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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices, by
+Charles Dickens
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions 
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at 
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices
+
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+
+
+Release Date: January 11, 2015  [eBook #888]
+[This file was first posted on April 28, 1997]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE
+APPRENTICES***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1905 Chapman and Hall edition (_The Works of Charles
+Dickens_, volume 28) by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+                          [Picture: Book cover]
+
+
+
+
+
+                  THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES
+
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                            By CHARLES DICKENS
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+         _With Illustrations by Harry Furniss and A. J. Goodman_
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                       LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL, LD.
+                    NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
+                                   1905
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+IN the autumn month of September, eighteen hundred and fifty-seven,
+wherein these presents bear date, two idle apprentices, exhausted by the
+long, hot summer, and the long, hot work it had brought with it, ran away
+from their employer.  They were bound to a highly meritorious lady (named
+Literature), of fair credit and repute, though, it must be acknowledged,
+not quite so highly esteemed in the City as she might be.  This is the
+more remarkable, as there is nothing against the respectable lady in that
+quarter, but quite the contrary; her family having rendered eminent
+service to many famous citizens of London.  It may be sufficient to name
+Sir William Walworth, Lord Mayor under King Richard II., at the time of
+Wat Tyler’s insurrection, and Sir Richard Whittington: which latter
+distinguished man and magistrate was doubtless indebted to the lady’s
+family for the gift of his celebrated cat.  There is also strong reason
+to suppose that they rang the Highgate bells for him with their own
+hands.
+
+The misguided young men who thus shirked their duty to the mistress from
+whom they had received many favours, were actuated by the low idea of
+making a perfectly idle trip, in any direction.  They had no intention of
+going anywhere in particular; they wanted to see nothing, they wanted to
+know nothing, they wanted to learn nothing, they wanted to do nothing.
+They wanted only to be idle.  They took to themselves (after HOGARTH),
+the names of Mr. Thomas Idle and Mr. Francis Goodchild; but there was not
+a moral pin to choose between them, and they were both idle in the last
+degree.
+
+Between Francis and Thomas, however, there was this difference of
+character: Goodchild was laboriously idle, and would take upon himself
+any amount of pains and labour to assure himself that he was idle; in
+short, had no better idea of idleness than that it was useless industry.
+Thomas Idle, on the other hand, was an idler of the unmixed Irish or
+Neapolitan type; a passive idler, a born-and-bred idler, a consistent
+idler, who practised what he would have preached if he had not been too
+idle to preach; a one entire and perfect chrysolite of idleness.
+
+The two idle apprentices found themselves, within a few hours of their
+escape, walking down into the North of England, that is to say, Thomas
+was lying in a meadow, looking at the railway trains as they passed over
+a distant viaduct—which was _his_ idea of walking down into the North;
+while Francis was walking a mile due South against time—which was _his_
+idea of walking down into the North.  In the meantime the day waned, and
+the milestones remained unconquered.
+
+‘Tom,’ said Goodchild, ‘the sun is getting low.  Up, and let us go
+forward!’
+
+‘Nay,’ quoth Thomas Idle, ‘I have not done with Annie Laurie yet.’  And
+he proceeded with that idle but popular ballad, to the effect that for
+the bonnie young person of that name he would ‘lay him doon and
+dee’—equivalent, in prose, to lay him down and die.
+
+‘What an ass that fellow was!’ cried Goodchild, with the bitter emphasis
+of contempt.
+
+‘Which fellow?’ asked Thomas Idle.
+
+‘The fellow in your song.  Lay him doon and dee!  Finely he’d show off
+before the girl by doing _that_.  A sniveller!  Why couldn’t he get up,
+and punch somebody’s head!’
+
+‘Whose?’ asked Thomas Idle.
+
+‘Anybody’s.  Everybody’s would be better than nobody’s!  If I fell into
+that state of mind about a girl, do you think I’d lay me doon and dee?
+No, sir,’ proceeded Goodchild, with a disparaging assumption of the
+Scottish accent, ‘I’d get me oop and peetch into somebody.  Wouldn’t
+you?’
+
+‘I wouldn’t have anything to do with her,’ yawned Thomas Idle.  ‘Why
+should I take the trouble?’
+
+‘It’s no trouble, Tom, to fall in love,’ said Goodchild, shaking his
+head.
+
+‘It’s trouble enough to fall out of it, once you’re in it,’ retorted Tom.
+‘So I keep out of it altogether.  It would be better for you, if you did
+the same.’
+
+Mr. Goodchild, who is always in love with somebody, and not unfrequently
+with several objects at once, made no reply.  He heaved a sigh of the
+kind which is termed by the lower orders ‘a bellowser,’ and then, heaving
+Mr. Idle on his feet (who was not half so heavy as the sigh), urged him
+northward.
+
+These two had sent their personal baggage on by train: only retaining
+each a knapsack.  Idle now applied himself to constantly regretting the
+train, to tracking it through the intricacies of Bradshaw’s Guide, and
+finding out where it is now—and where now—and where now—and to asking
+what was the use of walking, when you could ride at such a pace as that.
+Was it to see the country?  If that was the object, look at it out of the
+carriage windows.  There was a great deal more of it to be seen there
+than here.  Besides, who wanted to see the country?  Nobody.  And again,
+whoever did walk?  Nobody.  Fellows set off to walk, but they never did
+it.  They came back and said they did, but they didn’t.  Then why should
+he walk?  He wouldn’t walk.  He swore it by this milestone!
+
+It was the fifth from London, so far had they penetrated into the North.
+Submitting to the powerful chain of argument, Goodchild proposed a return
+to the Metropolis, and a falling back upon Euston Square Terminus.
+Thomas assented with alacrity, and so they walked down into the North by
+the next morning’s express, and carried their knapsacks in the
+luggage-van.
+
+It was like all other expresses, as every express is and must be.  It
+bore through the harvest country a smell like a large washing-day, and a
+sharp issue of steam as from a huge brazen tea-urn.  The greatest power
+in nature and art combined, it yet glided over dangerous heights in the
+sight of people looking up from fields and roads, as smoothly and
+unreally as a light miniature plaything.  Now, the engine shrieked in
+hysterics of such intensity, that it seemed desirable that the men who
+had her in charge should hold her feet, slap her hands, and bring her to;
+now, burrowed into tunnels with a stubborn and undemonstrative energy so
+confusing that the train seemed to be flying back into leagues of
+darkness.  Here, were station after station, swallowed up by the express
+without stopping; here, stations where it fired itself in like a volley
+of cannon-balls, swooped away four country-people with nosegays, and
+three men of business with portmanteaus, and fired itself off again,
+bang, bang, bang!  At long intervals were uncomfortable
+refreshment-rooms, made more uncomfortable by the scorn of Beauty towards
+Beast, the public (but to whom she never relented, as Beauty did in the
+story, towards the other Beast), and where sensitive stomachs were fed,
+with a contemptuous sharpness occasioning indigestion.  Here, again, were
+stations with nothing going but a bell, and wonderful wooden razors set
+aloft on great posts, shaving the air.  In these fields, the horses,
+sheep, and cattle were well used to the thundering meteor, and didn’t
+mind; in those, they were all set scampering together, and a herd of pigs
+scoured after them.  The pastoral country darkened, became coaly, became
+smoky, became infernal, got better, got worse, improved again, grew
+rugged, turned romantic; was a wood, a stream, a chain of hills, a gorge,
+a moor, a cathedral town, a fortified place, a waste.  Now, miserable
+black dwellings, a black canal, and sick black towers of chimneys; now, a
+trim garden, where the flowers were bright and fair; now, a wilderness of
+hideous altars all a-blaze; now, the water meadows with their fairy
+rings; now, the mangy patch of unlet building ground outside the stagnant
+town, with the larger ring where the Circus was last week.  The
+temperature changed, the dialect changed, the people changed, faces got
+sharper, manner got shorter, eyes got shrewder and harder; yet all so
+quickly, that the spruce guard in the London uniform and silver lace, had
+not yet rumpled his shirt-collar, delivered half the dispatches in his
+shiny little pouch, or read his newspaper.
+
+Carlisle!  Idle and Goodchild had got to Carlisle.  It looked congenially
+and delightfully idle.  Something in the way of public amusement had
+happened last month, and something else was going to happen before
+Christmas; and, in the meantime there was a lecture on India for those
+who liked it—which Idle and Goodchild did not.  Likewise, by those who
+liked them, there were impressions to be bought of all the vapid prints,
+going and gone, and of nearly all the vapid books.  For those who wanted
+to put anything in missionary boxes, here were the boxes.  For those who
+wanted the Reverend Mr. Podgers (artist’s proofs, thirty shillings), here
+was Mr. Podgers to any amount.  Not less gracious and abundant, Mr.
+Codgers also of the vineyard, but opposed to Mr. Podgers, brotherly tooth
+and nail.  Here, were guide-books to the neighbouring antiquities, and
+eke the Lake country, in several dry and husky sorts; here, many
+physically and morally impossible heads of both sexes, for young ladies
+to copy, in the exercise of the art of drawing; here, further, a large
+impression of MR. SPURGEON, solid as to the flesh, not to say even
+something gross.  The working young men of Carlisle were drawn up, with
+their hands in their pockets, across the pavements, four and six abreast,
+and appeared (much to the satisfaction of Mr. Idle) to have nothing else
+to do.  The working and growing young women of Carlisle, from the age of
+twelve upwards, promenaded the streets in the cool of the evening, and
+rallied the said young men.  Sometimes the young men rallied the young
+women, as in the case of a group gathered round an accordion-player, from
+among whom a young man advanced behind a young woman for whom he appeared
+to have a tenderness, and hinted to her that he was there and playful, by
+giving her (he wore clogs) a kick.
+
+On market morning, Carlisle woke up amazingly, and became (to the two
+Idle Apprentices) disagreeably and reproachfully busy.  There were its
+cattle market, its sheep market, and its pig market down by the river,
+with raw-boned and shock-headed Rob Roys hiding their Lowland dresses
+beneath heavy plaids, prowling in and out among the animals, and
+flavouring the air with fumes of whiskey.  There was its corn market down
+the main street, with hum of chaffering over open sacks.  There was its
+general market in the street too, with heather brooms on which the purple
+flower still flourished, and heather baskets primitive and fresh to
+behold.  With women trying on clogs and caps at open stalls, and ‘Bible
+stalls’ adjoining.  With ‘Doctor Mantle’s Dispensary for the cure of all
+Human Maladies and no charge for advice,’ and with Doctor Mantle’s
+‘Laboratory of Medical, Chemical, and Botanical Science’—both healing
+institutions established on one pair of trestles, one board, and one
+sun-blind.  With the renowned phrenologist from London, begging to be
+favoured (at sixpence each) with the company of clients of both sexes, to
+whom, on examination of their heads, he would make revelations ‘enabling
+him or her to know themselves.’  Through all these bargains and
+blessings, the recruiting-sergeant watchfully elbowed his way, a thread
+of War in the peaceful skein.  Likewise on the walls were printed hints
+that the Oxford Blues might not be indisposed to hear of a few fine
+active young men; and that whereas the standard of that distinguished
+corps is full six feet, ‘growing lads of five feet eleven’ need not
+absolutely despair of being accepted.
+
+Scenting the morning air more pleasantly than the buried majesty of
+Denmark did, Messrs. Idle and Goodchild rode away from Carlisle at eight
+o’clock one forenoon, bound for the village of Hesket, Newmarket, some
+fourteen miles distant.  Goodchild (who had already begun to doubt
+whether he was idle: as his way always is when he has nothing to do) had
+read of a certain black old Cumberland hill or mountain, called Carrock,
+or Carrock Fell; and had arrived at the conclusion that it would be the
+culminating triumph of Idleness to ascend the same.  Thomas Idle,
+dwelling on the pains inseparable from that achievement, had expressed
+the strongest doubts of the expediency, and even of the sanity, of the
+enterprise; but Goodchild had carried his point, and they rode away.
+
+Up hill and down hill, and twisting to the right, and twisting to the
+left, and with old Skiddaw (who has vaunted himself a great deal more
+than his merits deserve; but that is rather the way of the Lake country),
+dodging the apprentices in a picturesque and pleasant manner.  Good,
+weather-proof, warm, pleasant houses, well white-limed, scantily dotting
+the road.  Clean children coming out to look, carrying other clean
+children as big as themselves.  Harvest still lying out and much rained
+upon; here and there, harvest still unreaped.  Well-cultivated gardens
+attached to the cottages, with plenty of produce forced out of their hard
+soil.  Lonely nooks, and wild; but people can be born, and married, and
+buried in such nooks, and can live and love, and be loved, there as
+elsewhere, thank God! (Mr. Goodchild’s remark.)  By-and-by, the village.
+Black, coarse-stoned, rough-windowed houses; some with outer staircases,
+like Swiss houses; a sinuous and stony gutter winding up hill and round
+the corner, by way of street.  All the children running out directly.
+Women pausing in washing, to peep from doorways and very little windows.
+Such were the observations of Messrs. Idle and Goodchild, as their
+conveyance stopped at the village shoemaker’s.  Old Carrock gloomed down
+upon it all in a very ill-tempered state; and rain was beginning.
+
+The village shoemaker declined to have anything to do with Carrock.  No
+visitors went up Carrock.  No visitors came there at all.  Aa’ the world
+ganged awa’ yon.  The driver appealed to the Innkeeper.  The Innkeeper
+had two men working in the fields, and one of them should be called in,
+to go up Carrock as guide.  Messrs. Idle and Goodchild, highly approving,
+entered the Innkeeper’s house, to drink whiskey and eat oatcake.
+
+The Innkeeper was not idle enough—was not idle at all, which was a great
+fault in him—but was a fine specimen of a north-country man, or any kind
+of man.  He had a ruddy cheek, a bright eye, a well-knit frame, an
+immense hand, a cheery, outspeaking voice, and a straight, bright, broad
+look.  He had a drawing-room, too, upstairs, which was worth a visit to
+the Cumberland Fells.  (This was Mr. Francis Goodchild’s opinion, in
+which Mr. Thomas Idle did not concur.)
+
+The ceiling of this drawing-room was so crossed and recrossed by beams of
+unequal lengths, radiating from a centre, in a corner, that it looked
+like a broken star-fish.  The room was comfortably and solidly furnished
+with good mahogany and horsehair.  It had a snug fireside, and a couple
+of well-curtained windows, looking out upon the wild country behind the
+house.  What it most developed was, an unexpected taste for little
+ornaments and nick-nacks, of which it contained a most surprising number.
+They were not very various, consisting in great part of waxen babies with
+their limbs more or less mutilated, appealing on one leg to the parental
+affections from under little cupping glasses; but, Uncle Tom was there,
+in crockery, receiving theological instructions from Miss Eva, who grew
+out of his side like a wen, in an exceedingly rough state of profile
+propagandism.  Engravings of Mr. Hunt’s country boy, before and after his
+pie, were on the wall, divided by a highly-coloured nautical piece, the
+subject of which had all her colours (and more) flying, and was making
+great way through a sea of a regular pattern, like a lady’s collar.  A
+benevolent, elderly gentleman of the last century, with a powdered head,
+kept guard, in oil and varnish, over a most perplexing piece of furniture
+on a table; in appearance between a driving seat and an angular
+knife-box, but, when opened, a musical instrument of tinkling wires,
+exactly like David’s harp packed for travelling.  Everything became a
+nick-nack in this curious room.  The copper tea-kettle, burnished up to
+the highest point of glory, took his station on a stand of his own at the
+greatest possible distance from the fireplace, and said: ‘By your leave,
+not a kettle, but a bijou.’  The Staffordshire-ware butter-dish with the
+cover on, got upon a little round occasional table in a window, with a
+worked top, and announced itself to the two chairs accidentally placed
+there, as an aid to polite conversation, a graceful trifle in china to be
+chatted over by callers, as they airily trifled away the visiting moments
+of a butterfly existence, in that rugged old village on the Cumberland
+Fells.  The very footstool could not keep the floor, but got upon a sofa,
+and there-from proclaimed itself, in high relief of white and
+liver-coloured wool, a favourite spaniel coiled up for repose.  Though,
+truly, in spite of its bright glass eyes, the spaniel was the least
+successful assumption in the collection: being perfectly flat, and
+dismally suggestive of a recent mistake in sitting down on the part of
+some corpulent member of the family.
+
+There were books, too, in this room; books on the table, books on the
+chimney-piece, books in an open press in the corner.  Fielding was there,
+and Smollett was there, and Steele and Addison were there, in dispersed
+volumes; and there were tales of those who go down to the sea in ships,
+for windy nights; and there was really a choice of good books for rainy
+days or fine.  It was so very pleasant to see these things in such a
+lonesome by-place—so very agreeable to find these evidences of a taste,
+however homely, that went beyond the beautiful cleanliness and trimness
+of the house—so fanciful to imagine what a wonder a room must be to the
+little children born in the gloomy village—what grand impressions of it
+those of them who became wanderers over the earth would carry away; and
+how, at distant ends of the world, some old voyagers would die,
+cherishing the belief that the finest apartment known to men was once in
+the Hesket-Newmarket Inn, in rare old Cumberland—it was such a charmingly
+lazy pursuit to entertain these rambling thoughts over the choice oatcake
+and the genial whiskey, that Mr. Idle and Mr. Goodchild never asked
+themselves how it came to pass that the men in the fields were never
+heard of more, how the stalwart landlord replaced them without
+explanation, how his dog-cart came to be waiting at the door, and how
+everything was arranged without the least arrangement for climbing to old
+Carrock’s shoulders, and standing on his head.
+
+Without a word of inquiry, therefore, the Two Idle Apprentices drifted
+out resignedly into a fine, soft, close, drowsy, penetrating rain; got
+into the landlord’s light dog-cart, and rattled off through the village
+for the foot of Carrock.  The journey at the outset was not remarkable.
+The Cumberland road went up and down like all other roads; the Cumberland
+curs burst out from backs of cottages and barked like other curs, and the
+Cumberland peasantry stared after the dog-cart amazedly, as long as it
+was in sight, like the rest of their race.  The approach to the foot of
+the mountain resembled the approaches to the feet of most other mountains
+all over the world.  The cultivation gradually ceased, the trees grew
+gradually rare, the road became gradually rougher, and the sides of the
+mountain looked gradually more and more lofty, and more and more
+difficult to get up.  The dog-cart was left at a lonely farm-house.  The
+landlord borrowed a large umbrella, and, assuming in an instant the
+character of the most cheerful and adventurous of guides, led the way to
+the ascent.  Mr. Goodchild looked eagerly at the top of the mountain,
+and, feeling apparently that he was now going to be very lazy indeed,
+shone all over wonderfully to the eye, under the influence of the
+contentment within and the moisture without.  Only in the bosom of Mr.
+Thomas Idle did Despondency now hold her gloomy state.  He kept it a
+secret; but he would have given a very handsome sum, when the ascent
+began, to have been back again at the inn.  The sides of Carrock looked
+fearfully steep, and the top of Carrock was hidden in mist.  The rain was
+falling faster and faster.  The knees of Mr. Idle—always weak on walking
+excursions—shivered and shook with fear and damp.  The wet was already
+penetrating through the young man’s outer coat to a brand-new
+shooting-jacket, for which he had reluctantly paid the large sum of two
+guineas on leaving town; he had no stimulating refreshment about him but
+a small packet of clammy gingerbread nuts; he had nobody to give him an
+arm, nobody to push him gently behind, nobody to pull him up tenderly in
+front, nobody to speak to who really felt the difficulties of the ascent,
+the dampness of the rain, the denseness of the mist, and the unutterable
+folly of climbing, undriven, up any steep place in the world, when there
+is level ground within reach to walk on instead.  Was it for this that
+Thomas had left London?  London, where there are nice short walks in
+level public gardens, with benches of repose set up at convenient
+distances for weary travellers—London, where rugged stone is humanely
+pounded into little lumps for the road, and intelligently shaped into
+smooth slabs for the pavement!  No! it was not for the laborious ascent
+of the crags of Carrock that Idle had left his native city, and travelled
+to Cumberland.  Never did he feel more disastrously convinced that he had
+committed a very grave error in judgment than when he found himself
+standing in the rain at the bottom of a steep mountain, and knew that the
+responsibility rested on his weak shoulders of actually getting to the
+top of it.
+
+The honest landlord went first, the beaming Goodchild followed, the
+mournful Idle brought up the rear.  From time to time, the two foremost
+members of the expedition changed places in the order of march; but the
+rearguard never altered his position.  Up the mountain or down the
+mountain, in the water or out of it, over the rocks, through the bogs,
+skirting the heather, Mr. Thomas Idle was always the last, and was always
+the man who had to be looked after and waited for.  At first the ascent
+was delusively easy, the sides of the mountain sloped gradually, and the
+material of which they were composed was a soft spongy turf, very tender
+and pleasant to walk upon.  After a hundred yards or so, however, the
+verdant scene and the easy slope disappeared, and the rocks began.  Not
+noble, massive rocks, standing upright, keeping a certain regularity in
+their positions, and possessing, now and then, flat tops to sit upon, but
+little irritating, comfortless rocks, littered about anyhow, by Nature;
+treacherous, disheartening rocks of all sorts of small shapes and small
+sizes, bruisers of tender toes and trippers-up of wavering feet.  When
+these impediments were passed, heather and slough followed.  Here the
+steepness of the ascent was slightly mitigated; and here the exploring
+party of three turned round to look at the view below them.  The scene of
+the moorland and the fields was like a feeble water-colour drawing half
+sponged out.  The mist was darkening, the rain was thickening, the trees
+were dotted about like spots of faint shadow, the division-lines which
+mapped out the fields were all getting blurred together, and the lonely
+farm-house where the dog-cart had been left, loomed spectral in the grey
+light like the last human dwelling at the end of the habitable world.
+Was this a sight worth climbing to see?  Surely—surely not!
+
+Up again—for the top of Carrock is not reached yet.  The land-lord, just
+as good-tempered and obliging as he was at the bottom of the mountain.
+Mr. Goodchild brighter in the eyes and rosier in the face than ever; full
+of cheerful remarks and apt quotations; and walking with a springiness of
+step wonderful to behold.  Mr. Idle, farther and farther in the rear,
+with the water squeaking in the toes of his boots, with his two-guinea
+shooting-jacket clinging damply to his aching sides, with his overcoat so
+full of rain, and standing out so pyramidically stiff, in consequence,
+from his shoulders downwards, that he felt as if he was walking in a
+gigantic extinguisher—the despairing spirit within him representing but
+too aptly the candle that had just been put out.  Up and up and up again,
+till a ridge is reached and the outer edge of the mist on the summit of
+Carrock is darkly and drizzingly near.  Is this the top?  No, nothing
+like the top.  It is an aggravating peculiarity of all mountains, that,
+although they have only one top when they are seen (as they ought always
+to be seen) from below, they turn out to have a perfect eruption of false
+tops whenever the traveller is sufficiently ill-advised to go out of his
+way for the purpose of ascending them.  Carrock is but a trumpery little
+mountain of fifteen hundred feet, and it presumes to have false tops, and
+even precipices, as if it were Mont Blanc.  No matter; Goodchild enjoys
+it, and will go on; and Idle, who is afraid of being left behind by
+himself, must follow.  On entering the edge of the mist, the landlord
+stops, and says he hopes that it will not get any thicker.  It is twenty
+years since he last ascended Carrock, and it is barely possible, if the
+mist increases, that the party may be lost on the mountain.  Goodchild
+hears this dreadful intimation, and is not in the least impressed by it.
+He marches for the top that is never to be found, as if he was the
+Wandering Jew, bound to go on for ever, in defiance of everything.  The
+landlord faithfully accompanies him.  The two, to the dim eye of Idle,
+far below, look in the exaggerative mist, like a pair of friendly giants,
+mounting the steps of some invisible castle together.  Up and up, and
+then down a little, and then up, and then along a strip of level ground,
+and then up again.  The wind, a wind unknown in the happy valley, blows
+keen and strong; the rain-mist gets impenetrable; a dreary little cairn
+of stones appears.  The landlord adds one to the heap, first walking all
+round the cairn as if he were about to perform an incantation, then
+dropping the stone on to the top of the heap with the gesture of a
+magician adding an ingredient to a cauldron in full bubble.  Goodchild
+sits down by the cairn as if it was his study-table at home; Idle,
+drenched and panting, stands up with his back to the wind, ascertains
+distinctly that this is the top at last, looks round with all the little
+curiosity that is left in him, and gets, in return, a magnificent view
+of—Nothing!
+
+The effect of this sublime spectacle on the minds of the exploring party
+is a little injured by the nature of the direct conclusion to which the
+sight of it points—the said conclusion being that the mountain mist has
+actually gathered round them, as the landlord feared it would.  It now
+becomes imperatively necessary to settle the exact situation of the
+farm-house in the valley at which the dog-cart has been left, before the
+travellers attempt to descend.  While the landlord is endeavouring to
+make this discovery in his own way, Mr. Goodchild plunges his hand under
+his wet coat, draws out a little red morocco-case, opens it, and displays
+to the view of his companions a neat pocket-compass.  The north is found,
+the point at which the farm-house is situated is settled, and the descent
+begins.  After a little downward walking, Idle (behind as usual) sees his
+fellow-travellers turn aside sharply—tries to follow them—loses them in
+the mist—is shouted after, waited for, recovered—and then finds that a
+halt has been ordered, partly on his account, partly for the purpose of
+again consulting the compass.
+
+The point in debate is settled as before between Goodchild and the
+landlord, and the expedition moves on, not down the mountain, but
+marching straight forward round the slope of it.  The difficulty of
+following this new route is acutely felt by Thomas Idle.  He finds the
+hardship of walking at all greatly increased by the fatigue of moving his
+feet straight forward along the side of a slope, when their natural
+tendency, at every step, is to turn off at a right angle, and go straight
+down the declivity.  Let the reader imagine himself to be walking along
+the roof of a barn, instead of up or down it, and he will have an exact
+idea of the pedestrian difficulty in which the travellers had now
+involved themselves.  In ten minutes more Idle was lost in the distance
+again, was shouted for, waited for, recovered as before; found Goodchild
+repeating his observation of the compass, and remonstrated warmly against
+the sideway route that his companions persisted in following.  It
+appeared to the uninstructed mind of Thomas that when three men want to
+get to the bottom of a mountain, their business is to walk down it; and
+he put this view of the case, not only with emphasis, but even with some
+irritability.  He was answered from the scientific eminence of the
+compass on which his companions were mounted, that there was a frightful
+chasm somewhere near the foot of Carrock, called The Black Arches, into
+which the travellers were sure to march in the mist, if they risked
+continuing the descent from the place where they had now halted.  Idle
+received this answer with the silent respect which was due to the
+commanders of the expedition, and followed along the roof of the barn, or
+rather the side of the mountain, reflecting upon the assurance which he
+received on starting again, that the object of the party was only to gain
+‘a certain point,’ and, this haven attained, to continue the descent
+afterwards until the foot of Carrock was reached.  Though quite
+unexceptionable as an abstract form of expression, the phrase ‘a certain
+point’ has the disadvantage of sounding rather vaguely when it is
+pronounced on unknown ground, under a canopy of mist much thicker than a
+London fog.  Nevertheless, after the compass, this phrase was all the
+clue the party had to hold by, and Idle clung to the extreme end of it as
+hopefully as he could.
+
+More sideway walking, thicker and thicker mist, all sorts of points
+reached except the ‘certain point;’ third loss of Idle, third shouts for
+him, third recovery of him, third consultation of compass.  Mr. Goodchild
+draws it tenderly from his pocket, and prepares to adjust it on a stone.
+Something falls on the turf—it is the glass.  Something else drops
+immediately after—it is the needle.  The compass is broken, and the
+exploring party is lost!
+
+It is the practice of the English portion of the human race to receive
+all great disasters in dead silence.  Mr. Goodchild restored the useless
+compass to his pocket without saying a word, Mr. Idle looked at the
+landlord, and the landlord looked at Mr. Idle.  There was nothing for it
+now but to go on blindfold, and trust to the chapter of chances.
+Accordingly, the lost travellers moved forward, still walking round the
+slope of the mountain, still desperately resolved to avoid the Black
+Arches, and to succeed in reaching the ‘certain point.’
+
+A quarter of an hour brought them to the brink of a ravine, at the bottom
+of which there flowed a muddy little stream.  Here another halt was
+called, and another consultation took place.  The landlord, still
+clinging pertinaciously to the idea of reaching the ‘point,’ voted for
+crossing the ravine, and going on round the slope of the mountain.  Mr.
+Goodchild, to the great relief of his fellow-traveller, took another view
+of the case, and backed Mr. Idle’s proposal to descend Carrock at once,
+at any hazard—the rather as the running stream was a sure guide to follow
+from the mountain to the valley.  Accordingly, the party descended to the
+rugged and stony banks of the stream; and here again Thomas lost ground
+sadly, and fell far behind his travelling companions.  Not much more than
+six weeks had elapsed since he had sprained one of his ankles, and he
+began to feel this same ankle getting rather weak when he found himself
+among the stones that were strewn about the running water.  Goodchild and
+the landlord were getting farther and farther ahead of him.  He saw them
+cross the stream and disappear round a projection on its banks.  He heard
+them shout the moment after as a signal that they had halted and were
+waiting for him.  Answering the shout, he mended his pace, crossed the
+stream where they had crossed it, and was within one step of the opposite
+bank, when his foot slipped on a wet stone, his weak ankle gave a twist
+outwards, a hot, rending, tearing pain ran through it at the same moment,
+and down fell the idlest of the Two Idle Apprentices, crippled in an
+instant.
+
+The situation was now, in plain terms, one of absolute danger.  There lay
+Mr. Idle writhing with pain, there was the mist as thick as ever, there
+was the landlord as completely lost as the strangers whom he was
+conducting, and there was the compass broken in Goodchild’s pocket.  To
+leave the wretched Thomas on unknown ground was plainly impossible; and
+to get him to walk with a badly sprained ankle seemed equally out of the
+question.  However, Goodchild (brought back by his cry for help) bandaged
+the ankle with a pocket-handkerchief, and assisted by the landlord,
+raised the crippled Apprentice to his legs, offered him a shoulder to
+lean on, and exhorted him for the sake of the whole party to try if he
+could walk.  Thomas, assisted by the shoulder on one side, and a stick on
+the other, did try, with what pain and difficulty those only can imagine
+who have sprained an ankle and have had to tread on it afterwards.  At a
+pace adapted to the feeble hobbling of a newly-lamed man, the lost party
+moved on, perfectly ignorant whether they were on the right side of the
+mountain or the wrong, and equally uncertain how long Idle would be able
+to contend with the pain in his ankle, before he gave in altogether and
+fell down again, unable to stir another step.
+
+Slowly and more slowly, as the clog of crippled Thomas weighed heavily
+and more heavily on the march of the expedition, the lost travellers
+followed the windings of the stream, till they came to a faintly-marked
+cart-track, branching off nearly at right angles, to the left.  After a
+little consultation it was resolved to follow this dim vestige of a road
+in the hope that it might lead to some farm or cottage, at which Idle
+could be left in safety.  It was now getting on towards the afternoon,
+and it was fast becoming more than doubtful whether the party, delayed in
+their progress as they now were, might not be overtaken by the darkness
+before the right route was found, and be condemned to pass the night on
+the mountain, without bit or drop to comfort them, in their wet clothes.
+
+The cart-track grew fainter and fainter, until it was washed out
+altogether by another little stream, dark, turbulent, and rapid.  The
+landlord suggested, judging by the colour of the water, that it must be
+flowing from one of the lead mines in the neighbourhood of Carrock; and
+the travellers accordingly kept by the stream for a little while, in the
+hope of possibly wandering towards help in that way.  After walking
+forward about two hundred yards, they came upon a mine indeed, but a
+mine, exhausted and abandoned; a dismal, ruinous place, with nothing but
+the wreck of its works and buildings left to speak for it.  Here, there
+were a few sheep feeding.  The landlord looked at them earnestly, thought
+he recognised the marks on them—then thought he did not—finally gave up
+the sheep in despair—and walked on just as ignorant of the whereabouts of
+the party as ever.
+
+The march in the dark, literally as well as metaphorically in the dark,
+had now been continued for three-quarters of an hour from the time when
+the crippled Apprentice had met with his accident.  Mr. Idle, with all
+the will to conquer the pain in his ankle, and to hobble on, found the
+power rapidly failing him, and felt that another ten minutes at most
+would find him at the end of his last physical resources.  He had just
+made up his mind on this point, and was about to communicate the dismal
+result of his reflections to his companions, when the mist suddenly
+brightened, and begun to lift straight ahead.  In another minute, the
+landlord, who was in advance, proclaimed that he saw a tree.  Before
+long, other trees appeared—then a cottage—then a house beyond the
+cottage, and a familiar line of road rising behind it.  Last of all,
+Carrock itself loomed darkly into view, far away to the right hand.  The
+party had not only got down the mountain without knowing how, but had
+wandered away from it in the mist, without knowing why—away, far down on
+the very moor by which they had approached the base of Carrock that
+morning.
+
+The happy lifting of the mist, and the still happier discovery that the
+travellers had groped their way, though by a very roundabout direction,
+to within a mile or so of the part of the valley in which the farm-house
+was situated, restored Mr. Idle’s sinking spirits and reanimated his
+failing strength.  While the landlord ran off to get the dog-cart, Thomas
+was assisted by Goodchild to the cottage which had been the first
+building seen when the darkness brightened, and was propped up against
+the garden wall, like an artist’s lay figure waiting to be forwarded,
+until the dog-cart should arrive from the farm-house below.  In due
+time—and a very long time it seemed to Mr. Idle—the rattle of wheels was
+heard, and the crippled Apprentice was lifted into the seat.  As the
+dog-cart was driven back to the inn, the landlord related an anecdote
+which he had just heard at the farm-house, of an unhappy man who had been
+lost, like his two guests and himself, on Carrock; who had passed the
+night there alone; who had been found the next morning, ‘scared and
+starved;’ and who never went out afterwards, except on his way to the
+grave.  Mr. Idle heard this sad story, and derived at least one useful
+impression from it.  Bad as the pain in his ankle was, he contrived to
+bear it patiently, for he felt grateful that a worse accident had not
+befallen him in the wilds of Carrock.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+THE dog-cart, with Mr. Thomas Idle and his ankle on the hanging seat
+behind, Mr. Francis Goodchild and the Innkeeper in front, and the rain in
+spouts and splashes everywhere, made the best of its way back to the
+little inn; the broken moor country looking like miles upon miles of
+Pre-Adamite sop, or the ruins of some enormous jorum of antediluvian
+toast-and-water.  The trees dripped; the eaves of the scattered cottages
+dripped; the barren stone walls dividing the land, dripped; the yelping
+dogs dripped; carts and waggons under ill-roofed penthouses, dripped;
+melancholy cocks and hens perching on their shafts, or seeking shelter
+underneath them, dripped; Mr. Goodchild dripped; Thomas Idle dripped; the
+Inn-keeper dripped; the mare dripped; the vast curtains of mist and cloud
+passed before the shadowy forms of the hills, streamed water as they were
+drawn across the landscape.  Down such steep pitches that the mare seemed
+to be trotting on her head, and up such steep pitches that she seemed to
+have a supplementary leg in her tail, the dog-cart jolted and tilted back
+to the village.  It was too wet for the women to look out, it was too wet
+even for the children to look out; all the doors and windows were closed,
+and the only sign of life or motion was in the rain-punctured puddles.
+
+Whiskey and oil to Thomas Idle’s ankle, and whiskey without oil to
+Francis Goodchild’s stomach, produced an agreeable change in the systems
+of both; soothing Mr. Idle’s pain, which was sharp before, and sweetening
+Mr. Goodchild’s temper, which was sweet before.  Portmanteaus being then
+opened and clothes changed, Mr. Goodchild, through having no change of
+outer garments but broadcloth and velvet, suddenly became a magnificent
+portent in the Innkeeper’s house, a shining frontispiece to the fashions
+for the month, and a frightful anomaly in the Cumberland village.
+
+Greatly ashamed of his splendid appearance, the conscious Goodchild
+quenched it as much as possible, in the shadow of Thomas Idle’s ankle,
+and in a corner of the little covered carriage that started with them for
+Wigton—a most desirable carriage for any country, except for its having a
+flat roof and no sides; which caused the plumps of rain accumulating on
+the roof to play vigorous games of bagatelle into the interior all the
+way, and to score immensely.  It was comfortable to see how the people
+coming back in open carts from Wigton market made no more of the rain
+than if it were sunshine; how the Wigton policeman taking a country walk
+of half-a-dozen miles (apparently for pleasure), in resplendent uniform,
+accepted saturation as his normal state; how clerks and schoolmasters in
+black, loitered along the road without umbrellas, getting varnished at
+every step; how the Cumberland girls, coming out to look after the
+Cumberland cows, shook the rain from their eyelashes and laughed it away;
+and how the rain continued to fall upon all, as it only does fall in hill
+countries.
+
+Wigton market was over, and its bare booths were smoking with rain all
+down the street.  Mr. Thomas Idle, melodramatically carried to the inn’s
+first floor, and laid upon three chairs (he should have had the sofa, if
+there had been one), Mr. Goodchild went to the window to take an
+observation of Wigton, and report what he saw to his disabled companion.
+
+‘Brother Francis, brother Francis,’ cried Thomas Idle, ‘What do you see
+from the turret?’
+
+‘I see,’ said Brother Francis, ‘what I hope and believe to be one of the
+most dismal places ever seen by eyes.  I see the houses with their roofs
+of dull black, their stained fronts, and their dark-rimmed windows,
+looking as if they were all in mourning.  As every little puff of wind
+comes down the street, I see a perfect train of rain let off along the
+wooden stalls in the market-place and exploded against me.  I see a very
+big gas lamp in the centre which I know, by a secret instinct, will not
+be lighted to-night.  I see a pump, with a trivet underneath its spout
+whereon to stand the vessels that are brought to be filled with water.  I
+see a man come to pump, and he pumps very hard, but no water follows, and
+he strolls empty away.’
+
+‘Brother Francis, brother Francis,’ cried Thomas Idle, ‘what more do you
+see from the turret, besides the man and the pump, and the trivet and the
+houses all in mourning and the rain?’
+
+‘I see,’ said Brother Francis, ‘one, two, three, four, five,
+linen-drapers’ shops in front of me.  I see a linen-draper’s shop next
+door to the right—and there are five more linen-drapers’ shops down the
+corner to the left.  Eleven homicidal linen-drapers’ shops within a short
+stone’s throw, each with its hands at the throats of all the rest!  Over
+the small first-floor of one of these linen-drapers’ shops appears the
+wonderful inscription, BANK.’
+
+‘Brother Francis, brother Francis,’ cried Thomas Idle, ‘what more do you
+see from the turret, besides the eleven homicidal linen-drapers’ shops,
+and the wonderful inscription, “Bank,”—on the small first-floor, and the
+man and the pump and the trivet and the houses all in mourning and the
+rain?’
+
+‘I see,’ said Brother Francis, ‘the depository for Christian Knowledge,
+and through the dark vapour I think I again make out Mr. Spurgeon looming
+heavily.  Her Majesty the Queen, God bless her, printed in colours, I am
+sure I see.  I see the _Illustrated London News_ of several years ago,
+and I see a sweetmeat shop—which the proprietor calls a “Salt
+Warehouse”—with one small female child in a cotton bonnet looking in on
+tip-toe, oblivious of rain.  And I see a watchmaker’s with only three
+great pale watches of a dull metal hanging in his window, each in a
+separate pane.’
+
+‘Brother Francis, brother Francis,’ cried Thomas Idle, ‘what more do you
+see of Wigton, besides these objects, and the man and the pump and the
+trivet and the houses all in mourning and the rain?’
+
+‘I see nothing more,’ said Brother Francis, ‘and there is nothing more to
+see, except the curlpaper bill of the theatre, which was opened and shut
+last week (the manager’s family played all the parts), and the short,
+square, chinky omnibus that goes to the railway, and leads too rattling a
+life over the stones to hold together long.  O yes!  Now, I see two men
+with their hands in their pockets and their backs towards me.’
+
+‘Brother Francis, brother Francis,’ cried Thomas Idle, ‘what do you make
+out from the turret, of the expression of the two men with their hands in
+their pockets and their backs towards you?’
+
+‘They are mysterious men,’ said Brother Francis, ‘with inscrutable backs.
+They keep their backs towards me with persistency.  If one turns an inch
+in any direction, the other turns an inch in the same direction, and no
+more.  They turn very stiffly, on a very little pivot, in the middle of
+the market-place.  Their appearance is partly of a mining, partly of a
+ploughing, partly of a stable, character.  They are looking at
+nothing—very hard.  Their backs are slouched, and their legs are curved
+with much standing about.  Their pockets are loose and dog’s-eared, on
+account of their hands being always in them.  They stand to be rained
+upon, without any movement of impatience or dissatisfaction, and they
+keep so close together that an elbow of each jostles an elbow of the
+other, but they never speak.  They spit at times, but speak not.  I see
+it growing darker and darker, and still I see them, sole visible
+population of the place, standing to be rained upon with their backs
+towards me, and looking at nothing very hard.’
+
+‘Brother Francis, brother Francis,’ cried Thomas Idle, ‘before you draw
+down the blind of the turret and come in to have your head scorched by
+the hot gas, see if you can, and impart to me, something of the
+expression of those two amazing men.’
+
+‘The murky shadows,’ said Francis Goodchild, ‘are gathering fast; and the
+wings of evening, and the wings of coal, are folding over Wigton.  Still,
+they look at nothing very hard, with their backs towards me.  Ah!  Now,
+they turn, and I see—’
+
+‘Brother Francis, brother Francis,’ cried Thomas Idle, ‘tell me quickly
+what you see of the two men of Wigton!’
+
+‘I see,’ said Francis Goodchild, ‘that they have no expression at all.
+And now the town goes to sleep, undazzled by the large unlighted lamp in
+the market-place; and let no man wake it.’
+
+At the close of the next day’s journey, Mr. Thomas Idle’s ankle became
+much swollen and inflamed.  There are reasons which will presently
+explain themselves for not publicly indicating the exact direction in
+which that journey lay, or the place in which it ended.  It was a long
+day’s shaking of Thomas Idle over the rough roads, and a long day’s
+getting out and going on before the horses, and fagging up hills, and
+scouring down hills, on the part of Mr. Goodchild, who in the fatigues of
+such labours congratulated himself on attaining a high point of idleness.
+It was at a little town, still in Cumberland, that they halted for the
+night—a very little town, with the purple and brown moor close upon its
+one street; a curious little ancient market-cross set up in the midst of
+it; and the town itself looking much as if it were a collection of great
+stones piled on end by the Druids long ago, which a few recluse people
+had since hollowed out for habitations.
+
+‘Is there a doctor here?’ asked Mr. Goodchild, on his knee, of the
+motherly landlady of the little Inn: stopping in his examination of Mr.
+Idle’s ankle, with the aid of a candle.
+
+‘Ey, my word!’ said the landlady, glancing doubtfully at the ankle for
+herself; ‘there’s Doctor Speddie.’
+
+‘Is he a good Doctor?’
+
+‘Ey!’ said the landlady, ‘I ca’ him so.  A’ cooms efther nae doctor that
+I ken.  Mair nor which, a’s just THE doctor heer.’
+
+‘Do you think he is at home?’
+
+Her reply was, ‘Gang awa’, Jock, and bring him.’
+
+Jock, a white-headed boy, who, under pretence of stirring up some bay
+salt in a basin of water for the laving of this unfortunate ankle, had
+greatly enjoyed himself for the last ten minutes in splashing the carpet,
+set off promptly.  A very few minutes had elapsed when he showed the
+Doctor in, by tumbling against the door before him and bursting it open
+with his head.
+
+‘Gently, Jock, gently,’ said the Doctor as he advanced with a quiet step.
+‘Gentlemen, a good evening.  I am sorry that my presence is required
+here.  A slight accident, I hope?  A slip and a fall?  Yes, yes, yes.
+Carrock, indeed?  Hah!  Does that pain you, sir?  No doubt, it does.  It
+is the great connecting ligament here, you see, that has been badly
+strained.  Time and rest, sir!  They are often the recipe in greater
+cases,’ with a slight sigh, ‘and often the recipe in small.  I can send a
+lotion to relieve you, but we must leave the cure to time and rest.’
+
+This he said, holding Idle’s foot on his knee between his two hands, as
+he sat over against him.  He had touched it tenderly and skilfully in
+explanation of what he said, and, when his careful examination was
+completed, softly returned it to its former horizontal position on a
+chair.
+
+He spoke with a little irresolution whenever he began, but afterwards
+fluently.  He was a tall, thin, large-boned, old gentleman, with an
+appearance at first sight of being hard-featured; but, at a second
+glance, the mild expression of his face and some particular touches of
+sweetness and patience about his mouth, corrected this impression and
+assigned his long professional rides, by day and night, in the bleak
+hill-weather, as the true cause of that appearance.  He stooped very
+little, though past seventy and very grey.  His dress was more like that
+of a clergyman than a country doctor, being a plain black suit, and a
+plain white neck-kerchief tied behind like a band.  His black was the
+worse for wear, and there were darns in his coat, and his linen was a
+little frayed at the hems and edges.  He might have been poor—it was
+likely enough in that out-of-the-way spot—or he might have been a little
+self-forgetful and eccentric.  Any one could have seen directly, that he
+had neither wife nor child at home.  He had a scholarly air with him, and
+that kind of considerate humanity towards others which claimed a gentle
+consideration for himself.  Mr. Goodchild made this study of him while he
+was examining the limb, and as he laid it down.  Mr. Goodchild wishes to
+add that he considers it a very good likeness.
+
+It came out in the course of a little conversation, that Doctor Speddie
+was acquainted with some friends of Thomas Idle’s, and had, when a young
+man, passed some years in Thomas Idle’s birthplace on the other side of
+England.  Certain idle labours, the fruit of Mr. Goodchild’s
+apprenticeship, also happened to be well known to him.  The lazy
+travellers were thus placed on a more intimate footing with the Doctor
+than the casual circumstances of the meeting would of themselves have
+established; and when Doctor Speddie rose to go home, remarking that he
+would send his assistant with the lotion, Francis Goodchild said that was
+unnecessary, for, by the Doctor’s leave, he would accompany him, and
+bring it back.  (Having done nothing to fatigue himself for a full
+quarter of an hour, Francis began to fear that he was not in a state of
+idleness.)
+
+Doctor Speddie politely assented to the proposition of Francis Goodchild,
+‘as it would give him the pleasure of enjoying a few more minutes of Mr.
+Goodchild’s society than he could otherwise have hoped for,’ and they
+went out together into the village street.  The rain had nearly ceased,
+the clouds had broken before a cool wind from the north-east, and stars
+were shining from the peaceful heights beyond them.
+
+Doctor Speddie’s house was the last house in the place.  Beyond it, lay
+the moor, all dark and lonesome.  The wind moaned in a low, dull,
+shivering manner round the little garden, like a houseless creature that
+knew the winter was coming.  It was exceedingly wild and solitary.
+‘Roses,’ said the Doctor, when Goodchild touched some wet leaves
+overhanging the stone porch; ‘but they get cut to pieces.’
+
+The Doctor opened the door with a key he carried, and led the way into a
+low but pretty ample hall with rooms on either side.  The door of one of
+these stood open, and the Doctor entered it, with a word of welcome to
+his guest.  It, too, was a low room, half surgery and half parlour, with
+shelves of books and bottles against the walls, which were of a very dark
+hue.  There was a fire in the grate, the night being damp and chill.
+Leaning against the chimney-piece looking down into it, stood the
+Doctor’s Assistant.
+
+A man of a most remarkable appearance.  Much older than Mr. Goodchild had
+expected, for he was at least two-and-fifty; but, that was nothing.  What
+was startling in him was his remarkable paleness.  His large black eyes,
+his sunken cheeks, his long and heavy iron-grey hair, his wasted hands,
+and even the attenuation of his figure, were at first forgotten in his
+extraordinary pallor.  There was no vestige of colour in the man.  When
+he turned his face, Francis Goodchild started as if a stone figure had
+looked round at him.
+
+‘Mr. Lorn,’ said the Doctor.  ‘Mr. Goodchild.’
+
+The Assistant, in a distraught way—as if he had forgotten something—as if
+he had forgotten everything, even to his own name and
+himself—acknowledged the visitor’s presence, and stepped further back
+into the shadow of the wall behind him.  But, he was so pale that his
+face stood out in relief again the dark wall, and really could not be
+hidden so.
+
+‘Mr. Goodchild’s friend has met with accident, Lorn,’ said Doctor
+Speddie.  ‘We want the lotion for a bad sprain.’
+
+A pause.
+
+‘My dear fellow, you are more than usually absent to-night.  The lotion
+for a bad sprain.’
+
+‘Ah! yes!  Directly.’
+
+He was evidently relieved to turn away, and to take his white face and
+his wild eyes to a table in a recess among the bottles.  But, though he
+stood there, compounding the lotion with his back towards them, Goodchild
+could not, for many moments, withdraw his gaze from the man.  When he at
+length did so, he found the Doctor observing him, with some trouble in
+his face.  ‘He is absent,’ explained the Doctor, in a low voice.  ‘Always
+absent.  Very absent.’
+
+‘Is he ill?’
+
+‘No, not ill.’
+
+‘Unhappy?’
+
+‘I have my suspicions that he was,’ assented the Doctor, ‘once.’
+
+Francis Goodchild could not but observe that the Doctor accompanied these
+words with a benignant and protecting glance at their subject, in which
+there was much of the expression with which an attached father might have
+looked at a heavily afflicted son.  Yet, that they were not father and
+son must have been plain to most eyes.  The Assistant, on the other hand,
+turning presently to ask the Doctor some question, looked at him with a
+wan smile as if he were his whole reliance and sustainment in life.
+
+It was in vain for the Doctor in his easy-chair, to try to lead the mind
+of Mr. Goodchild in the opposite easy-chair, away from what was before
+him.  Let Mr. Goodchild do what he would to follow the Doctor, his eyes
+and thoughts reverted to the Assistant.  The Doctor soon perceived it,
+and, after falling silent, and musing in a little perplexity, said:
+
+‘Lorn!’
+
+‘My dear Doctor.’
+
+‘Would you go to the Inn, and apply that lotion?  You will show the best
+way of applying it, far better than Mr. Goodchild can.’
+
+‘With pleasure.’
+
+The Assistant took his hat, and passed like a shadow to the door.
+
+‘Lorn!’ said the Doctor, calling after him.
+
+He returned.
+
+‘Mr. Goodchild will keep me company till you come home.  Don’t hurry.
+Excuse my calling you back.’
+
+‘It is not,’ said the Assistant, with his former smile, ‘the first time
+you have called me back, dear Doctor.’  With those words he went away.
+
+‘Mr. Goodchild,’ said Doctor Speddie, in a low voice, and with his former
+troubled expression of face, ‘I have seen that your attention has been
+concentrated on my friend.’
+
+‘He fascinates me.  I must apologise to you, but he has quite bewildered
+and mastered me.’
+
+‘I find that a lonely existence and a long secret,’ said the Doctor,
+drawing his chair a little nearer to Mr. Goodchild’s, ‘become in the
+course of time very heavy.  I will tell you something.  You may make what
+use you will of it, under fictitious names.  I know I may trust you.  I
+am the more inclined to confidence to-night, through having been
+unexpectedly led back, by the current of our conversation at the Inn, to
+scenes in my early life.  Will you please to draw a little nearer?’
+
+Mr. Goodchild drew a little nearer, and the Doctor went on thus:
+speaking, for the most part, in so cautious a voice, that the wind,
+though it was far from high, occasionally got the better of him.
+
+When this present nineteenth century was younger by a good many years
+than it is now, a certain friend of mine, named Arthur Holliday, happened
+to arrive in the town of Doncaster, exactly in the middle of a race-week,
+or, in other words, in the middle of the month of September.  He was one
+of those reckless, rattle-pated, open-hearted, and open-mouthed young
+gentlemen, who possess the gift of familiarity in its highest perfection,
+and who scramble carelessly along the journey of life making friends, as
+the phrase is, wherever they go.  His father was a rich manufacturer, and
+had bought landed property enough in one of the midland counties to make
+all the born squires in his neighbourhood thoroughly envious of him.
+Arthur was his only son, possessor in prospect of the great estate and
+the great business after his father’s death; well supplied with money,
+and not too rigidly looked after, during his father’s lifetime.  Report,
+or scandal, whichever you please, said that the old gentleman had been
+rather wild in his youthful days, and that, unlike most parents, he was
+not disposed to be violently indignant when he found that his son took
+after him.  This may be true or not.  I myself only knew the elder Mr.
+Holliday when he was getting on in years; and then he was as quiet and as
+respectable a gentleman as ever I met with.
+
+Well, one September, as I told you, young Arthur comes to Doncaster,
+having decided all of a sudden, in his harebrained way, that he would go
+to the races.  He did not reach the town till towards the close of the
+evening, and he went at once to see about his dinner and bed at the
+principal hotel.  Dinner they were ready enough to give him; but as for a
+bed, they laughed when he mentioned it.  In the race-week at Doncaster,
+it is no uncommon thing for visitors who have not bespoken apartments, to
+pass the night in their carriages at the inn doors.  As for the lower
+sort of strangers, I myself have often seen them, at that full time,
+sleeping out on the doorsteps for want of a covered place to creep under.
+Rich as he was, Arthur’s chance of getting a night’s lodging (seeing that
+he had not written beforehand to secure one) was more than doubtful.  He
+tried the second hotel, and the third hotel, and two of the inferior inns
+after that; and was met everywhere by the same form of answer.  No
+accommodation for the night of any sort was left.  All the bright golden
+sovereigns in his pocket would not buy him a bed at Doncaster in the
+race-week.
+
+To a young fellow of Arthur’s temperament, the novelty of being turned
+away into the street, like a penniless vagabond, at every house where he
+asked for a lodging, presented itself in the light of a new and highly
+amusing piece of experience.  He went on, with his carpet-bag in his
+hand, applying for a bed at every place of entertainment for travellers
+that he could find in Doncaster, until he wandered into the outskirts of
+the town.  By this time, the last glimmer of twilight had faded out, the
+moon was rising dimly in a mist, the wind was getting cold, the clouds
+were gathering heavily, and there was every prospect that it was soon
+going to rain.
+
+The look of the night had rather a lowering effect on young Holliday’s
+good spirits.  He began to contemplate the houseless situation in which
+he was placed, from the serious rather than the humorous point of view;
+and he looked about him, for another public-house to inquire at, with
+something very like downright anxiety in his mind on the subject of a
+lodging for the night.  The suburban part of the town towards which he
+had now strayed was hardly lighted at all, and he could see nothing of
+the houses as he passed them, except that they got progressively smaller
+and dirtier, the farther he went.  Down the winding road before him shone
+the dull gleam of an oil lamp, the one faint, lonely light that struggled
+ineffectually with the foggy darkness all round him.  He resolved to go
+on as far as this lamp, and then, if it showed him nothing in the shape
+of an Inn, to return to the central part of the town and to try if he
+could not at least secure a chair to sit down on, through the night, at
+one of the principal Hotels.
+
+As he got near the lamp, he heard voices; and, walking close under it,
+found that it lighted the entrance to a narrow court, on the wall of
+which was painted a long hand in faded flesh-colour, pointing with a lean
+forefinger, to this inscription:—
+
+                               THE TWO ROBINS.
+
+Arthur turned into the court without hesitation, to see what The Two
+Robins could do for him.  Four or five men were standing together round
+the door of the house which was at the bottom of the court, facing the
+entrance from the street.  The men were all listening to one other man,
+better dressed than the rest, who was telling his audience something, in
+a low voice, in which they were apparently very much interested.
+
+On entering the passage, Arthur was passed by a stranger with a knapsack
+in his hand, who was evidently leaving the house.
+
+‘No,’ said the traveller with the knapsack, turning round and addressing
+himself cheerfully to a fat, sly-looking, bald-headed man, with a dirty
+white apron on, who had followed him down the passage.  ‘No, Mr.
+landlord, I am not easily scared by trifles; but, I don’t mind confessing
+that I can’t quite stand _that_.’
+
+It occurred to young Holliday, the moment he heard these words, that the
+stranger had been asked an exorbitant price for a bed at The Two Robins;
+and that he was unable or unwilling to pay it.  The moment his back was
+turned, Arthur, comfortably conscious of his own well-filled pockets,
+addressed himself in a great hurry, for fear any other benighted
+traveller should slip in and forestall him, to the sly-looking landlord
+with the dirty apron and the bald head.
+
+‘If you have got a bed to let,’ he said, ‘and if that gentleman who has
+just gone out won’t pay your price for it, I will.’
+
+The sly landlord looked hard at Arthur.
+
+‘Will you, sir?’ he asked, in a meditative, doubtful way.
+
+‘Name your price,’ said young Holliday, thinking that the landlord’s
+hesitation sprang from some boorish distrust of him.  ‘Name your price,
+and I’ll give you the money at once if you like?’
+
+‘Are you game for five shillings?’ inquired the landlord, rubbing his
+stubbly double chin, and looking up thoughtfully at the ceiling above
+him.
+
+Arthur nearly laughed in the man’s face; but thinking it prudent to
+control himself, offered the five shillings as seriously as he could.
+The sly landlord held out his hand, then suddenly drew it back again.
+
+‘You’re acting all fair and above-board by me,’ he said: ‘and, before I
+take your money, I’ll do the same by you.  Look here, this is how it
+stands.  You can have a bed all to yourself for five shillings; but you
+can’t have more than a half-share of the room it stands in.  Do you see
+what I mean, young gentleman?’
+
+‘Of course I do,’ returned Arthur, a little irritably.  ‘You mean that it
+is a double-bedded room, and that one of the beds is occupied?’
+
+The landlord nodded his head, and rubbed his double chin harder than
+ever.  Arthur hesitated, and mechanically moved back a step or two
+towards the door.  The idea of sleeping in the same room with a total
+stranger, did not present an attractive prospect to him.  He felt more
+than half inclined to drop his five shillings into his pocket, and to go
+out into the street once more.
+
+‘Is it yes, or no?’ asked the landlord.  ‘Settle it as quick as you can,
+because there’s lots of people wanting a bed at Doncaster to-night,
+besides you.’
+
+Arthur looked towards the court, and heard the rain falling heavily in
+the street outside.  He thought he would ask a question or two before he
+rashly decided on leaving the shelter of The Two Robins.
+
+‘What sort of a man is it who has got the other bed?’ he inquired.  ‘Is
+he a gentleman?  I mean, is he a quiet, well-behaved person?’
+
+‘The quietest man I ever came across,’ said the landlord, rubbing his fat
+hands stealthily one over the other.  ‘As sober as a judge, and as
+regular as clock-work in his habits.  It hasn’t struck nine, not ten
+minutes ago, and he’s in his bed already.  I don’t know whether that
+comes up to your notion of a quiet man: it goes a long way ahead of mine,
+I can tell you.’
+
+‘Is he asleep, do you think?’ asked Arthur.
+
+‘I know he’s asleep,’ returned the landlord.  ‘And what’s more, he’s gone
+off so fast, that I’ll warrant you don’t wake him.  This way, sir,’ said
+the landlord, speaking over young Holliday’s shoulder, as if he was
+addressing some new guest who was approaching the house.
+
+‘Here you are,’ said Arthur, determined to be beforehand with the
+stranger, whoever he might be.  ‘I’ll take the bed.’  And he handed the
+five shillings to the landlord, who nodded, dropped the money carelessly
+into his waistcoat-pocket, and lighted the candle.
+
+‘Come up and see the room,’ said the host of The Two Robins, leading the
+way to the staircase quite briskly, considering how fat he was.
+
+They mounted to the second-floor of the house.  The landlord half opened
+a door, fronting the landing, then stopped, and turned round to Arthur.
+
+‘It’s a fair bargain, mind, on my side as well as on yours,’ he said.
+‘You give me five shillings, I give you in return a clean, comfortable
+bed; and I warrant, beforehand, that you won’t be interfered with, or
+annoyed in any way, by the man who sleeps in the same room as you.’
+Saying those words, he looked hard, for a moment, in young Holliday’s
+face, and then led the way into the room.
+
+It was larger and cleaner than Arthur had expected it would be.  The two
+beds stood parallel with each other—a space of about six feet intervening
+between them.  They were both of the same medium size, and both had the
+same plain white curtains, made to draw, if necessary, all round them.
+The occupied bed was the bed nearest the window.  The curtains were all
+drawn round this, except the half curtain at the bottom, on the side of
+the bed farthest from the window.  Arthur saw the feet of the sleeping
+man raising the scanty clothes into a sharp little eminence, as if he was
+lying flat on his back.  He took the candle, and advanced softly to draw
+the curtain—stopped half-way, and listened for a moment—then turned to
+the landlord.
+
+‘He’s a very quiet sleeper,’ said Arthur.
+
+‘Yes,’ said the landlord, ‘very quiet.’
+
+Young Holliday advanced with the candle, and looked in at the man
+cautiously.
+
+‘How pale he is!’ said Arthur.
+
+‘Yes,’ returned the landlord, ‘pale enough, isn’t he?’
+
+Arthur looked closer at the man.  The bedclothes were drawn up to his
+chin, and they lay perfectly still over the region of his chest.
+Surprised and vaguely startled, as he noticed this, Arthur stooped down
+closer over the stranger; looked at his ashy, parted lips; listened
+breathlessly for an instant; looked again at the strangely still face,
+and the motionless lips and chest; and turned round suddenly on the
+landlord, with his own cheeks as pale for the moment as the hollow cheeks
+of the man on the bed.
+
+‘Come here,’ he whispered, under his breath.  ‘Come here, for God’s sake!
+The man’s not asleep—he is dead!’
+
+‘You have found that out sooner than I thought you would,’ said the
+landlord, composedly.  ‘Yes, he’s dead, sure enough.  He died at five
+o’clock to-day.’
+
+‘How did he die?  Who is he?’ asked Arthur, staggered, for a moment, by
+the audacious coolness of the answer.
+
+‘As to who is he,’ rejoined the landlord, ‘I know no more about him than
+you do.  There are his books and letters and things, all sealed up in
+that brown-paper parcel, for the Coroner’s inquest to open to-morrow or
+next day.  He’s been here a week, paying his way fairly enough, and
+stopping in-doors, for the most part, as if he was ailing.  My girl
+brought him up his tea at five to-day; and as he was pouring of it out,
+he fell down in a faint, or a fit, or a compound of both, for anything I
+know.  We could not bring him to—and I said he was dead.  And the doctor
+couldn’t bring him to—and the doctor said he was dead.  And there he is.
+And the Coroner’s inquest’s coming as soon as it can.  And that’s as much
+as I know about it.’
+
+Arthur held the candle close to the man’s lips.  The flame still burnt
+straight up, as steadily as before.  There was a moment of silence; and
+the rain pattered drearily through it against the panes of the window.
+
+‘If you haven’t got nothing more to say to me,’ continued the landlord,
+‘I suppose I may go.  You don’t expect your five shillings back, do you?
+There’s the bed I promised you, clean and comfortable.  There’s the man I
+warranted not to disturb you, quiet in this world for ever.  If you’re
+frightened to stop alone with him, that’s not my look out.  I’ve kept my
+part of the bargain, and I mean to keep the money.  I’m not Yorkshire,
+myself, young gentleman; but I’ve lived long enough in these parts to
+have my wits sharpened; and I shouldn’t wonder if you found out the way
+to brighten up yours, next time you come amongst us.’  With these words,
+the landlord turned towards the door, and laughed to himself softly, in
+high satisfaction at his own sharpness.
+
+Startled and shocked as he was, Arthur had by this time sufficiently
+recovered himself to feel indignant at the trick that had been played on
+him, and at the insolent manner in which the landlord exulted in it.
+
+‘Don’t laugh,’ he said sharply, ‘till you are quite sure you have got the
+laugh against me.  You shan’t have the five shillings for nothing, my
+man.  I’ll keep the bed.’
+
+‘Will you?’ said the landlord.  ‘Then I wish you a goodnight’s rest.’
+With that brief farewell, he went out, and shut the door after him.
+
+A good night’s rest!  The words had hardly been spoken, the door had
+hardly been closed, before Arthur half-repented the hasty words that had
+just escaped him.  Though not naturally over-sensitive, and not wanting
+in courage of the moral as well as the physical sort, the presence of the
+dead man had an instantaneously chilling effect on his mind when he found
+himself alone in the room—alone, and bound by his own rash words to stay
+there till the next morning.  An older man would have thought nothing of
+those words, and would have acted, without reference to them, as his
+calmer sense suggested.  But Arthur was too young to treat the ridicule,
+even of his inferiors, with contempt—too young not to fear the momentary
+humiliation of falsifying his own foolish boast, more than he feared the
+trial of watching out the long night in the same chamber with the dead.
+
+‘It is but a few hours,’ he thought to himself, ‘and I can get away the
+first thing in the morning.’
+
+He was looking towards the occupied bed as that idea passed through his
+mind, and the sharp, angular eminence made in the clothes by the dead
+man’s upturned feet again caught his eye.  He advanced and drew the
+curtains, purposely abstaining, as he did so, from looking at the face of
+the corpse, lest he might unnerve himself at the outset by fastening some
+ghastly impression of it on his mind.  He drew the curtain very gently,
+and sighed involuntarily as he closed it.  ‘Poor fellow,’ he said, almost
+as sadly as if he had known the man.  ‘Ah, poor fellow!’
+
+He went next to the window.  The night was black, and he could see
+nothing from it.  The rain still pattered heavily against the glass.  He
+inferred, from hearing it, that the window was at the back of the house;
+remembering that the front was sheltered from the weather by the court
+and the buildings over it.
+
+While he was still standing at the window—for even the dreary rain was a
+relief, because of the sound it made; a relief, also, because it moved,
+and had some faint suggestion, in consequence, of life and companionship
+in it—while he was standing at the window, and looking vacantly into the
+black darkness outside, he heard a distant church-clock strike ten.  Only
+ten!  How was he to pass the time till the house was astir the next
+morning?
+
+Under any other circumstances, he would have gone down to the
+public-house parlour, would have called for his grog, and would have
+laughed and talked with the company assembled as familiarly as if he had
+known them all his life.  But the very thought of whiling away the time
+in this manner was distasteful to him.  The new situation in which he was
+placed seemed to have altered him to himself already.  Thus far, his life
+had been the common, trifling, prosaic, surface-life of a prosperous
+young man, with no troubles to conquer, and no trials to face.  He had
+lost no relation whom he loved, no friend whom he treasured.  Till this
+night, what share he had of the immortal inheritance that is divided
+amongst us all, had laid dormant within him.  Till this night, Death and
+he had not once met, even in thought.
+
+He took a few turns up and down the room—then stopped.  The noise made by
+his boots on the poorly carpeted floor, jarred on his ear.  He hesitated
+a little, and ended by taking the boots off, and walking backwards and
+forwards noiselessly.  All desire to sleep or to rest had left him.  The
+bare thought of lying down on the unoccupied bed instantly drew the
+picture on his mind of a dreadful mimicry of the position of the dead
+man.  Who was he?  What was the story of his past life?  Poor he must
+have been, or he would not have stopped at such a place as The Two Robins
+Inn—and weakened, probably, by long illness, or he could hardly have died
+in the manner in which the landlord had described.  Poor, ill,
+lonely,—dead in a strange place; dead, with nobody but a stranger to pity
+him.  A sad story: truly, on the mere face of it, a very sad story.
+
+While these thoughts were passing through his mind, he had stopped
+insensibly at the window, close to which stood the foot of the bed with
+the closed curtains.  At first he looked at it absently; then he became
+conscious that his eyes were fixed on it; and then, a perverse desire
+took possession of him to do the very thing which he had resolved not to
+do, up to this time—to look at the dead man.
+
+He stretched out his hand towards the curtains; but checked himself in
+the very act of undrawing them, turned his back sharply on the bed, and
+walked towards the chimney-piece, to see what things were placed on it,
+and to try if he could keep the dead man out of his mind in that way.
+
+There was a pewter inkstand on the chimney-piece, with some mildewed
+remains of ink in the bottle.  There were two coarse china ornaments of
+the commonest kind; and there was a square of embossed card, dirty and
+fly-blown, with a collection of wretched riddles printed on it, in all
+sorts of zig-zag directions, and in variously coloured inks.  He took the
+card, and went away, to read it, to the table on which the candle was
+placed; sitting down, with his back resolutely turned to the curtained
+bed.
+
+He read the first riddle, the second, the third, all in one corner of the
+card—then turned it round impatiently to look at another.  Before he
+could begin reading the riddles printed here, the sound of the
+church-clock stopped him.  Eleven.  He had got through an hour of the
+time, in the room with the dead man.
+
+Once more he looked at the card.  It was not easy to make out the letters
+printed on it, in consequence of the dimness of the light which the
+landlord had left him—a common tallow candle, furnished with a pair of
+heavy old-fashioned steel snuffers.  Up to this time, his mind had been
+too much occupied to think of the light.  He had left the wick of the
+candle unsnuffed, till it had risen higher than the flame, and had burnt
+into an odd pent-house shape at the top, from which morsels of the
+charred cotton fell off, from time to time, in little flakes.  He took up
+the snuffers now, and trimmed the wick.  The light brightened directly,
+and the room became less dismal.
+
+Again he turned to the riddles; reading them doggedly and resolutely, now
+in one corner of the card, now in another.  All his efforts, however,
+could not fix his attention on them.  He pursued his occupation
+mechanically, deriving no sort of impression from what he was reading.
+It was as if a shadow from the curtained bed had got between his mind and
+the gaily printed letters—a shadow that nothing could dispel.  At last,
+he gave up the struggle, and threw the card from him impatiently, and
+took to walking softly up and down the room again.
+
+The dead man, the dead man, the _hidden_ dead man on the bed!  There was
+the one persistent idea still haunting him.  Hidden?  Was it only the
+body being there, or was it the body being there, concealed, that was
+preying on his mind?  He stopped at the window, with that doubt in him;
+once more listening to the pattering rain, once more looking out into the
+black darkness.
+
+Still the dead man!  The darkness forced his mind back upon itself, and
+set his memory at work, reviving, with a painfully-vivid distinctness the
+momentary impression it had received from the first sight of the corpse.
+Before long the face seemed to be hovering out in the middle of the
+darkness, confronting him through the window, with the paleness whiter,
+with the dreadful dull line of light between the imperfectly-closed
+eyelids broader than he had seen it—with the parted lips slowly dropping
+farther and farther away from each other—with the features growing larger
+and moving closer, till they seemed to fill the window and to silence the
+rain, and to shut out the night.
+
+The sound of a voice, shouting below-stairs, woke him suddenly from the
+dream of his own distempered fancy.  He recognised it as the voice of the
+landlord.  ‘Shut up at twelve, Ben,’ he heard it say.  ‘I’m off to bed.’
+
+He wiped away the damp that had gathered on his forehead, reasoned with
+himself for a little while, and resolved to shake his mind free of the
+ghastly counterfeit which still clung to it, by forcing himself to
+confront, if it was only for a moment, the solemn reality.  Without
+allowing himself an instant to hesitate, he parted the curtains at the
+foot of the bed, and looked through.
+
+There was a sad, peaceful, white face, with the awful mystery of
+stillness on it, laid back upon the pillow.  No stir, no change there!
+He only looked at it for a moment before he closed the curtains again—but
+that moment steadied him, calmed him, restored him—mind and body—to
+himself.
+
+He returned to his old occupation of walking up and down the room;
+persevering in it, this time, till the clock struck again.  Twelve.
+
+As the sound of the clock-bell died away, it was succeeded by the
+confused noise, down-stairs, of the drinkers in the tap-room leaving the
+house.  The next sound, after an interval of silence, was caused by the
+barring of the door, and the closing of the shutters, at the back of the
+Inn.  Then the silence followed again, and was disturbed no more.
+
+He was alone now—absolutely, utterly, alone with the dead man, till the
+next morning.
+
+The wick of the candle wanted trimming again.  He took up the
+snuffers—but paused suddenly on the very point of using them, and looked
+attentively at the candle—then back, over his shoulder, at the curtained
+bed—then again at the candle.  It had been lighted, for the first time,
+to show him the way up-stairs, and three parts of it, at least, were
+already consumed.  In another hour it would be burnt out.  In another
+hour—unless he called at once to the man who had shut up the Inn, for a
+fresh candle—he would be left in the dark.
+
+Strongly as his mind had been affected since he had entered his room, his
+unreasonable dread of encountering ridicule, and of exposing his courage
+to suspicion, had not altogether lost its influence over him, even yet.
+He lingered irresolutely by the table, waiting till he could prevail on
+himself to open the door, and call, from the landing, to the man who had
+shut up the Inn.  In his present hesitating frame of mind, it was a kind
+of relief to gain a few moments only by engaging in the trifling
+occupation of snuffing the candle.  His hand trembled a little, and the
+snuffers were heavy and awkward to use.  When he closed them on the wick,
+he closed them a hair’s breadth too low.  In an instant the candle was
+out, and the room was plunged in pitch darkness.
+
+The one impression which the absence of light immediately produced on his
+mind, was distrust of the curtained bed—distrust which shaped itself into
+no distinct idea, but which was powerful enough in its very vagueness, to
+bind him down to his chair, to make his heart beat fast, and to set him
+listening intently.  No sound stirred in the room but the familiar sound
+of the rain against the window, louder and sharper now than he had heard
+it yet.
+
+Still the vague distrust, the inexpressible dread possessed him, and kept
+him to his chair.  He had put his carpet-bag on the table, when he first
+entered the room; and he now took the key from his pocket, reached out
+his hand softly, opened the bag, and groped in it for his travelling
+writing-case, in which he knew that there was a small store of matches.
+When he had got one of the matches, he waited before he struck it on the
+coarse wooden table, and listened intently again, without knowing why.
+Still there was no sound in the room but the steady, ceaseless, rattling
+sound of the rain.
+
+He lighted the candle again, without another moment of delay and, on the
+instant of its burning up, the first object in the room that his eyes
+sought for was the curtained bed.
+
+Just before the light had been put out, he had looked in that direction,
+and had seen no change, no disarrangement of any sort, in the folds of
+the closely-drawn curtains.
+
+When he looked at the bed, now, he saw, hanging over the side of it, a
+long white hand.
+
+It lay perfectly motionless, midway on the side of the bed, where the
+curtain at the head and the curtain at the foot met.  Nothing more was
+visible.  The clinging curtains hid everything but the long white hand.
+
+He stood looking at it unable to stir, unable to call out; feeling
+nothing, knowing nothing, every faculty he possessed gathered up and lost
+in the one seeing faculty.  How long that first panic held him he never
+could tell afterwards.  It might have been only for a moment; it might
+have been for many minutes together.  How he got to the bed—whether he
+ran to it headlong, or whether he approached it slowly—how he wrought
+himself up to unclose the curtains and look in, he never has remembered,
+and never will remember to his dying day.  It is enough that he did go to
+the bed, and that he did look inside the curtains.
+
+The man had moved.  One of his arms was outside the clothes; his face was
+turned a little on the pillow; his eyelids were wide open.  Changed as to
+position, and as to one of the features, the face was, otherwise,
+fearfully and wonderfully unaltered.  The dead paleness and the dead
+quiet were on it still.
+
+One glance showed Arthur this—one glance, before he flew breathlessly to
+the door, and alarmed the house.
+
+The man whom the landlord called ‘Ben,’ was the first to appear on the
+stairs.  In three words, Arthur told him what had happened, and sent him
+for the nearest doctor.
+
+I, who tell you this story, was then staying with a medical friend of
+mine, in practice at Doncaster, taking care of his patients for him,
+during his absence in London; and I, for the time being, was the nearest
+doctor.  They had sent for me from the Inn, when the stranger was taken
+ill in the afternoon; but I was not at home, and medical assistance was
+sought for elsewhere.  When the man from The Two Robins rang the
+night-bell, I was just thinking of going to bed.  Naturally enough, I did
+not believe a word of his story about ‘a dead man who had come to life
+again.’  However, I put on my hat, armed myself with one or two bottles
+of restorative medicine, and ran to the Inn, expecting to find nothing
+more remarkable, when I got there, than a patient in a fit.
+
+My surprise at finding that the man had spoken the literal truth was
+almost, if not quite, equalled by my astonishment at finding myself face
+to face with Arthur Holliday as soon as I entered the bedroom.  It was no
+time then for giving or seeking explanations.  We just shook hands
+amazedly; and then I ordered everybody but Arthur out of the room, and
+hurried to the man on the bed.
+
+The kitchen fire had not been long out.  There was plenty of hot water in
+the boiler, and plenty of flannel to be had.  With these, with my
+medicines, and with such help as Arthur could render under my direction,
+I dragged the man, literally, out of the jaws of death.  In less than an
+hour from the time when I had been called in, he was alive and talking in
+the bed on which he had been laid out to wait for the Coroner’s inquest.
+
+You will naturally ask me, what had been the matter with him; and I might
+treat you, in reply, to a long theory, plentifully sprinkled with, what
+the children call, hard words.  I prefer telling you that, in this case,
+cause and effect could not be satisfactorily joined together by any
+theory whatever.  There are mysteries in life, and the condition of it,
+which human science has not fathomed yet; and I candidly confess to you,
+that, in bringing that man back to existence, I was, morally speaking,
+groping haphazard in the dark.  I know (from the testimony of the doctor
+who attended him in the afternoon) that the vital machinery, so far as
+its action is appreciable by our senses, had, in this case,
+unquestionably stopped; and I am equally certain (seeing that I recovered
+him) that the vital principle was not extinct.  When I add, that he had
+suffered from a long and complicated illness, and that his whole nervous
+system was utterly deranged, I have told you all I really know of the
+physical condition of my dead-alive patient at The Two Robins Inn.
+
+When he ‘came to,’ as the phrase goes, he was a startling object to look
+at, with his colourless face, his sunken cheeks, his wild black eyes, and
+his long black hair.  The first question he asked me about himself, when
+he could speak, made me suspect that I had been called in to a man in my
+own profession.  I mentioned to him my surmise; and he told me that I was
+right.
+
+He said he had come last from Paris, where he had been attached to a
+hospital.  That he had lately returned to England, on his way to
+Edinburgh, to continue his studies; that he had been taken ill on the
+journey; and that he had stopped to rest and recover himself at
+Doncaster.  He did not add a word about his name, or who he was: and, of
+course, I did not question him on the subject.  All I inquired, when he
+ceased speaking, was what branch of the profession he intended to follow.
+
+‘Any branch,’ he said, bitterly, ‘which will put bread into the mouth of
+a poor man.’
+
+At this, Arthur, who had been hitherto watching him in silent curiosity,
+burst out impetuously in his usual good-humoured way:—
+
+‘My dear fellow!’ (everybody was ‘my dear fellow’ with Arthur) ‘now you
+have come to life again, don’t begin by being down-hearted about your
+prospects.  I’ll answer for it, I can help you to some capital thing in
+the medical line—or, if I can’t, I know my father can.’
+
+The medical student looked at him steadily.
+
+‘Thank you,’ he said, coldly.  Then added, ‘May I ask who your father
+is?’
+
+‘He’s well enough known all about this part of the country,’ replied
+Arthur.  ‘He is a great manufacturer, and his name is Holliday.’
+
+My hand was on the man’s wrist during this brief conversation.  The
+instant the name of Holliday was pronounced I felt the pulse under my
+fingers flutter, stop, go on suddenly with a bound, and beat afterwards,
+for a minute or two, at the fever rate.
+
+‘How did you come here?’ asked the stranger, quickly, excitably,
+passionately almost.
+
+Arthur related briefly what had happened from the time of his first
+taking the bed at the inn.
+
+‘I am indebted to Mr. Holliday’s son then for the help that has saved my
+life,’ said the medical student, speaking to himself, with a singular
+sarcasm in his voice.  ‘Come here!’
+
+He held out, as he spoke, his long, white, bony, right hand.
+
+‘With all my heart,’ said Arthur, taking the hand-cordially.  ‘I may
+confess it now,’ he continued, laughing.  ‘Upon my honour, you almost
+frightened me out of my wits.’
+
+The stranger did not seem to listen.  His wild black eyes were fixed with
+a look of eager interest on Arthur’s face, and his long bony fingers kept
+tight hold of Arthur’s hand.  Young Holliday, on his side, returned the
+gaze, amazed and puzzled by the medical student’s odd language and
+manners.  The two faces were close together; I looked at them; and, to my
+amazement, I was suddenly impressed by the sense of a likeness between
+them—not in features, or complexion, but solely in expression.  It must
+have been a strong likeness, or I should certainly not have found it out,
+for I am naturally slow at detecting resemblances between faces.
+
+‘You have saved my life,’ said the strange man, still looking hard in
+Arthur’s face, still holding tightly by his hand.  ‘If you had been my
+own brother, you could not have done more for me than that.’
+
+He laid a singularly strong emphasis on those three words ‘my own
+brother,’ and a change passed over his face as he pronounced them,—a
+change that no language of mine is competent to describe.
+
+‘I hope I have not done being of service to you yet,’ said Arthur.  ‘I’ll
+speak to my father, as soon as I get home.’
+
+‘You seem to be fond and proud of your father,’ said the medical student.
+‘I suppose, in return, he is fond and proud of you?’
+
+‘Of course, he is!’ answered Arthur, laughing.  ‘Is there anything
+wonderful in that?  Isn’t _your_ father fond—’
+
+The stranger suddenly dropped young Holliday’s hand, and turned his face
+away.
+
+‘I beg your pardon,’ said Arthur.  ‘I hope I have not unintentionally
+pained you.  I hope you have not lost your father.’
+
+‘I can’t well lose what I have never had,’ retorted the medical student,
+with a harsh, mocking laugh.
+
+‘What you have never had!’
+
+The strange man suddenly caught Arthur’s hand again, suddenly looked once
+more hard in his face.
+
+‘Yes,’ he said, with a repetition of the bitter laugh.  ‘You have brought
+a poor devil back into the world, who has no business there.  Do I
+astonish you?  Well!  I have a fancy of my own for telling you what men
+in my situation generally keep a secret.  I have no name and no father.
+The merciful law of Society tells me I am Nobody’s Son!  Ask your father
+if he will be my father too, and help me on in life with the family
+name.’
+
+Arthur looked at me, more puzzled than ever.  I signed to him to say
+nothing, and then laid my fingers again on the man’s wrist.  No!  In
+spite of the extraordinary speech that he had just made, he was not, as I
+had been disposed to suspect, beginning to get light-headed.  His pulse,
+by this time, had fallen back to a quiet, slow beat, and his skin was
+moist and cool.  Not a symptom of fever or agitation about him.
+
+Finding that neither of us answered him, he turned to me, and began
+talking of the extraordinary nature of his case, and asking my advice
+about the future course of medical treatment to which he ought to subject
+himself.  I said the matter required careful thinking over, and suggested
+that I should submit certain prescriptions to him the next morning.  He
+told me to write them at once, as he would, most likely, be leaving
+Doncaster, in the morning, before I was up.  It was quite useless to
+represent to him the folly and danger of such a proceeding as this.  He
+heard me politely and patiently, but held to his resolution, without
+offering any reasons or any explanations, and repeated to me, that if I
+wished to give him a chance of seeing my prescription, I must write it at
+once.  Hearing this, Arthur volunteered the loan of a travelling
+writing-case, which, he said, he had with him; and, bringing it to the
+bed, shook the note-paper out of the pocket of the case forthwith in his
+usual careless way.  With the paper, there fell out on the counterpane of
+the bed a small packet of sticking-plaster, and a little water-colour
+drawing of a landscape.
+
+The medical student took up the drawing and looked at it.  His eye fell
+on some initials neatly written, in cypher, in one corner.  He started
+and trembled; his pale face grew whiter than ever; his wild black eyes
+turned on Arthur, and looked through and through him.
+
+‘A pretty drawing,’ he said in a remarkably quiet tone of voice.
+
+‘Ah! and done by such a pretty girl,’ said Arthur.  ‘Oh, such a pretty
+girl!  I wish it was not a landscape—I wish it was a portrait of her!’
+
+‘You admire her very much?’
+
+Arthur, half in jest, half in earnest, kissed his hand for answer.
+
+‘Love at first sight!’ he said, putting the drawing away again.  ‘But the
+course of it doesn’t run smooth.  It’s the old story.  She’s monopolised
+as usual.  Trammelled by a rash engagement to some poor man who is never
+likely to get money enough to marry her.  It was lucky I heard of it in
+time, or I should certainly have risked a declaration when she gave me
+that drawing.  Here, doctor!  Here is pen, ink, and paper all ready for
+you.’
+
+‘When she gave you that drawing?  Gave it.  Gave it.’  He repeated the
+words slowly to himself, and suddenly closed his eyes.  A momentary
+distortion passed across his face, and I saw one of his hands clutch up
+the bedclothes and squeeze them hard.  I thought he was going to be ill
+again, and begged that there might be no more talking.  He opened his
+eyes when I spoke, fixed them once more searchingly on Arthur, and said,
+slowly and distinctly, ‘You like her, and she likes you.  The poor man
+may die out of your way.  Who can tell that she may not give you herself
+as well as her drawing, after all?’
+
+Before young Holliday could answer, he turned to me, and said in a
+whisper, ‘Now for the prescription.’  From that time, though he spoke to
+Arthur again, he never looked at him more.
+
+When I had written the prescription, he examined it, approved of it, and
+then astonished us both by abruptly wishing us good night.  I offered to
+sit up with him, and he shook his head.  Arthur offered to sit up with
+him, and he said, shortly, with his face turned away, ‘No.’  I insisted
+on having somebody left to watch him.  He gave way when he found I was
+determined, and said he would accept the services of the waiter at the
+Inn.
+
+‘Thank you, both,’ he said, as we rose to go.  ‘I have one last favour to
+ask—not of you, doctor, for I leave you to exercise your professional
+discretion—but of Mr. Holliday.’  His eyes, while he spoke, still rested
+steadily on me, and never once turned towards Arthur.  ‘I beg that Mr.
+Holliday will not mention to any one—least of all to his father—the
+events that have occurred, and the words that have passed, in this room.
+I entreat him to bury me in his memory, as, but for him, I might have
+been buried in my grave.  I cannot give my reasons for making this
+strange request.  I can only implore him to grant it.’
+
+His voice faltered for the first time, and he hid his face on the pillow.
+Arthur, completely bewildered, gave the required pledge.  I took young
+Holliday away with me, immediately afterwards, to the house of my friend;
+determining to go back to the Inn, and to see the medical student again
+before he had left in the morning.
+
+I returned to the Inn at eight o’clock, purposely abstaining from waking
+Arthur, who was sleeping off the past night’s excitement on one of my
+friend’s sofas.  A suspicion had occurred to me as soon as I was alone in
+my bedroom, which made me resolve that Holliday and the stranger whose
+life he had saved should not meet again, if I could prevent it.  I have
+already alluded to certain reports, or scandals, which I knew of,
+relating to the early life of Arthur’s father.  While I was thinking, in
+my bed, of what had passed at the Inn—of the change in the student’s
+pulse when he heard the name of Holliday; of the resemblance of
+expression that I had discovered between his face and Arthur’s; of the
+emphasis he had laid on those three words, ‘my own brother;’ and of his
+incomprehensible acknowledgment of his own illegitimacy—while I was
+thinking of these things, the reports I have mentioned suddenly flew into
+my mind, and linked themselves fast to the chain of my previous
+reflections.  Something within me whispered, ‘It is best that those two
+young men should not meet again.’  I felt it before I slept; I felt it
+when I woke; and I went, as I told you, alone to the Inn the next
+morning.
+
+I had missed my only opportunity of seeing my nameless patient again.  He
+had been gone nearly an hour when I inquired for him.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+I have now told you everything that I know for certain, in relation to
+the man whom I brought back to life in the double-bedded room of the Inn
+at Doncaster.  What I have next to add is matter for inference and
+surmise, and is not, strictly speaking, matter of fact.
+
+I have to tell you, first, that the medical student turned out to be
+strangely and unaccountably right in assuming it as more than probable
+that Arthur Holliday would marry the young lady who had given him the
+water-colour drawing of the landscape.  That marriage took place a little
+more than a year after the events occurred which I have just been
+relating.  The young couple came to live in the neighbourhood in which I
+was then established in practice.  I was present at the wedding, and was
+rather surprised to find that Arthur was singularly reserved with me,
+both before and after his marriage, on the subject of the young lady’s
+prior engagement.  He only referred to it once, when we were alone,
+merely telling me, on that occasion, that his wife had done all that
+honour and duty required of her in the matter, and that the engagement
+had been broken off with the full approval of her parents.  I never heard
+more from him than this.  For three years he and his wife lived together
+happily.  At the expiration of that time, the symptoms of a serious
+illness first declared themselves in Mrs. Arthur Holliday.  It turned out
+to be a long, lingering, hopeless malady.  I attended her throughout.  We
+had been great friends when she was well, and we became more attached to
+each other than ever when she was ill.  I had many long and interesting
+conversations with her in the intervals when she suffered least.  The
+result of one of these conversations I may briefly relate, leaving you to
+draw any inferences from it that you please.
+
+The interview to which I refer, occurred shortly before her death.  I
+called one evening, as usual, and found her alone, with a look in her
+eyes which told me that she had been crying.  She only informed me at
+first, that she had been depressed in spirits; but, by little and little,
+she became more communicative, and confessed to me that she had been
+looking over some old letters, which had been addressed to her, before
+she had seen Arthur, by a man to whom she had been engaged to be married.
+I asked her how the engagement came to be broken off.  She replied that
+it had not been broken off, but that it had died out in a very mysterious
+way.  The person to whom she was engaged—her first love, she called
+him—was very poor, and there was no immediate prospect of their being
+married.  He followed my profession, and went abroad to study.  They had
+corresponded regularly, until the time when, as she believed, he had
+returned to England.  From that period she heard no more of him.  He was
+of a fretful, sensitive temperament; and she feared that she might have
+inadvertently done or said something that offended him.  However that
+might be, he had never written to her again; and, after waiting a year,
+she had married Arthur.  I asked when the first estrangement had begun,
+and found that the time at which she ceased to hear anything of her first
+lover exactly corresponded with the time at which I had been called in to
+my mysterious patient at The Two Robins Inn.
+
+A fortnight after that conversation, she died.  In course of time, Arthur
+married again.  Of late years, he has lived principally in London, and I
+have seen little or nothing of him.
+
+I have many years to pass over before I can approach to anything like a
+conclusion of this fragmentary narrative.  And even when that later
+period is reached, the little that I have to say will not occupy your
+attention for more than a few minutes.  Between six and seven years ago,
+the gentleman to whom I introduced you in this room, came to me, with
+good professional recommendations, to fill the position of my assistant.
+We met, not like strangers, but like friends—the only difference between
+us being, that I was very much surprised to see him, and that he did not
+appear to be at all surprised to see me.  If he was my son or my brother,
+I believe he could not be fonder of me than he is; but he has never
+volunteered any confidences since he has been here, on the subject of his
+past life.  I saw something that was familiar to me in his face when we
+first met; and yet it was also something that suggested the idea of
+change.  I had a notion once that my patient at the Inn might be a
+natural son of Mr. Holliday’s; I had another idea that he might also have
+been the man who was engaged to Arthur’s first wife; and I have a third
+idea, still clinging to me, that Mr. Lorn is the only man in England who
+could really enlighten me, if he chose, on both those doubtful points.
+His hair is not black, now, and his eyes are dimmer than the piercing
+eyes that I remember, but, for all that, he is very like the nameless
+medical student of my young days—very like him.  And, sometimes, when I
+come home late at night, and find him asleep, and wake him, he looks, in
+coming to, wonderfully like the stranger at Doncaster, as he raised
+himself in the bed on that memorable night!
+
+The Doctor paused.  Mr. Goodchild, who had been following every word that
+fell from his lips up to this time, leaned forward eagerly to ask a
+question.  Before he could say a word, the latch of the door was raised,
+without any warning sound of footsteps in the passage outside.  A long,
+white, bony hand appeared through the opening, gently pushing the door,
+which was prevented from working freely on its hinges by a fold in the
+carpet under it.
+
+‘That hand!  Look at that hand, Doctor!’ said Mr. Goodchild, touching
+him.
+
+At the same moment, the Doctor looked at Mr. Goodchild, and whispered to
+him, significantly:
+
+‘Hush! he has come back.’
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+THE Cumberland Doctor’s mention of Doncaster Races, inspired Mr. Francis
+Goodchild with the idea of going down to Doncaster to see the races.
+Doncaster being a good way off, and quite out of the way of the Idle
+Apprentices (if anything could be out of their way, who had no way), it
+necessarily followed that Francis perceived Doncaster in the race-week to
+be, of all possible idleness, the particular idleness that would
+completely satisfy him.
+
+Thomas, with an enforced idleness grafted on the natural and voluntary
+power of his disposition, was not of this mind; objecting that a man
+compelled to lie on his back on a floor, a sofa, a table, a line of
+chairs, or anything he could get to lie upon, was not in racing
+condition, and that he desired nothing better than to lie where he was,
+enjoying himself in looking at the flies on the ceiling.  But, Francis
+Goodchild, who had been walking round his companion in a circuit of
+twelve miles for two days, and had begun to doubt whether it was reserved
+for him ever to be idle in his life, not only overpowered this objection,
+but even converted Thomas Idle to a scheme he formed (another idle
+inspiration), of conveying the said Thomas to the sea-coast, and putting
+his injured leg under a stream of salt-water.
+
+Plunging into this happy conception headforemost, Mr. Goodchild
+immediately referred to the county-map, and ardently discovered that the
+most delicious piece of sea-coast to be found within the limits of
+England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man, and the Channel
+Islands, all summed up together, was Allonby on the coast of Cumberland.
+There was the coast of Scotland opposite to Allonby, said Mr. Goodchild
+with enthusiasm; there was a fine Scottish mountain on that Scottish
+coast; there were Scottish lights to be seen shining across the glorious
+Channel, and at Allonby itself there was every idle luxury (no doubt)
+that a watering-place could offer to the heart of idle man.  Moreover,
+said Mr. Goodchild, with his finger on the map, this exquisite retreat
+was approached by a coach-road, from a railway-station called Aspatria—a
+name, in a manner, suggestive of the departed glories of Greece,
+associated with one of the most engaging and most famous of Greek women.
+On this point, Mr. Goodchild continued at intervals to breathe a vein of
+classic fancy and eloquence exceedingly irksome to Mr. Idle, until it
+appeared that the honest English pronunciation of that Cumberland country
+shortened Aspatria into ‘Spatter.’  After this supplementary discovery,
+Mr. Goodchild said no more about it.
+
+By way of Spatter, the crippled Idle was carried, hoisted, pushed, poked,
+and packed, into and out of carriages, into and out of beds, into and out
+of tavern resting-places, until he was brought at length within sniff of
+the sea.  And now, behold the apprentices gallantly riding into Allonby
+in a one-horse fly, bent upon staying in that peaceful marine valley
+until the turbulent Doncaster time shall come round upon the wheel, in
+its turn among what are in sporting registers called the ‘Fixtures’ for
+the month.
+
+‘Do you see Allonby!’ asked Thomas Idle.
+
+‘I don’t see it yet,’ said Francis, looking out of window.
+
+‘It must be there,’ said Thomas Idle.
+
+‘I don’t see it,’ returned Francis.
+
+‘It must be there,’ repeated Thomas Idle, fretfully.
+
+‘Lord bless me!’ exclaimed Francis, drawing in his head, ‘I suppose this
+is it!’
+
+‘A watering-place,’ retorted Thomas Idle, with the pardonable sharpness
+of an invalid, ‘can’t be five gentlemen in straw hats, on a form on one
+side of a door, and four ladies in hats and falls, on a form on another
+side of a door, and three geese in a dirty little brook before them, and
+a boy’s legs hanging over a bridge (with a boy’s body I suppose on the
+other side of the parapet), and a donkey running away.  What are you
+talking about?’
+
+‘Allonby, gentlemen,’ said the most comfortable of landladies as she
+opened one door of the carriage; ‘Allonby, gentlemen,’ said the most
+attentive of landlords, as he opened the other.
+
+Thomas Idle yielded his arm to the ready Goodchild, and descended from
+the vehicle.  Thomas, now just able to grope his way along, in a
+doubled-up condition, with the aid of two thick sticks, was no bad
+embodiment of Commodore Trunnion, or of one of those many gallant
+Admirals of the stage, who have all ample fortunes, gout, thick sticks,
+tempers, wards, and nephews.  With this distinguished naval appearance
+upon him, Thomas made a crab-like progress up a clean little bulk-headed
+staircase, into a clean little bulk-headed room, where he slowly
+deposited himself on a sofa, with a stick on either hand of him, looking
+exceedingly grim.
+
+‘Francis,’ said Thomas Idle, ‘what do you think of this place?’
+
+‘I think,’ returned Mr. Goodchild, in a glowing way, ‘it is everything we
+expected.’
+
+‘Hah!’ said Thomas Idle.
+
+‘There is the sea,’ cried Mr. Goodchild, pointing out of window; ‘and
+here,’ pointing to the lunch on the table, ‘are shrimps.  Let us—’ here
+Mr. Goodchild looked out of window, as if in search of something, and
+looked in again,—‘let us eat ’em.’
+
+The shrimps eaten and the dinner ordered, Mr. Goodchild went out to
+survey the watering-place.  As Chorus of the Drama, without whom Thomas
+could make nothing of the scenery, he by-and-by returned, to have the
+following report screwed out of him.
+
+In brief, it was the most delightful place ever seen.
+
+‘But,’ Thomas Idle asked, ‘where is it?’
+
+‘It’s what you may call generally up and down the beach, here and there,’
+said Mr. Goodchild, with a twist of his hand.
+
+‘Proceed,’ said Thomas Idle.
+
+It was, Mr. Goodchild went on to say, in cross-examination, what you
+might call a primitive place.  Large?  No, it was not large.  Who ever
+expected it would be large?  Shape?  What a question to ask!  No shape.
+What sort of a street?  Why, no street.  Shops?  Yes, of course (quite
+indignant).  How many?  Who ever went into a place to count the shops?
+Ever so many.  Six?  Perhaps.  A library?  Why, of course (indignant
+again).  Good collection of books?  Most likely—couldn’t say—had seen
+nothing in it but a pair of scales.  Any reading-room?  Of course, there
+was a reading-room.  Where?  Where! why, over there.  Where was over
+there?  Why, _there_!  Let Mr. Idle carry his eye to that bit of waste
+ground above high-water mark, where the rank grass and loose stones were
+most in a litter; and he would see a sort of long, ruinous brick loft,
+next door to a ruinous brick out-house, which loft had a ladder outside,
+to get up by.  That was the reading-room, and if Mr. Idle didn’t like the
+idea of a weaver’s shuttle throbbing under a reading-room, that was his
+look out.  _He_ was not to dictate, Mr. Goodchild supposed (indignant
+again), to the company.
+
+‘By-the-by,’ Thomas Idle observed; ‘the company?’
+
+Well! (Mr. Goodchild went on to report) very nice company.  Where were
+they?  Why, there they were.  Mr. Idle could see the tops of their hats,
+he supposed.  What?  Those nine straw hats again, five gentlemen’s and
+four ladies’?  Yes, to be sure.  Mr. Goodchild hoped the company were not
+to be expected to wear helmets, to please Mr. Idle.
+
+Beginning to recover his temper at about this point, Mr. Goodchild
+voluntarily reported that if you wanted to be primitive, you could be
+primitive here, and that if you wanted to be idle, you could be idle
+here.  In the course of some days, he added, that there were three
+fishing-boats, but no rigging, and that there were plenty of fishermen
+who never fished.  That they got their living entirely by looking at the
+ocean.  What nourishment they looked out of it to support their strength,
+he couldn’t say; but, he supposed it was some sort of Iodine.  The place
+was full of their children, who were always upside down on the public
+buildings (two small bridges over the brook), and always hurting
+themselves or one another, so that their wailings made more continual
+noise in the air than could have been got in a busy place.  The houses
+people lodged in, were nowhere in particular, and were in capital
+accordance with the beach; being all more or less cracked and damaged as
+its shells were, and all empty—as its shells were.  Among them, was an
+edifice of destitute appearance, with a number of wall-eyed windows in
+it, looking desperately out to Scotland as if for help, which said it was
+a Bazaar (and it ought to know), and where you might buy anything you
+wanted—supposing what you wanted, was a little camp-stool or a child’s
+wheelbarrow.  The brook crawled or stopped between the houses and the
+sea, and the donkey was always running away, and when he got into the
+brook he was pelted out with stones, which never hit him, and which
+always hit some of the children who were upside down on the public
+buildings, and made their lamentations louder.  This donkey was the
+public excitement of Allonby, and was probably supported at the public
+expense.
+
+The foregoing descriptions, delivered in separate items, on separate days
+of adventurous discovery, Mr. Goodchild severally wound up, by looking
+out of window, looking in again, and saying, ‘But there is the sea, and
+here are the shrimps—let us eat ’em.’
+
+There were fine sunsets at Allonby when the low flat beach, with its
+pools of water and its dry patches, changed into long bars of silver and
+gold in various states of burnishing, and there were fine views—on fine
+days—of the Scottish coast.  But, when it rained at Allonby, Allonby
+thrown back upon its ragged self, became a kind of place which the donkey
+seemed to have found out, and to have his highly sagacious reasons for
+wishing to bolt from.  Thomas Idle observed, too, that Mr. Goodchild,
+with a noble show of disinterestedness, became every day more ready to
+walk to Maryport and back, for letters; and suspicions began to harbour
+in the mind of Thomas, that his friend deceived him, and that Maryport
+was a preferable place.
+
+Therefore, Thomas said to Francis on a day when they had looked at the
+sea and eaten the shrimps, ‘My mind misgives me, Goodchild, that you go
+to Maryport, like the boy in the story-book, to ask _it_ to be idle with
+you.’
+
+‘Judge, then,’ returned Francis, adopting the style of the story-book,
+‘with what success.  I go to a region which is a bit of water-side
+Bristol, with a slice of Wapping, a seasoning of Wolverhampton, and a
+garnish of Portsmouth, and I say, “Will _you_ come and be idle with me?”
+And it answers, “No; for I am a great deal too vaporous, and a great deal
+too rusty, and a great deal too muddy, and a great deal too dirty
+altogether; and I have ships to load, and pitch and tar to boil, and iron
+to hammer, and steam to get up, and smoke to make, and stone to quarry,
+and fifty other disagreeable things to do, and I can’t be idle with you.”
+Then I go into jagged up-hill and down-hill streets, where I am in the
+pastrycook’s shop at one moment, and next moment in savage fastnesses of
+moor and morass, beyond the confines of civilisation, and I say to those
+murky and black-dusty streets, “Will _you_ come and be idle with me?”  To
+which they reply, “No, we can’t, indeed, for we haven’t the spirits, and
+we are startled by the echo of your feet on the sharp pavement, and we
+have so many goods in our shop-windows which nobody wants, and we have so
+much to do for a limited public which never comes to us to be done for,
+that we are altogether out of sorts and can’t enjoy ourselves with any
+one.”  So I go to the Post-office, and knock at the shutter, and I say to
+the Post-master, “Will _you_ come and be idle with me?”  To which he
+rejoins, “No, I really can’t, for I live, as you may see, in such a very
+little Post-office, and pass my life behind such a very little shutter,
+that my hand, when I put it out, is as the hand of a giant crammed
+through the window of a dwarf’s house at a fair, and I am a mere
+Post-office anchorite in a cell much too small for him, and I can’t get
+out, and I can’t get in, and I have no space to be idle in, even if I
+would.”  So, the boy,’ said Mr. Goodchild, concluding the tale, ‘comes
+back with the letters after all, and lives happy never afterwards.’
+
+But it may, not unreasonably, be asked—while Francis Goodchild was
+wandering hither and thither, storing his mind with perpetual observation
+of men and things, and sincerely believing himself to be the laziest
+creature in existence all the time—how did Thomas Idle, crippled and
+confined to the house, contrive to get through the hours of the day?
+
+Prone on the sofa, Thomas made no attempt to get through the hours, but
+passively allowed the hours to get through _him_.  Where other men in his
+situation would have read books and improved their minds, Thomas slept
+and rested his body.  Where other men would have pondered anxiously over
+their future prospects, Thomas dreamed lazily of his past life.  The one
+solitary thing he did, which most other people would have done in his
+place, was to resolve on making certain alterations and improvements in
+his mode of existence, as soon as the effects of the misfortune that had
+overtaken him had all passed away.  Remembering that the current of his
+life had hitherto oozed along in one smooth stream of laziness,
+occasionally troubled on the surface by a slight passing ripple of
+industry, his present ideas on the subject of self-reform, inclined
+him—not as the reader may be disposed to imagine, to project schemes for
+a new existence of enterprise and exertion—but, on the contrary, to
+resolve that he would never, if he could possibly help it, be active or
+industrious again, throughout the whole of his future career.
+
+It is due to Mr. Idle to relate that his mind sauntered towards this
+peculiar conclusion on distinct and logically-producible grounds.  After
+reviewing, quite at his ease, and with many needful intervals of repose,
+the generally-placid spectacle of his past existence, he arrived at the
+discovery that all the great disasters which had tried his patience and
+equanimity in early life, had been caused by his having allowed himself
+to be deluded into imitating some pernicious example of activity and
+industry that had been set him by others.  The trials to which he here
+alludes were three in number, and may be thus reckoned up: First, the
+disaster of being an unpopular and a thrashed boy at school; secondly,
+the disaster of falling seriously ill; thirdly, the disaster of becoming
+acquainted with a great bore.
+
+The first disaster occurred after Thomas had been an idle and a popular
+boy at school, for some happy years.  One Christmas-time, he was
+stimulated by the evil example of a companion, whom he had always trusted
+and liked, to be untrue to himself, and to try for a prize at the ensuing
+half-yearly examination.  He did try, and he got a prize—how, he did not
+distinctly know at the moment, and cannot remember now.  No sooner,
+however, had the book—Moral Hints to the Young on the Value of Time—been
+placed in his hands, than the first troubles of his life began.  The idle
+boys deserted him, as a traitor to their cause.  The industrious boys
+avoided him, as a dangerous interloper; one of their number, who had
+always won the prize on previous occasions, expressing just resentment at
+the invasion of his privileges by calling Thomas into the play-ground,
+and then and there administering to him the first sound and genuine
+thrashing that he had ever received in his life.  Unpopular from that
+moment, as a beaten boy, who belonged to no side and was rejected by all
+parties, young Idle soon lost caste with his masters, as he had
+previously lost caste with his schoolfellows.  He had forfeited the
+comfortable reputation of being the one lazy member of the youthful
+community whom it was quite hopeless to punish.  Never again did he hear
+the headmaster say reproachfully to an industrious boy who had committed
+a fault, ‘I might have expected this in Thomas Idle, but it is
+inexcusable, sir, in you, who know better.’  Never more, after winning
+that fatal prize, did he escape the retributive imposition, or the
+avenging birch.  From that time, the masters made him work, and the boys
+would not let him play.  From that time his social position steadily
+declined, and his life at school became a perpetual burden to him.
+
+So, again, with the second disaster.  While Thomas was lazy, he was a
+model of health.  His first attempt at active exertion and his first
+suffering from severe illness are connected together by the intimate
+relations of cause and effect.  Shortly after leaving school, he
+accompanied a party of friends to a cricket-field, in his natural and
+appropriate character of spectator only.  On the ground it was discovered
+that the players fell short of the required number, and facile Thomas was
+persuaded to assist in making up the complement.  At a certain appointed
+time, he was roused from peaceful slumber in a dry ditch, and placed
+before three wickets with a bat in his hand.  Opposite to him, behind
+three more wickets, stood one of his bosom friends, filling the situation
+(as he was informed) of bowler.  No words can describe Mr. Idle’s horror
+and amazement, when he saw this young man—on ordinary occasions, the
+meekest and mildest of human beings—suddenly contract his eye-brows,
+compress his lips, assume the aspect of an infuriated savage, run back a
+few steps, then run forward, and, without the slightest previous
+provocation, hurl a detestably hard ball with all his might straight at
+Thomas’s legs.  Stimulated to preternatural activity of body and
+sharpness of eye by the instinct of self-preservation, Mr. Idle
+contrived, by jumping deftly aside at the right moment, and by using his
+bat (ridiculously narrow as it was for the purpose) as a shield, to
+preserve his life and limbs from the dastardly attack that had been made
+on both, to leave the full force of the deadly missile to strike his
+wicket instead of his leg; and to end the innings, so far as his side was
+concerned, by being immediately bowled out.  Grateful for his escape, he
+was about to return to the dry ditch, when he was peremptorily stopped,
+and told that the other side was ‘going in,’ and that he was expected to
+‘field.’  His conception of the whole art and mystery of ‘fielding,’ may
+be summed up in the three words of serious advice which he privately
+administered to himself on that trying occasion—avoid the ball.
