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+Project Gutenberg EBook, Night and Morning by E. B. Lytton, Vol. 2
+#191 in our series by Edward Bulwer Lytton
+
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+Title: Night and Morning, Volume 2
+
+Author: Edward Bulwer Lytton
+
+Release Date: January 2006  [EBook #9751]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on October 9, 2003]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, NIGHT AND MORNING, V2 ***
+
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+[See the latest corrected and updated text and html PG Editions
+ of the complete 5 volume set at:
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+
+
+
+                           THE WORKS
+
+                              OF
+
+                     EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
+
+                         (LORD LYTTON)
+
+
+                       NIGHT AND MORNING
+
+                            Book II
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+               "Incubo.  Look to the cavalier.  What ails he?
+                      .     .     .     .     .
+               Hostess.  And in such good clothes, too!"
+                        BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER: _Love's Pilgrimage_.
+
+     "Theod.  I have a brother--there my last hope!.
+              Thus as you find me, without fear or wisdom,
+              I now am only child of Hope and Danger."--Ibid.
+
+The time employed by Mr. Beaufort in reaching his home was haunted by
+gloomy and confused terrors.  He felt inexplicably as if the
+denunciations of Philip were to visit less himself than his son.  He
+trembled at the thought of Arthur meeting this strange, wild, exasperated
+scatterling--perhaps on the morrow--in the very height of his passions.
+And yet, after the scene between Arthur and himself, he saw cause to fear
+that he might not be able to exercise a sufficient authority over his
+son, however naturally facile and obedient, to prevent his return to the
+house of death.  In this dilemma he resolved, as is usual with cleverer
+men, even when yoked to yet feebler helpmates, to hear if his wife had
+anything comforting or sensible to say upon the subject.  Accordingly, on
+reaching Berkeley Square, he went straight to Mrs. Beaufort; and having
+relieved her mind as to Arthur's safety, related the scene in which he
+had been so unwilling an actor.  With that more lively susceptibility
+which belongs to most women, however comparatively unfeeling, Mrs.
+Beaufort made greater allowance than her husband for the excitement
+Philip had betrayed.  Still Beaufort's description of the dark menaces,
+the fierce countenance, the brigand-like form, of the bereaved son, gave
+her very considerable apprehensions for Arthur, should the young men
+meet; and she willingly coincided with her husband in the propriety of
+using all means of parental persuasion or command to guard against such
+an encounter.  But, in the meanwhile, Arthur returned not, and new fears
+seized the anxious parents.  He had gone forth alone, in a remote suburb
+of the metropolis, at a late hour, himself under strong excitement.  He
+might have returned to the house, or have lost his way amidst some dark
+haunts of violence and crime; they knew not where to send, or what to
+suggest.  Day already began to dawn, and still he came not.  A length,
+towards five o'clock, a loud rap was heard at the door, and Mr. Beaufort,
+hearing some bustle in the hall, descended.  He saw his son borne into
+the hall from a hackney-coach by two strangers, pale, bleeding, and
+apparently insensible.  His first thought was that he had been murdered
+by Philip.  He uttered a feeble cry, and sank down beside his son.
+
+"Don't be darnted, sir," said one of the strangers, who seemed an
+artisan; "I don't think he be much hurt.  You sees he was crossing the
+street, and the coach ran against him; but it did not go over his head;
+it be only the stones that makes him bleed so: and that's a mercy."
+
+"A providence, sir," said the other man; "but Providence watches over us
+all, night and day, sleep or wake.  Hem!  We were passing at the time
+from the meeting--the Odd Fellows, sir--and so we took him, and got him a
+coach; for we found his card in his pocket.  He could not speak just
+then; but the rattling of the coach did him a deal of good, for he
+groaned--my eyes! how he groaned! did he not, Burrows?"
+
+"It did one's heart good to hear him."
+
+"Run for Astley Cooper--you--go to Brodie.  Good Heavens! he is dying.
+Be quick--quick!" cried Mr. Beaufort to his servants, while Mrs.
+Beaufort, who had now gained the spot, with greater presence of mind had
+Arthur conveyed into a room.
+
+"It is a judgment upon me," groaned Beaufort, rooted to the stone of his
+hall, and left alone with the strangers.  "No, sir, it is not a judgment,
+it is a providence," said the more sanctimonious and better dressed of
+the two men "for, put the question, if it had been a judgment, the wheel
+would have gone over him--but it didn't; and, whether he dies or not, I
+shall always say that if that's not a providence, I don't know what is.
+We have come a long way, sir; and Burrows is a poor man, though I'm well
+to do."
+
+This hint for money restored Beaufort to his recollection; he put his
+purse into the nearest hand outstretched to clutch it, and muttered forth
+something like thanks.
+
+"Sir, may the Lord bless you! and I hope the young gentleman will do
+well.  I am sure you have cause to be thankful that he was within an inch
+of the wheel; was he not, Burrows?  Well, it's enough to convert a
+heathen.  But the ways of Providence are mysterious, and that's the truth
+of it.  Good night, sir."
+
+Certainly it did seem as if the curse of Philip was already at its work.
+An accident almost similar to that which, in the adventure of the blind
+man, had led Arthur to the clue of Catherine, within twenty-four hours
+stretched Arthur himself upon his bed.  The sorrow Mr. Beaufort had not
+relieved was now at his own hearth.  But there were parents and nurses,
+and great physicians, and skilful surgeons, and all the army that combine
+against Death, and there were ease, and luxury, and kind eyes, and pitying
+looks, and all that can take the sting from pain.  And thus, the very
+night on which Catherine had died, broken down, and worn out, upon a
+strange breast, with a feeless doctor, and by the ray of a single candle,
+the heir to the fortunes once destined to her son wrestled also with the
+grim Tyrant, who seemed, however, scared from his prey by the arts and
+luxuries which the world of rich men raises up in defiance of the grave.
+
+Arthur, was, indeed, very seriously injured; one of his ribs was broken,
+and he had received two severe contusions on the head.  To insensibility
+succeeded fever, followed by delirium.  He was in imminent danger for
+several days.  If anything could console his parents for such an
+affliction, it was the thought that, at least, he was saved from the
+chance of meeting Philip.
+
+Mr. Beaufort, in the instinct of that capricious and fluctuating
+conscience which belongs to weak minds, which remains still, and
+drooping, and lifeless, as a flag on a masthead during the calm of
+prosperity, but flutters, and flaps, and tosses when the wind blows and
+the wave heaves, thought very acutely and remorsefully of the condition
+of the Mortons, during the danger of his own son.  So far, indeed, from
+his anxiety for Arthur monopolising all his care, it only sharpened his
+charity towards the orphans; for many a man becomes devout and good when
+he fancies he has an Immediate interest in appeasing Providence.  The
+morning after Arthur's accident, he sent for Mr. Blackwell.  He
+commissioned him to see that Catherine's funeral rites were performed
+with all due care and attention; he bade him obtain an interview with
+Philip, and assure the youth of Mr. Beaufort's good and friendly
+disposition towards him, and to offer to forward his views in any course
+of education he might prefer, or any profession he might adopt; and he
+earnestly counselled the lawyer to employ all his tact and delicacy in
+conferring with one of so proud and fiery a temper.  Mr. Blackwell,
+however, had no tact or delicacy to employ: he went to the house of
+mourning, forced his way to Philip, and the very exordium of his
+harangue, which was devoted to praises of the extraordinary generosity
+and benevolence of his employer, mingled with condescending admonitions
+towards gratitude from Philip, so exasperated the boy, that Mr. Blackwell
+was extremely glad to get out of the house with a whole skin.  He,
+however, did not neglect the more formal part of his mission; but
+communicated immediately with a fashionable undertaker, and gave orders
+for a very genteel funeral.  He thought after the funeral that Philip
+would be in a less excited state of mind, and more likely to hear reason;
+he, therefore, deferred a second interview with the orphan till after
+that event; and, in the meanwhile, despatched a letter to Mr. Beaufort,
+stating that he had attended to his instructions; that the orders for the
+funeral were given; but that at present Mr. Philip Morton's mind was a
+little disordered, and that he could not calmly discuss the plans for the
+future suggested by Mr. Beaufort.  He did not doubt, however, that in
+another interview all would be arranged according to the wishes his
+client had so nobly conveyed to him.  Mr. Beaufort's conscience on this
+point was therefore set at rest.  It was a dull, close, oppressive
+morning, upon which the remains of Catherine Morton were consigned to the
+grave.  With the preparations for the funeral Philip did not interfere;
+he did not inquire by whose orders all that solemnity of mutes, and
+coaches, and black plumes, and crape bands, was appointed.  If his vague
+and undeveloped conjecture ascribed this last and vain attention to
+Robert Beaufort, it neither lessened the sullen resentment he felt
+against his uncle, nor, on the other hand, did he conceive that he had a
+right to forbid respect to the dead, though he might reject service for
+the survivor.  Since Mr. Blackwell's visit, he had remained in a sort of
+apathy or torpor, which seemed to the people of the house to partake
+rather of indifference than woe.
+
+The funeral was over, and Philip had returned to the apartments occupied
+by the deceased; and now, for the first time, he set himself to examine
+what papers, &c., she had left behind.  In an old escritoire, he found,
+first, various packets of letters in his father's handwriting, the
+characters in many of them faded by time.  He opened a few; they were the
+earliest love-letters.  He did not dare to read above a few lines; so
+much did their living tenderness, and breathing, frank, hearty passion,
+contrast with the fate of the adored one.  In those letters, the very
+heart of the writer seemed to beat!  Now both hearts alike were stilled!
+And GHOST called vainly unto GHOST!
+
+He came, at length, to a letter in his mother's hand, addressed to
+himself, and dated two days before her death.  He went to the window and
+gasped in the mists of the sultry air for breath.  Below were heard the
+noises of London; the shrill cries of itinerant vendors, the rolling
+carts, the whoop of boys returned for a while from school.  Amidst all
+these rose one loud, merry peal of laughter, which drew his attention
+mechanically to the spot whence it came; it was at the threshold of a
+public-house, before which stood the hearse that had conveyed his
+mother's coffin, and the gay undertakers, halting there to refresh
+themselves.  He closed the window with a groan, retired to the farthest
+corner of the room, and read as follows:
+
+"MY DEAREST PHILIP,--When you read this, I shall be no more.  You and
+poor Sidney will have neither father nor mother, nor fortune, nor name.
+Heaven is more just than man, and in Heaven is my hope for you.  You,
+Philip, are already past childhood; your nature is one formed, I think,
+to wrestle successfully with the world.  Guard against your own passions,
+and you may bid defiance to the obstacles that will beset your path in
+life.  And lately, in our reverses, Philip, you have so subdued those
+passions, so schooled the pride and impetuosity of your childhood, that I
+have contemplated your prospects with less fear than I used to do, even
+when they seemed so brilliant.  Forgive me, my dear child, if I have
+concealed from you my state of health, and if my death be a sudden and
+unlooked-for shock.  Do not grieve for me too long.  For myself, my
+release is indeed escape from the prison-house and the chain--from bodily
+pain and mental torture, which may, I fondly hope, prove some expiation
+for the errors of a happier time.  For I did err, when, even from the
+least selfish motives, I suffered my union with your father to remain
+concealed, and thus ruined the hopes of those who had rights upon me
+equal even to his.  But, O Philip!  beware of the first false steps into
+deceit; beware, too, of the passions, which do not betray their fruit
+till years and years after the leaves that look so green and the blossoms
+that seem so fair.
+
+"I repeat my solemn injunction--Do not grieve for me; but strengthen your
+mind and heart to receive the charge that I now confide to you--my
+Sidney, my child, your brother!  He is so soft, so gentle, he has been so
+dependent for very life upon me, and we are parted now for the first and
+last time.  He is with strangers; and--and--O Philip, Philip!  watch over
+him for the love you bear, not only to him, but to me!  Be to him a
+father as well as a brother.  Put your stout heart against the world, so
+that you may screen him, the weak child, from its malice.  He has not
+your talents nor strength of character; without you he is nothing.  Live,
+toil, rise for his sake not less than your own.  If you knew how this
+heart beats as I write to you, if you could conceive what comfort I take
+for _him_ from my confidence in you, you would feel a new spirit--my
+spirit--my mother-spirit of love, and forethought, and vigilance, enter
+into you while you read.  See him when I am gone--comfort and soothe him.
+Happily he is too young yet to know all his loss; and do not let him
+think unkindly of me in the days to come, for he is a child now, and they
+may poison his mind against me more easily than they can yours.  Think,
+if he is unhappy hereafter, he may forget how I loved him, he may curse
+those who gave him birth.  Forgive me all this, Philip, my son, and heed
+it well.
+
+"And now, where you find this letter, you will see a key; it opens a well
+in the bureau in which I have hoarded my little savings.  You will see
+that I have not died in poverty.  Take what there is; young as you are,
+you may want it more now than hereafter.  But hold it in trust for your
+brother as well as yourself.  If he is harshly treated (and you will go
+and see him, and you will remember that he would writhe under what you
+might scarcely feel), or if they overtask him (he is so young to work),
+yet it may find him a home near you.  God watch over and guard you both!
+You are orphans now.  But HE has told even the orphans to call him
+'Father!'"
+
+When he had read this letter, Philip Morton fell upon his knees, and
+prayed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+          "His curse!  Dost comprehend what that word means?
+          Shot from a father's angry breath."
+          JAMES SHIRLEY: _The Brothers_.
+
+          "This term is fatal, and affrights me."--Ibid.
+
+          "Those fond philosophers that magnify
+          Our human nature . . . . . .
+          Conversed but little with the world-they knew not
+          The fierce vexation of community!"--Ibid.
+
+After he had recovered his self-possession, Philip opened the well of the
+bureau, and was astonished and affected to find that Catherine had saved
+more than L100.  Alas! how much must she have pinched herself to have
+hoarded this little treasure!  After burning his father's love-letters,
+and some other papers, which he deemed useless, he made up a little
+bundle of those trifling effects belonging to the deceased, which he
+valued as memorials and relies of her, quitted the apartment, and
+descended to the parlour behind the shop.  On the way he met with the
+kind servant, and recalling the grief that she had manifested for his
+mother since he had been in the house, he placed two sovereigns in her
+hand.  "And now," said he, as the servant wept while be spoke, "now I can
+bear to ask you what I have not before done.  How did my poor mother die?
+Did she suffer much?--or--or--"
+
+"She went off like a lamb, sir," said the girl, drying her eyes.  "You
+see the gentleman had been with her all the day, and she was much more
+easy and comfortable in her mind after he came."
+
+"The gentleman!  Not the gentleman I found here?"
+
+"Oh, dear no!  Not the pale middle-aged gentleman nurse and I saw go down
+as the clock struck two.  But the young, soft-spoken gentleman who came
+in the morning, and said as how he was a relation.  He stayed with her
+till she slept; and, when she woke, she smiled in his face--I shall never
+forget that smile--for I was standing on the other side, as it might be
+here, and the doctor was by the window, pouring out the doctor's stuff in
+the glass; and so she looked on the young gentleman, and then looked
+round at us all, and shook her head very gently, but did not speak.  And
+the gentleman asked her how she felt, and she took both his hands and
+kissed them; and then he put his arms round and raised her up to take the
+physic like, and she said then, 'You will never forget them?' and he
+said, 'Never.'  I don't know what that meant, sir!"
+
+"Well, well--go on."
+
+"And her head fell back on his buzzom, and she looked so happy; and, when
+the doctor came to the bedside, she was quite gone."
+
+"And the stranger had my post!  No matter; God bless him--God bless him.
+Who was he?  what was his name?"
+
+"I don't know, sir; he did not say.  He stayed after the doctor went, and
+cried very bitterly; he took on more than you did, sir."
+
+"And the other gentleman came just as he was a-going, and they did not
+seem to like each other; for I heard him through the wall, as nurse and I
+were in the next room, speak as if he was scolding; but he did not stay
+long."
+
+"And has never been seen since?"
+
+"No, sir.  Perhaps missus can tell you more about him.  But won't you
+take something, sir?  Do--you look so pale."
+
+Philip, without speaking, pushed her gently aside, and went slowly down
+the stairs.  He entered the parlour, where two or three children were
+seated, playing at dominoes; he despatched one for their mother, the
+mistress of the shop, who came in, and dropped him a courtesy, with a
+very grave, sad face, as was proper.
+
+"I am going to leave your house, ma'am; and I wish to settle any little
+arrears of rent, &c."
+
+"O sir!  don't mention it," said the landlady; and, as she spoke, she
+took a piece of paper from her bosom, very neatly folded, and laid it on
+the table.  "And here, sir," she added, taking from the same depository a
+card,--"here is the card left by the gentleman who saw to the funeral.
+He called half an hour ago, and bade me say, with his compliments, that
+he would wait on you to-morrow at eleven o'clock.  So I hope you won't go
+yet: for I think he means to settle everything for you; he said as much,
+sir."
+
+Philip glanced over the card, and read, "Mr. George Blackwell, Lincoln's
+Inn."  His brow grew dark--he let the card fall on the ground, put his
+foot on it with a quiet scorn, and muttered to himself, "The lawyer shall
+not bribe me out of my curse!"  He turned to the total of the bill--not
+heavy, for poor Catherine had regularly defrayed the expense of her
+scanty maintenance and humble lodging--paid the money, and, as the
+landlady wrote the receipt, he asked, "Who was the gentleman--the younger
+gentleman--who called in the morning of the day my mother died?"
+
+"Oh, sir!  I am so sorry I did not get his name.  Mr. Perkins said that
+he was some relation.  Very odd he has never been since.  But he'll be
+sure to call again, sir; you had much better stay here."
+
+"No: it does not signify.  All that he could do is done.  But stay, give
+him this note, if she should call."
+
+Philip, taking the pen from the landlady's hand, hastily wrote (while
+Mrs. Lacy went to bring him sealing-wax and a light) these words:
+
+"I cannot guess who you are: they say that you call yourself a relation;
+that must be some mistake.  I knew not that my poor mother had relations
+so kind.  But, whoever you be, you soothed her last hours--she died in
+your arms; and if ever--years, long years hence--we should chance to
+meet, and I can do anything to aid another, my blood, and my life, and my
+heart, and my soul, all are slaves to your will.  If you be really of her
+kindred, I commend to you my brother: he is at ----, with Mr. Morton.
+If you can serve him, my mother's soul will watch over you as a guardian
+angel.  As for me, I ask no help from any one: I go into the world and
+will carve out my own way.  So much do I shrink from the thought of
+charity from others, that I do not believe I could bless you as I do now
+if your kindness to me did not close with the stone upon my mother's
+grave.  PHILIP."
