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THE FIRST BOOK I. Of my grandfather Verus I have learned to be gentle and meek, and to refrain from all anger and passion. From the fame and memory of him that begot me I have learned both shamefastness and manlike behaviour. Of my mother I have learned to be religious, and bountiful; and to forbear, not only to do, but to intend any evil; to content myself with a spare diet, and to fly all such excess as is incidental to great wealth. Of my great-grandfather, both to frequent public schools and auditories, and to get me good and able teachers at home; and that I ought not to think much, if upon such occasions, I were at excessive charges. II. Of him that brought me up, not to be fondly addicted to either of the two great factions of the coursers in the circus, called Prasini, and Veneti: nor in the amphitheatre partially to favour any of the gladiators, or fencers, as either the Parmularii, or the Secutores. Moreover, to endure labour; nor to need many things; when I have anything to do, to do it myself rather than by others; not to meddle with many businesses; and not easily to admit of any slander. III. Of Diognetus, not to busy myself about vain things, and not easily to believe those things, which are commonly spoken, by such as take upon them to work wonders, and by sorcerers, or prestidigitators, and impostors; concerning the power of charms, and their driving out of demons, or evil spirits; and the like. Not to keep quails for the game; nor to be mad after such things. Not to be offended with other men's liberty of speech, and to apply myself unto philosophy. Him also I must thank, that ever I heard first Bacchius, then Tandasis and Marcianus, and that I did write dialogues in my youth; and that I took liking to the philosophers' little couch and skins, and such other things, which by the Grecian discipline are proper to those who profess philosophy. IV. To Rusticus I am beholding, that I first entered into the conceit that my life wanted some redress and cure. And then, that I did not fall into the ambition of ordinary sophists, either to write tracts concerning the common theorems, or to exhort men unto virtue and the study of philosophy by public orations; as also that I never by way of ostentation did affect to show myself an active able man, for any kind of bodily exercises. And that I gave over the study of rhetoric and poetry, and of elegant neat language. That I did not use to walk about the house in my long robe, nor to do any such things. Moreover I learned of him to write letters without any affectation, or curiosity; such as that was, which by him was written to my mother from Sinuessa: and to be easy and ready to be reconciled, and well pleased again with them that had offended me, as soon as any of them would be content to seek unto me again. To read with diligence; not to rest satisfied with a light and superficial knowledge, nor quickly to assent to things commonly spoken of: whom also I must thank that ever I lighted upon Epictetus his Hypomnemata, or moral commentaries and common-factions: which also he gave me of his own. V. From Apollonius, true liberty, and unvariable steadfastness, and not to regard anything at all, though never so little, but right and reason: and always, whether in the sharpest pains, or after the loss of a child, or in long diseases, to be still the same man; who also was a present and visible example unto me, that it was possible for the same man to be both vehement and remiss: a man not subject to be vexed, and offended with the incapacity of his scholars and auditors in his lectures and expositions; and a true pattern of a man who of all his good gifts and faculties, least esteemed in himself, that his excellent skill and ability to teach and persuade others the common theorems and maxims of the Stoic philosophy. Of him also I learned how to receive favours and kindnesses (as commonly they are accounted:) from friends, so that I might not become obnoxious unto them, for them, nor more yielding upon occasion, than in right I ought; and yet so that I should not pass them neither, as an unsensible and unthankful man. VI. Of Sextus, mildness and the pattern of a family governed with paternal affection; and a purpose to live according to nature: to be grave without affectation: to observe carefully the several dispositions of my friends, not to be offended with idiots, nor unseasonably to set upon those that are carried with the vulgar opinions, with the theorems, and tenets of philosophers: his conversation being an example how a man might accommodate himself to all men and companies; so that though his company were sweeter and more pleasing than any flatterer's cogging and fawning; yet was it at the same time most respected and reverenced: who also had a proper happiness and faculty, rationally and methodically to find out, and set in order all necessary determinations and instructions for a man's life. A man without ever the least appearance of anger, or any other passion; able at the same time most exactly to observe the Stoic Apathia, or unpassionateness, and yet to be most tender-hearted: ever of good credit; and yet almost without any noise, or rumour: very learned, and yet making little show. VII. From Alexander the Grammarian, to be un-reprovable myself, and not reproachfully to reprehend any man for a barbarism, or a solecism, or any false pronunciation, but dextrously by way of answer, or