+Fortified by this sound and salutary principle, he took his own course,
+impervious alike to ridicule and abuse.  Whenever the ball came near him,
+he thought of his shins, and got out of the way immediately.  ‘Catch it!’
+‘Stop it!’  ‘Pitch it up!’ were cries that passed by him like the idle
+wind that he regarded not.  He ducked under it, he jumped over it, he
+whisked himself away from it on either side.  Never once, through the
+whole innings did he and the ball come together on anything approaching
+to intimate terms.  The unnatural activity of body which was necessarily
+called forth for the accomplishment of this result threw Thomas Idle, for
+the first time in his life, into a perspiration.  The perspiration, in
+consequence of his want of practice in the management of that particular
+result of bodily activity, was suddenly checked; the inevitable chill
+succeeded; and that, in its turn, was followed by a fever.  For the first
+time since his birth, Mr. Idle found himself confined to his bed for many
+weeks together, wasted and worn by a long illness, of which his own
+disastrous muscular exertion had been the sole first cause.
+
+The third occasion on which Thomas found reason to reproach himself
+bitterly for the mistake of having attempted to be industrious, was
+connected with his choice of a calling in life.  Having no interest in
+the Church, he appropriately selected the next best profession for a lazy
+man in England—the Bar.  Although the Benchers of the Inns of Court have
+lately abandoned their good old principles, and oblige their students to
+make some show of studying, in Mr. Idle’s time no such innovation as this
+existed.  Young men who aspired to the honourable title of barrister
+were, very properly, not asked to learn anything of the law, but were
+merely required to eat a certain number of dinners at the table of their
+Hall, and to pay a certain sum of money; and were called to the Bar as
+soon as they could prove that they had sufficiently complied with these
+extremely sensible regulations.  Never did Thomas move more harmoniously
+in concert with his elders and betters than when he was qualifying
+himself for admission among the barristers of his native country.  Never
+did he feel more deeply what real laziness was in all the serene majesty
+of its nature, than on the memorable day when he was called to the Bar,
+after having carefully abstained from opening his law-books during his
+period of probation, except to fall asleep over them.  How he could ever
+again have become industrious, even for the shortest period, after that
+great reward conferred upon his idleness, quite passes his comprehension.
+The kind Benchers did everything they could to show him the folly of
+exerting himself.  They wrote out his probationary exercise for him, and
+never expected him even to take the trouble of reading it through when it
+was written.  They invited him, with seven other choice spirits as lazy
+as himself, to come and be called to the Bar, while they were sitting
+over their wine and fruit after dinner.  They put his oaths of
+allegiance, and his dreadful official denunciations of the Pope and the
+Pretender, so gently into his mouth, that he hardly knew how the words
+got there.  They wheeled all their chairs softly round from the table,
+and sat surveying the young barristers with their backs to their bottles,
+rather than stand up, or adjourn to hear the exercises read.  And when
+Mr. Idle and the seven unlabouring neophytes, ranged in order, as a
+class, with their backs considerately placed against a screen, had begun,
+in rotation, to read the exercises which they had not written, even then,
+each Bencher, true to the great lazy principle of the whole proceeding,
+stopped each neophyte before he had stammered through his first line, and
+bowed to him, and told him politely that he was a barrister from that
+moment.  This was all the ceremony.  It was followed by a social supper,
+and by the presentation, in accordance with ancient custom, of a pound of
+sweetmeats and a bottle of Madeira, offered in the way of needful
+refreshment, by each grateful neophyte to each beneficent Bencher.  It
+may seem inconceivable that Thomas should ever have forgotten the great
+do-nothing principle instilled by such a ceremony as this; but it is,
+nevertheless, true, that certain designing students of industrious habits
+found him out, took advantage of his easy humour, persuaded him that it
+was discreditable to be a barrister and to know nothing whatever about
+the law, and lured him, by the force of their own evil example, into a
+conveyancer’s chambers, to make up for lost time, and to qualify himself
+for practice at the Bar.  After a fortnight of self-delusion, the curtain
+fell from his eyes; he resumed his natural character, and shut up his
+books.  But the retribution which had hitherto always followed his little
+casual errors of industry followed them still.  He could get away from
+the conveyancer’s chambers, but he could not get away from one of the
+pupils, who had taken a fancy to him,—a tall, serious, raw-boned,
+hard-working, disputatious pupil, with ideas of his own about reforming
+the Law of Real Property, who has been the scourge of Mr. Idle’s
+existence ever since the fatal day when he fell into the mistake of
+attempting to study the law.  Before that time his friends were all
+sociable idlers like himself.  Since that time the burden of bearing with
+a hard-working young man has become part of his lot in life.  Go where he
+will now, he can never feel certain that the raw-boned pupil is not
+affectionately waiting for him round a corner, to tell him a little more
+about the Law of Real Property.  Suffer as he may under the infliction,
+he can never complain, for he must always remember, with unavailing
+regret, that he has his own thoughtless industry to thank for first
+exposing him to the great social calamity of knowing a bore.
+
+These events of his past life, with the significant results that they
+brought about, pass drowsily through Thomas Idle’s memory, while he lies
+alone on the sofa at Allonby and elsewhere, dreaming away the time which
+his fellow-apprentice gets through so actively out of doors.  Remembering
+the lesson of laziness which his past disasters teach, and bearing in
+mind also the fact that he is crippled in one leg because he exerted
+himself to go up a mountain, when he ought to have known that his proper
+course of conduct was to stop at the bottom of it, he holds now, and will
+for the future firmly continue to hold, by his new resolution never to be
+industrious again, on any pretence whatever, for the rest of his life.
+The physical results of his accident have been related in a previous
+chapter.  The moral results now stand on record; and, with the
+enumeration of these, that part of the present narrative which is
+occupied by the Episode of The Sprained Ankle may now perhaps be
+considered, in all its aspects, as finished and complete.
+
+‘How do you propose that we get through this present afternoon and
+evening?’ demanded Thomas Idle, after two or three hours of the foregoing
+reflections at Allonby.
+
+Mr. Goodchild faltered, looked out of window, looked in again, and said,
+as he had so often said before, ‘There is the sea, and here are the
+shrimps;—let us eat ’em’!’
+
+But, the wise donkey was at that moment in the act of bolting: not with
+the irresolution of his previous efforts which had been wanting in
+sustained force of character, but with real vigour of purpose: shaking
+the dust off his mane and hind-feet at Allonby, and tearing away from it,
+as if he had nobly made up his mind that he never would be taken alive.
+At sight of this inspiring spectacle, which was visible from his sofa,
+Thomas Idle stretched his neck and dwelt upon it rapturously.
+
+‘Francis Goodchild,’ he then said, turning to his companion with a solemn
+air, ‘this is a delightful little Inn, excellently kept by the most
+comfortable of landladies and the most attentive of landlords, but—the
+donkey’s right!’
+
+The words, ‘There is the sea, and here are the—’ again trembled on the
+lips of Goodchild, unaccompanied however by any sound.
+
+‘Let us instantly pack the portmanteaus,’ said Thomas Idle, ‘pay the
+bill, and order a fly out, with instructions to the driver to follow the
+donkey!’
+
+Mr. Goodchild, who had only wanted encouragement to disclose the real
+state of his feelings, and who had been pining beneath his weary secret,
+now burst into tears, and confessed that he thought another day in the
+place would be the death of him.
+
+So, the two idle apprentices followed the donkey until the night was far
+advanced.  Whether he was recaptured by the town-council, or is bolting
+at this hour through the United Kingdom, they know not.  They hope he may
+be still bolting; if so, their best wishes are with him.
+
+It entered Mr. Idle’s head, on the borders of Cumberland, that there
+could be no idler place to stay at, except by snatches of a few minutes
+each, than a railway station.  ‘An intermediate station on a line—a
+junction—anything of that sort,’ Thomas suggested.  Mr. Goodchild
+approved of the idea as eccentric, and they journeyed on and on, until
+they came to such a station where there was an Inn.
+
+‘Here,’ said Thomas, ‘we may be luxuriously lazy; other people will
+travel for us, as it were, and we shall laugh at their folly.’
+
+It was a Junction-Station, where the wooden razors before mentioned
+shaved the air very often, and where the sharp electric-telegraph bell
+was in a very restless condition.  All manner of cross-lines of rails
+came zig-zagging into it, like a Congress of iron vipers; and, a little
+way out of it, a pointsman in an elevated signal-box was constantly going
+through the motions of drawing immense quantities of beer at a
+public-house bar.  In one direction, confused perspectives of embankments
+and arches were to be seen from the platform; in the other, the rails
+soon disentangled themselves into two tracks and shot away under a
+bridge, and curved round a corner.  Sidings were there, in which empty
+luggage-vans and cattle-boxes often butted against each other as if they
+couldn’t agree; and warehouses were there, in which great quantities of
+goods seemed to have taken the veil (of the consistency of tarpaulin),
+and to have retired from the world without any hope of getting back to
+it.  Refreshment-rooms were there; one, for the hungry and thirsty Iron
+Locomotives where their coke and water were ready, and of good quality,
+for they were dangerous to play tricks with; the other, for the hungry
+and thirsty human Locomotives, who might take what they could get, and
+whose chief consolation was provided in the form of three terrific urns
+or vases of white metal, containing nothing, each forming a breastwork
+for a defiant and apparently much-injured woman.
+
+Established at this Station, Mr. Thomas Idle and Mr. Francis Goodchild
+resolved to enjoy it.  But, its contrasts were very violent, and there
+was also an infection in it.
+
+First, as to its contrasts.  They were only two, but they were Lethargy
+and Madness.  The Station was either totally unconscious, or wildly
+raving.  By day, in its unconscious state, it looked as if no life could
+come to it,—as if it were all rust, dust, and ashes—as if the last train
+for ever, had gone without issuing any Return-Tickets—as if the last
+Engine had uttered its last shriek and burst.  One awkward shave of the
+air from the wooden razor, and everything changed.  Tight office-doors
+flew open, panels yielded, books, newspapers, travelling-caps and
+wrappers broke out of brick walls, money chinked, conveyances oppressed
+by nightmares of luggage came careering into the yard, porters started up
+from secret places, ditto the much-injured women, the shining bell, who
+lived in a little tray on stilts by himself, flew into a man’s hand and
+clamoured violently.  The pointsman aloft in the signal-box made the
+motions of drawing, with some difficulty, hogsheads of beer.  Down Train!
+More bear!  Up Train!  More beer.  Cross junction Train!  More beer!
+Cattle Train!  More beer.  Goods Train!  Simmering, whistling, trembling,
+rumbling, thundering.  Trains on the whole confusion of intersecting
+rails, crossing one another, bumping one another, hissing one another,
+backing to go forward, tearing into distance to come close.  People
+frantic.  Exiles seeking restoration to their native carriages, and
+banished to remoter climes.  More beer and more bell.  Then, in a minute,
+the Station relapsed into stupor as the stoker of the Cattle Train, the
+last to depart, went gliding out of it, wiping the long nose of his
+oil-can with a dirty pocket-handkerchief.
+
+By night, in its unconscious state, the Station was not so much as
+visible.  Something in the air, like an enterprising chemist’s
+established in business on one of the boughs of Jack’s beanstalk, was all
+that could be discerned of it under the stars.  In a moment it would
+break out, a constellation of gas.  In another moment, twenty rival
+chemists, on twenty rival beanstalks, came into existence.  Then, the
+Furies would be seen, waving their lurid torches up and down the confused
+perspectives of embankments and arches—would be heard, too, wailing and
+shrieking.  Then, the Station would be full of palpitating trains, as in
+the day; with the heightening difference that they were not so clearly
+seen as in the day, whereas the Station walls, starting forward under the
+gas, like a hippopotamus’s eyes, dazzled the human locomotives with the
+sauce-bottle, the cheap music, the bedstead, the distorted range of
+buildings where the patent safes are made, the gentleman in the rain with
+the registered umbrella, the lady returning from the ball with the
+registered respirator, and all their other embellishments.  And now, the
+human locomotives, creased as to their countenances and purblind as to
+their eyes, would swarm forth in a heap, addressing themselves to the
+mysterious urns and the much-injured women; while the iron locomotives,
+dripping fire and water, shed their steam about plentifully, making the
+dull oxen in their cages, with heads depressed, and foam hanging from
+their mouths as their red looks glanced fearfully at the surrounding
+terrors, seem as though they had been drinking at half-frozen waters and
+were hung with icicles.  Through the same steam would be caught glimpses
+of their fellow-travellers, the sheep, getting their white kid faces
+together, away from the bars, and stuffing the interstices with trembling
+wool.  Also, down among the wheels, of the man with the sledge-hammer,
+ringing the axles of the fast night-train; against whom the oxen have a
+misgiving that he is the man with the pole-axe who is to come by-and-by,
+and so the nearest of them try to get back, and get a purchase for a
+thrust at him through the bars.  Suddenly, the bell would ring, the steam
+would stop with one hiss and a yell, the chemists on the beanstalks would
+be busy, the avenging Furies would bestir themselves, the fast
+night-train would melt from eye and ear, the other trains going their
+ways more slowly would be heard faintly rattling in the distance like
+old-fashioned watches running down, the sauce-bottle and cheap music
+retired from view, even the bedstead went to bed, and there was no such
+visible thing as the Station to vex the cool wind in its blowing, or
+perhaps the autumn lightning, as it found out the iron rails.
+
+The infection of the Station was this:—When it was in its raving state,
+the Apprentices found it impossible to be there, without labouring under
+the delusion that they were in a hurry.  To Mr. Goodchild, whose ideas of
+idleness were so imperfect, this was no unpleasant hallucination, and
+accordingly that gentleman went through great exertions in yielding to
+it, and running up and down the platform, jostling everybody, under the
+impression that he had a highly important mission somewhere, and had not
+a moment to lose.  But, to Thomas Idle, this contagion was so very
+unacceptable an incident of the situation, that he struck on the fourth
+day, and requested to be moved.
+
+‘This place fills me with a dreadful sensation,’ said Thomas, ‘of having
+something to do.  Remove me, Francis.’
+
+‘Where would you like to go next?’ was the question of the ever-engaging
+Goodchild.
+
+‘I have heard there is a good old Inn at Lancaster, established in a fine
+old house: an Inn where they give you Bride-cake every day after dinner,’
+said Thomas Idle.  ‘Let us eat Bride-cake without the trouble of being
+married, or of knowing anybody in that ridiculous dilemma.’
+
+Mr. Goodchild, with a lover’s sigh, assented.  They departed from the
+Station in a violent hurry (for which, it is unnecessary to observe,
+there was not the least occasion), and were delivered at the fine old
+house at Lancaster, on the same night.
+
+It is Mr. Goodchild’s opinion, that if a visitor on his arrival at
+Lancaster could be accommodated with a pole which would push the opposite
+side of the street some yards farther off, it would be better for all
+parties.  Protesting against being required to live in a trench, and
+obliged to speculate all day upon what the people can possibly be doing
+within a mysterious opposite window, which is a shop-window to look at,
+but not a shop-window in respect of its offering nothing for sale and
+declining to give any account whatever of itself, Mr. Goodchild concedes
+Lancaster to be a pleasant place.  A place dropped in the midst of a
+charming landscape, a place with a fine ancient fragment of castle, a
+place of lovely walks, a place possessing staid old houses richly fitted
+with old Honduras mahogany, which has grown so dark with time that it
+seems to have got something of a retrospective mirror-quality into
+itself, and to show the visitor, in the depth of its grain, through all
+its polish, the hue of the wretched slaves who groaned long ago under old
+Lancaster merchants.  And Mr. Goodchild adds that the stones of Lancaster
+do sometimes whisper, even yet, of rich men passed away—upon whose great
+prosperity some of these old doorways frowned sullen in the brightest
+weather—that their slave-gain turned to curses, as the Arabian Wizard’s
+money turned to leaves, and that no good ever came of it, even unto the
+third and fourth generations, until it was wasted and gone.
+
+It was a gallant sight to behold, the Sunday procession of the Lancaster
+elders to Church—all in black, and looking fearfully like a funeral
+without the Body—under the escort of Three Beadles.
+
+‘Think,’ said Francis, as he stood at the Inn window, admiring, ‘of being
+taken to the sacred edifice by three Beadles!  I have, in my early time,
+been taken out of it by one Beadle; but, to be taken into it by three, O
+Thomas, is a distinction I shall never enjoy!’
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+WHEN Mr. Goodchild had looked out of the Lancaster Inn window for two
+hours on end, with great perseverance, he begun to entertain a misgiving
+that he was growing industrious.  He therefore set himself next, to
+explore the country from the tops of all the steep hills in the
+neighbourhood.
+
+He came back at dinner-time, red and glowing, to tell Thomas Idle what he
+had seen.  Thomas, on his back reading, listened with great composure,
+and asked him whether he really had gone up those hills, and bothered
+himself with those views, and walked all those miles?
+
+‘Because I want to know,’ added Thomas, ‘what you would say of it, if you
+were obliged to do it?’
+
+‘It would be different, then,’ said Francis.  ‘It would be work, then;
+now, it’s play.’
+
+‘Play!’ replied Thomas Idle, utterly repudiating the reply.  ‘Play!  Here
+is a man goes systematically tearing himself to pieces, and putting
+himself through an incessant course of training, as if he were always
+under articles to fight a match for the champion’s belt, and he calls it
+Play!  Play!’ exclaimed Thomas Idle, scornfully contemplating his one
+boot in the air.  ‘You _can’t_ play.  You don’t know what it is.  You
+make work of everything.’
+
+The bright Goodchild amiably smiled.
+
+‘So you do,’ said Thomas.  ‘I mean it.  To me you are an absolutely
+terrible fellow.  You do nothing like another man.  Where another fellow
+would fall into a footbath of action or emotion, you fall into a mine.
+Where any other fellow would be a painted butterfly, you are a fiery
+dragon.  Where another man would stake a sixpence, you stake your
+existence.  If you were to go up in a balloon, you would make for Heaven;
+and if you were to dive into the depths of the earth, nothing short of
+the other place would content you.  What a fellow you are, Francis!’  The
+cheerful Goodchild laughed.
+
+‘It’s all very well to laugh, but I wonder you don’t feel it to be
+serious,’ said Idle.  ‘A man who can do nothing by halves appears to me
+to be a fearful man.’
+
+‘Tom, Tom,’ returned Goodchild, ‘if I can do nothing by halves, and be
+nothing by halves, it’s pretty clear that you must take me as a whole,
+and make the best of me.’
+
+With this philosophical rejoinder, the airy Goodchild clapped Mr. Idle on
+the shoulder in a final manner, and they sat down to dinner.
+
+‘By-the-by,’ said Goodchild, ‘I have been over a lunatic asylum too,
+since I have been out.’
+
+‘He has been,’ exclaimed Thomas Idle, casting up his eyes, ‘over a
+lunatic asylum!  Not content with being as great an Ass as Captain
+Barclay in the pedestrian way, he makes a Lunacy Commissioner of
+himself—for nothing!’
+
+‘An immense place,’ said Goodchild, ‘admirable offices, very good
+arrangements, very good attendants; altogether a remarkable place.’
+
+‘And what did you see there?’ asked Mr. Idle, adapting Hamlet’s advice to
+the occasion, and assuming the virtue of interest, though he had it not.
+
+‘The usual thing,’ said Francis Goodchild, with a sigh.  ‘Long groves of
+blighted men-and-women-trees; interminable avenues of hopeless faces;
+numbers, without the slightest power of really combining for any earthly
+purpose; a society of human creatures who have nothing in common but that
+they have all lost the power of being humanly social with one another.’
+
+‘Take a glass of wine with me,’ said Thomas Idle, ‘and let _us_ be
+social.’
+
+‘In one gallery, Tom,’ pursued Francis Goodchild, ‘which looked to me
+about the length of the Long Walk at Windsor, more or less—’
+
+‘Probably less,’ observed Thomas Idle.
+
+‘In one gallery, which was otherwise clear of patients (for they were all
+out), there was a poor little dark-chinned, meagre man, with a perplexed
+brow and a pensive face, stooping low over the matting on the floor, and
+picking out with his thumb and forefinger the course of its fibres.  The
+afternoon sun was slanting in at the large end-window, and there were
+cross patches of light and shade all down the vista, made by the unseen
+windows and the open doors of the little sleeping-cells on either side.
+In about the centre of the perspective, under an arch, regardless of the
+pleasant weather, regardless of the solitude, regardless of approaching
+footsteps, was the poor little dark-chinned, meagre man, poring over the
+matting.  “What are you doing there?” said my conductor, when we came to
+him.  He looked up, and pointed to the matting.  “I wouldn’t do that, I
+think,” said my conductor, kindly; “if I were you, I would go and read,
+or I would lie down if I felt tired; but I wouldn’t do that.”  The
+patient considered a moment, and vacantly answered, “No, sir, I won’t;
+I’ll—I’ll go and read,” and so he lamely shuffled away into one of the
+little rooms.  I turned my head before we had gone many paces.  He had
+already come out again, and was again poring over the matting, and
+tracking out its fibres with his thumb and forefinger.  I stopped to look
+at him, and it came into my mind, that probably the course of those
+fibres as they plaited in and out, over and under, was the only course of
+things in the whole wide world that it was left to him to understand—that
+his darkening intellect had narrowed down to the small cleft of light
+which showed him, “This piece was twisted this way, went in here, passed
+under, came out there, was carried on away here to the right where I now
+put my finger on it, and in this progress of events, the thing was made
+and came to be here.”  Then, I wondered whether he looked into the
+matting, next, to see if it could show him anything of the process
+through which _he_ came to be there, so strangely poring over it.  Then,
+I thought how all of us, GOD help us! in our different ways are poring
+over our bits of matting, blindly enough, and what confusions and
+mysteries we make in the pattern.  I had a sadder fellow-feeling with the
+little dark-chinned, meagre man, by that time, and I came away.’
+
+Mr. Idle diverting the conversation to grouse, custards, and bride-cake,
+Mr. Goodchild followed in the same direction.  The bride-cake was as
+bilious and indigestible as if a real Bride had cut it, and the dinner it
+completed was an admirable performance.
+
+The house was a genuine old house of a very quaint description, teeming
+with old carvings, and beams, and panels, and having an excellent old
+staircase, with a gallery or upper staircase, cut off from it by a
+curious fence-work of old oak, or of the old Honduras Mahogany wood.  It
+was, and is, and will be, for many a long year to come, a remarkably
+picturesque house; and a certain grave mystery lurking in the depth of
+the old mahogany panels, as if they were so many deep pools of dark
+water—such, indeed, as they had been much among when they were trees—gave
+it a very mysterious character after nightfall.
+
+When Mr. Goodchild and Mr. Idle had first alighted at the door, and
+stepped into the sombre, handsome old hall, they had been received by
+half-a-dozen noiseless old men in black, all dressed exactly alike, who
+glided up the stairs with the obliging landlord and waiter—but without
+appearing to get into their way, or to mind whether they did or no—and
+who had filed off to the right and left on the old staircase, as the
+guests entered their sitting-room.  It was then broad, bright day.  But,
+Mr. Goodchild had said, when their door was shut, ‘Who on earth are those
+old men?’  And afterwards, both on going out and coming in, he had
+noticed that there were no old men to be seen.
+
+Neither, had the old men, or any one of the old men, reappeared since.
+The two friends had passed a night in the house, but had seen nothing
+more of the old men.  Mr. Goodchild, in rambling about it, had looked
+along passages, and glanced in at doorways, but had encountered no old
+men; neither did it appear that any old men were, by any member of the
+establishment, missed or expected.
+
+Another odd circumstance impressed itself on their attention.  It was,
+that the door of their sitting-room was never left untouched for a
+quarter of an hour.  It was opened with hesitation, opened with
+confidence, opened a little way, opened a good way,—always clapped-to
+again without a word of explanation.  They were reading, they were
+writing, they were eating, they were drinking, they were talking, they
+were dozing; the door was always opened at an unexpected moment, and they
+looked towards it, and it was clapped-to again, and nobody was to be
+seen.  When this had happened fifty times or so, Mr. Goodchild had said
+to his companion, jestingly: ‘I begin to think, Tom, there was something
+wrong with those six old men.’
+
+Night had come again, and they had been writing for two or three hours:
+writing, in short, a portion of the lazy notes from which these lazy
+sheets are taken.  They had left off writing, and glasses were on the
+table between them.  The house was closed and quiet.  Around the head of
+Thomas Idle, as he lay upon his sofa, hovered light wreaths of fragrant
+smoke.  The temples of Francis Goodchild, as he leaned back in his chair,
+with his two hands clasped behind his head, and his legs crossed, were
+similarly decorated.
+
+They had been discussing several idle subjects of speculation, not
+omitting the strange old men, and were still so occupied, when Mr.
+Goodchild abruptly changed his attitude to wind up his watch.  They were
+just becoming drowsy enough to be stopped in their talk by any such
+slight check.  Thomas Idle, who was speaking at the moment, paused and
+said, ‘How goes it?’
+
+‘One,’ said Goodchild.
+
+As if he had ordered One old man, and the order were promptly executed
+(truly, all orders were so, in that excellent hotel), the door opened,
+and One old man stood there.
+
+He did not come in, but stood with the door in his hand.
+
+‘One of the six, Tom, at last!’ said Mr. Goodchild, in a surprised
+whisper.—‘Sir, your pleasure?’
+
+‘Sir, _your_ pleasure?’ said the One old man.
+
+‘I didn’t ring.’
+
+‘The bell did,’ said the One old man.
+
+He said BELL, in a deep, strong way, that would have expressed the church
+Bell.
+
+‘I had the pleasure, I believe, of seeing you, yesterday?’ said
+Goodchild.
+
+‘I cannot undertake to say for certain,’ was the grim reply of the One
+old man.
+
+‘I think you saw me?  Did you not?’
+
+‘Saw _you_?’ said the old man.  ‘O yes, I saw you.  But, I see many who
+never see me.’
+
+A chilled, slow, earthy, fixed old man.  A cadaverous old man of measured
+speech.  An old man who seemed as unable to wink, as if his eyelids had
+been nailed to his forehead.  An old man whose eyes—two spots of fire—had
+no more motion than if they had been connected with the back of his skull
+by screws driven through it, and rivetted and bolted outside, among his
+grey hair.
+
+The night had turned so cold, to Mr. Goodchild’s sensations, that he
+shivered.  He remarked lightly, and half apologetically, ‘I think
+somebody is walking over my grave.’
+
+‘No,’ said the weird old man, ‘there is no one there.’
+
+Mr. Goodchild looked at Idle, but Idle lay with his head enwreathed in
+smoke.
+
+‘No one there?’ said Goodchild.
+
+‘There is no one at your grave, I assure you,’ said the old man.
+
+He had come in and shut the door, and he now sat down.  He did not bend
+himself to sit, as other people do, but seemed to sink bolt upright, as
+if in water, until the chair stopped him.
+
+‘My friend, Mr. Idle,’ said Goodchild, extremely anxious to introduce a
+third person into the conversation.
+
+‘I am,’ said the old man, without looking at him, ‘at Mr. Idle’s
+service.’
+
+‘If you are an old inhabitant of this place,’ Francis Goodchild resumed.
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+‘Perhaps you can decide a point my friend and I were in doubt upon, this
+morning.  They hang condemned criminals at the Castle, I believe?’
+
+‘_I_ believe so,’ said the old man.
+
+‘Are their faces turned towards that noble prospect?’
+
+‘Your face is turned,’ replied the old man, ‘to the Castle wall.  When
+you are tied up, you see its stones expanding and contracting violently,
+and a similar expansion and contraction seem to take place in your own
+head and breast.  Then, there is a rush of fire and an earthquake, and
+the Castle springs into the air, and you tumble down a precipice.’
+
+His cravat appeared to trouble him.  He put his hand to his throat, and
+moved his neck from side to side.  He was an old man of a swollen
+character of face, and his nose was immoveably hitched up on one side, as
+if by a little hook inserted in that nostril.  Mr. Goodchild felt
+exceedingly uncomfortable, and began to think the night was hot, and not
+cold.
+
+‘A strong description, sir,’ he observed.
+
+‘A strong sensation,’ the old man rejoined.
+
+Again, Mr. Goodchild looked to Mr. Thomas Idle; but Thomas lay on his
+back with his face attentively turned towards the One old man, and made
+no sign.  At this time Mr. Goodchild believed that he saw threads of fire
+stretch from the old man’s eyes to his own, and there attach themselves.
+(Mr. Goodchild writes the present account of his experience, and, with
+the utmost solemnity, protests that he had the strongest sensation upon
+him of being forced to look at the old man along those two fiery films,
+from that moment.)
+
+‘I must tell it to you,’ said the old man, with a ghastly and a stony
+stare.
+
+‘What?’ asked Francis Goodchild.
+
+‘You know where it took place.  Yonder!’
+
+Whether he pointed to the room above, or to the room below, or to any
+room in that old house, or to a room in some other old house in that old
+town, Mr. Goodchild was not, nor is, nor ever can be, sure.  He was
+confused by the circumstance that the right forefinger of the One old man
+seemed to dip itself in one of the threads of fire, light itself, and
+make a fiery start in the air, as it pointed somewhere.  Having pointed
+somewhere, it went out.
+
+‘You know she was a Bride,’ said the old man.
+
+‘I know they still send up Bride-cake,’ Mr. Goodchild faltered.  ‘This is
+a very oppressive air.’
+
+‘She was a Bride,’ said the old man.  ‘She was a fair, flaxen-haired,
+large-eyed girl, who had no character, no purpose.  A weak, credulous,
+incapable, helpless nothing.  Not like her mother.  No, no.  It was her
+father whose character she reflected.
+
+‘Her mother had taken care to secure everything to herself, for her own
+life, when the father of this girl (a child at that time) died—of sheer
+helplessness; no other disorder—and then He renewed the acquaintance that
+had once subsisted between the mother and Him.  He had been put aside for
+the flaxen-haired, large-eyed man (or nonentity) with Money.  He could
+overlook that for Money.  He wanted compensation in Money.
+
+‘So, he returned to the side of that woman the mother, made love to her
+again, danced attendance on her, and submitted himself to her whims.  She
+wreaked upon him every whim she had, or could invent.  He bore it.  And
+the more he bore, the more he wanted compensation in Money, and the more
+he was resolved to have it.
+
+‘But, lo!  Before he got it, she cheated him.  In one of her imperious
+states, she froze, and never thawed again.  She put her hands to her head
+one night, uttered a cry, stiffened, lay in that attitude certain hours,
+and died.  And he had got no compensation from her in Money, yet.  Blight
+and Murrain on her!  Not a penny.
+
+‘He had hated her throughout that second pursuit, and had longed for
+retaliation on her.  He now counterfeited her signature to an instrument,
+leaving all she had to leave, to her daughter—ten years old then—to whom
+the property passed absolutely, and appointing himself the daughter’s
+Guardian.  When He slid it under the pillow of the bed on which she lay,
+He bent down in the deaf ear of Death, and whispered: “Mistress Pride, I
+have determined a long time that, dead or alive, you must make me
+compensation in Money.”’
+
+‘So, now there were only two left.  Which two were, He, and the fair
+flaxen-haired, large-eyed foolish daughter, who afterwards became the
+Bride.
+
+‘He put her to school.  In a secret, dark, oppressive, ancient house, he
+put her to school with a watchful and unscrupulous woman.  “My worthy
+lady,” he said, “here is a mind to be formed; will you help me to form
+it?”  She accepted the trust.  For which she, too, wanted compensation in
+Money, and had it.
+
+‘The girl was formed in the fear of him, and in the conviction, that
+there was no escape from him.  She was taught, from the first, to regard
+him as her future husband—the man who must marry her—the destiny that
+overshadowed her—the appointed certainty that could never be evaded.  The
+poor fool was soft white wax in their hands, and took the impression that
+they put upon her.  It hardened with time.  It became a part of herself.
+Inseparable from herself, and only to be torn away from her, by tearing
+life away from her.
+
+‘Eleven years she had lived in the dark house and its gloomy garden.  He
+was jealous of the very light and air getting to her, and they kept her
+close.  He stopped the wide chimneys, shaded the little windows, left the
+strong-stemmed ivy to wander where it would over the house-front, the
+moss to accumulate on the untrimmed fruit-trees in the red-walled garden,
+the weeds to over-run its green and yellow walks.  He surrounded her with
+images of sorrow and desolation.  He caused her to be filled with fears
+of the place and of the stories that were told of it, and then on pretext
+of correcting them, to be left in it in solitude, or made to shrink about
+it in the dark.  When her mind was most depressed and fullest of terrors,
+then, he would come out of one of the hiding-places from which he
+overlooked her, and present himself as her sole resource.
+
+‘Thus, by being from her childhood the one embodiment her life presented
+to her of power to coerce and power to relieve, power to bind and power
+to loose, the ascendency over her weakness was secured.  She was
+twenty-one years and twenty-one days old, when he brought her home to the
+gloomy house, his half-witted, frightened, and submissive Bride of three
+weeks.
+
+                      [Picture: A submissive bride]
+
+‘He had dismissed the governess by that time—what he had left to do, he
+could best do alone—and they came back, upon a rain night, to the scene
+of her long preparation.  She turned to him upon the threshold, as the
+rain was dripping from the porch, and said:
+
+‘“O sir, it is the Death-watch ticking for me!”
+
+‘“Well!” he answered.  “And if it were?”
+
+‘“O sir!” she returned to him, “look kindly on me, and be merciful to me!
+I beg your pardon.  I will do anything you wish, if you will only forgive
+me!”
+
+‘That had become the poor fool’s constant song: “I beg your pardon,” and
+“Forgive me!”
+
+‘She was not worth hating; he felt nothing but contempt for her.  But,
+she had long been in the way, and he had long been weary, and the work
+was near its end, and had to be worked out.
+
+‘“You fool,” he said.  “Go up the stairs!”
+
+‘She obeyed very quickly, murmuring, “I will do anything you wish!”  When
+he came into the Bride’s Chamber, having been a little retarded by the
+heavy fastenings of the great door (for they were alone in the house, and
+he had arranged that the people who attended on them should come and go
+in the day), he found her withdrawn to the furthest corner, and there
+standing pressed against the paneling as if she would have shrunk through
+it: her flaxen hair all wild about her face, and her large eyes staring
+at him in vague terror.
+
+‘“What are you afraid of?  Come and sit down by me.”
+
+‘“I will do anything you wish.  I beg your pardon, sir.  Forgive me!”
+Her monotonous tune as usual.
+
+‘“Ellen, here is a writing that you must write out to-morrow, in your own
+hand.  You may as well be seen by others, busily engaged upon it.  When
+you have written it all fairly, and corrected all mistakes, call in any
+two people there may be about the house, and sign your name to it before
+them.  Then, put it in your bosom to keep it safe, and when I sit here
+again to-morrow night, give it to me.”
+
+‘“I will do it all, with the greatest care.  I will do anything you
+wish.”
+
+‘“Don’t shake and tremble, then.”
+
+‘“I will try my utmost not to do it—if you will only forgive me!”
+
+‘Next day, she sat down at her desk, and did as she had been told.  He
+often passed in and out of the room, to observe her, and always saw her
+slowly and laboriously writing: repeating to herself the words she
+copied, in appearance quite mechanically, and without caring or
+endeavouring to comprehend them, so that she did her task.  He saw her
+follow the directions she had received, in all particulars; and at night,
+when they were alone again in the same Bride’s Chamber, and he drew his
+chair to the hearth, she timidly approached him from her distant seat,
+took the paper from her bosom, and gave it into his hand.
+
+‘It secured all her possessions to him, in the event of her death.  He
+put her before him, face to face, that he might look at her steadily; and
+he asked her, in so many plain words, neither fewer nor more, did she
+know that?
+
+‘There were spots of ink upon the bosom of her white dress, and they made
+her face look whiter and her eyes look larger as she nodded her head.
+There were spots of ink upon the hand with which she stood before him,
+nervously plaiting and folding her white skirts.
+
+‘He took her by the arm, and looked her, yet more closely and steadily,
+in the face.  “Now, die!  I have done with you.”
+
+‘She shrunk, and uttered a low, suppressed cry.
+
+‘“I am not going to kill you.  I will not endanger my life for yours.
+Die!”
+
+‘He sat before her in the gloomy Bride’s Chamber, day after day, night
+after night, looking the word at her when he did not utter it.  As often
+as her large unmeaning eyes were raised from the hands in which she
+rocked her head, to the stern figure, sitting with crossed arms and
+knitted forehead, in the chair, they read in it, “Die!”  When she dropped
+asleep in exhaustion, she was called back to shuddering consciousness, by
+the whisper, “Die!”  When she fell upon her old entreaty to be pardoned,
+she was answered “Die!”  When she had out-watched and out-suffered the
+long night, and the rising sun flamed into the sombre room, she heard it
+hailed with, “Another day and not dead?—Die!”
+
+‘Shut up in the deserted mansion, aloof from all mankind, and engaged
+alone in such a struggle without any respite, it came to this—that either
+he must die, or she.  He knew it very well, and concentrated his strength
+against her feebleness.  Hours upon hours he held her by the arm when her
+arm was black where he held it, and bade her Die!
+
+‘It was done, upon a windy morning, before sunrise.  He computed the time
+to be half-past four; but, his forgotten watch had run down, and he could
+not be sure.  She had broken away from him in the night, with loud and
+sudden cries—the first of that kind to which she had given vent—and he
+had had to put his hands over her mouth.  Since then, she had been quiet
+in the corner of the paneling where she had sunk down; and he had left
+her, and had gone back with his folded arms and his knitted forehead to
+his chair.
+
+‘Paler in the pale light, more colourless than ever in the leaden dawn,
+he saw her coming, trailing herself along the floor towards him—a white
+wreck of hair, and dress, and wild eyes, pushing itself on by an
+irresolute and bending hand.
+
+‘“O, forgive me!  I will do anything.  O, sir, pray tell me I may live!”
+
+‘“Die!”
+
+‘“Are you so resolved?  Is there no hope for me?”
+
+‘“Die!”
+
+‘Her large eyes strained themselves with wonder and fear; wonder and fear
+changed to reproach; reproach to blank nothing.  It was done.  He was not
+at first so sure it was done, but that the morning sun was hanging jewels
+in her hair—he saw the diamond, emerald, and ruby, glittering among it in
+little points, as he stood looking down at her—when he lifted her and
+laid her on her bed.
+
+‘She was soon laid in the ground.  And now they were all gone, and he had
+compensated himself well.
+
+‘He had a mind to travel.  Not that he meant to waste his Money, for he
+was a pinching man and liked his Money dearly (liked nothing else,
+indeed), but, that he had grown tired of the desolate house and wished to
+turn his back upon it and have done with it.  But, the house was worth
+Money, and Money must not be thrown away.  He determined to sell it
+before he went.  That it might look the less wretched and bring a better
+price, he hired some labourers to work in the overgrown garden; to cut
+out the dead wood, trim the ivy that drooped in heavy masses over the
+windows and gables, and clear the walks in which the weeds were growing
+mid-leg high.
+
+‘He worked, himself, along with them.  He worked later than they did,
+and, one evening at dusk, was left working alone, with his bill-hook in
+his hand.  One autumn evening, when the Bride was five weeks dead.
+
+‘“It grows too dark to work longer,” he said to himself, “I must give
+over for the night.”
+
+‘He detested the house, and was loath to enter it.  He looked at the dark
+porch waiting for him like a tomb, and felt that it was an accursed
+house.  Near to the porch, and near to where he stood, was a tree whose
+branches waved before the old bay-window of the Bride’s Chamber, where it
+had been done.  The tree swung suddenly, and made him start.  It swung
+again, although the night was still.  Looking up into it, he saw a figure
+among the branches.
+
+‘It was the figure of a young man.  The face looked down, as his looked
+up; the branches cracked and swayed; the figure rapidly descended, and
+slid upon its feet before him.  A slender youth of about her age, with
+long light brown hair.
+
+‘“What thief are you?” he said, seizing the youth by the collar.
+
+‘The young man, in shaking himself free, swung him a blow with his arm
+across the face and throat.  They closed, but the young man got from him
+and stepped back, crying, with great eagerness and horror, “Don’t touch
+me!  I would as lieve be touched by the Devil!”
+
+‘He stood still, with his bill-hook in his hand, looking at the young
+man.  For, the young man’s look was the counterpart of her last look, and
+he had not expected ever to see that again.
+
+‘“I am no thief.  Even if I were, I would not have a coin of your wealth,
+if it would buy me the Indies.  You murderer!”
+
+‘“What!”
+
+‘“I climbed it,” said the young man, pointing up into the tree, “for the
+first time, nigh four years ago.  I climbed it, to look at her.  I saw
+her.  I spoke to her.  I have climbed it, many a time, to watch and
+listen for her.  I was a boy, hidden among its leaves, when from that
+bay-window she gave me this!”
+
+‘He showed a tress of flaxen hair, tied with a mourning ribbon.
+
+‘“Her life,” said the young man, “was a life of mourning.  She gave me
+this, as a token of it, and a sign that she was dead to every one but
+you.  If I had been older, if I had seen her sooner, I might have saved
+her from you.  But, she was fast in the web when I first climbed the
+tree, and what could I do then to break it!”
+
+‘In saying those words, he burst into a fit of sobbing and crying: weakly
+at first, then passionately.
+
+‘“Murderer!  I climbed the tree on the night when you brought her back.
+I heard her, from the tree, speak of the Death-watch at the door.  I was
+three times in the tree while you were shut up with her, slowly killing
+her.  I saw her, from the tree, lie dead upon her bed.  I have watched
+you, from the tree, for proofs and traces of your guilt.  The manner of
+it, is a mystery to me yet, but I will pursue you until you have rendered
+up your life to the hangman.  You shall never, until then, be rid of me.
+I loved her!  I can know no relenting towards you.  Murderer, I loved
+her!”
+
+‘The youth was bare-headed, his hat having fluttered away in his descent
+from the tree.  He moved towards the gate.  He had to pass—Him—to get to
+it.  There was breadth for two old-fashioned carriages abreast; and the
+youth’s abhorrence, openly expressed in every feature of his face and
+limb of his body, and very hard to bear, had verge enough to keep itself
+at a distance in.  He (by which I mean the other) had not stirred hand or
+foot, since he had stood still to look at the boy.  He faced round, now,
+to follow him with his eyes.  As the back of the bare light-brown head
+was turned to him, he saw a red curve stretch from his hand to it.  He
+knew, before he threw the bill-hook, where it had alighted—I say, had
+alighted, and not, would alight; for, to his clear perception the thing
+was done before he did it.  It cleft the head, and it remained there, and
+the boy lay on his face.
+
+‘He buried the body in the night, at the foot of the tree.  As soon as it
+was light in the morning, he worked at turning up all the ground near the
+tree, and hacking and hewing at the neighbouring bushes and undergrowth.
+When the labourers came, there was nothing suspicious, and nothing
+suspected.
+
+‘But, he had, in a moment, defeated all his precautions, and destroyed
+the triumph of the scheme he had so long concerted, and so successfully
+worked out.  He had got rid of the Bride, and had acquired her fortune
+without endangering his life; but now, for a death by which he had gained
+nothing, he had evermore to live with a rope around his neck.
+
+‘Beyond this, he was chained to the house of gloom and horror, which he
+could not endure.  Being afraid to sell it or to quit it, lest discovery
+should be made, he was forced to live in it.  He hired two old people,
+man and wife, for his servants; and dwelt in it, and dreaded it.  His
+great difficulty, for a long time, was the garden.  Whether he should
+keep it trim, whether he should suffer it to fall into its former state
+of neglect, what would be the least likely way of attracting attention to
+it?
+
+‘He took the middle course of gardening, himself, in his evening leisure,
+and of then calling the old serving-man to help him; but, of never
+letting him work there alone.  And he made himself an arbour over against
+the tree, where he could sit and see that it was safe.
+
+‘As the seasons changed, and the tree changed, his mind perceived dangers
+that were always changing.  In the leafy time, he perceived that the
+upper boughs were growing into the form of the young man—that they made
+the shape of him exactly, sitting in a forked branch swinging in the
+wind.  In the time of the falling leaves, he perceived that they came
+down from the tree, forming tell-tale letters on the path, or that they
+had a tendency to heap themselves into a churchyard mound above the
+grave.  In the winter, when the tree was bare, he perceived that the
+boughs swung at him the ghost of the blow the young man had given, and
+that they threatened him openly.  In the spring, when the sap was
+mounting in the trunk, he asked himself, were the dried-up particles of
+blood mounting with it: to make out more obviously this year than last,
+the leaf-screened figure of the young man, swinging in the wind?
+
+‘However, he turned his Money over and over, and still over.  He was in
+the dark trade, the gold-dust trade, and most secret trades that yielded
+great returns.  In ten years, he had turned his Money over, so many
+times, that the traders and shippers who had dealings with him,
+absolutely did not lie—for once—when they declared that he had increased
+his fortune, Twelve Hundred Per Cent.
+
+‘He possessed his riches one hundred years ago, when people could be lost
+easily.  He had heard who the youth was, from hearing of the search that
+was made after him; but, it died away, and the youth was forgotten.
+
+‘The annual round of changes in the tree had been repeated ten times
+since the night of the burial at its foot, when there was a great
+thunder-storm over this place.  It broke at midnight, and roared until
+morning.  The first intelligence he heard from his old serving-man that
+morning, was, that the tree had been struck by Lightning.
+
+‘It had been riven down the stem, in a very surprising manner, and the
+stem lay in two blighted shafts: one resting against the house, and one
+against a portion of the old red garden-wall in which its fall had made a
+gap.  The fissure went down the tree to a little above the earth, and
+there stopped.  There was great curiosity to see the tree, and, with most
+of his former fears revived, he sat in his arbour—grown quite an old
+man—watching the people who came to see it.
+
+‘They quickly began to come, in such dangerous numbers, that he closed
+his garden-gate and refused to admit any more.  But, there were certain
+men of science who travelled from a distance to examine the tree, and, in
+an evil hour, he let them in!—Blight and Murrain on them, let them in!
+
+‘They wanted to dig up the ruin by the roots, and closely examine it, and
+the earth about it.  Never, while he lived!  They offered money for it.
+They!  Men of science, whom he could have bought by the gross, with a
+scratch of his pen!  He showed them the garden-gate again, and locked and
+barred it.
+
+‘But they were bent on doing what they wanted to do, and they bribed the
+old serving-man—a thankless wretch who regularly complained when he
+received his wages, of being underpaid—and they stole into the garden by
+night with their lanterns, picks, and shovels, and fell to at the tree.
+He was lying in a turret-room on the other side of the house (the Bride’s
+Chamber had been unoccupied ever since), but he soon dreamed of picks and
+shovels, and got up.
+
+‘He came to an upper window on that side, whence he could see their
+lanterns, and them, and the loose earth in a heap which he had himself
+disturbed and put back, when it was last turned to the air.  It was
+found!  They had that minute lighted on it.  They were all bending over
+it.  One of them said, “The skull is fractured;” and another, “See here
+the bones;” and another, “See here the clothes;” and then the first
+struck in again, and said, “A rusty bill-hook!”
+
+‘He became sensible, next day, that he was already put under a strict
+watch, and that he could go nowhere without being followed.  Before a
+week was out, he was taken and laid in hold.  The circumstances were
+gradually pieced together against him, with a desperate malignity, and an
+appalling ingenuity.  But, see the justice of men, and how it was
+extended to him!  He was further accused of having poisoned that girl in
+the Bride’s Chamber.  He, who had carefully and expressly avoided
+imperilling a hair of his head for her, and who had seen her die of her
+own incapacity!
+
+‘There was doubt for which of the two murders he should be first tried;
+but, the real one was chosen, and he was found Guilty, and cast for
+death.  Bloodthirsty wretches!  They would have made him Guilty of
+anything, so set they were upon having his life.
+
+‘His money could do nothing to save him, and he was hanged.  _I_ am He,
+and I was hanged at Lancaster Castle with my face to the wall, a hundred
+years ago!’
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+At this terrific announcement, Mr. Goodchild tried to rise and cry out.
+But, the two fiery lines extending from the old man’s eyes to his own,
+kept him down, and he could not utter a sound.  His sense of hearing,
+however, was acute, and he could hear the clock strike Two.  No sooner
+had he heard the clock strike Two, than he saw before him Two old men!
+
+Two.
+
+The eyes of each, connected with his eyes by two films of fire: each,
+exactly like the other: each, addressing him at precisely one and the
+same instant: each, gnashing the same teeth in the same head, with the
+same twitched nostril above them, and the same suffused expression around
+it.  Two old men.  Differing in nothing, equally distinct to the sight,
+the copy no fainter than the original, the second as real as the first.
+
+‘At what time,’ said the Two old men, ‘did you arrive at the door below?’
+
+‘At Six.’
+
+‘And there were Six old men upon the stairs!’
+
+Mr. Goodchild having wiped the perspiration from his brow, or tried to do
+it, the Two old men proceeded in one voice, and in the singular number:
+
+‘I had been anatomised, but had not yet had my skeleton put together and
+re-hung on an iron hook, when it began to be whispered that the Bride’s
+Chamber was haunted.  It _was_ haunted, and I was there.
+
+‘_We_ were there.  She and I were there.  I, in the chair upon the
+hearth; she, a white wreck again, trailing itself towards me on the
+floor.  But, I was the speaker no more, and the one word that she said to
+me from midnight until dawn was, ‘Live!’
+
+‘The youth was there, likewise.  In the tree outside the window.  Coming
+and going in the moonlight, as the tree bent and gave.  He has, ever
+since, been there, peeping in at me in my torment; revealing to me by
+snatches, in the pale lights and slatey shadows where he comes and goes,
+bare-headed—a bill-hook, standing edgewise in his hair.
+
+‘In the Bride’s Chamber, every night from midnight until dawn—one month
+in the year excepted, as I am going to tell you—he hides in the tree, and
+she comes towards me on the floor; always approaching; never coming
+nearer; always visible as if by moon-light, whether the moon shines or
+no; always saying, from mid-night until dawn, her one word, “Live!”
+
+‘But, in the month wherein I was forced out of this life—this present
+month of thirty days—the Bride’s Chamber is empty and quiet.  Not so my
+old dungeon.  Not so the rooms where I was restless and afraid, ten
+years.  Both are fitfully haunted then.  At One in the morning.  I am
+what you saw me when the clock struck that hour—One old man.  At Two in
+the morning, I am Two old men.  At Three, I am Three.  By Twelve at noon,
+I am Twelve old men, One for every hundred per cent. of old gain.  Every
+one of the Twelve, with Twelve times my old power of suffering and agony.
+From that hour until Twelve at night, I, Twelve old men in anguish and
+fearful foreboding, wait for the coming of the executioner.  At Twelve at
+night, I, Twelve old men turned off, swing invisible outside Lancaster
+Castle, with Twelve faces to the wall!
+
+‘When the Bride’s Chamber was first haunted, it was known to me that this
+punishment would never cease, until I could make its nature, and my
+story, known to two living men together.  I waited for the coming of two
+living men together into the Bride’s Chamber, years upon years.  It was
+infused into my knowledge (of the means I am ignorant) that if two living
+men, with their eyes open, could be in the Bride’s Chamber at One in the
+morning, they would see me sitting in my chair.
+
+‘At length, the whispers that the room was spiritually troubled, brought
+two men to try the adventure.  I was scarcely struck upon the hearth at
+midnight (I come there as if the Lightning blasted me into being), when I
+heard them ascending the stairs.  Next, I saw them enter.  One of them
+was a bold, gay, active man, in the prime of life, some five and forty
+years of age; the other, a dozen years younger.  They brought provisions
+with them in a basket, and bottles.  A young woman accompanied them, with
+wood and coals for the lighting of the fire.  When she had lighted it,
+the bold, gay, active man accompanied her along the gallery outside the
+room, to see her safely down the staircase, and came back laughing.
+
+‘He locked the door, examined the chamber, put out the contents of the
+basket on the table before the fire—little recking of me, in my appointed
+station on the hearth, close to him—and filled the glasses, and ate and
+drank.  His companion did the same, and was as cheerful and confident as
+he: though he was the leader.  When they had supped, they laid pistols on
+the table, turned to the fire, and began to smoke their pipes of foreign
+make.
+
+‘They had travelled together, and had been much together, and had an
+abundance of subjects in common.  In the midst of their talking and
+laughing, the younger man made a reference to the leader’s being always
+ready for any adventure; that one, or any other.  He replied in these
+words:
+
+‘“Not quite so, Dick; if I am afraid of nothing else, I am afraid of
+myself.”
+
+‘His companion seeming to grow a little dull, asked him, in what sense?
+How?
+
+‘“Why, thus,” he returned.  “Here is a Ghost to be disproved.  Well!  I
+cannot answer for what my fancy might do if I were alone here, or what
+tricks my senses might play with me if they had me to themselves.  But,
+in company with another man, and especially with Dick, I would consent to
+outface all the Ghosts that were ever of in the universe.”
+
+‘“I had not the vanity to suppose that I was of so much importance
+to-night,” said the other.
+
+‘“Of so much,” rejoined the leader, more seriously than he had spoken
+yet, “that I would, for the reason I have given, on no account have
+undertaken to pass the night here alone.”
+
+‘It was within a few minutes of One.  The head of the younger man had
+drooped when he made his last remark, and it drooped lower now.
+
+‘“Keep awake, Dick!” said the leader, gaily.  “The small hours are the
+worst.”
+
+‘He tried, but his head drooped again.
+
+‘“Dick!” urged the leader.  “Keep awake!”
+
+‘“I can’t,” he indistinctly muttered.  “I don’t know what strange
+influence is stealing over me.  I can’t.”
+
+‘His companion looked at him with a sudden horror, and I, in my different
+way, felt a new horror also; for, it was on the stroke of One, and I felt
+that the second watcher was yielding to me, and that the curse was upon
+me that I must send him to sleep.
+
+‘“Get up and walk, Dick!” cried the leader.  “Try!”
+
+‘It was in vain to go behind the slumber’s chair and shake him.  One
+o’clock sounded, and I was present to the elder man, and he stood
+transfixed before me.
+
+‘To him alone, I was obliged to relate my story, without hope of benefit.
+To him alone, I was an awful phantom making a quite useless confession.
+I foresee it will ever be the same.  The two living men together will
+never come to release me.  When I appear, the senses of one of the two
+will be locked in sleep; he will neither see nor hear me; my
+communication will ever be made to a solitary listener, and will ever be
+unserviceable.  Woe!  Woe!  Woe!’
+
+As the Two old men, with these words, wrung their hands, it shot into Mr.
+Goodchild’s mind that he was in the terrible situation of being virtually
+alone with the spectre, and that Mr. Idle’s immoveability was explained
+by his having been charmed asleep at One o’clock.  In the terror of this
+sudden discovery which produced an indescribable dread, he struggled so
+hard to get free from the four fiery threads, that he snapped them, after
+he had pulled them out to a great width.  Being then out of bonds, he
+caught up Mr. Idle from the sofa and rushed down-stairs with him.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+‘What are you about, Francis?’ demanded Mr. Idle.  ‘My bedroom is not
+down here.  What the deuce are you carrying me at all for?  I can walk
+with a stick now.  I don’t want to be carried.  Put me down.’
+
+Mr. Goodchild put him down in the old hall, and looked about him wildly.
+
+‘What are you doing?  Idiotically plunging at your own sex, and rescuing
+them or perishing in the attempt?’ asked Mr. Idle, in a highly petulant
+state.
+
+‘The One old man!’ cried Mr. Goodchild, distractedly,—‘and the Two old
+men!’
+
+Mr. Idle deigned no other reply than ‘The One old woman, I think you
+mean,’ as he began hobbling his way back up the staircase, with the
+assistance of its broad balustrade.
+
+‘I assure you, Tom,’ began Mr. Goodchild, attending at his side, ‘that
+since you fell asleep—’
+
+‘Come, I like that!’ said Thomas Idle, ‘I haven’t closed an eye!’
+
+With the peculiar sensitiveness on the subject of the disgraceful action
+of going to sleep out of bed, which is the lot of all mankind, Mr. Idle
+persisted in this declaration.  The same peculiar sensitiveness impelled
+Mr. Goodchild, on being taxed with the same crime, to repudiate it with
+honourable resentment.  The settlement of the question of The One old man
+and The Two old men was thus presently complicated, and soon made quite
+impracticable.  Mr. Idle said it was all Bride-cake, and fragments, newly
+arranged, of things seen and thought about in the day.  Mr. Goodchild
+said how could that be, when he hadn’t been asleep, and what right could
+Mr. Idle have to say so, who had been asleep?  Mr. Idle said he had never
+been asleep, and never did go to sleep, and that Mr. Goodchild, as a
+general rule, was always asleep.  They consequently parted for the rest
+of the night, at their bedroom doors, a little ruffled.  Mr. Goodchild’s
+last words were, that he had had, in that real and tangible old
+sitting-room of that real and tangible old Inn (he supposed Mr. Idle
+denied its existence?), every sensation and experience, the present
+record of which is now within a line or two of completion; and that he
+would write it out and print it every word.  Mr. Idle returned that he
+might if he liked—and he did like, and has now done it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+TWO of the many passengers by a certain late Sunday evening train, Mr.
+Thomas Idle and Mr. Francis Goodchild, yielded up their tickets at a
+little rotten platform (converted into artificial touchwood by smoke and
+ashes), deep in the manufacturing bosom of Yorkshire.  A mysterious bosom
+it appeared, upon a damp, dark, Sunday night, dashed through in the train
+to the music of the whirling wheels, the panting of the engine, and the
+part-singing of hundreds of third-class excursionists, whose vocal
+efforts ‘bobbed arayound’ from sacred to profane, from hymns, to our
+transatlantic sisters the Yankee Gal and Mairy Anne, in a remarkable way.
+There seemed to have been some large vocal gathering near to every lonely
+station on the line.  No town was visible, no village was visible, no
+light was visible; but, a multitude got out singing, and a multitude got
+in singing, and the second multitude took up the hymns, and adopted our
+transatlantic sisters, and sang of their own egregious wickedness, and of
+their bobbing arayound, and of how the ship it was ready and the wind it
+was fair, and they were bayound for the sea, Mairy Anne, until they in
+their turn became a getting-out multitude, and were replaced by another
+getting-in multitude, who did the same.  And at every station, the
+getting-in multitude, with an artistic reference to the completeness of
+their chorus, incessantly cried, as with one voice while scuffling into
+the carriages, ‘We mun aa’ gang toogither!’
+
+The singing and the multitudes had trailed off as the lonely places were
+left and the great towns were neared, and the way had lain as silently as
+a train’s way ever can, over the vague black streets of the great gulfs
+of towns, and among their branchless woods of vague black chimneys.
+These towns looked, in the cinderous wet, as though they had one and all
+been on fire and were just put out—a dreary and quenched panorama, many
+miles long.
+
+Thus, Thomas and Francis got to Leeds; of which enterprising and
+important commercial centre it may be observed with delicacy, that you
+must either like it very much or not at all.  Next day, the first of the
+Race-Week, they took train to Doncaster.
+
+And instantly the character, both of travellers and of luggage, entirely
+changed, and no other business than race-business any longer existed on
+the face of the earth.  The talk was all of horses and ‘John Scott.’
+Guards whispered behind their hands to station-masters, of horses and
+John Scott.  Men in cut-away coats and speckled cravats fastened with
+peculiar pins, and with the large bones of their legs developed under
+tight trousers, so that they should look as much as possible like horses’
+legs, paced up and down by twos at junction-stations, speaking low and
+moodily of horses and John Scott.  The young clergyman in the black
+strait-waistcoat, who occupied the middle seat of the carriage, expounded
+in his peculiar pulpit-accent to the young and lovely Reverend Mrs.
+Crinoline, who occupied the opposite middle-seat, a few passages of
+rumour relative to ‘Oartheth, my love, and Mithter John Eth-COTT.’  A
+bandy vagabond, with a head like a Dutch cheese, in a fustian
+stable-suit, attending on a horse-box and going about the platforms with
+a halter hanging round his neck like a Calais burgher of the ancient
+period much degenerated, was courted by the best society, by reason of
+what he had to hint, when not engaged in eating straw, concerning
+‘t’harses and Joon Scott.’  The engine-driver himself, as he applied one
+eye to his large stationary double-eye-glass on the engine, seemed to
+keep the other open, sideways, upon horses and John Scott.
+
+Breaks and barriers at Doncaster Station to keep the crowd off; temporary
+wooden avenues of ingress and egress, to help the crowd on.  Forty extra
+porters sent down for this present blessed Race-Week, and all of them
+making up their betting-books in the lamp-room or somewhere else, and
+none of them to come and touch the luggage.  Travellers disgorged into an
+open space, a howling wilderness of idle men.  All work but race-work at
+a stand-still; all men at a stand-still.  ‘Ey my word!  Deant ask noon o’
+us to help wi’ t’luggage.  Bock your opinion loike a mon.  Coom!  Dang
+it, coom, t’harses and Joon Scott!’  In the midst of the idle men, all
+the fly horses and omnibus horses of Doncaster and parts adjacent,
+rampant, rearing, backing, plunging, shying—apparently the result of
+their hearing of nothing but their own order and John Scott.
+
+Grand Dramatic Company from London for the Race-Week.  Poses Plastiques
+in the Grand Assembly Room up the Stable-Yard at seven and nine each
+evening, for the Race-Week.  Grand Alliance Circus in the field beyond
+the bridge, for the Race-Week.  Grand Exhibition of Aztec Lilliputians,
+important to all who want to be horrified cheap, for the Race-Week.
+Lodgings, grand and not grand, but all at grand prices, ranging from ten
+pounds to twenty, for the Grand Race-Week!
+
+Rendered giddy enough by these things, Messieurs Idle and Goodchild
+repaired to the quarters they had secured beforehand, and Mr. Goodchild
+looked down from the window into the surging street.
+
+‘By Heaven, Tom!’ cried he, after contemplating it, ‘I am in the Lunatic
+Asylum again, and these are all mad people under the charge of a body of
+designing keepers!’
+
+All through the Race-Week, Mr. Goodchild never divested himself of this
+idea.  Every day he looked out of window, with something of the dread of
+Lemuel Gulliver looking down at men after he returned home from the
+horse-country; and every day he saw the Lunatics, horse-mad, betting-mad,
+drunken-mad, vice-mad, and the designing Keepers always after them.  The
+idea pervaded, like the second colour in shot-silk, the whole of Mr.
+Goodchild’s impressions.  They were much as follows:
+
+Monday, mid-day.  Races not to begin until to-morrow, but all the
+mob-Lunatics out, crowding the pavements of the one main street of pretty
+and pleasant Doncaster, crowding the road, particularly crowding the
+outside of the Betting Rooms, whooping and shouting loudly after all
+passing vehicles.  Frightened lunatic horses occasionally running away,
+with infinite clatter.  All degrees of men, from peers to paupers,
+betting incessantly.  Keepers very watchful, and taking all good chances.
+An awful family likeness among the Keepers, to Mr. Palmer and Mr.
+Thurtell.  With some knowledge of expression and some acquaintance with
+heads (thus writes Mr. Goodchild), I never have seen anywhere, so many
+repetitions of one class of countenance and one character of head (both
+evil) as in this street at this time.  Cunning, covetousness, secrecy,
+cold calculation, hard callousness and dire insensibility, are the
+uniform Keeper characteristics.  Mr. Palmer passes me five times in five
+minutes, and, so I go down the street, the back of Mr. Thurtell’s skull
+is always going on before me.
+
+Monday evening.  Town lighted up; more Lunatics out than ever; a complete
+choke and stoppage of the thoroughfare outside the Betting Rooms.
+Keepers, having dined, pervade the Betting Rooms, and sharply snap at the
+moneyed Lunatics.  Some Keepers flushed with drink, and some not, but all
+close and calculating.  A vague echoing roar of ‘t’harses’ and ‘t’races’
+always rising in the air, until midnight, at about which period it dies
+away in occasional drunken songs and straggling yells.  But, all night,
+some unmannerly drinking-house in the neighbourhood opens its mouth at
+intervals and spits out a man too drunk to be retained: who thereupon
+makes what uproarious protest may be left in him, and either falls asleep
+where he tumbles, or is carried off in custody.
+
+Tuesday morning, at daybreak.  A sudden rising, as it were out of the
+earth, of all the obscene creatures, who sell ‘correct cards of the
+races.’  They may have been coiled in corners, or sleeping on door-steps,
+and, having all passed the night under the same set of circumstances, may
+all want to circulate their blood at the same time; but, however that may
+be, they spring into existence all at once and together, as though a new
+Cadmus had sown a race-horse’s teeth.  There is nobody up, to buy the
+cards; but, the cards are madly cried.  There is no patronage to quarrel
+for; but, they madly quarrel and fight.  Conspicuous among these hyænas,
+as breakfast-time discloses, is a fearful creature in the general
+semblance of a man: shaken off his next-to-no legs by drink and devilry,
+bare-headed and bare-footed, with a great shock of hair like a horrible
+broom, and nothing on him but a ragged pair of trousers and a pink
+glazed-calico coat—made on him—so very tight that it is as evident that
+he could never take it off, as that he never does.  This hideous
+apparition, inconceivably drunk, has a terrible power of making a
+gong-like imitation of the braying of an ass: which feat requires that he
+should lay his right jaw in his begrimed right paw, double himself up,
+and shake his bray out of himself, with much staggering on his next-to-no
+legs, and much twirling of his horrible broom, as if it were a mop.  From
+the present minute, when he comes in sight holding up his cards to the
+windows, and hoarsely proposing purchase to My Lord, Your Excellency,
+Colonel, the Noble Captain, and Your Honourable Worship—from the present
+minute until the Grand Race-Week is finished, at all hours of the
+morning, evening, day, and night, shall the town reverberate, at
+capricious intervals, to the brays of this frightful animal the
+Gong-donkey.
+
+No very great racing to-day, so no very great amount of vehicles: though
+there is a good sprinkling, too: from farmers’ carts and gigs, to
+carriages with post-horses and to fours-in-hand, mostly coming by the
+road from York, and passing on straight through the main street to the
+Course.  A walk in the wrong direction may be a better thing for Mr.
+Goodchild to-day than the Course, so he walks in the wrong direction.
+Everybody gone to the races.  Only children in the street.  Grand
+Alliance Circus deserted; not one Star-Rider left; omnibus which forms
+the Pay-Place, having on separate panels Pay here for the Boxes, Pay here
+for the Pit, Pay here for the Gallery, hove down in a corner and locked
+up; nobody near the tent but the man on his knees on the grass, who is
+making the paper balloons for the Star young gentlemen to jump through
+to-night.  A pleasant road, pleasantly wooded.  No labourers working in
+the fields; all gone ‘t’races.’  The few late wenders of their way
+‘t’races,’ who are yet left driving on the road, stare in amazement at
+the recluse who is not going ‘t’races.’  Roadside innkeeper has gone
+‘t’races.’  Turnpike-man has gone ‘t’races.’  His thrifty wife, washing
+clothes at the toll-house door, is going ‘t’races’ to-morrow.  Perhaps
+there may be no one left to take the toll to-morrow; who knows?  Though
+assuredly that would be neither turnpike-like nor Yorkshire-like.  The
+very wind and dust seem to be hurrying ‘t’races,’ as they briskly pass
+the only wayfarer on the road.  In the distance, the Railway Engine,
+waiting at the town-end, shrieks despairingly.  Nothing but the
+difficulty of getting off the Line, restrains that Engine from going
+‘t’races,’ too, it is very clear.
+
+At night, more Lunatics out than last night—and more Keepers.  The latter
+very active at the Betting Rooms, the street in front of which is now
+impassable.  Mr. Palmer as before.  Mr. Thurtell as before.  Roar and
+uproar as before.  Gradual subsidence as before.  Unmannerly
+drinking-house expectorates as before.  Drunken negro-melodists,
+Gong-donkey, and correct cards, in the night.
+
+On Wednesday morning, the morning of the great St. Leger, it becomes
+apparent that there has been a great influx since yesterday, both of
+Lunatics and Keepers.  The families of the tradesmen over the way are no
+longer within human ken; their places know them no more; ten, fifteen,
+and twenty guinea-lodgers fill them.  At the pastry-cook’s second-floor
+window, a Keeper is brushing Mr. Thurtell’s hair—thinking it his own.  In
+the wax-chandler’s attic, another Keeper is putting on Mr. Palmer’s
+braces.  In the gunsmith’s nursery, a Lunatic is shaving himself.  In the
+serious stationer’s best sitting-room, three Lunatics are taking a
+combination-breakfast, praising the (cook’s) devil, and drinking neat
+brandy in an atmosphere of last midnight’s cigars.  No family sanctuary
+is free from our Angelic messengers—we put up at the Angel—who in the
+guise of extra waiters for the grand Race-Week, rattle in and out of the
+most secret chambers of everybody’s house, with dishes and tin covers,
+decanters, soda-water bottles, and glasses.  An hour later.  Down the
+street and up the street, as far as eyes can see and a good deal farther,
+there is a dense crowd; outside the Betting Rooms it is like a great
+struggle at a theatre door—in the days of theatres; or at the vestibule
+of the Spurgeon temple—in the days of Spurgeon.  An hour later.  Fusing
+into this crowd, and somehow getting through it, are all kinds of
+conveyances, and all kinds of foot-passengers; carts, with brick-makers
+and brick-makeresses jolting up and down on planks; drags, with the
+needful grooms behind, sitting cross-armed in the needful manner, and
+slanting themselves backward from the soles of their boots at the needful
+angle; postboys, in the shining hats and smart jackets of the olden time,
+when stokers were not; beautiful Yorkshire horses, gallantly driven by
+their own breeders and masters.  Under every pole, and every shaft, and
+every horse, and every wheel as it would seem, the
+Gong-donkey—metallically braying, when not struggling for life, or
+whipped out of the way.
+
+By one o’clock, all this stir has gone out of the streets, and there is
+no one left in them but Francis Goodchild.  Francis Goodchild will not be
+left in them long; for, he too is on his way, ‘t’races.’
+
+A most beautiful sight, Francis Goodchild finds ‘t’races’ to be, when he
+has left fair Doncaster behind him, and comes out on the free course,
+with its agreeable prospect, its quaint Red House oddly changing and
+turning as Francis turns, its green grass, and fresh heath.  A free
+course and an easy one, where Francis can roll smoothly where he will,
+and can choose between the start, or the coming-in, or the turn behind
+the brow of the hill, or any out-of-the-way point where he lists to see
+the throbbing horses straining every nerve, and making the sympathetic
+earth throb as they come by.  Francis much delights to be, not in the
+Grand Stand, but where he can see it, rising against the sky with its
+vast tiers of little white dots of faces, and its last high rows and
+corners of people, looking like pins stuck into an enormous
+pincushion—not quite so symmetrically as his orderly eye could wish, when
+people change or go away.  When the race is nearly run out, it is as good
+as the race to him to see the flutter among the pins, and the change in
+them from dark to light, as hats are taken off and waved.  Not less full
+of interest, the loud anticipation of the winner’s name, the swelling,
+and the final, roar; then, the quick dropping of all the pins out of
+their places, the revelation of the shape of the bare pincushion, and the
+closing-in of the whole host of Lunatics and Keepers, in the rear of the
+three horses with bright-coloured riders, who have not yet quite subdued
+their gallop though the contest is over.
+
+Mr. Goodchild would appear to have been by no means free from lunacy
+himself at ‘t’races,’ though not of the prevalent kind.  He is suspected
+by Mr. Idle to have fallen into a dreadful state concerning a pair of
+little lilac gloves and a little bonnet that he saw there.  Mr. Idle
+asserts, that he did afterwards repeat at the Angel, with an appearance
+of being lunatically seized, some rhapsody to the following effect: ‘O
+little lilac gloves!  And O winning little bonnet, making in conjunction
+with her golden hair quite a Glory in the sunlight round the pretty head,
+why anything in the world but you and me!  Why may not this day’s
+running-of horses, to all the rest: of precious sands of life to me—be
+prolonged through an everlasting autumn-sunshine, without a sunset!
+Slave of the Lamp, or Ring, strike me yonder gallant equestrian Clerk of
+the Course, in the scarlet coat, motionless on the green grass for ages!
+Friendly Devil on Two Sticks, for ten times ten thousands years, keep
+Blink-Bonny jibbing at the post, and let us have no start!  Arab drums,
+powerful of old to summon Genii in the desert, sound of yourselves and
+raise a troop for me in the desert of my heart, which shall so enchant
+this dusty barouche (with a conspicuous excise-plate, resembling the
+Collector’s door-plate at a turnpike), that I, within it, loving the
+little lilac gloves, the winning little bonnet, and the dear
+unknown-wearer with the golden hair, may wait by her side for ever, to
+see a Great St. Leger that shall never be run!’
+
+Thursday morning.  After a tremendous night of crowding, shouting,
+drinking-house expectoration, Gong-donkey, and correct cards.  Symptoms
+of yesterday’s gains in the way of drink, and of yesterday’s losses in
+the way of money, abundant.  Money-losses very great.  As usual, nobody
+seems to have won; but, large losses and many losers are unquestionable
+facts.  Both Lunatics and Keepers, in general very low.  Several of both
+kinds look in at the chemist’s while Mr. Goodchild is making a purchase
+there, to be ‘picked up.’  One red-eyed Lunatic, flushed, faded, and
+disordered, enters hurriedly and cries savagely, ‘Hond us a gloss of sal
+volatile in wather, or soom dommed thing o’ thot sart!’  Faces at the
+Betting Rooms very long, and a tendency to bite nails observable.
+Keepers likewise given this morning to standing about solitary, with
+their hands in their pockets, looking down at their boots as they fit
+them into cracks of the pavement, and then looking up whistling and
+walking away.  Grand Alliance Circus out, in procession; buxom
+lady-member of Grand Alliance, in crimson riding-habit, fresher to look
+at, even in her paint under the day sky, than the cheeks of Lunatics or
+Keepers.  Spanish Cavalier appears to have lost yesterday, and jingles
+his bossed bridle with disgust, as if he were paying.  Reaction also
+apparent at the Guildhall opposite, whence certain pickpockets come out
+handcuffed together, with that peculiar walk which is never seen under
+any other circumstances—a walk expressive of going to jail, game, but
+still of jails being in bad taste and arbitrary, and how would _you_ like
+it if it was you instead of me, as it ought to be!  Mid-day.  Town filled
+as yesterday, but not so full; and emptied as yesterday, but not so
+empty.  In the evening, Angel ordinary where every Lunatic and Keeper has
+his modest daily meal of turtle, venison, and wine, not so crowded as
+yesterday, and not so noisy.  At night, the theatre.  More abstracted
+faces in it than one ever sees at public assemblies; such faces wearing
+an expression which strongly reminds Mr. Goodchild of the boys at school
+who were ‘going up next,’ with their arithmetic or mathematics.  These
+boys are, no doubt, going up to-morrow with _their_ sums and figures.
+Mr. Palmer and Mr. Thurtell in the boxes O. P.  Mr. Thurtell and Mr.
+Palmer in the boxes P. S.  The firm of Thurtell, Palmer, and Thurtell, in
+the boxes Centre.  A most odious tendency observable in these
+distinguished gentlemen to put vile constructions on sufficiently
+innocent phrases in the play, and then to applaud them in a Satyr-like
+manner.  Behind Mr. Goodchild, with a party of other Lunatics and one
+Keeper, the express incarnation of the thing called a ‘gent.’  A
+gentleman born; a gent manufactured.  A something with a scarf round its
+neck, and a slipshod speech issuing from behind the scarf; more depraved,
+more foolish, more ignorant, more unable to believe in any noble or good
+thing of any kind, than the stupidest Bosjesman.  The thing is but a boy
+in years, and is addled with drink.  To do its company justice, even its
+company is ashamed of it, as it drawls its slang criticisms on the
+representation, and inflames Mr. Goodchild with a burning ardour to fling
+it into the pit.  Its remarks are so horrible, that Mr. Goodchild, for
+the moment, even doubts whether that _is_ a wholesome Art, which sets
+women apart on a high floor before such a thing as this, though as good
+as its own sisters, or its own mother—whom Heaven forgive for bringing it
+into the world!  But, the consideration that a low nature must make a low
+world of its own to live in, whatever the real materials, or it could no
+more exist than any of us could without the sense of touch, brings Mr.
+Goodchild to reason: the rather, because the thing soon drops its downy
+chin upon its scarf, and slobbers itself asleep.
+
+Friday Morning.  Early fights.  Gong-donkey, and correct cards.  Again, a
+great set towards the races, though not so great a set as on Wednesday.
+Much packing going on too, upstairs at the gun-smith’s, the
+wax-chandler’s, and the serious stationer’s; for there will be a heavy
+drift of Lunatics and Keepers to London by the afternoon train.  The
+course as pretty as ever; the great pincushion as like a pincushion, but
+not nearly so full of pins; whole rows of pins wanting.  On the great
+event of the day, both Lunatics and Keepers become inspired with rage;
+and there is a violent scuffling, and a rushing at the losing jockey, and
+an emergence of the said jockey from a swaying and menacing crowd,
+protected by friends, and looking the worse for wear; which is a rough
+proceeding, though animating to see from a pleasant distance.  After the
+great event, rills begin to flow from the pincushion towards the
+railroad; the rills swell into rivers; the rivers soon unite into a lake.
+The lake floats Mr. Goodchild into Doncaster, past the Itinerant
+personage in black, by the way-side telling him from the vantage ground
+of a legibly printed placard on a pole that for all these things the Lord
+will bring him to judgment.  No turtle and venison ordinary this evening;
+that is all over.  No Betting at the rooms; nothing there but the plants
+in pots, which have, all the week, been stood about the entry to give it
+an innocent appearance, and which have sorely sickened by this time.
+
+Saturday.  Mr. Idle wishes to know at breakfast, what were those dreadful
+groanings in his bedroom doorway in the night?  Mr. Goodchild answers,
+Nightmare.  Mr. Idle repels the calumny, and calls the waiter.  The Angel
+is very sorry—had intended to explain; but you see, gentlemen, there was
+a gentleman dined down-stairs with two more, and he had lost a deal of
+money, and he would drink a deal of wine, and in the night he ‘took the
+horrors,’ and got up; and as his friends could do nothing with him he
+laid himself down and groaned at Mr. Idle’s door.  ‘And he DID groan
+there,’ Mr. Idle says; ‘and you will please to imagine me inside, “taking
+the horrors” too!’
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+So far, the picture of Doncaster on the occasion of its great sporting
+anniversary, offers probably a general representation of the social
+condition of the town, in the past as well as in the present time.  The
+sole local phenomenon of the current year, which may be considered as
+entirely unprecedented in its way, and which certainly claims, on that
+account, some slight share of notice, consists in the actual existence of
+one remarkable individual, who is sojourning in Doncaster, and who,
+neither directly nor indirectly, has anything at all to do, in any
+capacity whatever, with the racing amusements of the week.  Ranging
+throughout the entire crowd that fills the town, and including the
+inhabitants as well as the visitors, nobody is to be found altogether
+disconnected with the business of the day, excepting this one
+unparalleled man.  He does not bet on the races, like the sporting men.
+He does not assist the races, like the jockeys, starters, judges, and
+grooms.  He does not look on at the races, like Mr. Goodchild and his
+fellow-spectators.  He does not profit by the races, like the
+hotel-keepers and the tradespeople.  He does not minister to the
+necessities of the races, like the booth-keepers, the postilions, the
+waiters, and the hawkers of Lists.  He does not assist the attractions of
+the races, like the actors at the theatre, the riders at the circus, or
+the posturers at the Poses Plastiques.  Absolutely and literally, he is
+the only individual in Doncaster who stands by the brink of the
+full-flowing race-stream, and is not swept away by it in common with all
+the rest of his species.  Who is this modern hermit, this recluse of the
+St. Leger-week, this inscrutably ungregarious being, who lives apart from
+the amusements and activities of his fellow-creatures?  Surely, there is
+little difficulty in guessing that clearest and easiest of all riddles.
+Who could he be, but Mr. Thomas Idle?
+
+Thomas had suffered himself to be taken to Doncaster, just as he would
+have suffered himself to be taken to any other place in the habitable
+globe which would guarantee him the temporary possession of a comfortable
+sofa to rest his ankle on.  Once established at the hotel, with his leg
+on one cushion and his back against another, he formally declined taking
+the slightest interest in any circumstance whatever connected with the
+races, or with the people who were assembled to see them.  Francis
+Goodchild, anxious that the hours should pass by his crippled
+travelling-companion as lightly as possible, suggested that his sofa
+should be moved to the window, and that he should amuse himself by
+looking out at the moving panorama of humanity, which the view from it of
+the principal street presented.  Thomas, however, steadily declined
+profiting by the suggestion.
+
+‘The farther I am from the window,’ he said, ‘the better, Brother
+Francis, I shall be pleased.  I have nothing in common with the one
+prevalent idea of all those people who are passing in the street.  Why
+should I care to look at them?’
+
+‘I hope I have nothing in common with the prevalent idea of a great many
+of them, either,’ answered Goodchild, thinking of the sporting gentlemen
+whom he had met in the course of his wanderings about Doncaster.  ‘But,
+surely, among all the people who are walking by the house, at this very
+moment, you may find—’
+
+‘Not one living creature,’ interposed Thomas, ‘who is not, in one way or
+another, interested in horses, and who is not, in a greater or less
+degree, an admirer of them.  Now, I hold opinions in reference to these
+particular members of the quadruped creation, which may lay claim (as I
+believe) to the disastrous distinction of being unpartaken by any other
+human being, civilised or savage, over the whole surface of the earth.
+Taking the horse as an animal in the abstract, Francis, I cordially
+despise him from every point of view.’
+
+‘Thomas,’ said Goodchild, ‘confinement to the house has begun to affect
+your biliary secretions.  I shall go to the chemist’s and get you some
+physic.’
+
+‘I object,’ continued Thomas, quietly possessing himself of his friend’s
+hat, which stood on a table near him,—‘I object, first, to the personal
+appearance of the horse.  I protest against the conventional idea of
+beauty, as attached to that animal.  I think his nose too long, his
+forehead too low, and his legs (except in the case of the cart-horse)
+ridiculously thin by comparison with the size of his body.  Again,
+considering how big an animal he is, I object to the contemptible
+delicacy of his constitution.  Is he not the sickliest creature in
+creation?  Does any child catch cold as easily as a horse?  Does he not
+sprain his fetlock, for all his appearance of superior strength, as
+easily as I sprained my ankle!  Furthermore, to take him from another
+point of view, what a helpless wretch he is!  No fine lady requires more
+constant waiting-on than a horse.  Other animals can make their own
+toilette: he must have a groom.  You will tell me that this is because we
+want to make his coat artificially glossy.  Glossy!  Come home with me,
+and see my cat,—my clever cat, who can groom herself!  Look at your own
+dog! see how the intelligent creature curry-combs himself with his own
+honest teeth!  Then, again, what a fool the horse is, what a poor,
+nervous fool!  He will start at a piece of white paper in the road as if
+it was a lion.  His one idea, when he hears a noise that he is not
+accustomed to, is to run away from it.  What do you say to those two
+common instances of the sense and courage of this absurdly overpraised
+animal?  I might multiply them to two hundred, if I chose to exert my
+mind and waste my breath, which I never do.  I prefer coming at once to
+my last charge against the horse, which is the most serious of all,
+because it affects his moral character.  I accuse him boldly, in his
+capacity of servant to man, of slyness and treachery.  I brand him
+publicly, no matter how mild he may look about the eyes, or how sleek he
+may be about the coat, as a systematic betrayer, whenever he can get the
+chance, of the confidence reposed in him.  What do you mean by laughing
+and shaking your head at me?’
+
+‘Oh, Thomas, Thomas!’ said Goodchild.  ‘You had better give me my hat;
+you had better let me get you that physic.’
+
+‘I will let you get anything you like, including a composing draught for
+yourself,’ said Thomas, irritably alluding to his fellow-apprentice’s
+inexhaustible activity, ‘if you will only sit quiet for five minutes
+longer, and hear me out.  I say again the horse is a betrayer of the
+confidence reposed in him; and that opinion, let me add, is drawn from my
+own personal experience, and is not based on any fanciful theory
+whatever.  You shall have two instances, two overwhelming instances.  Let
+me start the first of these by asking, what is the distinguishing quality
+which the Shetland Pony has arrogated to himself, and is still
+perpetually trumpeting through the world by means of popular report and
+books on Natural History?  I see the answer in your face: it is the
+quality of being Sure-Footed.  He professes to have other virtues, such
+as hardiness and strength, which you may discover on trial; but the one
+thing which he insists on your believing, when you get on his back, is
+that he may be safely depended on not to tumble down with you.  Very
+good.  Some years ago, I was in Shetland with a party of friends.  They
+insisted on taking me with them to the top of a precipice that overhung
+the sea.  It was a great distance off, but they all determined to walk to
+it except me.  I was wiser then than I was with you at Carrock, and I
+determined to be carried to the precipice.  There was no carriage-road in
+the island, and nobody offered (in consequence, as I suppose, of the
+imperfectly-civilised state of the country) to bring me a sedan-chair,
+which is naturally what I should have liked best.  A Shetland pony was
+produced instead.  I remembered my Natural History, I recalled popular
+report, and I got on the little beast’s back, as any other man would have
+done in my position, placing implicit confidence in the sureness of his
+feet.  And how did he repay that confidence?  Brother Francis, carry your
+mind on from morning to noon.  Picture to yourself a howling wilderness
+of grass and bog, bounded by low stony hills.  Pick out one particular
+spot in that imaginary scene, and sketch me in it, with outstretched
+arms, curved back, and heels in the air, plunging headforemost into a
+black patch of water and mud.  Place just behind me the legs, the body,
+and the head of a sure-footed Shetland pony, all stretched flat on the
+ground, and you will have produced an accurate representation of a very
+lamentable fact.  And the moral device, Francis, of this picture will be
+to testify that when gentlemen put confidence in the legs of Shetland
+ponies, they will find to their cost that they are leaning on nothing but
+broken reeds.  There is my first instance—and what have you got to say to
+that?’
+
+‘Nothing, but that I want my hat,’ answered Goodchild, starting up and
+walking restlessly about the room.
+
+‘You shall have it in a minute,’ rejoined Thomas.  ‘My second
+instance’—(Goodchild groaned, and sat down again)—‘My second instance is
+more appropriate to the present time and place, for it refers to a
+race-horse.  Two years ago an excellent friend of mine, who was desirous
+of prevailing on me to take regular exercise, and who was well enough
+acquainted with the weakness of my legs to expect no very active
+compliance with his wishes on their part, offered to make me a present of
+one of his horses.  Hearing that the animal in question had started in
+life on the turf, I declined accepting the gift with many thanks; adding,
+by way of explanation, that I looked on a race-horse as a kind of
+embodied hurricane, upon which no sane man of my character and habits
+could be expected to seat himself.  My friend replied that, however
+appropriate my metaphor might be as applied to race-horses in general, it
+was singularly unsuitable as applied to the particular horse which he
+proposed to give me.  From a foal upwards this remarkable animal had been
+the idlest and most sluggish of his race.  Whatever capacities for speed
+he might possess he had kept so strictly to himself, that no amount of
+training had ever brought them out.  He had been found hopelessly slow as
+a racer, and hopelessly lazy as a hunter, and was fit for nothing but a
+quiet, easy life of it with an old gentleman or an invalid.  When I heard
+this account of the horse, I don’t mind confessing that my heart warmed
+to him.  Visions of Thomas Idle ambling serenely on the back of a steed
+as lazy as himself, presenting to a restless world the soothing and
+composite spectacle of a kind of sluggardly Centaur, too peaceable in his
+habits to alarm anybody, swam attractively before my eyes.  I went to
+look at the horse in the stable.  Nice fellow! he was fast asleep with a
+kitten on his back.  I saw him taken out for an airing by the groom.  If
+he had had trousers on his legs I should not have known them from my own,
+so deliberately were they lifted up, so gently were they put down, so
+slowly did they get over the ground.  From that moment I gratefully
+accepted my friend’s offer.  I went home; the horse followed me—by a slow
+train.  Oh, Francis, how devoutly I believed in that horse I how
+carefully I looked after all his little comforts!  I had never gone the
+length of hiring a man-servant to wait on myself; but I went to the
+expense of hiring one to wait upon him.  If I thought a little of myself
+when I bought the softest saddle that could be had for money, I thought
+also of my horse.  When the man at the shop afterwards offered me spurs
+and a whip, I turned from him with horror.  When I sallied out for my
+first ride, I went purposely unarmed with the means of hurrying my steed.
+He proceeded at his own pace every step of the way; and when he stopped,
+at last, and blew out both his sides with a heavy sigh, and turned his
+sleepy head and looked behind him, I took him home again, as I might take
+home an artless child who said to me, “If you please, sir, I am tired.”
+For a week this complete harmony between me and my horse lasted
+undisturbed.  At the end of that time, when he had made quite sure of my
+friendly confidence in his laziness, when he had thoroughly acquainted
+himself with all the little weaknesses of my seat (and their name is
+Legion), the smouldering treachery and ingratitude of the equine nature
+blazed out in an instant.  Without the slightest provocation from me,
+with nothing passing him at the time but a pony-chaise driven by an old
+lady, he started in one instant from a state of sluggish depression to a
+state of frantic high spirits.  He kicked, he plunged, he shied, he
+pranced, he capered fearfully.  I sat on him as long as I could, and when
+I could sit no longer, I fell off.  No, Francis! this is not a
+circumstance to be laughed at, but to be wept over.  What would be said
+of a Man who had requited my kindness in that way?  Range over all the
+rest of the animal creation, and where will you find me an instance of
+treachery so black as this?  The cow that kicks down the milking-pail may
+have some reason for it; she may think herself taxed too heavily to
+contribute to the dilution of human tea and the greasing of human bread.
+The tiger who springs out on me unawares has the excuse of being hungry
+at the time, to say nothing of the further justification of being a total
+stranger to me.  The very flea who surprises me in my sleep may defend
+his act of assassination on the ground that I, in my turn, am always
+ready to murder him when I am awake.  I defy the whole body of Natural
+Historians to move me, logically, off the ground that I have taken in
+regard to the horse.  Receive back your hat, Brother Francis, and go to
+the chemist’s, if you please; for I have now done.  Ask me to take
+anything you like, except an interest in the Doncaster races.  Ask me to
+look at anything you like, except an assemblage of people all animated by
+feelings of a friendly and admiring nature towards the horse.  You are a
+remarkably well-informed man, and you have heard of hermits.  Look upon
+me as a member of that ancient fraternity, and you will sensibly add to
+the many obligations which Thomas Idle is proud to owe to Francis
+Goodchild.’
+
+Here, fatigued by the effort of excessive talking, disputatious Thomas
+waved one hand languidly, laid his head back on the sofa-pillow, and
+calmly closed his eyes.
+
+At a later period, Mr. Goodchild assailed his travelling companion boldly
+from the impregnable fortress of common sense.  But Thomas, though tamed
+in body by drastic discipline, was still as mentally unapproachable as
+ever on the subject of his favourite delusion.
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+The view from the window after Saturday’s breakfast is altogether
+changed.  The tradesmen’s families have all come back again.  The serious
+stationer’s young woman of all work is shaking a duster out of the window
+of the combination breakfast-room; a child is playing with a doll, where
+Mr. Thurtell’s hair was brushed; a sanitary scrubbing is in progress on
+the spot where Mr. Palmer’s braces were put on.  No signs of the Races
+are in the streets, but the tramps and the tumble-down-carts and trucks
+laden with drinking-forms and tables and remnants of booths, that are
+making their way out of the town as fast as they can.  The Angel, which
+has been cleared for action all the week, already begins restoring every
+neat and comfortable article of furniture to its own neat and comfortable
+place.  The Angel’s daughters (pleasanter angels Mr. Idle and Mr.
+Goodchild never saw, nor more quietly expert in their business, nor more
+superior to the common vice of being above it), have a little time to
+rest, and to air their cheerful faces among the flowers in the yard.  It
+is market-day.  The market looks unusually natural, comfortable, and
+wholesome; the market-people too.  The town seems quite restored, when,
+hark! a metallic bray—The Gong-donkey!
+
+The wretched animal has not cleared off with the rest, but is here, under
+the window.  How much more inconceivably drunk now, how much more
+begrimed of paw, how much more tight of calico hide, how much more
+stained and daubed and dirty and dunghilly, from his horrible broom to
+his tender toes, who shall say!  He cannot even shake the bray out of
+himself now, without laying his cheek so near to the mud of the street,
+that he pitches over after delivering it.  Now, prone in the mud, and now
+backing himself up against shop-windows, the owners of which come out in
+terror to remove him; now, in the drinking-shop, and now in the
+tobacconist’s, where he goes to buy tobacco, and makes his way into the
+parlour, and where he gets a cigar, which in half-a-minute he forgets to
+smoke; now dancing, now dozing, now cursing, and now complimenting My
+Lord, the Colonel, the Noble Captain, and Your Honourable Worship, the
+Gong-donkey kicks up his heels, occasionally braying, until suddenly, he
+beholds the dearest friend he has in the world coming down the street.
+
+The dearest friend the Gong-donkey has in the world, is a sort of
+Jackall, in a dull, mangy, black hide, of such small pieces that it looks
+as if it were made of blacking bottles turned inside out and cobbled
+together.  The dearest friend in the world (inconceivably drunk too)
+advances at the Gong-donkey, with a hand on each thigh, in a series of
+humorous springs and stops, wagging his head as he comes.  The
+Gong-donkey regarding him with attention and with the warmest affection,
+suddenly perceives that he is the greatest enemy he has in the world, and
+hits him hard in the countenance.  The astonished Jackall closes with the
+Donkey, and they roll over and over in the mud, pummelling one another.
+A Police Inspector, supernaturally endowed with patience, who has long
+been looking on from the Guildhall-steps, says, to a myrmidon, ‘Lock ’em
+up!  Bring ’em in!’
+
+Appropriate finish to the Grand Race-Week.  The Gong-donkey, captive and
+last trace of it, conveyed into limbo, where they cannot do better than
+keep him until next Race-Week.  The Jackall is wanted too, and is much
+looked for, over the way and up and down.  But, having had the good
+fortune to be undermost at the time of the capture, he has vanished into
+air.
+
+On Saturday afternoon, Mr. Goodchild walks out and looks at the Course.
+It is quite deserted; heaps of broken crockery and bottles are raised to
+its memory; and correct cards and other fragments of paper are blowing
+about it, as the regulation little paper-books, carried by the French
+soldiers in their breasts, were seen, soon after the battle was fought,
+blowing idly about the plains of Waterloo.
+
+Where will these present idle leaves be blown by the idle winds, and
+where will the last of them be one day lost and forgotten?  An idle
+question, and an idle thought.; and with it Mr. Idle fitly makes his bow,
+and Mr. Goodchild his, and thus ends the Lazy Tour of Two Idle
+Apprentices.
+
+
+
+
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices, by
+Charles Dickens
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions 
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at 
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices
+
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+
+
+Release Date: January 11, 2015  [eBook #888]
+[This file was first posted on April 28, 1997]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE
+APPRENTICES***
+</pre>
+<p>Transcribed from the 1905 Chapman and Hall edition (<i>The
+Works of Charles Dickens</i>, volume 28) by David Price, email
+ccx074@pglaf.org</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/coverb.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Book cover"
+title=
+"Book cover"
+ src="images/covers.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h1><span class="smcap">The Lazy Tour of Two Idle
+Apprentices</span></h1>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center">By CHARLES DICKENS</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><b><i>With Illustrations by Harry
+Furniss and A. J. Goodman</i></b></p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center">LONDON: CHAPMAN &amp; HALL, LD.<br
+/>
+NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER&rsquo;S SONS<br />
+1905</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">In</span> the autumn month of September,
+eighteen hundred and fifty-seven, wherein these presents bear
+date, two idle apprentices, exhausted by the long, hot summer,
+and the long, hot work it had brought with it, ran away from
+their employer.&nbsp; They were bound to a highly meritorious
+lady (named Literature), of fair credit and repute, though, it
+must be acknowledged, not quite so highly esteemed in the City as
+she might be.&nbsp; This is the more remarkable, as there is
+nothing against the respectable lady in that quarter, but quite
+the contrary; her family having rendered eminent service to many
+famous citizens of London.&nbsp; It may be sufficient to name Sir
+William Walworth, Lord Mayor under King Richard II., at the time
+of Wat Tyler&rsquo;s insurrection, and Sir Richard Whittington:
+which latter distinguished man and magistrate was doubtless
+indebted to the lady&rsquo;s family for the gift of his
+celebrated cat.&nbsp; There is also strong reason to suppose that
+they rang the Highgate bells for him with their own hands.</p>
+<p>The misguided young men who thus shirked their duty to the
+mistress from whom they had received many favours, were actuated
+by the low idea of making a perfectly idle trip, in any
+direction.&nbsp; They had no intention of going anywhere in
+particular; they wanted to see nothing, they wanted to know
+nothing, they wanted to learn nothing, they wanted to do
+nothing.&nbsp; They wanted only to be idle.&nbsp; They took to
+themselves (after <span class="smcap">Hogarth</span>), the names
+of Mr. Thomas Idle and Mr. Francis Goodchild; but there was not a
+moral pin to choose between them, and they were both idle in the
+last degree.</p>
+<p>Between Francis and Thomas, however, there was this difference
+of character: Goodchild was laboriously idle, and would take upon
+himself any amount of pains and labour to assure himself that he
+was idle; in short, had no better idea of idleness than that it
+was useless industry.&nbsp; Thomas Idle, on the other hand, was
+an idler of the unmixed Irish or Neapolitan type; a passive
+idler, a born-and-bred idler, a consistent idler, who practised
+what he would have preached if he had not been too idle to
+preach; a one entire and perfect chrysolite of idleness.</p>
+<p>The two idle apprentices found themselves, within a few hours
+of their escape, walking down into the North of England, that is
+to say, Thomas was lying in a meadow, looking at the railway
+trains as they passed over a distant viaduct&mdash;which was
+<i>his</i> idea of walking down into the North; while Francis was
+walking a mile due South against time&mdash;which was <i>his</i>
+idea of walking down into the North.&nbsp; In the meantime the
+day waned, and the milestones remained unconquered.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Tom,&rsquo; said Goodchild, &lsquo;the sun is getting
+low.&nbsp; Up, and let us go forward!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Nay,&rsquo; quoth Thomas Idle, &lsquo;I have not done
+with Annie Laurie yet.&rsquo;&nbsp; And he proceeded with that
+idle but popular ballad, to the effect that for the bonnie young
+person of that name he would &lsquo;lay him doon and
+dee&rsquo;&mdash;equivalent, in prose, to lay him down and
+die.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What an ass that fellow was!&rsquo; cried Goodchild,
+with the bitter emphasis of contempt.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Which fellow?&rsquo; asked Thomas Idle.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The fellow in your song.&nbsp; Lay him doon and
+dee!&nbsp; Finely he&rsquo;d show off before the girl by doing
+<i>that</i>.&nbsp; A sniveller!&nbsp; Why couldn&rsquo;t he get
+up, and punch somebody&rsquo;s head!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Whose?&rsquo; asked Thomas Idle.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Anybody&rsquo;s.&nbsp; Everybody&rsquo;s would be
+better than nobody&rsquo;s!&nbsp; If I fell into that state of
+mind about a girl, do you think I&rsquo;d lay me doon and
+dee?&nbsp; No, sir,&rsquo; proceeded Goodchild, with a
+disparaging assumption of the Scottish accent, &lsquo;I&rsquo;d
+get me oop and peetch into somebody.&nbsp; Wouldn&rsquo;t
+you?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t have anything to do with her,&rsquo;
+yawned Thomas Idle.&nbsp; &lsquo;Why should I take the
+trouble?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It&rsquo;s no trouble, Tom, to fall in love,&rsquo;
+said Goodchild, shaking his head.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It&rsquo;s trouble enough to fall out of it, once
+you&rsquo;re in it,&rsquo; retorted Tom.&nbsp; &lsquo;So I keep
+out of it altogether.&nbsp; It would be better for you, if you
+did the same.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mr. Goodchild, who is always in love with somebody, and not
+unfrequently with several objects at once, made no reply.&nbsp;
+He heaved a sigh of the kind which is termed by the lower orders
+&lsquo;a bellowser,&rsquo; and then, heaving Mr. Idle on his feet
+(who was not half so heavy as the sigh), urged him northward.</p>
+<p>These two had sent their personal baggage on by train: only
+retaining each a knapsack.&nbsp; Idle now applied himself to
+constantly regretting the train, to tracking it through the
+intricacies of Bradshaw&rsquo;s Guide, and finding out where it
+is now&mdash;and where now&mdash;and where now&mdash;and to
+asking what was the use of walking, when you could ride at such a
+pace as that.&nbsp; Was it to see the country?&nbsp; If that was
+the object, look at it out of the carriage windows.&nbsp; There
+was a great deal more of it to be seen there than here.&nbsp;
+Besides, who wanted to see the country?&nbsp; Nobody.&nbsp; And
+again, whoever did walk?&nbsp; Nobody.&nbsp; Fellows set off to
+walk, but they never did it.&nbsp; They came back and said they
+did, but they didn&rsquo;t.&nbsp; Then why should he walk?&nbsp;
+He wouldn&rsquo;t walk.&nbsp; He swore it by this milestone!</p>
+<p>It was the fifth from London, so far had they penetrated into
+the North.&nbsp; Submitting to the powerful chain of argument,
+Goodchild proposed a return to the Metropolis, and a falling back
+upon Euston Square Terminus.&nbsp; Thomas assented with alacrity,
+and so they walked down into the North by the next
+morning&rsquo;s express, and carried their knapsacks in the
+luggage-van.</p>
+<p>It was like all other expresses, as every express is and must
+be.&nbsp; It bore through the harvest country a smell like a
+large washing-day, and a sharp issue of steam as from a huge
+brazen tea-urn.&nbsp; The greatest power in nature and art
+combined, it yet glided over dangerous heights in the sight of
+people looking up from fields and roads, as smoothly and unreally
+as a light miniature plaything.&nbsp; Now, the engine shrieked in
+hysterics of such intensity, that it seemed desirable that the
+men who had her in charge should hold her feet, slap her hands,
+and bring her to; now, burrowed into tunnels with a stubborn and
+undemonstrative energy so confusing that the train seemed to be
+flying back into leagues of darkness.&nbsp; Here, were station
+after station, swallowed up by the express without stopping;
+here, stations where it fired itself in like a volley of
+cannon-balls, swooped away four country-people with nosegays, and
+three men of business with portmanteaus, and fired itself off
+again, bang, bang, bang!&nbsp; At long intervals were
+uncomfortable refreshment-rooms, made more uncomfortable by the
+scorn of Beauty towards Beast, the public (but to whom she never
+relented, as Beauty did in the story, towards the other Beast),
+and where sensitive stomachs were fed, with a contemptuous
+sharpness occasioning indigestion.&nbsp; Here, again, were
+stations with nothing going but a bell, and wonderful wooden
+razors set aloft on great posts, shaving the air.&nbsp; In these
+fields, the horses, sheep, and cattle were well used to the
+thundering meteor, and didn&rsquo;t mind; in those, they were all
+set scampering together, and a herd of pigs scoured after
+them.&nbsp; The pastoral country darkened, became coaly, became
+smoky, became infernal, got better, got worse, improved again,
+grew rugged, turned romantic; was a wood, a stream, a chain of
+hills, a gorge, a moor, a cathedral town, a fortified place, a
+waste.&nbsp; Now, miserable black dwellings, a black canal, and
+sick black towers of chimneys; now, a trim garden, where the
+flowers were bright and fair; now, a wilderness of hideous altars
+all a-blaze; now, the water meadows with their fairy rings; now,
+the mangy patch of unlet building ground outside the stagnant
+town, with the larger ring where the Circus was last week.&nbsp;
+The temperature changed, the dialect changed, the people changed,
+faces got sharper, manner got shorter, eyes got shrewder and
+harder; yet all so quickly, that the spruce guard in the London
+uniform and silver lace, had not yet rumpled his shirt-collar,
+delivered half the dispatches in his shiny little pouch, or read
+his newspaper.</p>
+<p>Carlisle!&nbsp; Idle and Goodchild had got to Carlisle.&nbsp;
+It looked congenially and delightfully idle.&nbsp; Something in
+the way of public amusement had happened last month, and
+something else was going to happen before Christmas; and, in the
+meantime there was a lecture on India for those who liked
+it&mdash;which Idle and Goodchild did not.&nbsp; Likewise, by
+those who liked them, there were impressions to be bought of all
+the vapid prints, going and gone, and of nearly all the vapid
+books.&nbsp; For those who wanted to put anything in missionary
+boxes, here were the boxes.&nbsp; For those who wanted the
+Reverend Mr. Podgers (artist&rsquo;s proofs, thirty shillings),
+here was Mr. Podgers to any amount.&nbsp; Not less gracious and
+abundant, Mr. Codgers also of the vineyard, but opposed to Mr.
+Podgers, brotherly tooth and nail.&nbsp; Here, were guide-books
+to the neighbouring antiquities, and eke the Lake country, in
+several dry and husky sorts; here, many physically and morally
+impossible heads of both sexes, for young ladies to copy, in the
+exercise of the art of drawing; here, further, a large impression
+of <span class="smcap">Mr. Spurgeon</span>, solid as to the
+flesh, not to say even something gross.&nbsp; The working young
+men of Carlisle were drawn up, with their hands in their pockets,
+across the pavements, four and six abreast, and appeared (much to
+the satisfaction of Mr. Idle) to have nothing else to do.&nbsp;
+The working and growing young women of Carlisle, from the age of
+twelve upwards, promenaded the streets in the cool of the
+evening, and rallied the said young men.&nbsp; Sometimes the
+young men rallied the young women, as in the case of a group
+gathered round an accordion-player, from among whom a young man
+advanced behind a young woman for whom he appeared to have a
+tenderness, and hinted to her that he was there and playful, by
+giving her (he wore clogs) a kick.</p>
+<p>On market morning, Carlisle woke up amazingly, and became (to
+the two Idle Apprentices) disagreeably and reproachfully
+busy.&nbsp; There were its cattle market, its sheep market, and
+its pig market down by the river, with raw-boned and shock-headed
+Rob Roys hiding their Lowland dresses beneath heavy plaids,
+prowling in and out among the animals, and flavouring the air
+with fumes of whiskey.&nbsp; There was its corn market down the
+main street, with hum of chaffering over open sacks.&nbsp; There
+was its general market in the street too, with heather brooms on
+which the purple flower still flourished, and heather baskets
+primitive and fresh to behold.&nbsp; With women trying on clogs
+and caps at open stalls, and &lsquo;Bible stalls&rsquo;
+adjoining.&nbsp; With &lsquo;Doctor Mantle&rsquo;s Dispensary for
+the cure of all Human Maladies and no charge for advice,&rsquo;
+and with Doctor Mantle&rsquo;s &lsquo;Laboratory of Medical,
+Chemical, and Botanical Science&rsquo;&mdash;both healing
+institutions established on one pair of trestles, one board, and
+one sun-blind.&nbsp; With the renowned phrenologist from London,
+begging to be favoured (at sixpence each) with the company of
+clients of both sexes, to whom, on examination of their heads, he
+would make revelations &lsquo;enabling him or her to know
+themselves.&rsquo;&nbsp; Through all these bargains and
+blessings, the recruiting-sergeant watchfully elbowed his way, a
+thread of War in the peaceful skein.&nbsp; Likewise on the walls
+were printed hints that the Oxford Blues might not be indisposed
+to hear of a few fine active young men; and that whereas the
+standard of that distinguished corps is full six feet,
+&lsquo;growing lads of five feet eleven&rsquo; need not
+absolutely despair of being accepted.</p>
+<p>Scenting the morning air more pleasantly than the buried
+majesty of Denmark did, Messrs. Idle and Goodchild rode away from
+Carlisle at eight o&rsquo;clock one forenoon, bound for the
+village of Hesket, Newmarket, some fourteen miles distant.&nbsp;
+Goodchild (who had already begun to doubt whether he was idle: as
+his way always is when he has nothing to do) had read of a
+certain black old Cumberland hill or mountain, called Carrock, or
+Carrock Fell; and had arrived at the conclusion that it would be
+the culminating triumph of Idleness to ascend the same.&nbsp;
+Thomas Idle, dwelling on the pains inseparable from that
+achievement, had expressed the strongest doubts of the
+expediency, and even of the sanity, of the enterprise; but
+Goodchild had carried his point, and they rode away.</p>
+<p>Up hill and down hill, and twisting to the right, and twisting
+to the left, and with old Skiddaw (who has vaunted himself a
+great deal more than his merits deserve; but that is rather the
+way of the Lake country), dodging the apprentices in a
+picturesque and pleasant manner.&nbsp; Good, weather-proof, warm,
+pleasant houses, well white-limed, scantily dotting the
+road.&nbsp; Clean children coming out to look, carrying other
+clean children as big as themselves.&nbsp; Harvest still lying
+out and much rained upon; here and there, harvest still
+unreaped.&nbsp; Well-cultivated gardens attached to the cottages,
+with plenty of produce forced out of their hard soil.&nbsp;
+Lonely nooks, and wild; but people can be born, and married, and
+buried in such nooks, and can live and love, and be loved, there
+as elsewhere, thank God! (Mr. Goodchild&rsquo;s remark.)&nbsp;
+By-and-by, the village.&nbsp; Black, coarse-stoned,
+rough-windowed houses; some with outer staircases, like Swiss
+houses; a sinuous and stony gutter winding up hill and round the
+corner, by way of street.&nbsp; All the children running out
+directly.&nbsp; Women pausing in washing, to peep from doorways
+and very little windows.&nbsp; Such were the observations of
+Messrs. Idle and Goodchild, as their conveyance stopped at the
+village shoemaker&rsquo;s.&nbsp; Old Carrock gloomed down upon it
+all in a very ill-tempered state; and rain was beginning.</p>
+<p>The village shoemaker declined to have anything to do with
+Carrock.&nbsp; No visitors went up Carrock.&nbsp; No visitors
+came there at all.&nbsp; Aa&rsquo; the world ganged awa&rsquo;
+yon.&nbsp; The driver appealed to the Innkeeper.&nbsp; The
+Innkeeper had two men working in the fields, and one of them
+should be called in, to go up Carrock as guide.&nbsp; Messrs.