+
+He sealed this letter, and gave it to the woman.
+
+"Oh, by the by," said she, "I had forgot; the Doctor said that if you
+would send for him, he would be most happy to call on you, and give you
+any advice."
+
+"Very well."
+
+"And what shall I say to Mr. Blackwell?"
+
+"That he may tell his employer to remember our last interview."
+
+With that Philip took up his bundle and strode from the house.  He went
+first to the churchyard, where his mother's remains had been that day
+interred.  It was near at hand, a quiet, almost a rural, spot.  The gate
+stood ajar, for there was a public path through the churchyard, and
+Philip entered with a noiseless tread.  It was then near evening; the sun
+had broken out from the mists of the earlier day, and the wistering rays
+shone bright and holy upon the solemn place.
+
+"Mother! mother!" sobbed the orphan, as he fell prostrate before that
+fresh green mound: "here--here I have come to repeat my oath, to swear
+again that I will be faithful to the charge you have entrusted to your
+wretched son!  And at this hour I dare ask if there be on this earth one
+more miserable and forlorn?"
+
+As words to this effect struggled from his lips, a loud, shrill voice--
+the cracked, painful voice of weak age wrestling with strong passion,
+rose close at hand.
+
+"Away, reprobate! thou art accursed!"
+
+Philip started, and shuddered as if the words were addressed to himself,
+and from the grave.  But, as he rose on his knee, and tossing the wild
+hair from his eyes, looked confusedly round, he saw, at a short distance,
+and in the shadow of the wall, two forms; the one, an old man with grey
+hair, who was seated on a crumbling wooden tomb, facing the setting sun;
+the other, a man apparently yet in the vigour of life, who appeared bent
+as in humble supplication.  The old man's hands were outstretched over
+the head of the younger, as if suiting terrible action to the terrible
+words, and, after a moment's pause--a moment, but it seemed far longer to
+Philip--there was heard a deep, wild, ghastly howl from a dog that
+cowered at the old man's feet; a howl, perhaps of fear at the passion of
+his master, which the animal might associate with danger.
+
+"Father!  father!"  said the  suppliant  reproachfully, "your very dog
+rebukes your curse."
+
+"Be dumb!  My dog!  What hast thou left me on earth but him?  Thou hast
+made me loathe the sight of friends, for thou hast made me loathe mine
+own name.  Thou hast covered it with disgrace,--thou hast turned mine old
+age into a by-word,--thy crimes leave me solitary in the midst of my
+shame!"
+
+"It is many years since we met, father; we may never meet again--shall we
+part thus?"
+
+"Thus, aha!"  said the old man in a tone of withering sarcasm!  "I
+comprehend,--you are come for money!"
+
+At this taunt the son started as if stung by a serpent; raised his head
+to its full height, folded his arms, and replied:
+
+"Sir, you wrong me: for more than twenty years I have maintained myself--
+no matter how, but without taxing you;--and now, I felt remorse for
+having suffered you to discard me,--now, when you are old and helpless,
+and, I heard, blind: and you might want aid, even from your poor good-
+for-nothing son.  But I have done.  Forget,--not my sins, but this
+interview.  Repeal your curse, father; I have enough on my head without
+yours; and so--let the son at least bless the father who curses him.
+Farewell!"
+
+The speaker turned as he thus said, with a voice that trembled at the
+close, and brushed rapidly by Philip, whom he did not, however, appear to
+perceive; but Philip, by the last red beam of the sun, saw again that
+marked storm-beaten face which it was difficult, once seen, to forget,
+and recognised the stranger on whose breast be had slept the night of his
+fatal visit to R----.
+
+The old man's imperfect vision did not detect the departure of his son,
+but his face changed and softened as the latter strode silently through
+the rank grass.
+
+"William!" he said at last, gently; "William!" and the tears rolled down
+his furrowed cheeks; "my son!" but that son was gone--the old man
+listened for reply--none came.  "He has left me--poor William!--we shall
+never meet again;" and he sank once more on the old tombstone, dumb,
+rigid, motionless--an image of Time himself in his own domain of Graves.
+The dog crept closer to his master, and licked his hand.  Philip stood
+for a moment in thoughtful silence: his exclamation of despair had been
+answered as by his better angel.  There was a being more miserable than
+himself; and the Accursed would have envied the Bereaved!
+
+The twilight had closed in; the earliest star--the star of Memory and
+Love, the Hesperus hymned by every poet since the world began--was fair
+in the arch of heaven, as Philip quitted the spot, with a spirit more
+reconciled to the future, more softened, chastened, attuned to gentle and
+pious thoughts than perhaps ever yet had made his soul dominant over the
+deep and dark tide of his gloomy passions.  He went thence to a
+neighbouring sculptor, and paid beforehand for a plain tablet to be
+placed above the grave he had left.  He had just quitted that shop, in
+the same street, not many doors removed from the house in which his
+mother had breathed her last.  He was pausing by a crossing, irresolute
+whether to repair at once to the home assigned to Sidney, or to seek some
+shelter in town for that night, when three men who were on the opposite
+side of the way suddenly caught sight of him.
+
+"There he is--there he is!  Stop, sir!--stop!"
+
+Philip heard these words, looked up, and recognised the voice and the
+person of Mr. Plaskwith; the bookseller was accompanied by Mr. Plimmins,
+and a sturdy, ill-favoured stranger.
+
+A nameless feeling of fear, rage, and disgust seized the unhappy boy, and
+at the same moment a ragged vagabond whispered to him, "Stump it, my
+cove; that's a Bow Street runner."
+
+Then there shot through Philip's mind the recollection of the money he
+had seized, though but to dash away; was he now--he, still to his own
+conviction, the heir of an ancient and spotless name--to be hunted as a
+thief; or, at the best, what right over his person and his liberty had he
+given to his taskmaster?  Ignorant of the law--the law only seemed to
+him, as it ever does to the ignorant and the friendless--a Foe.  Quicker
+than lightning these thoughts, which it takes so many words to describe,
+flashed through the storm and darkness of his breast; and at the very
+instant that Mr. Plimmins had laid hands on his shoulder his resolution
+was formed.  The instinct of self beat loud at his heart.  With a bound--
+a spring that sent Mr. Plimmins sprawling in the kennel, he darted across
+the road, and fled down an opposite lane.
+
+"Stop him!  stop!"  cried the bookseller, and the officer rushed after
+him with almost equal speed.  Lane after lane, alley after alley, fled
+Philip; dodging, winding, breathless, panting; and lane after lane, and
+alley after alley, thickened at his heels the crowd that pursued.  The
+idle and the curious, and the officious,--ragged boys, ragged men, from
+stall and from cellar, from corner and from crossing, joined in that
+delicious chase, which runs down young Error till it sinks, too often, at
+the door of the gaol or the foot of the gallows.  But Philip slackened
+not his pace; he began to distance his pursuers.  He was now in a street
+which they had not yet entered--a quiet street, with few, if any, shops.
+Before the threshold of a better kind of public-house, or rather tavern,
+to judge by its appearance, lounged two men; and while Philip flew on,
+the cry of "Stop him!" had changed as the shout passed to new voices,
+into "Stop the thief!"--that cry yet howled in the distance.  One of the
+loungers seized him: Philip, desperate and ferocious, struck at him with
+all his force; but the blow was scarcely felt by that Herculean frame.
+
+"Pish!"  said the man, scornfully; "I am no spy; if you run from justice,
+I would help you to a sign-post."
+
+Struck by the voice, Philip looked hard at the speaker.  It was the voice
+of the Accursed Son.
+
+"Save me! you remember me?"  said the orphan, faintly.  "Ah! I think I
+do; poor lad!  Follow me-this way!"  The stranger turned within the
+tavern, passed the hall through a sort of corridor that led into a back
+yard which opened upon a nest of courts or passages.
+
+"You are safe for the present; I will take you where you can tell me all
+at your ease--See!"  As he spoke they emerged into an open street, and
+the guide pointed to a row of hackney coaches.  "Be quick--get in.
+Coachman, drive fast to ---"
+
+Philip did not hear the rest of the direction.
+
+Our story returns to Sidney.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+               "Nous vous mettrons a couvert,
+               Repondit le pot de fer
+               Si quelque matiere dure
+               Vous menace d'aventure,
+               Entre deux je passerai,
+               Et du coup vous sauverai.
+                   . . . . . . . .
+               Le pot de terre en souffre!"--LA FONTAINE.
+
+     ["We, replied the Iron Pot, will shield you: should any hard
+     substance menace you with danger, I'll intervene, and save you
+     from the shock.
+     . . . . . . . . . The Earthen Pot was the sufferer!]
+
+"SIDNEY, come here, sir!  What have you been at?  you have torn your
+frill into tatters!  How did you do this?  Come sir, no lies."
+
+"Indeed, ma'am, it was not my fault.  I just put my head out of the
+window to see the coach go by, and a nail caught me here."
+
+"Why, you little plague! you have scratched yourself--you are always in
+mischief.  What business had you to look after the coach?"
+
+"I don't know," said Sidney, hanging his head ruefully.  "La, mother!"
+cried the youngest of the cousins, a square-built, ruddy, coarse-featured
+urchin, about Sidney's age, "La, mother, he never see a coach in the
+street when we are at play but he runs arter it."
+
+"After, not arter," said Mr. Roger Morton, taking the pipe from his
+mouth.
+
+"Why do you go after the coaches, Sidney?" said Mrs. Morton; "it is very
+naughty; you will be run over some day."
+
+"Yes, ma'am," said Sidney, who during the whole colloquy had been
+trembling from bead to foot.
+
+"'Yes ma'am,' and 'no, ma'am:' you have no more manners than a cobbler's
+boy."
+
+"Don't tease the child, my dear; he is crying," said Mr. Morton, more
+authoritatively than usual.  "Come here, my man!" and the worthy uncle
+took him in his lap and held his glass of brandy-and-water to his lips;
+Sidney, too frightened to refuse, sipped hurriedly, keeping his large
+eyes fixed on his aunt, as children do when they fear a cuff.
+
+"You spoil the boy more than do your own flesh and blood," said Mrs.
+Morton, greatly displeased.
+
+Here Tom, the youngest-born before described, put his mouth to his
+mother's ear, and whispered loud enough to be heard by all:  "He runs
+arter the coach 'cause he thinks his ma may be in it.  Who's home-sick, I
+should like to know?  Ba!  Baa!"
+
+The boy pointed his finger over his mother's shoulder, and the other
+children burst into a loud giggle.
+
+"Leave the room, all of you,--leave the room!"  said Mr. Morton, rising
+angrily and stamping his foot.
+
+The children, who were in great awe of their father, huddled and hustled
+each other to the door; but Tom, who went last, bold in his mother's
+favour, popped his head through the doorway, and cried, "Good-bye, little
+home-sick!"
+
+A sudden slap in the face from his father changed his chuckle into a very
+different kind of music, and a loud indignant sob was heard without for
+some moments after the door was closed.
+
+"If that's the way you behave to your children, Mr. Morton, I vow you
+sha'n't have any more if I can help it.  Don't come near me--don't touch
+me!" and Mrs. Morton assumed the resentful air of offended beauty.
+
+"Pshaw!" growled the spouse, and he reseated himself and resumed his
+pipe.  There was a dead silence.  Sidney crouched near his uncle, looking
+very pale.  Mrs. Morton, who was knitting, knitted away with the excited
+energy of nervous irritation.
+
+"Ring the bell, Sidney," said Mr. Morton.  The boy obeyed-the parlour-
+maid entered.  "Take Master Sidney to his room; keep the boys away from
+him, and give him a large slice of bread and jam, Martha."
+
+"Jam, indeed!--treacle," said Mrs. Morton.
+
+"Jam, Martha," repeated the uncle, authoritatively.  "Treacle!"
+reiterated the aunt.
+
+"Jam, I say!"
+
+"Treacle, you hear: and for that matter, Martha has no jam to give!"
+
+The husband had nothing more to say.
+
+"Good night, Sidney; there's a good boy, go and kiss your aunt and make
+your bow; and I say, my lad, don't mind those plagues.  I'll talk to them
+to-morrow, that I will; no one shall be unkind to you in my house."
+
+Sidney muttered something, and went timidly up to Mrs. Morton.  His look
+so gentle and subdued; his eyes full of tears; his pretty mouth which,
+though silent, pleaded so eloquently; his willingness to forgive, and his
+wish to be forgiven, might have melted many a heart harder, perhaps, than
+Mrs. Morton's.  But there reigned what are worse than hardness,--
+prejudice and wounded vanity--maternal vanity.  His contrast to her own
+rough, coarse children grated on her, and set the teeth of her mind on
+edge.
+
+"There, child, don't tread on my gown: you are so awkward: say your
+prayers, and don't throw off the counterpane!  I don't like slovenly
+boys."
+
+Sidney put his finger in his mouth, drooped, and vanished.
+
+"Now, Mrs. M.," said Mr. Morton, abruptly, and knocking out the ashes of
+his pipe; "now Mrs. M., one word for all: I have told you that I promised
+poor Catherine to be a father to that child, and it goes to my heart to
+see him so snubbed.  Why you dislike him I can't guess for the life of
+me.  I never saw a sweeter-tempered child."
+
+"Go on, sir, go on: make your personal reflections on your own lawful
+wife.  They don't hurt me--oh no, not at all!  Sweet-tempered, indeed; I
+suppose your own children are not sweet-tempered?"
+
+"That's neither here nor there," said Mr. Morton: "my own children are
+such as God made them, and I am very well satisfied."
+
+"Indeed you may be proud of such a family; and to think of the pains I
+have taken with them, and how I have saved you in nurses, and the bad
+times I have had; and now, to find their noses put out of joint by that
+little mischief-making interloper--it is too bad of you, Mr. Morton; you
+will break my heart--that you will!"
+
+Mrs. Morton put her handkerchief to her eyes and sobbed.  The husband was
+moved: he got up and attempted to take her hand.  "Indeed, Margaret, I
+did not mean to vex you."
+
+"And I who have been such a fa--fai--faithful wi--wi--wife, and brought you
+such a deal of mon--mon--money, and always stud--stud--studied your
+interests; many's the time when you have been fast asleep that I have sat
+up half the night--men--men--mending the house linen; and you have not
+been the same man, Roger, since that boy came!"
+
+"Well, well" said the good man, quite overcome, and fairly taking her
+round the waist and kissing her; "no words between us; it makes life
+quite unpleasant.  If it pains you to have Sidney here, I will put him
+to some school in the town, where they'll be kind to him.  Only, if you
+would, Margaret, for my sake--old girl! come, now! there's a darling!--
+just be more tender with him.  You see he frets so after his mother.
+Think how little Tom would fret if he was away from you!  Poor little
+Tom!"
+
+"La! Mr. Morton, you are such a man!--there's no resisting your ways!
+You know how to come over me, don't you?"
+
+And Mrs. Morton smiled benignly, as she escaped from his conjugal arms
+and smoothed her cap.
+
+Peace thus restored, Mr. Morton refilled his pipe, and the good lady,
+after a pause, resumed, in a very mild, conciliatory tone:
+
+"I'll tell you what it is, Roger, that vexes me with that there child.
+He is so deceitful, and he does tell such fibs!"
+
+"Fibs! that is a very  bad fault," said Mr. Morton, gravely.  "That must
+be corrected."
+
+"It was but the other day that I saw him break a pane of glass in the
+shop; and when I taxed him with it, he denied it;--and with such a face!
+I can't abide storytelling."
+
+"Let me know the next story he tells; I'll cure him," said Mr. Morton,
+sternly.  "You now how I broke Tom of it.  Spare the rod, and spoil the
+child.  And where I promised to be kind to the boy, of course I did not
+mean that I was not to take care of his morals, and see that he grew up
+an honest man.  Tell truth and shame the devil--that's my motto."
+
+"Spoke like yourself, Roger," said Mrs. Morton, with great animation.
+"But you see he has not had the advantage of such a father as you.  I
+wonder your sister don't write to you.  Some people make a great fuss
+about their feelings; but out of sight out of mind."
+
+"I hope she is not ill.  Poor Catherine! she looked in a very bad way
+when she was here," said Morton; and he turned uneasily to the fireplace
+and sighed.
+
+Here the servant entered with the supper-tray, and the conversation fell
+upon other topics.
+
+Mrs. Roger Morton's charge against Sidney was, alas! too true.  He had
+acquired, under that roof, a terrible habit of telling stories.  He had
+never incurred that vice with his mother, because then and there he had
+nothing to fear; now, he had everything to fear;--the grim aunt--even the
+quiet, kind, cold, austere uncle--the apprentices--the strange servants--
+and, oh! more than all, those hardeyed, loud-laughing tormentors, the
+boys of his own age!  Naturally timid, severity made him actually a
+coward; and when the nerves tremble, a lie sounds as surely as, when I
+vibrate that wire, the bell at the end of it will ring.  Beware of the
+man who has been roughly treated as a child.
+
+The day after the conference just narrated, Mr. Morton, who was subject
+to erysipelas, had taken a little cooling medicine.  He breakfasted,
+therefore, later than usual--after the rest of the family; and at this
+meal _pour lui soulager_ he ordered the luxury of a muffin.  Now it so
+chanced that he had only finished half the muffin, and drunk one cup of
+tea, when he was called into the shop by a customer of great importance--
+a prosy old lady, who always gave her orders with remarkable precision,
+and who valued herself on a character for affability, which she
+maintained by never buying a penny riband without asking the shopman how
+all his family were, and talking news about every other family in the
+place.  At the time Mr. Morton left the parlour, Sidney and Master Tom
+were therein, seated on two stools, and casting up division sums on their
+respective slates--a point of education to which Mr. Morton attended with
+great care.  As soon as his father's back was turned, Master Tom's eyes
+wandered from the slate to the muffin, as it leered at him from the slop-
+basin.  Never did Pythian sibyl, seated above the bubbling spring, utter
+more oracular eloquence to her priest, than did that muffin--at least the
+parts of it yet extant--utter to the fascinated senses of Master Tom.
+First he sighed; then he moved round on his stool; then he got up; then
+he peered at the muffin from a respectful distance; then he gradually
+approached, and walked round, and round, and round it--his eyes getting
+bigger and bigger; then he peeped through the glass-door into the shop,
+and saw his father busily engaged with the old lady; then he began to
+calculate and philosophise, perhaps his father had done breakfast;
+perhaps he would not come back at all; if he came back, he would not miss
+one corner of the muffin; and if he did miss it, why should Tom be
+supposed to have taken it?  As he thus communed with himself, he drew
+nearer into the fatal vortex, and at last with a desperate plunge, he
+seized the triangular temptation,--
+
+          "And ere a man had power to say 'Behold!'
