A Rolling Stone Vol. II

A Rolling Stone

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A Rolling Stone By Clara Cheeseman

Printed publisher's mark. Vol. II.LondonRichard Bentley & Son, New Burlington ST. Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen 1886

Chapter I. Then a little child came by that way, Bounding along in its happy play. As I felt the grasp of its tiny hand, It thrilled me through with a new command.

Three are good people who would shrink from the slightest falsehood implied or spoken to men and women, and yet think it no evil to deceive a little child. Whether it were better to tell the bitter truth at once, or, from day to day, soothe the passionate longings and eager questionings of her motherless charge with promises and hopes never to be fulfilled, Mrs. Sherlock never considered. Her wish was to act in the manner most comfortable to herself, and to manage that Harry should not cry oftener nor louder than was agreeable to the household. Every day the hope was held out to him that to-morrow mother would come. To-morrow surely came; but not the lost face, the vanished presence. That never came again, save in ecstatic dreams, which were fainter and more infrequent as he grew older.

He was a thoughtful child, and quicker of perception than is usual at his age. It was not long before Mrs. Sherlock shamed him out of crying for his mother. Pride and fear of ridicule helped him, young as he was, to keep back or hide his teas. Only when he was alone, in the darkness of the night, would he indulge his grief. And this before his mother had lain a week in her grave!

However, there was one who stood to him in her place and filled it as well as any one but the real person could have done. It was Rosa now who told him stories and sang him to sleep at night, who dressed him and gave him his meals, and was never weary of him nor impatient. To his mind Rosa was his mother vicegerent, and had been commissioned by her to watch over him. Mrs. Sherlock he despised as an inferior person, who could not understand him nor feel for his needs. But Rosa was his comfort. Together they explored the garden, where he collected old snailshells, pebbles, and bits of broken crockery for curiosities. The kitchen-yard he thought delightful, for there he could do very much as he liked; build little houses, with half bricks and chips; dig miniature wells, or make great excavations in the cinder heap. It was a capital place for fun with the dog and cat, and also for soiling a clean pinafore in the shortest space of time.

Meanwhile, Mr. Sherlock, Mr. Wishart, the doctor, and one or two others did their best to find out his relatives, and after all was done that seemed possible, had to acknowledge themselves defeated. In spite of Mr. Wishart's confident assertion that one could hardly be lost or lose oneself in this narrowed world, he had to submit to the fact, that a mother and her child had effectually lost themselves. Mrs. Sherlock wondered audibly what was to become of the child and looked at Mr. Wishart as if he ought to tell her. That gentleman spent time and money in vain in quest of Harry's lawful protectors. Passenger lists of the steamers showed no one who could be identified with his mother. The agents could give no information; the captain and officers, when questioned, protested their inability to recollect any one exactly answering the description of this lady and her child. They could not be expected to single out particular persons from the crowd of passengers who went to and fro with them, many of whom they hardly noticed during the short time they were on board, and perhaps never distinguished by name, and whose names, when they were known, would be forgotten in a day or two. Besides, it was impossible to discover which steamer the lady had travelled by. She might not have come direct from Melbourne; that she had been there very lately was only a guess. So, in making these inquiries, Mr. Wishart and his friends felt as if they were groping in the dark.

They could not tell to what country she belonged. They could not tell whence she had come—from some other part of New Zealand, or from Australia. They could not tell whether she had other relatives besides the husband whom she had spoken of. The portrait she had shown to Mrs. Sherlock told them nothing. It was that of a very young man—a boy he might be called, though his face was a graver, more thoughtful one than usually belongs to a boy. If he were living, it was not likely any one would recognise him from that portrait. It was dim and faded, an old likeness evidently, which must have been taken years ago.

The Melbourne doctor was written to, and although this chance had seemed more promising than any other, here also, by a strange fatality, their hopes were baffled. He was dead, of the same disease which had taken away his patient. They could not trace her. No response came to their advertisements; no advertisement appeared which could be interpreted as an inquiry into her fate. As it may often be in other painstaking researches, their endeavours only served to acquaint them with their own ignorance.

An idea presented itself to Mr. Wishart. It seemed such a simple thing that every one wondered how it was he or she had not thought of it. They would question the child.

‘Such a quick child can't have forgotten all he has heard and seen, even in his short life,’ said Mr. Wishart. ‘We'll try him; we may learn something. Harry, come here.’

Harry threw down an ill-used wooden horse, and ran up to Mr. Wishart, with whom he was now on very familiar terms.

‘I want you to try and remember, Harry. I can remember when I was a little fellow, smaller than you are. I wonder how much you can tell me about yourself.’

Harry looked interested. ‘I remember going with mamma and Lizzie on the sands,’ he said.

‘Lizzie? Who was Lizzie?’

‘Lizzie was nurse, of course,’ said Harry. ‘She left because we had to go away, when papa was so angry.’

Mrs. Sherlock looked at Mr. Wishart. ‘That's the first time he's mentioned his father; just encourage him, and we shall hear more.’

‘Mamma used to say,’ said Harry, severely eyeing Mrs. Sherlock, ‘that it was rude to whisper away like that. I wouldn't do it. I always speak up loud, because I don't say things about people I'm afraid of them hearing.’

‘Hoity toity, little wisdom!’ laughed Mrs. Sherlock.

Harry coloured very much, and disdainfully turned away from her.

‘Come, Mrs. Sherlock, you spoil our game. You go on, Harry, and after you've told me ever so much, I'll tell you a long story about what I did when I was a boy.’

‘That was a very long time ago, wasn't it?’ said Harry.

‘Why, yes,’ said Mr. Wishart, laughing. ‘This boy pokes fun at us, Mrs. Sherlock. Your papa wasn't angry with you, Harry, was he? You said he was angry, you know.’

‘No, not with me.’

‘Who then?’ said Mrs. Sherlock.

Harry looked at her distrustfully. If Mrs. Sherlock wanted to know anything the determined at once she should not know it. ‘Nobody,’ he said, pursing up his little mouth with a comical affectation of determined will.

‘I think it wasn't with his little boy at any rate,’ said Mr. Wishart. ‘Wouldn't you like to see your papa again, Harry?’

‘No!’ the child answered, in so firm and full-toned a voice that both interrogators stared at him in surprise. His eyes looked boldly into theirs, and his face, had a serious, most unchildlike expression. Most certainly he meant what he said.

‘That's bad,’ said Mr. Wishart, feeling that this was no ordinary child he had to deal with. ‘I am sure he misses you very much.’

‘He used to make mamma cry,’ said Harry, looking a little ashamed, for he perceived that his declaration had shocked the others.

‘Perhaps she cried because she was going away,’ hazarded Mr. Wishart.

‘No. Mamma wanted to go, and she wanted me. Papa said no; we oughtn't to go, and then he was angry.’

‘And you left him at home,’ said Mr. Wishart, continuing to draw him on. ‘Was it a pretty place?’

‘Oh, so beautiful!’ The boy's face was actually illumined. ‘Mamma always let me be in her room. It was ever so much bigger than this one, and full of pretty things, and I played with them. And out of the windows you could see ever so many streets, and a great many people.’

‘Hum—a town house,’ said Mr. Wishart. ‘What did your father do all day, Harry?’

‘Papa was away all day,’ said Harry.

‘Business,’ concluded Mr. Wishart. ‘So your father went to work for you, I expect, just as mine did long ago. Now, my father's name was the same as mine. What did they call yours?’

‘Mamma called him Harold.’

‘But what did other people call him?’ said Mr. Wishart. ‘Every one wouldn't call him Harold.’

‘Yes, broke in Mrs. Sherlock, too impatient to be satisfied with Mr. Wishart's slow process of extracting information. ‘What did gentlemen and ladies say, when they spoke to your papa? Mr. So-and-So—they would say—what was it?’

‘They didn't say such a silly thing,’ answered Harry, indignantly. ‘No one said that.’

‘He doesn't understand you,’ said Mr. Wishart. ‘But, Harry, you know your mamma's name?’

‘Mamma's name ‘was Emily,’ readily answered the boy.

‘But your mamma's friends wouldn't call her that,’ said Mr. Wishart. ‘They would speak of her by some other name.’

‘Lizzie called her ma'am,’ said Harry, ‘and one ugly old lady would always call her “dear,” though mamma never spoke to her like that.’

‘He's a little simpleton,’ Mrs. Sherlock ventured to whisper.

‘He is nothing of the kind,’ said Mr. Wishart, looking into the face of the child with a curious and thoughtful gaze. ‘I am sure,’ he thought to himself, ‘that he's more than four years old’ (in which the gentleman was mistaken), ‘and I don't believe that such a sharp boy could help taking notice of his father's name, or have forgotten it so soon. Surely he can't be deceiving us. This age produces some frightfully precocious children, but one can hardly imagine such a youngster as this craftily playing a part, and feigning the innocency of babes when he's hardly left babyhood behind him. Harry,’ he continued, ‘think a little. Try to remember another name for your father and mother. Don't you know people always have two names?’

‘No,’ said the boy decidedly. ‘I've only one. This isn't a game,’ he added petulantly; ‘I don't like it.’ He pulled his hand away from Mr. Wishart's, and pattered away down the passage and on to the verandah, admiringly looking down on his bright shoe buckles as they flashed in and out as he ran.

He sat down on the edge of the verandah and took off his shoes, a thing which he did about ten times a day. And then, while this singular child was seemingly absorbed in the contemplation of these same little shoes and their resplendent buckles, he was softly saying to himself, ‘I know, I know, but I won't tell.’

Mr. Wishart, though baffled this once, was not discouraged. He questioned Harry carefully again and again, without learning anything new. In the end he became fully persuaded that the child was the soul of truthfulness and candour, of too frank and unreserved a nature to be able to keep back a hidden thought. His sounding line was just a little too short. He forgot that your frank and open people can keep secrets very well on occasion, simply because others will not believe in the existence of such property. And Harry kept his. By and by he had no need to be careful over it; it had gone from his own grasp.

But there were things he never forgot. He never forgot how his father and mother had parted from each other. As even then he had taken his mother's side, so ever afterwards he retained the impression that she had suffered, and had been injured. He never lost a dim recollection of her as a beautiful and unhappy woman, full of all love and tenderness for him. The mind picture he preserved of his father, though not so fondly treasured, was more clear and distinct than this. A grave and serious man, cold in manner, and with a voice that sounded harsh, even when his words were not so. He remembered his face: old-looking, worn, and colourless; he remembered how he had disliked the glance of his keen bright eyes, and how he had been afraid to play, or laugh and chatter noisily in his presence. All this had come into his mind when Mr. Wishart had questioned him. If they knew who his father was, would they not send him back to a house which would be a prison now his mother was not with him?

His father had not deserved to be thus remembered. Both wife and child had been very dear to him. There are those who can never put their happier thoughts into words; who can never show their better nature to another. They can endure no close intimacy; they form no warm friendships. Yet, who knows?—are they not always mutely stretching out their hands, with yearnings inexpressible, towards the very ones whom they offend by their cold reserve? No one knows, and they can never tell how it is with them. These are the people who really are misjudged and misunderstood; not the poor wailing creatures who are for ever complaining that their talent is unrecognised, that their work is not prized, and their good qualities are not seen. They are always turning their little natures inside out; the others live quietly amongst us, bear their trials, and make no sign. They may not have the pity which is their due; for no one guesses that they need it; and yet pitiable enough is the case of one who cannot even win the love of a little child.

It became necessary that some one should decide what was to be done with Harry. Children who belong to nobody in particular are at least the property of the State. Mr. Wishart knew that a wise and parentally inclined Government had made some provision for orphans and destitute children. But he knew also what these orphans of the State were, and from what class they were recruited. This child could not be sent amongst them. He resolved to take him to his own home, and told Mrs. Sherlock so.

‘Well, sir, you are kind,’ said she. ‘Very few gentlemen would have taken the trouble you've put yourself to. I must say you've raised a load from my mind.’

‘How's that?’ asked Mr. Wishart.

‘You know my husband, and what romancing views he takes of things. He's dreadfully unpractical, Sherlock is. Now it's not every one who can afford to be romantic.’

‘I should have thought one state of mind was as cheap as another.’

‘Not unless you keep your ideas in your mind and never put them into practice. When you take a fancy to do a thing, Mr. Wishart, you don't stop to count the cost. You can indulge all your fancies; you can adopt a dozen boys if you like, and bring them up.’

‘A dozen! Mrs. Sherlock, I am not prepared to go that length. I hardly consider that I'm adopting this boy. I hope—indeed I'm almost certain, that his father is looking for him, and will come for him, sooner or later.’

‘It comes to much the same thing,’ said Mrs. Sherlock. ‘I've been afraid Sherlock would adopt him. I'm morally certain he would have done so if you hadn't spoken first. You see, sir, it's a remarkable thing to happen in one's house: so affecting and pathetic; just like a piece of a novel; and Sherlock reads heaps of novels, wasting precious time and eyesight over them, and he likes to imitate the queer, crack-brained people described in them. Now, you know, sir, if this was written down in a novel, they'd make Sherlock and me adopt this child. But I've brought up eight—four of them boys—and each one more trouble than the last, and I call upon you to say whether I've not done my share.’

‘Most certainly you have,’ said Mr. Wishart, laughing.

‘I don't care if I am thought hard-hearted. I say I'll be bothered no more with young children. There's a sentimental way of looking at these things, and there's a sensible one. He's a sweet child when he's not in his tantrums; but. I don't want to start again and bring him up, for he's not much more than a baby. No, thank goodness! I've done with nursing, with walking about half the night with crying fits, measles, whooping cough, and all the rest of it.’

‘Mrs. Sherlock,’ said Mr. Wishart, as seriously as he could, ‘depend upon it I should be the last person to overwhelm you again with such responsibilities. Harry goes home with me tonight.’

Mrs. Sherlock packed up Harry's clothes and toys. In the last-named property he was rich, and had become much richer since his acquaintance with Mr. Wishart. When it was time to go, Rosa carried him to the gate and lifted him into the cab. She was sorry to lose her little friend. Mrs. Sherlock was not sorry; Harry had given her sufficient proof of a quick temper. Sherlock made some remarks, borrowed from his last novel, on the poetry and romance which still lingered in the world notwithstanding its age. Mr. Borage rushed out at the last moment, almost killing the cat, which got in his way, and hastily presented a packet, containing about two pounds of jujubes, as refreshment for Harry upon his journey—a most injudicious present, which Mrs. Sherlock attempted to confiscate. Then the cab rolled away, and hurried the orphan and his guardian out of sight.

They had a long drive before them. At sunset they were climbing the last hill, with their faces towards the rosy western sky. When they passed Mr. Bailey's he himself was at the gate to greet Mr. Wishart with a ‘beautiful evening, this evening, sir,’ and all the young Baileys were running wild outside, making the most of a short twilight. The boys were shouting and cracking whips; the girls, with torn frocks and tangled hair, were chasing each other round the house. One could see from a distance how red their cheeks were, and how they were growing out of their clothes at a rate that was the despair of their mother. The kitchen door was open; it was seldom closed by day, and never locked by night; for ‘the poor may sleep with open gate.’ And such a splendid wood fire blazed on the open hearth, where Mrs. Bailey was boiling a kettle, with about enough fuel to get up steam for a fair-sized engine. The red glow from door and window made Harry and Mr. Wishart realise how cold they were. Mr. Wishart swathed Harry in a carriage rug till he looked like a soft furry ball. He fell asleep very soon. When he opened his eyes again he was being carried into a large room, brilliantly lighted and full of pleasant warmth. Hardly awake, he was conscious of a figure, gliding, as it seemed, rather than walking towards him—a lady who was very tall and graceful, whose pale brown hair was golden in the lamplight, and who had a soft delicate colour in her face, and beautiful shining eyes. She looked at him as no one had looked since his mother had gone, and, half dreaming, half waking, he stretched out his arms to her, and murmured, ‘Mamma.’

‘Yes, poor child,’ she said. ‘I'll be your mamma now; you shall belong to me.’

‘You are taking plenty of responsibility on yourself, Maud,’ said another lady short, plump, and lazy-looking, with hair, eyes, and complexion all of the lightest shade.

‘What are we worth if we cannot endure a few responsibilities?’ said Maud.

The other lady was Mr. Wishart's widowed sister, Mrs. Meade. She had come to live with him because she had complained of her loneliness until he had been compelled to invite her. She had been glad enough to rid herself of the cares of housekeeping by joining him. The cares of her family, which consisted of two sons, had been dispensed with some time before. Her son's were disposed of for life: one an apprentice in the merchant service, the other a midshipman in the navy. Mrs. Meade was only in middle life, but she had already abandoned herself to the ease and retirement proper to old age. She almost lived in an easy-chair. Only one thing she persevered in—the incessant study of light literature; and only one work employed her hands—the fabrication of a set of drawing-room curtains which, if they ever were finished, would be a marvel of fine art needlework.

They went into the dining-room, Harry walking between the two ladies, and holding a hand of each. Mrs. Meade noticed him kindly now and then; but he had already chosen. Maud as his favourite, and to her he always looked and listened. Every one waited on him, and indulged him to the utmost. Mr. Wishart would have endangered his health by feeding him exclusively on cream cake and jelly had not Mrs. Meade prudently interfered. Maud talked nonsense to him all the time, and allowed him to play with the jewelled charms on her watch-chain, and to slip her bracelets over his chubby brown hands. Afterwards, when they were in the drawing-room again, and she was at the piano, playing soft and dreamy music, he crept to her side to listen, and watched the quick movements of her fingers. She sang, and he came still nearer, and laid his hands on her knee, looking up into her face in a strange solemn manner.

‘What is it?’ she said, stopping to smile at him. ‘Do you like music?’

‘You poor little darling!’ said Mrs. Meade, so moved that she felt obliged to fatigue herself by leaving her chair and her novel and going to Harry to affectionately embrace him. Harry, who did not quite understand such a sudden outburst of affection, submitted to it patiently, though it was not pleasant to have the ends of a lace cravat dangled into his eyes.

‘He looks sleepy,’ said Maud. ‘I suppose he ought to go to bed.’

‘One would naturally suppose so,’ said Mr. Wishart. ‘Madame, my sister, at what hour do little boys of three or four go to bed? You must tell us these things. Maud and I know nothing of any but grown-up children.’

‘They ought not to sit up much later than seven,’ said Mrs. Meade, with authority.

‘And, woe worth the hour! it is nine,’ said Mr. Wishart. ‘One of the most important rules infringed already! Harry, wouldn't you like to go to bed?’

‘No,’ answered that person. ‘I won't.’

‘Oh!’ said Mr. Wishart, and they all laughed; Harry wondered why.

But a few minutes afterwards his eyelids felt so heavy that do what he would they dropped lower and lower, and presently the long eyelashes rested on his check, and his head lay on Maud's shoulder. He was carried upstairs to a cosy, white, little, bed, which had been made ready for him in a room which henceforth was to be known as ‘Harry's room.’ They laid him down there, without waking him, and he slept the deep delightful sleep of tired-out childhood. Towards morning dreams came, in which he sat again with his new friends at the table, and Maud was beside him but instead of quiet placid Mrs. Meade, his mother, happier-looking, more beautiful than ever, was on the other hand. And he felt that this—this was true, and that he had only lost her and wept for her in some dream that was past. But he woke to the sunshine of another day, and to a world that mocks our dreams.

Chapter II. Whose imp art thou, with dimpled cheek, And curly pate and merry eye, And arms and shoulders, round and sleek, And soft and fair, thou urchin sly? What boots it, who, with sweet caresses, First called thee his, or squire or hind, For thou in every wight that passes Dost now a friendly playmate find.'

Joanna Baillie.

To describe how Mr. Wishart and his sisters gave themselves up to idolatry, pure and simple, the object of their idolatry being the youngest person in the house, would needlessly lower our good characters in the eyes of the reader. To describe fully Harry's mischievous ticks and the scrapes in which he was almost always involved would not only be undesirable—it would be impossible. He was all over the house, from garret to basement, several times a day. Was there a mysteriously closed box, a sealed packet, a jug, jar, pipkin, pitcher, or vessel of any shape?—if on a high shelf, so much the more desirable—he would know what was in that box; he would open that packet; he would attain to the elevated position of that jar, cost what it might. The spirit of discovery animated him to such an extent that nothing, however carefully hidden, seemed to be safe from his meddlings. The maidservants, for fear lest he should bring to light their treasures of trinkets, ribbons, or love-letters, hid them under their pillows or carried them about in their pockets. Mr. Wishart put his private papers and diary into a strong box; Mrs. Meade kept her false hair when it was not on her head, under lock and key. The apoplectic old lady who acted as housekeeper was not so careful, therefore she almost gasped her last when she descried Harry hanging out of an upstairs window, holding her spectacles in one hand, and in the other proudly waving some long and luxuriant tresses, which were hers by right of purchase, and which finally he dropped outside.

Never was there a child of such an active and inquiring mind. He delighted in experiments, though in most cases they ended in disaster. His scientific investigations with fire and water came near making him a martyr at an early age. Any new or strange thing, the use of which he did not understand, would hold him absorbed in thought for half an hour at a time. So was the found crouching on the floor before the recess which contained a filter and seltzogene, gazing on those unheard of accessories to domestic comfort with eyes that seemed to grow bigger and bigger with astonishment and deep ponderings. A type-writer which he found in Mr. Wishart's room kept him engrossed with his own reflections for the greater part of an afternoon, and was not improved by his attentions while he was so lost in admiration of a knife-cleaning machine that he had to be forcibly dragged away from it to eat his supper.

All this was as nothing compared to his accidents and hairbreadth escapes. He fell—who can say how often?—he was always falling, and yet always courting danger by recklessly climbing and scrambling into all sorts of perilous places. He had fierce tussles with the dogs and cats, and was a victor in one obstinately contested engagement with an enormous turkey cock who made as if he would gobble him up every time he ventured into the yard. He was lost in the bush of course, and he tumbled into the creek, and, but for the timely intervention of Mr. Bailey, this might have been his last escapade.

He was the hero of the household. Talk about romance! his everyday life was a romance; he could not do anything in a commonplace manner. He grew and throve, in spite of all accidents; and in the astonishingly short space of eight weeks after his introduction to country life, Mrs. Grigsby confided the alarming and important fact to Mrs. Meade that he had worn and torn all his clothes to rags.

‘I never saw such a boy for rending and riving,’ said the awe-stricken housekeeper. ‘So beautifully dressed as he was when he came! He was like a little prince in his black velvet suits.’

‘But has he nothing left?’ asked Mrs. Meade, with incredulous surprise. ‘He had so many clothes’.

‘You must consider what he's come through, ma'am,’ said Mrs. Grigsby. ‘I often say it's a wonder the boy—bless him!—is alive yet. He must be reserved for something great.’

‘He has distinguished himself already,’ laughed Maud, as the young gentleman referred to careered past the window, torn, sunburnt, and scratched from a recent encounter with one of the domestic animals.

‘I'm afraid he will grow into a rough plain boy,’ said Mrs. Meade plaintively.

‘So much the better’, said Mr. Wishart, ‘I know nothing more undesirable than prettiness in a man.’

‘I'm sure there can't be any particular virtue in ugliness,’ said Mrs. Meade. ‘It can't be pleasant, either for oneself or others.’

‘Nine-tenths of the human race are ugly, and are happy notwithstanding. I don't mean to advocate ugliness, however. Extremes should always be avoided. A moderate plainness is best for man. I am not certain about women; I think they ought to be handsome, one and all. To be sure, most of them are happy in believing that they are so.’

‘You ought to apologise to us for that speech,’ said Maud.

‘Why? what possible connection can it have with you. For myself, I assure you, I look upon my unlovely countenance in the light of a blessing. For ordinary people an ordinary appearance is best.’

‘You are so odd!’ said Mrs. Meade. ‘Why then is beauty admired; why do poets and novelists always make their heroes handsome?’

‘That is easily answered. They have to please their readers. Who form the great mass of novel readers? Women, my dear sister, women—ladies who, like yourself, think a man ought at least to be worth looking at.’

‘I don't know whether you are in earnest, and I don't care to argue,’ said Mrs. Meade languidly; ‘but I don't believe any one would prefer to be plain-looking. Of course, when a person is very clever or amiable—’

Mrs. Meade had not energy to finish the sentence.

‘It really does not matter what they look like,’ added Maud. ‘Wasn't that what you meant to say?’

‘Oh, it matters a great deal,’ said Mr. Wishart. ‘Although it is as preposterous to associated cleverness and plainness as it is to believe that beauty must be accompanied by vanity and frivolity, people will give the great class of the unattractive credit for possessing all the most excellent qualities. Prettiness is at such a disadvantage that a pretty fellow can't get others to think he has anything in him. It has become so general to believe that the good-looking people have no mind to spare beyond what is devoted to laying themselves out for admiration, that they have little or no credit for talent. Whereas, the lucky man who has no features to boast of need only hold his tongue and sit quietly, as if sunk in deep thought, and some one is sure to wonder at the profundity of his wisdom.’

‘So at last we arrive at the reason why it is best for a man to be moderately plain,’ said Maud. ‘Here is some one coming to continue the argument, if you have not sufficiently expounded your views.’

‘I am satisfied,’ said Mr. Wishart. ‘I have made two converts.’

Both ladies instantly contradicted this assertion.

‘It is Mr. Langridge,’ said Mrs. Meade, looking up from her book.

‘The amiable Stephen. He is one of those blessed with moderate plainness, and ought to uphold my doctrine.’

‘He is by no means bad-looking,’ said Mrs. Meade. ‘I think him very passable.’

‘I forgot,’ said Mr. Wishart. ‘There is one kind of plainness from which every one may reasonably pray to be delivered. From a thin sensitive skin, which is fanned to a flame-colour by wind, and baked a glowing brick-red by sun, may I and all my family and familiar friends be delivered!’

‘I should like to gag you, Algernon,’ said Mrs. Meade, with unusual vivacity, just as their visitor's feet were heard on the verandah.

Stephen Langridge was a frequent visitor, though he was by no means a near neighbour. In a country district, where houses are sparsely scattered, distances of ten, fifteen, or twenty miles are made light of. Friends will meet though rivers may run and mountains rise between them. As a matter of fact, there were many awkward gullies and wearying hills on the long road that Stephen had ridden that day; but he had not even cared to reckon their number. It was a road he liked to follow, and he was weak enough to fancy that no one but himself knew why he so often rode that way.

‘He's crazed about Miss Desmond,’ said old Mr. Langridge.

‘I wish he had taken a fancy to some nice colonial girl,’ said Mrs. Langridge.

‘He's a right to marry the best lady in the land,’ said. Mr. Langridge emphatically.

‘If she'll have him’ wisely replied his wife. ‘To my mind her half sister Mrs. Meade is the nicer woman of the two.’

‘What! the one who's always muffled in a woollen shawl, and reading novels,’ exclaimed the farmer. ‘Why, she hasn't a word for a groat. Look at Miss Desmond, the way she holds her head, and how her eyes sparkle when she talks and smiles in her lively way.’

‘She's cold, though she seems to make herself so free with one,’ said Mrs. Langridge, ‘and she's proud too, though it isn't petty pride with her, of silly trifles and common things. Besides,’ said the managing woman, ‘I really am surprised Stephen can think of marrying a woman who is so extravagant.’

‘Why, she's a fortune of her own!’ cried Mr. Langridge. ‘Surely she can spend what's her own.’

‘If she had ten fortunes she ought not to waste. What do you think? they have a housekeeper in their new house. Two grown women, and one of them forty, if she's a day, and they must have another one to manage for them! I believe they don't know what they have for dinner till it comes on the table. Perhaps, they don't go into their own kitchen more than once a week, if it's that. And that child they have now—mercy on us! how that child is allowed to go on.’

‘Well, you see, there's a great difference in woman,’ said Mr. Langridge. ‘Some are fitted for the drawing-room, and some are only at ease in the kitchen. I think Miss Desmond has no business there. It's all very well to fiddle with some pretty little housekeeping ways; some fine delicate Frenchiness of cookery, or so on, once in a while; but there are plenty without her to fuss and flurry over work. Just think of her burning her complexion red over a fire, or putting her white hands into hot water!’

‘I believe you are as infatuated with her as Stephen is.’

‘Well I'll own I am. I should be proud to call her my daughter-in-law. I'm a plain old fellow, rough in speech, and in manner, too, sometimes. I couldn't expect her to think much of being related to me. But I wouldn't shame them before other folk, if it should come to pass. I'd keep out of their way. I wish Stephen to have everything he wants to make him happy; and, if money's to be spoken of, I think I can make his fortune even with hers.’

‘Money won't influence her.’

‘No. I didn't think that. I meant he shouldn't be beholden to his wife for money. But now I've something to say to you. Can't we help this match on a bit, hey?’

‘Can't we make ourselves into two old simpletons!’ said Mrs. Langridge, moved to such scorn, and so surprised by this suggestion, that half a dozen stitches went down by the run, and formed a wide Jacob's Ladder in her knitting.

‘What's amiss?’ said her husband. ‘Young people often need help in these affairs. They want bringing together; bringing to the point, one may say.’

‘I've had some experience, I hope,’ said Mrs. Langridge, picking up the stitches, ‘and its this—that whenever young folk's affairs are meddled with they go the opposite way to that the old folks want them to go.’

‘Ay, if we were to let them see we were meddling. But these things can be managed so as they'll never know who's steering. Now Stephen has no opportunity to make himself agreeable to her.’

‘I'm sure he's had opportunity enough to pay court to two young ladies instead of one. I wonder he has the conscience to go so often.’

‘How can he get on, when he never has a chance to have a quiet talk with her alone? He never sees her without Mr. Wishart and Mrs. what-d'ye-call-her, one or both of them, being in the room. And, for some reason or other, she never rides out with him as she used to.’

‘She doesn't like him, I tell you.’

‘Be quiet, Polly. Laihoa’—the; farmer often used this expressive Maori word—‘I defy you, or any one else, to tell who a young woman does or doesn't like. You may have a guess by judging that they generally mean the contrary of what they say; but that rule even don't always answer. The question is, now can he convince her that he likes her; how can—’

‘Goodness! Do you think she's got no eyes?’

‘You never let me say my say. She's been out in the world, and is accustomed to attention, and she isn't vain or silly, so whatever she sees she'll think nothing of it till it's put into words. How on earth is Steve to express himself when the other lady, wrapped in her shawl, is everlastingly in the way? It makes no difference if she is reading her novel, and as nearly as possible asleep over it: I tell you these things can't be managed before a third person.’

‘But we can't help it,’ said Mrs. Langridge, ‘If you want me to speak for him, I tell you I won't!’

‘Bless you, Polly, how dull you are! How do other women help on matches? There's certain things arranged specially for them, I believe, if people were to own up honestly. Dances are good; so are boating and riding parties; concerts and signing classes are pretty fair; but nothing beats a picnic.’

‘Gracious! you know a sight about it,’ said his wife, with a laugh of scorn. ‘It puzzles me to guess where you've picked up your information.’

‘From watching you, Polly—ho! ho!—and your little tricks with our girls.’

‘I won't sit and listen to any more of your stuff,’ said Mrs. Langridge indignantly. ‘I never descended to any such doings. My girls may get married without such little tricks, as you call them, or never be married at all.’

‘Well, perhaps you did it without knowing. Now, I want you to do a little in the same way with your eyes open. We've often promised the girls a week at the farm I've bought for Steve. When I was there I saw that the house was comfortable enough to stay in—for a few days, at any rate. You might ask Miss Desmond to go with you and the girls. Steve would be there, of course; and so as it mightn't look as if we'd planned it, I could send him up a long time beforehand, as if to help Wrackstraw to manage, though sure enough he can hardly tell turnips from mangolds. That reminds me, there's a field of turnips there it would do your heart good to look at. Aha! we'll manage it.’

‘Edward,’ said Mrs. Langridge, severely, ‘I believe you're crazy.’

‘Now don't object. Come, come, Polly!’—and his voice was all the more persuasive, because just then he pronounced the words ‘coom, coom.’

‘Well, if you wish it, I don't care,’ said Mrs. Langridge. ‘I feel as if an out would do me good.’

‘Of course! you've not been off the place for months. You can picnic every day, if you like. The bush is full of ferns, and fern gathering isn't bad for confidential talk. Then there's that big hill close behind the house; there's a view from it that'll astonish you. They can climb that, and I guess they'll find themselves alone at the top. Then there's a long walk—ho! ho! I'd forgotten that: one would think it had been made on purpose; it was cut through the tea-tree last year, and Wrackstraw, who is a bit sentimental, called it the Lovers’ Walk, though it's not a pleasant place, being rather gloomy, and rough under feet with stumps. Altogether, if my idea doesn't succeed, and if Stephen doesn't speak out before the end of the week, he'll be a regular duffer.’

‘Hem’! said Mrs. Langridge, in a tone which showed she had mental reservations.

‘You'd better go to see the ladies, and ask Miss Desmond yourself; it would be politer, wouldn't it? Or would it be best to write a note?’

‘I don't like writing notes,’ said Mrs. Langridge, ‘besides I'm a poor speller. I'll go some day soon.’

‘Yes; and get Steve to drive you.’

‘I'm sure I shan't! He's there too often. Dear me! don't you see that if you don't take care you'll spoil everything. It won't do to be always throwing him at her head; she'll soon see your little plan, and be disgusted with you, as she would be now if she could hear you.’

‘Well, I don't want to hurt her feelings. Perhaps I'd better leave everything to you. Would it answer, do you think, to praise Steve up to her now and then?’

‘It just depends on how you do it,’ said Mrs. Langridge. ‘If it was done very carefully, perhaps it might.’

‘I think I shall put in a good word for him occasionally,’ said the farmer.

Chapter III. ‘I prithee send me back my heart, Since I can not have thine, For if from yours you will not part, Why then shouldst thou have mine? Yet now I think on't, let it lie, To find it were in vain, For thou'st a thief in either eye Would steal it back again.’

Sir John Suckling.

The country property where Mr. and Mrs. Langridge intended to picnic for a week was only a day's journey from their own farm. Mr. Langridge had bought it for his son the year before. He did not expect that Stephen would ever farm it, not even vicariously; but it was a settled principle of his to invest all that he had in land. As he was always proclaiming that farming did not pay, it was manifest that he must have been very successful in his land speculations. Had he done business on a larger scale, with tens and hundreds of thousands of acres, he might have earned the very colonial and expressive title of ‘landshark.’ As it was, he was quite as fond of the ‘unearned increment’ as those gentlemen who swallow up land by the county, and in one sense he was quite as voracious, for he possessed himself of as much as money and credit would allow, and they could do no more.

A true landshark, however, does not cultivate, and sometimes Mr. Langridge did. He would put a thousand acres or so into grass, and sell them, just when the young fern was shooting through, with millions of stalks, tender, fresh and green. And, of course, the purchaser paid dear for this grass. On Stephen's farm he had got as far as turnips, and on the strength of these turnips, his selling price had risen with a bound. He valued the whole property as if it had been strewn with turnips, though two-thirds of it bloomed with a vegetation much more dense and not half so useful. If he had only given two pounds an acre for the land, was that any reason why he should not sell it at eight, if he could? There was no wrong in buying land, swamp, stiff clay, or loose sand, for a few shillings an acre, and selling it for as many pounds, when settlement had flowed round, and made even its barren soil of value. That was the way to gather in the ‘unearned increment,’ and very sweet it was when gathered.

He always had valuable property of this kind waiting for buyers. He paid land-tax and road-rates in several counties, and instead of being thankful that he had wherewith to be taxed, grumbled when the assessment papers came round, and Government humbly asked him for a halfpenny in the pound. Very often he held these properties in his children's names, and so Stephen had always had a farm which he had never seen, and which was sometimes in one part of the country sometimes in another.

‘It is near Mahurangi, isn't it?’ he asked, when his father requested as a favour that he would visit his farm for the first time, to oversee the labours of the industrious Mr. Wrackstraw, who was growing turnips there.

‘Mahurangi! I parted with that two years ago, Steve, and sold it too low by half. The man who bought it ran up a frame of a house which he couldn't finish, and then sold for half as much again as he gave me. I oughtn't to have let him had that profit.

‘Where is it, then?’ said Stephen. ‘Do you mean that place at Karaka I have heard you talk about?’

‘That's gone too, sold to a company who are trying to grow broom corn on soil that won't even grow flax.’

‘I am not sorry it has gone,’ said Stephen. ‘I shouldn't have liked to spend two months there.’

Mr. Langridge explained where the farm was, and expatiated on its beauties to such purpose that his son was almost interested. He consented to give Mr. Wrackstraw the benefit of his assistance.

‘But I don't know what I can do there,’ he said.

‘Oh, it will do you good. I don't want you to farm unless you please, but it's as well you should know how the thing's done, and Wrackstraw is a practical man; you'll get lots of information from him. I want you to see the cattle, and the turnips and clover; ah! we've no such clover here.’

‘I don't know good cattle from bad,’ said Stephen.

‘Time you did, then. And you ought to see more of the country, it'll enlarge your mind. You may have some fine rides there, my boy. You may gallop for twenty miles at a stretch over land as level as a bowling-green. And the prospects, Steve; you've an eye for fine scenery. Get on a hill, when you're lucky enough to find one, and I declare you may see almost everything from it.’

The result of this conversation was satisfactory to Mr. Langridge; for, when Stephen had left him, he hastened to find his wife, and burst into her presence with a loud ‘He'll go, Polly, ho, ho, ho!’

Some time after this Mrs. Langridge went to call on the ladies at Mr. Wishart's, and delivered her invitation to Miss Desmond.

‘Will she go?’ asked Mr. Langridge, taking the first opportunity of speaking to his wife after her return.

‘Yes; but I am so vexed. That little flirt Violet Palmer is coming too.’

‘Bother!’ cried Mr. Langridge. ‘It'll spoil everything.’

‘She was there staying with them,’ said Mrs. Langridge. ‘I was obliged to ask Miss Desmond before her, and she said at once how delightful it would be, and how she only wished she were going, and so—I don't know how it was exactly—I had to say I'd be glad to see her. The sly little thing!’

‘It beats everything’ said the farmer, rubbing his forehead. ‘You should have made an excuse; a fine lady would have slipped out of that trap easily. Couldn't you have said there was no room for her?’

‘I did say something about having only one room to spare. But oh! she didn't mind about sharing dear Maud's room. I know how it will be. She'll always be dragging Stephen about, teasing him to take her to this place and that. She's the kind of girl that, if there were, only one young man in the country she'd keep him to herself. Mr. Wishart is possessed to think of marrying such a girl I wonder what he can see in her.’

‘I tell you what it is,’ said the farmer suddenly, ‘I shall have to go to balance the affair.’

‘You, Edward! What in the name of fortune now?’

‘It won't do to invite two young ladies, and only have Steve to escort 'em. I'll take care of the little flighty miss. I can't go with you, but I'll be there the next day, and if between you and me the wheels of this machinery can't be moved, it'll be odd, that's all.’

‘It amazes me to hear you talk so confidently,’ said Mrs. Langridge, with a dubious shake of the head.

On the appointed day Mrs. Langridge and her charges made their excursion into the country; and were welcomed by the wondering Stephen, who had had short notice of their approach.

‘Why, mother, what is the meaning of this?’ he asked, as he helped her out of the large waggon, which, for want of a lighter vehicle, had brought the party from the station.

‘We thought to give you a little surprise, Steve,’ she answered, ‘and I hope you are glad to see us.’

‘Glad? I should think I am! I have seen no one but Wrackstraw for the last three weeks, and he has talked of nothing but turnips. But I wish I had known earlier that you were coming. The house might have been made more comfortable.’

‘Oh, don't trouble yourself, Stephen,’ said Mrs. Langridge consolingly. ‘Miss Desmond isn't finikin, and neither are we. We've not come to sit indoors, but to get the good of the country air.’ Good Mrs. Langridge! she had lived amongst green fields for the half of a century, and her round fresh-coloured face showed that she had known the benefit of pure breezes and healthy exercise for quite as long. Stephen left her to see that the luggage had been taken care of.

‘There's a wonderful lot here with Miss Palmer on it,’ said Wrackstraw, who was unloading the waggon. ‘Is that the little one with the light hair, Mr. Langridge?’

‘Yes,’ said Stephen, looking with surprise at a long row of boxes.

‘Goodness! this makes the seventh,’ said Wrack- strawWrackstraw. ‘Little though she be, her clothes take up a lot of room.’

Mrs. Langridge meanwhile was looking over the house.

‘Very nice indeed, Mrs. Wrackstraw,’ she deigned to say to the industrious woman who had spent two days in a fierce warfare against dust and all uncleanness.

‘The place smells of soap awful, ma'am,’ said Mrs. Wrackstraw humbly. ‘It had ought to have been done a week ago, if we'd known.’

‘It's a smell that will do no one any harm,’ said Mrs. Langridge. ‘I wish there was more of it in some places. Now, could you make us a cup of good tea. I'm tired, if the others aren't.

Mrs. Wrackstraw made tea of surpassing strength. Stephen was so anxious it should be served properly that he harassed the poor woman with orders and counter-orders.

‘Yes, Mr. Stephen, I'm going to get out a clean tablecloth. D'ye think I wouldn't?’

‘I hope you have a better cream-jug somewhere, Mrs. Wrackstraw. That one is so cracked and chipped.’

‘Massy! it's always been on the table since you came, and you've never minded. Now, Mr. Stephen, what's amiss with the knives? Do leave me to lay the cloth; it's the first time I ever saw a young gentleman meddle in such things.’

‘I can't think why you don't clean the knives regularly.’

‘I've no time for fancy housework. They're washed; what's the use of scouring them away with bathbrick?’

‘Well, I'll clean them,’ said Stephen.

‘I rubs them on that board,’ said Mrs. Wrackstraw.

Stephen worked hard with gritty bathbrick on a board until the knives looked as if they had been polished on a grindstone. He watched Mrs. Wrackstraw so narrowly, and complained so much of her humble tea equipage, that she began to be nervous and irritable.

‘I'm sure I does all I can. Every Saturday I cleans up, I'm sure they shine like silver.’

‘Well, never mind,’ said Stephen. ‘They will not expect—’

‘If it's of the ladies you're thinking, sir, they're too sensible to expect finery and folderols here; but they'll not find a cleaner house—I dare 'em to do it!—between this and England.’

‘Very true, Mrs. Wrackstraw, everything is in order and beautifully clean,’ said Mrs. Langridge, rustling in from the next room. ‘Stephen, do you assist in the kitchen here? I may as well remind you that the partitions of this house are very thin. I could hear everything you said in the other room. I shall be glad of anything you may have, Mrs. Wrackstraw. I don't care if all the jugs are cracked and the knives haven't been cleaned for a fortnight. What a time those girls are before they come out. I suppose Violet Palmer must smarten herself up. What a trouble she has been with all that luggage of hers—ridiculous to bring so much!”