+Idle and Goodchild, highly approving, entered the
+Innkeeper&rsquo;s house, to drink whiskey and eat oatcake.</p>
+<p>The Innkeeper was not idle enough&mdash;was not idle at all,
+which was a great fault in him&mdash;but was a fine specimen of a
+north-country man, or any kind of man.&nbsp; He had a ruddy
+cheek, a bright eye, a well-knit frame, an immense hand, a
+cheery, outspeaking voice, and a straight, bright, broad
+look.&nbsp; He had a drawing-room, too, upstairs, which was worth
+a visit to the Cumberland Fells.&nbsp; (This was Mr. Francis
+Goodchild&rsquo;s opinion, in which Mr. Thomas Idle did not
+concur.)</p>
+<p>The ceiling of this drawing-room was so crossed and recrossed
+by beams of unequal lengths, radiating from a centre, in a
+corner, that it looked like a broken star-fish.&nbsp; The room
+was comfortably and solidly furnished with good mahogany and
+horsehair.&nbsp; It had a snug fireside, and a couple of
+well-curtained windows, looking out upon the wild country behind
+the house.&nbsp; What it most developed was, an unexpected taste
+for little ornaments and nick-nacks, of which it contained a most
+surprising number.&nbsp; They were not very various, consisting
+in great part of waxen babies with their limbs more or less
+mutilated, appealing on one leg to the parental affections from
+under little cupping glasses; but, Uncle Tom was there, in
+crockery, receiving theological instructions from Miss Eva, who
+grew out of his side like a wen, in an exceedingly rough state of
+profile propagandism.&nbsp; Engravings of Mr. Hunt&rsquo;s
+country boy, before and after his pie, were on the wall, divided
+by a highly-coloured nautical piece, the subject of which had all
+her colours (and more) flying, and was making great way through a
+sea of a regular pattern, like a lady&rsquo;s collar.&nbsp; A
+benevolent, elderly gentleman of the last century, with a
+powdered head, kept guard, in oil and varnish, over a most
+perplexing piece of furniture on a table; in appearance between a
+driving seat and an angular knife-box, but, when opened, a
+musical instrument of tinkling wires, exactly like David&rsquo;s
+harp packed for travelling.&nbsp; Everything became a nick-nack
+in this curious room.&nbsp; The copper tea-kettle, burnished up
+to the highest point of glory, took his station on a stand of his
+own at the greatest possible distance from the fireplace, and
+said: &lsquo;By your leave, not a kettle, but a
+bijou.&rsquo;&nbsp; The Staffordshire-ware butter-dish with the
+cover on, got upon a little round occasional table in a window,
+with a worked top, and announced itself to the two chairs
+accidentally placed there, as an aid to polite conversation, a
+graceful trifle in china to be chatted over by callers, as they
+airily trifled away the visiting moments of a butterfly
+existence, in that rugged old village on the Cumberland
+Fells.&nbsp; The very footstool could not keep the floor, but got
+upon a sofa, and there-from proclaimed itself, in high relief of
+white and liver-coloured wool, a favourite spaniel coiled up for
+repose.&nbsp; Though, truly, in spite of its bright glass eyes,
+the spaniel was the least successful assumption in the
+collection: being perfectly flat, and dismally suggestive of a
+recent mistake in sitting down on the part of some corpulent
+member of the family.</p>
+<p>There were books, too, in this room; books on the table, books
+on the chimney-piece, books in an open press in the corner.&nbsp;
+Fielding was there, and Smollett was there, and Steele and
+Addison were there, in dispersed volumes; and there were tales of
+those who go down to the sea in ships, for windy nights; and
+there was really a choice of good books for rainy days or
+fine.&nbsp; It was so very pleasant to see these things in such a
+lonesome by-place&mdash;so very agreeable to find these evidences
+of a taste, however homely, that went beyond the beautiful
+cleanliness and trimness of the house&mdash;so fanciful to
+imagine what a wonder a room must be to the little children born
+in the gloomy village&mdash;what grand impressions of it those of
+them who became wanderers over the earth would carry away; and
+how, at distant ends of the world, some old voyagers would die,
+cherishing the belief that the finest apartment known to men was
+once in the Hesket-Newmarket Inn, in rare old Cumberland&mdash;it
+was such a charmingly lazy pursuit to entertain these rambling
+thoughts over the choice oatcake and the genial whiskey, that Mr.
+Idle and Mr. Goodchild never asked themselves how it came to pass
+that the men in the fields were never heard of more, how the
+stalwart landlord replaced them without explanation, how his
+dog-cart came to be waiting at the door, and how everything was
+arranged without the least arrangement for climbing to old
+Carrock&rsquo;s shoulders, and standing on his head.</p>
+<p>Without a word of inquiry, therefore, the Two Idle Apprentices
+drifted out resignedly into a fine, soft, close, drowsy,
+penetrating rain; got into the landlord&rsquo;s light dog-cart,
+and rattled off through the village for the foot of
+Carrock.&nbsp; The journey at the outset was not
+remarkable.&nbsp; The Cumberland road went up and down like all
+other roads; the Cumberland curs burst out from backs of cottages
+and barked like other curs, and the Cumberland peasantry stared
+after the dog-cart amazedly, as long as it was in sight, like the
+rest of their race.&nbsp; The approach to the foot of the
+mountain resembled the approaches to the feet of most other
+mountains all over the world.&nbsp; The cultivation gradually
+ceased, the trees grew gradually rare, the road became gradually
+rougher, and the sides of the mountain looked gradually more and
+more lofty, and more and more difficult to get up.&nbsp; The
+dog-cart was left at a lonely farm-house.&nbsp; The landlord
+borrowed a large umbrella, and, assuming in an instant the
+character of the most cheerful and adventurous of guides, led the
+way to the ascent.&nbsp; Mr. Goodchild looked eagerly at the top
+of the mountain, and, feeling apparently that he was now going to
+be very lazy indeed, shone all over wonderfully to the eye, under
+the influence of the contentment within and the moisture
+without.&nbsp; Only in the bosom of Mr. Thomas Idle did
+Despondency now hold her gloomy state.&nbsp; He kept it a secret;
+but he would have given a very handsome sum, when the ascent
+began, to have been back again at the inn.&nbsp; The sides of
+Carrock looked fearfully steep, and the top of Carrock was hidden
+in mist.&nbsp; The rain was falling faster and faster.&nbsp; The
+knees of Mr. Idle&mdash;always weak on walking
+excursions&mdash;shivered and shook with fear and damp.&nbsp; The
+wet was already penetrating through the young man&rsquo;s outer
+coat to a brand-new shooting-jacket, for which he had reluctantly
+paid the large sum of two guineas on leaving town; he had no
+stimulating refreshment about him but a small packet of clammy
+gingerbread nuts; he had nobody to give him an arm, nobody to
+push him gently behind, nobody to pull him up tenderly in front,
+nobody to speak to who really felt the difficulties of the
+ascent, the dampness of the rain, the denseness of the mist, and
+the unutterable folly of climbing, undriven, up any steep place
+in the world, when there is level ground within reach to walk on
+instead.&nbsp; Was it for this that Thomas had left London?&nbsp;
+London, where there are nice short walks in level public gardens,
+with benches of repose set up at convenient distances for weary
+travellers&mdash;London, where rugged stone is humanely pounded
+into little lumps for the road, and intelligently shaped into
+smooth slabs for the pavement!&nbsp; No! it was not for the
+laborious ascent of the crags of Carrock that Idle had left his
+native city, and travelled to Cumberland.&nbsp; Never did he feel
+more disastrously convinced that he had committed a very grave
+error in judgment than when he found himself standing in the rain
+at the bottom of a steep mountain, and knew that the
+responsibility rested on his weak shoulders of actually getting
+to the top of it.</p>
+<p>The honest landlord went first, the beaming Goodchild
+followed, the mournful Idle brought up the rear.&nbsp; From time
+to time, the two foremost members of the expedition changed
+places in the order of march; but the rearguard never altered his
+position.&nbsp; Up the mountain or down the mountain, in the
+water or out of it, over the rocks, through the bogs, skirting
+the heather, Mr. Thomas Idle was always the last, and was always
+the man who had to be looked after and waited for.&nbsp; At first
+the ascent was delusively easy, the sides of the mountain sloped
+gradually, and the material of which they were composed was a
+soft spongy turf, very tender and pleasant to walk upon.&nbsp;
+After a hundred yards or so, however, the verdant scene and the
+easy slope disappeared, and the rocks began.&nbsp; Not noble,
+massive rocks, standing upright, keeping a certain regularity in
+their positions, and possessing, now and then, flat tops to sit
+upon, but little irritating, comfortless rocks, littered about
+anyhow, by Nature; treacherous, disheartening rocks of all sorts
+of small shapes and small sizes, bruisers of tender toes and
+trippers-up of wavering feet.&nbsp; When these impediments were
+passed, heather and slough followed.&nbsp; Here the steepness of
+the ascent was slightly mitigated; and here the exploring party
+of three turned round to look at the view below them.&nbsp; The
+scene of the moorland and the fields was like a feeble
+water-colour drawing half sponged out.&nbsp; The mist was
+darkening, the rain was thickening, the trees were dotted about
+like spots of faint shadow, the division-lines which mapped out
+the fields were all getting blurred together, and the lonely
+farm-house where the dog-cart had been left, loomed spectral in
+the grey light like the last human dwelling at the end of the
+habitable world.&nbsp; Was this a sight worth climbing to
+see?&nbsp; Surely&mdash;surely not!</p>
+<p>Up again&mdash;for the top of Carrock is not reached
+yet.&nbsp; The land-lord, just as good-tempered and obliging as
+he was at the bottom of the mountain.&nbsp; Mr. Goodchild
+brighter in the eyes and rosier in the face than ever; full of
+cheerful remarks and apt quotations; and walking with a
+springiness of step wonderful to behold.&nbsp; Mr. Idle, farther
+and farther in the rear, with the water squeaking in the toes of
+his boots, with his two-guinea shooting-jacket clinging damply to
+his aching sides, with his overcoat so full of rain, and standing
+out so pyramidically stiff, in consequence, from his shoulders
+downwards, that he felt as if he was walking in a gigantic
+extinguisher&mdash;the despairing spirit within him representing
+but too aptly the candle that had just been put out.&nbsp; Up and
+up and up again, till a ridge is reached and the outer edge of
+the mist on the summit of Carrock is darkly and drizzingly
+near.&nbsp; Is this the top?&nbsp; No, nothing like the
+top.&nbsp; It is an aggravating peculiarity of all mountains,
+that, although they have only one top when they are seen (as they
+ought always to be seen) from below, they turn out to have a
+perfect eruption of false tops whenever the traveller is
+sufficiently ill-advised to go out of his way for the purpose of
+ascending them.&nbsp; Carrock is but a trumpery little mountain
+of fifteen hundred feet, and it presumes to have false tops, and
+even precipices, as if it were Mont Blanc.&nbsp; No matter;
+Goodchild enjoys it, and will go on; and Idle, who is afraid of
+being left behind by himself, must follow.&nbsp; On entering the
+edge of the mist, the landlord stops, and says he hopes that it
+will not get any thicker.&nbsp; It is twenty years since he last
+ascended Carrock, and it is barely possible, if the mist
+increases, that the party may be lost on the mountain.&nbsp;
+Goodchild hears this dreadful intimation, and is not in the least
+impressed by it.&nbsp; He marches for the top that is never to be
+found, as if he was the Wandering Jew, bound to go on for ever,
+in defiance of everything.&nbsp; The landlord faithfully
+accompanies him.&nbsp; The two, to the dim eye of Idle, far
+below, look in the exaggerative mist, like a pair of friendly
+giants, mounting the steps of some invisible castle
+together.&nbsp; Up and up, and then down a little, and then up,
+and then along a strip of level ground, and then up again.&nbsp;
+The wind, a wind unknown in the happy valley, blows keen and
+strong; the rain-mist gets impenetrable; a dreary little cairn of
+stones appears.&nbsp; The landlord adds one to the heap, first
+walking all round the cairn as if he were about to perform an
+incantation, then dropping the stone on to the top of the heap
+with the gesture of a magician adding an ingredient to a cauldron
+in full bubble.&nbsp; Goodchild sits down by the cairn as if it
+was his study-table at home; Idle, drenched and panting, stands
+up with his back to the wind, ascertains distinctly that this is
+the top at last, looks round with all the little curiosity that
+is left in him, and gets, in return, a magnificent view
+of&mdash;Nothing!</p>
+<p>The effect of this sublime spectacle on the minds of the
+exploring party is a little injured by the nature of the direct
+conclusion to which the sight of it points&mdash;the said
+conclusion being that the mountain mist has actually gathered
+round them, as the landlord feared it would.&nbsp; It now becomes
+imperatively necessary to settle the exact situation of the
+farm-house in the valley at which the dog-cart has been left,
+before the travellers attempt to descend.&nbsp; While the
+landlord is endeavouring to make this discovery in his own way,
+Mr. Goodchild plunges his hand under his wet coat, draws out a
+little red morocco-case, opens it, and displays to the view of
+his companions a neat pocket-compass.&nbsp; The north is found,
+the point at which the farm-house is situated is settled, and the
+descent begins.&nbsp; After a little downward walking, Idle
+(behind as usual) sees his fellow-travellers turn aside
+sharply&mdash;tries to follow them&mdash;loses them in the
+mist&mdash;is shouted after, waited for, recovered&mdash;and then
+finds that a halt has been ordered, partly on his account, partly
+for the purpose of again consulting the compass.</p>
+<p>The point in debate is settled as before between Goodchild and
+the landlord, and the expedition moves on, not down the mountain,
+but marching straight forward round the slope of it.&nbsp; The
+difficulty of following this new route is acutely felt by Thomas
+Idle.&nbsp; He finds the hardship of walking at all greatly
+increased by the fatigue of moving his feet straight forward
+along the side of a slope, when their natural tendency, at every
+step, is to turn off at a right angle, and go straight down the
+declivity.&nbsp; Let the reader imagine himself to be walking
+along the roof of a barn, instead of up or down it, and he will
+have an exact idea of the pedestrian difficulty in which the
+travellers had now involved themselves.&nbsp; In ten minutes more
+Idle was lost in the distance again, was shouted for, waited for,
+recovered as before; found Goodchild repeating his observation of
+the compass, and remonstrated warmly against the sideway route
+that his companions persisted in following.&nbsp; It appeared to
+the uninstructed mind of Thomas that when three men want to get
+to the bottom of a mountain, their business is to walk down it;
+and he put this view of the case, not only with emphasis, but
+even with some irritability.&nbsp; He was answered from the
+scientific eminence of the compass on which his companions were
+mounted, that there was a frightful chasm somewhere near the foot
+of Carrock, called The Black Arches, into which the travellers
+were sure to march in the mist, if they risked continuing the
+descent from the place where they had now halted.&nbsp; Idle
+received this answer with the silent respect which was due to the
+commanders of the expedition, and followed along the roof of the
+barn, or rather the side of the mountain, reflecting upon the
+assurance which he received on starting again, that the object of
+the party was only to gain &lsquo;a certain point,&rsquo; and,
+this haven attained, to continue the descent afterwards until the
+foot of Carrock was reached.&nbsp; Though quite unexceptionable
+as an abstract form of expression, the phrase &lsquo;a certain
+point&rsquo; has the disadvantage of sounding rather vaguely when
+it is pronounced on unknown ground, under a canopy of mist much
+thicker than a London fog.&nbsp; Nevertheless, after the compass,
+this phrase was all the clue the party had to hold by, and Idle
+clung to the extreme end of it as hopefully as he could.</p>
+<p>More sideway walking, thicker and thicker mist, all sorts of
+points reached except the &lsquo;certain point;&rsquo; third loss
+of Idle, third shouts for him, third recovery of him, third
+consultation of compass.&nbsp; Mr. Goodchild draws it tenderly
+from his pocket, and prepares to adjust it on a stone.&nbsp;
+Something falls on the turf&mdash;it is the glass.&nbsp;
+Something else drops immediately after&mdash;it is the
+needle.&nbsp; The compass is broken, and the exploring party is
+lost!</p>
+<p>It is the practice of the English portion of the human race to
+receive all great disasters in dead silence.&nbsp; Mr. Goodchild
+restored the useless compass to his pocket without saying a word,
+Mr. Idle looked at the landlord, and the landlord looked at Mr.
+Idle.&nbsp; There was nothing for it now but to go on blindfold,
+and trust to the chapter of chances.&nbsp; Accordingly, the lost
+travellers moved forward, still walking round the slope of the
+mountain, still desperately resolved to avoid the Black Arches,
+and to succeed in reaching the &lsquo;certain point.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>A quarter of an hour brought them to the brink of a ravine, at
+the bottom of which there flowed a muddy little stream.&nbsp;
+Here another halt was called, and another consultation took
+place.&nbsp; The landlord, still clinging pertinaciously to the
+idea of reaching the &lsquo;point,&rsquo; voted for crossing the
+ravine, and going on round the slope of the mountain.&nbsp; Mr.
+Goodchild, to the great relief of his fellow-traveller, took
+another view of the case, and backed Mr. Idle&rsquo;s proposal to
+descend Carrock at once, at any hazard&mdash;the rather as the
+running stream was a sure guide to follow from the mountain to
+the valley.&nbsp; Accordingly, the party descended to the rugged
+and stony banks of the stream; and here again Thomas lost ground
+sadly, and fell far behind his travelling companions.&nbsp; Not
+much more than six weeks had elapsed since he had sprained one of
+his ankles, and he began to feel this same ankle getting rather
+weak when he found himself among the stones that were strewn
+about the running water.&nbsp; Goodchild and the landlord were
+getting farther and farther ahead of him.&nbsp; He saw them cross
+the stream and disappear round a projection on its banks.&nbsp;
+He heard them shout the moment after as a signal that they had
+halted and were waiting for him.&nbsp; Answering the shout, he
+mended his pace, crossed the stream where they had crossed it,
+and was within one step of the opposite bank, when his foot
+slipped on a wet stone, his weak ankle gave a twist outwards, a
+hot, rending, tearing pain ran through it at the same moment, and
+down fell the idlest of the Two Idle Apprentices, crippled in an
+instant.</p>
+<p>The situation was now, in plain terms, one of absolute
+danger.&nbsp; There lay Mr. Idle writhing with pain, there was
+the mist as thick as ever, there was the landlord as completely
+lost as the strangers whom he was conducting, and there was the
+compass broken in Goodchild&rsquo;s pocket.&nbsp; To leave the
+wretched Thomas on unknown ground was plainly impossible; and to
+get him to walk with a badly sprained ankle seemed equally out of
+the question.&nbsp; However, Goodchild (brought back by his cry
+for help) bandaged the ankle with a pocket-handkerchief, and
+assisted by the landlord, raised the crippled Apprentice to his
+legs, offered him a shoulder to lean on, and exhorted him for the
+sake of the whole party to try if he could walk.&nbsp; Thomas,
+assisted by the shoulder on one side, and a stick on the other,
+did try, with what pain and difficulty those only can imagine who
+have sprained an ankle and have had to tread on it
+afterwards.&nbsp; At a pace adapted to the feeble hobbling of a
+newly-lamed man, the lost party moved on, perfectly ignorant
+whether they were on the right side of the mountain or the wrong,
+and equally uncertain how long Idle would be able to contend with
+the pain in his ankle, before he gave in altogether and fell down
+again, unable to stir another step.</p>
+<p>Slowly and more slowly, as the clog of crippled Thomas weighed
+heavily and more heavily on the march of the expedition, the lost
+travellers followed the windings of the stream, till they came to
+a faintly-marked cart-track, branching off nearly at right
+angles, to the left.&nbsp; After a little consultation it was
+resolved to follow this dim vestige of a road in the hope that it
+might lead to some farm or cottage, at which Idle could be left
+in safety.&nbsp; It was now getting on towards the afternoon, and
+it was fast becoming more than doubtful whether the party,
+delayed in their progress as they now were, might not be
+overtaken by the darkness before the right route was found, and
+be condemned to pass the night on the mountain, without bit or
+drop to comfort them, in their wet clothes.</p>
+<p>The cart-track grew fainter and fainter, until it was washed
+out altogether by another little stream, dark, turbulent, and
+rapid.&nbsp; The landlord suggested, judging by the colour of the
+water, that it must be flowing from one of the lead mines in the
+neighbourhood of Carrock; and the travellers accordingly kept by
+the stream for a little while, in the hope of possibly wandering
+towards help in that way.&nbsp; After walking forward about two
+hundred yards, they came upon a mine indeed, but a mine,
+exhausted and abandoned; a dismal, ruinous place, with nothing
+but the wreck of its works and buildings left to speak for
+it.&nbsp; Here, there were a few sheep feeding.&nbsp; The
+landlord looked at them earnestly, thought he recognised the
+marks on them&mdash;then thought he did not&mdash;finally gave up
+the sheep in despair&mdash;and walked on just as ignorant of the
+whereabouts of the party as ever.</p>
+<p>The march in the dark, literally as well as metaphorically in
+the dark, had now been continued for three-quarters of an hour
+from the time when the crippled Apprentice had met with his
+accident.&nbsp; Mr. Idle, with all the will to conquer the pain
+in his ankle, and to hobble on, found the power rapidly failing
+him, and felt that another ten minutes at most would find him at
+the end of his last physical resources.&nbsp; He had just made up
+his mind on this point, and was about to communicate the dismal
+result of his reflections to his companions, when the mist
+suddenly brightened, and begun to lift straight ahead.&nbsp; In
+another minute, the landlord, who was in advance, proclaimed that
+he saw a tree.&nbsp; Before long, other trees appeared&mdash;then
+a cottage&mdash;then a house beyond the cottage, and a familiar
+line of road rising behind it.&nbsp; Last of all, Carrock itself
+loomed darkly into view, far away to the right hand.&nbsp; The
+party had not only got down the mountain without knowing how, but
+had wandered away from it in the mist, without knowing
+why&mdash;away, far down on the very moor by which they had
+approached the base of Carrock that morning.</p>
+<p>The happy lifting of the mist, and the still happier discovery
+that the travellers had groped their way, though by a very
+roundabout direction, to within a mile or so of the part of the
+valley in which the farm-house was situated, restored Mr.
+Idle&rsquo;s sinking spirits and reanimated his failing
+strength.&nbsp; While the landlord ran off to get the dog-cart,
+Thomas was assisted by Goodchild to the cottage which had been
+the first building seen when the darkness brightened, and was
+propped up against the garden wall, like an artist&rsquo;s lay
+figure waiting to be forwarded, until the dog-cart should arrive
+from the farm-house below.&nbsp; In due time&mdash;and a very
+long time it seemed to Mr. Idle&mdash;the rattle of wheels was
+heard, and the crippled Apprentice was lifted into the
+seat.&nbsp; As the dog-cart was driven back to the inn, the
+landlord related an anecdote which he had just heard at the
+farm-house, of an unhappy man who had been lost, like his two
+guests and himself, on Carrock; who had passed the night there
+alone; who had been found the next morning, &lsquo;scared and
+starved;&rsquo; and who never went out afterwards, except on his
+way to the grave.&nbsp; Mr. Idle heard this sad story, and
+derived at least one useful impression from it.&nbsp; Bad as the
+pain in his ankle was, he contrived to bear it patiently, for he
+felt grateful that a worse accident had not befallen him in the
+wilds of Carrock.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> dog-cart, with Mr. Thomas Idle
+and his ankle on the hanging seat behind, Mr. Francis Goodchild
+and the Innkeeper in front, and the rain in spouts and splashes
+everywhere, made the best of its way back to the little inn; the
+broken moor country looking like miles upon miles of Pre-Adamite
+sop, or the ruins of some enormous jorum of antediluvian
+toast-and-water.&nbsp; The trees dripped; the eaves of the
+scattered cottages dripped; the barren stone walls dividing the
+land, dripped; the yelping dogs dripped; carts and waggons under
+ill-roofed penthouses, dripped; melancholy cocks and hens
+perching on their shafts, or seeking shelter underneath them,
+dripped; Mr. Goodchild dripped; Thomas Idle dripped; the
+Inn-keeper dripped; the mare dripped; the vast curtains of mist
+and cloud passed before the shadowy forms of the hills, streamed
+water as they were drawn across the landscape.&nbsp; Down such
+steep pitches that the mare seemed to be trotting on her head,
+and up such steep pitches that she seemed to have a supplementary
+leg in her tail, the dog-cart jolted and tilted back to the
+village.&nbsp; It was too wet for the women to look out, it was
+too wet even for the children to look out; all the doors and
+windows were closed, and the only sign of life or motion was in
+the rain-punctured puddles.</p>
+<p>Whiskey and oil to Thomas Idle&rsquo;s ankle, and whiskey
+without oil to Francis Goodchild&rsquo;s stomach, produced an
+agreeable change in the systems of both; soothing Mr.
+Idle&rsquo;s pain, which was sharp before, and sweetening Mr.
+Goodchild&rsquo;s temper, which was sweet before.&nbsp;
+Portmanteaus being then opened and clothes changed, Mr.
+Goodchild, through having no change of outer garments but
+broadcloth and velvet, suddenly became a magnificent portent in
+the Innkeeper&rsquo;s house, a shining frontispiece to the
+fashions for the month, and a frightful anomaly in the Cumberland
+village.</p>
+<p>Greatly ashamed of his splendid appearance, the conscious
+Goodchild quenched it as much as possible, in the shadow of
+Thomas Idle&rsquo;s ankle, and in a corner of the little covered
+carriage that started with them for Wigton&mdash;a most desirable
+carriage for any country, except for its having a flat roof and
+no sides; which caused the plumps of rain accumulating on the
+roof to play vigorous games of bagatelle into the interior all
+the way, and to score immensely.&nbsp; It was comfortable to see
+how the people coming back in open carts from Wigton market made
+no more of the rain than if it were sunshine; how the Wigton
+policeman taking a country walk of half-a-dozen miles (apparently
+for pleasure), in resplendent uniform, accepted saturation as his
+normal state; how clerks and schoolmasters in black, loitered
+along the road without umbrellas, getting varnished at every
+step; how the Cumberland girls, coming out to look after the
+Cumberland cows, shook the rain from their eyelashes and laughed
+it away; and how the rain continued to fall upon all, as it only
+does fall in hill countries.</p>
+<p>Wigton market was over, and its bare booths were smoking with
+rain all down the street.&nbsp; Mr. Thomas Idle, melodramatically
+carried to the inn&rsquo;s first floor, and laid upon three
+chairs (he should have had the sofa, if there had been one), Mr.
+Goodchild went to the window to take an observation of Wigton,
+and report what he saw to his disabled companion.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Brother Francis, brother Francis,&rsquo; cried Thomas
+Idle, &lsquo;What do you see from the turret?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I see,&rsquo; said Brother Francis, &lsquo;what I hope
+and believe to be one of the most dismal places ever seen by
+eyes.&nbsp; I see the houses with their roofs of dull black,
+their stained fronts, and their dark-rimmed windows, looking as
+if they were all in mourning.&nbsp; As every little puff of wind
+comes down the street, I see a perfect train of rain let off
+along the wooden stalls in the market-place and exploded against
+me.&nbsp; I see a very big gas lamp in the centre which I know,
+by a secret instinct, will not be lighted to-night.&nbsp; I see a
+pump, with a trivet underneath its spout whereon to stand the
+vessels that are brought to be filled with water.&nbsp; I see a
+man come to pump, and he pumps very hard, but no water follows,
+and he strolls empty away.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Brother Francis, brother Francis,&rsquo; cried Thomas
+Idle, &lsquo;what more do you see from the turret, besides the
+man and the pump, and the trivet and the houses all in mourning
+and the rain?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I see,&rsquo; said Brother Francis, &lsquo;one, two,
+three, four, five, linen-drapers&rsquo; shops in front of
+me.&nbsp; I see a linen-draper&rsquo;s shop next door to the
+right&mdash;and there are five more linen-drapers&rsquo; shops
+down the corner to the left.&nbsp; Eleven homicidal
+linen-drapers&rsquo; shops within a short stone&rsquo;s throw,
+each with its hands at the throats of all the rest!&nbsp; Over
+the small first-floor of one of these linen-drapers&rsquo; shops
+appears the wonderful inscription, <span
+class="smcap">Bank</span>.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Brother Francis, brother Francis,&rsquo; cried Thomas
+Idle, &lsquo;what more do you see from the turret, besides the
+eleven homicidal linen-drapers&rsquo; shops, and the wonderful
+inscription, &ldquo;Bank,&rdquo;&mdash;on the small first-floor,
+and the man and the pump and the trivet and the houses all in
+mourning and the rain?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I see,&rsquo; said Brother Francis, &lsquo;the
+depository for Christian Knowledge, and through the dark vapour I
+think I again make out Mr. Spurgeon looming heavily.&nbsp; Her
+Majesty the Queen, God bless her, printed in colours, I am sure I
+see.&nbsp; I see the <i>Illustrated London News</i> of several
+years ago, and I see a sweetmeat shop&mdash;which the proprietor
+calls a &ldquo;Salt Warehouse&rdquo;&mdash;with one small female
+child in a cotton bonnet looking in on tip-toe, oblivious of
+rain.&nbsp; And I see a watchmaker&rsquo;s with only three great
+pale watches of a dull metal hanging in his window, each in a
+separate pane.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Brother Francis, brother Francis,&rsquo; cried Thomas
+Idle, &lsquo;what more do you see of Wigton, besides these
+objects, and the man and the pump and the trivet and the houses
+all in mourning and the rain?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I see nothing more,&rsquo; said Brother Francis,
+&lsquo;and there is nothing more to see, except the curlpaper
+bill of the theatre, which was opened and shut last week (the
+manager&rsquo;s family played all the parts), and the short,
+square, chinky omnibus that goes to the railway, and leads too
+rattling a life over the stones to hold together long.&nbsp; O
+yes!&nbsp; Now, I see two men with their hands in their pockets
+and their backs towards me.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Brother Francis, brother Francis,&rsquo; cried Thomas
+Idle, &lsquo;what do you make out from the turret, of the
+expression of the two men with their hands in their pockets and
+their backs towards you?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;They are mysterious men,&rsquo; said Brother Francis,
+&lsquo;with inscrutable backs.&nbsp; They keep their backs
+towards me with persistency.&nbsp; If one turns an inch in any
+direction, the other turns an inch in the same direction, and no
+more.&nbsp; They turn very stiffly, on a very little pivot, in
+the middle of the market-place.&nbsp; Their appearance is partly
+of a mining, partly of a ploughing, partly of a stable,
+character.&nbsp; They are looking at nothing&mdash;very
+hard.&nbsp; Their backs are slouched, and their legs are curved
+with much standing about.&nbsp; Their pockets are loose and
+dog&rsquo;s-eared, on account of their hands being always in
+them.&nbsp; They stand to be rained upon, without any movement of
+impatience or dissatisfaction, and they keep so close together
+that an elbow of each jostles an elbow of the other, but they
+never speak.&nbsp; They spit at times, but speak not.&nbsp; I see
+it growing darker and darker, and still I see them, sole visible
+population of the place, standing to be rained upon with their
+backs towards me, and looking at nothing very hard.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Brother Francis, brother Francis,&rsquo; cried Thomas
+Idle, &lsquo;before you draw down the blind of the turret and
+come in to have your head scorched by the hot gas, see if you
+can, and impart to me, something of the expression of those two
+amazing men.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The murky shadows,&rsquo; said Francis Goodchild,
+&lsquo;are gathering fast; and the wings of evening, and the
+wings of coal, are folding over Wigton.&nbsp; Still, they look at
+nothing very hard, with their backs towards me.&nbsp; Ah!&nbsp;
+Now, they turn, and I see&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Brother Francis, brother Francis,&rsquo; cried Thomas
+Idle, &lsquo;tell me quickly what you see of the two men of
+Wigton!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I see,&rsquo; said Francis Goodchild, &lsquo;that they
+have no expression at all.&nbsp; And now the town goes to sleep,
+undazzled by the large unlighted lamp in the market-place; and
+let no man wake it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>At the close of the next day&rsquo;s journey, Mr. Thomas
+Idle&rsquo;s ankle became much swollen and inflamed.&nbsp; There
+are reasons which will presently explain themselves for not
+publicly indicating the exact direction in which that journey
+lay, or the place in which it ended.&nbsp; It was a long
+day&rsquo;s shaking of Thomas Idle over the rough roads, and a
+long day&rsquo;s getting out and going on before the horses, and
+fagging up hills, and scouring down hills, on the part of Mr.
+Goodchild, who in the fatigues of such labours congratulated
+himself on attaining a high point of idleness.&nbsp; It was at a
+little town, still in Cumberland, that they halted for the
+night&mdash;a very little town, with the purple and brown moor
+close upon its one street; a curious little ancient market-cross
+set up in the midst of it; and the town itself looking much as if
+it were a collection of great stones piled on end by the Druids
+long ago, which a few recluse people had since hollowed out for
+habitations.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Is there a doctor here?&rsquo; asked Mr. Goodchild, on
+his knee, of the motherly landlady of the little Inn: stopping in
+his examination of Mr. Idle&rsquo;s ankle, with the aid of a
+candle.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ey, my word!&rsquo; said the landlady, glancing
+doubtfully at the ankle for herself; &lsquo;there&rsquo;s Doctor
+Speddie.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Is he a good Doctor?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ey!&rsquo; said the landlady, &lsquo;I ca&rsquo; him
+so.&nbsp; A&rsquo; cooms efther nae doctor that I ken.&nbsp; Mair
+nor which, a&rsquo;s just <span class="GutSmall">THE</span>
+doctor heer.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Do you think he is at home?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Her reply was, &lsquo;Gang awa&rsquo;, Jock, and bring
+him.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Jock, a white-headed boy, who, under pretence of stirring up
+some bay salt in a basin of water for the laving of this
+unfortunate ankle, had greatly enjoyed himself for the last ten
+minutes in splashing the carpet, set off promptly.&nbsp; A very
+few minutes had elapsed when he showed the Doctor in, by tumbling
+against the door before him and bursting it open with his
+head.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Gently, Jock, gently,&rsquo; said the Doctor as he
+advanced with a quiet step.&nbsp; &lsquo;Gentlemen, a good
+evening.&nbsp; I am sorry that my presence is required
+here.&nbsp; A slight accident, I hope?&nbsp; A slip and a
+fall?&nbsp; Yes, yes, yes.&nbsp; Carrock, indeed?&nbsp;
+Hah!&nbsp; Does that pain you, sir?&nbsp; No doubt, it
+does.&nbsp; It is the great connecting ligament here, you see,
+that has been badly strained.&nbsp; Time and rest, sir!&nbsp;
+They are often the recipe in greater cases,&rsquo; with a slight
+sigh, &lsquo;and often the recipe in small.&nbsp; I can send a
+lotion to relieve you, but we must leave the cure to time and
+rest.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>This he said, holding Idle&rsquo;s foot on his knee between
+his two hands, as he sat over against him.&nbsp; He had touched
+it tenderly and skilfully in explanation of what he said, and,
+when his careful examination was completed, softly returned it to
+its former horizontal position on a chair.</p>
+<p>He spoke with a little irresolution whenever he began, but
+afterwards fluently.&nbsp; He was a tall, thin, large-boned, old
+gentleman, with an appearance at first sight of being
+hard-featured; but, at a second glance, the mild expression of
+his face and some particular touches of sweetness and patience
+about his mouth, corrected this impression and assigned his long
+professional rides, by day and night, in the bleak hill-weather,
+as the true cause of that appearance.&nbsp; He stooped very
+little, though past seventy and very grey.&nbsp; His dress was
+more like that of a clergyman than a country doctor, being a
+plain black suit, and a plain white neck-kerchief tied behind
+like a band.&nbsp; His black was the worse for wear, and there
+were darns in his coat, and his linen was a little frayed at the
+hems and edges.&nbsp; He might have been poor&mdash;it was likely
+enough in that out-of-the-way spot&mdash;or he might have been a
+little self-forgetful and eccentric.&nbsp; Any one could have
+seen directly, that he had neither wife nor child at home.&nbsp;
+He had a scholarly air with him, and that kind of considerate
+humanity towards others which claimed a gentle consideration for
+himself.&nbsp; Mr. Goodchild made this study of him while he was
+examining the limb, and as he laid it down.&nbsp; Mr. Goodchild
+wishes to add that he considers it a very good likeness.</p>
+<p>It came out in the course of a little conversation, that
+Doctor Speddie was acquainted with some friends of Thomas
+Idle&rsquo;s, and had, when a young man, passed some years in
+Thomas Idle&rsquo;s birthplace on the other side of
+England.&nbsp; Certain idle labours, the fruit of Mr.
+Goodchild&rsquo;s apprenticeship, also happened to be well known
+to him.&nbsp; The lazy travellers were thus placed on a more
+intimate footing with the Doctor than the casual circumstances of
+the meeting would of themselves have established; and when Doctor
+Speddie rose to go home, remarking that he would send his
+assistant with the lotion, Francis Goodchild said that was
+unnecessary, for, by the Doctor&rsquo;s leave, he would accompany
+him, and bring it back.&nbsp; (Having done nothing to fatigue
+himself for a full quarter of an hour, Francis began to fear that
+he was not in a state of idleness.)</p>
+<p>Doctor Speddie politely assented to the proposition of Francis
+Goodchild, &lsquo;as it would give him the pleasure of enjoying a
+few more minutes of Mr. Goodchild&rsquo;s society than he could
+otherwise have hoped for,&rsquo; and they went out together into
+the village street.&nbsp; The rain had nearly ceased, the clouds
+had broken before a cool wind from the north-east, and stars were
+shining from the peaceful heights beyond them.</p>
+<p>Doctor Speddie&rsquo;s house was the last house in the
+place.&nbsp; Beyond it, lay the moor, all dark and
+lonesome.&nbsp; The wind moaned in a low, dull, shivering manner
+round the little garden, like a houseless creature that knew the
+winter was coming.&nbsp; It was exceedingly wild and
+solitary.&nbsp; &lsquo;Roses,&rsquo; said the Doctor, when
+Goodchild touched some wet leaves overhanging the stone porch;
+&lsquo;but they get cut to pieces.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The Doctor opened the door with a key he carried, and led the
+way into a low but pretty ample hall with rooms on either
+side.&nbsp; The door of one of these stood open, and the Doctor
+entered it, with a word of welcome to his guest.&nbsp; It, too,
+was a low room, half surgery and half parlour, with shelves of
+books and bottles against the walls, which were of a very dark
+hue.&nbsp; There was a fire in the grate, the night being damp
+and chill.&nbsp; Leaning against the chimney-piece looking down
+into it, stood the Doctor&rsquo;s Assistant.</p>
+<p>A man of a most remarkable appearance.&nbsp; Much older than
+Mr. Goodchild had expected, for he was at least two-and-fifty;
+but, that was nothing.&nbsp; What was startling in him was his
+remarkable paleness.&nbsp; His large black eyes, his sunken
+cheeks, his long and heavy iron-grey hair, his wasted hands, and
+even the attenuation of his figure, were at first forgotten in
+his extraordinary pallor.&nbsp; There was no vestige of colour in
+the man.&nbsp; When he turned his face, Francis Goodchild started
+as if a stone figure had looked round at him.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Mr. Lorn,&rsquo; said the Doctor.&nbsp; &lsquo;Mr.
+Goodchild.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The Assistant, in a distraught way&mdash;as if he had
+forgotten something&mdash;as if he had forgotten everything, even
+to his own name and himself&mdash;acknowledged the
+visitor&rsquo;s presence, and stepped further back into the
+shadow of the wall behind him.&nbsp; But, he was so pale that his
+face stood out in relief again the dark wall, and really could
+not be hidden so.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Mr. Goodchild&rsquo;s friend has met with accident,
+Lorn,&rsquo; said Doctor Speddie.&nbsp; &lsquo;We want the lotion
+for a bad sprain.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>A pause.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My dear fellow, you are more than usually absent
+to-night.&nbsp; The lotion for a bad sprain.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah! yes!&nbsp; Directly.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He was evidently relieved to turn away, and to take his white
+face and his wild eyes to a table in a recess among the
+bottles.&nbsp; But, though he stood there, compounding the lotion
+with his back towards them, Goodchild could not, for many
+moments, withdraw his gaze from the man.&nbsp; When he at length
+did so, he found the Doctor observing him, with some trouble in
+his face.&nbsp; &lsquo;He is absent,&rsquo; explained the Doctor,
+in a low voice.&nbsp; &lsquo;Always absent.&nbsp; Very
+absent.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Is he ill?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No, not ill.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Unhappy?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I have my suspicions that he was,&rsquo; assented the
+Doctor, &lsquo;once.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Francis Goodchild could not but observe that the Doctor
+accompanied these words with a benignant and protecting glance at
+their subject, in which there was much of the expression with
+which an attached father might have looked at a heavily afflicted
+son.&nbsp; Yet, that they were not father and son must have been
+plain to most eyes.&nbsp; The Assistant, on the other hand,
+turning presently to ask the Doctor some question, looked at him
+with a wan smile as if he were his whole reliance and sustainment
+in life.</p>
+<p>It was in vain for the Doctor in his easy-chair, to try to
+lead the mind of Mr. Goodchild in the opposite easy-chair, away
+from what was before him.&nbsp; Let Mr. Goodchild do what he
+would to follow the Doctor, his eyes and thoughts reverted to the
+Assistant.&nbsp; The Doctor soon perceived it, and, after falling
+silent, and musing in a little perplexity, said:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Lorn!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My dear Doctor.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Would you go to the Inn, and apply that lotion?&nbsp;
+You will show the best way of applying it, far better than Mr.
+Goodchild can.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;With pleasure.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The Assistant took his hat, and passed like a shadow to the
+door.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Lorn!&rsquo; said the Doctor, calling after him.</p>
+<p>He returned.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Mr. Goodchild will keep me company till you come
+home.&nbsp; Don&rsquo;t hurry.&nbsp; Excuse my calling you
+back.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It is not,&rsquo; said the Assistant, with his former
+smile, &lsquo;the first time you have called me back, dear
+Doctor.&rsquo;&nbsp; With those words he went away.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Mr. Goodchild,&rsquo; said Doctor Speddie, in a low
+voice, and with his former troubled expression of face, &lsquo;I
+have seen that your attention has been concentrated on my
+friend.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He fascinates me.&nbsp; I must apologise to you, but he
+has quite bewildered and mastered me.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I find that a lonely existence and a long
+secret,&rsquo; said the Doctor, drawing his chair a little nearer
+to Mr. Goodchild&rsquo;s, &lsquo;become in the course of time
+very heavy.&nbsp; I will tell you something.&nbsp; You may make
+what use you will of it, under fictitious names.&nbsp; I know I
+may trust you.&nbsp; I am the more inclined to confidence
+to-night, through having been unexpectedly led back, by the
+current of our conversation at the Inn, to scenes in my early
+life.&nbsp; Will you please to draw a little nearer?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mr. Goodchild drew a little nearer, and the Doctor went on
+thus: speaking, for the most part, in so cautious a voice, that
+the wind, though it was far from high, occasionally got the
+better of him.</p>
+<p>When this present nineteenth century was younger by a good
+many years than it is now, a certain friend of mine, named Arthur
+Holliday, happened to arrive in the town of Doncaster, exactly in
+the middle of a race-week, or, in other words, in the middle of
+the month of September.&nbsp; He was one of those reckless,
+rattle-pated, open-hearted, and open-mouthed young gentlemen, who
+possess the gift of familiarity in its highest perfection, and
+who scramble carelessly along the journey of life making friends,
+as the phrase is, wherever they go.&nbsp; His father was a rich
+manufacturer, and had bought landed property enough in one of the
+midland counties to make all the born squires in his
+neighbourhood thoroughly envious of him.&nbsp; Arthur was his
+only son, possessor in prospect of the great estate and the great
+business after his father&rsquo;s death; well supplied with
+money, and not too rigidly looked after, during his
+father&rsquo;s lifetime.&nbsp; Report, or scandal, whichever you
+please, said that the old gentleman had been rather wild in his
+youthful days, and that, unlike most parents, he was not disposed
+to be violently indignant when he found that his son took after
+him.&nbsp; This may be true or not.&nbsp; I myself only knew the
+elder Mr. Holliday when he was getting on in years; and then he
+was as quiet and as respectable a gentleman as ever I met
+with.</p>
+<p>Well, one September, as I told you, young Arthur comes to
+Doncaster, having decided all of a sudden, in his harebrained
+way, that he would go to the races.&nbsp; He did not reach the
+town till towards the close of the evening, and he went at once
+to see about his dinner and bed at the principal hotel.&nbsp;
+Dinner they were ready enough to give him; but as for a bed, they
+laughed when he mentioned it.&nbsp; In the race-week at
+Doncaster, it is no uncommon thing for visitors who have not
+bespoken apartments, to pass the night in their carriages at the
+inn doors.&nbsp; As for the lower sort of strangers, I myself
+have often seen them, at that full time, sleeping out on the
+doorsteps for want of a covered place to creep under.&nbsp; Rich
+as he was, Arthur&rsquo;s chance of getting a night&rsquo;s
+lodging (seeing that he had not written beforehand to secure one)
+was more than doubtful.&nbsp; He tried the second hotel, and the
+third hotel, and two of the inferior inns after that; and was met
+everywhere by the same form of answer.&nbsp; No accommodation for
+the night of any sort was left.&nbsp; All the bright golden
+sovereigns in his pocket would not buy him a bed at Doncaster in
+the race-week.</p>
+<p>To a young fellow of Arthur&rsquo;s temperament, the novelty
+of being turned away into the street, like a penniless vagabond,
+at every house where he asked for a lodging, presented itself in
+the light of a new and highly amusing piece of experience.&nbsp;
+He went on, with his carpet-bag in his hand, applying for a bed
+at every place of entertainment for travellers that he could find
+in Doncaster, until he wandered into the outskirts of the
+town.&nbsp; By this time, the last glimmer of twilight had faded
+out, the moon was rising dimly in a mist, the wind was getting
+cold, the clouds were gathering heavily, and there was every
+prospect that it was soon going to rain.</p>
+<p>The look of the night had rather a lowering effect on young
+Holliday&rsquo;s good spirits.&nbsp; He began to contemplate the
+houseless situation in which he was placed, from the serious
+rather than the humorous point of view; and he looked about him,
+for another public-house to inquire at, with something very like
+downright anxiety in his mind on the subject of a lodging for the
+night.&nbsp; The suburban part of the town towards which he had
+now strayed was hardly lighted at all, and he could see nothing
+of the houses as he passed them, except that they got
+progressively smaller and dirtier, the farther he went.&nbsp;
+Down the winding road before him shone the dull gleam of an oil
+lamp, the one faint, lonely light that struggled ineffectually
+with the foggy darkness all round him.&nbsp; He resolved to go on
+as far as this lamp, and then, if it showed him nothing in the
+shape of an Inn, to return to the central part of the town and to
+try if he could not at least secure a chair to sit down on,
+through the night, at one of the principal Hotels.</p>
+<p>As he got near the lamp, he heard voices; and, walking close
+under it, found that it lighted the entrance to a narrow court,
+on the wall of which was painted a long hand in faded
+flesh-colour, pointing with a lean forefinger, to this
+inscription:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p style="text-align: center">THE TWO ROBINS.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>Arthur turned into the court without hesitation, to see what
+The Two Robins could do for him.&nbsp; Four or five men were
+standing together round the door of the house which was at the
+bottom of the court, facing the entrance from the street.&nbsp;
+The men were all listening to one other man, better dressed than
+the rest, who was telling his audience something, in a low voice,
+in which they were apparently very much interested.</p>
+<p>On entering the passage, Arthur was passed by a stranger with
+a knapsack in his hand, who was evidently leaving the house.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No,&rsquo; said the traveller with the knapsack,
+turning round and addressing himself cheerfully to a fat,
+sly-looking, bald-headed man, with a dirty white apron on, who
+had followed him down the passage.&nbsp; &lsquo;No, Mr. landlord,
+I am not easily scared by trifles; but, I don&rsquo;t mind
+confessing that I can&rsquo;t quite stand <i>that</i>.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>It occurred to young Holliday, the moment he heard these
+words, that the stranger had been asked an exorbitant price for a
+bed at The Two Robins; and that he was unable or unwilling to pay
+it.&nbsp; The moment his back was turned, Arthur, comfortably
+conscious of his own well-filled pockets, addressed himself in a
+great hurry, for fear any other benighted traveller should slip
+in and forestall him, to the sly-looking landlord with the dirty
+apron and the bald head.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;If you have got a bed to let,&rsquo; he said,
+&lsquo;and if that gentleman who has just gone out won&rsquo;t
+pay your price for it, I will.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The sly landlord looked hard at Arthur.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Will you, sir?&rsquo; he asked, in a meditative,
+doubtful way.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Name your price,&rsquo; said young Holliday, thinking
+that the landlord&rsquo;s hesitation sprang from some boorish
+distrust of him.&nbsp; &lsquo;Name your price, and I&rsquo;ll
+give you the money at once if you like?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Are you game for five shillings?&rsquo; inquired the
+landlord, rubbing his stubbly double chin, and looking up
+thoughtfully at the ceiling above him.</p>
+<p>Arthur nearly laughed in the man&rsquo;s face; but thinking it
+prudent to control himself, offered the five shillings as
+seriously as he could.&nbsp; The sly landlord held out his hand,
+then suddenly drew it back again.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You&rsquo;re acting all fair and above-board by
+me,&rsquo; he said: &lsquo;and, before I take your money,
+I&rsquo;ll do the same by you.&nbsp; Look here, this is how it
+stands.&nbsp; You can have a bed all to yourself for five
+shillings; but you can&rsquo;t have more than a half-share of the
+room it stands in.&nbsp; Do you see what I mean, young
+gentleman?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Of course I do,&rsquo; returned Arthur, a little
+irritably.&nbsp; &lsquo;You mean that it is a double-bedded room,
+and that one of the beds is occupied?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The landlord nodded his head, and rubbed his double chin
+harder than ever.&nbsp; Arthur hesitated, and mechanically moved
+back a step or two towards the door.&nbsp; The idea of sleeping
+in the same room with a total stranger, did not present an
+attractive prospect to him.&nbsp; He felt more than half inclined
+to drop his five shillings into his pocket, and to go out into
+the street once more.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Is it yes, or no?&rsquo; asked the landlord.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Settle it as quick as you can, because there&rsquo;s lots
+of people wanting a bed at Doncaster to-night, besides
+you.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Arthur looked towards the court, and heard the rain falling
+heavily in the street outside.&nbsp; He thought he would ask a
+question or two before he rashly decided on leaving the shelter
+of The Two Robins.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What sort of a man is it who has got the other
+bed?&rsquo; he inquired.&nbsp; &lsquo;Is he a gentleman?&nbsp; I
+mean, is he a quiet, well-behaved person?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The quietest man I ever came across,&rsquo; said the
+landlord, rubbing his fat hands stealthily one over the
+other.&nbsp; &lsquo;As sober as a judge, and as regular as
+clock-work in his habits.&nbsp; It hasn&rsquo;t struck nine, not
+ten minutes ago, and he&rsquo;s in his bed already.&nbsp; I
+don&rsquo;t know whether that comes up to your notion of a quiet
+man: it goes a long way ahead of mine, I can tell you.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Is he asleep, do you think?&rsquo; asked Arthur.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I know he&rsquo;s asleep,&rsquo; returned the
+landlord.&nbsp; &lsquo;And what&rsquo;s more, he&rsquo;s gone off
+so fast, that I&rsquo;ll warrant you don&rsquo;t wake him.&nbsp;
+This way, sir,&rsquo; said the landlord, speaking over young
+Holliday&rsquo;s shoulder, as if he was addressing some new guest
+who was approaching the house.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Here you are,&rsquo; said Arthur, determined to be
+beforehand with the stranger, whoever he might be.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I&rsquo;ll take the bed.&rsquo;&nbsp; And he handed the
+five shillings to the landlord, who nodded, dropped the money
+carelessly into his waistcoat-pocket, and lighted the candle.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Come up and see the room,&rsquo; said the host of The
+Two Robins, leading the way to the staircase quite briskly,
+considering how fat he was.</p>
+<p>They mounted to the second-floor of the house.&nbsp; The
+landlord half opened a door, fronting the landing, then stopped,
+and turned round to Arthur.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It&rsquo;s a fair bargain, mind, on my side as well as
+on yours,&rsquo; he said.&nbsp; &lsquo;You give me five
+shillings, I give you in return a clean, comfortable bed; and I
+warrant, beforehand, that you won&rsquo;t be interfered with, or
+annoyed in any way, by the man who sleeps in the same room as
+you.&rsquo;&nbsp; Saying those words, he looked hard, for a
+moment, in young Holliday&rsquo;s face, and then led the way into
+the room.</p>
+<p>It was larger and cleaner than Arthur had expected it would
+be.&nbsp; The two beds stood parallel with each other&mdash;a
+space of about six feet intervening between them.&nbsp; They were
+both of the same medium size, and both had the same plain white
+curtains, made to draw, if necessary, all round them.&nbsp; The
+occupied bed was the bed nearest the window.&nbsp; The curtains
+were all drawn round this, except the half curtain at the bottom,
+on the side of the bed farthest from the window.&nbsp; Arthur saw
+the feet of the sleeping man raising the scanty clothes into a
+sharp little eminence, as if he was lying flat on his back.&nbsp;
+He took the candle, and advanced softly to draw the
+curtain&mdash;stopped half-way, and listened for a
+moment&mdash;then turned to the landlord.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He&rsquo;s a very quiet sleeper,&rsquo; said
+Arthur.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; said the landlord, &lsquo;very
+quiet.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Young Holliday advanced with the candle, and looked in at the
+man cautiously.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;How pale he is!&rsquo; said Arthur.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; returned the landlord, &lsquo;pale enough,
+isn&rsquo;t he?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Arthur looked closer at the man.&nbsp; The bedclothes were
+drawn up to his chin, and they lay perfectly still over the
+region of his chest.&nbsp; Surprised and vaguely startled, as he
+noticed this, Arthur stooped down closer over the stranger;
+looked at his ashy, parted lips; listened breathlessly for an
+instant; looked again at the strangely still face, and the
+motionless lips and chest; and turned round suddenly on the
+landlord, with his own cheeks as pale for the moment as the
+hollow cheeks of the man on the bed.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Come here,&rsquo; he whispered, under his breath.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Come here, for God&rsquo;s sake!&nbsp; The man&rsquo;s not
+asleep&mdash;he is dead!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You have found that out sooner than I thought you
+would,&rsquo; said the landlord, composedly.&nbsp; &lsquo;Yes,
+he&rsquo;s dead, sure enough.&nbsp; He died at five o&rsquo;clock
+to-day.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;How did he die?&nbsp; Who is he?&rsquo; asked Arthur,
+staggered, for a moment, by the audacious coolness of the
+answer.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;As to who is he,&rsquo; rejoined the landlord, &lsquo;I
+know no more about him than you do.&nbsp; There are his books and
+letters and things, all sealed up in that brown-paper parcel, for
+the Coroner&rsquo;s inquest to open to-morrow or next day.&nbsp;
+He&rsquo;s been here a week, paying his way fairly enough, and
+stopping in-doors, for the most part, as if he was ailing.&nbsp;
+My girl brought him up his tea at five to-day; and as he was
+pouring of it out, he fell down in a faint, or a fit, or a
+compound of both, for anything I know.&nbsp; We could not bring
+him to&mdash;and I said he was dead.&nbsp; And the doctor
+couldn&rsquo;t bring him to&mdash;and the doctor said he was
+dead.&nbsp; And there he is.&nbsp; And the Coroner&rsquo;s
+inquest&rsquo;s coming as soon as it can.&nbsp; And that&rsquo;s
+as much as I know about it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Arthur held the candle close to the man&rsquo;s lips.&nbsp;
+The flame still burnt straight up, as steadily as before.&nbsp;
+There was a moment of silence; and the rain pattered drearily
+through it against the panes of the window.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;If you haven&rsquo;t got nothing more to say to
+me,&rsquo; continued the landlord, &lsquo;I suppose I may
+go.&nbsp; You don&rsquo;t expect your five shillings back, do
+you?&nbsp; There&rsquo;s the bed I promised you, clean and
+comfortable.&nbsp; There&rsquo;s the man I warranted not to
+disturb you, quiet in this world for ever.&nbsp; If you&rsquo;re
+frightened to stop alone with him, that&rsquo;s not my look
+out.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ve kept my part of the bargain, and I mean to
+keep the money.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m not Yorkshire, myself, young
+gentleman; but I&rsquo;ve lived long enough in these parts to
+have my wits sharpened; and I shouldn&rsquo;t wonder if you found
+out the way to brighten up yours, next time you come amongst
+us.&rsquo;&nbsp; With these words, the landlord turned towards
+the door, and laughed to himself softly, in high satisfaction at
+his own sharpness.</p>
+<p>Startled and shocked as he was, Arthur had by this time
+sufficiently recovered himself to feel indignant at the trick
+that had been played on him, and at the insolent manner in which
+the landlord exulted in it.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Don&rsquo;t laugh,&rsquo; he said sharply, &lsquo;till
+you are quite sure you have got the laugh against me.&nbsp; You
+shan&rsquo;t have the five shillings for nothing, my man.&nbsp;
+I&rsquo;ll keep the bed.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Will you?&rsquo; said the landlord.&nbsp; &lsquo;Then I
+wish you a goodnight&rsquo;s rest.&rsquo;&nbsp; With that brief
+farewell, he went out, and shut the door after him.</p>
+<p>A good night&rsquo;s rest!&nbsp; The words had hardly been
+spoken, the door had hardly been closed, before Arthur
+half-repented the hasty words that had just escaped him.&nbsp;
+Though not naturally over-sensitive, and not wanting in courage
+of the moral as well as the physical sort, the presence of the
+dead man had an instantaneously chilling effect on his mind when
+he found himself alone in the room&mdash;alone, and bound by his
+own rash words to stay there till the next morning.&nbsp; An
+older man would have thought nothing of those words, and would
+have acted, without reference to them, as his calmer sense
+suggested.&nbsp; But Arthur was too young to treat the ridicule,
+even of his inferiors, with contempt&mdash;too young not to fear
+the momentary humiliation of falsifying his own foolish boast,
+more than he feared the trial of watching out the long night in
+the same chamber with the dead.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It is but a few hours,&rsquo; he thought to himself,
+&lsquo;and I can get away the first thing in the
+morning.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He was looking towards the occupied bed as that idea passed
+through his mind, and the sharp, angular eminence made in the
+clothes by the dead man&rsquo;s upturned feet again caught his
+eye.&nbsp; He advanced and drew the curtains, purposely
+abstaining, as he did so, from looking at the face of the corpse,
+lest he might unnerve himself at the outset by fastening some
+ghastly impression of it on his mind.&nbsp; He drew the curtain
+very gently, and sighed involuntarily as he closed it.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Poor fellow,&rsquo; he said, almost as sadly as if he had
+known the man.&nbsp; &lsquo;Ah, poor fellow!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He went next to the window.&nbsp; The night was black, and he
+could see nothing from it.&nbsp; The rain still pattered heavily
+against the glass.&nbsp; He inferred, from hearing it, that the
+window was at the back of the house; remembering that the front
+was sheltered from the weather by the court and the buildings
+over it.</p>
+<p>While he was still standing at the window&mdash;for even the
+dreary rain was a relief, because of the sound it made; a relief,
+also, because it moved, and had some faint suggestion, in
+consequence, of life and companionship in it&mdash;while he was
+standing at the window, and looking vacantly into the black
+darkness outside, he heard a distant church-clock strike
+ten.&nbsp; Only ten!&nbsp; How was he to pass the time till the
+house was astir the next morning?</p>
+<p>Under any other circumstances, he would have gone down to the
+public-house parlour, would have called for his grog, and would
+have laughed and talked with the company assembled as familiarly
+as if he had known them all his life.&nbsp; But the very thought
+of whiling away the time in this manner was distasteful to
+him.&nbsp; The new situation in which he was placed seemed to
+have altered him to himself already.&nbsp; Thus far, his life had
+been the common, trifling, prosaic, surface-life of a prosperous
+young man, with no troubles to conquer, and no trials to
+face.&nbsp; He had lost no relation whom he loved, no friend whom
+he treasured.&nbsp; Till this night, what share he had of the
+immortal inheritance that is divided amongst us all, had laid
+dormant within him.&nbsp; Till this night, Death and he had not
+once met, even in thought.</p>
+<p>He took a few turns up and down the room&mdash;then
+stopped.&nbsp; The noise made by his boots on the poorly carpeted
+floor, jarred on his ear.&nbsp; He hesitated a little, and ended
+by taking the boots off, and walking backwards and forwards
+noiselessly.&nbsp; All desire to sleep or to rest had left
+him.&nbsp; The bare thought of lying down on the unoccupied bed
+instantly drew the picture on his mind of a dreadful mimicry of
+the position of the dead man.&nbsp; Who was he?&nbsp; What was
+the story of his past life?&nbsp; Poor he must have been, or he
+would not have stopped at such a place as The Two Robins
+Inn&mdash;and weakened, probably, by long illness, or he could
+hardly have died in the manner in which the landlord had
+described.&nbsp; Poor, ill, lonely,&mdash;dead in a strange
+place; dead, with nobody but a stranger to pity him.&nbsp; A sad
+story: truly, on the mere face of it, a very sad story.</p>
+<p>While these thoughts were passing through his mind, he had
+stopped insensibly at the window, close to which stood the foot
+of the bed with the closed curtains.&nbsp; At first he looked at
+it absently; then he became conscious that his eyes were fixed on
+it; and then, a perverse desire took possession of him to do the
+very thing which he had resolved not to do, up to this
+time&mdash;to look at the dead man.</p>
+<p>He stretched out his hand towards the curtains; but checked
+himself in the very act of undrawing them, turned his back
+sharply on the bed, and walked towards the chimney-piece, to see
+what things were placed on it, and to try if he could keep the
+dead man out of his mind in that way.</p>
+<p>There was a pewter inkstand on the chimney-piece, with some
+mildewed remains of ink in the bottle.&nbsp; There were two
+coarse china ornaments of the commonest kind; and there was a
+square of embossed card, dirty and fly-blown, with a collection
+of wretched riddles printed on it, in all sorts of zig-zag
+directions, and in variously coloured inks.&nbsp; He took the
+card, and went away, to read it, to the table on which the candle
+was placed; sitting down, with his back resolutely turned to the
+curtained bed.</p>
+<p>He read the first riddle, the second, the third, all in one
+corner of the card&mdash;then turned it round impatiently to look
+at another.&nbsp; Before he could begin reading the riddles
+printed here, the sound of the church-clock stopped him.&nbsp;
+Eleven.&nbsp; He had got through an hour of the time, in the room
+with the dead man.</p>
+<p>Once more he looked at the card.&nbsp; It was not easy to make
+out the letters printed on it, in consequence of the dimness of
+the light which the landlord had left him&mdash;a common tallow
+candle, furnished with a pair of heavy old-fashioned steel
+snuffers.&nbsp; Up to this time, his mind had been too much
+occupied to think of the light.&nbsp; He had left the wick of the
+candle unsnuffed, till it had risen higher than the flame, and
+had burnt into an odd pent-house shape at the top, from which
+morsels of the charred cotton fell off, from time to time, in
+little flakes.&nbsp; He took up the snuffers now, and trimmed the
+wick.&nbsp; The light brightened directly, and the room became
+less dismal.</p>
+<p>Again he turned to the riddles; reading them doggedly and
+resolutely, now in one corner of the card, now in another.&nbsp;
+All his efforts, however, could not fix his attention on
+them.&nbsp; He pursued his occupation mechanically, deriving no
+sort of impression from what he was reading.&nbsp; It was as if a
+shadow from the curtained bed had got between his mind and the
+gaily printed letters&mdash;a shadow that nothing could
+dispel.&nbsp; At last, he gave up the struggle, and threw the
+card from him impatiently, and took to walking softly up and down
+the room again.</p>
+<p>The dead man, the dead man, the <i>hidden</i> dead man on the
+bed!&nbsp; There was the one persistent idea still haunting
+him.&nbsp; Hidden?&nbsp; Was it only the body being there, or was
+it the body being there, concealed, that was preying on his
+mind?&nbsp; He stopped at the window, with that doubt in him;
+once more listening to the pattering rain, once more looking out
+into the black darkness.</p>
+<p>Still the dead man!&nbsp; The darkness forced his mind back
+upon itself, and set his memory at work, reviving, with a
+painfully-vivid distinctness the momentary impression it had
+received from the first sight of the corpse.&nbsp; Before long
+the face seemed to be hovering out in the middle of the darkness,
+confronting him through the window, with the paleness whiter,
+with the dreadful dull line of light between the
+imperfectly-closed eyelids broader than he had seen it&mdash;with
+the parted lips slowly dropping farther and farther away from
+each other&mdash;with the features growing larger and moving
+closer, till they seemed to fill the window and to silence the
+rain, and to shut out the night.</p>
+<p>The sound of a voice, shouting below-stairs, woke him suddenly
+from the dream of his own distempered fancy.&nbsp; He recognised
+it as the voice of the landlord.&nbsp; &lsquo;Shut up at twelve,
+Ben,&rsquo; he heard it say.&nbsp; &lsquo;I&rsquo;m off to
+bed.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He wiped away the damp that had gathered on his forehead,
+reasoned with himself for a little while, and resolved to shake
+his mind free of the ghastly counterfeit which still clung to it,
+by forcing himself to confront, if it was only for a moment, the
+solemn reality.&nbsp; Without allowing himself an instant to
+hesitate, he parted the curtains at the foot of the bed, and
+looked through.</p>
+<p>There was a sad, peaceful, white face, with the awful mystery
+of stillness on it, laid back upon the pillow.&nbsp; No stir, no
+change there!&nbsp; He only looked at it for a moment before he
+closed the curtains again&mdash;but that moment steadied him,
+calmed him, restored him&mdash;mind and body&mdash;to
+himself.</p>
+<p>He returned to his old occupation of walking up and down the
+room; persevering in it, this time, till the clock struck
+again.&nbsp; Twelve.</p>
+<p>As the sound of the clock-bell died away, it was succeeded by
+the confused noise, down-stairs, of the drinkers in the tap-room
+leaving the house.&nbsp; The next sound, after an interval of
+silence, was caused by the barring of the door, and the closing
+of the shutters, at the back of the Inn.&nbsp; Then the silence
+followed again, and was disturbed no more.</p>
+<p>He was alone now&mdash;absolutely, utterly, alone with the
+dead man, till the next morning.</p>
+<p>The wick of the candle wanted trimming again.&nbsp; He took up
+the snuffers&mdash;but paused suddenly on the very point of using
+them, and looked attentively at the candle&mdash;then back, over
+his shoulder, at the curtained bed&mdash;then again at the
+candle.&nbsp; It had been lighted, for the first time, to show
+him the way up-stairs, and three parts of it, at least, were
+already consumed.&nbsp; In another hour it would be burnt
+out.&nbsp; In another hour&mdash;unless he called at once to the
+man who had shut up the Inn, for a fresh candle&mdash;he would be
+left in the dark.</p>
+<p>Strongly as his mind had been affected since he had entered
+his room, his unreasonable dread of encountering ridicule, and of
+exposing his courage to suspicion, had not altogether lost its
+influence over him, even yet.&nbsp; He lingered irresolutely by
+the table, waiting till he could prevail on himself to open the
+door, and call, from the landing, to the man who had shut up the
+Inn.&nbsp; In his present hesitating frame of mind, it was a kind
+of relief to gain a few moments only by engaging in the trifling
+occupation of snuffing the candle.&nbsp; His hand trembled a
+little, and the snuffers were heavy and awkward to use.&nbsp;
+When he closed them on the wick, he closed them a hair&rsquo;s
+breadth too low.&nbsp; In an instant the candle was out, and the
+room was plunged in pitch darkness.</p>
+<p>The one impression which the absence of light immediately
+produced on his mind, was distrust of the curtained
+bed&mdash;distrust which shaped itself into no distinct idea, but
+which was powerful enough in its very vagueness, to bind him down
+to his chair, to make his heart beat fast, and to set him
+listening intently.&nbsp; No sound stirred in the room but the
+familiar sound of the rain against the window, louder and sharper
+now than he had heard it yet.</p>
+<p>Still the vague distrust, the inexpressible dread possessed
+him, and kept him to his chair.&nbsp; He had put his carpet-bag
+on the table, when he first entered the room; and he now took the
+key from his pocket, reached out his hand softly, opened the bag,
+and groped in it for his travelling writing-case, in which he
+knew that there was a small store of matches.&nbsp; When he had
+got one of the matches, he waited before he struck it on the
+coarse wooden table, and listened intently again, without knowing
+why.&nbsp; Still there was no sound in the room but the steady,
+ceaseless, rattling sound of the rain.</p>
+<p>He lighted the candle again, without another moment of delay
+and, on the instant of its burning up, the first object in the
+room that his eyes sought for was the curtained bed.</p>
+<p>Just before the light had been put out, he had looked in that
+direction, and had seen no change, no disarrangement of any sort,
+in the folds of the closely-drawn curtains.</p>
+<p>When he looked at the bed, now, he saw, hanging over the side
+of it, a long white hand.</p>
+<p>It lay perfectly motionless, midway on the side of the bed,
+where the curtain at the head and the curtain at the foot
+met.&nbsp; Nothing more was visible.&nbsp; The clinging curtains
+hid everything but the long white hand.</p>
+<p>He stood looking at it unable to stir, unable to call out;
+feeling nothing, knowing nothing, every faculty he possessed
+gathered up and lost in the one seeing faculty.&nbsp; How long
+that first panic held him he never could tell afterwards.&nbsp;
+It might have been only for a moment; it might have been for many
+minutes together.&nbsp; How he got to the bed&mdash;whether he
+ran to it headlong, or whether he approached it slowly&mdash;how
+he wrought himself up to unclose the curtains and look in, he
+never has remembered, and never will remember to his dying
+day.&nbsp; It is enough that he did go to the bed, and that he
+did look inside the curtains.</p>
+<p>The man had moved.&nbsp; One of his arms was outside the
+clothes; his face was turned a little on the pillow; his eyelids
+were wide open.&nbsp; Changed as to position, and as to one of
+the features, the face was, otherwise, fearfully and wonderfully
+unaltered.&nbsp; The dead paleness and the dead quiet were on it
+still.</p>
+<p>One glance showed Arthur this&mdash;one glance, before he flew
+breathlessly to the door, and alarmed the house.</p>
+<p>The man whom the landlord called &lsquo;Ben,&rsquo; was the
+first to appear on the stairs.&nbsp; In three words, Arthur told
+him what had happened, and sent him for the nearest doctor.</p>
+<p>I, who tell you this story, was then staying with a medical
+friend of mine, in practice at Doncaster, taking care of his
+patients for him, during his absence in London; and I, for the
+time being, was the nearest doctor.&nbsp; They had sent for me
+from the Inn, when the stranger was taken ill in the afternoon;
+but I was not at home, and medical assistance was sought for
+elsewhere.&nbsp; When the man from The Two Robins rang the
+night-bell, I was just thinking of going to bed.&nbsp; Naturally
+enough, I did not believe a word of his story about &lsquo;a dead
+man who had come to life again.&rsquo;&nbsp; However, I put on my
+hat, armed myself with one or two bottles of restorative
+medicine, and ran to the Inn, expecting to find nothing more
+remarkable, when I got there, than a patient in a fit.</p>
+<p>My surprise at finding that the man had spoken the literal
+truth was almost, if not quite, equalled by my astonishment at
+finding myself face to face with Arthur Holliday as soon as I
+entered the bedroom.&nbsp; It was no time then for giving or
+seeking explanations.&nbsp; We just shook hands amazedly; and
+then I ordered everybody but Arthur out of the room, and hurried
+to the man on the bed.</p>
+<p>The kitchen fire had not been long out.&nbsp; There was plenty
+of hot water in the boiler, and plenty of flannel to be
+had.&nbsp; With these, with my medicines, and with such help as
+Arthur could render under my direction, I dragged the man,
+literally, out of the jaws of death.&nbsp; In less than an hour
+from the time when I had been called in, he was alive and talking
+in the bed on which he had been laid out to wait for the
+Coroner&rsquo;s inquest.</p>
+<p>You will naturally ask me, what had been the matter with him;
+and I might treat you, in reply, to a long theory, plentifully
+sprinkled with, what the children call, hard words.&nbsp; I
+prefer telling you that, in this case, cause and effect could not
+be satisfactorily joined together by any theory whatever.&nbsp;
+There are mysteries in life, and the condition of it, which human
+science has not fathomed yet; and I candidly confess to you,
+that, in bringing that man back to existence, I was, morally
+speaking, groping haphazard in the dark.&nbsp; I know (from the
+testimony of the doctor who attended him in the afternoon) that
+the vital machinery, so far as its action is appreciable by our
+senses, had, in this case, unquestionably stopped; and I am
+equally certain (seeing that I recovered him) that the vital
+principle was not extinct.&nbsp; When I add, that he had suffered
+from a long and complicated illness, and that his whole nervous
+system was utterly deranged, I have told you all I really know of
+the physical condition of my dead-alive patient at The Two Robins
+Inn.</p>
+<p>When he &lsquo;came to,&rsquo; as the phrase goes, he was a
+startling object to look at, with his colourless face, his sunken
+cheeks, his wild black eyes, and his long black hair.&nbsp; The
+first question he asked me about himself, when he could speak,
+made me suspect that I had been called in to a man in my own
+profession.&nbsp; I mentioned to him my surmise; and he told me
+that I was right.</p>
+<p>He said he had come last from Paris, where he had been
+attached to a hospital.&nbsp; That he had lately returned to
+England, on his way to Edinburgh, to continue his studies; that
+he had been taken ill on the journey; and that he had stopped to
+rest and recover himself at Doncaster.&nbsp; He did not add a
+word about his name, or who he was: and, of course, I did not
+question him on the subject.&nbsp; All I inquired, when he ceased
+speaking, was what branch of the profession he intended to
+follow.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Any branch,&rsquo; he said, bitterly, &lsquo;which will
+put bread into the mouth of a poor man.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>At this, Arthur, who had been hitherto watching him in silent
+curiosity, burst out impetuously in his usual good-humoured
+way:&mdash;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My dear fellow!&rsquo; (everybody was &lsquo;my dear
+fellow&rsquo; with Arthur) &lsquo;now you have come to life
+again, don&rsquo;t begin by being down-hearted about your
+prospects.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ll answer for it, I can help you to some
+capital thing in the medical line&mdash;or, if I can&rsquo;t, I
+know my father can.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The medical student looked at him steadily.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Thank you,&rsquo; he said, coldly.&nbsp; Then added,
+&lsquo;May I ask who your father is?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He&rsquo;s well enough known all about this part of the
+country,&rsquo; replied Arthur.&nbsp; &lsquo;He is a great
+manufacturer, and his name is Holliday.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>My hand was on the man&rsquo;s wrist during this brief
+conversation.&nbsp; The instant the name of Holliday was
+pronounced I felt the pulse under my fingers flutter, stop, go on
+suddenly with a bound, and beat afterwards, for a minute or two,
+at the fever rate.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;How did you come here?&rsquo; asked the stranger,
+quickly, excitably, passionately almost.</p>
+<p>Arthur related briefly what had happened from the time of his
+first taking the bed at the inn.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am indebted to Mr. Holliday&rsquo;s son then for the
+help that has saved my life,&rsquo; said the medical student,
+speaking to himself, with a singular sarcasm in his voice.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Come here!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He held out, as he spoke, his long, white, bony, right
+hand.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;With all my heart,&rsquo; said Arthur, taking the
+hand-cordially.&nbsp; &lsquo;I may confess it now,&rsquo; he
+continued, laughing.&nbsp; &lsquo;Upon my honour, you almost
+frightened me out of my wits.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The stranger did not seem to listen.&nbsp; His wild black eyes
+were fixed with a look of eager interest on Arthur&rsquo;s face,
+and his long bony fingers kept tight hold of Arthur&rsquo;s
+hand.&nbsp; Young Holliday, on his side, returned the gaze,
+amazed and puzzled by the medical student&rsquo;s odd language
+and manners.&nbsp; The two faces were close together; I looked at
+them; and, to my amazement, I was suddenly impressed by the sense
+of a likeness between them&mdash;not in features, or complexion,
+but solely in expression.&nbsp; It must have been a strong
+likeness, or I should certainly not have found it out, for I am
+naturally slow at detecting resemblances between faces.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You have saved my life,&rsquo; said the strange man,
+still looking hard in Arthur&rsquo;s face, still holding tightly
+by his hand.&nbsp; &lsquo;If you had been my own brother, you
+could not have done more for me than that.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He laid a singularly strong emphasis on those three words
+&lsquo;my own brother,&rsquo; and a change passed over his face
+as he pronounced them,&mdash;a change that no language of mine is
+competent to describe.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I hope I have not done being of service to you
+yet,&rsquo; said Arthur.&nbsp; &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll speak to my
+father, as soon as I get home.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You seem to be fond and proud of your father,&rsquo;
+said the medical student.&nbsp; &lsquo;I suppose, in return, he
+is fond and proud of you?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Of course, he is!&rsquo; answered Arthur,
+laughing.&nbsp; &lsquo;Is there anything wonderful in that?&nbsp;
+Isn&rsquo;t <i>your</i> father fond&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The stranger suddenly dropped young Holliday&rsquo;s hand, and
+turned his face away.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I beg your pardon,&rsquo; said Arthur.&nbsp; &lsquo;I
+hope I have not unintentionally pained you.&nbsp; I hope you have
+not lost your father.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I can&rsquo;t well lose what I have never had,&rsquo;
+retorted the medical student, with a harsh, mocking laugh.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What you have never had!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The strange man suddenly caught Arthur&rsquo;s hand again,
+suddenly looked once more hard in his face.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; he said, with a repetition of the bitter
+laugh.&nbsp; &lsquo;You have brought a poor devil back into the
+world, who has no business there.&nbsp; Do I astonish you?&nbsp;
+Well!&nbsp; I have a fancy of my own for telling you what men in
+my situation generally keep a secret.&nbsp; I have no name and no
+father.&nbsp; The merciful law of Society tells me I am
+Nobody&rsquo;s Son!&nbsp; Ask your father if he will be my father
+too, and help me on in life with the family name.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Arthur looked at me, more puzzled than ever.&nbsp; I signed to
+him to say nothing, and then laid my fingers again on the
+man&rsquo;s wrist.&nbsp; No!&nbsp; In spite of the extraordinary
+speech that he had just made, he was not, as I had been disposed
+to suspect, beginning to get light-headed.&nbsp; His pulse, by
+this time, had fallen back to a quiet, slow beat, and his skin
+was moist and cool.&nbsp; Not a symptom of fever or agitation
+about him.</p>
+<p>Finding that neither of us answered him, he turned to me, and
+began talking of the extraordinary nature of his case, and asking
+my advice about the future course of medical treatment to which
+he ought to subject himself.&nbsp; I said the matter required
+careful thinking over, and suggested that I should submit certain
+prescriptions to him the next morning.&nbsp; He told me to write
+them at once, as he would, most likely, be leaving Doncaster, in
+the morning, before I was up.&nbsp; It was quite useless to
+represent to him the folly and danger of such a proceeding as
+this.&nbsp; He heard me politely and patiently, but held to his
+resolution, without offering any reasons or any explanations, and
+repeated to me, that if I wished to give him a chance of seeing
+my prescription, I must write it at once.&nbsp; Hearing this,
+Arthur volunteered the loan of a travelling writing-case, which,
+he said, he had with him; and, bringing it to the bed, shook the
+note-paper out of the pocket of the case forthwith in his usual
+careless way.&nbsp; With the paper, there fell out on the
+counterpane of the bed a small packet of sticking-plaster, and a
+little water-colour drawing of a landscape.</p>
+<p>The medical student took up the drawing and looked at
+it.&nbsp; His eye fell on some initials neatly written, in
+cypher, in one corner.&nbsp; He started and trembled; his pale
+face grew whiter than ever; his wild black eyes turned on Arthur,
+and looked through and through him.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;A pretty drawing,&rsquo; he said in a remarkably quiet
+tone of voice.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah! and done by such a pretty girl,&rsquo; said
+Arthur.&nbsp; &lsquo;Oh, such a pretty girl!&nbsp; I wish it was
+not a landscape&mdash;I wish it was a portrait of her!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You admire her very much?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Arthur, half in jest, half in earnest, kissed his hand for
+answer.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Love at first sight!&rsquo; he said, putting the
+drawing away again.&nbsp; &lsquo;But the course of it
+doesn&rsquo;t run smooth.&nbsp; It&rsquo;s the old story.&nbsp;
+She&rsquo;s monopolised as usual.&nbsp; Trammelled by a rash
+engagement to some poor man who is never likely to get money
+enough to marry her.&nbsp; It was lucky I heard of it in time, or
+I should certainly have risked a declaration when she gave me
+that drawing.&nbsp; Here, doctor!&nbsp; Here is pen, ink, and
+paper all ready for you.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;When she gave you that drawing?&nbsp; Gave it.&nbsp;
+Gave it.&rsquo;&nbsp; He repeated the words slowly to himself,
+and suddenly closed his eyes.&nbsp; A momentary distortion passed
+across his face, and I saw one of his hands clutch up the
+bedclothes and squeeze them hard.&nbsp; I thought he was going to
+be ill again, and begged that there might be no more
+talking.&nbsp; He opened his eyes when I spoke, fixed them once
+more searchingly on Arthur, and said, slowly and distinctly,
+&lsquo;You like her, and she likes you.&nbsp; The poor man may
+die out of your way.&nbsp; Who can tell that she may not give you
+herself as well as her drawing, after all?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Before young Holliday could answer, he turned to me, and said
+in a whisper, &lsquo;Now for the prescription.&rsquo;&nbsp; From
+that time, though he spoke to Arthur again, he never looked at
+him more.</p>
+<p>When I had written the prescription, he examined it, approved
+of it, and then astonished us both by abruptly wishing us good
+night.&nbsp; I offered to sit up with him, and he shook his
+head.&nbsp; Arthur offered to sit up with him, and he said,
+shortly, with his face turned away, &lsquo;No.&rsquo;&nbsp; I
+insisted on having somebody left to watch him.&nbsp; He gave way
+when he found I was determined, and said he would accept the
+services of the waiter at the Inn.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Thank you, both,&rsquo; he said, as we rose to
+go.&nbsp; &lsquo;I have one last favour to ask&mdash;not of you,
+doctor, for I leave you to exercise your professional
+discretion&mdash;but of Mr. Holliday.&rsquo;&nbsp; His eyes,
+while he spoke, still rested steadily on me, and never once
+turned towards Arthur.&nbsp; &lsquo;I beg that Mr. Holliday will
+not mention to any one&mdash;least of all to his father&mdash;the
+events that have occurred, and the words that have passed, in
+this room.&nbsp; I entreat him to bury me in his memory, as, but
+for him, I might have been buried in my grave.&nbsp; I cannot
+give my reasons for making this strange request.&nbsp; I can only
+implore him to grant it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>His voice faltered for the first time, and he hid his face on
+the pillow.&nbsp; Arthur, completely bewildered, gave the
+required pledge.&nbsp; I took young Holliday away with me,
+immediately afterwards, to the house of my friend; determining to
+go back to the Inn, and to see the medical student again before
+he had left in the morning.</p>
+<p>I returned to the Inn at eight o&rsquo;clock, purposely
+abstaining from waking Arthur, who was sleeping off the past
+night&rsquo;s excitement on one of my friend&rsquo;s sofas.&nbsp;
+A suspicion had occurred to me as soon as I was alone in my
+bedroom, which made me resolve that Holliday and the stranger
+whose life he had saved should not meet again, if I could prevent
+it.&nbsp; I have already alluded to certain reports, or scandals,
+which I knew of, relating to the early life of Arthur&rsquo;s
+father.&nbsp; While I was thinking, in my bed, of what had passed
+at the Inn&mdash;of the change in the student&rsquo;s pulse when
+he heard the name of Holliday; of the resemblance of expression
+that I had discovered between his face and Arthur&rsquo;s; of the
+emphasis he had laid on those three words, &lsquo;my own
+brother;&rsquo; and of his incomprehensible acknowledgment of his
+own illegitimacy&mdash;while I was thinking of these things, the
+reports I have mentioned suddenly flew into my mind, and linked
+themselves fast to the chain of my previous reflections.&nbsp;
+Something within me whispered, &lsquo;It is best that those two
+young men should not meet again.&rsquo;&nbsp; I felt it before I
+slept; I felt it when I woke; and I went, as I told you, alone to
+the Inn the next morning.</p>
+<p>I had missed my only opportunity of seeing my nameless patient
+again.&nbsp; He had been gone nearly an hour when I inquired for
+him.</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p>I have now told you everything that I know for certain, in
+relation to the man whom I brought back to life in the
+double-bedded room of the Inn at Doncaster.&nbsp; What I have
+next to add is matter for inference and surmise, and is not,
+strictly speaking, matter of fact.</p>
+<p>I have to tell you, first, that the medical student turned out
+to be strangely and unaccountably right in assuming it as more
+than probable that Arthur Holliday would marry the young lady who
+had given him the water-colour drawing of the landscape.&nbsp;
+That marriage took place a little more than a year after the
+events occurred which I have just been relating.&nbsp; The young
+couple came to live in the neighbourhood in which I was then
+established in practice.&nbsp; I was present at the wedding, and
+was rather surprised to find that Arthur was singularly reserved
+with me, both before and after his marriage, on the subject of
+the young lady&rsquo;s prior engagement.&nbsp; He only referred
+to it once, when we were alone, merely telling me, on that
+occasion, that his wife had done all that honour and duty
+required of her in the matter, and that the engagement had been
+broken off with the full approval of her parents.&nbsp; I never
+heard more from him than this.&nbsp; For three years he and his
+wife lived together happily.&nbsp; At the expiration of that
+time, the symptoms of a serious illness first declared themselves
+in Mrs. Arthur Holliday.&nbsp; It turned out to be a long,
+lingering, hopeless malady.&nbsp; I attended her
+throughout.&nbsp; We had been great friends when she was well,
+and we became more attached to each other than ever when she was
+ill.&nbsp; I had many long and interesting conversations with her
+in the intervals when she suffered least.&nbsp; The result of one
+of these conversations I may briefly relate, leaving you to draw
+any inferences from it that you please.</p>
+<p>The interview to which I refer, occurred shortly before her
+death.&nbsp; I called one evening, as usual, and found her alone,
+with a look in her eyes which told me that she had been
+crying.&nbsp; She only informed me at first, that she had been
+depressed in spirits; but, by little and little, she became more
+communicative, and confessed to me that she had been looking over
+some old letters, which had been addressed to her, before she had
+seen Arthur, by a man to whom she had been engaged to be
+married.&nbsp; I asked her how the engagement came to be broken
+off.&nbsp; She replied that it had not been broken off, but that
+it had died out in a very mysterious way.&nbsp; The person to
+whom she was engaged&mdash;her first love, she called
+him&mdash;was very poor, and there was no immediate prospect of
+their being married.&nbsp; He followed my profession, and went
+abroad to study.&nbsp; They had corresponded regularly, until the
+time when, as she believed, he had returned to England.&nbsp;
+From that period she heard no more of him.&nbsp; He was of a
+fretful, sensitive temperament; and she feared that she might
+have inadvertently done or said something that offended
+him.&nbsp; However that might be, he had never written to her
+again; and, after waiting a year, she had married Arthur.&nbsp; I
+asked when the first estrangement had begun, and found that the
+time at which she ceased to hear anything of her first lover
+exactly corresponded with the time at which I had been called in
+to my mysterious patient at The Two Robins Inn.</p>
+<p>A fortnight after that conversation, she died.&nbsp; In course
+of time, Arthur married again.&nbsp; Of late years, he has lived
+principally in London, and I have seen little or nothing of
+him.</p>
+<p>I have many years to pass over before I can approach to
+anything like a conclusion of this fragmentary narrative.&nbsp;
+And even when that later period is reached, the little that I
+have to say will not occupy your attention for more than a few
+minutes.&nbsp; Between six and seven years ago, the gentleman to
+whom I introduced you in this room, came to me, with good
+professional recommendations, to fill the position of my
+assistant.&nbsp; We met, not like strangers, but like
+friends&mdash;the only difference between us being, that I was
+very much surprised to see him, and that he did not appear to be
+at all surprised to see me.&nbsp; If he was my son or my brother,
+I believe he could not be fonder of me than he is; but he has
+never volunteered any confidences since he has been here, on the
+subject of his past life.&nbsp; I saw something that was familiar
+to me in his face when we first met; and yet it was also
+something that suggested the idea of change.&nbsp; I had a notion
+once that my patient at the Inn might be a natural son of Mr.
+Holliday&rsquo;s; I had another idea that he might also have been
+the man who was engaged to Arthur&rsquo;s first wife; and I have
+a third idea, still clinging to me, that Mr. Lorn is the only man
+in England who could really enlighten me, if he chose, on both
+those doubtful points.&nbsp; His hair is not black, now, and his
+eyes are dimmer than the piercing eyes that I remember, but, for
+all that, he is very like the nameless medical student of my
+young days&mdash;very like him.&nbsp; And, sometimes, when I come
+home late at night, and find him asleep, and wake him, he looks,
+in coming to, wonderfully like the stranger at Doncaster, as he
+raised himself in the bed on that memorable night!</p>
+<p>The Doctor paused.&nbsp; Mr. Goodchild, who had been following
+every word that fell from his lips up to this time, leaned
+forward eagerly to ask a question.&nbsp; Before he could say a
+word, the latch of the door was raised, without any warning sound
+of footsteps in the passage outside.&nbsp; A long, white, bony
+hand appeared through the opening, gently pushing the door, which
+was prevented from working freely on its hinges by a fold in the
+carpet under it.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;That hand!&nbsp; Look at that hand, Doctor!&rsquo; said
+Mr. Goodchild, touching him.</p>
+<p>At the same moment, the Doctor looked at Mr. Goodchild, and
+whispered to him, significantly:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Hush! he has come back.&rsquo;</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> Cumberland Doctor&rsquo;s
+mention of Doncaster Races, inspired Mr. Francis Goodchild with
+the idea of going down to Doncaster to see the races.&nbsp;
+Doncaster being a good way off, and quite out of the way of the
+Idle Apprentices (if anything could be out of their way, who had
+no way), it necessarily followed that Francis perceived Doncaster
+in the race-week to be, of all possible idleness, the particular
+idleness that would completely satisfy him.</p>
+<p>Thomas, with an enforced idleness grafted on the natural and
+voluntary power of his disposition, was not of this mind;
+objecting that a man compelled to lie on his back on a floor, a
+sofa, a table, a line of chairs, or anything he could get to lie
+upon, was not in racing condition, and that he desired nothing
+better than to lie where he was, enjoying himself in looking at
+the flies on the ceiling.&nbsp; But, Francis Goodchild, who had
+been walking round his companion in a circuit of twelve miles for
+two days, and had begun to doubt whether it was reserved for him
+ever to be idle in his life, not only overpowered this objection,
+but even converted Thomas Idle to a scheme he formed (another
+idle inspiration), of conveying the said Thomas to the sea-coast,
+and putting his injured leg under a stream of salt-water.</p>
+<p>Plunging into this happy conception headforemost, Mr.
+Goodchild immediately referred to the county-map, and ardently
+discovered that the most delicious piece of sea-coast to be found
+within the limits of England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Isle
+of Man, and the Channel Islands, all summed up together, was
+Allonby on the coast of Cumberland.&nbsp; There was the coast of
+Scotland opposite to Allonby, said Mr. Goodchild with enthusiasm;
+there was a fine Scottish mountain on that Scottish coast; there
+were Scottish lights to be seen shining across the glorious
+Channel, and at Allonby itself there was every idle luxury (no
+doubt) that a watering-place could offer to the heart of idle
+man.&nbsp; Moreover, said Mr. Goodchild, with his finger on the
+map, this exquisite retreat was approached by a coach-road, from
+a railway-station called Aspatria&mdash;a name, in a manner,
+suggestive of the departed glories of Greece, associated with one
+of the most engaging and most famous of Greek women.&nbsp; On
+this point, Mr. Goodchild continued at intervals to breathe a
+vein of classic fancy and eloquence exceedingly irksome to Mr.
+Idle, until it appeared that the honest English pronunciation of
+that Cumberland country shortened Aspatria into
+&lsquo;Spatter.&rsquo;&nbsp; After this supplementary discovery,
+Mr. Goodchild said no more about it.</p>
+<p>By way of Spatter, the crippled Idle was carried, hoisted,
+pushed, poked, and packed, into and out of carriages, into and
+out of beds, into and out of tavern resting-places, until he was
+brought at length within sniff of the sea.&nbsp; And now, behold
+the apprentices gallantly riding into Allonby in a one-horse fly,
+bent upon staying in that peaceful marine valley until the
+turbulent Doncaster time shall come round upon the wheel, in its
+turn among what are in sporting registers called the
+&lsquo;Fixtures&rsquo; for the month.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Do you see Allonby!&rsquo; asked Thomas Idle.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I don&rsquo;t see it yet,&rsquo; said Francis, looking
+out of window.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It must be there,&rsquo; said Thomas Idle.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I don&rsquo;t see it,&rsquo; returned Francis.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It must be there,&rsquo; repeated Thomas Idle,
+fretfully.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Lord bless me!&rsquo; exclaimed Francis, drawing in his
+head, &lsquo;I suppose this is it!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;A watering-place,&rsquo; retorted Thomas Idle, with the
+pardonable sharpness of an invalid, &lsquo;can&rsquo;t be five
+gentlemen in straw hats, on a form on one side of a door, and
+four ladies in hats and falls, on a form on another side of a
+door, and three geese in a dirty little brook before them, and a
+boy&rsquo;s legs hanging over a bridge (with a boy&rsquo;s body I
+suppose on the other side of the parapet), and a donkey running
+away.&nbsp; What are you talking about?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Allonby, gentlemen,&rsquo; said the most comfortable of
+landladies as she opened one door of the carriage;
+&lsquo;Allonby, gentlemen,&rsquo; said the most attentive of
+landlords, as he opened the other.</p>
+<p>Thomas Idle yielded his arm to the ready Goodchild, and
+descended from the vehicle.&nbsp; Thomas, now just able to grope
+his way along, in a doubled-up condition, with the aid of two
+thick sticks, was no bad embodiment of Commodore Trunnion, or of
+one of those many gallant Admirals of the stage, who have all
+ample fortunes, gout, thick sticks, tempers, wards, and
+nephews.&nbsp; With this distinguished naval appearance upon him,
+Thomas made a crab-like progress up a clean little bulk-headed
+staircase, into a clean little bulk-headed room, where he slowly
+deposited himself on a sofa, with a stick on either hand of him,
+looking exceedingly grim.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Francis,&rsquo; said Thomas Idle, &lsquo;what do you
+think of this place?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I think,&rsquo; returned Mr. Goodchild, in a glowing
+way, &lsquo;it is everything we expected.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Hah!&rsquo; said Thomas Idle.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;There is the sea,&rsquo; cried Mr. Goodchild, pointing
+out of window; &lsquo;and here,&rsquo; pointing to the lunch on
+the table, &lsquo;are shrimps.&nbsp; Let us&mdash;&rsquo; here
+Mr. Goodchild looked out of window, as if in search of something,
+and looked in again,&mdash;&lsquo;let us eat
+&rsquo;em.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The shrimps eaten and the dinner ordered, Mr. Goodchild went
+out to survey the watering-place.&nbsp; As Chorus of the Drama,
+without whom Thomas could make nothing of the scenery, he
+by-and-by returned, to have the following report screwed out of
+him.</p>
+<p>In brief, it was the most delightful place ever seen.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But,&rsquo; Thomas Idle asked, &lsquo;where is
+it?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It&rsquo;s what you may call generally up and down the
+beach, here and there,&rsquo; said Mr. Goodchild, with a twist of
+his hand.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Proceed,&rsquo; said Thomas Idle.</p>
+<p>It was, Mr. Goodchild went on to say, in cross-examination,
+what you might call a primitive place.&nbsp; Large?&nbsp; No, it
+was not large.&nbsp; Who ever expected it would be large?&nbsp;
+Shape?&nbsp; What a question to ask!&nbsp; No shape.&nbsp; What
+sort of a street?&nbsp; Why, no street.&nbsp; Shops?&nbsp; Yes,
+of course (quite indignant).&nbsp; How many?&nbsp; Who ever went
+into a place to count the shops?&nbsp; Ever so many.&nbsp;
+Six?&nbsp; Perhaps.&nbsp; A library?&nbsp; Why, of course
+(indignant again).&nbsp; Good collection of books?&nbsp; Most
+likely&mdash;couldn&rsquo;t say&mdash;had seen nothing in it but
+a pair of scales.&nbsp; Any reading-room?&nbsp; Of course, there
+was a reading-room.&nbsp; Where?&nbsp; Where! why, over
+there.&nbsp; Where was over there?&nbsp; Why, <i>there</i>!&nbsp;
+Let Mr. Idle carry his eye to that bit of waste ground above
+high-water mark, where the rank grass and loose stones were most
+in a litter; and he would see a sort of long, ruinous brick loft,
+next door to a ruinous brick out-house, which loft had a ladder
+outside, to get up by.&nbsp; That was the reading-room, and if
+Mr. Idle didn&rsquo;t like the idea of a weaver&rsquo;s shuttle
+throbbing under a reading-room, that was his look out.&nbsp;
+<i>He</i> was not to dictate, Mr. Goodchild supposed (indignant
+again), to the company.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;By-the-by,&rsquo; Thomas Idle observed; &lsquo;the
+company?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Well! (Mr. Goodchild went on to report) very nice
+company.&nbsp; Where were they?&nbsp; Why, there they were.&nbsp;
+Mr. Idle could see the tops of their hats, he supposed.&nbsp;
+What?&nbsp; Those nine straw hats again, five gentlemen&rsquo;s
+and four ladies&rsquo;?&nbsp; Yes, to be sure.&nbsp; Mr.
+Goodchild hoped the company were not to be expected to wear
+helmets, to please Mr. Idle.</p>
+<p>Beginning to recover his temper at about this point, Mr.