+          The jaws of Thomas had devoured it up."
+
+Sidney, disturbed from his studies by the agitation of his companion,
+witnessed this proceeding with great and conscientious alarm.  "O Tom!"
+said he, "what will your papa say?"
+
+"Look at that!"  said Tom, putting his fist under Sidney's reluctant
+nose.  "If father misses it, you'll say the cat took it.  If you don't--
+my eye, what a wapping I'll give you!"
+
+Here Mr. Morton's voice was heard wishing the lady "Good morning!"  and
+Master Tom, thinking it better to leave the credit of the invention
+solely to Sidney, whispered, "Say I'm gone up stairs for my pocket-
+hanker," and hastily absconded.
+
+Mr. Morton, already in a very bad humour, partly at the effects of the
+cooling medicine, partly at the suspension of his breakfast, stalked into
+the parlour.  His tea-the second cup already poured out, was cold.  He
+turned towards the muffin, and missed the lost piece at a glance.
+
+"Who has been at my muffin?"  said he, in a voice that seemed to Sidney
+like the voice he had always supposed an ogre to possess.  "Have you,
+Master Sidney?"
+
+"N--n--no, sir; indeed, sir!"
+
+"Then Tom has.  Where is he?"
+
+"Gone up stairs for his handkerchief, sir."
+
+"Did he take my muffin?  Speak the truth!"
+
+"No, sir; it was the--it was the--the cat, sir!"
+
+"O you wicked, wicked boy!"  cried Mrs. Morton, who had followed her
+husband into the parlour; "the cat kittened last night, and is locked up
+in the coal-cellar!"
+
+"Come here, Master Sidney!  No! first go down, Margaret, and see if the
+cat is in the cellar: it might have got out, Mrs. M.," said Mr. Morton,
+just even in his wrath.
+
+Mrs. Morton went, and there was a dead silence, except indeed in Sidney's
+heart, which beat louder than a clock ticks.  Mr. Morton, meanwhile, went
+to a little cupboard;--while still there, Mrs. Morton returned: the cat
+was in the cellar--the key turned on her--in no mood to eat muffins, poor
+thing!--she would not even lap her milk! like her mistress, she had had a
+very bad time!
+
+"Now come here, sir," said Mr. Morton, withdrawing himself from the
+cupboard, with a small horsewhip in his hand, "I will teach you how to
+speak the truth in future!  Confess that you have told a lie!"
+
+"Yes, sir, it was a lie!  Pray--pray forgive me: but Tom made me!"
+
+"What! when poor Tom is up-stairs? worse and worse!" said Mrs. Morton,
+lifting up her hands and eyes.  "What a viper!"
+
+"For shame, boy,--for shame!  Take that--and that--and that--"
+
+Writhing--shrinking, still more terrified than hurt, the poor child
+cowered beneath the lash.
+
+"Mamma! mamma!" he cried at last, "Oh, why--why did you leave me?"
+
+At these words Mr. Morton stayed his hand, the whip fell to the ground.
+
+"Yet it is all for the boy's good," he muttered.  "There, child, I hope
+this is the last time.  There, you are not much hurt.  Zounds, don't cry
+so!"
+
+"He will alarm the whole street," said Mrs. Morton; "I never see such a
+child!  Here, take this parcel to Mrs. Birnie's--you know the house--only
+next street, and dry your eyes before you get there.  Don't go through
+the shop; this way out."
+
+She pushed the child, still sobbing with a vehemence that she could not
+comprehend, through the private passage into the street, and returned to
+her husband.
+
+"You are convinced now, Mr. M.?"
+
+"Pshaw!  ma'am; don't talk.  But, to be sure, that's how I cured Tom of
+fibbing.--The tea's as cold as a stone!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+     "Le bien nous le faisons: le mal c'est la Fortune.
+     On a toujours raison, le Destin toujours tort."--LA FONTAINE.
+
+     [The Good, we effect ourselves; the Evil is the handiwork of
+     Fortune.  Mortals are always in the right, Destiny always in the
+     wrong.]
+
+Upon the early morning of the day commemorated by the historical events
+of our last chapter, two men were deposited by a branch coach at the inn
+of a hamlet about ten miles distant from the town in which Mr. Roger
+Morton resided.  Though the hamlet was small, the inn was large, for it
+was placed close by a huge finger-post that pointed to three great roads:
+one led to the town before mentioned; another to the heart of a
+manufacturing district; and a third to a populous seaport.  The weather
+was fine, and the two travellers ordered breakfast to be taken into an
+arbour in the garden, as well as the basins and towels necessary for
+ablution.  The elder of the travellers appeared to be unequivocally
+foreign; you would have guessed him at once for a German.  He wore, what
+was then very uncommon in this country, a loose, brown linen _blouse_,
+buttoned to the chin, with a leathern belt, into which were stuck a
+German meerschaum and a tobacco-pouch.  He had very long flaxen hair,
+false or real, that streamed half-way down his back, large light
+mustaches, and a rough, sunburnt complexion, which made the fairness of
+the hair more remarkable.  He wore an enormous pair of green spectacles,
+and complained much in broken English of the weakness of his eyes.  All
+about him, even to the smallest minutiae, indicated the German; not only
+the large muscular frame, the broad feet, and vast though well-shaped
+hands, but the brooch--evidently purchased of a Jew in some great fair--
+stuck ostentatiously and superfluously into his stock; the quaint, droll-
+looking carpet-bag, which he refused to trust to the boots; and the
+great, massive, dingy ring which he wore on his forefinger.  The other
+was a slender, remarkably upright and sinewy youth, in a blue frock, over
+which was thrown a large cloak, a travelling cap, with a shade that
+concealed all of the upper part of his face, except a dark quick eye of
+uncommon fire; and a shawl handkerchief, which was equally useful in
+concealing the lower part of the countenance.  On descending from the
+coach, the German with some difficulty made the ostler understand that he
+wanted a post-chaise in a quarter of an hour; and then, without entering
+the house, he and his friend strolled to the arbour.  While the maid-
+servant was covering the table with bread, butter, tea, eggs, and a huge
+round of beef, the German was busy in washing his hands, and talking in
+his national tongue to the young man, who returned no answer.  But as
+soon as the servant had completed her operations the foreigner turned
+round, and observing her eyes fixed on his brooch with much female
+admiration, he made one stride to her.
+
+"Der Teufel, my goot Madchen--but you are von var pretty--vat you call
+it?" and he gave her, as he spoke, so hearty a smack that the girl was
+more flustered than flattered by the courtesy.
+
+"Keep yourself to yourself, sir!"  said she, very tartly, for
+chambermaids never like to be kissed by a middle-aged gentleman when a
+younger one is by: whereupon the German replied by a pinch,--it is
+immaterial to state the exact spot to which that delicate caress was
+directed.  But this last offence was so inexpiable, that the "Madchen"
+bounced off with a face of scarlet, and a "Sir, you are no gentleman--
+that's what you arn't!"  The German thrust his head out of the arbour,
+and followed her with a loud laugh; then drawing himself in again, he
+said in quite another accent, and in excellent English, "There, Master
+Philip, we have got rid of the girl for the rest of the morning, and
+that's exactly what I wanted to do--women's wits are confoundedly sharp.
+Well, did I not tell you right, we have baffled all the bloodhounds!"
+
+"And here, then, Gawtrey, we are to part," said Philip, mournfully.
+
+"I wish you would think better of it, my boy," returned Mr. Gawtrey,
+breaking an egg; "how can you shift for yourself--no kith nor kin, not
+even that important machine for giving advice called a friend--no, not a
+friend, when I am gone?  I foresee how it must end.  [D--- it, salt
+butter, by Jove!]"
+
+"If I were alone in the world, as I have told you again and again,
+perhaps I might pin my fate to yours.  But my brother!"
+
+"There it is, always wrong when we act from our feelings.  My whole life,
+which some day or other I will tell you, proves that.  Your brother--bah!
+is he not very well off with his own uncle and aunt?--plenty to eat and
+drink, I dare say.  Come, man, you must be as hungry as a hawk--a slice
+of the beef?  Let well alone, and shift for yourself.  What good can you
+do your brother?"
+
+"I don't know, but I must see him; I have sworn it."
+
+"Well, go and see him, and then strike across the country to me.  I will
+wait a day for you,--there now!"
+
+"But tell me first," said Philip, very earnestly, and fixing his dark
+eyes on his companion,--"tell me--yes, I must speak frankly--tell me, you
+who would link my fortunes with your own,--tell me, what and who are
+you?"
+
+Gawtrey looked up.
+
+"What do you suppose?"  said he, dryly.
+
+"I fear to suppose anything, lest I wrong you; but the strange place to
+which you took me the evening on which you saved me from pursuit, the
+persons I met there--"
+
+"Well-dressed, and very civil to you?"
+
+"True!  but with a certain wild looseness in their talk that--But I have
+no right to judge others by mere appearance.  Nor is it this that has
+made me anxious, and, if you will, suspicious."
+
+"What then?"
+
+"Your dress-your disguise."
+
+"Disguised yourself!--ha! ha!  Behold the world's charity!  You fly from
+some danger, some pursuit, disguised--you, who hold yourself guiltless--I
+do the same, and you hold me criminal--a robber, perhaps-a murderer it
+may be!  I will tell you what I am: I am a son of Fortune, an adventurer;
+I live by my wits--so do poets and lawyers, and all the charlatans of the
+world; I am a charlatan--a chameleon.  'Each man in his time plays many
+parts:' I play any part in which Money, the Arch-Manager, promises me a
+livelihood.  Are you satisfied?"
+
+"Perhaps," answered the boy, sadly, "when I know more of the world, I
+shall understand you better.  Strange--strange, that you, out of all men,
+should have been kind to me in distress!"
+
+"Not at all strange.  Ask the beggar whom he gets the most pence from--
+the fine lady in her carriage--the beau smelling of eau de Cologne?
+Pish! the people nearest to being beggars themselves keep the beggar
+alive.  You were friendless, and the man who has all earth for a foe
+befriends you.  It is the way of the world, sir,--the way of the world.
+Come, eat while you can; this time next year you may have no beef to your
+bread."
+
+Thus masticating and moralising at the same time, Mr. Gawtrey at last
+finished a breakfast that would have astonished the whole Corporation of
+London; and then taking out a large old watch, with an enamelled back--
+doubtless more German than its master--he said, as he lifted up his
+carpet-bag, "I must be off--tempos fugit, and I must arrive just in time
+to nick the vessels.  Shall get to Ostend, or Rotterdam, safe and snug;
+thence to Paris.  How my pretty Fan will have grown!  Ah, you don't know
+Fan--make you a nice little wife one of these days!  Cheer up, man, we
+shall meet again.  Be sure of it; and hark ye, that strange place, as you
+call it, where I took you,--you can find it again?"
+
+"Not I."
+
+"Here, then, is the address.  Whenever you want me, go there, ask to see
+Mr. Gregg--old fellow with one eye, you recollect--shake him by the hand
+just so--you catch the trick--practise it again.  No, the forefinger
+thus, that's right.  Say 'blater,' no more--'blater;'--stay, I will write
+it down for you; and then ask for William Gawtrey's direction.  He will
+give it you at once, without questions--these signs understood; and if
+you want money for your passage, he will give you that also, with advice
+into the bargain.  Always a warm welcome with me.  And so take care of
+yourself, and good-bye.  I see my chaise is at the door."
+
+As he spoke, Gawtrey shook the young man's hand with cordial vigour, and
+strode off to his chaise, muttering, "Money well laid out--fee money; I
+shall have him, and, Gad, I like him,--poor devil!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+     "He is a cunning coachman that can turn well in a narrow room."
+     Old Play: from Lamb's _Specimens_.
+
+     "Here are two pilgrims,
+     And neither knows one footstep of the way."
+     HEYWOOD's Duchess of Suffolk, Ibid.
+
+The chaise had scarce driven from the inn-door when a coach stopped to
+change horses on its last stage to the town to which Philip was, bound.
+The name of the destination, in gilt letters on the coach-door, caught
+his eye, as he walked from the arbour towards the road, and in a few
+moments he was seated as the fourth passenger in the "Nelson Slow and
+Sure."  From under the shade of his cap, he darted that quick, quiet
+glance, which a man who hunts, or is hunted,--in other words, who
+observes, or shuns,--soon acquires.  At his left hand sat a young woman
+in a cloak lined with yellow; she had taken off her bonnet and pinned it
+to the roof of the coach, and looked fresh and pretty in a silk
+handkerchief, which she had tied round her head, probably to serve as a
+nightcap during the drowsy length of the journey.  Opposite to her was a
+middle-aged man of pale complexion, and a grave, pensive, studious
+expression of face; and vis-a-vis to Philip sat an overdressed, showy,
+very good-looking man of about two or three and forty.  This gentleman
+wore auburn whiskers, which met at the chin; a foraging cap, with a gold
+tassel; a velvet waistcoat, across which, in various folds, hung a golden
+chain, at the end of which dangled an eye-glass, that from time to time
+he screwed, as it were, into his right eye; he wore, also, a blue silk
+stock, with a frill much crumpled, dirty kid gloves, and over his lap lay
+a cloak lined with red silk.  As Philip glanced towards this personage,
+the latter fixed his glass also at him, with a scrutinising stare, which
+drew fire from Philip's dark eyes.  The man dropped his glass, and said
+in a half provincial, half haw-haw tone, like the stage exquisite of a
+minor theatre, "Pawdon me, and split legs!"  therewith stretching himself
+between Philip's limbs in the approved fashion of inside passengers.  A
+young man in a white great-coat now came to the door with a glass of warm
+sherry and water.
+
+"You must take this--you must now; it will keep the cold out," (the day
+was broiling,) said he to the young woman.
+
+"Gracious me!" was the answer, "but I never drink wine of a morning,
+James; it will get into my head."
+
+"To oblige me!"  said the young man, sentimentally; whereupon the young
+lady took the glass, and looking very kindly at her Ganymede, said, "Your
+health!" and sipped, and made a wry face--then she looked at the
+passengers, tittered, and said, "I can't bear wine!" and so, very slowly
+and daintily, sipped up the rest.  A silent and expressive squeeze of the
+hand, on returning the glass, rewarded the young man, and proved the
+salutary effect of his prescription.
+
+"All right!" cried the coachman: the ostler twitched the cloths from the
+leaders, and away went the "Nelson Slow and Sure," with as much
+pretension as if it had meant to do the ten miles in an hour.  The pale
+gentleman took from his waistcoat pocket a little box containing gum-
+arabic, and having inserted a couple of morsels between his lips, he next
+drew forth a little thin volume, which from the manner the lines were
+printed was evidently devoted to poetry.
+
+The smart gentleman, who since the episode of the sherry and water had
+kept his glass fixed upon the young lady, now said, with a genteel smirk:
+
+"That young gentleman seems very auttentive, miss!"
+
+"He is a very good young man, sir, and takes great care of me."
+
+"Not your brother, miss,--eh?"
+
+"La, sir--why not?"
+
+"No faumily likeness--noice-looking fellow enough!  But your oiyes and
+mouth--ah, miss!"
+
+Miss turned away her head, and uttered with pert vivacity: "I never likes
+compliments, sir!  But the young man is not my brother."
+
+"A sweetheart,--eh?  Oh fie, miss!  Haw!  haw!" and the auburn-whiskered
+Adonis poked Philip in the knee with one hand, and the pale gentleman in
+the ribs with the other.  The latter looked up, and reproachfully; the
+former drew in his legs, and uttered an angry ejaculation.
+
+"Well, sir, there is no harm in a sweetheart, is there?"  "None in the
+least, ma'am; I advoise you to double the dose.  We often hear of two
+strings to a bow.  Daun't you think it would be noicer to have two beaux
+to your string?"  As he thus wittily expressed himself, the gentleman
+took off his cap, and thrust his fingers through a very curling and
+comely head of hair; the young lady looked at him with evident coquetry,
+and said, "How you do run on, you gentlemen!"
+
+"I may well run on, miss, as long as I run aufter you," was the gallant
+reply.
+
+Here the pale gentleman, evidently annoyed by being talked across, shut
+his book up, and looked round.  His eye rested on Philip, who, whether
+from the heat of the day or from the forgetfulness of thought, had pushed
+his cap from his brows; and the gentleman, after staring at him for a few
+moments with great earnestness, sighed so heavily that it attracted the
+notice of all the passengers.
+
+"Are you unwell, sir?"  asked the young lady, compassionately.
+
+"A little pain in my side, nothing more!"
+
+"Chaunge places with me, sir," cried the Lothario, officiously.  "Now
+do!"  The pale gentleman, after a short hesitation, and a bashful excuse,
+accepted the proposal.  In a few moments the young lady and the beau were
+in deep and whispered conversation, their heads turned towards the
+window.  The pale gentleman continued to gaze at Philip, till the latter,
+perceiving the notice he excited, coloured, and replaced his cap over his
+face.
+
+"Are you going to N----? asked the gentleman, in a gentle, timid voice.
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"Is it the first time you have ever been there?"
+
+"Sir!"  returned Philip, in a voice that spoke surprise and distaste at
+his neighbour's curiosity.
+
+"Forgive me," said the gentleman, shrinking back; "but you remind me of-
+of--a family I once knew in the town.  Do you know--the--the Mortons?"
+
+One in Philip's situation, with, as he supposed, the officers of justice
+in his track (for Gawtrey, for reasons of his own, rather encouraged than
+allayed his fears), might well be suspicious.  He replied therefore
+shortly, "I am quite a stranger to the town," and ensconced himself in
+the corner, as if to take a nap.  Alas! that answer was one of the many
+obstacles he was doomed to build up between himself and a fairer fate.
+
+The gentleman sighed again, and never spoke more to the end of the
+journey.  When the coach halted at the inn,--the same inn which had
+before given its shelter to poor Catherine,--the young man in the white
+coat opened the door, and offered his arm to the young lady.
+
+"Do you make any stay here, sir?" said she to the beau, as she unpinned
+her bonnet from the roof.
+
+"Perhaps so; I am waiting for my phe-a-ton, which my faellow is to bring
+down,--tauking a little tour."
+
+"We shall be very happy to see you, sir!"  said the young lady, on whom
+the phe-a-ton completed the effect produced by the gentleman's previous
+gallantries; and with that she dropped into his hand a very neat card, on
+which was printed, "Wavers and Snow, Staymakers, High Street."
+
+The beau put the card gracefully into his pocket-leaped from the coach-
+nudged aside his rival of the white coat, and offered his arm to the
+lady, who leaned on it affectionately as she descended.