‘I think I had better remind you of the thinness of the partitions this time,’ said Stephen, and just then the young ladies entered, Violet, gay as a butterfly, in a complicated and many-coloured costume, as unsuitable to the country as any she could have chosen. But it suited her, and she knew it. Mrs. Wrackstraw was scandalised, and privately told her husband that the ‘little one’ dressed like a ‘theatrical.’ Mrs. Langridge compared her sensibly-attired daughters with the doll-like Violet, and made comforting reflections. If Violet, like the coquette she was, had made her toilet for the benefit of the only gentleman present her pains were wasted. He only looked at another person, and thought that, in her plain dark-blue dress, she was handsomer than ever.

The next morning they all got up very early, as one feels obliged to do when staying in the country. For whosoever will lie in bed, with the birds twittering just outside his window, with the sun blazing upon it, and with all the cheerful sounds of the farmyard forcing themselves on his drowsy ears, must be past all hope of redemption. People make a point of seeing the sum rise when they are in the country, that they may say they have done so when they come back to town, where no one cares to see his fiery face come up behind chimneys and house- topshousetops. But when saying that all arose early, Violet ought to have been excepted. She was fonder of the end of the day than of the beginning. As for Stephen, he astonished Mrs. Wrackstraw by being up first of all. ‘He's rousing up,’ she said to Wrackstraw; ‘it'll do him good.’

It was Stephen's idea (and a brilliant one he thought it) that they should have a ride before breakfast. And what a glorious ride that was!—while yet the sun was low above the purple-tinted hills, which lay all in shadow, flecked with mist-wreaths curling upwards. Away, away, over the level fields, over scented clover, where the bees were humming; through brown-green fern, where the pheasants rose with a whirr, or the gentle little quail hid themselves in fear at the thud of the horses’ hoofs,—away to the border of the valley, where the hills rose, and a river hurried on its course, winding in and out, winding on and on, to a seashore beyond the faintest blue of distance.

How strange the sound of voices and laughter seemed in the morning stillness resting on these plains. The cattle turned to stare at the riders, as if offended with them for disturbing their pensive ruminations so rudely. And Stephen was somewhat nearer perfect bliss than he had been before. His sisters had been supplied with slow and aged horses. (accidentally of course), and were far behind. Amiable girls! they did not mind about that. He had found something to talk about in describing the country to Maud, and was surprised that he could say so much about it. He had thought it ugly; he had thought it dull—it. appeared so no longer. He had not cared for his property, he had not known where it was six weeks before, but now he felt a pride in pointing out to her how far it extended. He was proud to be able to look with her along the curving line of the river, and across the plain, and to say, ‘All this is mine.’ And when she asked him, ‘Will you live here some day?’ though he only said ‘I do not know,’ he thought that, one condition granted, it would not matter where he made his home.

Mrs. Langridge employed the early morning hour in inspecting the kitchen, pantry, and dairy under Mrs. Wrackstraw's care, and made her a happy woman by praising her management. Fortunately their views exactly coincided on the three crucial tests by which Mrs. Langridge judged of the ability of other housewives. In butter and cheese making and in bacon curing, Mrs. Wrackstraw agreed with her in every particular, or appeared to, inasmuch as she protested that she had always followed the rules set down by Mrs. Langridge as the only ones which a woman of sense would observe. Both of them had from their youth made their bread in the same manner, and both knew the best way of giving a satin-like gloss to starched linen, a recipe which each had imagined was unknown by any other woman. These remarkable coincidences made each feel that the other was a superior woman.

‘A very useful couple to have on a farm, Steve,’ said Mrs. Langridge, ‘if the man is as sensible as his wife. The dairy was remarkably clean and sweet, and the milk-strainer and the pans looked as if they were scoured regularly. I've seen some strainers—ay, and in places where you'd think people would be particular—that have given me quite a turn.’ The milk-strainer had been scoured. Mrs. Wrackstraw had scoured it the day before Mrs. Langridge's arrival with a vigour which had added numerous perforations to those it already possessed. ‘And well I did it, and the other things too,’ she congratulated herself, ‘for of all the women for spying round, with eyes sharper than needles, she beats the worst I've seen. It's well for me she couldn't find speck or spot high or low. But law! she should have seen it a week ago.’

When breakfast was half over, Violet appeared, wearing another new costume, a walking dress, short to a fault, and so covered with trimmings that the eldest Miss Langridge could not help falling into mental calculations of its probable cost.

‘You see we have not waited for you, my dear,’ said Mrs. Langridge, blandly. ‘You missed a nice ride with not being up earlier.’

‘Oh, I never can get up early, Mrs. Langridge. I'm so glad you did not wait for me,’ said Violet carelessly. ‘I suppose it must be delightful, though, if one can manage it, to ride before breakfast. Mr. Langridge, remember you promised to show me all the pretty places to-day. I want to make some sketches—no, I don't want, but Mrs. Plushey expects it, and I know they will be horrid.’

‘But I made a rash promise, if I said I would show you them all in one day,’ said Stephen. ‘I am afraid you would be tired before I had finished.’

‘Well, if I may advise you, Miss Palmer,’ said Mrs. Langridge, ‘I would take the view from this window. So much pleasanter sitting in the house out of the sun, and with a table to rest your arms on.’

‘Oh, Mrs. Langridge, that would be just like drawing in the schoolroom. I shouldn't be able to fancy I was sketching from Nature at all.’

Before that day was over Stephen was very sorry he had ever spoken of the charming scenery of the place, and thus aroused a mania for sketching in Violet's mind. First he had to break open with hammer and chisel a box strong enough and screwed down sufficiently tight to have gone round the world and borne transhipping several times. Out of this box came Violet's sketching materials, her drawing-board, and a camp-stool all of which Stephen had to carry wherever she went. When she fixed on her position he had to point her pencils, to fasten the paper on the drawing-board, to bring her water in a little glass, to mix the colours, and, when he was not otherwise employed, to hold a parasol over her head. All the time he had the annoyance of being obliged to listen to a conversation that bored him, while he vainly endeavoured to catch the words uttered by another young lady, who was a little distance away with Mrs. Langridge. He could not leave Violet, for she was constantly appealing to him.

‘Do you think the ridge of this hill is high enough, Mr. Langridge?’

‘Oh, quite high enough,’ said Stephen, without looking.

‘I'm afraid this is not a bit like it’—the resemblance was very faint—‘and I haven't the least idea of perspective. Is this is perspective?’

‘I really don't understand perspective,’ said Stephen, very glad he could say so.

‘Perhaps, after all,’ cried Violet suddenly, ‘I had better have gone higher up the stream. It must be much prettier there.’

‘Oh, no, not half so pretty,’ Stephen assured her, determined he would carry the camp-stool no farther that day.

‘Isn't it really? Please grind me some cobalt. I shall put in the sky now.’ A smudge of blue appeared on the paper.

‘Is that the way you do it?’ inquired Stephen, looking over her shoulder. ‘I thought you began at one side, and worked across, finishing everything as you went on.’

‘Oh, no; we do everything with separate washes of colour,’ said Violet. And, in truth, the sketch began to look very washy. The paper rose up in blisters. Stephen thought the colour should be mixed thicker. ‘You've been mixing it too thin all along,’ said Violet, with a pout. He mixed some as thick as paste, saying he supposed that what artists called ‘body colours’ were prepared in that way. The thick paint went on no better than the thin; the paper was saturated with paint, and refused to absorb more. Stephen advised that it should be left in the sun to dry; that is, if the colours wouldn't fade out again. Violet thought they couldn't; Mrs. Plushey had told her they were permanent. The sketch was laid aside, and curled up into a cylinder in the hot sun.

Stephen felt much relieved when Violet said she did not care to paint in the afternoon. But he was mistaken if he had imagined he was to be allowed his usual freedom of action. All the afternoon was he in some way, he hardly knew how, retained in Violet's service. Mrs. Langridge noticed this with smouldering ire.

At eventide came Mr. Langridge, and Stephen wondered why he had come.

‘I thought you were very busy,’ he said.

‘So I am, Steve, so I am,’ chuckled his father, ‘but not too busy to come and see you. You're in grand style here, with a houseful of visitors. I thought I'd come up and enjoy myself too. All work and no play doesn't do for long.’

He managed, after a few minutes, to gain the ear of Mrs. Langridge and to whisper in a sepulchral tone, ‘Well, how goes it?’

‘How goes what?’ said the lady, affecting ignorance, and carefully looking to be sure that no one was near.

‘Come, Polly, come, don't pretend you don't know what's what.’

‘Edward, I'm quite sick of your come, coming me!’

‘Well, if things have gone wrong, you needn't be cross with me,’ said her husband, in an aggrieved tone.

Mrs. Langridge unfolded her history of the day, and said that, for her part, she thought the whole thing was a waste of time. She enlarged on Violet's misdeeds, and presented that young lady in the light of a stumbling-block which would have to be removed before their plans could succeed.

‘I see you want me with you,’ the farmer said. ‘Let me alone for managing her. She must have some one to wait on her you say; well, she shall have me.’

‘We've decided to go to the bush to-morrow,’ said Mrs. Langridge. ‘Wrackstraw is to drive us in the waggon.’

‘All right; all the same to me wherever you go,’ said the farmer. ‘Well, Steve,’ he cried, walking up to his son, ‘how are all things looking? How are the cattle getting on?’

‘Well enough, I believe,’ said Stephen, who had not the remotest idea. ‘Wrackstraw attends to them very well.’

‘I'm sorry to hear some dogs have been amongst the sheep,’ said Mr. Langridge. ‘You must lay poison, Steve.’

‘Poison?’ said his son, staring at him. He had not attended to the last remark.

‘Yes, poison—strychnine. Dear me, how absentminded the poor lad is!’—this in an undertone to Mrs. Langridge. ‘We'll go round to-morrow early, Stephen, and look at everything. Your mother says you rise with the lark now.’

The farmer was true to his promise. He attempted to manage Violet, and succeeded better than might have been expected. The shawl, parasol, camp-stool, and portfolio, that had weighed Stephen down, were as nothing to him, and he bore them along with a jaunty step as if they had been trifles light as air. He went wherever she wanted to go, and he made himself very entertaining, inventing long stories to amuse her. The worthy man was not so light of foot as he had been, but what of that? On he tramped beneath a broiling sun, red in the face, generally panting, and always perspiring. Violet believed he was mightily taken with her; in no other way could she account for his officious attentions. She told Maud that he was delightfully amusing.

‘I always laughed, at you,’ she said, ‘for liking him; but now I've seen him I'm quite fond of the dear comical old gentleman, and he is so kind.’

‘So he is,’ said Maud, and she could not help laughing. Kind! The poor old farmer was Violet's slave. Was there any flower or any fern growing in a place difficult of access? Violet wanted it. Was there any rough place, any steep bank to climb, any gully to cross, Violet was afraid to venture on it by herself, and had to be helped over with much care and deliberation. She was always losing something, a handkerchief, bracelet, or ring, which must be sought for in the tangled herbage; she was always searching for something to sketch, and was never satisfied with it when it was found. Such a companion is pretty sure to exhaust the largest fund of long-suffering human kindness before the end of many hours. At the close of a hard day Mr. Langridge said, with a groan, ‘Blessed if this picnicking isn't harder work than digging! If it's all to be like this I don't stay out the week.’

‘You are soon done up,’ said Mrs. Langridge sarcastically. ‘I'm as tired as you are. I don't know how some people can go a-jaunting day after day, and not be sick to death of it. And so far as I can tell nothing has come of your grand idea.’

‘How do you know?’ said Mr. Langridge; but the remark nettled him so much that he determined to persevere, and even to work harder yet. He became so cunning and crafty in his ways that his conduct surprised every one but Mrs. Langridge. When all the party were exploring some little dingle or dell he would mysteriously entice them away, one by one, till only Maud and Stephen were left in the secluded spot. He would either contrive that these two should walk first, and then keep every one else fifty yards behind, or he would manage to give them the slip in some bush path or quiet nook, and hurry all the rest on in front, driving them before him like a flock of sheep up a steep hill, down a hollow into a mass of thick fern or tea-tree—anywhere, so that they were out of the way. His wife submitted to this without a murmur, though worn out with continual hurrying and scrambling; his daughters also were tolerably manageable; but Violet was apt to rebel, and to insist on going the way she pleased. This gave him extra trouble, and necessitated (so he thought) frequent lapses from the way of truth. The false statements made by this formerly straightforward man during these few days would have filled a book. He invented reasons without number to explain why Violet should not do as she wished. There was always a lion in the way she wanted to go: wild cattle, impassable watercourses, rough ground, fallen trees—anything he could think of. And yet she generally took the forbidden path, and interrupted the tête-à-tête he had secured with such pains. She soon tired of always having his companionship; she would be with Maud, or she would make demands on the good nature of the useful Stephen. So at the end of the week, the farmer felt he had been exerting himself most painfully to very little purpose.

‘I don't believe she left them alone five minutes yesterday,’ he complained, ‘except when I captured her and took her right down to the far end of the paddock, pretending there was a fine view from it. But to-morrow we're going up that hill. Now, in my opinion, Polly,’—and he dropped his voice to a whisper, and looked behind him before he spoke,—‘that's the place for what they call the denoomong in novels.’

‘I never heard you mash up French among your talk before,’ said Mrs. Langridge. ‘If there's to be a “denoomong,” it will be that you and I will go home shorn of our wool. I believe that sharp, sly girl Violet knows everything, and is laughing at us in her sleeve. If you want to go match-making again, Edward, you may do it by yourself.’

‘And so I will, Polly,’ returned Mr. Langridge, ‘for you've been as cross as two sticks all this time, and haven't tried to help me a bit. I've had it all laid on me, and that's where all the blame will be laid too if it doesn't answer. But let's wait a while before we say die.’

The morrow of which such great things were hoped came in with rain. If Mr. Langridge could have controlled the clouds, he would have dispersed them at once with a mighty wind, for, to his mind, what he was trying to bring about could only take place outside. His heart bounded for joy when the sky cleared about mid-day. Then he announced that he had laid out an afternoon's work for the party, and overruled every objection. Up the hill they must go. If they went away and did not see the view from the top they would regret it ever afterwards. It was easy to climb; the most beautiful ferns grew on it; the way went through the finest piece of bush; some of the trees were monsters, perfect giants of the forest; they were not likely to see such trees again if they missed this chance. Rain? It wouldn't, couldn't rain. Road bad? dry as a bone by this time; the hillside was so steep water ran off it at once. Steep? no; didn't mean that at all—quite easy; splendid path; a lame man might hobble up it. And at last he got them out of the house, and at last he got them on the hill, and better than all, secured Violet.

But of all the toils he had gone through this last day's work was the worst. He had never felt hotter in his life than when he helped Violet up the hill, with the sun's rays, so it seemed, striking perpendicularly on the back of his neck. And, of course, when a raging thirst possessed him water was nowhere to be found, and they had forgotten to bring any. He had said the path was easy, but this had been one of his little fictions; there was no path at all, and they had to walk through fern just high enough to scratch their faces. The farmer was annoyed by spider-webs on the tops of the fern, the threads of which were of extraordinary strength, and once or twice formed a net-work before his features. Violet's shoes were always coming untied or coming off. Nearly at the top they found a peach-tree which Mr. Langridge declared to be his salvation. The fruit, which was lying on the ground in heaps, was ripe and juicy, and served to assuage their thirst. He persuaded Violet that the view which was to be seen from under this peach-tree surpassed every other view for miles round. While she sketched he lay among the fern, with a pocket handkerchief over his face, one eye excepted; it was necessary to keep that on Violet lest she should escape, for which reason also he dared not go to sleep as he fain would have done. Mrs. Langridge and her daughters strolled to a place which, the farmer had said, beat the world for ferns. Where the other two persons went was a matter of no importance.

If the farmer had had the cunning of Machiavelli he could not have withdrawn the supernumeraries from the stage at a moment more opportune. He did not know this, though he had arranged for it, and his son had never even suspected that his parents concerned themselves in the least about his evident admiration for Miss Desmond. He had never noticed the clumsy manœuvring of his father, so absorbed had he been in his own thoughts. He had been blind to everything, and he had supposed others were as blind to the inferences which might naturally be drawn from his conduct. All the week he had been in a state of vacillation and irresolution. He would speak to her—no, he would not, had been the two resolves alternately adopted by him. On the last day he had made up his mind.

Could she have known of this resolve, and could she have known why the farmer was mounting guard over Violet, the calmness of the lady looking dreamily towards the distant hills would have been suddenly shaken. Perhaps the silence told her at last that the others had gone, for she turned her head, and found that the only person near was looking at her, not at the view, and had, as his guilty confusion seemed to say, been studying her countenance all the while.

‘We came here to see the view,’ she said quietly, as if she had noticed nothing strange in his manner, ‘and I must confess I have only made a pretence of looking at it. I have been too absent-minded.’

‘I haven't even pretended to look at it,’ said Stephen, ‘and I think it is the dreariest view I ever saw. I don't agree with my father in calling it beautiful. If you have been thinking of something else all the while, so have I.’

What he proceeded to say after this was doubtless the unfolding of those thoughts, but the listener was only puzzled by his incoherent and rambling sentences. She could not imagine what he meant by starting to depreciate himself in a very thorough and unflinching manner. When he began to speak of her in a different strain she was at first ashamed, then irritated, and finally, however calm she might be to outward view, angry. It all flashed upon her at once—the ridiculous pantomime of the last few days. She had smiled at the farmer's oddities when she had seen no purpose in them; she had thought little or nothing of Stephen's persistent attentions; but now she felt indignant—insulted; she was the last woman to brook such treatment.

It seemed to Stephen that he had been talking for a long while, and had not received the slightest encouragement. It became quite clear to him that he had said all he could; quite enough, if not too much. Still she would not speak.

‘Have I offended you?’ he asked, so timidly that she was constrained to pity his embarrassment. She even thought she was behaving unkindly, and that Mr. and Mrs. Langridge merited her displeasure more than this poor confused Stephen.

‘I would not have said a word,’ he continued, ‘if I had known it would be so displeasing to you.’

‘No, you have not offended me,’ she answered. ‘I have no right to be offended when you have only been trying to say the kindest things about me’—she could not repress a faint smile—‘I should rather thank you for what you have said. I was only thinking how I ought to answer you.’

‘Oh,’ he said quickly, ‘there is only one answer—I mean, only one I wish to hear. If you cannot give it, I would even rather you would say unkind things to me than study how to tell me politely, what I can guess from your manner—that I have been mistaken. I would rather you told me you disliked me—that you were angry with me.’

‘I cannot give you that answer; but I am not going to say unkind things to you, Mr. Langridge,’ said the lady quietly. ‘That would be an ill return. I don't dislike you, so how could I say so? I have always liked you; we have been friends for a long while.’

‘Friends—yes!’ said Stephen. ‘I thought that word would be brought in to qualify the liking. I beg your pardon; I don't know what I am saying, I believe.’

There was silence again, and this permitted distant voices to be heard. First the voice of Violet. ‘I can't think where we left Maud, Mr. Langridge. I must show her this. So good of you! I'm sure you must have been tired with waiting while I finished it.’

‘Oh, they've gone down again, I believe,’ said the farmer, who believed nothing of the kind, and hoped he might be forgiven for the falsity.

‘Gone down? Hadn't I better run up and see? We left them not far from here.’

‘Oh, dear no, you're quite mistaken,’ said the farmer, putting up his head from amongst the scrub, and hastily drawing it back again when he saw two other heads in front of him. ‘Come back! Miss Palmer, we're going all wrong.’

‘But here is the place where we had lunch.’

‘Nothing of the kind; there are hundreds of places like this.’

‘Oh, dear!’ cried Violet, struggling to get up a steep place, ‘I'm slipping. Oh, Mr. Langridge, I'm going! Oh, I've lost my portfolio!’

‘Hold on a bit till I come,’ shouted Mr. Langridge, who just then was caught up by a mass of interlaced roots. ‘Never mind the portfolio, you're worth more than many portfolios. Dash it! I'm fast myself. Hallo! there goes my hat, spinning down at the rate of sixty miles an hour. Now then, take my hand. This comes of running away. I told you that wasn't the way.’

‘We ought to let them know we are here,’ said Maud. ‘They are going down, had we not better follow?’

‘I suppose so,’ answered Stephen. He did not speak again till they were half way down the hill. Then again he said, ‘I hope I haven't offended you.’

‘Oh no,’ she said, frankly. ‘But you will do as I wish in one thing, will you not?’

‘You know I will, if I can.’

‘Then let this be forgotten. We need not think of it again.’

‘That is just the one thing I can't promise,’ said Stephen bluntly. ‘How can I help thinking of it—perhaps speaking of it again? I mean to ask you again, because I shall not be able to prevent myself from hoping that sometime you may give me a different answer.’

‘I am sorry you should say that. I can never give you a different answer.’

They joined the others at this moment. Mrs. Langridge read the story of disappointment and failure in Stephen's face. The farmer's countenance fell visibly; he also knew something was wrong.

‘Steve's rejected,’ he whispered. ‘I can see it in his face.’

‘I've seen it already,’ Mrs. Langridge replied, ‘and I've seen it from the first. Let's be thankful no one knows how silly we've been; though it's just likely, Edward, from the outrageous way you've gone on in, that Violet Palmer has guessed everything, and if so, it's as good as advertised. You never will be guided by me.’

‘There, there, don't come down on me like a thousand of bricks!’ entreated her husband. ‘Spare a fellow! You women have no generosity; you'll trample on a man when he's down. I say, though,’ he suggested, and his face brightened, ‘perhaps it's only a little quarrel. Shall I put in a word for Steve?’

‘If you meddle, Edward,’ cried Mrs. Langridge, looking aghast at this proposal, ‘you will do your very worst for him. You're wandering, I believe.’

‘Why, whatever I propose, you say it won't do. I suppose you'd have me do nothing.’

‘I've always said so. Stephen isn't going to fancy, I hope, that there's only one woman in the world. He'll find some one else better suited to him, and, meanwhile, this little disappointment will do him a great deal of good. He had far better be thinking of Miss Desmond, and studying how to please her, than be just wrapped up in himself, only caring to get along easily. Let's go into the house, or somebody will begin to wonder why we are always putting our heads together.’

What was the matter with Violet that evening? No one could imagine. She seemed to be bubbling over with mirth. She had put on a dress she had kept for the last evening a dress of a pale creamy tint, on which here and there flashed a scarlet bow. She had the audacity to wear a scarlet flower in her light hair, which, however, only gleamed the brighter for the contrast. That she had some secret fund of amusement was very plain; her blue eyes were always sparkling, her face dimpling, and her lips curving, as if she would have liked to laugh, and dared not. Not until she and Maud were alone in their room could she indulge herself in this desire. Then almost instantly she was convulsed with laughter so infectious in its kind that Maud was obliged to follow her example. Violet continued to laugh, sometimes smothering her mirth, and then brushing out again, until her friend seemed displeased as well as surprised.

‘I know it's dreadfully rude; but I can't help it. I really can't,’ said Violet, brushing the tears from her eyes. ‘Of course, they have heard me all through this little house. They won't mind; no one expects me to be sensible. Maud, I must tell you.’

‘Is it worth telling?’

‘I don't know. Oh, you innocent creature! I wondered, I really wondered what it all meant. I wondered why good old Mr. Langridge was always leading me about, and why Mrs. Langridge was always giving me looks which smote me to the heart, and why that poor blighted Stephen—’

‘Violet!’ exclaimed the other, indignantly.

‘Oh, don't be angry; I won't say a word more. Yes, I will; only this, that it all burst upon me at once when I caught a word or two from something Mr. and Mrs. Langridge were saying. Don't you feel flattered? You ought to. I can't help laughing when I think of what a marplot I've been, and how hard those two ridiculous old people have worked. And when we were on that hill—oh, Maud, I feel as if I should choke!’

‘I wish you wouldn't talk like that, I won't listen to you any longer.’

‘I don't know why you need care. You are not going to appear in the character of Mrs. Stephen Langridge surely? Perhaps you haven't been asked yet? Maud, I feel so curious; do tell me?’

‘Oh, Violet, don't! Why do you ask such questions?’

‘Because I'm silly, I suppose. Don't be vexed,’—and Violet, with a sudden change from mockery to tenderness, affectionately kissed her friend. ‘I wonder at any one like Stephen Langridge having the presumption even to look at you. After all, Maud, some people wouldn't have been in such a hurry to send him away. He isn't so bad, you know. I have known worse persons.’

‘And I have, if you come to that,’ said Maud.

‘Worse-looking, for instance, and worse-tempered, and more stupid. And then he will be so very well off. If you had been poor, Maud, would you have done the same?’

‘Yes, why not?’

‘Why not? Any one can see you've never been poor. You can please yourself; you needn't marry any one unless you like. You don't know how it is with many girls. Suppose me as a poor girl, living in a small squalid house, with ever so many tiresome little brothers and sisters to look after, and suppose a rich someone comes to ask me if I'll leave it all behind and marry him. And I don't think of him. I think of having no more to do with the poverty and its little shifts and shams, with the cross children, with pinching and saving; so I say, “Most willingly, dear sir,” and I escape at once from it all, and every one thinks ever so much more of me, because I've done well for myself.’

‘Violet,’ said her companion, looking at her closely, ‘where did you learn to talk like that?’

‘In a school you never went to,’ quickly answered the girl, ‘and oh, how happy, how thankful you ought to be that you haven't my learning! Dear me! what am I thinking of?—you are too innocent to understand anything of this.’

‘No; tell me what you mean. Do you think I ought to be happy because I don't know what poverty is? Every one says riches don't bring happiness with them.’

‘Things that every one says aren't always true. Oh, Maud, you've often asked me how I could stay so long away from home. You've wondered perhaps why I've never had you there. You haven't seen my home. Oh, so dingy and—don't be shocked—so dirty! Everything wears out before we can replace it; nothing seems fresh and nice, even when it is new. You don't know how poor people live—how can you?—I mean people like ourselves; the very poor, who care for nothing so long as they get bread, are much happier. I don't know why I say all this, and am not ashamed to let you hear it.’

‘Dear Violet, don't be ashamed because I hear it. Why did you never tell me before? You know I am rich, and though I can't do as I should like with my money, for I am not supposed to have sense enough to take care of it, I have a large allowance, more than is necessary for myself alone. Don't be offended if I ask you to help me to spend it. We are almost sisters, or shall be some day.’

‘Yes, that is just like you, Maud. It's very well you can't do as you like with your money, for if you could you'd give it all away. You are too good; but, don't you see, no one can help us. Papa has no idea of keeping money or making it, and mamma has too many ideas about wasting and spending it. If you gave us a fortune we should soon be as bad as ever, and so it must go on as it is.’

‘But I don't believe in things going on as they are when they can be made better.’

‘Who is to make them better? You needn't be surprised again that I don't care to spend my holidays at home. Why, some of the children hardly know me. I'm not sure whether I know them all. Your mother must have loved you, Maud, because every one does; but mine was very pleased when I went away to school, and she will be glad when I leave home altogether. There is only papa, and I should like to take him somewhere away from the bosom of his family, which isn't at all a happy one. But what is there in all this to distress you?’

‘Very much. You have had all these unhappy things to think of, and I have never dreamed it. I have always thought you were as gay and careless as any bird.’

‘And so I am,’ said Violet lightly. ‘Oh, don't fancy I trouble myself about this. I've everything I want for myself; have you forgotten that I'm provided for? It's selfish, of course, but I can always be happy when I'm comfortable myself. It's dreadful at home, but I never fret about what goes on where I can't see it. If I had to live amongst it I should be miserable. It is so nice to have everything handsome and pleasant about one, just as you have it, Maud. Good furniture, large rooms, and nothing shabby or worn. When anything becomes a little passe you've only to get it new again; you've no need to contrive or consider the cost.’

‘Ah, that is a great aid to happiness, I suppose.’

‘I think so. You can't say you're unhappy because you have money.’

‘I unhappy! I have everything to make me happy. But as for my money’—there was a tone of scorn in her voice—no one need envy me that. It hardly seems to be mine. I did not earn it, and I can't use it. To be sure, every year I can buy myself as much as I like of useless things—no exception would be taken to that—but if I wished to do something that was of use, that would do good to others, but which needed a large sum of money, I could not do it, not with all my thousands. I have to go like a beggar to my trustee for what is my own; and I know too well I might ask in vain for money to use in such a way. Men who make fortunes must have some pleasure in spending them as they like, I suppose. I shall never have that pleasure from mine, and I shall never be able to do much good with it; it is just like so much wasted money locked up in a chest.’

‘But you know, Maud,’ said Violet playfully, ‘if you were to marry some one who would let you do just as you liked, then you could have your own way with the money. The trustee couldn't interfere then, could he?’

‘There would be no need for his interference. In that case I should have no money of my own at all.’

‘Why, you wouldn't lose it, surely?’

‘Yes; of course I never shall—’

‘Oh, of course!’ cried Violet, with a laugh.

‘But if I did I should lose my useless fortune altogether. It was given to me on a condition that was an insult to me!’ Her face flushed, and for a moment there was a suspicious brightness in her eyes.

‘How wicked! I understand; it was to prevent some one getting it. As if any one worth a thought, Maud, would care more for your fortune than yourself! But aren't we ridiculous?’ she ended, with a laugh, ‘one talking against poverty, the other against riches. Good night; we really ought to be asleep.’

Chapter IV. ‘There must be those who bear that heat And burden: on with weary feet They toil along the noontide way; Nor rest when comes the fall of day. ‘Through dewy morn, through tender eves Love's labour keeps them binding sheaves Which no man cares for. One on high Will count their earnings by and by.’

On the next day Stephen was bereft of his visitors. Once again he had to content himself with the companionship of Wrackstraw. There was no one else to talk with, and Wrackstraw when he did not talk of turnips talked of shorthorns. There was nothing to read except the newspaper, which generally had nothing in it, and there was nothing which he cared to do. Yet here he remained immured for two months, a fact which shows how rich he must have been in patient endurance.

Maud came back to her home duties with renewed interest. Do not think she had nothing to do. Though she had no skill in those domestic arts to which Mrs. Langridge was devoted, she was not that pitiable creature, a woman without an occupation. Work may be found anywhere, and it was her happy gift to be glad of whatever her hand found to do. Then she lived very much in the fresh air and sunshine. She knew all the windings of the creek; she followed it in her boat from one bend to another, till boulders and snags, waterfalls and rapids, stopped the way, and made navigation dangerous for any bark less light than a nutshell. High up the stream, where the kingfishers kept watch on the withered branches of tall dead trees, and the wood-pigeons, hidden in their leafy halls, dreamed away the sultry noontide, she had her sheltered little harbours, where, with her boat moored in the shade of overhanging boughs, she could read or think in a delicious quietness. And on the banks she had her bowers, draped with starry clematis in springtime, canopied with crimson flowers in midsummer. She could row beneath branches drooping with their weight of flowers, and pluck what she chose without stepping from the boat. Sometimes she slowly drifted down the stream, singing softly to herself. There were only birds to hear her, and often a clear sweet gush of song seemed to answer her from the bush. The birds were not afraid of her; perhaps they did not mind her looking curiously into their nests, and robbing them of a pink or white egg—when there was a nestful—or possessing herself of some little deserted house whence the young brood had departed.

What long rambles she had with Harry for her companion, and how profoundly learned they became in all kinds of lore of birds and insects, flowers and trees. They fished in the creek together, though Maud never caught anything, and Harry nothing better than eels or very small fry. They drove together for miles, and they rode together, when Harry could be trusted on horseback. Oh, better this a thousand times than a languid indoors existence, shut in by four walls, and looking at the blue sky and the world of sunshine through panes of glass. No wonder that this young lady's eyes were so bright and that she had such a rich colour on her cheek. The book of Nature was her chiefest study; that book whose thousand pages are blank to careless or unloving eyes, but to those who look aright are written closely within and without. After this, perhaps, you expect to hear that she dabbled in science. Well, she read books of science sometimes, for her reading had a wide range. But she was sadly unscientific in her classification; she did not know the names of many of her treasures, and, like any ordinary woman, she collected only what was curious or pleasing to the eye. Her science was of the mild and inferior kind, disdainfully termed ‘popular.’ But very possibly a great naturalist was lost to the world when this gentle inquirer was made a woman.

But now other things were in her thoughts. Her last conversation with Violet often recurred to her. That little glimpse which it had given her of an ill-managed and unhappy home troubled her and would not be forgotten. It was none of her business, perhaps, but she was one of a class (would it were larger!) who are never satisfied with their own well-being, but would, if they could, put right all that is wrong, and comfort all who mourn. They may blunder over it sometimes, and Quixote-like, go tilting with wind-mills, but theirs is a good doctrine.

She thought she would like to see for herself how it was with Violet's family, and one day went to the house. It was not less dingy nor ugly than she had expected; but she could not understand why, on such a fine warm day, clothing could not have been put outside to air instead of being hung out of every window. Why were the blinds all askew, why was everything askew that ought to have been straight, and why were all the doors clapping? Also, she might have asked, why such screaming from a child of about three, laid on its back in the middle of the gravel path, and black in the face with passion. She was frightened at its distorted features, and tried to lift it from the ground. A feeble voice was heard to say, ‘Alice, are you going to let that boy scream himself into convulsions?’ ‘What can I do?’ answered some one in high-pitched tones. ‘Better let him have his cry out. I would whip him if I'd time.’

A door opened and slammed. Footsteps were heard in the passage—the footsteps of some one in slippers which were big and down-trodden at the heel. They flapped, along the oil-cloth till they nearly came to the front door. Maud half saw an untidy woman, too slatternly, she supposed, to be any one but the servant. The woman peeped at her through the crack of the door, and then took flight as quickly as her slippers would allow her.

Some one stirred in the little room at the end of the verandah. Mr. Everard appeared, with a flushed face, looking deeply ashamed and nervous for some cause. He knew Miss Desmond, having met her once or twice before, and he made her welcome in his quiet gentlemanly manner. ‘Get up, and leave off crying directly,’ he said to the little boy. ‘Go to your mother.’ The child obeyed, staring vacantly at the visitor, before it toddled away to the back of the house.

Mr. Everard said quietly that they were very uncomfortable at present. Mrs. Palmer was so busy she could not attend to the children as usual; the fact was, they had lost their servant; it was so very difficult to get a good servant to stay with them. Maud felt enlightened and astonished. Was it then the mistress of the house who had peeped at her from behind the door, and wisely hidden herself in flight?

They went into the room—ah, what a room! The visitor could not help thinking that bare boards scrubbed clean would have looked ever so much better than the gaudy carpet. Why, oh why was magenta the prevailing colour in this carpet, and why was the furniture covered with a shade of crimson that most effectually killed the vulgar hues of the carpet while vicing with them in brightness? It was a room full of eyesores. One who had to live in it might not unreasonably pray for colour-blindness. Tawdry brackets in every corner, common pictures on the wall, cheap finery on the mantelpiece, chair-covers gaudy even now when faded and worn out. How frowsy, and dusty, and neglected everything looked! No wonder it had vexed and annoyed poor Violet. Better far a clean kitchen, with its wooden chairs and table, and its homely adornments of brightened stove and polished tin-ware, than this caricature of a drawing-room.

She would never have noticed one half of this had it not been for Violet's words. It made her uncomfortable to have it before her eyes. In such a room perhaps the best thing was to sit still in one place, and look straight at the blank spaces on the wall. Mr. Everard, in his gentle mournful way, was trying to talk of things very far away from her thoughts. He had such a melancholy expression, poor man, as if he had been wearied to death with trifles and the petty troubles that make three-quarters of this world's woe. He always spoke in a low voice, and looked at one so winningly with his mournful cavernous eyes, and was so simple and unconscious in his manner, no one could help pitying him and liking him.

Maud was sorry he should be embarrassed on her account. She resolutely turned her head away from the ragged lace curtain, which, with the exasperating pertinacity of inanimate things, would obtrude itself on her notice, and roused herself to talk pleasantly and kindly of the flowers outside, which were his care (or they would not have existed long); of the caged birds singing on the verandah, which were his also. She did not know how she was charming him. The faded eyes brightened, the wearied brow relaxed—he looked ever so much younger when he smiled. They had tastes in common; they both loved birds and flowers. How seldom had he found such a lively intelligent listener! how rare it was for him to listen to anything but a querulous woman's complainings! The quiet self-possessed manners of this lady soon put him at ease; he talked freely with her, as if she had been an old friend. He was led into speaking of his studies. There also they were agreed; she was well-informed, without being pedantic, and her favourite science happened to be the one to which just then he was devoted. He proved how much he was pleased by asking her to go into his study, a little box rather than a room, lined about with books. She followed him there. Why, there was another atmosphere here! a blaze of sunlight through the open window, and a sweet savour of fresh air which had blown over beds of scented flowers. He did not tell her, but, looking at the man himself, and judging from his scrupulous neatness, she guessed that no one but himself entered this room, and that he took care it should always be as delicately clean and orderly as it was then. His microscope was on the table, and he showed her some objects, talking the while with animation of what he hoped to discover, for he believed himself to be on the brink of a discovery. She was soon out of her depth in following his arguments, but he was too interested in what he was bent on proving to perceive this. He pulled down books from the shelves, and referred to written notes now and then. They were all ready to his hand—no book nor paper was out of its place.

Mrs. Palmer's foot was heard in the passage, and they went back to the sitting-room. The lady of the house had dressed herself with more than ordinary care, and Mr. Everard was pleased and reassured to see his wife looking so well. She was not old yet; but she had succeeded, after years of worry, in making a very near approach to old age in appearance. She was Violet herself, twenty years further advanced in time, and with all the bloom gone from her complexion and the brightness from her eyes. The mother and daughter were duplicates almost; only much that was undisguised and glaring in Mrs. Palmer's manner had been covered in Violet's with the veneering of boarding-school accomplishments.

Mrs. Palmer was flattered and delighted to have a visitor. The ladies of the neighbourhood, after some spasmodic complimentary calls, had united in ignoring her. To have Miss Desmond in her house compensated for the neglect of others; and to think that most probably some of those others had seen her come, was a thought of joy and consolation. She admired her beauty and her dress, which was elegant in its simplicity, and probably costly, like most things of that kind which look beautifully simple. ‘Ah, if I could only look like that!’ she thought, ‘if I could always say and do the proper thing, and if I could dress myself as beautifully, perhaps Everard would let me go into society.’ She thought of herself as she had been half an hour before, bedraggled, untidy, unloveable, and her lip quivered with an irrepressible sign. But her mind could not reach far enough above the level of present things to show her what she might have been.

It was fortunate, or unfortunate (which, Mr. and Mrs. Palmer hardly knew) that sudden rain, heavy and continuous, obliged them to keep this engaging stranger under their roof. Mr. Palmer was pleased that she should stay, and yet he was ashamed that she should see still more of the peculiar domestic economics of the house. Mrs. Palmer was glad enough of her presence, but she felt it as a trial that for the next four and twenty hours she would have to endure the strain of keeping herself presentable. This also when there was no Abigail to bear the burden of the day. But her guest was so easy and unaffected in her ways that she surely could not be hard to please. And she did not seem to notice anything. There were women—Mrs. Palmer knew and feared them—whose piercing eyes could detect tears in the curtains or stains on the carpet at distances far removed, who could tell by instinct what was happening in the kitchen while they sat in the room, and whose taste was so refined that they had merely to nibble at her bread or cake to know how it had been made. Joyful to think of!—here was not such a one. This woman could not be suspected of darting invidious glances around her, her mild eyes were not spying out instances of ill-thrift, and most likely she would never know whether the cake had been raised with soda or with eggs, or that the dark colour of the preserves was caused by their burning in the pan. It was a comfortable task to entertain such a woman; with her any timorous and incapable housekeeper was safe.

How often has it been said, without explaining the fact, that some natures irresistibly attract confidence? How is it that so often confidence is not bartered, but freely given to those who are very loath to part with their own secrets? There are people who seem appointed to listen and to comfort—people who trouble no one with their cares, and yet are ever chosen to bear the weight of secrets not their own, and to give counsel on matters which do not concern them. They wonder why others will tell them so much, since they know it would be painful, humbling, impossible for them to make such confessions. As if there were anything to wonder at! Why are those beloved who rejoice with us in our joy, who mourn when we mourn, who forget their own affairs to be interested in ours, and who can counsel without judging us? These are the people to whom we can tell everything, and to whom we can tell it uninvited. As for those who are anxious to possess themselves of your feelings in detail, or to force their consolations upon you, flee such affectionates. Job's comforters, let it be remembered, were not sent for, but came.

Before she left that house Maud knew all that its distressed, complaining mistress could tell her of the troubles and harassing trifles that had soured and aged her. She had no pride, poor woman; she never stopped to consider whether she were not making a very unnecessary exposure of family jars. All she knew was that it was very soothing to speak of what had long been festering in her heart to a kind woman who could feel deeply for her. So pleasant to sit close to her, and look into her eyes, and tell it all; for all must come out when she had once begun. Mr. Everard would have writhed in agony had he known of these revelations, but of course he did not know. The greatest of mercies is our ignorance.

‘I don't know why I've told you all this,’ she said, ‘unless it's because I've never any one to talk to who cares about my troubles. It's a bother to you, perhaps.’

‘Oh, no,’ the listener hastened to reply; ‘but is it right that you should—I mean’ (hesitating over her words) ‘ought I to know this?’

‘Oh, I'm not afraid of you knowing everything about us!’ burst out the distressed Mrs. Palmer. ‘I wouldn't breathe a word to any one else; but you are so—so different. It does me good to speak out. You can't think how lonely I am. No one comes near me; I've nothing to think of but work, and it's always behindhand, and I'm always in a muddle. One never knows when one is well off. When I was a girl I wanted to be married and have a house of my own: now I'd give anything to be a girl again. Don't you be in a hurry to get married; you'll never be so happy again as you are now.’

‘Oh, don't say that,’ said Maud, ‘you do not always think so’.

‘Yes, I do’, sobbed Mrs. Palmer. ‘I'm miserable, and Everard doesn't care. I'm not what I once was to him; he never thinks of me now; he wouldn't miss me much if—if I were gone.’

‘Oh, Mrs. Palmer!’ exclaimed her visitor, blushing as deeply as the other woman ought to have blushed for herself. How could any one speak of such a thing even if it were true! how could she listen without feeling as much ashamed as if she herself were in the other's place, blurting out all this to one whom she had hardly known the day before! As it was, when Mrs. Palmer cried—Mrs. Palmer was ready to cry at very little provocation—she could not help the tears coming into her own eyes, she was so heartily sorry for her.