+Goodchild voluntarily reported that if you wanted to be
+primitive, you could be primitive here, and that if you wanted to
+be idle, you could be idle here.&nbsp; In the course of some
+days, he added, that there were three fishing-boats, but no
+rigging, and that there were plenty of fishermen who never
+fished.&nbsp; That they got their living entirely by looking at
+the ocean.&nbsp; What nourishment they looked out of it to
+support their strength, he couldn&rsquo;t say; but, he supposed
+it was some sort of Iodine.&nbsp; The place was full of their
+children, who were always upside down on the public buildings
+(two small bridges over the brook), and always hurting themselves
+or one another, so that their wailings made more continual noise
+in the air than could have been got in a busy place.&nbsp; The
+houses people lodged in, were nowhere in particular, and were in
+capital accordance with the beach; being all more or less cracked
+and damaged as its shells were, and all empty&mdash;as its shells
+were.&nbsp; Among them, was an edifice of destitute appearance,
+with a number of wall-eyed windows in it, looking desperately out
+to Scotland as if for help, which said it was a Bazaar (and it
+ought to know), and where you might buy anything you
+wanted&mdash;supposing what you wanted, was a little camp-stool
+or a child&rsquo;s wheelbarrow.&nbsp; The brook crawled or
+stopped between the houses and the sea, and the donkey was always
+running away, and when he got into the brook he was pelted out
+with stones, which never hit him, and which always hit some of
+the children who were upside down on the public buildings, and
+made their lamentations louder.&nbsp; This donkey was the public
+excitement of Allonby, and was probably supported at the public
+expense.</p>
+<p>The foregoing descriptions, delivered in separate items, on
+separate days of adventurous discovery, Mr. Goodchild severally
+wound up, by looking out of window, looking in again, and saying,
+&lsquo;But there is the sea, and here are the shrimps&mdash;let
+us eat &rsquo;em.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>There were fine sunsets at Allonby when the low flat beach,
+with its pools of water and its dry patches, changed into long
+bars of silver and gold in various states of burnishing, and
+there were fine views&mdash;on fine days&mdash;of the Scottish
+coast.&nbsp; But, when it rained at Allonby, Allonby thrown back
+upon its ragged self, became a kind of place which the donkey
+seemed to have found out, and to have his highly sagacious
+reasons for wishing to bolt from.&nbsp; Thomas Idle observed,
+too, that Mr. Goodchild, with a noble show of disinterestedness,
+became every day more ready to walk to Maryport and back, for
+letters; and suspicions began to harbour in the mind of Thomas,
+that his friend deceived him, and that Maryport was a preferable
+place.</p>
+<p>Therefore, Thomas said to Francis on a day when they had
+looked at the sea and eaten the shrimps, &lsquo;My mind misgives
+me, Goodchild, that you go to Maryport, like the boy in the
+story-book, to ask <i>it</i> to be idle with you.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Judge, then,&rsquo; returned Francis, adopting the
+style of the story-book, &lsquo;with what success.&nbsp; I go to
+a region which is a bit of water-side Bristol, with a slice of
+Wapping, a seasoning of Wolverhampton, and a garnish of
+Portsmouth, and I say, &ldquo;Will <i>you</i> come and be idle
+with me?&rdquo;&nbsp; And it answers, &ldquo;No; for I am a great
+deal too vaporous, and a great deal too rusty, and a great deal
+too muddy, and a great deal too dirty altogether; and I have
+ships to load, and pitch and tar to boil, and iron to hammer, and
+steam to get up, and smoke to make, and stone to quarry, and
+fifty other disagreeable things to do, and I can&rsquo;t be idle
+with you.&rdquo;&nbsp; Then I go into jagged up-hill and
+down-hill streets, where I am in the pastrycook&rsquo;s shop at
+one moment, and next moment in savage fastnesses of moor and
+morass, beyond the confines of civilisation, and I say to those
+murky and black-dusty streets, &ldquo;Will <i>you</i> come and be
+idle with me?&rdquo;&nbsp; To which they reply, &ldquo;No, we
+can&rsquo;t, indeed, for we haven&rsquo;t the spirits, and we are
+startled by the echo of your feet on the sharp pavement, and we
+have so many goods in our shop-windows which nobody wants, and we
+have so much to do for a limited public which never comes to us
+to be done for, that we are altogether out of sorts and
+can&rsquo;t enjoy ourselves with any one.&rdquo;&nbsp; So I go to
+the Post-office, and knock at the shutter, and I say to the
+Post-master, &ldquo;Will <i>you</i> come and be idle with
+me?&rdquo;&nbsp; To which he rejoins, &ldquo;No, I really
+can&rsquo;t, for I live, as you may see, in such a very little
+Post-office, and pass my life behind such a very little shutter,
+that my hand, when I put it out, is as the hand of a giant
+crammed through the window of a dwarf&rsquo;s house at a fair,
+and I am a mere Post-office anchorite in a cell much too small
+for him, and I can&rsquo;t get out, and I can&rsquo;t get in, and
+I have no space to be idle in, even if I would.&rdquo;&nbsp; So,
+the boy,&rsquo; said Mr. Goodchild, concluding the tale,
+&lsquo;comes back with the letters after all, and lives happy
+never afterwards.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>But it may, not unreasonably, be asked&mdash;while Francis
+Goodchild was wandering hither and thither, storing his mind with
+perpetual observation of men and things, and sincerely believing
+himself to be the laziest creature in existence all the
+time&mdash;how did Thomas Idle, crippled and confined to the
+house, contrive to get through the hours of the day?</p>
+<p>Prone on the sofa, Thomas made no attempt to get through the
+hours, but passively allowed the hours to get through
+<i>him</i>.&nbsp; Where other men in his situation would have
+read books and improved their minds, Thomas slept and rested his
+body.&nbsp; Where other men would have pondered anxiously over
+their future prospects, Thomas dreamed lazily of his past
+life.&nbsp; The one solitary thing he did, which most other
+people would have done in his place, was to resolve on making
+certain alterations and improvements in his mode of existence, as
+soon as the effects of the misfortune that had overtaken him had
+all passed away.&nbsp; Remembering that the current of his life
+had hitherto oozed along in one smooth stream of laziness,
+occasionally troubled on the surface by a slight passing ripple
+of industry, his present ideas on the subject of self-reform,
+inclined him&mdash;not as the reader may be disposed to imagine,
+to project schemes for a new existence of enterprise and
+exertion&mdash;but, on the contrary, to resolve that he would
+never, if he could possibly help it, be active or industrious
+again, throughout the whole of his future career.</p>
+<p>It is due to Mr. Idle to relate that his mind sauntered
+towards this peculiar conclusion on distinct and
+logically-producible grounds.&nbsp; After reviewing, quite at his
+ease, and with many needful intervals of repose, the
+generally-placid spectacle of his past existence, he arrived at
+the discovery that all the great disasters which had tried his
+patience and equanimity in early life, had been caused by his
+having allowed himself to be deluded into imitating some
+pernicious example of activity and industry that had been set him
+by others.&nbsp; The trials to which he here alludes were three
+in number, and may be thus reckoned up: First, the disaster of
+being an unpopular and a thrashed boy at school; secondly, the
+disaster of falling seriously ill; thirdly, the disaster of
+becoming acquainted with a great bore.</p>
+<p>The first disaster occurred after Thomas had been an idle and
+a popular boy at school, for some happy years.&nbsp; One
+Christmas-time, he was stimulated by the evil example of a
+companion, whom he had always trusted and liked, to be untrue to
+himself, and to try for a prize at the ensuing half-yearly
+examination.&nbsp; He did try, and he got a prize&mdash;how, he
+did not distinctly know at the moment, and cannot remember
+now.&nbsp; No sooner, however, had the book&mdash;Moral Hints to
+the Young on the Value of Time&mdash;been placed in his hands,
+than the first troubles of his life began.&nbsp; The idle boys
+deserted him, as a traitor to their cause.&nbsp; The industrious
+boys avoided him, as a dangerous interloper; one of their number,
+who had always won the prize on previous occasions, expressing
+just resentment at the invasion of his privileges by calling
+Thomas into the play-ground, and then and there administering to
+him the first sound and genuine thrashing that he had ever
+received in his life.&nbsp; Unpopular from that moment, as a
+beaten boy, who belonged to no side and was rejected by all
+parties, young Idle soon lost caste with his masters, as he had
+previously lost caste with his schoolfellows.&nbsp; He had
+forfeited the comfortable reputation of being the one lazy member
+of the youthful community whom it was quite hopeless to
+punish.&nbsp; Never again did he hear the headmaster say
+reproachfully to an industrious boy who had committed a fault,
+&lsquo;I might have expected this in Thomas Idle, but it is
+inexcusable, sir, in you, who know better.&rsquo;&nbsp; Never
+more, after winning that fatal prize, did he escape the
+retributive imposition, or the avenging birch.&nbsp; From that
+time, the masters made him work, and the boys would not let him
+play.&nbsp; From that time his social position steadily declined,
+and his life at school became a perpetual burden to him.</p>
+<p>So, again, with the second disaster.&nbsp; While Thomas was
+lazy, he was a model of health.&nbsp; His first attempt at active
+exertion and his first suffering from severe illness are
+connected together by the intimate relations of cause and
+effect.&nbsp; Shortly after leaving school, he accompanied a
+party of friends to a cricket-field, in his natural and
+appropriate character of spectator only.&nbsp; On the ground it
+was discovered that the players fell short of the required
+number, and facile Thomas was persuaded to assist in making up
+the complement.&nbsp; At a certain appointed time, he was roused
+from peaceful slumber in a dry ditch, and placed before three
+wickets with a bat in his hand.&nbsp; Opposite to him, behind
+three more wickets, stood one of his bosom friends, filling the
+situation (as he was informed) of bowler.&nbsp; No words can
+describe Mr. Idle&rsquo;s horror and amazement, when he saw this
+young man&mdash;on ordinary occasions, the meekest and mildest of
+human beings&mdash;suddenly contract his eye-brows, compress his
+lips, assume the aspect of an infuriated savage, run back a few
+steps, then run forward, and, without the slightest previous
+provocation, hurl a detestably hard ball with all his might
+straight at Thomas&rsquo;s legs.&nbsp; Stimulated to
+preternatural activity of body and sharpness of eye by the
+instinct of self-preservation, Mr. Idle contrived, by jumping
+deftly aside at the right moment, and by using his bat
+(ridiculously narrow as it was for the purpose) as a shield, to
+preserve his life and limbs from the dastardly attack that had
+been made on both, to leave the full force of the deadly missile
+to strike his wicket instead of his leg; and to end the innings,
+so far as his side was concerned, by being immediately bowled
+out.&nbsp; Grateful for his escape, he was about to return to the
+dry ditch, when he was peremptorily stopped, and told that the
+other side was &lsquo;going in,&rsquo; and that he was expected
+to &lsquo;field.&rsquo;&nbsp; His conception of the whole art and
+mystery of &lsquo;fielding,&rsquo; may be summed up in the three
+words of serious advice which he privately administered to
+himself on that trying occasion&mdash;avoid the ball.&nbsp;
+Fortified by this sound and salutary principle, he took his own
+course, impervious alike to ridicule and abuse.&nbsp; Whenever
+the ball came near him, he thought of his shins, and got out of
+the way immediately.&nbsp; &lsquo;Catch it!&rsquo;&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Stop it!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Pitch it up!&rsquo; were
+cries that passed by him like the idle wind that he regarded
+not.&nbsp; He ducked under it, he jumped over it, he whisked
+himself away from it on either side.&nbsp; Never once, through
+the whole innings did he and the ball come together on anything
+approaching to intimate terms.&nbsp; The unnatural activity of
+body which was necessarily called forth for the accomplishment of
+this result threw Thomas Idle, for the first time in his life,
+into a perspiration.&nbsp; The perspiration, in consequence of
+his want of practice in the management of that particular result
+of bodily activity, was suddenly checked; the inevitable chill
+succeeded; and that, in its turn, was followed by a fever.&nbsp;
+For the first time since his birth, Mr. Idle found himself
+confined to his bed for many weeks together, wasted and worn by a
+long illness, of which his own disastrous muscular exertion had
+been the sole first cause.</p>
+<p>The third occasion on which Thomas found reason to reproach
+himself bitterly for the mistake of having attempted to be
+industrious, was connected with his choice of a calling in
+life.&nbsp; Having no interest in the Church, he appropriately
+selected the next best profession for a lazy man in
+England&mdash;the Bar.&nbsp; Although the Benchers of the Inns of
+Court have lately abandoned their good old principles, and oblige
+their students to make some show of studying, in Mr. Idle&rsquo;s
+time no such innovation as this existed.&nbsp; Young men who
+aspired to the honourable title of barrister were, very properly,
+not asked to learn anything of the law, but were merely required
+to eat a certain number of dinners at the table of their Hall,
+and to pay a certain sum of money; and were called to the Bar as
+soon as they could prove that they had sufficiently complied with
+these extremely sensible regulations.&nbsp; Never did Thomas move
+more harmoniously in concert with his elders and betters than
+when he was qualifying himself for admission among the barristers
+of his native country.&nbsp; Never did he feel more deeply what
+real laziness was in all the serene majesty of its nature, than
+on the memorable day when he was called to the Bar, after having
+carefully abstained from opening his law-books during his period
+of probation, except to fall asleep over them.&nbsp; How he could
+ever again have become industrious, even for the shortest period,
+after that great reward conferred upon his idleness, quite passes
+his comprehension.&nbsp; The kind Benchers did everything they
+could to show him the folly of exerting himself.&nbsp; They wrote
+out his probationary exercise for him, and never expected him
+even to take the trouble of reading it through when it was
+written.&nbsp; They invited him, with seven other choice spirits
+as lazy as himself, to come and be called to the Bar, while they
+were sitting over their wine and fruit after dinner.&nbsp; They
+put his oaths of allegiance, and his dreadful official
+denunciations of the Pope and the Pretender, so gently into his
+mouth, that he hardly knew how the words got there.&nbsp; They
+wheeled all their chairs softly round from the table, and sat
+surveying the young barristers with their backs to their bottles,
+rather than stand up, or adjourn to hear the exercises
+read.&nbsp; And when Mr. Idle and the seven unlabouring
+neophytes, ranged in order, as a class, with their backs
+considerately placed against a screen, had begun, in rotation, to
+read the exercises which they had not written, even then, each
+Bencher, true to the great lazy principle of the whole
+proceeding, stopped each neophyte before he had stammered through
+his first line, and bowed to him, and told him politely that he
+was a barrister from that moment.&nbsp; This was all the
+ceremony.&nbsp; It was followed by a social supper, and by the
+presentation, in accordance with ancient custom, of a pound of
+sweetmeats and a bottle of Madeira, offered in the way of needful
+refreshment, by each grateful neophyte to each beneficent
+Bencher.&nbsp; It may seem inconceivable that Thomas should ever
+have forgotten the great do-nothing principle instilled by such a
+ceremony as this; but it is, nevertheless, true, that certain
+designing students of industrious habits found him out, took
+advantage of his easy humour, persuaded him that it was
+discreditable to be a barrister and to know nothing whatever
+about the law, and lured him, by the force of their own evil
+example, into a conveyancer&rsquo;s chambers, to make up for lost
+time, and to qualify himself for practice at the Bar.&nbsp; After
+a fortnight of self-delusion, the curtain fell from his eyes; he
+resumed his natural character, and shut up his books.&nbsp; But
+the retribution which had hitherto always followed his little
+casual errors of industry followed them still.&nbsp; He could get
+away from the conveyancer&rsquo;s chambers, but he could not get
+away from one of the pupils, who had taken a fancy to
+him,&mdash;a tall, serious, raw-boned, hard-working, disputatious
+pupil, with ideas of his own about reforming the Law of Real
+Property, who has been the scourge of Mr. Idle&rsquo;s existence
+ever since the fatal day when he fell into the mistake of
+attempting to study the law.&nbsp; Before that time his friends
+were all sociable idlers like himself.&nbsp; Since that time the
+burden of bearing with a hard-working young man has become part
+of his lot in life.&nbsp; Go where he will now, he can never feel
+certain that the raw-boned pupil is not affectionately waiting
+for him round a corner, to tell him a little more about the Law
+of Real Property.&nbsp; Suffer as he may under the infliction, he
+can never complain, for he must always remember, with unavailing
+regret, that he has his own thoughtless industry to thank for
+first exposing him to the great social calamity of knowing a
+bore.</p>
+<p>These events of his past life, with the significant results
+that they brought about, pass drowsily through Thomas
+Idle&rsquo;s memory, while he lies alone on the sofa at Allonby
+and elsewhere, dreaming away the time which his fellow-apprentice
+gets through so actively out of doors.&nbsp; Remembering the
+lesson of laziness which his past disasters teach, and bearing in
+mind also the fact that he is crippled in one leg because he
+exerted himself to go up a mountain, when he ought to have known
+that his proper course of conduct was to stop at the bottom of
+it, he holds now, and will for the future firmly continue to
+hold, by his new resolution never to be industrious again, on any
+pretence whatever, for the rest of his life.&nbsp; The physical
+results of his accident have been related in a previous
+chapter.&nbsp; The moral results now stand on record; and, with
+the enumeration of these, that part of the present narrative
+which is occupied by the Episode of The Sprained Ankle may now
+perhaps be considered, in all its aspects, as finished and
+complete.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;How do you propose that we get through this present
+afternoon and evening?&rsquo; demanded Thomas Idle, after two or
+three hours of the foregoing reflections at Allonby.</p>
+<p>Mr. Goodchild faltered, looked out of window, looked in again,
+and said, as he had so often said before, &lsquo;There is the
+sea, and here are the shrimps;&mdash;let us eat
+&rsquo;em&rsquo;!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>But, the wise donkey was at that moment in the act of bolting:
+not with the irresolution of his previous efforts which had been
+wanting in sustained force of character, but with real vigour of
+purpose: shaking the dust off his mane and hind-feet at Allonby,
+and tearing away from it, as if he had nobly made up his mind
+that he never would be taken alive.&nbsp; At sight of this
+inspiring spectacle, which was visible from his sofa, Thomas Idle
+stretched his neck and dwelt upon it rapturously.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Francis Goodchild,&rsquo; he then said, turning to his
+companion with a solemn air, &lsquo;this is a delightful little
+Inn, excellently kept by the most comfortable of landladies and
+the most attentive of landlords, but&mdash;the donkey&rsquo;s
+right!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The words, &lsquo;There is the sea, and here are
+the&mdash;&rsquo; again trembled on the lips of Goodchild,
+unaccompanied however by any sound.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Let us instantly pack the portmanteaus,&rsquo; said
+Thomas Idle, &lsquo;pay the bill, and order a fly out, with
+instructions to the driver to follow the donkey!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mr. Goodchild, who had only wanted encouragement to disclose
+the real state of his feelings, and who had been pining beneath
+his weary secret, now burst into tears, and confessed that he
+thought another day in the place would be the death of him.</p>
+<p>So, the two idle apprentices followed the donkey until the
+night was far advanced.&nbsp; Whether he was recaptured by the
+town-council, or is bolting at this hour through the United
+Kingdom, they know not.&nbsp; They hope he may be still bolting;
+if so, their best wishes are with him.</p>
+<p>It entered Mr. Idle&rsquo;s head, on the borders of
+Cumberland, that there could be no idler place to stay at, except
+by snatches of a few minutes each, than a railway station.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;An intermediate station on a line&mdash;a
+junction&mdash;anything of that sort,&rsquo; Thomas
+suggested.&nbsp; Mr. Goodchild approved of the idea as eccentric,
+and they journeyed on and on, until they came to such a station
+where there was an Inn.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Here,&rsquo; said Thomas, &lsquo;we may be luxuriously
+lazy; other people will travel for us, as it were, and we shall
+laugh at their folly.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>It was a Junction-Station, where the wooden razors before
+mentioned shaved the air very often, and where the sharp
+electric-telegraph bell was in a very restless condition.&nbsp;
+All manner of cross-lines of rails came zig-zagging into it, like
+a Congress of iron vipers; and, a little way out of it, a
+pointsman in an elevated signal-box was constantly going through
+the motions of drawing immense quantities of beer at a
+public-house bar.&nbsp; In one direction, confused perspectives
+of embankments and arches were to be seen from the platform; in
+the other, the rails soon disentangled themselves into two tracks
+and shot away under a bridge, and curved round a corner.&nbsp;
+Sidings were there, in which empty luggage-vans and cattle-boxes
+often butted against each other as if they couldn&rsquo;t agree;
+and warehouses were there, in which great quantities of goods
+seemed to have taken the veil (of the consistency of tarpaulin),
+and to have retired from the world without any hope of getting
+back to it.&nbsp; Refreshment-rooms were there; one, for the
+hungry and thirsty Iron Locomotives where their coke and water
+were ready, and of good quality, for they were dangerous to play
+tricks with; the other, for the hungry and thirsty human
+Locomotives, who might take what they could get, and whose chief
+consolation was provided in the form of three terrific urns or
+vases of white metal, containing nothing, each forming a
+breastwork for a defiant and apparently much-injured woman.</p>
+<p>Established at this Station, Mr. Thomas Idle and Mr. Francis
+Goodchild resolved to enjoy it.&nbsp; But, its contrasts were
+very violent, and there was also an infection in it.</p>
+<p>First, as to its contrasts.&nbsp; They were only two, but they
+were Lethargy and Madness.&nbsp; The Station was either totally
+unconscious, or wildly raving.&nbsp; By day, in its unconscious
+state, it looked as if no life could come to it,&mdash;as if it
+were all rust, dust, and ashes&mdash;as if the last train for
+ever, had gone without issuing any Return-Tickets&mdash;as if the
+last Engine had uttered its last shriek and burst.&nbsp; One
+awkward shave of the air from the wooden razor, and everything
+changed.&nbsp; Tight office-doors flew open, panels yielded,
+books, newspapers, travelling-caps and wrappers broke out of
+brick walls, money chinked, conveyances oppressed by nightmares
+of luggage came careering into the yard, porters started up from
+secret places, ditto the much-injured women, the shining bell,
+who lived in a little tray on stilts by himself, flew into a
+man&rsquo;s hand and clamoured violently.&nbsp; The pointsman
+aloft in the signal-box made the motions of drawing, with some
+difficulty, hogsheads of beer.&nbsp; Down Train!&nbsp; More
+bear!&nbsp; Up Train!&nbsp; More beer.&nbsp; Cross junction
+Train!&nbsp; More beer!&nbsp; Cattle Train!&nbsp; More
+beer.&nbsp; Goods Train!&nbsp; Simmering, whistling, trembling,
+rumbling, thundering.&nbsp; Trains on the whole confusion of
+intersecting rails, crossing one another, bumping one another,
+hissing one another, backing to go forward, tearing into distance
+to come close.&nbsp; People frantic.&nbsp; Exiles seeking
+restoration to their native carriages, and banished to remoter
+climes.&nbsp; More beer and more bell.&nbsp; Then, in a minute,
+the Station relapsed into stupor as the stoker of the Cattle
+Train, the last to depart, went gliding out of it, wiping the
+long nose of his oil-can with a dirty pocket-handkerchief.</p>
+<p>By night, in its unconscious state, the Station was not so
+much as visible.&nbsp; Something in the air, like an enterprising
+chemist&rsquo;s established in business on one of the boughs of
+Jack&rsquo;s beanstalk, was all that could be discerned of it
+under the stars.&nbsp; In a moment it would break out, a
+constellation of gas.&nbsp; In another moment, twenty rival
+chemists, on twenty rival beanstalks, came into existence.&nbsp;
+Then, the Furies would be seen, waving their lurid torches up and
+down the confused perspectives of embankments and
+arches&mdash;would be heard, too, wailing and shrieking.&nbsp;
+Then, the Station would be full of palpitating trains, as in the
+day; with the heightening difference that they were not so
+clearly seen as in the day, whereas the Station walls, starting
+forward under the gas, like a hippopotamus&rsquo;s eyes, dazzled
+the human locomotives with the sauce-bottle, the cheap music, the
+bedstead, the distorted range of buildings where the patent safes
+are made, the gentleman in the rain with the registered umbrella,
+the lady returning from the ball with the registered respirator,
+and all their other embellishments.&nbsp; And now, the human
+locomotives, creased as to their countenances and purblind as to
+their eyes, would swarm forth in a heap, addressing themselves to
+the mysterious urns and the much-injured women; while the iron
+locomotives, dripping fire and water, shed their steam about
+plentifully, making the dull oxen in their cages, with heads
+depressed, and foam hanging from their mouths as their red looks
+glanced fearfully at the surrounding terrors, seem as though they
+had been drinking at half-frozen waters and were hung with
+icicles.&nbsp; Through the same steam would be caught glimpses of
+their fellow-travellers, the sheep, getting their white kid faces
+together, away from the bars, and stuffing the interstices with
+trembling wool.&nbsp; Also, down among the wheels, of the man
+with the sledge-hammer, ringing the axles of the fast
+night-train; against whom the oxen have a misgiving that he is
+the man with the pole-axe who is to come by-and-by, and so the
+nearest of them try to get back, and get a purchase for a thrust
+at him through the bars.&nbsp; Suddenly, the bell would ring, the
+steam would stop with one hiss and a yell, the chemists on the
+beanstalks would be busy, the avenging Furies would bestir
+themselves, the fast night-train would melt from eye and ear, the
+other trains going their ways more slowly would be heard faintly
+rattling in the distance like old-fashioned watches running down,
+the sauce-bottle and cheap music retired from view, even the
+bedstead went to bed, and there was no such visible thing as the
+Station to vex the cool wind in its blowing, or perhaps the
+autumn lightning, as it found out the iron rails.</p>
+<p>The infection of the Station was this:&mdash;When it was in
+its raving state, the Apprentices found it impossible to be
+there, without labouring under the delusion that they were in a
+hurry.&nbsp; To Mr. Goodchild, whose ideas of idleness were so
+imperfect, this was no unpleasant hallucination, and accordingly
+that gentleman went through great exertions in yielding to it,
+and running up and down the platform, jostling everybody, under
+the impression that he had a highly important mission somewhere,
+and had not a moment to lose.&nbsp; But, to Thomas Idle, this
+contagion was so very unacceptable an incident of the situation,
+that he struck on the fourth day, and requested to be moved.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;This place fills me with a dreadful sensation,&rsquo;
+said Thomas, &lsquo;of having something to do.&nbsp; Remove me,
+Francis.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Where would you like to go next?&rsquo; was the
+question of the ever-engaging Goodchild.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I have heard there is a good old Inn at Lancaster,
+established in a fine old house: an Inn where they give you
+Bride-cake every day after dinner,&rsquo; said Thomas Idle.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Let us eat Bride-cake without the trouble of being
+married, or of knowing anybody in that ridiculous
+dilemma.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mr. Goodchild, with a lover&rsquo;s sigh, assented.&nbsp; They
+departed from the Station in a violent hurry (for which, it is
+unnecessary to observe, there was not the least occasion), and
+were delivered at the fine old house at Lancaster, on the same
+night.</p>
+<p>It is Mr. Goodchild&rsquo;s opinion, that if a visitor on his
+arrival at Lancaster could be accommodated with a pole which
+would push the opposite side of the street some yards farther
+off, it would be better for all parties.&nbsp; Protesting against
+being required to live in a trench, and obliged to speculate all
+day upon what the people can possibly be doing within a
+mysterious opposite window, which is a shop-window to look at,
+but not a shop-window in respect of its offering nothing for sale
+and declining to give any account whatever of itself, Mr.
+Goodchild concedes Lancaster to be a pleasant place.&nbsp; A
+place dropped in the midst of a charming landscape, a place with
+a fine ancient fragment of castle, a place of lovely walks, a
+place possessing staid old houses richly fitted with old Honduras
+mahogany, which has grown so dark with time that it seems to have
+got something of a retrospective mirror-quality into itself, and
+to show the visitor, in the depth of its grain, through all its
+polish, the hue of the wretched slaves who groaned long ago under
+old Lancaster merchants.&nbsp; And Mr. Goodchild adds that the
+stones of Lancaster do sometimes whisper, even yet, of rich men
+passed away&mdash;upon whose great prosperity some of these old
+doorways frowned sullen in the brightest weather&mdash;that their
+slave-gain turned to curses, as the Arabian Wizard&rsquo;s money
+turned to leaves, and that no good ever came of it, even unto the
+third and fourth generations, until it was wasted and gone.</p>
+<p>It was a gallant sight to behold, the Sunday procession of the
+Lancaster elders to Church&mdash;all in black, and looking
+fearfully like a funeral without the Body&mdash;under the escort
+of Three Beadles.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Think,&rsquo; said Francis, as he stood at the Inn
+window, admiring, &lsquo;of being taken to the sacred edifice by
+three Beadles!&nbsp; I have, in my early time, been taken out of
+it by one Beadle; but, to be taken into it by three, O Thomas, is
+a distinction I shall never enjoy!&rsquo;</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">When</span> Mr. Goodchild had looked out
+of the Lancaster Inn window for two hours on end, with great
+perseverance, he begun to entertain a misgiving that he was
+growing industrious.&nbsp; He therefore set himself next, to
+explore the country from the tops of all the steep hills in the
+neighbourhood.</p>
+<p>He came back at dinner-time, red and glowing, to tell Thomas
+Idle what he had seen.&nbsp; Thomas, on his back reading,
+listened with great composure, and asked him whether he really
+had gone up those hills, and bothered himself with those views,
+and walked all those miles?</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Because I want to know,&rsquo; added Thomas,
+&lsquo;what you would say of it, if you were obliged to do
+it?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It would be different, then,&rsquo; said Francis.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;It would be work, then; now, it&rsquo;s play.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Play!&rsquo; replied Thomas Idle, utterly repudiating
+the reply.&nbsp; &lsquo;Play!&nbsp; Here is a man goes
+systematically tearing himself to pieces, and putting himself
+through an incessant course of training, as if he were always
+under articles to fight a match for the champion&rsquo;s belt,
+and he calls it Play!&nbsp; Play!&rsquo; exclaimed Thomas Idle,
+scornfully contemplating his one boot in the air.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;You <i>can&rsquo;t</i> play.&nbsp; You don&rsquo;t know
+what it is.&nbsp; You make work of everything.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The bright Goodchild amiably smiled.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;So you do,&rsquo; said Thomas.&nbsp; &lsquo;I mean
+it.&nbsp; To me you are an absolutely terrible fellow.&nbsp; You
+do nothing like another man.&nbsp; Where another fellow would
+fall into a footbath of action or emotion, you fall into a
+mine.&nbsp; Where any other fellow would be a painted butterfly,
+you are a fiery dragon.&nbsp; Where another man would stake a
+sixpence, you stake your existence.&nbsp; If you were to go up in
+a balloon, you would make for Heaven; and if you were to dive
+into the depths of the earth, nothing short of the other place
+would content you.&nbsp; What a fellow you are,
+Francis!&rsquo;&nbsp; The cheerful Goodchild laughed.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It&rsquo;s all very well to laugh, but I wonder you
+don&rsquo;t feel it to be serious,&rsquo; said Idle.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;A man who can do nothing by halves appears to me to be a
+fearful man.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Tom, Tom,&rsquo; returned Goodchild, &lsquo;if I can do
+nothing by halves, and be nothing by halves, it&rsquo;s pretty
+clear that you must take me as a whole, and make the best of
+me.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>With this philosophical rejoinder, the airy Goodchild clapped
+Mr. Idle on the shoulder in a final manner, and they sat down to
+dinner.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;By-the-by,&rsquo; said Goodchild, &lsquo;I have been
+over a lunatic asylum too, since I have been out.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He has been,&rsquo; exclaimed Thomas Idle, casting up
+his eyes, &lsquo;over a lunatic asylum!&nbsp; Not content with
+being as great an Ass as Captain Barclay in the pedestrian way,
+he makes a Lunacy Commissioner of himself&mdash;for
+nothing!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;An immense place,&rsquo; said Goodchild,
+&lsquo;admirable offices, very good arrangements, very good
+attendants; altogether a remarkable place.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And what did you see there?&rsquo; asked Mr. Idle,
+adapting Hamlet&rsquo;s advice to the occasion, and assuming the
+virtue of interest, though he had it not.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The usual thing,&rsquo; said Francis Goodchild, with a
+sigh.&nbsp; &lsquo;Long groves of blighted men-and-women-trees;
+interminable avenues of hopeless faces; numbers, without the
+slightest power of really combining for any earthly purpose; a
+society of human creatures who have nothing in common but that
+they have all lost the power of being humanly social with one
+another.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Take a glass of wine with me,&rsquo; said Thomas Idle,
+&lsquo;and let <i>us</i> be social.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;In one gallery, Tom,&rsquo; pursued Francis Goodchild,
+&lsquo;which looked to me about the length of the Long Walk at
+Windsor, more or less&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Probably less,&rsquo; observed Thomas Idle.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;In one gallery, which was otherwise clear of patients
+(for they were all out), there was a poor little dark-chinned,
+meagre man, with a perplexed brow and a pensive face, stooping
+low over the matting on the floor, and picking out with his thumb
+and forefinger the course of its fibres.&nbsp; The afternoon sun
+was slanting in at the large end-window, and there were cross
+patches of light and shade all down the vista, made by the unseen
+windows and the open doors of the little sleeping-cells on either
+side.&nbsp; In about the centre of the perspective, under an
+arch, regardless of the pleasant weather, regardless of the
+solitude, regardless of approaching footsteps, was the poor
+little dark-chinned, meagre man, poring over the matting.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;What are you doing there?&rdquo; said my conductor, when
+we came to him.&nbsp; He looked up, and pointed to the
+matting.&nbsp; &ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t do that, I think,&rdquo;
+said my conductor, kindly; &ldquo;if I were you, I would go and
+read, or I would lie down if I felt tired; but I wouldn&rsquo;t
+do that.&rdquo;&nbsp; The patient considered a moment, and
+vacantly answered, &ldquo;No, sir, I won&rsquo;t;
+I&rsquo;ll&mdash;I&rsquo;ll go and read,&rdquo; and so he lamely
+shuffled away into one of the little rooms.&nbsp; I turned my
+head before we had gone many paces.&nbsp; He had already come out
+again, and was again poring over the matting, and tracking out
+its fibres with his thumb and forefinger.&nbsp; I stopped to look
+at him, and it came into my mind, that probably the course of
+those fibres as they plaited in and out, over and under, was the
+only course of things in the whole wide world that it was left to
+him to understand&mdash;that his darkening intellect had narrowed
+down to the small cleft of light which showed him, &ldquo;This
+piece was twisted this way, went in here, passed under, came out
+there, was carried on away here to the right where I now put my
+finger on it, and in this progress of events, the thing was made
+and came to be here.&rdquo;&nbsp; Then, I wondered whether he
+looked into the matting, next, to see if it could show him
+anything of the process through which <i>he</i> came to be there,
+so strangely poring over it.&nbsp; Then, I thought how all of us,
+<span class="smcap">God</span> help us! in our different ways are
+poring over our bits of matting, blindly enough, and what
+confusions and mysteries we make in the pattern.&nbsp; I had a
+sadder fellow-feeling with the little dark-chinned, meagre man,
+by that time, and I came away.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mr. Idle diverting the conversation to grouse, custards, and
+bride-cake, Mr. Goodchild followed in the same direction.&nbsp;
+The bride-cake was as bilious and indigestible as if a real Bride
+had cut it, and the dinner it completed was an admirable
+performance.</p>
+<p>The house was a genuine old house of a very quaint
+description, teeming with old carvings, and beams, and panels,
+and having an excellent old staircase, with a gallery or upper
+staircase, cut off from it by a curious fence-work of old oak, or
+of the old Honduras Mahogany wood.&nbsp; It was, and is, and will
+be, for many a long year to come, a remarkably picturesque house;
+and a certain grave mystery lurking in the depth of the old
+mahogany panels, as if they were so many deep pools of dark
+water&mdash;such, indeed, as they had been much among when they
+were trees&mdash;gave it a very mysterious character after
+nightfall.</p>
+<p>When Mr. Goodchild and Mr. Idle had first alighted at the
+door, and stepped into the sombre, handsome old hall, they had
+been received by half-a-dozen noiseless old men in black, all
+dressed exactly alike, who glided up the stairs with the obliging
+landlord and waiter&mdash;but without appearing to get into their
+way, or to mind whether they did or no&mdash;and who had filed
+off to the right and left on the old staircase, as the guests
+entered their sitting-room.&nbsp; It was then broad, bright
+day.&nbsp; But, Mr. Goodchild had said, when their door was shut,
+&lsquo;Who on earth are those old men?&rsquo;&nbsp; And
+afterwards, both on going out and coming in, he had noticed that
+there were no old men to be seen.</p>
+<p>Neither, had the old men, or any one of the old men,
+reappeared since.&nbsp; The two friends had passed a night in the
+house, but had seen nothing more of the old men.&nbsp; Mr.
+Goodchild, in rambling about it, had looked along passages, and
+glanced in at doorways, but had encountered no old men; neither
+did it appear that any old men were, by any member of the
+establishment, missed or expected.</p>
+<p>Another odd circumstance impressed itself on their
+attention.&nbsp; It was, that the door of their sitting-room was
+never left untouched for a quarter of an hour.&nbsp; It was
+opened with hesitation, opened with confidence, opened a little
+way, opened a good way,&mdash;always clapped-to again without a
+word of explanation.&nbsp; They were reading, they were writing,
+they were eating, they were drinking, they were talking, they
+were dozing; the door was always opened at an unexpected moment,
+and they looked towards it, and it was clapped-to again, and
+nobody was to be seen.&nbsp; When this had happened fifty times
+or so, Mr. Goodchild had said to his companion, jestingly:
+&lsquo;I begin to think, Tom, there was something wrong with
+those six old men.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Night had come again, and they had been writing for two or
+three hours: writing, in short, a portion of the lazy notes from
+which these lazy sheets are taken.&nbsp; They had left off
+writing, and glasses were on the table between them.&nbsp; The
+house was closed and quiet.&nbsp; Around the head of Thomas Idle,
+as he lay upon his sofa, hovered light wreaths of fragrant
+smoke.&nbsp; The temples of Francis Goodchild, as he leaned back
+in his chair, with his two hands clasped behind his head, and his
+legs crossed, were similarly decorated.</p>
+<p>They had been discussing several idle subjects of speculation,
+not omitting the strange old men, and were still so occupied,
+when Mr. Goodchild abruptly changed his attitude to wind up his
+watch.&nbsp; They were just becoming drowsy enough to be stopped
+in their talk by any such slight check.&nbsp; Thomas Idle, who
+was speaking at the moment, paused and said, &lsquo;How goes
+it?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;One,&rsquo; said Goodchild.</p>
+<p>As if he had ordered One old man, and the order were promptly
+executed (truly, all orders were so, in that excellent hotel),
+the door opened, and One old man stood there.</p>
+<p>He did not come in, but stood with the door in his hand.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;One of the six, Tom, at last!&rsquo; said Mr.
+Goodchild, in a surprised whisper.&mdash;&lsquo;Sir, your
+pleasure?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Sir, <i>your</i> pleasure?&rsquo; said the One old
+man.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I didn&rsquo;t ring.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The bell did,&rsquo; said the One old man.</p>
+<p>He said <span class="smcap">Bell</span>, in a deep, strong
+way, that would have expressed the church Bell.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I had the pleasure, I believe, of seeing you,
+yesterday?&rsquo; said Goodchild.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I cannot undertake to say for certain,&rsquo; was the
+grim reply of the One old man.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I think you saw me?&nbsp; Did you not?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Saw <i>you</i>?&rsquo; said the old man.&nbsp; &lsquo;O
+yes, I saw you.&nbsp; But, I see many who never see
+me.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>A chilled, slow, earthy, fixed old man.&nbsp; A cadaverous old
+man of measured speech.&nbsp; An old man who seemed as unable to
+wink, as if his eyelids had been nailed to his forehead.&nbsp; An
+old man whose eyes&mdash;two spots of fire&mdash;had no more
+motion than if they had been connected with the back of his skull
+by screws driven through it, and rivetted and bolted outside,
+among his grey hair.</p>
+<p>The night had turned so cold, to Mr. Goodchild&rsquo;s
+sensations, that he shivered.&nbsp; He remarked lightly, and half
+apologetically, &lsquo;I think somebody is walking over my
+grave.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No,&rsquo; said the weird old man, &lsquo;there is no
+one there.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mr. Goodchild looked at Idle, but Idle lay with his head
+enwreathed in smoke.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No one there?&rsquo; said Goodchild.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;There is no one at your grave, I assure you,&rsquo;
+said the old man.</p>
+<p>He had come in and shut the door, and he now sat down.&nbsp;
+He did not bend himself to sit, as other people do, but seemed to
+sink bolt upright, as if in water, until the chair stopped
+him.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My friend, Mr. Idle,&rsquo; said Goodchild, extremely
+anxious to introduce a third person into the conversation.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am,&rsquo; said the old man, without looking at him,
+&lsquo;at Mr. Idle&rsquo;s service.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;If you are an old inhabitant of this place,&rsquo;
+Francis Goodchild resumed.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Perhaps you can decide a point my friend and I were in
+doubt upon, this morning.&nbsp; They hang condemned criminals at
+the Castle, I believe?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;<i>I</i> believe so,&rsquo; said the old man.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Are their faces turned towards that noble
+prospect?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Your face is turned,&rsquo; replied the old man,
+&lsquo;to the Castle wall.&nbsp; When you are tied up, you see
+its stones expanding and contracting violently, and a similar
+expansion and contraction seem to take place in your own head and
+breast.&nbsp; Then, there is a rush of fire and an earthquake,
+and the Castle springs into the air, and you tumble down a
+precipice.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>His cravat appeared to trouble him.&nbsp; He put his hand to
+his throat, and moved his neck from side to side.&nbsp; He was an
+old man of a swollen character of face, and his nose was
+immoveably hitched up on one side, as if by a little hook
+inserted in that nostril.&nbsp; Mr. Goodchild felt exceedingly
+uncomfortable, and began to think the night was hot, and not
+cold.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;A strong description, sir,&rsquo; he observed.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;A strong sensation,&rsquo; the old man rejoined.</p>
+<p>Again, Mr. Goodchild looked to Mr. Thomas Idle; but Thomas lay
+on his back with his face attentively turned towards the One old
+man, and made no sign.&nbsp; At this time Mr. Goodchild believed
+that he saw threads of fire stretch from the old man&rsquo;s eyes
+to his own, and there attach themselves.&nbsp; (Mr. Goodchild
+writes the present account of his experience, and, with the
+utmost solemnity, protests that he had the strongest sensation
+upon him of being forced to look at the old man along those two
+fiery films, from that moment.)</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I must tell it to you,&rsquo; said the old man, with a
+ghastly and a stony stare.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What?&rsquo; asked Francis Goodchild.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You know where it took place.&nbsp; Yonder!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Whether he pointed to the room above, or to the room below, or
+to any room in that old house, or to a room in some other old
+house in that old town, Mr. Goodchild was not, nor is, nor ever
+can be, sure.&nbsp; He was confused by the circumstance that the
+right forefinger of the One old man seemed to dip itself in one
+of the threads of fire, light itself, and make a fiery start in
+the air, as it pointed somewhere.&nbsp; Having pointed somewhere,
+it went out.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You know she was a Bride,&rsquo; said the old man.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I know they still send up Bride-cake,&rsquo; Mr.
+Goodchild faltered.&nbsp; &lsquo;This is a very oppressive
+air.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;She was a Bride,&rsquo; said the old man.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;She was a fair, flaxen-haired, large-eyed girl, who had no
+character, no purpose.&nbsp; A weak, credulous, incapable,
+helpless nothing.&nbsp; Not like her mother.&nbsp; No, no.&nbsp;
+It was her father whose character she reflected.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Her mother had taken care to secure everything to
+herself, for her own life, when the father of this girl (a child
+at that time) died&mdash;of sheer helplessness; no other
+disorder&mdash;and then He renewed the acquaintance that had once
+subsisted between the mother and Him.&nbsp; He had been put aside
+for the flaxen-haired, large-eyed man (or nonentity) with
+Money.&nbsp; He could overlook that for Money.&nbsp; He wanted
+compensation in Money.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;So, he returned to the side of that woman the mother,
+made love to her again, danced attendance on her, and submitted
+himself to her whims.&nbsp; She wreaked upon him every whim she
+had, or could invent.&nbsp; He bore it.&nbsp; And the more he
+bore, the more he wanted compensation in Money, and the more he
+was resolved to have it.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But, lo!&nbsp; Before he got it, she cheated him.&nbsp;
+In one of her imperious states, she froze, and never thawed
+again.&nbsp; She put her hands to her head one night, uttered a
+cry, stiffened, lay in that attitude certain hours, and
+died.&nbsp; And he had got no compensation from her in Money,
+yet.&nbsp; Blight and Murrain on her!&nbsp; Not a penny.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He had hated her throughout that second pursuit, and
+had longed for retaliation on her.&nbsp; He now counterfeited her
+signature to an instrument, leaving all she had to leave, to her
+daughter&mdash;ten years old then&mdash;to whom the property
+passed absolutely, and appointing himself the daughter&rsquo;s
+Guardian.&nbsp; When He slid it under the pillow of the bed on
+which she lay, He bent down in the deaf ear of Death, and
+whispered: &ldquo;Mistress Pride, I have determined a long time
+that, dead or alive, you must make me compensation in
+Money.&rdquo;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;So, now there were only two left.&nbsp; Which two were,
+He, and the fair flaxen-haired, large-eyed foolish daughter, who
+afterwards became the Bride.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He put her to school.&nbsp; In a secret, dark,
+oppressive, ancient house, he put her to school with a watchful
+and unscrupulous woman.&nbsp; &ldquo;My worthy lady,&rdquo; he
+said, &ldquo;here is a mind to be formed; will you help me to
+form it?&rdquo;&nbsp; She accepted the trust.&nbsp; For which
+she, too, wanted compensation in Money, and had it.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The girl was formed in the fear of him, and in the
+conviction, that there was no escape from him.&nbsp; She was
+taught, from the first, to regard him as her future
+husband&mdash;the man who must marry her&mdash;the destiny that
+overshadowed her&mdash;the appointed certainty that could never
+be evaded.&nbsp; The poor fool was soft white wax in their hands,
+and took the impression that they put upon her.&nbsp; It hardened
+with time.&nbsp; It became a part of herself.&nbsp; Inseparable
+from herself, and only to be torn away from her, by tearing life
+away from her.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Eleven years she had lived in the dark house and its
+gloomy garden.&nbsp; He was jealous of the very light and air
+getting to her, and they kept her close.&nbsp; He stopped the
+wide chimneys, shaded the little windows, left the strong-stemmed
+ivy to wander where it would over the house-front, the moss to
+accumulate on the untrimmed fruit-trees in the red-walled garden,
+the weeds to over-run its green and yellow walks.&nbsp; He
+surrounded her with images of sorrow and desolation.&nbsp; He
+caused her to be filled with fears of the place and of the
+stories that were told of it, and then on pretext of correcting
+them, to be left in it in solitude, or made to shrink about it in
+the dark.&nbsp; When her mind was most depressed and fullest of
+terrors, then, he would come out of one of the hiding-places from
+which he overlooked her, and present himself as her sole
+resource.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Thus, by being from her childhood the one embodiment
+her life presented to her of power to coerce and power to
+relieve, power to bind and power to loose, the ascendency over
+her weakness was secured.&nbsp; She was twenty-one years and
+twenty-one days old, when he brought her home to the gloomy
+house, his half-witted, frightened, and submissive Bride of three
+weeks.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p408b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"A submissive bride"
+title=
+"A submissive bride"
+ src="images/p408s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p>&lsquo;He had dismissed the governess by that time&mdash;what
+he had left to do, he could best do alone&mdash;and they came
+back, upon a rain night, to the scene of her long
+preparation.&nbsp; She turned to him upon the threshold, as the
+rain was dripping from the porch, and said:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;O sir, it is the Death-watch ticking for
+me!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Well!&rdquo; he answered.&nbsp; &ldquo;And if it
+were?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;O sir!&rdquo; she returned to him, &ldquo;look
+kindly on me, and be merciful to me!&nbsp; I beg your
+pardon.&nbsp; I will do anything you wish, if you will only
+forgive me!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;That had become the poor fool&rsquo;s constant song:
+&ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Forgive
+me!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;She was not worth hating; he felt nothing but contempt
+for her.&nbsp; But, she had long been in the way, and he had long
+been weary, and the work was near its end, and had to be worked
+out.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;You fool,&rdquo; he said.&nbsp; &ldquo;Go up the
+stairs!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;She obeyed very quickly, murmuring, &ldquo;I will do
+anything you wish!&rdquo;&nbsp; When he came into the
+Bride&rsquo;s Chamber, having been a little retarded by the heavy
+fastenings of the great door (for they were alone in the house,
+and he had arranged that the people who attended on them should
+come and go in the day), he found her withdrawn to the furthest
+corner, and there standing pressed against the paneling as if she
+would have shrunk through it: her flaxen hair all wild about her
+face, and her large eyes staring at him in vague terror.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;What are you afraid of?&nbsp; Come and sit down
+by me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;I will do anything you wish.&nbsp; I beg your
+pardon, sir.&nbsp; Forgive me!&rdquo;&nbsp; Her monotonous tune
+as usual.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Ellen, here is a writing that you must write out
+to-morrow, in your own hand.&nbsp; You may as well be seen by
+others, busily engaged upon it.&nbsp; When you have written it
+all fairly, and corrected all mistakes, call in any two people
+there may be about the house, and sign your name to it before
+them.&nbsp; Then, put it in your bosom to keep it safe, and when
+I sit here again to-morrow night, give it to me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;I will do it all, with the greatest care.&nbsp;
+I will do anything you wish.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t shake and tremble, then.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;I will try my utmost not to do it&mdash;if you
+will only forgive me!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Next day, she sat down at her desk, and did as she had
+been told.&nbsp; He often passed in and out of the room, to
+observe her, and always saw her slowly and laboriously writing:
+repeating to herself the words she copied, in appearance quite
+mechanically, and without caring or endeavouring to comprehend
+them, so that she did her task.&nbsp; He saw her follow the
+directions she had received, in all particulars; and at night,
+when they were alone again in the same Bride&rsquo;s Chamber, and
+he drew his chair to the hearth, she timidly approached him from
+her distant seat, took the paper from her bosom, and gave it into
+his hand.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It secured all her possessions to him, in the event of
+her death.&nbsp; He put her before him, face to face, that he
+might look at her steadily; and he asked her, in so many plain
+words, neither fewer nor more, did she know that?</p>
+<p>&lsquo;There were spots of ink upon the bosom of her white
+dress, and they made her face look whiter and her eyes look
+larger as she nodded her head.&nbsp; There were spots of ink upon
+the hand with which she stood before him, nervously plaiting and
+folding her white skirts.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He took her by the arm, and looked her, yet more
+closely and steadily, in the face.&nbsp; &ldquo;Now, die!&nbsp; I
+have done with you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;She shrunk, and uttered a low, suppressed cry.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;I am not going to kill you.&nbsp; I will not
+endanger my life for yours.&nbsp; Die!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He sat before her in the gloomy Bride&rsquo;s Chamber,
+day after day, night after night, looking the word at her when he
+did not utter it.&nbsp; As often as her large unmeaning eyes were
+raised from the hands in which she rocked her head, to the stern
+figure, sitting with crossed arms and knitted forehead, in the
+chair, they read in it, &ldquo;Die!&rdquo;&nbsp; When she dropped
+asleep in exhaustion, she was called back to shuddering
+consciousness, by the whisper, &ldquo;Die!&rdquo;&nbsp; When she
+fell upon her old entreaty to be pardoned, she was answered
+&ldquo;Die!&rdquo;&nbsp; When she had out-watched and
+out-suffered the long night, and the rising sun flamed into the
+sombre room, she heard it hailed with, &ldquo;Another day and not
+dead?&mdash;Die!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Shut up in the deserted mansion, aloof from all
+mankind, and engaged alone in such a struggle without any
+respite, it came to this&mdash;that either he must die, or
+she.&nbsp; He knew it very well, and concentrated his strength
+against her feebleness.&nbsp; Hours upon hours he held her by the
+arm when her arm was black where he held it, and bade her
+Die!</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It was done, upon a windy morning, before
+sunrise.&nbsp; He computed the time to be half-past four; but,
+his forgotten watch had run down, and he could not be sure.&nbsp;
+She had broken away from him in the night, with loud and sudden
+cries&mdash;the first of that kind to which she had given
+vent&mdash;and he had had to put his hands over her mouth.&nbsp;
+Since then, she had been quiet in the corner of the paneling
+where she had sunk down; and he had left her, and had gone back
+with his folded arms and his knitted forehead to his chair.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Paler in the pale light, more colourless than ever in
+the leaden dawn, he saw her coming, trailing herself along the
+floor towards him&mdash;a white wreck of hair, and dress, and
+wild eyes, pushing itself on by an irresolute and bending
+hand.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;O, forgive me!&nbsp; I will do anything.&nbsp;
+O, sir, pray tell me I may live!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Die!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Are you so resolved?&nbsp; Is there no hope for
+me?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Die!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Her large eyes strained themselves with wonder and
+fear; wonder and fear changed to reproach; reproach to blank
+nothing.&nbsp; It was done.&nbsp; He was not at first so sure it
+was done, but that the morning sun was hanging jewels in her
+hair&mdash;he saw the diamond, emerald, and ruby, glittering
+among it in little points, as he stood looking down at
+her&mdash;when he lifted her and laid her on her bed.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;She was soon laid in the ground.&nbsp; And now they
+were all gone, and he had compensated himself well.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He had a mind to travel.&nbsp; Not that he meant to
+waste his Money, for he was a pinching man and liked his Money
+dearly (liked nothing else, indeed), but, that he had grown tired
+of the desolate house and wished to turn his back upon it and
+have done with it.&nbsp; But, the house was worth Money, and
+Money must not be thrown away.&nbsp; He determined to sell it
+before he went.&nbsp; That it might look the less wretched and
+bring a better price, he hired some labourers to work in the
+overgrown garden; to cut out the dead wood, trim the ivy that
+drooped in heavy masses over the windows and gables, and clear
+the walks in which the weeds were growing mid-leg high.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He worked, himself, along with them.&nbsp; He worked
+later than they did, and, one evening at dusk, was left working
+alone, with his bill-hook in his hand.&nbsp; One autumn evening,
+when the Bride was five weeks dead.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;It grows too dark to work longer,&rdquo; he said
+to himself, &ldquo;I must give over for the night.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He detested the house, and was loath to enter it.&nbsp;
+He looked at the dark porch waiting for him like a tomb, and felt
+that it was an accursed house.&nbsp; Near to the porch, and near
+to where he stood, was a tree whose branches waved before the old
+bay-window of the Bride&rsquo;s Chamber, where it had been
+done.&nbsp; The tree swung suddenly, and made him start.&nbsp; It
+swung again, although the night was still.&nbsp; Looking up into
+it, he saw a figure among the branches.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It was the figure of a young man.&nbsp; The face looked
+down, as his looked up; the branches cracked and swayed; the
+figure rapidly descended, and slid upon its feet before
+him.&nbsp; A slender youth of about her age, with long light
+brown hair.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;What thief are you?&rdquo; he said, seizing the
+youth by the collar.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The young man, in shaking himself free, swung him a
+blow with his arm across the face and throat.&nbsp; They closed,
+but the young man got from him and stepped back, crying, with
+great eagerness and horror, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t touch me!&nbsp; I
+would as lieve be touched by the Devil!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He stood still, with his bill-hook in his hand, looking
+at the young man.&nbsp; For, the young man&rsquo;s look was the
+counterpart of her last look, and he had not expected ever to see
+that again.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;I am no thief.&nbsp; Even if I were, I would not
+have a coin of your wealth, if it would buy me the Indies.&nbsp;
+You murderer!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;What!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;I climbed it,&rdquo; said the young man,
+pointing up into the tree, &ldquo;for the first time, nigh four
+years ago.&nbsp; I climbed it, to look at her.&nbsp; I saw
+her.&nbsp; I spoke to her.&nbsp; I have climbed it, many a time,
+to watch and listen for her.&nbsp; I was a boy, hidden among its
+leaves, when from that bay-window she gave me this!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He showed a tress of flaxen hair, tied with a mourning
+ribbon.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Her life,&rdquo; said the young man, &ldquo;was
+a life of mourning.&nbsp; She gave me this, as a token of it, and
+a sign that she was dead to every one but you.&nbsp; If I had
+been older, if I had seen her sooner, I might have saved her from
+you.&nbsp; But, she was fast in the web when I first climbed the
+tree, and what could I do then to break it!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;In saying those words, he burst into a fit of sobbing
+and crying: weakly at first, then passionately.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Murderer!&nbsp; I climbed the tree on the night
+when you brought her back.&nbsp; I heard her, from the tree,
+speak of the Death-watch at the door.&nbsp; I was three times in
+the tree while you were shut up with her, slowly killing
+her.&nbsp; I saw her, from the tree, lie dead upon her bed.&nbsp;
+I have watched you, from the tree, for proofs and traces of your
+guilt.&nbsp; The manner of it, is a mystery to me yet, but I will
+pursue you until you have rendered up your life to the
+hangman.&nbsp; You shall never, until then, be rid of me.&nbsp; I
+loved her!&nbsp; I can know no relenting towards you.&nbsp;
+Murderer, I loved her!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The youth was bare-headed, his hat having fluttered
+away in his descent from the tree.&nbsp; He moved towards the
+gate.&nbsp; He had to pass&mdash;Him&mdash;to get to it.&nbsp;
+There was breadth for two old-fashioned carriages abreast; and
+the youth&rsquo;s abhorrence, openly expressed in every feature
+of his face and limb of his body, and very hard to bear, had
+verge enough to keep itself at a distance in.&nbsp; He (by which
+I mean the other) had not stirred hand or foot, since he had
+stood still to look at the boy.&nbsp; He faced round, now, to
+follow him with his eyes.&nbsp; As the back of the bare
+light-brown head was turned to him, he saw a red curve stretch
+from his hand to it.&nbsp; He knew, before he threw the
+bill-hook, where it had alighted&mdash;I say, had alighted, and
+not, would alight; for, to his clear perception the thing was
+done before he did it.&nbsp; It cleft the head, and it remained
+there, and the boy lay on his face.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He buried the body in the night, at the foot of the
+tree.&nbsp; As soon as it was light in the morning, he worked at
+turning up all the ground near the tree, and hacking and hewing
+at the neighbouring bushes and undergrowth.&nbsp; When the
+labourers came, there was nothing suspicious, and nothing
+suspected.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But, he had, in a moment, defeated all his precautions,
+and destroyed the triumph of the scheme he had so long concerted,
+and so successfully worked out.&nbsp; He had got rid of the
+Bride, and had acquired her fortune without endangering his life;
+but now, for a death by which he had gained nothing, he had
+evermore to live with a rope around his neck.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Beyond this, he was chained to the house of gloom and
+horror, which he could not endure.&nbsp; Being afraid to sell it
+or to quit it, lest discovery should be made, he was forced to
+live in it.&nbsp; He hired two old people, man and wife, for his
+servants; and dwelt in it, and dreaded it.&nbsp; His great
+difficulty, for a long time, was the garden.&nbsp; Whether he
+should keep it trim, whether he should suffer it to fall into its
+former state of neglect, what would be the least likely way of
+attracting attention to it?</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He took the middle course of gardening, himself, in his
+evening leisure, and of then calling the old serving-man to help
+him; but, of never letting him work there alone.&nbsp; And he
+made himself an arbour over against the tree, where he could sit
+and see that it was safe.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;As the seasons changed, and the tree changed, his mind
+perceived dangers that were always changing.&nbsp; In the leafy
+time, he perceived that the upper boughs were growing into the
+form of the young man&mdash;that they made the shape of him
+exactly, sitting in a forked branch swinging in the wind.&nbsp;
+In the time of the falling leaves, he perceived that they came
+down from the tree, forming tell-tale letters on the path, or
+that they had a tendency to heap themselves into a churchyard
+mound above the grave.&nbsp; In the winter, when the tree was
+bare, he perceived that the boughs swung at him the ghost of the
+blow the young man had given, and that they threatened him
+openly.&nbsp; In the spring, when the sap was mounting in the
+trunk, he asked himself, were the dried-up particles of blood
+mounting with it: to make out more obviously this year than last,
+the leaf-screened figure of the young man, swinging in the
+wind?</p>
+<p>&lsquo;However, he turned his Money over and over, and still
+over.&nbsp; He was in the dark trade, the gold-dust trade, and
+most secret trades that yielded great returns.&nbsp; In ten
+years, he had turned his Money over, so many times, that the
+traders and shippers who had dealings with him, absolutely did
+not lie&mdash;for once&mdash;when they declared that he had
+increased his fortune, Twelve Hundred Per Cent.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He possessed his riches one hundred years ago, when
+people could be lost easily.&nbsp; He had heard who the youth
+was, from hearing of the search that was made after him; but, it
+died away, and the youth was forgotten.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The annual round of changes in the tree had been
+repeated ten times since the night of the burial at its foot,
+when there was a great thunder-storm over this place.&nbsp; It
+broke at midnight, and roared until morning.&nbsp; The first
+intelligence he heard from his old serving-man that morning, was,
+that the tree had been struck by Lightning.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It had been riven down the stem, in a very surprising
+manner, and the stem lay in two blighted shafts: one resting
+against the house, and one against a portion of the old red
+garden-wall in which its fall had made a gap.&nbsp; The fissure
+went down the tree to a little above the earth, and there
+stopped.&nbsp; There was great curiosity to see the tree, and,
+with most of his former fears revived, he sat in his
+arbour&mdash;grown quite an old man&mdash;watching the people who
+came to see it.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;They quickly began to come, in such dangerous numbers,
+that he closed his garden-gate and refused to admit any
+more.&nbsp; But, there were certain men of science who travelled
+from a distance to examine the tree, and, in an evil hour, he let
+them in!&mdash;Blight and Murrain on them, let them in!</p>
+<p>&lsquo;They wanted to dig up the ruin by the roots, and
+closely examine it, and the earth about it.&nbsp; Never, while he
+lived!&nbsp; They offered money for it.&nbsp; They!&nbsp; Men of
+science, whom he could have bought by the gross, with a scratch
+of his pen!&nbsp; He showed them the garden-gate again, and
+locked and barred it.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But they were bent on doing what they wanted to do, and
+they bribed the old serving-man&mdash;a thankless wretch who
+regularly complained when he received his wages, of being
+underpaid&mdash;and they stole into the garden by night with
+their lanterns, picks, and shovels, and fell to at the
+tree.&nbsp; He was lying in a turret-room on the other side of
+the house (the Bride&rsquo;s Chamber had been unoccupied ever
+since), but he soon dreamed of picks and shovels, and got up.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He came to an upper window on that side, whence he
+could see their lanterns, and them, and the loose earth in a heap
+which he had himself disturbed and put back, when it was last
+turned to the air.&nbsp; It was found!&nbsp; They had that minute
+lighted on it.&nbsp; They were all bending over it.&nbsp; One of
+them said, &ldquo;The skull is fractured;&rdquo; and another,
+&ldquo;See here the bones;&rdquo; and another, &ldquo;See here
+the clothes;&rdquo; and then the first struck in again, and said,
+&ldquo;A rusty bill-hook!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He became sensible, next day, that he was already put
+under a strict watch, and that he could go nowhere without being
+followed.&nbsp; Before a week was out, he was taken and laid in
+hold.&nbsp; The circumstances were gradually pieced together
+against him, with a desperate malignity, and an appalling
+ingenuity.&nbsp; But, see the justice of men, and how it was
+extended to him!&nbsp; He was further accused of having poisoned
+that girl in the Bride&rsquo;s Chamber.&nbsp; He, who had
+carefully and expressly avoided imperilling a hair of his head
+for her, and who had seen her die of her own incapacity!</p>
+<p>&lsquo;There was doubt for which of the two murders he should
+be first tried; but, the real one was chosen, and he was found
+Guilty, and cast for death.&nbsp; Bloodthirsty wretches!&nbsp;
+They would have made him Guilty of anything, so set they were
+upon having his life.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;His money could do nothing to save him, and he was
+hanged.&nbsp; <i>I</i> am He, and I was hanged at Lancaster
+Castle with my face to the wall, a hundred years ago!&rsquo;</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p>At this terrific announcement, Mr. Goodchild tried to rise and
+cry out.&nbsp; But, the two fiery lines extending from the old
+man&rsquo;s eyes to his own, kept him down, and he could not
+utter a sound.&nbsp; His sense of hearing, however, was acute,
+and he could hear the clock strike Two.&nbsp; No sooner had he
+heard the clock strike Two, than he saw before him Two old
+men!</p>
+<p>Two.</p>
+<p>The eyes of each, connected with his eyes by two films of
+fire: each, exactly like the other: each, addressing him at
+precisely one and the same instant: each, gnashing the same teeth
+in the same head, with the same twitched nostril above them, and
+the same suffused expression around it.&nbsp; Two old men.&nbsp;
+Differing in nothing, equally distinct to the sight, the copy no
+fainter than the original, the second as real as the first.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;At what time,&rsquo; said the Two old men, &lsquo;did
+you arrive at the door below?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;At Six.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And there were Six old men upon the stairs!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mr. Goodchild having wiped the perspiration from his brow, or
+tried to do it, the Two old men proceeded in one voice, and in
+the singular number:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I had been anatomised, but had not yet had my skeleton
+put together and re-hung on an iron hook, when it began to be
+whispered that the Bride&rsquo;s Chamber was haunted.&nbsp; It
+<i>was</i> haunted, and I was there.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;<i>We</i> were there.&nbsp; She and I were there.&nbsp;
+I, in the chair upon the hearth; she, a white wreck again,
+trailing itself towards me on the floor.&nbsp; But, I was the
+speaker no more, and the one word that she said to me from
+midnight until dawn was, &lsquo;Live!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The youth was there, likewise.&nbsp; In the tree
+outside the window.&nbsp; Coming and going in the moonlight, as
+the tree bent and gave.&nbsp; He has, ever since, been there,
+peeping in at me in my torment; revealing to me by snatches, in
+the pale lights and slatey shadows where he comes and goes,
+bare-headed&mdash;a bill-hook, standing edgewise in his hair.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;In the Bride&rsquo;s Chamber, every night from midnight
+until dawn&mdash;one month in the year excepted, as I am going to
+tell you&mdash;he hides in the tree, and she comes towards me on
+the floor; always approaching; never coming nearer; always
+visible as if by moon-light, whether the moon shines or no;
+always saying, from mid-night until dawn, her one word,
+&ldquo;Live!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But, in the month wherein I was forced out of this
+life&mdash;this present month of thirty days&mdash;the
+Bride&rsquo;s Chamber is empty and quiet.&nbsp; Not so my old
+dungeon.&nbsp; Not so the rooms where I was restless and afraid,
+ten years.&nbsp; Both are fitfully haunted then.&nbsp; At One in
+the morning.&nbsp; I am what you saw me when the clock struck
+that hour&mdash;One old man.&nbsp; At Two in the morning, I am
+Two old men.&nbsp; At Three, I am Three.&nbsp; By Twelve at noon,
+I am Twelve old men, One for every hundred per cent. of old
+gain.&nbsp; Every one of the Twelve, with Twelve times my old
+power of suffering and agony.&nbsp; From that hour until Twelve
+at night, I, Twelve old men in anguish and fearful foreboding,
+wait for the coming of the executioner.&nbsp; At Twelve at night,
+I, Twelve old men turned off, swing invisible outside Lancaster
+Castle, with Twelve faces to the wall!</p>
+<p>&lsquo;When the Bride&rsquo;s Chamber was first haunted, it
+was known to me that this punishment would never cease, until I
+could make its nature, and my story, known to two living men
+together.&nbsp; I waited for the coming of two living men
+together into the Bride&rsquo;s Chamber, years upon years.&nbsp;
+It was infused into my knowledge (of the means I am ignorant)
+that if two living men, with their eyes open, could be in the
+Bride&rsquo;s Chamber at One in the morning, they would see me
+sitting in my chair.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;At length, the whispers that the room was spiritually
+troubled, brought two men to try the adventure.&nbsp; I was
+scarcely struck upon the hearth at midnight (I come there as if
+the Lightning blasted me into being), when I heard them ascending
+the stairs.&nbsp; Next, I saw them enter.&nbsp; One of them was a
+bold, gay, active man, in the prime of life, some five and forty
+years of age; the other, a dozen years younger.&nbsp; They
+brought provisions with them in a basket, and bottles.&nbsp; A
+young woman accompanied them, with wood and coals for the
+lighting of the fire.&nbsp; When she had lighted it, the bold,
+gay, active man accompanied her along the gallery outside the
+room, to see her safely down the staircase, and came back
+laughing.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He locked the door, examined the chamber, put out the
+contents of the basket on the table before the fire&mdash;little
+recking of me, in my appointed station on the hearth, close to
+him&mdash;and filled the glasses, and ate and drank.&nbsp; His
+companion did the same, and was as cheerful and confident as he:
+though he was the leader.&nbsp; When they had supped, they laid
+pistols on the table, turned to the fire, and began to smoke
+their pipes of foreign make.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;They had travelled together, and had been much
+together, and had an abundance of subjects in common.&nbsp; In
+the midst of their talking and laughing, the younger man made a
+reference to the leader&rsquo;s being always ready for any
+adventure; that one, or any other.&nbsp; He replied in these
+words:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Not quite so, Dick; if I am afraid of nothing
+else, I am afraid of myself.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;His companion seeming to grow a little dull, asked him,
+in what sense?&nbsp; How?</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Why, thus,&rdquo; he returned.&nbsp; &ldquo;Here
+is a Ghost to be disproved.&nbsp; Well!&nbsp; I cannot answer for
+what my fancy might do if I were alone here, or what tricks my
+senses might play with me if they had me to themselves.&nbsp;
+But, in company with another man, and especially with Dick, I
+would consent to outface all the Ghosts that were ever of in the
+universe.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;I had not the vanity to suppose that I was of so
+much importance to-night,&rdquo; said the other.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Of so much,&rdquo; rejoined the leader, more
+seriously than he had spoken yet, &ldquo;that I would, for the
+reason I have given, on no account have undertaken to pass the
+night here alone.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It was within a few minutes of One.&nbsp; The head of
+the younger man had drooped when he made his last remark, and it
+drooped lower now.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Keep awake, Dick!&rdquo; said the leader,
+gaily.&nbsp; &ldquo;The small hours are the worst.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He tried, but his head drooped again.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Dick!&rdquo; urged the leader.&nbsp; &ldquo;Keep
+awake!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t,&rdquo; he indistinctly
+muttered.&nbsp; &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what strange influence
+is stealing over me.&nbsp; I can&rsquo;t.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;His companion looked at him with a sudden horror, and
+I, in my different way, felt a new horror also; for, it was on
+the stroke of One, and I felt that the second watcher was
+yielding to me, and that the curse was upon me that I must send
+him to sleep.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Get up and walk, Dick!&rdquo; cried the
+leader.&nbsp; &ldquo;Try!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It was in vain to go behind the slumber&rsquo;s chair
+and shake him.&nbsp; One o&rsquo;clock sounded, and I was present
+to the elder man, and he stood transfixed before me.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;To him alone, I was obliged to relate my story, without
+hope of benefit.&nbsp; To him alone, I was an awful phantom
+making a quite useless confession.&nbsp; I foresee it will ever
+be the same.&nbsp; The two living men together will never come to
+release me.&nbsp; When I appear, the senses of one of the two
+will be locked in sleep; he will neither see nor hear me; my
+communication will ever be made to a solitary listener, and will
+ever be unserviceable.&nbsp; Woe!&nbsp; Woe!&nbsp;
+Woe!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>As the Two old men, with these words, wrung their hands, it
+shot into Mr. Goodchild&rsquo;s mind that he was in the terrible
+situation of being virtually alone with the spectre, and that Mr.
+Idle&rsquo;s immoveability was explained by his having been
+charmed asleep at One o&rsquo;clock.&nbsp; In the terror of this
+sudden discovery which produced an indescribable dread, he
+struggled so hard to get free from the four fiery threads, that
+he snapped them, after he had pulled them out to a great
+width.&nbsp; Being then out of bonds, he caught up Mr. Idle from
+the sofa and rushed down-stairs with him.</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p>&lsquo;What are you about, Francis?&rsquo; demanded Mr.
+Idle.&nbsp; &lsquo;My bedroom is not down here.&nbsp; What the
+deuce are you carrying me at all for?&nbsp; I can walk with a
+stick now.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t want to be carried.&nbsp; Put me
+down.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mr. Goodchild put him down in the old hall, and looked about
+him wildly.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What are you doing?&nbsp; Idiotically plunging at your
+own sex, and rescuing them or perishing in the attempt?&rsquo;
+asked Mr. Idle, in a highly petulant state.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The One old man!&rsquo; cried Mr. Goodchild,
+distractedly,&mdash;&lsquo;and the Two old men!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mr. Idle deigned no other reply than &lsquo;The One old woman,
+I think you mean,&rsquo; as he began hobbling his way back up the
+staircase, with the assistance of its broad balustrade.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I assure you, Tom,&rsquo; began Mr. Goodchild,
+attending at his side, &lsquo;that since you fell
+asleep&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Come, I like that!&rsquo; said Thomas Idle, &lsquo;I
+haven&rsquo;t closed an eye!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>With the peculiar sensitiveness on the subject of the
+disgraceful action of going to sleep out of bed, which is the lot
+of all mankind, Mr. Idle persisted in this declaration.&nbsp; The
+same peculiar sensitiveness impelled Mr. Goodchild, on being
+taxed with the same crime, to repudiate it with honourable
+resentment.&nbsp; The settlement of the question of The One old
+man and The Two old men was thus presently complicated, and soon
+made quite impracticable.&nbsp; Mr. Idle said it was all
+Bride-cake, and fragments, newly arranged, of things seen and
+thought about in the day.&nbsp; Mr. Goodchild said how could that
+be, when he hadn&rsquo;t been asleep, and what right could Mr.
+Idle have to say so, who had been asleep?&nbsp; Mr. Idle said he
+had never been asleep, and never did go to sleep, and that Mr.
+Goodchild, as a general rule, was always asleep.&nbsp; They
+consequently parted for the rest of the night, at their bedroom
+doors, a little ruffled.&nbsp; Mr. Goodchild&rsquo;s last words
+were, that he had had, in that real and tangible old sitting-room
+of that real and tangible old Inn (he supposed Mr. Idle denied
+its existence?), every sensation and experience, the present
+record of which is now within a line or two of completion; and
+that he would write it out and print it every word.&nbsp; Mr.
+Idle returned that he might if he liked&mdash;and he did like,
+and has now done it.</p>
+<h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Two</span> of the many passengers by a
+certain late Sunday evening train, Mr. Thomas Idle and Mr.
+Francis Goodchild, yielded up their tickets at a little rotten
+platform (converted into artificial touchwood by smoke and
+ashes), deep in the manufacturing bosom of Yorkshire.&nbsp; A
+mysterious bosom it appeared, upon a damp, dark, Sunday night,
+dashed through in the train to the music of the whirling wheels,
+the panting of the engine, and the part-singing of hundreds of
+third-class excursionists, whose vocal efforts &lsquo;bobbed
+arayound&rsquo; from sacred to profane, from hymns, to our
+transatlantic sisters the Yankee Gal and Mairy Anne, in a
+remarkable way.&nbsp; There seemed to have been some large vocal
+gathering near to every lonely station on the line.&nbsp; No town
+was visible, no village was visible, no light was visible; but, a
+multitude got out singing, and a multitude got in singing, and
+the second multitude took up the hymns, and adopted our
+transatlantic sisters, and sang of their own egregious
+wickedness, and of their bobbing arayound, and of how the ship it
+was ready and the wind it was fair, and they were bayound for the
+sea, Mairy Anne, until they in their turn became a getting-out
+multitude, and were replaced by another getting-in multitude, who
+did the same.&nbsp; And at every station, the getting-in
+multitude, with an artistic reference to the completeness of
+their chorus, incessantly cried, as with one voice while
+scuffling into the carriages, &lsquo;We mun aa&rsquo; gang
+toogither!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The singing and the multitudes had trailed off as the lonely
+places were left and the great towns were neared, and the way had
+lain as silently as a train&rsquo;s way ever can, over the vague
+black streets of the great gulfs of towns, and among their
+branchless woods of vague black chimneys.&nbsp; These towns
+looked, in the cinderous wet, as though they had one and all been
+on fire and were just put out&mdash;a dreary and quenched
+panorama, many miles long.</p>
+<p>Thus, Thomas and Francis got to Leeds; of which enterprising
+and important commercial centre it may be observed with delicacy,
+that you must either like it very much or not at all.&nbsp; Next
+day, the first of the Race-Week, they took train to
+Doncaster.</p>
+<p>And instantly the character, both of travellers and of
+luggage, entirely changed, and no other business than
+race-business any longer existed on the face of the earth.&nbsp;
+The talk was all of horses and &lsquo;John Scott.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+Guards whispered behind their hands to station-masters, of horses
+and John Scott.&nbsp; Men in cut-away coats and speckled cravats
+fastened with peculiar pins, and with the large bones of their
+legs developed under tight trousers, so that they should look as
+much as possible like horses&rsquo; legs, paced up and down by
+twos at junction-stations, speaking low and moodily of horses and
+John Scott.&nbsp; The young clergyman in the black
+strait-waistcoat, who occupied the middle seat of the carriage,
+expounded in his peculiar pulpit-accent to the young and lovely
+Reverend Mrs. Crinoline, who occupied the opposite middle-seat, a
+few passages of rumour relative to &lsquo;Oartheth, my love, and
+Mithter John Eth-<span class="GutSmall">COTT</span>.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+A bandy vagabond, with a head like a Dutch cheese, in a fustian
+stable-suit, attending on a horse-box and going about the
+platforms with a halter hanging round his neck like a Calais
+burgher of the ancient period much degenerated, was courted by
+the best society, by reason of what he had to hint, when not
+engaged in eating straw, concerning &lsquo;t&rsquo;harses and
+Joon Scott.&rsquo;&nbsp; The engine-driver himself, as he applied
+one eye to his large stationary double-eye-glass on the engine,
+seemed to keep the other open, sideways, upon horses and John
+Scott.</p>
+<p>Breaks and barriers at Doncaster Station to keep the crowd
+off; temporary wooden avenues of ingress and egress, to help the
+crowd on.&nbsp; Forty extra porters sent down for this present
+blessed Race-Week, and all of them making up their betting-books
+in the lamp-room or somewhere else, and none of them to come and
+touch the luggage.&nbsp; Travellers disgorged into an open space,
+a howling wilderness of idle men.&nbsp; All work but race-work at
+a stand-still; all men at a stand-still.&nbsp; &lsquo;Ey my
+word!&nbsp; Deant ask noon o&rsquo; us to help wi&rsquo;
+t&rsquo;luggage.&nbsp; Bock your opinion loike a mon.&nbsp;
+Coom!&nbsp; Dang it, coom, t&rsquo;harses and Joon
+Scott!&rsquo;&nbsp; In the midst of the idle men, all the fly
+horses and omnibus horses of Doncaster and parts adjacent,
+rampant, rearing, backing, plunging, shying&mdash;apparently the
+result of their hearing of nothing but their own order and John
+Scott.</p>
+<p>Grand Dramatic Company from London for the Race-Week.&nbsp;
+Poses Plastiques in the Grand Assembly Room up the Stable-Yard at
+seven and nine each evening, for the Race-Week.&nbsp; Grand
+Alliance Circus in the field beyond the bridge, for the
+Race-Week.&nbsp; Grand Exhibition of Aztec Lilliputians,
+important to all who want to be horrified cheap, for the
+Race-Week.&nbsp; Lodgings, grand and not grand, but all at grand
+prices, ranging from ten pounds to twenty, for the Grand
+Race-Week!</p>
+<p>Rendered giddy enough by these things, Messieurs Idle and
+Goodchild repaired to the quarters they had secured beforehand,
+and Mr. Goodchild looked down from the window into the surging
+street.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;By Heaven, Tom!&rsquo; cried he, after contemplating
+it, &lsquo;I am in the Lunatic Asylum again, and these are all
+mad people under the charge of a body of designing
+keepers!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>All through the Race-Week, Mr. Goodchild never divested
+himself of this idea.&nbsp; Every day he looked out of window,
+with something of the dread of Lemuel Gulliver looking down at
+men after he returned home from the horse-country; and every day
+he saw the Lunatics, horse-mad, betting-mad, drunken-mad,
+vice-mad, and the designing Keepers always after them.&nbsp; The
+idea pervaded, like the second colour in shot-silk, the whole of
+Mr. Goodchild&rsquo;s impressions.&nbsp; They were much as
+follows:</p>
+<p>Monday, mid-day.&nbsp; Races not to begin until to-morrow, but
+all the mob-Lunatics out, crowding the pavements of the one main
+street of pretty and pleasant Doncaster, crowding the road,
+particularly crowding the outside of the Betting Rooms, whooping
+and shouting loudly after all passing vehicles.&nbsp; Frightened
+lunatic horses occasionally running away, with infinite
+clatter.&nbsp; All degrees of men, from peers to paupers, betting
+incessantly.&nbsp; Keepers very watchful, and taking all good
+chances.&nbsp; An awful family likeness among the Keepers, to Mr.
+Palmer and Mr. Thurtell.&nbsp; With some knowledge of expression
+and some acquaintance with heads (thus writes Mr. Goodchild), I
+never have seen anywhere, so many repetitions of one class of
+countenance and one character of head (both evil) as in this
+street at this time.&nbsp; Cunning, covetousness, secrecy, cold
+calculation, hard callousness and dire insensibility, are the
+uniform Keeper characteristics.&nbsp; Mr. Palmer passes me five
+times in five minutes, and, so I go down the street, the back of
+Mr. Thurtell&rsquo;s skull is always going on before me.</p>
+<p>Monday evening.&nbsp; Town lighted up; more Lunatics out than
+ever; a complete choke and stoppage of the thoroughfare outside
+the Betting Rooms.&nbsp; Keepers, having dined, pervade the
+Betting Rooms, and sharply snap at the moneyed Lunatics.&nbsp;
+Some Keepers flushed with drink, and some not, but all close and
+calculating.&nbsp; A vague echoing roar of
+&lsquo;t&rsquo;harses&rsquo; and &lsquo;t&rsquo;races&rsquo;
+always rising in the air, until midnight, at about which period
+it dies away in occasional drunken songs and straggling
+yells.&nbsp; But, all night, some unmannerly drinking-house in
+the neighbourhood opens its mouth at intervals and spits out a
+man too drunk to be retained: who thereupon makes what uproarious
+protest may be left in him, and either falls asleep where he
+tumbles, or is carried off in custody.</p>
+<p>Tuesday morning, at daybreak.&nbsp; A sudden rising, as it
+were out of the earth, of all the obscene creatures, who sell
+&lsquo;correct cards of the races.&rsquo;&nbsp; They may have
+been coiled in corners, or sleeping on door-steps, and, having
+all passed the night under the same set of circumstances, may all
+want to circulate their blood at the same time; but, however that
+may be, they spring into existence all at once and together, as
+though a new Cadmus had sown a race-horse&rsquo;s teeth.&nbsp;
+There is nobody up, to buy the cards; but, the cards are madly
+cried.&nbsp; There is no patronage to quarrel for; but, they
+madly quarrel and fight.&nbsp; Conspicuous among these
+hy&aelig;nas, as breakfast-time discloses, is a fearful creature
+in the general semblance of a man: shaken off his next-to-no legs
+by drink and devilry, bare-headed and bare-footed, with a great
+shock of hair like a horrible broom, and nothing on him but a
+ragged pair of trousers and a pink glazed-calico coat&mdash;made
+on him&mdash;so very tight that it is as evident that he could
+never take it off, as that he never does.&nbsp; This hideous
+apparition, inconceivably drunk, has a terrible power of making a
+gong-like imitation of the braying of an ass: which feat requires
+that he should lay his right jaw in his begrimed right paw,
+double himself up, and shake his bray out of himself, with much
+staggering on his next-to-no legs, and much twirling of his
+horrible broom, as if it were a mop.&nbsp; From the present
+minute, when he comes in sight holding up his cards to the
+windows, and hoarsely proposing purchase to My Lord, Your
+Excellency, Colonel, the Noble Captain, and Your Honourable
+Worship&mdash;from the present minute until the Grand Race-Week
+is finished, at all hours of the morning, evening, day, and
+night, shall the town reverberate, at capricious intervals, to
+the brays of this frightful animal the Gong-donkey.</p>
+<p>No very great racing to-day, so no very great amount of
+vehicles: though there is a good sprinkling, too: from
+farmers&rsquo; carts and gigs, to carriages with post-horses and
+to fours-in-hand, mostly coming by the road from York, and
+passing on straight through the main street to the Course.&nbsp;
+A walk in the wrong direction may be a better thing for Mr.
+Goodchild to-day than the Course, so he walks in the wrong
+direction.&nbsp; Everybody gone to the races.&nbsp; Only children
+in the street.&nbsp; Grand Alliance Circus deserted; not one
+Star-Rider left; omnibus which forms the Pay-Place, having on
+separate panels Pay here for the Boxes, Pay here for the Pit, Pay
+here for the Gallery, hove down in a corner and locked up; nobody
+near the tent but the man on his knees on the grass, who is
+making the paper balloons for the Star young gentlemen to jump
+through to-night.&nbsp; A pleasant road, pleasantly wooded.&nbsp;
+No labourers working in the fields; all gone
+&lsquo;t&rsquo;races.&rsquo;&nbsp; The few late wenders of their
+way &lsquo;t&rsquo;races,&rsquo; who are yet left driving on the
+road, stare in amazement at the recluse who is not going
+&lsquo;t&rsquo;races.&rsquo;&nbsp; Roadside innkeeper has gone
+&lsquo;t&rsquo;races.&rsquo;&nbsp; Turnpike-man has gone
+&lsquo;t&rsquo;races.&rsquo;&nbsp; His thrifty wife, washing
+clothes at the toll-house door, is going
+&lsquo;t&rsquo;races&rsquo; to-morrow.&nbsp; Perhaps there may be
+no one left to take the toll to-morrow; who knows?&nbsp; Though
+assuredly that would be neither turnpike-like nor
+Yorkshire-like.&nbsp; The very wind and dust seem to be hurrying
+&lsquo;t&rsquo;races,&rsquo; as they briskly pass the only
+wayfarer on the road.&nbsp; In the distance, the Railway Engine,
+waiting at the town-end, shrieks despairingly.&nbsp; Nothing but
+the difficulty of getting off the Line, restrains that Engine
+from going &lsquo;t&rsquo;races,&rsquo; too, it is very
+clear.</p>
+<p>At night, more Lunatics out than last night&mdash;and more
+Keepers.&nbsp; The latter very active at the Betting Rooms, the
+street in front of which is now impassable.&nbsp; Mr. Palmer as
+before.&nbsp; Mr. Thurtell as before.&nbsp; Roar and uproar as
+before.&nbsp; Gradual subsidence as before.&nbsp; Unmannerly
+drinking-house expectorates as before.&nbsp; Drunken
+negro-melodists, Gong-donkey, and correct cards, in the
+night.</p>
+<p>On Wednesday morning, the morning of the great St. Leger, it
+becomes apparent that there has been a great influx since
+yesterday, both of Lunatics and Keepers.&nbsp; The families of
+the tradesmen over the way are no longer within human ken; their
+places know them no more; ten, fifteen, and twenty guinea-lodgers
+fill them.&nbsp; At the pastry-cook&rsquo;s second-floor window,
+a Keeper is brushing Mr. Thurtell&rsquo;s hair&mdash;thinking it
+his own.&nbsp; In the wax-chandler&rsquo;s attic, another Keeper
+is putting on Mr. Palmer&rsquo;s braces.&nbsp; In the
+gunsmith&rsquo;s nursery, a Lunatic is shaving himself.&nbsp; In
+the serious stationer&rsquo;s best sitting-room, three Lunatics
+are taking a combination-breakfast, praising the (cook&rsquo;s)
+devil, and drinking neat brandy in an atmosphere of last
+midnight&rsquo;s cigars.&nbsp; No family sanctuary is free from
+our Angelic messengers&mdash;we put up at the Angel&mdash;who in
+the guise of extra waiters for the grand Race-Week, rattle in and
+out of the most secret chambers of everybody&rsquo;s house, with
+dishes and tin covers, decanters, soda-water bottles, and
+glasses.&nbsp; An hour later.&nbsp; Down the street and up the
+street, as far as eyes can see and a good deal farther, there is
+a dense crowd; outside the Betting Rooms it is like a great
+struggle at a theatre door&mdash;in the days of theatres; or at
+the vestibule of the Spurgeon temple&mdash;in the days of
+Spurgeon.&nbsp; An hour later.&nbsp; Fusing into this crowd, and
+somehow getting through it, are all kinds of conveyances, and all
+kinds of foot-passengers; carts, with brick-makers and
+brick-makeresses jolting up and down on planks; drags, with the
+needful grooms behind, sitting cross-armed in the needful manner,
+and slanting themselves backward from the soles of their boots at
+the needful angle; postboys, in the shining hats and smart
+jackets of the olden time, when stokers were not; beautiful
+Yorkshire horses, gallantly driven by their own breeders and
+masters.&nbsp; Under every pole, and every shaft, and every
+horse, and every wheel as it would seem, the
+Gong-donkey&mdash;metallically braying, when not struggling for
+life, or whipped out of the way.</p>
+<p>By one o&rsquo;clock, all this stir has gone out of the
+streets, and there is no one left in them but Francis
+Goodchild.&nbsp; Francis Goodchild will not be left in them long;
+for, he too is on his way, &lsquo;t&rsquo;races.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>A most beautiful sight, Francis Goodchild finds
+&lsquo;t&rsquo;races&rsquo; to be, when he has left fair
+Doncaster behind him, and comes out on the free course, with its
+agreeable prospect, its quaint Red House oddly changing and
+turning as Francis turns, its green grass, and fresh heath.&nbsp;
+A free course and an easy one, where Francis can roll smoothly
+where he will, and can choose between the start, or the
+coming-in, or the turn behind the brow of the hill, or any
+out-of-the-way point where he lists to see the throbbing horses
+straining every nerve, and making the sympathetic earth throb as
+they come by.&nbsp; Francis much delights to be, not in the Grand
+Stand, but where he can see it, rising against the sky with its
+vast tiers of little white dots of faces, and its last high rows
+and corners of people, looking like pins stuck into an enormous
+pincushion&mdash;not quite so symmetrically as his orderly eye
+could wish, when people change or go away.&nbsp; When the race is
+nearly run out, it is as good as the race to him to see the
+flutter among the pins, and the change in them from dark to
+light, as hats are taken off and waved.&nbsp; Not less full of
+interest, the loud anticipation of the winner&rsquo;s name, the
+swelling, and the final, roar; then, the quick dropping of all
+the pins out of their places, the revelation of the shape of the
+bare pincushion, and the closing-in of the whole host of Lunatics
+and Keepers, in the rear of the three horses with bright-coloured
+riders, who have not yet quite subdued their gallop though the
+contest is over.</p>
+<p>Mr. Goodchild would appear to have been by no means free from
+lunacy himself at &lsquo;t&rsquo;races,&rsquo; though not of the
+prevalent kind.&nbsp; He is suspected by Mr. Idle to have fallen
+into a dreadful state concerning a pair of little lilac gloves
+and a little bonnet that he saw there.&nbsp; Mr. Idle asserts,
+that he did afterwards repeat at the Angel, with an appearance of
+being lunatically seized, some rhapsody to the following effect:
+&lsquo;O little lilac gloves!&nbsp; And O winning little bonnet,
+making in conjunction with her golden hair quite a Glory in the
+sunlight round the pretty head, why anything in the world but you
+and me!&nbsp; Why may not this day&rsquo;s running-of horses, to
+all the rest: of precious sands of life to me&mdash;be prolonged
+through an everlasting autumn-sunshine, without a sunset!&nbsp;
+Slave of the Lamp, or Ring, strike me yonder gallant equestrian
+Clerk of the Course, in the scarlet coat, motionless on the green
+grass for ages!&nbsp; Friendly Devil on Two Sticks, for ten times
+ten thousands years, keep Blink-Bonny jibbing at the post, and
+let us have no start!&nbsp; Arab drums, powerful of old to summon
+Genii in the desert, sound of yourselves and raise a troop for me
+in the desert of my heart, which shall so enchant this dusty
+barouche (with a conspicuous excise-plate, resembling the
+Collector&rsquo;s door-plate at a turnpike), that I, within it,
+loving the little lilac gloves, the winning little bonnet, and
+the dear unknown-wearer with the golden hair, may wait by her
+side for ever, to see a Great St. Leger that shall never be
+run!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Thursday morning.&nbsp; After a tremendous night of crowding,
+shouting, drinking-house expectoration, Gong-donkey, and correct
+cards.&nbsp; Symptoms of yesterday&rsquo;s gains in the way of
+drink, and of yesterday&rsquo;s losses in the way of money,
+abundant.&nbsp; Money-losses very great.&nbsp; As usual, nobody
+seems to have won; but, large losses and many losers are
+unquestionable facts.&nbsp; Both Lunatics and Keepers, in general
+very low.&nbsp; Several of both kinds look in at the
+chemist&rsquo;s while Mr. Goodchild is making a purchase there,
+to be &lsquo;picked up.&rsquo;&nbsp; One red-eyed Lunatic,
+flushed, faded, and disordered, enters hurriedly and cries
+savagely, &lsquo;Hond us a gloss of sal volatile in wather, or
+soom dommed thing o&rsquo; thot sart!&rsquo;&nbsp; Faces at the
+Betting Rooms very long, and a tendency to bite nails
+observable.&nbsp; Keepers likewise given this morning to standing
+about solitary, with their hands in their pockets, looking down
+at their boots as they fit them into cracks of the pavement, and
+then looking up whistling and walking away.&nbsp; Grand Alliance
+Circus out, in procession; buxom lady-member of Grand Alliance,
+in crimson riding-habit, fresher to look at, even in her paint
+under the day sky, than the cheeks of Lunatics or Keepers.&nbsp;
+Spanish Cavalier appears to have lost yesterday, and jingles his
+bossed bridle with disgust, as if he were paying.&nbsp; Reaction
+also apparent at the Guildhall opposite, whence certain
+pickpockets come out handcuffed together, with that peculiar walk
+which is never seen under any other circumstances&mdash;a walk
+expressive of going to jail, game, but still of jails being in
+bad taste and arbitrary, and how would <i>you</i> like it if it
+was you instead of me, as it ought to be!&nbsp; Mid-day.&nbsp;
+Town filled as yesterday, but not so full; and emptied as
+yesterday, but not so empty.&nbsp; In the evening, Angel ordinary
+where every Lunatic and Keeper has his modest daily meal of
+turtle, venison, and wine, not so crowded as yesterday, and not
+so noisy.&nbsp; At night, the theatre.&nbsp; More abstracted
+faces in it than one ever sees at public assemblies; such faces
+wearing an expression which strongly reminds Mr. Goodchild of the
+boys at school who were &lsquo;going up next,&rsquo; with their
+arithmetic or mathematics.&nbsp; These boys are, no doubt, going
+up to-morrow with <i>their</i> sums and figures.&nbsp; Mr. Palmer
+and Mr. Thurtell in the boxes O. P.&nbsp; Mr. Thurtell and Mr.
+Palmer in the boxes P. S.&nbsp; The firm of Thurtell, Palmer, and
+Thurtell, in the boxes Centre.&nbsp; A most odious tendency
+observable in these distinguished gentlemen to put vile
+constructions on sufficiently innocent phrases in the play, and
+then to applaud them in a Satyr-like manner.&nbsp; Behind Mr.
+Goodchild, with a party of other Lunatics and one Keeper, the
+express incarnation of the thing called a
+&lsquo;gent.&rsquo;&nbsp; A gentleman born; a gent
+manufactured.&nbsp; A something with a scarf round its neck, and
+a slipshod speech issuing from behind the scarf; more depraved,
+more foolish, more ignorant, more unable to believe in any noble
+or good thing of any kind, than the stupidest Bosjesman.&nbsp;
+The thing is but a boy in years, and is addled with drink.&nbsp;
+To do its company justice, even its company is ashamed of it, as
+it drawls its slang criticisms on the representation, and
+inflames Mr. Goodchild with a burning ardour to fling it into the
+pit.&nbsp; Its remarks are so horrible, that Mr. Goodchild, for
+the moment, even doubts whether that <i>is</i> a wholesome Art,
+which sets women apart on a high floor before such a thing as
+this, though as good as its own sisters, or its own
+mother&mdash;whom Heaven forgive for bringing it into the
+world!&nbsp; But, the consideration that a low nature must make a
+low world of its own to live in, whatever the real materials, or
+it could no more exist than any of us could without the sense of
+touch, brings Mr. Goodchild to reason: the rather, because the
+thing soon drops its downy chin upon its scarf, and slobbers
+itself asleep.</p>
+<p>Friday Morning.&nbsp; Early fights.&nbsp; Gong-donkey, and
+correct cards.&nbsp; Again, a great set towards the races, though
+not so great a set as on Wednesday.&nbsp; Much packing going on
+too, upstairs at the gun-smith&rsquo;s, the wax-chandler&rsquo;s,
+and the serious stationer&rsquo;s; for there will be a heavy
+drift of Lunatics and Keepers to London by the afternoon
+train.&nbsp; The course as pretty as ever; the great pincushion
+as like a pincushion, but not nearly so full of pins; whole rows
+of pins wanting.&nbsp; On the great event of the day, both
+Lunatics and Keepers become inspired with rage; and there is a
+violent scuffling, and a rushing at the losing jockey, and an
+emergence of the said jockey from a swaying and menacing crowd,
+protected by friends, and looking the worse for wear; which is a
+rough proceeding, though animating to see from a pleasant
+distance.&nbsp; After the great event, rills begin to flow from
+the pincushion towards the railroad; the rills swell into rivers;
+the rivers soon unite into a lake.&nbsp; The lake floats Mr.
+Goodchild into Doncaster, past the Itinerant personage in black,
+by the way-side telling him from the vantage ground of a legibly
+printed placard on a pole that for all these things the Lord will
+bring him to judgment.&nbsp; No turtle and venison ordinary this
+evening; that is all over.&nbsp; No Betting at the rooms; nothing
+there but the plants in pots, which have, all the week, been
+stood about the entry to give it an innocent appearance, and
+which have sorely sickened by this time.</p>
+<p>Saturday.&nbsp; Mr. Idle wishes to know at breakfast, what
+were those dreadful groanings in his bedroom doorway in the
+night?&nbsp; Mr. Goodchild answers, Nightmare.&nbsp; Mr. Idle
+repels the calumny, and calls the waiter.&nbsp; The Angel is very
+sorry&mdash;had intended to explain; but you see, gentlemen,
+there was a gentleman dined down-stairs with two more, and he had
+lost a deal of money, and he would drink a deal of wine, and in
+the night he &lsquo;took the horrors,&rsquo; and got up; and as
+his friends could do nothing with him he laid himself down and
+groaned at Mr. Idle&rsquo;s door.&nbsp; &lsquo;And he <span
+class="GutSmall">DID</span> groan there,&rsquo; Mr. Idle says;
+&lsquo;and you will please to imagine me inside, &ldquo;taking
+the horrors&rdquo; too!&rsquo;</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p>So far, the picture of Doncaster on the occasion of its great
+sporting anniversary, offers probably a general representation of
+the social condition of the town, in the past as well as in the
+present time.&nbsp; The sole local phenomenon of the current
+year, which may be considered as entirely unprecedented in its
+way, and which certainly claims, on that account, some slight
+share of notice, consists in the actual existence of one
+remarkable individual, who is sojourning in Doncaster, and who,
+neither directly nor indirectly, has anything at all to do, in
+any capacity whatever, with the racing amusements of the
+week.&nbsp; Ranging throughout the entire crowd that fills the
+town, and including the inhabitants as well as the visitors,
+nobody is to be found altogether disconnected with the business
+of the day, excepting this one unparalleled man.&nbsp; He does
+not bet on the races, like the sporting men.&nbsp; He does not
+assist the races, like the jockeys, starters, judges, and
+grooms.&nbsp; He does not look on at the races, like Mr.
+Goodchild and his fellow-spectators.&nbsp; He does not profit by
+the races, like the hotel-keepers and the tradespeople.&nbsp; He
+does not minister to the necessities of the races, like the
+booth-keepers, the postilions, the waiters, and the hawkers of
+Lists.&nbsp; He does not assist the attractions of the races,
+like the actors at the theatre, the riders at the circus, or the
+posturers at the Poses Plastiques.&nbsp; Absolutely and
+literally, he is the only individual in Doncaster who stands by
+the brink of the full-flowing race-stream, and is not swept away
+by it in common with all the rest of his species.&nbsp; Who is
+this modern hermit, this recluse of the St. Leger-week, this
+inscrutably ungregarious being, who lives apart from the
+amusements and activities of his fellow-creatures?&nbsp; Surely,
+there is little difficulty in guessing that clearest and easiest
+of all riddles.&nbsp; Who could he be, but Mr. Thomas Idle?</p>
+<p>Thomas had suffered himself to be taken to Doncaster, just as
+he would have suffered himself to be taken to any other place in
+the habitable globe which would guarantee him the temporary
+possession of a comfortable sofa to rest his ankle on.&nbsp; Once
+established at the hotel, with his leg on one cushion and his
+back against another, he formally declined taking the slightest
+interest in any circumstance whatever connected with the races,
+or with the people who were assembled to see them.&nbsp; Francis
+Goodchild, anxious that the hours should pass by his crippled
+travelling-companion as lightly as possible, suggested that his
+sofa should be moved to the window, and that he should amuse
+himself by looking out at the moving panorama of humanity, which
+the view from it of the principal street presented.&nbsp; Thomas,
+however, steadily declined profiting by the suggestion.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The farther I am from the window,&rsquo; he said,
+&lsquo;the better, Brother Francis, I shall be pleased.&nbsp; I
+have nothing in common with the one prevalent idea of all those
+people who are passing in the street.&nbsp; Why should I care to
+look at them?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I hope I have nothing in common with the prevalent idea
+of a great many of them, either,&rsquo; answered Goodchild,
+thinking of the sporting gentlemen whom he had met in the course
+of his wanderings about Doncaster.&nbsp; &lsquo;But, surely,
+among all the people who are walking by the house, at this very
+moment, you may find&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Not one living creature,&rsquo; interposed Thomas,
+&lsquo;who is not, in one way or another, interested in horses,
+and who is not, in a greater or less degree, an admirer of
+them.&nbsp; Now, I hold opinions in reference to these particular
+members of the quadruped creation, which may lay claim (as I
+believe) to the disastrous distinction of being unpartaken by any
+other human being, civilised or savage, over the whole surface of
+the earth.&nbsp; Taking the horse as an animal in the abstract,
+Francis, I cordially despise him from every point of
+view.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Thomas,&rsquo; said Goodchild, &lsquo;confinement to
+the house has begun to affect your biliary secretions.&nbsp; I
+shall go to the chemist&rsquo;s and get you some
+physic.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I object,&rsquo; continued Thomas, quietly possessing
+himself of his friend&rsquo;s hat, which stood on a table near
+him,&mdash;&lsquo;I object, first, to the personal appearance of
+the horse.&nbsp; I protest against the conventional idea of
+beauty, as attached to that animal.&nbsp; I think his nose too
+long, his forehead too low, and his legs (except in the case of
+the cart-horse) ridiculously thin by comparison with the size of
+his body.&nbsp; Again, considering how big an animal he is, I
+object to the contemptible delicacy of his constitution.&nbsp; Is
+he not the sickliest creature in creation?&nbsp; Does any child
+catch cold as easily as a horse?&nbsp; Does he not sprain his
+fetlock, for all his appearance of superior strength, as easily
+as I sprained my ankle!&nbsp; Furthermore, to take him from
+another point of view, what a helpless wretch he is!&nbsp; No
+fine lady requires more constant waiting-on than a horse.&nbsp;
+Other animals can make their own toilette: he must have a
+groom.&nbsp; You will tell me that this is because we want to
+make his coat artificially glossy.&nbsp; Glossy!&nbsp; Come home
+with me, and see my cat,&mdash;my clever cat, who can groom
+herself!&nbsp; Look at your own dog! see how the intelligent
+creature curry-combs himself with his own honest teeth!&nbsp;
+Then, again, what a fool the horse is, what a poor, nervous
+fool!&nbsp; He will start at a piece of white paper in the road
+as if it was a lion.&nbsp; His one idea, when he hears a noise
+that he is not accustomed to, is to run away from it.&nbsp; What
+do you say to those two common instances of the sense and courage
+of this absurdly overpraised animal?&nbsp; I might multiply them
+to two hundred, if I chose to exert my mind and waste my breath,
+which I never do.&nbsp; I prefer coming at once to my last charge
+against the horse, which is the most serious of all, because it
+affects his moral character.&nbsp; I accuse him boldly, in his
+capacity of servant to man, of slyness and treachery.&nbsp; I
+brand him publicly, no matter how mild he may look about the
+eyes, or how sleek he may be about the coat, as a systematic
+betrayer, whenever he can get the chance, of the confidence
+reposed in him.&nbsp; What do you mean by laughing and shaking
+your head at me?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh, Thomas, Thomas!&rsquo; said Goodchild.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;You had better give me my hat; you had better let me get
+you that physic.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I will let you get anything you like, including a
+composing draught for yourself,&rsquo; said Thomas, irritably
+alluding to his fellow-apprentice&rsquo;s inexhaustible activity,
+&lsquo;if you will only sit quiet for five minutes longer, and
+hear me out.&nbsp; I say again the horse is a betrayer of the
+confidence reposed in him; and that opinion, let me add, is drawn
+from my own personal experience, and is not based on any fanciful
+theory whatever.&nbsp; You shall have two instances, two
+overwhelming instances.&nbsp; Let me start the first of these by
+asking, what is the distinguishing quality which the Shetland
+Pony has arrogated to himself, and is still perpetually
+trumpeting through the world by means of popular report and books
+on Natural History?&nbsp; I see the answer in your face: it is
+the quality of being Sure-Footed.&nbsp; He professes to have
+other virtues, such as hardiness and strength, which you may
+discover on trial; but the one thing which he insists on your
+believing, when you get on his back, is that he may be safely
+depended on not to tumble down with you.&nbsp; Very good.&nbsp;
+Some years ago, I was in Shetland with a party of friends.&nbsp;
+They insisted on taking me with them to the top of a precipice
+that overhung the sea.&nbsp; It was a great distance off, but
+they all determined to walk to it except me.&nbsp; I was wiser
+then than I was with you at Carrock, and I determined to be
+carried to the precipice.&nbsp; There was no carriage-road in the
+island, and nobody offered (in consequence, as I suppose, of the
+imperfectly-civilised state of the country) to bring me a
+sedan-chair, which is naturally what I should have liked
+best.&nbsp; A Shetland pony was produced instead.&nbsp; I
+remembered my Natural History, I recalled popular report, and I
+got on the little beast&rsquo;s back, as any other man would have
+done in my position, placing implicit confidence in the sureness
+of his feet.&nbsp; And how did he repay that confidence?&nbsp;
+Brother Francis, carry your mind on from morning to noon.&nbsp;
+Picture to yourself a howling wilderness of grass and bog,
+bounded by low stony hills.&nbsp; Pick out one particular spot in
+that imaginary scene, and sketch me in it, with outstretched
+arms, curved back, and heels in the air, plunging headforemost
+into a black patch of water and mud.&nbsp; Place just behind me
+the legs, the body, and the head of a sure-footed Shetland pony,
+all stretched flat on the ground, and you will have produced an
+accurate representation of a very lamentable fact.&nbsp; And the
+moral device, Francis, of this picture will be to testify that
+when gentlemen put confidence in the legs of Shetland ponies,
+they will find to their cost that they are leaning on nothing but
+broken reeds.&nbsp; There is my first instance&mdash;and what
+have you got to say to that?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Nothing, but that I want my hat,&rsquo; answered
+Goodchild, starting up and walking restlessly about the room.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You shall have it in a minute,&rsquo; rejoined
+Thomas.&nbsp; &lsquo;My second instance&rsquo;&mdash;(Goodchild
+groaned, and sat down again)&mdash;&lsquo;My second instance is
+more appropriate to the present time and place, for it refers to
+a race-horse.&nbsp; Two years ago an excellent friend of mine,
+who was desirous of prevailing on me to take regular exercise,
+and who was well enough acquainted with the weakness of my legs
+to expect no very active compliance with his wishes on their
+part, offered to make me a present of one of his horses.&nbsp;
+Hearing that the animal in question had started in life on the
+turf, I declined accepting the gift with many thanks; adding, by
+way of explanation, that I looked on a race-horse as a kind of
+embodied hurricane, upon which no sane man of my character and
+habits could be expected to seat himself.&nbsp; My friend replied
+that, however appropriate my metaphor might be as applied to
+race-horses in general, it was singularly unsuitable as applied
+to the particular horse which he proposed to give me.&nbsp; From
+a foal upwards this remarkable animal had been the idlest and
+most sluggish of his race.&nbsp; Whatever capacities for speed he
+might possess he had kept so strictly to himself, that no amount
+of training had ever brought them out.&nbsp; He had been found
+hopelessly slow as a racer, and hopelessly lazy as a hunter, and
+was fit for nothing but a quiet, easy life of it with an old
+gentleman or an invalid.&nbsp; When I heard this account of the
+horse, I don&rsquo;t mind confessing that my heart warmed to
+him.&nbsp; Visions of Thomas Idle ambling serenely on the back of
+a steed as lazy as himself, presenting to a restless world the
+soothing and composite spectacle of a kind of sluggardly Centaur,
+too peaceable in his habits to alarm anybody, swam attractively
+before my eyes.&nbsp; I went to look at the horse in the
+stable.&nbsp; Nice fellow! he was fast asleep with a kitten on
+his back.&nbsp; I saw him taken out for an airing by the
+groom.&nbsp; If he had had trousers on his legs I should not have
+known them from my own, so deliberately were they lifted up, so
+gently were they put down, so slowly did they get over the
+ground.&nbsp; From that moment I gratefully accepted my
+friend&rsquo;s offer.&nbsp; I went home; the horse followed
+me&mdash;by a slow train.&nbsp; Oh, Francis, how devoutly I
+believed in that horse I how carefully I looked after all his
+little comforts!&nbsp; I had never gone the length of hiring a
+man-servant to wait on myself; but I went to the expense of
+hiring one to wait upon him.&nbsp; If I thought a little of
+myself when I bought the softest saddle that could be had for
+money, I thought also of my horse.&nbsp; When the man at the shop
+afterwards offered me spurs and a whip, I turned from him with
+horror.&nbsp; When I sallied out for my first ride, I went
+purposely unarmed with the means of hurrying my steed.&nbsp; He
+proceeded at his own pace every step of the way; and when he
+stopped, at last, and blew out both his sides with a heavy sigh,
+and turned his sleepy head and looked behind him, I took him home
+again, as I might take home an artless child who said to me,
+&ldquo;If you please, sir, I am tired.&rdquo;&nbsp; For a week
+this complete harmony between me and my horse lasted
+undisturbed.&nbsp; At the end of that time, when he had made
+quite sure of my friendly confidence in his laziness, when he had
+thoroughly acquainted himself with all the little weaknesses of
+my seat (and their name is Legion), the smouldering treachery and
+ingratitude of the equine nature blazed out in an instant.&nbsp;
+Without the slightest provocation from me, with nothing passing
+him at the time but a pony-chaise driven by an old lady, he
+started in one instant from a state of sluggish depression to a
+state of frantic high spirits.&nbsp; He kicked, he plunged, he
+shied, he pranced, he capered fearfully.&nbsp; I sat on him as
+long as I could, and when I could sit no longer, I fell
+off.&nbsp; No, Francis! this is not a circumstance to be laughed
+at, but to be wept over.&nbsp; What would be said of a Man who
+had requited my kindness in that way?&nbsp; Range over all the
+rest of the animal creation, and where will you find me an
+instance of treachery so black as this?&nbsp; The cow that kicks
+down the milking-pail may have some reason for it; she may think
+herself taxed too heavily to contribute to the dilution of human
+tea and the greasing of human bread.&nbsp; The tiger who springs
+out on me unawares has the excuse of being hungry at the time, to
+say nothing of the further justification of being a total
+stranger to me.&nbsp; The very flea who surprises me in my sleep
+may defend his act of assassination on the ground that I, in my
+turn, am always ready to murder him when I am awake.&nbsp; I defy
+the whole body of Natural Historians to move me, logically, off
+the ground that I have taken in regard to the horse.&nbsp;
+Receive back your hat, Brother Francis, and go to the
+chemist&rsquo;s, if you please; for I have now done.&nbsp; Ask me
+to take anything you like, except an interest in the Doncaster
+races.&nbsp; Ask me to look at anything you like, except an
+assemblage of people all animated by feelings of a friendly and
+admiring nature towards the horse.&nbsp; You are a remarkably
+well-informed man, and you have heard of hermits.&nbsp; Look upon
+me as a member of that ancient fraternity, and you will sensibly
+add to the many obligations which Thomas Idle is proud to owe to
+Francis Goodchild.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Here, fatigued by the effort of excessive talking,
+disputatious Thomas waved one hand languidly, laid his head back
+on the sofa-pillow, and calmly closed his eyes.</p>
+<p>At a later period, Mr. Goodchild assailed his travelling
+companion boldly from the impregnable fortress of common
+sense.&nbsp; But Thomas, though tamed in body by drastic
+discipline, was still as mentally unapproachable as ever on the
+subject of his favourite delusion.</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p>The view from the window after Saturday&rsquo;s breakfast is
+altogether changed.&nbsp; The tradesmen&rsquo;s families have all
+come back again.&nbsp; The serious stationer&rsquo;s young woman
+of all work is shaking a duster out of the window of the
+combination breakfast-room; a child is playing with a doll, where
+Mr. Thurtell&rsquo;s hair was brushed; a sanitary scrubbing is in
+progress on the spot where Mr. Palmer&rsquo;s braces were put
+on.&nbsp; No signs of the Races are in the streets, but the
+tramps and the tumble-down-carts and trucks laden with
+drinking-forms and tables and remnants of booths, that are making
+their way out of the town as fast as they can.&nbsp; The Angel,
+which has been cleared for action all the week, already begins
+restoring every neat and comfortable article of furniture to its
+own neat and comfortable place.&nbsp; The Angel&rsquo;s daughters
+(pleasanter angels Mr. Idle and Mr. Goodchild never saw, nor more
+quietly expert in their business, nor more superior to the common
+vice of being above it), have a little time to rest, and to air
+their cheerful faces among the flowers in the yard.&nbsp; It is
+market-day.&nbsp; The market looks unusually natural,
+comfortable, and wholesome; the market-people too.&nbsp; The town
+seems quite restored, when, hark! a metallic bray&mdash;The
+Gong-donkey!</p>
+<p>The wretched animal has not cleared off with the rest, but is
+here, under the window.&nbsp; How much more inconceivably drunk
+now, how much more begrimed of paw, how much more tight of calico
+hide, how much more stained and daubed and dirty and dunghilly,
+from his horrible broom to his tender toes, who shall say!&nbsp;
+He cannot even shake the bray out of himself now, without laying
+his cheek so near to the mud of the street, that he pitches over
+after delivering it.&nbsp; Now, prone in the mud, and now backing
+himself up against shop-windows, the owners of which come out in
+terror to remove him; now, in the drinking-shop, and now in the
+tobacconist&rsquo;s, where he goes to buy tobacco, and makes his
+way into the parlour, and where he gets a cigar, which in
+half-a-minute he forgets to smoke; now dancing, now dozing, now
+cursing, and now complimenting My Lord, the Colonel, the Noble
+Captain, and Your Honourable Worship, the Gong-donkey kicks up
+his heels, occasionally braying, until suddenly, he beholds the
+dearest friend he has in the world coming down the street.</p>
+<p>The dearest friend the Gong-donkey has in the world, is a sort
+of Jackall, in a dull, mangy, black hide, of such small pieces
+that it looks as if it were made of blacking bottles turned
+inside out and cobbled together.&nbsp; The dearest friend in the
+world (inconceivably drunk too) advances at the Gong-donkey, with
+a hand on each thigh, in a series of humorous springs and stops,
+wagging his head as he comes.&nbsp; The Gong-donkey regarding him
+with attention and with the warmest affection, suddenly perceives
+that he is the greatest enemy he has in the world, and hits him
+hard in the countenance.&nbsp; The astonished Jackall closes with
+the Donkey, and they roll over and over in the mud, pummelling
+one another.&nbsp; A Police Inspector, supernaturally endowed
+with patience, who has long been looking on from the
+Guildhall-steps, says, to a myrmidon, &lsquo;Lock &rsquo;em
+up!&nbsp; Bring &rsquo;em in!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Appropriate finish to the Grand Race-Week.&nbsp; The
+Gong-donkey, captive and last trace of it, conveyed into limbo,
+where they cannot do better than keep him until next
+Race-Week.&nbsp; The Jackall is wanted too, and is much looked
+for, over the way and up and down.&nbsp; But, having had the good
+fortune to be undermost at the time of the capture, he has
+vanished into air.</p>
+<p>On Saturday afternoon, Mr. Goodchild walks out and looks at
+the Course.&nbsp; It is quite deserted; heaps of broken crockery
+and bottles are raised to its memory; and correct cards and other
+fragments of paper are blowing about it, as the regulation little
+paper-books, carried by the French soldiers in their breasts,
+were seen, soon after the battle was fought, blowing idly about
+the plains of Waterloo.</p>
+<p>Where will these present idle leaves be blown by the idle
+winds, and where will the last of them be one day lost and
+forgotten?&nbsp; An idle question, and an idle thought.; and with
+it Mr. Idle fitly makes his bow, and Mr. Goodchild his, and thus
+ends the Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices.</p>
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE
+APPRENTICES***</p>
+<pre>
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices
+by Charles Dickens
+(#23 in our series by Charles Dickens)
+
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+Title: The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+Release Date: April, 1997  [EBook #888]
+[This file was first posted on April 28, 1997]
+[Most recently updated: May 11, 2003]
+
+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES ***
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1905 edition by David Price,
+email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+
+In the autumn month of September, eighteen hundred and fifty-seven,
+wherein these presents bear date, two idle apprentices, exhausted
+by the long, hot summer, and the long, hot work it had brought with
+it, ran away from their employer.  They were bound to a highly
+meritorious lady (named Literature), of fair credit and repute,
+though, it must be acknowledged, not quite so highly esteemed in
+the City as she might be.  This is the more remarkable, as there is
+nothing against the respectable lady in that quarter, but quite the
+contrary; her family having rendered eminent service to many famous
+citizens of London.  It may be sufficient to name Sir William
+Walworth, Lord Mayor under King Richard II., at the time of Wat
+Tyler's insurrection, and Sir Richard Whittington:  which latter
+distinguished man and magistrate was doubtless indebted to the
+lady's family for the gift of his celebrated cat.  There is also
+strong reason to suppose that they rang the Highgate bells for him
+with their own hands.