+
+"This gentleman has been so perlite to me, James," said she.  James
+touched his hat; the beau clapped him on the shoulder,--"Ah! you are not
+a hauppy man,--are you?  Oh no, not at all a hauppy man!--Good day to
+you!  Guard, that hat-box is mine!"
+
+While Philip was paying the coachman, the beau passed, and whispered
+him--
+
+"Recollect old Gregg--anything on the lay here--don't spoil my sport if
+we meet!"  and bustled off into the inn, whistling "God save the king!"
+
+Philip started, then tried to bring to mind the faces which he had seen
+at the "strange place," and thought he recalled the features of his
+fellow-traveller.  However, he did not seek to renew the acquaintance,
+but inquired the way to Mr. Morton's house, and thither he now proceeded.
+
+He was directed, as a short cut, down one of those narrow passages at the
+entrance of which posts are placed as an indication that they are
+appropriated solely to foot-passengers.  A dead white wall, which
+screened the garden of the physician of the place, ran on one side; a
+high fence to a nursery-ground was on the other; the passage was lonely,
+for it was now the hour when few persons walk either for business or
+pleasure in a provincial town, and no sound was heard save the fall of
+his own step on the broad flagstones.  At the end of the passage in the
+main street to which it led, he saw already the large, smart, showy shop,
+with the hot sum shining full on the gilt letters that conveyed to the
+eyes of the customer the respectable name of "Morton,"--when suddenly the
+silence was broken by choked and painful sobs.  He turned, and beneath a
+_compo portico_, jutting from the wall, which adorned the physician's door,
+he saw a child seated on the stone steps weeping bitterly--a thrill shot
+through Philip's heart!  Did he recognise, disguised as it was by pain
+and sorrow, that voice?  He paused, and laid his hand on the child's
+shoulder: "Oh, don't--don't--pray don't--I am going, I am indeed:" cried
+the child, quailing, and still keeping his hands clasped before his face.
+
+"Sidney!" said Philip.  The boy started to his feet, uttered a cry of
+rapturous joy, and fell upon his brother's breast.
+
+"O Philip!--dear, dear Philip!  you are come to take me away back to my
+own--own mamma; I will be so good, I will never tease her again,--never,
+never!  I have been so wretched!"
+
+"Sit down, and tell me what they have done to you," said Philip, checking
+the rising heart that heaved at his mother's name.
+
+So, there they sat, on the cold stone under the stranger's porch, these
+two orphans: Philip's arms round his brother's waist, Sidney leaning on
+his shoulder, and imparting to him--perhaps with pardonable exaggeration,
+all the sufferings he had gone through; and, when he came to that
+morning's chastisement, and showed the wale across the little hands which
+he had vainly held up in supplication, Philip's passion shook him from
+limb to limb.  His impulse was to march straight into Mr. Morton's shop
+and gripe him by the throat; and the indignation he betrayed encouraged
+Sidney to colour yet more highly the tale of his wrongs and pain.
+
+When he had done, and clinging tightly to his brother's broad chest,
+said--
+
+"But never mind, Philip; now we will go home to mamma."
+
+Philip replied--
+
+"Listen to me, my dear brother.  We cannot go back to our mother.  I will
+tell you why, later.  We are alone in the world-we two!  If you will come
+with me--God help you!--for you will have many hardships: we shall have
+to work and drudge, and you may be cold and hungry, and tired, very
+often, Sidney,--very, very often!  But you know that, long ago, when I
+was so passionate, I never was wilfully unkind to you; and I declare now,
+that I would bite out my tongue rather than it should say a harsh word to
+you.  That is all I can promise.  Think well.  Will you never miss all
+the comforts you have now?"
+
+"Comforts!" repeated Sidney, ruefully, and looking at the wale over his
+hands.  "Oh! let--let--let me go with you, I shall die if I stay here.
+I shall indeed--indeed!"
+
+"Hush!" said Philip; for at that moment a step was heard, and the pale
+gentleman walked slowly down the passage, and started, and turned his
+head wistfully as he looked at the boys.
+
+When he was gone.  Philip rose.
+
+"It is settled, then," said he, firmly.  "Come with me at once.  You
+shall return to their roof no more.  Come, quick: we shall have many
+miles to go to-night."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+          "He comes--
+          Yet careless what he brings; his one concern
+          Is to conduct it to the destined inn;
+          And having dropp'd the expected bag, pass on----
+          To him indifferent whether grief or joy."
+                          COWPER: Description of the Postman.
+
+The pale gentleman entered Mr. Morton's shop; and, looking round him,
+spied the worthy trader showing shawls to a young lady just married.  He
+seated himself on a stool, and said to the bowing foreman--
+
+"I will wait till Mr. Morton is disengaged."
+
+The young lady having closely examined seven shawls, and declared they
+were beautiful, said, "she would think of it," and walked away.  Mr.
+Morton now approached the stranger.
+
+"Mr. Morton," said the pale gentleman; "you are very little altered.  You
+do not recollect me?"
+
+"Bless me, Mr. Spencer! is it really you?  Well, what a time since we
+met!  I am very glad to see you.  And what brings you to N----?
+Business?"
+
+"Yes, business.  Let us go within?"
+
+Mr. Morton led the way to the parlour, where Master Tom, reperched on the
+stool, was rapidly digesting the plundered muffin.  Mr. Morton dismissed
+him to play, and the pale gentleman took a chair.
+
+"Mr. Morton," said he, glancing over his dress, "you see I am in
+mourning.  It is for your sister.  I never got the better of that early
+attachment--never."
+
+"My sister! Good Heavens!"  said Mr. Morton, turning very pale; "is she
+dead?  Poor Catherine!--and I not know of it!  When did she die?"
+
+"Not many days since; and--and--" said Mr. Spencer, greatly affected, "I
+fear in want.  I had been abroad for some months: on my return last week,
+looking over the newspapers (for I always order them to be filed), I read
+the short account of her lawsuit against Mr. Beaufort, some time back.
+I resolved to find her out.  I did so through the solicitor she employed:
+it was too late; I arrived at her lodgings two days after her--her
+burial.  I then determined to visit poor Catherine's brother, and learn
+if anything could be done for the children she had left behind."
+
+"She left but two.  Philip, the elder, is very comfortably placed at
+R----; the younger has his home with me; and Mrs. Morton is a moth--that
+is to say, she takes great pains with him.  Ehem!  And my poor--poor
+sister!"
+
+"Is he like his mother?"
+
+"Very much, when she was young--poor dear Catherine!"
+
+"What age is he?"
+
+"About ten, perhaps; I don't know exactly; much younger than the other.
+And so she's dead!"
+
+"Mr. Morton, I am an old bachelor" (here a sickly smile crossed Mr.
+Spencer's face); "a small portion of my fortune is settled, it is true,
+on my relations; but the rest is mine, and I live within my income.  The
+elder of these boys is probably old enough to begin to take care of
+himself.  But, the younger--perhaps you have a family of your own, and
+can spare him!"
+
+Mr. Morton hesitated, and twitched up his trousers.  "Why," said he,
+"this is very kind in you.  I don't know--we'll see.  The boy is out now;
+come and dine with us at two--pot-luck.  Well, so she is no more!
+Heigho!  Meanwhile, I'll talk it over with Mrs. M."
+
+"I will be with you," said Mr. Spencer, rising.
+
+"Ah!" sighed Mr. Morton, "if Catherine had but married you she would have
+been a happy woman."
+
+"I would have tried to make her so," said Mr. Spencer, as he turned away
+his face and took his departure.
+
+Two o'clock came; but no Sidney.  They had sent to the place whither he
+had been despatched; he had never arrived there.  Mr. Morton grew
+alarmed; and, when Mr. Spencer came to dinner, his host was gone in
+search of the truant.  He did not return till three.  Doomed that day to
+be belated both at breakfast and dinner, this decided him to part with
+Sidney whenever he should be found.  Mrs. Morton was persuaded that the
+child only sulked, and would come back fast enough when he was hungry.
+Mr. Spencer tried to believe her, and ate his mutton, which was burnt to
+a cinder; but when five, six, seven o'clock came, and the boy was still
+missing,--even Mrs. Morton agreed that it was high time to institute a
+regular search.  The whole family set off different ways.  It was ten
+o'clock before they were reunited; and then all the news picked up was,
+that a boy, answering Sidney's description, had been seen with a young
+man in three several parts of the town; the last time at the outskirts,
+on the high road towards the manufacturing districts.  These tidings so
+far relieved Mr. Morton's mind that he dismissed the chilling fear that
+had crept there,--that Sidney might have drowned himself.  Boys will
+drown themselves sometimes!  The description of the young man coincided
+so remarkably with the fellow-passenger of Mr. Spencer, that he did not
+doubt it was the same; the more so when he recollected having seen him
+with a fair-haired child under the portico; and yet more, when he
+recalled the likeness to Catherine that had struck him in the coach, and
+caused the inquiry that had roused Philip's suspicion.  The mystery was
+thus made clear--Sidney had fled with his brother.  Nothing more,
+however, could be done that night.  The next morning, active measures
+should be devised; and when the morning came, the mail brought to Mr.
+Morton the two following letters.  The first was from Arthur Beaufort.
+
+"SIR,--I have been prevented by severe illness from writing to yon
+before.  I can now scarcely hold a pen; but the instant my health is
+recovered I shall be with you at N ---, on her deathbed, the mother of
+the boy under your charge, Sidney Morton, committed him solemnly to me.
+I make his fortunes my care, and shall hasten to claim him at your kindly
+hands.  But the elder son,--this poor Philip, who has suffered so
+unjustly,--for our lawyer has seen Mr. Plaskwith, and heard the whole
+story--what has become of him?  All our inquiries have failed to track
+him.  Alas, I was too ill to institute them myself while it was yet time.
+Perhaps he may have sought shelter, with you, his uncle; if so, assure
+him that he is in no danger from the pursuit of the law,--that his
+innocence is fully recognised; and that my father and myself implore him
+to accept our affection.  I can write no more now; but in a few days I
+shall hope to see you.
+                "I am, sir, &c.,
+                       "ARTHUR BEAUFORT.
+"Berkely Square. "
+
+
+The second letter was from Mr. Plaskwith, and ran thus:
+
+"DEAR MORTON,--Something very awkward has happened,--not my fault, and
+very unpleasant for me.  Your relation, Philip, as I wrote you word, was
+a painstaking lad, though odd and bad mannered,--for want, perhaps, poor
+boy! of being taught better, and Mrs. P. is, you know, a very genteel
+woman--women go too much by manners--so she never took much to him.
+However, to the point, as the French emperor used to say: one evening he
+asked me for money for his mother, who, he said, was ill, in a very
+insolent way: I may say threatening.  It was in my own shop, and before
+Plimmins and Mrs. P.; I was forced to answer with dignified rebuke, and
+left the shop.  When I returned, he was gone, and some shillings-
+fourteen, I think, and three sovereigns--evidently from the till,
+scattered on the floor.  Mrs. P. and Mr. Plimmins were very much
+frightened; thought it was clear I was robbed, and that we were to be
+murdered.  Plimmins slept below that night, and we borrowed butcher
+Johnson's dog.  Nothing happened.  I did not think I was robbed; because
+the money, when we came to calculate, was all right.  I know human
+nature.  He had thought to take it, but repented--quite clear.  However,
+I was naturally very angry, thought he'd comeback again--meant to reprove
+him properly--waited several days--heard nothing of him--grew uneasy--
+would not attend longer to Mrs. P.; for, as Napoleon Buonaparte observed,
+'women are well in their way, not in our ours.'  Made Plimmins go with me
+to town--hired a Bow Street runner to track him out--cost me L1. 1s, and
+two glasses of brandy and water.  Poor Mrs. Morton was just buried--quite
+shocked!  Suddenly saw the boy in the streets.  Plimmins rushed forward
+in the kindest way--was knocked down--hurt his arm--paid 2s. 6d. for
+lotion.  Philip ran off, we ran after him--could not find him.  Forced to
+return home.  Next day, a lawyer from a Mr. Beaufort--Mr. George
+Blackwell, a gentlemanlike man called.  Mr. Beaufort will do anything for
+him in reason.  Is there anything more I can do?  I really am very uneasy
+about the lad, and Mrs. P. and I have a tiff about it: but that's
+nothing--thought I had best write to you for instructions.
+           "Yours truly,
+                   "C. PLASHWITH.
+
+"P. S.--Just open my letter to say, Bow Street officer just been here--
+has found out that the boy has been seen with a very suspicious
+character: they think he has left London.  Bow Street officer wants to go
+after him--very expensive: so now you can decide."
+
+
+Mr. Spencer scarcely listened to Mr. Plaskwith's letter, but of Arthur's
+he felt jealous.  He would fain have been the only protector to
+Catherine's children; but he was the last man fitted to head the search,
+now so necessary to prosecute with equal tact and energy.
+
+A soft-hearted, soft-headed man, a confirmed valtudinarian, a day-
+dreamer, who had wasted away his life in dawdling and maundering over
+Simple Poetry, and sighing over his unhappy attachment; no child, no
+babe, was more thoroughly helpless than Mr. Spencer.
+
+The task of investigation devolved, therefore, on Mr. Morton, and he went
+about it in a regular, plain, straightforward way.  Hand-bills were
+circulated, constables employed, and a lawyer, accompanied by Mr.
+Spencer, despatched to the manufacturing districts: towards which the
+orphans had been seen to direct their path.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+               "Give the gentle South
+               Yet leave to court these sails."
+               BEAUMONT AND FLLTCHER: Beggar's Bush.
+
+               "Cut your cloth, sir,
+               According to your calling."--Ibid.
+
+Meanwhile the brothers were far away, and He who feeds the young ravens
+made their paths pleasant to their feet.  Philip had broken to Sidney the
+sad news of their mother's death, and Sidney had wept with bitter
+passion.  But children,--what can they know of death?  Their tears over
+graves dry sooner than the dews.  It is melancholy to compare the depth,
+the endurance, the far-sighted, anxious, prayerful love of a parent, with
+the inconsiderate, frail, and evanescent affection of the infant, whose
+eyes the hues of the butterfly yet dazzle with delight.  It was the night
+of their flight, and in the open air, when Philip (his arms round
+Sidney's waist) told his brother-orphan that they were motherless.  And
+the air was balmy, the skies filled with the effulgent presence of the
+August moon; the cornfields stretched round them wide and far, and not a
+leaf trembled on the beech-tree beneath which they had sought shelter.
+It seemed as if Nature herself smiled pityingly on their young sorrow,
+and said to them, "Grieve not for the dead: I, who live for ever, I will
+be your mother!"
+
+They crept, as the night deepened, into the warmer sleeping-place
+afforded by stacks of hay, mown that summer and still fragrant.  And the
+next morning the birds woke them betimes, to feel that Liberty, at least,
+was with them, and to wander with her at will.
+
+Who in his boyhood has not felt the delight of freedom and adventure?
+to have the world of woods and sward before him--to escape restriction--
+to lean, for the first time, on his own resources--to rejoice in the wild
+but manly luxury of independence--to act the Crusoe--and to fancy a
+Friday in every footprint--an island of his own in every field?  Yes, in
+spite of their desolation, their loss, of the melancholy past, of the
+friendless future, the orphans were happy--happy in their youth--their
+freedom--their love--their wanderings in the delicious air of the
+glorious August.  Sometimes they came upon knots of reapers lingering in
+the shade of the hedge-rows over their noonday meal; and, grown sociable
+by travel, and bold by safety, they joined and partook of the rude fare
+with the zest of fatigue and youth.  Sometimes, too, at night, they saw,
+gleam afar and red by the woodside, the fires of gipsy tents.  But these,
+with the superstition derived from old nursery-tales, they scrupulously
+shunned, eying them with a mysterious awe!  What heavenly twilights
+belong to that golden month!--the air so lucidly serene, as the purple of
+the clouds fades gradually away, and up soars, broad, round, intense, and
+luminous, the full moon which belongs to the joyous season!  The fields
+then are greener than in the heats of July and June,--they have got back
+the luxury of a second spring.  And still, beside the paths of the
+travellers, lingered on the hedges the clustering honeysuckle--the
+convolvulus glittered in the tangles of the brake--the hardy heathflower
+smiled on the green waste.
+
+And ever, at evening, they came, field after field, upon those circles
+which recall to children so many charmed legends, and are fresh and
+frequent in that month--the Fairy Rings!  They thought, poor boys! that
+it was a good omen, and half fancied that the Fairies protected them, as
+in the old time they had often protected the desolate and outcast.
+
+They avoided the main roads, and all towns, with suspicious care.  But
+sometimes they paused, for food and rest, at the obscure hostel of some
+scattered hamlet: though, more often, they loved to spread the simple
+food they purchased by the way under some thick, tree, or beside a stream
+through whose limpid waters they could watch the trout glide and play.
+And they often preferred the chance shelter of a haystack, or a shed, to
+the less romantic repose offered by the small inns they alone dared to
+enter.  They went in this much by the face and voice of the host or
+hostess.  Once only Philip had entered a town, on the second day of their
+flight, and that solely for the purchase of ruder clothes, and a change
+of linen for Sidney, with some articles and implements of use necessary
+in their present course of shift and welcome hardship.  A wise
+precaution; for, thus clad, they escaped suspicion.
+
+So journeying, they consumed several days; and, having taken a direction
+quite opposite to that which led to the manufacturing districts, whither
+pursuit had been directed, they were now in the centre of another county
+--in the neighbourhood of one of the most considerable towns of England;
+and here Philip began to think their wanderings ought to cease, and it
+was time to settle on some definite course of life.  He had carefully
+hoarded about his person, and most thriftily managed, the little fortune
+bequeathed by his mother.  But Philip looked on this capital as a deposit
+sacred to Sidney; it was not to be spent, but kept and augmented--the
+nucleus for future wealth.  Within the last few weeks his character was
+greatly ripened, and his powers of thought enlarged.  He was no more a
+boy,--he was a man: he had another life to take care of.  He resolved,
+then, to enter the town they were approaching, and to seek for some
+situation by which he might maintain both.  Sidney was very loath to
+abandon their present roving life; but he allowed that the warm weather
+could not always last, and that in winter the fields would be less
+pleasant.  He, therefore, with a sigh, yielded to his brother's
+reasonings.
+
+They entered the fair and busy town of  one day at noon; and, after
+finding a small lodging, at which he deposited Sidney, who was fatigued
+with their day's walk, Philip sallied forth alone.
+
+After his long rambling, Philip was pleased and struck with the broad
+bustling streets, the gay shops--the evidences of opulence and trade.  He
+thought it hard if he could not find there a market for the health and
+heart of sixteen.  He strolled slowly and alone along the streets, till
+his attention was caught by a small corner shop, in the window of which
+was placed a board, bearing this inscription:
+
+"OFFICE FOR EMPLOYMENT.--RECIPROCAL ADVANTAGE.