‘It all comes of not being clever or educated,’ Mrs. Palmer went on with her plaint. ‘I'm no companion for Everard. I can't understand him when he talks about his fancies, and I never could read the books he likes. I ought never to have married above myself. Oh! if I'd married a plain working man, like my own father, we could have got along with each other, and he'd have had no need to be ashamed of his wife, as Everard is ashamed of me, and my own daughter wouldn't have thought herself above me as Violet does. I shall never care to visit her after she is married, because I shall know all the while that she'll be afraid of her grand friends finding out that her mother isn't a lady. Don't stop me—don't say I'm mistaken: all this is true, and I can't mend it. Only if I could keep the house nicer, and if the children weren't always so untidy, perhaps Everard would be pleased with me again. But I can't. I can't work harder. Look at me: I'm younger than your sister Mrs. Meade; but would any one think it who saw us together? And once—oh, you needn't think I'm vain, or it's that I care for!—but once I was so pretty, as pretty as Violet is now.’

‘Mrs. Palmer,’ said Maud, glad to have a chance of interrupting her, ‘I think I can help you.’

‘No one can. It's no use bothering. I let things go now.’

‘Yes; I think I can. Perhaps it is something like presumption on my part to offer advice about housekeeping. You know I am ignorant of everything; but I think you are trying to do more than is possible. You could not—at least I do not think one woman could do everything in this house.’

‘She couldn't, and then feel fresh and bright in the evenings,’ said Mrs. Palmer. ‘Everard wonders why I'm cross, and I know I do let my temper get the better of me sometimes. He never considers how fagged I am with it all; and that's why I'm never fit to be seen, and no one cares to visit me.’

‘But if you had a nice, industrious woman, who was fond of children, and would take care of them, as well as help you in other things,—cookery, for instance, which a common servant seldom does well, you would have time for rest.’

‘Ah, that would mean money,’ said Mrs. Palmer mournfully. ‘You have to pay for such comforts. We couldn't afford to keep more than one servant.’

‘I think,’ said Maud, looking shyly at her, and colouring faintly, ‘that the person I was thinking of wouldn't want money. I know of some one who would do it, and whom you need not pay.’

‘Do you mean to say,’ asked Mrs. Palmer incredulously, ‘that any woman who'd be worth having would wait on my cross dirty children just for love of them? I can't believe that.’

‘I know of one who would come if I asked her,’ said Maud, ‘and who would do her work as if it were a pleasure to her. She will only ask you to give her a home; there will be no word of money. She knows how to do everything, and I don't think any child could be cross with her.’

‘Well, I wish she'd drop down into this room,’ said Mrs. Palmer, smoothing her light hair and drying her eyes, ‘for if she's ready to do it, and make a pleasure of it, she's an angel.’

‘She is not quite that,’ said Maud, smiling, ‘she only pretends to be a good amiable girl. I assure you I know of such a person, and if you will allow me I will tell her to come.’

‘I think I could go and bring her,’ said Mrs. Palmer, ‘if she is all that you say. I'd better ask Everard; but he is sure to say I can do as I like; he doesn't care to have anything to do with such affairs.’

‘Then she shall come next week if it is possible,’ said Maud. ‘Please don't ask me yet who she is, for I am not certain whether she is still at home. Her mother keeps a boarding-house. We stayed there for a short time while our house was building, and that was how I found her out. I know she wants to leave home: life in a boarding-house is an unsettled scrambling sort of existence. She would be delighted to live in the country, and she would think helping in the work of your family quite easy compared to the perpetual waiting and serving she has been accustomed to. You must humour me in this. They tell me at home I was a spoilt child, and that is why I am fond of my own way.’

‘I think it's a way that's good for other people,’ answered Mrs. Palmer. There was no more said, for the moment of departure had arrived.

Instead of going home that same morning, Maud went into the town and called to see Mrs. Sherlock. She had some conversation with that woman of experience, and Rosa also was admitted to their counsels. Mrs. Sherlock declared that Rosa could do as she liked; and Rosa replied that if her mother were satisfied she was ready to go wherever Miss Desmond pleased. Then there was mention made of salary—discreetly by Mrs. Sherlock, who brought up again the well-worn saying that ‘time is money.’ Miss Desmond's remarks on this subject were of an agreeable nature. There was to be a salary; she would make that her care; and she named a sum which Rosa thought large, and which Mrs. Sherlock admitted to be ‘fair.’ But one condition was attached: those whom Rosa was to serve must never know of this salary. They might imagine, if they chose, that like those needy and over-anxious women who protest in their advertisements that wages are ‘no object,’ she was content to earn the right to her daily bread and a comfortable home.

‘I ought to tell you,’ said Miss Desmond, ‘that you may not find this a very easy or pleasant place. I do not think you will have so much work as you have been used to at home; but you may have many little annoyances that you have not here. I am certain of one thing, however, that you will make the place an easy one before you have done with it, and I know of no one else who could undertake it, or whom I could trust so thoroughly.’

Mrs. Sherlock said that a secret was as safe with Rosa as if it were sunk in the sea, and Rosa felt proud that such trust was reposed in her. Mrs. Sherlock settled everything, and detained Maud at the door that she might speak more highly of her daughter than she had liked to do in her presence.

‘I suppose it will be something like a nursery governes's place?’ she said. ‘Rosa's well qualified to teach young children. I make bold to say she would show up better in an examination than one half of the teachers here. I took pains to give her a downright good plain education.’

‘I don't know whether she will have to teach, Mrs. Sherlock,’ said her visitor, with a smile, ‘unless it is to teach housekeeping. She will have to be a little of everything, perhaps. I want her to take her orderly ways into a family which has great need of them. But she will find out for herself what she has to do.’

‘Well, you may depend on, Rosa,’ said Mrs. Sherlock.

Rosa entered on her engagement during the first days of the next week. Mrs. Palmer was dismayed to see a nice-looking girl, instead of the middle-aged and sour-faced woman whom the idea of a person experienced in domestic duties had always brought before her mind's eye. She doubted whether any one so good-looking and well-dressed could know much about household work. So far as her own experience went, a hardworking woman must needs be untidy; only those who did nothing were able to attend to their appearance. She had another servant now who was quite slovenly enough to bear out this theory. Rosa was taken round the house, and shown hidden and interior arrangements of every kind. She saw enough to amaze her, and to make it very plain why Miss Desmond had been so anxious to introduce a reformer into this household.

She was a brave girl, so her heart did not fail her. Everything was against her: the fixed habits of the helpless mistress, the spoilt children, the stupidity of the servant; but she began her campaign against disorder and mismanagement with that determination to win success which so often commands it. And after many days a brightness and refreshing cleanliness was in that house which it had not known before.

It was noticed by the nearest neighbours that the children cried less frequently; it was noticed also that torn curtains no longer flapped out of the windows, nor were articles of clothing hung upon the sills to dry. Mrs. Palmer was seldom seen, as of yore, traversing the backyard with head uncovered, and hair in that state which, however gracefully careless it may look in a portrait, in real life is far from seemly. Example in these things is contagious. When Rosa came down every morning with her brown hair as smooth as satin, and in a neat print dress innocent of spot or blemish, even Mrs. Palmer shrank from exposing herself to un- favourableunfavourable comparisons by going to the breakfast-table with frizzly hair and in a costume by no means spotless. The example reached farther; it roused the sluggish spirit of Hannah in the kitchen, and that hard-worked damsel went the length of washing her morning gowns and brushing her hair at least twice as often. Then the meals and especially the dinners, began to be so much better. Rosa had sense enough to perceive that a reform in cookery might well herald an improvement in the tempers of those who had suffered so long from food dyspeptic in its qualities. Cookery had always been an incomprehensible science to Mrs. Palmer. How often had she stood before her oven wondering how a batch of bread or some curiously-compounded cake would turn out, and how often had it turned out far from well! Things would not do for her as they did for other women. No amount of baking powder was efficacious in some cases of her sad experience, yeast would not rise, butter refused to come, or milk to curdle, except when it ought not—the chemistry of the kitchen was full of disagreeable surprises. How gladly she handed it all over to Rosa, a girl who was a very witch in her knowledge of this dark science. Mr. Everard could not imagine (though he was profoundly thankful) why the supply of sour and half-baked bread suddenly ceased, nor why, without having more dishes or different ones, the dinners seemed so much nicer. He was not so often disturbed by banging doors or crying children, he never heard Mrs. Palmer scolding in a loud shrill voice: she had been shamed out of that. Why should she scold? things had ceased to be provoking and unbearable. Her irritable disposition was soothed by an ease and comfort she had not felt during all the other years of her married life. She could rest now when she was tired; she began to feel not so very old, and the wrinkles smoothed out of her forehead and the colour came back to her face. But what made her happiest was the approval of her husband, who, slow to notice any change in a house in which for the last ten years he had found it best to be blind and deaf to one half of what was happening, at last awakened to a sense of this new departure. He praised her warmly, and told her how all the while he had feared she was overworking herself, he even took blame to himself for permitting it. All this was very sweet to her. She thought as she listened, flattered and happy in his assurances that she was looking young and pretty again, that this praise compensated her for every trial and toil.

I suppose no one gave particular attention or praise to the good girl whose cunning right hand had wrought all these changes. Those who do such work as hers seldom have their meed of praise. She must have been wearied at times, but she made no complaint. To the children she was a wonder. Never before had any one thought it worth the while to teach them games or tell them stories. Could any one number her games, and had any one else a head so full of fairy lore? She had a ready wit too; when stories grew old, she could weave together new ones, or alter them to suit the taste of her critical audience. In the quiet of the afternoon, when housework was done, they would gather round her to listen to her romances. And all the while her bright needle flew fast—ah, what a swift little needle that was! No child wandered now all forlorn in garments wanting string or button; no gaping rents were suffered to last the week out unmended and extending. She had a charm for bad temper; she had a charm that brought sleep to restless fretful little ones, though it was only her soft voice singing or going over again unweariedly the oft-told tale. Hers were the little cares, the humble labours, little noticed, often despised, and yet surely all written down somewhere to the account of the patient servant.

Chapter V. ‘All dead—the joyous, bright, and free, To whom this life was dear. The green leaves shivered from the tree, And dangling left the sere! O dim wild world!—but from the sky Down came the glad lark waveringly: And, started by his liquid mirth, I rose to walk in faith the darkling paths of earth.'

Wilson.

Those two bosom friends and chief gossips of the neighbourhood, Mrs. Sligo and Mrs. Hickson, held one of their longest conferences on the unlooked-for improvements which had been made in Mrs. Palmer's household. Although they did not live near enough to exercise the same unremitting surveillance with regard to her affairs as that with which they honoured Palmer, they collected, by one means or another, a mass of knowledge that was creditable to their industry and research. But, as Mrs. Sligo remarked, ‘A person with half an eye could see how things went on in that house.’

‘My word,’ she said, ‘there's been a strange turning-out there! I was told, 'Liza, and though I don't know it to be true, I repeat it to you in confidence, that the front room carpet had never been up for seven years.’

‘Sakes alive!’ cried Mrs. Hickson.

‘And many's the time that my heart has bled for those poor children as were like to burst out of their clothes, no provision being made for their growth.’

‘I've known them go to school a sight to be seen,’ said Mrs. Hickson, ‘and yet Mrs. Palmer sets herself up above people who were as good as her when she was a girl.’

‘You should have seen them at home,’ said Mrs. Sligo, with a mournful smile; ‘don't mention what they were going to school—that was nothing. And, oh, Mrs. Hickson, you should have seen her kitchen!’

‘I don't want to see it,’ said Mrs. Hickson, looking round her own with a glow of pride. It had just been cleaned.

‘In all my born days,’ said Mrs. Sligo, who loved to express herself forcibly, ‘never have I seen, and I hope I never shall see, such another kitchen. The pantry and dairy were a thought worse, if anything. Victoria Sarah Stokes, who was in service there, has told me things I shouldn't like to repeat.’

‘Really!’ said Mrs. Hickson, wondering what those things were, but knowing she should hear them presently.

‘Vickey's a girl that'll tell the truth whatever comes of it,’ said Mrs. Sligo, ‘though, to give every one her due, she's not so tidy herself as she might be. She said it used to make her afraid the family would come to want when she saw the awful waste in the house. Eating new bread for one thing, and making puddings of new milk with all the cream in, when skimmed would have done just as well. They never warmed up cold meat again, and she's seen, with her own eyes, Mrs. Palmer give to the dogs enough to feed a working man. And good strong tea thrown out of the pot as if it cost no more than pump-water. But what do you say to milk standing five days before it was creamed?’

‘Oh, my!’ said Mrs. Hickson, elevating her eyebrows and groaning.

‘Vickey says it was fit to bubble out of the pans, and the cream was spotted like a leopard. You may fancy what butter that would make.’

‘Why didn't Vickey cream it herself,’ inquired Mrs. Hickson.

‘Oh, she'd made an agreement from the first to do no dairy work; she never could bear to meddle with milk. However, being a delicate girl, and as she couldn't eat the butter Mrs. Palmer made up, she always churned a little fresh cream for herself when she could do it without being noticed.’

‘I've heard of that,’ said Mrs. Hickson. ‘Her butter was strong. But her bread was enough to spoil my appetite without putting the butter on it.’

‘Well it might,’ said Mrs. Sligo, ‘considering how it was made. I shouldn't say so much to any one else, 'Liza, as they might think me ill-natured, but really such women ought not to get married. I feel for poor Mr. Palmer. I hope he's more comfortable now; things are a sight better in the house.’

‘I should say the young woman they have now has had some hard work to get 'em put to rights’, said Mrs. Hickson.

‘That she has! Well, she may be a clever young woman, but she's too close to suit me. I tried to engage her in a little friendly talk, but I could have got nearly as much out of a gate-post. I don't like to see persons so lifted up. I wonder what she gets for helping there.’

‘I suppose it isn't our business,’ feebly observed Mrs. Hickson.

‘Anything that concerns our neighbours is our business, 'Liza. Some people would be like the Samaritan; they would go past on the other side and never trouble themselves if their neighbour was lying in the mire. I'm not one of that sort. I can feel for my neighbours, and I like to know all about 'em.’

‘So do I,’ said Mrs. Hickson. ‘I don't see why we shouldn't. I've no secrets; I'm not afraid of everything being known that goes on in this house, and I don't see why other people should be more particular.’

‘Yes; and how people can turn the key on themselves, and go about like locked chests or sealed-up parcels among their fellow-creatures I never could understand. I allude to Mr. Randall, Mrs. Hickson, and you may believe me or not, but some day there'll be a come-out about that young man.’

‘Why! I thought you knew all about him long ago. You've told me a strange lot, anyway.’

‘I've told you? I've never given an ear to the ridiculous reports some one—I'll not say who—sends flying about. I never believed he was a nobleman's son.’

‘Whoever said he was?’ asked Mrs. Hickson. ‘You, yourself, Maria, I believe. Hickson and I have always been of one mind about him, that he's no better than he should be. I shan't wonder if he turns out to be a common fellow enough.’

‘Well; he's turned Mr. Palmer's heart from his old friends,’ said Mrs. Sligo, with a deep-drawn sigh. ‘Twice this last week has he gone past me as if I'd been a stone image.’

‘Well, what does it matter?’ said Mrs. Hickson, who was getting tired of her friend's company, and had been irritated once or twice by her manner. ‘Why should he speak to you?’

‘We've known each other these two years, and I've kept his house for fifteen months, and kept it well, I'll make bold to say.’

‘And to speak plainly, Maria, you want to keep it all along; and I'm surprised, I really am astonished at you, a woman of over forty, who has buried one husband, wanting to have the chance of burying another, for that's what it amounts to; every one knows the poor man won't live long.’

‘Woman of over forty!’ repeated Mrs. Sligo, dwelling on the assertion which had been most exasperating to her. ‘Buried one husband! As if I'd put him out of the way! Well, what else?’

‘Well, it's shameful!’ said Mrs. Hickson, ‘and I can tell you I'm not the only one as thinks so.’

‘Let them!’ contemptuously answered the amiable widow. ‘I expect no one to say a good word for me, though I've had a heart to feel for them all in their afflictions. I don't see any harm in a woman of thirty-nine, if you please, Mrs. Hickson, marrying again, after she's worn widow's mourning for these eight years, and conducted herself like a Dorcas, if ever woman did.’

‘I don't see how you've to manage it, anyway,’ said Mrs. Hickson, with the sourest of smiles, ‘if he won't look at you or speak to you. I suppose yoaren't going to drag him into church and marry him right off.’

‘There's nothing I abominate more than vulgarity, 'Liza, and that's downright vulgar. I don't look for the delicacy of a lady in you, but you might spare my feelings. Perhaps, after all, the reason Mr. Palmer has not been for speaking to me lately—in public’—Mrs. Sligo simpered mysteriously—‘is, that he wants to put a stop to all the gossip that's been got up about me and him. Time will show whether there's anything in it or not, and then perhaps you'll be more friendly and polite in your expressions, Mrs. Hickson.’

‘I guess time will show,’ said her friend incredulously. ‘A confirmed old bachelor's hard to catch, Maria. There's Smithers, his engine-driver, a good-looking young fellow, only ten years younger than you are, and a much more likely match.’

‘’Liza Hickson! your vulgarity is unbearable,’ cried Mrs. Sligo, burying her face in a pink-edged handkerchief. She took it out again very quickly, however, for she heard some one on horseback passing by, and thought it might be the obdurate Palmer. So she hastened to sit by the open window, in a graceful and pensive attitude, with a book (upside down) in her hand. Palmer, unfortunately, was not to be seen; but there came along at a fast trot a stranger whom Mrs. Hickson and Mrs. Sligo, as with o one voice, designated as a ‘gallant-looking gentleman.’

Whether he were gallant or not, he had excited much curious attention while riding through that quiet rural neighbourhood. Some had admired the fine horse he rode; others, with less reason, had admired the man himself. Certainly he had bold well-shaped features; he rode with an indolent ease and grace that would have become a Mexican caballero; he was well attired—perhaps the style was a little flashy—but, if flashiness looks well anywhere, it is on a dull country road. From afar might be seen the scarlet flower in his buttonhole, the brilliancy of his horse-shoe breastpin, and the gleamings of polished stirrups and spurs. His very presence in that hedge-bordered lane seemed a perpetual swagger from one end of it to the other.

At his near approach Palmer knew him for his brother Godfrey, and stood silently surveying him, coldly taking note of all his bravery of apparel. ‘What have you rigged yourself out like that for?’ he asked. ‘You come one day in rags and tatters, and the next riding on horseback, and got up in the latest horsey style, I suppose one may call it. I admire the fit of your clothes. One would think you had been poured into them like liquid plaster of Paris.’

‘Don't try to be sarcastic. Yes, they do fit, I think. I'll tell you how I've been promoted; how from being a tramp, if not a beggar I've been set on horseback.’

‘There are many ways of doing the thing; but, no doubt, yours was like that of no other man.’

‘I can't say that. Sweepstakes were not invented this season. Nor even in this country.’

‘Sweepstakes? There really must be something lucky about you if you've profited by them. I thought they swept one's pocket clean rather than replenished it.’

‘My excellent but simple brother, I do not put into sweeps, I am too old for that—too experienced, in fact. Have you never considered the difference there is between those who support sweeps and those who get them up? Has it never struck you that a large part of the public really do not know what to do with their money? No one need ask a man nowadays to stand and deliver, as the gentlemen of the road did in olden times. People force their savings upon you; they fling them at you. The public delights in lotteries and co-operative swindles. The public is easily deceived, very willing to be persuaded; in short, the public mostly consists of fools.’

‘And even if we grant that,’ said Palmer, ‘it seems a very noble thing indeed to occupy oneself with relieving fools of the riches that embarrass them.’

‘My dear John, what else have such fellows as myself to depend on? If the public were wise, how hard our struggle for existence would be! Sweeps couldn't exist in such a state of things, we should hear no more of the betting ring, and very likely the glorious institution of the turf would be knocked on the head also. As it is, however, the kind public is always ready to encourage swindling by passively allowing itself to be swindled.’

‘This all means, I suppose, that you have been managing a swindle.’

‘Why so severe? I and a friend of mine have just happily arranged a £2000 sweep on the Melbourne Cup. It has succeeded so well that we are sorry we did not make it £6000 while we were doing. You know the sort of people who support these things. Miners and gum-diggers; book-keepers and bank-clerks, who always seem possessed with an insane desire to make their little salaries less; barmaids and public-house keepers; young men about town, who think they know so much of the world, because they have the slang of the pavement and can lounge in and out of hotels—they are the most ignorant and gullible of all.’

‘Do you want to say much more about this precious piece of business?’

‘Not if it displeases you. I can make allowance for xour prejudices.’

‘It may be a prejudice to be jealous of one's good name; but I hop it's one that will cling to me as long as I live.’

‘Name!’ said Godfrey Palmer with one of the most disagreeable of his many smiles. ‘Don't be afraid; the name of Palmer has not appeared in the business.’

‘So much the better. Who are the principal prize-takers?’

‘The principal one is before you. You might have seen in the papers, however, that two or three nice little prizes have been drawn persons resident in this part of the country. That has a very good effect; it gives the thing such an honest look. We are supposed to know all about the other prize-takers, and so we do. It is said that the £800 prize was drawn by a butcher in Napier. Happy butcher! worthy man! we are much indebted to him.’

‘The public is long-suffering,’ said Palmer; ‘but you and your friend may do it once too often.’

‘After all,’ resumed his brother, ‘I don't care for this kind of thing, though I can't lay claim to your exquisite sensibilities. Why wasn't I born rich? I should have been a very decent kind of man if I'd had plenty of money. Then, instead of interesting myself in sweeps and hanging about race-courses, doing a little business on the shady side of the betting ring, I should have had horses of my own, and it would have been very proper in my position,—keeping up the fine old English sport, and so on. What a popular fellow I should have been! heading subscription lists like a prince, supporting churches and schools, keeping open house for the whole county, and finishing up at a good old age by remembering every one in my will!’

‘If you'd anything left to remember them with. Strange! I never hear you wonder what you might have been if you'd not thrown up your profession.’

‘My profession would have thrown me up sooner or later. The wisdom of my parents was never more clearly revealed than when they destined me for a clergyman. Can you imagine me in a pulpit?’

‘Not at present certainly; but there was a time—’

‘Yes, there is a time for all things. It's hateful, though, to think of what might have been; and weak, too, in a man, to go on maundering about such things. But there was something I wanted to tell you. I may come in for a fortune after all.’

‘Oh, indeed,’ said Palmer, with an incredulous smile.

‘We have an uncle, as you know.’

‘I do, and I know also that he is likely to outlive us both, besides being gifted with a wife and son.’

‘He had a wife and son.’

‘What do you mean? What has happened to them?’

‘He has lost both. Who was Mrs. Moresby?’

The last words were uttered in a higher key. Palmer happened at that moment to be looking into the next room, where Randall was writing. The doors were wide open, and he must have heard most of the conversation. It had not seemed to interest him; he had gone on with his work, his head slightly bent over the table, and his pen moving rapidly across the paper. But at the question, ‘Who was Mrs. Moresby?’ Palmer saw him start violently. His pen stopped in its career, and he turned his face towards the two who were talking in the other room.

‘Did you never see her?’ continued Godfrey Palmer to his brother.

‘My uncle married after I came here,’ said Palmer. ‘I never knew who the lady was, or I've forgotten if I did.’

‘I only know he married a very young lady. Her family must have made the poor child marry old Moresby, a sour, reserved man, getting on towards the wrong side of fifty, for his money: there could be no other reason. She was a beauty, and he was foolishly proud of her, and indulged her in everything; but there wasn't much happiness in their house, so at last they sensibly resolved to live in two houses. There was no quarrel—our uncle was too fond of her for that. He gave her a place of her own, and made her a handsome allowance, and she took her little boy with her and left him. The thing was done quietly, and neither of the two condescended to give a reason or explanation to their friends; but it was intended to be a separation for life. I think in some sort the husband deserved it, for making such a ridiculous marriage. The next thing he heard of his wife was that she had left England, without consulting any one. Her letters to himself and her mother had been written on the day of her departure, and besides these, she had not taken leave of relative or friend. Perhaps she had no intimate friends. My opinion is that young Mrs. Moresby was one of those strong-minded women who don't encourage friendship. However, she had gone with her child, leaving her husband to wring his hands in helplessness.’

‘Run away!’ said Palmer, in astonishment. Randall's attitude had not changed; he was still listening.

‘What she meant to do will never be known, although scandalmongers, of course, knew all about it. It's only certain that she took her passage for New Zealand. Her husband was prepared to follow her, when news came that the Cairngorm—the ship she had sailed in—had been burnt to the water's edge; burnt on the high seas, three thousand miles from land. A few men—of the crew mostly—had escaped in the boats; but out of these only two sailors were picked up by a passing ship—the others had died of thirst. That's the tragic end of the story.’

‘Tragic indeed. Poor Mrs. Moresby! Where did you hear this?’

‘The account of the burning of the Cairngorm is in all the papers. The rest I've learnt by a letter from the only English correspondent who has not forsaken me. Our unfortunate uncle is hardly expected to get over it. He will not be persuaded that his wife is dead; he is possessed with the belief that she may yet be drifting about on some raft or boat, or may have found her way to some ocean island. So he clings to that poor fragment of a hope, and, they say, is even coming out in his steam yacht to look for her.’

‘Poor old man!’ said Palmer. ‘And so you see a fortune in the distance, Godfrey? I wouldn't have you be too certain. Waiting for dead men's shoes is weary work. There are a hundred different ways in which Mr. Moresby may leave his money without favouring us.’

‘We are his only relatives. There is his mother-in-law, of course; but I've never heard of a man leaving much to his mother-in-law. He is sure to make a peculiar will, however; give it all to some hospital or charitable institution. People think it much more Christian to do that than to enrich their poor relations.’

‘I'm sure I don't want him to enrich me,’ said Palmer.

‘Very likely, my dear fellow; but there's me—the irrepressible me—and there's poor Everard, with his nine, ten, or twelve children—how many he has I don't know. He wouldn't refuse a nice ten or twenty thousand, perhaps. Now, why does your bookkeeper stare across at us in that disagreeable way? I have always found people with those very keen black eyes uncomfortable to be with; they shoot their glances at you.’

‘I don't believe he's looking at you,’ said Palmer, ‘He is only in a brown study. I'll ask him to play something.’

‘Do so; it will help me into a better frame of mind, I'm comparatively innocent when listening to music.’

‘We want you to play something, Randall,’ cried Palmer. ‘One of your best.’

Play something! Was there not a mockery in that request? They asked him to make amusement for them, to entertain them with sweet sounds, when the only music he could hear was a dirge, the wailing song of mourners, and the heavy funeral march. All this, and much more, was in the piece he played; for he forgot his listeners as soon as his fingers touched the keys. What a relief to be able to pour forth all that was unutterable by the lips in the full tide of music, which surged through the dimly-lighted rooms and through the open windows out into the dark and sultry night.

‘Is that what is called playing with expression?’ said Godfrey Palmer. ‘It makes me melancholy, and I'd rather not be that.’

‘He plays strangely to-night,’ said Palmer. ‘I could listen to him for hours though play as he will. There is some sort of language in his music, if only one could understand it. I've fancied sometimes that I could read his thoughts by it. But what's that? He has stopped very abruptly.’

‘He's too much of a genius to behave like common people,’ said Godfrey Palmer. ‘You didn't tell me when I was here before who he was, or why you had taken him in. I found out, though. I have a pleasure in finding things out.

‘You ought to be ashamed to mention him. Are you going?’

‘Yes. I have lodgings now, and fare sumptously, so I need not trouble you.’

He took his leave. Palmer, who was tired with a long day's riding, fell into a doze, and did not wake until Randall had come into the room. He thought him strange and altered somehow in his manner. A day or two after he saw that he wore mourning, but he did not ask him what loss he had suffered, of relative or friend. He wondered what Mrs. Moresby and Randall had been to each other, but he asked no questions. What he knew of Randall's history had been told him unasked. One thing which he knew was significant: all that Randall received from him, except the little he was obliged to use in necessary expenses, was remitted to England. It was in payment of an old debt, he said. But though he sent money he sent no letters. It surprised Palmer therefore that he should write about this time to his mother, as he told him. Months later the letter came back to him; it had found no owner. Palmer was sorry; but his companion, whatever he might feel, expressed no disappointment in words. He quietly burnt his own letter, and from that time seemed to abandon the idea of communicating with his family.

Chapter VI. ‘Like to the grass that's newly sprung, Or like a tale that's new begun, Or like the bird that's here to-day, Or like the pearled dew of May, Or like one hour, or like a span, Or like the singing of a swan. E'en such is man who lives by breath— is here, now there, in life or death.'

Simon Wastell.

Palmer was ill. This was no new thing, however; his bad health, though he might refuse to acknowledge it, was patent to every observer. But it was a new thing that he should believe himself to be ill, and it was yet more surprising that he should send for a doctor; no doctor as yet had crossed the threshold of his house.

The doctor was only too delighted to come. He regarded Palmer as a sorely battered and beleaguered castle, which had held out bravely for a long time, but was at last starved into submission. He had expected this capitulation, and he came with the hearty cheeriness of one who headed a relief party, bringing health and plenty in his train.

Palmer, as usual, protested that his illness was a trifling one, though it had been serious enough to keep him indoors, and, according to the doctor, ought to have kept him in bed, could such a man have been persuaded to go to bed as long as he was able to stand.

‘It may please you to neglect these little things,’ the doctor said warningly; ‘but some day they'll bring you to lying down on your bed whether you like it or not.’

‘All right. I shall have you to pull me through,’ said Palmer.

‘If I can. Perhaps you'll be going too far to be pulled through.’

‘Well, I don't expect to live for ever,’ growled Palmer, whose temper was in an irritable state.

‘Oh, of course; so you don't mind about shortening your days. I'm an old friend; I've often thought of speaking plainly to you, Palmer, and I shall do it now.’

‘Well, go ahead. When any one reminds me that he's an old friend, and says he's going to speak plainly, I expect to be pitched into.’

‘It is this,’ said the worthy doctor. ‘You're well off—at least every one says so—and you are getting old. Why live in this miserly, pinched style; in this tumble-down old house, full of draughts, and with the window rattling to a dance tune all day long? Why not go to a cheerful, warm, healthy house, and get a servant or two to keep it in order, and a housekeeper. You had a nice tidy woman here a year age—where has she gone?’

‘A nice tidy woman!’ said Palmer, struggling with suppressed wrath. ‘Do you mean that old harpy Mrs. Sligo?’

‘I do, and what the poor creature has done to be called an old harpy I don't quite perceive.’

‘A man isn't safe in the same house with her,’ said Palmer, getting husky with emotion and his cold. ‘Why, doctor, that woman only quitted my house in time to save me from becoming Mr. Sli—no, I mean to prevent her from becoming Mrs. Palmer. She would have made me marry her if she had stayed long enough.’

‘You are a free agent, I suppose?’

‘I doubt very much whether any man can be a free agent who has been so foolish as to take such a woman into his house. I don't know how she could have managed it, of course—how can you or I or any other man know the ingenuity of a widow?—but she would have done it.’

‘Well,’ said the doctor calmly, ‘you might make a worse choice. I've heard of it before; indeed I heard you were to be married, and that speedily.’

‘It's abominable!’ gurgled Palmer. ‘She gets up those reports. I do all I can to discourage them; I ride past at a canter when we meet; I don't speak unless I'm obliged, and I'm sure I don't encourage conversation on her part. What more can a man do? As for marrying her—I don't know whether there are ways of marrying a man without his knowing it; but if she intends to marry me that's the way in which she'll have to do it.’

‘Well, I believed the report, and, to tell you the truth, I thought you had done wisely,’ said the doctor, hardly able to suppress a chuckle.

‘No doubt,’ said Palmer. ‘You and all other married people will set on an old bachelor at times, and goad him on till he's almost mad enough to marry any one. I don't choose to make myself ridiculous at my time of life.’

‘I don't see anything ridiculous in marrying an amiable woman. A very sensible match, I should call it; the lady is not too young for you.’

‘Whoever said she was? She may be old enough for the patriarchs for all I care, and I can assure you she's a good fifteen years over what she owns to.’

‘Oh, really’ said the doctor, affecting to be very much shocked by Palmer's ungallant remarks. ‘A lady's age is her own business, Mr. Palmer. It doesn't matter how old she is if she doesn't look it.’

‘I'm sure it doesn't matter to me,’ said Palmer.

The doctor thought it prudent to change the subject, but he was not less plain-spoken on that with which his visit had most to do. He told Palmer that in future he would have to be as careful of his health as he had been careless.

‘Which means I'm always to be sending for you, I suppose,’ was Palmer's unamiable response.

‘No use in that, if you will ride out in rainstorms, and keep on your wet clothes when you come home, besides doing all other kinds of foolish things,’ said the doctor.

‘When can I get out of the house again?’ demanded Palmer.

‘Not until I give you leave,’ replied his physician. ‘Don't let me catch you putting your head outside.’

‘But I tell you I can't endure being shut up for another week,’ said Palmer. ‘It's very likely I shall be putting my head outside.’

Palmer had to endure it, however. The days would have been unbearably long and dreary but for his books. He began at one end of a shelf and read conscientiously across it to the other. The books were old, faded, and worn, and many of them showed signs of an approaching separation from their bindings; but they had that within which was worth more than all the brightness of fresh colouring and burnished gilding—worth more, as Palmer would say, than ‘a whole library full of modern froth.’ Poor moderns! for whom the best things have all been said or written ages ago. Those heavy quartos, with their many pages of solid information and sound sense were written and read when every one was not running a hot race with time. Nowadays we are the prey of the buccaneers of literature, who every day send out something so fresh, so brilliant, and, above all, so ‘modern,’ that we never dream it may have appeared first in one of those musty old volumes we keep in our libraries to look at but not to read.

The kindness of Mrs. Sligo at this epoch was oppressive. The good woman must have toiled for days together at her cooking stove, so many and various were the delicacies she made with her own hands, and sent to Palmer's house. It was in vain that the doctor advised him to eat them and be thankful; it was in vain that Randall even urged him not to hurt poor Mrs Sligo's feelings by despising her offerings. Palmer refused to taste them, alleging that the very sight of the different preparations of corn flour, arrowroot, and jelly instantaneously deprived him of the little appetite he had. But still they came: blancmanges, beautifully moulded as lions or dogs; jellies, pink, salmon, or sherry coloured, until Randall declared it was imperative something should be done with them, as the kitchen and pantry were filling fast. Palmer ordered them to be sent across the road to the cottage, and for a week Hickson's family feasted right royally. Unfortunately, one day when they had sat down to a meal principally composed of the rejected dainties, Mrs. Sligo suddenly entered the cottage, as was her wont, in a very unceremonious manner. By some mysterious influence her eyes were immediately drawn to the middle of the table, where stood two magnificent dishes which she knew had never been made in Mrs. Hickson's house. Almost stifled by her emotions, which must indeed have been violent, as, according to her own statement, she was deprived of the power of speech, she gazed at the well-remembered salad and blancmange for a moment, then majestically turned on her heel and left the house.

‘I felt fit to drop down,’ she said, when recounting her trials to Randall, on the chance that he might afterwards tell Palmer. ‘Oh, that ungrateful 'Liza Hickson! Many's the time I've waited on her troublesome children—and such children I never saw for catching whatever may be going about; measles they've had twice, as sure as I'm here; and I've nursed them and ought to know. There they were, every one of them down to the baby, gormandising—I can't call it anything else—on what I'd made with great trouble from the combined receipts of three cookery books for poor Mr. Palmer. I daresay his appetite was so bad he couldn't eat them, and those Hicksons have been sly enough to get them over to their house unknown to him. Just as I came in Hickson was scooping out the most tremendous spoonful right into the head of as beautiful a lion as was ever moulded. I don't say I wish it may have disagreed with them, but if it should have done so it'll have been no more than justice.’

‘Why, wasn't it good?’ inquired Randall, much amused.

‘Good!’ exclaimed Mrs. Sligo hotly. ‘Good enough; and nothing in it, besides the rich milk and best loaf sugar, that could do any one harm; none of those nasty flavourings which are next door to poisons. I never use them. It would have done good to the person it was intended for. I meant to say I hoped it wouldn't benefit the Hicksons much. But I spoke my mind to Mrs. Hickson the next time I saw her. “Eliza Hickson,” said I, “we've been neighbours these five years, and I thought I knew you well, but I see now I've never had the least idea of your real character.” “Well,” she said, and smiled the great simple smile that seems to spread over her whole face, “well, what's the matter?” “Matter!” I said, “you know well. I will not demean myself by explaining. We can't associate with each other again, Mrs. Hickson, after the revelations of last week.” I thought, after I'd said that, perhaps I'd been using too elevated language to be understood by the poor woman, as she hasn't had much education, so I put it into plain words. She answered in an off-hand manner that she was of the same opinion as to breaking off the acquaintance; and Hickson, coming in just then, joined in, like the great clodhopper he is, and as good as ordered me out, and right glad I was to go.’

Mrs. Sligo was not quite discouraged by this rebuff. She continued to inquire regularly after Palmer's health, and once actually wrote a letter to Randall, in which she entreated him to make some dandelion coffee, and, if possible, induce Palmer to take it. Several recipes for the preparation of various herb medicines of great repute were enclosed in the letter.

Others besides Mrs. Sligo were concerned and anxious about the long duration of Palmer's illness. His old friend Mr. Langridge, visited him, and shook his head gravely when he left the house again. Palmer himself said, in his sanguine manner, he should be better than ever after so long a rest. There was no reason why he should trouble about his business. Randall could manage the workmen and look after everything. True, he was not so sharp an overseer; he could not scold and harangue the men as Palmer could, and they actually regretted this. Palmer had always been amusing, even when most overbearing. They longed to see him again, coming at a furious gallop along the road, taking fences, if he were in a hurry, instead of stopping to open gates. How often had he, tried to surprise them, darting into their midst like a hawk into a poultry-yard, and rousing each man into redoubled activity!

‘There was some “go” about Mr. Palmer,’ said Smithers, the engine-driver. ‘One likes to be under a man of sperrit. I don't say that Mr. Randall doesn't make a good foreman, but he's a trifle high in his manners. He's too much of the aristocrat about him.’

‘Haristocrat!’ cried Simpkins with an exuberant H. (He was still in Mr. Langridge's service, after having been turned off four times and taken on again as often.) ‘Why, is he any better than us?’

‘Can't say,’ said Smithers. ‘He seems to think so, and other folk too; but really a man ought to be more sociable with those who work for him. Mr. Palmer did speak to us often enough, though it was only blowing us up; in fact, he blew us up all day long. Now, this high and mighty gentleman doesn't condescend to blow us up at all.’

‘I won't stand it from him, so he'd better not,’ said Simpkins. ‘I don't like your high manners. I like a man to be free and easy.’ And Simpkins proceeded to eat good-sized cubes of bread and cheese on the point of a pocket-knife, in a manner that was free and easy in the last degree.

‘Well, I'm sorry for Mr. Palmer being so pulled down by this illness,’ said Smithers. ‘He had a queer way about him; one couldn't come the old soldier over him. Ho, ho! Simpkins, d'ye remember him sending me about my business?’

‘I does,’ said his friend, ‘and if he hadn't been pretty queer he wouldn't have had any more to do with you. I think we'd better be moving—there's his lordship casting his eye in our direction, and if he doesn't waste words he keeps one up to the mark.’

So, slowly and regretfully they left their nook between the stacks, and the whirr of the machine started again, and the corn fell in plump round grains into the sacks, and the bright clean straw mounted higher and higher into a clumsy heap rather than a stack; for in this land of abundance one does not waste much labour over straw. And above there was the burning sun and the sky of summer's blue, just as it was a year ago when—Randall remembered it well—he walked on the long and wearying road, past the meadows and cornfields.

Mr. Langridge had not forgotten it either. ‘That was a lucky day for you,’ he said, when they were led to talk of that bygone harvesting. ‘You have been in a good place ever since. I wish you well. I always respect a man who's not afraid or ashamed to work. Do you remember me advising you to put that fine ring of yours in your pocket? I thought you'd taken offence at me then.’

‘Not at all,’ said Randall. ‘Your advice was good, and I took it. I wish I'd always taken the good advice that has been given me.’

‘Well, then, here's some more, said the farmer. ‘My old friend Palmer wouldn't have trusted you if you weren't worth trusting. No one knows what may happen; some day you may go adrift again and want a friend. Come to me, then; it will be strange if I can't put you in the way of something.’

‘Thank you, Mr. Langridge,’ said Randall warmly, surprised as well as pleased by this offer from one whom he had not suspected of being even remotely interested in his affairs. ‘I shall remember your kind promise, though I may never need to remind you of it.’

‘If you ever do you'll find I mean what I say. What a time that Simpkins is loading! I must go to those fellows; they keep us all waiting.’

Mr. Langridge briskly started in the direction of the tardy Simpkins, who, in defiance of all rules and commandments, was smoking his pipe in the harvest- fieldharvestfield, while detailing his colonial experiences to a gaping and admiring ‘new chum.’

‘Call this hot, do you? Bless you! this is a cool summer I've known the sun to raise blisters all over one's face and hands. I remember once there wasn't no really cold water to be got anywhere My! that was a season; the cattle would rush a fellow carrying water. I've been chased by a whole drove to get’ at a bucketful I was taking for my missis. The ground cracked all over that year as if there'd been an earthquake, and the heat was that powerful I've seen men flop right down at their work. But we think nothing of that sort of thing: one soon gets used to it, Yah! you've no summers in the old country. We'll colonise you before long. I remember a young man—’

‘Just cut your rememberings short, Simpkins,’ shouted the farmer, ‘and put out your pipe, or I'll remember to give you a chance of smoking it outside my field. You're a pretty colonist, aren't you?’

‘Always at one,’ muttered Simpkins, as he extinguished his pipe; ‘and I've got so used to smoking to keep off the musketeers that I hardly knows when I does it. Ah, you've none of them at home,’ he continued, as Langridge withdrew from their position. I daresay you don't know 'em. Blood-thirsty little things! I've known men so fastened on by them that they'd be so swollen up in the face they couldn't see out of their eyes, and pale as a sheet through losing so much to the little blood- suckersbloodsuckers. They always takes to new-comers, too; old colonists are too hardened to suit their tastes.’

‘Gracious!’ cried the new-comer, ‘what'll kill them?’

‘Well, they're mostly difficult to kill,’ said Simpkins. ‘Catching them one by one and squeezing them to death is tiring work.’

‘Are they big ones that you have here?’ anxiously inquired the new-comer.

‘Big!’ said Simpkins expressively. ‘My word! you—’

He said no more, for an angry shout from Mr. Langridge compelled him to make all haste to the stacks. The waggon creaked over the stubble, and Simpkins's ill-arranged load kept falling here and there on the way.