+
+The misguided young men who thus shirked their duty to the mistress
+from whom they had received many favours, were actuated by the low
+idea of making a perfectly idle trip, in any direction.  They had
+no intention of going anywhere in particular; they wanted to see
+nothing, they wanted to know nothing, they wanted to learn nothing,
+they wanted to do nothing.  They wanted only to be idle.  They took
+to themselves (after HOGARTH), the names of Mr. Thomas Idle and Mr.
+Francis Goodchild; but there was not a moral pin to choose between
+them, and they were both idle in the last degree.
+
+Between Francis and Thomas, however, there was this difference of
+character:  Goodchild was laboriously idle, and would take upon
+himself any amount of pains and labour to assure himself that he
+was idle; in short, had no better idea of idleness than that it was
+useless industry.  Thomas Idle, on the other hand, was an idler of
+the unmixed Irish or Neapolitan type; a passive idler, a born-and-
+bred idler, a consistent idler, who practised what he would have
+preached if he had not been too idle to preach; a one entire and
+perfect chrysolite of idleness.
+
+The two idle apprentices found themselves, within a few hours of
+their escape, walking down into the North of England, that is to
+say, Thomas was lying in a meadow, looking at the railway trains as
+they passed over a distant viaduct--which was HIS idea of walking
+down into the North; while Francis was walking a mile due South
+against time--which was HIS idea of walking down into the North.
+In the meantime the day waned, and the milestones remained
+unconquered.
+
+'Tom,' said Goodchild, 'the sun is getting low.  Up, and let us go
+forward!'
+
+'Nay,' quoth Thomas Idle, 'I have not done with Annie Laurie yet.'
+And he proceeded with that idle but popular ballad, to the effect
+that for the bonnie young person of that name he would 'lay him
+doon and dee'--equivalent, in prose, to lay him down and die.
+
+'What an ass that fellow was!' cried Goodchild, with the bitter
+emphasis of contempt.
+
+'Which fellow?' asked Thomas Idle.
+
+'The fellow in your song.  Lay him doon and dee!  Finely he'd show
+off before the girl by doing THAT.  A sniveller!  Why couldn't he
+get up, and punch somebody's head!'
+
+'Whose?' asked Thomas Idle.
+
+'Anybody's.  Everybody's would be better than nobody's!  If I fell
+into that state of mind about a girl, do you think I'd lay me doon
+and dee?  No, sir,' proceeded Goodchild, with a disparaging
+assumption of the Scottish accent, 'I'd get me oop and peetch into
+somebody.  Wouldn't you?'
+
+'I wouldn't have anything to do with her,' yawned Thomas Idle.
+'Why should I take the trouble?'
+
+'It's no trouble, Tom, to fall in love,' said Goodchild, shaking
+his head.
+
+'It's trouble enough to fall out of it, once you're in it,'
+retorted Tom.  'So I keep out of it altogether.  It would be better
+for you, if you did the same.'
+
+Mr. Goodchild, who is always in love with somebody, and not
+unfrequently with several objects at once, made no reply.  He
+heaved a sigh of the kind which is termed by the lower orders 'a
+bellowser,' and then, heaving Mr. Idle on his feet (who was not
+half so heavy as the sigh), urged him northward.
+
+These two had sent their personal baggage on by train:  only
+retaining each a knapsack.  Idle now applied himself to constantly
+regretting the train, to tracking it through the intricacies of
+Bradshaw's Guide, and finding out where it is now--and where now--
+and where now--and to asking what was the use of walking, when you
+could ride at such a pace as that.  Was it to see the country?  If
+that was the object, look at it out of the carriage windows.  There
+was a great deal more of it to be seen there than here.  Besides,
+who wanted to see the country?  Nobody.  And again, whoever did
+walk?  Nobody.  Fellows set off to walk, but they never did it.
+They came back and said they did, but they didn't.  Then why should
+he walk?  He wouldn't walk.  He swore it by this milestone!
+
+It was the fifth from London, so far had they penetrated into the
+North.  Submitting to the powerful chain of argument, Goodchild
+proposed a return to the Metropolis, and a falling back upon Euston
+Square Terminus.  Thomas assented with alacrity, and so they walked
+down into the North by the next morning's express, and carried
+their knapsacks in the luggage-van.
+
+It was like all other expresses, as every express is and must be.
+It bore through the harvest country a smell like a large washing-
+day, and a sharp issue of steam as from a huge brazen tea-urn.  The
+greatest power in nature and art combined, it yet glided over
+dangerous heights in the sight of people looking up from fields and
+roads, as smoothly and unreally as a light miniature plaything.
+Now, the engine shrieked in hysterics of such intensity, that it
+seemed desirable that the men who had her in charge should hold her
+feet, slap her hands, and bring her to; now, burrowed into tunnels
+with a stubborn and undemonstrative energy so confusing that the
+train seemed to be flying back into leagues of darkness.  Here,
+were station after station, swallowed up by the express without
+stopping; here, stations where it fired itself in like a volley of
+cannon-balls, swooped away four country-people with nosegays, and
+three men of business with portmanteaus, and fired itself off
+again, bang, bang, bang!  At long intervals were uncomfortable
+refreshment-rooms, made more uncomfortable by the scorn of Beauty
+towards Beast, the public (but to whom she never relented, as
+Beauty did in the story, towards the other Beast), and where
+sensitive stomachs were fed, with a contemptuous sharpness
+occasioning indigestion.  Here, again, were stations with nothing
+going but a bell, and wonderful wooden razors set aloft on great
+posts, shaving the air.  In these fields, the horses, sheep, and
+cattle were well used to the thundering meteor, and didn't mind; in
+those, they were all set scampering together, and a herd of pigs
+scoured after them.  The pastoral country darkened, became coaly,
+became smoky, became infernal, got better, got worse, improved
+again, grew rugged, turned romantic; was a wood, a stream, a chain
+of hills, a gorge, a moor, a cathedral town, a fortified place, a
+waste.  Now, miserable black dwellings, a black canal, and sick
+black towers of chimneys; now, a trim garden, where the flowers
+were bright and fair; now, a wilderness of hideous altars all a-
+blaze; now, the water meadows with their fairy rings; now, the
+mangy patch of unlet building ground outside the stagnant town,
+with the larger ring where the Circus was last week.  The
+temperature changed, the dialect changed, the people changed, faces
+got sharper, manner got shorter, eyes got shrewder and harder; yet
+all so quickly, that the spruce guard in the London uniform and
+silver lace, had not yet rumpled his shirt-collar, delivered half
+the dispatches in his shiny little pouch, or read his newspaper.
+
+Carlisle!  Idle and Goodchild had got to Carlisle.  It looked
+congenially and delightfully idle.  Something in the way of public
+amusement had happened last month, and something else was going to
+happen before Christmas; and, in the meantime there was a lecture
+on India for those who liked it--which Idle and Goodchild did not.
+Likewise, by those who liked them, there were impressions to be
+bought of all the vapid prints, going and gone, and of nearly all
+the vapid books.  For those who wanted to put anything in
+missionary boxes, here were the boxes.  For those who wanted the
+Reverend Mr. Podgers (artist's proofs, thirty shillings), here was
+Mr. Podgers to any amount.  Not less gracious and abundant, Mr.
+Codgers also of the vineyard, but opposed to Mr. Podgers, brotherly
+tooth and nail.  Here, were guide-books to the neighbouring
+antiquities, and eke the Lake country, in several dry and husky
+sorts; here, many physically and morally impossible heads of both
+sexes, for young ladies to copy, in the exercise of the art of
+drawing; here, further, a large impression of MR. SPURGEON, solid
+as to the flesh, not to say even something gross.  The working
+young men of Carlisle were drawn up, with their hands in their
+pockets, across the pavements, four and six abreast, and appeared
+(much to the satisfaction of Mr. Idle) to have nothing else to do.
+The working and growing young women of Carlisle, from the age of
+twelve upwards, promenaded the streets in the cool of the evening,
+and rallied the said young men.  Sometimes the young men rallied
+the young women, as in the case of a group gathered round an
+accordion-player, from among whom a young man advanced behind a
+young woman for whom he appeared to have a tenderness, and hinted
+to her that he was there and playful, by giving her (he wore clogs)
+a kick.
+
+On market morning, Carlisle woke up amazingly, and became (to the
+two Idle Apprentices) disagreeably and reproachfully busy.  There
+were its cattle market, its sheep market, and its pig market down
+by the river, with raw-boned and shock-headed Rob Roys hiding their
+Lowland dresses beneath heavy plaids, prowling in and out among the
+animals, and flavouring the air with fumes of whiskey.  There was
+its corn market down the main street, with hum of chaffering over
+open sacks.  There was its general market in the street too, with
+heather brooms on which the purple flower still flourished, and
+heather baskets primitive and fresh to behold.  With women trying
+on clogs and caps at open stalls, and 'Bible stalls' adjoining.
+With 'Doctor Mantle's Dispensary for the cure of all Human Maladies
+and no charge for advice,' and with Doctor Mantle's 'Laboratory of
+Medical, Chemical, and Botanical Science'--both healing
+institutions established on one pair of trestles, one board, and
+one sun-blind.  With the renowned phrenologist from London, begging
+to be favoured (at sixpence each) with the company of clients of
+both sexes, to whom, on examination of their heads, he would make
+revelations 'enabling him or her to know themselves.'  Through all
+these bargains and blessings, the recruiting-sergeant watchfully
+elbowed his way, a thread of War in the peaceful skein.  Likewise
+on the walls were printed hints that the Oxford Blues might not be
+indisposed to hear of a few fine active young men; and that whereas
+the standard of that distinguished corps is full six feet, 'growing
+lads of five feet eleven' need not absolutely despair of being
+accepted.
+
+Scenting the morning air more pleasantly than the buried majesty of
+Denmark did, Messrs. Idle and Goodchild rode away from Carlisle at
+eight o'clock one forenoon, bound for the village of Hesket,
+Newmarket, some fourteen miles distant.  Goodchild (who had already
+begun to doubt whether he was idle:  as his way always is when he
+has nothing to do) had read of a certain black old Cumberland hill
+or mountain, called Carrock, or Carrock Fell; and had arrived at
+the conclusion that it would be the culminating triumph of Idleness
+to ascend the same.  Thomas Idle, dwelling on the pains inseparable
+from that achievement, had expressed the strongest doubts of the
+expediency, and even of the sanity, of the enterprise; but
+Goodchild had carried his point, and they rode away.
+
+Up hill and down hill, and twisting to the right, and twisting to
+the left, and with old Skiddaw (who has vaunted himself a great
+deal more than his merits deserve; but that is rather the way of
+the Lake country), dodging the apprentices in a picturesque and
+pleasant manner.  Good, weather-proof, warm, pleasant houses, well
+white-limed, scantily dotting the road.  Clean children coming out
+to look, carrying other clean children as big as themselves.
+Harvest still lying out and much rained upon; here and there,
+harvest still unreaped.  Well-cultivated gardens attached to the
+cottages, with plenty of produce forced out of their hard soil.
+Lonely nooks, and wild; but people can be born, and married, and
+buried in such nooks, and can live and love, and be loved, there as
+elsewhere, thank God! (Mr. Goodchild's remark.)  By-and-by, the
+village.  Black, coarse-stoned, rough-windowed houses; some with
+outer staircases, like Swiss houses; a sinuous and stony gutter
+winding up hill and round the corner, by way of street.  All the
+children running out directly.  Women pausing in washing, to peep
+from doorways and very little windows.  Such were the observations
+of Messrs. Idle and Goodchild, as their conveyance stopped at the
+village shoemaker's.  Old Carrock gloomed down upon it all in a
+very ill-tempered state; and rain was beginning.
+
+The village shoemaker declined to have anything to do with Carrock.
+No visitors went up Carrock.  No visitors came there at all.  Aa'
+the world ganged awa' yon.  The driver appealed to the Innkeeper.
+The Innkeeper had two men working in the fields, and one of them
+should be called in, to go up Carrock as guide.  Messrs. Idle and
+Goodchild, highly approving, entered the Innkeeper's house, to
+drink whiskey and eat oatcake.
+
+The Innkeeper was not idle enough--was not idle at all, which was a
+great fault in him--but was a fine specimen of a north-country man,
+or any kind of man.  He had a ruddy cheek, a bright eye, a well-
+knit frame, an immense hand, a cheery, outspeaking voice, and a
+straight, bright, broad look.  He had a drawing-room, too,
+upstairs, which was worth a visit to the Cumberland Fells.  (This
+was Mr. Francis Goodchild's opinion, in which Mr. Thomas Idle did
+not concur.)
+
+The ceiling of this drawing-room was so crossed and recrossed by
+beams of unequal lengths, radiating from a centre, in a corner,
+that it looked like a broken star-fish.  The room was comfortably
+and solidly furnished with good mahogany and horsehair.  It had a
+snug fireside, and a couple of well-curtained windows, looking out
+upon the wild country behind the house.  What it most developed
+was, an unexpected taste for little ornaments and nick-nacks, of
+which it contained a most surprising number.  They were not very
+various, consisting in great part of waxen babies with their limbs
+more or less mutilated, appealing on one leg to the parental
+affections from under little cupping glasses; but, Uncle Tom was
+there, in crockery, receiving theological instructions from Miss
+Eva, who grew out of his side like a wen, in an exceedingly rough
+state of profile propagandism.  Engravings of Mr. Hunt's country
+boy, before and after his pie, were on the wall, divided by a
+highly-coloured nautical piece, the subject of which had all her
+colours (and more) flying, and was making great way through a sea
+of a regular pattern, like a lady's collar.  A benevolent, elderly
+gentleman of the last century, with a powdered head, kept guard, in
+oil and varnish, over a most perplexing piece of furniture on a
+table; in appearance between a driving seat and an angular knife-
+box, but, when opened, a musical instrument of tinkling wires,
+exactly like David's harp packed for travelling.  Everything became
+a nick-nack in this curious room.  The copper tea-kettle, burnished
+up to the highest point of glory, took his station on a stand of
+his own at the greatest possible distance from the fireplace, and
+said:  'By your leave, not a kettle, but a bijou.'  The
+Staffordshire-ware butter-dish with the cover on, got upon a little
+round occasional table in a window, with a worked top, and
+announced itself to the two chairs accidentally placed there, as an
+aid to polite conversation, a graceful trifle in china to be
+chatted over by callers, as they airily trifled away the visiting
+moments of a butterfly existence, in that rugged old village on the
+Cumberland Fells.  The very footstool could not keep the floor, but
+got upon a sofa, and there-from proclaimed itself, in high relief
+of white and liver-coloured wool, a favourite spaniel coiled up for
+repose.  Though, truly, in spite of its bright glass eyes, the
+spaniel was the least successful assumption in the collection:
+being perfectly flat, and dismally suggestive of a recent mistake
+in sitting down on the part of some corpulent member of the family.
+
+There were books, too, in this room; books on the table, books on
+the chimney-piece, books in an open press in the corner.  Fielding
+was there, and Smollett was there, and Steele and Addison were
+there, in dispersed volumes; and there were tales of those who go
+down to the sea in ships, for windy nights; and there was really a
+choice of good books for rainy days or fine.  It was so very
+pleasant to see these things in such a lonesome by-place--so very
+agreeable to find these evidences of a taste, however homely, that
+went beyond the beautiful cleanliness and trimness of the house--so
+fanciful to imagine what a wonder a room must be to the little
+children born in the gloomy village--what grand impressions of it
+those of them who became wanderers over the earth would carry away;
+and how, at distant ends of the world, some old voyagers would die,
+cherishing the belief that the finest apartment known to men was
+once in the Hesket-Newmarket Inn, in rare old Cumberland--it was
+such a charmingly lazy pursuit to entertain these rambling thoughts
+over the choice oatcake and the genial whiskey, that Mr. Idle and
+Mr. Goodchild never asked themselves how it came to pass that the
+men in the fields were never heard of more, how the stalwart
+landlord replaced them without explanation, how his dog-cart came
+to be waiting at the door, and how everything was arranged without
+the least arrangement for climbing to old Carrock's shoulders, and
+standing on his head.
+
+Without a word of inquiry, therefore, the Two Idle Apprentices
+drifted out resignedly into a fine, soft, close, drowsy,
+penetrating rain; got into the landlord's light dog-cart, and
+rattled off through the village for the foot of Carrock.  The
+journey at the outset was not remarkable.  The Cumberland road went
+up and down like all other roads; the Cumberland curs burst out
+from backs of cottages and barked like other curs, and the
+Cumberland peasantry stared after the dog-cart amazedly, as long as
+it was in sight, like the rest of their race.  The approach to the
+foot of the mountain resembled the approaches to the feet of most
+other mountains all over the world.  The cultivation gradually
+ceased, the trees grew gradually rare, the road became gradually
+rougher, and the sides of the mountain looked gradually more and
+more lofty, and more and more difficult to get up.  The dog-cart
+was left at a lonely farm-house.  The landlord borrowed a large
+umbrella, and, assuming in an instant the character of the most
+cheerful and adventurous of guides, led the way to the ascent.  Mr.
+Goodchild looked eagerly at the top of the mountain, and, feeling
+apparently that he was now going to be very lazy indeed, shone all
+over wonderfully to the eye, under the influence of the contentment
+within and the moisture without.  Only in the bosom of Mr. Thomas
+Idle did Despondency now hold her gloomy state.  He kept it a
+secret; but he would have given a very handsome sum, when the
+ascent began, to have been back again at the inn.  The sides of
+Carrock looked fearfully steep, and the top of Carrock was hidden
+in mist.  The rain was falling faster and faster.  The knees of Mr.
+Idle--always weak on walking excursions--shivered and shook with
+fear and damp.  The wet was already penetrating through the young
+man's outer coat to a brand-new shooting-jacket, for which he had
+reluctantly paid the large sum of two guineas on leaving town; he
+had no stimulating refreshment about him but a small packet of
+clammy gingerbread nuts; he had nobody to give him an arm, nobody
+to push him gently behind, nobody to pull him up tenderly in front,
+nobody to speak to who really felt the difficulties of the ascent,
+the dampness of the rain, the denseness of the mist, and the
+unutterable folly of climbing, undriven, up any steep place in the
+world, when there is level ground within reach to walk on instead.
+Was it for this that Thomas had left London?  London, where there
+are nice short walks in level public gardens, with benches of
+repose set up at convenient distances for weary travellers--London,
+where rugged stone is humanely pounded into little lumps for the
+road, and intelligently shaped into smooth slabs for the pavement!
+No! it was not for the laborious ascent of the crags of Carrock
+that Idle had left his native city, and travelled to Cumberland.
+Never did he feel more disastrously convinced that he had committed
+a very grave error in judgment than when he found himself standing
+in the rain at the bottom of a steep mountain, and knew that the
+responsibility rested on his weak shoulders of actually getting to
+the top of it.
+
+The honest landlord went first, the beaming Goodchild followed, the
+mournful Idle brought up the rear.  From time to time, the two
+foremost members of the expedition changed places in the order of
+march; but the rearguard never altered his position.  Up the
+mountain or down the mountain, in the water or out of it, over the
+rocks, through the bogs, skirting the heather, Mr. Thomas Idle was
+always the last, and was always the man who had to be looked after
+and waited for.  At first the ascent was delusively easy, the sides
+of the mountain sloped gradually, and the material of which they
+were composed was a soft spongy turf, very tender and pleasant to
+walk upon.  After a hundred yards or so, however, the verdant scene
+and the easy slope disappeared, and the rocks began.  Not noble,
+massive rocks, standing upright, keeping a certain regularity in
+their positions, and possessing, now and then, flat tops to sit
+upon, but little irritating, comfortless rocks, littered about
+anyhow, by Nature; treacherous, disheartening rocks of all sorts of
+small shapes and small sizes, bruisers of tender toes and trippers-
+up of wavering feet.  When these impediments were passed, heather
+and slough followed.  Here the steepness of the ascent was slightly
+mitigated; and here the exploring party of three turned round to
+look at the view below them.  The scene of the moorland and the
+fields was like a feeble water-colour drawing half sponged out.
+The mist was darkening, the rain was thickening, the trees were
+dotted about like spots of faint shadow, the division-lines which
+mapped out the fields were all getting blurred together, and the
+lonely farm-house where the dog-cart had been left, loomed spectral
+in the grey light like the last human dwelling at the end of the
+habitable world.  Was this a sight worth climbing to see?  Surely--
+surely not!
+
+Up again--for the top of Carrock is not reached yet.  The land-
+lord, just as good-tempered and obliging as he was at the bottom of
+the mountain.  Mr. Goodchild brighter in the eyes and rosier in the
+face than ever; full of cheerful remarks and apt quotations; and
+walking with a springiness of step wonderful to behold.  Mr. Idle,
+farther and farther in the rear, with the water squeaking in the
+toes of his boots, with his two-guinea shooting-jacket clinging
+damply to his aching sides, with his overcoat so full of rain, and
+standing out so pyramidically stiff, in consequence, from his
+shoulders downwards, that he felt as if he was walking in a
+gigantic extinguisher--the despairing spirit within him
+representing but too aptly the candle that had just been put out.
+Up and up and up again, till a ridge is reached and the outer edge
+of the mist on the summit of Carrock is darkly and drizzingly near.
+Is this the top?  No, nothing like the top.  It is an aggravating
+peculiarity of all mountains, that, although they have only one top
+when they are seen (as they ought always to be seen) from below,
+they turn out to have a perfect eruption of false tops whenever the
+traveller is sufficiently ill-advised to go out of his way for the
+purpose of ascending them.  Carrock is but a trumpery little
+mountain of fifteen hundred feet, and it presumes to have false
+tops, and even precipices, as if it were Mont Blanc.  No matter;
+Goodchild enjoys it, and will go on; and Idle, who is afraid of
+being left behind by himself, must follow.  On entering the edge of
+the mist, the landlord stops, and says he hopes that it will not
+get any thicker.  It is twenty years since he last ascended
+Carrock, and it is barely possible, if the mist increases, that the
+party may be lost on the mountain.  Goodchild hears this dreadful
+intimation, and is not in the least impressed by it.  He marches
+for the top that is never to be found, as if he was the Wandering
+Jew, bound to go on for ever, in defiance of everything.  The
+landlord faithfully accompanies him.  The two, to the dim eye of
+Idle, far below, look in the exaggerative mist, like a pair of
+friendly giants, mounting the steps of some invisible castle
+together.  Up and up, and then down a little, and then up, and then
+along a strip of level ground, and then up again.  The wind, a wind
+unknown in the happy valley, blows keen and strong; the rain-mist
+gets impenetrable; a dreary little cairn of stones appears.  The
+landlord adds one to the heap, first walking all round the cairn as
+if he were about to perform an incantation, then dropping the stone
+on to the top of the heap with the gesture of a magician adding an
+ingredient to a cauldron in full bubble.  Goodchild sits down by
+the cairn as if it was his study-table at home; Idle, drenched and
+panting, stands up with his back to the wind, ascertains distinctly
+that this is the top at last, looks round with all the little
+curiosity that is left in him, and gets, in return, a magnificent
+view of--Nothing!
+
+The effect of this sublime spectacle on the minds of the exploring
+party is a little injured by the nature of the direct conclusion to
+which the sight of it points--the said conclusion being that the
+mountain mist has actually gathered round them, as the landlord
+feared it would.  It now becomes imperatively necessary to settle
+the exact situation of the farm-house in the valley at which the
+dog-cart has been left, before the travellers attempt to descend.
+While the landlord is endeavouring to make this discovery in his
+own way, Mr. Goodchild plunges his hand under his wet coat, draws
+out a little red morocco-case, opens it, and displays to the view
+of his companions a neat pocket-compass.  The north is found, the
+point at which the farm-house is situated is settled, and the
+descent begins.  After a little downward walking, Idle (behind as
+usual) sees his fellow-travellers turn aside sharply--tries to
+follow them--loses them in the mist--is shouted after, waited for,
+recovered--and then finds that a halt has been ordered, partly on
+his account, partly for the purpose of again consulting the
+compass.
+
+The point in debate is settled as before between Goodchild and the
+landlord, and the expedition moves on, not down the mountain, but
+marching straight forward round the slope of it.  The difficulty of
+following this new route is acutely felt by Thomas Idle.  He finds
+the hardship of walking at all greatly increased by the fatigue of
+moving his feet straight forward along the side of a slope, when
+their natural tendency, at every step, is to turn off at a right
+angle, and go straight down the declivity.  Let the reader imagine
+himself to be walking along the roof of a barn, instead of up or
+down it, and he will have an exact idea of the pedestrian
+difficulty in which the travellers had now involved themselves.  In
+ten minutes more Idle was lost in the distance again, was shouted
+for, waited for, recovered as before; found Goodchild repeating his
+observation of the compass, and remonstrated warmly against the
+sideway route that his companions persisted in following.  It
+appeared to the uninstructed mind of Thomas that when three men
+want to get to the bottom of a mountain, their business is to walk
+down it; and he put this view of the case, not only with emphasis,
+but even with some irritability.  He was answered from the
+scientific eminence of the compass on which his companions were
+mounted, that there was a frightful chasm somewhere near the foot
+of Carrock, called The Black Arches, into which the travellers were
+sure to march in the mist, if they risked continuing the descent
+from the place where they had now halted.  Idle received this
+answer with the silent respect which was due to the commanders of
+the expedition, and followed along the roof of the barn, or rather
+the side of the mountain, reflecting upon the assurance which he
+received on starting again, that the object of the party was only
+to gain 'a certain point,' and, this haven attained, to continue
+the descent afterwards until the foot of Carrock was reached.
+Though quite unexceptionable as an abstract form of expression, the
+phrase 'a certain point' has the disadvantage of sounding rather
+vaguely when it is pronounced on unknown ground, under a canopy of
+mist much thicker than a London fog.  Nevertheless, after the
+compass, this phrase was all the clue the party had to hold by, and
+Idle clung to the extreme end of it as hopefully as he could.
+
+More sideway walking, thicker and thicker mist, all sorts of points
+reached except the 'certain point;' third loss of Idle, third
+shouts for him, third recovery of him, third consultation of
+compass.  Mr. Goodchild draws it tenderly from his pocket, and
+prepares to adjust it on a stone.  Something falls on the turf--it
+is the glass.  Something else drops immediately after--it is the
+needle.  The compass is broken, and the exploring party is lost!
+
+It is the practice of the English portion of the human race to
+receive all great disasters in dead silence.  Mr. Goodchild
+restored the useless compass to his pocket without saying a word,
+Mr. Idle looked at the landlord, and the landlord looked at Mr.
+Idle.  There was nothing for it now but to go on blindfold, and
+trust to the chapter of chances.  Accordingly, the lost travellers
+moved forward, still walking round the slope of the mountain, still
+desperately resolved to avoid the Black Arches, and to succeed in
+reaching the 'certain point.'
+
+A quarter of an hour brought them to the brink of a ravine, at the
+bottom of which there flowed a muddy little stream.  Here another
+halt was called, and another consultation took place.  The
+landlord, still clinging pertinaciously to the idea of reaching the
+'point,' voted for crossing the ravine, and going on round the
+slope of the mountain.  Mr. Goodchild, to the great relief of his
+fellow-traveller, took another view of the case, and backed Mr.
+Idle's proposal to descend Carrock at once, at any hazard--the
+rather as the running stream was a sure guide to follow from the
+mountain to the valley.  Accordingly, the party descended to the
+rugged and stony banks of the stream; and here again Thomas lost
+ground sadly, and fell far behind his travelling companions.  Not
+much more than six weeks had elapsed since he had sprained one of
+his ankles, and he began to feel this same ankle getting rather
+weak when he found himself among the stones that were strewn about
+the running water.  Goodchild and the landlord were getting farther
+and farther ahead of him.  He saw them cross the stream and
+disappear round a projection on its banks.  He heard them shout the
+moment after as a signal that they had halted and were waiting for
+him.  Answering the shout, he mended his pace, crossed the stream
+where they had crossed it, and was within one step of the opposite
+bank, when his foot slipped on a wet stone, his weak ankle gave a
+twist outwards, a hot, rending, tearing pain ran through it at the
+same moment, and down fell the idlest of the Two Idle Apprentices,
+crippled in an instant.
+
+The situation was now, in plain terms, one of absolute danger.
+There lay Mr. Idle writhing with pain, there was the mist as thick
+as ever, there was the landlord as completely lost as the strangers
+whom he was conducting, and there was the compass broken in
+Goodchild's pocket.  To leave the wretched Thomas on unknown ground
+was plainly impossible; and to get him to walk with a badly
+sprained ankle seemed equally out of the question.  However,
+Goodchild (brought back by his cry for help) bandaged the ankle
+with a pocket-handkerchief, and assisted by the landlord, raised
+the crippled Apprentice to his legs, offered him a shoulder to lean
+on, and exhorted him for the sake of the whole party to try if he
+could walk.  Thomas, assisted by the shoulder on one side, and a
+stick on the other, did try, with what pain and difficulty those
+only can imagine who have sprained an ankle and have had to tread
+on it afterwards.  At a pace adapted to the feeble hobbling of a
+newly-lamed man, the lost party moved on, perfectly ignorant
+whether they were on the right side of the mountain or the wrong,
+and equally uncertain how long Idle would be able to contend with
+the pain in his ankle, before he gave in altogether and fell down
+again, unable to stir another step.
+
+Slowly and more slowly, as the clog of crippled Thomas weighed
+heavily and more heavily on the march of the expedition, the lost
+travellers followed the windings of the stream, till they came to a
+faintly-marked cart-track, branching off nearly at right angles, to
+the left.  After a little consultation it was resolved to follow
+this dim vestige of a road in the hope that it might lead to some
+farm or cottage, at which Idle could be left in safety.  It was now
+getting on towards the afternoon, and it was fast becoming more
+than doubtful whether the party, delayed in their progress as they
+now were, might not be overtaken by the darkness before the right
+route was found, and be condemned to pass the night on the
+mountain, without bit or drop to comfort them, in their wet
+clothes.
+
+The cart-track grew fainter and fainter, until it was washed out
+altogether by another little stream, dark, turbulent, and rapid.
+The landlord suggested, judging by the colour of the water, that it
+must be flowing from one of the lead mines in the neighbourhood of
+Carrock; and the travellers accordingly kept by the stream for a
+little while, in the hope of possibly wandering towards help in
+that way.  After walking forward about two hundred yards, they came
+upon a mine indeed, but a mine, exhausted and abandoned; a dismal,
+ruinous place, with nothing but the wreck of its works and
+buildings left to speak for it.  Here, there were a few sheep
+feeding.  The landlord looked at them earnestly, thought he
+recognised the marks on them--then thought he did not--finally gave
+up the sheep in despair--and walked on just as ignorant of the
+whereabouts of the party as ever.
+
+The march in the dark, literally as well as metaphorically in the
+dark, had now been continued for three-quarters of an hour from the
+time when the crippled Apprentice had met with his accident.  Mr.
+Idle, with all the will to conquer the pain in his ankle, and to
+hobble on, found the power rapidly failing him, and felt that
+another ten minutes at most would find him at the end of his last
+physical resources.  He had just made up his mind on this point,
+and was about to communicate the dismal result of his reflections
+to his companions, when the mist suddenly brightened, and begun to
+lift straight ahead.  In another minute, the landlord, who was in
+advance, proclaimed that he saw a tree.  Before long, other trees
+appeared--then a cottage--then a house beyond the cottage, and a
+familiar line of road rising behind it.  Last of all, Carrock
+itself loomed darkly into view, far away to the right hand.  The
+party had not only got down the mountain without knowing how, but
+had wandered away from it in the mist, without knowing why--away,
+far down on the very moor by which they had approached the base of
+Carrock that morning.
+
+The happy lifting of the mist, and the still happier discovery that
+the travellers had groped their way, though by a very roundabout
+direction, to within a mile or so of the part of the valley in
+which the farm-house was situated, restored Mr. Idle's sinking
+spirits and reanimated his failing strength.  While the landlord
+ran off to get the dog-cart, Thomas was assisted by Goodchild to
+the cottage which had been the first building seen when the
+darkness brightened, and was propped up against the garden wall,
+like an artist's lay figure waiting to be forwarded, until the dog-
+cart should arrive from the farm-house below.  In due time--and a
+very long time it seemed to Mr. Idle--the rattle of wheels was
+heard, and the crippled Apprentice was lifted into the seat.  As
+the dog-cart was driven back to the inn, the landlord related an
+anecdote which he had just heard at the farm-house, of an unhappy
+man who had been lost, like his two guests and himself, on Carrock;
+who had passed the night there alone; who had been found the next
+morning, 'scared and starved;' and who never went out afterwards,
+except on his way to the grave.  Mr. Idle heard this sad story, and
+derived at least one useful impression from it.  Bad as the pain in
+his ankle was, he contrived to bear it patiently, for he felt
+grateful that a worse accident had not befallen him in the wilds of
+Carrock.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+
+The dog-cart, with Mr. Thomas Idle and his ankle on the hanging
+seat behind, Mr. Francis Goodchild and the Innkeeper in front, and
+the rain in spouts and splashes everywhere, made the best of its
+way back to the little inn; the broken moor country looking like
+miles upon miles of Pre-Adamite sop, or the ruins of some enormous
+jorum of antediluvian toast-and-water.  The trees dripped; the
+eaves of the scattered cottages dripped; the barren stone walls
+dividing the land, dripped; the yelping dogs dripped; carts and
+waggons under ill-roofed penthouses, dripped; melancholy cocks and
+hens perching on their shafts, or seeking shelter underneath them,
+dripped; Mr. Goodchild dripped; Thomas Idle dripped; the Inn-keeper
+dripped; the mare dripped; the vast curtains of mist and cloud
+passed before the shadowy forms of the hills, streamed water as
+they were drawn across the landscape.  Down such steep pitches that
+the mare seemed to be trotting on her head, and up such steep
+pitches that she seemed to have a supplementary leg in her tail,
+the dog-cart jolted and tilted back to the village.  It was too wet
+for the women to look out, it was too wet even for the children to
+look out; all the doors and windows were closed, and the only sign
+of life or motion was in the rain-punctured puddles.
+
+Whiskey and oil to Thomas Idle's ankle, and whiskey without oil to
+Francis Goodchild's stomach, produced an agreeable change in the
+systems of both; soothing Mr. Idle's pain, which was sharp before,
+and sweetening Mr. Goodchild's temper, which was sweet before.
+Portmanteaus being then opened and clothes changed, Mr. Goodchild,
+through having no change of outer garments but broadcloth and
+velvet, suddenly became a magnificent portent in the Innkeeper's
+house, a shining frontispiece to the fashions for the month, and a
+frightful anomaly in the Cumberland village.
+
+Greatly ashamed of his splendid appearance, the conscious Goodchild
+quenched it as much as possible, in the shadow of Thomas Idle's
+ankle, and in a corner of the little covered carriage that started
+with them for Wigton--a most desirable carriage for any country,
+except for its having a flat roof and no sides; which caused the
+plumps of rain accumulating on the roof to play vigorous games of
+bagatelle into the interior all the way, and to score immensely.
+It was comfortable to see how the people coming back in open carts
+from Wigton market made no more of the rain than if it were
+sunshine; how the Wigton policeman taking a country walk of half-a-
+dozen miles (apparently for pleasure), in resplendent uniform,
+accepted saturation as his normal state; how clerks and
+schoolmasters in black, loitered along the road without umbrellas,
+getting varnished at every step; how the Cumberland girls, coming
+out to look after the Cumberland cows, shook the rain from their
+eyelashes and laughed it away; and how the rain continued to fall
+upon all, as it only does fall in hill countries.
+
+Wigton market was over, and its bare booths were smoking with rain
+all down the street.  Mr. Thomas Idle, melodramatically carried to
+the inn's first floor, and laid upon three chairs (he should have
+had the sofa, if there had been one), Mr. Goodchild went to the
+window to take an observation of Wigton, and report what he saw to
+his disabled companion.
+
+'Brother Francis, brother Francis,' cried Thomas Idle, 'What do you
+see from the turret?'
+
+'I see,' said Brother Francis, 'what I hope and believe to be one
+of the most dismal places ever seen by eyes.  I see the houses with
+their roofs of dull black, their stained fronts, and their dark-
+rimmed windows, looking as if they were all in mourning.  As every
+little puff of wind comes down the street, I see a perfect train of
+rain let off along the wooden stalls in the market-place and
+exploded against me.  I see a very big gas lamp in the centre which
+I know, by a secret instinct, will not be lighted to-night.  I see
+a pump, with a trivet underneath its spout whereon to stand the
+vessels that are brought to be filled with water.  I see a man come
+to pump, and he pumps very hard, but no water follows, and he
+strolls empty away.'
+
+'Brother Francis, brother Francis,' cried Thomas Idle, 'what more
+do you see from the turret, besides the man and the pump, and the
+trivet and the houses all in mourning and the rain?'
+
+'I see,' said Brother Francis, 'one, two, three, four, five, linen-
+drapers' shops in front of me.  I see a linen-draper's shop next
+door to the right--and there are five more linen-drapers' shops
+down the corner to the left.  Eleven homicidal linen-drapers' shops
+within a short stone's throw, each with its hands at the throats of
+all the rest!  Over the small first-floor of one of these linen-
+drapers' shops appears the wonderful inscription, BANK.'
+
+'Brother Francis, brother Francis,' cried Thomas Idle, 'what more
+do you see from the turret, besides the eleven homicidal linen-
+drapers' shops, and the wonderful inscription, "Bank,"--on the
+small first-floor, and the man and the pump and the trivet and the
+houses all in mourning and the rain?'
+
+'I see,' said Brother Francis, 'the depository for Christian
+Knowledge, and through the dark vapour I think I again make out Mr.
+Spurgeon looming heavily.  Her Majesty the Queen, God bless her,
+printed in colours, I am sure I see.  I see the Illustrated London
+News of several years ago, and I see a sweetmeat shop--which the
+proprietor calls a "Salt Warehouse"--with one small female child in
+a cotton bonnet looking in on tip-toe, oblivious of rain.  And I
+see a watchmaker's with only three great pale watches of a dull
+metal hanging in his window, each in a separate pane.'
+
+'Brother Francis, brother Francis,' cried Thomas Idle, 'what more
+do you see of Wigton, besides these objects, and the man and the
+pump and the trivet and the houses all in mourning and the rain?'
+
+'I see nothing more,' said Brother Francis, 'and there is nothing
+more to see, except the curlpaper bill of the theatre, which was
+opened and shut last week (the manager's family played all the
+parts), and the short, square, chinky omnibus that goes to the
+railway, and leads too rattling a life over the stones to hold
+together long.  O yes!  Now, I see two men with their hands in
+their pockets and their backs towards me.'
+
+'Brother Francis, brother Francis,' cried Thomas Idle, 'what do you
+make out from the turret, of the expression of the two men with
+their hands in their pockets and their backs towards you?'
+
+'They are mysterious men,' said Brother Francis, 'with inscrutable
+backs.  They keep their backs towards me with persistency.  If one
+turns an inch in any direction, the other turns an inch in the same
+direction, and no more.  They turn very stiffly, on a very little
+pivot, in the middle of the market-place.  Their appearance is
+partly of a mining, partly of a ploughing, partly of a stable,
+character.  They are looking at nothing--very hard.  Their backs
+are slouched, and their legs are curved with much standing about.
+Their pockets are loose and dog's-eared, on account of their hands
+being always in them.  They stand to be rained upon, without any
+movement of impatience or dissatisfaction, and they keep so close
+together that an elbow of each jostles an elbow of the other, but
+they never speak.  They spit at times, but speak not.  I see it
+growing darker and darker, and still I see them, sole visible
+population of the place, standing to be rained upon with their
+backs towards me, and looking at nothing very hard.'
+
+'Brother Francis, brother Francis,' cried Thomas Idle, 'before you
+draw down the blind of the turret and come in to have your head
+scorched by the hot gas, see if you can, and impart to me,
+something of the expression of those two amazing men.'
+
+'The murky shadows,' said Francis Goodchild, 'are gathering fast;
+and the wings of evening, and the wings of coal, are folding over
+Wigton.  Still, they look at nothing very hard, with their backs
+towards me.  Ah!  Now, they turn, and I see--'
+
+'Brother Francis, brother Francis,' cried Thomas Idle, 'tell me
+quickly what you see of the two men of Wigton!'
+
+'I see,' said Francis Goodchild, 'that they have no expression at
+all.  And now the town goes to sleep, undazzled by the large
+unlighted lamp in the market-place; and let no man wake it.'
+
+At the close of the next day's journey, Mr. Thomas Idle's ankle
+became much swollen and inflamed.  There are reasons which will
+presently explain themselves for not publicly indicating the exact
+direction in which that journey lay, or the place in which it
+ended.  It was a long day's shaking of Thomas Idle over the rough
+roads, and a long day's getting out and going on before the horses,
+and fagging up hills, and scouring down hills, on the part of Mr.
+Goodchild, who in the fatigues of such labours congratulated
+himself on attaining a high point of idleness.  It was at a little
+town, still in Cumberland, that they halted for the night--a very
+little town, with the purple and brown moor close upon its one
+street; a curious little ancient market-cross set up in the midst
+of it; and the town itself looking much as if it were a collection
+of great stones piled on end by the Druids long ago, which a few
+recluse people had since hollowed out for habitations.
+
+'Is there a doctor here?' asked Mr. Goodchild, on his knee, of the
+motherly landlady of the little Inn:  stopping in his examination
+of Mr. Idle's ankle, with the aid of a candle.
+
+'Ey, my word!' said the landlady, glancing doubtfully at the ankle
+for herself; 'there's Doctor Speddie.'
+
+'Is he a good Doctor?'
+
+'Ey!' said the landlady, 'I ca' him so.  A' cooms efther nae doctor
+that I ken.  Mair nor which, a's just THE doctor heer.'
+
+'Do you think he is at home?'
+
+Her reply was, 'Gang awa', Jock, and bring him.'
+
+Jock, a white-headed boy, who, under pretence of stirring up some
+bay salt in a basin of water for the laving of this unfortunate
+ankle, had greatly enjoyed himself for the last ten minutes in
+splashing the carpet, set off promptly.  A very few minutes had
+elapsed when he showed the Doctor in, by tumbling against the door
+before him and bursting it open with his head.
+
+'Gently, Jock, gently,' said the Doctor as he advanced with a quiet
+step.  'Gentlemen, a good evening.  I am sorry that my presence is
+required here.  A slight accident, I hope?  A slip and a fall?
+Yes, yes, yes.  Carrock, indeed?  Hah!  Does that pain you, sir?
+No doubt, it does.  It is the great connecting ligament here, you
+see, that has been badly strained.  Time and rest, sir!  They are
+often the recipe in greater cases,' with a slight sigh, 'and often
+the recipe in small.  I can send a lotion to relieve you, but we
+must leave the cure to time and rest.'
+
+This he said, holding Idle's foot on his knee between his two
+hands, as he sat over against him.  He had touched it tenderly and
+skilfully in explanation of what he said, and, when his careful
+examination was completed, softly returned it to its former
+horizontal position on a chair.
+
+He spoke with a little irresolution whenever he began, but
+afterwards fluently.  He was a tall, thin, large-boned, old
+gentleman, with an appearance at first sight of being hard-
+featured; but, at a second glance, the mild expression of his face
+and some particular touches of sweetness and patience about his
+mouth, corrected this impression and assigned his long professional
+rides, by day and night, in the bleak hill-weather, as the true
+cause of that appearance.  He stooped very little, though past
+seventy and very grey.  His dress was more like that of a clergyman
+than a country doctor, being a plain black suit, and a plain white
+neck-kerchief tied behind like a band.  His black was the worse for
+wear, and there were darns in his coat, and his linen was a little
+frayed at the hems and edges.  He might have been poor--it was
+likely enough in that out-of-the-way spot--or he might have been a
+little self-forgetful and eccentric.  Any one could have seen
+directly, that he had neither wife nor child at home.  He had a
+scholarly air with him, and that kind of considerate humanity
+towards others which claimed a gentle consideration for himself.
+Mr. Goodchild made this study of him while he was examining the
+limb, and as he laid it down.  Mr. Goodchild wishes to add that he
+considers it a very good likeness.
+
+It came out in the course of a little conversation, that Doctor
+Speddie was acquainted with some friends of Thomas Idle's, and had,
+when a young man, passed some years in Thomas Idle's birthplace on
+the other side of England.  Certain idle labours, the fruit of Mr.
+Goodchild's apprenticeship, also happened to be well known to him.
+The lazy travellers were thus placed on a more intimate footing
+with the Doctor than the casual circumstances of the meeting would
+of themselves have established; and when Doctor Speddie rose to go
+home, remarking that he would send his assistant with the lotion,
+Francis Goodchild said that was unnecessary, for, by the Doctor's
+leave, he would accompany him, and bring it back.  (Having done
+nothing to fatigue himself for a full quarter of an hour, Francis
+began to fear that he was not in a state of idleness.)
+
+Doctor Speddie politely assented to the proposition of Francis
+Goodchild, 'as it would give him the pleasure of enjoying a few
+more minutes of Mr. Goodchild's society than he could otherwise
+have hoped for,' and they went out together into the village
+street.  The rain had nearly ceased, the clouds had broken before a
+cool wind from the north-east, and stars were shining from the
+peaceful heights beyond them.
+
+Doctor Speddie's house was the last house in the place.  Beyond it,
+lay the moor, all dark and lonesome.  The wind moaned in a low,
+dull, shivering manner round the little garden, like a houseless
+creature that knew the winter was coming.  It was exceedingly wild
+and solitary.  'Roses,' said the Doctor, when Goodchild touched
+some wet leaves overhanging the stone porch; 'but they get cut to
+pieces.'
+
+The Doctor opened the door with a key he carried, and led the way
+into a low but pretty ample hall with rooms on either side.  The
+door of one of these stood open, and the Doctor entered it, with a
+word of welcome to his guest.  It, too, was a low room, half
+surgery and half parlour, with shelves of books and bottles against
+the walls, which were of a very dark hue.  There was a fire in the
+grate, the night being damp and chill.  Leaning against the
+chimney-piece looking down into it, stood the Doctor's Assistant.
+
+A man of a most remarkable appearance.  Much older than Mr.
+Goodchild had expected, for he was at least two-and-fifty; but,
+that was nothing.  What was startling in him was his remarkable
+paleness.  His large black eyes, his sunken cheeks, his long and
+heavy iron-grey hair, his wasted hands, and even the attenuation of
+his figure, were at first forgotten in his extraordinary pallor.
+There was no vestige of colour in the man.  When he turned his
+face, Francis Goodchild started as if a stone figure had looked
+round at him.
+
+'Mr. Lorn,' said the Doctor.  'Mr. Goodchild.'
+
+The Assistant, in a distraught way--as if he had forgotten
+something--as if he had forgotten everything, even to his own name
+and himself--acknowledged the visitor's presence, and stepped
+further back into the shadow of the wall behind him.  But, he was
+so pale that his face stood out in relief again the dark wall, and
+really could not be hidden so.
+
+'Mr. Goodchild's friend has met with accident, Lorn,' said Doctor
+Speddie.  'We want the lotion for a bad sprain.'
+
+A pause.
+
+'My dear fellow, you are more than usually absent to-night.  The
+lotion for a bad sprain.'
+
+'Ah! yes!  Directly.'
+
+He was evidently relieved to turn away, and to take his white face
+and his wild eyes to a table in a recess among the bottles.  But,
+though he stood there, compounding the lotion with his back towards
+them, Goodchild could not, for many moments, withdraw his gaze from
+the man.  When he at length did so, he found the Doctor observing
+him, with some trouble in his face.  'He is absent,' explained the
+Doctor, in a low voice.  'Always absent.  Very absent.'
+
+'Is he ill?'
+
+'No, not ill.'
+
+'Unhappy?'
+
+'I have my suspicions that he was,' assented the Doctor, 'once.'
+
+Francis Goodchild could not but observe that the Doctor accompanied
+these words with a benignant and protecting glance at their
+subject, in which there was much of the expression with which an
+attached father might have looked at a heavily afflicted son.  Yet,
+that they were not father and son must have been plain to most
+eyes.  The Assistant, on the other hand, turning presently to ask
+the Doctor some question, looked at him with a wan smile as if he
+were his whole reliance and sustainment in life.
+
+It was in vain for the Doctor in his easy-chair, to try to lead the
+mind of Mr. Goodchild in the opposite easy-chair, away from what
+was before him.  Let Mr. Goodchild do what he would to follow the
+Doctor, his eyes and thoughts reverted to the Assistant.  The
+Doctor soon perceived it, and, after falling silent, and musing in
+a little perplexity, said:
+
+'Lorn!'
+
+'My dear Doctor.'
+
+'Would you go to the Inn, and apply that lotion?  You will show the
+best way of applying it, far better than Mr. Goodchild can.'
+
+'With pleasure.'
+
+The Assistant took his hat, and passed like a shadow to the door.
+
+'Lorn!' said the Doctor, calling after him.
+
+He returned.
+
+'Mr. Goodchild will keep me company till you come home.  Don't
+hurry.  Excuse my calling you back.'
+
+'It is not,' said the Assistant, with his former smile, 'the first
+time you have called me back, dear Doctor.'  With those words he
+went away.
+
+'Mr. Goodchild,' said Doctor Speddie, in a low voice, and with his
+former troubled expression of face, 'I have seen that your
+attention has been concentrated on my friend.'
+
+'He fascinates me.  I must apologise to you, but he has quite
+bewildered and mastered me.'
+
+'I find that a lonely existence and a long secret,' said the
+Doctor, drawing his chair a little nearer to Mr. Goodchild's,
+'become in the course of time very heavy.  I will tell you
+something.  You may make what use you will of it, under fictitious
+names.  I know I may trust you.  I am the more inclined to
+confidence to-night, through having been unexpectedly led back, by
+the current of our conversation at the Inn, to scenes in my early
+life.  Will you please to draw a little nearer?'
+
+Mr. Goodchild drew a little nearer, and the Doctor went on thus:
+speaking, for the most part, in so cautious a voice, that the wind,
+though it was far from high, occasionally got the better of him.
+
+When this present nineteenth century was younger by a good many
+years than it is now, a certain friend of mine, named Arthur
+Holliday, happened to arrive in the town of Doncaster, exactly in
+the middle of a race-week, or, in other words, in the middle of the
+month of September.  He was one of those reckless, rattle-pated,
+open-hearted, and open-mouthed young gentlemen, who possess the
+gift of familiarity in its highest perfection, and who scramble
+carelessly along the journey of life making friends, as the phrase
+is, wherever they go.  His father was a rich manufacturer, and had
+bought landed property enough in one of the midland counties to
+make all the born squires in his neighbourhood thoroughly envious
+of him.  Arthur was his only son, possessor in prospect of the
+great estate and the great business after his father's death; well
+supplied with money, and not too rigidly looked after, during his
+father's lifetime.  Report, or scandal, whichever you please, said
+that the old gentleman had been rather wild in his youthful days,
+and that, unlike most parents, he was not disposed to be violently
+indignant when he found that his son took after him.  This may be
+true or not.  I myself only knew the elder Mr. Holliday when he was
+getting on in years; and then he was as quiet and as respectable a
+gentleman as ever I met with.
+
+Well, one September, as I told you, young Arthur comes to
+Doncaster, having decided all of a sudden, in his harebrained way,
+that he would go to the races.  He did not reach the town till
+towards the close of the evening, and he went at once to see about
+his dinner and bed at the principal hotel.  Dinner they were ready
+enough to give him; but as for a bed, they laughed when he
+mentioned it.  In the race-week at Doncaster, it is no uncommon
+thing for visitors who have not bespoken apartments, to pass the
+night in their carriages at the inn doors.  As for the lower sort
+of strangers, I myself have often seen them, at that full time,
+sleeping out on the doorsteps for want of a covered place to creep
+under.  Rich as he was, Arthur's chance of getting a night's
+lodging (seeing that he had not written beforehand to secure one)
+was more than doubtful.  He tried the second hotel, and the third
+hotel, and two of the inferior inns after that; and was met
+everywhere by the same form of answer.  No accommodation for the
+night of any sort was left.  All the bright golden sovereigns in
+his pocket would not buy him a bed at Doncaster in the race-week.
+
+To a young fellow of Arthur's temperament, the novelty of being
+turned away into the street, like a penniless vagabond, at every
+house where he asked for a lodging, presented itself in the light
+of a new and highly amusing piece of experience.  He went on, with
+his carpet-bag in his hand, applying for a bed at every place of
+entertainment for travellers that he could find in Doncaster, until
+he wandered into the outskirts of the town.  By this time, the last
+glimmer of twilight had faded out, the moon was rising dimly in a
+mist, the wind was getting cold, the clouds were gathering heavily,
+and there was every prospect that it was soon going to rain.
+
+The look of the night had rather a lowering effect on young
+Holliday's good spirits.  He began to contemplate the houseless
+situation in which he was placed, from the serious rather than the
+humorous point of view; and he looked about him, for another
+public-house to inquire at, with something very like downright
+anxiety in his mind on the subject of a lodging for the night.  The
+suburban part of the town towards which he had now strayed was
+hardly lighted at all, and he could see nothing of the houses as he
+passed them, except that they got progressively smaller and
+dirtier, the farther he went.  Down the winding road before him
+shone the dull gleam of an oil lamp, the one faint, lonely light
+that struggled ineffectually with the foggy darkness all round him.
+He resolved to go on as far as this lamp, and then, if it showed
+him nothing in the shape of an Inn, to return to the central part
+of the town and to try if he could not at least secure a chair to
+sit down on, through the night, at one of the principal Hotels.
+
+As he got near the lamp, he heard voices; and, walking close under
+it, found that it lighted the entrance to a narrow court, on the
+wall of which was painted a long hand in faded flesh-colour,
+pointing with a lean forefinger, to this inscription:-
+
+
+THE TWO ROBINS.
+
+
+Arthur turned into the court without hesitation, to see what The
+Two Robins could do for him.  Four or five men were standing
+together round the door of the house which was at the bottom of the
+court, facing the entrance from the street.  The men were all
+listening to one other man, better dressed than the rest, who was
+telling his audience something, in a low voice, in which they were
+apparently very much interested.
+
+On entering the passage, Arthur was passed by a stranger with a
+knapsack in his hand, who was evidently leaving the house.
+
+'No,' said the traveller with the knapsack, turning round and
+addressing himself cheerfully to a fat, sly-looking, bald-headed
+man, with a dirty white apron on, who had followed him down the
+passage.  'No, Mr. landlord, I am not easily scared by trifles;
+but, I don't mind confessing that I can't quite stand THAT.'
+
+It occurred to young Holliday, the moment he heard these words,
+that the stranger had been asked an exorbitant price for a bed at
+The Two Robins; and that he was unable or unwilling to pay it.  The
+moment his back was turned, Arthur, comfortably conscious of his
+own well-filled pockets, addressed himself in a great hurry, for
+fear any other benighted traveller should slip in and forestall
+him, to the sly-looking landlord with the dirty apron and the bald
+head.
+
+'If you have got a bed to let,' he said, 'and if that gentleman who
+has just gone out won't pay your price for it, I will.'
+
+The sly landlord looked hard at Arthur.
+
+'Will you, sir?' he asked, in a meditative, doubtful way.
+
+'Name your price,' said young Holliday, thinking that the
+landlord's hesitation sprang from some boorish distrust of him.
+'Name your price, and I'll give you the money at once if you like?'
+
+'Are you game for five shillings?' inquired the landlord, rubbing
+his stubbly double chin, and looking up thoughtfully at the ceiling
+above him.
+
+Arthur nearly laughed in the man's face; but thinking it prudent to
+control himself, offered the five shillings as seriously as he
+could.  The sly landlord held out his hand, then suddenly drew it
+back again.
+
+'You're acting all fair and above-board by me,' he said:  'and,
+before I take your money, I'll do the same by you.  Look here, this
+is how it stands.  You can have a bed all to yourself for five
+shillings; but you can't have more than a half-share of the room it
+stands in.  Do you see what I mean, young gentleman?'
+
+'Of course I do,' returned Arthur, a little irritably.  'You mean
+that it is a double-bedded room, and that one of the beds is
+occupied?'
+
+The landlord nodded his head, and rubbed his double chin harder
+than ever.  Arthur hesitated, and mechanically moved back a step or
+two towards the door.  The idea of sleeping in the same room with a
+total stranger, did not present an attractive prospect to him.  He
+felt more than half inclined to drop his five shillings into his
+pocket, and to go out into the street once more.
+
+'Is it yes, or no?' asked the landlord.  'Settle it as quick as you
+can, because there's lots of people wanting a bed at Doncaster to-
+night, besides you.'
+
+Arthur looked towards the court, and heard the rain falling heavily
+in the street outside.  He thought he would ask a question or two
+before he rashly decided on leaving the shelter of The Two Robins.
+
+'What sort of a man is it who has got the other bed?' he inquired.
+'Is he a gentleman?  I mean, is he a quiet, well-behaved person?'
+
+'The quietest man I ever came across,' said the landlord, rubbing
+his fat hands stealthily one over the other.  'As sober as a judge,
+and as regular as clock-work in his habits.  It hasn't struck nine,
+not ten minutes ago, and he's in his bed already.  I don't know
+whether that comes up to your notion of a quiet man:  it goes a
+long way ahead of mine, I can tell you.'
+
+'Is he asleep, do you think?' asked Arthur.
+
+'I know he's asleep,' returned the landlord.  'And what's more,
+he's gone off so fast, that I'll warrant you don't wake him.  This
+way, sir,' said the landlord, speaking over young Holliday's
+shoulder, as if he was addressing some new guest who was
+approaching the house.
+
+'Here you are,' said Arthur, determined to be beforehand with the
+stranger, whoever he might be.  'I'll take the bed.'  And he handed
+the five shillings to the landlord, who nodded, dropped the money
+carelessly into his waistcoat-pocket, and lighted the candle.
+
+'Come up and see the room,' said the host of The Two Robins,
+leading the way to the staircase quite briskly, considering how fat
+he was.
+
+They mounted to the second-floor of the house.  The landlord half
+opened a door, fronting the landing, then stopped, and turned round
+to Arthur.
+
+'It's a fair bargain, mind, on my side as well as on yours,' he
+said.  'You give me five shillings, I give you in return a clean,
+comfortable bed; and I warrant, beforehand, that you won't be
+interfered with, or annoyed in any way, by the man who sleeps in
+the same room as you.'  Saying those words, he looked hard, for a
+moment, in young Holliday's face, and then led the way into the
+room.
+
+It was larger and cleaner than Arthur had expected it would be.
+The two beds stood parallel with each other--a space of about six
+feet intervening between them.  They were both of the same medium
+size, and both had the same plain white curtains, made to draw, if
+necessary, all round them.  The occupied bed was the bed nearest
+the window.  The curtains were all drawn round this, except the
+half curtain at the bottom, on the side of the bed farthest from
+the window.  Arthur saw the feet of the sleeping man raising the
+scanty clothes into a sharp little eminence, as if he was lying
+flat on his back.  He took the candle, and advanced softly to draw
+the curtain--stopped half-way, and listened for a moment--then
+turned to the landlord.
+
+'He's a very quiet sleeper,' said Arthur.
+
+'Yes,' said the landlord, 'very quiet.'
+
+Young Holliday advanced with the candle, and looked in at the man
+cautiously.
+
+'How pale he is!' said Arthur.
+
+'Yes,' returned the landlord, 'pale enough, isn't he?'
+
+Arthur looked closer at the man.  The bedclothes were drawn up to
+his chin, and they lay perfectly still over the region of his
+chest.  Surprised and vaguely startled, as he noticed this, Arthur
+stooped down closer over the stranger; looked at his ashy, parted
+lips; listened breathlessly for an instant; looked again at the
+strangely still face, and the motionless lips and chest; and turned
+round suddenly on the landlord, with his own cheeks as pale for the
+moment as the hollow cheeks of the man on the bed.
+
+'Come here,' he whispered, under his breath.  'Come here, for God's
+sake!  The man's not asleep--he is dead!'
+
+'You have found that out sooner than I thought you would,' said the
+landlord, composedly.  'Yes, he's dead, sure enough.  He died at
+five o'clock to-day.'
+
+'How did he die?  Who is he?' asked Arthur, staggered, for a
+moment, by the audacious coolness of the answer.
+
+'As to who is he,' rejoined the landlord, 'I know no more about him
+than you do.  There are his books and letters and things, all
+sealed up in that brown-paper parcel, for the Coroner's inquest to
+open to-morrow or next day.  He's been here a week, paying his way
+fairly enough, and stopping in-doors, for the most part, as if he
+was ailing.  My girl brought him up his tea at five to-day; and as
+he was pouring of it out, he fell down in a faint, or a fit, or a
+compound of both, for anything I know.  We could not bring him to--
+and I said he was dead.  And the doctor couldn't bring him to--and
+the doctor said he was dead.  And there he is.  And the Coroner's
+inquest's coming as soon as it can.  And that's as much as I know
+about it.'
+
+Arthur held the candle close to the man's lips.  The flame still
+burnt straight up, as steadily as before.  There was a moment of
+silence; and the rain pattered drearily through it against the
+panes of the window.
+
+'If you haven't got nothing more to say to me,' continued the
+landlord, 'I suppose I may go.  You don't expect your five
+shillings back, do you?  There's the bed I promised you, clean and
+comfortable.  There's the man I warranted not to disturb you, quiet
+in this world for ever.  If you're frightened to stop alone with
+him, that's not my look out.  I've kept my part of the bargain, and
+I mean to keep the money.  I'm not Yorkshire, myself, young
+gentleman; but I've lived long enough in these parts to have my
+wits sharpened; and I shouldn't wonder if you found out the way to
+brighten up yours, next time you come amongst us.'  With these
+words, the landlord turned towards the door, and laughed to himself
+softly, in high satisfaction at his own sharpness.
+
+Startled and shocked as he was, Arthur had by this time
+sufficiently recovered himself to feel indignant at the trick that
+had been played on him, and at the insolent manner in which the
+landlord exulted in it.
+
+'Don't laugh,' he said sharply, 'till you are quite sure you have
+got the laugh against me.  You shan't have the five shillings for
+nothing, my man.  I'll keep the bed.'
+
+'Will you?' said the landlord.  'Then I wish you a goodnight's
+rest.'  With that brief farewell, he went out, and shut the door
+after him.
+
+A good night's rest!  The words had hardly been spoken, the door
+had hardly been closed, before Arthur half-repented the hasty words
+that had just escaped him.  Though not naturally over-sensitive,
+and not wanting in courage of the moral as well as the physical
+sort, the presence of the dead man had an instantaneously chilling
+effect on his mind when he found himself alone in the room--alone,
+and bound by his own rash words to stay there till the next
+morning.  An older man would have thought nothing of those words,
+and would have acted, without reference to them, as his calmer
+sense suggested.  But Arthur was too young to treat the ridicule,
+even of his inferiors, with contempt--too young not to fear the
+momentary humiliation of falsifying his own foolish boast, more
+than he feared the trial of watching out the long night in the same
+chamber with the dead.
+
+'It is but a few hours,' he thought to himself, 'and I can get away
+the first thing in the morning.'
+
+He was looking towards the occupied bed as that idea passed through
+his mind, and the sharp, angular eminence made in the clothes by
+the dead man's upturned feet again caught his eye.  He advanced and
+drew the curtains, purposely abstaining, as he did so, from looking
+at the face of the corpse, lest he might unnerve himself at the
+outset by fastening some ghastly impression of it on his mind.  He
+drew the curtain very gently, and sighed involuntarily as he closed
+it.  'Poor fellow,' he said, almost as sadly as if he had known the
+man.  'Ah, poor fellow!'
+
+He went next to the window.  The night was black, and he could see
+nothing from it.  The rain still pattered heavily against the
+glass.  He inferred, from hearing it, that the window was at the
+back of the house; remembering that the front was sheltered from
+the weather by the court and the buildings over it.
+
+While he was still standing at the window--for even the dreary rain
+was a relief, because of the sound it made; a relief, also, because
+it moved, and had some faint suggestion, in consequence, of life
+and companionship in it--while he was standing at the window, and
+looking vacantly into the black darkness outside, he heard a
+distant church-clock strike ten.  Only ten!  How was he to pass the
+time till the house was astir the next morning?
+
+Under any other circumstances, he would have gone down to the
+public-house parlour, would have called for his grog, and would
+have laughed and talked with the company assembled as familiarly as
+if he had known them all his life.  But the very thought of whiling
+away the time in this manner was distasteful to him.  The new
+situation in which he was placed seemed to have altered him to
+himself already.  Thus far, his life had been the common, trifling,
+prosaic, surface-life of a prosperous young man, with no troubles
+to conquer, and no trials to face.  He had lost no relation whom he
+loved, no friend whom he treasured.  Till this night, what share he
+had of the immortal inheritance that is divided amongst us all, had
+laid dormant within him.  Till this night, Death and he had not
+once met, even in thought.
+
+He took a few turns up and down the room--then stopped.  The noise
+made by his boots on the poorly carpeted floor, jarred on his ear.
+He hesitated a little, and ended by taking the boots off, and
+walking backwards and forwards noiselessly.  All desire to sleep or
+to rest had left him.  The bare thought of lying down on the
+unoccupied bed instantly drew the picture on his mind of a dreadful
+mimicry of the position of the dead man.  Who was he?  What was the
+story of his past life?  Poor he must have been, or he would not
+have stopped at such a place as The Two Robins Inn--and weakened,
+probably, by long illness, or he could hardly have died in the
+manner in which the landlord had described.  Poor, ill, lonely,--
+dead in a strange place; dead, with nobody but a stranger to pity
+him.  A sad story:  truly, on the mere face of it, a very sad
+story.
+
+While these thoughts were passing through his mind, he had stopped
+insensibly at the window, close to which stood the foot of the bed
+with the closed curtains.  At first he looked at it absently; then
+he became conscious that his eyes were fixed on it; and then, a
+perverse desire took possession of him to do the very thing which
+he had resolved not to do, up to this time--to look at the dead
+man.
+
+He stretched out his hand towards the curtains; but checked himself
+in the very act of undrawing them, turned his back sharply on the
+bed, and walked towards the chimney-piece, to see what things were
+placed on it, and to try if he could keep the dead man out of his
+mind in that way.
+
+There was a pewter inkstand on the chimney-piece, with some
+mildewed remains of ink in the bottle.  There were two coarse china
+ornaments of the commonest kind; and there was a square of embossed
+card, dirty and fly-blown, with a collection of wretched riddles
+printed on it, in all sorts of zig-zag directions, and in variously
+coloured inks.  He took the card, and went away, to read it, to the
+table on which the candle was placed; sitting down, with his back
+resolutely turned to the curtained bed.
+
+He read the first riddle, the second, the third, all in one corner
+of the card--then turned it round impatiently to look at another.
+Before he could begin reading the riddles printed here, the sound
+of the church-clock stopped him.  Eleven.  He had got through an
+hour of the time, in the room with the dead man.
+
+Once more he looked at the card.  It was not easy to make out the
+letters printed on it, in consequence of the dimness of the light
+which the landlord had left him--a common tallow candle, furnished
+with a pair of heavy old-fashioned steel snuffers.  Up to this
+time, his mind had been too much occupied to think of the light.
+He had left the wick of the candle unsnuffed, till it had risen
+higher than the flame, and had burnt into an odd pent-house shape
+at the top, from which morsels of the charred cotton fell off, from
+time to time, in little flakes.  He took up the snuffers now, and
+trimmed the wick.  The light brightened directly, and the room
+became less dismal.
+
+Again he turned to the riddles; reading them doggedly and
+resolutely, now in one corner of the card, now in another.  All his
+efforts, however, could not fix his attention on them.  He pursued
+his occupation mechanically, deriving no sort of impression from
+what he was reading.  It was as if a shadow from the curtained bed
+had got between his mind and the gaily printed letters--a shadow
+that nothing could dispel.  At last, he gave up the struggle, and
+threw the card from him impatiently, and took to walking softly up
+and down the room again.
+
+The dead man, the dead man, the HIDDEN dead man on the bed!  There
+was the one persistent idea still haunting him.  Hidden?  Was it
+only the body being there, or was it the body being there,
+concealed, that was preying on his mind?  He stopped at the window,
+with that doubt in him; once more listening to the pattering rain,
+once more looking out into the black darkness.
+
+Still the dead man!  The darkness forced his mind back upon itself,
+and set his memory at work, reviving, with a painfully-vivid
+distinctness the momentary impression it had received from the
+first sight of the corpse.  Before long the face seemed to be
+hovering out in the middle of the darkness, confronting him through
+the window, with the paleness whiter, with the dreadful dull line
+of light between the imperfectly-closed eyelids broader than he had
+seen it--with the parted lips slowly dropping farther and farther
+away from each other--with the features growing larger and moving
+closer, till they seemed to fill the window and to silence the
+rain, and to shut out the night.
+
+The sound of a voice, shouting below-stairs, woke him suddenly from
+the dream of his own distempered fancy.  He recognised it as the
+voice of the landlord.  'Shut up at twelve, Ben,' he heard it say.
+'I'm off to bed.'
+
+He wiped away the damp that had gathered on his forehead, reasoned
+with himself for a little while, and resolved to shake his mind
+free of the ghastly counterfeit which still clung to it, by forcing
+himself to confront, if it was only for a moment, the solemn
+reality.  Without allowing himself an instant to hesitate, he
+parted the curtains at the foot of the bed, and looked through.
+
+There was a sad, peaceful, white face, with the awful mystery of
+stillness on it, laid back upon the pillow.  No stir, no change
+there!  He only looked at it for a moment before he closed the
+curtains again--but that moment steadied him, calmed him, restored
+him--mind and body--to himself.
+
+He returned to his old occupation of walking up and down the room;
+persevering in it, this time, till the clock struck again.  Twelve.
+
+As the sound of the clock-bell died away, it was succeeded by the
+confused noise, down-stairs, of the drinkers in the tap-room
+leaving the house.  The next sound, after an interval of silence,
+was caused by the barring of the door, and the closing of the
+shutters, at the back of the Inn.  Then the silence followed again,
+and was disturbed no more.
+
+He was alone now--absolutely, utterly, alone with the dead man,
+till the next morning.
+
+The wick of the candle wanted trimming again.  He took up the
+snuffers--but paused suddenly on the very point of using them, and
+looked attentively at the candle--then back, over his shoulder, at
+the curtained bed--then again at the candle.  It had been lighted,
+for the first time, to show him the way up-stairs, and three parts
+of it, at least, were already consumed.  In another hour it would
+be burnt out.  In another hour--unless he called at once to the man
+who had shut up the Inn, for a fresh candle--he would be left in
+the dark.
+
+Strongly as his mind had been affected since he had entered his
+room, his unreasonable dread of encountering ridicule, and of
+exposing his courage to suspicion, had not altogether lost its
+influence over him, even yet.  He lingered irresolutely by the
+table, waiting till he could prevail on himself to open the door,
+and call, from the landing, to the man who had shut up the Inn.  In
+his present hesitating frame of mind, it was a kind of relief to
+gain a few moments only by engaging in the trifling occupation of
+snuffing the candle.  His hand trembled a little, and the snuffers
+were heavy and awkward to use.  When he closed them on the wick, he
+closed them a hair's breadth too low.  In an instant the candle was
+out, and the room was plunged in pitch darkness.
+
+The one impression which the absence of light immediately produced
+on his mind, was distrust of the curtained bed--distrust which
+shaped itself into no distinct idea, but which was powerful enough
+in its very vagueness, to bind him down to his chair, to make his
+heart beat fast, and to set him listening intently.  No sound
+stirred in the room but the familiar sound of the rain against the
+window, louder and sharper now than he had heard it yet.
+
+Still the vague distrust, the inexpressible dread possessed him,
+and kept him to his chair.  He had put his carpet-bag on the table,
+when he first entered the room; and he now took the key from his
+pocket, reached out his hand softly, opened the bag, and groped in
+it for his travelling writing-case, in which he knew that there was
+a small store of matches.  When he had got one of the matches, he
+waited before he struck it on the coarse wooden table, and listened
+intently again, without knowing why.  Still there was no sound in
+the room but the steady, ceaseless, rattling sound of the rain.
+
+He lighted the candle again, without another moment of delay and,
+on the instant of its burning up, the first object in the room that
+his eyes sought for was the curtained bed.
+
+Just before the light had been put out, he had looked in that
+direction, and had seen no change, no disarrangement of any sort,
+in the folds of the closely-drawn curtains.
+
+When he looked at the bed, now, he saw, hanging over the side of
+it, a long white hand.
+
+It lay perfectly motionless, midway on the side of the bed, where
+the curtain at the head and the curtain at the foot met.  Nothing
+more was visible.  The clinging curtains hid everything but the
+long white hand.
+
+He stood looking at it unable to stir, unable to call out; feeling
+nothing, knowing nothing, every faculty he possessed gathered up
+and lost in the one seeing faculty.  How long that first panic held
+him he never could tell afterwards.  It might have been only for a
+moment; it might have been for many minutes together.  How he got
+to the bed--whether he ran to it headlong, or whether he approached
+it slowly--how he wrought himself up to unclose the curtains and
+look in, he never has remembered, and never will remember to his
+dying day.  It is enough that he did go to the bed, and that he did
+look inside the curtains.
+
+The man had moved.  One of his arms was outside the clothes; his
+face was turned a little on the pillow; his eyelids were wide open.
+Changed as to position, and as to one of the features, the face
+was, otherwise, fearfully and wonderfully unaltered.  The dead
+paleness and the dead quiet were on it still
+
+One glance showed Arthur this--one glance, before he flew
+breathlessly to the door, and alarmed the house.
+
+The man whom the landlord called 'Ben,' was the first to appear on
+the stairs.  In three words, Arthur told him what had happened, and
+sent him for the nearest doctor.
+
+I, who tell you this story, was then staying with a medical friend
+of mine, in practice at Doncaster, taking care of his patients for
+him, during his absence in London; and I, for the time being, was
+the nearest doctor.  They had sent for me from the Inn, when the
+stranger was taken ill in the afternoon; but I was not at home, and
+medical assistance was sought for elsewhere.  When the man from The
+Two Robins rang the night-bell, I was just thinking of going to
+bed.  Naturally enough, I did not believe a word of his story about
+'a dead man who had come to life again.'  However, I put on my hat,
+armed myself with one or two bottles of restorative medicine, and
+ran to the Inn, expecting to find nothing more remarkable, when I
+got there, than a patient in a fit.
+
+My surprise at finding that the man had spoken the literal truth
+was almost, if not quite, equalled by my astonishment at finding
+myself face to face with Arthur Holliday as soon as I entered the
+bedroom.  It was no time then for giving or seeking explanations.
+We just shook hands amazedly; and then I ordered everybody but
+Arthur out of the room, and hurried to the man on the bed.
+
+The kitchen fire had not been long out.  There was plenty of hot
+water in the boiler, and plenty of flannel to be had.  With these,
+with my medicines, and with such help as Arthur could render under
+my direction, I dragged the man, literally, out of the jaws of
+death.  In less than an hour from the time when I had been called
+in, he was alive and talking in the bed on which he had been laid
+out to wait for the Coroner's inquest.
+
+You will naturally ask me, what had been the matter with him; and I
+might treat you, in reply, to a long theory, plentifully sprinkled
+with, what the children call, hard words.  I prefer telling you
+that, in this case, cause and effect could not be satisfactorily
+joined together by any theory whatever.  There are mysteries in
+life, and the condition of it, which human science has not fathomed
+yet; and I candidly confess to you, that, in bringing that man back
+to existence, I was, morally speaking, groping haphazard in the
+dark.  I know (from the testimony of the doctor who attended him in
+the afternoon) that the vital machinery, so far as its action is
+appreciable by our senses, had, in this case, unquestionably
+stopped; and I am equally certain (seeing that I recovered him)
+that the vital principle was not extinct.  When I add, that he had
+suffered from a long and complicated illness, and that his whole
+nervous system was utterly deranged, I have told you all I really
+know of the physical condition of my dead-alive patient at The Two
+Robins Inn.
+
+When he 'came to,' as the phrase goes, he was a startling object to
+look at, with his colourless face, his sunken cheeks, his wild
+black eyes, and his long black hair.  The first question he asked
+me about himself, when he could speak, made me suspect that I had
+been called in to a man in my own profession.  I mentioned to him
+my surmise; and he told me that I was right.
+
+He said he had come last from Paris, where he had been attached to
+a hospital.  That he had lately returned to England, on his way to
+Edinburgh, to continue his studies; that he had been taken ill on
+the journey; and that he had stopped to rest and recover himself at
+Doncaster.  He did not add a word about his name, or who he was:
+and, of course, I did not question him on the subject.  All I
+inquired, when he ceased speaking, was what branch of the
+profession he intended to follow.
+
+'Any branch,' he said, bitterly, 'which will put bread into the
+mouth of a poor man.'
+
+At this, Arthur, who had been hitherto watching him in silent
+curiosity, burst out impetuously in his usual good-humoured way:-
+
+'My dear fellow!' (everybody was 'my dear fellow' with Arthur) 'now
+you have come to life again, don't begin by being down-hearted
+about your prospects.  I'll answer for it, I can help you to some
+capital thing in the medical line--or, if I can't, I know my father
+can.'
+
+The medical student looked at him steadily.
+
+'Thank you,' he said, coldly.  Then added, 'May I ask who your
+father is?'
+
+'He's well enough known all about this part of the country,'
+replied Arthur.  'He is a great manufacturer, and his name is
+Holliday.'
+
+My hand was on the man's wrist during this brief conversation.  The
+instant the name of Holliday was pronounced I felt the pulse under
+my fingers flutter, stop, go on suddenly with a bound, and beat
+afterwards, for a minute or two, at the fever rate.
+
+'How did you come here?' asked the stranger, quickly, excitably,
+passionately almost.
+
+Arthur related briefly what had happened from the time of his first
+taking the bed at the inn.
+
+'I am indebted to Mr. Holliday's son then for the help that has
+saved my life,' said the medical student, speaking to himself, with
+a singular sarcasm in his voice.  'Come here!'
+
+He held out, as he spoke, his long, white, bony, right hand.
+
+'With all my heart,' said Arthur, taking the hand-cordially.  'I
+may confess it now,' he continued, laughing.  'Upon my honour, you
+almost frightened me out of my wits.'
+
+The stranger did not seem to listen.  His wild black eyes were
+fixed with a look of eager interest on Arthur's face, and his long
+bony fingers kept tight hold of Arthur's hand.  Young Holliday, on
+his side, returned the gaze, amazed and puzzled by the medical
+student's odd language and manners.  The two faces were close
+together; I looked at them; and, to my amazement, I was suddenly
+impressed by the sense of a likeness between them--not in features,
+or complexion, but solely in expression.  It must have been a
+strong likeness, or I should certainly not have found it out, for I
+am naturally slow at detecting resemblances between faces.
+
+'You have saved my life,' said the strange man, still looking hard
+in Arthur's face, still holding tightly by his hand.  'If you had
+been my own brother, you could not have done more for me than
+that.'
+
+He laid a singularly strong emphasis on those three words 'my own
+brother,' and a change passed over his face as he pronounced them,-
+-a change that no language of mine is competent to describe.
+
+'I hope I have not done being of service to you yet,' said Arthur.
+'I'll speak to my father, as soon as I get home.'
+
+'You seem to be fond and proud of your father,' said the medical
+student.  'I suppose, in return, he is fond and proud of you?'
+
+'Of course, he is!' answered Arthur, laughing.  'Is there anything
+wonderful in that?  Isn't YOUR father fond--'
+
+The stranger suddenly dropped young Holliday's hand, and turned his
+face away.
+
+'I beg your pardon,' said Arthur.  'I hope I have not
+unintentionally pained you.  I hope you have not lost your father.'
+
+'I can't well lose what I have never had,' retorted the medical
+student, with a harsh, mocking laugh.
+
+'What you have never had!'
+
+The strange man suddenly caught Arthur's hand again, suddenly
+looked once more hard in his face.
+
+'Yes,' he said, with a repetition of the bitter laugh.  'You have
+brought a poor devil back into the world, who has no business
+there.  Do I astonish you?  Well!  I have a fancy of my own for
+telling you what men in my situation generally keep a secret.  I
+have no name and no father.  The merciful law of Society tells me I
+am Nobody's Son!  Ask your father if he will be my father too, and
+help me on in life with the family name.'
+
+Arthur looked at me, more puzzled than ever.  I signed to him to
+say nothing, and then laid my fingers again on the man's wrist.
+No!  In spite of the extraordinary speech that he had just made, he
+was not, as I had been disposed to suspect, beginning to get light-
+headed.  His pulse, by this time, had fallen back to a quiet, slow
+beat, and his skin was moist and cool.  Not a symptom of fever or
+agitation about him.
+
+Finding that neither of us answered him, he turned to me, and began
+talking of the extraordinary nature of his case, and asking my
+advice about the future course of medical treatment to which he
+ought to subject himself.  I said the matter required careful
+thinking over, and suggested that I should submit certain
+prescriptions to him the next morning.  He told me to write them at
+once, as he would, most likely, be leaving Doncaster, in the
+morning, before I was up.  It was quite useless to represent to him
+the folly and danger of such a proceeding as this.  He heard me
+politely and patiently, but held to his resolution, without
+offering any reasons or any explanations, and repeated to me, that
+if I wished to give him a chance of seeing my prescription, I must
+write it at once.  Hearing this, Arthur volunteered the loan of a
+travelling writing-case, which, he said, he had with him; and,
+bringing it to the bed, shook the note-paper out of the pocket of
+the case forthwith in his usual careless way.  With the paper,
+there fell out on the counterpane of the bed a small packet of
+sticking-plaster, and a little water-colour drawing of a landscape.
+
+The medical student took up the drawing and looked at it.  His eye
+fell on some initials neatly written, in cypher, in one corner.  He
+started and trembled; his pale face grew whiter than ever; his wild
+black eyes turned on Arthur, and looked through and through him.
+
+'A pretty drawing,' he said in a remarkably quiet tone of voice.
+
+'Ah! and done by such a pretty girl,' said Arthur.  'Oh, such a
+pretty girl!  I wish it was not a landscape--I wish it was a
+portrait of her!'
+
+'You admire her very much?'
+
+Arthur, half in jest, half in earnest, kissed his hand for answer.
+
+'Love at first sight!' he said, putting the drawing away again.
+'But the course of it doesn't run smooth.  It's the old story.
+She's monopolised as usual.  Trammelled by a rash engagement to
+some poor man who is never likely to get money enough to marry her.
+It was lucky I heard of it in time, or I should certainly have
+risked a declaration when she gave me that drawing.  Here, doctor!
+Here is pen, ink, and paper all ready for you.'
+
+'When she gave you that drawing?  Gave it.  Gave it.'  He repeated
+the words slowly to himself, and suddenly closed his eyes.  A
+momentary distortion passed across his face, and I saw one of his
+hands clutch up the bedclothes and squeeze them hard.  I thought he
+was going to be ill again, and begged that there might be no more
+talking.  He opened his eyes when I spoke, fixed them once more
+searchingly on Arthur, and said, slowly and distinctly, 'You like
+her, and she likes you.  The poor man may die out of your way.  Who
+can tell that she may not give you herself as well as her drawing,
+after all?'
+
+Before young Holliday could answer, he turned to me, and said in a
+whisper, 'Now for the prescription.'  From that time, though he
+spoke to Arthur again, he never looked at him more.
+
+When I had written the prescription, he examined it, approved of
+it, and then astonished us both by abruptly wishing us good night.
+I offered to sit up with him, and he shook his head.  Arthur
+offered to sit up with him, and he said, shortly, with his face
+turned away, 'No.'  I insisted on having somebody left to watch
+him.  He gave way when he found I was determined, and said he would
+accept the services of the waiter at the Inn.
+
+'Thank you, both,' he said, as we rose to go.  'I have one last
+favour to ask--not of you, doctor, for I leave you to exercise your
+professional discretion--but of Mr. Holliday.'  His eyes, while he
+spoke, still rested steadily on me, and never once turned towards
+Arthur.  'I beg that Mr. Holliday will not mention to any one--
+least of all to his father--the events that have occurred, and the
+words that have passed, in this room.  I entreat him to bury me in
+his memory, as, but for him, I might have been buried in my grave.
+I cannot give my reasons for making this strange request.  I can
+only implore him to grant it.'
+
+His voice faltered for the first time, and he hid his face on the
+pillow.  Arthur, completely bewildered, gave the required pledge.
+I took young Holliday away with me, immediately afterwards, to the
+house of my friend; determining to go back to the Inn, and to see
+the medical student again before he had left in the morning.
+
+I returned to the Inn at eight o'clock, purposely abstaining from
+waking Arthur, who was sleeping off the past night's excitement on
+one of my friend's sofas.  A suspicion had occurred to me as soon
+as I was alone in my bedroom, which made me resolve that Holliday
+and the stranger whose life he had saved should not meet again, if
+I could prevent it.  I have already alluded to certain reports, or
+scandals, which I knew of, relating to the early life of Arthur's
+father.  While I was thinking, in my bed, of what had passed at the
+Inn--of the change in the student's pulse when he heard the name of
+Holliday; of the resemblance of expression that I had discovered
+between his face and Arthur's; of the emphasis he had laid on those
+three words, 'my own brother;' and of his incomprehensible
+acknowledgment of his own illegitimacy--while I was thinking of
+these things, the reports I have mentioned suddenly flew into my
+mind, and linked themselves fast to the chain of my previous
+reflections.  Something within me whispered, 'It is best that those
+two young men should not meet again.'  I felt it before I slept; I
+felt it when I woke; and I went, as I told you, alone to the Inn
+the next morning.
+
+I had missed my only opportunity of seeing my nameless patient
+again.  He had been gone nearly an hour when I inquired for him.
+
+
+I have now told you everything that I know for certain, in relation
+to the man whom I brought back to life in the double-bedded room of
+the Inn at Doncaster.  What I have next to add is matter for
+inference and surmise, and is not, strictly speaking, matter of
+fact.
+
+I have to tell you, first, that the medical student turned out to
+be strangely and unaccountably right in assuming it as more than
+probable that Arthur Holliday would marry the young lady who had
+given him the water-colour drawing of the landscape.  That marriage
+took place a little more than a year after the events occurred
+which I have just been relating.  The young couple came to live in
+the neighbourhood in which I was then established in practice.  I
+was present at the wedding, and was rather surprised to find that
+Arthur was singularly reserved with me, both before and after his
+marriage, on the subject of the young lady's prior engagement.  He
+only referred to it once, when we were alone, merely telling me, on
+that occasion, that his wife had done all that honour and duty
+required of her in the matter, and that the engagement had been
+broken off with the full approval of her parents.  I never heard
+more from him than this.  For three years he and his wife lived
+together happily.  At the expiration of that time, the symptoms of
+a serious illness first declared themselves in Mrs. Arthur
+Holliday.  It turned out to be a long, lingering, hopeless malady.
+I attended her throughout.  We had been great friends when she was
+well, and we became more attached to each other than ever when she
+was ill.  I had many long and interesting conversations with her in
+the intervals when she suffered least.  The result of one of these
+conversations I may briefly relate, leaving you to draw any
+inferences from it that you please.
+
+The interview to which I refer, occurred shortly before her death.
+I called one evening, as usual, and found her alone, with a look in
+her eyes which told me that she had been crying.  She only informed
+me at first, that she had been depressed in spirits; but, by little
+and little, she became more communicative, and confessed to me that
+she had been looking over some old letters, which had been
+addressed to her, before she had seen Arthur, by a man to whom she
+had been engaged to be married.  I asked her how the engagement
+came to be broken off.  She replied that it had not been broken
+off, but that it had died out in a very mysterious way.  The person
+to whom she was engaged--her first love, she called him--was very
+poor, and there was no immediate prospect of their being married.
+He followed my profession, and went abroad to study.  They had
+corresponded regularly, until the time when, as she believed, he
+had returned to England.  From that period she heard no more of
+him.  He was of a fretful, sensitive temperament; and she feared
+that she might have inadvertently done or said something that
+offended him.  However that might be, he had never written to her
+again; and, after waiting a year, she had married Arthur.  I asked
+when the first estrangement had begun, and found that the time at
+which she ceased to hear anything of her first lover exactly
+corresponded with the time at which I had been called in to my
+mysterious patient at The Two Robins Inn.
+
+A fortnight after that conversation, she died.  In course of time,
+Arthur married again.  Of late years, he has lived principally in
+London, and I have seen little or nothing of him.
+
+I have many years to pass over before I can approach to anything
+like a conclusion of this fragmentary narrative.  And even when
+that later period is reached, the little that I have to say will
+not occupy your attention for more than a few minutes.  Between six
+and seven years ago, the gentleman to whom I introduced you in this
+room, came to me, with good professional recommendations, to fill
+the position of my assistant.  We met, not like strangers, but like
+friends--the only difference between us being, that I was very much
+surprised to see him, and that he did not appear to be at all
+surprised to see me.  If he was my son or my brother, I believe he
+could not be fonder of me than he is; but he has never volunteered
+any confidences since he has been here, on the subject of his past
+life.  I saw something that was familiar to me in his face when we
+first met; and yet it was also something that suggested the idea of
+change.  I had a notion once that my patient at the Inn might be a
+natural son of Mr. Holliday's; I had another idea that he might
+also have been the man who was engaged to Arthur's first wife; and
+I have a third idea, still clinging to me, that Mr. Lorn is the
+only man in England who could really enlighten me, if he chose, on
+both those doubtful points.  His hair is not black, now, and his
+eyes are dimmer than the piercing eyes that I remember, but, for
+all that, he is very like the nameless medical student of my young
+days--very like him.  And, sometimes, when I come home late at
+night, and find him asleep, and wake him, he looks, in coming to,
+wonderfully like the stranger at Doncaster, as he raised himself in
+the bed on that memorable night!
+
+The Doctor paused.  Mr. Goodchild, who had been following every
+word that fell from his lips up to this time, leaned forward
+eagerly to ask a question.  Before he could say a word, the latch
+of the door was raised, without any warning sound of footsteps in
+the passage outside.  A long, white, bony hand appeared through the
+opening, gently pushing the door, which was prevented from working
+freely on its hinges by a fold in the carpet under it.
+
+'That hand!  Look at that hand, Doctor!' said Mr. Goodchild,
+touching him.
+
+At the same moment, the Doctor looked at Mr. Goodchild, and
+whispered to him, significantly:
+
+'Hush! he has come back.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+
+The Cumberland Doctor's mention of Doncaster Races, inspired Mr.
+Francis Goodchild with the idea of going down to Doncaster to see
+the races.  Doncaster being a good way off, and quite out of the
+way of the Idle Apprentices (if anything could be out of their way,
+who had no way), it necessarily followed that Francis perceived
+Doncaster in the race-week to be, of all possible idleness, the
+particular idleness that would completely satisfy him.
+
+Thomas, with an enforced idleness grafted on the natural and
+voluntary power of his disposition, was not of this mind; objecting
+that a man compelled to lie on his back on a floor, a sofa, a
+table, a line of chairs, or anything he could get to lie upon, was
+not in racing condition, and that he desired nothing better than to
+lie where he was, enjoying himself in looking at the flies on the
+ceiling.  But, Francis Goodchild, who had been walking round his
+companion in a circuit of twelve miles for two days, and had begun
+to doubt whether it was reserved for him ever to be idle in his
+life, not only overpowered this objection, but even converted
+Thomas Idle to a scheme he formed (another idle inspiration), of
+conveying the said Thomas to the sea-coast, and putting his injured
+leg under a stream of salt-water.
+
+Plunging into this happy conception headforemost, Mr. Goodchild
+immediately referred to the county-map, and ardently discovered
+that the most delicious piece of sea-coast to be found within the
+limits of England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man, and
+the Channel Islands, all summed up together, was Allonby on the
+coast of Cumberland.  There was the coast of Scotland opposite to
+Allonby, said Mr. Goodchild with enthusiasm; there was a fine
+Scottish mountain on that Scottish coast; there were Scottish
+lights to be seen shining across the glorious Channel, and at
+Allonby itself there was every idle luxury (no doubt) that a
+watering-place could offer to the heart of idle man.  Moreover,
+said Mr. Goodchild, with his finger on the map, this exquisite
+retreat was approached by a coach-road, from a railway-station
+called Aspatria--a name, in a manner, suggestive of the departed
+glories of Greece, associated with one of the most engaging and
+most famous of Greek women.  On this point, Mr. Goodchild continued
+at intervals to breathe a vein of classic fancy and eloquence
+exceedingly irksome to Mr. Idle, until it appeared that the honest
+English pronunciation of that Cumberland country shortened Aspatria
+into 'Spatter.'  After this supplementary discovery, Mr. Goodchild
+said no more about it.
+
+By way of Spatter, the crippled Idle was carried, hoisted, pushed,
+poked, and packed, into and out of carriages, into and out of beds,
+into and out of tavern resting-places, until he was brought at
+length within sniff of the sea.  And now, behold the apprentices
+gallantly riding into Allonby in a one-horse fly, bent upon staying
+in that peaceful marine valley until the turbulent Doncaster time
+shall come round upon the wheel, in its turn among what are in
+sporting registers called the 'Fixtures' for the month.
+
+'Do you see Allonby!' asked Thomas Idle.
+
+'I don't see it yet,' said Francis, looking out of window.
+
+'It must be there,' said Thomas Idle.
+
+'I don't see it,' returned Francis.
+
+'It must be there,' repeated Thomas Idle, fretfully.
+
+'Lord bless me!' exclaimed Francis, drawing in his head, 'I suppose
+this is it!'
+
+'A watering-place,' retorted Thomas Idle, with the pardonable
+sharpness of an invalid, 'can't be five gentlemen in straw hats, on
+a form on one side of a door, and four ladies in hats and falls, on
+a form on another side of a door, and three geese in a dirty little
+brook before them, and a boy's legs hanging over a bridge (with a
+boy's body I suppose on the other side of the parapet), and a
+donkey running away.  What are you talking about?'
+
+'Allonby, gentlemen,' said the most comfortable of landladies as
+she opened one door of the carriage; 'Allonby, gentlemen,' said the
+most attentive of landlords, as he opened the other.
+
+Thomas Idle yielded his arm to the ready Goodchild, and descended
+from the vehicle.  Thomas, now just able to grope his way along, in
+a doubled-up condition, with the aid of two thick sticks, was no
+bad embodiment of Commodore Trunnion, or of one of those many
+gallant Admirals of the stage, who have all ample fortunes, gout,
+thick sticks, tempers, wards, and nephews.  With this distinguished
+naval appearance upon him, Thomas made a crab-like progress up a
+clean little bulk-headed staircase, into a clean little bulk-headed
+room, where he slowly deposited himself on a sofa, with a stick on
+either hand of him, looking exceedingly grim.
+
+'Francis,' said Thomas Idle, 'what do you think of this place?'
+
+'I think,' returned Mr. Goodchild, in a glowing way, 'it is
+everything we expected.'
+
+'Hah!' said Thomas Idle.
+
+'There is the sea,' cried Mr. Goodchild, pointing out of window;
+'and here,' pointing to the lunch on the table, 'are shrimps.  Let
+us--' here Mr. Goodchild looked out of window, as if in search of
+something, and looked in again,--'let us eat 'em.'
+
+The shrimps eaten and the dinner ordered, Mr. Goodchild went out to
+survey the watering-place.  As Chorus of the Drama, without whom
+Thomas could make nothing of the scenery, he by-and-by returned, to
+have the following report screwed out of him.
+
+In brief, it was the most delightful place ever seen.
+
+'But,' Thomas Idle asked, 'where is it?'
+
+'It's what you may call generally up and down the beach, here and
+there,' said Mr. Goodchild, with a twist of his hand.
+
+'Proceed,' said Thomas Idle.
+
+It was, Mr. Goodchild went on to say, in cross-examination, what
+you might call a primitive place.  Large?  No, it was not large.
+Who ever expected it would be large?  Shape?  What a question to
+ask!  No shape.  What sort of a street?  Why, no street.  Shops?
+Yes, of course (quite indignant).  How many?  Who ever went into a
+place to count the shops?  Ever so many.  Six?  Perhaps.  A
+library?  Why, of course (indignant again).  Good collection of
+books?  Most likely--couldn't say--had seen nothing in it but a
+pair of scales.  Any reading-room?  Of course, there was a reading-
+room.  Where?  Where! why, over there.  Where was over there?  Why,
+THERE!  Let Mr. Idle carry his eye to that bit of waste ground
+above high-water mark, where the rank grass and loose stones were
+most in a litter; and he would see a sort of long, ruinous brick
+loft, next door to a ruinous brick out-house, which loft had a
+ladder outside, to get up by.  That was the reading-room, and if
+Mr. Idle didn't like the idea of a weaver's shuttle throbbing under
+a reading-room, that was his look out.  HE was not to dictate, Mr.
+Goodchild supposed (indignant again), to the company.
+
+'By-the-by,' Thomas Idle observed; 'the company?'
+
+Well! (Mr. Goodchild went on to report) very nice company.  Where
+were they?  Why, there they were.  Mr. Idle could see the tops of
+their hats, he supposed.  What?  Those nine straw hats again, five
+gentlemen's and four ladies'?  Yes, to be sure.  Mr. Goodchild
+hoped the company were not to be expected to wear helmets, to
+please Mr. Idle.
+
+Beginning to recover his temper at about this point, Mr. Goodchild
+voluntarily reported that if you wanted to be primitive, you could
+be primitive here, and that if you wanted to be idle, you could be
+idle here.  In the course of some days, he added, that there were
+three fishing-boats, but no rigging, and that there were plenty of
+fishermen who never fished.  That they got their living entirely by
+looking at the ocean.  What nourishment they looked out of it to
+support their strength, he couldn't say; but, he supposed it was
+some sort of Iodine.  The place was full of their children, who
+were always upside down on the public buildings (two small bridges
+over the brook), and always hurting themselves or one another, so
+that their wailings made more continual noise in the air than could
+have been got in a busy place.  The houses people lodged in, were
+nowhere in particular, and were in capital accordance with the
+beach; being all more or less cracked and damaged as its shells
+were, and all empty--as its shells were.  Among them, was an
+edifice of destitute appearance, with a number of wall-eyed windows
+in it, looking desperately out to Scotland as if for help, which
+said it was a Bazaar (and it ought to know), and where you might
+buy anything you wanted--supposing what you wanted, was a little
+camp-stool or a child's wheelbarrow.  The brook crawled or stopped
+between the houses and the sea, and the donkey was always running
+away, and when he got into the brook he was pelted out with stones,
+which never hit him, and which always hit some of the children who
+were upside down on the public buildings, and made their
+lamentations louder.  This donkey was the public excitement of
+Allonby, and was probably supported at the public expense.
+
+The foregoing descriptions, delivered in separate items, on
+separate days of adventurous discovery, Mr. Goodchild severally
+wound up, by looking out of window, looking in again, and saying,
+'But there is the sea, and here are the shrimps--let us eat 'em.'
+
+There were fine sunsets at Allonby when the low flat beach, with
+its pools of water and its dry patches, changed into long bars of
+silver and gold in various states of burnishing, and there were
+fine views--on fine days--of the Scottish coast.  But, when it
+rained at Allonby, Allonby thrown back upon its ragged self, became
+a kind of place which the donkey seemed to have found out, and to
+have his highly sagacious reasons for wishing to bolt from.  Thomas
+Idle observed, too, that Mr. Goodchild, with a noble show of
+disinterestedness, became every day more ready to walk to Maryport
+and back, for letters; and suspicions began to harbour in the mind
+of Thomas, that his friend deceived him, and that Maryport was a
+preferable place.
+
+Therefore, Thomas said to Francis on a day when they had looked at
+the sea and eaten the shrimps, 'My mind misgives me, Goodchild,
+that you go to Maryport, like the boy in the story-book, to ask IT
+to be idle with you.'
+
+'Judge, then,' returned Francis, adopting the style of the story-
+book, 'with what success.  I go to a region which is a bit of
+water-side Bristol, with a slice of Wapping, a seasoning of
+Wolverhampton, and a garnish of Portsmouth, and I say, "Will YOU
+come and be idle with me?"  And it answers, "No; for I am a great
+deal too vaporous, and a great deal too rusty, and a great deal too
+muddy, and a great deal too dirty altogether; and I have ships to
+load, and pitch and tar to boil, and iron to hammer, and steam to
+get up, and smoke to make, and stone to quarry, and fifty other
+disagreeable things to do, and I can't be idle with you."  Then I
+go into jagged up-hill and down-hill streets, where I am in the
+pastrycook's shop at one moment, and next moment in savage
+fastnesses of moor and morass, beyond the confines of civilisation,
+and I say to those murky and black-dusty streets, "Will YOU come
+and be idle with me?"  To which they reply, "No, we can't, indeed,
+for we haven't the spirits, and we are startled by the echo of your
+feet on the sharp pavement, and we have so many goods in our shop-
+windows which nobody wants, and we have so much to do for a limited
+public which never comes to us to be done for, that we are
+altogether out of sorts and can't enjoy ourselves with any one."
+So I go to the Post-office, and knock at the shutter, and I say to
+the Post-master, "Will YOU come and be idle with me?"  To which he
+rejoins, "No, I really can't, for I live, as you may see, in such a
+very little Post-office, and pass my life behind such a very little
+shutter, that my hand, when I put it out, is as the hand of a giant
+crammed through the window of a dwarf's house at a fair, and I am a
+mere Post-office anchorite in a cell much too small for him, and I
+can't get out, and I can't get in, and I have no space to be idle
+in, even if I would."  So, the boy,' said Mr. Goodchild, concluding
+the tale, 'comes back with the letters after all, and lives happy
+never afterwards.'
+
+But it may, not unreasonably, be asked--while Francis Goodchild was
+wandering hither and thither, storing his mind with perpetual
+observation of men and things, and sincerely believing himself to
+be the laziest creature in existence all the time--how did Thomas
+Idle, crippled and confined to the house, contrive to get through
+the hours of the day?
+
+Prone on the sofa, Thomas made no attempt to get through the hours,
+but passively allowed the hours to get through HIM.  Where other
+men in his situation would have read books and improved their
+minds, Thomas slept and rested his body.  Where other men would
+have pondered anxiously over their future prospects, Thomas dreamed
+lazily of his past life.  The one solitary thing he did, which most
+other people would have done in his place, was to resolve on making
+certain alterations and improvements in his mode of existence, as
+soon as the effects of the misfortune that had overtaken him had
+all passed away.  Remembering that the current of his life had
+hitherto oozed along in one smooth stream of laziness, occasionally
+troubled on the surface by a slight passing ripple of industry, his
+present ideas on the subject of self-reform, inclined him--not as
+the reader may be disposed to imagine, to project schemes for a new
+existence of enterprise and exertion--but, on the contrary, to
+resolve that he would never, if he could possibly help it, be
+active or industrious again, throughout the whole of his future
+career.
+
+It is due to Mr. Idle to relate that his mind sauntered towards
+this peculiar conclusion on distinct and logically-producible
+grounds.  After reviewing, quite at his ease, and with many needful
+intervals of repose, the generally-placid spectacle of his past
+existence, he arrived at the discovery that all the great disasters
+which had tried his patience and equanimity in early life, had been
+caused by his having allowed himself to be deluded into imitating
+some pernicious example of activity and industry that had been set
+him by others.  The trials to which he here alludes were three in
+number, and may be thus reckoned up:  First, the disaster of being
+an unpopular and a thrashed boy at school; secondly, the disaster
+of falling seriously ill; thirdly, the disaster of becoming
+acquainted with a great bore.
+
+The first disaster occurred after Thomas had been an idle and a
+popular boy at school, for some happy years.  One Christmas-time,
+he was stimulated by the evil example of a companion, whom he had
+always trusted and liked, to be untrue to himself, and to try for a
+prize at the ensuing half-yearly examination.  He did try, and he
+got a prize--how, he did not distinctly know at the moment, and
+cannot remember now.  No sooner, however, had the book--Moral Hints
+to the Young on the Value of Time--been placed in his hands, than
+the first troubles of his life began.  The idle boys deserted him,
+as a traitor to their cause.  The industrious boys avoided him, as
+a dangerous interloper; one of their number, who had always won the
+prize on previous occasions, expressing just resentment at the
+invasion of his privileges by calling Thomas into the play-ground,
+and then and there administering to him the first sound and genuine
+thrashing that he had ever received in his life.  Unpopular from
+that moment, as a beaten boy, who belonged to no side and was
+rejected by all parties, young Idle soon lost caste with his
+masters, as he had previously lost caste with his schoolfellows.
+He had forfeited the comfortable reputation of being the one lazy
+member of the youthful community whom it was quite hopeless to
+punish.  Never again did he hear the headmaster say reproachfully
+to an industrious boy who had committed a fault, 'I might have
+expected this in Thomas Idle, but it is inexcusable, sir, in you,
+who know better.'  Never more, after winning that fatal prize, did
+he escape the retributive imposition, or the avenging birch.  From
+that time, the masters made him work, and the boys would not let
+him play.  From that time his social position steadily declined,
+and his life at school became a perpetual burden to him.