+
+"Mr. John Clump's bureau open every day, from ten till four.  Clerks,
+servants, labourers, &c., provided with suitable situations.  Terms
+moderate.  N.B.--The oldest established office in the town.
+
+"Wanted, a good cook.  An under gardener."
+
+What he sought was here!  Philip entered, and saw a short fat man with
+spectacles, seated before a desk, poring upon the well-filled leaves of a
+long register.
+
+"Sir," said Philip, "I wish for a situation.  I don't care what."
+
+"Half-a-crown for entry, if you please.  That's right.  Now for
+particulars.  Hum!--you don't look like a servant!"
+
+"No; I wish for any place where my education can be of use.  I can read
+and write; I know Latin and French; I can draw; I know arithmetic and
+summing."
+
+"Very well;  very genteel young man--prepossessing appearance (that's a
+fudge!), highly educated; usher in a school, eh?"
+
+"What you like."
+
+"References?"
+
+"I have none."
+
+"Eh!--none?"  and Mr. Clump fixed his spectacles full upon Philip.
+
+Philip was prepared for the question, and had the sense to perceive that
+a frank reply was his best policy.  "The fact is," said he boldly, "I was
+well brought up; my father died; I was to be bound apprentice to a trade
+I disliked; I left it, and have now no friends."
+
+"If I can help you, I will," said Mr. Clump, coldly.  "Can't promise
+much.  If you were a labourer, character might not matter; but educated
+young men must have a character.  Hands always more useful than head.
+Education no avail nowadays; common, quite common.  Call again on
+Monday."
+
+Somewhat disappointed and chilled, Philip turned from the bureau; but he
+had a strong confidence in his own resources, and recovered his spirits
+as he mingled with the throng.  He passed, at length, by a livery-stable,
+and paused, from old associations, as he saw a groom in the mews
+attempting to manage a young, hot horse, evidently unbroken.  The master
+of the stables, in a green short jacket and top-boots, with a long whip
+in his hand, was standing by, with one or two men who looked like
+horsedealers.
+
+"Come off, clumsy! you can't manage that I ere fine hanimal," cried the
+liveryman.  "Ah!  he's a lamb, sir, if he were backed properly.  But I
+has not a man in the yard as can ride since Will died.  Come off, I say,
+lubber!"
+
+But to come off, without being thrown off, was more easily said than
+done.  The horse was now plunging as if Juno had sent her gadfly to him;
+and Philip, interested and excited, came nearer and nearer, till he stood
+by the side of the horse-dealers.  The other ostlers ran to the help of
+their comrade, who at last, with white lips and shaking knees, found
+himself on terra firma; while the horse, snorting hard, and rubbing his
+head against the breast and arms of the ostler, who held him tightly by
+the rein, seemed to ask, is his own way, "Are there any more of you?"
+
+A suspicion that the horse was an old acquaintance crossed Philip's mind;
+he went up to him, and a white spot over the left eye confirmed his
+doubts.  It had been a foal reserved and reared for his own riding! one
+that, in his prosperous days, had ate bread from his hand, and followed
+him round the paddock like a dog; one that he had mounted in sport,
+without saddle, when his father's back was turned; a friend, in short, of
+the happy Lang syne;--nay, the very friend to whom he had boasted his
+affection, when, standing with Arthur Beaufort under the summer sky, the
+whole world seemed to him full of friends.  He put his hand on the
+horse's neck, and whispered, "Soho!  So, Billy!"  and the horse turned
+sharp round with a quick joyous neigh.
+
+"If you please, sir," said Philip, appealing to the liveryman, "I will
+undertake to ride this horse, and take him over yon leaping-bar.  Just
+let me try him."
+
+"There's a fine-spirited lad for you!"  said the liveryman, much pleased
+at the offer.  "Now, gentlemen, did I not tell you that 'ere hanimal had
+no vice if he was properly managed?"
+
+The horse-dealers shook their heads.
+
+"May I give him some bread first?"  asked Philip; and the ostler was
+despatched to the house.  Meanwhile the animal evinced various signs of
+pleasure and recognition, as Philip stroked and talked to him; and,
+finally, when he ate the bread from the young man's hand, the whole yard
+seemed in as much delight and surprise as if they had witnessed one of
+Monsieur Van Amburgh's exploits.
+
+And now, Philip, still caressing the horse, slowly and cautiously
+mounted; the animal made one bound half-across the yard--a bound which
+sent all the horse-dealers into a corner-and then went through his paces,
+one after the other, with as much ease and calm as if he had been broken
+in at Mr. Fozard's to carry a young lady.  And when he crowned all by
+going thrice over the leaping-bar, and Philip, dismounting, threw the
+reins to the ostler, and turned triumphantly to the horse-dealer, that
+gentleman slapped him on the back, and said, emphatically, "Sir, you are
+a man! and I am proud to see you here."
+
+Meanwhile the horse-dealers gathered round the animal; looked at his
+hoofs, felt his legs, examined his windpipe, and concluded the bargain,
+which, but for Philip, would have been very abruptly broken off.  When
+the horse was led out of the yard, the liveryman, Mr. Stubmore, turned to
+Philip, who, leaning against the wall, followed the poor animal with
+mournful eyes.
+
+"My good sir, you have sold that horse for me--that you have!  Anything
+as I can do for you?  One good turn de serves another.  Here's a brace of
+shiners."
+
+"Thank you, sir!  I want no money, but I do want some employment.  I can
+be of use to you, perhaps, in your establishment.  I have been brought up
+among horses all my life."
+
+"Saw it, sir!  that's very clear.  I say, that 'ere horse knows you!"
+and the dealer put his finger to his nose.
+
+"Quite right to be mum!  He was bred by an old customer of mine--famous
+rider!--Mr. Beaufort.  Aha! that's where you knew him, I s'pose.  Were
+you in his stables?"
+
+"Hem--I knew Mr. Beaufort well."
+
+"Did you?  You could not know a better man.  Well, I shall be very glad
+to engage you, though you seem by your hands to be a bit of a gentleman-
+elh?  Never mind; don't want you to groom!--but superintend things.  D'ye
+know accounts, eh?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Character?"
+
+Philip repeated to Mr. Stubmore the story he had imparted to Mr. Clump.
+Somehow or other, men who live much with horses are always more lax in
+their notions than the rest of mankind.  Mr. Stubmore did not seem to
+grow more distant at Philip's narration.
+
+"Understand you perfectly, my man.  Brought up with them 'ere fine
+creturs, how could you nail your nose to a desk?  I'll take you without
+more palaver.  What's your name?"
+
+"Philips."
+
+"Come to-morrow, and we'll settle about wages.  Sleep here?"
+
+"No. I have a brother whom I must lodge with, and for whose sake I wish
+to work.  I should not like him to be at the stables--he is too young.
+But I can come early every day, and go home late."
+
+"Well, just as you like, my man.  Good day."
+
+And thus, not from any mental accomplishment--not from the result of his
+intellectual education, but from the mere physical capacity and brute
+habit of sticking fast on his saddle, did Philip Morton, in this great,
+intelligent, gifted, civilised, enlightened community of Great Britain,
+find the means of earning his bread without stealing it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+          "_Don Salluste (souriunt)_.  Je paire
+          Que vous ne pensiez pas a moi?"--Ruy Blas.
+
+          "_Don Salluste_.  Cousin!
+          Don Cesar.  De vos bienfaits je n'aurai nulle envie,
+          Tant que je trouverai vivant ma libre vie."--Ibid.
+
+     Don Sallust (smiling).  I'll lay a wager you won't think of me?
+     Don Sallust.  Cousin!
+     Don Caesar.  I covet not your favours, so but I lead an independent
+     life.
+
+Phillip's situation was agreeable to his habits.  His great courage and
+skill in horsemanship were not the only qualifications useful to Mr.
+Stubmore: his education answered a useful purpose in accounts, and his
+manners and appearance were highly to the credit of the yard.  The
+customers and loungers soon grew to like Gentleman Philips, as he was
+styled in the establishment.  Mr. Stubmore conceived a real affection for
+him.  So passed several weeks; and Philip, in this humble capacity, might
+have worked out his destinies in peace and comfort, but for a new cause
+of vexation that arose in Sidney.  This boy was all in all to his
+brother.  For him he had resisted the hearty and joyous invitations of
+Gawtrey (whose gay manner and high spirits had, it must be owned,
+captivated his fancy, despite the equivocal mystery of the man's
+avocations and condition); for him he now worked and toiled, cheerful and
+contented; and him he sought to save from all to which he subjected
+himself.  He could not bear that that soft and delicate child should ever
+be exposed to the low and menial associations that now made up his own
+life--to the obscene slang of grooms and ostlers--to their coarse manners
+and rough contact.  He kept him, therefore, apart and aloof in their
+little lodging, and hoped in time to lay by, so that Sidney might
+ultimately be restored, if not to his bright original sphere, at least to
+a higher grade than that to which Philip was himself condemned.  But poor
+Sidney could not bear to be thus left alone--to lose sight of his brother
+from daybreak till bed-time--to have no one to amuse him; he fretted and
+pined away: all the little inconsiderate selfishness, uneradicated from
+his breast by his sufferings, broke out the more, the more he felt that
+he was the first object on earth to Philip.  Philip, thinking he might be
+more cheerful at a day-school, tried the experiment of placing him at one
+where the boys were much of his own age.  But Sidney, on the third day,
+came back with a black eye, and he would return no more.  Philip several
+times thought of changing their lodging for one where there were young
+people.  But Sidney had taken a fancy to the kind old widow who was their
+landlady, and cried at the thought of removal.  Unfortunately, the old
+woman was deaf and rheumatic; and though she bore teasing _ad libitum_,
+she could not entertain the child long on a stretch.  Too young to be
+reasonable, Sidney could not, or would not, comprehend why his brother
+was so long away from him; and once he said, peevishly,--
+
+"If I had thought I was to be moped up so, I would not have left Mrs.
+Morton.  Tom was a bad boy, but still it was somebody to play with.  I
+wish I had not gone away with you!"
+
+This speech cut Philip to the heart.  What, then, he had taken from the
+child a respectable and safe shelter--the sure provision of a life--and
+the child now reproached him!  When this was said to him, the tears
+gushed from his eyes.  "God forgive me, Sidney," said he, and turned
+away.
+
+But then Sidney, who had the most endearing ways with him, seeing his
+brother so vexed, ran up and kissed him, and scolded himself for being
+naughty.  Still the words were spoken, and their meaning rankled deep.
+Philip himself, too, was morbid in his excessive tenderness for this boy.
+There is a certain age, before the love for the sex commences, when the
+feeling of friendship is almost a passion.  You see it constantly in
+girls and boys at school.  It is the first vague craving of the heart
+after the master food of human life--Love.  It has its jealousies, and
+humours, and caprices, like love itself.  Philip was painfully acute to
+Sidney's affection, was jealous of every particle of it.  He dreaded lest
+his brother should ever be torn from him.
+
+He would start from his sleep at night, and go to Sidney's bed to see
+that he was there.  He left him in the morning with forebodings--he
+returned in the dark with fear.  Meanwhile the character of this young
+man, so sweet and tender to Sidney, was gradually becoming more hard and
+stern to others.  He had now climbed to the post of command in that rude
+establishment; and premature command in any sphere tends to make men
+unsocial and imperious.
+
+One day Mr. Stubmore called him into his own countinghouse, where stood a
+gentleman, with one hand in his coatpocket, the other tapping his whip
+against his boot.
+
+"Philips, show this gentleman the brown mare.  She is a beauty in
+harness, is she not?  This gentleman wants a match for his pheaton."
+
+"She must step very hoigh," said the gentleman, turning round: and Philip
+recognised the beau in the stage-coach.  The recognition was
+simultaneous.  The beau nodded, then whistled, and winked.
+
+"Come, my man, I am at your service," said he.
+
+Philip, with many misgivings, followed him across the yard.  The
+gentleman then beckoned him to approach.
+
+"You, sir,--moind, I never peach--setting up here in the honest line?
+Dull work, honesty,--eh?"
+
+"Sir, I really don't know you."
+
+"Daun't you recollect old Greggs, the evening you came there with jolly
+Bill Gawtrey?  Recollect that, eh?"  Philip was mute.
+
+"I was among the gentlemen in the back parlour who shook you by the hand.
+Bill's off to France, then.  I am tauking the provinces.  I want a good
+horse--the best in the yard, moind!  Cutting such a swell here!  My name
+is Captain de Burgh Smith--never moind yours, my fine faellow.  Now,
+then, out with your rattlers, and keep your tongue in your mouth."
+
+Philip mechanically ordered out the brown mare, which Captain Smith did
+not seem much to approve of; and, after glancing round the stables with
+great disdain of the collection, he sauntered out of the yard without
+saying more to Philip, though he stopped and spoke a few sentences to Mr.
+Stubmore.  Philip hoped he had no design of purchasing, and that he was
+rid, for the present, of so awkward a customer.  Mr. Stubmore approached
+Philip.
+
+"Drive over the greys to Sir John," said he.  "My lady wants a pair to
+job.  A very pleasant man, that Captain Smith.  I did not know you had
+been in a yard before--says you were the pet at Elmore's in London.
+Served him many a day.  Pleasant, gentlemanlike man!"
+
+"Y-e-s!"  said Philip, hardly knowing what he said, and hurrying back
+into the stables to order out the greys.  The place to which he was bound
+was some miles distant, and it was sunset when he returned.  As he drove
+into the main street, two men observed him closely.
+
+"That is he!  I am almost sure it is," said one.  "Oh! then it's all
+smooth sailing," replied the other.
+
+"But, bless my eyes! you must be mistaken!  See whom he's talking to
+now!"
+
+At that moment Captain de Burgh Smith, mounted on the brown mare, stopped
+Philip.
+
+"Well, you see, I've bought her,--hope she'll turn out well.  What do you
+really think she's worth?  Not to buy, but to sell?"
+
+"Sixty guineas."
+
+"Well, that's a good day's work; and I owe it to you.  The old faellow
+would not have trusted me if you had not served me at Elmore's--ha! ha!
+If he gets scent and looks shy at you, my lad, come to me.  I'm at the
+Star Hotel for the next few days.  I want a tight faellow like you, and
+you shall have a fair percentage.  I'm none of your stingy ones.  I say,
+I hope this devil is quiet?  She cocks up her ears dawmnably!"
+
+"Look you, sir!"  said Philip, very gravely, and rising up in his break;
+"I know very little of you, and that little is not much to your credit.
+I give you fair warning that I shall caution my employer against you."
+
+"Will you, my fine faellow?  then take care of yourself."
+
+"Stay, and if you dare utter a word against me," said Philip, with that
+frown to which his swarthy complexion and flashing eyes gave an
+expression of fierce power beyond his years, "you will find that, as I am
+the last to care for a threat, so I am the first to resent an injury!"
+
+Thus saying, he drove on.  Captain Smith affected a cough, and put his
+brown mare into a canter.  The two men followed Philip as he drove into
+the yard.
+
+"What do you know against the person he spoke to?"  said one of them.
+
+"Merely that he is one of the cunningest swells on this side the Bay,"
+returned the other.  "It looks bad for your young friend."
+
+The first speaker shook his head and made no reply.
+
+On gaining the yard, Philip found that Mr. Stubmore had gone out, and was
+not expected home till the next day.  He had some relations who were
+farmers, whom he often visited; to them he was probably gone.
+
+Philip, therefore, deferring his intended caution against the gay captain
+till the morrow, and musing how the caution might be most discreetly
+given, walked homeward.  He had just entered the lane that led to his
+lodgings, when he saw the two men I have spoken of on the other side of
+the street.  The taller and better-dressed of the two left his comrade;
+and crossing over to Philip, bowed, and thus accosted him,--
+
+"Fine evening, Mr. Philip Morton.  I am rejoiced to see you at last.  You
+remember me--Mr. Blackwell, Lincoln's Inn."
+
+"What is your business?"  said Philip, halting, and speaking short and
+fiercely.
+
+"Now don't be in a passion, my dear sir,--now don't.  I am here on behalf
+of my clients, Messrs.  Beaufort, sen. and jun.  I have had such work to
+find you!  Dear, dear! but you are a sly one!  Ha! ha!  Well, you see we
+have settled that little affair of Plaskwith's for you (might have been
+ugly), and now I hope you will--"
+
+"To your business, sir!  What do you want with me?"
+
+"Why, now, don't be so quick!  'Tis not the way to do business.  Suppose
+you step to my hotel.  A glass of wine now, Mr. Philip!  We shall soon
+understand each other."
+
+"Out of my path, or speak plainly!"
+
+Thus put to it, the lawyer, casting a glance at his stout companion, who
+appeared to be contemplating the sunset on the other side of the way,
+came at once to the marrow of his subject.
+
+"Well, then,--well, my say is soon said.  Mr. Arthur Beaufort takes a
+most lively interest in you; it is he who has directed this inquiry.  He
+bids me say that he shall be most happy--yes, most happy--to serve you in
+anything; and if you will but see him, he is in the town, I am sure you
+will be charmed with him--most amiable young man!"
+
+"Look you, sir," said Philip,  drawing himself  up "neither from father,
+nor from son, nor from one of that family, on whose heads rest the
+mother's death and the orphans' curse, will I ever accept boon or
+benefit--with them, voluntarily, I will hold no communion; if they force
+themselves in my path, let them beware!  I am earning my bread in the way
+I desire--I am independent--I want them not.  Begone!"
+
+With that, Philip pushed aside the lawyer and strode on rapidly.  Mr.
+Blackwell, abashed and perplexed, returned to his companion.
+
+Philip regained his home, and found Sidney stationed at the window alone,
+and with wistful eyes noting the flight of the grey moths as they darted
+to and fro, across the dull shrubs that, variegated with lines for
+washing, adorned the plot of ground which the landlady called a garden.
+The elder brother had returned at an earlier hour than usual, and Sidney
+did not at first perceive him enter.  When he did he clapped his hands,
+and ran to him.
+
+"This is so good in you, Philip.  I have been so dull; you will come and
+play now?"
+
+"With all my heart--where shall we play?"  said Philip, with a cheerful
+smile.
+
+"Oh, in the garden!--it's such a nice time for hide and seek."
+
+"But is it not chill and damp for you?"  said Philip.
+
+"There now; you are always making excuses.  I see you don't like it.  I
+have no heart to play now."
+
+Sidney seated himself and pouted.
+
+"Poor Sidney!  you must be dull without me.  Yes, let us play; but put on
+this handkerchief;" and Philip took off his own cravat and tied it round
+his brother's neck, and kissed him.