‘There's that carriage on the road again,’ he cried—he never made so much haste that he could not look about him and talk. ‘Puzzles me to think how some of those fine ladies, who've nothing to do but to dress up and show themselves, get through their time. They say that this overseer of Mr. Palmer's once drove in his carriage. Well, some come down and others go up.’

‘I've been told this is the place to make one's fortune in,’ said the new-comer.

‘Don't believe it,’ said Simpkins. ‘I've not made mine.’

Chapter VII. —‘Underneath the turf Soft thou sleepest, free from morrow; Thou hast struggled through the surf Of wild thoughts and want and sorrow.'

Lowell.

Mrs. Palmer was sitting by herself in her room sewing a little and crying a good deal. She was much addicted to crying, and just now it seemed as if everything and every one had combined to afflict her. That useful Rosa had gone home ill, so she had lost her mainstay and support. The children also were ill. Mr. Everard, to save himself from being deafened by perpetual crying, had retired within that little fortress of his, where he was strongly entrenched amongst his books, and for a fortnight had been invisible or nearly so. Violet had been excessively provoking; for it was her fault that the wedding which Mrs. Palmer longingly expected had not yet taken place. It had been postponed twice by her artful excuses, so that people were beginning to whisper it never would come to pass. And they whispered other things very displeasing to Mrs. Palmer, to whose ear they came in course of time. They said hard things of Violet, harder even than she deserved—for a flirt has no friends, and it must be confessed that this young lady was a most accomplished flirt. Some elderly chaperons, jealous of the attention she monopolised, wondered if Mr. Wishart, poor man, knew how naughty she was. They could have told him almost, they felt so sorry.

While Mrs. Palmer was thinking of these things the door opened, and Mr. Everard came in noiselessly. He passed most of his lifetime in slippers, and went about softly.

‘Oh, you are here, Alice,’ he said, ‘I was looking for you. Why was I not told that my brother was much worse?’

‘I supposed you knew; but really, Everard, you shut yourself up so, I believe I might die and you not hear of it.’

‘Don't be absurd,’ said Mr. Everard, with impatience. ‘You knew, then? Have you sent to inquire?’

‘Mrs. Sligo told me to-day he was the same.’

‘That is only hearsay. You should have sent to-day.’

‘Really, Everard, how cross you do get about trifles! I am so tired and flustered all day long I can never think of things, and I couldn't do anything to help him. Shall I send now?’

‘No, I am going directly.’

‘You, Everard, with that dreadful cough! Why, very likely your brother is no worse than you are, if one knew. You mustn't go.’

Mr. Everard had gone before this speech was finished, hastily slipping on a stronger pair of shoes in the passage, and fortunately finding his hat as soon as he sought for it. He did not look fit for a long walk, but he had neither horse nor carriage, so he was obliged to go on foot. The wind was cold, and he shivered as it met him in the face, for the poor gentleman was thinly clad. His funds were at the lowest ebb just then, and as he had ever been too honourable to run into debt, he did without what he could not pay for. He did without overcoats, for instance, and hence, perhaps, the cough that troubled him.

When he came near the house he saw sings of unusual commotion therein. Except at night Palmer's windows were never veiled by blind or curtain, so that the interior of his front room was a familiar sight to passers-by. The doctor's carriage was at the gate, and Mr. Everard could see the doctor within, talking with the vigour and positiveness characteristic of the medical profession. There were several other persons in the room besides his brother, who was wrapped up with rugs and pillows in an easy-chair. There was an immense man, whom Mr. Everard recognised as Professor Crasher, and the Professor seemed to be much affected, for he alternately rubbed his eyes and wrung his large fat hands. There was Mr. Langridge, seated gingerly on a creaky chair, as if he expected it to give way at any moment—and truly this was no unlikely occurrence. Also Mrs. Sligo had just entered with a saffron-coloured jelly, and Smithers, the engine-driver, had chosen the same moment to bring in some four yards of a black and greasy rubber belt which had broken suddenly, in order that Palmer might, by examining the fracture, form some idea as to whether it had been caused by honest wear and tear or by the utter worthlessness of the article.

‘You'd better take that away, my good fellow,’ said the doctor.

‘I want you to look at this, Mr. Palmer,’ said the unabashed Smithers ‘This here's one of those American rubber belts. It's only a fortnight since we hitched it on for the first time, and look at it now. That's never been worn; that's rotten, sir, perfectly rotten.’

‘Well, it's done for, I suppose,’ said Palmer. ‘Last year you nearly ruined me with your waste in oil, Smithers, and now you're trying to ruin me with belts. Take it away; be off!’

Smithers retreated, the long black belt wriggling after him like a snake. He stopped at the door, turned round, and after a mysterious pause said, ‘Never mind the belt, Mr. Palmer; what's a belt, after all? If this gentleman, who I take to be a doctor, could make you a new constitution as easy as we can get a new belt, right glad would we all be. I come from the rest of the men to—to—’

Smithers looked despairingly round him, and found a helper in Mrs. Sligo, who quickly prompted him with, ‘to express their sorrow!’

‘To express their sorrow,’ said Smithers, with alacrity, ‘on account of your being so ill. We've no pleasure in anything now, Mr. Palmer; we've no sperrit to get on with the work, and, as true as I'm here, the men have gone off so in their appetite, that one half of 'em brings next to no lunch with 'em now. This is the feelings of all, sir; and I was to say they all earnestly desire you'd improve’ (‘recover,’ corrected Mrs. Sligo); ‘thanks, recover,’ said Smithers, ‘and hope to see you about with them soon.’

The door closed as the last syllable fell from Smithers's lips, and he vanished, switching the belt after him.

‘It's most affecting, isn't it, doctor?’ whispered Mrs. Sligo. ‘You see how they all worship him.’

Palmer looked surprised at Smithers's declaration, and remarked that he was ‘coming out strong.’

‘Go after him, Randall,’ he said, ‘and give the poor fellow a kind word. I've been rough with him lately. You may as well give him a glass of something, too; perhaps he expected it. Mrs. Sligo, it's exceedingly kind of you to bring me that splendid jelly; but I'm afraid if I were to try at it every day for a week I should make but a slight difference in its appearance. Why, Everard! are you here?’

‘I have but just come in,’ said his brother. ‘You look very ill, John, and I go from home so seldom, I hear nothing. I did not know you had been worse before to-day.’

‘Well, there was no reason to fuss about it,’ said Palmer, ‘so I didn't send you word. I feel nearly all right again. I don't mean to say die yet, eh, doctor?’

‘Let us hope not,’ replied that personage. ‘But if you won't obey orders, I at least shan't be responsible. For a month or more have I been ordering your brother from home, and he has refused to go, Mr. Palmer.’

‘Ah, you should, my good friend,’ broke in the musical Crasher. ‘I wish only some one would say to me, “Crasher, you must have rest; you must try a sea voyage, or a change to some nice quiet place.” I would agree with delight. I would spread my pinions at once; but I'm bound here, bound to the wheel.’

‘Yes, a change does wonders,’ said the farmer, who was the very type of rubicund health. ‘I assure you, doctor, that I felt like another man after a run up the country to Steve's place; but, what with one crop going in or another coming out, I hardly ever can get away. I feel the want of a change now, but I'm fast; I haven't a man I could trust to leave in charge.’

‘It always surprises me, Langridge,’ said Palmer, ‘that, so long as we can do our own work, there never is any one to be found who can do it properly Yet, when we drop off, our places are filled at once; and who cares? the world's machinery goes on as well as ever.’

‘Ah, but I know better than to let any man get into my place while I can help it,’ returned the farmer. ‘However, you can be spared. Randall here can manage while you're away.’

‘I'm not going,’ said Palmer. ‘I'm not going to be consigned like a bale of goods to the most convenient port. I won't be bundled about from one hotel to another. The air here is good enough, as good as any you'll find south of the line. My house is my castle, and I'm not disposed to leave it.’

‘And as damp as damp can be,’ said Mrs. Sligo, mournfully, ‘and dingy enough to make you a hippocondor.’

‘I really think it would do you good,’ said Mr. Everard quietly.

‘I'd much rather hear of you going, Everard. You shall be my proxy, if you like. You enjoy travelling.’

Mr. Everard did. As his brother spoke, there came into his mind a vision of other days, when he and a friend, long since dead, but never to be forgotten, had made an Italian tour together. Ah, that by gone time.

‘But the wherewithal,’ he said, with a faint smile.

‘Is it that?’ said Palmer, in an undertone. ‘What is mine shall be yours for that purpose; so don't hesitate to go on that account.’

‘The best thing you could do, Mr. Palmer,’ said the doctor, whose ears caught most of the undertones about.

Mrs. Sligo had withdrawn during this colloquy. She had whispered to Randal that she would take the liberty of making tea for the company assembled, and without waiting to hear whether the purpose was approved of had gone to prepare it. In a few minutes she came in again, carrying the tray, and dispensed a refreshing cup of tea to each person present.

‘A very useful, amiable woman,’ said the doctor, when she had gone out.

‘A meddlesome, interfering woman,’ said Palmer.

‘She seems to take things into her own hands,’ said Mr. Everard.

‘The fact is, Everard,’ declared Palmer, ‘if anything could induce me to leave home it would be her conduct. All day long is she about now, and neither I nor Randall know how to get rid of her. Unfortunately we're both of us too subservient to womenkind; we're not able to hector, and swagger, and go on against them as some men do, and so they domineer over us. You may stare, Randall, but it's a fact that you can't keep her away.’

‘Why, I thought, as she had been your house-keeper for so long, she would know how to be of use to you better than any one else.’

‘That's a mere excuse. You are not able to prevent her doing as she likes—that's the truth. And there's one, thing you'd better take care of. I believe that, if I should be removed from the scene, you'll be the next object of her solicitude.’

Randall laughed, and Professor Crasher whispered to Mr. Langridge that he was afraid their old friend's head must be affected.

‘Head affected! Stuff!’ said Mr. Langridge unceremoniously: ‘nothing the matter with that. You try to drive a bargain with him, and see.’

The doctor looked at his watch, and seeing that his call had lasted half an hour, protested that he had not another minute to spare. All the day had he been sacrificing his own ease to a suffering but selfish public, and now it would be dark before he could reach home. ‘Mr. Everard followed him to the door, and tried to find out what he thought of his brother's condition. The doctor did not tell him: it was not his habit to give any other than vague or unsatisfactory answers when questioned about his patients. He almost resented such inquiries. Why could they not leave him alone; was he not doing his best? So, instead of telling Mr. Everard much about the patient, he told him how ill he, the hard-worked doctor, felt, and how it was next to an impossibility that he could ever be free of his ailments, for he had no time to cure them—both day and night was he running to and fro on his errands of mercy.

‘You should take a holiday’, said Mr. Everard sympathisingly.

‘Holiday!’ scoffed the doctor; ‘you good people won't let me have one.’

He squeezed into an enormous greatcoat, stepped into his carriage, and, as Mr. Everard thought, was about to go, when second and perhaps better thoughts occurring to him, he came out again with a great plunge, and said, ‘Your brother ought to have left this damp unhealthy place long ago. Now I think it would be unwise to persuade him to go; he is hardly strong enough to take a journey. You could get him out of that damp cold room, though, into one on the sunny side of the house; and if you could smuggle some strong woman in, who would give the house a thorough cleaning, and burn up most of the old rubbish it's filled with, it would be all the better for him. He ought to be well nursed and attended to.’

‘But will he—will he get over it?’ said poor Mr. Everard rather huskily.

‘Well,’ said the doctor slowly, ‘well’—he got into his carriage again; and, if he finished the sentence, it was lost in the rumbling of the wheels.

Mr. Langridge went out next, Professor Crasher lumbering by his side. ‘He won't recover,’ said the farmer, ‘though he may last a long while yet. His brother looks nearly as bad. A sickly family; all consumptive.’

‘Ah, how distressing!’ said the Professor. ‘We are such old friends, Mr. Langridge, that I thought I must come and see him to-day, although I have hardly a minute to call my own. Oh, this work, this work! and with it all, one can hardly make both ends meet. I've two music lessons to give before I can get home.’

‘Just so,’ said Langridge; ‘I don't know why it is, but there is certainly less time and more work than there used to be. I ought to have been looking after sowing turnips. It'll be done, of course, in my absence, but in a way. Farming is slavery, and, to make the matter worse, it doesn't pay.’

‘Dear me! I thought all the farmers were well off,’ said the Professor, with astonishment. ‘To me, Mr. Langridge, a farmer's life seems enviable, delightful, quite Arcadian in its peaceful simplicity.’

‘I don't know what an Arcadian life is like,’ said Langridge; ‘but neither you nor the doctor, who has just been grumbling about his little bit of work, knows what farming is. You think, I suppose, our cattle grow up without attention and our crops plant themselves. As for being well off, we're one half of us beggars, Mr. Crasher.’

‘Good gracious!’ said the Professor.

Mr. Everard went back into the house, to sit a little longer with his brother before returning to his own home. He took more notice of the room, now that it was nearly emptied of people, and was dismayed by its untidiness, its cold gloom, and the dampness that might be felt. No one could get better, he thought, who had all the medicine bottles he had emptied arranged before him in an overawing phalanx. The table was piled higher than ever with things of all kinds, the cobwebs hung thicker than ever in the corners, and the windows soon promised to be windows no longer, if the admission of light gave them a right to the name.

‘Couldn't he be moved into a better room?’ he asked of Randall.

‘I wish he could. If you suggested it, perhaps he would not object.’

‘I shall insist that it ought to be done. And, really, you know, these things are positively shocking.’

‘I would have altered all that long ago, but any interference of the kind only seems to annoy Mr. Palmer.’

He must not be humoured in this,’ said Mr. Everard. ‘At least, let us get these horrid bottles away.’

They carried the offending bottles outside, and Mrs. Sligo, who had not yet left the house, vigorously pounded them to dust with a large stone.

‘I've never been able to bear the sight of them,’ she cried, ‘since my husband, the poor sergeant, died after nine months’ illness, and there was a wheelbarrow full of them to be put away.’

‘I don't wonder that the sergeant is no more,’ said Randall.

‘Well, I suppose if he could have been kept alive, he would have been. There were three doctors at him.’

‘That explains it, perhaps.’

‘Well, now, I've done this,’ said Mrs. Sligo, breaking the last bottle, ‘I'd like to have his old mouldy books down, Mr. Randall, and if you would help me, I think we could drag out the carpet and beat it. My there's some dust in it.’

Randall felt no desire for such a charming task. ‘We must get him out of the room altogether,’ he said, ‘and then it shall be handed over to you, Mrs. Sligo; but I beg to be excused from participating in the carpet-shaking.’

‘Ah, most men are afraid of it,’ said Mrs. Sligo. ‘I've shaken scores.’

But Palmer only consented to vacate his room on the condition that Mrs. Sligo was not to be allowed to meddle with anything therein. Consequently the room she had hoped to have the pleasure of emptying and purifying was locked up as it was. Palmer took up his abode in the large chamber upstairs which he had assigned to Randall little more than a year ago.

Here the sunshine came in upon him, and as there was a fireplace, the room could be as well warmed as lighted. He persisted in declaring there was nothing seriously amiss with him, and whenever it was fine during the weeks of an autumn and winter that were unusually cold and rainy, he would go out and walk up and down in the yard, sometimes looking into the machinery sheds, if any work was being done there. But by degrees these excursions to the workshop and the yard became less and less frequent. Still he was generally in good spirits, and made no complaint. His brother, who seemed nearly as ill, and had been ordered away by the doctor, went to Adelaide for the winter, confident of seeing Palmer in health when he returned. If the doctor, who professed to understand the constitutions of both gentlemen, thought otherwise, he did not say so. Perhaps he was silent out of kindness. For, though he was rough in manner, and could scold a silly or obstinate patient into submissiveness, he had a little heart left yet, after thirty years of practice. He did not believe in heralding an evil day, however clearly he might see it in the distance.

That day might be slow in coming. The autumn went, and his patient was no better. Gradually he had ceased his walks outside, and was only seen on the verandah on sunny days. Then that also must be given up, and he never left his room. He had called it a prison during the first days of his illness, and had chafed and fretted against the restraint his doctor had thought fit to put upon him. But now it was as if he had lost the desire to look upon the world outside; the things which had once occupied his mind failed to interest him. In other ways, too, he had changed: his little irritabilities and his roughness of speech had vanished; he had grown quieter and more considerate. And this, as Mrs. Sligo sorrowfully observed, was a very bad sign.

Now, when it was evident that his days on earth were to be few, it was surprising how many discovered that they had been very fond of this odd man without knowing it. So many remembered old stories about him which once they had laughed at, but which now seemed to do him credit—kind things which he had done, though, to be sure, they had been done in a peculiar manner. They found out that his charities had been large, though he had never been a rich man. There were people, principally among the poor and lowly, who could tell how he had befriended them. These deeds all came to light now, though they had been done in secrecy.

It bewildered him, people coming every day to ask after him, to thank him for benefits and favours he had forgotten long ago, and to talk wistfully of that recovery which now could only be hoped for. Why, often in his loneliness he, a man without wife or children, had dreaded these latter days: he had known so surely that he must pass through them alone. But no one could be kindlier tended, and there were so many anxious to do him good that one might have thought the whole country-side were of kin to him.

Randall never left him now. They read together, they talked when Palmer was not too much exhausted for conversation. He never tired of music, and as Randall never tired of playing, they had it often—too often, the doctor thought; but he was decidedly unmusical. He might grumble at it, but the first sound of the full deep chords was sufficient to tempt the workmen to loiter near the house, and passers-by would often wonderingly stop to listen to a fragment of some grand oratorio or sonata, and ask afterwards who lived in the dingy old house.

‘I wonder you never made some use of that talent,’ said Palmer one day when his friend had been brilliant in his improvisations. ‘But I needn't wonder; most of our gifts are neglected ones. Do you know, when, as a boy, I read the Gospels with my poor mother, the parable that used to impress and awe me most was that of the man who wrapped his talent in a napkin, and hid his Lord's money.’

‘But how many do that!’ said Randall.

‘I was beginning to wonder, as I lay here, whether I had. Really it seems that I've had very little time to think before now. You know how a certain essay-writer says that half the ills of life might be prevented if men could sit still in a room long enough to think out their problems. We're always hurrying; rashness and impatience ruin all our plans; we rush on decisions that may make or mar our lives. And I've had a busy life. You know my hobby has been work, and I have always held it up as a universal panacea. I've practised my own doctrines; my life has been one of hard work and—it's only truth if I add—self-denial. After all, I begin to doubt whether it was the best kind of life; whether a man can't be something better than a drudge. What have I gained, and what has it all been worth to me?’

‘That would depend on what aim you had in view,’ said Randall.

‘Ah, I started with so many aims! I wished to do so much—more than was possible. But I bound myself to a hard bondage at the very beginning. Do you know what it is to work to pay off old debts, debts incurred by another, to give your strength to them day after day, to think of them with shame night after night? How I hated debt, how I hate it now! our family was disgraced and dragged down by it, and I worked to raise it again to honour. I did it, too!’—and there was a faint glow on his face, and a sparkle in his eyes as of triumph—‘Yes! but there was no one to be glad with me when the work was done. Those who would have cared were in their graves, and I had given my life for it. Three years ago only I paid the last of those debts, and for that hour of triumph I had worked—slaved, I'll call it—since I was a boy of eleven.

‘It was a hard life,’ said his companion; ‘but it cannot have been all in vain.’

‘Who can tell? Sometimes a feeling of desperation comes over me, as I think how many lives are offered up to Moloch in the same fashion. How many are pinched and pined in education and culture, in all that makes our happiness, that they may give every moment to the work that brings in a little dross. Is it right, even if you may want the dross for a good purpose? It may be very praise- worthypraiseworthy for children to work to pay their parents’ debts; but somehow I should rather mourn over the poor creatures who bound about their necks such a millstone as I laid on mine. I should be tempted to dissuade them from selling their life's work for so low a price. I'd say, “Yes, work as hard as you please, but don't let it be for sordid ends, or to gratify family pride only. Never mind the old debts, the broken obligations; they're another's, not yours. They'll crush you, they'll grind the freshness and spirit out of your youth. No creditor has a right to hold you in such a cruel bondage.”’

‘But is it not worth something to redeem the family honour, to remove the stain from an old name? You would do the same again. I should have done the same.’

‘Yes; a great deal, but not everything. Isn't there more of pride than anything else in the desire that prompts such an endeavour? A stupid pride! to ruin one life because another has been ruined. When there are so many ways through the world, to have to choose this dreary one is a hard fate. And I've thought—I can't help thinking I could have done something had my hands been free.’

A memory of thoughts like this, dreams that had had no fulfilment, came to the listener. ‘I too have thought so,’ he said, speaking rather to himself than any one else, ‘and I have done nothing. I had better have worked for a mistaken purpose even.’

It was the first time Palmer had spoken to Randall of the work on which he had spent his life. They never talked again on the same subject. A week afterwards, however, Palmer had one of his good days. He appeared to be much better and stronger, and was in high spirits. Several friends called to see him, and went away feeling sure that he was recovering fast. One or two had the boldness to tell the doctor so. He listened to their opinion grimly, without giving his own, and went the very next morning to Palmer's, on the strength of this information. It was as he had feared. His patient was dying, and he told Randall so, adding that it had been a hopeless case for some time.

‘Are you a relative?’ he asked abruptly.

‘No, not in the slightest degree. Only he is my best friend.’

‘I don't often meet with such friendship,’ said the doctor. ‘I'm sorry for you, Mr. Randall; I know what it is to lose a friend; there are not many of us who find more than one in a lifetime. I shall be here again to-morrow, but I hardly hope to find him alive.’

But the flickering spark of life lasted longer than he had thought. It was not the next day, nor the day after even. Palmer, guessing that something had been said, insisted on being told the doctor's opinion.

‘I knew it,’ he murmured faintly. ‘I felt it must be so; though the doctor isn't infallible,’ he could not resist adding, with a slight smile. ‘And you are tired; it won't be long now.’

‘Tired!’

‘You are very good to me. You've been kinder than them all. I can't tell you now; but I've done what I could for you in return. And, Randall,’ he whispered, after a pause, during which there was silence, for the other could not speak, ‘you will promise me one thing?’

‘Anything.’

‘My poor brother did you an injury. Strange things happen—you may have the chance of repaying him; but don't let it be evil for evil. I want you to forget it for my sake.’

‘Is that all? I could do much more than that for you. Yes, I promise.’

‘I have not done what I ought,’ said Palmer, rousing himself to speak with all his old energy and decision. ‘I ought to have cleared you. I couldn't, Randall. I couldn't tell them my own brother was a thief.’

‘Never mind; it is over now,’ said the other, only anxious to soothe him.

‘No, it was wrong—cowardly. But I have written to Everard. I have told him—he will see you righted. You will remember? Poor Godfrey, what will become of him now?’

He never spoke again, except in broken words and fragments of sentences. From these Randall knew he was trying to repeat the lines:—

‘What if some little pain the passage have That makes frail flesh to fear the bitter wave; Is not short pain well borne that brings long ease, And lays the soul to sleep in quiet grave? Sleep after, toil, port after stormy seas, Ease after war, death after life doth greatly please.'

Two days later they followed him to his grave. There had been another funeral in the same neighbourhood not long before, an ostentatious funeral of a rich man; an influential man also, who had held a high position. The carriages of the rich came from far and near to do him honour. But to this funeral, besides a few friends, came only the poor, walking two and two in a long line. Hardworking men and women, some of whom had walked miles to pay this last token of respect; plain country people from distant settlements; strangers even from the town, were there. People wondered at the large following, and asked one another who all these were, and whence they had come. For most of them were unknown one to another, and yet each had been drawn thither by a grateful remembrance. He had done good by stealth, and now it enriched his memory.

Chapter VIII. ‘The stranger's shadow flits across Our old familiar floors; The stranger's footstep as of right Seeks our old open doors.'

Randall had been requested by Mr. Gatherall, Palmer's lawyer, and by Mr. Langridge, who was an executor under the will, to remain in charge of the house and property for a short time after the funeral Mr. Everard had been written to; but it was impossible that he could return immediately, for he had fallen ill again at Adelaide and was not yet sufficiently recovered to travel. Under these circumstances, Randall waited until some one should appear who had authority to relieve him of his charge.

He had not to wait long. One morning, when he was breakfasting alone, a man of most unlovely countenance, whose appearance moreover suggested that he belonged to that great class who are nearly total abstainers from soap and water slouched into the room, and with an ease a bashful visitor might have envied, seated himself at once on a chair near the door.

‘Well, mister,’ he said, by way of opening the conversation. ‘Good morning.’

‘Good morning,’ returned Randall, half inclined to turn the fellow out again. ‘Have you any business with me?’

‘I've come to look after the place,’ said the man, bringing himself and his chair farther into the room. ‘I reckon it's time some one of the family should see how things are. I'm to take charge of everything till the sale. They told me outside you'd locked up the machinery sheds, and all the house but two rooms. You can deliver up the keys to me, and shift your work on to my shoulders. That's enough, isn't it?’

‘Not quite’, said Randall. ‘I must see a written order, signed by some proper person, before I can oblige you in that way.’

‘Oh, well, look here.’ He held two letters between his unwashed finger and thumb, and jerked them towards Randall. ‘Them's my instructions. They've got word from Mr. Palmer, who's in Australia somewhere, to realise—sell up to the last stick.’

One of the letters was from Mr. Gatherall. ‘Yes, this is quite right,’ said Randall. ‘You are from Mrs. Palmer, then?’ he asked, reading the signature of the other letter with some surprise.

‘She's my sister’ said the singular visitor, now coming chair and all, up to the table, with a clatter and a scrape along the floor.

‘Indeed,’ said Randall, surveying him with amazement ‘I was not aware.’

‘Yes, most people don't know it. Family don't care for me. My name's Prosser. I knows yours already. Excuse me. I've ridden a good way, and had no chance to get my breakfast.’

And he helped himself liberally.

‘Oh, pray make yourself at home,’ said Randall, conscious that the invitation was quite unnecessary. He read Mrs. Palmer's letter while Mr. Prosser repaired the waste of his tissue, which, judging from the rapid diminution of the cold beef and the bread-loaf, must have been considerable.

The letter was remarkable.

Mr. Randall—You will alow the Bearer to take possession of the house, and give everything into his charge. Also will you please get Mrs. Sligo and Mrs. Hickson to clean it, and burn up all the old rubbitch that can't be sold. You will be paid for all your trouble up to this time. I hope you have been very carefull of all my brother-in-law's things.

Alice Palmer.

‘You're satisfied, I suppose, with them letters?’ said Mr. Prosser, diligently scraping out the mustard-pot.

‘Perfectly,’ replied Randall.

‘I should like to go over the place with you, and just see what order it's in. I like to see the state of a thing as soon as it comes into my hands; so that, if anything's found out afterwards, I know whether it was done in my time or not. Pass the salt, please.’

‘A very necessary precaution in some cases,’ said Randall, to which Mr. Prosser assented with a nod.

‘I've finished now,’ he said, after a moment. ‘I feel something better. We'll go into the stables first and see the horses. I heard he'd a fine lot.’

They went to the stables, and afterwards to the engine and machinery sheds. Mr. Prosser was dumbfounded.

‘I say!’ he cried at length, all this is valuable. Have you any idea how much he was worth? you ought to; you were with him long enough to find out.’

‘None at all,’ said Randall, ‘It was not my business to find that out.’

‘You're rather huffy,’ said Mr. Prosser. ‘Perhaps you know more than you like to tell. He liked you they say. Has he left you anything?’

‘I do not know what he has left,’ answered Randall, more strongly inclined than ever to eject Mr. Prosser. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Oh, nothing. I only wondered. No offence. Let's go into the house now.’

‘There is no need for me to show you over the house,’ said Randall. ‘There is very little in it, except in the two rooms I have been using.’

‘Oh, we'll look through,’ said Mr. Prosser; but he could not prevail on Randall to accompany him farther. He came to speak to him again half an hour afterwards, and informed him there was not fifty pounds’ worth in the whole house. ‘At least it wouldn't fetch that at auction,’ he added.

‘Probably not,’ said Randall. “Is everything to be sold, then?’

‘Yes, as soon as it can be done.’

‘But there are many things in the house which Mr. and Mrs. Palmer might wish to keep. There is this portrait, for instance, and a great many private papers and letters, as well as the books, which have belonged to the family for a long while.’

‘The painting seems a good one,’ said Mr. Prosser, posing as an art critic. ‘Fine-looking old lady that; old-fashioned style, though. But the books! I wouldn't give five shillings for the lot.’

‘I was not thinking of what they would sell for, but that the family might not like them to go to an auction. I think I shall make out a list of the things I have mentioned and send it to Mrs. Palmer.’

‘You can do as you like, but I believe she'll want to sell them.’

Randall wrote a list of the few things he thought Mr. Everard would value for his brother's sake, and then went across the road to summon Mrs. Sligo and Mrs. Hickson to what they would be sure to delight in—a thorough cleansing of the neglected house.

Mrs. Sligo had put on black, and was sorrowfully taking tea with Mrs. Hickson, for there had been a tender reconciliation, and they were now more enthusiastic in their friendship than ever. They were talking about Palmer, and Mrs. Sligo was alternately weeping and swallowing strong tea, which perhaps sustained her in this trying hour.

‘And to think that he should have been so cruelly set against me in his last days!’ she cried. ‘I was forbidden the house, and though I sat up at night making him herb tea he wouldn't taste it. He would never even look at what I made; his mind was poisoned against me.’

‘Bear up, Maria,’ said Mrs. Hickson soothingly. ‘I suspect that proud-looking man, Mr. Randall, of having interfered betwixt you. Now, what do you think I heard Mr. Palmer say to him about you?’

‘I don't want to hear it,’ said Mrs. Sligo, with a hysterical gulp. ‘What does it matter?’

‘But you must hear it,’ persisted Mrs. Hickson. ‘I was on the verandah, and accidentally like I stopped by the window, and I heard him say, “Randall, as sure as I'm here, that woman will make a dead set at you after I'm gone.” And Mr. Randall had actually the ill-manneredness to laugh.’

‘He said that?’ cried Mrs. Sligo, almost choking, and I at that very moment working myself to death for him! Well, well, men are poor things at the best; but I didn't expect that of him. As for his fine Mr. Randall, I wouldn't go a yard to look after him.’

‘He's here looking after you, anyway,’ giggled Mrs. Hickson ‘Maria, speaking as a friend, I feel it my duty to tell you I believe that man admires you. Just fancy if he should have heard us!’

‘I don't care,’ sobbed Mrs. Sligo. ‘Let him; I care for nothing; what's admiration to me now? Now, ‘Liza, why don't you go to the door, do you want him to wait there all day?’

Mrs. Sligo dried her tears and smiled again when Randall delivered his message. She was greatly cheered by the prospect of being able to work her will on the room into which Palmer had never permitted her or any other woman to enter with duster or broom.

‘What a state it must be in!’ she cried. ‘The rest of the house, 'Liza, will make you hold up your hands; but I don't know what you mayn't find in that room. He used to say he put it right, and dusted it himself, and I believe Mr. Randall did a little occasionally, which maybe he thought was of some good; but we know how men clean—flapping about with a cloth, and fancying they're dusting.’

‘Yes; we've some work before us,’ said Mrs. Hickson, with solemnity. ‘We must be there early.’

Randall did not trust to Mr. Prosser forwarding the list to Mrs. Palmer, but posted it himself, and she received it the next day. If she had only had her own wishes to consult she would have taken no notice of it. Old papers and books were only useless lumber; she valued none of them. But she knew that her husband did, and that when he returned he would assuredly ask after their fate. Therefore she resolved to go to the house and sort out what ought to be saved. When she arrived Mr. Prosser had gone out, leaving the keys with Mrs. Hickson. From that person Mrs. Palmer obtained them, and declining her offers of companionship, went to look, through the house alone.

Her first action was to sit down and rest. She was tired with her walk, and her black dress and cloak felt hot and heavy upon her. She lay back in Palmer's old easy-chair, and listlessly looked at the worn-out furniture, the faded moth-eaten curtains, the torn and stained paper on the walls. Age and neglect had ruined and disfigured everything; the aspect of the gloomy comfortless room depressed and chilled her. Her heart was filled with a bitter disappointment. She was not altogether an unkind women. She had liked her brother-in-law with a lukewarm kind of affection, and had felt sorry when his long illness had ended in death. But all through that illness she had thought, almost unconsciously—for this was one of the thoughts which lurk in dark corners and back chambers of the mind, and are never admitted into the well-lighted apartments where our amiable reflections flourish — she had thought that if Palmer should not recover, her family and herself would have the sufficient consolation of a fortune: the end of their poverty was at hand.

But now it was certain that her brother-in-law, instead of dying rich, as he surely ought to have done, after so many years of constant and plodding industry, had only left a few hundred pounds in cash. It was not expected that the estate, after all expenses were paid, would realise much more than two thousand pounds. A paltry little fortune.

True, it would set them right with the world: they had got a little behind it while Mr. Everard had not been at home to check unnecessary expenditure. They could pay their little debts with this legacy; they could have many comforts hitherto denied them; they could send the children to school; but she must give up her dreams of a large handsomely-furnished house, of social gaiety, of unrestrained indulgence in costly dress. Only two thousand!—a pitiful affair.

She arose with a sigh from the creaky old rocking-chair, and began to sort out letters and papers. There were some very old letters scattered about in the drawers of the bookcase. These were worthless, she decided; they had been written twenty years ago, and could not be of use or interest to any one now. Besides, they were not from any one of the family; they were signed by a name she had never heard. She turned them over carelessly and read a few lines. ‘Why, I believe,’ she said, with a smile stealing over her face, ‘these are love-letters! The idea of him ever having had anything of the kind!’ and she laughed aloud. She sat down with a pile of letters in her lap, and began to read.

Ah me! Why have we not a law of tapu? To an untaught Maori those letters would have been sacred because a dying breath had been drawn so near them. We read in history how a certain royal lady spent her last night on earth in reading and destroying her private papers and letters. The voice of death was whispering in her ear his mark was set on her pallid and haggard face, but she rallied all her strength to the painful task. She was a wise woman, who trusted nothing to the honour or fidelity of those who would weep at her deathbed and follow her to her grave.

He had only lain in his grave a few days—the man to whom these letters had been written—who had written many of them himself, for his answers were there. Could he have known who would read them at the last, when years ago he made these confessions of his thoughts and feelings, penning day by day his story of life's struggles and disappointments, it might have seemed to him one of time's bitterest revenges.

They were glanced over coldly enough now—these letters which had been written on the impulse of warm feeling. After reading several, tearing each crosswise when she had finished it, Mrs. Palmer began to think she had mistaken the nature of this feeling. Certainly there had been the closest in timacy between the two who had corresponded so regularly for years; they had hidden nothing from each other, and yet, had not one been a man and the other a woman, and had not their Christian names appeared at the head of each letter, the thought she had expressed would never have occurred to her. The letters might just as well have passed between two school friends, she thought; they contained none of the weak and washy sentiment she had expected to find.

She yawned over them, and finally threw them on the floor. They need not be preserved; better let Mrs. Sligo burn them with the other rubbish a foolish old man had allowed to accumulate in his rooms.

She saw Palmer's desk; if there were any papers of importance they would be in it. It was unlocked, or as she noticed afterwards, the lock had been broken long ago. She opened the desk, and at the top lay a letter to her husband. Well I came! was her ejaculation. Without pausing to consider whether the letter might be intended only for her husband's eye, she opened it—Mrs. Palmer had got into the way of opening letters. This promised to be more interesting than those stupid old ones, and again she sat down to read.

It had been written only three days before Palmer's death. It began with a statement that years previously he had made his eldest brother his heir, and this private letter only contained certain instructions which he did not wish to be known by others. He had two persons to commend to his care. One was their brother Godfrey, to whom he had made no bequest, because it would have been a very questionable benefit. But he charged Everard to help him whenever he should be in need; not to forget him, nor, if possible, to lose sight of him. Then he spoke of Randall's untiring care during his illness, and of the wrong which had been done to him by Godfrey Palmer. It was fully told, as a matter of which Mr. Everard had had no previous knowledge. Palmer entreated his brother, for his sake, to go to Randall's former employers, and tell them the whole truth, since it was not to be hoped that Godfrey would ever have the manliness to confess his fault.

Mrs. Palmer learnt all this for the first time. For the first time she heard of the existence of this brother, and something like a triumph thrilled her small mind. ‘They looked down on my family,’ she thought, ‘and see here! they've a vagabond brother they're ashamed to won. And really John must have been simple! Everard to go and tell everything—a nice disgrace!’

She read on. Palmer proceeded to say, with a feebler and tired hand evidently, for the writing grew more and more indistinct, that according to an arrangement between them there was still a sum of money owing to Randall remaining in his hands. It was about sixty pounds, and he had intended to invest it for Randall, but on account of his illness the matter had been neglected. He wished his brother to pay this, adding to it a present of a hundred and fifty pounds. He would have given him much more in a legacy, but had not thought it right to leave money away from his own family when they were in need of it.

‘More than two hundred pounds!’ cried Mrs. Palmer, ‘and here he is again—Randall is to have the riding horse and saddle he always used. Why, that is a splendid horse! I was on him once, and he went better than any horse I've ever ridden. He would have suited me—but no—it's Randall this, and Randall that—it's a wonder we've anything at all. And of course Everard will do it; he would give everything away if the letter said so, without caring a bit for me and the children.

Tears of vexation came into her eyes. She put together the few things she meant to have sent to her house mechanically, her thoughts running all the while on the letter. She had expected to be made rich—it was bad enough to be disappointed in that without having to give presents out of the little they would have to a person who was nothing to them. She was disposed just then to hate the idea of poverty with tenfold vigour. The old letters she had been reading had breathed of its sufferings and sacrifices throughout. Not complainingly, however, but with a feeling that was too subtle to be comprehended by her uneducated nature. If she had understood them they would have given her clearer views as to what really does constitute poverty or riches. As she thought to be poor and miserable was synonymous with not having money sufficient for the gratification of every desire. To have to do without the pleasurable and luxurious things of this life—that meant unhappiness to Mrs. Palmer.

She walked to the window. The sky was growing pink in the west—the sounds of evening broke the stillness of that quiet place. Men were coming home from their work, in rumbling waggons, or riding on plough-horses; the cows were being driven to the milking sheds; the smoke of the fires was curling upward from the cottage chimneys; it was time she was at home. She put all that she thought her husband would wish to keep, including the broken desk and the oil painting, which she managed to take down from the wall, into one of the empty rooms, and locked it up. Then she stood, silently thinking, with the unfortunate letter in her hand. Why did her hand close so tightly upon it as to crush it into a hard round ball? There was the sound of a heavy foot crunching the gravel on the path. Mr. Prosser had returned from an exciting rabbit hunt. He thought his sister's face looked flushed and agitated when he suddenly entered the room, and he asked her jocosely whether she had been crying over the old things. She answered shortly, ‘No,’ and wrapping her cloak tightly round her, passed out.

The second day after that was the day on which the house was to be given into the hands of Mrs. Sligo and her friend. At an early hour they proceeded to the post of duty. They were welcomed by Mr. Prosser, who was calmly sitting on one corner of the table, asking a hearty breakfast of cold beef and bread, and something that was not water, though it looked like it. He rose, set chairs for them in the middle of the room, and, returning to his elevated seat, asked what on earth they wanted.

‘We were told to come to clean the house,’ said Mrs. Hickson, meekly. ‘Where's Mr. Randall? he knows about it.’

‘Oh, he cleared out as soon as he could after I came. He didn't seem to like my company, I don't know why. If you want to clean, go ahead. I shan't stay here, though, if that's it.

‘And we don't want you, my good sir,’ said Mrs. Sligo, when Mr. Prosser had gone out, slamming three doors in succession. ‘Now, 'Liza, let's begin with Mr. Palmer's room’ it's the worst. My word!’ she cried, as she opened the door, ‘did you ever see such a sight for a woman who's been accustomed to clean ways? Look at that bookcase! If Mr. Randall had been anything of a man he'd have taken a duster to it. Why, the books are white with mould, and the table's piled up with things like a scavenger's basket.’

‘I don't know where to begin,’ said Mrs. Hickson. ‘Mercy! Maria, there's a spider three inches across. Kill the nasty thing.’

‘This is what I shall do,’ said Mrs. Sligo, sweeping everything off the table into the table-cloth, and tying it up in a bundle. There! we can sort them afterwards. I'll get some water on to boil.’

The fire she made in pursuance of this resolve roared up the chimney with a fury that was alarming. She fed the flames with those old letters which Mrs. Palmer had examined, and with others which they found scattered in almost every drawer or box they opened; that is, every one which was not locked.

‘What stuff he kept about him, really!’ said Mrs. Hickson, igniting a pyramid of newspapers.

‘There are these old clothes, too,’ said her coadjutor, ‘we'll have to make a bonfire outside. And here's his old slippers, poor dear man! I think I'll keep them in memory of him.’

‘What's in this box;’ said Mrs. Hickson, tapping authoritatively on the article referred to, as if it ought to have answered for itself.

‘Oh, that's Mr. Randall's; it's left for a day while he can send for it. I don't think there's much in it; he wasn't blessed with much property.’

‘No, and some say Mr. Palmer hasn't left much behind him. That seems mysterious-like, Maria; he was always making money. What has he done with it?’

‘You needn't ask that, if you consider that his relatives never made any,’ answered Mrs. Sligo. ‘I wish you'd leave ferreting among his letters, and let's get on. I can tell you there's a lot of work before us.’

‘Most of these are in a lady's hand,’ said Mrs. Hickson meaningly, ‘and he's kept them a long while for 'em to be ordinary letters. I always did hear there'd been a bit of romance in his life. I think he must have been cruelly disappointed in some one.’

‘Ah, you may lay your life on that,’ agreed Mrs. Sligo. ‘He was the sort of man you know, to take a thing of that kind to heart. That fire's out again, 'Liza—you don't put half enough on. Give me the bellows; I'll make it go.’

‘Some people now would have read these letters, observed Mrs. Hickson, throwing the last on the fire. ‘I never could understand the curiosity of some.’

‘We haven't time to read them, if we wanted,’ cried Mrs. Sligo. ‘You'll have it dark before we've done one room, if you don't mind.’

Mrs. Sligo vigorously bundled together some old newspapers and magazines, and went to revivify her bonfire in the yard, which, the last time she looked at it, had died down to a heap of white ashes. She opened the door, gave one hurried glance, and screamed loudly. Then she threw down her apronful of papers, and darted like an arrow across the yard to assist Mr. Prosser, who was threshing with all his might at a line of fire which was rapidly spreading from one end of the shrubbery to the other.