testimony, or confirmation of the same matter (taking no notice of the word) to utter it as it should have been spoken; or by some other such close and indirect admonition, handsomely and civilly to tell him of it. VIII. Of Fronto, to how much envy and fraud and hypocrisy the state of a tyrannous king is subject unto, and how they who are commonly called [Eupatridas Gk.], i.e. nobly born, are in some sort incapable, or void of natural affection. IX. Of Alexander the Platonic, not often nor without great necessity to say, or to write to any man in a letter, 'I am not at leisure'; nor in this manner still to put off those duties, which we owe to our friends and acquaintances (to every one in his kind) under pretence of urgent affairs. X. Of Catulus, not to contemn any friend's expostulation, though unjust, but to strive to reduce him to his former disposition: freely and heartily to speak well of all my masters upon any occasion, as it is reported of Domitius, and Athenodotus: and to love my children with true affection. XI. From my brother Severus, to be kind and loving to all them of my house and family; by whom also I came to the knowledge of Thrasea and Helvidius, and Cato, and Dio, and Brutus. He it was also that did put me in the first conceit and desire of an equal commonwealth, administered by justice and equality; and of a kingdom wherein should be regarded nothing more than the good and welfare of the subjects. Of him also, to observe a constant tenor, (not interrupted, with any other cares and distractions,) in the study and esteem of philosophy: to be bountiful and liberal in the largest measure; always to hope the best; and to be confident that my friends love me. In whom I moreover observed open dealing towards those whom he reproved at any time, and that his friends might without all doubt or much observation know what he would, or would not, so open and plain was he. XII. From Claudius Maximus, in all things to endeavour to have power of myself, and in nothing to be carried about; to be cheerful and courageous in all sudden chances and accidents, as in sicknesses: to love mildness, and moderation, and gravity: and to do my business, whatsoever it be, thoroughly, and without querulousness. Whatsoever he said, all men believed him that as he spake, so he thought, and whatsoever he did, that he did it with a good intent. His manner was, never to wonder at anything; never to be in haste, and yet never slow: nor to be perplexed, or dejected, or at any time unseemly, or excessively to laugh: nor to be angry, or suspicious, but ever ready to do good, and to forgive, and to speak truth; and all this, as one that seemed rather of himself to have been straight and right, than ever to have been rectified or redressed; neither was there any man that ever thought himself undervalued by him, or that could find in his heart, to think himself a better man than he. He would also be very pleasant and gracious. XIII. In my father, I observed his meekness; his constancy without wavering in those things, which after a due examination and deliberation, he had determined. How free from all vanity he carried himself in matter of honour and dignity, (as they are esteemed:) his laboriousness and assiduity, his readiness to hear any man, that had aught to say tending to any common good: how generally and impartially he would give every man his due; his skill and knowledge, when rigour or extremity, or when remissness or moderation was in season; how he did abstain from all unchaste love of youths; his moderate condescending to other men's occasions as an ordinary man, neither absolutely requiring of his friends, that they should wait upon him at his ordinary meals, nor that they should of necessity accompany him in his journeys; and that whensoever any business upon some necessary occasions was to be put off and omitted before it could be ended, he was ever found when he went about it again, the same man that he was before. His accurate examination of things in consultations, and patient hearing of others. He would not hastily give over the search of the matter, as one easy to be satisfied with sudden notions and apprehensions. His care to preserve his friends; how neither at any time he would carry himself towards them with disdainful neglect, and grow weary of them; nor yet at any time be madly fond of them. His contented mind in all things, his cheerful countenance, his care to foresee things afar off, and to take order for the least, without any noise or clamour. Moreover how all acclamations and flattery were repressed by him: how carefully he observed all things necessary to the government, and kept an account of the common expenses, and how patiently he did abide that he was reprehended by some for this his strict and rigid kind of dealing. How he was neither a superstitious worshipper of the gods, nor an ambitious pleaser of men, or studious of popular applause; but sober in all things, and everywhere observant of that which was fitting; no affecter of novelties: in those things which conduced to his ease and convenience, (plenty whereof his fortune did afford him,) without pride and bragging, yet with all freedom and liberty: so that as he did freely enjoy them without any anxiety or affectation when they were present; so when absent, he found no want of them. Moreover, that he was never commended by any man, as either a learned acute man, or an obsequious officious man, or a fine orator; but as a ripe mature