+
+So, again, with the second disaster.  While Thomas was lazy, he was
+a model of health.  His first attempt at active exertion and his
+first suffering from severe illness are connected together by the
+intimate relations of cause and effect.  Shortly after leaving
+school, he accompanied a party of friends to a cricket-field, in
+his natural and appropriate character of spectator only.  On the
+ground it was discovered that the players fell short of the
+required number, and facile Thomas was persuaded to assist in
+making up the complement.  At a certain appointed time, he was
+roused from peaceful slumber in a dry ditch, and placed before
+three wickets with a bat in his hand.  Opposite to him, behind
+three more wickets, stood one of his bosom friends, filling the
+situation (as he was informed) of bowler.  No words can describe
+Mr. Idle's horror and amazement, when he saw this young man--on
+ordinary occasions, the meekest and mildest of human beings--
+suddenly contract his eye-brows, compress his lips, assume the
+aspect of an infuriated savage, run back a few steps, then run
+forward, and, without the slightest previous provocation, hurl a
+detestably hard ball with all his might straight at Thomas's legs.
+Stimulated to preternatural activity of body and sharpness of eye
+by the instinct of self-preservation, Mr. Idle contrived, by
+jumping deftly aside at the right moment, and by using his bat
+(ridiculously narrow as it was for the purpose) as a shield, to
+preserve his life and limbs from the dastardly attack that had been
+made on both, to leave the full force of the deadly missile to
+strike his wicket instead of his leg; and to end the innings, so
+far as his side was concerned, by being immediately bowled out.
+Grateful for his escape, he was about to return to the dry ditch,
+when he was peremptorily stopped, and told that the other side was
+'going in,' and that he was expected to 'field.'  His conception of
+the whole art and mystery of 'fielding,' may be summed up in the
+three words of serious advice which he privately administered to
+himself on that trying occasion--avoid the ball.  Fortified by this
+sound and salutary principle, he took his own course, impervious
+alike to ridicule and abuse.  Whenever the ball came near him, he
+thought of his shins, and got out of the way immediately.  'Catch
+it!'  'Stop it!'  'Pitch it up!' were cries that passed by him like
+the idle wind that he regarded not.  He ducked under it, he jumped
+over it, he whisked himself away from it on either side.  Never
+once, through the whole innings did he and the ball come together
+on anything approaching to intimate terms.  The unnatural activity
+of body which was necessarily called forth for the accomplishment
+of this result threw Thomas Idle, for the first time in his life,
+into a perspiration.  The perspiration, in consequence of his want
+of practice in the management of that particular result of bodily
+activity, was suddenly checked; the inevitable chill succeeded; and
+that, in its turn, was followed by a fever.  For the first time
+since his birth, Mr. Idle found himself confined to his bed for
+many weeks together, wasted and worn by a long illness, of which
+his own disastrous muscular exertion had been the sole first cause.
+
+The third occasion on which Thomas found reason to reproach himself
+bitterly for the mistake of having attempted to be industrious, was
+connected with his choice of a calling in life.  Having no interest
+in the Church, he appropriately selected the next best profession
+for a lazy man in England--the Bar.  Although the Benchers of the
+Inns of Court have lately abandoned their good old principles, and
+oblige their students to make some show of studying, in Mr. Idle's
+time no such innovation as this existed.  Young men who aspired to
+the honourable title of barrister were, very properly, not asked to
+learn anything of the law, but were merely required to eat a
+certain number of dinners at the table of their Hall, and to pay a
+certain sum of money; and were called to the Bar as soon as they
+could prove that they had sufficiently complied with these
+extremely sensible regulations.  Never did Thomas move more
+harmoniously in concert with his elders and betters than when he
+was qualifying himself for admission among the barristers of his
+native country.  Never did he feel more deeply what real laziness
+was in all the serene majesty of its nature, than on the memorable
+day when he was called to the Bar, after having carefully abstained
+from opening his law-books during his period of probation, except
+to fall asleep over them.  How he could ever again have become
+industrious, even for the shortest period, after that great reward
+conferred upon his idleness, quite passes his comprehension.  The
+kind Benchers did everything they could to show him the folly of
+exerting himself.  They wrote out his probationary exercise for
+him, and never expected him even to take the trouble of reading it
+through when it was written.  They invited him, with seven other
+choice spirits as lazy as himself, to come and be called to the
+Bar, while they were sitting over their wine and fruit after
+dinner.  They put his oaths of allegiance, and his dreadful
+official denunciations of the Pope and the Pretender, so gently
+into his mouth, that he hardly knew how the words got there.  They
+wheeled all their chairs softly round from the table, and sat
+surveying the young barristers with their backs to their bottles,
+rather than stand up, or adjourn to hear the exercises read.  And
+when Mr. Idle and the seven unlabouring neophytes, ranged in order,
+as a class, with their backs considerately placed against a screen,
+had begun, in rotation, to read the exercises which they had not
+written, even then, each Bencher, true to the great lazy principle
+of the whole proceeding, stopped each neophyte before he had
+stammered through his first line, and bowed to him, and told him
+politely that he was a barrister from that moment.  This was all
+the ceremony.  It was followed by a social supper, and by the
+presentation, in accordance with ancient custom, of a pound of
+sweetmeats and a bottle of Madeira, offered in the way of needful
+refreshment, by each grateful neophyte to each beneficent Bencher.
+It may seem inconceivable that Thomas should ever have forgotten
+the great do-nothing principle instilled by such a ceremony as
+this; but it is, nevertheless, true, that certain designing
+students of industrious habits found him out, took advantage of his
+easy humour, persuaded him that it was discreditable to be a
+barrister and to know nothing whatever about the law, and lured
+him, by the force of their own evil example, into a conveyancer's
+chambers, to make up for lost time, and to qualify himself for
+practice at the Bar.  After a fortnight of self-delusion, the
+curtain fell from his eyes; he resumed his natural character, and
+shut up his books.  But the retribution which had hitherto always
+followed his little casual errors of industry followed them still.
+He could get away from the conveyancer's chambers, but he could not
+get away from one of the pupils, who had taken a fancy to him,--a
+tall, serious, raw-boned, hard-working, disputatious pupil, with
+ideas of his own about reforming the Law of Real Property, who has
+been the scourge of Mr. Idle's existence ever since the fatal day
+when he fell into the mistake of attempting to study the law.
+Before that time his friends were all sociable idlers like himself.
+Since that time the burden of bearing with a hard-working young man
+has become part of his lot in life.  Go where he will now, he can
+never feel certain that the raw-boned pupil is not affectionately
+waiting for him round a corner, to tell him a little more about the
+Law of Real Property.  Suffer as he may under the infliction, he
+can never complain, for he must always remember, with unavailing
+regret, that he has his own thoughtless industry to thank for first
+exposing him to the great social calamity of knowing a bore.
+
+These events of his past life, with the significant results that
+they brought about, pass drowsily through Thomas Idle's memory,
+while he lies alone on the sofa at Allonby and elsewhere, dreaming
+away the time which his fellow-apprentice gets through so actively
+out of doors.  Remembering the lesson of laziness which his past
+disasters teach, and bearing in mind also the fact that he is
+crippled in one leg because he exerted himself to go up a mountain,
+when he ought to have known that his proper course of conduct was
+to stop at the bottom of it, he holds now, and will for the future
+firmly continue to hold, by his new resolution never to be
+industrious again, on any pretence whatever, for the rest of his
+life.  The physical results of his accident have been related in a
+previous chapter.  The moral results now stand on record; and, with
+the enumeration of these, that part of the present narrative which
+is occupied by the Episode of The Sprained Ankle may now perhaps be
+considered, in all its aspects, as finished and complete.
+
+'How do you propose that we get through this present afternoon and
+evening?' demanded Thomas Idle, after two or three hours of the
+foregoing reflections at Allonby.
+
+Mr. Goodchild faltered, looked out of window, looked in again, and
+said, as he had so often said before, 'There is the sea, and here
+are the shrimps;--let us eat 'em'!'
+
+But, the wise donkey was at that moment in the act of bolting:  not
+with the irresolution of his previous efforts which had been
+wanting in sustained force of character, but with real vigour of
+purpose:  shaking the dust off his mane and hind-feet at Allonby,
+and tearing away from it, as if he had nobly made up his mind that
+he never would be taken alive.  At sight of this inspiring
+spectacle, which was visible from his sofa, Thomas Idle stretched
+his neck and dwelt upon it rapturously.
+
+'Francis Goodchild,' he then said, turning to his companion with a
+solemn air, 'this is a delightful little Inn, excellently kept by
+the most comfortable of landladies and the most attentive of
+landlords, but--the donkey's right!'
+
+The words, 'There is the sea, and here are the--' again trembled on
+the lips of Goodchild, unaccompanied however by any sound.
+
+'Let us instantly pack the portmanteaus,' said Thomas Idle, 'pay
+the bill, and order a fly out, with instructions to the driver to
+follow the donkey!'
+
+Mr. Goodchild, who had only wanted encouragement to disclose the
+real state of his feelings, and who had been pining beneath his
+weary secret, now burst into tears, and confessed that he thought
+another day in the place would be the death of him.
+
+So, the two idle apprentices followed the donkey until the night
+was far advanced.  Whether he was recaptured by the town-council,
+or is bolting at this hour through the United Kingdom, they know
+not.  They hope he may be still bolting; if so, their best wishes
+are with him.
+
+It entered Mr. Idle's head, on the borders of Cumberland, that
+there could be no idler place to stay at, except by snatches of a
+few minutes each, than a railway station.  'An intermediate station
+on a line--a junction--anything of that sort,' Thomas suggested.
+Mr. Goodchild approved of the idea as eccentric, and they journeyed
+on and on, until they came to such a station where there was an
+Inn.
+
+'Here,' said Thomas, 'we may be luxuriously lazy; other people will
+travel for us, as it were, and we shall laugh at their folly.'
+
+It was a Junction-Station, where the wooden razors before mentioned
+shaved the air very often, and where the sharp electric-telegraph
+bell was in a very restless condition.  All manner of cross-lines
+of rails came zig-zagging into it, like a Congress of iron vipers;
+and, a little way out of it, a pointsman in an elevated signal-box
+was constantly going through the motions of drawing immense
+quantities of beer at a public-house bar.  In one direction,
+confused perspectives of embankments and arches were to be seen
+from the platform; in the other, the rails soon disentangled
+themselves into two tracks and shot away under a bridge, and curved
+round a corner.  Sidings were there, in which empty luggage-vans
+and cattle-boxes often butted against each other as if they
+couldn't agree; and warehouses were there, in which great
+quantities of goods seemed to have taken the veil (of the
+consistency of tarpaulin), and to have retired from the world
+without any hope of getting back to it.  Refreshment-rooms were
+there; one, for the hungry and thirsty Iron Locomotives where their
+coke and water were ready, and of good quality, for they were
+dangerous to play tricks with; the other, for the hungry and
+thirsty human Locomotives, who might take what they could get, and
+whose chief consolation was provided in the form of three terrific
+urns or vases of white metal, containing nothing, each forming a
+breastwork for a defiant and apparently much-injured woman.
+
+Established at this Station, Mr. Thomas Idle and Mr. Francis
+Goodchild resolved to enjoy it.  But, its contrasts were very
+violent, and there was also an infection in it.
+
+First, as to its contrasts.  They were only two, but they were
+Lethargy and Madness.  The Station was either totally unconscious,
+or wildly raving.  By day, in its unconscious state, it looked as
+if no life could come to it,--as if it were all rust, dust, and
+ashes--as if the last train for ever, had gone without issuing any
+Return-Tickets--as if the last Engine had uttered its last shriek
+and burst.  One awkward shave of the air from the wooden razor, and
+everything changed.  Tight office-doors flew open, panels yielded,
+books, newspapers, travelling-caps and wrappers broke out of brick
+walls, money chinked, conveyances oppressed by nightmares of
+luggage came careering into the yard, porters started up from
+secret places, ditto the much-injured women, the shining bell, who
+lived in a little tray on stilts by himself, flew into a man's hand
+and clamoured violently.  The pointsman aloft in the signal-box
+made the motions of drawing, with some difficulty, hogsheads of
+beer.  Down Train!  More bear!  Up Train!  More beer.  Cross
+junction Train!  More beer!  Cattle Train!  More beer.  Goods
+Train!  Simmering, whistling, trembling, rumbling, thundering.
+Trains on the whole confusion of intersecting rails, crossing one
+another, bumping one another, hissing one another, backing to go
+forward, tearing into distance to come close.  People frantic.
+Exiles seeking restoration to their native carriages, and banished
+to remoter climes.  More beer and more bell.  Then, in a minute,
+the Station relapsed into stupor as the stoker of the Cattle Train,
+the last to depart, went gliding out of it, wiping the long nose of
+his oil-can with a dirty pocket-handkerchief.
+
+By night, in its unconscious state, the Station was not so much as
+visible.  Something in the air, like an enterprising chemist's
+established in business on one of the boughs of Jack's beanstalk,
+was all that could be discerned of it under the stars.  In a moment
+it would break out, a constellation of gas.  In another moment,
+twenty rival chemists, on twenty rival beanstalks, came into
+existence.  Then, the Furies would be seen, waving their lurid
+torches up and down the confused perspectives of embankments and
+arches--would be heard, too, wailing and shrieking.  Then, the
+Station would be full of palpitating trains, as in the day; with
+the heightening difference that they were not so clearly seen as in
+the day, whereas the Station walls, starting forward under the gas,
+like a hippopotamus's eyes, dazzled the human locomotives with the
+sauce-bottle, the cheap music, the bedstead, the distorted range of
+buildings where the patent safes are made, the gentleman in the
+rain with the registered umbrella, the lady returning from the ball
+with the registered respirator, and all their other embellishments.
+And now, the human locomotives, creased as to their countenances
+and purblind as to their eyes, would swarm forth in a heap,
+addressing themselves to the mysterious urns and the much-injured
+women; while the iron locomotives, dripping fire and water, shed
+their steam about plentifully, making the dull oxen in their cages,
+with heads depressed, and foam hanging from their mouths as their
+red looks glanced fearfully at the surrounding terrors, seem as
+though they had been drinking at half-frozen waters and were hung
+with icicles.  Through the same steam would be caught glimpses of
+their fellow-travellers, the sheep, getting their white kid faces
+together, away from the bars, and stuffing the interstices with
+trembling wool.  Also, down among the wheels, of the man with the
+sledge-hammer, ringing the axles of the fast night-train; against
+whom the oxen have a misgiving that he is the man with the pole-axe
+who is to come by-and-by, and so the nearest of them try to get
+back, and get a purchase for a thrust at him through the bars.
+Suddenly, the bell would ring, the steam would stop with one hiss
+and a yell, the chemists on the beanstalks would be busy, the
+avenging Furies would bestir themselves, the fast night-train would
+melt from eye and ear, the other trains going their ways more
+slowly would be heard faintly rattling in the distance like old-
+fashioned watches running down, the sauce-bottle and cheap music
+retired from view, even the bedstead went to bed, and there was no
+such visible thing as the Station to vex the cool wind in its
+blowing, or perhaps the autumn lightning, as it found out the iron
+rails.
+
+The infection of the Station was this:- When it was in its raving
+state, the Apprentices found it impossible to be there, without
+labouring under the delusion that they were in a hurry.  To Mr.
+Goodchild, whose ideas of idleness were so imperfect, this was no
+unpleasant hallucination, and accordingly that gentleman went
+through great exertions in yielding to it, and running up and down
+the platform, jostling everybody, under the impression that he had
+a highly important mission somewhere, and had not a moment to lose.
+But, to Thomas Idle, this contagion was so very unacceptable an
+incident of the situation, that he struck on the fourth day, and
+requested to be moved.
+
+'This place fills me with a dreadful sensation,' said Thomas, 'of
+having something to do.  Remove me, Francis.'
+
+'Where would you like to go next?' was the question of the ever-
+engaging Goodchild.
+
+'I have heard there is a good old Inn at Lancaster, established in
+a fine old house:  an Inn where they give you Bride-cake every day
+after dinner,' said Thomas Idle.  'Let us eat Bride-cake without
+the trouble of being married, or of knowing anybody in that
+ridiculous dilemma.'
+
+Mr. Goodchild, with a lover's sigh, assented.  They departed from
+the Station in a violent hurry (for which, it is unnecessary to
+observe, there was not the least occasion), and were delivered at
+the fine old house at Lancaster, on the same night.
+
+It is Mr. Goodchild's opinion, that if a visitor on his arrival at
+Lancaster could be accommodated with a pole which would push the
+opposite side of the street some yards farther off, it would be
+better for all parties.  Protesting against being required to live
+in a trench, and obliged to speculate all day upon what the people
+can possibly be doing within a mysterious opposite window, which is
+a shop-window to look at, but not a shop-window in respect of its
+offering nothing for sale and declining to give any account
+whatever of itself, Mr. Goodchild concedes Lancaster to be a
+pleasant place.  A place dropped in the midst of a charming
+landscape, a place with a fine ancient fragment of castle, a place
+of lovely walks, a place possessing staid old houses richly fitted
+with old Honduras mahogany, which has grown so dark with time that
+it seems to have got something of a retrospective mirror-quality
+into itself, and to show the visitor, in the depth of its grain,
+through all its polish, the hue of the wretched slaves who groaned
+long ago under old Lancaster merchants.  And Mr. Goodchild adds
+that the stones of Lancaster do sometimes whisper, even yet, of
+rich men passed away--upon whose great prosperity some of these old
+doorways frowned sullen in the brightest weather--that their slave-
+gain turned to curses, as the Arabian Wizard's money turned to
+leaves, and that no good ever came of it, even unto the third and
+fourth generations, until it was wasted and gone.
+
+It was a gallant sight to behold, the Sunday procession of the
+Lancaster elders to Church--all in black, and looking fearfully
+like a funeral without the Body--under the escort of Three Beadles.
+
+'Think,' said Francis, as he stood at the Inn window, admiring, 'of
+being taken to the sacred edifice by three Beadles!  I have, in my
+early time, been taken out of it by one Beadle; but, to be taken
+into it by three, O Thomas, is a distinction I shall never enjoy!'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+
+When Mr. Goodchild had looked out of the Lancaster Inn window for
+two hours on end, with great perseverance, he begun to entertain a
+misgiving that he was growing industrious.  He therefore set
+himself next, to explore the country from the tops of all the steep
+hills in the neighbourhood.
+
+He came back at dinner-time, red and glowing, to tell Thomas Idle
+what he had seen.  Thomas, on his back reading, listened with great
+composure, and asked him whether he really had gone up those hills,
+and bothered himself with those views, and walked all those miles?
+
+'Because I want to know,' added Thomas, 'what you would say of it,
+if you were obliged to do it?'
+
+'It would be different, then,' said Francis.  'It would be work,
+then; now, it's play.'
+
+'Play!' replied Thomas Idle, utterly repudiating the reply.  'Play!
+Here is a man goes systematically tearing himself to pieces, and
+putting himself through an incessant course of training, as if he
+were always under articles to fight a match for the champion's
+belt, and he calls it Play!  Play!' exclaimed Thomas Idle,
+scornfully contemplating his one boot in the air.  'You CAN'T play.
+You don't know what it is.  You make work of everything.'
+
+The bright Goodchild amiably smiled.
+
+'So you do,' said Thomas.  'I mean it.  To me you are an absolutely
+terrible fellow.  You do nothing like another man.  Where another
+fellow would fall into a footbath of action or emotion, you fall
+into a mine.  Where any other fellow would be a painted butterfly,
+you are a fiery dragon.  Where another man would stake a sixpence,
+you stake your existence.  If you were to go up in a balloon, you
+would make for Heaven; and if you were to dive into the depths of
+the earth, nothing short of the other place would content you.
+What a fellow you are, Francis!'  The cheerful Goodchild laughed.
+
+'It's all very well to laugh, but I wonder you don't feel it to be
+serious,' said Idle.  'A man who can do nothing by halves appears
+to me to be a fearful man.'
+
+'Tom, Tom,' returned Goodchild, 'if I can do nothing by halves, and
+be nothing by halves, it's pretty clear that you must take me as a
+whole, and make the best of me.'
+
+With this philosophical rejoinder, the airy Goodchild clapped Mr.
+Idle on the shoulder in a final manner, and they sat down to
+dinner.
+
+'By-the-by,' said Goodchild, 'I have been over a lunatic asylum
+too, since I have been out.'
+
+'He has been,' exclaimed Thomas Idle, casting up his eyes, 'over a
+lunatic asylum!  Not content with being as great an Ass as Captain
+Barclay in the pedestrian way, he makes a Lunacy Commissioner of
+himself--for nothing!'
+
+'An immense place,' said Goodchild, 'admirable offices, very good
+arrangements, very good attendants; altogether a remarkable place.'
+
+'And what did you see there?' asked Mr. Idle, adapting Hamlet's
+advice to the occasion, and assuming the virtue of interest, though
+he had it not.
+
+'The usual thing,' said Francis Goodchild, with a sigh.  'Long
+groves of blighted men-and-women-trees; interminable avenues of
+hopeless faces; numbers, without the slightest power of really
+combining for any earthly purpose; a society of human creatures who
+have nothing in common but that they have all lost the power of
+being humanly social with one another.'
+
+'Take a glass of wine with me,' said Thomas Idle, 'and let US be
+social.'
+
+'In one gallery, Tom,' pursued Francis Goodchild, 'which looked to
+me about the length of the Long Walk at Windsor, more or less--'
+
+'Probably less,' observed Thomas Idle.
+
+'In one gallery, which was otherwise clear of patients (for they
+were all out), there was a poor little dark-chinned, meagre man,
+with a perplexed brow and a pensive face, stooping low over the
+matting on the floor, and picking out with his thumb and forefinger
+the course of its fibres.  The afternoon sun was slanting in at the
+large end-window, and there were cross patches of light and shade
+all down the vista, made by the unseen windows and the open doors
+of the little sleeping-cells on either side.  In about the centre
+of the perspective, under an arch, regardless of the pleasant
+weather, regardless of the solitude, regardless of approaching
+footsteps, was the poor little dark-chinned, meagre man, poring
+over the matting.  "What are you doing there?" said my conductor,
+when we came to him.  He looked up, and pointed to the matting.  "I
+wouldn't do that, I think," said my conductor, kindly; "if I were
+you, I would go and read, or I would lie down if I felt tired; but
+I wouldn't do that."  The patient considered a moment, and vacantly
+answered, "No, sir, I won't; I'll--I'll go and read," and so he
+lamely shuffled away into one of the little rooms.  I turned my
+head before we had gone many paces.  He had already come out again,
+and was again poring over the matting, and tracking out its fibres
+with his thumb and forefinger.  I stopped to look at him, and it
+came into my mind, that probably the course of those fibres as they
+plaited in and out, over and under, was the only course of things
+in the whole wide world that it was left to him to understand--that
+his darkening intellect had narrowed down to the small cleft of
+light which showed him, "This piece was twisted this way, went in
+here, passed under, came out there, was carried on away here to the
+right where I now put my finger on it, and in this progress of
+events, the thing was made and came to be here."  Then, I wondered
+whether he looked into the matting, next, to see if it could show
+him anything of the process through which HE came to be there, so
+strangely poring over it.  Then, I thought how all of us, GOD help
+us! in our different ways are poring over our bits of matting,
+blindly enough, and what confusions and mysteries we make in the
+pattern.  I had a sadder fellow-feeling with the little dark-
+chinned, meagre man, by that time, and I came away.'
+
+Mr. Idle diverting the conversation to grouse, custards, and bride-
+cake, Mr. Goodchild followed in the same direction.  The bride-cake
+was as bilious and indigestible as if a real Bride had cut it, and
+the dinner it completed was an admirable performance.
+
+The house was a genuine old house of a very quaint description,
+teeming with old carvings, and beams, and panels, and having an
+excellent old staircase, with a gallery or upper staircase, cut off
+from it by a curious fence-work of old oak, or of the old Honduras
+Mahogany wood.  It was, and is, and will be, for many a long year
+to come, a remarkably picturesque house; and a certain grave
+mystery lurking in the depth of the old mahogany panels, as if they
+were so many deep pools of dark water--such, indeed, as they had
+been much among when they were trees--gave it a very mysterious
+character after nightfall.
+
+When Mr. Goodchild and Mr. Idle had first alighted at the door, and
+stepped into the sombre, handsome old hall, they had been received
+by half-a-dozen noiseless old men in black, all dressed exactly
+alike, who glided up the stairs with the obliging landlord and
+waiter--but without appearing to get into their way, or to mind
+whether they did or no--and who had filed off to the right and left
+on the old staircase, as the guests entered their sitting-room.  It
+was then broad, bright day.  But, Mr. Goodchild had said, when
+their door was shut, 'Who on earth are those old men?'  And
+afterwards, both on going out and coming in, he had noticed that
+there were no old men to be seen.
+
+Neither, had the old men, or any one of the old men, reappeared
+since.  The two friends had passed a night in the house, but had
+seen nothing more of the old men.  Mr. Goodchild, in rambling about
+it, had looked along passages, and glanced in at doorways, but had
+encountered no old men; neither did it appear that any old men
+were, by any member of the establishment, missed or expected.
+
+Another odd circumstance impressed itself on their attention.  It
+was, that the door of their sitting-room was never left untouched
+for a quarter of an hour.  It was opened with hesitation, opened
+with confidence, opened a little way, opened a good way,--always
+clapped-to again without a word of explanation.  They were reading,
+they were writing, they were eating, they were drinking, they were
+talking, they were dozing; the door was always opened at an
+unexpected moment, and they looked towards it, and it was clapped-
+to again, and nobody was to be seen.  When this had happened fifty
+times or so, Mr. Goodchild had said to his companion, jestingly:
+'I begin to think, Tom, there was something wrong with those six
+old men.'
+
+Night had come again, and they had been writing for two or three
+hours:  writing, in short, a portion of the lazy notes from which
+these lazy sheets are taken.  They had left off writing, and
+glasses were on the table between them.  The house was closed and
+quiet.  Around the head of Thomas Idle, as he lay upon his sofa,
+hovered light wreaths of fragrant smoke.  The temples of Francis
+Goodchild, as he leaned back in his chair, with his two hands
+clasped behind his head, and his legs crossed, were similarly
+decorated.
+
+They had been discussing several idle subjects of speculation, not
+omitting the strange old men, and were still so occupied, when Mr.
+Goodchild abruptly changed his attitude to wind up his watch.  They
+were just becoming drowsy enough to be stopped in their talk by any
+such slight check.  Thomas Idle, who was speaking at the moment,
+paused and said, 'How goes it?'
+
+'One,' said Goodchild.
+
+As if he had ordered One old man, and the order were promptly
+executed (truly, all orders were so, in that excellent hotel), the
+door opened, and One old man stood there.
+
+He did not come in, but stood with the door in his hand.
+
+'One of the six, Tom, at last!' said Mr. Goodchild, in a surprised
+whisper.--'Sir, your pleasure?'
+
+'Sir, YOUR pleasure?' said the One old man.
+
+'I didn't ring.'
+
+'The bell did,' said the One old man.
+
+He said BELL, in a deep, strong way, that would have expressed the
+church Bell.
+
+'I had the pleasure, I believe, of seeing you, yesterday?' said
+Goodchild.
+
+'I cannot undertake to say for certain,' was the grim reply of the
+One old man.
+
+'I think you saw me?  Did you not?'
+
+'Saw YOU?' said the old man.  'O yes, I saw you.  But, I see many
+who never see me.'
+
+A chilled, slow, earthy, fixed old man.  A cadaverous old man of
+measured speech.  An old man who seemed as unable to wink, as if
+his eyelids had been nailed to his forehead.  An old man whose
+eyes--two spots of fire--had no more motion than if they had been
+connected with the back of his skull by screws driven through it,
+and rivetted and bolted outside, among his grey hair.
+
+The night had turned so cold, to Mr. Goodchild's sensations, that
+he shivered.  He remarked lightly, and half apologetically, 'I
+think somebody is walking over my grave.'
+
+'No,' said the weird old man, 'there is no one there.'
+
+Mr. Goodchild looked at Idle, but Idle lay with his head enwreathed
+in smoke.
+
+'No one there?' said Goodchild.
+
+'There is no one at your grave, I assure you,' said the old man.
+
+He had come in and shut the door, and he now sat down.  He did not
+bend himself to sit, as other people do, but seemed to sink bolt
+upright, as if in water, until the chair stopped him.
+
+'My friend, Mr. Idle,' said Goodchild, extremely anxious to
+introduce a third person into the conversation.
+
+'I am,' said the old man, without looking at him, 'at Mr. Idle's
+service.'
+
+'If you are an old inhabitant of this place,' Francis Goodchild
+resumed.
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Perhaps you can decide a point my friend and I were in doubt upon,
+this morning.  They hang condemned criminals at the Castle, I
+believe?'
+
+'_I_ believe so,' said the old man.
+
+'Are their faces turned towards that noble prospect?'
+
+'Your face is turned,' replied the old man, 'to the Castle wall.
+When you are tied up, you see its stones expanding and contracting
+violently, and a similar expansion and contraction seem to take
+place in your own head and breast.  Then, there is a rush of fire
+and an earthquake, and the Castle springs into the air, and you
+tumble down a precipice.'
+
+His cravat appeared to trouble him.  He put his hand to his throat,
+and moved his neck from side to side.  He was an old man of a
+swollen character of face, and his nose was immoveably hitched up
+on one side, as if by a little hook inserted in that nostril.  Mr.
+Goodchild felt exceedingly uncomfortable, and began to think the
+night was hot, and not cold.
+
+'A strong description, sir,' he observed.
+
+'A strong sensation,' the old man rejoined.
+
+Again, Mr. Goodchild looked to Mr. Thomas Idle; but Thomas lay on
+his back with his face attentively turned towards the One old man,
+and made no sign.  At this time Mr. Goodchild believed that he saw
+threads of fire stretch from the old man's eyes to his own, and
+there attach themselves.  (Mr.  Goodchild writes the present
+account of his experience, and, with the utmost solemnity, protests
+that he had the strongest sensation upon him of being forced to
+look at the old man along those two fiery films, from that moment.)
+
+'I must tell it to you,' said the old man, with a ghastly and a
+stony stare.
+
+'What?' asked Francis Goodchild.
+
+'You know where it took place.  Yonder!'
+
+Whether he pointed to the room above, or to the room below, or to
+any room in that old house, or to a room in some other old house in
+that old town, Mr. Goodchild was not, nor is, nor ever can be,
+sure.  He was confused by the circumstance that the right
+forefinger of the One old man seemed to dip itself in one of the
+threads of fire, light itself, and make a fiery start in the air,
+as it pointed somewhere.  Having pointed somewhere, it went out.
+
+'You know she was a Bride,' said the old man.
+
+'I know they still send up Bride-cake,' Mr. Goodchild faltered.
+'This is a very oppressive air.'
+
+'She was a Bride,' said the old man.  'She was a fair, flaxen-
+haired, large-eyed girl, who had no character, no purpose.  A weak,
+credulous, incapable, helpless nothing.  Not like her mother.  No,
+no.  It was her father whose character she reflected.
+
+'Her mother had taken care to secure everything to herself, for her
+own life, when the father of this girl (a child at that time) died-
+-of sheer helplessness; no other disorder--and then He renewed the
+acquaintance that had once subsisted between the mother and Him.
+He had been put aside for the flaxen-haired, large-eyed man (or
+nonentity) with Money.  He could overlook that for Money.  He
+wanted compensation in Money.
+
+'So, he returned to the side of that woman the mother, made love to
+her again, danced attendance on her, and submitted himself to her
+whims.  She wreaked upon him every whim she had, or could invent.
+He bore it.  And the more he bore, the more he wanted compensation
+in Money, and the more he was resolved to have it.
+
+'But, lo!  Before he got it, she cheated him.  In one of her
+imperious states, she froze, and never thawed again.  She put her
+hands to her head one night, uttered a cry, stiffened, lay in that
+attitude certain hours, and died.  And he had got no compensation
+from her in Money, yet.  Blight and Murrain on her!  Not a penny.
+
+'He had hated her throughout that second pursuit, and had longed
+for retaliation on her.  He now counterfeited her signature to an
+instrument, leaving all she had to leave, to her daughter--ten
+years old then--to whom the property passed absolutely, and
+appointing himself the daughter's Guardian.  When He slid it under
+the pillow of the bed on which she lay, He bent down in the deaf
+ear of Death, and whispered:  "Mistress Pride, I have determined a
+long time that, dead or alive, you must make me compensation in
+Money.'
+
+'So, now there were only two left.  Which two were, He, and the
+fair flaxen-haired, large-eyed foolish daughter, who afterwards
+became the Bride.
+
+'He put her to school.  In a secret, dark, oppressive, ancient
+house, he put her to school with a watchful and unscrupulous woman.
+"My worthy lady," he said, "here is a mind to be formed; will you
+help me to form it?"  She accepted the trust.  For which she, too,
+wanted compensation in Money, and had it.
+
+'The girl was formed in the fear of him, and in the conviction,
+that there was no escape from him.  She was taught, from the first,
+to regard him as her future husband--the man who must marry her--
+the destiny that overshadowed her--the appointed certainty that
+could never be evaded.  The poor fool was soft white wax in their
+hands, and took the impression that they put upon her.  It hardened
+with time.  It became a part of herself.  Inseparable from herself,
+and only to be torn away from her, by tearing life away from her.
+
+'Eleven years she had lived in the dark house and its gloomy
+garden.  He was jealous of the very light and air getting to her,
+and they kept her close.  He stopped the wide chimneys, shaded the
+little windows, left the strong-stemmed ivy to wander where it
+would over the house-front, the moss to accumulate on the untrimmed
+fruit-trees in the red-walled garden, the weeds to over-run its
+green and yellow walks.  He surrounded her with images of sorrow
+and desolation.  He caused her to be filled with fears of the place
+and of the stories that were told of it, and then on pretext of
+correcting them, to be left in it in solitude, or made to shrink
+about it in the dark.  When her mind was most depressed and fullest
+of terrors, then, he would come out of one of the hiding-places
+from which he overlooked her, and present himself as her sole
+resource.
+
+'Thus, by being from her childhood the one embodiment her life
+presented to her of power to coerce and power to relieve, power to
+bind and power to loose, the ascendency over her weakness was
+secured.  She was twenty-one years and twenty-one days old, when he
+brought her home to the gloomy house, his half-witted, frightened,
+and submissive Bride of three weeks.
+
+'He had dismissed the governess by that time--what he had left to
+do, he could best do alone--and they came back, upon a rain night,
+to the scene of her long preparation.  She turned to him upon the
+threshold, as the rain was dripping from the porch, and said:
+
+'"O sir, it is the Death-watch ticking for me!"
+
+'"Well!" he answered.  "And if it were?"
+
+'"O sir!" she returned to him, "look kindly on me, and be merciful
+to me!  I beg your pardon.  I will do anything you wish, if you
+will only forgive me!"
+
+'That had become the poor fool's constant song:  "I beg your
+pardon," and "Forgive me!"
+
+'She was not worth hating; he felt nothing but contempt for her.
+But, she had long been in the way, and he had long been weary, and
+the work was near its end, and had to be worked out.
+
+'"You fool," he said.  "Go up the stairs!"
+
+'She obeyed very quickly, murmuring, "I will do anything you wish!"
+When he came into the Bride's Chamber, having been a little
+retarded by the heavy fastenings of the great door (for they were
+alone in the house, and he had arranged that the people who
+attended on them should come and go in the day), he found her
+withdrawn to the furthest corner, and there standing pressed
+against the paneling as if she would have shrunk through it:  her
+flaxen hair all wild about her face, and her large eyes staring at
+him in vague terror.
+
+'"What are you afraid of?  Come and sit down by me."
+
+'"I will do anything you wish.  I beg your pardon, sir.  Forgive
+me!"  Her monotonous tune as usual.
+
+'"Ellen, here is a writing that you must write out to-morrow, in
+your own hand.  You may as well be seen by others, busily engaged
+upon it.  When you have written it all fairly, and corrected all
+mistakes, call in any two people there may be about the house, and
+sign your name to it before them.  Then, put it in your bosom to
+keep it safe, and when I sit here again to-morrow night, give it to
+me."
+
+'"I will do it all, with the greatest care.  I will do anything you
+wish."
+
+'"Don't shake and tremble, then."
+
+'"I will try my utmost not to do it--if you will only forgive me!"
+
+'Next day, she sat down at her desk, and did as she had been told.
+He often passed in and out of the room, to observe her, and always
+saw her slowly and laboriously writing:  repeating to herself the
+words she copied, in appearance quite mechanically, and without
+caring or endeavouring to comprehend them, so that she did her
+task.  He saw her follow the directions she had received, in all
+particulars; and at night, when they were alone again in the same
+Bride's Chamber, and he drew his chair to the hearth, she timidly
+approached him from her distant seat, took the paper from her
+bosom, and gave it into his hand.
+
+'It secured all her possessions to him, in the event of her death.
+He put her before him, face to face, that he might look at her
+steadily; and he asked her, in so many plain words, neither fewer
+nor more, did she know that?
+
+'There were spots of ink upon the bosom of her white dress, and
+they made her face look whiter and her eyes look larger as she
+nodded her head.  There were spots of ink upon the hand with which
+she stood before him, nervously plaiting and folding her white
+skirts.
+
+'He took her by the arm, and looked her, yet more closely and
+steadily, in the face.  "Now, die!  I have done with you."
+
+'She shrunk, and uttered a low, suppressed cry.
+
+'"I am not going to kill you.  I will not endanger my life for
+yours.  Die!"
+
+'He sat before her in the gloomy Bride's Chamber, day after day,
+night after night, looking the word at her when he did not utter
+it.  As often as her large unmeaning eyes were raised from the
+hands in which she rocked her head, to the stern figure, sitting
+with crossed arms and knitted forehead, in the chair, they read in
+it, "Die!"  When she dropped asleep in exhaustion, she was called
+back to shuddering consciousness, by the whisper, "Die!"  When she
+fell upon her old entreaty to be pardoned, she was answered "Die!"
+When she had out-watched and out-suffered the long night, and the
+rising sun flamed into the sombre room, she heard it hailed with,
+"Another day and not dead?--Die!"
+
+'Shut up in the deserted mansion, aloof from all mankind, and
+engaged alone in such a struggle without any respite, it came to
+this--that either he must die, or she.  He knew it very well, and
+concentrated his strength against her feebleness.  Hours upon hours
+he held her by the arm when her arm was black where he held it, and
+bade her Die!
+
+'It was done, upon a windy morning, before sunrise.  He computed
+the time to be half-past four; but, his forgotten watch had run
+down, and he could not be sure.  She had broken away from him in
+the night, with loud and sudden cries--the first of that kind to
+which she had given vent--and he had had to put his hands over her
+mouth.  Since then, she had been quiet in the corner of the
+paneling where she had sunk down; and he had left her, and had gone
+back with his folded arms and his knitted forehead to his chair.
+
+'Paler in the pale light, more colourless than ever in the leaden
+dawn, he saw her coming, trailing herself along the floor towards
+him--a white wreck of hair, and dress, and wild eyes, pushing
+itself on by an irresolute and bending hand.
+
+'"O, forgive me!  I will do anything.  O, sir, pray tell me I may
+live!"
+
+'"Die!"
+
+'"Are you so resolved?  Is there no hope for me?"
+
+'"Die!"
+
+'Her large eyes strained themselves with wonder and fear; wonder
+and fear changed to reproach; reproach to blank nothing.  It was
+done.  He was not at first so sure it was done, but that the
+morning sun was hanging jewels in her hair--he saw the diamond,
+emerald, and ruby, glittering among it in little points, as he
+stood looking down at her--when he lifted her and laid her on her
+bed.
+
+'She was soon laid in the ground.  And now they were all gone, and
+he had compensated himself well.
+
+'He had a mind to travel.  Not that he meant to waste his Money,
+for he was a pinching man and liked his Money dearly (liked nothing
+else, indeed), but, that he had grown tired of the desolate house
+and wished to turn his back upon it and have done with it.  But,
+the house was worth Money, and Money must not be thrown away.  He
+determined to sell it before he went.  That it might look the less
+wretched and bring a better price, he hired some labourers to work
+in the overgrown garden; to cut out the dead wood, trim the ivy
+that drooped in heavy masses over the windows and gables, and clear
+the walks in which the weeds were growing mid-leg high.
+
+'He worked, himself, along with them.  He worked later than they
+did, and, one evening at dusk, was left working alone, with his
+bill-hook in his hand.  One autumn evening, when the Bride was five
+weeks dead.
+
+'"It grows too dark to work longer," he said to himself, "I must
+give over for the night."
+
+'He detested the house, and was loath to enter it.  He looked at
+the dark porch waiting for him like a tomb, and felt that it was an
+accursed house.  Near to the porch, and near to where he stood, was
+a tree whose branches waved before the old bay-window of the
+Bride's Chamber, where it had been done.  The tree swung suddenly,
+and made him start.  It swung again, although the night was still.
+Looking up into it, he saw a figure among the branches.
+
+'It was the figure of a young man.  The face looked down, as his
+looked up; the branches cracked and swayed; the figure rapidly
+descended, and slid upon its feet before him.  A slender youth of
+about her age, with long light brown hair.
+
+'"What thief are you?" he said, seizing the youth by the collar.
+
+'The young man, in shaking himself free, swung him a blow with his
+arm across the face and throat.  They closed, but the young man got
+from him and stepped back, crying, with great eagerness and horror,
+"Don't touch me!  I would as lieve be touched by the Devil!"
+
+'He stood still, with his bill-hook in his hand, looking at the
+young man.  For, the young man's look was the counterpart of her
+last look, and he had not expected ever to see that again.
+
+'"I am no thief.  Even if I were, I would not have a coin of your
+wealth, if it would buy me the Indies.  You murderer!"
+
+'"What!"
+
+'"I climbed it," said the young man, pointing up into the tree,
+"for the first time, nigh four years ago.  I climbed it, to look at
+her.  I saw her.  I spoke to her.  I have climbed it, many a time,
+to watch and listen for her.  I was a boy, hidden among its leaves,
+when from that bay-window she gave me this!"
+
+'He showed a tress of flaxen hair, tied with a mourning ribbon.
+
+'"Her life," said the young man, "was a life of mourning.  She gave
+me this, as a token of it, and a sign that she was dead to every
+one but you.  If I had been older, if I had seen her sooner, I
+might have saved her from you.  But, she was fast in the web when I
+first climbed the tree, and what could I do then to break it!"
+
+'In saying those words, he burst into a fit of sobbing and crying:
+weakly at first, then passionately.
+
+'"Murderer!  I climbed the tree on the night when you brought her
+back.  I heard her, from the tree, speak of the Death-watch at the
+door.  I was three times in the tree while you were shut up with
+her, slowly killing her.  I saw her, from the tree, lie dead upon
+her bed.  I have watched you, from the tree, for proofs and traces
+of your guilt.  The manner of it, is a mystery to me yet, but I
+will pursue you until you have rendered up your life to the
+hangman.  You shall never, until then, be rid of me.  I loved her!
+I can know no relenting towards you.  Murderer, I loved her!"
+
+'The youth was bare-headed, his hat having fluttered away in his
+descent from the tree.  He moved towards the gate.  He had to pass-
+-Him--to get to it.  There was breadth for two old-fashioned
+carriages abreast; and the youth's abhorrence, openly expressed in
+every feature of his face and limb of his body, and very hard to
+bear, had verge enough to keep itself at a distance in.  He (by
+which I mean the other) had not stirred hand or foot, since he had
+stood still to look at the boy.  He faced round, now, to follow him
+with his eyes.  As the back of the bare light-brown head was turned
+to him, he saw a red curve stretch from his hand to it.  He knew,
+before he threw the bill-hook, where it had alighted--I say, had
+alighted, and not, would alight; for, to his clear perception the
+thing was done before he did it.  It cleft the head, and it
+remained there, and the boy lay on his face.
+
+'He buried the body in the night, at the foot of the tree.  As soon
+as it was light in the morning, he worked at turning up all the
+ground near the tree, and hacking and hewing at the neighbouring
+bushes and undergrowth.  When the labourers came, there was nothing
+suspicious, and nothing suspected.
+
+'But, he had, in a moment, defeated all his precautions, and
+destroyed the triumph of the scheme he had so long concerted, and
+so successfully worked out.  He had got rid of the Bride, and had
+acquired her fortune without endangering his life; but now, for a
+death by which he had gained nothing, he had evermore to live with
+a rope around his neck.
+
+'Beyond this, he was chained to the house of gloom and horror,
+which he could not endure.  Being afraid to sell it or to quit it,
+lest discovery should be made, he was forced to live in it.  He
+hired two old people, man and wife, for his servants; and dwelt in
+it, and dreaded it.  His great difficulty, for a long time, was the
+garden.  Whether he should keep it trim, whether he should suffer
+it to fall into its former state of neglect, what would be the
+least likely way of attracting attention to it?
+
+'He took the middle course of gardening, himself, in his evening
+leisure, and of then calling the old serving-man to help him; but,
+of never letting him work there alone.  And he made himself an
+arbour over against the tree, where he could sit and see that it
+was safe.
+
+'As the seasons changed, and the tree changed, his mind perceived
+dangers that were always changing.  In the leafy time, he perceived
+that the upper boughs were growing into the form of the young man--
+that they made the shape of him exactly, sitting in a forked branch
+swinging in the wind.  In the time of the falling leaves, he
+perceived that they came down from the tree, forming tell-tale
+letters on the path, or that they had a tendency to heap themselves
+into a churchyard mound above the grave.  In the winter, when the
+tree was bare, he perceived that the boughs swung at him the ghost
+of the blow the young man had given, and that they threatened him
+openly.  In the spring, when the sap was mounting in the trunk, he
+asked himself, were the dried-up particles of blood mounting with
+it:  to make out more obviously this year than last, the leaf-
+screened figure of the young man, swinging in the wind?
+
+'However, he turned his Money over and over, and still over.  He
+was in the dark trade, the gold-dust trade, and most secret trades
+that yielded great returns.  In ten years, he had turned his Money
+over, so many times, that the traders and shippers who had dealings
+with him, absolutely did not lie--for once--when they declared that
+he had increased his fortune, Twelve Hundred Per Cent.
+
+'He possessed his riches one hundred years ago, when people could
+be lost easily.  He had heard who the youth was, from hearing of
+the search that was made after him; but, it died away, and the
+youth was forgotten.
+
+'The annual round of changes in the tree had been repeated ten
+times since the night of the burial at its foot, when there was a
+great thunder-storm over this place.  It broke at midnight, and
+roared until morning.  The first intelligence he heard from his old
+serving-man that morning, was, that the tree had been struck by
+Lightning.
+
+'It had been riven down the stem, in a very surprising manner, and
+the stem lay in two blighted shafts:  one resting against the
+house, and one against a portion of the old red garden-wall in
+which its fall had made a gap.  The fissure went down the tree to a
+little above the earth, and there stopped.  There was great
+curiosity to see the tree, and, with most of his former fears
+revived, he sat in his arbour--grown quite an old man--watching the
+people who came to see it.
+
+'They quickly began to come, in such dangerous numbers, that he
+closed his garden-gate and refused to admit any more.  But, there
+were certain men of science who travelled from a distance to
+examine the tree, and, in an evil hour, he let them in!--Blight and
+Murrain on them, let them in!
+
+'They wanted to dig up the ruin by the roots, and closely examine
+it, and the earth about it.  Never, while he lived!  They offered
+money for it.  They!  Men of science, whom he could have bought by
+the gross, with a scratch of his pen!  He showed them the garden-
+gate again, and locked and barred it.
+
+'But they were bent on doing what they wanted to do, and they
+bribed the old serving-man--a thankless wretch who regularly
+complained when he received his wages, of being underpaid--and they
+stole into the garden by night with their lanterns, picks, and
+shovels, and fell to at the tree.  He was lying in a turret-room on
+the other side of the house (the Bride's Chamber had been
+unoccupied ever since), but he soon dreamed of picks and shovels,
+and got up.
+
+'He came to an upper window on that side, whence he could see their
+lanterns, and them, and the loose earth in a heap which he had
+himself disturbed and put back, when it was last turned to the air.
+It was found!  They had that minute lighted on it.  They were all
+bending over it.  One of them said, "The skull is fractured;" and
+another, "See here the bones;" and another, "See here the clothes;"
+and then the first struck in again, and said, "A rusty bill-hook!"
+
+'He became sensible, next day, that he was already put under a
+strict watch, and that he could go nowhere without being followed.
+Before a week was out, he was taken and laid in hold.  The
+circumstances were gradually pieced together against him, with a
+desperate malignity, and an appalling ingenuity.  But, see the
+justice of men, and how it was extended to him!  He was further
+accused of having poisoned that girl in the Bride's Chamber.  He,
+who had carefully and expressly avoided imperilling a hair of his
+head for her, and who had seen her die of her own incapacity!
+
+'There was doubt for which of the two murders he should be first
+tried; but, the real one was chosen, and he was found Guilty, and
+cast for death.  Bloodthirsty wretches!  They would have made him
+Guilty of anything, so set they were upon having his life.
+
+'His money could do nothing to save him, and he was hanged.  _I_ am
+He, and I was hanged at Lancaster Castle with my face to the wall,
+a hundred years ago!'
+
+
+At this terrific announcement, Mr. Goodchild tried to rise and cry
+out.  But, the two fiery lines extending from the old man's eyes to
+his own, kept him down, and he could not utter a sound.  His sense
+of hearing, however, was acute, and he could hear the clock strike
+Two.  No sooner had he heard the clock strike Two, than he saw
+before him Two old men!
+
+TWO.
+
+The eyes of each, connected with his eyes by two films of fire:
+each, exactly like the other:  each, addressing him at precisely
+one and the same instant:  each, gnashing the same teeth in the
+same head, with the same twitched nostril above them, and the same
+suffused expression around it.  Two old men.  Differing in nothing,
+equally distinct to the sight, the copy no fainter than the
+original, the second as real as the first.
+
+'At what time,' said the Two old men, 'did you arrive at the door
+below?'
+
+'At Six.'
+
+'And there were Six old men upon the stairs!'
+
+Mr. Goodchild having wiped the perspiration from his brow, or tried
+to do it, the Two old men proceeded in one voice, and in the
+singular number:
+
+'I had been anatomised, but had not yet had my skeleton put
+together and re-hung on an iron hook, when it began to be whispered
+that the Bride's Chamber was haunted.  It WAS haunted, and I was
+there.
+
+'WE were there.  She and I were there.  I, in the chair upon the
+hearth; she, a white wreck again, trailing itself towards me on the
+floor.  But, I was the speaker no more, and the one word that she
+said to me from midnight until dawn was, 'Live!'
+
+'The youth was there, likewise.  In the tree outside the window.
+Coming and going in the moonlight, as the tree bent and gave.  He
+has, ever since, been there, peeping in at me in my torment;
+revealing to me by snatches, in the pale lights and slatey shadows
+where he comes and goes, bare-headed--a bill-hook, standing
+edgewise in his hair.
+
+'In the Bride's Chamber, every night from midnight until dawn--one
+month in the year excepted, as I am going to tell you--he hides in
+the tree, and she comes towards me on the floor; always
+approaching; never coming nearer; always visible as if by moon-
+light, whether the moon shines or no; always saying, from mid-night
+until dawn, her one word, "Live!"
+
+'But, in the month wherein I was forced out of this life--this
+present month of thirty days--the Bride's Chamber is empty and
+quiet.  Not so my old dungeon.  Not so the rooms where I was
+restless and afraid, ten years.  Both are fitfully haunted then.
+At One in the morning.  I am what you saw me when the clock struck
+that hour--One old man.  At Two in the morning, I am Two old men.
+At Three, I am Three.  By Twelve at noon, I am Twelve old men, One
+for every hundred per cent. of old gain.  Every one of the Twelve,
+with Twelve times my old power of suffering and agony.  From that
+hour until Twelve at night, I, Twelve old men in anguish and
+fearful foreboding, wait for the coming of the executioner.  At
+Twelve at night, I, Twelve old men turned off, swing invisible
+outside Lancaster Castle, with Twelve faces to the wall!
+
+'When the Bride's Chamber was first haunted, it was known to me
+that this punishment would never cease, until I could make its
+nature, and my story, known to two living men together.  I waited
+for the coming of two living men together into the Bride's Chamber,
+years upon years.  It was infused into my knowledge (of the means I
+am ignorant) that if two living men, with their eyes open, could be
+in the Bride's Chamber at One in the morning, they would see me
+sitting in my chair.
+
+'At length, the whispers that the room was spiritually troubled,
+brought two men to try the adventure.  I was scarcely struck upon
+the hearth at midnight (I come there as if the Lightning blasted me
+into being), when I heard them ascending the stairs.  Next, I saw
+them enter.  One of them was a bold, gay, active man, in the prime
+of life, some five and forty years of age; the other, a dozen years
+younger.  They brought provisions with them in a basket, and
+bottles.  A young woman accompanied them, with wood and coals for
+the lighting of the fire.  When she had lighted it, the bold, gay,
+active man accompanied her along the gallery outside the room, to
+see her safely down the staircase, and came back laughing.
+
+'He locked the door, examined the chamber, put out the contents of
+the basket on the table before the fire--little recking of me, in
+my appointed station on the hearth, close to him--and filled the
+glasses, and ate and drank.  His companion did the same, and was as
+cheerful and confident as he:  though he was the leader.  When they
+had supped, they laid pistols on the table, turned to the fire, and
+began to smoke their pipes of foreign make.
+
+'They had travelled together, and had been much together, and had
+an abundance of subjects in common.  In the midst of their talking
+and laughing, the younger man made a reference to the leader's
+being always ready for any adventure; that one, or any other.  He
+replied in these words:
+
+'"Not quite so, Dick; if I am afraid of nothing else, I am afraid
+of myself."
+
+'His companion seeming to grow a little dull, asked him, in what
+sense?  How?
+
+'"Why, thus," he returned.  "Here is a Ghost to be disproved.
+Well!  I cannot answer for what my fancy might do if I were alone
+here, or what tricks my senses might play with me if they had me to
+themselves.  But, in company with another man, and especially with
+Dick, I would consent to outface all the Ghosts that were ever of
+in the universe."
+
+'"I had not the vanity to suppose that I was of so much importance
+to-night," said the other.
+
+'"Of so much," rejoined the leader, more seriously than he had
+spoken yet, "that I would, for the reason I have given, on no
+account have undertaken to pass the night here alone."
+
+'It was within a few minutes of One.  The head of the younger man
+had drooped when he made his last remark, and it drooped lower now.
+
+'"Keep awake, Dick!" said the leader, gaily.  "The small hours are
+the worst."
+
+'He tried, but his head drooped again.
+
+'"Dick!" urged the leader.  "Keep awake!"
+
+'"I can't," he indistinctly muttered.  "I don't know what strange
+influence is stealing over me.  I can't."
+
+'His companion looked at him with a sudden horror, and I, in my
+different way, felt a new horror also; for, it was on the stroke of
+One, and I felt that the second watcher was yielding to me, and
+that the curse was upon me that I must send him to sleep.
+
+'"Get up and walk, Dick!" cried the leader.  "Try!"
+
+'It was in vain to go behind the slumber's chair and shake him.
+One o'clock sounded, and I was present to the elder man, and he
+stood transfixed before me.
+
+'To him alone, I was obliged to relate my story, without hope of
+benefit.  To him alone, I was an awful phantom making a quite
+useless confession.  I foresee it will ever be the same.  The two
+living men together will never come to release me.  When I appear,
+the senses of one of the two will be locked in sleep; he will
+neither see nor hear me; my communication will ever be made to a
+solitary listener, and will ever be unserviceable.  Woe!  Woe!
+Woe!'
+
+As the Two old men, with these words, wrung their hands, it shot
+into Mr. Goodchild's mind that he was in the terrible situation of
+being virtually alone with the spectre, and that Mr. Idle's
+immoveability was explained by his having been charmed asleep at
+One o'clock.  In the terror of this sudden discovery which produced
+an indescribable dread, he struggled so hard to get free from the
+four fiery threads, that he snapped them, after he had pulled them
+out to a great width.  Being then out of bonds, he caught up Mr.
+Idle from the sofa and rushed down-stairs with him.
+
+
+'What are you about, Francis?' demanded Mr. Idle.  'My bedroom is
+not down here.  What the deuce are you carrying me at all for?  I
+can walk with a stick now.  I don't want to be carried.  Put me
+down.'
+
+Mr. Goodchild put him down in the old hall, and looked about him
+wildly.
+
+'What are you doing?  Idiotically plunging at your own sex, and
+rescuing them or perishing in the attempt?' asked Mr. Idle, in a
+highly petulant state.
+
+'The One old man!' cried Mr. Goodchild, distractedly,--'and the Two
+old men!'
+
+Mr. Idle deigned no other reply than 'The One old woman, I think
+you mean,' as he began hobbling his way back up the staircase, with
+the assistance of its broad balustrade.
+
+'I assure you, Tom,' began Mr. Goodchild, attending at his side,
+'that since you fell asleep--'
+
+'Come, I like that!' said Thomas Idle, 'I haven't closed an eye!'
+
+With the peculiar sensitiveness on the subject of the disgraceful
+action of going to sleep out of bed, which is the lot of all
+mankind, Mr. Idle persisted in this declaration.  The same peculiar
+sensitiveness impelled Mr. Goodchild, on being taxed with the same
+crime, to repudiate it with honourable resentment.  The settlement
+of the question of The One old man and The Two old men was thus
+presently complicated, and soon made quite impracticable.  Mr. Idle
+said it was all Bride-cake, and fragments, newly arranged, of
+things seen and thought about in the day.  Mr. Goodchild said how
+could that be, when he hadn't been asleep, and what right could Mr.
+Idle have to say so, who had been asleep?  Mr. Idle said he had
+never been asleep, and never did go to sleep, and that Mr.
+Goodchild, as a general rule, was always asleep.  They consequently
+parted for the rest of the night, at their bedroom doors, a little
+ruffled.  Mr. Goodchild's last words were, that he had had, in that
+real and tangible old sitting-room of that real and tangible old
+Inn (he supposed Mr. Idle denied its existence?), every sensation
+and experience, the present record of which is now within a line or
+two of completion; and that he would write it out and print it
+every word.  Mr. Idle returned that he might if he liked--and he
+did like, and has now done it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+
+Two of the many passengers by a certain late Sunday evening train,
+Mr. Thomas Idle and Mr. Francis Goodchild, yielded up their tickets
+at a little rotten platform (converted into artificial touchwood by
+smoke and ashes), deep in the manufacturing bosom of Yorkshire.  A
+mysterious bosom it appeared, upon a damp, dark, Sunday night,
+dashed through in the train to the music of the whirling wheels,
+the panting of the engine, and the part-singing of hundreds of
+third-class excursionists, whose vocal efforts 'bobbed arayound'
+from sacred to profane, from hymns, to our transatlantic sisters
+the Yankee Gal and Mairy Anne, in a remarkable way.  There seemed
+to have been some large vocal gathering near to every lonely
+station on the line.  No town was visible, no village was visible,
+no light was visible; but, a multitude got out singing, and a
+multitude got in singing, and the second multitude took up the
+hymns, and adopted our transatlantic sisters, and sang of their own
+egregious wickedness, and of their bobbing arayound, and of how the
+ship it was ready and the wind it was fair, and they were bayound
+for the sea, Mairy Anne, until they in their turn became a getting-
+out multitude, and were replaced by another getting-in multitude,
+who did the same.  And at every station, the getting-in multitude,
+with an artistic reference to the completeness of their chorus,
+incessantly cried, as with one voice while scuffling into the
+carriages, 'We mun aa' gang toogither!'
+
+The singing and the multitudes had trailed off as the lonely places
+were left and the great towns were neared, and the way had lain as
+silently as a train's way ever can, over the vague black streets of
+the great gulfs of towns, and among their branchless woods of vague
+black chimneys.  These towns looked, in the cinderous wet, as
+though they had one and all been on fire and were just put out--a
+dreary and quenched panorama, many miles long.
+
+Thus, Thomas and Francis got to Leeds; of which enterprising and
+important commercial centre it may be observed with delicacy, that
+you must either like it very much or not at all.  Next day, the
+first of the Race-Week, they took train to Doncaster.
+
+And instantly the character, both of travellers and of luggage,
+entirely changed, and no other business than race-business any
+longer existed on the face of the earth.  The talk was all of
+horses and 'John Scott.'  Guards whispered behind their hands to
+station-masters, of horses and John Scott.  Men in cut-away coats
+and speckled cravats fastened with peculiar pins, and with the
+large bones of their legs developed under tight trousers, so that
+they should look as much as possible like horses' legs, paced up
+and down by twos at junction-stations, speaking low and moodily of
+horses and John Scott.  The young clergyman in the black strait-
+waistcoat, who occupied the middle seat of the carriage, expounded
+in his peculiar pulpit-accent to the young and lovely Reverend Mrs.
+Crinoline, who occupied the opposite middle-seat, a few passages of
+rumour relative to 'Oartheth, my love, and Mithter John Eth-COTT.'
+A bandy vagabond, with a head like a Dutch cheese, in a fustian
+stable-suit, attending on a horse-box and going about the platforms
+with a halter hanging round his neck like a Calais burgher of the
+ancient period much degenerated, was courted by the best society,
+by reason of what he had to hint, when not engaged in eating straw,
+concerning 't'harses and Joon Scott.'  The engine-driver himself,
+as he applied one eye to his large stationary double-eye-glass on
+the engine, seemed to keep the other open, sideways, upon horses
+and John Scott.
+
+Breaks and barriers at Doncaster Station to keep the crowd off;
+temporary wooden avenues of ingress and egress, to help the crowd
+on.  Forty extra porters sent down for this present blessed Race-
+Week, and all of them making up their betting-books in the lamp-
+room or somewhere else, and none of them to come and touch the
+luggage.  Travellers disgorged into an open space, a howling
+wilderness of idle men.  All work but race-work at a stand-still;
+all men at a stand-still.  'Ey my word!  Deant ask noon o' us to
+help wi' t'luggage.  Bock your opinion loike a mon.  Coom!  Dang
+it, coom, t'harses and Joon Scott!'  In the midst of the idle men,
+all the fly horses and omnibus horses of Doncaster and parts
+adjacent, rampant, rearing, backing, plunging, shying--apparently
+the result of their hearing of nothing but their own order and John
+Scott.
+
+Grand Dramatic Company from London for the Race-Week.  Poses
+Plastiques in the Grand Assembly Room up the Stable-Yard at seven
+and nine each evening, for the Race-Week.  Grand Alliance Circus in
+the field beyond the bridge, for the Race-Week.  Grand Exhibition
+of Aztec Lilliputians, important to all who want to be horrified
+cheap, for the Race-Week.  Lodgings, grand and not grand, but all
+at grand prices, ranging from ten pounds to twenty, for the Grand
+Race-Week!
+
+Rendered giddy enough by these things, Messieurs Idle and Goodchild
+repaired to the quarters they had secured beforehand, and Mr.
+Goodchild looked down from the window into the surging street.
+
+'By Heaven, Tom!' cried he, after contemplating it, 'I am in the
+Lunatic Asylum again, and these are all mad people under the charge
+of a body of designing keepers!'
+
+All through the Race-Week, Mr. Goodchild never divested himself of
+this idea.  Every day he looked out of window, with something of
+the dread of Lemuel Gulliver looking down at men after he returned
+home from the horse-country; and every day he saw the Lunatics,
+horse-mad, betting-mad, drunken-mad, vice-mad, and the designing
+Keepers always after them.  The idea pervaded, like the second
+colour in shot-silk, the whole of Mr. Goodchild's impressions.
+They were much as follows:
+
+Monday, mid-day.  Races not to begin until to-morrow, but all the
+mob-Lunatics out, crowding the pavements of the one main street of
+pretty and pleasant Doncaster, crowding the road, particularly
+crowding the outside of the Betting Rooms, whooping and shouting
+loudly after all passing vehicles.  Frightened lunatic horses
+occasionally running away, with infinite clatter.  All degrees of
+men, from peers to paupers, betting incessantly.  Keepers very
+watchful, and taking all good chances.  An awful family likeness
+among the Keepers, to Mr. Palmer and Mr. Thurtell.  With some
+knowledge of expression and some acquaintance with heads (thus
+writes Mr. Goodchild), I never have seen anywhere, so many
+repetitions of one class of countenance and one character of head
+(both evil) as in this street at this time.  Cunning, covetousness,
+secrecy, cold calculation, hard callousness and dire insensibility,
+are the uniform Keeper characteristics.  Mr. Palmer passes me five
+times in five minutes, and, so I go down the street, the back of
+Mr. Thurtell's skull is always going on before me.
+
+Monday evening.  Town lighted up; more Lunatics out than ever; a
+complete choke and stoppage of the thoroughfare outside the Betting
+Rooms.  Keepers, having dined, pervade the Betting Rooms, and
+sharply snap at the moneyed Lunatics.  Some Keepers flushed with
+drink, and some not, but all close and calculating.  A vague
+echoing roar of 't'harses' and 't'races' always rising in the air,
+until midnight, at about which period it dies away in occasional
+drunken songs and straggling yells.  But, all night, some
+unmannerly drinking-house in the neighbourhood opens its mouth at
+intervals and spits out a man too drunk to be retained:  who
+thereupon makes what uproarious protest may be left in him, and
+either falls asleep where he tumbles, or is carried off in custody.
+
+Tuesday morning, at daybreak.  A sudden rising, as it were out of
+the earth, of all the obscene creatures, who sell 'correct cards of
+the races.'  They may have been coiled in corners, or sleeping on
+door-steps, and, having all passed the night under the same set of
+circumstances, may all want to circulate their blood at the same
+time; but, however that may be, they spring into existence all at
+once and together, as though a new Cadmus had sown a race-horse's
+teeth.  There is nobody up, to buy the cards; but, the cards are
+madly cried.  There is no patronage to quarrel for; but, they madly
+quarrel and fight.  Conspicuous among these hyaenas, as breakfast-
+time discloses, is a fearful creature in the general semblance of a
+man:  shaken off his next-to-no legs by drink and devilry, bare-
+headed and bare-footed, with a great shock of hair like a horrible
+broom, and nothing on him but a ragged pair of trousers and a pink
+glazed-calico coat--made on him--so very tight that it is as
+evident that he could never take it off, as that he never does.
+This hideous apparition, inconceivably drunk, has a terrible power
+of making a gong-like imitation of the braying of an ass:  which
+feat requires that he should lay his right jaw in his begrimed
+right paw, double himself up, and shake his bray out of himself,
+with much staggering on his next-to-no legs, and much twirling of
+his horrible broom, as if it were a mop.  From the present minute,
+when he comes in sight holding up his cards to the windows, and
+hoarsely proposing purchase to My Lord, Your Excellency, Colonel,
+the Noble Captain, and Your Honourable Worship--from the present
+minute until the Grand Race-Week is finished, at all hours of the
+morning, evening, day, and night, shall the town reverberate, at
+capricious intervals, to the brays of this frightful animal the
+Gong-donkey.
+
+No very great racing to-day, so no very great amount of vehicles:
+though there is a good sprinkling, too:  from farmers' carts and
+gigs, to carriages with post-horses and to fours-in-hand, mostly
+coming by the road from York, and passing on straight through the
+main street to the Course.  A walk in the wrong direction may be a
+better thing for Mr. Goodchild to-day than the Course, so he walks
+in the wrong direction.  Everybody gone to the races.  Only
+children in the street.  Grand Alliance Circus deserted; not one
+Star-Rider left; omnibus which forms the Pay-Place, having on
+separate panels Pay here for the Boxes, Pay here for the Pit, Pay
+here for the Gallery, hove down in a corner and locked up; nobody
+near the tent but the man on his knees on the grass, who is making
+the paper balloons for the Star young gentlemen to jump through to-
+night.  A pleasant road, pleasantly wooded.  No labourers working
+in the fields; all gone 't'races.'  The few late wenders of their
+way 't'races,' who are yet left driving on the road, stare in
+amazement at the recluse who is not going 't'races.'  Roadside
+innkeeper has gone 't'races.'  Turnpike-man has gone 't'races.'
+His thrifty wife, washing clothes at the toll-house door, is going
+'t'races' to-morrow.  Perhaps there may be no one left to take the
+toll to-morrow; who knows?  Though assuredly that would be neither
+turnpike-like nor Yorkshire-like.  The very wind and dust seem to
+be hurrying 't'races,' as they briskly pass the only wayfarer on
+the road.  In the distance, the Railway Engine, waiting at the
+town-end, shrieks despairingly.  Nothing but the difficulty of
+getting off the Line, restrains that Engine from going 't'races,'
+too, it is very clear.
+
+At night, more Lunatics out than last night--and more Keepers.  The
+latter very active at the Betting Rooms, the street in front of
+which is now impassable.  Mr. Palmer as before.  Mr. Thurtell as
+before.  Roar and uproar as before.  Gradual subsidence as before.
+Unmannerly drinking-house expectorates as before.  Drunken negro-
+melodists, Gong-donkey, and correct cards, in the night.
+
+On Wednesday morning, the morning of the great St. Leger, it
+becomes apparent that there has been a great influx since
+yesterday, both of Lunatics and Keepers.  The families of the
+tradesmen over the way are no longer within human ken; their places
+know them no more; ten, fifteen, and twenty guinea-lodgers fill
+them.  At the pastry-cook's second-floor window, a Keeper is
+brushing Mr. Thurtell's hair--thinking it his own.  In the wax-
+chandler's attic, another Keeper is putting on Mr. Palmer's braces.
+In the gunsmith's nursery, a Lunatic is shaving himself.  In the
+serious stationer's best sitting-room, three Lunatics are taking a
+combination-breakfast, praising the (cook's) devil, and drinking
+neat brandy in an atmosphere of last midnight's cigars.  No family
+sanctuary is free from our Angelic messengers--we put up at the
+Angel--who in the guise of extra waiters for the grand Race-Week,
+rattle in and out of the most secret chambers of everybody's house,
+with dishes and tin covers, decanters, soda-water bottles, and
+glasses.  An hour later.  Down the street and up the street, as far
+as eyes can see and a good deal farther, there is a dense crowd;
+outside the Betting Rooms it is like a great struggle at a theatre
+door--in the days of theatres; or at the vestibule of the Spurgeon
+temple--in the days of Spurgeon.  An hour later.  Fusing into this
+crowd, and somehow getting through it, are all kinds of
+conveyances, and all kinds of foot-passengers; carts, with brick-
+makers and brick-makeresses jolting up and down on planks; drags,
+with the needful grooms behind, sitting cross-armed in the needful
+manner, and slanting themselves backward from the soles of their
+boots at the needful angle; postboys, in the shining hats and smart
+jackets of the olden time, when stokers were not; beautiful
+Yorkshire horses, gallantly driven by their own breeders and
+masters.  Under every pole, and every shaft, and every horse, and
+every wheel as it would seem, the Gong-donkey--metallically
+braying, when not struggling for life, or whipped out of the way.
+
+By one o'clock, all this stir has gone out of the streets, and
+there is no one left in them but Francis Goodchild.  Francis
+Goodchild will not be left in them long; for, he too is on his way,
+'t'races.'
+
+A most beautiful sight, Francis Goodchild finds 't'races' to be,
+when he has left fair Doncaster behind him, and comes out on the
+free course, with its agreeable prospect, its quaint Red House
+oddly changing and turning as Francis turns, its green grass, and
+fresh heath.  A free course and an easy one, where Francis can roll
+smoothly where he will, and can choose between the start, or the
+coming-in, or the turn behind the brow of the hill, or any out-of-
+the-way point where he lists to see the throbbing horses straining
+every nerve, and making the sympathetic earth throb as they come
+by.  Francis much delights to be, not in the Grand Stand, but where
+he can see it, rising against the sky with its vast tiers of little
+white dots of faces, and its last high rows and corners of people,
+looking like pins stuck into an enormous pincushion--not quite so
+symmetrically as his orderly eye could wish, when people change or
+go away.  When the race is nearly run out, it is as good as the
+race to him to see the flutter among the pins, and the change in
+them from dark to light, as hats are taken off and waved.  Not less
+full of interest, the loud anticipation of the winner's name, the
+swelling, and the final, roar; then, the quick dropping of all the
+pins out of their places, the revelation of the shape of the bare
+pincushion, and the closing-in of the whole host of Lunatics and
+Keepers, in the rear of the three horses with bright-coloured
+riders, who have not yet quite subdued their gallop though the
+contest is over.
+
+Mr. Goodchild would appear to have been by no means free from
+lunacy himself at 't'races,' though not of the prevalent kind.  He
+is suspected by Mr. Idle to have fallen into a dreadful state
+concerning a pair of little lilac gloves and a little bonnet that
+he saw there.  Mr. Idle asserts, that he did afterwards repeat at
+the Angel, with an appearance of being lunatically seized, some
+rhapsody to the following effect:  'O little lilac gloves!  And O
+winning little bonnet, making in conjunction with her golden hair
+quite a Glory in the sunlight round the pretty head, why anything
+in the world but you and me!  Why may not this day's running-of
+horses, to all the rest:  of precious sands of life to me--be
+prolonged through an everlasting autumn-sunshine, without a sunset!
+Slave of the Lamp, or Ring, strike me yonder gallant equestrian
+Clerk of the Course, in the scarlet coat, motionless on the green
+grass for ages!  Friendly Devil on Two Sticks, for ten times ten
+thousands years, keep Blink-Bonny jibbing at the post, and let us
+have no start!  Arab drums, powerful of old to summon Genii in the
+desert, sound of yourselves and raise a troop for me in the desert
+of my heart, which shall so enchant this dusty barouche (with a
+conspicuous excise-plate, resembling the Collector's door-plate at
+a turnpike), that I, within it, loving the little lilac gloves, the
+winning little bonnet, and the dear unknown-wearer with the golden
+hair, may wait by her side for ever, to see a Great St. Leger that
+shall never be run!'
+
+Thursday morning.  After a tremendous night of crowding, shouting,
+drinking-house expectoration, Gong-donkey, and correct cards.
+Symptoms of yesterday's gains in the way of drink, and of
+yesterday's losses in the way of money, abundant.  Money-losses
+very great.  As usual, nobody seems to have won; but, large losses
+and many losers are unquestionable facts.  Both Lunatics and
+Keepers, in general very low.  Several of both kinds look in at the
+chemist's while Mr. Goodchild is making a purchase there, to be
+'picked up.'  One red-eyed Lunatic, flushed, faded, and disordered,
+enters hurriedly and cries savagely, 'Hond us a gloss of sal
+volatile in wather, or soom dommed thing o' thot sart!'  Faces at
+the Betting Rooms very long, and a tendency to bite nails
+observable.  Keepers likewise given this morning to standing about
+solitary, with their hands in their pockets, looking down at their
+boots as they fit them into cracks of the pavement, and then
+looking up whistling and walking away.  Grand Alliance Circus out,
+in procession; buxom lady-member of Grand Alliance, in crimson
+riding-habit, fresher to look at, even in her paint under the day
+sky, than the cheeks of Lunatics or Keepers.  Spanish Cavalier
+appears to have lost yesterday, and jingles his bossed bridle with
+disgust, as if he were paying.  Reaction also apparent at the
+Guildhall opposite, whence certain pickpockets come out handcuffed
+together, with that peculiar walk which is never seen under any
+other circumstances--a walk expressive of going to jail, game, but
+still of jails being in bad taste and arbitrary, and how would YOU
+like it if it was you instead of me, as it ought to be!  Mid-day.
+Town filled as yesterday, but not so full; and emptied as
+yesterday, but not so empty.  In the evening, Angel ordinary where
+every Lunatic and Keeper has his modest daily meal of turtle,
+venison, and wine, not so crowded as yesterday, and not so noisy.
+At night, the theatre.  More abstracted faces in it than one ever
+sees at public assemblies; such faces wearing an expression which
+strongly reminds Mr. Goodchild of the boys at school who were
+'going up next,' with their arithmetic or mathematics.  These boys
+are, no doubt, going up to-morrow with THEIR sums and figures.  Mr.
+Palmer and Mr. Thurtell in the boxes O. P.  Mr. Thurtell and Mr.
+Palmer in the boxes P. S.  The firm of Thurtell, Palmer, and
+Thurtell, in the boxes Centre.  A most odious tendency observable
+in these distinguished gentlemen to put vile constructions on
+sufficiently innocent phrases in the play, and then to applaud them
+in a Satyr-like manner.  Behind Mr. Goodchild, with a party of
+other Lunatics and one Keeper, the express incarnation of the thing
+called a 'gent.'  A gentleman born; a gent manufactured.  A
+something with a scarf round its neck, and a slipshod speech
+issuing from behind the scarf; more depraved, more foolish, more
+ignorant, more unable to believe in any noble or good thing of any
+kind, than the stupidest Bosjesman.  The thing is but a boy in
+years, and is addled with drink.  To do its company justice, even
+its company is ashamed of it, as it drawls its slang criticisms on
+the representation, and inflames Mr. Goodchild with a burning
+ardour to fling it into the pit.  Its remarks are so horrible, that
+Mr. Goodchild, for the moment, even doubts whether that IS a
+wholesome Art, which sets women apart on a high floor before such a
+thing as this, though as good as its own sisters, or its own
+mother--whom Heaven forgive for bringing it into the world!  But,
+the consideration that a low nature must make a low world of its
+own to live in, whatever the real materials, or it could no more
+exist than any of us could without the sense of touch, brings Mr.
+Goodchild to reason:  the rather, because the thing soon drops its
+downy chin upon its scarf, and slobbers itself asleep.
+
+Friday Morning.  Early fights.  Gong-donkey, and correct cards.
+Again, a great set towards the races, though not so great a set as
+on Wednesday.  Much packing going on too, upstairs at the gun-
+smith's, the wax-chandler's, and the serious stationer's; for there
+will be a heavy drift of Lunatics and Keepers to London by the
+afternoon train.  The course as pretty as ever; the great
+pincushion as like a pincushion, but not nearly so full of pins;
+whole rows of pins wanting.  On the great event of the day, both
+Lunatics and Keepers become inspired with rage; and there is a
+violent scuffling, and a rushing at the losing jockey, and an
+emergence of the said jockey from a swaying and menacing crowd,
+protected by friends, and looking the worse for wear; which is a
+rough proceeding, though animating to see from a pleasant distance.
+After the great event, rills begin to flow from the pincushion
+towards the railroad; the rills swell into rivers; the rivers soon
+unite into a lake.  The lake floats Mr. Goodchild into Doncaster,
+past the Itinerant personage in black, by the way-side telling him
+from the vantage ground of a legibly printed placard on a pole that
+for all these things the Lord will bring him to judgment.  No
+turtle and venison ordinary this evening; that is all over.  No
+Betting at the rooms; nothing there but the plants in pots, which
+have, all the week, been stood about the entry to give it an
+innocent appearance, and which have sorely sickened by this time.
+
+Saturday.  Mr. Idle wishes to know at breakfast, what were those
+dreadful groanings in his bedroom doorway in the night?  Mr.
+Goodchild answers, Nightmare.  Mr. Idle repels the calumny, and
+calls the waiter.  The Angel is very sorry--had intended to
+explain; but you see, gentlemen, there was a gentleman dined down-
+stairs with two more, and he had lost a deal of money, and he would
+drink a deal of wine, and in the night he 'took the horrors,' and
+got up; and as his friends could do nothing with him he laid
+himself down and groaned at Mr. Idle's door.  'And he DID groan
+there,' Mr. Idle says; 'and you will please to imagine me inside,
+"taking the horrors" too!'
+
+
+So far, the picture of Doncaster on the occasion of its great
+sporting anniversary, offers probably a general representation of
+the social condition of the town, in the past as well as in the
+present time.  The sole local phenomenon of the current year, which
+may be considered as entirely unprecedented in its way, and which
+certainly claims, on that account, some slight share of notice,
+consists in the actual existence of one remarkable individual, who
+is sojourning in Doncaster, and who, neither directly nor
+indirectly, has anything at all to do, in any capacity whatever,
+with the racing amusements of the week.  Ranging throughout the
+entire crowd that fills the town, and including the inhabitants as
+well as the visitors, nobody is to be found altogether disconnected
+with the business of the day, excepting this one unparalleled man.
+He does not bet on the races, like the sporting men.  He does not
+assist the races, like the jockeys, starters, judges, and grooms.
+He does not look on at the races, like Mr. Goodchild and his
+fellow-spectators.  He does not profit by the races, like the
+hotel-keepers and the tradespeople.  He does not minister to the
+necessities of the races, like the booth-keepers, the postilions,
+the waiters, and the hawkers of Lists.  He does not assist the
+attractions of the races, like the actors at the theatre, the
+riders at the circus, or the posturers at the Poses Plastiques.
+Absolutely and literally, he is the only individual in Doncaster
+who stands by the brink of the full-flowing race-stream, and is not
+swept away by it in common with all the rest of his species.  Who
+is this modern hermit, this recluse of the St. Leger-week, this
+inscrutably ungregarious being, who lives apart from the amusements
+and activities of his fellow-creatures?  Surely, there is little
+difficulty in guessing that clearest and easiest of all riddles.
+Who could he be, but Mr. Thomas Idle?
+
+Thomas had suffered himself to be taken to Doncaster, just as he
+would have suffered himself to be taken to any other place in the
+habitable globe which would guarantee him the temporary possession
+of a comfortable sofa to rest his ankle on.  Once established at
+the hotel, with his leg on one cushion and his back against
+another, he formally declined taking the slightest interest in any
+circumstance whatever connected with the races, or with the people
+who were assembled to see them.  Francis Goodchild, anxious that
+the hours should pass by his crippled travelling-companion as
+lightly as possible, suggested that his sofa should be moved to the
+window, and that he should amuse himself by looking out at the
+moving panorama of humanity, which the view from it of the
+principal street presented.  Thomas, however, steadily declined
+profiting by the suggestion.
+
+'The farther I am from the window,' he said, 'the better, Brother
+Francis, I shall be pleased.  I have nothing in common with the one
+prevalent idea of all those people who are passing in the street.
+Why should I care to look at them?'
+
+'I hope I have nothing in common with the prevalent idea of a great
+many of them, either,' answered Goodchild, thinking of the sporting
+gentlemen whom he had met in the course of his wanderings about
+Doncaster.  'But, surely, among all the people who are walking by
+the house, at this very moment, you may find--'
+
+'Not one living creature,' interposed Thomas, 'who is not, in one
+way or another, interested in horses, and who is not, in a greater
+or less degree, an admirer of them.  Now, I hold opinions in
+reference to these particular members of the quadruped creation,
+which may lay claim (as I believe) to the disastrous distinction of
+being unpartaken by any other human being, civilised or savage,
+over the whole surface of the earth.  Taking the horse as an animal
+in the abstract, Francis, I cordially despise him from every point
+of view.'
+
+'Thomas,' said Goodchild, 'confinement to the house has begun to
+affect your biliary secretions.  I shall go to the chemist's and
+get you some physic.'
+
+'I object,' continued Thomas, quietly possessing himself of his
+friend's hat, which stood on a table near him,--'I object, first,
+to the personal appearance of the horse.  I protest against the
+conventional idea of beauty, as attached to that animal.  I think
+his nose too long, his forehead too low, and his legs (except in
+the case of the cart-horse) ridiculously thin by comparison with
+the size of his body.  Again, considering how big an animal he is,
+I object to the contemptible delicacy of his constitution.  Is he
+not the sickliest creature in creation?  Does any child catch cold
+as easily as a horse?  Does he not sprain his fetlock, for all his
+appearance of superior strength, as easily as I sprained my ankle!
+Furthermore, to take him from another point of view, what a
+helpless wretch he is!  No fine lady requires more constant
+waiting-on than a horse.  Other animals can make their own
+toilette:  he must have a groom.  You will tell me that this is
+because we want to make his coat artificially glossy.  Glossy!
+Come home with me, and see my cat,--my clever cat, who can groom
+herself!  Look at your own dog! see how the intelligent creature
+curry-combs himself with his own honest teeth!  Then, again, what a
+fool the horse is, what a poor, nervous fool!  He will start at a
+piece of white paper in the road as if it was a lion.  His one
+idea, when he hears a noise that he is not accustomed to, is to run
+away from it.  What do you say to those two common instances of the
+sense and courage of this absurdly overpraised animal?  I might
+multiply them to two hundred, if I chose to exert my mind and waste
+my breath, which I never do.  I prefer coming at once to my last
+charge against the horse, which is the most serious of all, because
+it affects his moral character.  I accuse him boldly, in his
+capacity of servant to man, of slyness and treachery.  I brand him
+publicly, no matter how mild he may look about the eyes, or how
+sleek he may be about the coat, as a systematic betrayer, whenever
+he can get the chance, of the confidence reposed in him.  What do
+you mean by laughing and shaking your head at me?'
+
+'Oh, Thomas, Thomas!' said Goodchild.  'You had better give me my
+hat; you had better let me get you that physic.'
+
+'I will let you get anything you like, including a composing
+draught for yourself,' said Thomas, irritably alluding to his
+fellow-apprentice's inexhaustible activity, 'if you will only sit
+quiet for five minutes longer, and hear me out.  I say again the
+horse is a betrayer of the confidence reposed in him; and that
+opinion, let me add, is drawn from my own personal experience, and
+is not based on any fanciful theory whatever.  You shall have two
+instances, two overwhelming instances.  Let me start the first of
+these by asking, what is the distinguishing quality which the
+Shetland Pony has arrogated to himself, and is still perpetually
+trumpeting through the world by means of popular report and books
+on Natural History?  I see the answer in your face:  it is the
+quality of being Sure-Footed.  He professes to have other virtues,
+such as hardiness and strength, which you may discover on trial;
+but the one thing which he insists on your believing, when you get
+on his back, is that he may be safely depended on not to tumble
+down with you.  Very good.  Some years ago, I was in Shetland with
+a party of friends.  They insisted on taking me with them to the
+top of a precipice that overhung the sea.  It was a great distance
+off, but they all determined to walk to it except me.  I was wiser
+then than I was with you at Carrock, and I determined to be carried
+to the precipice.  There was no carriage-road in the island, and
+nobody offered (in consequence, as I suppose, of the imperfectly-
+civilised state of the country) to bring me a sedan-chair, which is
+naturally what I should have liked best.  A Shetland pony was
+produced instead.  I remembered my Natural History, I recalled
+popular report, and I got on the little beast's back, as any other
+man would have done in my position, placing implicit confidence in
+the sureness of his feet.  And how did he repay that confidence?
+Brother Francis, carry your mind on from morning to noon.  Picture
+to yourself a howling wilderness of grass and bog, bounded by low
+stony hills.  Pick out one particular spot in that imaginary scene,
+and sketch me in it, with outstretched arms, curved back, and heels
+in the air, plunging headforemost into a black patch of water and
+mud.  Place just behind me the legs, the body, and the head of a
+sure-footed Shetland pony, all stretched flat on the ground, and
+you will have produced an accurate representation of a very
+lamentable fact.  And the moral device, Francis, of this picture
+will be to testify that when gentlemen put confidence in the legs
+of Shetland ponies, they will find to their cost that they are
+leaning on nothing but broken reeds.  There is my first instance--
+and what have you got to say to that?'
+
+'Nothing, but that I want my hat,' answered Goodchild, starting up
+and walking restlessly about the room.
+
+'You shall have it in a minute,' rejoined Thomas.  'My second
+instance'--(Goodchild groaned, and sat down again)--'My second
+instance is more appropriate to the present time and place, for it
+refers to a race-horse.  Two years ago an excellent friend of mine,
+who was desirous of prevailing on me to take regular exercise, and
+who was well enough acquainted with the weakness of my legs to
+expect no very active compliance with his wishes on their part,
+offered to make me a present of one of his horses.  Hearing that
+the animal in question had started in life on the turf, I declined
+accepting the gift with many thanks; adding, by way of explanation,
+that I looked on a race-horse as a kind of embodied hurricane, upon
+which no sane man of my character and habits could be expected to
+seat himself.  My friend replied that, however appropriate my
+metaphor might be as applied to race-horses in general, it was
+singularly unsuitable as applied to the particular horse which he
+proposed to give me.  From a foal upwards this remarkable animal
+had been the idlest and most sluggish of his race.  Whatever
+capacities for speed he might possess he had kept so strictly to
+himself, that no amount of training had ever brought them out.  He
+had been found hopelessly slow as a racer, and hopelessly lazy as a
+hunter, and was fit for nothing but a quiet, easy life of it with
+an old gentleman or an invalid.  When I heard this account of the
+horse, I don't mind confessing that my heart warmed to him.
+Visions of Thomas Idle ambling serenely on the back of a steed as
+lazy as himself, presenting to a restless world the soothing and
+composite spectacle of a kind of sluggardly Centaur, too peaceable
+in his habits to alarm anybody, swam attractively before my eyes.
+I went to look at the horse in the stable.  Nice fellow! he was
+fast asleep with a kitten on his back.  I saw him taken out for an
+airing by the groom.  If he had had trousers on his legs I should
+not have known them from my own, so deliberately were they lifted
+up, so gently were they put down, so slowly did they get over the
+ground.  From that moment I gratefully accepted my friend's offer.
+I went home; the horse followed me--by a slow train.  Oh, Francis,
+how devoutly I believed in that horse I how carefully I looked
+after all his little comforts!  I had never gone the length of
+hiring a man-servant to wait on myself; but I went to the expense
+of hiring one to wait upon him.  If I thought a little of myself
+when I bought the softest saddle that could be had for money, I
+thought also of my horse.  When the man at the shop afterwards
+offered me spurs and a whip, I turned from him with horror.  When I
+sallied out for my first ride, I went purposely unarmed with the
+means of hurrying my steed.  He proceeded at his own pace every
+step of the way; and when he stopped, at last, and blew out both
+his sides with a heavy sigh, and turned his sleepy head and looked
+behind him, I took him home again, as I might take home an artless
+child who said to me, "If you please, sir, I am tired."  For a week
+this complete harmony between me and my horse lasted undisturbed.
+At the end of that time, when he had made quite sure of my friendly
+confidence in his laziness, when he had thoroughly acquainted
+himself with all the little weaknesses of my seat (and their name
+is Legion), the smouldering treachery and ingratitude of the equine
+nature blazed out in an instant.  Without the slightest provocation
+from me, with nothing passing him at the time but a pony-chaise
+driven by an old lady, he started in one instant from a state of
+sluggish depression to a state of frantic high spirits.  He kicked,
+he plunged, he shied, he pranced, he capered fearfully.  I sat on
+him as long as I could, and when I could sit no longer, I fell off.
+No, Francis! this is not a circumstance to be laughed at, but to be
+wept over.  What would be said of a Man who had requited my
+kindness in that way?  Range over all the rest of the animal
+creation, and where will you find me an instance of treachery so
+black as this?  The cow that kicks down the milking-pail may have
+some reason for it; she may think herself taxed too heavily to
+contribute to the dilution of human tea and the greasing of human
+bread.  The tiger who springs out on me unawares has the excuse of
+being hungry at the time, to say nothing of the further
+justification of being a total stranger to me.  The very flea who
+surprises me in my sleep may defend his act of assassination on the
+ground that I, in my turn, am always ready to murder him when I am
+awake.  I defy the whole body of Natural Historians to move me,
+logically, off the ground that I have taken in regard to the horse.
+Receive back your hat, Brother Francis, and go to the chemist's, if
+you please; for I have now done.  Ask me to take anything you like,
+except an interest in the Doncaster races.  Ask me to look at
+anything you like, except an assemblage of people all animated by
+feelings of a friendly and admiring nature towards the horse.  You
+are a remarkably well-informed man, and you have heard of hermits.
+Look upon me as a member of that ancient fraternity, and you will
+sensibly add to the many obligations which Thomas Idle is proud to
+owe to Francis Goodchild.'
+
+Here, fatigued by the effort of excessive talking, disputatious
+Thomas waved one hand languidly, laid his head back on the sofa-
+pillow, and calmly closed his eyes.
+
+At a later period, Mr. Goodchild assailed his travelling companion
+boldly from the impregnable fortress of common sense.  But Thomas,
+though tamed in body by drastic discipline, was still as mentally
+unapproachable as ever on the subject of his favourite delusion.
+
+
+The view from the window after Saturday's breakfast is altogether
+changed.  The tradesmen's families have all come back again.  The
+serious stationer's young woman of all work is shaking a duster out
+of the window of the combination breakfast-room; a child is playing
+with a doll, where Mr. Thurtell's hair was brushed; a sanitary
+scrubbing is in progress on the spot where Mr. Palmer's braces were
+put on.  No signs of the Races are in the streets, but the tramps
+and the tumble-down-carts and trucks laden with drinking-forms and
+tables and remnants of booths, that are making their way out of the
+town as fast as they can.  The Angel, which has been cleared for
+action all the week, already begins restoring every neat and
+comfortable article of furniture to its own neat and comfortable
+place.  The Angel's daughters (pleasanter angels Mr. Idle and Mr.
+Goodchild never saw, nor more quietly expert in their business, nor
+more superior to the common vice of being above it), have a little
+time to rest, and to air their cheerful faces among the flowers in
+the yard.  It is market-day.  The market looks unusually natural,
+comfortable, and wholesome; the market-people too.  The town seems
+quite restored, when, hark! a metallic bray--The Gong-donkey!
+
+The wretched animal has not cleared off with the rest, but is here,
+under the window.  How much more inconceivably drunk now, how much
+more begrimed of paw, how much more tight of calico hide, how much
+more stained and daubed and dirty and dunghilly, from his horrible
+broom to his tender toes, who shall say!  He cannot even shake the
+bray out of himself now, without laying his cheek so near to the
+mud of the street, that he pitches over after delivering it.  Now,
+prone in the mud, and now backing himself up against shop-windows,
+the owners of which come out in terror to remove him; now, in the
+drinking-shop, and now in the tobacconist's, where he goes to buy
+tobacco, and makes his way into the parlour, and where he gets a
+cigar, which in half-a-minute he forgets to smoke; now dancing, now
+dozing, now cursing, and now complimenting My Lord, the Colonel,
+the Noble Captain, and Your Honourable Worship, the Gong-donkey
+kicks up his heels, occasionally braying, until suddenly, he
+beholds the dearest friend he has in the world coming down the
+street.
+
+The dearest friend the Gong-donkey has in the world, is a sort of
+Jackall, in a dull, mangy, black hide, of such small pieces that it
+looks as if it were made of blacking bottles turned inside out and
+cobbled together.  The dearest friend in the world (inconceivably
+drunk too) advances at the Gong-donkey, with a hand on each thigh,
+in a series of humorous springs and stops, wagging his head as he
+comes.  The Gong-donkey regarding him with attention and with the
+warmest affection, suddenly perceives that he is the greatest enemy
+he has in the world, and hits him hard in the countenance.  The
+astonished Jackall closes with the Donkey, and they roll over and
+over in the mud, pummelling one another.  A Police Inspector,
+supernaturally endowed with patience, who has long been looking on
+from the Guildhall-steps, says, to a myrmidon, 'Lock 'em up!  Bring
+'em in!'
+
+Appropriate finish to the Grand Race-Week.  The Gong-donkey,
+captive and last trace of it, conveyed into limbo, where they
+cannot do better than keep him until next Race-Week.  The Jackall
+is wanted too, and is much looked for, over the way and up and
+down.  But, having had the good fortune to be undermost at the time
+of the capture, he has vanished into air.
+
+On Saturday afternoon, Mr. Goodchild walks out and looks at the
+Course.  It is quite deserted; heaps of broken crockery and bottles
+are raised to its memory; and correct cards and other fragments of
+paper are blowing about it, as the regulation little paper-books,
+carried by the French soldiers in their breasts, were seen, soon
+after the battle was fought, blowing idly about the plains of
+Waterloo.
+
+Where will these present idle leaves be blown by the idle winds,
+and where will the last of them be one day lost and forgotten?  An
+idle question, and an idle thought.; and with it Mr. Idle fitly
+makes his bow, and Mr. Goodchild his, and thus ends the Lazy Tour
+of Two Idle Apprentices.
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES ***
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+<a href="#startoftext">The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices, by Charles Dickens</a>
+</h2>
+<pre>
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices
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+Title: The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+Release Date: April, 1997  [EBook #888]
+[This file was first posted on April 28, 1997]
+[Most recently updated: May 11, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
+
+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: US-ASCII
+</pre>
+<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p>
+<p>Transcribed from the 1905 edition by David Price,
+email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<h1>THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES</h1>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>In the autumn month of September, eighteen hundred and fifty-seven,
+wherein these presents bear date, two idle apprentices, exhausted by
+the long, hot summer, and the long, hot work it had brought with it,
+ran away from their employer.&nbsp; They were bound to a highly meritorious
+lady (named Literature), of fair credit and repute, though, it must
+be acknowledged, not quite so highly esteemed in the City as she might
+be.&nbsp; This is the more remarkable, as there is nothing against the
+respectable lady in that quarter, but quite the contrary; her family
+having rendered eminent service to many famous citizens of London.&nbsp;
+It may be sufficient to name Sir William Walworth, Lord Mayor under
+King Richard II., at the time of Wat Tyler&rsquo;s insurrection, and
+Sir Richard Whittington: which latter distinguished man and magistrate
+was doubtless indebted to the lady&rsquo;s family for the gift of his
+celebrated cat.&nbsp; There is also strong reason to suppose that they
+rang the Highgate bells for him with their own hands.</p>
+<p>The misguided young men who thus shirked their duty to the mistress
+from whom they had received many favours, were actuated by the low idea
+of making a perfectly idle trip, in any direction.&nbsp; They had no
+intention of going anywhere in particular; they wanted to see nothing,
+they wanted to know nothing, they wanted to learn nothing, they wanted
+to do nothing.&nbsp; They wanted only to be idle.&nbsp; They took to
+themselves (after HOGARTH), the names of Mr. Thomas Idle and Mr. Francis
+Goodchild; but there was not a moral pin to choose between them, and
+they were both idle in the last degree.</p>
+<p>Between Francis and Thomas, however, there was this difference of
+character: Goodchild was laboriously idle, and would take upon himself
+any amount of pains and labour to assure himself that he was idle; in
+short, had no better idea of idleness than that it was useless industry.&nbsp;
+Thomas Idle, on the other hand, was an idler of the unmixed Irish or
+Neapolitan type; a passive idler, a born-and-bred idler, a consistent
+idler, who practised what he would have preached if he had not been
+too idle to preach; a one entire and perfect chrysolite of idleness.</p>
+<p>The two idle apprentices found themselves, within a few hours of
+their escape, walking down into the North of England, that is to say,
+Thomas was lying in a meadow, looking at the railway trains as they
+passed over a distant viaduct&mdash;which was <i>his</i> idea of walking
+down into the North; while Francis was walking a mile due South against
+time&mdash;which was <i>his</i> idea of walking down into the North.&nbsp;
+In the meantime the day waned, and the milestones remained unconquered.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Tom,&rsquo; said Goodchild, &lsquo;the sun is getting low.&nbsp;
+Up, and let us go forward!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Nay,&rsquo; quoth Thomas Idle, &lsquo;I have not done with
+Annie Laurie yet.&rsquo;&nbsp; And he proceeded with that idle but popular
+ballad, to the effect that for the bonnie young person of that name
+he would &lsquo;lay him doon and dee&rsquo;&mdash;equivalent, in prose,
+to lay him down and die.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What an ass that fellow was!&rsquo; cried Goodchild, with
+the bitter emphasis of contempt.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Which fellow?&rsquo; asked Thomas Idle.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The fellow in your song.&nbsp; Lay him doon and dee!&nbsp;
+Finely he&rsquo;d show off before the girl by doing <i>that</i>.&nbsp;
+A sniveller!&nbsp; Why couldn&rsquo;t he get up, and punch somebody&rsquo;s
+head!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Whose?&rsquo; asked Thomas Idle.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Anybody&rsquo;s.&nbsp; Everybody&rsquo;s would be better than
+nobody&rsquo;s!&nbsp; If I fell into that state of mind about a girl,
+do you think I&rsquo;d lay me doon and dee?&nbsp; No, sir,&rsquo; proceeded
+Goodchild, with a disparaging assumption of the Scottish accent, &lsquo;I&rsquo;d
+get me oop and peetch into somebody.&nbsp; Wouldn&rsquo;t you?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t have anything to do with her,&rsquo; yawned
+Thomas Idle.&nbsp; &lsquo;Why should I take the trouble?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It&rsquo;s no trouble, Tom, to fall in love,&rsquo; said Goodchild,
+shaking his head.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It&rsquo;s trouble enough to fall out of it, once you&rsquo;re
+in it,&rsquo; retorted Tom.&nbsp; &lsquo;So I keep out of it altogether.&nbsp;
+It would be better for you, if you did the same.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mr. Goodchild, who is always in love with somebody, and not unfrequently
+with several objects at once, made no reply.&nbsp; He heaved a sigh
+of the kind which is termed by the lower orders &lsquo;a bellowser,&rsquo;
+and then, heaving Mr. Idle on his feet (who was not half so heavy as
+the sigh), urged him northward.</p>
+<p>These two had sent their personal baggage on by train: only retaining
+each a knapsack.&nbsp; Idle now applied himself to constantly regretting
+the train, to tracking it through the intricacies of Bradshaw&rsquo;s
+Guide, and finding out where it is now&mdash;and where now&mdash;and
+where now&mdash;and to asking what was the use of walking, when you
+could ride at such a pace as that.&nbsp; Was it to see the country?&nbsp;
+If that was the object, look at it out of the carriage windows.&nbsp;
+There was a great deal more of it to be seen there than here.&nbsp;
+Besides, who wanted to see the country?&nbsp; Nobody.&nbsp; And again,
+whoever did walk?&nbsp; Nobody.&nbsp; Fellows set off to walk, but they
+never did it.&nbsp; They came back and said they did, but they didn&rsquo;t.&nbsp;
+Then why should he walk?&nbsp; He wouldn&rsquo;t walk.&nbsp; He swore
+it by this milestone!</p>
+<p>It was the fifth from London, so far had they penetrated into the
+North.&nbsp; Submitting to the powerful chain of argument, Goodchild
+proposed a return to the Metropolis, and a falling back upon Euston
+Square Terminus.&nbsp; Thomas assented with alacrity, and so they walked
+down into the North by the next morning&rsquo;s express, and carried
+their knapsacks in the luggage-van.</p>
+<p>It was like all other expresses, as every express is and must be.&nbsp;
+It bore through the harvest country a smell like a large washing-day,
+and a sharp issue of steam as from a huge brazen tea-urn.&nbsp; The
+greatest power in nature and art combined, it yet glided over dangerous
+heights in the sight of people looking up from fields and roads, as
+smoothly and unreally as a light miniature plaything.&nbsp; Now, the
+engine shrieked in hysterics of such intensity, that it seemed desirable
+that the men who had her in charge should hold her feet, slap her hands,
+and bring her to; now, burrowed into tunnels with a stubborn and undemonstrative
+energy so confusing that the train seemed to be flying back into leagues
+of darkness.&nbsp; Here, were station after station, swallowed up by
+the express without stopping; here, stations where it fired itself in
+like a volley of cannon-balls, swooped away four country-people with
+nosegays, and three men of business with portmanteaus, and fired itself
+off again, bang, bang, bang!&nbsp; At long intervals were uncomfortable
+refreshment-rooms, made more uncomfortable by the scorn of Beauty towards
+Beast, the public (but to whom she never relented, as Beauty did in
+the story, towards the other Beast), and where sensitive stomachs were
+fed, with a contemptuous sharpness occasioning indigestion.&nbsp; Here,
+again, were stations with nothing going but a bell, and wonderful wooden
+razors set aloft on great posts, shaving the air.&nbsp; In these fields,
+the horses, sheep, and cattle were well used to the thundering meteor,
+and didn&rsquo;t mind; in those, they were all set scampering together,
+and a herd of pigs scoured after them.&nbsp; The pastoral country darkened,
+became coaly, became smoky, became infernal, got better, got worse,
+improved again, grew rugged, turned romantic; was a wood, a stream,
+a chain of hills, a gorge, a moor, a cathedral town, a fortified place,
+a waste.&nbsp; Now, miserable black dwellings, a black canal, and sick
+black towers of chimneys; now, a trim garden, where the flowers were
+bright and fair; now, a wilderness of hideous altars all a-blaze; now,
+the water meadows with their fairy rings; now, the mangy patch of unlet
+building ground outside the stagnant town, with the larger ring where
+the Circus was last week.&nbsp; The temperature changed, the dialect
+changed, the people changed, faces got sharper, manner got shorter,
+eyes got shrewder and harder; yet all so quickly, that the spruce guard
+in the London uniform and silver lace, had not yet rumpled his shirt-collar,
+delivered half the dispatches in his shiny little pouch, or read his
+newspaper.</p>
+<p>Carlisle!&nbsp; Idle and Goodchild had got to Carlisle.&nbsp; It
+looked congenially and delightfully idle.&nbsp; Something in the way
+of public amusement had happened last month, and something else was
+going to happen before Christmas; and, in the meantime there was a lecture
+on India for those who liked it&mdash;which Idle and Goodchild did not.&nbsp;
+Likewise, by those who liked them, there were impressions to be bought
+of all the vapid prints, going and gone, and of nearly all the vapid
+books.&nbsp; For those who wanted to put anything in missionary boxes,
+here were the boxes.&nbsp; For those who wanted the Reverend Mr. Podgers
+(artist&rsquo;s proofs, thirty shillings), here was Mr. Podgers to any
+amount.&nbsp; Not less gracious and abundant, Mr. Codgers also of the
+vineyard, but opposed to Mr. Podgers, brotherly tooth and nail.&nbsp;
+Here, were guide-books to the neighbouring antiquities, and eke the
+Lake country, in several dry and husky sorts; here, many physically
+and morally impossible heads of both sexes, for young ladies to copy,
+in the exercise of the art of drawing; here, further, a large impression
+of MR. SPURGEON, solid as to the flesh, not to say even something gross.&nbsp;
+The working young men of Carlisle were drawn up, with their hands in
+their pockets, across the pavements, four and six abreast, and appeared
+(much to the satisfaction of Mr. Idle) to have nothing else to do.&nbsp;
+The working and growing young women of Carlisle, from the age of twelve
+upwards, promenaded the streets in the cool of the evening, and rallied
+the said young men.&nbsp; Sometimes the young men rallied the young
+women, as in the case of a group gathered round an accordion-player,
+from among whom a young man advanced behind a young woman for whom he
+appeared to have a tenderness, and hinted to her that he was there and
+playful, by giving her (he wore clogs) a kick.</p>
+<p>On market morning, Carlisle woke up amazingly, and became (to the
+two Idle Apprentices) disagreeably and reproachfully busy.&nbsp; There
+were its cattle market, its sheep market, and its pig market down by
+the river, with raw-boned and shock-headed Rob Roys hiding their Lowland
+dresses beneath heavy plaids, prowling in and out among the animals,
+and flavouring the air with fumes of whiskey.&nbsp; There was its corn
+market down the main street, with hum of chaffering over open sacks.&nbsp;
+There was its general market in the street too, with heather brooms
+on which the purple flower still flourished, and heather baskets primitive
+and fresh to behold.&nbsp; With women trying on clogs and caps at open
+stalls, and &lsquo;Bible stalls&rsquo; adjoining.&nbsp; With &lsquo;Doctor
+Mantle&rsquo;s Dispensary for the cure of all Human Maladies and no
+charge for advice,&rsquo; and with Doctor Mantle&rsquo;s &lsquo;Laboratory
+of Medical, Chemical, and Botanical Science&rsquo;&mdash;both healing
+institutions established on one pair of trestles, one board, and one
+sun-blind.&nbsp; With the renowned phrenologist from London, begging
+to be favoured (at sixpence each) with the company of clients of both
+sexes, to whom, on examination of their heads, he would make revelations
+&lsquo;enabling him or her to know themselves.&rsquo;&nbsp; Through
+all these bargains and blessings, the recruiting-sergeant watchfully
+elbowed his way, a thread of War in the peaceful skein.&nbsp; Likewise
+on the walls were printed hints that the Oxford Blues might not be indisposed
+to hear of a few fine active young men; and that whereas the standard
+of that distinguished corps is full six feet, &lsquo;growing lads of
+five feet eleven&rsquo; need not absolutely despair of being accepted.</p>
+<p>Scenting the morning air more pleasantly than the buried majesty
+of Denmark did, Messrs. Idle and Goodchild rode away from Carlisle at
+eight o&rsquo;clock one forenoon, bound for the village of Hesket, Newmarket,
+some fourteen miles distant.&nbsp; Goodchild (who had already begun
+to doubt whether he was idle: as his way always is when he has nothing
+to do) had read of a certain black old Cumberland hill or mountain,
+called Carrock, or Carrock Fell; and had arrived at the conclusion that
+it would be the culminating triumph of Idleness to ascend the same.&nbsp;
+Thomas Idle, dwelling on the pains inseparable from that achievement,
+had expressed the strongest doubts of the expediency, and even of the
+sanity, of the enterprise; but Goodchild had carried his point, and
+they rode away.</p>
+<p>Up hill and down hill, and twisting to the right, and twisting to
+the left, and with old Skiddaw (who has vaunted himself a great deal
+more than his merits deserve; but that is rather the way of the Lake
+country), dodging the apprentices in a picturesque and pleasant manner.&nbsp;
+Good, weather-proof, warm, pleasant houses, well white-limed, scantily
+dotting the road.&nbsp; Clean children coming out to look, carrying
+other clean children as big as themselves.&nbsp; Harvest still lying
+out and much rained upon; here and there, harvest still unreaped.&nbsp;
+Well-cultivated gardens attached to the cottages, with plenty of produce
+forced out of their hard soil.&nbsp; Lonely nooks, and wild; but people
+can be born, and married, and buried in such nooks, and can live and
+love, and be loved, there as elsewhere, thank God! (Mr. Goodchild&rsquo;s
+remark.)&nbsp; By-and-by, the village.&nbsp; Black, coarse-stoned, rough-windowed
+houses; some with outer staircases, like Swiss houses; a sinuous and
+stony gutter winding up hill and round the corner, by way of street.&nbsp;
+All the children running out directly.&nbsp; Women pausing in washing,
+to peep from doorways and very little windows.&nbsp; Such were the observations
+of Messrs. Idle and Goodchild, as their conveyance stopped at the village
+shoemaker&rsquo;s.&nbsp; Old Carrock gloomed down upon it all in a very
+ill-tempered state; and rain was beginning.</p>
+<p>The village shoemaker declined to have anything to do with Carrock.&nbsp;
+No visitors went up Carrock.&nbsp; No visitors came there at all.&nbsp;
+Aa&rsquo; the world ganged awa&rsquo; yon.&nbsp; The driver appealed
+to the Innkeeper.&nbsp; The Innkeeper had two men working in the fields,
+and one of them should be called in, to go up Carrock as guide.&nbsp;
+Messrs. Idle and Goodchild, highly approving, entered the Innkeeper&rsquo;s
+house, to drink whiskey and eat oatcake.</p>
+<p>The Innkeeper was not idle enough&mdash;was not idle at all, which
+was a great fault in him&mdash;but was a fine specimen of a north-country
+man, or any kind of man.&nbsp; He had a ruddy cheek, a bright eye, a
+well-knit frame, an immense hand, a cheery, outspeaking voice, and a
+straight, bright, broad look.&nbsp; He had a drawing-room, too, upstairs,
+which was worth a visit to the Cumberland Fells.&nbsp; (This was Mr.