‘Yes; you'd better come to help!’ he shouted, as he dealt about him with the branch of a tree in tremendous blows, that caused sparks and blackened stalks and leaves to fly in every direction. ‘What d'ye mean by setting fire to the whole place with your rubbish heaps? There! don't let it catch that shed.’

Mrs. Sligo worked with her whole strength, and Mr. Prosser performed feats which would have distinguished him had they been done on the field of battle instead of in an obscure backyard. Mrs. Hickson also came to their assistance, first throwing about a quart of water on the fire. After half an hour of exhausting toil they were conquerors—the fire was completely extinguished, and the shrubbery was annihilated. Mr. Prosser asked if there was anything in the house which would allay thirst. Mrs. Sligo thought there was some bottled beer, and it was unanimously resolved that, in that moment of supreme exhaustion, the bottled beer should be produced. The two ladies went to search for it, entering the house by the front door, which they had purposely left open, as well as every other door and window, so that there might be a fine draught through all the rooms. Mr. Prosser sat on the gate and waited for the beer.

In less than five seconds he heard two screams, and immediately afterwards Mrs. Sligo came out of the front door with the utmost swiftness of which she was capable, and Mrs. Hickson propelled some small articles from the window, and jumped out after them, apparently forgetting there was an open door not far off.

‘The women are mad!’ politely exclaimed Mr. Prosser, running into the house. He was met by a body of flame and smoke which drove him back again immediately. Mrs. Sligo's fire, which had been so obstinate, had burned up at last.

They ran hither and thither and looked for water, but found very little. The tanks were nearly empty, after a long continuance of dry weather. Mr. Prosser saved some of the furniture, and when he could no longer enter the house, folded his arms, and watched the flames doing their work. Mrs. Sligo cried and wrung her hands. They were aroused from their inactivity by Mrs. Hickson, who suddenly began to make signs and wildly wave her hands in the direction of the sheds, being speechless, it seemed, with fear and horror. One of the sheds was on fire. Again did Mr. Prosser put forth all his strength. As he very truly said, he worked harder than he had ever done in his life. He had no help from Mrs. Sligo this time, for that lady thought fit to go into hysterics, and Mrs. Hickson, with wails that would have excited admiration at a Maori funeral, threw the last bucket of water over her.

Mr. Prosser's exertions were all in vain. The fire spread with such rapidity that he had barely time to lead the frightened horses out of the stable, and to drag some of the lighter pieces of machinery into a place of safety. In a short time all was over. The roofs of the buildings crashed in with a shower of sparks like a splendid display of fireworks, and only some heaps of cinders and broken bricks remained. Mrs. Sligo and her friend had done their work of clearing out the old house most effectually.

Chapter IX. ‘Oh, the world goes up and the world goes down, And the sunshine follows the rain; And yesterday's sneer and yesterday's frown Can never come over again, Never come over again.'

Charles Kingsley.

Mr. Prosser's advent, and certain strong feelings, other than those of respect or admiration excited by his conduct, had hastened Randall's departure. He had felt it impossible to endure the charms of that illustrious person's company for more than one day. Nevertheless, some news which he read in the morning paper a few days after convinced him that it would have been better to have borne with Mr. Prosser for a little longer. If he had not left so hastily he might have taken away all that belonged to him. Then he would not have been bereft of part of his little property by the conflagration which Mrs. Sligo and Mrs. Hickson had perpetrated. Truly, there had been little of value in the box which he had left in the house, some papers excepted, which he might be required to produce. Their loss, however, might be a serious one to him.

The same newspaper which contained an account of the disaster at Palmer's notified to those whom it might concern that all claims against the estate of the late John Palmer, and all debts owing to it, must be sent into the offices of his solicitors, Messrs. Sampson and Gatherall, before a certain date. This reminded Randall that he had a claim, though he did not see how it was to be proved, since the fire had destroyed nearly all Palmer's accounts and memoranda, as well as his own. However, he wrote to Gatherall and Sampson, stating the amount that was due to him, and explaining the circumstances that prevented him adducing further proof than his own word. Then he considered that he had been very unwise, which is generally our first thought when our neglect or imprudence has brought its own reward.

He saw an unpleasant prospect before him. He was without employment, and he had only a small sum of money. As has been said, he had sent most of his salary to England. That which he had not yet received was the wages of five or six months, not the last, however, which he had spent with Palmer. For several weeks before Palmer's death, Randall as well as the others in his employ had been paid regularly, and Mr. Gatherall had not forgotten to pay Randall for the time during which he had remained in charge of the property.

Mr. Prosser bore the news of the fire to his sister. Mrs. Palmer was much distressed; one misfortune seemed to follow another. Mr. Prosser attempted to console her by reminding her that the horses and a little of the machinery were left.

‘That's not worth much,’ she said despondingly. ‘I can't think how it is John left so little money. He must have lost it in those mines at the Thames.’

‘I thought he was very shy of speculation,’ said Mr. Prosser, sitting crosswise on a chair. ‘Pity he didn't insure.’

‘Not insured!’ cried Mrs. Palmer, catching at this additional straw of her burden. ‘What a man!’

‘I see the horses are to be sold to-morrow,’ said Mr. Prosser. ‘I'd like to buy one or two of them horses, but I've nothing to spare, and they're sure to go high. I was going to mention it to you before, but you don't seem to have much coming to you after all.’

‘If it's anything you want from us, Josiah,’ said his sister sharply, ‘you won't get it. How can you expect us to throw money about like that when we've such a family to provide for?’

‘Well, did I ask you to throw it about?’ asked Mr. Prosser reproachfully. ‘Ain't I in the family? I thought a little present might have been made, but if you can't, why you can't. You'll have to give something to the young man who waited on him, I suppose.’

‘Give something! why should we? If we once begin giving, people will never stop asking and taking while there's anything left. We can't afford to give much. He was paid his wages’—she checked herself, and was silent.

Mr. Prosser opined that most people wanted more than their due, and went his way, of which one thing only can be predicated with certainty, that it did not lead to anything requiring hard labour.

His last words had reminded Mrs. Palmer of the letter. Ah, that letter. If she had never touched it! if she had never brought it away from the house! Then it would have perished in the fire, and her husband would never have known of its existence. He knew nothing yet; why should he ever know? She really did not see that any one would be injured. They needed the money far more than Randall. He had no right to a present of a hundred and fifty pounds, and as for that which was owing to him, most likely he would look after it sharply enough. Why should they be expected to re-establish his character? they were not responsible for another's actions. He ought to be able to take care of himself; and perhaps he deserved all he had suffered. With such reasoning she justified herself, as she watched the letter slowly blacken into tinder.

Now, whatever might happen, her lips were sealed. The fear that something might come of it troubled her. She shivered when she thought how her husband would look, and what he would say, if he should find out her fault. There were some things he could not suffer in silence; she knew how despicable this would be in his eyes. She had no firm principles of her own to rest upon, so all questions of right or wrong resolved themselves into this—what he would approve or condemn. But as long as she kept her own counsel she was safe. It would be unpleasant to have a secret; but she did not mean to be always thinking of it. And, indeed, it was probable that a conscience grown somewhat torpid from disuse would not remind her of it too frequently.

Messrs. Sampson and Gatherall were a long time in winding up the estate of their deceased client, but at length accomplished it in the most legal and satisfactory manner. They could not say they had had much trouble with the business; the estate was small, and totally unencumbered with debts, if that owing to Randall be excepted. That Messrs. Sampson and Gatherall sturdily refused to pay unless it could be proved, and as it could not be proved to their satisfaction, it was not paid. Mr. Langridge spoke to them about it, declaring the claim ought to be admitted, whereupon Mr. Gatherall told him an ancient story.

‘Yes, you may believe me, my dear sir,’ he said, gracefully leaning back in his office chair, a very easy one. ‘I thought the name was familiar to me. Your young gentleman you are so anxious to befriend has been concerned in one or two little affairs which might have enabled him to spend a few years in a certain public institution, had it not been for the soft-heartedness of his employers. Oh yes! he disgraced himself in England years ago, and very soon after he got his first situation in this town he was detected in the same old thing—the common fault of fast young men—embezzling his employer's money.’

‘Bless me! Why, I could have sworn he was the soul of honesty!’

‘His appearance is rather prepossessing,’ admitted Mr. Gatherall, ‘and he knows how to make the best of it; but don't trust him any further than you can see him, is my advice.’

‘If any one but you had said it, I wouldn't have listened to a word against him!’ exclaimed Mr. Langridge, with indignation. ‘I had taken a great fancy to him. I was going to find him a good place. You know what a friend of mine Palmer was; well, this Randall nursed him all through his last illness like his own son.’

‘Oh yes, yes.’ Mr. Gatherall laughed softly. ‘Your friend hadn't a son of his own. He was reputed to be rich. Human nature! My dear Mr. Langridge, it is wonderful in its artifices. My profession gives me some insight into it. I think I may say I know something of human nature.’

‘You ought to, anyway, by this time,’ bluntly answered the farmer. ‘But don't you judge too harshly?’

‘I should be sorry to injure the young man’, calmly replied the lawyer. ‘If he were at all anxious to redeem his character I should be very happy to lend him a helping hand. But I'm afraid he is irreclaimable. His statements are more than improbable—they are palpably false, and such an imposture deserves to be exposed.’

‘Oh, don't let's do that!’ cried Mr. Langridge. ‘Don't mention it. I shan't breathe a word, and, of course, you won't.’

‘Certainly not,’ said Mr. Gatherall. He had mentioned it already as an instance of the depravity of human nature, but this trifling circumstance had escaped his memory.

‘Is there nothing to show that Palmer was not in the habit of paying him regularly?’ asked Mr. Langridge.

‘Nothing, On the contrary, there is evidence that he did pay him. There are entries in an account-book which was saved from the fire to prove that. The very last entry relates to one of those payments. He acknowledges that for the last three months he was paid up to the very week before Mr. Palmer's death, and that he had his wages regularly every week for nearly a year after he came into his employ. He claims for five or six months between the two periods, but he cannot give the exact dates. It is absurd to suppose that Mr. Palmer would have paid him week by week for nearly a year, and then suddenly discontinued such a sensible practice, only to begin it again shortly afterwards. It is at variance with all that we knew of him. I am sure you will remember that one of his most marked peculiarities was an exaggerated fear of being in any one's debt. This is the only claim on his estate; besides this he did not owe a penny when he died. He paid cash for everything, and all his labourers, no matter how many he might have, received their money regularly at the end of every week.’

‘You are quite right; he was very strict on that point. He never ran a bill in his life, I believe Well, I'm sorry for Randall. I liked him so much.’

‘It really does you credit, Mr. Langridge,’ said the lawyer, with great sweetness, ‘to feel in that way; but your charity is wasted on him.’

‘But don't you think the family ought to give him something after all?’ persisted Mr. Langridge. ‘It will look bad if they don't. No matter what he expected to get for it, he waited on a near relative of theirs, he sat up with him at nights, he hardly left him at other times, and he was with him when he died. I don't care what his motives were, he behaved well to my old friend, and, if no one else will, I'll make him a present out of my own pocket.’

‘Very good of you,’ said the amiable Gatherall. ‘If there were not such kind-hearted persons as yourself my dear sir, roguery couldn't thrive, and gentlemen like Mr. Randall would be obliged to live by honest hard labour instead of by their wits. What you say, however, is perfectly true; it would look better, as he really attended well to our friend, if some little present were made him—ten guineas or so; it might help to keep him out of the way of temptation till he finds a situation.’

‘Well, if you or Mrs. Palmer don't send something, I shall,’ said the farmer. ‘We don't know much of him, Mr. Gatherall; he mayn't be so black as he's painted, and worse men have lived down their faults.’

‘I should be glad to hear of his doing the same,’ said Mr. Gatherall; ‘but I can't hope for it. I know him better, I think. Ask Trevet, my brother-in-law, who had him as bookkeeper, and he will tell you enough. Trevet has never had another bookkeeper; he was satisfied with his one experience. And he told me that, only last year, a young lady, very handsome, and respectably dressed, came to him to ask after Randall. He, of course, thought it kindest to let her know the worst, and she went away in great distress. Stapleton, his partner, fancied she might be a sister, but that was impossible; Randall's only sister, Mrs. Moresby, was lost in the Cairngorm. But she was on her way to New Zealand to look after this scapegrace of the family, it is supposed. Who the other lady was, no one can guess. Some poor girl who thought better of him than he deserved, no doubt. He has brought disgrace on his relatives, and sorrow to all who cared for him, I'm afraid.’

‘Oh, if he really is a fellow of that kind,’ said Mr. Langridge, with a changed tone, ‘he deserves little enough from us. Still, he didn't look it.’

An elegantly-worded letter from Gatherall and Sampson informed Randall that his claim could not be allowed. They ventured to doubt that their late client had ever been indebted to him for such a sum as he mentioned. Mr. Gatherall had been kind enough to take special pains to investigate the matter thoroughly, and it was with deep sorrow he was constrained to state that he had found nothing which would tend to substantiate Randall's claim, but much evidence against it. Mr. Gatherall had been so kind that the letter was not only of his own wording, but in his own handwriting. It was not an ordinary lawyer's letter at all, but contained good advice, as well as some delicate references to past misfortunes, which he hoped his correspondent might now obliterate from the memory of all who had known and sorrowed over his faults, by walking soberly in the right path, and avoiding temptation to turn aside to ways that must infallibly end in tribulation.

There was an enclosure in the letter, a cheque of ten guineas, which Mr. Gatherall offered with a few mild and consolatory sentences, much as if he were applying a plaster to a wound of his own making. It was in return for those services to his esteemed friend and client, the late Mr. Palmer, which had not been paid for, and would prove to Randall that neither the family nor himself bore any ill-feeling towards him notwithstanding his conduct.

Mr. Gatherall wrote this in all sincerity. He was sincere also in the hope which he expressed to his partner that the faulty person for whom his kindly exhortations were intended might be affected by them. And though it was not of the kind de- sireddesired by Mr. Gatherall, they certainly had a powerful effect on him.

He read the letter with an angry flush on his face. Years afterwards he could have repeated the closing sentences. The pharisaical moralising, the doubt cast upon his truthfulness, the half-veiled allusions to a fault which had marred his life, burnt like an insult into his mind. The present that was cast to him rather than offered, because, as only too plainly appeared, it was the proper thing to do, he only touched to transfer it from one envelope to another. Mr. Gatherall need not have hesitated to offer it; Mrs. Palmer need not have grudged it—it was coming back to them.

The note in reply caused amazement and indignation in the office of Gatherall and Sampson. The amazement was on the part of the chief clerk, who could not understand such foolishness as the rejection of a cheque; the indignation was aroused in Mr. Gatherall's breast, who was shocked at the ingratitude revealed to him by this new development of human nature. He read the letter to his partner, and demanded to know what he thought of it. Now, getting a thought from Mr. Sampson was like drawing water out of a very deep well. He was a quiet man, who spoke little and did less, and as he went through the world peaceably and harmed no one, he was credited with possessing all the unobtrusive virtues which were not claimed by Mr. Gatherall. Not that Gatherall was thought inferior to him in moral worth: it could hardly be so, when his conversation dwelt so much on doing good and eschewing evil, that most persons believed he never did wrong, except when he mistook it for right. Mr. Sampson pondered for a while, and then made the following wise remark, ‘He must have been very angry when he wrote that.’

‘Angry!’ said Mr. Gatherall, with an aggrieved air. ‘What right has he to be angry? He's an unreasonable, hot-headed fellow.’

‘Proud—very proud,’ murmured Mr. Sampson to himself, taking up the letter, and noticing with what a firm hand it had been written. He studied it for some time; and then said, with slow gravity, ‘If I were you, Gatherall, I would not advise except in the way of business.’

Mr. Gatherall sulkily intimated that it was the last time he should cast his pearls away so recklessly. ‘As he throws my kindness in my face,’ he said, ‘I think I'm justified in leaving him to his own devices. I shall tell Langridge of this.’

He lost no time in doing so, and the worthy farmer was surprised and disappointed.

‘Won't have it, do you say? What did you say to him?’

‘Rather ask what he said to me’, answered Mr. Gatherall, with a little laugh. ‘I should call his letter insulting in its very politeness. Just notice the haughty way in which he thanks me for the interest I have taken in his affairs, and for the cheque which he begs I will allow him to return to me.’

‘Yes, it's cool and cutting,’ said Mr. Langridge, not without some satisfaction in the thought that Gatherall had been smartly answered. ‘Upon my word, he seems to have the upper hand of you in correspondence. But you're right, there's no good to be done with him—better leave him alone.’

Chapter X. ‘O world, thy slipp'ry turns! Fallen on evil days and evil tongues; In darkness, and with dangers compassed round And solitude.'

Milton.

Randall was left alone after this—very much alone. He had no friends in the town, and no occupation beyond that most wearying one of seeking for work, and the yet more dispiriting one of sitting down in his narrow little room at night to consider the question of ways and means. A very serious question for him just then. Though he watched jealously over every coin, his little wealth was slipping from him too fast.

Those were hard times. There was little work and less money in the town. The results of overtrading and extravagance, the wise ones said. It was only a transitory depression; it would soon pass over. Just as there were periods of bad seasons and of sun-spots, so must one expect these recurring commercial panics; these days of an overstocked labour-market and exhausted capital. It was an ingenious theory which traced a connection between commotions in the sun and bad harvests, and again between these and increased activity of the Bankruptcy Court. It was diverting to study these things, and to propose remedies for such of them as admitted of a remedy. But while political economists reason about labour and capital, and the laws of supply and demand, the people very frequently starve.

Let those who have known it tell how heart-sickening it is to wait from day to day for the chance which at last falls to another; to pace the wildering streets up and down; to watch the advertisements with eager eye; to answer them, only to be met with cold disapproval, or the news that some one has been before you. To wander through a city, and feel yourself homeless in the midst of homes; to watch the ships sailing out into the pale, glittering sea, and, with a fierce envy of those on board, to wish that they might bear you away also; to look down on the river flowing onward, and to think (for in such a time temptation finds its way to the heart) of the cold stealing wave of silence and of rest. And how it is with those who endure all this, and how in all cities, their cry is always going up, cither to the brilliant sky of day, or to the changeless stars at night, no one can know or tell.

Part of this bitter lesson Randall was learning now. It was not at the worst with him yet: he had not lost all hope, though he had had many rebuffs. When he applied for a situation and found himself too late, it did not console him to know that fifty others, many of them, perhaps, better fitted for the place than himself, had also been turned away. It was rather disheartening than otherwise: it showed him how hard it would be to make way in the face of such competition. Who could hire all those who stood daily waiting in the streets, who answered every advertisement in crowds, who besieged the doors of those who had places in their gift, and who may be excused for growing importunate, when we consider that for long ages no raiment nor shoes have been known which do not wax old, and no manna, alas! has fallen from the skies.

However, Randall continued to abide at Mrs. Sherlock's, and regularly went forth in search of employment, not allowing himself to despair. The other lodgers wondered what work he had which seemed to harass him so much, and from which he came back at night looking so pale and depressed. Mrs. Sherlock praised the regularity of his habits, and also liked the manner in which he agreed with her observations (absent-mindedly though it was), and ate of what she gave him, not seeming to care what it was, or how it had been cooked. An invaluable quality this in a lodger, who ought to have the digestion of an ostrich. Other people were given to complaining whenever there was a failure in the cookery. Mr. Borage especially made her miserable with his dyspeptic fancies. She began to pay great attention to Randall, which made Mr. Borage jealous. She began to be curious about her new lodger.

‘I wonder what he does all day,’ she said. ‘James, do you know?’

‘I don't think he does anything,’ said her son.

‘Not anything! How can he live?’

‘Well, I've seen him, and so have others, in all kinds of places about the town, as if he wanted to explore it, and at times when, if he had any work, he wouldn't be walking about. He walks on the wharf sometimes, and he often goes to the library to read.’

‘He may have enough to keep him,’ conjectured Mrs. Sherlock; ‘but he always looks so fagged when he comes in, as if he'd been working hard all day.’

‘Perhaps he's like Borage, tired of doing nothing,’ said James.

The thin, elongated figure of Mr. Borage had just cast a shadow on the blind. He was walking on the verandah and smoking: it was the only place where he was allowed to smoke. So far as he was concerned, the whole house seemed to be full of restrictions. Mrs. Sherlock regulated every action of his daily life, and would not allow him to turn to the right or the left from the way she laid down. Since Randall had come he had been worse used than ever. He accounted for this by concluding that Mrs. Sherlock could only behave well to one person at a time. However, he liked the new lodger himself: he could talk to him, even about his ailments, without being snubbed or laughed at, as he often was by the others. He got into the habit of talking with Randall every evening, and an odd kind of fellowship sprang up between them, as sometimes will between persons who have nothing in common, but are so much thrown together that they must needs be friends.

Mr. Borage watched for Randall that evening, and greeted him with the remark that he had been very unwell all day.

‘I have had a splitting headache,’ he said, ‘and Mrs. Sherlock is so inconsiderate; the house has been noisier than ever, though I begged them not to slam the doors and—Gallop up and down the stairs.’

Mr. Borage always spoke in a weak, tremulous voice, and occasionally his breath would fail him in the middle of a sentence. The next word after the pause, however, would be brought out with such emphasis as may best be represented by a capital letter. He continued the recital of his afflictions to Randall when they were seated at the dinner-table. Generally speaking, the whole household dined together; it was more sociable and homelike, Mrs. Sherlock said. Lodgers who desired private meals were not in favour with that excellent woman, and her scale of charges testified to this fact. While Mr. Borage talked of his ailments, therefore, Sherlock talked politics—a subject he professed to understand—James talked of a debating class he attended, and two or three boarders who were in the commercial way exchanged quotations from trade journals, and remarked on the last great failures, the reported shakiness of certain well-known firms, and other thrilling news of the day.

‘It isn't only the loss of sleep,’ Mr. Borage said, appealing to any one who might be able to hear him, ‘it's the strange sensation I often have as if something was—Wrong here’—touching his forehead. ‘Something like—Buzzing and bubbling in the head, and a—Dizziness, and a feeling as if I could lie down and—die at once.’

‘It's your ideas bubbling up,’ said James. Mrs. Sherlock gave a little sniff of contempt, and murmured, Indigestion.’

‘Do you ever feel like that?’ plaintively inquired Mr. Borage of Randall. ‘Never? Every one tells me so. Mine must be a peculiar case. It can't be indigestion, you know, for I've tried every kind of diet, and it's always the same. I've lived on a vegetable, a farinaceous, and a—Milk diet in turns, and it never alters; the—Buzzing in my head, and the want of strength, and the loss of sleep, and no—Appetite. I never have any. I've none now. Thank you, Mrs. Sherlock, that beefsteak pie looks so nice, and is so—Wholesome, I think I could take a little, a very little.’

‘It might have something to do with that buzzing and bubbling you complain of,’ said Mrs. Sherlock, helping him to a piece which could only be called a little one in a Pickwickian sense.

‘I'm astonished at the perfidy of the government!’ cried Mr. Sherlock. ‘If I was young like you, James, or perhaps that's rather too young—about your age, Mr. Randall, I'd offer myself to some constitooency. They want new men in the House; they're worn out, a used-up lot of politicians. They go on feathering their own nests, and laying on taxes till we're ground down with them. And we've a queer lot in the Ministry now, as queer as could be scraped together.’

‘I don't think it matters who's in or out,’ said Mrs. Sherlock. ‘They're all alike, ready to promise great things when they're out, but it's for themselves they do them when they get in.’

‘True enough, for this Government,’ assented Sherlock. ‘There's the Premier, now. If he has a conscience he ought to remember how he was promising and promising away at this time last year. Doesn't it strike you, Mr. Randall, that there's a mighty difference between what he's promised and what he's done?’

‘I thought there was always a great difference between promise and performance in politics,’ said Randall.

‘They say he's ill now,’ continued Sherlock, ‘and no wonder. Sitting up all night, bothering with meetings, deputations, caucuses, and such like; speechifying, argeying, and exciting himself for three months at a time must make a man rather weakly.’

‘Nothing like loss of sleep for doing harm to the constitution,’ observed Mr. Borage, taking advantage of a gap in the conversation. ‘I wouldn't mind about other things if I could only—Sleep. Oh, Mrs. Sherlock! what would I not give for it? We don't half value that precious gift as we ought.’

‘One would think so indeed,’ said the lady, ‘by the way people lie in bed in the morning. One would think it was precious to them.’

‘If you mean me, Mrs. Sherlock,’ said Borage, raising his voice a little, ‘I've often told you I never do get any sleep till about the time other people wake. To force me to rise early would deprive me of that little rest, and would end in destroying my—Reason. I would give all I have, if I could only—Sleep as you do.’

‘As I do, Mr. Borage! My patience! What with sitting up late to finish work, and getting up at the peep of day to begin it again, I can tell you I don't get much sleep. Sherlock there and James May.’

‘Oh, come now, don't turn on us,’ said James.

‘I'm sure, Martha, we get up pretty early,’ said Sherlock meekly.

‘You have no experience in these things?’ inquired Mr. Borage of Randall.

‘I am happy to say that I haven't,’ said Randall. ‘I don't suffer from buzzing and bubbling in the head, nor from want of appetite, nor am I unable to sleep at night.’

‘You are to be—Envied,’ said Mr. Borage very faintly. He subsided into silence after this, his mind being occupied with the composition of a letter. Writing and composition fatigued and depressed Mr. Borage very much, and yet, being a dutiful son, he wrote home by almost every mail, and laboured over his fortnightly or monthly budget of news with praiseworthy industry. This evening he wrote his letter in Randall's room, because he had fallen into the habit of spending much of his time with him, and also because he was weak in spelling, and wanted assistance very often. He had formerly depended on James for such aid, and through that person's treachery, his letters had been masterpieces in the way of phonetic spelling. He had soon found, however, that James was not a safe guide, and had trusted to the dictionary until the coming of Randall, whom he had hailed with delight as a much more convenient instructor than a big and heavy volume, in consulting which, moreover, he was almost sure to be overtaken by a complete forgetfulness of the right sequence of the letters of the alphabet.

‘You're certain there's a double r in irretrievable?’ he asked, slowly plodding on in the schoolboy's big round hand which was still the only one that flowed easily from his pen. ‘Whatever did I use such a long word for? it covers half the line. How do you manage to write so small? Dear me! I've dated it the 18th, and it's only the 8th; perhaps it doesn't matter, though. Am I in your way here? do I—Bore you?’

This was a question which Mr. Borage's fellow-lodgers had long ago decided by averring that he must bore Randall ‘frightfully.’ However, Randall answered truthfully when he said, ‘Bore me? Not at all. I am glad of your company.’

‘I'm glad you say so,’ went on Mr. Borage, as he signed his name with a queer little flourish, ‘for I should like to be your—Friend.’

‘My friend!’ Randall was startled into smiling at the naiveté of his companion, and then touched at the thought of one who had asked for his friendship in almost the same words. ‘There is nothing to be gained, and no pleasure in being my friend,’ he added, with some bitterness.

‘Oh; but one doesn't think of that,’ said Mr. Borage, with mild reproach that Randall felt was deserved. ‘It is so pleasant to talk with you; you are not like the others; they don't care to listen to a word from me.’

Randall felt yet more ashamed of himself at this, recollecting how half the time he had not listened to poor Borage at all.

‘I want to ask you,’ said Mr. Borage, coming to the point, as such simple souls will, with marvellous directness, ‘what it is that troubles you. You oughtn't to look so wretched.’

‘Am I so wretched?’ said Randall, with a laugh that sounded rather forced.

‘Oh, you talk and laugh like the rest; you laugh at me now; but I've noticed—I do notice things sometimes, though I've been called stupid and dull ever since I can remember. You don't look happy when you sit alone, thinking by yourself, and often I see your face change all at once as if something that vexed you had come into your mind; and you're restless—you can't stay long in one place. I know you're troubled about something. I wonder how you can keep it to yourself; I never could when anything was wrong. Now, if you would tell me, perhaps I could—Do something,’ concluded Mr. Borage, quite out of breath, and with his eyes so well employed in watching Randall's face that it was impossible for him to see what ruin had been wrought with his yet unblotted letter by his coat cuff.

‘I don't think you're either stupid or dull, whatever people may call you. I call you a good, kind-hearted fellow.’ Poor Mr. Borage was so unused to praise that he actually coloured with pleasure. ‘And I think you've been very clever to have made such discoveries—quicker in taking notice of a mere acquaintance than I should have been, I'm afraid.’

‘Well, you needn't deny it, you know,’ said Mr. Borage, ‘for I don't want to ask about anything you don't want to tell, or meddle with your—Business. Only I know it is so, and I should like to be of some use; I'm tired of doing nothing.’

‘You are very good; but I've nothing to tell you—nothing worth telling, at least. I have no troubles that I can talk about.’

Mr. Borage looked frightened at this; but he was reassured by a glance at Randall's face, which did not seem unfriendly. ‘Have you tried at Mr. Wainright's?’ he timidly whispered rather than spoke ‘He is a relative of mine, and I know he wants some one. If you went there to-morrow, and if I wrote to him—’

Mr. Borage did not finish the sentence; he got out of the room in a hurry, afraid lest he should be thanked.

Randall went to Mr. Wainright's the next day. It was a fruitless errand. Here, as well as in other places, he felt as if some evil whisper had preceded him. He saw, or fancied he saw—it was much the same to the poor fellow—the countenance of each person to whom he applied change as soon as he pronounced his name. What was it they knew of him? who had told them? Had some secret league been formed to prevent him from ever again filling a position of trust? However it might be, those whom he called upon seemed to be divided into two classes—those who for various reasons assigned would none of him, and those who, as evil fortune ordained, had just suited themselves with some one else.

At last he was ashamed to ask—beg, he fiercely called it to himself—of them any longer. He was so overpowered by a nervous fear of being turned away—a fear which was always realised—that it was torture to him to make an application. He sickened of pacing the streets, and going in and out of the stores and offices on the same old and useless errand. He even became so unlike his own self that he shrunk away from meeting men who might know him; it seemed to him that they all knew some ill of him; that he was indeed now and for ever a castaway.

The days wound their long length along. The summer was passing away, a summer that he would have felt to be a glorious succession of brilliant days and starlit peaceful nights, had he been in the country. In the pent-up town it was a misery of dust and heat and glare, with unwholesome vaporous darkness after the fiery sun had withdrawn itself. But, he told himself, it was nearly over. What might become of him he did not know; but he could not remain where he was any longer. He said goodbye to Mrs. Sherlock, thanking her for her special acts of kindness, which had not been a few. Sherlock regretted the loss of a person to whom he could talk politics, and Mr. Borage was so distressed that he really had no appetite, and lost all his sleep for one night.

His vanished friend found a humbler lodging before that night—a little room in a more obscure part of the town than that in which Mrs. Sherlock's house had its place. All he wanted was a shelter for the night: the surroundings were such that his first effort after the appearance of daylight was to get away from them. He was supposed by the slatternly woman who let him the room to provide himself with meals in some other quarter. Sometimes he did; sometimes he went without them.

It has often been remarked that a man can live on very little when he tries. Some benevolent persons, chiefly of the kind who have much time and little work on their hands, have experimented on themselves in this matter for the instruction of the race, and have attained to a surprising height in the bleak regions of abstinence and self-denial; but they have seldom done themselves much harm by their experiments. There have been people who have fasted most devoutly, and thereby have brought themselves into a thin and meagre habit of mind as well as body; and there have been some who have found their long-continued fastings very profitable, and who may really, if it does not sound too paradoxical, have starved for a sustenance. But, as a rule, mankind show a decided preference for feasts over fasts, and instances of deliberate starvation are generally resolved, when examined, into deliberate shams. There is this difference, moreover, between voluntary and compulsory starvation, that the former can always be ended at the pleasure of the silly person who is trying it, while the latter may be prolonged just a little too far. Death has an inconvenient way of stepping in, and cutting short these attempts to live on air, before the appetite is sufficiently well-educated.

It was not long before Randall had experimented sufficiently in this direction to show him that he could not go much farther. Afterwards he wondered how he had lived during the time. He was sometimes startled by a sight of his haggard face; he was miserable enough now, both in feelings and appearance, to have satisfied the sourest of disciplinarians. Very often he walked out of the town to a place where there were trees and shady paths amongst them, where he could aimlessly wander about unobserved. He was driven away from this retreat by meeting others who were in much worse case than himself. Some of them, poor wretches, were denizens of the place; they slept there in little huts, rude as those of savages, which they built for themselves under the trees, and starved quietly in the shade during the day that they might not offend the eyes of respectability, or be hunted about by the police, who are especially vigilant in such cases. Sharp as was his own distress, he could not endure the sight of theirs, knowing that he was unable to relieve it. Oh, you who shut up your hearts so tightly, and make your hoards for yourselves alone, if you only knew how the poor suffer because they have nothing to give but their pity!

He had his violin yet. Fortunately he had brought it away with him when he left Palmer's, and so it had been saved from the fire. It was his solace now. Often, when he was playing it in some quiet spot away from the town, he forgot everything in its music—his misfortunes, his want, and the dark future towards which, in spite of all his efforts, he seemed to be hurrying. Sometimes, all unknown to himself, he had an audience. One day it was a band of school-children who quietly stole round him to listen, and spoke in whispers, afraid lest he should break off before the tune was finished. He played for them a long while after he had found out they were near him: he could not help being pleased by their shy, unfeigned approbation; better pleased perhaps than he would have been by the praise of grown men and women, very capable of judging, and very conscious of their own capability.

Another time he was surprised by a picnic party who kindly pressed him to make himself their friend for the day, and when it was over seemed unwilling to part from him, they had been so surprised and charmed by his playing. One of the party, a mild-looking old gentleman, quiet in manner and slow of speech, was almost affectionate to Randall. He praised his playing, thanked him warmly for the pleasure it had been to him, and asked to look at the violin. He held it for a moment in silence—a kind of silent ecstasy—and returned it to Randall without a word. But in that moment he had made a vow that he would have it for his own. No matter how many virtues he had had before, they were all obscured by the gigantic growth of one vice, that of covetousness. Collectors and connoisseurs of things lovely, quaint, or rare, that they delight in, cannot well help being covetous; indeed, most of them have the malady in a chronic form. This old gentleman, who for years had longed to have just such an old violin as Randall's, was really a very honest, good-natured sort of person, and in the ordinary affairs of life would not have wronged his greatest enemy. But this was not an ordinary affair; it was something decidedly uncommon, and therefore he was prepared to strain a point. It is wonderful how virtuous we are in common things, and how easily a new-fangled temptation trips us up, just as a man of weak principle may conscientiously refrain from stealing pence, but not hesitate to abscond with a bag of sovereigns.

The old gentleman, however, had no thought of such a vulgar thing as theft. He intended to buy the violin, and to buy it cheaply. He took some pains to find out where Randall lodged, and at the same time discovered that he was poor and out of employment. Then he harassed and importuned him almost every day.

‘Name your price,’ he said, after, on three several occasions, he had offered five, fifteen, and twenty pounds, and had been refused.

‘It has no price,’ said Randall.

‘Do you mean to say you won't part with it?’

‘If I could have parted with it I shouldn't have it now.’

‘Come! I know your circumstances,’ said the gentleman brusquely. ‘It may be a matter of sentiment with you, but hard cash would be more useful in your present condition. Far better take a fair price than be obliged to borrow on it; perhaps pledge and lose it for a few shillings.’

‘Borrow on it!’ exclaimed Randall, almost fiercely. Then he checked himself, and asked, with apparent calmness, ‘What do you call a fair price?’

‘What do you say to thirty pounds?’ returned the other, flattering himself that there was now some hope of a bargain.

‘Do you think I don't know its value?’ said Randall, with a short laugh. ‘Try to buy a violin by this maker for thirty pounds in London, or in any city of Europe.’

‘We are not in Europe, and that makes all the difference. My good fellow, it's not worth thirty shillings in this market. Try to sell it: not one man in a hundred would bid for it. You might wait years for such an offer as mine.’

‘Let me ask you, sir,’ returned the owner of the violin, laying his hand upon it, ‘if this were yours; if it had been your father's, and for a century had been handed down in your family from father to son; and if also it had been your companion for years,—all that you had to call your own, and had been set aside always as a thing that must be kept, whatever else might go,—could you sell it?’

‘If I were as hard-pushed as you seem to be, I should,’ said the elderly gentleman. ‘I suppose’—he was losing, his temper—‘you're one of the “unemployed,” who write pathetic letters to the papers about their sufferings. Why, man, that ring of yours would be better sold to buy you meat and drink. You're starving yourself, can't I see it in your face? and here you sit with a hundred guinea ring on your finger, and a violin by you worth five or six times—’ He ceased; he was really too incautious.

‘If my violin is worth five or six hundred, why do you offer me thirty pounds as a fair price? What has it to do with you—with any one—if I choose to starve myself rather than sell or pawn all the inheritance I had from my father?’

‘Well, I don't want to be hard. Take fifty. I have the money with me.’

‘No! Not for fifty times fifty. I have been in difficulties before, but I kept it through them all, and I'll keep it now.’

‘Very well,’ said the other, in a tone of resignation. ‘You may be brought to your senses. The money shall be yours whenever you like to bring the violin to me.’

He went; but the thoughts he had suggested did not take their departure also. That innocent violin had a voice now that spoke plainly at intervals, Fifty pounds—fifty pounds. Good heavens! what was not fifty pounds? Wealth, plenty, a fortune to the man who sat and thought, because he had nothing else to do, and looked from one to the other of the two things which represented his personal property A violin and a ring. One morning he took the ring, and went out into the street. He walked some distance, then suddenly turned back, as if a gulf had opened between him and the shop he was about to enter. What had stopped him? Only a vision, which he saw as distinctly as the people who jostled past him saw the dusty crowded thoroughfare and the lines of buildings. A face, something like his own, but white and cold, and a hand on which a ring shone brightly. He remembered how, in the silence round a death-bed, his mother had put that ring upon his own hand. He could not pawn it.

Hurriedly he returned to his lodgings, and packed up the violin and the ring also as carefully as he could. It was the day of the week on which country-people brought their farm produce into town. After some search he found a settler who lived near to Mr. Bailey, and who readily promised to leave the package containing the violin at the latter person's house, and to tell him that it was to remain there until the owner should call or send for it. Randall saw it placed in the settler's heavy clattering dray, and felt relieved; he had put one temptation beyond him. He was almost light-hearted, and yet, as surely as man has ever done, he had burnt his ships. Now indeed he was alone with Want, or Famine he might call that haggard-eyed creature whose arm was linked in his.

The violin could hardly have reached its destined place of refuge when a letter came from the man who coveted it so ardently, making an offer for it of a hundred pounds. Randall burnt the letter, but he thought he saw the three figures of the price, written in white flame, long after the other characters had vanished.

Later in the day he went out again, to look for what he had been so often disappointed of that he would have been surprised if he had found it. It was the same everywhere—no one wanted him, or anything that he could do. But, on his way through the streets, he noticed a window in which some water-colour drawings, poor and washy in colour, and by no means faultless in outline, were exhibited for sale. They were marked at three guineas each, which, if execution were considered, was quite enough. ‘Three guineas!’ he thought, with a smile, as he could not but observe the blotchiness of the paint, and the slovenly manner in which it has been dabbed on, the scraggy trees, with puny stems smaller than their branches, the muddy water, and the sky not of cerulean hue. ‘In one day I have painted a better finished picture than that. I have most of mine yet, whatever else has gone. Still, seeing them here is no proof that they are saleable. The artist may be like me, a man whose work no one will buy.’

He went into the shop and asked if any pictures had been sold by the artist who had painted those in the window. The dealer answered that he had sold numberless pictures for the same gentleman, and another artist who was in the shop volunteered extra information about him. He was an artist of repute, he declared; every one admired, many imitated his paintings. To be sure, they were not in the common showy style that caught the eye of people who, like children, admired bright colouring; but they appealed to the sympathies of those who worshipped art in its purest form.

‘But they are not like the places,’ said Randall; which objection caused the gentleman to smile pityingly upon him.

‘Certainly not,’ he said. ‘In an artist we look for something more than a mere copyist. Any man with a camera can be that.’

‘Then why put on the picture, “A view of such and such a place,”’ said Randall. ‘Why not tell the truth, and say, “An imaginary landscape,” or a “Sketch from Nature, slightly altered by myself?”’

Mr. Rollo—so the dealer addressed him—looked shocked at Randall's audacity; but he proceeded to say, ‘An artist sees a place differently from the ordinary class of people. He recognises a thousand beautiful tints in the sea, the sky, the luxuriant foliage and verdure of this country, which are never noticed by the purblind gaze of the uneducated eye.’

Randall did not presume to answer this extra-ordinary speech; but he wondered why the artist under discussion, if he could see those thousand tints, had not put them in, since his picture was an arrangement in faded blue and the sickliest of ‘æsthetic’ greens.

‘Are you a painter?’ asked Mr. Rollo, jumping to the conclusion that the pale and worn appearance of the stranger must have resulted from excessive devotion to the brush and easel.

‘I have painted a little,’ said Randall.

‘A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,’ said Mr. Rollo conclusively. He went out, after ordering a frame for a painting he had nearly finished: a square yard of landscape that defied nature, and also defied man in some representations of the human form divine which had been inserted in the foreground.

Randall brought some of his paintings to the shop, and the dealer was complaisant enough to put one of them in the window amongst the works of the artist whom Mr. Rollo had so warmly praised. How long it remained in that window, or whether it ever got out of it again, cannot be said, for the reason that no one except the picture-dealer, or perhaps Mr. Rollo, ever knew what became of it. When Randall called to inquire into its fate he was informed that Mr. Rollo had been in several times—the fact was, he almost lived in the shop, when he was not dabbling in paint at home. He had complained each time that his eyes were pained by the sight of Randall's picture. There was a vulgar reality about it which no artist could endure; it was too commonplace. He had the presumption, this young artist, to daub in his own manner, instead of following the time-honoured traditions which had regulated Mr. Rollo's daubing ever since the happy day on which he had first handled the brush. Mr. Rollo, had finally warned his friend, the dealer, against encouraging bad art by displaying specimens of it in his window. A man could not gaze on a picture, and go his way, and be the same as he was before. That was impossible. Had not Ruskin, whom Mr. Rollo worshipped from afar, and over whose books he beat his poor brains into a state of bewilderment—had not Ruskin said that it was unadvisable, nay, dangerous to look at bad pictures? There was enough in that little square of fifteen inches to lower the taste of any one who might incautiously stop to look at it, and to utterly destroy artistic feeling in him who was lost enough to buy it, bear it away to his own home, and hang it up in his room.