man, a perfect sound man; one that could not endure to be flattered; able to govern both himself and others. Moreover, how much he did honour all true philosophers, without upbraiding those that were not so; his sociableness, his gracious and delightful conversation, but never unto satiety; his care of his body within bounds and measure, not as one that desired to live long, or over-studious of neatness, and elegancy; and yet not as one that did not regard it: so that through his own care and providence, he seldom needed any inward physic, or outward applications: but especially how ingeniously he would yield to any that had obtained any peculiar faculty, as either eloquence, or the knowledge of the laws, or of ancient customs, or the like; and how he concurred with them, in his best care and endeavour that every one of them might in his kind, for that wherein he excelled, be regarded and esteemed: and although he did all things carefully after the ancient customs of his forefathers, yet even of this was he not desirous that men should take notice, that he did imitate ancient customs. Again, how he was not easily moved and tossed up and down, but loved to be constant, both in the same places and businesses; and how after his great fits of headache he would return fresh and vigorous to his wonted affairs. Again, that secrets he neither had many, nor often, and such only as concerned public matters: his discretion and moderation, in exhibiting of the public sights and shows for the pleasure and pastime of the people: in public buildings. congiaries, and the like. In all these things, having a respect unto men only as men, and to the equity of the things themselves, and not unto the glory that might follow. Never wont to use the baths at unseasonable hours; no builder; never curious, or solicitous, either about his meat, or about the workmanship, or colour of his clothes, or about anything that belonged to external beauty. In all his conversation, far from all inhumanity, all boldness, and incivility, all greediness and impetuosity; never doing anything with such earnestness, and intention, that a man could say of him, that he did sweat about it: but contrariwise, all things distinctly, as at leisure; without trouble; orderly, soundly, and agreeably. A man might have applied that to him, which is recorded of Socrates, that he knew how to want, and to enjoy those things, in the want whereof, most men show themselves weak; and in the fruition, intemperate: but to hold out firm and constant, and to keep within the compass of true moderation and sobriety in either estate, is proper to a man, who hath a perfect and invincible soul; such as he showed himself in the sickness of Maximus. XIV. From the gods I received that I had good grandfathers, and parents, a good sister, good masters, good domestics, loving kinsmen, almost all that I have; and that I never through haste and rashness transgressed against any of them, notwithstanding that my disposition was such, as that such a thing (if occasion had been) might very well have been committed by me, but that It was the mercy of the gods, to prevent such a concurring of matters and occasions, as might make me to incur this blame. That I was not long brought up by the concubine of my father; that I preserved the flower of my youth. That I took not upon me to be a man before my time, but rather put it off longer than I needed. That I lived under the government of my lord and father, who would take away from me all pride and vainglory, and reduce me to that conceit and opinion that it was not impossible for a prince to live in the court without a troop of guards and followers, extraordinary apparel, such and such torches and statues, and other like particulars of state and magnificence; but that a man may reduce and contract himself almost to the state of a private man, and yet for all that not to become the more base and remiss in those public matters and affairs, wherein power and authority is requisite. That I have had such a brother, who by his own example might stir me up to think of myself; and by his respect and love, delight and please me. That I have got ingenuous children, and that they were not born distorted, nor with any other natural deformity. That I was no great proficient in the study of rhetoric and poetry, and of other faculties, which perchance I might have dwelt upon, if I had found myself to go on in them with success. That I did by times prefer those, by whom I was brought up, to such places and dignities, which they seemed unto me most to desire; and that I did not put them off with hope and expectation, that (since that they were yet but young) I would do the same hereafter. That I ever knew Apollonius and Rusticus, and Maximus. That I have had occasion often and effectually to consider and meditate with myself, concerning that life which is according to nature, what the nature and manner of it is: so that as for the gods and such suggestions, helps and inspirations, as might be expected from them, nothing did hinder, but that I might have begun long before to live according to nature; or that even now that I was not yet partaker and in present possession of that life, that I myself (in that I did not observe those inward motions, and suggestions, yea and almost plain and apparent instructions and admonitions of the gods,) was the only cause of it. That my body in such a life, hath been able to hold out so long. That I never had to do with Benedicta