+Francis Goodchild&rsquo;s opinion, in which Mr. Thomas Idle did not
+concur.)</p>
+<p>The ceiling of this drawing-room was so crossed and recrossed by
+beams of unequal lengths, radiating from a centre, in a corner, that
+it looked like a broken star-fish.&nbsp; The room was comfortably and
+solidly furnished with good mahogany and horsehair.&nbsp; It had a snug
+fireside, and a couple of well-curtained windows, looking out upon the
+wild country behind the house.&nbsp; What it most developed was, an
+unexpected taste for little ornaments and nick-nacks, of which it contained
+a most surprising number.&nbsp; They were not very various, consisting
+in great part of waxen babies with their limbs more or less mutilated,
+appealing on one leg to the parental affections from under little cupping
+glasses; but, Uncle Tom was there, in crockery, receiving theological
+instructions from Miss Eva, who grew out of his side like a wen, in
+an exceedingly rough state of profile propagandism.&nbsp; Engravings
+of Mr. Hunt&rsquo;s country boy, before and after his pie, were on the
+wall, divided by a highly-coloured nautical piece, the subject of which
+had all her colours (and more) flying, and was making great way through
+a sea of a regular pattern, like a lady&rsquo;s collar.&nbsp; A benevolent,
+elderly gentleman of the last century, with a powdered head, kept guard,
+in oil and varnish, over a most perplexing piece of furniture on a table;
+in appearance between a driving seat and an angular knife-box, but,
+when opened, a musical instrument of tinkling wires, exactly like David&rsquo;s
+harp packed for travelling.&nbsp; Everything became a nick-nack in this
+curious room.&nbsp; The copper tea-kettle, burnished up to the highest
+point of glory, took his station on a stand of his own at the greatest
+possible distance from the fireplace, and said: &lsquo;By your leave,
+not a kettle, but a bijou.&rsquo;&nbsp; The Staffordshire-ware butter-dish
+with the cover on, got upon a little round occasional table in a window,
+with a worked top, and announced itself to the two chairs accidentally
+placed there, as an aid to polite conversation, a graceful trifle in
+china to be chatted over by callers, as they airily trifled away the
+visiting moments of a butterfly existence, in that rugged old village
+on the Cumberland Fells.&nbsp; The very footstool could not keep the
+floor, but got upon a sofa, and there-from proclaimed itself, in high
+relief of white and liver-coloured wool, a favourite spaniel coiled
+up for repose.&nbsp; Though, truly, in spite of its bright glass eyes,
+the spaniel was the least successful assumption in the collection: being
+perfectly flat, and dismally suggestive of a recent mistake in sitting
+down on the part of some corpulent member of the family.</p>
+<p>There were books, too, in this room; books on the table, books on
+the chimney-piece, books in an open press in the corner.&nbsp; Fielding
+was there, and Smollett was there, and Steele and Addison were there,
+in dispersed volumes; and there were tales of those who go down to the
+sea in ships, for windy nights; and there was really a choice of good
+books for rainy days or fine.&nbsp; It was so very pleasant to see these
+things in such a lonesome by-place&mdash;so very agreeable to find these
+evidences of a taste, however homely, that went beyond the beautiful
+cleanliness and trimness of the house&mdash;so fanciful to imagine what
+a wonder a room must be to the little children born in the gloomy village&mdash;what
+grand impressions of it those of them who became wanderers over the
+earth would carry away; and how, at distant ends of the world, some
+old voyagers would die, cherishing the belief that the finest apartment
+known to men was once in the Hesket-Newmarket Inn, in rare old Cumberland&mdash;it
+was such a charmingly lazy pursuit to entertain these rambling thoughts
+over the choice oatcake and the genial whiskey, that Mr. Idle and Mr.
+Goodchild never asked themselves how it came to pass that the men in
+the fields were never heard of more, how the stalwart landlord replaced
+them without explanation, how his dog-cart came to be waiting at the
+door, and how everything was arranged without the least arrangement
+for climbing to old Carrock&rsquo;s shoulders, and standing on his head.</p>
+<p>Without a word of inquiry, therefore, the Two Idle Apprentices drifted
+out resignedly into a fine, soft, close, drowsy, penetrating rain; got
+into the landlord&rsquo;s light dog-cart, and rattled off through the
+village for the foot of Carrock.&nbsp; The journey at the outset was
+not remarkable.&nbsp; The Cumberland road went up and down like all
+other roads; the Cumberland curs burst out from backs of cottages and
+barked like other curs, and the Cumberland peasantry stared after the
+dog-cart amazedly, as long as it was in sight, like the rest of their
+race.&nbsp; The approach to the foot of the mountain resembled the approaches
+to the feet of most other mountains all over the world.&nbsp; The cultivation
+gradually ceased, the trees grew gradually rare, the road became gradually
+rougher, and the sides of the mountain looked gradually more and more
+lofty, and more and more difficult to get up.&nbsp; The dog-cart was
+left at a lonely farm-house.&nbsp; The landlord borrowed a large umbrella,
+and, assuming in an instant the character of the most cheerful and adventurous
+of guides, led the way to the ascent.&nbsp; Mr. Goodchild looked eagerly
+at the top of the mountain, and, feeling apparently that he was now
+going to be very lazy indeed, shone all over wonderfully to the eye,
+under the influence of the contentment within and the moisture without.&nbsp;
+Only in the bosom of Mr. Thomas Idle did Despondency now hold her gloomy
+state.&nbsp; He kept it a secret; but he would have given a very handsome
+sum, when the ascent began, to have been back again at the inn.&nbsp;
+The sides of Carrock looked fearfully steep, and the top of Carrock
+was hidden in mist.&nbsp; The rain was falling faster and faster.&nbsp;
+The knees of Mr. Idle&mdash;always weak on walking excursions&mdash;shivered
+and shook with fear and damp.&nbsp; The wet was already penetrating
+through the young man&rsquo;s outer coat to a brand-new shooting-jacket,
+for which he had reluctantly paid the large sum of two guineas on leaving
+town; he had no stimulating refreshment about him but a small packet
+of clammy gingerbread nuts; he had nobody to give him an arm, nobody
+to push him gently behind, nobody to pull him up tenderly in front,
+nobody to speak to who really felt the difficulties of the ascent, the
+dampness of the rain, the denseness of the mist, and the unutterable
+folly of climbing, undriven, up any steep place in the world, when there
+is level ground within reach to walk on instead.&nbsp; Was it for this
+that Thomas had left London?&nbsp; London, where there are nice short
+walks in level public gardens, with benches of repose set up at convenient
+distances for weary travellers&mdash;London, where rugged stone is humanely
+pounded into little lumps for the road, and intelligently shaped into
+smooth slabs for the pavement!&nbsp; No! it was not for the laborious
+ascent of the crags of Carrock that Idle had left his native city, and
+travelled to Cumberland.&nbsp; Never did he feel more disastrously convinced
+that he had committed a very grave error in judgment than when he found
+himself standing in the rain at the bottom of a steep mountain, and
+knew that the responsibility rested on his weak shoulders of actually
+getting to the top of it.</p>
+<p>The honest landlord went first, the beaming Goodchild followed, the
+mournful Idle brought up the rear.&nbsp; From time to time, the two
+foremost members of the expedition changed places in the order of march;
+but the rearguard never altered his position.&nbsp; Up the mountain
+or down the mountain, in the water or out of it, over the rocks, through
+the bogs, skirting the heather, Mr. Thomas Idle was always the last,
+and was always the man who had to be looked after and waited for.&nbsp;
+At first the ascent was delusively easy, the sides of the mountain sloped
+gradually, and the material of which they were composed was a soft spongy
+turf, very tender and pleasant to walk upon.&nbsp; After a hundred yards
+or so, however, the verdant scene and the easy slope disappeared, and
+the rocks began.&nbsp; Not noble, massive rocks, standing upright, keeping
+a certain regularity in their positions, and possessing, now and then,
+flat tops to sit upon, but little irritating, comfortless rocks, littered
+about anyhow, by Nature; treacherous, disheartening rocks of all sorts
+of small shapes and small sizes, bruisers of tender toes and trippers-up
+of wavering feet.&nbsp; When these impediments were passed, heather
+and slough followed.&nbsp; Here the steepness of the ascent was slightly
+mitigated; and here the exploring party of three turned round to look
+at the view below them.&nbsp; The scene of the moorland and the fields
+was like a feeble water-colour drawing half sponged out.&nbsp; The mist
+was darkening, the rain was thickening, the trees were dotted about
+like spots of faint shadow, the division-lines which mapped out the
+fields were all getting blurred together, and the lonely farm-house
+where the dog-cart had been left, loomed spectral in the grey light
+like the last human dwelling at the end of the habitable world.&nbsp;
+Was this a sight worth climbing to see?&nbsp; Surely&mdash;surely not!</p>
+<p>Up again&mdash;for the top of Carrock is not reached yet.&nbsp; The
+land-lord, just as good-tempered and obliging as he was at the bottom
+of the mountain.&nbsp; Mr. Goodchild brighter in the eyes and rosier
+in the face than ever; full of cheerful remarks and apt quotations;
+and walking with a springiness of step wonderful to behold.&nbsp; Mr.
+Idle, farther and farther in the rear, with the water squeaking in the
+toes of his boots, with his two-guinea shooting-jacket clinging damply
+to his aching sides, with his overcoat so full of rain, and standing
+out so pyramidically stiff, in consequence, from his shoulders downwards,
+that he felt as if he was walking in a gigantic extinguisher&mdash;the
+despairing spirit within him representing but too aptly the candle that
+had just been put out.&nbsp; Up and up and up again, till a ridge is
+reached and the outer edge of the mist on the summit of Carrock is darkly
+and drizzingly near.&nbsp; Is this the top?&nbsp; No, nothing like the
+top.&nbsp; It is an aggravating peculiarity of all mountains, that,
+although they have only one top when they are seen (as they ought always
+to be seen) from below, they turn out to have a perfect eruption of
+false tops whenever the traveller is sufficiently ill-advised to go
+out of his way for the purpose of ascending them.&nbsp; Carrock is but
+a trumpery little mountain of fifteen hundred feet, and it presumes
+to have false tops, and even precipices, as if it were Mont Blanc.&nbsp;
+No matter; Goodchild enjoys it, and will go on; and Idle, who is afraid
+of being left behind by himself, must follow.&nbsp; On entering the
+edge of the mist, the landlord stops, and says he hopes that it will
+not get any thicker.&nbsp; It is twenty years since he last ascended
+Carrock, and it is barely possible, if the mist increases, that the
+party may be lost on the mountain.&nbsp; Goodchild hears this dreadful
+intimation, and is not in the least impressed by it.&nbsp; He marches
+for the top that is never to be found, as if he was the Wandering Jew,
+bound to go on for ever, in defiance of everything.&nbsp; The landlord
+faithfully accompanies him.&nbsp; The two, to the dim eye of Idle, far
+below, look in the exaggerative mist, like a pair of friendly giants,
+mounting the steps of some invisible castle together.&nbsp; Up and up,
+and then down a little, and then up, and then along a strip of level
+ground, and then up again.&nbsp; The wind, a wind unknown in the happy
+valley, blows keen and strong; the rain-mist gets impenetrable; a dreary
+little cairn of stones appears.&nbsp; The landlord adds one to the heap,
+first walking all round the cairn as if he were about to perform an
+incantation, then dropping the stone on to the top of the heap with
+the gesture of a magician adding an ingredient to a cauldron in full
+bubble.&nbsp; Goodchild sits down by the cairn as if it was his study-table
+at home; Idle, drenched and panting, stands up with his back to the
+wind, ascertains distinctly that this is the top at last, looks round
+with all the little curiosity that is left in him, and gets, in return,
+a magnificent view of&mdash;Nothing!</p>
+<p>The effect of this sublime spectacle on the minds of the exploring
+party is a little injured by the nature of the direct conclusion to
+which the sight of it points&mdash;the said conclusion being that the
+mountain mist has actually gathered round them, as the landlord feared
+it would.&nbsp; It now becomes imperatively necessary to settle the
+exact situation of the farm-house in the valley at which the dog-cart
+has been left, before the travellers attempt to descend.&nbsp; While
+the landlord is endeavouring to make this discovery in his own way,
+Mr. Goodchild plunges his hand under his wet coat, draws out a little
+red morocco-case, opens it, and displays to the view of his companions
+a neat pocket-compass.&nbsp; The north is found, the point at which
+the farm-house is situated is settled, and the descent begins.&nbsp;
+After a little downward walking, Idle (behind as usual) sees his fellow-travellers
+turn aside sharply&mdash;tries to follow them&mdash;loses them in the
+mist&mdash;is shouted after, waited for, recovered&mdash;and then finds
+that a halt has been ordered, partly on his account, partly for the
+purpose of again consulting the compass.</p>
+<p>The point in debate is settled as before between Goodchild and the
+landlord, and the expedition moves on, not down the mountain, but marching
+straight forward round the slope of it.&nbsp; The difficulty of following
+this new route is acutely felt by Thomas Idle.&nbsp; He finds the hardship
+of walking at all greatly increased by the fatigue of moving his feet
+straight forward along the side of a slope, when their natural tendency,
+at every step, is to turn off at a right angle, and go straight down
+the declivity.&nbsp; Let the reader imagine himself to be walking along
+the roof of a barn, instead of up or down it, and he will have an exact
+idea of the pedestrian difficulty in which the travellers had now involved
+themselves.&nbsp; In ten minutes more Idle was lost in the distance
+again, was shouted for, waited for, recovered as before; found Goodchild
+repeating his observation of the compass, and remonstrated warmly against
+the sideway route that his companions persisted in following.&nbsp;
+It appeared to the uninstructed mind of Thomas that when three men want
+to get to the bottom of a mountain, their business is to walk down it;
+and he put this view of the case, not only with emphasis, but even with
+some irritability.&nbsp; He was answered from the scientific eminence
+of the compass on which his companions were mounted, that there was
+a frightful chasm somewhere near the foot of Carrock, called The Black
+Arches, into which the travellers were sure to march in the mist, if
+they risked continuing the descent from the place where they had now
+halted.&nbsp; Idle received this answer with the silent respect which
+was due to the commanders of the expedition, and followed along the
+roof of the barn, or rather the side of the mountain, reflecting upon
+the assurance which he received on starting again, that the object of
+the party was only to gain &lsquo;a certain point,&rsquo; and, this
+haven attained, to continue the descent afterwards until the foot of
+Carrock was reached.&nbsp; Though quite unexceptionable as an abstract
+form of expression, the phrase &lsquo;a certain point&rsquo; has the
+disadvantage of sounding rather vaguely when it is pronounced on unknown
+ground, under a canopy of mist much thicker than a London fog.&nbsp;
+Nevertheless, after the compass, this phrase was all the clue the party
+had to hold by, and Idle clung to the extreme end of it as hopefully
+as he could.</p>
+<p>More sideway walking, thicker and thicker mist, all sorts of points
+reached except the &lsquo;certain point;&rsquo; third loss of Idle,
+third shouts for him, third recovery of him, third consultation of compass.&nbsp;
+Mr. Goodchild draws it tenderly from his pocket, and prepares to adjust
+it on a stone.&nbsp; Something falls on the turf&mdash;it is the glass.&nbsp;
+Something else drops immediately after&mdash;it is the needle.&nbsp;
+The compass is broken, and the exploring party is lost!</p>
+<p>It is the practice of the English portion of the human race to receive
+all great disasters in dead silence.&nbsp; Mr. Goodchild restored the
+useless compass to his pocket without saying a word, Mr. Idle looked
+at the landlord, and the landlord looked at Mr. Idle.&nbsp; There was
+nothing for it now but to go on blindfold, and trust to the chapter
+of chances.&nbsp; Accordingly, the lost travellers moved forward, still
+walking round the slope of the mountain, still desperately resolved
+to avoid the Black Arches, and to succeed in reaching the &lsquo;certain
+point.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>A quarter of an hour brought them to the brink of a ravine, at the
+bottom of which there flowed a muddy little stream.&nbsp; Here another
+halt was called, and another consultation took place.&nbsp; The landlord,
+still clinging pertinaciously to the idea of reaching the &lsquo;point,&rsquo;
+voted for crossing the ravine, and going on round the slope of the mountain.&nbsp;
+Mr. Goodchild, to the great relief of his fellow-traveller, took another
+view of the case, and backed Mr. Idle&rsquo;s proposal to descend Carrock
+at once, at any hazard&mdash;the rather as the running stream was a
+sure guide to follow from the mountain to the valley.&nbsp; Accordingly,
+the party descended to the rugged and stony banks of the stream; and
+here again Thomas lost ground sadly, and fell far behind his travelling
+companions.&nbsp; Not much more than six weeks had elapsed since he
+had sprained one of his ankles, and he began to feel this same ankle
+getting rather weak when he found himself among the stones that were
+strewn about the running water.&nbsp; Goodchild and the landlord were
+getting farther and farther ahead of him.&nbsp; He saw them cross the
+stream and disappear round a projection on its banks.&nbsp; He heard
+them shout the moment after as a signal that they had halted and were
+waiting for him.&nbsp; Answering the shout, he mended his pace, crossed
+the stream where they had crossed it, and was within one step of the
+opposite bank, when his foot slipped on a wet stone, his weak ankle
+gave a twist outwards, a hot, rending, tearing pain ran through it at
+the same moment, and down fell the idlest of the Two Idle Apprentices,
+crippled in an instant.</p>
+<p>The situation was now, in plain terms, one of absolute danger.&nbsp;
+There lay Mr. Idle writhing with pain, there was the mist as thick as
+ever, there was the landlord as completely lost as the strangers whom
+he was conducting, and there was the compass broken in Goodchild&rsquo;s
+pocket.&nbsp; To leave the wretched Thomas on unknown ground was plainly
+impossible; and to get him to walk with a badly sprained ankle seemed
+equally out of the question.&nbsp; However, Goodchild (brought back
+by his cry for help) bandaged the ankle with a pocket-handkerchief,
+and assisted by the landlord, raised the crippled Apprentice to his
+legs, offered him a shoulder to lean on, and exhorted him for the sake
+of the whole party to try if he could walk.&nbsp; Thomas, assisted by
+the shoulder on one side, and a stick on the other, did try, with what
+pain and difficulty those only can imagine who have sprained an ankle
+and have had to tread on it afterwards.&nbsp; At a pace adapted to the
+feeble hobbling of a newly-lamed man, the lost party moved on, perfectly
+ignorant whether they were on the right side of the mountain or the
+wrong, and equally uncertain how long Idle would be able to contend
+with the pain in his ankle, before he gave in altogether and fell down
+again, unable to stir another step.</p>
+<p>Slowly and more slowly, as the clog of crippled Thomas weighed heavily
+and more heavily on the march of the expedition, the lost travellers
+followed the windings of the stream, till they came to a faintly-marked
+cart-track, branching off nearly at right angles, to the left.&nbsp;
+After a little consultation it was resolved to follow this dim vestige
+of a road in the hope that it might lead to some farm or cottage, at
+which Idle could be left in safety.&nbsp; It was now getting on towards
+the afternoon, and it was fast becoming more than doubtful whether the
+party, delayed in their progress as they now were, might not be overtaken
+by the darkness before the right route was found, and be condemned to
+pass the night on the mountain, without bit or drop to comfort them,
+in their wet clothes.</p>
+<p>The cart-track grew fainter and fainter, until it was washed out
+altogether by another little stream, dark, turbulent, and rapid.&nbsp;
+The landlord suggested, judging by the colour of the water, that it
+must be flowing from one of the lead mines in the neighbourhood of Carrock;
+and the travellers accordingly kept by the stream for a little while,
+in the hope of possibly wandering towards help in that way.&nbsp; After
+walking forward about two hundred yards, they came upon a mine indeed,
+but a mine, exhausted and abandoned; a dismal, ruinous place, with nothing
+but the wreck of its works and buildings left to speak for it.&nbsp;
+Here, there were a few sheep feeding.&nbsp; The landlord looked at them
+earnestly, thought he recognised the marks on them&mdash;then thought
+he did not&mdash;finally gave up the sheep in despair&mdash;and walked
+on just as ignorant of the whereabouts of the party as ever.</p>
+<p>The march in the dark, literally as well as metaphorically in the
+dark, had now been continued for three-quarters of an hour from the
+time when the crippled Apprentice had met with his accident.&nbsp; Mr.
+Idle, with all the will to conquer the pain in his ankle, and to hobble
+on, found the power rapidly failing him, and felt that another ten minutes
+at most would find him at the end of his last physical resources.&nbsp;
+He had just made up his mind on this point, and was about to communicate
+the dismal result of his reflections to his companions, when the mist
+suddenly brightened, and begun to lift straight ahead.&nbsp; In another
+minute, the landlord, who was in advance, proclaimed that he saw a tree.&nbsp;
+Before long, other trees appeared&mdash;then a cottage&mdash;then a
+house beyond the cottage, and a familiar line of road rising behind
+it.&nbsp; Last of all, Carrock itself loomed darkly into view, far away
+to the right hand.&nbsp; The party had not only got down the mountain
+without knowing how, but had wandered away from it in the mist, without
+knowing why&mdash;away, far down on the very moor by which they had
+approached the base of Carrock that morning.</p>
+<p>The happy lifting of the mist, and the still happier discovery that
+the travellers had groped their way, though by a very roundabout direction,
+to within a mile or so of the part of the valley in which the farm-house
+was situated, restored Mr. Idle&rsquo;s sinking spirits and reanimated
+his failing strength.&nbsp; While the landlord ran off to get the dog-cart,
+Thomas was assisted by Goodchild to the cottage which had been the first
+building seen when the darkness brightened, and was propped up against
+the garden wall, like an artist&rsquo;s lay figure waiting to be forwarded,
+until the dog-cart should arrive from the farm-house below.&nbsp; In
+due time&mdash;and a very long time it seemed to Mr. Idle&mdash;the
+rattle of wheels was heard, and the crippled Apprentice was lifted into
+the seat.&nbsp; As the dog-cart was driven back to the inn, the landlord
+related an anecdote which he had just heard at the farm-house, of an
+unhappy man who had been lost, like his two guests and himself, on Carrock;
+who had passed the night there alone; who had been found the next morning,
+&lsquo;scared and starved;&rsquo; and who never went out afterwards,
+except on his way to the grave.&nbsp; Mr. Idle heard this sad story,
+and derived at least one useful impression from it.&nbsp; Bad as the
+pain in his ankle was, he contrived to bear it patiently, for he felt
+grateful that a worse accident had not befallen him in the wilds of
+Carrock.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The dog-cart, with Mr. Thomas Idle and his ankle on the hanging seat
+behind, Mr. Francis Goodchild and the Innkeeper in front, and the rain
+in spouts and splashes everywhere, made the best of its way back to
+the little inn; the broken moor country looking like miles upon miles
+of Pre-Adamite sop, or the ruins of some enormous jorum of antediluvian
+toast-and-water.&nbsp; The trees dripped; the eaves of the scattered
+cottages dripped; the barren stone walls dividing the land, dripped;
+the yelping dogs dripped; carts and waggons under ill-roofed penthouses,
+dripped; melancholy cocks and hens perching on their shafts, or seeking
+shelter underneath them, dripped; Mr. Goodchild dripped; Thomas Idle
+dripped; the Inn-keeper dripped; the mare dripped; the vast curtains
+of mist and cloud passed before the shadowy forms of the hills, streamed
+water as they were drawn across the landscape.&nbsp; Down such steep
+pitches that the mare seemed to be trotting on her head, and up such
+steep pitches that she seemed to have a supplementary leg in her tail,
+the dog-cart jolted and tilted back to the village.&nbsp; It was too
+wet for the women to look out, it was too wet even for the children
+to look out; all the doors and windows were closed, and the only sign
+of life or motion was in the rain-punctured puddles.</p>
+<p>Whiskey and oil to Thomas Idle&rsquo;s ankle, and whiskey without
+oil to Francis Goodchild&rsquo;s stomach, produced an agreeable change
+in the systems of both; soothing Mr. Idle&rsquo;s pain, which was sharp
+before, and sweetening Mr. Goodchild&rsquo;s temper, which was sweet
+before.&nbsp; Portmanteaus being then opened and clothes changed, Mr.
+Goodchild, through having no change of outer garments but broadcloth
+and velvet, suddenly became a magnificent portent in the Innkeeper&rsquo;s
+house, a shining frontispiece to the fashions for the month, and a frightful
+anomaly in the Cumberland village.</p>
+<p>Greatly ashamed of his splendid appearance, the conscious Goodchild
+quenched it as much as possible, in the shadow of Thomas Idle&rsquo;s
+ankle, and in a corner of the little covered carriage that started with
+them for Wigton&mdash;a most desirable carriage for any country, except
+for its having a flat roof and no sides; which caused the plumps of
+rain accumulating on the roof to play vigorous games of bagatelle into
+the interior all the way, and to score immensely.&nbsp; It was comfortable
+to see how the people coming back in open carts from Wigton market made
+no more of the rain than if it were sunshine; how the Wigton policeman
+taking a country walk of half-a-dozen miles (apparently for pleasure),
+in resplendent uniform, accepted saturation as his normal state; how
+clerks and schoolmasters in black, loitered along the road without umbrellas,
+getting varnished at every step; how the Cumberland girls, coming out
+to look after the Cumberland cows, shook the rain from their eyelashes
+and laughed it away; and how the rain continued to fall upon all, as
+it only does fall in hill countries.</p>
+<p>Wigton market was over, and its bare booths were smoking with rain
+all down the street.&nbsp; Mr. Thomas Idle, melodramatically carried
+to the inn&rsquo;s first floor, and laid upon three chairs (he should
+have had the sofa, if there had been one), Mr. Goodchild went to the
+window to take an observation of Wigton, and report what he saw to his
+disabled companion.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Brother Francis, brother Francis,&rsquo; cried Thomas Idle,
+&lsquo;What do you see from the turret?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I see,&rsquo; said Brother Francis, &lsquo;what I hope and
+believe to be one of the most dismal places ever seen by eyes.&nbsp;
+I see the houses with their roofs of dull black, their stained fronts,
+and their dark-rimmed windows, looking as if they were all in mourning.&nbsp;
+As every little puff of wind comes down the street, I see a perfect
+train of rain let off along the wooden stalls in the market-place and
+exploded against me.&nbsp; I see a very big gas lamp in the centre which
+I know, by a secret instinct, will not be lighted to-night.&nbsp; I
+see a pump, with a trivet underneath its spout whereon to stand the
+vessels that are brought to be filled with water.&nbsp; I see a man
+come to pump, and he pumps very hard, but no water follows, and he strolls
+empty away.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Brother Francis, brother Francis,&rsquo; cried Thomas Idle,
+&lsquo;what more do you see from the turret, besides the man and the
+pump, and the trivet and the houses all in mourning and the rain?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I see,&rsquo; said Brother Francis, &lsquo;one, two, three,
+four, five, linen-drapers&rsquo; shops in front of me.&nbsp; I see a
+linen-draper&rsquo;s shop next door to the right&mdash;and there are
+five more linen-drapers&rsquo; shops down the corner to the left.&nbsp;
+Eleven homicidal linen-drapers&rsquo; shops within a short stone&rsquo;s
+throw, each with its hands at the throats of all the rest!&nbsp; Over
+the small first-floor of one of these linen-drapers&rsquo; shops appears
+the wonderful inscription, BANK.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Brother Francis, brother Francis,&rsquo; cried Thomas Idle,
+&lsquo;what more do you see from the turret, besides the eleven homicidal
+linen-drapers&rsquo; shops, and the wonderful inscription, &ldquo;Bank,&rdquo;&mdash;on
+the small first-floor, and the man and the pump and the trivet and the
+houses all in mourning and the rain?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I see,&rsquo; said Brother Francis, &lsquo;the depository
+for Christian Knowledge, and through the dark vapour I think I again
+make out Mr. Spurgeon looming heavily.&nbsp; Her Majesty the Queen,
+God bless her, printed in colours, I am sure I see.&nbsp; I see the
+<i>Illustrated</i> <i>London News</i> of several years ago, and I see
+a sweetmeat shop&mdash;which the proprietor calls a &ldquo;Salt Warehouse&rdquo;&mdash;with
+one small female child in a cotton bonnet looking in on tip-toe, oblivious
+of rain.&nbsp; And I see a watchmaker&rsquo;s with only three great
+pale watches of a dull metal hanging in his window, each in a separate
+pane.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Brother Francis, brother Francis,&rsquo; cried Thomas Idle,
+&lsquo;what more do you see of Wigton, besides these objects, and the
+man and the pump and the trivet and the houses all in mourning and the
+rain?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I see nothing more,&rsquo; said Brother Francis, &lsquo;and
+there is nothing more to see, except the curlpaper bill of the theatre,
+which was opened and shut last week (the manager&rsquo;s family played
+all the parts), and the short, square, chinky omnibus that goes to the
+railway, and leads too rattling a life over the stones to hold together
+long.&nbsp; O yes!&nbsp; Now, I see two men with their hands in their
+pockets and their backs towards me.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Brother Francis, brother Francis,&rsquo; cried Thomas Idle,
+&lsquo;what do you make out from the turret, of the expression of the
+two men with their hands in their pockets and their backs towards you?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;They are mysterious men,&rsquo; said Brother Francis, &lsquo;with
+inscrutable backs.&nbsp; They keep their backs towards me with persistency.&nbsp;
+If one turns an inch in any direction, the other turns an inch in the
+same direction, and no more.&nbsp; They turn very stiffly, on a very
+little pivot, in the middle of the market-place.&nbsp; Their appearance
+is partly of a mining, partly of a ploughing, partly of a stable, character.&nbsp;
+They are looking at nothing&mdash;very hard.&nbsp; Their backs are slouched,
+and their legs are curved with much standing about.&nbsp; Their pockets
+are loose and dog&rsquo;s-eared, on account of their hands being always
+in them.&nbsp; They stand to be rained upon, without any movement of
+impatience or dissatisfaction, and they keep so close together that
+an elbow of each jostles an elbow of the other, but they never speak.&nbsp;
+They spit at times, but speak not.&nbsp; I see it growing darker and
+darker, and still I see them, sole visible population of the place,
+standing to be rained upon with their backs towards me, and looking
+at nothing very hard.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Brother Francis, brother Francis,&rsquo; cried Thomas Idle,
+&lsquo;before you draw down the blind of the turret and come in to have
+your head scorched by the hot gas, see if you can, and impart to me,
+something of the expression of those two amazing men.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The murky shadows,&rsquo; said Francis Goodchild, &lsquo;are
+gathering fast; and the wings of evening, and the wings of coal, are
+folding over Wigton.&nbsp; Still, they look at nothing very hard, with
+their backs towards me.&nbsp; Ah!&nbsp; Now, they turn, and I see&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Brother Francis, brother Francis,&rsquo; cried Thomas Idle,
+&lsquo;tell me quickly what you see of the two men of Wigton!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I see,&rsquo; said Francis Goodchild, &lsquo;that they have
+no expression at all.&nbsp; And now the town goes to sleep, undazzled
+by the large unlighted lamp in the market-place; and let no man wake
+it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>At the close of the next day&rsquo;s journey, Mr. Thomas Idle&rsquo;s
+ankle became much swollen and inflamed.&nbsp; There are reasons which
+will presently explain themselves for not publicly indicating the exact
+direction in which that journey lay, or the place in which it ended.&nbsp;
+It was a long day&rsquo;s shaking of Thomas Idle over the rough roads,
+and a long day&rsquo;s getting out and going on before the horses, and
+fagging up hills, and scouring down hills, on the part of Mr. Goodchild,
+who in the fatigues of such labours congratulated himself on attaining
+a high point of idleness.&nbsp; It was at a little town, still in Cumberland,
+that they halted for the night&mdash;a very little town, with the purple
+and brown moor close upon its one street; a curious little ancient market-cross
+set up in the midst of it; and the town itself looking much as if it
+were a collection of great stones piled on end by the Druids long ago,
+which a few recluse people had since hollowed out for habitations.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Is there a doctor here?&rsquo; asked Mr. Goodchild, on his
+knee, of the motherly landlady of the little Inn: stopping in his examination
+of Mr. Idle&rsquo;s ankle, with the aid of a candle.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ey, my word!&rsquo; said the landlady, glancing doubtfully
+at the ankle for herself; &lsquo;there&rsquo;s Doctor Speddie.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Is he a good Doctor?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ey!&rsquo; said the landlady, &lsquo;I ca&rsquo; him so.&nbsp;
+A&rsquo; cooms efther nae doctor that I ken.&nbsp; Mair nor which, a&rsquo;s
+just THE doctor heer.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Do you think he is at home?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Her reply was, &lsquo;Gang awa&rsquo;, Jock, and bring him.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Jock, a white-headed boy, who, under pretence of stirring up some
+bay salt in a basin of water for the laving of this unfortunate ankle,
+had greatly enjoyed himself for the last ten minutes in splashing the
+carpet, set off promptly.&nbsp; A very few minutes had elapsed when
+he showed the Doctor in, by tumbling against the door before him and
+bursting it open with his head.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Gently, Jock, gently,&rsquo; said the Doctor as he advanced
+with a quiet step.&nbsp; &lsquo;Gentlemen, a good evening.&nbsp; I am
+sorry that my presence is required here.&nbsp; A slight accident, I
+hope?&nbsp; A slip and a fall?&nbsp; Yes, yes, yes.&nbsp; Carrock, indeed?&nbsp;
+Hah!&nbsp; Does that pain you, sir?&nbsp; No doubt, it does.&nbsp; It
+is the great connecting ligament here, you see, that has been badly
+strained.&nbsp; Time and rest, sir!&nbsp; They are often the recipe
+in greater cases,&rsquo; with a slight sigh, &lsquo;and often the recipe
+in small.&nbsp; I can send a lotion to relieve you, but we must leave
+the cure to time and rest.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>This he said, holding Idle&rsquo;s foot on his knee between his two
+hands, as he sat over against him.&nbsp; He had touched it tenderly
+and skilfully in explanation of what he said, and, when his careful
+examination was completed, softly returned it to its former horizontal
+position on a chair.</p>
+<p>He spoke with a little irresolution whenever he began, but afterwards
+fluently.&nbsp; He was a tall, thin, large-boned, old gentleman, with
+an appearance at first sight of being hard-featured; but, at a second
+glance, the mild expression of his face and some particular touches
+of sweetness and patience about his mouth, corrected this impression
+and assigned his long professional rides, by day and night, in the bleak
+hill-weather, as the true cause of that appearance.&nbsp; He stooped
+very little, though past seventy and very grey.&nbsp; His dress was
+more like that of a clergyman than a country doctor, being a plain black
+suit, and a plain white neck-kerchief tied behind like a band.&nbsp;
+His black was the worse for wear, and there were darns in his coat,
+and his linen was a little frayed at the hems and edges.&nbsp; He might
+have been poor&mdash;it was likely enough in that out-of-the-way spot&mdash;or
+he might have been a little self-forgetful and eccentric.&nbsp; Any
+one could have seen directly, that he had neither wife nor child at
+home.&nbsp; He had a scholarly air with him, and that kind of considerate
+humanity towards others which claimed a gentle consideration for himself.&nbsp;
+Mr. Goodchild made this study of him while he was examining the limb,
+and as he laid it down.&nbsp; Mr. Goodchild wishes to add that he considers
+it a very good likeness.</p>
+<p>It came out in the course of a little conversation, that Doctor Speddie
+was acquainted with some friends of Thomas Idle&rsquo;s, and had, when
+a young man, passed some years in Thomas Idle&rsquo;s birthplace on
+the other side of England.&nbsp; Certain idle labours, the fruit of
+Mr. Goodchild&rsquo;s apprenticeship, also happened to be well known
+to him.&nbsp; The lazy travellers were thus placed on a more intimate
+footing with the Doctor than the casual circumstances of the meeting
+would of themselves have established; and when Doctor Speddie rose to
+go home, remarking that he would send his assistant with the lotion,
+Francis Goodchild said that was unnecessary, for, by the Doctor&rsquo;s
+leave, he would accompany him, and bring it back.&nbsp; (Having done
+nothing to fatigue himself for a full quarter of an hour, Francis began
+to fear that he was not in a state of idleness.)</p>
+<p>Doctor Speddie politely assented to the proposition of Francis Goodchild,
+&lsquo;as it would give him the pleasure of enjoying a few more minutes
+of Mr. Goodchild&rsquo;s society than he could otherwise have hoped
+for,&rsquo; and they went out together into the village street.&nbsp;
+The rain had nearly ceased, the clouds had broken before a cool wind
+from the north-east, and stars were shining from the peaceful heights
+beyond them.</p>
+<p>Doctor Speddie&rsquo;s house was the last house in the place.&nbsp;
+Beyond it, lay the moor, all dark and lonesome.&nbsp; The wind moaned
+in a low, dull, shivering manner round the little garden, like a houseless
+creature that knew the winter was coming.&nbsp; It was exceedingly wild
+and solitary.&nbsp; &lsquo;Roses,&rsquo; said the Doctor, when Goodchild
+touched some wet leaves overhanging the stone porch; &lsquo;but they
+get cut to pieces.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The Doctor opened the door with a key he carried, and led the way
+into a low but pretty ample hall with rooms on either side.&nbsp; The
+door of one of these stood open, and the Doctor entered it, with a word
+of welcome to his guest.&nbsp; It, too, was a low room, half surgery
+and half parlour, with shelves of books and bottles against the walls,
+which were of a very dark hue.&nbsp; There was a fire in the grate,
+the night being damp and chill.&nbsp; Leaning against the chimney-piece
+looking down into it, stood the Doctor&rsquo;s Assistant.</p>
+<p>A man of a most remarkable appearance.&nbsp; Much older than Mr.
+Goodchild had expected, for he was at least two-and-fifty; but, that
+was nothing.&nbsp; What was startling in him was his remarkable paleness.&nbsp;
+His large black eyes, his sunken cheeks, his long and heavy iron-grey
+hair, his wasted hands, and even the attenuation of his figure, were
+at first forgotten in his extraordinary pallor.&nbsp; There was no vestige
+of colour in the man.&nbsp; When he turned his face, Francis Goodchild
+started as if a stone figure had looked round at him.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Mr. Lorn,&rsquo; said the Doctor.&nbsp; &lsquo;Mr. Goodchild.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The Assistant, in a distraught way&mdash;as if he had forgotten something&mdash;as
+if he had forgotten everything, even to his own name and himself&mdash;acknowledged
+the visitor&rsquo;s presence, and stepped further back into the shadow
+of the wall behind him.&nbsp; But, he was so pale that his face stood
+out in relief again the dark wall, and really could not be hidden so.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Mr. Goodchild&rsquo;s friend has met with accident, Lorn,&rsquo;
+said Doctor Speddie.&nbsp; &lsquo;We want the lotion for a bad sprain.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>A pause.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My dear fellow, you are more than usually absent to-night.&nbsp;
+The lotion for a bad sprain.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah! yes!&nbsp; Directly.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He was evidently relieved to turn away, and to take his white face
+and his wild eyes to a table in a recess among the bottles.&nbsp; But,
+though he stood there, compounding the lotion with his back towards
+them, Goodchild could not, for many moments, withdraw his gaze from
+the man.&nbsp; When he at length did so, he found the Doctor observing
+him, with some trouble in his face.&nbsp; &lsquo;He is absent,&rsquo;
+explained the Doctor, in a low voice.&nbsp; &lsquo;Always absent.&nbsp;
+Very absent.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Is he ill?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No, not ill.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Unhappy?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I have my suspicions that he was,&rsquo; assented the Doctor,
+&lsquo;once.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Francis Goodchild could not but observe that the Doctor accompanied
+these words with a benignant and protecting glance at their subject,
+in which there was much of the expression with which an attached father
+might have looked at a heavily afflicted son.&nbsp; Yet, that they were
+not father and son must have been plain to most eyes.&nbsp; The Assistant,
+on the other hand, turning presently to ask the Doctor some question,
+looked at him with a wan smile as if he were his whole reliance and
+sustainment in life.</p>
+<p>It was in vain for the Doctor in his easy-chair, to try to lead the
+mind of Mr. Goodchild in the opposite easy-chair, away from what was
+before him.&nbsp; Let Mr. Goodchild do what he would to follow the Doctor,
+his eyes and thoughts reverted to the Assistant.&nbsp; The Doctor soon
+perceived it, and, after falling silent, and musing in a little perplexity,
+said:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Lorn!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My dear Doctor.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Would you go to the Inn, and apply that lotion?&nbsp; You
+will show the best way of applying it, far better than Mr. Goodchild
+can.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;With pleasure.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The Assistant took his hat, and passed like a shadow to the door.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Lorn!&rsquo; said the Doctor, calling after him.</p>
+<p>He returned.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Mr. Goodchild will keep me company till you come home.&nbsp;
+Don&rsquo;t hurry.&nbsp; Excuse my calling you back.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It is not,&rsquo; said the Assistant, with his former smile,
+&lsquo;the first time you have called me back, dear Doctor.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+With those words he went away.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Mr. Goodchild,&rsquo; said Doctor Speddie, in a low voice,
+and with his former troubled expression of face, &lsquo;I have seen
+that your attention has been concentrated on my friend.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He fascinates me.&nbsp; I must apologise to you, but he has
+quite bewildered and mastered me.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I find that a lonely existence and a long secret,&rsquo; said
+the Doctor, drawing his chair a little nearer to Mr. Goodchild&rsquo;s,
+&lsquo;become in the course of time very heavy.&nbsp; I will tell you
+something.&nbsp; You may make what use you will of it, under fictitious
+names.&nbsp; I know I may trust you.&nbsp; I am the more inclined to
+confidence to-night, through having been unexpectedly led back, by the
+current of our conversation at the Inn, to scenes in my early life.&nbsp;
+Will you please to draw a little nearer?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mr. Goodchild drew a little nearer, and the Doctor went on thus:
+speaking, for the most part, in so cautious a voice, that the wind,
+though it was far from high, occasionally got the better of him.</p>
+<p>When this present nineteenth century was younger by a good many years
+than it is now, a certain friend of mine, named Arthur Holliday, happened
+to arrive in the town of Doncaster, exactly in the middle of a race-week,
+or, in other words, in the middle of the month of September.&nbsp; He
+was one of those reckless, rattle-pated, open-hearted, and open-mouthed
+young gentlemen, who possess the gift of familiarity in its highest
+perfection, and who scramble carelessly along the journey of life making
+friends, as the phrase is, wherever they go.&nbsp; His father was a
+rich manufacturer, and had bought landed property enough in one of the
+midland counties to make all the born squires in his neighbourhood thoroughly
+envious of him.&nbsp; Arthur was his only son, possessor in prospect
+of the great estate and the great business after his father&rsquo;s
+death; well supplied with money, and not too rigidly looked after, during
+his father&rsquo;s lifetime.&nbsp; Report, or scandal, whichever you
+please, said that the old gentleman had been rather wild in his youthful
+days, and that, unlike most parents, he was not disposed to be violently
+indignant when he found that his son took after him.&nbsp; This may
+be true or not.&nbsp; I myself only knew the elder Mr. Holliday when
+he was getting on in years; and then he was as quiet and as respectable
+a gentleman as ever I met with.</p>
+<p>Well, one September, as I told you, young Arthur comes to Doncaster,
+having decided all of a sudden, in his harebrained way, that he would
+go to the races.&nbsp; He did not reach the town till towards the close
+of the evening, and he went at once to see about his dinner and bed
+at the principal hotel.&nbsp; Dinner they were ready enough to give
+him; but as for a bed, they laughed when he mentioned it.&nbsp; In the
+race-week at Doncaster, it is no uncommon thing for visitors who have
+not bespoken apartments, to pass the night in their carriages at the
+inn doors.&nbsp; As for the lower sort of strangers, I myself have often
+seen them, at that full time, sleeping out on the doorsteps for want
+of a covered place to creep under.&nbsp; Rich as he was, Arthur&rsquo;s
+chance of getting a night&rsquo;s lodging (seeing that he had not written
+beforehand to secure one) was more than doubtful.&nbsp; He tried the
+second hotel, and the third hotel, and two of the inferior inns after
+that; and was met everywhere by the same form of answer.&nbsp; No accommodation
+for the night of any sort was left.&nbsp; All the bright golden sovereigns
+in his pocket would not buy him a bed at Doncaster in the race-week.</p>
+<p>To a young fellow of Arthur&rsquo;s temperament, the novelty of being
+turned away into the street, like a penniless vagabond, at every house
+where he asked for a lodging, presented itself in the light of a new
+and highly amusing piece of experience.&nbsp; He went on, with his carpet-bag
+in his hand, applying for a bed at every place of entertainment for
+travellers that he could find in Doncaster, until he wandered into the
+outskirts of the town.&nbsp; By this time, the last glimmer of twilight
+had faded out, the moon was rising dimly in a mist, the wind was getting
+cold, the clouds were gathering heavily, and there was every prospect
+that it was soon going to rain.</p>
+<p>The look of the night had rather a lowering effect on young Holliday&rsquo;s
+good spirits.&nbsp; He began to contemplate the houseless situation
+in which he was placed, from the serious rather than the humorous point
+of view; and he looked about him, for another public-house to inquire
+at, with something very like downright anxiety in his mind on the subject
+of a lodging for the night.&nbsp; The suburban part of the town towards
+which he had now strayed was hardly lighted at all, and he could see
+nothing of the houses as he passed them, except that they got progressively
+smaller and dirtier, the farther he went.&nbsp; Down the winding road
+before him shone the dull gleam of an oil lamp, the one faint, lonely
+light that struggled ineffectually with the foggy darkness all round
+him.&nbsp; He resolved to go on as far as this lamp, and then, if it
+showed him nothing in the shape of an Inn, to return to the central
+part of the town and to try if he could not at least secure a chair
+to sit down on, through the night, at one of the principal Hotels.</p>
+<p>As he got near the lamp, he heard voices; and, walking close under
+it, found that it lighted the entrance to a narrow court, on the wall
+of which was painted a long hand in faded flesh-colour, pointing with
+a lean forefinger, to this inscription:-</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>THE TWO ROBINS.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>Arthur turned into the court without hesitation, to see what The
+Two Robins could do for him.&nbsp; Four or five men were standing together
+round the door of the house which was at the bottom of the court, facing
+the entrance from the street.&nbsp; The men were all listening to one
+other man, better dressed than the rest, who was telling his audience
+something, in a low voice, in which they were apparently very much interested.</p>
+<p>On entering the passage, Arthur was passed by a stranger with a knapsack
+in his hand, who was evidently leaving the house.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No,&rsquo; said the traveller with the knapsack, turning round
+and addressing himself cheerfully to a fat, sly-looking, bald-headed
+man, with a dirty white apron on, who had followed him down the passage.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;No, Mr. landlord, I am not easily scared by trifles; but, I don&rsquo;t
+mind confessing that I can&rsquo;t quite stand <i>that</i>.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>It occurred to young Holliday, the moment he heard these words, that
+the stranger had been asked an exorbitant price for a bed at The Two
+Robins; and that he was unable or unwilling to pay it.&nbsp; The moment
+his back was turned, Arthur, comfortably conscious of his own well-filled
+pockets, addressed himself in a great hurry, for fear any other benighted
+traveller should slip in and forestall him, to the sly-looking landlord
+with the dirty apron and the bald head.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;If you have got a bed to let,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;and if
+that gentleman who has just gone out won&rsquo;t pay your price for
+it, I will.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The sly landlord looked hard at Arthur.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Will you, sir?&rsquo; he asked, in a meditative, doubtful
+way.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Name your price,&rsquo; said young Holliday, thinking that
+the landlord&rsquo;s hesitation sprang from some boorish distrust of
+him.&nbsp; &lsquo;Name your price, and I&rsquo;ll give you the money
+at once if you like?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Are you game for five shillings?&rsquo; inquired the landlord,
+rubbing his stubbly double chin, and looking up thoughtfully at the
+ceiling above him.</p>
+<p>Arthur nearly laughed in the man&rsquo;s face; but thinking it prudent
+to control himself, offered the five shillings as seriously as he could.&nbsp;
+The sly landlord held out his hand, then suddenly drew it back again.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You&rsquo;re acting all fair and above-board by me,&rsquo;
+he said: &lsquo;and, before I take your money, I&rsquo;ll do the same
+by you.&nbsp; Look here, this is how it stands.&nbsp; You can have a
+bed all to yourself for five shillings; but you can&rsquo;t have more
+than a half-share of the room it stands in.&nbsp; Do you see what I
+mean, young gentleman?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Of course I do,&rsquo; returned Arthur, a little irritably.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;You mean that it is a double-bedded room, and that one of the
+beds is occupied?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The landlord nodded his head, and rubbed his double chin harder than
+ever.&nbsp; Arthur hesitated, and mechanically moved back a step or
+two towards the door.&nbsp; The idea of sleeping in the same room with
+a total stranger, did not present an attractive prospect to him.&nbsp;
+He felt more than half inclined to drop his five shillings into his
+pocket, and to go out into the street once more.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Is it yes, or no?&rsquo; asked the landlord.&nbsp; &lsquo;Settle
+it as quick as you can, because there&rsquo;s lots of people wanting
+a bed at Doncaster to-night, besides you.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Arthur looked towards the court, and heard the rain falling heavily
+in the street outside.&nbsp; He thought he would ask a question or two
+before he rashly decided on leaving the shelter of The Two Robins.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What sort of a man is it who has got the other bed?&rsquo;
+he inquired.&nbsp; &lsquo;Is he a gentleman?&nbsp; I mean, is he a quiet,
+well-behaved person?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The quietest man I ever came across,&rsquo; said the landlord,
+rubbing his fat hands stealthily one over the other.&nbsp; &lsquo;As
+sober as a judge, and as regular as clock-work in his habits.&nbsp;
+It hasn&rsquo;t struck nine, not ten minutes ago, and he&rsquo;s in
+his bed already.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t know whether that comes up to your
+notion of a quiet man: it goes a long way ahead of mine, I can tell
+you.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Is he asleep, do you think?&rsquo; asked Arthur.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I know he&rsquo;s asleep,&rsquo; returned the landlord.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;And what&rsquo;s more, he&rsquo;s gone off so fast, that I&rsquo;ll
+warrant you don&rsquo;t wake him.&nbsp; This way, sir,&rsquo; said the
+landlord, speaking over young Holliday&rsquo;s shoulder, as if he was
+addressing some new guest who was approaching the house.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Here you are,&rsquo; said Arthur, determined to be beforehand
+with the stranger, whoever he might be.&nbsp; &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll take
+the bed.&rsquo;&nbsp; And he handed the five shillings to the landlord,
+who nodded, dropped the money carelessly into his waistcoat-pocket,
+and lighted the candle.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Come up and see the room,&rsquo; said the host of The Two
+Robins, leading the way to the staircase quite briskly, considering
+how fat he was.</p>
+<p>They mounted to the second-floor of the house.&nbsp; The landlord
+half opened a door, fronting the landing, then stopped, and turned round
+to Arthur.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It&rsquo;s a fair bargain, mind, on my side as well as on
+yours,&rsquo; he said.&nbsp; &lsquo;You give me five shillings, I give
+you in return a clean, comfortable bed; and I warrant, beforehand, that
+you won&rsquo;t be interfered with, or annoyed in any way, by the man
+who sleeps in the same room as you.&rsquo;&nbsp; Saying those words,
+he looked hard, for a moment, in young Holliday&rsquo;s face, and then
+led the way into the room.</p>
+<p>It was larger and cleaner than Arthur had expected it would be.&nbsp;
+The two beds stood parallel with each other&mdash;a space of about six
+feet intervening between them.&nbsp; They were both of the same medium
+size, and both had the same plain white curtains, made to draw, if necessary,
+all round them.&nbsp; The occupied bed was the bed nearest the window.&nbsp;
+The curtains were all drawn round this, except the half curtain at the
+bottom, on the side of the bed farthest from the window.&nbsp; Arthur
+saw the feet of the sleeping man raising the scanty clothes into a sharp
+little eminence, as if he was lying flat on his back.&nbsp; He took
+the candle, and advanced softly to draw the curtain&mdash;stopped half-way,
+and listened for a moment&mdash;then turned to the landlord.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He&rsquo;s a very quiet sleeper,&rsquo; said Arthur.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; said the landlord, &lsquo;very quiet.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Young Holliday advanced with the candle, and looked in at the man
+cautiously.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;How pale he is!&rsquo; said Arthur.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; returned the landlord, &lsquo;pale enough, isn&rsquo;t
+he?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Arthur looked closer at the man.&nbsp; The bedclothes were drawn
+up to his chin, and they lay perfectly still over the region of his
+chest.&nbsp; Surprised and vaguely startled, as he noticed this, Arthur
+stooped down closer over the stranger; looked at his ashy, parted lips;
+listened breathlessly for an instant; looked again at the strangely
+still face, and the motionless lips and chest; and turned round suddenly
+on the landlord, with his own cheeks as pale for the moment as the hollow
+cheeks of the man on the bed.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Come here,&rsquo; he whispered, under his breath.&nbsp; &lsquo;Come
+here, for God&rsquo;s sake!&nbsp; The man&rsquo;s not asleep&mdash;he
+is dead!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You have found that out sooner than I thought you would,&rsquo;
+said the landlord, composedly.&nbsp; &lsquo;Yes, he&rsquo;s dead, sure
+enough.&nbsp; He died at five o&rsquo;clock to-day.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;How did he die?&nbsp; Who is he?&rsquo; asked Arthur, staggered,
+for a moment, by the audacious coolness of the answer.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;As to who is he,&rsquo; rejoined the landlord, &lsquo;I know
+no more about him than you do.&nbsp; There are his books and letters
+and things, all sealed up in that brown-paper parcel, for the Coroner&rsquo;s
+inquest to open to-morrow or next day.&nbsp; He&rsquo;s been here a
+week, paying his way fairly enough, and stopping in-doors, for the most
+part, as if he was ailing.&nbsp; My girl brought him up his tea at five
+to-day; and as he was pouring of it out, he fell down in a faint, or
+a fit, or a compound of both, for anything I know.&nbsp; We could not
+bring him to&mdash;and I said he was dead.&nbsp; And the doctor couldn&rsquo;t
+bring him to&mdash;and the doctor said he was dead.&nbsp; And there
+he is.&nbsp; And the Coroner&rsquo;s inquest&rsquo;s coming as soon
+as it can.&nbsp; And that&rsquo;s as much as I know about it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Arthur held the candle close to the man&rsquo;s lips.&nbsp; The flame
+still burnt straight up, as steadily as before.&nbsp; There was a moment
+of silence; and the rain pattered drearily through it against the panes
+of the window.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;If you haven&rsquo;t got nothing more to say to me,&rsquo;
+continued the landlord, &lsquo;I suppose I may go.&nbsp; You don&rsquo;t
+expect your five shillings back, do you?&nbsp; There&rsquo;s the bed
+I promised you, clean and comfortable.&nbsp; There&rsquo;s the man I
+warranted not to disturb you, quiet in this world for ever.&nbsp; If
+you&rsquo;re frightened to stop alone with him, that&rsquo;s not my
+look out.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ve kept my part of the bargain, and I mean to
+keep the money.&nbsp; I&rsquo;m not Yorkshire, myself, young gentleman;
+but I&rsquo;ve lived long enough in these parts to have my wits sharpened;
+and I shouldn&rsquo;t wonder if you found out the way to brighten up
+yours, next time you come amongst us.&rsquo;&nbsp; With these words,
+the landlord turned towards the door, and laughed to himself softly,
+in high satisfaction at his own sharpness.</p>
+<p>Startled and shocked as he was, Arthur had by this time sufficiently
+recovered himself to feel indignant at the trick that had been played
+on him, and at the insolent manner in which the landlord exulted in
+it.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Don&rsquo;t laugh,&rsquo; he said sharply, &lsquo;till you
+are quite sure you have got the laugh against me.&nbsp; You shan&rsquo;t
+have the five shillings for nothing, my man.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ll keep the
+bed.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Will you?&rsquo; said the landlord.&nbsp; &lsquo;Then I wish
+you a goodnight&rsquo;s rest.&rsquo;&nbsp; With that brief farewell,
+he went out, and shut the door after him.</p>
+<p>A good night&rsquo;s rest!&nbsp; The words had hardly been spoken,
+the door had hardly been closed, before Arthur half-repented the hasty
+words that had just escaped him.&nbsp; Though not naturally over-sensitive,
+and not wanting in courage of the moral as well as the physical sort,
+the presence of the dead man had an instantaneously chilling effect
+on his mind when he found himself alone in the room&mdash;alone, and
+bound by his own rash words to stay there till the next morning.&nbsp;
+An older man would have thought nothing of those words, and would have
+acted, without reference to them, as his calmer sense suggested.&nbsp;
+But Arthur was too young to treat the ridicule, even of his inferiors,
+with contempt&mdash;too young not to fear the momentary humiliation
+of falsifying his own foolish boast, more than he feared the trial of
+watching out the long night in the same chamber with the dead.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It is but a few hours,&rsquo; he thought to himself, &lsquo;and
+I can get away the first thing in the morning.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He was looking towards the occupied bed as that idea passed through
+his mind, and the sharp, angular eminence made in the clothes by the
+dead man&rsquo;s upturned feet again caught his eye.&nbsp; He advanced
+and drew the curtains, purposely abstaining, as he did so, from looking
+at the face of the corpse, lest he might unnerve himself at the outset
+by fastening some ghastly impression of it on his mind.&nbsp; He drew
+the curtain very gently, and sighed involuntarily as he closed it.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Poor fellow,&rsquo; he said, almost as sadly as if he had known
+the man.&nbsp; &lsquo;Ah, poor fellow!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He went next to the window.&nbsp; The night was black, and he could
+see nothing from it.&nbsp; The rain still pattered heavily against the
+glass.&nbsp; He inferred, from hearing it, that the window was at the
+back of the house; remembering that the front was sheltered from the
+weather by the court and the buildings over it.</p>
+<p>While he was still standing at the window&mdash;for even the dreary
+rain was a relief, because of the sound it made; a relief, also, because
+it moved, and had some faint suggestion, in consequence, of life and
+companionship in it&mdash;while he was standing at the window, and looking
+vacantly into the black darkness outside, he heard a distant church-clock
+strike ten.&nbsp; Only ten!&nbsp; How was he to pass the time till the
+house was astir the next morning?</p>
+<p>Under any other circumstances, he would have gone down to the public-house
+parlour, would have called for his grog, and would have laughed and
+talked with the company assembled as familiarly as if he had known them
+all his life.&nbsp; But the very thought of whiling away the time in
+this manner was distasteful to him.&nbsp; The new situation in which
+he was placed seemed to have altered him to himself already.&nbsp; Thus
+far, his life had been the common, trifling, prosaic, surface-life of
+a prosperous young man, with no troubles to conquer, and no trials to
+face.&nbsp; He had lost no relation whom he loved, no friend whom he
+treasured.&nbsp; Till this night, what share he had of the immortal
+inheritance that is divided amongst us all, had laid dormant within
+him.&nbsp; Till this night, Death and he had not once met, even in thought.</p>
+<p>He took a few turns up and down the room&mdash;then stopped.&nbsp;
+The noise made by his boots on the poorly carpeted floor, jarred on
+his ear.&nbsp; He hesitated a little, and ended by taking the boots
+off, and walking backwards and forwards noiselessly.&nbsp; All desire
+to sleep or to rest had left him.&nbsp; The bare thought of lying down
+on the unoccupied bed instantly drew the picture on his mind of a dreadful
+mimicry of the position of the dead man.&nbsp; Who was he?&nbsp; What
+was the story of his past life?&nbsp; Poor he must have been, or he
+would not have stopped at such a place as The Two Robins Inn&mdash;and
+weakened, probably, by long illness, or he could hardly have died in
+the manner in which the landlord had described.&nbsp; Poor, ill, lonely,&mdash;dead
+in a strange place; dead, with nobody but a stranger to pity him.&nbsp;
+A sad story: truly, on the mere face of it, a very sad story.</p>
+<p>While these thoughts were passing through his mind, he had stopped
+insensibly at the window, close to which stood the foot of the bed with
+the closed curtains.&nbsp; At first he looked at it absently; then he
+became conscious that his eyes were fixed on it; and then, a perverse
+desire took possession of him to do the very thing which he had resolved
+not to do, up to this time&mdash;to look at the dead man.</p>
+<p>He stretched out his hand towards the curtains; but checked himself
+in the very act of undrawing them, turned his back sharply on the bed,
+and walked towards the chimney-piece, to see what things were placed
+on it, and to try if he could keep the dead man out of his mind in that
+way.</p>
+<p>There was a pewter inkstand on the chimney-piece, with some mildewed
+remains of ink in the bottle.&nbsp; There were two coarse china ornaments
+of the commonest kind; and there was a square of embossed card, dirty
+and fly-blown, with a collection of wretched riddles printed on it,
+in all sorts of zig-zag directions, and in variously coloured inks.&nbsp;
+He took the card, and went away, to read it, to the table on which the
+candle was placed; sitting down, with his back resolutely turned to
+the curtained bed.</p>
+<p>He read the first riddle, the second, the third, all in one corner
+of the card&mdash;then turned it round impatiently to look at another.&nbsp;
+Before he could begin reading the riddles printed here, the sound of
+the church-clock stopped him.&nbsp; Eleven.&nbsp; He had got through
+an hour of the time, in the room with the dead man.</p>
+<p>Once more he looked at the card.&nbsp; It was not easy to make out
+the letters printed on it, in consequence of the dimness of the light
+which the landlord had left him&mdash;a common tallow candle, furnished
+with a pair of heavy old-fashioned steel snuffers.&nbsp; Up to this
+time, his mind had been too much occupied to think of the light.&nbsp;
+He had left the wick of the candle unsnuffed, till it had risen higher
+than the flame, and had burnt into an odd pent-house shape at the top,
+from which morsels of the charred cotton fell off, from time to time,
+in little flakes.&nbsp; He took up the snuffers now, and trimmed the
+wick.&nbsp; The light brightened directly, and the room became less
+dismal.</p>
+<p>Again he turned to the riddles; reading them doggedly and resolutely,
+now in one corner of the card, now in another.&nbsp; All his efforts,
+however, could not fix his attention on them.&nbsp; He pursued his occupation
+mechanically, deriving no sort of impression from what he was reading.&nbsp;
+It was as if a shadow from the curtained bed had got between his mind
+and the gaily printed letters&mdash;a shadow that nothing could dispel.&nbsp;
+At last, he gave up the struggle, and threw the card from him impatiently,
+and took to walking softly up and down the room again.</p>
+<p>The dead man, the dead man, the <i>hidden</i> dead man on the bed!&nbsp;
+There was the one persistent idea still haunting him.&nbsp; Hidden?&nbsp;
+Was it only the body being there, or was it the body being there, concealed,
+that was preying on his mind?&nbsp; He stopped at the window, with that
+doubt in him; once more listening to the pattering rain, once more looking
+out into the black darkness.</p>
+<p>Still the dead man!&nbsp; The darkness forced his mind back upon
+itself, and set his memory at work, reviving, with a painfully-vivid
+distinctness the momentary impression it had received from the first
+sight of the corpse.&nbsp; Before long the face seemed to be hovering
+out in the middle of the darkness, confronting him through the window,
+with the paleness whiter, with the dreadful dull line of light between
+the imperfectly-closed eyelids broader than he had seen it&mdash;with
+the parted lips slowly dropping farther and farther away from each other&mdash;with
+the features growing larger and moving closer, till they seemed to fill
+the window and to silence the rain, and to shut out the night.</p>
+<p>The sound of a voice, shouting below-stairs, woke him suddenly from
+the dream of his own distempered fancy.&nbsp; He recognised it as the
+voice of the landlord.&nbsp; &lsquo;Shut up at twelve, Ben,&rsquo; he
+heard it say.&nbsp; &lsquo;I&rsquo;m off to bed.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He wiped away the damp that had gathered on his forehead, reasoned
+with himself for a little while, and resolved to shake his mind free
+of the ghastly counterfeit which still clung to it, by forcing himself
+to confront, if it was only for a moment, the solemn reality.&nbsp;
+Without allowing himself an instant to hesitate, he parted the curtains
+at the foot of the bed, and looked through.</p>
+<p>There was a sad, peaceful, white face, with the awful mystery of
+stillness on it, laid back upon the pillow.&nbsp; No stir, no change
+there!&nbsp; He only looked at it for a moment before he closed the
+curtains again&mdash;but that moment steadied him, calmed him, restored
+him&mdash;mind and body&mdash;to himself.</p>
+<p>He returned to his old occupation of walking up and down the room;
+persevering in it, this time, till the clock struck again.&nbsp; Twelve.</p>
+<p>As the sound of the clock-bell died away, it was succeeded by the
+confused noise, down-stairs, of the drinkers in the tap-room leaving
+the house.&nbsp; The next sound, after an interval of silence, was caused
+by the barring of the door, and the closing of the shutters, at the
+back of the Inn.&nbsp; Then the silence followed again, and was disturbed
+no more.</p>
+<p>He was alone now&mdash;absolutely, utterly, alone with the dead man,
+till the next morning.</p>
+<p>The wick of the candle wanted trimming again.&nbsp; He took up the
+snuffers&mdash;but paused suddenly on the very point of using them,
+and looked attentively at the candle&mdash;then back, over his shoulder,
+at the curtained bed&mdash;then again at the candle.&nbsp; It had been
+lighted, for the first time, to show him the way up-stairs, and three
+parts of it, at least, were already consumed.&nbsp; In another hour
+it would be burnt out.&nbsp; In another hour&mdash;unless he called
+at once to the man who had shut up the Inn, for a fresh candle&mdash;he
+would be left in the dark.</p>
+<p>Strongly as his mind had been affected since he had entered his room,
+his unreasonable dread of encountering ridicule, and of exposing his
+courage to suspicion, had not altogether lost its influence over him,
+even yet.&nbsp; He lingered irresolutely by the table, waiting till
+he could prevail on himself to open the door, and call, from the landing,
+to the man who had shut up the Inn.&nbsp; In his present hesitating
+frame of mind, it was a kind of relief to gain a few moments only by
+engaging in the trifling occupation of snuffing the candle.&nbsp; His
+hand trembled a little, and the snuffers were heavy and awkward to use.&nbsp;
+When he closed them on the wick, he closed them a hair&rsquo;s breadth
+too low.&nbsp; In an instant the candle was out, and the room was plunged
+in pitch darkness.</p>
+<p>The one impression which the absence of light immediately produced
+on his mind, was distrust of the curtained bed&mdash;distrust which
+shaped itself into no distinct idea, but which was powerful enough in
+its very vagueness, to bind him down to his chair, to make his heart
+beat fast, and to set him listening intently.&nbsp; No sound stirred
+in the room but the familiar sound of the rain against the window, louder
+and sharper now than he had heard it yet.</p>
+<p>Still the vague distrust, the inexpressible dread possessed him,
+and kept him to his chair.&nbsp; He had put his carpet-bag on the table,
+when he first entered the room; and he now took the key from his pocket,
+reached out his hand softly, opened the bag, and groped in it for his
+travelling writing-case, in which he knew that there was a small store
+of matches.&nbsp; When he had got one of the matches, he waited before
+he struck it on the coarse wooden table, and listened intently again,
+without knowing why.&nbsp; Still there was no sound in the room but
+the steady, ceaseless, rattling sound of the rain.</p>
+<p>He lighted the candle again, without another moment of delay and,
+on the instant of its burning up, the first object in the room that
+his eyes sought for was the curtained bed.</p>
+<p>Just before the light had been put out, he had looked in that direction,
+and had seen no change, no disarrangement of any sort, in the folds
+of the closely-drawn curtains.</p>
+<p>When he looked at the bed, now, he saw, hanging over the side of
+it, a long white hand.</p>
+<p>It lay perfectly motionless, midway on the side of the bed, where
+the curtain at the head and the curtain at the foot met.&nbsp; Nothing
+more was visible.&nbsp; The clinging curtains hid everything but the
+long white hand.</p>
+<p>He stood looking at it unable to stir, unable to call out; feeling
+nothing, knowing nothing, every faculty he possessed gathered up and
+lost in the one seeing faculty.&nbsp; How long that first panic held
+him he never could tell afterwards.&nbsp; It might have been only for
+a moment; it might have been for many minutes together.&nbsp; How he
+got to the bed&mdash;whether he ran to it headlong, or whether he approached
+it slowly&mdash;how he wrought himself up to unclose the curtains and
+look in, he never has remembered, and never will remember to his dying
+day.&nbsp; It is enough that he did go to the bed, and that he did look
+inside the curtains.</p>
+<p>The man had moved.&nbsp; One of his arms was outside the clothes;
+his face was turned a little on the pillow; his eyelids were wide open.&nbsp;
+Changed as to position, and as to one of the features, the face was,
+otherwise, fearfully and wonderfully unaltered.&nbsp; The dead paleness
+and the dead quiet were on it still</p>
+<p>One glance showed Arthur this&mdash;one glance, before he flew breathlessly
+to the door, and alarmed the house.</p>
+<p>The man whom the landlord called &lsquo;Ben,&rsquo; was the first
+to appear on the stairs.&nbsp; In three words, Arthur told him what
+had happened, and sent him for the nearest doctor.</p>
+<p>I, who tell you this story, was then staying with a medical friend
+of mine, in practice at Doncaster, taking care of his patients for him,
+during his absence in London; and I, for the time being, was the nearest
+doctor.&nbsp; They had sent for me from the Inn, when the stranger was
+taken ill in the afternoon; but I was not at home, and medical assistance
+was sought for elsewhere.&nbsp; When the man from The Two Robins rang
+the night-bell, I was just thinking of going to bed.&nbsp; Naturally
+enough, I did not believe a word of his story about &lsquo;a dead man
+who had come to life again.&rsquo;&nbsp; However, I put on my hat, armed
+myself with one or two bottles of restorative medicine, and ran to the
+Inn, expecting to find nothing more remarkable, when I got there, than
+a patient in a fit.</p>
+<p>My surprise at finding that the man had spoken the literal truth
+was almost, if not quite, equalled by my astonishment at finding myself
+face to face with Arthur Holliday as soon as I entered the bedroom.&nbsp;
+It was no time then for giving or seeking explanations.&nbsp; We just
+shook hands amazedly; and then I ordered everybody but Arthur out of
+the room, and hurried to the man on the bed.</p>
+<p>The kitchen fire had not been long out.&nbsp; There was plenty of
+hot water in the boiler, and plenty of flannel to be had.&nbsp; With
+these, with my medicines, and with such help as Arthur could render
+under my direction, I dragged the man, literally, out of the jaws of
+death.&nbsp; In less than an hour from the time when I had been called
+in, he was alive and talking in the bed on which he had been laid out
+to wait for the Coroner&rsquo;s inquest.</p>
+<p>You will naturally ask me, what had been the matter with him; and
+I might treat you, in reply, to a long theory, plentifully sprinkled
+with, what the children call, hard words.&nbsp; I prefer telling you
+that, in this case, cause and effect could not be satisfactorily joined
+together by any theory whatever.&nbsp; There are mysteries in life,
+and the condition of it, which human science has not fathomed yet; and
+I candidly confess to you, that, in bringing that man back to existence,
+I was, morally speaking, groping haphazard in the dark.&nbsp; I know
+(from the testimony of the doctor who attended him in the afternoon)
+that the vital machinery, so far as its action is appreciable by our
+senses, had, in this case, unquestionably stopped; and I am equally
+certain (seeing that I recovered him) that the vital principle was not
+extinct.&nbsp; When I add, that he had suffered from a long and complicated
+illness, and that his whole nervous system was utterly deranged, I have
+told you all I really know of the physical condition of my dead-alive
+patient at The Two Robins Inn.</p>
+<p>When he &lsquo;came to,&rsquo; as the phrase goes, he was a startling
+object to look at, with his colourless face, his sunken cheeks, his
+wild black eyes, and his long black hair.&nbsp; The first question he
+asked me about himself, when he could speak, made me suspect that I
+had been called in to a man in my own profession.&nbsp; I mentioned
+to him my surmise; and he told me that I was right.</p>
+<p>He said he had come last from Paris, where he had been attached to
+a hospital.&nbsp; That he had lately returned to England, on his way
+to Edinburgh, to continue his studies; that he had been taken ill on
+the journey; and that he had stopped to rest and recover himself at
+Doncaster.&nbsp; He did not add a word about his name, or who he was:
+and, of course, I did not question him on the subject.&nbsp; All I inquired,
+when he ceased speaking, was what branch of the profession he intended
+to follow.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Any branch,&rsquo; he said, bitterly, &lsquo;which will put
+bread into the mouth of a poor man.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>At this, Arthur, who had been hitherto watching him in silent curiosity,
+burst out impetuously in his usual good-humoured way:-</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My dear fellow!&rsquo; (everybody was &lsquo;my dear fellow&rsquo;
+with Arthur) &lsquo;now you have come to life again, don&rsquo;t begin
+by being down-hearted about your prospects.&nbsp; I&rsquo;ll answer
+for it, I can help you to some capital thing in the medical line&mdash;or,
+if I can&rsquo;t, I know my father can.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The medical student looked at him steadily.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Thank you,&rsquo; he said, coldly.&nbsp; Then added, &lsquo;May
+I ask who your father is?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He&rsquo;s well enough known all about this part of the country,&rsquo;
+replied Arthur.&nbsp; &lsquo;He is a great manufacturer, and his name
+is Holliday.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>My hand was on the man&rsquo;s wrist during this brief conversation.&nbsp;
+The instant the name of Holliday was pronounced I felt the pulse under
+my fingers flutter, stop, go on suddenly with a bound, and beat afterwards,
+for a minute or two, at the fever rate.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;How did you come here?&rsquo; asked the stranger, quickly,
+excitably, passionately almost.</p>
+<p>Arthur related briefly what had happened from the time of his first
+taking the bed at the inn.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am indebted to Mr. Holliday&rsquo;s son then for the help
+that has saved my life,&rsquo; said the medical student, speaking to
+himself, with a singular sarcasm in his voice.&nbsp; &lsquo;Come here!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He held out, as he spoke, his long, white, bony, right hand.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;With all my heart,&rsquo; said Arthur, taking the hand-cordially.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;I may confess it now,&rsquo; he continued, laughing.&nbsp; &lsquo;Upon
+my honour, you almost frightened me out of my wits.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The stranger did not seem to listen.&nbsp; His wild black eyes were
+fixed with a look of eager interest on Arthur&rsquo;s face, and his
+long bony fingers kept tight hold of Arthur&rsquo;s hand.&nbsp; Young
+Holliday, on his side, returned the gaze, amazed and puzzled by the
+medical student&rsquo;s odd language and manners.&nbsp; The two faces
+were close together; I looked at them; and, to my amazement, I was suddenly
+impressed by the sense of a likeness between them&mdash;not in features,
+or complexion, but solely in expression.&nbsp; It must have been a strong
+likeness, or I should certainly not have found it out, for I am naturally
+slow at detecting resemblances between faces.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You have saved my life,&rsquo; said the strange man, still
+looking hard in Arthur&rsquo;s face, still holding tightly by his hand.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;If you had been my own brother, you could not have done more
+for me than that.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>He laid a singularly strong emphasis on those three words &lsquo;my
+own brother,&rsquo; and a change passed over his face as he pronounced
+them,&mdash;a change that no language of mine is competent to describe.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I hope I have not done being of service to you yet,&rsquo;
+said Arthur.&nbsp; &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll speak to my father, as soon as
+I get home.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You seem to be fond and proud of your father,&rsquo; said
+the medical student.&nbsp; &lsquo;I suppose, in return, he is fond and
+proud of you?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Of course, he is!&rsquo; answered Arthur, laughing.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Is there anything wonderful in that?&nbsp; Isn&rsquo;t <i>your</i>
+father fond&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The stranger suddenly dropped young Holliday&rsquo;s hand, and turned
+his face away.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I beg your pardon,&rsquo; said Arthur.&nbsp; &lsquo;I hope
+I have not unintentionally pained you.&nbsp; I hope you have not lost
+your father.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I can&rsquo;t well lose what I have never had,&rsquo; retorted
+the medical student, with a harsh, mocking laugh.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What you have never had!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The strange man suddenly caught Arthur&rsquo;s hand again, suddenly
+looked once more hard in his face.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes,&rsquo; he said, with a repetition of the bitter laugh.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;You have brought a poor devil back into the world, who has no
+business there.&nbsp; Do I astonish you?&nbsp; Well!&nbsp; I have a
+fancy of my own for telling you what men in my situation generally keep
+a secret.&nbsp; I have no name and no father.&nbsp; The merciful law
+of Society tells me I am Nobody&rsquo;s Son!&nbsp; Ask your father if
+he will be my father too, and help me on in life with the family name.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Arthur looked at me, more puzzled than ever.&nbsp; I signed to him
+to say nothing, and then laid my fingers again on the man&rsquo;s wrist.&nbsp;
+No!&nbsp; In spite of the extraordinary speech that he had just made,
+he was not, as I had been disposed to suspect, beginning to get light-headed.&nbsp;
+His pulse, by this time, had fallen back to a quiet, slow beat, and
+his skin was moist and cool.&nbsp; Not a symptom of fever or agitation
+about him.</p>
+<p>Finding that neither of us answered him, he turned to me, and began
+talking of the extraordinary nature of his case, and asking my advice
+about the future course of medical treatment to which he ought to subject
+himself.&nbsp; I said the matter required careful thinking over, and
+suggested that I should submit certain prescriptions to him the next
+morning.&nbsp; He told me to write them at once, as he would, most likely,
+be leaving Doncaster, in the morning, before I was up.&nbsp; It was
+quite useless to represent to him the folly and danger of such a proceeding
+as this.&nbsp; He heard me politely and patiently, but held to his resolution,
+without offering any reasons or any explanations, and repeated to me,
+that if I wished to give him a chance of seeing my prescription, I must
+write it at once.&nbsp; Hearing this, Arthur volunteered the loan of
+a travelling writing-case, which, he said, he had with him; and, bringing
+it to the bed, shook the note-paper out of the pocket of the case forthwith
+in his usual careless way.&nbsp; With the paper, there fell out on the
+counterpane of the bed a small packet of sticking-plaster, and a little
+water-colour drawing of a landscape.</p>
+<p>The medical student took up the drawing and looked at it.&nbsp; His
+eye fell on some initials neatly written, in cypher, in one corner.&nbsp;
+He started and trembled; his pale face grew whiter than ever; his wild
+black eyes turned on Arthur, and looked through and through him.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;A pretty drawing,&rsquo; he said in a remarkably quiet tone
+of voice.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Ah! and done by such a pretty girl,&rsquo; said Arthur.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Oh, such a pretty girl!&nbsp; I wish it was not a landscape&mdash;I
+wish it was a portrait of her!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You admire her very much?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Arthur, half in jest, half in earnest, kissed his hand for answer.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Love at first sight!&rsquo; he said, putting the drawing away
+again.&nbsp; &lsquo;But the course of it doesn&rsquo;t run smooth.&nbsp;
+It&rsquo;s the old story.&nbsp; She&rsquo;s monopolised as usual.&nbsp;
+Trammelled by a rash engagement to some poor man who is never likely
+to get money enough to marry her.&nbsp; It was lucky I heard of it in
+time, or I should certainly have risked a declaration when she gave
+me that drawing.&nbsp; Here, doctor!&nbsp; Here is pen, ink, and paper
+all ready for you.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;When she gave you that drawing?&nbsp; Gave it.&nbsp; Gave
+it.&rsquo;&nbsp; He repeated the words slowly to himself, and suddenly
+closed his eyes.&nbsp; A momentary distortion passed across his face,
+and I saw one of his hands clutch up the bedclothes and squeeze them
+hard.&nbsp; I thought he was going to be ill again, and begged that
+there might be no more talking.&nbsp; He opened his eyes when I spoke,
+fixed them once more searchingly on Arthur, and said, slowly and distinctly,
+&lsquo;You like her, and she likes you.&nbsp; The poor man may die out
+of your way.&nbsp; Who can tell that she may not give you herself as
+well as her drawing, after all?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Before young Holliday could answer, he turned to me, and said in
+a whisper, &lsquo;Now for the prescription.&rsquo;&nbsp; From that time,
+though he spoke to Arthur again, he never looked at him more.</p>
+<p>When I had written the prescription, he examined it, approved of
+it, and then astonished us both by abruptly wishing us good night.&nbsp;
+I offered to sit up with him, and he shook his head.&nbsp; Arthur offered
+to sit up with him, and he said, shortly, with his face turned away,
+&lsquo;No.&rsquo;&nbsp; I insisted on having somebody left to watch
+him.&nbsp; He gave way when he found I was determined, and said he would
+accept the services of the waiter at the Inn.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Thank you, both,&rsquo; he said, as we rose to go.&nbsp; &lsquo;I
+have one last favour to ask&mdash;not of you, doctor, for I leave you
+to exercise your professional discretion&mdash;but of Mr. Holliday.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+His eyes, while he spoke, still rested steadily on me, and never once
+turned towards Arthur.&nbsp; &lsquo;I beg that Mr. Holliday will not
+mention to any one&mdash;least of all to his father&mdash;the events
+that have occurred, and the words that have passed, in this room.&nbsp;
+I entreat him to bury me in his memory, as, but for him, I might have
+been buried in my grave.&nbsp; I cannot give my reasons for making this
+strange request.&nbsp; I can only implore him to grant it.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>His voice faltered for the first time, and he hid his face on the
+pillow.&nbsp; Arthur, completely bewildered, gave the required pledge.&nbsp;
+I took young Holliday away with me, immediately afterwards, to the house
+of my friend; determining to go back to the Inn, and to see the medical
+student again before he had left in the morning.</p>
+<p>I returned to the Inn at eight o&rsquo;clock, purposely abstaining
+from waking Arthur, who was sleeping off the past night&rsquo;s excitement
+on one of my friend&rsquo;s sofas.&nbsp; A suspicion had occurred to
+me as soon as I was alone in my bedroom, which made me resolve that
+Holliday and the stranger whose life he had saved should not meet again,
+if I could prevent it.&nbsp; I have already alluded to certain reports,
+or scandals, which I knew of, relating to the early life of Arthur&rsquo;s
+father.&nbsp; While I was thinking, in my bed, of what had passed at
+the Inn&mdash;of the change in the student&rsquo;s pulse when he heard
+the name of Holliday; of the resemblance of expression that I had discovered
+between his face and Arthur&rsquo;s; of the emphasis he had laid on
+those three words, &lsquo;my own brother;&rsquo; and of his incomprehensible
+acknowledgment of his own illegitimacy&mdash;while I was thinking of
+these things, the reports I have mentioned suddenly flew into my mind,
+and linked themselves fast to the chain of my previous reflections.&nbsp;
+Something within me whispered, &lsquo;It is best that those two young
+men should not meet again.&rsquo;&nbsp; I felt it before I slept; I
+felt it when I woke; and I went, as I told you, alone to the Inn the
+next morning.</p>
+<p>I had missed my only opportunity of seeing my nameless patient again.&nbsp;
+He had been gone nearly an hour when I inquired for him.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>I have now told you everything that I know for certain, in relation
+to the man whom I brought back to life in the double-bedded room of
+the Inn at Doncaster.&nbsp; What I have next to add is matter for inference
+and surmise, and is not, strictly speaking, matter of fact.</p>
+<p>I have to tell you, first, that the medical student turned out to
+be strangely and unaccountably right in assuming it as more than probable
+that Arthur Holliday would marry the young lady who had given him the
+water-colour drawing of the landscape.&nbsp; That marriage took place
+a little more than a year after the events occurred which I have just
+been relating.&nbsp; The young couple came to live in the neighbourhood
+in which I was then established in practice.&nbsp; I was present at
+the wedding, and was rather surprised to find that Arthur was singularly
+reserved with me, both before and after his marriage, on the subject
+of the young lady&rsquo;s prior engagement.&nbsp; He only referred to
+it once, when we were alone, merely telling me, on that occasion, that
+his wife had done all that honour and duty required of her in the matter,
+and that the engagement had been broken off with the full approval of
+her parents.&nbsp; I never heard more from him than this.&nbsp; For
+three years he and his wife lived together happily.&nbsp; At the expiration
+of that time, the symptoms of a serious illness first declared themselves
+in Mrs. Arthur Holliday.&nbsp; It turned out to be a long, lingering,
+hopeless malady.&nbsp; I attended her throughout.&nbsp; We had been
+great friends when she was well, and we became more attached to each
+other than ever when she was ill.&nbsp; I had many long and interesting
+conversations with her in the intervals when she suffered least.&nbsp;
+The result of one of these conversations I may briefly relate, leaving
+you to draw any inferences from it that you please.</p>
+<p>The interview to which I refer, occurred shortly before her death.&nbsp;
+I called one evening, as usual, and found her alone, with a look in
+her eyes which told me that she had been crying.&nbsp; She only informed
+me at first, that she had been depressed in spirits; but, by little
+and little, she became more communicative, and confessed to me that
+she had been looking over some old letters, which had been addressed
+to her, before she had seen Arthur, by a man to whom she had been engaged
+to be married.&nbsp; I asked her how the engagement came to be broken
+off.&nbsp; She replied that it had not been broken off, but that it
+had died out in a very mysterious way.&nbsp; The person to whom she
+was engaged&mdash;her first love, she called him&mdash;was very poor,
+and there was no immediate prospect of their being married.&nbsp; He
+followed my profession, and went abroad to study.&nbsp; They had corresponded
+regularly, until the time when, as she believed, he had returned to
+England.&nbsp; From that period she heard no more of him.&nbsp; He was
+of a fretful, sensitive temperament; and she feared that she might have
+inadvertently done or said something that offended him.&nbsp; However
+that might be, he had never written to her again; and, after waiting
+a year, she had married Arthur.&nbsp; I asked when the first estrangement
+had begun, and found that the time at which she ceased to hear anything
+of her first lover exactly corresponded with the time at which I had
+been called in to my mysterious patient at The Two Robins Inn.</p>
+<p>A fortnight after that conversation, she died.&nbsp; In course of
+time, Arthur married again.&nbsp; Of late years, he has lived principally
+in London, and I have seen little or nothing of him.</p>
+<p>I have many years to pass over before I can approach to anything
+like a conclusion of this fragmentary narrative.&nbsp; And even when
+that later period is reached, the little that I have to say will not
+occupy your attention for more than a few minutes.&nbsp; Between six
+and seven years ago, the gentleman to whom I introduced you in this
+room, came to me, with good professional recommendations, to fill the
+position of my assistant.&nbsp; We met, not like strangers, but like
+friends&mdash;the only difference between us being, that I was very
+much surprised to see him, and that he did not appear to be at all surprised
+to see me.&nbsp; If he was my son or my brother, I believe he could
+not be fonder of me than he is; but he has never volunteered any confidences
+since he has been here, on the subject of his past life.&nbsp; I saw
+something that was familiar to me in his face when we first met; and
+yet it was also something that suggested the idea of change.&nbsp; I
+had a notion once that my patient at the Inn might be a natural son
+of Mr. Holliday&rsquo;s; I had another idea that he might also have
+been the man who was engaged to Arthur&rsquo;s first wife; and I have
+a third idea, still clinging to me, that Mr. Lorn is the only man in
+England who could really enlighten me, if he chose, on both those doubtful
+points.&nbsp; His hair is not black, now, and his eyes are dimmer than
+the piercing eyes that I remember, but, for all that, he is very like
+the nameless medical student of my young days&mdash;very like him.&nbsp;
+And, sometimes, when I come home late at night, and find him asleep,
+and wake him, he looks, in coming to, wonderfully like the stranger
+at Doncaster, as he raised himself in the bed on that memorable night!</p>
+<p>The Doctor paused.&nbsp; Mr. Goodchild, who had been following every
+word that fell from his lips up to this time, leaned forward eagerly
+to ask a question.&nbsp; Before he could say a word, the latch of the
+door was raised, without any warning sound of footsteps in the passage
+outside.&nbsp; A long, white, bony hand appeared through the opening,
+gently pushing the door, which was prevented from working freely on
+its hinges by a fold in the carpet under it.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;That hand!&nbsp; Look at that hand, Doctor!&rsquo; said Mr.
+Goodchild, touching him.</p>
+<p>At the same moment, the Doctor looked at Mr. Goodchild, and whispered
+to him, significantly:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Hush! he has come back.&rsquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>The Cumberland Doctor&rsquo;s mention of Doncaster Races, inspired
+Mr. Francis Goodchild with the idea of going down to Doncaster to see
+the races.&nbsp; Doncaster being a good way off, and quite out of the
+way of the Idle Apprentices (if anything could be out of their way,
+who had no way), it necessarily followed that Francis perceived Doncaster
+in the race-week to be, of all possible idleness, the particular idleness
+that would completely satisfy him.</p>
+<p>Thomas, with an enforced idleness grafted on the natural and voluntary
+power of his disposition, was not of this mind; objecting that a man
+compelled to lie on his back on a floor, a sofa, a table, a line of
+chairs, or anything he could get to lie upon, was not in racing condition,
+and that he desired nothing better than to lie where he was, enjoying
+himself in looking at the flies on the ceiling.&nbsp; But, Francis Goodchild,
+who had been walking round his companion in a circuit of twelve miles
+for two days, and had begun to doubt whether it was reserved for him
+ever to be idle in his life, not only overpowered this objection, but
+even converted Thomas Idle to a scheme he formed (another idle inspiration),
+of conveying the said Thomas to the sea-coast, and putting his injured
+leg under a stream of salt-water.</p>
+<p>Plunging into this happy conception headforemost, Mr. Goodchild immediately
+referred to the county-map, and ardently discovered that the most delicious
+piece of sea-coast to be found within the limits of England, Ireland,
+Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man, and the Channel Islands, all summed
+up together, was Allonby on the coast of Cumberland.&nbsp; There was
+the coast of Scotland opposite to Allonby, said Mr. Goodchild with enthusiasm;
+there was a fine Scottish mountain on that Scottish coast; there were
+Scottish lights to be seen shining across the glorious Channel, and
+at Allonby itself there was every idle luxury (no doubt) that a watering-place
+could offer to the heart of idle man.&nbsp; Moreover, said Mr. Goodchild,
+with his finger on the map, this exquisite retreat was approached by
+a coach-road, from a railway-station called Aspatria&mdash;a name, in
+a manner, suggestive of the departed glories of Greece, associated with
+one of the most engaging and most famous of Greek women.&nbsp; On this
+point, Mr. Goodchild continued at intervals to breathe a vein of classic
+fancy and eloquence exceedingly irksome to Mr. Idle, until it appeared
+that the honest English pronunciation of that Cumberland country shortened
+Aspatria into &lsquo;Spatter.&rsquo;&nbsp; After this supplementary
+discovery, Mr. Goodchild said no more about it.</p>
+<p>By way of Spatter, the crippled Idle was carried, hoisted, pushed,
+poked, and packed, into and out of carriages, into and out of beds,
+into and out of tavern resting-places, until he was brought at length
+within sniff of the sea.&nbsp; And now, behold the apprentices gallantly
+riding into Allonby in a one-horse fly, bent upon staying in that peaceful
+marine valley until the turbulent Doncaster time shall come round upon
+the wheel, in its turn among what are in sporting registers called the
+&lsquo;Fixtures&rsquo; for the month.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Do you see Allonby!&rsquo; asked Thomas Idle.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I don&rsquo;t see it yet,&rsquo; said Francis, looking out
+of window.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It must be there,&rsquo; said Thomas Idle.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I don&rsquo;t see it,&rsquo; returned Francis.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It must be there,&rsquo; repeated Thomas Idle, fretfully.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Lord bless me!&rsquo; exclaimed Francis, drawing in his head,
+&lsquo;I suppose this is it!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;A watering-place,&rsquo; retorted Thomas Idle, with the pardonable
+sharpness of an invalid, &lsquo;can&rsquo;t be five gentlemen in straw
+hats, on a form on one side of a door, and four ladies in hats and falls,
+on a form on another side of a door, and three geese in a dirty little
+brook before them, and a boy&rsquo;s legs hanging over a bridge (with
+a boy&rsquo;s body I suppose on the other side of the parapet), and
+a donkey running away.&nbsp; What are you talking about?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Allonby, gentlemen,&rsquo; said the most comfortable of landladies
+as she opened one door of the carriage; &lsquo;Allonby, gentlemen,&rsquo;
+said the most attentive of landlords, as he opened the other.</p>
+<p>Thomas Idle yielded his arm to the ready Goodchild, and descended
+from the vehicle.&nbsp; Thomas, now just able to grope his way along,
+in a doubled-up condition, with the aid of two thick sticks, was no
+bad embodiment of Commodore Trunnion, or of one of those many gallant
+Admirals of the stage, who have all ample fortunes, gout, thick sticks,
+tempers, wards, and nephews.&nbsp; With this distinguished naval appearance
+upon him, Thomas made a crab-like progress up a clean little bulk-headed
+staircase, into a clean little bulk-headed room, where he slowly deposited
+himself on a sofa, with a stick on either hand of him, looking exceedingly
+grim.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Francis,&rsquo; said Thomas Idle, &lsquo;what do you think
+of this place?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I think,&rsquo; returned Mr. Goodchild, in a glowing way,
+&lsquo;it is everything we expected.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Hah!&rsquo; said Thomas Idle.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;There is the sea,&rsquo; cried Mr. Goodchild, pointing out
+of window; &lsquo;and here,&rsquo; pointing to the lunch on the table,
+&lsquo;are shrimps.&nbsp; Let us&mdash;&rsquo; here Mr. Goodchild looked
+out of window, as if in search of something, and looked in again,&mdash;&lsquo;let
+us eat &rsquo;em.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The shrimps eaten and the dinner ordered, Mr. Goodchild went out
+to survey the watering-place.&nbsp; As Chorus of the Drama, without
+whom Thomas could make nothing of the scenery, he by-and-by returned,
+to have the following report screwed out of him.</p>
+<p>In brief, it was the most delightful place ever seen.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But,&rsquo; Thomas Idle asked, &lsquo;where is it?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It&rsquo;s what you may call generally up and down the beach,
+here and there,&rsquo; said Mr. Goodchild, with a twist of his hand.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Proceed,&rsquo; said Thomas Idle.</p>
+<p>It was, Mr. Goodchild went on to say, in cross-examination, what
+you might call a primitive place.&nbsp; Large?&nbsp; No, it was not
+large.&nbsp; Who ever expected it would be large?&nbsp; Shape?&nbsp;
+What a question to ask!&nbsp; No shape.&nbsp; What sort of a street?&nbsp;
+Why, no street.&nbsp; Shops?&nbsp; Yes, of course (quite indignant).&nbsp;
+How many?&nbsp; Who ever went into a place to count the shops?&nbsp;
+Ever so many.&nbsp; Six?&nbsp; Perhaps.&nbsp; A library?&nbsp; Why,
+of course (indignant again).&nbsp; Good collection of books?&nbsp; Most
+likely&mdash;couldn&rsquo;t say&mdash;had seen nothing in it but a pair
+of scales.&nbsp; Any reading-room?&nbsp; Of course, there was a reading-room.&nbsp;
+Where?&nbsp; Where! why, over there.&nbsp; Where was over there?&nbsp;
+Why, <i>there</i>!&nbsp; Let Mr. Idle carry his eye to that bit of waste
+ground above high-water mark, where the rank grass and loose stones
+were most in a litter; and he would see a sort of long, ruinous brick
+loft, next door to a ruinous brick out-house, which loft had a ladder
+outside, to get up by.&nbsp; That was the reading-room, and if Mr. Idle
+didn&rsquo;t like the idea of a weaver&rsquo;s shuttle throbbing under
+a reading-room, that was his look out.&nbsp; <i>He</i> was not to dictate,
+Mr. Goodchild supposed (indignant again), to the company.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;By-the-by,&rsquo; Thomas Idle observed; &lsquo;the company?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Well! (Mr. Goodchild went on to report) very nice company.&nbsp;
+Where were they?&nbsp; Why, there they were.&nbsp; Mr. Idle could see
+the tops of their hats, he supposed.&nbsp; What?&nbsp; Those nine straw
+hats again, five gentlemen&rsquo;s and four ladies&rsquo;?&nbsp; Yes,
+to be sure.&nbsp; Mr. Goodchild hoped the company were not to be expected
+to wear helmets, to please Mr. Idle.</p>
+<p>Beginning to recover his temper at about this point, Mr. Goodchild
+voluntarily reported that if you wanted to be primitive, you could be
+primitive here, and that if you wanted to be idle, you could be idle
+here.&nbsp; In the course of some days, he added, that there were three
+fishing-boats, but no rigging, and that there were plenty of fishermen
+who never fished.&nbsp; That they got their living entirely by looking
+at the ocean.&nbsp; What nourishment they looked out of it to support
+their strength, he couldn&rsquo;t say; but, he supposed it was some
+sort of Iodine.&nbsp; The place was full of their children, who were
+always upside down on the public buildings (two small bridges over the
+brook), and always hurting themselves or one another, so that their
+wailings made more continual noise in the air than could have been got
+in a busy place.&nbsp; The houses people lodged in, were nowhere in
+particular, and were in capital accordance with the beach; being all
+more or less cracked and damaged as its shells were, and all empty&mdash;as
+its shells were.&nbsp; Among them, was an edifice of destitute appearance,
+with a number of wall-eyed windows in it, looking desperately out to
+Scotland as if for help, which said it was a Bazaar (and it ought to
+know), and where you might buy anything you wanted&mdash;supposing what
+you wanted, was a little camp-stool or a child&rsquo;s wheelbarrow.&nbsp;
+The brook crawled or stopped between the houses and the sea, and the
+donkey was always running away, and when he got into the brook he was
+pelted out with stones, which never hit him, and which always hit some
+of the children who were upside down on the public buildings, and made
+their lamentations louder.&nbsp; This donkey was the public excitement
+of Allonby, and was probably supported at the public expense.</p>
+<p>The foregoing descriptions, delivered in separate items, on separate
+days of adventurous discovery, Mr. Goodchild severally wound up, by
+looking out of window, looking in again, and saying, &lsquo;But there
+is the sea, and here are the shrimps&mdash;let us eat &rsquo;em.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>There were fine sunsets at Allonby when the low flat beach, with
+its pools of water and its dry patches, changed into long bars of silver
+and gold in various states of burnishing, and there were fine views&mdash;on
+fine days&mdash;of the Scottish coast.&nbsp; But, when it rained at
+Allonby, Allonby thrown back upon its ragged self, became a kind of
+place which the donkey seemed to have found out, and to have his highly
+sagacious reasons for wishing to bolt from.&nbsp; Thomas Idle observed,
+too, that Mr. Goodchild, with a noble show of disinterestedness, became
+every day more ready to walk to Maryport and back, for letters; and
+suspicions began to harbour in the mind of Thomas, that his friend deceived
+him, and that Maryport was a preferable place.</p>
+<p>Therefore, Thomas said to Francis on a day when they had looked at
+the sea and eaten the shrimps, &lsquo;My mind misgives me, Goodchild,
+that you go to Maryport, like the boy in the story-book, to ask <i>it</i>
+to be idle with you.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Judge, then,&rsquo; returned Francis, adopting the style of
+the story-book, &lsquo;with what success.&nbsp; I go to a region which
+is a bit of water-side Bristol, with a slice of Wapping, a seasoning
+of Wolverhampton, and a garnish of Portsmouth, and I say, &ldquo;Will<i>
+you</i> come and be idle with me?&rdquo;&nbsp; And it answers, &ldquo;No;
+for I am a great deal too vaporous, and a great deal too rusty, and
+a great deal too muddy, and a great deal too dirty altogether; and I
+have ships to load, and pitch and tar to boil, and iron to hammer, and
+steam to get up, and smoke to make, and stone to quarry, and fifty other
+disagreeable things to do, and I can&rsquo;t be idle with you.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Then I go into jagged up-hill and down-hill streets, where I am in the
+pastrycook&rsquo;s shop at one moment, and next moment in savage fastnesses
+of moor and morass, beyond the confines of civilisation, and I say to
+those murky and black-dusty streets, &ldquo;Will<i> you</i> come and
+be idle with me?&rdquo;&nbsp; To which they reply, &ldquo;No, we can&rsquo;t,
+indeed, for we haven&rsquo;t the spirits, and we are startled by the
+echo of your feet on the sharp pavement, and we have so many goods in
+our shop-windows which nobody wants, and we have so much to do for a
+limited public which never comes to us to be done for, that we are altogether
+out of sorts and can&rsquo;t enjoy ourselves with any one.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+So I go to the Post-office, and knock at the shutter, and I say to the
+Post-master, &ldquo;Will<i> you</i> come and be idle with me?&rdquo;&nbsp;
+To which he rejoins, &ldquo;No, I really can&rsquo;t, for I live, as
+you may see, in such a very little Post-office, and pass my life behind
+such a very little shutter, that my hand, when I put it out, is as the
+hand of a giant crammed through the window of a dwarf&rsquo;s house
+at a fair, and I am a mere Post-office anchorite in a cell much too
+small for him, and I can&rsquo;t get out, and I can&rsquo;t get in,
+and I have no space to be idle in, even if I would.&rdquo;&nbsp; So,
+the boy,&rsquo; said Mr. Goodchild, concluding the tale, &lsquo;comes
+back with the letters after all, and lives happy never afterwards.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>But it may, not unreasonably, be asked&mdash;while Francis Goodchild
+was wandering hither and thither, storing his mind with perpetual observation
+of men and things, and sincerely believing himself to be the laziest
+creature in existence all the time&mdash;how did Thomas Idle, crippled
+and confined to the house, contrive to get through the hours of the
+day?</p>
+<p>Prone on the sofa, Thomas made no attempt to get through the hours,
+but passively allowed the hours to get through <i>him</i>.&nbsp; Where
+other men in his situation would have read books and improved their
+minds, Thomas slept and rested his body.&nbsp; Where other men would
+have pondered anxiously over their future prospects, Thomas dreamed
+lazily of his past life.&nbsp; The one solitary thing he did, which
+most other people would have done in his place, was to resolve on making
+certain alterations and improvements in his mode of existence, as soon
+as the effects of the misfortune that had overtaken him had all passed
+away.&nbsp; Remembering that the current of his life had hitherto oozed
+along in one smooth stream of laziness, occasionally troubled on the
+surface by a slight passing ripple of industry, his present ideas on
+the subject of self-reform, inclined him&mdash;not as the reader may
+be disposed to imagine, to project schemes for a new existence of enterprise
+and exertion&mdash;but, on the contrary, to resolve that he would never,
+if he could possibly help it, be active or industrious again, throughout
+the whole of his future career.</p>
+<p>It is due to Mr. Idle to relate that his mind sauntered towards this
+peculiar conclusion on distinct and logically-producible grounds.&nbsp;
+After reviewing, quite at his ease, and with many needful intervals
+of repose, the generally-placid spectacle of his past existence, he
+arrived at the discovery that all the great disasters which had tried
+his patience and equanimity in early life, had been caused by his having
+allowed himself to be deluded into imitating some pernicious example
+of activity and industry that had been set him by others.&nbsp; The
+trials to which he here alludes were three in number, and may be thus
+reckoned up: First, the disaster of being an unpopular and a thrashed
+boy at school; secondly, the disaster of falling seriously ill; thirdly,
+the disaster of becoming acquainted with a great bore.</p>
+<p>The first disaster occurred after Thomas had been an idle and a popular
+boy at school, for some happy years.&nbsp; One Christmas-time, he was
+stimulated by the evil example of a companion, whom he had always trusted
+and liked, to be untrue to himself, and to try for a prize at the ensuing
+half-yearly examination.&nbsp; He did try, and he got a prize&mdash;how,
+he did not distinctly know at the moment, and cannot remember now.&nbsp;
+No sooner, however, had the book&mdash;Moral Hints to the Young on the
+Value of Time&mdash;been placed in his hands, than the first troubles
+of his life began.&nbsp; The idle boys deserted him, as a traitor to
+their cause.&nbsp; The industrious boys avoided him, as a dangerous
+interloper; one of their number, who had always won the prize on previous
+occasions, expressing just resentment at the invasion of his privileges
+by calling Thomas into the play-ground, and then and there administering
+to him the first sound and genuine thrashing that he had ever received
+in his life.&nbsp; Unpopular from that moment, as a beaten boy, who
+belonged to no side and was rejected by all parties, young Idle soon
+lost caste with his masters, as he had previously lost caste with his
+schoolfellows.&nbsp; He had forfeited the comfortable reputation of
+being the one lazy member of the youthful community whom it was quite
+hopeless to punish.&nbsp; Never again did he hear the headmaster say
+reproachfully to an industrious boy who had committed a fault, &lsquo;I
+might have expected this in Thomas Idle, but it is inexcusable, sir,
+in you, who know better.&rsquo;&nbsp; Never more, after winning that
+fatal prize, did he escape the retributive imposition, or the avenging
+birch.&nbsp; From that time, the masters made him work, and the boys
+would not let him play.&nbsp; From that time his social position steadily
+declined, and his life at school became a perpetual burden to him.</p>
+<p>So, again, with the second disaster.&nbsp; While Thomas was lazy,
+he was a model of health.&nbsp; His first attempt at active exertion
+and his first suffering from severe illness are connected together by
+the intimate relations of cause and effect.&nbsp; Shortly after leaving
+school, he accompanied a party of friends to a cricket-field, in his
+natural and appropriate character of spectator only.&nbsp; On the ground
+it was discovered that the players fell short of the required number,
+and facile Thomas was persuaded to assist in making up the complement.&nbsp;
+At a certain appointed time, he was roused from peaceful slumber in
+a dry ditch, and placed before three wickets with a bat in his hand.&nbsp;
+Opposite to him, behind three more wickets, stood one of his bosom friends,
+filling the situation (as he was informed) of bowler.&nbsp; No words
+can describe Mr. Idle&rsquo;s horror and amazement, when he saw this
+young man&mdash;on ordinary occasions, the meekest and mildest of human
+beings&mdash;suddenly contract his eye-brows, compress his lips, assume
+the aspect of an infuriated savage, run back a few steps, then run forward,
+and, without the slightest previous provocation, hurl a detestably hard
+ball with all his might straight at Thomas&rsquo;s legs.&nbsp; Stimulated
+to preternatural activity of body and sharpness of eye by the instinct
+of self-preservation, Mr. Idle contrived, by jumping deftly aside at
+the right moment, and by using his bat (ridiculously narrow as it was
+for the purpose) as a shield, to preserve his life and limbs from the
+dastardly attack that had been made on both, to leave the full force
+of the deadly missile to strike his wicket instead of his leg; and to
+end the innings, so far as his side was concerned, by being immediately
+bowled out.&nbsp; Grateful for his escape, he was about to return to
+the dry ditch, when he was peremptorily stopped, and told that the other
+side was &lsquo;going in,&rsquo; and that he was expected to &lsquo;field.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+His conception of the whole art and mystery of &lsquo;fielding,&rsquo;
+may be summed up in the three words of serious advice which he privately
+administered to himself on that trying occasion&mdash;avoid the ball.&nbsp;
+Fortified by this sound and salutary principle, he took his own course,
+impervious alike to ridicule and abuse.&nbsp; Whenever the ball came
+near him, he thought of his shins, and got out of the way immediately.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Catch it!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Stop it!&rsquo;&nbsp; &lsquo;Pitch
+it up!&rsquo; were cries that passed by him like the idle wind that
+he regarded not.&nbsp; He ducked under it, he jumped over it, he whisked
+himself away from it on either side.&nbsp; Never once, through the whole
+innings did he and the ball come together on anything approaching to
+intimate terms.&nbsp; The unnatural activity of body which was necessarily
+called forth for the accomplishment of this result threw Thomas Idle,
+for the first time in his life, into a perspiration.&nbsp; The perspiration,
+in consequence of his want of practice in the management of that particular
+result of bodily activity, was suddenly checked; the inevitable chill
+succeeded; and that, in its turn, was followed by a fever.&nbsp; For
+the first time since his birth, Mr. Idle found himself confined to his
+bed for many weeks together, wasted and worn by a long illness, of which
+his own disastrous muscular exertion had been the sole first cause.</p>
+<p>The third occasion on which Thomas found reason to reproach himself
+bitterly for the mistake of having attempted to be industrious, was
+connected with his choice of a calling in life.&nbsp; Having no interest
+in the Church, he appropriately selected the next best profession for
+a lazy man in England&mdash;the Bar.&nbsp; Although the Benchers of
+the Inns of Court have lately abandoned their good old principles, and
+oblige their students to make some show of studying, in Mr. Idle&rsquo;s
+time no such innovation as this existed.&nbsp; Young men who aspired
+to the honourable title of barrister were, very properly, not asked
+to learn anything of the law, but were merely required to eat a certain
+number of dinners at the table of their Hall, and to pay a certain sum
+of money; and were called to the Bar as soon as they could prove that
+they had sufficiently complied with these extremely sensible regulations.&nbsp;
+Never did Thomas move more harmoniously in concert with his elders and
+betters than when he was qualifying himself for admission among the
+barristers of his native country.&nbsp; Never did he feel more deeply
+what real laziness was in all the serene majesty of its nature, than
+on the memorable day when he was called to the Bar, after having carefully
+abstained from opening his law-books during his period of probation,
+except to fall asleep over them.&nbsp; How he could ever again have
+become industrious, even for the shortest period, after that great reward
+conferred upon his idleness, quite passes his comprehension.&nbsp; The
+kind Benchers did everything they could to show him the folly of exerting
+himself.&nbsp; They wrote out his probationary exercise for him, and
+never expected him even to take the trouble of reading it through when
+it was written.&nbsp; They invited him, with seven other choice spirits
+as lazy as himself, to come and be called to the Bar, while they were
+sitting over their wine and fruit after dinner.&nbsp; They put his oaths
+of allegiance, and his dreadful official denunciations of the Pope and
+the Pretender, so gently into his mouth, that he hardly knew how the
+words got there.&nbsp; They wheeled all their chairs softly round from
+the table, and sat surveying the young barristers with their backs to
+their bottles, rather than stand up, or adjourn to hear the exercises
+read.&nbsp; And when Mr. Idle and the seven unlabouring neophytes, ranged
+in order, as a class, with their backs considerately placed against
+a screen, had begun, in rotation, to read the exercises which they had
+not written, even then, each Bencher, true to the great lazy principle
+of the whole proceeding, stopped each neophyte before he had stammered
+through his first line, and bowed to him, and told him politely that
+he was a barrister from that moment.&nbsp; This was all the ceremony.&nbsp;
+It was followed by a social supper, and by the presentation, in accordance
+with ancient custom, of a pound of sweetmeats and a bottle of Madeira,
+offered in the way of needful refreshment, by each grateful neophyte
+to each beneficent Bencher.&nbsp; It may seem inconceivable that Thomas
+should ever have forgotten the great do-nothing principle instilled
+by such a ceremony as this; but it is, nevertheless, true, that certain
+designing students of industrious habits found him out, took advantage
+of his easy humour, persuaded him that it was discreditable to be a
+barrister and to know nothing whatever about the law, and lured him,
+by the force of their own evil example, into a conveyancer&rsquo;s chambers,
+to make up for lost time, and to qualify himself for practice at the
+Bar.&nbsp; After a fortnight of self-delusion, the curtain fell from
+his eyes; he resumed his natural character, and shut up his books.&nbsp;
+But the retribution which had hitherto always followed his little casual
+errors of industry followed them still.&nbsp; He could get away from
+the conveyancer&rsquo;s chambers, but he could not get away from one
+of the pupils, who had taken a fancy to him,&mdash;a tall, serious,
+raw-boned, hard-working, disputatious pupil, with ideas of his own about
+reforming the Law of Real Property, who has been the scourge of Mr.