No; it would not sell, so Randall left it altogether to the tender mercies of the dealer and Mr. Rollo. Neither would anything else sell. He received this announcement in an apathetic sort of way. His only thought now was to be out of the throng and ceaseless noise of the town. He took the way that led him through the place which has been mentioned before—the lurking-place of miserable outcasts, to whom hunger was a common thing, who perhaps had forgotten what happiness was like, they had not known it for so long, and yet who lived on, in some awful manner, from day to day; how, one cannot even imagine.

One of these met him in a turning of the path, where it was dark under the trees, and grasped his arm so tightly that Randall felt the chill of his bony hand through his coat sleeve. ‘What! you need not rob me,’ he said, with a smile, the strangeness of which on a white, set face appalled the man more then a desperate resistance would have done. ‘take it,’ and he gave him a coin — it was his last. The man held in his palm for a moment, looking at it, and then, shivering in his rags, faint, half mad with hunger, he burst into tears. ‘No, not from you,’ the poor wretch sobbed, ‘for the Lird knows you're bad enough yourself. I didn't see at first, or I wouldn't have touched you, I swear I wouldn't! No, no, I can do awhile yet; I'm better used to this than you.'

‘Keep it,’ the other replied laconically, and went on his way.

He walked on asn on, until the roads was hemmed in by green fields, and the soft fresh breezes of the open country blew in his face. It grew late; but there was o need for him to hasten back again. No one waiting for him in the distant town; no home from which he would be missed. Why would the picuture of a long-lost home, fair and pleasant among the English lanes, rise before him? why would scenes in that old time pass before him so quickly? And what was that?—only a hot tear which fell upon his hand. He need not have been so much ashamed of it after all.

How delicious was the evening stillness here! There was no one else on the lonely road, which, he knew, after many miles of windings. led to the renges where the dark forest towered, and the clear streams rushed from the heifhts. Seldom was there any sound there but the murmuring of water gliding downwards, or falling into pools among the black rocks, under arches and canopies of ferns. There were places in those ravines where the sun could not have shone for ages. How dark there in the night-time; how gloomy and profoundly still always!

It might have been that his restless feet would have borne him to one of those darksome recesses in the forest, had they had the power. But at sunset he came to a bridge across a wide creek into which the tide was sluggishly flowing, and here he stopped to lean against the parapet, feeling dizzy and faint. The air seemed filled with the melancholy cries of the sea-birds feeding on the wide mud flats. Now and then a flock of curlew passed over his head, or a harsh-voiced cormorant flying low. These were his only companions in a solitary place, while he looked downwards at the black water that swirled through the openings of the bridge.

There was a footstep on the bridge. A hand touched him—a hand that felt cold and clammy on his wrist. He looked up, and saw Godfrey Palmer.

‘Aha! well met,’ was his greeting.

Randall turned partly away from him, and Mr. Godfrey Palmer's hand slipped off his arm like a limp mass of jelly rather than a thing of bone and muscle.

‘You have walked a long way to see a sluggish creek and its mud banks,’ he said, looking closely into Randall's face.

‘Yes, it is a long way, but one need not go back again,’ said Randall, answering his thought as much as the other's words.

‘And do you lodge with the birds of the air, then? They are flying away now, as the night and the tide are coming in together. Listen how it rushes under the bridge. This is an ugly place at night. I hate it, but something, I don't know what, brought me here. I have not been here since I came this way to John's. You were with him to the last?’

‘Yes.’

‘We are on the same level now. He didn't do anything for you, and he quite forgot me.’

‘No, not so. He spoke of you on the last day he lived. Almost his last words were of you.’

‘But what did he do for me? Of course I know he's told Everard to look after me—he would be sure to do that—but did he expect me to go there and ask for a maintenance? I never could get on with Everard, amiable as he is, and I don't think his brotherly affection is of a very ardent nature. You and I, old comrade, belong to those who are not particularly prized by thier relatives.’

‘Do you class yourself with me?’

‘Ay, that I do, though you may draw yourself away so haughtily. What's the difference between us? Do you think you have some little shred of reputation left yet, some atom of self-respect? Others don't believe in it. What's the use of merit or honesty no one believes in? What's the good of anything which is not marketable? Pooh, don't you know that in this world it's those who seem to be what they are not who get on, that hypocrites flourish while saints starve? Yes! we are poor creatures,’ he continued, laughing as if the idea were mirthful, ‘we who were such prodigies of talent in our youth. Did they tell you?—they told me—that there was a brilliant future for that talent. Were you praised as I was, were you encouraged as I was, were you set in places, only to let yourself drop out of them? What have we now, we the clever ones, who passed our dull plodding school fellows so quickly? We are grovelling here—yes, we! I will class myself with you yet—while the dull fellows we despised have risen high above us.’

He stopped, and there was silence for several minutes. ‘It is strange that I should talk to you like this,’ he resumed, in an altered tone, ‘and that we should stand here together, looking down into the stream. There's a fascination in that; have you ever felt it? Some have stood in such places, and looked and looked, till, as if a hand had beckoned to them, they have flung themselves into the water. Don't look like that, though it seems so cool and still down there, doesn't it?’

There was no assent from the one who listened, but he still leaned on the parapet of the bridge, and his eyes were downcast.

‘Ah,’ said the other one, and his voice—which, however false and evil its words might be, was always singularly musical in its tones—stole like the whisper of a tempter on the ear, ‘and they call that wicked, the respectable people, taking matters into one's own hands, and ending all this coil with one plunge. They only know one side of life: they never see the black depths such unfortunates as ourselves look into every day. And others call it cowardly; but there are many who have done it, there are many who will. We did not choose to live, may we not choose to die? Are there not those who long for death, and dig for it as for hidden treasures? I have read those words or heard them somewhere; they are very true. And it does not come. It takes others, though; do you not know? It takes all those you would keep; for those who are good, and would have done you good, always die young.

There was some response from his companion this time, though only a muttered word.

‘I wonder,’ went on the low voice that was so clear and distinct, pursuing the same fearful thought, ‘I wonder how it would be. We can never know from those who have tried it. Would one go down at once without a struggle, without a cry? or would the chill of the water creeping round one—ugly black water like this—rouse one to make some effort to try to save oneself? But it couldn't last long, and then there would be silence down there, and forgetfulness, and an end of everything.’

‘But afterwards?’ suddenly spoke the other, raising his head.

‘Is it the Day after Death you mean?’ said Godfrey Palmer. ‘What if there be no day after death?’—and his voice sank to a whisper. ‘What then is the worth of existence such as this?’

‘It was never promised us that we should be happy, I suppose.’

‘True, but we are fools enough to expect it. But perhaps,’ and his tone changed, ‘life is so pleasant that you love it. It is so easy, so cheering and prosperous that you would be loath to part from it. How men love life! how patiently they cling to it through all kinds of wretchedness, hoping for something it never brings!’

‘Were you sent here to torment me?’ passionately exclaimed the other, who had listened so long out of utter exhaustion and weariness. ‘Why do you whisper your horrible thoughts into my ear? Keep off!’ Mr. Godfrey Palmer recoiled; his companion looked dangerous. ‘What you speak of is cowardly—cowardly enough. What does it mean but that a man is afraid of the future because of a few troubles and disappointments he has had? Why, even one who like you believed in nothing might at least have courage enough to try to change what could be altered, and to bear with what he couldn't help. Perhaps there is no imaginable misfortune or suffering which some one has not borne with to the end. Are you content to be outdone by others? I am not. What another has endured, I can.’

‘Don't waste your strength in haranguing me responded Mr. Godfrey Palmer. ‘I admire your spirit, though; there's more left in you than I thought. I really hope you may get through.’

‘I shall get through!’ said the other, still excited. ‘It will not always be like this.’

‘A sanguine temperament is a great blessing. You may live on it in an emergency. Good-night. You shall have your wish, and be left to yourself in a place where I would not care to stand alone after nightfall, when strange thoughts come with the darkness into one's mind.’

He turned and went across the bridge. In the oppressive stillness the regular tramp of his feet sounded loud, even from the road on the other side of the creek. The night came on, with its misty darkness and its myriad stars. Slowly the tide flowed in till all the marshy flats were covered. From the east the clouds rolled back, like a heavy purple curtain raised before the moon. Into the clear space she rose, higher and higher, to thread her path across the dome of the sky. There was her image in the stream; there also was the tremulous glimmer of a star reflected from above. Stiller now—lonelier than ever on the bridge. From the wind not a whisper; on the water scarce a ripple. Silence breathless and profound falls on the darkened landscape: it is the time of rest for half a world. Oh, mild and calm and gracious hour! whose solemn beauty rebukes the passions and strivings of the day; in whose stillness unknown voices speak to strengthen and console; in whose deep repose misery forgets itself, and eyes worn with weeping are healed with the balm of sleep.

‘O holy Night! from thee I learn to bear What man has borne before: Thou lay'st they finger on the lips of Care, And they complain no more.’

Chapter XI. ‘Tell me, sad tree, why are thy branches bare, What hast thou done? To win strange winter from the summer air, Frost from the sun? ‘“Never,” replied that forest hermit lone (Old truth and endless!) “Never for evil done, but fortune flown, Are we left friendless. ‘“Yet wholly, nor for winter nor for storm, Doth love depart, We are not all forsaken, till the worm. Creeps to the heart!”’

Bulwer.

It was later on the same night, and Randall was slowly retracing his steps to the town. Suddenly, with a faint waft from the ghost of a breeze that occasionally stirred the trees on each side of the road, he heard the sound of voices and of wheels moving towards him.

The voices were two. One, which was clear and high, evidently belonged to a woman; the other was not so distinct; but both were loud enough at times to admit of his hearing most of the conversation. The voice of the lady was raised, first in complaining, and then in reproof. The gentleman's was employed in excusing himself or in disparaging the horse, which, on his part, seemed to be doing much as he liked. There was a stoppage about every twenty yards; and then there were caustic remarks from the lady, savage ones from the gentleman, and sounds of peaceful munching amongst the herbage by the way.

‘I thought you knew everything about managing horses, Mr. Borage,’ cried the lady.

‘So I do,’ replied her protector; ‘at least I could always manage my father's horses; but they were different from this one. I never saw a horse with so little—Go in him. Now, Mrs. Sherlock, for goodness’ sake don't twitch at the reins; two of us can't drive at once.’

‘I believe he's going to kick,’ said Mrs. Sherlock.

‘He'd better not!’ cried Mr. Borage. ‘But he can't—he hasn't enough spirit in him for that.’

‘I'm sick of this,’ said Mrs. Sherlock. ‘He's stopped at every little rise, and boggled at every bridge along the road. I'd have walked if I'd known, only I thought you were such a splendid driver.’

‘You seem to think I'm to blame, and not the horse,’ plaintively responded Mr. Borage. ‘Take the reins, if you please, I am going to get out and—Whip him.’

‘Now, now, don't be cruel,’ implored Mrs. Sherlock. ‘I believe they've pined him. He was grazing all the time we were there, and he's wanted to eat at every patch of grass and drink at every spring we've passed.’

The horse was eating then, and neither Mr. Borage nor Mrs. Sherlock could get his head up from the grass.

‘I'll lead him,’ announced Mr. Borage. ‘I'd sooner be out than in, with such a broken-down creature. Mrs. Sherlock, what on earth are you doing? you are turning right off the road.’

‘He will go there!’ said the landlady, in despair. ‘He wants to drink again, I believe.’

‘It's enough to drive one frantic!’ said Mr. Borage, who was just getting out when the horse executed this manœuvre. ‘Never mind, I've hold of his head; come on.’

Mrs. Sherlock thought it best to remind the horse that they had a whip, and, in consequence, he came on with such alacrity that Mr. Borage, fearing he would be trodden to the earth, let his head go. He went so well now that in a few seconds Mr. Borage was five hundred yards behind. Mrs. Sherlock adjured the horse with the most persuasive ‘whoas,’ and he stopped; most likely not in obedience to her, but because of some luxuriant grass, and also because there was a hill before him. Mr. Borage came up at a run, and in a violent temper.

‘This is the second time he's served me this trick!’ he exclaimed, inflicting punishment on the horse, which caused him to bear Mrs. Sherlock away at a gallop. Mr. Borage was on the step by this time, and he managed to retain his position and to flourish his whip over the horse, very seldom touching him, however.

This second advance on their homeward way brought them to Randall's position, where the horse stopped, and taking advantage of the state of fear and helplessness into which Mrs. Sherlock had lapsed, began to graze again with great serenity of mind. Mr. Borage, seeing some one on the road, jumped down determined to ask for assistance. At the same time, Mrs. Sherlock descended from her seat with wonderful activity, and with a smothered ejaculation which seemed to indicate that she was in an emotional state of mind. ‘Mr. Borage!’ she cried, ‘don't you know who it is?’

‘It's he!’ cried Mr. Borage, who was a conscientious grammarian, and adhered to all the rules of syntax he had learned in his boyhood.

‘It's part of him!’ said Mrs. Sherlock, with pathos. ‘He's a shadow, that's all. Mr. Randall, aren't you ashamed of yourself? It's not often people leave my house to go to other lodgings; at least, not the sort of people I care for. Where have you been hiding, and what have you done to yourself? You'd have been better off with us; I wonder why you would leave. Come, you shall tell me why.’

‘If you will be told, Mrs. Sherlock, I went away because if I had stayed any longer I could not have paid you.’

And you can look me in the face and tell me that! What do you take me for? asked the good woman, furtively wiping away a tear. ‘I suppose you think I'm one of those greedy boarding-house keepers—I know plenty of them, though I give no names—who'd turn a lodger into the streets, and seize all his poor bits of things if they were afraid they'd lose by him. Do I look like one of that sort?’

‘Not at all,’ interpolated Mr. Borage; but his feeble remark was lost in the torrent of Mrs. Sherlock's glowing words.

‘I haven't had, and Sherlock hasn't—and, my word! he'd better not have—such a thought. Oh, if you'd told us you were in trouble! I shouldn't have said, as some might, that you were to take yourself off with your troubles. It wouldn't have been the first time—ay, nor the second either—that I've given house-room without asking to be paid for it. Paid!’ she ended with scorn, ‘to think that I, who for the better part of sixty years have been trying to do my duty by my neighbour, should be suspected of giving nothing away without money for it.’

‘If it's—Money that is the question,’ said Mr. Borage, asserting himself while Mrs. Sherlock took breath. ‘I think you needn't have been afraid of asking me. I have more than is good for me. I am sure I should be—Better if some were taken from me.’

‘Oh, you needn't talk to him, Mr. Borage,’ said Mrs. Sherlock, reproachfully eyeing Randall. ‘He is too proud to let a friend do him a kindness.’

‘I hope not, Mrs. Sherlock,’ said Randall, at last getting a chance to speak. ‘I think I allowed you to do me many kindnesses when I was in your house. If I had imagined it would have hurt you, I should not have left as I did. I wish you wouldn't cry, either. I don't want any one to cry on my account.’

‘I'm sure your appearance is enough to make any one cry,’ said Mrs. Sherlock. ‘It was only by James happening to catch sight of you the other day that I found out you were in town yet. Then I knew something was amiss, and set him and Mr. Borage to find you, and we should have come to you to-morrow, if we hadn't luckily met with you to-night. And I've news for you—good news.’

‘You make me feel ashamed of myself,’ said Randall. ‘I had no need to think every one had forgotten me. You are very good—very kind—’ He stopped. He had been saved by these two friends; that was all he could feel or think of just then.

Mr. Borage's mild and plaintive voice was heard again. ‘I knew something was wrong when you went away. I wish you'd told me you were—Hard up. No one will let me do anything useful.’

‘You can be quiet at least, which is very useful sometimes,’ said Mrs. Sherlock, who, now that she was recovering her equanimity, felt able to domineer over her lodger as usual. ‘You talk too much; don't you see the excited and nervous state he's in?’

‘I talk too much!’ said Borage, stung by the injustice of this accusation. He knew that Mrs. Sherlock had uttered four words to every one of his.

‘Come, we're going home,’ said Mrs. Sherlock, holding Randall's arm, as if she were afraid he would run away. ‘You're going with us, Mr. Randall, whether you like it or not. Mr. Borage! how's this? Where's the horse?’

‘The horse! where—where?’ repeated Mr. Borage, staring wildly, but not perceiving the unfaithful animal referred to. ‘Why, he's gone on without us!’

‘This comes of carelessness,’ severely remarked Mrs. Sherlock. ‘You should have held him. Perhaps he's half-way to town by this—perhaps he's broken the buggy, and we shall have a fine bill for damages.’

‘I would rather pay heavy damages than drive him again,’ said Mr. Borage, with unusual decision.

To their joy they found the horse in the next hollow, luxuriating knee-deep in clover and rye-grass, and with his appendage, the buggy, jammed in the ditch. Mr. Borage declared they should never get it out. Fortunately, however, his wild gestures and threatening demeanour so intimidated the horse that, with a sudden start, he jerked the buggy on the road, putting forth all his strength for the first time that day. Mrs. Sherlock compelled Mr. Borage to give up the office of driver to Randall, and nothing loath to do so, he modestly took a back seat.

They drove through moonlit lanes, where the dew shone like silver on the hedges and on the grass, and where the few houses were dark and still, because it was past the hour at which tired and hardworking country folk go to bed. And then they passed through gas-lighted streets, where there was yet a constant stream of people, going from the theatres and other places of amusement to their homes, or walking up and down the pavement, because, in their opinion, it was a long way better than home. The whole thing seemed unreal to Randall, when he remembered where he had been, and what had been his thoughts an hour or two ago. It passed before him like a scene in a drama—a wonderfully well-acted one, but not a part of his life.

It was unreal again when he was led into Mrs. Sherlock's house like some honoured guest, and when Mrs. Sherlock and Mr. Borage, both speaking at once, related how they had captured him. Or was this the reality, and had the events of the last few weeks only passed before him in some hideous dream? But oh, supreme consolation!—the only one that we can grasp in some dark hours—they had passed by never to return. Come what come might, this at least he would never have to live through again.

In the morning Mrs. Sherlock took the first opportunity of telling him the good news she had in store. While he was staying with her she had admired a little painting of his so much that he had made her a present of it. It had been admired again by Mr. Wishart, who had come to her house during Randall's absence, and he had been curious to know the name of the painter. When he heard this he had at once remembered his meeting with Randall in the bush on his own land, and the night they had spent together at Bailey's. ‘He spoke of your playing to him there on your violin,’ said Mrs. Sherlock, ‘and said that he'd often thought of it since, and on that account as much as anything he would like to meet with you again. As for the little picture, he told me he had tried to paint the same view half a dozen times and had always failed. I saw he wanted it very much, and so at last he bought it.’ At this part of her story Mrs. Sherlock put a little packet into Randall's hand.

‘That bargain wasn't long in making,’ she said, with a pleased laugh. ‘You're not offended, are you? It's the first time I've traded off a present. Too much! that was his look-out, he gave what he pleased. And don't stop me—he's not satisfied with one picture; he wants more, and he likes your work so well he'll pay you handsomely. They're all to be views taken on his property, which I hear is the most beautiful place in the country. But here is his letter, you had better read it now.’

‘It mayn't be exactly what you want,’ she said, when Randall had read the letter, and thanked the kind-hearted woman for her timely interference in his business—but my advice is, take it. I know something of colonial life and its ups and downs—most of the downs. I've met with many a one like you, Mr. Randall; yes, many a one.’

‘I have no doubt,’ he said, ‘and if you did for others what you have done for me, they have cause to be glad that they met with you.’

‘I can't say I've always done what I might. But I've noticed this of people such as yourself—if you'll excuse an old woman speaking to you in this plain way—that they're very hard to help. They're so awfully independent that nothing can be done for them, or they'll spend their time in wishing and looking for things which are out of their way, and all the while there's something lying at their feet they ought to pick up. Well, don't you be like that. I tell you in this country one must take what one can get, not mope about waiting for what one would like to have. This will do while something better turns up. Painting isn't much of a trade. I remember a cousin of mine who tried it. He expected to be a great artist; he was always talking about the “old masters” and suchlike; but after a while he went into the paperhanging business, and did much better at that.’

It seemed as if telling of her good deeds had exacerbated Mrs. Sherlock's temper, for she was unusually sharp and sarcastic at the breakfast table. Mr. Borage having forgotten himself so far as to complain of the want of several comforts, when, according to Mrs. Sherlock, he ought to have been thankful he had any at all, received such a crushing rebuke that in his nervous uncertainty he sugared his egg, and mingled such condiments with his coffee as made it a very bitter cup indeed. Sherlock also was reproved for certain figures of speech which Mrs. Sherlock declared to be inelegant.

‘You can't expect a self-educated man to have much polish about him,’ he said apologetically. ‘I believe I've fallen off lately; I've had no opportunity for improving conversation. Since you went away, Mr. Randall, I've not had a good talk about politics. Mr. Borage takes no interest in them.’

‘I never could understand the politics of this country,’ said Mr. Borage, ‘and in Victoria just now it's all Berryism.’

‘Good gracious! what's that? asked Mrs. Sherlock, thinking it might be allied to Fetichism.

Mr. Borage proceeded to explain, and Mrs. Sherlock was hopelessly confused. By some means also, his explanation and a spirited account James was giving of his debating class became inextricably entangled.

‘So they meet once a fortnight,’ said Mrs. Sherlock, ‘and Mr. Berry is chairman.’

‘Dear me! Mrs. Sherlock,’ cried Borage, in despair. ‘Did I say that?’

‘The subject to-night will be Female Suffrage’, said James.

‘Well, what will Mr. Berry say on that? He may well be unpopular if he supports such nonsense,’ said Mrs. Sherlock.

‘It's nothing in the world to—Do with that,’ gasped Mr. Borage. ‘I'm speaking of Mr. Berry, our Victorian politician, and James is talking about his debating class.’

‘If Mr. Berry is a politician, I want to hear no more of him’, said Mrs. Sherlock. ‘So you're going to debate on Female Suffrage, James? Well, really!’

‘Let 'em have it,’ said Mr. Sherlock, benignly looking round him, as if he beheld the whole army of supplicating and voteless womankind. ‘Why shouldn't they?’

‘Why should they?’ said Mrs. Sherlock, with acerbity. ‘Do we want to have all the idle and foolish women going to elections, and getting themselves elected too; for, judging from what happens in the case of men, want of sense will never prevent any one from getting into Parliament. What kind of laws should we have?’

‘Very good ones, if all women were like you,’ said Sherlock, trying to mollify Mrs. Sherlock with a compliment.

‘All women are not like me, or they'd be contented with women's work. I am; I've plenty to satisfy me; I've no desire to take the men's on my shoulders as well, though I shouldn't wonder if that isn't what they want us to do, and all their opposition is a sham. I know what would come of the Suffrage, as they call it. Every woman who had a husband, no matter what a poor creature he might be, would move heaven and earth to have him in Parliament, and those who hadn't husbands would want to be in themselves.’

‘Then the best thing we can do,’ said James, ‘is to get married.’

‘Better get some more sense first,’ said his mother, with a severe glance in his direction.

‘I've been reading the Governor's speech,’ said Sherlock, thinking to make a diversion in favour of his pet subject. ‘It's a rare length.’

‘It's to be hoped there's some wisdom in it,’ said Mrs. Sherlock. ‘I wonder how long he was writing it.’

‘Why, you know, he doesn't write it; leastways, I believe not. They don't allow a governor to get up his own speeches, because he might put something in that wouldn't tally with his Minister's opinions. There can't be much pleasure in being a governor; they keep a tight rein on him, and he's pulled up in a hurry if he tries to go alone. It's a difficult science, this politics.’

‘Yes,’ assented Mrs. Sherlock, ‘difficult to see the use of it. I never saw much come out of it yet but taxes, and a big debt fastened on the whole country.’

‘Well,’ responded her husband, ‘and do you see nothing grand and encouraging in that? Doesn't it prove that if a young country like this can bear up under such a big debt, it must be a grand one; a young Hercules? We ought to be proud of it. There are nations who haven't got up anything like it in twice the time; there are nations who can't borrow; and we can have our national debt like an old-established country, and are as little troubled about it, and as little likely to pay it as any of 'em. As for taxes, they prove the prosperity of the people; if they hadn't the money they couldn't pay it away. While, as the Governor says, in one of the best bits of his speech, the resources of the counter are immense, and are all but undeveloped.’

‘Oh, I can believe that,’ said Mrs. Sherlock; ‘there's more talk than work about most people here.’

As he was obliged to be at Mr. Wishart's before the end of the week, Randall had only one day to spend in town. Mrs. Sherlock insisted that he ought to do nothing but keep himself quiet; an occupation, however, which some find very wearisome. Mr. Borage suggested that they should drive out together, promising to hire a horse whose performances would be satisfactory. James asked him to attend a meeting of the debating class that evening.

This debating class was called a society for mutual improvement, and its members had mutually improved one another to such a degree that their friends and relatives stood in awe of them. They wrote essays and speeches; they argued; they declaimed; they even acted and criticised Shakespeare, attributing motives and meanings to the divine William which, could he have been brought by any medium upon the scene, would have filled him with astonishment if not with wrath. The public was admitted to their meetings, and that part of the public which was most constant in its patronage, and most lenient in its criticisms, was composed of ladies more or less related to or interested in the mutually improved. It was noticed that when James had a part in the debate a certain young lady usually occupied one of the front seats, and it was also noticed after Mr. Borage became a member that he chose a seat as near to the young lady as possible; but no one as yet saw a meaning in these things.

But Mr. Borage did not go to the debating class this time. He stayed at home, wondering how he could bestow on another person some of the superfluous wealth which burdened him. Any one else would have gone about the matter in a straight-forward fashion; but to Mr. Borage this was impossible. First, on account of his nervous shyness, and secondly because it seemed very likely to him that the other person might be as shy of taking as he was of giving.

‘People say it's hard to get money,’ he reflected; ‘I find it very difficult just now to give it away. I don't want him to know it's mine, and yet, if he didn't know where it came from, or why it was sent, he might not like to use it. If I spoke to him, he would be sure to refuse, or put me off in some way, and, of course, I couldn't make him take it. There really seems to be no way of doing the thing in the little time he'll be here; and if it's to be done at all,’ added Mr. Borage, unconsciously paraphrasing Shakspeare, ‘it had better be done quickly.’

A brilliant idea, as he thought, coming into his mind just then, Mr. Borage hurried to his room. When he ran he saw nothing except the object aimed for, consequently his collisions with persons and things had been many, and often serious. This time he rushed against the servant girl, and as she was a new arrival, and knew nothing of his peculiarities, such an unprovoked attack caused her to turn and scuttle back into the kitchen, with a loud shrill scream. Mrs. Sherlock came up in time to see Mr. Borage dash into his own room. This explained everything to her.

He sought about, turning things over, upsetting and throwing down, until he found a book he had offered to lend to Randall, but had hitherto forgotten to give him. He sat down, with this book before him, and slipped some thin pieces of paper between its leaves. ‘I'll tell him I've marked my favourite passages,’ he said; ‘but he'll find these more valuable than most book-markers.’

Next he wrote a letter full of entreaties that Randall would accept the markers, if not as a gift, at least as a loan. From the humble tone of his letter, one would have thought Mr. Borage wanted to borrow money rather than lend it. He put the piece of paper he had written on inside the book, tied it up and directed it to Randall, and left the packet in his room.

Having done the deed, Mr. Borage became very frightened lest he should be found out. He kept out of the way until he was certain that Randall was in his room. Then, for the first and last time, he condescended to play the spy. He went outside, and favoured by a blind that was too narrow for the window, saw Randall with the book in his hand, and actually trembled with rapture at the thought that his little plot had succeeded. ‘Why did I never give away anything before?’ the poor fellow asked himself, as he stood under a very damp tree in the garden, too happy to know that it was dripping upon him.

In the morning he was invisible to the person who wanted to see him. It was in vain that he was called in the most alluring voice Mrs. Sherlock could summon for the occasion, and in vain did Sherlock open the door and attempt to arouse him, that he might say good-bye to Randall, who was going; he persisted in sleeping a suspiciously sound sleep.

‘I've always suspected him of talking for effect, when he's said he couldn't sleep,’ exclaimed Mrs. Sherlock, ‘and this is the second or third time the falsity of the story's been proved. He always is asleep when he's wanted—all fiddle about lying awake at night.’

Mr. Borage heard these slanderous words, and treasured them up for future repayment. Had he known that the book had been packed up unopened, and that Randall was still ignorant of his generosity, he would have shown himself. How he managed it, no one knew; but when the train by which his friend was a passenger moved off from the station, Mr. Borage appeared on the platform, and waved an adieu. Then he walked home, and told Mrs. Sherlock that he had begun to follow her advice by taking exercise before breakfast, and that he had never felt better in his life.

Chapter XII. ‘Not yet, O friend, not yet; The patient stars Lean from the lattices, content to wait. All is illusion till the morning bars Slip from the level of the eastern gate. Night is too young, O friend, day is too near: Wait for the day that maketh all things clear— Not yet, O friend, not yet.'

Bret Harte.

It was still early in the day when the train arrived at a desolate station, the last on that recently constructed line of railway, and likely to be the last for some time, as beyond there were hills which would not soon be tunnelled, even in such a country of progress. From the station plenty of tea-tree and long thick-growing fern was to be seen, but only one house, and that a speck in the distance. There was no settlement visible; why should there be? It had been one of the rules of those who had planned and laid out this railway, to place the stations away from the disturbance of traffic. So averse, however, are colonists to letting well alone, that, as soon as such a station has been planted in the wilderness, they begin to afflict their rulers with wails for a branch line, to connect it with their own little village. After wrangling, strife, and contention, the branch line is made at enormous expense; they are happy, and the people of the next settlement are envious and discontented.

At the station there were two persons waiting to see the train come in; one being an unlucky gum-digger who could find no gum, and had grown weary of ‘pricking the plain’ to no purpose. The other was Mr. Bailey, who had come to meet Randall.

‘I am glad to see you!’ he cried, with a squeeze and a tremendous wrench of the hand to prove his sincerity. You're not exactly the thing, though; got thin, haven't you? So have I; hard work this summer; heat fearful; never mind; it can't last. I promised Mr. Wishart to drive you to his place. My word! Mary Anne and the children will be glad.’

All this fell from Mr. Bailey's lips without intermission, as Randall and he seated themselves in the buggy, and as he turned it into the road. It was strange; but the road no more went to the settlement than the railway did. Just as a branch railway was needed, so also was a branch road — that is, had been, for the settlers had made this for themselves. It forked off neatly from the other one, with two ruts of quite moderate depth—only fifteen inches—there having been dry weather for some time. But an inhabitant of the settlement would tell you with pride that farther on, in two or three deep hollows, you could see something like ruts. Yea, and if it were in winter, something more like a Slough of Despond than has been seen or imagined since the time of Bunyan.

Mr. Bailey began to talk about his own affairs when he had asked Randall several questions and had been answered.

‘So you've been misfortunate,’ said he. ‘I reckon this is a world of trouble—people say so—and yet there's streaks of luck in it, like the leaders in a gold mine; but only a few men hit on them. I haven't found my leader, and yours has broken up suddenly; but you may pick it up again farther on. For myself, I don't care, being convinced that my besetting sin is to be too fond of money. I'm better without it. Riches would be my ruin.’

‘Would you object to something less than riches?’ said Randall.

‘Don't know,’ said Mr. Bailey. ‘It would only develop my passion for hoarding up. I began to save once. I bought one of those crockery things, which have only a little hole at the top where you drop your money in. You have to break them to get it out, and I daresay they are safer than other contrivances on that account: one doesn't break anything in a hurry, especially a thick earthenware concern which won't smash without a great noise. I got quite fond of the ugly thing. I couldn't look in, so I used to shake it, and guess by the sound how much there was inside, and many a time I've wished it was glass so as I could see. Well, once I let it fall, and when I saw all the money together, it came into my head what a lot Mary Anne could get with it for herself and the girls. So I handed it over to her. I've saved nothing since then. What's the use, if you have to pine and starve to do it? You can see Mr. Wishart's house now. Who'd have thought, two years ago, we should have a place like that in our district? The gardens are like a paradise. Most likely Mr. Wishart will never leave it; he's one of those who like a home to live and die in.’

Mr. Wishart was almost alone in his large house when Randall arrived. The ladies of the family, though as usual in excellent health, had gone to a certain sanatorium, the fame of which is great in New Zealand. The invalids who resort to it are greatly outnumbered by those who cannot be proved to be invalids by any manner of means, but who possibly fortify themselves against disease by so-journing in a place where idleness can be made very agreeable. While Mrs. Meade and Maud spent their time: thus, Harry made the days burden-some to Mrs. Grigsby, and when Mr. Wishart remembered to ask for him, as he and Randall were sitting down to lunch, was suffering well-merited punishment. Mrs. Grigsby had shut him up in a closet, where she fancied he would find nothing to amuse himself with. She was mistaken. There was nothing but an old cushion, but it was great amusement to pull this to pieces to see what it was made of. When the housekeeper came to release him, Harry was in the midst of a mingled mass of curled horsehair and wool, with many fragments of the same adhering to his clothes and sticking in his hair.

‘Of all the children for making disorder you're the worst!’ said Mrs. Grigsby, shaking him, and burshing him down with a very hard clothes-brush, as if he had been a wooden figure. ‘There's Mr. Wishart sent for you, and there's a gentleman come, and you're not fit to be seen.’

‘It's only out of the cushion,’ said Harry. ‘There was such a lot inside!’

‘There isn't much in it now, after your little mischievous fingers have been picking at it. I hope you're a good boy now.’

‘No, I'm not,’ answered the young gentleman. ‘I'm not going to be good till you give me back my paint-box.’

‘Well, you won't get it just yet,’ said Mrs. Grigsby, giving him a little jerk which brought him into the dining-room.

The boy drew back on seeing a stranger, but being pushed forward by Mrs. Grigsby, ran across the room, and passing Mr. Wishart, went directly to Randall and climbed on his knee.

‘That's an easy way of introducing yourself, Harry,’ said Mr. Wishart. ‘You won't look at me now; new friends are best. How has he behaved, Mrs. Grigsby?’

‘He has been a very bad boy, sir,’ said the housekeeper, proceeding to bear testimony in an unsparing manner. ‘He has destroyed I don't know what in places he could get at, and he's scribbled in Mrs. Meade's books and torn his clothes so as he's hardly fit for company.’

‘What a record of misdemeanours! What have you to say for yourself, Harry?’

‘You took my paint-box away,’ said Harry, with a defiant look at Mrs. Grigsby.

‘He was spoiling everything with paint, sir,’ said Mrs. Grigsby. ‘I don't think it's a nice play-thing for a young child; he only messes about with it.’

‘The dawnings of genius, I suppose,’ said Mr. Wishart, smiling, as Mrs. Grigsby exhibited a photograph of the late lamented Mr. Grigsby coloured like a flame of fire. ‘This is really too bad. Harry, you have been a very naughty boy, and Mrs. Grigsby shall keep your paint-box till you can make a better use of it.’

‘But she has got my ball too!’ cried Harry.

‘You sent it through the window twice, and then threw it at me,’ said Mrs. Grigsby.

‘Quite right,’ said Mr. Wishart. ‘I mean,’ he added, as the housekeeper looked perplexed, ‘quite right to take it from him. He does look rather dilapidated, Mrs. Grigsby; he must be an extraordinary child for wearing out his clothes.’

‘I never saw his equal,’ said Mrs. Grigsby.

‘He's a regular Berserker,’ said Mr. Wishart, looking admiringly rather than reprovingly on the young person under discussion; ‘a great deal too handsome, though, for a boy.’

‘Well, it doesn't matter so long as he doesn't know it,’ said Mrs. Grigsby. ‘It has always been my plan, sir, with such children to tell 'em they're frights; it prevents vanity.’

‘Does it?’ said Mr. Wishart incredulously.

Mrs. Grigsby wished to take Harry away, but he repulsed her with a vigorous ‘No,’ and kept his place on Randall's knee, looking into his face as if he were learning it by heart.

‘Well, did you ever see Mr. Randall before, Harry?’ said Mr. Wishart.

‘No,’ said Harry, after some thought. ‘But,’ he added slowly, ‘he has eyes like mamma's.’

‘Poor little fellow!’ said Mr. Wishart to Randall, ‘I thought he had forgotten.’

‘Is not this Mrs. Meade's little boy, then?’ asked Randall.

‘Oh, no. Harry is our boy by adoption only. I'll tell you his story some time. Now, come into my studio, as I call it already, though I've only been a painter for about six months. You shall have it for your own.’

They went into a room opening on to one of the side verandahs. There were pictures about in every stage and, as it seemed to Randall, in every style. Mr. Wishart was an experimentalist in art, and he had struck out into quite a new path. It was almost impossible to suppress a smile at the first view of some of his efforts, and he laughed at them himself.

‘I've learnt one thing at least,’ he said, as they sat down before a large landscape to consider its extraordinary depth of colour, and to wonder at its perspective. ‘I've learnt that I wasn't intended for a painter. I find no difficulty in covering any amount of canvas with pigments of some sort or other, but the effect isn't exactly natural. I shall give it up, though it's tantalising to live in the midst of fine scenery and not be able to paint it. You shall do that for me.’

It chanced that the time was one of unbroken fine weather. It was autumn, the most delicious season of the New Zealand year. The days were glorious in their sunshine, their soft hazy skies, and their restful stillness. There was no wind; even the surf on the open coast was quieter, and rolled toward the beach languidly, as if tired of its own ravings. And after the heat of the day there came down a refreshing coolness with the night, and a greater silence yet upon the woods and hills, whence for a long distance might be heard the cry of a night bird or the rush of a waterfall.

Mr. Wishart and his guest were outside, on the hills and by the streams, all day long. Randall, being deficient in that power of imagination which enables some artists to imitate Nature in the seclusion of their own rooms, could only paint his pictures on the spot, with what he wished to represent directly before him. Most of his work was done out of doors. He always had Harry for a companion. The spoilt child of the house took such interest in the work that he forsook everything else to watch it, and though his excursions among the trees meant ruin to his habiliments and necessitated a great deal of patching and mending on the part of Mrs. Grigsby, she was pleased that he should be kept out of mischief by this new employment. He would bring out his little paint-box, which had soon been redeemed from Mrs. Grigsby's hold, and sitting down at Randall's feet, would make his own picture of the scene before them. These pictures were proudly shown about the house, and all therein, from Mrs. Grigsby to the kitchen-maid, thought them wonderful evidences of talent. ‘Bless the boy!’ said the housekeeper; ‘though he's a world of trouble, one wouldn't be without him.’

It was an afternoon in the second week of Randall's stay. He was working on the verandah at a picture that was all but finished, and Harry as usually was in his near neighbourhood scooping out a piece of wood with a dangerously sharp knife into something that he persisted in calling a ship. It was a very absorbing occupation this ship-making, and he had been silent for a full quarter of an hour, when he suddenly looked up with the question, ‘Do you know Aunt Maud?’

‘Aunt Maud?’ said Randall inquiringly.

‘Yes. Don't you know her? Every one does.

‘Every one does, do they? Then I'm afraid I'm no one at all.’

‘She is coming home to-night,’ said Harry. ‘If they let me sit up I'll tell you when she comes. But I expect Mrs. Grigsby will send me to bed,’ he concluded ruefully.

‘Oh, you mean Mrs. Meade?’

‘No, no,’ said Harry impatiently. ‘I don't care for her; but I like Aunt Maud, and so does everybody. You'll be sure to. I shall show her all my pictures, and you'll show her yours, won't you?’

‘That depends on whether she may want to see them or not.’

‘I'm making this ship for her, but she'll have to put the sails on herself. Aunt Maud is very pretty, you know, and she's a good deal taller than I am; but Mrs. Grigsby says I shall be the tallest some day. I think,’ added Harry, eyeing Randall critically, ‘I'd like to be about your height. How long is it since you were my size?’

‘How long? More than twenty years, I should say.’

‘It's a long time to wait,’ said Harry gravely. ‘Oh! I've cut my finger, and it bleeds dreadfully. I'll go to Mrs. Grigsby and get it tied up.’

He was soon back again, with one hand swathed in a linen rag, and a thick piece of bread and butter in the other. ‘You can have some too if you're hungry,’ he cried to Randall, as he ran past him. ‘I'm going to the gate to see if they're coming.’

And he watched at the gate until sundown, but no one came. There was a sharp strife between him and Mrs. Grigsby when, according to that lady, it was his bedtime. He openly defied her authority; he broke away, and was chased upstairs and downstairs, but was ingloriously captured and borne away at the last, not without a wail of lamentation. ‘No, I'll do my duty by him as if he'd been one of my own!’ Mrs. Grigsby cried in answer to Randall's intercession.

After this mournful banishment it was very quiet. Randall read a book of travels so filled with complainings that one might wonder why the author had spent so much time in a country he so cordially disliked. This not having a very cheering effect, he tried another book which Mr. Wishart had recommended to him as being extremely interesting. It contained the yearly offering to science of a society of which Mr. Wishart was a hardworking member. It was principally owing to his industry that the earthworms of the country were so well known—and there are magnificent earthworms in New Zealand. By his exertions also great light had been thrown on the manners and customs of the Phytophagi, and an engaging little creature known as Peripatus.

All this must have deeply interested Randall, for when the carriage arrived he did not hear it. All at once, to his surprise, a lady came gliding into the room like a ghost, if one can imagine a ghost in a long dark blue cloak, a white plumed hat, and the pretty adornments, perhaps necessary that cool evening, of a grebe-skin muff and collar. She came in as one who expects to find an empty room, and carelessly threw her muff and collar aside, exclaiming, ‘Oh, how nice to be all to ourselves again!’

‘I forgot to tell you I was not alone,’ said Mr. Wishart, laughing a little as he followed her into the room. And then, as Mrs. Meade had come in, and was adjusting her spectacles that she might see who was there, Randall was introduced to her and Miss Desmond. You may have some idea of the very distant and coldly polite greeting which passed between the two last introduced, if you know how two persons once intimate will behave when suddenly presented to each other as strangers, both being desirous that all present should imagine they are meeting for the first time, and each hoping that the other has not recognised him or her.

Yet there was a startled look on the lady's face which might have betrayed her had there been a watchful eye in the room. The confusion of the other person was attributed to shyness by Mrs. Meade. She took a fancy to him at once, and (pleased with what she said herself, for his own words were few) imagined he was an acquisition to be thankful for. He reminded her of some character in one of her novels, she said to her brother when they were alone. His shyness also was very becoming.

‘It may be,’ said Mr. Wishart, ‘but it can't be pleasant to the person who suffers from it. I'm glad you like him, though. Try to make him feel at home while he is here. I have taken a great liking to him.’

Chapter XIII. ‘Not yet, O friend! not yet— All is not true; All is not ever as it seemeth now; Soon shall the river take another blue, Soon dies you light upon the mountain brow, What lieth dark, O love! bright day will fill: Wait for thy morning be it good or ill— Not yet, O love! not yet.’

Bret Harte.