+
+Sidney, whose anger seldom lasted long, was reconciled; and they went
+into the garden to play.  It was a little spot, screened by an old moss-
+grown paling, from the neighbouring garden on the one side and a lane on
+the other.  They played with great glee till the night grew darker and
+the dews heavier.
+
+"This must be the last time," cried Philip.  "It is my turn to hide."
+
+"Very well!  Now, then."
+
+Philip secreted himself behind a poplar; and as Sidney searched for him,
+and Philip stole round and round the tree, the latter, happening to look
+across the paling, saw the dim outline of a man's figure in the lane, who
+appeared watching them.  A thrill shot across his breast.  These
+Beauforts, associated in his thoughts with every evil omen and augury,
+had they set a spy upon his movements?  He remained erect and gazing at
+the form, when Sidney discovered, and ran up to him, with his noisy
+laugh.
+
+As the child clung to him, shouting with gladness, Philip, unheeding his
+playmate, called aloud and imperiously to the stranger--
+
+"What are you gaping at?  Why do you stand watching us?"
+
+The man muttered something, moved on, and disappeared.  "I hope there are
+no thieves here!  I am so much afraid of thieves," said Sidney,
+tremulously.
+
+The fear grated on Philip's heart.  Had he not himself, perhaps, been
+judged and treated as a thief?  He said nothing, but drew his brother
+within; and there, in their little room, by the one poor candle, it was
+touching and beautiful to see these boys--the tender patience of the
+elder lending itself to every whim of the younger--now building houses
+with cards--now telling stories of fairy and knight-errant--the
+sprightliest he could remember or invent.  At length, as all was over,
+and Sidney was undressing for the night, Philip, standing apart, said to
+him, in a mournful voice:--
+
+"Are you sad now, Sidney?"
+
+"No! not when you are with me--but that is so seldom."
+
+"Do you read none of the story-books I bought for you?"
+
+"Sometimes! but one can't read all day."
+
+"Ah! Sidney, if ever we should part, perhaps you will love me no longer!"
+
+"Don't say so," said Sidney.  "But we sha'n't part, Philip?"
+
+Philip sighed, and turned away as his brother leaped into bed.  Something
+whispered to him that danger was near; and as it was, could Sidney grow
+up, neglected and uneducated; was it thus that he was to fulfil his
+trust?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+     "But oh, what storm was in that mind!"--CRABBE. _Ruth_
+
+While Philip mused, and his brother fell into the happy sleep of
+childhood, in a room in the principal hotel of the town sat three
+persons, Arthur Beaufort, Mr. Spencer, and Mr. Blackwell.
+
+"And so," said the first, "he rejected every overture from the
+Beauforts?"
+
+"With a scorn I cannot convey to you!"  replied the lawyer.  "But the
+fact is, that he is evidently a lad of low habits; to think of his being
+a sort of helper to a horse dealer!  I suppose, sir, he was always in the
+stables in his father's time.  Bad company depraves the taste very soon;
+but that is not the worst.  Sharp declares that the man he was talking
+with, as I told you, is a common swindler.  Depend on it, Mr. Arthur, he
+is incorrigible; all we can do is to save the brother."
+
+"It is too dreadful to contemplate!"  said Arthur, who, still ill and
+languid, reclined on a sofa.
+
+"It is, indeed," said Mr. Spencer; "I am sure I should not know what to
+do with such a character; but the other poor child, it would be a mercy
+to get hold of him."
+
+"Where is Mr. Sharp?"  asked Arthur.
+
+"Why," said the lawyer, "he has followed Philip at a distance to find out
+his lodgings, and learn if his brother is with him.  Oh! here he is!"
+and Blackwell's companion in the earlier part of the evening entered.
+
+"I have found him out, sir," said Mr. Sharp, wiping his forehead.  "What
+a fierce 'un he is!  I thought he would have had a stone at my head; but
+we officers are used to it; we does our duty, and Providence makes our
+heads unkimmon hard!"
+
+"Is the child with him?"  asked Mr. Spencer.
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"A little, quiet, subdued boy?" asked the melancholy inhabitant of the
+Lakes.
+
+"Quiet!  Lord love you! never heard a noisier little urchin!  There they
+were, romping and romping in the garden, like a couple of gaol birds."
+
+"You see," groaned Mr. Spencer, "he will make that poor child as bad as
+himself."
+
+"What shall us do, Mr. Blackwell?"  asked Sharp, who longed for his
+brandy and water.
+
+"Why, I was thinking you might go to the horse-dealer the first thing in
+the morning; find out whether Philip is really thick with the swindler;
+and, perhaps, Mr. Stubmore may have some influence with him, if, without
+saying who he is--"
+
+"Yes," interrupted Arthur, "do not expose his name."
+
+"You could still hint that he ought to be induced to listen to his
+friends and go with them.  Mr. Stubmore may be a respectable man, and---"
+
+"I understand," said Sharp; "I have no doubt as how I can settle it.  We
+learns to know human natur in our profession;--'cause why?  we gets at
+its blind side.  Good night, gentlemen!"
+
+"You seem very pale, Mr. Arthur; you had better go to bed; you promised
+your father, you know."
+
+"Yes, I am not well; I will go to bed;" and Arthur rose, lighted his
+candle, and sought his room.
+
+"I will see Philip to-morrow," he said to himself; "he will listen to
+me."
+
+The conduct of Arthur Beaufort in executing the charge he had undertaken
+had brought into full light all the most amiable and generous part of his
+character.  As soon as he was sufficiently recovered, he had expressed so
+much anxiety as to the fate of the orphans, that to quiet him his father
+was forced to send for Mr. Blackwell.  The lawyer had ascertained,
+through Dr. ---, the name of Philip's employer at R----.  At Arthur's
+request he went down to Mr. Plaskwith; and arriving there the day after
+the return of the bookseller, learned those particulars with which Mr.
+Plaskwith's letter to Roger Morton has already made the reader
+acquainted.  The lawyer then sent for Mr. Sharp, the officer before
+employed, and commissioned him to track the young man's whereabout.  That
+shrewd functionary soon reported that a youth every way answering to
+Philip's description had been introduced the night of the escape by a man
+celebrated, not indeed for robberies, or larcenies, or crimes of the
+coarser kind, but for address in all that more large and complex
+character which comes under the denomination of living upon one's wits,
+to a polite rendezvous frequented by persons of a similar profession.
+Since then, however, all clue of Philip was lost.  But though Mr.
+Blackwell, in the way of his profession, was thus publicly benevolent
+towards the fugitive, he did not the less privately represent to his
+patrons, senior and junior, the very equivocal character that Philip must
+be allowed to bear.  Like most lawyers, hard upon all who wander from the
+formal tracks, he unaffectedly regarded Philip's flight and absence as
+proofs of a reprobate disposition; and this conduct was greatly
+aggravated in his eyes by Mr. Sharp's report, by which it appeared that
+after his escape Philip had so suddenly, and, as it were, so naturally,
+taken to such equivocal companionship.  Mr. Robert Beaufort, already
+prejudiced against Philip, viewed matters in the same light as the
+lawyer; and the story of his supposed predilections reached Arthur's ears
+in so distorted a shape, that even he was staggered and revolted:--still
+Philip was so young--Arthur's oath to the orphans' mother so recent--and
+if thus early inclined to wrong courses, should not every effort be made
+to lure him back to the straight path?  With these views and reasonings,
+as soon as he was able, Arthur himself visited Mrs. Lacy, and the note
+from Philip, which the good lady put into his hands, affected him deeply,
+and confirmed all his previous resolutions.  Mrs. Lacy was very anxious
+to get at his name; but Arthur, having heard that Philip had refused all
+aid from his father and Mr. Blackwell, thought that the young man's pride
+might work equally against himself, and therefore evaded the landlady's
+curiosity.  He wrote the next day the letter we have seen, to Mr. Roger
+Morton, whose address Catherine had given to him; and by return of post
+came a letter from the linendraper narrating the flight of Sidney, as it
+was supposed with his brother.  This news so excited Arthur that he
+insisted on going down to N---- at once, and joining in the search.  His
+father, alarmed for his health, positively refused; and the consequence
+was an increase of fever, a consultation with the doctors, and a
+declaration that Mr. Arthur was in that state that it would be dangerous
+not to let him have his own way,  Mr. Beaufort was forced to yield, and
+with Blackwell and Mr. Sharp accompanied his son to N----.  The
+inquiries, hitherto fruitless, then assumed a more regular and business-
+like character.  By little and little they came, through the aid of Mr.
+Sharp, upon the right clue, up to a certain point.  But here there was a
+double scent: two youths answering the description, had been seen at a
+small village; then there came those who asserted that they had seen the
+same youths at a seaport in one direction; others, who deposed to their
+having taken the road to an inland town in the other.  This had induced
+Arthur and his father to part company.  Mr. Beaufort, accompanied by
+Roger Morton, went to the seaport; and Arthur, with Mr. Spencer and Mr.
+Sharp, more fortunate, tracked the fugitives to their retreat.  As for
+Mr. Beaufort, senior, now that his mind was more at ease about his son,
+he was thoroughly sick of the whole thing; greatly bored by the society
+of Mr. Morton; very much ashamed that he, so respectable and great a man,
+should be employed on such an errand; more afraid of, than pleased with,
+any chance of discovering the fierce Philip; and secretly resolved upon
+slinking back to London at the first reasonable excuse.
+
+The next morning Mr. Sharp entered betimes Mr. Stubmore's counting-house.
+In the yard he caught a glimpse of Philip, and managed to keep himself
+unseen by that young gentleman.
+
+"Mr. Stubmore, I think?"
+
+"At your service, sir."
+
+Mr. Sharp shut the glass door mysteriously, and lifting up the corner of
+a green curtain that covered the panes, beckoned to the startled
+Stubmore to approach.
+
+"You see that 'ere young man in the velveteen jacket?  you employs him?"
+
+"I do, sir; he's my right hand."
+
+"Well, now, don't be frightened, but his friends are arter him.  He has
+got into bad ways, and we want you to give him a little good advice."
+
+"Pooh!  I know he has run away, like a fine-spirited lad as he is; and as
+long as he likes to stay with me, they as comes after him may get a
+ducking in the horse-trough!"
+
+"Be you a father? a father of a family, Mr. Stubmore?"  said Sharp,
+thrusting his hands into his breeches pockets, swelling out his stomach,
+and pursing up his lips with great solemnity.
+
+"Nonsense! no gammon with me!  Take your chaff to the goslings.  I tells
+you I can't do without that 'ere lad.  Every man to himself."
+
+"Oho!"  thought Sharp, "I must change the tack."
+
+"Mr. Stubmore," said he, taking a stool, "you speaks like a sensible
+man.  No one can reasonably go for to ask a gentleman to go for to
+inconvenience hisself. But what do you know of that 'ere youngster.
+Had you a carakter with him?"
+
+"What's that to you?"
+
+"Why, it's more to yourself, Mr. Stubmore; he is but a lad, and if he
+goes back to his friends they may take care of him, but he got into a bad
+set afore he come here.  Do you know a good-looking chap with whiskers,
+who talks of his pheaton, and was riding last night on a brown mare?"
+
+"Y--e--s!"  said Mr. Stubmore, growing rather pale, "and I knows the
+mare, too.  Why, sir, I sold him that mare!"
+
+"Did he pay you for her?"
+
+"Why, to be sure, he gave me a cheque on Coutts."
+
+"And you took it!  My eyes!  what a flat!"  Here Mr. Sharp closed the
+orbs he had invoked, and whistled with that self-hugging delight which
+men invariably feel when another man is taken in.
+
+Mr. Stubmore became evidently nervous.
+
+"Why, what now;--you don't think I'm done?  I did not let him have the
+mare till I went to the hotel,--found he was cutting a great dash there,
+a groom, a pheaton, and a fine horse, and as extravagant as the devil!"
+
+"O Lord!--O Lord!  what a world this is!  What does he call his-self?"
+
+"Why, here's the cheque--George Frederick  de--de Burgh Smith."
+
+"Put it in your pipe, my man,--put it in your pipe--not worth a d---!"
+
+"And who the deuce are you, sir?"  bawled out Mr. Stubmore, in an equal
+rage both with himself and his guest.
+
+"I, sir," said the visitor, rising with great dignity,--"I, sir, am of
+the great Bow Street Office, and my name is John Sharp!"
+
+Mr. Stubmore nearly fell off his stool, his eyes rolled in his head, and
+his teeth chattered.  Mr. Sharp perceived the advantage he had gained,
+and continued,--
+
+"Yes, sir; and I could have much to say against that chap, who is nothing
+more or less than Dashing Jerry, as has ruined more girls and more
+tradesmen than any lord in the land.  And so I called to give you a bit
+of caution; for, says I to myself, 'Mr. Stubmore is a respectable man.'"
+
+"I hope I am,  sir," said the crestfallen horse-dealer; "that was always
+my character."
+
+"And the father of a family?"
+
+"Three boys and a babe at the buzzom," said Mr. Stubmore pathetically.
+
+"And he sha'n't be taken in if I can help it!  That 'ere young man as I
+am arter, you see, knows Captain Smith--ha!  ha!--smell a rat now--eh?"
+
+"Captain Smith said he knew him--the wiper--and that's what made me so
+green."
+
+"Well, we must not be hard on the youngster: 'cause why? he has friends
+as is gemmen.  But you tell him to go back to his poor dear relations,
+and all shall be forgiven; and say as how you won't keep him; and if he
+don't go back, he'll have to get his livelihood without a carakter; and
+use your influence with him like a man and a Christian, and what's more,
+like the father of a family--Mr. Stub more--with three boys and a babe at
+the buzzom.  You won't keep him now?"
+
+"Keep him!  I have had a precious escape.  I'd better go and see after
+the mare."
+
+"I doubt if you'll find her: the Captain caught a sight of me this
+morning.  Why, he lodges at our hotel.  He's off by this time!"
+
+"And why the devil did you let him go?"
+
+"'Cause I had no writ agin him!"  said the Bow Street officer; and he
+walked straight out of the counting-office, satisfied that he had "done
+the job."
+
+To snatch his hat--to run to the hotel--to find that Captain Smith had
+indeed gone off in his phaeton, bag and baggage, the, same as he came,
+except that he had now two horses to the phaeton instead of one--having
+left with the landlord the amount of his bill in another cheque upon
+Coutts--was the work of five minutes with Mr. Stubmore.  He returned
+home, panting and purple with indignation and wounded feeling.
+
+"To think that chap, whom I took into my yard like a son, should have
+connived at this!  'Tain't the money'tis the willany that 'flicts me!"
+muttered Mr. Stubmore, as he re-entered the mews.
+
+Here he came plump upon Philip, who said--
+
+"Sir, I wished to see you, to say that you had better take care of
+Captain Smith."
+
+"Oh, you did, did you, now he's gone?  'sconded off to America, I dare
+say, by this time.  Now look ye, young man; your friends are after you, I
+won't say anything agin you; but you go back to them--I wash my hands of
+you.  Quite too much for me.  There's your week, and never let me catch
+you in my yard agin, that's all!"
+
+Philip dropped the money which Stubmore had put into his hand.  "My
+friends!--friends have been with you, have they?  I thought so--I thank
+them.  And so you part with me?  Well, you have been very kind, very
+kind; let us part kindly;" and he held out his hand.
+
+Mr. Stubmore was softened--he touched the hand held out to him, and
+looked doubtful a moment; but Captain de Burgh Smith's cheque for eighty
+guineas suddenly rose before his eyes.  He turned on his heel abruptly,
+and said, over his shoulder:
+
+"Don't go after Captain Smith (he'll come to the gallows); mend your
+ways, and be ruled by your poor dear relatives, whose hearts you are
+breaking."
+
+"Captain Smith!  Did my relations tell you?"
+
+"Yes--yes--they told me all--that is, they sent to tell me; so you see
+I'm d---d soft not to lay hold of you.  But, perhaps, if they be gemmen,
+they'll act as sich, and cash me this here cheque!"
+
+But the last words were said to air.  Philip had rushed from the yard.
+
+With a heaving breast, and every nerve in his body quivering with wrath,
+the proud, unhappy boy strode through the gay streets.  They had betrayed
+him then, these accursed Beauforts! they circled his steps with schemes
+to drive him like a deer into the snare of their loathsome charity!  The
+roof was to be taken from his head--the bread from his lips--so that he
+might fawn at their knees for bounty.  "But they shall not break my
+spirit, nor steal away my curse.  No, my dead mother, never!"
+
+As he thus muttered, he passed through a patch of waste land that led to
+the row of houses in which his lodging was placed.  And here a voice
+called to him, and a hand was laid on his shoulder.  He turned, and
+Arthur Beaufort, who had followed him from the street, stood behind him.
+Philip did not, at the first glance, recognise his cousin; illness had so
+altered him, and his dress was so different from that in which he had
+first and last beheld him.  The contrast between the two young men was
+remarkable.  Philip was clad in a rough garb suited to his late calling--
+a jacket of black velveteen, ill-fitting and ill-fashioned, loose fustian
+trousers, coarse shoes, his hat set deep over his pent eyebrows, his
+raven hair long and neglected.  He was just at that age when one with
+strong features and robust frame is at the worst in point of appearance
+--the sinewy proportions not yet sufficiently fleshed, and seeming
+inharmonious and undeveloped; precisely in proportion, perhaps, to the
+symmetry towards which they insensibly mature: the contour of the face
+sharpened from the roundness of boyhood, and losing its bloom without yet
+acquiring that relief and shadow which make the expression and dignity of
+the masculine countenance.  Thus accoutred, thus gaunt, and uncouth,
+stood Morton.  Arthur Beaufort, always refined in his appearance, seemed
+yet more so from the almost feminine delicacy which ill-health threw over
+his pale complexion and graceful figure; that sort of unconscious
+elegance which belongs to the dress of the rich when they are young--seen
+most in minutiae--not observable, perhaps, by themselves-marked forcibly
+and painfully the distinction of rank between the two.  That distinction
+Beaufort did not feel; but at a glance it was visible to Philip.
+
+The past rushed back on him.  The sunny lawn-the gun offered and
+rejected-the pride of old, much less haughty than the pride of to-day.
+
+"Philip," said Beaufort, feebly, "they tell me you will not accept any
+kindness from me or mine.  Ah! if you knew how we have sought you!"
+
+"Knew!" cried Philip, savagely, for that unlucky sentence recalled to him
+his late interview with his employer, and his present destitution.
+"Knew!  And why have you dared to hunt me out, and halloo me down?--why
+must this insolent tyranny, that assumes the right over these limbs and
+this free will, betray and expose me and my wretchedness wherever I
+turn?"