and Theodotus, yea and afterwards when I fell into some fits of love, I was soon cured. That having been often displeased with Rusticus, I never did him anything for which afterwards I had occasion to repent. That it being so that my mother was to die young, yet she lived with me all her latter years. That as often as I had a purpose to help and succour any that either were poor, or fallen into some present necessity, I never was answered by my officers that there was not ready money enough to do it; and that I myself never had occasion to require the like succour from any other. That I have such a wife, so obedient, so loving, so ingenuous. That I had choice of fit and able men, to whom I might commit the bringing up of my children. That by dreams I have received help, as for other things, so in particular, how I might stay my casting of blood, and cure my dizziness, as that also that happened to thee in Cajeta, as unto Chryses when he prayed by the seashore. And when I did first apply myself to philosophy, that I did not fall into the hands of some sophists, or spent my time either in reading the manifold volumes of ordinary philosophers, nor in practising myself in the solution of arguments and fallacies, nor dwelt upon the studies of the meteors, and other natural curiosities. All these things without the assistance of the gods, and fortune, could not have been. XV. In the country of the Quadi at Granua, these. Betimes in the morning say to thyself, This day I shalt have to do with an idle curious man, with an unthankful man, a railer, a crafty, false, or an envious man; an unsociable uncharitable man. All these ill qualities have happened unto them, through ignorance of that which is truly good and truly bad. But I that understand the nature of that which is good, that it only is to be desired, and of that which is bad, that it only is truly odious and shameful: who know moreover, that this transgressor, whosoever he be, is my kinsman, not by the same blood and seed, but by participation of the same reason, and of the same divine particle; How can I either be hurt by any of those, since it is not in their power to make me incur anything that is truly reproachful? or angry, and ill affected towards him, who by nature is so near unto me? for we are all born to be fellow-workers, as the feet, the hands, and the eyelids; as the rows of the upper and under teeth: for such therefore to be in opposition, is against nature; and what is it to chafe at, and to be averse from, but to be in opposition? XVI. Whatsoever I am, is either flesh, or life, or that which we commonly call the mistress and overruling part of man; reason. Away with thy books, suffer not thy mind any more to be distracted, and carried to and fro; for it will not be; but as even now ready to die, think little of thy flesh: blood, bones, and a skin; a pretty piece of knit and twisted work, consisting of nerves, veins and arteries; think no more of it, than so. And as for thy life, consider what it is; a wind; not one constant wind neither, but every moment of an hour let out, and sucked in again. The third, is thy ruling part; and here consider; Thou art an old man; suffer not that excellent part to be brought in subjection, and to become slavish: suffer it not to be drawn up and down with unreasonable and unsociable lusts and motions, as it were with wires and nerves; suffer it not any more, either to repine at anything now present, or to fear and fly anything to come, which the destiny hath appointed thee. XVII. Whatsoever proceeds from the gods immediately, that any man will grant totally depends from their divine providence. As for those things that are commonly said to happen by fortune, even those must be conceived to have dependence from nature, or from that first and general connection, and concatenation of all those things, which more apparently by the divine providence are administered and brought to pass. All things flow from thence: and whatsoever it is that is, is both necessary, and conducing to the whole (part of which thou art), and whatsoever it is that is requisite and necessary for the preservation of the general, must of necessity for every particular nature, be good and behoveful. And as for the whole, it is preserved, as by the perpetual mutation and conversion of the simple elements one into another, so also by the mutation, and alteration of things mixed and compounded. Let these things suffice thee; let them be always unto thee, as thy general rules and precepts. As for thy thirst after books, away with it with all speed, that thou die not murmuring and complaining, but truly meek and well satisfied, and from thy heart thankful unto the gods.