+Idle&rsquo;s existence ever since the fatal day when he fell into the
+mistake of attempting to study the law.&nbsp; Before that time his friends
+were all sociable idlers like himself.&nbsp; Since that time the burden
+of bearing with a hard-working young man has become part of his lot
+in life.&nbsp; Go where he will now, he can never feel certain that
+the raw-boned pupil is not affectionately waiting for him round a corner,
+to tell him a little more about the Law of Real Property.&nbsp; Suffer
+as he may under the infliction, he can never complain, for he must always
+remember, with unavailing regret, that he has his own thoughtless industry
+to thank for first exposing him to the great social calamity of knowing
+a bore.</p>
+<p>These events of his past life, with the significant results that
+they brought about, pass drowsily through Thomas Idle&rsquo;s memory,
+while he lies alone on the sofa at Allonby and elsewhere, dreaming away
+the time which his fellow-apprentice gets through so actively out of
+doors.&nbsp; Remembering the lesson of laziness which his past disasters
+teach, and bearing in mind also the fact that he is crippled in one
+leg because he exerted himself to go up a mountain, when he ought to
+have known that his proper course of conduct was to stop at the bottom
+of it, he holds now, and will for the future firmly continue to hold,
+by his new resolution never to be industrious again, on any pretence
+whatever, for the rest of his life.&nbsp; The physical results of his
+accident have been related in a previous chapter.&nbsp; The moral results
+now stand on record; and, with the enumeration of these, that part of
+the present narrative which is occupied by the Episode of The Sprained
+Ankle may now perhaps be considered, in all its aspects, as finished
+and complete.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;How do you propose that we get through this present afternoon
+and evening?&rsquo; demanded Thomas Idle, after two or three hours of
+the foregoing reflections at Allonby.</p>
+<p>Mr. Goodchild faltered, looked out of window, looked in again, and
+said, as he had so often said before, &lsquo;There is the sea, and here
+are the shrimps;&mdash;let us eat &rsquo;em&rsquo;!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>But, the wise donkey was at that moment in the act of bolting: not
+with the irresolution of his previous efforts which had been wanting
+in sustained force of character, but with real vigour of purpose: shaking
+the dust off his mane and hind-feet at Allonby, and tearing away from
+it, as if he had nobly made up his mind that he never would be taken
+alive.&nbsp; At sight of this inspiring spectacle, which was visible
+from his sofa, Thomas Idle stretched his neck and dwelt upon it rapturously.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Francis Goodchild,&rsquo; he then said, turning to his companion
+with a solemn air, &lsquo;this is a delightful little Inn, excellently
+kept by the most comfortable of landladies and the most attentive of
+landlords, but&mdash;the donkey&rsquo;s right!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The words, &lsquo;There is the sea, and here are the&mdash;&rsquo;
+again trembled on the lips of Goodchild, unaccompanied however by any
+sound.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Let us instantly pack the portmanteaus,&rsquo; said Thomas
+Idle, &lsquo;pay the bill, and order a fly out, with instructions to
+the driver to follow the donkey!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mr. Goodchild, who had only wanted encouragement to disclose the
+real state of his feelings, and who had been pining beneath his weary
+secret, now burst into tears, and confessed that he thought another
+day in the place would be the death of him.</p>
+<p>So, the two idle apprentices followed the donkey until the night
+was far advanced.&nbsp; Whether he was recaptured by the town-council,
+or is bolting at this hour through the United Kingdom, they know not.&nbsp;
+They hope he may be still bolting; if so, their best wishes are with
+him.</p>
+<p>It entered Mr. Idle&rsquo;s head, on the borders of Cumberland, that
+there could be no idler place to stay at, except by snatches of a few
+minutes each, than a railway station.&nbsp; &lsquo;An intermediate station
+on a line&mdash;a junction&mdash;anything of that sort,&rsquo; Thomas
+suggested.&nbsp; Mr. Goodchild approved of the idea as eccentric, and
+they journeyed on and on, until they came to such a station where there
+was an Inn.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Here,&rsquo; said Thomas, &lsquo;we may be luxuriously lazy;
+other people will travel for us, as it were, and we shall laugh at their
+folly.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>It was a Junction-Station, where the wooden razors before mentioned
+shaved the air very often, and where the sharp electric-telegraph bell
+was in a very restless condition.&nbsp; All manner of cross-lines of
+rails came zig-zagging into it, like a Congress of iron vipers; and,
+a little way out of it, a pointsman in an elevated signal-box was constantly
+going through the motions of drawing immense quantities of beer at a
+public-house bar.&nbsp; In one direction, confused perspectives of embankments
+and arches were to be seen from the platform; in the other, the rails
+soon disentangled themselves into two tracks and shot away under a bridge,
+and curved round a corner.&nbsp; Sidings were there, in which empty
+luggage-vans and cattle-boxes often butted against each other as if
+they couldn&rsquo;t agree; and warehouses were there, in which great
+quantities of goods seemed to have taken the veil (of the consistency
+of tarpaulin), and to have retired from the world without any hope of
+getting back to it.&nbsp; Refreshment-rooms were there; one, for the
+hungry and thirsty Iron Locomotives where their coke and water were
+ready, and of good quality, for they were dangerous to play tricks with;
+the other, for the hungry and thirsty human Locomotives, who might take
+what they could get, and whose chief consolation was provided in the
+form of three terrific urns or vases of white metal, containing nothing,
+each forming a breastwork for a defiant and apparently much-injured
+woman.</p>
+<p>Established at this Station, Mr. Thomas Idle and Mr. Francis Goodchild
+resolved to enjoy it.&nbsp; But, its contrasts were very violent, and
+there was also an infection in it.</p>
+<p>First, as to its contrasts.&nbsp; They were only two, but they were
+Lethargy and Madness.&nbsp; The Station was either totally unconscious,
+or wildly raving.&nbsp; By day, in its unconscious state, it looked
+as if no life could come to it,&mdash;as if it were all rust, dust,
+and ashes&mdash;as if the last train for ever, had gone without issuing
+any Return-Tickets&mdash;as if the last Engine had uttered its last
+shriek and burst.&nbsp; One awkward shave of the air from the wooden
+razor, and everything changed.&nbsp; Tight office-doors flew open, panels
+yielded, books, newspapers, travelling-caps and wrappers broke out of
+brick walls, money chinked, conveyances oppressed by nightmares of luggage
+came careering into the yard, porters started up from secret places,
+ditto the much-injured women, the shining bell, who lived in a little
+tray on stilts by himself, flew into a man&rsquo;s hand and clamoured
+violently.&nbsp; The pointsman aloft in the signal-box made the motions
+of drawing, with some difficulty, hogsheads of beer.&nbsp; Down Train!&nbsp;
+More bear!&nbsp; Up Train!&nbsp; More beer.&nbsp; Cross junction Train!&nbsp;
+More beer!&nbsp; Cattle Train!&nbsp; More beer.&nbsp; Goods Train!&nbsp;
+Simmering, whistling, trembling, rumbling, thundering.&nbsp; Trains
+on the whole confusion of intersecting rails, crossing one another,
+bumping one another, hissing one another, backing to go forward, tearing
+into distance to come close.&nbsp; People frantic.&nbsp; Exiles seeking
+restoration to their native carriages, and banished to remoter climes.&nbsp;
+More beer and more bell.&nbsp; Then, in a minute, the Station relapsed
+into stupor as the stoker of the Cattle Train, the last to depart, went
+gliding out of it, wiping the long nose of his oil-can with a dirty
+pocket-handkerchief.</p>
+<p>By night, in its unconscious state, the Station was not so much as
+visible.&nbsp; Something in the air, like an enterprising chemist&rsquo;s
+established in business on one of the boughs of Jack&rsquo;s beanstalk,
+was all that could be discerned of it under the stars.&nbsp; In a moment
+it would break out, a constellation of gas.&nbsp; In another moment,
+twenty rival chemists, on twenty rival beanstalks, came into existence.&nbsp;
+Then, the Furies would be seen, waving their lurid torches up and down
+the confused perspectives of embankments and arches&mdash;would be heard,
+too, wailing and shrieking.&nbsp; Then, the Station would be full of
+palpitating trains, as in the day; with the heightening difference that
+they were not so clearly seen as in the day, whereas the Station walls,
+starting forward under the gas, like a hippopotamus&rsquo;s eyes, dazzled
+the human locomotives with the sauce-bottle, the cheap music, the bedstead,
+the distorted range of buildings where the patent safes are made, the
+gentleman in the rain with the registered umbrella, the lady returning
+from the ball with the registered respirator, and all their other embellishments.&nbsp;
+And now, the human locomotives, creased as to their countenances and
+purblind as to their eyes, would swarm forth in a heap, addressing themselves
+to the mysterious urns and the much-injured women; while the iron locomotives,
+dripping fire and water, shed their steam about plentifully, making
+the dull oxen in their cages, with heads depressed, and foam hanging
+from their mouths as their red looks glanced fearfully at the surrounding
+terrors, seem as though they had been drinking at half-frozen waters
+and were hung with icicles.&nbsp; Through the same steam would be caught
+glimpses of their fellow-travellers, the sheep, getting their white
+kid faces together, away from the bars, and stuffing the interstices
+with trembling wool.&nbsp; Also, down among the wheels, of the man with
+the sledge-hammer, ringing the axles of the fast night-train; against
+whom the oxen have a misgiving that he is the man with the pole-axe
+who is to come by-and-by, and so the nearest of them try to get back,
+and get a purchase for a thrust at him through the bars.&nbsp; Suddenly,
+the bell would ring, the steam would stop with one hiss and a yell,
+the chemists on the beanstalks would be busy, the avenging Furies would
+bestir themselves, the fast night-train would melt from eye and ear,
+the other trains going their ways more slowly would be heard faintly
+rattling in the distance like old-fashioned watches running down, the
+sauce-bottle and cheap music retired from view, even the bedstead went
+to bed, and there was no such visible thing as the Station to vex the
+cool wind in its blowing, or perhaps the autumn lightning, as it found
+out the iron rails.</p>
+<p>The infection of the Station was this:- When it was in its raving
+state, the Apprentices found it impossible to be there, without labouring
+under the delusion that they were in a hurry.&nbsp; To Mr. Goodchild,
+whose ideas of idleness were so imperfect, this was no unpleasant hallucination,
+and accordingly that gentleman went through great exertions in yielding
+to it, and running up and down the platform, jostling everybody, under
+the impression that he had a highly important mission somewhere, and
+had not a moment to lose.&nbsp; But, to Thomas Idle, this contagion
+was so very unacceptable an incident of the situation, that he struck
+on the fourth day, and requested to be moved.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;This place fills me with a dreadful sensation,&rsquo; said
+Thomas, &lsquo;of having something to do.&nbsp; Remove me, Francis.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Where would you like to go next?&rsquo; was the question of
+the ever-engaging Goodchild.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I have heard there is a good old Inn at Lancaster, established
+in a fine old house: an Inn where they give you Bride-cake every day
+after dinner,&rsquo; said Thomas Idle.&nbsp; &lsquo;Let us eat Bride-cake
+without the trouble of being married, or of knowing anybody in that
+ridiculous dilemma.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mr. Goodchild, with a lover&rsquo;s sigh, assented.&nbsp; They departed
+from the Station in a violent hurry (for which, it is unnecessary to
+observe, there was not the least occasion), and were delivered at the
+fine old house at Lancaster, on the same night.</p>
+<p>It is Mr. Goodchild&rsquo;s opinion, that if a visitor on his arrival
+at Lancaster could be accommodated with a pole which would push the
+opposite side of the street some yards farther off, it would be better
+for all parties.&nbsp; Protesting against being required to live in
+a trench, and obliged to speculate all day upon what the people can
+possibly be doing within a mysterious opposite window, which is a shop-window
+to look at, but not a shop-window in respect of its offering nothing
+for sale and declining to give any account whatever of itself, Mr. Goodchild
+concedes Lancaster to be a pleasant place.&nbsp; A place dropped in
+the midst of a charming landscape, a place with a fine ancient fragment
+of castle, a place of lovely walks, a place possessing staid old houses
+richly fitted with old Honduras mahogany, which has grown so dark with
+time that it seems to have got something of a retrospective mirror-quality
+into itself, and to show the visitor, in the depth of its grain, through
+all its polish, the hue of the wretched slaves who groaned long ago
+under old Lancaster merchants.&nbsp; And Mr. Goodchild adds that the
+stones of Lancaster do sometimes whisper, even yet, of rich men passed
+away&mdash;upon whose great prosperity some of these old doorways frowned
+sullen in the brightest weather&mdash;that their slave-gain turned to
+curses, as the Arabian Wizard&rsquo;s money turned to leaves, and that
+no good ever came of it, even unto the third and fourth generations,
+until it was wasted and gone.</p>
+<p>It was a gallant sight to behold, the Sunday procession of the Lancaster
+elders to Church&mdash;all in black, and looking fearfully like a funeral
+without the Body&mdash;under the escort of Three Beadles.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Think,&rsquo; said Francis, as he stood at the Inn window,
+admiring, &lsquo;of being taken to the sacred edifice by three Beadles!&nbsp;
+I have, in my early time, been taken out of it by one Beadle; but, to
+be taken into it by three, O Thomas, is a distinction I shall never
+enjoy!&rsquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>When Mr. Goodchild had looked out of the Lancaster Inn window for
+two hours on end, with great perseverance, he begun to entertain a misgiving
+that he was growing industrious.&nbsp; He therefore set himself next,
+to explore the country from the tops of all the steep hills in the neighbourhood.</p>
+<p>He came back at dinner-time, red and glowing, to tell Thomas Idle
+what he had seen.&nbsp; Thomas, on his back reading, listened with great
+composure, and asked him whether he really had gone up those hills,
+and bothered himself with those views, and walked all those miles?</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Because I want to know,&rsquo; added Thomas, &lsquo;what you
+would say of it, if you were obliged to do it?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It would be different, then,&rsquo; said Francis.&nbsp; &lsquo;It
+would be work, then; now, it&rsquo;s play.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Play!&rsquo; replied Thomas Idle, utterly repudiating the
+reply.&nbsp; &lsquo;Play!&nbsp; Here is a man goes systematically tearing
+himself to pieces, and putting himself through an incessant course of
+training, as if he were always under articles to fight a match for the
+champion&rsquo;s belt, and he calls it Play!&nbsp; Play!&rsquo; exclaimed
+Thomas Idle, scornfully contemplating his one boot in the air.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;You <i>can&rsquo;t</i> play.&nbsp; You don&rsquo;t know what
+it is.&nbsp; You make work of everything.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The bright Goodchild amiably smiled.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;So you do,&rsquo; said Thomas.&nbsp; &lsquo;I mean it.&nbsp;
+To me you are an absolutely terrible fellow.&nbsp; You do nothing like
+another man.&nbsp; Where another fellow would fall into a footbath of
+action or emotion, you fall into a mine.&nbsp; Where any other fellow
+would be a painted butterfly, you are a fiery dragon.&nbsp; Where another
+man would stake a sixpence, you stake your existence.&nbsp; If you were
+to go up in a balloon, you would make for Heaven; and if you were to
+dive into the depths of the earth, nothing short of the other place
+would content you.&nbsp; What a fellow you are, Francis!&rsquo;&nbsp;
+The cheerful Goodchild laughed.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It&rsquo;s all very well to laugh, but I wonder you don&rsquo;t
+feel it to be serious,&rsquo; said Idle.&nbsp; &lsquo;A man who can
+do nothing by halves appears to me to be a fearful man.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Tom, Tom,&rsquo; returned Goodchild, &lsquo;if I can do nothing
+by halves, and be nothing by halves, it&rsquo;s pretty clear that you
+must take me as a whole, and make the best of me.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>With this philosophical rejoinder, the airy Goodchild clapped Mr.
+Idle on the shoulder in a final manner, and they sat down to dinner.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;By-the-by,&rsquo; said Goodchild, &lsquo;I have been over
+a lunatic asylum too, since I have been out.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He has been,&rsquo; exclaimed Thomas Idle, casting up his
+eyes, &lsquo;over a lunatic asylum!&nbsp; Not content with being as
+great an Ass as Captain Barclay in the pedestrian way, he makes a Lunacy
+Commissioner of himself&mdash;for nothing!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;An immense place,&rsquo; said Goodchild, &lsquo;admirable
+offices, very good arrangements, very good attendants; altogether a
+remarkable place.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And what did you see there?&rsquo; asked Mr. Idle, adapting
+Hamlet&rsquo;s advice to the occasion, and assuming the virtue of interest,
+though he had it not.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The usual thing,&rsquo; said Francis Goodchild, with a sigh.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Long groves of blighted men-and-women-trees; interminable avenues
+of hopeless faces; numbers, without the slightest power of really combining
+for any earthly purpose; a society of human creatures who have nothing
+in common but that they have all lost the power of being humanly social
+with one another.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Take a glass of wine with me,&rsquo; said Thomas Idle, &lsquo;and
+let <i>us</i> be social.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;In one gallery, Tom,&rsquo; pursued Francis Goodchild, &lsquo;which
+looked to me about the length of the Long Walk at Windsor, more or less&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Probably less,&rsquo; observed Thomas Idle.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;In one gallery, which was otherwise clear of patients (for
+they were all out), there was a poor little dark-chinned, meagre man,
+with a perplexed brow and a pensive face, stooping low over the matting
+on the floor, and picking out with his thumb and forefinger the course
+of its fibres.&nbsp; The afternoon sun was slanting in at the large
+end-window, and there were cross patches of light and shade all down
+the vista, made by the unseen windows and the open doors of the little
+sleeping-cells on either side.&nbsp; In about the centre of the perspective,
+under an arch, regardless of the pleasant weather, regardless of the
+solitude, regardless of approaching footsteps, was the poor little dark-chinned,
+meagre man, poring over the matting.&nbsp; &ldquo;What are you doing
+there?&rdquo; said my conductor, when we came to him.&nbsp; He looked
+up, and pointed to the matting.&nbsp; &ldquo;I wouldn&rsquo;t do that,
+I think,&rdquo; said my conductor, kindly; &ldquo;if I were you, I would
+go and read, or I would lie down if I felt tired; but I wouldn&rsquo;t
+do that.&rdquo;&nbsp; The patient considered a moment, and vacantly
+answered, &ldquo;No, sir, I won&rsquo;t; I&rsquo;ll&mdash;I&rsquo;ll
+go and read,&rdquo; and so he lamely shuffled away into one of the little
+rooms.&nbsp; I turned my head before we had gone many paces.&nbsp; He
+had already come out again, and was again poring over the matting, and
+tracking out its fibres with his thumb and forefinger.&nbsp; I stopped
+to look at him, and it came into my mind, that probably the course of
+those fibres as they plaited in and out, over and under, was the only
+course of things in the whole wide world that it was left to him to
+understand&mdash;that his darkening intellect had narrowed down to the
+small cleft of light which showed him, &ldquo;This piece was twisted
+this way, went in here, passed under, came out there, was carried on
+away here to the right where I now put my finger on it, and in this
+progress of events, the thing was made and came to be here.&rdquo;&nbsp;
+Then, I wondered whether he looked into the matting, next, to see if
+it could show him anything of the process through which <i>he</i> came
+to be there, so strangely poring over it.&nbsp; Then, I thought how
+all of us, GOD help us! in our different ways are poring over our bits
+of matting, blindly enough, and what confusions and mysteries we make
+in the pattern.&nbsp; I had a sadder fellow-feeling with the little
+dark-chinned, meagre man, by that time, and I came away.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mr. Idle diverting the conversation to grouse, custards, and bride-cake,
+Mr. Goodchild followed in the same direction.&nbsp; The bride-cake was
+as bilious and indigestible as if a real Bride had cut it, and the dinner
+it completed was an admirable performance.</p>
+<p>The house was a genuine old house of a very quaint description, teeming
+with old carvings, and beams, and panels, and having an excellent old
+staircase, with a gallery or upper staircase, cut off from it by a curious
+fence-work of old oak, or of the old Honduras Mahogany wood.&nbsp; It
+was, and is, and will be, for many a long year to come, a remarkably
+picturesque house; and a certain grave mystery lurking in the depth
+of the old mahogany panels, as if they were so many deep pools of dark
+water&mdash;such, indeed, as they had been much among when they were
+trees&mdash;gave it a very mysterious character after nightfall.</p>
+<p>When Mr. Goodchild and Mr. Idle had first alighted at the door, and
+stepped into the sombre, handsome old hall, they had been received by
+half-a-dozen noiseless old men in black, all dressed exactly alike,
+who glided up the stairs with the obliging landlord and waiter&mdash;but
+without appearing to get into their way, or to mind whether they did
+or no&mdash;and who had filed off to the right and left on the old staircase,
+as the guests entered their sitting-room.&nbsp; It was then broad, bright
+day.&nbsp; But, Mr. Goodchild had said, when their door was shut, &lsquo;Who
+on earth are those old men?&rsquo;&nbsp; And afterwards, both on going
+out and coming in, he had noticed that there were no old men to be seen.</p>
+<p>Neither, had the old men, or any one of the old men, reappeared since.&nbsp;
+The two friends had passed a night in the house, but had seen nothing
+more of the old men.&nbsp; Mr. Goodchild, in rambling about it, had
+looked along passages, and glanced in at doorways, but had encountered
+no old men; neither did it appear that any old men were, by any member
+of the establishment, missed or expected.</p>
+<p>Another odd circumstance impressed itself on their attention.&nbsp;
+It was, that the door of their sitting-room was never left untouched
+for a quarter of an hour.&nbsp; It was opened with hesitation, opened
+with confidence, opened a little way, opened a good way,&mdash;always
+clapped-to again without a word of explanation.&nbsp; They were reading,
+they were writing, they were eating, they were drinking, they were talking,
+they were dozing; the door was always opened at an unexpected moment,
+and they looked towards it, and it was clapped-to again, and nobody
+was to be seen.&nbsp; When this had happened fifty times or so, Mr.
+Goodchild had said to his companion, jestingly: &lsquo;I begin to think,
+Tom, there was something wrong with those six old men.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Night had come again, and they had been writing for two or three
+hours: writing, in short, a portion of the lazy notes from which these
+lazy sheets are taken.&nbsp; They had left off writing, and glasses
+were on the table between them.&nbsp; The house was closed and quiet.&nbsp;
+Around the head of Thomas Idle, as he lay upon his sofa, hovered light
+wreaths of fragrant smoke.&nbsp; The temples of Francis Goodchild, as
+he leaned back in his chair, with his two hands clasped behind his head,
+and his legs crossed, were similarly decorated.</p>
+<p>They had been discussing several idle subjects of speculation, not
+omitting the strange old men, and were still so occupied, when Mr. Goodchild
+abruptly changed his attitude to wind up his watch.&nbsp; They were
+just becoming drowsy enough to be stopped in their talk by any such
+slight check.&nbsp; Thomas Idle, who was speaking at the moment, paused
+and said, &lsquo;How goes it?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;One,&rsquo; said Goodchild.</p>
+<p>As if he had ordered One old man, and the order were promptly executed
+(truly, all orders were so, in that excellent hotel), the door opened,
+and One old man stood there.</p>
+<p>He did not come in, but stood with the door in his hand.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;One of the six, Tom, at last!&rsquo; said Mr. Goodchild, in
+a surprised whisper.&mdash;&lsquo;Sir, your pleasure?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Sir, <i>your</i> pleasure?&rsquo; said the One old man.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I didn&rsquo;t ring.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The bell did,&rsquo; said the One old man.</p>
+<p>He said BELL, in a deep, strong way, that would have expressed the
+church Bell.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I had the pleasure, I believe, of seeing you, yesterday?&rsquo;
+said Goodchild.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I cannot undertake to say for certain,&rsquo; was the grim
+reply of the One old man.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I think you saw me?&nbsp; Did you not?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Saw <i>you</i>?&rsquo; said the old man.&nbsp; &lsquo;O yes,
+I saw you.&nbsp; But, I see many who never see me.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>A chilled, slow, earthy, fixed old man.&nbsp; A cadaverous old man
+of measured speech.&nbsp; An old man who seemed as unable to wink, as
+if his eyelids had been nailed to his forehead.&nbsp; An old man whose
+eyes&mdash;two spots of fire&mdash;had no more motion than if they had
+been connected with the back of his skull by screws driven through it,
+and rivetted and bolted outside, among his grey hair.</p>
+<p>The night had turned so cold, to Mr. Goodchild&rsquo;s sensations,
+that he shivered.&nbsp; He remarked lightly, and half apologetically,
+&lsquo;I think somebody is walking over my grave.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No,&rsquo; said the weird old man, &lsquo;there is no one
+there.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mr. Goodchild looked at Idle, but Idle lay with his head enwreathed
+in smoke.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;No one there?&rsquo; said Goodchild.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;There is no one at your grave, I assure you,&rsquo; said the
+old man.</p>
+<p>He had come in and shut the door, and he now sat down.&nbsp; He did
+not bend himself to sit, as other people do, but seemed to sink bolt
+upright, as if in water, until the chair stopped him.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;My friend, Mr. Idle,&rsquo; said Goodchild, extremely anxious
+to introduce a third person into the conversation.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I am,&rsquo; said the old man, without looking at him, &lsquo;at
+Mr. Idle&rsquo;s service.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;If you are an old inhabitant of this place,&rsquo; Francis
+Goodchild resumed.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Yes.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Perhaps you can decide a point my friend and I were in doubt
+upon, this morning.&nbsp; They hang condemned criminals at the Castle,
+I believe?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;<i>I</i> believe so,&rsquo; said the old man.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Are their faces turned towards that noble prospect?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Your face is turned,&rsquo; replied the old man, &lsquo;to
+the Castle wall.&nbsp; When you are tied up, you see its stones expanding
+and contracting violently, and a similar expansion and contraction seem
+to take place in your own head and breast.&nbsp; Then, there is a rush
+of fire and an earthquake, and the Castle springs into the air, and
+you tumble down a precipice.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>His cravat appeared to trouble him.&nbsp; He put his hand to his
+throat, and moved his neck from side to side.&nbsp; He was an old man
+of a swollen character of face, and his nose was immoveably hitched
+up on one side, as if by a little hook inserted in that nostril.&nbsp;
+Mr. Goodchild felt exceedingly uncomfortable, and began to think the
+night was hot, and not cold.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;A strong description, sir,&rsquo; he observed.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;A strong sensation,&rsquo; the old man rejoined.</p>
+<p>Again, Mr. Goodchild looked to Mr. Thomas Idle; but Thomas lay on
+his back with his face attentively turned towards the One old man, and
+made no sign.&nbsp; At this time Mr. Goodchild believed that he saw
+threads of fire stretch from the old man&rsquo;s eyes to his own, and
+there attach themselves.&nbsp; (Mr.&nbsp; Goodchild writes the present
+account of his experience, and, with the utmost solemnity, protests
+that he had the strongest sensation upon him of being forced to look
+at the old man along those two fiery films, from that moment.)</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I must tell it to you,&rsquo; said the old man, with a ghastly
+and a stony stare.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What?&rsquo; asked Francis Goodchild.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You know where it took place.&nbsp; Yonder!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Whether he pointed to the room above, or to the room below, or to
+any room in that old house, or to a room in some other old house in
+that old town, Mr. Goodchild was not, nor is, nor ever can be, sure.&nbsp;
+He was confused by the circumstance that the right forefinger of the
+One old man seemed to dip itself in one of the threads of fire, light
+itself, and make a fiery start in the air, as it pointed somewhere.&nbsp;
+Having pointed somewhere, it went out.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You know she was a Bride,&rsquo; said the old man.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I know they still send up Bride-cake,&rsquo; Mr. Goodchild
+faltered.&nbsp; &lsquo;This is a very oppressive air.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;She was a Bride,&rsquo; said the old man.&nbsp; &lsquo;She
+was a fair, flaxen-haired, large-eyed girl, who had no character, no
+purpose.&nbsp; A weak, credulous, incapable, helpless nothing.&nbsp;
+Not like her mother.&nbsp; No, no.&nbsp; It was her father whose character
+she reflected.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Her mother had taken care to secure everything to herself,
+for her own life, when the father of this girl (a child at that time)
+died&mdash;of sheer helplessness; no other disorder&mdash;and then He
+renewed the acquaintance that had once subsisted between the mother
+and Him.&nbsp; He had been put aside for the flaxen-haired, large-eyed
+man (or nonentity) with Money.&nbsp; He could overlook that for Money.&nbsp;
+He wanted compensation in Money.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;So, he returned to the side of that woman the mother, made
+love to her again, danced attendance on her, and submitted himself to
+her whims.&nbsp; She wreaked upon him every whim she had, or could invent.&nbsp;
+He bore it.&nbsp; And the more he bore, the more he wanted compensation
+in Money, and the more he was resolved to have it.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But, lo!&nbsp; Before he got it, she cheated him.&nbsp; In
+one of her imperious states, she froze, and never thawed again.&nbsp;
+She put her hands to her head one night, uttered a cry, stiffened, lay
+in that attitude certain hours, and died.&nbsp; And he had got no compensation
+from her in Money, yet.&nbsp; Blight and Murrain on her!&nbsp; Not a
+penny.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He had hated her throughout that second pursuit, and had longed
+for retaliation on her.&nbsp; He now counterfeited her signature to
+an instrument, leaving all she had to leave, to her daughter&mdash;ten
+years old then&mdash;to whom the property passed absolutely, and appointing
+himself the daughter&rsquo;s Guardian.&nbsp; When He slid it under the
+pillow of the bed on which she lay, He bent down in the deaf ear of
+Death, and whispered: &ldquo;Mistress Pride, I have determined a long
+time that, dead or alive, you must make me compensation in Money.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;So, now there were only two left.&nbsp; Which two were, He,
+and the fair flaxen-haired, large-eyed foolish daughter, who afterwards
+became the Bride.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He put her to school.&nbsp; In a secret, dark, oppressive,
+ancient house, he put her to school with a watchful and unscrupulous
+woman.&nbsp; &ldquo;My worthy lady,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;here is a
+mind to be formed; will you help me to form it?&rdquo;&nbsp; She accepted
+the trust.&nbsp; For which she, too, wanted compensation in Money, and
+had it.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The girl was formed in the fear of him, and in the conviction,
+that there was no escape from him.&nbsp; She was taught, from the first,
+to regard him as her future husband&mdash;the man who must marry her&mdash;the
+destiny that overshadowed her&mdash;the appointed certainty that could
+never be evaded.&nbsp; The poor fool was soft white wax in their hands,
+and took the impression that they put upon her.&nbsp; It hardened with
+time.&nbsp; It became a part of herself.&nbsp; Inseparable from herself,
+and only to be torn away from her, by tearing life away from her.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Eleven years she had lived in the dark house and its gloomy
+garden.&nbsp; He was jealous of the very light and air getting to her,
+and they kept her close.&nbsp; He stopped the wide chimneys, shaded
+the little windows, left the strong-stemmed ivy to wander where it would
+over the house-front, the moss to accumulate on the untrimmed fruit-trees
+in the red-walled garden, the weeds to over-run its green and yellow
+walks.&nbsp; He surrounded her with images of sorrow and desolation.&nbsp;
+He caused her to be filled with fears of the place and of the stories
+that were told of it, and then on pretext of correcting them, to be
+left in it in solitude, or made to shrink about it in the dark.&nbsp;
+When her mind was most depressed and fullest of terrors, then, he would
+come out of one of the hiding-places from which he overlooked her, and
+present himself as her sole resource.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Thus, by being from her childhood the one embodiment her life
+presented to her of power to coerce and power to relieve, power to bind
+and power to loose, the ascendency over her weakness was secured.&nbsp;
+She was twenty-one years and twenty-one days old, when he brought her
+home to the gloomy house, his half-witted, frightened, and submissive
+Bride of three weeks.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He had dismissed the governess by that time&mdash;what he
+had left to do, he could best do alone&mdash;and they came back, upon
+a rain night, to the scene of her long preparation.&nbsp; She turned
+to him upon the threshold, as the rain was dripping from the porch,
+and said:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;O sir, it is the Death-watch ticking for me!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Well!&rdquo; he answered.&nbsp; &ldquo;And if it were?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;O sir!&rdquo; she returned to him, &ldquo;look kindly
+on me, and be merciful to me!&nbsp; I beg your pardon.&nbsp; I will
+do anything you wish, if you will only forgive me!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;That had become the poor fool&rsquo;s constant song: &ldquo;I
+beg your pardon,&rdquo; and &ldquo;Forgive me!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;She was not worth hating; he felt nothing but contempt for
+her.&nbsp; But, she had long been in the way, and he had long been weary,
+and the work was near its end, and had to be worked out.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;You fool,&rdquo; he said.&nbsp; &ldquo;Go up the stairs!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;She obeyed very quickly, murmuring, &ldquo;I will do anything
+you wish!&rdquo;&nbsp; When he came into the Bride&rsquo;s Chamber,
+having been a little retarded by the heavy fastenings of the great door
+(for they were alone in the house, and he had arranged that the people
+who attended on them should come and go in the day), he found her withdrawn
+to the furthest corner, and there standing pressed against the paneling
+as if she would have shrunk through it: her flaxen hair all wild about
+her face, and her large eyes staring at him in vague terror.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;What are you afraid of?&nbsp; Come and sit down by
+me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;I will do anything you wish.&nbsp; I beg your pardon,
+sir.&nbsp; Forgive me!&rdquo;&nbsp; Her monotonous tune as usual.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Ellen, here is a writing that you must write out to-morrow,
+in your own hand.&nbsp; You may as well be seen by others, busily engaged
+upon it.&nbsp; When you have written it all fairly, and corrected all
+mistakes, call in any two people there may be about the house, and sign
+your name to it before them.&nbsp; Then, put it in your bosom to keep
+it safe, and when I sit here again to-morrow night, give it to me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;I will do it all, with the greatest care.&nbsp; I will
+do anything you wish.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t shake and tremble, then.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;I will try my utmost not to do it&mdash;if you will
+only forgive me!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Next day, she sat down at her desk, and did as she had been
+told.&nbsp; He often passed in and out of the room, to observe her,
+and always saw her slowly and laboriously writing: repeating to herself
+the words she copied, in appearance quite mechanically, and without
+caring or endeavouring to comprehend them, so that she did her task.&nbsp;
+He saw her follow the directions she had received, in all particulars;
+and at night, when they were alone again in the same Bride&rsquo;s Chamber,
+and he drew his chair to the hearth, she timidly approached him from
+her distant seat, took the paper from her bosom, and gave it into his
+hand.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It secured all her possessions to him, in the event of her
+death.&nbsp; He put her before him, face to face, that he might look
+at her steadily; and he asked her, in so many plain words, neither fewer
+nor more, did she know that?</p>
+<p>&lsquo;There were spots of ink upon the bosom of her white dress,
+and they made her face look whiter and her eyes look larger as she nodded
+her head.&nbsp; There were spots of ink upon the hand with which she
+stood before him, nervously plaiting and folding her white skirts.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He took her by the arm, and looked her, yet more closely and
+steadily, in the face.&nbsp; &ldquo;Now, die!&nbsp; I have done with
+you.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;She shrunk, and uttered a low, suppressed cry.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;I am not going to kill you.&nbsp; I will not endanger
+my life for yours.&nbsp; Die!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He sat before her in the gloomy Bride&rsquo;s Chamber, day
+after day, night after night, looking the word at her when he did not
+utter it.&nbsp; As often as her large unmeaning eyes were raised from
+the hands in which she rocked her head, to the stern figure, sitting
+with crossed arms and knitted forehead, in the chair, they read in it,
+&ldquo;Die!&rdquo;&nbsp; When she dropped asleep in exhaustion, she
+was called back to shuddering consciousness, by the whisper, &ldquo;Die!&rdquo;&nbsp;
+When she fell upon her old entreaty to be pardoned, she was answered
+&ldquo;Die!&rdquo;&nbsp; When she had out-watched and out-suffered the
+long night, and the rising sun flamed into the sombre room, she heard
+it hailed with, &ldquo;Another day and not dead?&mdash;Die!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Shut up in the deserted mansion, aloof from all mankind, and
+engaged alone in such a struggle without any respite, it came to this&mdash;that
+either he must die, or she.&nbsp; He knew it very well, and concentrated
+his strength against her feebleness.&nbsp; Hours upon hours he held
+her by the arm when her arm was black where he held it, and bade her
+Die!</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It was done, upon a windy morning, before sunrise.&nbsp; He
+computed the time to be half-past four; but, his forgotten watch had
+run down, and he could not be sure.&nbsp; She had broken away from him
+in the night, with loud and sudden cries&mdash;the first of that kind
+to which she had given vent&mdash;and he had had to put his hands over
+her mouth.&nbsp; Since then, she had been quiet in the corner of the
+paneling where she had sunk down; and he had left her, and had gone
+back with his folded arms and his knitted forehead to his chair.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Paler in the pale light, more colourless than ever in the
+leaden dawn, he saw her coming, trailing herself along the floor towards
+him&mdash;a white wreck of hair, and dress, and wild eyes, pushing itself
+on by an irresolute and bending hand.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;O, forgive me!&nbsp; I will do anything.&nbsp; O, sir,
+pray tell me I may live!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Die!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Are you so resolved?&nbsp; Is there no hope for me?&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Die!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Her large eyes strained themselves with wonder and fear; wonder
+and fear changed to reproach; reproach to blank nothing.&nbsp; It was
+done.&nbsp; He was not at first so sure it was done, but that the morning
+sun was hanging jewels in her hair&mdash;he saw the diamond, emerald,
+and ruby, glittering among it in little points, as he stood looking
+down at her&mdash;when he lifted her and laid her on her bed.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;She was soon laid in the ground.&nbsp; And now they were all
+gone, and he had compensated himself well.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He had a mind to travel.&nbsp; Not that he meant to waste
+his Money, for he was a pinching man and liked his Money dearly (liked
+nothing else, indeed), but, that he had grown tired of the desolate
+house and wished to turn his back upon it and have done with it.&nbsp;
+But, the house was worth Money, and Money must not be thrown away.&nbsp;
+He determined to sell it before he went.&nbsp; That it might look the
+less wretched and bring a better price, he hired some labourers to work
+in the overgrown garden; to cut out the dead wood, trim the ivy that
+drooped in heavy masses over the windows and gables, and clear the walks
+in which the weeds were growing mid-leg high.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He worked, himself, along with them.&nbsp; He worked later
+than they did, and, one evening at dusk, was left working alone, with
+his bill-hook in his hand.&nbsp; One autumn evening, when the Bride
+was five weeks dead.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;It grows too dark to work longer,&rdquo; he said to
+himself, &ldquo;I must give over for the night.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He detested the house, and was loath to enter it.&nbsp; He
+looked at the dark porch waiting for him like a tomb, and felt that
+it was an accursed house.&nbsp; Near to the porch, and near to where
+he stood, was a tree whose branches waved before the old bay-window
+of the Bride&rsquo;s Chamber, where it had been done.&nbsp; The tree
+swung suddenly, and made him start.&nbsp; It swung again, although the
+night was still.&nbsp; Looking up into it, he saw a figure among the
+branches.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It was the figure of a young man.&nbsp; The face looked down,
+as his looked up; the branches cracked and swayed; the figure rapidly
+descended, and slid upon its feet before him.&nbsp; A slender youth
+of about her age, with long light brown hair.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;What thief are you?&rdquo; he said, seizing the youth
+by the collar.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The young man, in shaking himself free, swung him a blow with
+his arm across the face and throat.&nbsp; They closed, but the young
+man got from him and stepped back, crying, with great eagerness and
+horror, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t touch me!&nbsp; I would as lieve be touched
+by the Devil!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He stood still, with his bill-hook in his hand, looking at
+the young man.&nbsp; For, the young man&rsquo;s look was the counterpart
+of her last look, and he had not expected ever to see that again.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;I am no thief.&nbsp; Even if I were, I would not have
+a coin of your wealth, if it would buy me the Indies.&nbsp; You murderer!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;What!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;I climbed it,&rdquo; said the young man, pointing up
+into the tree, &ldquo;for the first time, nigh four years ago.&nbsp;
+I climbed it, to look at her.&nbsp; I saw her.&nbsp; I spoke to her.&nbsp;
+I have climbed it, many a time, to watch and listen for her.&nbsp; I
+was a boy, hidden among its leaves, when from that bay-window she gave
+me this!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He showed a tress of flaxen hair, tied with a mourning ribbon.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Her life,&rdquo; said the young man, &ldquo;was a life
+of mourning.&nbsp; She gave me this, as a token of it, and a sign that
+she was dead to every one but you.&nbsp; If I had been older, if I had
+seen her sooner, I might have saved her from you.&nbsp; But, she was
+fast in the web when I first climbed the tree, and what could I do then
+to break it!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;In saying those words, he burst into a fit of sobbing and
+crying: weakly at first, then passionately.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Murderer!&nbsp; I climbed the tree on the night when
+you brought her back.&nbsp; I heard her, from the tree, speak of the
+Death-watch at the door.&nbsp; I was three times in the tree while you
+were shut up with her, slowly killing her.&nbsp; I saw her, from the
+tree, lie dead upon her bed.&nbsp; I have watched you, from the tree,
+for proofs and traces of your guilt.&nbsp; The manner of it, is a mystery
+to me yet, but I will pursue you until you have rendered up your life
+to the hangman.&nbsp; You shall never, until then, be rid of me.&nbsp;
+I loved her!&nbsp; I can know no relenting towards you.&nbsp; Murderer,
+I loved her!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The youth was bare-headed, his hat having fluttered away in
+his descent from the tree.&nbsp; He moved towards the gate.&nbsp; He
+had to pass&mdash;Him&mdash;to get to it.&nbsp; There was breadth for
+two old-fashioned carriages abreast; and the youth&rsquo;s abhorrence,
+openly expressed in every feature of his face and limb of his body,
+and very hard to bear, had verge enough to keep itself at a distance
+in.&nbsp; He (by which I mean the other) had not stirred hand or foot,
+since he had stood still to look at the boy.&nbsp; He faced round, now,
+to follow him with his eyes.&nbsp; As the back of the bare light-brown
+head was turned to him, he saw a red curve stretch from his hand to
+it.&nbsp; He knew, before he threw the bill-hook, where it had alighted&mdash;I
+say, had alighted, and not, would alight; for, to his clear perception
+the thing was done before he did it.&nbsp; It cleft the head, and it
+remained there, and the boy lay on his face.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He buried the body in the night, at the foot of the tree.&nbsp;
+As soon as it was light in the morning, he worked at turning up all
+the ground near the tree, and hacking and hewing at the neighbouring
+bushes and undergrowth.&nbsp; When the labourers came, there was nothing
+suspicious, and nothing suspected.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But, he had, in a moment, defeated all his precautions, and
+destroyed the triumph of the scheme he had so long concerted, and so
+successfully worked out.&nbsp; He had got rid of the Bride, and had
+acquired her fortune without endangering his life; but now, for a death
+by which he had gained nothing, he had evermore to live with a rope
+around his neck.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Beyond this, he was chained to the house of gloom and horror,
+which he could not endure.&nbsp; Being afraid to sell it or to quit
+it, lest discovery should be made, he was forced to live in it.&nbsp;
+He hired two old people, man and wife, for his servants; and dwelt in
+it, and dreaded it.&nbsp; His great difficulty, for a long time, was
+the garden.&nbsp; Whether he should keep it trim, whether he should
+suffer it to fall into its former state of neglect, what would be the
+least likely way of attracting attention to it?</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He took the middle course of gardening, himself, in his evening
+leisure, and of then calling the old serving-man to help him; but, of
+never letting him work there alone.&nbsp; And he made himself an arbour
+over against the tree, where he could sit and see that it was safe.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;As the seasons changed, and the tree changed, his mind perceived
+dangers that were always changing.&nbsp; In the leafy time, he perceived
+that the upper boughs were growing into the form of the young man&mdash;that
+they made the shape of him exactly, sitting in a forked branch swinging
+in the wind.&nbsp; In the time of the falling leaves, he perceived that
+they came down from the tree, forming tell-tale letters on the path,
+or that they had a tendency to heap themselves into a churchyard mound
+above the grave.&nbsp; In the winter, when the tree was bare, he perceived
+that the boughs swung at him the ghost of the blow the young man had
+given, and that they threatened him openly.&nbsp; In the spring, when
+the sap was mounting in the trunk, he asked himself, were the dried-up
+particles of blood mounting with it: to make out more obviously this
+year than last, the leaf-screened figure of the young man, swinging
+in the wind?</p>
+<p>&lsquo;However, he turned his Money over and over, and still over.&nbsp;
+He was in the dark trade, the gold-dust trade, and most secret trades
+that yielded great returns.&nbsp; In ten years, he had turned his Money
+over, so many times, that the traders and shippers who had dealings
+with him, absolutely did not lie&mdash;for once&mdash;when they declared
+that he had increased his fortune, Twelve Hundred Per Cent.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He possessed his riches one hundred years ago, when people
+could be lost easily.&nbsp; He had heard who the youth was, from hearing
+of the search that was made after him; but, it died away, and the youth
+was forgotten.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The annual round of changes in the tree had been repeated
+ten times since the night of the burial at its foot, when there was
+a great thunder-storm over this place.&nbsp; It broke at midnight, and
+roared until morning.&nbsp; The first intelligence he heard from his
+old serving-man that morning, was, that the tree had been struck by
+Lightning.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It had been riven down the stem, in a very surprising manner,
+and the stem lay in two blighted shafts: one resting against the house,
+and one against a portion of the old red garden-wall in which its fall
+had made a gap.&nbsp; The fissure went down the tree to a little above
+the earth, and there stopped.&nbsp; There was great curiosity to see
+the tree, and, with most of his former fears revived, he sat in his
+arbour&mdash;grown quite an old man&mdash;watching the people who came
+to see it.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;They quickly began to come, in such dangerous numbers, that
+he closed his garden-gate and refused to admit any more.&nbsp; But,
+there were certain men of science who travelled from a distance to examine
+the tree, and, in an evil hour, he let them in!&mdash;Blight and Murrain
+on them, let them in!</p>
+<p>&lsquo;They wanted to dig up the ruin by the roots, and closely examine
+it, and the earth about it.&nbsp; Never, while he lived!&nbsp; They
+offered money for it.&nbsp; They!&nbsp; Men of science, whom he could
+have bought by the gross, with a scratch of his pen!&nbsp; He showed
+them the garden-gate again, and locked and barred it.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But they were bent on doing what they wanted to do, and they
+bribed the old serving-man&mdash;a thankless wretch who regularly complained
+when he received his wages, of being underpaid&mdash;and they stole
+into the garden by night with their lanterns, picks, and shovels, and
+fell to at the tree.&nbsp; He was lying in a turret-room on the other
+side of the house (the Bride&rsquo;s Chamber had been unoccupied ever
+since), but he soon dreamed of picks and shovels, and got up.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He came to an upper window on that side, whence he could see
+their lanterns, and them, and the loose earth in a heap which he had
+himself disturbed and put back, when it was last turned to the air.&nbsp;
+It was found!&nbsp; They had that minute lighted on it.&nbsp; They were
+all bending over it.&nbsp; One of them said, &ldquo;The skull is fractured;&rdquo;
+and another, &ldquo;See here the bones;&rdquo; and another, &ldquo;See
+here the clothes;&rdquo; and then the first struck in again, and said,
+&ldquo;A rusty bill-hook!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He became sensible, next day, that he was already put under
+a strict watch, and that he could go nowhere without being followed.&nbsp;
+Before a week was out, he was taken and laid in hold.&nbsp; The circumstances
+were gradually pieced together against him, with a desperate malignity,
+and an appalling ingenuity.&nbsp; But, see the justice of men, and how
+it was extended to him!&nbsp; He was further accused of having poisoned
+that girl in the Bride&rsquo;s Chamber.&nbsp; He, who had carefully
+and expressly avoided imperilling a hair of his head for her, and who
+had seen her die of her own incapacity!</p>
+<p>&lsquo;There was doubt for which of the two murders he should be
+first tried; but, the real one was chosen, and he was found Guilty,
+and cast for death.&nbsp; Bloodthirsty wretches!&nbsp; They would have
+made him Guilty of anything, so set they were upon having his life.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;His money could do nothing to save him, and he was hanged.&nbsp;
+<i>I</i> am He, and I was hanged at Lancaster Castle with my face to
+the wall, a hundred years ago!&rsquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>At this terrific announcement, Mr. Goodchild tried to rise and cry
+out.&nbsp; But, the two fiery lines extending from the old man&rsquo;s
+eyes to his own, kept him down, and he could not utter a sound.&nbsp;
+His sense of hearing, however, was acute, and he could hear the clock
+strike Two.&nbsp; No sooner had he heard the clock strike Two, than
+he saw before him Two old men!</p>
+<p>TWO.</p>
+<p>The eyes of each, connected with his eyes by two films of fire: each,
+exactly like the other: each, addressing him at precisely one and the
+same instant: each, gnashing the same teeth in the same head, with the
+same twitched nostril above them, and the same suffused expression around
+it.&nbsp; Two old men.&nbsp; Differing in nothing, equally distinct
+to the sight, the copy no fainter than the original, the second as real
+as the first.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;At what time,&rsquo; said the Two old men, &lsquo;did you
+arrive at the door below?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;At Six.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;And there were Six old men upon the stairs!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mr. Goodchild having wiped the perspiration from his brow, or tried
+to do it, the Two old men proceeded in one voice, and in the singular
+number:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I had been anatomised, but had not yet had my skeleton put
+together and re-hung on an iron hook, when it began to be whispered
+that the Bride&rsquo;s Chamber was haunted.&nbsp; It <i>was</i> haunted,
+and I was there.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;<i>We</i> were there.&nbsp; She and I were there.&nbsp; I,
+in the chair upon the hearth; she, a white wreck again, trailing itself
+towards me on the floor.&nbsp; But, I was the speaker no more, and the
+one word that she said to me from midnight until dawn was, &lsquo;Live!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The youth was there, likewise.&nbsp; In the tree outside the
+window.&nbsp; Coming and going in the moonlight, as the tree bent and
+gave.&nbsp; He has, ever since, been there, peeping in at me in my torment;
+revealing to me by snatches, in the pale lights and slatey shadows where
+he comes and goes, bare-headed&mdash;a bill-hook, standing edgewise
+in his hair.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;In the Bride&rsquo;s Chamber, every night from midnight until
+dawn&mdash;one month in the year excepted, as I am going to tell you&mdash;he
+hides in the tree, and she comes towards me on the floor; always approaching;
+never coming nearer; always visible as if by moon-light, whether the
+moon shines or no; always saying, from mid-night until dawn, her one
+word, &ldquo;Live!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;But, in the month wherein I was forced out of this life&mdash;this
+present month of thirty days&mdash;the Bride&rsquo;s Chamber is empty
+and quiet.&nbsp; Not so my old dungeon.&nbsp; Not so the rooms where
+I was restless and afraid, ten years.&nbsp; Both are fitfully haunted
+then.&nbsp; At One in the morning.&nbsp; I am what you saw me when the
+clock struck that hour&mdash;One old man.&nbsp; At Two in the morning,
+I am Two old men.&nbsp; At Three, I am Three.&nbsp; By Twelve at noon,
+I am Twelve old men, One for every hundred per cent. of old gain.&nbsp;
+Every one of the Twelve, with Twelve times my old power of suffering
+and agony.&nbsp; From that hour until Twelve at night, I, Twelve old
+men in anguish and fearful foreboding, wait for the coming of the executioner.&nbsp;
+At Twelve at night, I, Twelve old men turned off, swing invisible outside
+Lancaster Castle, with Twelve faces to the wall!</p>
+<p>&lsquo;When the Bride&rsquo;s Chamber was first haunted, it was known
+to me that this punishment would never cease, until I could make its
+nature, and my story, known to two living men together.&nbsp; I waited
+for the coming of two living men together into the Bride&rsquo;s Chamber,
+years upon years.&nbsp; It was infused into my knowledge (of the means
+I am ignorant) that if two living men, with their eyes open, could be
+in the Bride&rsquo;s Chamber at One in the morning, they would see me
+sitting in my chair.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;At length, the whispers that the room was spiritually troubled,
+brought two men to try the adventure.&nbsp; I was scarcely struck upon
+the hearth at midnight (I come there as if the Lightning blasted me
+into being), when I heard them ascending the stairs.&nbsp; Next, I saw
+them enter.&nbsp; One of them was a bold, gay, active man, in the prime
+of life, some five and forty years of age; the other, a dozen years
+younger.&nbsp; They brought provisions with them in a basket, and bottles.&nbsp;
+A young woman accompanied them, with wood and coals for the lighting
+of the fire.&nbsp; When she had lighted it, the bold, gay, active man
+accompanied her along the gallery outside the room, to see her safely
+down the staircase, and came back laughing.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He locked the door, examined the chamber, put out the contents
+of the basket on the table before the fire&mdash;little recking of me,
+in my appointed station on the hearth, close to him&mdash;and filled
+the glasses, and ate and drank.&nbsp; His companion did the same, and
+was as cheerful and confident as he: though he was the leader.&nbsp;
+When they had supped, they laid pistols on the table, turned to the
+fire, and began to smoke their pipes of foreign make.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;They had travelled together, and had been much together, and
+had an abundance of subjects in common.&nbsp; In the midst of their
+talking and laughing, the younger man made a reference to the leader&rsquo;s
+being always ready for any adventure; that one, or any other.&nbsp;
+He replied in these words:</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Not quite so, Dick; if I am afraid of nothing else,
+I am afraid of myself.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;His companion seeming to grow a little dull, asked him, in
+what sense?&nbsp; How?</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Why, thus,&rdquo; he returned.&nbsp; &ldquo;Here is
+a Ghost to be disproved.&nbsp; Well!&nbsp; I cannot answer for what
+my fancy might do if I were alone here, or what tricks my senses might
+play with me if they had me to themselves.&nbsp; But, in company with
+another man, and especially with Dick, I would consent to outface all
+the Ghosts that were ever of in the universe.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;I had not the vanity to suppose that I was of so much
+importance to-night,&rdquo; said the other.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Of so much,&rdquo; rejoined the leader, more seriously
+than he had spoken yet, &ldquo;that I would, for the reason I have given,
+on no account have undertaken to pass the night here alone.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It was within a few minutes of One.&nbsp; The head of the
+younger man had drooped when he made his last remark, and it drooped
+lower now.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Keep awake, Dick!&rdquo; said the leader, gaily.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;The small hours are the worst.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;He tried, but his head drooped again.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Dick!&rdquo; urged the leader.&nbsp; &ldquo;Keep awake!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t,&rdquo; he indistinctly muttered.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what strange influence is stealing over me.&nbsp;
+I can&rsquo;t.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;His companion looked at him with a sudden horror, and I, in
+my different way, felt a new horror also; for, it was on the stroke
+of One, and I felt that the second watcher was yielding to me, and that
+the curse was upon me that I must send him to sleep.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;&ldquo;Get up and walk, Dick!&rdquo; cried the leader.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Try!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;It was in vain to go behind the slumber&rsquo;s chair and
+shake him.&nbsp; One o&rsquo;clock sounded, and I was present to the
+elder man, and he stood transfixed before me.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;To him alone, I was obliged to relate my story, without hope
+of benefit.&nbsp; To him alone, I was an awful phantom making a quite
+useless confession.&nbsp; I foresee it will ever be the same.&nbsp;
+The two living men together will never come to release me.&nbsp; When
+I appear, the senses of one of the two will be locked in sleep; he will
+neither see nor hear me; my communication will ever be made to a solitary
+listener, and will ever be unserviceable.&nbsp; Woe!&nbsp; Woe!&nbsp;
+Woe!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>As the Two old men, with these words, wrung their hands, it shot
+into Mr. Goodchild&rsquo;s mind that he was in the terrible situation
+of being virtually alone with the spectre, and that Mr. Idle&rsquo;s
+immoveability was explained by his having been charmed asleep at One
+o&rsquo;clock.&nbsp; In the terror of this sudden discovery which produced
+an indescribable dread, he struggled so hard to get free from the four
+fiery threads, that he snapped them, after he had pulled them out to
+a great width.&nbsp; Being then out of bonds, he caught up Mr. Idle
+from the sofa and rushed down-stairs with him.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>&lsquo;What are you about, Francis?&rsquo; demanded Mr. Idle.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;My bedroom is not down here.&nbsp; What the deuce are you carrying
+me at all for?&nbsp; I can walk with a stick now.&nbsp; I don&rsquo;t
+want to be carried.&nbsp; Put me down.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mr. Goodchild put him down in the old hall, and looked about him
+wildly.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;What are you doing?&nbsp; Idiotically plunging at your own
+sex, and rescuing them or perishing in the attempt?&rsquo; asked Mr.
+Idle, in a highly petulant state.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The One old man!&rsquo; cried Mr. Goodchild, distractedly,&mdash;&lsquo;and
+the Two old men!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Mr. Idle deigned no other reply than &lsquo;The One old woman, I
+think you mean,&rsquo; as he began hobbling his way back up the staircase,
+with the assistance of its broad balustrade.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I assure you, Tom,&rsquo; began Mr. Goodchild, attending at
+his side, &lsquo;that since you fell asleep&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Come, I like that!&rsquo; said Thomas Idle, &lsquo;I haven&rsquo;t
+closed an eye!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>With the peculiar sensitiveness on the subject of the disgraceful
+action of going to sleep out of bed, which is the lot of all mankind,
+Mr. Idle persisted in this declaration.&nbsp; The same peculiar sensitiveness
+impelled Mr. Goodchild, on being taxed with the same crime, to repudiate
+it with honourable resentment.&nbsp; The settlement of the question
+of The One old man and The Two old men was thus presently complicated,
+and soon made quite impracticable.&nbsp; Mr. Idle said it was all Bride-cake,
+and fragments, newly arranged, of things seen and thought about in the
+day.&nbsp; Mr. Goodchild said how could that be, when he hadn&rsquo;t
+been asleep, and what right could Mr. Idle have to say so, who had been
+asleep?&nbsp; Mr. Idle said he had never been asleep, and never did
+go to sleep, and that Mr. Goodchild, as a general rule, was always asleep.&nbsp;
+They consequently parted for the rest of the night, at their bedroom
+doors, a little ruffled.&nbsp; Mr. Goodchild&rsquo;s last words were,
+that he had had, in that real and tangible old sitting-room of that
+real and tangible old Inn (he supposed Mr. Idle denied its existence?),
+every sensation and experience, the present record of which is now within
+a line or two of completion; and that he would write it out and print
+it every word.&nbsp; Mr. Idle returned that he might if he liked&mdash;and
+he did like, and has now done it.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines2"><br /><br /></div>
+<p>Two of the many passengers by a certain late Sunday evening train,
+Mr. Thomas Idle and Mr. Francis Goodchild, yielded up their tickets
+at a little rotten platform (converted into artificial touchwood by
+smoke and ashes), deep in the manufacturing bosom of Yorkshire.&nbsp;
+A mysterious bosom it appeared, upon a damp, dark, Sunday night, dashed
+through in the train to the music of the whirling wheels, the panting
+of the engine, and the part-singing of hundreds of third-class excursionists,
+whose vocal efforts &lsquo;bobbed arayound&rsquo; from sacred to profane,
+from hymns, to our transatlantic sisters the Yankee Gal and Mairy Anne,
+in a remarkable way.&nbsp; There seemed to have been some large vocal
+gathering near to every lonely station on the line.&nbsp; No town was
+visible, no village was visible, no light was visible; but, a multitude
+got out singing, and a multitude got in singing, and the second multitude
+took up the hymns, and adopted our transatlantic sisters, and sang of
+their own egregious wickedness, and of their bobbing arayound, and of
+how the ship it was ready and the wind it was fair, and they were bayound
+for the sea, Mairy Anne, until they in their turn became a getting-out
+multitude, and were replaced by another getting-in multitude, who did
+the same.&nbsp; And at every station, the getting-in multitude, with
+an artistic reference to the completeness of their chorus, incessantly
+cried, as with one voice while scuffling into the carriages, &lsquo;We
+mun aa&rsquo; gang toogither!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>The singing and the multitudes had trailed off as the lonely places
+were left and the great towns were neared, and the way had lain as silently
+as a train&rsquo;s way ever can, over the vague black streets of the
+great gulfs of towns, and among their branchless woods of vague black
+chimneys.&nbsp; These towns looked, in the cinderous wet, as though
+they had one and all been on fire and were just put out&mdash;a dreary
+and quenched panorama, many miles long.</p>
+<p>Thus, Thomas and Francis got to Leeds; of which enterprising and
+important commercial centre it may be observed with delicacy, that you
+must either like it very much or not at all.&nbsp; Next day, the first
+of the Race-Week, they took train to Doncaster.</p>
+<p>And instantly the character, both of travellers and of luggage, entirely
+changed, and no other business than race-business any longer existed
+on the face of the earth.&nbsp; The talk was all of horses and &lsquo;John
+Scott.&rsquo;&nbsp; Guards whispered behind their hands to station-masters,
+of horses and John Scott.&nbsp; Men in cut-away coats and speckled cravats
+fastened with peculiar pins, and with the large bones of their legs
+developed under tight trousers, so that they should look as much as
+possible like horses&rsquo; legs, paced up and down by twos at junction-stations,
+speaking low and moodily of horses and John Scott.&nbsp; The young clergyman
+in the black strait-waistcoat, who occupied the middle seat of the carriage,
+expounded in his peculiar pulpit-accent to the young and lovely Reverend
+Mrs. Crinoline, who occupied the opposite middle-seat, a few passages
+of rumour relative to &lsquo;Oartheth, my love, and Mithter John Eth-COTT.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+A bandy vagabond, with a head like a Dutch cheese, in a fustian stable-suit,
+attending on a horse-box and going about the platforms with a halter
+hanging round his neck like a Calais burgher of the ancient period much
+degenerated, was courted by the best society, by reason of what he had
+to hint, when not engaged in eating straw, concerning &lsquo;t&rsquo;harses
+and Joon Scott.&rsquo;&nbsp; The engine-driver himself, as he applied
+one eye to his large stationary double-eye-glass on the engine, seemed
+to keep the other open, sideways, upon horses and John Scott.</p>
+<p>Breaks and barriers at Doncaster Station to keep the crowd off; temporary
+wooden avenues of ingress and egress, to help the crowd on.&nbsp; Forty
+extra porters sent down for this present blessed Race-Week, and all
+of them making up their betting-books in the lamp-room or somewhere
+else, and none of them to come and touch the luggage.&nbsp; Travellers
+disgorged into an open space, a howling wilderness of idle men.&nbsp;
+All work but race-work at a stand-still; all men at a stand-still.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;Ey my word!&nbsp; Deant ask noon o&rsquo; us to help wi&rsquo;
+t&rsquo;luggage.&nbsp; Bock your opinion loike a mon.&nbsp; Coom!&nbsp;
+Dang it, coom, t&rsquo;harses and Joon Scott!&rsquo;&nbsp; In the midst
+of the idle men, all the fly horses and omnibus horses of Doncaster
+and parts adjacent, rampant, rearing, backing, plunging, shying&mdash;apparently
+the result of their hearing of nothing but their own order and John
+Scott.</p>
+<p>Grand Dramatic Company from London for the Race-Week.&nbsp; Poses
+Plastiques in the Grand Assembly Room up the Stable-Yard at seven and
+nine each evening, for the Race-Week.&nbsp; Grand Alliance Circus in
+the field beyond the bridge, for the Race-Week.&nbsp; Grand Exhibition
+of Aztec Lilliputians, important to all who want to be horrified cheap,
+for the Race-Week.&nbsp; Lodgings, grand and not grand, but all at grand
+prices, ranging from ten pounds to twenty, for the Grand Race-Week!</p>
+<p>Rendered giddy enough by these things, Messieurs Idle and Goodchild
+repaired to the quarters they had secured beforehand, and Mr. Goodchild
+looked down from the window into the surging street.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;By Heaven, Tom!&rsquo; cried he, after contemplating it, &lsquo;I
+am in the Lunatic Asylum again, and these are all mad people under the
+charge of a body of designing keepers!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>All through the Race-Week, Mr. Goodchild never divested himself of
+this idea.&nbsp; Every day he looked out of window, with something of
+the dread of Lemuel Gulliver looking down at men after he returned home
+from the horse-country; and every day he saw the Lunatics, horse-mad,
+betting-mad, drunken-mad, vice-mad, and the designing Keepers always
+after them.&nbsp; The idea pervaded, like the second colour in shot-silk,
+the whole of Mr. Goodchild&rsquo;s impressions.&nbsp; They were much
+as follows:</p>
+<p>Monday, mid-day.&nbsp; Races not to begin until to-morrow, but all
+the mob-Lunatics out, crowding the pavements of the one main street
+of pretty and pleasant Doncaster, crowding the road, particularly crowding
+the outside of the Betting Rooms, whooping and shouting loudly after
+all passing vehicles.&nbsp; Frightened lunatic horses occasionally running
+away, with infinite clatter.&nbsp; All degrees of men, from peers to
+paupers, betting incessantly.&nbsp; Keepers very watchful, and taking
+all good chances.&nbsp; An awful family likeness among the Keepers,
+to Mr. Palmer and Mr. Thurtell.&nbsp; With some knowledge of expression
+and some acquaintance with heads (thus writes Mr. Goodchild), I never
+have seen anywhere, so many repetitions of one class of countenance
+and one character of head (both evil) as in this street at this time.&nbsp;
+Cunning, covetousness, secrecy, cold calculation, hard callousness and
+dire insensibility, are the uniform Keeper characteristics.&nbsp; Mr.
+Palmer passes me five times in five minutes, and, so I go down the street,
+the back of Mr. Thurtell&rsquo;s skull is always going on before me.</p>
+<p>Monday evening.&nbsp; Town lighted up; more Lunatics out than ever;
+a complete choke and stoppage of the thoroughfare outside the Betting
+Rooms.&nbsp; Keepers, having dined, pervade the Betting Rooms, and sharply
+snap at the moneyed Lunatics.&nbsp; Some Keepers flushed with drink,
+and some not, but all close and calculating.&nbsp; A vague echoing roar
+of &lsquo;t&rsquo;harses&rsquo; and &lsquo;t&rsquo;races&rsquo; always
+rising in the air, until midnight, at about which period it dies away
+in occasional drunken songs and straggling yells.&nbsp; But, all night,
+some unmannerly drinking-house in the neighbourhood opens its mouth
+at intervals and spits out a man too drunk to be retained: who thereupon
+makes what uproarious protest may be left in him, and either falls asleep
+where he tumbles, or is carried off in custody.</p>
+<p>Tuesday morning, at daybreak.&nbsp; A sudden rising, as it were out
+of the earth, of all the obscene creatures, who sell &lsquo;correct
+cards of the races.&rsquo;&nbsp; They may have been coiled in corners,
+or sleeping on door-steps, and, having all passed the night under the
+same set of circumstances, may all want to circulate their blood at
+the same time; but, however that may be, they spring into existence
+all at once and together, as though a new Cadmus had sown a race-horse&rsquo;s
+teeth.&nbsp; There is nobody up, to buy the cards; but, the cards are
+madly cried.&nbsp; There is no patronage to quarrel for; but, they madly
+quarrel and fight.&nbsp; Conspicuous among these hyaenas, as breakfast-time
+discloses, is a fearful creature in the general semblance of a man:
+shaken off his next-to-no legs by drink and devilry, bare-headed and
+bare-footed, with a great shock of hair like a horrible broom, and nothing
+on him but a ragged pair of trousers and a pink glazed-calico coat&mdash;made
+on him&mdash;so very tight that it is as evident that he could never
+take it off, as that he never does.&nbsp; This hideous apparition, inconceivably
+drunk, has a terrible power of making a gong-like imitation of the braying
+of an ass: which feat requires that he should lay his right jaw in his
+begrimed right paw, double himself up, and shake his bray out of himself,
+with much staggering on his next-to-no legs, and much twirling of his
+horrible broom, as if it were a mop.&nbsp; From the present minute,
+when he comes in sight holding up his cards to the windows, and hoarsely
+proposing purchase to My Lord, Your Excellency, Colonel, the Noble Captain,
+and Your Honourable Worship&mdash;from the present minute until the
+Grand Race-Week is finished, at all hours of the morning, evening, day,
+and night, shall the town reverberate, at capricious intervals, to the
+brays of this frightful animal the Gong-donkey.</p>
+<p>No very great racing to-day, so no very great amount of vehicles:
+though there is a good sprinkling, too: from farmers&rsquo; carts and
+gigs, to carriages with post-horses and to fours-in-hand, mostly coming
+by the road from York, and passing on straight through the main street
+to the Course.&nbsp; A walk in the wrong direction may be a better thing
+for Mr. Goodchild to-day than the Course, so he walks in the wrong direction.&nbsp;
+Everybody gone to the races.&nbsp; Only children in the street.&nbsp;
+Grand Alliance Circus deserted; not one Star-Rider left; omnibus which
+forms the Pay-Place, having on separate panels Pay here for the Boxes,
+Pay here for the Pit, Pay here for the Gallery, hove down in a corner
+and locked up; nobody near the tent but the man on his knees on the
+grass, who is making the paper balloons for the Star young gentlemen
+to jump through to-night.&nbsp; A pleasant road, pleasantly wooded.&nbsp;
+No labourers working in the fields; all gone &lsquo;t&rsquo;races.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+The few late wenders of their way &lsquo;t&rsquo;races,&rsquo; who are
+yet left driving on the road, stare in amazement at the recluse who
+is not going &lsquo;t&rsquo;races.&rsquo;&nbsp; Roadside innkeeper has
+gone &lsquo;t&rsquo;races.&rsquo;&nbsp; Turnpike-man has gone &lsquo;t&rsquo;races.&rsquo;&nbsp;
+His thrifty wife, washing clothes at the toll-house door, is going &lsquo;t&rsquo;races&rsquo;
+to-morrow.&nbsp; Perhaps there may be no one left to take the toll to-morrow;
+who knows?&nbsp; Though assuredly that would be neither turnpike-like
+nor Yorkshire-like.&nbsp; The very wind and dust seem to be hurrying
+&lsquo;t&rsquo;races,&rsquo; as they briskly pass the only wayfarer
+on the road.&nbsp; In the distance, the Railway Engine, waiting at the
+town-end, shrieks despairingly.&nbsp; Nothing but the difficulty of
+getting off the Line, restrains that Engine from going &lsquo;t&rsquo;races,&rsquo;
+too, it is very clear.</p>
+<p>At night, more Lunatics out than last night&mdash;and more Keepers.&nbsp;
+The latter very active at the Betting Rooms, the street in front of
+which is now impassable.&nbsp; Mr. Palmer as before.&nbsp; Mr. Thurtell
+as before.&nbsp; Roar and uproar as before.&nbsp; Gradual subsidence
+as before.&nbsp; Unmannerly drinking-house expectorates as before.&nbsp;
+Drunken negro-melodists, Gong-donkey, and correct cards, in the night.</p>
+<p>On Wednesday morning, the morning of the great St. Leger, it becomes
+apparent that there has been a great influx since yesterday, both of
+Lunatics and Keepers.&nbsp; The families of the tradesmen over the way
+are no longer within human ken; their places know them no more; ten,
+fifteen, and twenty guinea-lodgers fill them.&nbsp; At the pastry-cook&rsquo;s
+second-floor window, a Keeper is brushing Mr. Thurtell&rsquo;s hair&mdash;thinking
+it his own.&nbsp; In the wax-chandler&rsquo;s attic, another Keeper
+is putting on Mr. Palmer&rsquo;s braces.&nbsp; In the gunsmith&rsquo;s
+nursery, a Lunatic is shaving himself.&nbsp; In the serious stationer&rsquo;s
+best sitting-room, three Lunatics are taking a combination-breakfast,
+praising the (cook&rsquo;s) devil, and drinking neat brandy in an atmosphere
+of last midnight&rsquo;s cigars.&nbsp; No family sanctuary is free from
+our Angelic messengers&mdash;we put up at the Angel&mdash;who in the
+guise of extra waiters for the grand Race-Week, rattle in and out of
+the most secret chambers of everybody&rsquo;s house, with dishes and
+tin covers, decanters, soda-water bottles, and glasses.&nbsp; An hour
+later.&nbsp; Down the street and up the street, as far as eyes can see
+and a good deal farther, there is a dense crowd; outside the Betting
+Rooms it is like a great struggle at a theatre door&mdash;in the days
+of theatres; or at the vestibule of the Spurgeon temple&mdash;in the
+days of Spurgeon.&nbsp; An hour later.&nbsp; Fusing into this crowd,
+and somehow getting through it, are all kinds of conveyances, and all
+kinds of foot-passengers; carts, with brick-makers and brick-makeresses
+jolting up and down on planks; drags, with the needful grooms behind,
+sitting cross-armed in the needful manner, and slanting themselves backward
+from the soles of their boots at the needful angle; postboys, in the
+shining hats and smart jackets of the olden time, when stokers were
+not; beautiful Yorkshire horses, gallantly driven by their own breeders
+and masters.&nbsp; Under every pole, and every shaft, and every horse,
+and every wheel as it would seem, the Gong-donkey&mdash;metallically
+braying, when not struggling for life, or whipped out of the way.</p>
+<p>By one o&rsquo;clock, all this stir has gone out of the streets,
+and there is no one left in them but Francis Goodchild.&nbsp; Francis
+Goodchild will not be left in them long; for, he too is on his way,
+&lsquo;t&rsquo;races.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>A most beautiful sight, Francis Goodchild finds &lsquo;t&rsquo;races&rsquo;
+to be, when he has left fair Doncaster behind him, and comes out on
+the free course, with its agreeable prospect, its quaint Red House oddly
+changing and turning as Francis turns, its green grass, and fresh heath.&nbsp;
+A free course and an easy one, where Francis can roll smoothly where
+he will, and can choose between the start, or the coming-in, or the
+turn behind the brow of the hill, or any out-of-the-way point where
+he lists to see the throbbing horses straining every nerve, and making
+the sympathetic earth throb as they come by.&nbsp; Francis much delights
+to be, not in the Grand Stand, but where he can see it, rising against
+the sky with its vast tiers of little white dots of faces, and its last
+high rows and corners of people, looking like pins stuck into an enormous
+pincushion&mdash;not quite so symmetrically as his orderly eye could
+wish, when people change or go away.&nbsp; When the race is nearly run
+out, it is as good as the race to him to see the flutter among the pins,
+and the change in them from dark to light, as hats are taken off and
+waved.&nbsp; Not less full of interest, the loud anticipation of the
+winner&rsquo;s name, the swelling, and the final, roar; then, the quick
+dropping of all the pins out of their places, the revelation of the
+shape of the bare pincushion, and the closing-in of the whole host of
+Lunatics and Keepers, in the rear of the three horses with bright-coloured
+riders, who have not yet quite subdued their gallop though the contest
+is over.</p>
+<p>Mr. Goodchild would appear to have been by no means free from lunacy
+himself at &lsquo;t&rsquo;races,&rsquo; though not of the prevalent
+kind.&nbsp; He is suspected by Mr. Idle to have fallen into a dreadful
+state concerning a pair of little lilac gloves and a little bonnet that
+he saw there.&nbsp; Mr. Idle asserts, that he did afterwards repeat
+at the Angel, with an appearance of being lunatically seized, some rhapsody
+to the following effect: &lsquo;O little lilac gloves!&nbsp; And O winning
+little bonnet, making in conjunction with her golden hair quite a Glory
+in the sunlight round the pretty head, why anything in the world but
+you and me!&nbsp; Why may not this day&rsquo;s running-of horses, to
+all the rest: of precious sands of life to me&mdash;be prolonged through
+an everlasting autumn-sunshine, without a sunset!&nbsp; Slave of the
+Lamp, or Ring, strike me yonder gallant equestrian Clerk of the Course,
+in the scarlet coat, motionless on the green grass for ages!&nbsp; Friendly
+Devil on Two Sticks, for ten times ten thousands years, keep Blink-Bonny
+jibbing at the post, and let us have no start!&nbsp; Arab drums, powerful
+of old to summon Genii in the desert, sound of yourselves and raise
+a troop for me in the desert of my heart, which shall so enchant this
+dusty barouche (with a conspicuous excise-plate, resembling the Collector&rsquo;s
+door-plate at a turnpike), that I, within it, loving the little lilac
+gloves, the winning little bonnet, and the dear unknown-wearer with
+the golden hair, may wait by her side for ever, to see a Great St. Leger
+that shall never be run!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Thursday morning.&nbsp; After a tremendous night of crowding, shouting,
+drinking-house expectoration, Gong-donkey, and correct cards.&nbsp;
+Symptoms of yesterday&rsquo;s gains in the way of drink, and of yesterday&rsquo;s
+losses in the way of money, abundant.&nbsp; Money-losses very great.&nbsp;
+As usual, nobody seems to have won; but, large losses and many losers
+are unquestionable facts.&nbsp; Both Lunatics and Keepers, in general
+very low.&nbsp; Several of both kinds look in at the chemist&rsquo;s
+while Mr. Goodchild is making a purchase there, to be &lsquo;picked
+up.&rsquo;&nbsp; One red-eyed Lunatic, flushed, faded, and disordered,
+enters hurriedly and cries savagely, &lsquo;Hond us a gloss of sal volatile
+in wather, or soom dommed thing o&rsquo; thot sart!&rsquo;&nbsp; Faces
+at the Betting Rooms very long, and a tendency to bite nails observable.&nbsp;
+Keepers likewise given this morning to standing about solitary, with
+their hands in their pockets, looking down at their boots as they fit
+them into cracks of the pavement, and then looking up whistling and
+walking away.&nbsp; Grand Alliance Circus out, in procession; buxom
+lady-member of Grand Alliance, in crimson riding-habit, fresher to look
+at, even in her paint under the day sky, than the cheeks of Lunatics
+or Keepers.&nbsp; Spanish Cavalier appears to have lost yesterday, and
+jingles his bossed bridle with disgust, as if he were paying.&nbsp;
+Reaction also apparent at the Guildhall opposite, whence certain pickpockets
+come out handcuffed together, with that peculiar walk which is never
+seen under any other circumstances&mdash;a walk expressive of going
+to jail, game, but still of jails being in bad taste and arbitrary,
+and how would <i>you</i> like it if it was you instead of me, as it
+ought to be!&nbsp; Mid-day.&nbsp; Town filled as yesterday, but not
+so full; and emptied as yesterday, but not so empty.&nbsp; In the evening,
+Angel ordinary where every Lunatic and Keeper has his modest daily meal
+of turtle, venison, and wine, not so crowded as yesterday, and not so
+noisy.&nbsp; At night, the theatre.&nbsp; More abstracted faces in it
+than one ever sees at public assemblies; such faces wearing an expression
+which strongly reminds Mr. Goodchild of the boys at school who were
+&lsquo;going up next,&rsquo; with their arithmetic or mathematics.&nbsp;
+These boys are, no doubt, going up to-morrow with <i>their</i> sums
+and figures.&nbsp; Mr. Palmer and Mr. Thurtell in the boxes O. P.&nbsp;
+Mr. Thurtell and Mr. Palmer in the boxes P. S.&nbsp; The firm of Thurtell,
+Palmer, and Thurtell, in the boxes Centre.&nbsp; A most odious tendency
+observable in these distinguished gentlemen to put vile constructions
+on sufficiently innocent phrases in the play, and then to applaud them
+in a Satyr-like manner.&nbsp; Behind Mr. Goodchild, with a party of
+other Lunatics and one Keeper, the express incarnation of the thing
+called a &lsquo;gent.&rsquo;&nbsp; A gentleman born; a gent manufactured.&nbsp;
+A something with a scarf round its neck, and a slipshod speech issuing
+from behind the scarf; more depraved, more foolish, more ignorant, more
+unable to believe in any noble or good thing of any kind, than the stupidest
+Bosjesman.&nbsp; The thing is but a boy in years, and is addled with
+drink.&nbsp; To do its company justice, even its company is ashamed
+of it, as it drawls its slang criticisms on the representation, and
+inflames Mr. Goodchild with a burning ardour to fling it into the pit.&nbsp;
+Its remarks are so horrible, that Mr. Goodchild, for the moment, even
+doubts whether that <i>is</i> a wholesome Art, which sets women apart
+on a high floor before such a thing as this, though as good as its own
+sisters, or its own mother&mdash;whom Heaven forgive for bringing it
+into the world!&nbsp; But, the consideration that a low nature must
+make a low world of its own to live in, whatever the real materials,
+or it could no more exist than any of us could without the sense of
+touch, brings Mr. Goodchild to reason: the rather, because the thing
+soon drops its downy chin upon its scarf, and slobbers itself asleep.</p>
+<p>Friday Morning.&nbsp; Early fights.&nbsp; Gong-donkey, and correct
+cards.&nbsp; Again, a great set towards the races, though not so great
+a set as on Wednesday.&nbsp; Much packing going on too, upstairs at
+the gun-smith&rsquo;s, the wax-chandler&rsquo;s, and the serious stationer&rsquo;s;
+for there will be a heavy drift of Lunatics and Keepers to London by
+the afternoon train.&nbsp; The course as pretty as ever; the great pincushion
+as like a pincushion, but not nearly so full of pins; whole rows of
+pins wanting.&nbsp; On the great event of the day, both Lunatics and
+Keepers become inspired with rage; and there is a violent scuffling,
+and a rushing at the losing jockey, and an emergence of the said jockey
+from a swaying and menacing crowd, protected by friends, and looking
+the worse for wear; which is a rough proceeding, though animating to
+see from a pleasant distance.&nbsp; After the great event, rills begin
+to flow from the pincushion towards the railroad; the rills swell into
+rivers; the rivers soon unite into a lake.&nbsp; The lake floats Mr.
+Goodchild into Doncaster, past the Itinerant personage in black, by
+the way-side telling him from the vantage ground of a legibly printed
+placard on a pole that for all these things the Lord will bring him
+to judgment.&nbsp; No turtle and venison ordinary this evening; that
+is all over.&nbsp; No Betting at the rooms; nothing there but the plants
+in pots, which have, all the week, been stood about the entry to give
+it an innocent appearance, and which have sorely sickened by this time.</p>
+<p>Saturday.&nbsp; Mr. Idle wishes to know at breakfast, what were those
+dreadful groanings in his bedroom doorway in the night?&nbsp; Mr. Goodchild
+answers, Nightmare.&nbsp; Mr. Idle repels the calumny, and calls the
+waiter.&nbsp; The Angel is very sorry&mdash;had intended to explain;
+but you see, gentlemen, there was a gentleman dined down-stairs with
+two more, and he had lost a deal of money, and he would drink a deal
+of wine, and in the night he &lsquo;took the horrors,&rsquo; and got
+up; and as his friends could do nothing with him he laid himself down
+and groaned at Mr. Idle&rsquo;s door.&nbsp; &lsquo;And he DID groan
+there,&rsquo; Mr. Idle says; &lsquo;and you will please to imagine me
+inside, &ldquo;taking the horrors&rdquo; too!&rsquo;</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>So far, the picture of Doncaster on the occasion of its great sporting
+anniversary, offers probably a general representation of the social
+condition of the town, in the past as well as in the present time.&nbsp;
+The sole local phenomenon of the current year, which may be considered
+as entirely unprecedented in its way, and which certainly claims, on
+that account, some slight share of notice, consists in the actual existence
+of one remarkable individual, who is sojourning in Doncaster, and who,
+neither directly nor indirectly, has anything at all to do, in any capacity
+whatever, with the racing amusements of the week.&nbsp; Ranging throughout
+the entire crowd that fills the town, and including the inhabitants
+as well as the visitors, nobody is to be found altogether disconnected
+with the business of the day, excepting this one unparalleled man.&nbsp;
+He does not bet on the races, like the sporting men.&nbsp; He does not
+assist the races, like the jockeys, starters, judges, and grooms.&nbsp;
+He does not look on at the races, like Mr. Goodchild and his fellow-spectators.&nbsp;
+He does not profit by the races, like the hotel-keepers and the tradespeople.&nbsp;
+He does not minister to the necessities of the races, like the booth-keepers,
+the postilions, the waiters, and the hawkers of Lists.&nbsp; He does
+not assist the attractions of the races, like the actors at the theatre,
+the riders at the circus, or the posturers at the Poses Plastiques.&nbsp;
+Absolutely and literally, he is the only individual in Doncaster who
+stands by the brink of the full-flowing race-stream, and is not swept
+away by it in common with all the rest of his species.&nbsp; Who is
+this modern hermit, this recluse of the St. Leger-week, this inscrutably
+ungregarious being, who lives apart from the amusements and activities
+of his fellow-creatures?&nbsp; Surely, there is little difficulty in
+guessing that clearest and easiest of all riddles.&nbsp; Who could he
+be, but Mr. Thomas Idle?</p>
+<p>Thomas had suffered himself to be taken to Doncaster, just as he
+would have suffered himself to be taken to any other place in the habitable
+globe which would guarantee him the temporary possession of a comfortable
+sofa to rest his ankle on.&nbsp; Once established at the hotel, with
+his leg on one cushion and his back against another, he formally declined
+taking the slightest interest in any circumstance whatever connected
+with the races, or with the people who were assembled to see them.&nbsp;
+Francis Goodchild, anxious that the hours should pass by his crippled
+travelling-companion as lightly as possible, suggested that his sofa
+should be moved to the window, and that he should amuse himself by looking
+out at the moving panorama of humanity, which the view from it of the
+principal street presented.&nbsp; Thomas, however, steadily declined
+profiting by the suggestion.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;The farther I am from the window,&rsquo; he said, &lsquo;the
+better, Brother Francis, I shall be pleased.&nbsp; I have nothing in
+common with the one prevalent idea of all those people who are passing
+in the street.&nbsp; Why should I care to look at them?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I hope I have nothing in common with the prevalent idea of
+a great many of them, either,&rsquo; answered Goodchild, thinking of
+the sporting gentlemen whom he had met in the course of his wanderings
+about Doncaster.&nbsp; &lsquo;But, surely, among all the people who
+are walking by the house, at this very moment, you may find&mdash;&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Not one living creature,&rsquo; interposed Thomas, &lsquo;who
+is not, in one way or another, interested in horses, and who is not,
+in a greater or less degree, an admirer of them.&nbsp; Now, I hold opinions
+in reference to these particular members of the quadruped creation,
+which may lay claim (as I believe) to the disastrous distinction of
+being unpartaken by any other human being, civilised or savage, over
+the whole surface of the earth.&nbsp; Taking the horse as an animal
+in the abstract, Francis, I cordially despise him from every point of
+view.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Thomas,&rsquo; said Goodchild, &lsquo;confinement to the house
+has begun to affect your biliary secretions.&nbsp; I shall go to the
+chemist&rsquo;s and get you some physic.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I object,&rsquo; continued Thomas, quietly possessing himself
+of his friend&rsquo;s hat, which stood on a table near him,&mdash;&lsquo;I
+object, first, to the personal appearance of the horse.&nbsp; I protest
+against the conventional idea of beauty, as attached to that animal.&nbsp;
+I think his nose too long, his forehead too low, and his legs (except
+in the case of the cart-horse) ridiculously thin by comparison with
+the size of his body.&nbsp; Again, considering how big an animal he
+is, I object to the contemptible delicacy of his constitution.&nbsp;
+Is he not the sickliest creature in creation?&nbsp; Does any child catch
+cold as easily as a horse?&nbsp; Does he not sprain his fetlock, for
+all his appearance of superior strength, as easily as I sprained my
+ankle!&nbsp; Furthermore, to take him from another point of view, what
+a helpless wretch he is!&nbsp; No fine lady requires more constant waiting-on
+than a horse.&nbsp; Other animals can make their own toilette: he must
+have a groom.&nbsp; You will tell me that this is because we want to
+make his coat artificially glossy.&nbsp; Glossy!&nbsp; Come home with
+me, and see my cat,&mdash;my clever cat, who can groom herself!&nbsp;
+Look at your own dog! see how the intelligent creature curry-combs himself
+with his own honest teeth!&nbsp; Then, again, what a fool the horse
+is, what a poor, nervous fool!&nbsp; He will start at a piece of white
+paper in the road as if it was a lion.&nbsp; His one idea, when he hears
+a noise that he is not accustomed to, is to run away from it.&nbsp;
+What do you say to those two common instances of the sense and courage
+of this absurdly overpraised animal?&nbsp; I might multiply them to
+two hundred, if I chose to exert my mind and waste my breath, which
+I never do.&nbsp; I prefer coming at once to my last charge against
+the horse, which is the most serious of all, because it affects his
+moral character.&nbsp; I accuse him boldly, in his capacity of servant
+to man, of slyness and treachery.&nbsp; I brand him publicly, no matter
+how mild he may look about the eyes, or how sleek he may be about the
+coat, as a systematic betrayer, whenever he can get the chance, of the
+confidence reposed in him.&nbsp; What do you mean by laughing and shaking
+your head at me?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Oh, Thomas, Thomas!&rsquo; said Goodchild.&nbsp; &lsquo;You
+had better give me my hat; you had better let me get you that physic.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;I will let you get anything you like, including a composing
+draught for yourself,&rsquo; said Thomas, irritably alluding to his
+fellow-apprentice&rsquo;s inexhaustible activity, &lsquo;if you will
+only sit quiet for five minutes longer, and hear me out.&nbsp; I say
+again the horse is a betrayer of the confidence reposed in him; and
+that opinion, let me add, is drawn from my own personal experience,
+and is not based on any fanciful theory whatever.&nbsp; You shall have
+two instances, two overwhelming instances.&nbsp; Let me start the first
+of these by asking, what is the distinguishing quality which the Shetland
+Pony has arrogated to himself, and is still perpetually trumpeting through
+the world by means of popular report and books on Natural History?&nbsp;
+I see the answer in your face: it is the quality of being Sure-Footed.&nbsp;
+He professes to have other virtues, such as hardiness and strength,
+which you may discover on trial; but the one thing which he insists
+on your believing, when you get on his back, is that he may be safely
+depended on not to tumble down with you.&nbsp; Very good.&nbsp; Some
+years ago, I was in Shetland with a party of friends.&nbsp; They insisted
+on taking me with them to the top of a precipice that overhung the sea.&nbsp;
+It was a great distance off, but they all determined to walk to it except
+me.&nbsp; I was wiser then than I was with you at Carrock, and I determined
+to be carried to the precipice.&nbsp; There was no carriage-road in
+the island, and nobody offered (in consequence, as I suppose, of the
+imperfectly-civilised state of the country) to bring me a sedan-chair,
+which is naturally what I should have liked best.&nbsp; A Shetland pony
+was produced instead.&nbsp; I remembered my Natural History, I recalled
+popular report, and I got on the little beast&rsquo;s back, as any other
+man would have done in my position, placing implicit confidence in the
+sureness of his feet.&nbsp; And how did he repay that confidence?&nbsp;
+Brother Francis, carry your mind on from morning to noon.&nbsp; Picture
+to yourself a howling wilderness of grass and bog, bounded by low stony
+hills.&nbsp; Pick out one particular spot in that imaginary scene, and
+sketch me in it, with outstretched arms, curved back, and heels in the
+air, plunging headforemost into a black patch of water and mud.&nbsp;
+Place just behind me the legs, the body, and the head of a sure-footed
+Shetland pony, all stretched flat on the ground, and you will have produced
+an accurate representation of a very lamentable fact.&nbsp; And the
+moral device, Francis, of this picture will be to testify that when
+gentlemen put confidence in the legs of Shetland ponies, they will find
+to their cost that they are leaning on nothing but broken reeds.&nbsp;
+There is my first instance&mdash;and what have you got to say to that?&rsquo;</p>
+<p>&lsquo;Nothing, but that I want my hat,&rsquo; answered Goodchild,
+starting up and walking restlessly about the room.</p>
+<p>&lsquo;You shall have it in a minute,&rsquo; rejoined Thomas.&nbsp;
+&lsquo;My second instance&rsquo;&mdash;(Goodchild groaned, and sat down
+again)&mdash;&lsquo;My second instance is more appropriate to the present
+time and place, for it refers to a race-horse.&nbsp; Two years ago an
+excellent friend of mine, who was desirous of prevailing on me to take
+regular exercise, and who was well enough acquainted with the weakness
+of my legs to expect no very active compliance with his wishes on their
+part, offered to make me a present of one of his horses.&nbsp; Hearing
+that the animal in question had started in life on the turf, I declined
+accepting the gift with many thanks; adding, by way of explanation,
+that I looked on a race-horse as a kind of embodied hurricane, upon
+which no sane man of my character and habits could be expected to seat
+himself.&nbsp; My friend replied that, however appropriate my metaphor
+might be as applied to race-horses in general, it was singularly unsuitable
+as applied to the particular horse which he proposed to give me.&nbsp;
+From a foal upwards this remarkable animal had been the idlest and most
+sluggish of his race.&nbsp; Whatever capacities for speed he might possess
+he had kept so strictly to himself, that no amount of training had ever
+brought them out.&nbsp; He had been found hopelessly slow as a racer,
+and hopelessly lazy as a hunter, and was fit for nothing but a quiet,
+easy life of it with an old gentleman or an invalid.&nbsp; When I heard
+this account of the horse, I don&rsquo;t mind confessing that my heart
+warmed to him.&nbsp; Visions of Thomas Idle ambling serenely on the
+back of a steed as lazy as himself, presenting to a restless world the
+soothing and composite spectacle of a kind of sluggardly Centaur, too
+peaceable in his habits to alarm anybody, swam attractively before my
+eyes.&nbsp; I went to look at the horse in the stable.&nbsp; Nice fellow!
+he was fast asleep with a kitten on his back.&nbsp; I saw him taken
+out for an airing by the groom.&nbsp; If he had had trousers on his
+legs I should not have known them from my own, so deliberately were
+they lifted up, so gently were they put down, so slowly did they get
+over the ground.&nbsp; From that moment I gratefully accepted my friend&rsquo;s
+offer.&nbsp; I went home; the horse followed me&mdash;by a slow train.&nbsp;
+Oh, Francis, how devoutly I believed in that horse I how carefully I
+looked after all his little comforts!&nbsp; I had never gone the length
+of hiring a man-servant to wait on myself; but I went to the expense
+of hiring one to wait upon him.&nbsp; If I thought a little of myself
+when I bought the softest saddle that could be had for money, I thought
+also of my horse.&nbsp; When the man at the shop afterwards offered
+me spurs and a whip, I turned from him with horror.&nbsp; When I sallied
+out for my first ride, I went purposely unarmed with the means of hurrying
+my steed.&nbsp; He proceeded at his own pace every step of the way;
+and when he stopped, at last, and blew out both his sides with a heavy
+sigh, and turned his sleepy head and looked behind him, I took him home
+again, as I might take home an artless child who said to me, &ldquo;If
+you please, sir, I am tired.&rdquo;&nbsp; For a week this complete harmony
+between me and my horse lasted undisturbed.&nbsp; At the end of that
+time, when he had made quite sure of my friendly confidence in his laziness,
+when he had thoroughly acquainted himself with all the little weaknesses
+of my seat (and their name is Legion), the smouldering treachery and
+ingratitude of the equine nature blazed out in an instant.&nbsp; Without
+the slightest provocation from me, with nothing passing him at the time
+but a pony-chaise driven by an old lady, he started in one instant from
+a state of sluggish depression to a state of frantic high spirits.&nbsp;
+He kicked, he plunged, he shied, he pranced, he capered fearfully.&nbsp;
+I sat on him as long as I could, and when I could sit no longer, I fell
+off.&nbsp; No, Francis! this is not a circumstance to be laughed at,
+but to be wept over.&nbsp; What would be said of a Man who had requited
+my kindness in that way?&nbsp; Range over all the rest of the animal
+creation, and where will you find me an instance of treachery so black
+as this?&nbsp; The cow that kicks down the milking-pail may have some
+reason for it; she may think herself taxed too heavily to contribute
+to the dilution of human tea and the greasing of human bread.&nbsp;
+The tiger who springs out on me unawares has the excuse of being hungry
+at the time, to say nothing of the further justification of being a
+total stranger to me.&nbsp; The very flea who surprises me in my sleep
+may defend his act of assassination on the ground that I, in my turn,
+am always ready to murder him when I am awake.&nbsp; I defy the whole
+body of Natural Historians to move me, logically, off the ground that
+I have taken in regard to the horse.&nbsp; Receive back your hat, Brother
+Francis, and go to the chemist&rsquo;s, if you please; for I have now
+done.&nbsp; Ask me to take anything you like, except an interest in
+the Doncaster races.&nbsp; Ask me to look at anything you like, except
+an assemblage of people all animated by feelings of a friendly and admiring
+nature towards the horse.&nbsp; You are a remarkably well-informed man,
+and you have heard of hermits.&nbsp; Look upon me as a member of that
+ancient fraternity, and you will sensibly add to the many obligations
+which Thomas Idle is proud to owe to Francis Goodchild.&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Here, fatigued by the effort of excessive talking, disputatious Thomas
+waved one hand languidly, laid his head back on the sofa-pillow, and
+calmly closed his eyes.</p>
+<p>At a later period, Mr. Goodchild assailed his travelling companion
+boldly from the impregnable fortress of common sense.&nbsp; But Thomas,
+though tamed in body by drastic discipline, was still as mentally unapproachable
+as ever on the subject of his favourite delusion.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines1"><br /></div>
+<p>The view from the window after Saturday&rsquo;s breakfast is altogether
+changed.&nbsp; The tradesmen&rsquo;s families have all come back again.&nbsp;
+The serious stationer&rsquo;s young woman of all work is shaking a duster
+out of the window of the combination breakfast-room; a child is playing
+with a doll, where Mr. Thurtell&rsquo;s hair was brushed; a sanitary
+scrubbing is in progress on the spot where Mr. Palmer&rsquo;s braces
+were put on.&nbsp; No signs of the Races are in the streets, but the
+tramps and the tumble-down-carts and trucks laden with drinking-forms
+and tables and remnants of booths, that are making their way out of
+the town as fast as they can.&nbsp; The Angel, which has been cleared
+for action all the week, already begins restoring every neat and comfortable
+article of furniture to its own neat and comfortable place.&nbsp; The
+Angel&rsquo;s daughters (pleasanter angels Mr. Idle and Mr. Goodchild
+never saw, nor more quietly expert in their business, nor more superior
+to the common vice of being above it), have a little time to rest, and
+to air their cheerful faces among the flowers in the yard.&nbsp; It
+is market-day.&nbsp; The market looks unusually natural, comfortable,
+and wholesome; the market-people too.&nbsp; The town seems quite restored,
+when, hark! a metallic bray&mdash;The Gong-donkey!</p>
+<p>The wretched animal has not cleared off with the rest, but is here,
+under the window.&nbsp; How much more inconceivably drunk now, how much
+more begrimed of paw, how much more tight of calico hide, how much more
+stained and daubed and dirty and dunghilly, from his horrible broom
+to his tender toes, who shall say!&nbsp; He cannot even shake the bray
+out of himself now, without laying his cheek so near to the mud of the
+street, that he pitches over after delivering it.&nbsp; Now, prone in
+the mud, and now backing himself up against shop-windows, the owners
+of which come out in terror to remove him; now, in the drinking-shop,
+and now in the tobacconist&rsquo;s, where he goes to buy tobacco, and
+makes his way into the parlour, and where he gets a cigar, which in
+half-a-minute he forgets to smoke; now dancing, now dozing, now cursing,
+and now complimenting My Lord, the Colonel, the Noble Captain, and Your
+Honourable Worship, the Gong-donkey kicks up his heels, occasionally
+braying, until suddenly, he beholds the dearest friend he has in the
+world coming down the street.</p>
+<p>The dearest friend the Gong-donkey has in the world, is a sort of
+Jackall, in a dull, mangy, black hide, of such small pieces that it
+looks as if it were made of blacking bottles turned inside out and cobbled
+together.&nbsp; The dearest friend in the world (inconceivably drunk
+too) advances at the Gong-donkey, with a hand on each thigh, in a series
+of humorous springs and stops, wagging his head as he comes.&nbsp; The
+Gong-donkey regarding him with attention and with the warmest affection,
+suddenly perceives that he is the greatest enemy he has in the world,
+and hits him hard in the countenance.&nbsp; The astonished Jackall closes
+with the Donkey, and they roll over and over in the mud, pummelling
+one another.&nbsp; A Police Inspector, supernaturally endowed with patience,
+who has long been looking on from the Guildhall-steps, says, to a myrmidon,
+&lsquo;Lock &rsquo;em up!&nbsp; Bring &rsquo;em in!&rsquo;</p>
+<p>Appropriate finish to the Grand Race-Week.&nbsp; The Gong-donkey,
+captive and last trace of it, conveyed into limbo, where they cannot
+do better than keep him until next Race-Week.&nbsp; The Jackall is wanted
+too, and is much looked for, over the way and up and down.&nbsp; But,
+having had the good fortune to be undermost at the time of the capture,
+he has vanished into air.</p>
+<p>On Saturday afternoon, Mr. Goodchild walks out and looks at the Course.&nbsp;
+It is quite deserted; heaps of broken crockery and bottles are raised
+to its memory; and correct cards and other fragments of paper are blowing
+about it, as the regulation little paper-books, carried by the French
+soldiers in their breasts, were seen, soon after the battle was fought,
+blowing idly about the plains of Waterloo.</p>
+<p>Where will these present idle leaves be blown by the idle winds,
+and where will the last of them be one day lost and forgotten?&nbsp;
+An idle question, and an idle thought.; and with it Mr. Idle fitly makes
+his bow, and Mr. Goodchild his, and thus ends the Lazy Tour of Two Idle
+Apprentices.</p>
+<div class="GutenbergBlankLines3"><br /><br /><br /></div>
+<p>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES ***</p>
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+</pre></body>
+</html>
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