+
+"Your poor mother--" began Beaufort.
+
+"Name her not with your lips--name her not!"  cried Philip, growing livid
+with his emotions.  "Talk not of the mercy--the forethought--a Beaufort
+could show to leer and her offspring!  I accept it not--I believe it not.
+Oh, yes! you follow me now with your false kindness; and why?  Because
+your father--your vain, hollow, heartless father--"
+
+"Hold!" said Beaufort, in a tone of such reproach, that it startled the
+wild heart on which it fell; "it is my father you speak of.  Let the son
+respect the son."
+
+"No--no--no!  I will respect none of your race.  I tell you your father
+fears me.  I tell you that my last words to him ring in his ears!  My
+wrongs!  Arthur Beaufort, when you are absent I seek to forget them; in
+your abhorred presence they revive--they--"
+
+He stopped, almost choked with his passion; but continued instantly, with
+equal intensity of fervour:
+
+Were yon tree the gibbet, and to touch your hand could alone save me from
+it, I would scorn your aid.  Aid!  The very thought fires my blood and
+nerves my hand.  Aid!  Will a Beaufort give me back my birthright--
+restore my dead mother's fair name?  Minion!--sleek, dainty, luxurious
+minion!--out of my path!  You have my fortune, my station, my rights; I
+have but poverty, and hate, and disdain.  I swear, again and again, that
+you shall not purchase these from me."
+
+"But, Philip--Philip," cried Beaufort, catching his arm; "hear one--hear
+one who stood by your--"
+
+The sentence that would have saved the outcast from the demons that were
+darkening and swooping round his soul, died upon the young Protector's
+lips.  Blinded, maddened, excited, and exasperated, almost out of
+humanity itself, Philip fiercely--brutally--swung aside the enfeebled
+form that sought to cling to him, and Beaufort fell at his feet.  Morton
+stopped--glared at him with clenched hands and a smiling lip, sprung over
+his prostrate form, and bounded to his home.
+
+He slackened his pace as he neared the house, and looked behind; but
+Beaufort had not followed him.  He entered the house, and found Sidney in
+the room, with a countenance so much more gay than that he had lately
+worn, that, absorbed as he was in thought and passion, it yet did not
+fail to strike him.
+
+"What has pleased you, Sidney?"  The child smiled.
+
+"Ah! it is a secret--I was not to tell you.  But I'm sure you are not the
+naughty boy lie says you are."
+
+"He!--who?"
+
+"Don't look so angry, Philip: you frighten me!"
+
+"And you torture me.  Who could malign one brother to the other?"
+
+"Oh! it was all meant very kindly--there's been such a nice, dear, good
+gentleman here, and he cried when he saw me, and said he knew dear mamma.
+Well, and he has promised to take me home with him and give me a pretty
+pony--as pretty--as pretty--oh, as pretty as it can be got!  And he is to
+call again and tell me more: I think he is a fairy, Philip."
+
+"Did he say that he was to take me, too, Sidney?"  said Morton, seating
+himself, and looking very pale.  At that question Sidney hung his head.
+
+"No, brother--he says you won't go, and that you are a bad boy--and that
+you associate with wicked people--and that you want to keep me shut up
+here and not let any one be good to me.  But I told him I did not believe
+that--yes, indeed, I told him so."
+
+And Sidney endeavoured caressingly to withdraw the hands that his brother
+placed before his face.
+
+Morton started up, and walked hastily to and fro the room.  "This,"
+thought he, "is another emissary of the Beauforts'--perhaps the lawyer:
+they will take him from me--the last thing left to love and hope for.
+I will foil them."
+
+"Sidney," he said aloud, "we must go hence today, this very hour-nay,
+instantly."
+
+"What! away from this nice, good gentleman?"
+
+"Curse him! yes, away from him.  Do not cry--it is of no use--you must
+go."
+
+This was said more harshly than Philip had ever yet spoken to Sidney; and
+when he had said it, he left the room to settle with the landlady, and to
+pack up their scanty effects.  In another hour, the brothers had turned
+their backs on the town.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+                              "I'll carry thee
+               In sorrow's arms to welcome Misery."
+
+                              HEYWOOD's Duchess of Sufolk.
+
+               "Who's here besides foul weather?"
+                                     SHAKSPEARE Lear.
+
+The sun was as bright and the sky as calm during the journey of the
+orphans as in the last.  They avoided, as before, the main roads, and
+their way lay through landscapes that might have charmed a Gainsborough's
+eye.  Autumn scattered its last hues of gold over the various foliage,
+and the poppy glowed from the hedges, and the wild convolvuli, here and
+there, still gleamed on the wayside with a parting smile.
+
+At times, over the sloping stubbles, broke the sound of the sportsman's
+gun; and ever and anon, by stream and sedge, they startled the shy wild
+fowl, just come from the far lands, nor yet settled in the new haunts too
+soon to be invaded.
+
+But there was no longer in the travellers the same hearts that had made
+light of hardship and fatigue.  Sidney was no longer flying from a harsh
+master, and his step was not elastic with the energy of fear that looked
+behind, and of hope that smiled before.  He was going a toilsome, weary
+journey, he knew not why nor whither; just, too, when he had made a
+friend, whose soothing words haunted his childish fancy.  He was
+displeased with Philip, and in sullen and silent thoughtfulness slowly
+plodded behind him; and Morton himself was gloomy, and knew not where in
+the world to seek a future.
+
+They arrived at dusk at a small inn, not so far distant from the town
+they had left as Morton could have wished; but the days were shorter than
+in their first flight.
+
+They were shown into a small sanded parlour, which Sidney eyed with great
+disgust; nor did he seem more pleased with the hacked and jagged leg of
+cold mutton, which was all that the hostess set before them for supper.
+Philip in vain endeavoured to cheer him up, and ate to set him the
+example.  He felt relieved when, under the auspices of a good-looking,
+good-natured chambermaid, Sidney retired to rest, and he was left in the
+parlour to his own meditations.  Hitherto it had been a happy thing for
+Morton that he had had some one dependent on him; that feeling had given
+him perseverance, patience, fortitude, and hope.  But now, dispirited and
+sad, he felt rather the horror of being responsible for a human life,
+without seeing the means to discharge the trust.  It was clear, even to
+his experience, that he was not likely to find another employer as facile
+as Mr. Stubmore; and wherever he went, he felt as if his Destiny stalked
+at his back.  He took out his little fortune and spread it on the table,
+counting it over and over; it had remained pretty stationary since his
+service with Mr. Stubmore, for Sidney had swallowed up the wages of his
+hire.  While thus employed, the door opened, and the chambermaid, showing
+in a gentleman, said, "We have no other room, sir."
+
+"Very well, then,--I'm not particular; a tumbler of braundy and water,
+stiffish, cold without, the newspaper--and a cigar.  You'll excuse smoking,
+sir?"
+
+Philip looked up from his hoard, and Captain de Burgh Smith stood before
+him.
+
+"Ah!"  said the latter, "well met!"  And closing the door, be took off
+his great-coat, seated himself near Philip, and bent both his eves with
+considerable wistfulness on the neat rows into which Philip's bank-notes,
+sovereigns, and shillings were arrayed.
+
+"Pretty little sum for pocket money; caush in hand goes a great way,
+properly invested.  You must have been very lucky.  Well, so I suppose
+you are surprised to see me here without my pheaton?"
+
+"I wish I had never seen you at all," replied Philip, uncourteously, and
+restoring his money to his pocket; "your fraud upon Mr. Stubmore, and
+your assurance that you knew me, have sent me adrift upon the world."
+
+"What's one man's meat is another man's poison," said the captain,
+philosophically; "no use fretting, care killed a cat.  I am as badly off
+as you; for, hang me, if there was not a Bow Street runner in the town.
+I caught his eye fixed on me like a gimlet: so I bolted--went to N----,
+left my pheaton and groom there for the present, and have doubled back,
+to bauffle pursuit, and cut across the country.  You recollect that voice
+girl we saw in the coach; 'gad, I served her spouse that is to be a
+praetty trick!  Borrowed his money under pretence of investing it in the
+New Grand Anti-Dry-Rot Company; cool hundred--it's only just gone, sir."
+
+Here the chambermaid entered with the brandy and water, the newspaper,
+and cigar,--the captain lighted the last, took a deep sup from the
+beverage, and said, gaily:
+
+"Well, now, let us join fortunes; we are both, as you say, 'adrift.' Best
+way to staund the breeze is to unite the caubles."
+
+Philip shook his head, and, displeased with his companion, sought his
+pillow.  He took care to put his money under his head, and to lock his
+door.
+
+The brothers started at daybreak; Sidney was even more discontented than
+on the previous day.  The weather was hot and oppressive; they rested for
+some hours at noon, and in the cool of the evening renewed their way.
+Philip had made up his mind to steer for a town in the thick of a hunting
+district, where he hoped his equestrian capacities might again befriend
+him; and their path now lay through a chain of vast dreary commons, which
+gave them at least the advantage to skirt the road-side unobserved.  But,
+somehow or other, either Philip had been misinformed as to an inn where
+he had proposed to pass the night, or he had missed it; for the clouds
+darkened, and the sun went down, and no vestige of human habitation was
+discernible.
+
+Sidney, footsore and querulous, began to weep, and declare that he could
+stir no further; and while Philip, whose iron frame defied fatigue,
+compassionately paused to rest his brother, a low roll of thunder broke
+upon the gloomy air.  "There will be a storm," said he, anxiously.  "Come
+on--pray, Sidney, come on."
+
+"It is so cruel in you, brother Philip," replied Sidney, sobbing.  "I
+wish I had never--never gone with you."
+
+A flash of lightning, that illuminated the whole heavens, lingered round
+Sidney's pale face as he spoke; and Philip threw himself instinctively on
+the child, as if to protect him even from the wrath of the unshelterable
+flame.  Sidney, hushed and terrified, clung to his brother's breast;
+after a pause, he silently consented to resume their journey.  But now
+the storm came nearer and nearer to the wanderers.  The darkness grew
+rapidly more intense, save when the lightning lit up heaven and earth
+alike with intolerable lustre.  And when at length the rain began to fall
+in merciless and drenching torrents, even Philip's brave heart failed
+him.  How could he ask Sidney to proceed, when they could scarcely see an
+inch before them?--all that could now be done was to gain the high-road,
+and hope for some passing conveyance.  With fits and starts, and by the
+glare of the lightning, they obtained their object; and stood at last on
+the great broad thoroughfare, along which, since the day when the Roman
+carved it from the waste, Misery hath plodded, and Luxury rolled, their
+common way.
+
+Philip had stripped handkerchief, coat, vest, all to shelter Sidney; and
+he felt a kind of strange pleasure through the dark, even to hear
+Sidney's voice wail and moan.  But that voice grew more languid and
+faint--it ceased--Sidney's weight hung heavy--heavier on the fostering
+arm.
+
+"For Heaven's sake, speak!--speak, Sidney!--only one word--I will carry
+you in my arms!"
+
+"I think I am dying," replied Sidney, in a low murmur; "I am so tired and
+worn out I can go no further--I must lie here."  And he sank at once upon
+the reeking grass beside the road..  At this time the rain gradually
+relaxed, the clouds broke away--a grey light succeeded to the darkness
+--the lightning was more distant; and the thunder rolled onward in its
+awful path.  Kneeling on the ground, Philip supported his brother in his
+arms, and cast his pleading eyes upward to the softening terrors of the
+sky.  A star, a solitary star-broke out for one moment, as if to smile
+comfort upon him, and then vanished.  But lo! in the distance there
+suddenly gleamed a red, steady light, like that in some solitary window;
+it was no will-o'-the-wisp, it was too stationary--human shelter was then
+nearer than he had thought for.  He pointed to the light, and whispered,
+"Rouse yourself, one struggle more--it cannot be far off."
+
+"It is impossible--I cannot stir," answered Sidney: and a sudden flash of
+lightning showed his countenance, ghastly, as if with the damps of Death.
+What could the brother do?--stay there, and see the boy perish before his
+eyes? leave him on the road and fly to the friendly light?  The last plan
+was the sole one left, yet he shrank from it in greater terror than the
+first.  Was that a step that he heard across the road?  He held his
+breath to listen--a form became dimly visible--it approached.
+
+Philip shouted aloud.
+
+"What now?" answered the voice, and it seemed familiar to Morton's ear.
+He sprang forward; and putting his face close to the wayfarer, thought to
+recognise the features of Captain de Burgh Smith.  The Captain, whose
+eyes were yet more accustomed to the dark, made the first overture.
+
+"Why, my lad, is it you then?  'Gad, you froightened me!"
+
+Odious as this man had hitherto been to Philip, he was as welcome to him
+as daylight now; he grasped his hand,--"My brother--a child--is here,
+dying, I fear, with cold and fatigue; he cannot stir.  Will you stay with
+him--support him--but for a few moments, while I make to yon light?  See,
+I have money--plenty of money!"
+
+"My good lad, it is very ugly work staying here at this hour: still--
+where's the choild?"
+
+"Here, here! make haste, raise him! that's right!  God bless you!  I
+shall be back ere you think me gone."
+
+He sprang from the road, and plunged through the heath, the furze, the
+rank glistening pools, straight towards the light-as the swimmer towards
+the shore.
+
+The captain, though a rogue, was human; and when life--an innocent life
+--is at stake, even a rogue's heart rises up from its weedy bed.  He
+muttered a few oaths, it is true, but he held the child in his arms; and,
+taking out a little tin case, poured some brandy down Sidney's throat and
+then, by way of company, down his own.  The cordial revived the boy; he
+opened his eyes, and said, "I think I can go on now, Philip."
+
+             .    .    .    .    .    .    .    .
+
+We must return to Arthur Beaufort.  He was naturally, though gentle, a
+person of high spirit and not without pride.  He rose from the ground
+with bitter, resentful feelings and a blushing cheek, and went his way to
+the hotel.  Here he found Mr. Spencer just returned from his visit to
+Sidney.  Enchanted with the soft and endearing manners of his lost
+Catherine's son, and deeply affected with the resemblance the child bore
+to the mother as he had seen her last at the gay and rosy age of fair
+sixteen, his description of the younger brother drew Beaufort's indignant
+thoughts from the elder.  He cordially concurred with Mr. Spencer in the
+wish to save one so gentle from the domination of one so fierce; and
+this, after all, was the child Catherine had most strongly commended to
+him.  She had said little of the elder; perhaps she had been aware of his
+ungracious and untractable nature, and, as it seemed to Arthur Beaufort,
+his predilections for a coarse and low career.
+
+"Yes," said he, "this boy, then, shall console me for the perverse
+brutality of the other.  He shall indeed drink of my cup, and eat of my
+bread, and be to me as a brother."
+
+"What!"  said Mr. Spencer, changing countenance, "you do not intend to
+take Sidney to live with you.  I meant him for my son--my adopted son."
+
+"No; generous as you are," said Arthur, pressing his hand, "this charge
+devolves on me--it is my right.  I am the orphan's relation--his mother
+consigned him to me.  But he shall be taught to love you not the less."
+
+Mr. Spencer was silent.  He could not bear the thought of losing Sidney
+as an inmate of his cheerless home, a tender relic of his early love.
+From that moment he began to contemplate the possibility of securing
+Sidney to himself, unknown to Beaufort.
+
+The plans both of Arthur and Spencer were interrupted by the sudden
+retreat of the brothers.  They determined to depart different ways in
+search of them.  Spencer, as the more helpless of the two, obtained the
+aid of Mr. Sharp; Beaufort departed with the lawyer.
+
+Two travellers, in a hired barouche, were slowly dragged by a pair of
+jaded posters along the commons I have just described.
+
+"I think," said one, "that the storm is very much abated; heigho! what an
+unpleasant night!"
+
+"Unkimmon ugly, sir," answered the other; "and an awful long stage,
+eighteen miles.  These here remote places are quite behind the age,
+sir--quite.  However, I think we shall kitch them now."
+
+"I am very much afraid of that eldest boy, Sharp.  He seems a dreadful
+vagabond."
+
+"You see, sir, quite hand in glove with Dashing Jerry; met in the same
+inn last night--preconcerted, you may be quite shure.  It would be the
+best day's job I have done this many a day to save that 'ere little
+fellow from being corrupted.  You sees he is just of a size to be useful
+to these bad karakters.  If they took to burglary, he would be a treasure
+to them--slip him through a pane of glass like a ferret, sir."
+
+"Don't talk of it, Sharp," said Mr. Spencer, with a groan; "and
+recollect, if we get hold of him, that you are not to say a word to Mr.
+Beaufort."
+
+"I understand, sir; and I always goes with the gemman who behaves most
+like a gemman."
+
+Here a loud halloo was heard close by the horses' heads.  "Good Heavens,
+if that is a footpad!"  said Mr. Spencer, shaking violently.
+
+"Lord, sir, I have my barkers with me.  Who's there?"  The barouche
+stopped--a man came to the window.  "Excuse me, sir," said the stranger;
+"but there is a poor boy here so tired and ill that I fear he will never
+reach the next town, unless you will koindly give him a lift."
+
+"A poor boy!" said Mr. Spencer, poking his head over the head of Mr.
+Sharp.  "Where?"
+
+"If you would just drop him at the King's Awrms it would be a chaurity,"
+said the man.
+
+Sharp pinched Mr. Spencer in his shoulder.  "That's Dashing Jerry; I'll
+get out."  So saying, he opened the door, jumped into the road, and
+presently reappeared with the lost and welcome Sidney in his arms.
+"Ben't this the boy?"  he whispered to Mr. Spencer; and, taking the lamp
+from the carriage, he raised it to the child's face.
+
+"It is! it is! God be thanked!"  exclaimed the worthy man.
+
+"Will you leave him at the King's Awrms?--we shall be there in an hour or
+two," cried the Captain.
+
+"We!  Who's we?"  said Sharp, gruffly.  "Why, myself and the choild's
+brother."
+
+"Oh!" said Sharp, raising the lantern to his own face; "you knows me, I
+think, Master Jerry?  Let me kitch you again, that's all.  And give my
+compliments to your 'sociate, and say, if he prosecutes this here hurchin
+any more, we'll settle his bizness for him; and so take a hint and make
+yourself scarce, old boy!"
+
+With that Mr. Sharp jumped into the barouche, and bade the postboy drive
+on as fast as he could.
+
+Ten minutes after this abduction, Philip, followed by two labourers, with
+a barrow, a lantern, and two blankets, returned from the hospitable farm
+to which the light had conducted him.  The spot where he had left Sidney,
+and which he knew by a neighbouring milestone, was vacant; he shouted an
+alarm, and the Captain answered from the distance of some threescore
+yards.  Philip came to him.  "Where is my brother?"