Marcus tells us about the virtues and qualities he's observed in the important people in his life. Absolute goodness came from Mom. Great-Grandpa wisely had Marcus avoid a public school education. Marcus's tutor taught him to work hard and have few needs. Marcus observes that it's important to avoid superstitions and people who ply them. It's also important to write essays and to accustom yourself to hard-living . Rusticus demonstrates the good of being diplomatic and avoiding fancy talk and fancy writing . Rusticus introduces Marcus to the work of Epictetus. Apollonius values indifference to changing fortunes, stability of personal character, and patience. From Sextus , Marcus learns the value of a traditional life, of living in accord with nature, of tolerance for all people, and of humility. Marcus learns also from Alexander to correct lack of knowledge in others gently and with patience. Marcus credits his tutor, Fronto, for showing him to avoid tyranny. Fronto says that the upper class may, in fact, be lacking a heart. Alexander the Platonist taught Marcus not to blow off friends, family, or colleagues, because there's not enough time in the day. Cinna Catulus, a philosopher, believed that friendship should be maintained, even after criticism. He also believed that teachers should be appreciated and children should be loved. Severus, a consul, demonstrated the value of family, truth, and justice. Severus also emphasized the importance of freedom of speech, of equality, and of the citizen. Severus was truthful, generous and optimistic. Marcus notes that Claudius Maximus showed self-control, humor, frankness, forgiveness, and generosity. Marcus rounds out the bromance-fest by addressing the qualities of his adoptive father, Antoninus Pius, and of the gods. Antoninus is quite a guy, and Marcus spends a lot of time tallying up his virtues. He's gentle, he's a good listener, and he's concerned with the common good. As a man of power, Antoninus never required his inferiors to dote on him. Rather, he gave them time off to be with their families or to pursue their own interests. Antoninus was also a good "steward" of the Empire, not squandering its resources. Antoninus was very much in control of himself and kept himself indifferent to the advantages of his position--something very important to Marcus--so that he was unaffected by their loss. We learn that Antoninus was prone to migraines, but that he sprang back from illness immediately. This is due, in part, to his ability to remain unchanged, no matter what life throws at him. Marcus admires the fact that Antoninus rides the middle line, neither indulging nor refraining from enjoyment, never getting too worked up about anything, never getting ambitious. As Marcus moves into his discussion of the gods, the tone becomes one of gratitude rather than admiration. Marcus mentions how lucky he is to have been given a good family and not to have screwed up too badly in his life. Marcus is also grateful for his delayed sexual experience, which he thinks has kept him out of mischief. Marcus is especially glad to have had a father who kept him simple and who taught him to spurn the pomp of the court, which might have overtaken him. Along these lines, Marcus is also super happy not to have been obsessed with rhetoric. As a result, his speech and thinking are neither fancy nor overbearing. Marcus feels that his ability to live the life of reason has kept him in communication with the gods and brings him inspiration. If he ever fails to live the good life, it is his fault, not the gods'. Just to make sure we understand, Marcus tells us that he's grateful for his sexual timidity. He's especially glad that he never indulged with either his male or female slaves. Marcus is grateful to the gods that he has money, so that he can always help someone out of financial distress if he wants to. Money has also allowed him to hire the best tutors for his children. Finally, Marcus is thankful for his lovely, submissive wife, Faustina. He is also thankful for all the help the gods have sent to him through dreams.

Chapter XXXVIII. Friendly Advice. Fouquet had gone to bed, like a man who clings to life, and wishes to economize, as much as possible, that slender tissue of existence, of which the shocks and frictions of this world so quickly wear out the tenuity. D'Artagnan appeared at the door of this chamber, and was saluted by the superintendent with a very affable "Good day." "_Bon jour!_ monseigneur," replied the musketeer; "how did you get through the journey?" "Tolerably well, thank you." "And the fever?" "But poorly. I drink, as you perceive. I am scarcely arrived, and I have already levied a contribution of _tisane_ upon Nantes." "You should sleep first, monseigneur." "Eh! _corbleu!_ my dear Monsieur d'Artagnan, I should be very glad to sleep." "Who hinders you?" "Why, _you_ in the first place." "I? Oh, monseigneur!" "No doubt you do. Is it at Nantes as at Paris? Do you not come in the king's name?" "For Heaven's sake, monseigneur," replied the captain, "leave the king alone! The day on which I shall come on the part of the king, for the purpose you mean, take my word for it, I will not leave you long in doubt. You will see me place my hand on my sword, according to the _ordonnance_, and you will hear my say at once, in ceremonial voice, 'Monseigneur, in the name of the king, I arrest you!'" "You promise me that frankness?" said the superintendent. "Upon my honor! But we have not come to that, believe me." "What makes you think that, M. d'Artagnan? For my part, I think quite the contrary." "I have heard speak of nothing of the kind," replied D'Artagnan. "Eh! eh!" said Fouquet. "Indeed, no. You are an agreeable man, in spite of your fever. The king should not, cannot help loving you, at the bottom of his heart." Fouquet's expression implied doubt. "But M. Colbert?" said he; "does M. Colbert love me as much as you say?" "I am not speaking of M. Colbert," replied D'Artagnan. "He is an exceptional man. He does not love you; so much is very possible; but, _mordioux!