Mrs. Meade was an indolent woman, even in the matter of entertaining visitors. Generally she preferred to make them free of the house and leave them to themselves, and with the majority this answered very well. To Randall, however, as he had been recommended to her kindness, she determined to be very gracious. She talked to him, and tried to draw him out, fancying she was succeeding whenever he said more than a dozen words at a time. She was much delighted with his talent for music, and thought to encourage him by incessantly urging him to cultivate it: nor did she neglect to praise his painting, which she could do without insincerity, as the faults were not apparent to her.

Mrs. Meade therefore, chose to be agreeable to him, but Miss Desmond was of another mind. It was necessary that they should meet sometimes, and occasionally they were obliged to speak to each other; but beyond this there was no approach to intimacy. At first he had accepted this as for the best, but very soon he began to vex himself with it. To every one else her manner invited frankness and cordiality: he alone must not dare to speak to her as a friend. He knew by a hundred little signs which no one else would have detected that his presence in that house was distasteful to her. He knew he had better not have come, that, it was his duty to escape from the false position he was placed in, and yet he was bound to the work he had undertaken, and must stay till it was finished. It would not take long, and meanwhile he would keep out of her sight as much as possible.

But they must meet—at meals, for example, and that was not so bad; for then others were present who, in their own unrestrained flow of conversation, would never observe that they did not speak to each other. At such times, also, he could see no wrong in looking at her across the table, and it is possible he may have derived a melancholy pleasure from this indulgence, even though her manner seemed to tell him that he might sit opposite to her for years, and yet never detect her eyes turning in his direction.

He had known years ago that this was a haughty young lady, and a wilful one too, who had a great constancy to her own opinion. Of course he had liked her none the worse, and it is a matter for thankfulness that the whole sum of human failings will seem as nothing in our eyes when it is our will to be pleased with the possessor. Once or twice, in the midst of the misfortunes that had come between them, he had wondered if she would be haughty to him should they ever meet again. He had acknowledged to himself that it was very probable, and now he saw that he had been right.

There may be people so lofty and high-minded that they cannot be moved by neglect or disdain. The approval of their own heart, doubtless, is quite sufficient for them. They are not the nicest kind of people, however. Most of us are much more anxious about the approval of some one else's heart. If her manner meant anything at all, surely it must mean that he had fallen so low in her esteem that she could not endure even to look down on him. It made him ashamed, if it did not anger him, that she should pass him in the hall or on the stairs with an averted face, that she should be ill at ease in his company, that, as more than once he had noticed, she should turn back abruptly as if she had forgotten something, rather than enter a room in which he was alone. All this he could have borne from another: from her it was unendurable.

The week after Mrs. Meade's return was marked by a sudden influx of visitors. It was the beginning of the shooting season, in which the mildest of men will yield to the passion for killing something, which, it has been argued, is a remnant of the old savage nature common to our ancestors who clothed themselves in skins, and hunted birds and beasts in the vast forests of their age. Very likely this is true, and, in any case, it is convenient to lay the responsibilities of our little peccadilloes on the shoulders of our remote grandparents.

Mr. Wishart had held out delusive hopes of fine sport to his friends. Pheasants abounded; wild ducks were particularly found of the neighbourhood; and, descending to commoner game, pukekos, or swamp hens, in their flaring attire of bright blue, matched by red legs and bill, were always stalking about boldly, and the voice of the weka never was mute.

It might have been so during the time of their protection: it assuredly was not so three days after shooting had begun. The sportsmen went out hopefully every morning, but too often returned at night with limp game-bags. They abused the country for its deficient supply of insect food—on which account the bird population could not increase,—and much more abused the settlers, who, it was suspected, had slain and eaten the few pheasants billeted on the district. Nevertheless, by hook or by crook, they would sometimes succeed in making a tolerably good bag; and great joy was made over wood-pigeons, and even over little quail, mites though they were. And, as a man with a gun is bound to fire it off at something or other, one misguided sportsman, in a delirium of joy at finding game in great quantity at last, shot seven of what he supposed to be a flock of wild turkeys, and was cut to the heart when he learned that he had carried the war into his host's poultry-yard.

There were, besides this party, two guests who were very indifferent to the attractions of sport, and made no complaint about the scarcity of pheasants. Professor Crasher had come into the country on a piano-tuning expedition. He had put new life into all the old jangling pianos within thirty miles of Mr. Wishart's; for he had made that hospitable gentleman's house his headquarters, and had beat up the country round about so vigorously that it was doubtful if a single piano had escaped being strung up to concert pitch. In fact, to quote the words of that oracle, the gifted person who was the newspaper correspondent for the settlement,—‘A flood of harmony had poured into the district.’

Things had gone hard with him lately, Professor Crasher told his friends, or he would not have been found in the humble position of an itinerant piano-tuner. People (chiefly tradesmen who were tired of being paid for their goods with promises only) would bully him. In the peaceful country, however, he could forget all that, and be happy in the knowledge that neither baker, butcher, grocer, nor tailor knew where he was. On the very day that ought to have been his last at Mr. Wishart's, he managed to disable himself by catching his foot in a rod of the stairs carpet, and half falling, half sliding down a dozen steps. His fall, according to Mrs. Grigsby, who was prone to exaggerate, shook the house to its foundations. Mr. Wishart insisted on keeping him till his bruises and sprains were cured, and the Professor had no objection. He was in clover. For the first time in a dozen years he had perfect rest from music-teaching, and nothing in the world to do, when he was not playing, but to sit in an easy-chair on the verandah and nurse his swollen foot. He was so constant to this easy-chair that Harry mischievously sewed his coat to the cushion. He recognised Randall with delight, but reproved him for neglecting music for painting. He himself showed no such neglect, for after he had tuned the piano, he nearly ruined it by thundering upon it, to his own delight if not always that of other people.

The other visitor was Stephen Langridge. He had never been known to neglect coming to this house as often as he conveniently could, and whether it were in season or out of season, no one supposed that he came to shoot pheasants. He also knew Randall again, and though he was very polite to him, he thought it a very strange thing to find him in such a place. This was about all the thought he deigned to give to a person who could not possibly affect him in any way. And as, generally speaking, Mr. Langridge preferred spending his time with the ladies, more especially with one of them, Randall was seldom favoured with his company.

Mr. Wishart, who at first had been very pleased with his artist's work, now noticed that he was not painting so well. It seemed as if his only desire was to finish his pictures as quickly as possible; he hurried over them; he was careless and impatient. The artist himself was conscious of this, and was thoroughly dissatisfied, which, doubtless, was the reason why at last, going from bad to worse, he began to paint atrociously. In reality, he had gone as far in painting as he was likely to make his way. He had what is called a taste for it, but not a talent.

He began a picture—it was the last—in a place chosen by Mr. Wishart, near the creek, at a short distance from the house. It was a view looking down the stream to a part where it widened, and then suddenly turned; so that, shut in by steep banks, with trees dropping to the water's edge, it seemed a quiet lake when the tide was in. For this was a tidal river.

‘She's a daughter of the Sea, Weary of home splendour, Running to the hills to be Hid by shadows tender; Whispering yet along her flight Snatches of his story; Trailing on blue breadths of light His abundant glory. Twice a day the shores are glad With the guest so royal; Twice a day she leaves them sad; Desolate yet loyal.'

In this spot it was always warm and still. In spring here the kowhais and the clematis flowered most abundantly, and the peach-trees were masses of bloom. Pink and white, gold and green—here was colour enough to madden and æsthete. And this was a favourite haunt of birds. A visitor of quiet habits might see either a heron in sober ashen-gray, standing on a stone, keeping his patient watch for a quarter of an hour at a time, or, in the autumn, kingfishers, like flashes of blue and orange, darting across the water. Amongst the trees the intrusive blackbird, whose impertinences were driving the native birds farther into the bush, chuckled over his clumsy nest, right in the face of the old-established families, pigeons, tuis, and kakas.

Inadvertently Randall had come to the place which had been chosen by Miss Desmond as a pleasant retreat. However, as the creek was pretty wide, and as he had taken the side opposite to the house, while she preferred the nearest one, their conflicting interests did not clash. He painted away, only looking at the trees and the water, and she calmly read her book, each unconscious that the other was near at hand.

But one morning, when it was very hot, and as profoundly still, the splash of oars caused him to push aside a branch, and look up the stream. There was a boat, in which Maud was using the oars, and Harry was leaning over the side, bathing his hands in the water. They came slowly on till they were just underneath him, when the lady pushed the boat close in shore, drew in the oars, and taking a book, began to read. Harry, tired and hot, laid his flushed little face against her knee and fell asleep.

Then the only one who saw her gave way to an alluring temptation, and discarding his half-finished picture began to paint another which pleased him better. He sketched it with a fearful haste, in which minutes seemed to grow into hours, he finished it afterwards from memory, and he hid it when he was finished, as a thing which he dared not let another person see. But after that day he went to the same place no more’; he would not trespass there unknown to her.

It is strange—like many a true thing—that what we have hidden will come to light sooner or later. It often happens, too, that it is discovered by the very person whom it most concerns. Now, although Miss Desmond affected to be unconscious of the existence of Randall, she knew all about his paintings, and though he had not presumed to show them to her, she had seen them all, and had watched their progress with some interest. Once when he had gone out, she happened to pass the open French window of the room he worked in, and seeing that it was empty, took that way of entering the house. A pile of loose sketches was on the table, and underneath was a portfolio filled with others of the same kind, she thought. Every one was accustomed to look at his sketches; they had been turned over and over dozens of times. It was natural enough that she should linger for a few minutes and idly turn them over once more.

In the portfolio she found some she had not seen before. They were old ones, which had been done in England.

Curious to look at these, she sat down and took them on her knee. One after the other, she drew them from the case, with a pleased light on her face. They were views of places she had known. There was one which bore no name, but on the margin was written ‘From Memory.’ She knew this also. No wonder he could draw it from memory; he knew every winding of that gently flowing river, and in that house he had been born.

But what was this? Something precious, no doubt, for it was in a pocket of the case, and had a wrapper round it, which heightened her curiosity. Ah! see now the reward of peeping and prying into other people's business. She let it fall from her hands, and all the colour rushed into her face. ‘Why,’ she said,—as we often do in spite of our teachers,—‘why, this is me!’ Yes, and a very charming me.

She was startled; not only that, she was vexed and ashamed, and the result of such mingled feelings was that tears came into her eyes, and she impatiently pushed the picture away from her, to think for a moment. Then her eyes stole’ towards it again. Without wishing any one to think that this young lady was not handsome, it must be admitted that the portrait was a flattering one. She knew herself that the colouring was softer and richer; the features finer in their outline than her own. Yet the artist had caught the expression of her face, and it was an unmistakable likeness. Also he had painted it about twice as well as anything else he had done—such is the difference between naughty work which we like to do and that which duty, and not our own will, imposes on us.

She sat there, resting her cheek on her hand, and the colour faded again from her face to the pale rose tint that was always there, and her eyes had only a dreamy softened light, instead of the cold brightness with which they had glittered when she was out of temper a few minutes before. Suddenly she looked up with a start. The offending artist was before her.

She felt almost choked with mortification. To be caught looking at her own portrait, and not looking so very displeased with it either! It was with the coldest, most repelling manner she could assume that she turned to speak to him.

‘I did not know portraits were painted without leave,’ she said.’ ‘Was it worth the trouble to watch me, and to spend such labour over this?’

‘Yes, it was worth a great deal more,’ he answered, for it has made you speak to me at last.’

‘Why should I speak to you?’ said the lady beginning to speak very plainly, in her indignation, ‘why did you come here at all?’

‘Perhaps I should not have come if I had known it was your home. I never knew your brother in England. I never heard his name, or if so i had forgotten it. I could not be expected to guess that you were here, in his house, when I had not even heard that you had such a relative. As for the other charge,’—and he was audacious enough to smile,—I did not watch you. I might as well accuse you of watching me, when for a whole afternoon your boat was mored close to where I was sketching. It may have been wrong to take your portrait without leave; but I didn't wait to think whether it were right or wrong, and I did not intend that you should be offended with a sight of it.’

There was a pause, and the lady timidly said, ‘I beg your pardon. Ma I ask one thing—will you give me the portrait?’

‘Do not beg my pardon.’ he rejoinde, ‘and do not ask me for what i cannot give you.’

‘You are not courteous,’ said Miss Desmond petulantly: she was not used to be denied. ‘Why cannot you?’

‘Because,’ he said, ‘if I am not to look at or speak to the original withour offence, it is too much surely to ask that I should give her portrait away, miserable one though it may bem and though I have taken it b stealth.’ offended with me, or that you should feel I have no right to be here. I know I am too deeply disgraced in your sight, to be worthy of your notice. Do not be afraid I shall ever seek it again. I have been working hard that I might go all the sooner. It is only for a short time we shall be in the same house, and afterwards there will be nothing to prevent you from forgetting me and this.’ He replaced the picture in the case.

Her anger was melting away. The thought came into her mind that once it would not have been a great crime in her eyes if he had stolen her protrait for himself. She might be cold and haughty sometimes, but she could be generous in making reparation or in acknowledging a fault.

‘I am sorry,’ she said, in a low voice. ‘Was it likely I could be the same to you as to any chance acquaintance? It is unkind and untrue to say that you were disgraced in my sight. Listen—I never believed it—never! They were all against you; they would not let me write to tell you; but I knew you couldn't have done it, and now, tell me yourself that it wasn't true.’

She waited for him to speak. Would he tell her now that it had been a mistake; that he had been misjudged and slandered? He could tell her no such thing. He shrunk away from her in his abasement. He had borne uncomplainingly with much that his fault had brought in its train, with undeserved suspicion, with taunts and reproaches, but this of all was the most severe—this was harder than all, that she should have trusted in his innocence for years, and now he himself was obliged to undeceive her.

‘I would give the world to be able to tell you that!’ he said bitterly. ‘Yes; it is true.’

He felt rather than knew by sight that she had drawn herself farther away, and that she was not looking at him, but beyond him, out of the window. She tried to speak, but her voice quavered into something like a sob. Without looking at him still, she rose from her chair and left the room.

A succession of heavy thuds and the shuffling of a slipper announced the approach of Professor Crasher, dragging his lame foot after him. He opened the door wide enough to admit of the insertion of his round florid face, and said in his sweetest tones, ‘My dear Randall, oblige me with your opinion on this inspiration.’ The inspiration was three pages of manuscript music.

‘Certainly,’ said Randall, wishing that the inspiration had been taken elsewhere. He followed the Professor into the next room, and listened to a thunderous piece with as much equanimity as he could call to his aid.

The Professor was smirking over something funny, which he did not impart to his friend. Though he was slow in his, movements, he was quick of hearing. There had been people talking in that room before he opened the door. When he looked in—presto! there was only one person to be seen. Also, and on this point he was certain, one of the voices had been the voice of Miss Desmond, and he had heard the rustle of her dress as she escaped by way of the verandah. But how it came to pass that Miss Desmond and Randall, who, when in the company of others, seemed to utterly ignore each other, should be alone here, talking confidentially was a riddle, which after some thought the Professor found no difficulty in guessing. He was mightily pleased with his own penetration, and much amused at the blindness of other people.

The Professor was not the only one who had received sudden enlightenment. The fragrance of a cigar might have warned Maud and Randall, if they had been able to give thought to such things, that some one was near them. That cigar had no soothing effect on Mr. Stephen Langridge. He wished he had not strolled into the shrubbery by himself; he wished very much that he had not unluckily turned his eyes in the direction of that window. He was so surprised that a somewhat sickly hue overspread his usually fresh-coloured face. What did it mean? The answer to this question, in Stephen's opinion, explained all the rebuffs and refusals he had endured within the last twelve months. He was savagely angry. ‘A fellow like that!’ he muttered to himself. ‘He must be deceiving her; he hasn't a penny in the world, and, of course, he knows she is rich. But he shan't have it all his own way; even if she won't look at me I'll spoil his little plans.’

He felt calmer after he had smoked another cigar. Then it appeared to him that he had an undoubted right to interfere. Maud must be protected at all hazards from such danger as he anticipated, but it behoved him to move discreetly. A blunderer would do more harm than good. To be sure, he was quite disinterested. A man who had been refused twice by the lady could have no interested motives. It was only an intense anxiety for her welfare that moved him. It was his duty—yes, his duty to find out all about this Randall. He knew he had done something amiss; he had been reduced to the direst straits; he had seen him working in the harvest-field. He a fitting match for the rich and proud Miss Desmond! Stephen's lip curled with scorn. What if he once had the position and education of a gentleman? There could be nothing more contemptible than a disgraced and broken-down gentleman.

At dinner that evening he could not help watching Maud and Randall. He could not detect that they spoke so much as one word to each other. Yet their manner had changed in some degree. Maud, who usually was lively, talked very little, and seemed absent-minded. Randall, who had got the credit of being a taciturn and reserved man, was thought to be brilliant in his conversation on this occasion. As for Stephen himself, he made but a poor dinner, and avenged his wrongs on Professor Crasher, who good-naturedly tried to amuse him, and whose overtures of friendship were most ungraciously received.

‘You are not interested in music?’ said the Professor, with the innocent childlike smile which accompanied most of his remarks.

‘I hate it said Stephen, and he thought he did just then. He had heard a great deal of music during the last three days, and he had disliked Crasher's because it deafened him, and Randall's because he was not disposed to see any good either in him or his performances.

‘Hate it!’ said the Professor his round blue eyes dilated in amazement. ‘But the same talent is not given to every one. Since I have had the freedom of your library, Mr. Wishart, I have been reading an extremely interesting account of the musical instruments of the ancient Egyptians. We actually find that they had that incomparable instrument the violin—in a rude and imperfect state, of course—flutes and pipes of all kinds; an instrument also, like a large tambourine, which must have sounded as loud as a gong.’

‘Thank goodness that's out of date!’ said Stephen.

‘And a beautifully-finished lute was found in the tomb of one of the Pharaohs,’ said Professor Crasher.

‘Of the Pharaohs, Professor Grasher?’ said Mrs. Meade. ‘I thought you told me it was in an Assyrian tomb.’

‘Did I really?’ said the Professor. ‘I beg your pardon—an Assyrian tomb. I am not quite certain now what ancient nation I was reading about. My memory is so untrustworthy. Only, I believe that large gong or tambourine I have just mentioned, Mr. Langridge, was found in the ruins of either Nineveh or Babylon. The workmanship was very fine, and it was three feet in diameter.’

‘I should think it must have been heard from one end of the hanging gardens of Babylon to the other,’ said Stephen.

‘And had you good sport to-day?’ said the Professor, addressing Mr. Wishart.

‘It was of a mixed kind,’ said that gentleman. ‘Three pheasants and three-quarters—one was torn to pieces by my dog—five quail, two pigeons, two pukekos—and I don't know how you will bear it, Maud, but Mr. Holmsby has unfortunately shot your peacock.’

‘Oh, Mr. Holmsby, how could you!’ said Maud.

‘I am very sorry, I am sure,’ said the distressed Mr. Holmsby, turning very red. I thought it was wild. I believe I have heard of wild peacocks in this country.’

‘Another loss! and only last week half my turkeys were sacrificed,’ said Mrs. Meade. ‘I suppose I can mention it without hurting any one's feelings, as the gentleman who made the mistake is not present.’

‘I think, you know,’ said Mr. Wishart, commiserating the repentant and bashful Mr. Holmsby, ‘that it's a very good thing, this popping over of your peacock, Maud. He was a great nuisance with his wild unearthly cries. You are all aware that they cry before rain; and, as it rains pretty often here, there was hardly a day on which that bird did not make me as owspirited as himself with his lamentations. Besides, we can resuscitate an old dish that was once set before kings. We will have him served up, in all the glory of his plumage—that is, if we can get our cook to do it.’

‘And then we shall all feel grateful to Mr. Holmsby,’ said Mrs. Meade, smiling at the young gentleman, who had only lately arrived from England, and was much puzzled with his colonial experiences.

There was a little dance that evening, as there had been before once or twice during the fortnight. Some of those invited had ridden or driven over many miles of rough country roads; a few had come by the afternoon train from town; and, as all were expected to tarry until another day, beds were made in all kinds of strange places, and the house was like a caravanserai.

The city visitors had remarked to one another that there was no knowing whom you might meet at Wishart's. He was generally thought to be too lax in his hospitalities. People whom one never saw anywhere else in society were tolerated in his house —odd people; old fashioned and shabbily-dressed people, whose manners as well as their clothes were out of date. One might pardon the introduction of a profoundly learned, a travelled, or a famous man, though he might be both eccentric and disagreeable, and trample on all the rules of etiquette; but it was impossible to understand what he could want with horrid people who knew no science but the commonplace one of agriculture. It was absurd to say they were asked because they were neighbours. But all this came of going out into a desert where there was no society.

One friend had ventured to say this to Mr. Wishart, and, with a smile, he had quoted the census returns for the district. ‘Where there are men and women there must be society,’ he said.

‘Yes, of a certain kind,’ replied the friend cautiously, ‘but will it be such as you would like to mix with?’

He thought of this word ‘mix,’ because in his old days he had been accustomed to mixing’ behind the counter of a bar-room. Most people had forgotten this; he had almost forgotten it himself; for, since he had made his fortune, he had with great labour transformed himself into as close an imitation of a gentleman as could be hoped for, considering the materials provided.

It could not be denied that these little parties were always delightful, possibly because the company was so carelessly brought together. What dances they had! People never seemed to tire; they began early, and left off early also—in the morning. There was a story and it was generally believed, being nothing extraordinary for colonial people, that one party of visitors had danced for two consecutive nights, played croquet and lawn tennis on the intervening day, and ridden to their own homes (a goodly distance) on the day after that, feeling, not worse, but better for their exertions.

Violet had come to the dance in high spirits and in handsome attire—perhaps a little too handsome for a country dance. Certainly that thin soft silk which was just the same tint as a pale wild rose, was excessively becoming to her; but Mrs. Meade, with the frankness of an old friend and a sister-in-law elect, hinted that a plainer dress would have been more suitable.

‘Oh, I am so sorry if you think it is not suitable,’ said Violet, and then she pouted, as she turned away, and thought, I'm not going to be a dowdy in a worn-out grenadine to please any one.’

‘Well, Queen Mab,’ said Mr. Wishart, looking at her admiringly—she was so pretty that no one could help doing that—‘did you come in your chariot of a nut-shell?’

‘Ah,’ she replied, and the pout had changed into a smile by this time, ‘I came in a close and crowded train, and it jerked so, I think I'm too tired to dance to-night.’

‘We shall se,’ said Mr. Wishart, staring across the room with his short-sighted eyes at Professor Crasher, who had found it impossible to sit still.

‘One is never too old to dance!’ cried the Professor, as he plunged through a polka.

‘But doesn't it hurt your foot?’ slyly asked Maud.

‘My dear young lady, what would you have? pleasure is always mingled with pain. Besides, my foot is almost cured now, and I am sorry, because that means I must leave you all. I could bear it over again gladly!’

‘You can fall downstairs again, you know, if you like, Crasher,’ said Mr. Wishart.

‘I declare I'm almost tempted to do it!’ answered the Professor, conducting Mrs. Meade, who had been his partner, to a seat. It was a peculiarity of that lady that when she had found a comfortable resting-place she did not care to leave it again very soon, and as Professor Crasher had made the dance they had taken part in a thing of uncertainty and terror, she was quite contented to dispense with more exercise of the same kind for the remainder of the evening. A watchful wallflower sees many things; and, as she had no novel in her hand, Mrs. Meade was unusually observant. Two things she saw which puzzled and irritated her. First, that Maud, who had not noticed Randall on other evenings, was talking to him for a very long while, and very earnestly. Secondly, that naughty girl Violet—she was no favourite with Mrs. Meade—oh! how shock- inglyshockingly she was flirting with that simple Mr. Holmsby, who seemed to like it very well. Violet passed her with Mr. Holmsby, and Mrs. Meade saw with disapproval that they were betaking themselves to the verandah.

‘It is so nice and cool outside,’ Violet had just said, ‘but what a pity it isn't so nice and cool outside,’ Violet had just said, ‘but what a pity it isn't moonlight. Don't you think we have beautiful moonlight evenings here, Mr. Holmsby?’

‘Oh, beautiful!’ assented the gentleman. ‘But, you know I ve been told it's very injurious to the complexion.’

‘Is it really, I wonder? But is it true that the moonlight is brighter here than in England?’

‘Oh, twice as bright!’ declared Mr. Holmsby. ‘I think it's magnificent in New Zealand.’

‘But you don't like New Zealand—no; it's the people you don't like. You must have found us very disagreeable, or you would not talk of going away again.’

‘I assure you, Miss Palmer, I never said so. Or course there is a want of society here.’

‘It must be so nice to live in England where there is plenty of good society,’ said Violet. ‘What a pity you had to leave it all! We haven't much here.’

‘But, Miss Palmer, I am afraid you misunderstand me,’ blundered poor Mr. Holmsby, wondering whether the young lady were sarcastic or only innocent. ‘There must be some people here accustomed to good society.’

‘Oh, certainly,’ agreed Violet. ‘They come out sometimes, I suppose. I am sure I know a good many.’

‘But colonial society, as a whole, wants tone,’ said Mr. Holmsby positively.

‘Indeed,’ said Violet, wondering what ‘tone’ was. ‘Perhaps we shall get it in time.’

‘Probably, as the country grows older, and a better class of people come to it the first settlers, I believe, were generally of the lower classes.’

‘There was papa, you know,’ gently corrected Violet. ‘He came out a long while ago.

‘Oh yes,’ said Mr. Holmsby, wishing he could get done with the subject. ‘I was speaking generally. There are many exceptions to the rule. I have seen some colonists who would be an ornament to any society.’

‘Oh, Mr. Holmsby, what nice things you say!’ cried the young lady, with a musical little laugh.

These words were overheard by Mrs. Meade. ‘Nice things,’ was her indignant comment, ‘yes, my dear, but if you were my daughter, you would not have so many opportunities of listening to them.’

It was just like that incorrigible blunderer, Professor Crasher, to come and sit beside her at this moment, and to direct her attention to the other thing that disquieted her.

‘One does not like to be premature in congratulations,’ he said, with a broad smile, waving his hand in the direction of the two persons he referred to; ‘but I think we may soon have a chance of offering ours to some one—you understand, my dear Mrs. Meade?’

Mrs. Meade looked at him with a strong stare, and the Professor felt as if he had committed a crime, but he blundered on. ‘The best fellow I ever knew, and clever too—a great deal cleverer than he knows himself. We shall hear of him distinguishing himself some day.’

‘Mr. Randall is clever, no doubt,’ said Mrs. Meade, thinking, ‘I really must stop this ridiculous man;’—‘but you mistake. We are all accustomed to see Miss Desmond admired and noticed by every one—it would be strange if it were not so—but I assure you there is not the slightest chance of—what you hinted at.’

She thought this would convince the Professor; but he actually giggled because he was so well-informed, and she knew so little of what was going on before her eyes. ‘My dear lady,’ he said, ‘I venture to think that there is no mistake about it, and I am very glad, very glad indeed.’

‘Professor, Crasher’—the lady was very serious —‘I do not know what reason you may have for being very glad; but I should be extremely sorry if I thought there could be anything of the kind between my sister and Mr. Randall. I hope she may make a better choice than that. Let me beg of you to say no more about it; at least not to any one else.’

‘Not a word, if such is your wish. I'm sorry the subject is unpleasant. But’ (he prepared to do battle for his friend) ‘what fault have you to find with Mr. Randall?’

‘No fault, except that he has no position to offer to his wife (supposing he wishes to marry) and hardly a penny in the world.’

‘Yes; it's money, I suppose,’ said the Professor. ‘Upon my word, Mrs. Meade, money is a great stumbling-block; one is always coming full tilt upon it, and breaking one's head. Because the money is all on one side, ought it to make any difference? For my part, I don't see why a man shouldn't marry the woman he likes best, even though she may have a million, if they are equal in other things. Ah, what would have become of me if my dear Selina—But I beg your pardon: we will say no more on this unfortunate subject.’

And he left her very much annoyed, and angry almost, because she saw that Maud was still talking to Randall. What would have been her state of mind if she had seen a little more—if she had seen all that was connected with the matter that troubled her?

If she had seen her step-sister, for instance, going out of the room in which she had made the discovery of her own portrait, holding her head very high, and with a very stately carriage; but, for all that, feeling as if she were going to break down ignominiously. She went into her brother's sitting- roomsittingroom, because she thought it would be empty, and she might hide there while she could recover herself. ‘I hate to cry!—I won't cry over this!’ she said to herself. Nevertheless, her eyes slowly filled with tears which one after another stole down her cheeks.

Again had she made a most unlucky choice of a room, if privacy were what she most desired. Mr. Wishart was there, quietly reading in a corner. He came out of it, after he had gazed in astonishment for some minutes. Maud crying! why, what in the world could she have to cry for? He did not remember ever having seen her in tears; she was not given to such weakness. It could be no trifle which distressed her in this way. He sat down beside her, and took upon himself the office of consoler. For a time his kind words seemed to make matters worse. But at last—for this uncompromising young lady hated denials and subterfuges even more than she hated to cry—she told him the simple truth, and was comforted a little by his sympathy.

Later that evening, when she was sitting apart from the others, too listless and out of spirits to take much interest in their amusements, she heard some one coming towards her, and without turning her head to look, knew that it was Randall. ‘May I speak to you for one moment?’ he asked, and she said, ‘Yes.’

‘I am going away to-morrow.’

‘To-morrow,’ she repeated.

‘Yes. I have decided to go. I, think I ought. You were not pleased that I should keep the portrait. I feel now that you were right. May I give it to you, as you asked me for it?’

She had been displeased when he had refused it to her; now, like an incomprehensible woman, she was displeased because he was so ready to give it away.

‘I would rather not see it again,’ she said. ‘I don't care for it now.’

‘Very well,’ he answered, getting a little out of patience himself; for, as may be easily perceived, neither of these two persons was angelical in temper. ‘I only wish to please you. Will you tell me what I am to do with it?’

‘I don't care what becomes of it!’ she said impetuously. ‘It is not that I care for.’

‘No; I ought not to expect you to care for it,’ he answered slowly. ‘Perhaps I have forgotten myself again in speaking to you. Forgive me that: it is the last time I shall transgress in that way. It is not likely we shall ever meet again after to-morrow. But before I go, let me thank you for one thing—for what you told me, that you had believed in me all these years. I shall never forget that—it was more than I hoped; more than I deserved.’

He was going, but something—her look or her manner—stopped him. ‘Am I then so hard to please, and so unforgiving?’ she said. ‘You judge me too harshly. It will seem now as if I had driven you away, and I have behaved meanly. My brother saw I was troubled; he asked what it was, and I could not help telling him. Now, he thinks you have deceived him, while I know you only kept silence on my account.’

She had not intended to say a word of this, but intentions are slippery things; we can seldom hold them fast. So also he had only intended to say one or two words. He found himself saying many more, and he could hardly believe that, in the midst of his bitter self-accusations, he should feel her hand laid gently upon his arm and hear her speaking to him, not like one who despised him, though he had told her the worst about himself. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I could not have all those hard and unpitying thoughts of any one. How could you fancy them of me? It was right you should tell me, and it grieved me very much; but we have spoken of it for the last time. Now, all we have to do is to forget it.’

Nor did they speak of it again. But they found other things to talk about. Well might Mrs. Meade watch them and be amazed. They neither saw her nor any one else. They passed by the elder Mr. Langridge as if her had held the receipt of fern-seed and had been as invisible as air, instead of being a very noticeable and substantial person. He saw them, however, and drew his own conclusions from their blindness. A glance at his son confirmed him in these. Stephen was evidently, as his parent observed, without seeking for a choicer expression, ‘in the doldrums.’

The farmer hastened to his wife, who, with a sweet complacency of countenance, was watching the vigorous dancing of the four amiable and blooming Misses Langridge.

‘Polly,’ he whispered, ‘it's all up with Steve.’

‘Edward,’ said the lady, drawing up her fine figure and fixing upon him a pair of blue eyes that were still very pretty ones, ‘you had far better wait till we get home if you have anything to say about that. Remember that your whisper is nearly as loud as the voice other people usually speak in.’

‘He's a rival,’ said Mr. Langridge in the lowest whisper he could manufacture; it sounded like a hoarse croak.

‘Didn't I tell you so long ago?’ asked Mrs. Langridge, who, however, had said nothing of the kind. ‘Very likely he has a dozen, if the truth were known.’

‘Ay, but this is the principal one,’ said Mr. Langridge. ‘I'm not blind any more than you are I'm afraid she's throwing herself away.’

‘Well, it's no business of ours,’ said Mrs. Langridge, rising with dignity and taking a seat close to Mrs. Meade, where she knew her husband dare not whisper to her.

Mr. Langridge wandered about disconsolately. ‘Well, Steve,’ he said, as he approached his son, ‘you're not dancing to-night; what's amiss—not well, eh?’

‘Oh, I'm well enough,’ said Stephen moodily.

‘But some one else isn't?’ said his father jocularly. ‘Keep up your spirits, my boy; nothing's worse than depression of spirits. Bless me! a young man has no right to be depressed. I shouldn't allow these things to prey on me if I was you. You know I and your mother always thought you'd a poor chance in that quarter.’

‘Oh, really, father!’ exclaimed the unhappy Stephen, rushing away, ‘don't let us talk of it.’

‘Consolation's no use just now,’ reflected Mr. Langridge, dropping into an easy-chair and going to sleep almost immediately.

It was late when the dance was over, and had Mrs. Meade been in her ordinary state of mind she would have sought repose as soon as possible. But she was too excited at the discoveries she had made. She could not nurse her indignation until the morrow.

‘Algernon,’ she said gravely—it was too solemn an occasion for the familiar shortening of her brother's name—‘I have something to say to you.’

‘Say on’, he replied, ‘but consider that it is two in the morning.’

‘I must say it now or not at all. You have been shamefully deceived. I was always afraid something like this would happen. You are careless in asking people we know nothing about to stay with us—young people too; it would not matter if they were old and sensible.’

‘Oh, oh,’ said Mr. Wishart. ‘We have only three staying with us who have not reached the golden prime of thirty-five. There are only young Holmsby, Stephen Langridge, and Randall, who can be supposed to be liable to the follies of youth.’

‘Precisely,’ said Mrs. Meade stiffly. ‘I don't want to speak of Mr. Langridge or of Mr. Holmsby; he is only a simple boy, I don't suppose he is of age yet—but your favourite Mr. Randall. Do you know who or what he is?’

‘Well, not exactly,’ said Mr. Wishart.

‘Not exactly!’ repeated Mrs. Meade, with something like horror.

‘How could I? He doesn't go about placarded with his rank, condition, and estate, and one doesn't like to ask for such details from a gentleman.’

‘Has he told you anything about himself?’

‘No. He is one of those rare people who will talk about anything rather than themselves. I haven't asked him to tell me anything.’

‘Because,’ said Mrs. Meade, ‘I really am afraid there must be something between him and Maud. They must have known each other before. He has deceived you.’

‘I happen to know there is something between them,’ said Mr. Wishart, ‘for Maud has told me herself. You see, my dear, it is no news to me, and I advise you to go to bed with as calm a mind as possible, and not to agitate yourself with thoughts of deception where possibly none exists.’

‘Algy!’ cried Mrs. Meade, ‘what will be said of us if we let Maud throw herself and her fortune away on such a man?’

‘Eleanor, think of herself, not the fortune. You may not know perhaps that it's quite impossible for her to throw that away.’

‘How so?’

‘Because her uncle, old Mr. Desmond, was, I am sorry to say, a very mean man. The last proof of his meanness that such a man gives to the world is generally his will, and he conformed to the rule in that respect. He was determined that Maud should marry a cousin, and so keep the money in the family; she wouldn't marry the cousin, so she loses every penny of her fortune on her wedding-day, if she marries any other man. Perhaps he excused himself for this by thinking that she would most likely make what is called a good match.’

‘But she has what her mother left her surely?’

‘That was little enough. Mrs. Desmond could only leave what she had saved from her income; she could no more touch the principal than Maud can use hers. The Desmonds were a close-fisted family—to their women, at least. They believed in tying up everything in the hands of trustees. Maud has spent what her mother left her. She is a woman who likes to use money, not to keep it, and I don't blame her for that. So you see her money will not gladden any fortune-hunter, but will only go to a cousin five times removed, to some charitable institutions, and to an asylum, whither, I think, the man ought to have gone who devised such a condition.’

‘And Maud is so headstrong,’ lamented Mrs. Meade. ‘She had better far marry poor Stephen Langridge, who would wait twenty years, I believe, with a little encouragement now and then.’

‘I am afraid he would have to wait longer even than that,’ said Mr. Wishart.

‘You must speak to Mr. Randall,’ said Mrs. Meade. ‘I should let him see that you had found out his deception.’

‘I don't feel quite so shocked at that as you may do,’ observed Mr. Wishart, looking longingly at his bedroom candlestick. ‘We know that the human heart is deceitful, so we may expect to find affairs of the heart to be full of deception.’

‘That may be intended for a joke, Algernon; but I see nothing to laugh at in this affair. What will you do?’

‘Can't say till my ideas are cleared by a little sleep.’

Mr. Wishart took his candlestick and escaped.

Chapter XIV. Gut verloren—etwas verloren! Musst rasch dich besinnen. Und neues gewinnen. Ehre verloren—viel verloren! Muss Ruhm gewinnen Da werden die Leute sich anders besinnen Muth verloren—alles’ verloren! Da wär’ es besser nicht geboren.'

Goethe.

The afflicted Stephen arose early the next morning. He was becoming quite as remarkable for early rising as he had been for the opposite practice. People said he was improving in many ways. Probably he was; he thought less of himself and his own comfort, and he had lost most of that languid indifference to others and their affairs which had once marked his conduct.

He walked so perseveringly this cool autumn morning that one might have thought he was going into training. He wandered about the lawn and through the garden, until he came to a road that was cut through a little piece of bush down to the creek. He stopped at the entrance, for he heard voices and knew them, and did not wish to meet the two who were walking there: why should he vex himself with that sight? He tried to avoid them, but they took an unexpected turning—there was a perfect maze of winding walks in this place—and crossed his path. And both smiled and said good morning as if they did not care in the least whether he saw them or not. They hardly interrupted their conversation for him. Some few words he heard as they passed him. ‘She is actually advising him—that worthless fellow!—and urging him to do something,’ he said to himself, and smiled pityingly. ‘What can have blinded her so? what can she find in him?’ Ah, my dear Mr. Stephen, if you had been the person whom the lady advised, would your impartial mind have exercised itself in wondering what she could find in you?

‘Can you guess what surprised me the most when you told me your story?’ she was saying to the other—the one who was so worthless in Stephen's eyes. ‘It is this: you have been clever — I must give you that praise — in adapting yourself to all kinds of situations, you have tried almost everything, you have not been easily discouraged, and yet (I only repeat your own words) — you have succeeded in nothing. Isn't that true?’

‘Quite true—unfortunately.’

‘And did you really fancy you could succeed when you never gave yourself up to anything in earnest? Does any one succeed who changes his occupation as soon as he is tired of it—before he has learnt enough to make it easy to him. You will fancy I am going to lecture you.’

‘I wish you would,’ he said.

‘Well, then, to begin—you have been very versatile and very fickle. All the while (it seems so strange you did not see it!) there was a way open before you which you never tried; a way you were much more likely to succeed in than any of the others. There was a profession, and a very honourable one, in which, long ago, when you were a boy, it had been said you might make yourself famous if you tried. You have never thought it worth your while to try.’

‘Oh, you mean music.’

‘Yes. You laughed at poor Professor Crasher because he groaned aloud when he found you spending your days in painting. I think he was right. It is something else you ought to be doing.’

‘Don't I know that? I am cured of fancying myself a painter. I shall spoil no more canvas. But it is not easy to succeed as a musician. In this, just as in other professions, hundreds fail for every one who succeeds. What can I, a man utterly unknown, do in music?’

‘Yes; every one is unknown at the beginning,’ she replied, with spirit. ‘Is that going to daunt you? Am I to believe you are afraid of a few difficulties? Oh! if I were in your place’—and the colour deepened in her face, and her eyes brightened with enthusiasm— ‘I wouldn't rest till I had made myself known. No difficulty, no misfortune should discourage me. If I failed at first—and you must not expect success to come all at once—I would say to myself I have so much the more to win to make this to be forgotten.’

Her earnestness startled him. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that is what I ought to think, and what ought to have been my resolve long ago. I did not know you were so ambitious.’

‘It is for you that I am ambitious, and what I complain of in you is that you have not enough ambition. Can anything be done without it? And you forest yourself. When you studied music under men who were masters in the art, what did they tell you?’

‘They told me I had a future,’ he answered gloomily, ‘and I threw it away.’

‘Oh, not so! you have a future yet. Don't despair’—and she smiled at him—‘it is all to come. If you believed it as I do you would not lose another day; you wouldn't wait for opportunities, you would make them.’

He was carried away by the spirit and vehemence of her words. ‘Maud, I do not wait!’ he exclaimed. ‘I have thought of this often; but I have foolishly allowed myself to be turned about by every chance. I should be ashamed if you thought the difficulties in the way could discourage me. I had resolved to waste no more of my life; you have reminded me how much I have to work for; you have made me feel as if I must succeed this time.”

‘Yes; you are going to succeed,’ she laughed confidently. ‘You must make up your mind to succeed.’

‘But when? Who is to tell me that? If you could set me a time and say, “When that is over come and tell me you have won success”—’

‘A time—how can I?’ she answered shyly. ‘No one can say how long it will take. Does it matter so much if you have it in the end?’

‘Yes; to me. I am of an impatient nature. So many years have gone by already; I cannot bear to lose many more. And some men have to wait a lifetime for what we have been talking of.’

‘Some, but not all. Once I heard a musician who, they told me, had made himself famous in three or four years. Of course before that time he must have worked and studied for many years when no one knew or cared about him. I heard him often; he played pieces I have heard you play, and —don't smile I am not a judge, certainly; but one can feel music when one cannot understand it —I believe there was nothing in his playing you might not do if you tried. And four years is not too long a time, is it?’

‘It will seem short, indeed, if at the end I am able to tell you that I see my way clear to success. It will be long—very long, if it proves me a failure.’

‘Ah,’ she said earnestly (and her mood had changed—she was not so confident), ‘you are not to speak of failures, not to think of them. What have I been saying?—wild, foolish things. Who can be certain of good fortune? — perhaps I am setting you an impossible task; and how can I bear to hear that you have failed!’

‘You shall never hear that. Whatever may happen, my disappointments shall not grieve you. If I come again it will not be to speak of failure.’