+
+"Gone away in a barouche and pair.  Devil take me if I understand it."
+And the Captain proceeded to give a confused account of what had passed.
+
+"My brother! my brother! they have torn thee from me, then;" cried
+Philip, and he fell to the earth insensible.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+          "Vous me rendrez mon frere!"
+                CASIMER DELAVIGNE: _Les Enfans d'Edouard_.
+
+          ['You shall restore me my brother!]
+
+One evening, a week after this event, a wild, tattered, haggard youth
+knocked at the door of Mr. Robert Beaufort.  The porter slowly presented
+himself.
+
+"Is your master at home?  I must see him instantly."  "That's more than
+you can, my man; my master does not see the like of you at this time of
+night," replied the porter, eying the ragged apparition before him with
+great disdain.
+
+"See me he must and shall," replied the young man; and as the porter
+blocked up the entrance, he grasped his collar with a hand of iron, swung
+him, huge as he was, aside, and strode into the spacious hall.
+
+"Stop! stop!" cried the  porter,  recovering  himself.  "James! John!
+here's ago!"
+
+Mr. Robert Beaufort had been back in town several days.  Mrs. Beaufort,
+who was waiting his return from his club, was in the dining-room.
+Hearing a noise in the hall, she opened the door, and saw the strange
+grim figure I have described, advancing towards her.  "Who are you?"
+said she; "and what do you want?"
+
+"I am Philip Morton.  Who are you?"
+
+"My husband," said Mrs. Beaufort, shrinking into the parlour, while
+Morton followed her and closed the door, "my husband, Mr. Beaufort, is
+not at home."
+
+"You are Mrs. Beaufort, then!  Well, you can understand me.  I want my
+brother.  He has been basely reft from me.  Tell me where he is, and I
+will forgive all.  Restore him to me, and I will bless you and yours."
+And Philip fell on his knees and grasped the train of her gown.  "I know
+nothing of your brother, Mr. Morton," cried Mrs. Beaufort, surprised and
+alarmed.  "Arthur, whom we expect every day, writes us word that all
+search for him has been in vain."
+
+"Ha! you admit the search?"  cried Morton, rising and clenching his
+hands.  "And who else but you or yours would have parted brother and
+brother?  Answer me where he is.  No subterfuge, madam: I am desperate!"
+
+Mrs. Beaufort, though a woman of that worldly coldness and indifference
+which, on ordinary occasions, supply the place of courage, was extremely
+terrified by the tone and mien of her rude guest.  She laid her hand on
+the bell; but Morton seized her arm, and, holding it sternly, said, while
+his dark eyes shot fire through the glimmering room, "I will not stir
+hence till you have told me.  Will you reject my gratitude, my blessing?
+Beware!  Again, where have you hid my brother?"
+
+At that instant the door opened, and Mr. Robert Beaufort entered.  The
+lady, with a shriek of joy, wrenched herself from Philip's grasp, and
+flew to her husband.
+
+"Save me from this ruffian!" she said, with an hysterical sob.
+
+Mr. Beaufort, who had heard from Blackwell strange accounts of Philip's
+obdurate perverseness, vile associates, and unredeemable character, was
+roused from his usual timidity by the appeal of his wife.
+
+"Insolent reprobate!" he said, advancing to Philip; "after all the absurd
+goodness of my son and myself; after rejecting all our offers, and
+persisting in your miserable and vicious conduct, how dare you presume to
+force yourself into this house?  Begone, or I will send for the
+constables to remove YOU!
+
+"Man, man," cried Philip, restraining the fury that shook him from head
+to foot, "I care not for your threats--I scarcely hear your abuse--your
+son, or yourself, has stolen away my brother: tell me only where he is;
+let me see him once more.  Do not drive me hence, without one word of
+justice, of pity.  I implore you--on my knees I implore you--yes, I,--I
+implore you, Robert Beaufort, to have mercy on your brother's son.  Where
+is Sidney?"  Like all mean and cowardly men, Robert Beaufort was rather
+encouraged than softened by Philip's abrupt humility.
+
+"I know nothing of your brother; and if this is not all some villainous
+trick--which it may be--I am heartily rejoiced that he, poor child! is
+rescued from the contamination of such a companion," answered Beaufort.
+
+"I am at your feet still; again, for the last time, clinging to you a
+suppliant: I pray you to tell me the truth."
+
+Mr. Beaufort, more and more exasperated by Morton's forbearance, raised
+his hand as if to strike; when, at that moment, one hitherto unobserved--
+one who, terrified by the scene she had witnessed but could not
+comprehend, had slunk into a dark corner of the room,--now came from her
+retreat.  And a child's soft voice was heard, saying:
+
+"Do not strike him, papa!--let him have his brother!"  Mr. Beaufort's arm
+fell to his side: kneeling before him, and by the outcast's side, was his
+own young daughter; she had crept into the room unobserved, when her
+father entered.  Through the dim shadows, relieved only by the red and
+fitful gleam of the fire, he saw her fair meek face looking up wistfully
+at his own, with tears of excitement, and perhaps of pity--for children
+have a quick insight into the reality of grief in those not far removed
+from their own years--glistening in her soft eyes.  Philip looked round
+bewildered, and he saw that face which seemed to him, at such a time,
+like the face of an angel.
+
+"Hear her!"  he murmured: "Oh, hear her!  For her sake, do not sever one
+orphan from the other!"
+
+"Take away that child, Mrs. Beaufort," cried Robert, angrily.  "Will you
+let her disgrace herself thus?  And you, sir, begone from this roof; and
+when you can approach me with due respect, I will give you, as I said I
+would, the means to get an honest living."
+
+Philip rose; Mrs. Beaufort had already led away her daughter, and she
+took that opportunity of sending in the servants: their forms filled up
+the doorway.
+
+"Will you go?" continued Mr. Beaufort, more and more emboldened, as he
+saw the menials at hand, "or shall they expel you?"
+
+"It is enough, sir," said Philip, with a sudden calm and dignity that
+surprised and almost awed his uncle.  "My father, if the dead yet watch
+over the living, has seen and heard you.  There will come a day for
+justice.  Out of my path, hirelings!"
+
+He waved his arm, and the menials shrank back at his tread, stalked
+across the inhospitable hall, and vanished.  When he had gained the
+street, he turned and looked up at the house.  His dark and hollow eyes,
+gleaming through the long and raven hair that fell profusely over his
+face, had in them an expression of menace almost preternatural, from its
+settled calmness; the wild and untutored majesty which, though rags and
+squalor, never deserted his form, as it never does the forms of men in
+whom the will is strong and the sense of injustice deep; the outstretched
+arm the haggard, but noble features; the bloomless and scathed youth, all
+gave to his features and his stature an aspect awful in its sinister and
+voiceless wrath.  There he stood a moment, like one to whom woe and wrong
+have given a Prophet's power, guiding the eye of the unforgetful Fate to
+the roof of the Oppressor.  Then slowly, and with a half smile, he turned
+away, and strode through the streets till he arrived at one of the narrow
+lanes that intersect the more equivocal quarters of the huge city.  He
+stopped at the private entrance of a small pawnbroker's shop; the door
+was opened by a slipshod boy; he ascended the dingy stairs till he came
+to the second floor; and there, in a small back room, he found Captain de
+Burgh Smith, seated before a table with a couple of candles on it,
+smoking a cigar, and playing at cards by himself.
+
+"Well, what news of your brother, Bully Phil?"
+
+"None: they will reveal nothing."
+
+"Do you give him up?"
+
+"Never!  My hope now is in you."
+
+"Well, I thought you would be driven to come to me, and I will do
+something for you that I should not loike to do for myself.  I told you
+that I knew the Bow Street runner who was in the barouche.  I will find
+him out--Heaven knows that is easily done; and, if you can pay well, you
+will get your news."
+
+"You shall have all I possess, if you restore my brother.  See what it
+is, one hundred pounds--it was his fortune.  It is useless to me without
+him.  There, take fifty now, and if--"
+
+Philip stopped, for his voice trembled too much to allow him farther
+speech.  Captain Smith thrust the notes into his pocket, and said--
+
+"We'll consider it settled."
+
+Captain Smith fulfilled his promise.  He saw the Bow Street officer.  Mr.
+Sharp had been bribed too high by the opposite party to tell tales, and
+he willingly encouraged the suspicion that Sidney was under the care of
+the Beauforts.  He promised, however, for the sake of ten guineas, to
+procure Philip a letter from Sidney himself.  This was all he would
+undertake.
+
+Philip was satisfied.  At the end of another week, Mr. Sharp transmitted
+to the Captain a letter, which he, in his turn, gave to Philip.  It ran
+thus, in Sidney's own sprawling hand:
+
+"DEAR BROTHER PHILIP,--I am told you wish to know how I am, and therfore
+take up my pen, and assure you that I write all out of my own head.  I am
+very Comfortable and happy--much more so than I have been since poor deir
+mama died; so I beg you won't vex yourself about me: and pray don't try
+and Find me out, For I would not go with you again for the world.  I am
+so much better Off here.  I wish you would be a good boy, and leave off
+your Bad ways; for I am sure, as every one says, I don't know what would
+have become of me if I had staid with you.  Mr.  [the Mr. half scratched
+out] the gentleman I am with, says if you turn out Properly, he will be a
+friend to you, Too; but he advises you to go, like a Good boy, to Arthur
+Beaufort, and ask his pardon for the past, and then Arthur will be very
+kind to you.  I send you a great Big sum of L20., and the gentleman says
+he would send more, only it might make you naughty, and set up.  I go to
+church now every Sunday, and read good books, and always pray that God
+may open your eyes.  I have such a Nice Pony, with such a long tale.  So
+no more at present from your affectionate brother,  SIDNEY MORTON."
+
+Oct. 8, 18--
+
+"Pray, pray don't come after me Any more.  You know I neerly died of it,
+but for this deir good gentleman I am with."
+
+So this, then, was the crowning reward of all his sufferings and all his
+love!  There was the letter, evidently undictated, with its errors of
+orthography, and in the child's rough scrawl; the serpent's tooth pierced
+to the heart, and left there its most lasting venom.
+
+"I have done with him for ever," said Philip, brushing away the bitter
+tears.  "I will molest him no farther; I care no more to pierce this
+mystery.  Better for him as it is--he is happy!  Well, well, and I--I
+will never care for a human being again."
+
+He bowed his head over his hands; and when he rose, his heart felt to him
+like stone.  It seemed as if Conscience herself had fled from his soul on
+the wings of departed Love.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+               "But you have found the mountain's top--there sit
+               On the calm flourishing head of it;
+               And whilst with wearied steps we upward go,
+               See us and clouds below."--COWLEY.
+
+It was true that Sidney was happy in his new home, and thither we must
+now trace him.
+
+On reaching the town where the travellers in the barouche had been
+requested to leave Sidney, "The King's Arms" was precisely the inn
+eschewed by Mr. Spencer.  While the horses were being changed, he
+summoned the surgeon of the town to examine the child, who had already
+much recovered; and by stripping his clothes, wrapping him in warm
+blankets, and administering cordials, he was permitted to reach another
+stage, so as to baffle pursuit that night; and in three days Mr. Spencer
+had placed his new charge with his maiden sisters, a hundred and fifty
+miles from the spot where he had been found.  He would not take him to
+his own home yet.  He feared the claims of Arthur Beaufort.  He artfully
+wrote to that gentleman, stating that he had abandoned the chase of
+Sidney in despair, and desiring to know if he had discovered him; and a
+bribe of L300. to Mr. Sharp with a candid exposition of his reasons for
+secreting Sidney--reasons in which the worthy officer professed to
+sympathise--secured the discretion of his ally.  But he would not deny
+himself the pleasure of being in the same house with Sidney, and was
+therefore for some months the guest of his sisters.  At length he heard
+that young Beaufort had been ordered abroad for his health, and he then
+deemed it safe to transfer his new idol to his _Lares_ by the lakes.
+During this interval the current of the younger Morton's life had indeed
+flowed through flowers.  At his age the cares of females were almost a
+want as well as a luxury, and the sisters spoiled and petted him as much
+as any elderly nymphs in Cytherea ever petted Cupid.  They were good,
+excellent, high-nosed, flat-bosomed spinsters, sentimentally fond of
+their brother, whom they called "the poet," and dotingly attached to
+children.  The cleanness, the quiet, the good cheer of their neat abode,
+all tended to revive and invigorate the spirits of their young guest, and
+every one there seemed to vie which should love him the most.  Still his
+especial favourite was Mr. Spencer: for Spencer never went out without
+bringing back cakes and toys; and Spencer gave him his pony; and Spencer
+rode a little crop-eared nag by his side; and Spencer, in short, was
+associated with his every comfort and caprice.  He told them his little
+history; and when he said how Philip had left him alone for long hours
+together, and how Philip had forced him to his last and nearly fatal
+journey, the old maids groaned, and the old bachelor sighed, and they all
+cried in a breath, that "Philip was a very wicked boy."  It was not only
+their obvious policy to detach him from his brother, but it was their
+sincere conviction that they did right to do so.  Sidney began, it is
+true, by taking Philip's part; but his mind was ductile, and he still
+looked back with a shudder to the hardships he had gone through: and so
+by little and little he learned to forget all the endearing and fostering
+love Philip had evinced to him; to connect his name with dark and
+mysterious fears; to repeat thanksgivings to Providence that he was saved
+from him; and to hope that they might never meet again.  In fact, when
+Mr. Spencer learned from Sharp that it was through Captain Smith, the
+swindler, that application had been made by Philip for news of his
+brother, and having also learned before, from the same person, that
+Philip had been implicated in the sale of a horse, swindled, if not
+stolen, he saw every additional reason to widen the stream that flowed
+between the wolf and the lamb.  The older Sidney grew, the better he
+comprehended and appreciated the motives of his protector--for he was
+brought up in a formal school of propriety and ethics, and his mind
+naturally revolted from all images of violence or fraud.  Mr. Spencer
+changed both the Christian and the surname of his protege, in order to
+elude the search whether of Philip, the Mortons, or the Beauforts, and
+Sidney passed for his nephew by a younger brother who had died in India.
+
+So there, by the calm banks of the placid lake, amidst the fairest
+landscapes of the Island Garden, the youngest born of Catherine passed
+his tranquil days.  The monotony of the retreat did not fatigue a spirit
+which, as he grew up, found occupation in books, music, poetry, and the
+elegances of the cultivated, if quiet, life within his reach.  To the
+rough past he looked back as to an evil dream, in which the image of
+Philip stood dark and threatening.  His brother's name as he grew older
+he rarely mentioned; and if he did volunteer it to Mr. Spencer, the bloom
+on his cheek grew paler.  The sweetness of his manners, his fair face and
+winning smile, still continued to secure him love, and to screen from the
+common eye whatever of selfishness yet lurked in his nature.  And,
+indeed, that fault in so serene a career, and with friends so attached,
+was seldom called into action.  So thus was he severed from both the
+protectors, Arthur and Philip, to whom poor Catherine had bequeathed him.
+
+By a perverse and strange mystery, they, to whom the charge was most
+intrusted were the very persons who were forbidden to redeem it.  On our
+death-beds when we think we have provided for those we leave behind--
+should we lose the last smile that gilds the solemn agony, if we could
+look one year into the Future?
+
+Arthur Beaufort, after an ineffectual search for Sidney, heard, on
+returning to his home, no unexaggerated narrative of Philip's visit, and
+listened, with deep resentment, to his mother's distorted account of the
+language addressed to her.  It is not to be surprised that, with all his
+romantic generosity, he felt sickened and revolted at violence that
+seemed to him without excuse.  Though not a revengeful character, he had
+not that meekness which never resents.  He looked upon Philip Morton as
+upon one rendered incorrigible by bad passions and evil company.  Still
+Catherine's last request, and Philip's note to him, the Unknown
+Comforter, often recurred to him, and he would have willingly yet aided
+him had Philip been thrown in his way.  But as it was, when he looked
+around, and saw the examples of that charity that begins at home, in
+which the world abounds, he felt as if he had done his duty; and
+prosperity having, though it could not harden his heart, still sapped the
+habits of perseverance, so by little and little the image of the dying
+Catherine, and the thought of her sons, faded from his remembrance.  And
+for this there was the more excuse after the receipt of an anonymous
+letter, which relieved all his apprehensions on behalf of Sidney.  The
+letter was short, and stated simply that Sidney Morton had found a friend
+who would protect him throughout life; but who would not scruple to apply
+to Beaufort if ever he needed his assistance.  So one son, and that the
+youngest and the best loved, was safe.  And the other, had he not chosen
+his own career?  Alas, poor Catherine! when you fancied that Philip was
+the one sure to force his way into fortune, and Sidney the one most
+helpless, how ill did you judge of the human heart!  It was that very
+strength of Philip's nature which tempted the winds that scattered the
+blossoms, and shook the stem to its roots; while the lighter and frailer
+nature bent to the gale, and bore transplanting to a happier soil.  If a
+parent read these pages, let him pause and think well on the characters
+of his children; let him at once fear and hope the most for the one whose
+passions and whose temper lead to a struggle with the world.  That same
+world is a tough wrestler, and has a bear's gripe.
+
+Meanwhile, Arthur Beaufort's own complaints, which grew serious and
+menaced consumption, recalled his thoughts more and more every day to
+himself.  He was compelled to abandon his career at the University, and
+to seek for health in the softer breezes of the South.  His parents
+accompanied him to Nice; and when, at the end of a few months, he was
+restored to health, the desire of travel seized the mind and attracted
+the fancy of the young heir.  His father and mother, satisfied with his
+recovery, and not unwilling that he should acquire the polish of
+Continental intercourse, returned to England; and young Beaufort, with
+gay companions and munificent income, already courted, spoiled, and
+flattered, commenced his tour with the fair climes of Italy.
+
+So, O dark mystery of the Moral World!--so, unlike the order of the
+External Universe, glide together, side by side, the shadowy steeds of
+NIGHT AND MORNING.  Examine life in its own world; confound not that
+world, the inner one, the practical one, with the more visible, yet
+airier and less substantial system, doing homage to the sun, to whose
+throne, afar in the infinite space, the human heart has no wings to flee.
+In life, the mind and the circumstance give the true seasons, and
+regulate the darkness and the light.  Of two men standing on the same
+foot of earth, the one revels in the joyous noon, the other shudders in
+the solitude of night.  For Hope and Fortune, the day-star is ever
+shining.  For Care and Penury, Night changes not with the ticking of the
+clock, nor with the shadow on the dial.  Morning for the heir, night for
+the houseless, and God's eye over both.
+
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, NIGHT AND MORNING, V2 ***
+By Edward Bulwer Lytton
+
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