They had forgotten poor Stephen completely, but they were still in his thoughts. ‘I wounder,’ he said, as he watched them go towards the house—‘does she know all about him? I wonder what it was he did!’

He had spoken aloud, without knowing it. A man, slovenly in his dress, handsome, but dissipated in appearance, had been leaning one the fence near him; he smiled to himself.

‘Is this the road to the settlement?’ he suddenly asked, in a loud, clear tone, so that the absorbed Stephen would be sure to hear him.

‘No; this is a private way through Mr. Wishart's property. That is the road, on the side of the hill.’

‘Thanks,’ answered the man. ‘Excuse me, you said something just now. You would like to know more of a person who has just gone past. Perhaps I can help you.’

‘When I require your help, I'll ask for it,’ said Stephen, looking at the man with disgust. He concluded he had never seen a man who was at once so fine-looking and so repulsive.

‘Don't be in a hurry,’ said the stranger, with an insinuating smile. ‘It is often our duty to do things which are unpleasant. We should not shrink from it. Perhaps that young lady does not know so much about that gentleman—let us call him—as your or I do. Do you think she would care to walk beside him if she did. I may be of service to you in this, Mr. Langridge.’

‘Do you want knocking down?’ inquired Stephen.

‘I do not,’ promptly replied the man, ‘and it would be a very bad return for the kindness I propose to do you. I could have given you an advantage over that gentleman yonder. But if you do not care that the young lady—’

‘You had better not mention her again!’ said Stephen, with such a threatening countenance that the obliging stranger mentally agreed with him that he had better not. ‘When I want to take a spy and informer into my service, I'll send for you.’

‘You are too virtuous for the age, Mr. Langridge,’ said the man, with a sneer, as he turned on his heel. ‘Your own thoughts betrayed you, and now you are ashamed of them.’

Stephen returned no answer, but he coloured to the eyes.

‘I believe the fellow is right,’ he muttered. ‘I was nearly as bad as himself. It was contemptible enough to wish to find something that would lower him in her opinion. I'm doing no good here.’

He was of the same opinion after breakfast, when he told his friends that he was going home.

‘What! not stay for our picnic on Wednesday, Mr. Langridge?’ said Mrs. Meade.

‘And our excursion to the coast on Thursday?’ said Mr. Wishart. ‘Bailey tells me there are pheasants by the thousand on this side of the sandhills. Why, you must stay; you haven't seen the rollers come in on the beach with a roar like thunder; it's worth the trip.’

But Stephen was not to be persuaded. He had been tempted to stay too long already, he said.

‘I shall be here again,’ he said, as he shook hands with his friends, ‘to say good-bye before I go South.’

‘Oh, are you going to the South?’

‘Yes,’ said Stephen, whose resolve had been made that very morning. ‘My father has bought a sheep-run for me, and I think I shall live, there and learn to manage it. I don't know how I shall like the work, but that doesn't matter. I have been idle long enough.’

‘You are quite right, I daresay, to wish to manage your own property,’ said Mrs. Meade; ‘but we shall miss you very much. What will become of our charades now, Maud? Mr. Langridge was to have helped us.’

‘You will manage much better without me,’ said Stephen. ‘I should only have blundered through my part. I never could act.’

Mrs. Meade laughed, and returned to her chair on the verandah and her novel, which was curling up in the sun.

Stephen ought to have gone, but forgetful that he had already said good-bye, he lingered to say to Maud, ‘You know why I am going, Miss Desmond?’

‘You assume that I do,’ she answered, with a slight smile.

‘You will not acknowledge it,’ said Stephen; ‘but you can guess it. I need not have stayed so long, if I had believed what you told me at the first—that you would never change. Well, I shan't either; but I will say no more of that, or I might offend you. We may at least part friends.’

‘Why, we have always been friends, haven't we?’ she asked, smiling frankly.

‘I suppose so,’ said Stephen. ‘It was friendship on your part; but there was something else as well on mine.’ Then he said good-bye, and rode away.

He went towards home, where he arrived just as his parents were rising from their early dinner. They were curious at his sudden appearance, but they were too considerate to question him. Mr. Langridge could not refrain from observing to his wife, sotto voce, as usual, ‘I believe that little affair's done with, Polly.’

‘Most likely,’ curtly replied his wife. ‘So much the better for Steve.’

Stephen was not long in announcing the resolve he had made.

‘Go to the South!’ cried Mrs. Langridge, who liked her son to be at home as much as possible. ‘Send some one down to look after the place; there's no need for you to go.’

‘I must have something to do,’ said Stephen. ‘I'm tired of an idle life. Don't you think I had better go?’ he appealed to his father.

‘Just as you like, Steve, just as you like,’ replied the old gentleman. ‘Please yourself. I reckon the place is a kind of howling wilderness; cold enough in winter to freeze the marrow in one's bones, hot enough to bake it in summer; not many trees about; country either flat as a pancake or sticking up in great ridges. But sheep get a living there, though you'll find rather less grass on it than there was on your little place here. I sold that farm well. Wiggins has it now, and you should hear him brag about his cattle.’

‘I think I shall go down immediately,’ said Stephen.

‘Why, you can go when you like,’ replied his father; ‘only say the word—for money'll be wanted, you know; nothing can be done without that. You'll not have many neighbours there; no morning callers, Steve; it's lonely enough.’

‘I shan't mind that,’ said Stephen. Two months ago he would have shuddered at the idea of exiling himself to such a desert as he believed the sheep-run to be; but now he was contentedly indifferent to the prospect. He packed up a box of books and his chessmen—chess was one of the few games of skill which he had not been too indolent to master. He determined to fight off dulness with the aid of literature and chess problems. His mother and sisters, in great excitement, set to work and made an outfit for him, comprising immense stores, not only of useful things, but of useless ones also; such an outfit, in fact, as no one but an only son can expect to have wasted upon him. In a fortnight he had left the warm and humid North for a colder climate and a home where, if no other good awaited him, he would have plenty of that solitude which anchorites of old thought so healthful for the soul.

Chapter XV. ‘This is the curse of life, that not Another calmer train Of wiser thoughts and feelings blot Our passions from our brain; But each day brings its petty dust Our soon-choked souls to fill, And we forget because we must, And not because we will.'

Matthew Arnold.

Whether sleep had cleared his ideas or not, Mr. Wishart did not allow the morning to pass over without addressing himself to the question Mrs. Meade had pressed on his notice with such earnestness. No sooner had he seen Stephen out of his door, with the reflection that possibly another person might soon be sent after him, than he determined to cross-examine Randall at once. It happened that Randall was coming to him with the intention of saving him that trouble. They met at the door of Mr. Wishart's room.

‘Oh, come in, I want you,’ he cried. ‘You have something to tell me, haven't you?’

‘Yes, I was looking for you with that purpose,’ said Randall.

Mr. Wishart put on a look proper for a man who thinks his kindness has been abused, and although he felt he could not keep it up, began in a dignified tone. ‘Now, Randall, I have been mistaken in you. You had no right to come into my house as a stranger when, as it appears, you were nothing of the kind—to one of us at least. I think you ought to have told us—though you might not have liked to do so, it would have been better than living here under false pretences.’

‘False pretences!’ said Randall, resenting the expression.

‘Well,’ said Mr. Wishart, beginning to slide down from his pinnacle of dignity, ‘perhaps I put things a little too strongly; but that is how it looks to me. You owe me an explanation in any case.’

‘And that is what I wish to give you,’ said Randall. ‘If I have deceived any one it has been unintentionally. I came here as a stranger, you say. I expected to find only strangers here. If you put yourself in my place you will feel that I could not have made myself known without speaking of things, not only very painful to me—perhaps that would not have mattered—but much more so to the only other person who knew them, and who might wish them to be entirely forgotten.’

‘I understand. It was another's secret as well as yours. But surely you knew before you came into this house that Miss Desmond and I were related by marriage. Knowing her and her mother so well as you must have done, you ought to have been aware of that.’

‘No; I did not know that Mrs. Desmond had married again until after I came here. Since I left England I have heard nothing of the family.’

‘You soon found out how it was, though. Was it fair to remain here?’

‘You should at least do me the justice to acknowledge that I wished to go.’

‘Yes, I'll acknowledge that you wanted to hurry away before your work was done, but I had no difficulty in persuading you to stay,’ answered Mr. Wishart, with a smile. ‘But that is of no moment now,’ he added, looking serious and dignified again. ‘You know, of course, that Miss Desmond is not my sister, nor indeed any relation of mine; but for a long while we have been as brother and sister to one another. I think this secret we have just spoken of is the only thing she has ever hidden from me. She told me a little last night, but I want to know all. I could not urge her to say more. You ought not to require urging. It seems that once there was an engagement between you, and that your conduct caused it to be broken. Now, I tell you plainly that if in any way you made yourself unworthy of her, no matter how much I have liked you—how much I like you now—you shall never come near her again, if I can prevent it. She is so much my sister that it is my duty to take care of her, and for her sake I must know all about you.’

‘Mr. Wishart,’ said the other, not angrily, but with the voice of the voice of one who with difficulty controlled himself, ‘do you think that I would not do as much for her as you? If I am unworthy do not fear that I shall ever try to bring myself to her remembrance again. Have I not offered to go? am I not going now? But you shall know everything; I will keep nothing back. I would rather tell you my whole history than a part.’

‘Randall, I don't mean to be unkind,’ said Mr. Wishart. ‘However it may turn out, we won't part so hastily as you think. No, I like you too well for that. I shall, try to prove to you that I'm your friend. I can help you, I am sure. But you can't complain that I have my sister's welfare at heart. You must see that you can't ask her to share your fortunes.’

‘No, truly, I don't want her to share my misfortunes, you might have said.’

‘And is she to wait for good-fortune to come to you?’

‘Not unless she pleases. If what I am about to stake everything on does not succeed by the end of the next four years, I promise you that she shall never see or hear of me again. And during that time she shall not hear of me; for I would not have her wait for what may never come. The obligation shall be all on my side.’

‘You speak frankly enough,’ said Mr. Wishart. I was to hear all about you, though. Come outside for a walk, and tell it to me.’

They went out, and while they leisurely followed the road through the bush, passing by the very place where they had first seen each other, Randall told his story.

‘You never knew my father, I believe, but you may have heard of him. He was senior partner in the firm of Randall and Haughton, an old business house. His father and grandfather before him had belonged to the same firm. The business was a large one, and Mr. Haughton and my father were supposed to be wealthy. And so they must have been for several years after I was born.

‘My father had a house near London—I daresay it is in London now. It was a beautiful old-fashioned place, and it had belonged to our family for more than a hundred years. It is lost how. Mr. and Mrs. Desmond were near neighbours and friends of ours. Your sister and mine were playmates; I might say the three of us were playmates, for I was only a boy then, and we were nearly always together. But after her husband's death Mrs. Desmond went to live in the country—’

‘Yes, to live near my father's house,’ interrupted Mr. Wishart; ‘and then, although I was a hobbledehoy of more than seventeen, Maud and I were playmates. But I beg your pardon; go on.’

‘Then,’ continued Randall, ‘we only met at intervals, generally at Mr. Richard Desmond's, your sister's uncle, who lived in town.’

‘I knew him,’ said Mr. Wishart, ‘only a little, but quite as much as I wished.’

‘From what I can remember I don't think my father gave much attention to his business in the city. Music was the business of his life. I have heard him say that there had always been a musician in the family.’

‘We have had some proof of that,’ said Mr. Wishart.

‘He had studied music as a science, and understood it thoroughly. He played well on three or four different instruments, but best on the violin. Some of his compositions are well known, though he would never have them published: he was contented with distributing them amongst his friends. He delighted in teaching me, and when I was old enough he sent me abroad to study under the best masters. I don't know which pleased me most when I was a child—to listen to his playin, or to have my mother sing to me. She had a delightful voice; the first thing I can remember is hearing her sing.’

‘It seems to me you were brought up with music and song,’ said Mr. Wishart.

‘Oh, that part of my life seems the pleasantest of all when I look back on it. It did not last long. I went to Cambridge when I was eighteen, and when I came home again for the first time, our home was no longer the same.

‘Till this time, if we had not been actually extravagant, it had always appeared as if everything which could be bought with money was at our command, and we had never dreamed of the probability of an ending to such an easy and luxurious way of life. Now, for the first time, my father began to be troubled about money matters. Want of attention to the business, which had been managed, and not managed well by his partner, had resulted as might have been foreseen. The firm was thrown into the shade by others more enterprising, the business began to grow less, and when Mr. Haughton died suddenly, his own affairs and those of the firm were found to be so inextricably entangled that no one could say exactly whether he had been honest or not. My father was of the opinion that he had been only a most inveterate blunderer. It came to pass, however, from his blundering that the house was on the brink of ruin.

‘No man could have worked harder to save it than my father did from this time. He had never liked business; but now he gave all his time and thought to it; he bent his whole energies on the work. The dread of the disgrace of bankruptcy was always in his mind; he changed greatly, he became gloomy and silent, and in a few months he seemed to grow old and careworn. Still I believe he would have succeeded in clearing himself had more time been allowed. He struggled bravely against misfortune, but it broke his heart at last. The failure of a business house with which he had connections hastened his own—and then—a few weeks after—he died.

‘I was just of age. Long before, my father had been accustomed to tell me, when he was in a pleasant mood, what should be done when that time came. I cannot help but like him better when I remember his fancies, though others might smile at them. He would talk of the wines that were waiting for that day in some cobwebbed cellar; of the feast that should be made ready; how open house should be kept for all who might please to come, and how some sort of a musical festival should be provided for their entertainment. This last idea was the one he most delighted in and talked of oftenest. Well, I suppose the rare wines have been drunk by some one long ago, but not at such a banquet as he dreamed of. There was mourning in our house that day, instead of feasting. Our house! it was ours no longer; we had nothing in the world; everything was assigned to the creditors, who proceeded to realise the estate with as much haste as could be made. Some of them, however, behaved very kindly to us. They had the more right to do so, as, in the end, my father's properly satisfied their claims to the last penny.

‘I cannot think of this, even now, without indignation. They had driven him into what they called a bankruptcy when in reality he was perfectly solvent. He had no debts of his own; the liabilities belonged to the firm: on the other hand, most of the assets were represented by his private property, which was given up to the creditors, even to the family plate and jewellery. He had filled his house with valuable collections: rare books and manu- scriptsmanuscripts, engravings, paintings, old furniture, and plate: all these were scattered. They sold for unheard-of prices; and it was this part of his property, which no one had thought of but himself, and which perhaps he had never valued at the immense sum it brought at the sale, that saved us. We were left without a shilling; but we had one thing to be thankful for—we were free of every obligation, and though the old firm had ended in disaster it left no debts behind it.

‘Our best friend was a Mr. Moresby, who had been intimate with us for years. He loaded us with kindnesses. He took me into his office, and promised to do all in his power for me. He had bought our house; but, as he did not wish to occupy it at once, he begged that my mother would continue to live there for some time. Through him also, as I found out afterwards, many things we had prized but had to been able to keep, were returned to us. There was a motive for these kindnesses, though we did not suspect it. I thought he was generous to us because he had been my father's friend. That may have been one reason, but there was another.

‘I have told you that I had a sister. I could not tell you how much she was to us—how beautiful, how clever—how proud we were of her. It was impossible to know her and not to love her. She was the other reason. Others beside Mr. Moresby would have befriended us for her sake, and for her he would have given us much more than we could ever have accepted.

‘I was with him for nearly a year, and all that time he treated me like a favourite. He gave me a high salary, he advanced me over the heads of men who had served him as many years as I had months, and he promised me a better and more independent position as soon as I understood the business. The firm had a branch house in Marseilles, which was managed by a distant relative of Mr. Moresby, called Edwards. Edwards was half a Frenchman; his parents were English, but he had been born in France, and was a naturalised subject of that country. Mr. Moresby proposed that I should go to Marseilles, and after I had gained experience, take the place of Edwards, who, it was expected, would leave the office after his approaching marriage to a rich lady, the widow of a merchant of Marseilles. I was eager to go. I should have grasped at anything which had seemed to bring me nearer to the end I longed for. I was in haste to be rich. I hated business—it had never been intended that I should meddle with it—but I was determined to work as hard as I could, so that I might escape from it all the sooner. I think I did work hard, too. They wondered at the quickness with which I learnt every detail of the business; this, too, when I had come into the office ignorant of nearly everything that could be of use to me there.

‘Before I went to Marseilles my mother told me that Mr. Moresby had made an offer of marriage to my sister. I felt offended as well as surprised. He was between forty-five and fifty; my sister was hardly eighteen. The disparity between their ages was not the only thing to be considered; he was singular in his habits, gloomy and morose, a man whose life had been spent in money making, and who, now that he had made it, was not able to enjoy his money. The proposal was refused, as might have been expected, but there was no change in his friendship—he continued to be the most frequent visitor at our house, and to me he was kinder than ever.

‘I liked my new place under Mr. Edwards very much. There was nothing English about him but his name, unless, as his friends said, it was his face, which was round and red, and had the stolid expression of selfish good-nature which appears in French caricatures of an Englishman. He had even succeeded in forgetting his mother-tongue. This however was no hindrance to our becoming intimate; for, having lived for some years in Paris when quite young, I spoke French almost as well as my own language.

‘Mr. Edwards looked stupid in the face: he was anything but that in reality, as most persons found out who dealt with him. He had been clever enough to have made a tolerable fortune—out of nothing, apparently, for his salary had never been large, and he had seemed to live to the full extent of his means. The explanation of this riddle lay in the fact that, like many Frenchmen of his class, he gambled in the share market. He was very adroit, this little French-Englishman; so that stocks rose and fell, it seemed, only for his advantage, and he was never too late in selling out or too rash in buying. He thought it a great proof of his friendship to teach me this dangerous business, and at first I thought so too. I bought and sold when he told me, and I was usually successful.

‘You can guess how this is going to end. I was in a position of great trust. I was treated by Edwards not as a subordinate but as one who had as much authority in the office as himself. Perhaps he thought he was pleasing Mr. Moresby in this. I was left to myself in the midst of dangerous opportunities and temptations which to one in my position were very strong. I do not wish to make excuses for myself; I have none to make, except this one that has been made for hundreds of others who have committed the same fault as mine. I was very young and very ignorant. I might add also that my only friend and adviser was a man of the sort with whom honesty means expediency.

‘I can't tell you how I was led into using money that was not my own, nor how I deluded myself into believing that what I purposed to do was not dishonest. I suppose every one who yields to such a temptation find arguments in plenty to satisfy himself that he is doing nothing amiss. It is so easy to deceive oneself, and, while it lasts, self-deception is so pleasant. Mine lasted only a short time. I knew that I was a thief, and then my agony for what I had done, and the position in which I had placed myself, was so great that I felt as if I should die if I kept it to myself. I went to Edwards and told him all. I felt covered with shame; but he, after he had listened to me gravely, not in the least affected as I stammered out my tale, looked at me and laughed.

‘“My dear Henry,” he said, “you are very young. You take things too seriously, you are too ready to despair. Take courage, my young friend, this is not going to ruin you. It is a common fault; it happens every day. What! is this misplacement, we will call it, of a paltry sum to bring disgrace upon your head? You will replace it, of course.” I vowed that I would. I could not. We had been fortunate in our speculations until this time; now we began to lose heavily, for me at least, who had staked everything, even reputation itself, itself, on this last chance. Yet if I had made a thousand fortunes by my ventures they would not have been worth the tortures I suffered; the thought of my disgrace and the dread of exposure; the wearying and incessant strain of excitement.

‘It came to an end at last. When the discovery was made I did the most foolish thing possible—I ran away. I hid myself in London, in the house of one of our old servants. I wrote to my mother, determined that I would tell her myself what I had done. Unfortunately she was not at home; she had gone to stay with a friend who was dangerously ill. My sister opened my letter, as she had been directed to do. She did not hesitate a moment, but took the next train to London, and went to entreat Mr. Moresby to save me from exposure. Do you think any one could have denied her request, he least of all when she came to him in tears, and begged for my pardon; when in her excitement she threw herself before him, and held his hand, refusing to let it go until he had given her his promise? Oh yes, then he could be generous! But he set a price upon his generosity, and it was a high one—it was herself.

‘If you think all this improbable, you must remember she was only a girl of eighteen, and as ignorant of the world as she was superior to its craft. My letter, written in the height of my despair, had driven her nearly frantic, and she was proud and high-spirited enough to think disgrace worse than death. She gave herself away without stopping to consider, and her promise once given was fixed. When I read her letter telling me at what a sacrifice she had saved me I think I went mad.

‘I had been going about from place to place, so I did not receive the letter for several weeks after it had been written. I found it waiting for me when I returned to my first hiding-place. I went to Mr. Moresby at once; he refused to see me, he would not allow me even to come into his office, and my letters were returned to me unread. I hurried down into the country, where my sister and mother were living then. They were gone to Brighton, I was told. I followed them. I was resolved to prevent the marriage by some means. I found the hotel where they were staying, and just as I had reached the door I saw the carriages returning from a wedding. I saw her, looking more like a child than ever in her white dress, and I saw him beside her, a gray-haired, elderly man. She knew me across the street, and, as they passed me, she turned her face away and burst into tears.

‘I could not bring myself to go to her or to my mother, though I longed to do so. Mr. Moresby wrote to me, offering to reinstate me in my place, declaring that he forgave me. I could not forgive him. I would take nothing more from him. I was thoroughly reckless now. I had no money, and I had no character. My sister had thought to hide my disgrace, but all who knew me had heard the story. I do not know where I should have gone, or what I should have become, if I had not met with one friend who was not ashamed to own me. I had known him at Cambridge, but had not been very intimate with him—indeed, I and my companions had been accustomed to make him the butt of our small jokes, and had looked down on him as a simple, odd kind of fellow, too eccentric to be anything but amusing when we had nothing better to amuse ourselves with. Now he can afford to smile at us in his turn; the simple fellow whom we thought so dull has left all those who laughed at him far behind. Sometimes I wonder if, in his busy public life, he finds time to think of us and the foolish tricks we played on him. Most likely he has forgotten long ago how he helped me when he found me out in my trouble. He advised me to go to one of the colonies, and he spoke of New Zealand because he happened to have a relative there, to whom he promised me a letter of recommendation. He lent me my passage-money, he went with me on board the ship, and he was the only one to whom I could say good-bye when I left England. I wrote to tell my mother and sister where I was going. There was no one else to tell. I had no longer any right to think that your sister would wish to hear of me again. Mrs. Desmond had, written to me, insisting that the engagement must be broken, and I felt that she was right. She had never approved of it since my father's death.

‘I had a place found for me as soon as I presented the letter from my friend. I was the bookkeeper in Trevet and Stapleton's, and for some time I kept the situation; long enough to return to Mr. Moresby most of the money I had taken. I paid the rest afterwards. But I soon found that my disgrace had followed me even here. Some one who had known me a little in England had brought out the story, and, as if it was not bad enough in itself, had made additions of his own. It was whispered about. My employers heard it, and though they had no cause to complain, they “kept their eye on me,” as they said. Those who watch a man closely will find grounds for suspicion in the end. They lost money by one of their clerks, and they were only too ready to believe that I was the guilty one. What could I do? I could not prove that I had not taken it, and though I had my own suspicions, I could not accuse another on suspicion only. There was that old fault of mine, which they all knew of weighing heavily in the balance against me. It ruined me a second time. I was dismissed, and reminded that I only escaped severer punishment because of the merciful forbearance of Messrs. Trevet and Stapleton. I believe it was Mr. Stapleton's; the quality of Mr. Trevet's mercy was very inferior. After this there was no possibility of obtaining another situation in the same town.

‘That was nearly six years ago. It would take a long time to tell you how I spent those years. I went from place to place. I tried first one occupation and then anther. I found it very easy to make a living, and after a time I gave up caring to do more. I liked a wandering life, and so I have, I should think, walked some thousands of miles in Australia and Tasmania, as well as in New Zealand. It was a rough life; but I liked in for the constant change, the beautiful scenery which was often around me, and the pleasure of living so much in the open air under the clear skies of a fine climate. And it seemed to me, from the free and hospitable manners of the people, that I had a friend in every house I came to. Such a life has many pleasures for one who had good health, and is not too fastidious, and does not trouble himself with the thought that he might employ his time in a better manner.

‘You know what my life has been for the last year or two. This is all that I need tell you. I have kept nothing back which I could wish to hide from you. You know the worst of me. I was foolish and guilty once; but since that time, though I have been in greater straits and temptations, I have done nothing of which I am ashamed. That is what I wish you to believe of me.’

‘Yes; I believe you have told me the truth,’ said Mr. Wishart, ‘and I am almost sorry to have made you talk of old troubles again. It is wisest to “let the dead past bury its dead.” I think Mr. Edwards was right, though he ought to have given you good advice as well, when he said you were too excitable and too ready to despair. That old giant Despair is a terrible fellow to encounter, and you know that many have died in his dungeons. But come, we have talked enough for one day. You are not going away just yet either, as soon as we have found you out.’

Mr. Wishart gave Randall the benefit of his advice while they walked about together. Who does not like to advise? It is to be questioned whether middle-aged and elderly people especially like any thing else half so well. Mr. Wishart thought his advice had been dictated by good sound sense; and feeling happy because he had been able to give it, went to tell his sister what had been said. Mrs. Meade was reading her novel, and as it was very affecting, crying over it, in which melting mood her brother found her.

‘What! in tears?’ he cried, in his loudest voice—he had a loud voice when he was in good spirits, and not specially careful to moderate it. ‘This is a day for smiles and congratulations.’

‘Congratulations?’ said Mrs.: Meade, gently mopping her pale-coloured eyes. ‘Have you come to tell me the date of your wedding-day, or something of that kind?’

‘Alas! no; my wedding-day is still involved in doubt and uncertainty. But four years hence—’.

‘Four years! Algernon, are you crazy? As if the engagement was not long enough already! Of course, Violet is still very young; but you are old enough, I should think.’

‘Yes; I am old, as you consolingly remark, my dear sister—very old; but the people who are thinking of a four years’ extension of an engagement are not quite so aged as to be afraid to wait so long.’

‘The people—what people?’

‘Eleanor, much novel-reading has turned your brain.’

‘If you mean Maud, and if you have allowed her to engage herself to Mr. Randall, you have acted very unwisely. Oh, Algy, how could you! You ought to have reasoned with her, and persuaded her to send him away; you have more influence than I have; she has always thought so much of you.’

‘My influence only extends to a certain point. If I tried to strain it beyond that I might reason till doomsday and do no good. Besides, have I any right to control her? She is of age, remember, and able to judge for herself. And I don't perceive anything so very bad about the poor fellow whom you would have me hunt from my doors.’

‘He must have disgraced himself in some way.’

‘Yes; and he has told me how. He made a false step at the beginning of his career, and has been severely punished for it. But if Maud can forgive that fault, and if, during the time of probation which has been granted to him, he shows himself to be really worthy of her, I can't see what right we have to object.’

‘So they were engaged years ago,’ said Mrs. Meade thoughtfully. ‘I remember hearing that there had been some foolish affair of the kind when Maud was a girl of seventeen or eighteen; but I was never told the gentleman's name. It must have been when John and I were in India, and you had gone out to New Zealand. Maud never said a word about it to me: she is like her mother; a woman you'd like to tell your own secrets to, but who wouldn't for the world let you have one of hers. They never spoke of it. And since then what splendid chances she has thrown away!’

‘Splendid in the opinion of others,’ said Mr. Wishart. ‘This young lad is not likel to marry a man of another person's choosing.’

‘What are they going to live on, I wonder? She loses her fortune if she marries. Does he know that?’

‘He does know it. They will live on what he can make for himself.’

‘I never heard anything so preposterous! Who would ever think of Maud as a poor man's wife? Why, she doesn't know the value of money—it has been so common with her all her life. And she would be miserable if she hadn't plenty to give away.’

‘Well, perhaps they won't be so very poor,’ said Mr. Wishart. ‘People have made a good deal out of music, you know.’

‘Oh, it is that, is it? He is a genius; but, so far as I know, geniuses are always wretchedly poor. I don't think he will ever get on.’

‘Yes it's an ill-thriven kind of thing, this genius, in the opinion of many people,’ said her brother, with a laugh. ‘I believe there are persons who, at the sound of the word, immediately have a vision of a sallow-faced, hollow-eyed, miserable wretch, in a coat out at elbows, and boots worn down at the heels with tramping the streets in search of a buyer for his useless talents. There are such poor fellows, of course; but I suspect that three-quarters of them haven't got the real thing at all, and that the remainder don't know what to do with it. They're idle, perhaps, or faint-hearted and timid, and a man who wants to “get on,” as you say, ought to be bold—very bold. It's not that genius is a drug in the market, for every century the world needs it more and more. It is only when it lies idle that we have a right to pity its owner. When genius puts its shoulder to the wheel there is nothing it may not do.’

‘Ah; but if this friend of ours shouldn't know what to do with his genius, or if it should turn out that he hasn't any?’

‘Why, then it is my belief that he will never come to tell us of his failure. He is too proud to make a parade of his misfortunes. If he should lose this chance we have seen the last of him.’

Chapter XVI. ‘Heute geh’ ich, komm' ioh wieder Singen wir ganz andre Lieder. Wo so viel sich hoffen lässt Ist der’ Abschied ja ein Fest.

Goethe

Although the day on which Randall had intended to depart was not his last at Mr. Wishart's, his kind host could not persuade him to stay for another week. He would not wait, though as yet the path which he must take was only dimly visible. The plans that he had formed, or that others had proposed to him, were involved in bewildering uncertainty. But one thing was plain—on his road standing still was as dangerous as turning back. ‘Shun delays, they breed remorse,’ an old writer says, amongst other excellent things. Of careless delay or of hesitation Randall had known too much.

He took his leave. The house he had left—which perhaps he would never visit again—dwindled to a small white patch amongst the trees; the forest-covered hills, dashed with sunshine and misty rain, grew lower and fainter in the distance. The train soon brought him into the throng of the town, in good time to fulfil an appointment he had made with his whimsical acquaintance, Professor Crasher. That gentleman had pressed Randall to visit him, and had made this offer of his hospitality so often and so warmly that to neglect it would have been inexcusable. Moreover, the Professor desired to introduce him to Virchow, a celebrated musician on his tour round the world, and it had been arranged that they should go together to one of his concerts.

It was in the cool of the evening when Randall, after a systematic exploration of several back-streets and by-lanes, in a populous but not a fashionable suburb, discovered the Professor's abode, a verandahed cottage, festooned with creepers which darkened the windows, and embowered in trees much too large for the little garden. It was so cool, now that the sun was declining, that it was surprising to find the Professor, who had a great affection for fireside comforts, outside, rapidly perambulating the garden and backyard bareheaded. At first he appeared to be taking violent exercise; then Randall conjectured that he and another man must be trying which could get round the house in the shortest space of time; then it became evident that the Professor wanted to get into the house, and that the other man was ambitious of attaining the same end, but was not particular as to means. The Professor, however, was desirous that his companion should stay outside. Now and again Mrs. Crasher, who also seemed to wish that her husband should come in, and that the stranger should remain where he was, would cautiously open a door for about three inches, and the Professor, notwithstanding the disadvantage of his weight, would dart towards it like an arrow from the bow. So also would his companion, and as he was a lanky man, with limbs which seemed to have been made for running, he always won the race, and, had not Mrs. Crasher invariably shut the door in the nick of time, would have been in, leaving the Professor in the cold blast.

They had been three times round the house, and at three different points of attack—the front door, the back door, and the kitchen window—had tried to effect an entrance, with discouraging results, when the unknown man retired to the wood-pile to sit upon it and rest, and Professor Crasher leaned against the verandah post and wiped the perspiration from his forehead. He happened to look towards the gate, and seeing Randall, hastened to meet him.

‘Very glad to see you,’ he cried, ‘though you find us in peculiar circumstances. But what of that? a friend is always welcome. If you can help me to get in without letting that long-legged scoundrel in as well, you shall be doubly welcome.’

‘He appears to be very active, unfortunately,’ said Randall.

‘He can run for any length of time without stopping,’ said the Professor. ‘I wouldn't bother about it just now; I'd stay here till he was tired, if I didn't want to go with you to hear Virchow, and I can't go in these clothes; I must dress myself suitably.’

An upstairs window was now opened, and Mrs. Crasher leaned out and invited the Professor to draw near.

‘I'm so afraid you'll catch cold, dear,’ she cried.

‘I've caught cold already,’ gloomily replied the Professor. ‘I can feel it coming on. Can't you throw out my hat? I should be more comfortable if I had it.’

Mrs. Crasher, threw out the hat, and the Professor put it on, at the same time favouring the man at the wood-pile with a glance which was meant to express utter indifference to whatever that person might choose to do.

‘My dear Randall,’ he said, as he carefully adjusted his hat, this is a cold reception; but if we can only get inside—Hallo! what does that stupid girl mean by opening the door? She will have the fellow in if she doesn't mind.’

The servant girl executed a very successful sally from the back door, and captured three billets of wood from the pile on which the man was sitting. He was politely anxious to carry them for her, which she would by no means allow. While they were skirmishing with each other, Randall suggested to the Professor that now was the time for them to make an attempt at the front of the house.

‘Nothing of the kind,’ said the Professor firmly. ‘He's watching us, and don't you see that he's at least three yards nearer to the corner of the house than we are? Such a start to a man of his activity means everything. You perceive the meaning of my unfortunate situation, I suppose?’

‘Why, yes, I think so,’ said Randall. It was all he could do to avoid smiling, and the Professor himself did not appear to be much saddened by the situation.

‘I am sorry to say,’ he observed, ‘that my affairs are not in such a flourishing state as I could wish. When one has a family of twelve to provide for it is a difficult task to live within one's income.’

‘I should think so indeed,’ replied Randall.

‘And then I fear—I really am afraid that I am not a very economical sort of person. Dear me! my opinion of economy is that its as disagreeable a business as a man can set himself to learn. There's something very ungentlemanly about it too; anyway it's repugnant to my nature. Many people say to me, “Crasher, you should give up this or that; such and such a thing is a luxury, not a necessary.” They can't understand that things which are called luxuries by the commonalty are indispensable to some natures. I couldn't live if I were deprived of everything but the bare necessaries of life. Why—will you believe it, my dear fellow?—some people have actually advised me to adopt another style of dress, to wear horrid ill-fitting clothes and big clumsy boots, to give up cigars, button-hole bouquets, and so on. I assure you that such persons, if I followed their advice, would soon have me walking about in a winding-sheet like a mummy cloth to save tailors’ bills. I say, I feel cold, don't you?’

‘It is unpleasantly cold under these trees,’ said Randall. ‘Why not make a dash just now and get in?’

‘I believe I will; the fellow is staring over the fence at that carriage in the street. Now!’

The man at the wood-pile saw them start, and rushed after them, but he was too late; the door closed in his face. The Professor could not deny himself the pleasure of looking out of the window and satirically smiling at his discomfited persecutor. ‘Aha, done you!’ he said. ‘I hope, my dear,’ he exclaimed to Mrs. Crasher, ‘that there is a good fire in the dining-room. I am chilled to the bone. I really feel for that poor man now I have got in. I suppose he's only doing his duty, and I'm sure it can't be a pleasant one on a day like this.’

Mrs. Crasher, who was a languid, pale-looking woman, replied that she had taken care there should be a good fire, and also that the dinner was ready, and had been waiting some time.

‘It shall wait no longer,’ said the Professor. ‘I have an appetite this evening.’

They went into the dining-room. Randall supposed that the majority of the family of twelve which the Professor had referred to must be still in the seclusion of the nursery, as only four young ladies, whose ages ranged from about sixteen to nine, sat down with them at dinner. The course of the dinner did not run smoothly. Mrs. Crasher was displeased because every dish was overdone or had got cold. The servant who waited at table had been so frightened by the burglarious attempts of the man in the yard that she was absent-minded, and made serious blunders in her ministrations. There were several alarms also, Mrs. Crasher continually fancying that some one was coming in by door or window. The Professor alone was serene and composed; as exuberant in his spirits, and eating with as good an appetite, as if there were no such things as bills of sale or executions in the world. His benevolence expanded with the warmth of the fire and the comfort of a dinner he had felt himself to be greatly in need of, and again he pitied the man outside.

‘Selina,’ he said to Mrs. Crasher, ‘don't you think we might send a plateful of something warm to that starved wretch? I suppose he won't go away yet. Is he there, Charlotte?’

‘He nearly got in just now, sir,’ answered the maid, ‘but I trapped his toe in the door.’

‘Oh, he wouldn't mind that; he's an enthusiast in his profession—a new hand most likely.’

‘I believe I hear him in the kitchen,’ said Mrs. Crasher.

‘You need not be afraid, Selina. I remember looking up the question when we had the same unpleasant affair before, and I believe he can't break into the house, and he'll have to go away at sunset.’

Charlotte was despatched with a plateful for the man—if he should not be in, Mrs. Crasher said; but the Professor observed that he might as well have it whether he were in or not, as he could not see what difference it made; sooner or later he would succeed in thi design. This proved true. Shortly afterwards a loud noise was heard from the kitchen, which in this suburban villa was by no means remote from the dining-room. There was a scuffle, a rush, a sound as if a door were being torn off its hinges, then the tramp of a heavy foot on the kitchen floor, and immediately after the servant girl darted into the room, crying, ‘Ma'am, he's in!’

‘Yes, I expected you would let him in, Charlotte,’ severely remarked Mrs. Crasher.

‘My dear, he was sure to get in,’ said the Professor. ‘I thought him a most extraordinary man for his perseverance.’

‘I couldn't help it,’ whimpered the servant. ‘I was obliged to fill the boiler or it would have bursted, and he squeezed past me all at once.’

‘Pooh! what does it matter?’ said the Professor. ‘Give the fellow a chair by the kitchen fire. We will have a little music, I think, Randall.’

He sat down to the piano and played till he thought it was time to dress for the concert. He had made some sort of a toilet before dinner, he now made another much more elaborate. To know how to dress with good taste, the Professor informed Randall, ought to be as much the accomplishment of every gentleman as it is allowed to be one of the many that are included in the making of a lady. As he said this he smiled, as if happy in the consciousness that he was an example of the fine art carried to perfection. ‘My dear fellow, pardon me,’ he said, ‘but at your age you should dress better. You should change your tailor.’ Professor Crasher's tailor was a man driven to desperation. He had as yet only been repaid by seeing how well his suits fitted the Professor. But the Professor advertised him continually.

They joined a stream of people going towards the music-hall. There was a crowd at the door, and a line of carriages along the street.

‘There will be a full house,’ said the Professor, ‘It is wonderful what audiences he draws. He has a fine talent, and it is wasted. They say that he is drinking himself to death, and that his agent Philimore has hard work to get through with him.’

‘Philimore?’ said Randall reflectively. ‘I had a friend who was called Philimore, and it is not a common name.’

‘There he is, talking to a very tall man. He towers head and shoulder above little Philimore.’

‘Little Philimore! that is what we used to call him. Yes, it is the same; how strange that he should be here!’

‘Why, for that matter, you are here too,’ said the Professor, ‘and so am I, and many another unlucky wight who never thought of vegetating in the colonies a few years ago. But here comes Virchow.’

There was an impatient burst of applause as a short, broad-shouldered man came on to the platform. He looked down, not at the rows of faces before him, and the stolid expression of his face remained unmoved, as if an enthusiastic reception mattered nothing to him. It was a face which bore out the truth of the Professor's words—dull, heavy, and covered with an unhealthy purple flush. Handsome it never could have been, but once it had been singularly intelligent; the eyes were fine and large, and the forehead was a broad and massive one. It was the face of a man who had sacrificed his intellect to a vile craving. Yet something of the lost light of expression came back when he commenced to play, only tolerably at first, then better and better as the music roused him from his apathy. The dull vacant eye grew bright, his features even seemed to alter, to become more dignified, and he held his head erect, as if conscious that, though degraded in other things, in this at least he had the superiority, and could lead his audience captive as long as it was his pleasure.

There was one listener who hung on every note and watched every movement of his hands with untiring interest. He knew the pieces note for note, and he acknowledged that they were faithfully rendered. But he said to himself, and felt that it was no boast, ‘What he is doing I can do as well. With time and opportunity I could do better than that.’

He spoke the last words aloud, though in an undertone.

‘Can you?’ said his companion pertinently. ‘Then why don't you?’ ‘If I could—ah, then I should not have an unbidden guest in my house at present, and I should not, my dear Randall, be obliged to ask you for the trifling loan of ten shillings. Thank you very much; shall I give you an I O U for the amount?—perhaps it is hardly worth while.’

Randall agreed with the Professor in this—his I O U's were not worth much.

There had been a short interval between the two parts of the concert, and Virchow had left the platform. He was expected to come on again to play the first piece in the second part of the programme—a violin solo—but he did not appear. The audience waited patiently; those who went to Virchow's concerts were often obliged to wait. At last, as the musician was not forthcoming, a change was made in the programme, and another member of the company, a lady celebrated for her soprano voice, sang one of Beethoven's melodies. Another pause, and one of Beethoven's melodies. Another pause, and then Mr. Philimore came forward, in an agitated manner, and entreated the indulgence of the audience. On account of a sudden attack of illness it was impossible for Virchow to appear again that evening. There were expressions of disapprobation, notwithstanding Mr. Philimore's polite and prettily-worded excuses. No one cared for the soprano, which was rather the worse for wear, nor for a dreary combination of harp and piano, and a drearier song from a gentleman whose voice had the merit of coming from the lowest depth of his chest. There was some difficulty in clearing the hall, and some parsimonious individuals complained loudly that they had not had their money's worth. In the crush at the door, Randall saw the man again who had been talking to Philimore before the concert began. He heard him whisper hurriedly to a friend, ‘Have you heard? Virchow is dead.’

‘What!’ cried the other, starting back. ‘So suddenly?’

‘Philimore told me himself. It is rather a blow for him.’

‘Poor little Philimore!’ was the last that Randall heard of this conversation. He parted from the Professor at the door, and made his way through the crowd mechanically, turning this way and that with the abstracted manner of one who is occupied with a new thought. On his way to his lodgings more than once he heard the words passed from mouth to mouth—‘Virchow is dead.’

End of Vol. II.

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Under A Charm. From the German of E. Werner, by Christina Tyrrell.

“Many leaves have not been turned over before the reader discovers that this is no ordinary novel—no mere chronicle of ambition and failure, love and disappointment; the book must be read to be appreciated, it really an admirable novel.”—Pall Mall Gazette.

“Novel-readers owe a debt of gratitude to the translator of this faseinating story. The translation is so well done that no one would ever suspect the book to be other than of English origin, and the narrative is so absorbing that few who take up the book will lay it down without finishing it.”—The Spectator.

London Richard Bentley & Son, New Burlington ST. Publishers in Ordinary to Her Majesty the Queen.