_ the squirrel can guard himself against the adder with very little trouble." "Do you know that you are speaking to me quite as a friend?" replied Fouquet; "and that, upon my life! I have never met with a man of your intelligence, and heart?" "You are pleased to say so," replied D'Artagnan. "Why did you wait till to-day to pay me such a compliment?" "Blind that we are!" murmured Fouquet. "Your voice is getting hoarse," said D'Artagnan; "drink, monseigneur, drink!" And he offered him a cup of _tisane_, with the most friendly cordiality; Fouquet took it, and thanked him by a gentle smile. "Such things only happen to me," said the musketeer. "I have passed ten years under your very beard, while you were rolling about tons of gold. You were clearing an annual pension of four millions; you never observed me; and you find out there is such a person in the world, just at the moment you--" "Just at the moment I am about to fall," interrupted Fouquet. "That is true, my dear Monsieur d'Artagnan." "I did not say so." "But you thought so; and that is the same thing. Well! if I fall, take my word as truth, I shall not pass a single day without saying to myself, as I strike my brow, 'Fool! fool!--stupid mortal! You had a Monsieur d'Artagnan under your eye and hand, and you did not employ him, you did not enrich him!'" "You overwhelm me," said the captain. "I esteem you greatly." "There exists another man, then, who does not think as M. Colbert thinks," said the surintendant. "How this M. Colbert looms up in your imagination! He is worse than fever!" "Oh! I have good cause," said Fouquet. "Judge for yourself." And he related the details of the course of the lighters, and the hypocritical persecution of Colbert. "Is not this a clear sign of my ruin?" D'Artagnan became very serious. "That is true," he said. "Yes; it has an unsavory odor, as M. de Treville used to say." And he fixed on M. Fouquet his intelligent and significant look. "Am I not clearly designated in that, captain? Is not the king bringing me to Nantes to get me away from Paris, where I have so many creatures, and to possess himself of Belle-Isle?" "Where M. d'Herblay is," added D'Artagnan. Fouquet raised his head. "As for me, monseigneur," continued D'Artagnan, "I can assure you the king has said nothing to me against you." "Indeed!" "The king commanded me to set out for Nantes, it is true; and to say nothing about it to M. de Gesvres." "My friend." "To M. de Gesvres, yes, monseigneur," continued the musketeer, whose eye s did not cease to speak a language different from the language of his lips. "The king, moreover, commanded me to take a brigade of musketeers, which is apparently superfluous, as the country is quite quiet." "A brigade!" said Fouquet, raising himself upon his elbow. "Ninety-six horsemen, yes, monseigneur. The same number as were employed in arresting MM. de Chalais, de Cinq-Mars, and Montmorency." Fouquet pricked up his ears at these words, pronounced without apparent value. "And what else?" said he. "Oh! nothing but insignificant orders; such as guarding the castle, guarding every lodging, allowing none of M. de Gesvres's guards to occupy a single post." "And as to myself," cried Fouquet, "what orders had you?" "As to you, monseigneur?--not the smallest word." "Monsieur d'Artagnan, my safety, my honor, perhaps my life are at stake. You would not deceive me?" "I?--to what end? Are you threatened? Only there really is an order with respect to carriages and boats--" "An order?" "Yes; but it cannot concern you--a simple measure of police." "What is it, captain?--what is it?" "To forbid all horses or boats to leave Nantes, without a pass, signed by the king." "Great God! but--" D'Artagnan began to laugh. "All that is not to be put into execution before the arrival of the king at Nantes. So that you see plainly, monseigneur, the order in nowise concerns you." Fouquet became thoughtful, and D'Artagnan feigned not to observe his preoccupation. "It is evident, by my thus confiding to you the orders which have been given to me, that I am friendly towards you, and that I am trying to prove to you that none of them are directed against you." "Without doubt!--without doubt!" said Fouquet, still absent. "Let us recapitulate," said the captain, his glance beaming with earnestness. "A special guard about the castle, in which your lodging is to be, is it not?" "Do you know the castle?" "Ah! monseigneur, a regular prison! The absence of M. de Gesvres, who has the honor of being one of your friends. The closing of the gates of the city, and of the river without a pass; but, only when the king shall have arrived. Please to observe, Monsieur Fouquet, that if, instead of speaking to man like you, who are one of the first in the kingdom, I were speaking to a troubled, uneasy conscience--I should compromise myself forever. What a fine opportunity for any one who wished to be free! No police, no guards, no orders; the water free, the roads free, Monsieur d'Artagnan obliged to lend his horses, if required. All this ought to reassure you, Monsieur Fouquet, for the king would not have left me thus independent, if he had any sinister designs. In truth, Monsieur Fouquet, ask me whatever you like, I am at your service; and, in return, if you will consent to do it, do me a service, that of giving my compliments to Aramis and Porthos, in case you embark for Belle-Isle, as you have a right to do without changing your dress, immediately, in your _robe de chambre_--just as you are." Saying these words, and with a profound bow, the musketeer, whose looks had lost none of their intelligent kindness, left the apartment. He had not reached the steps of the vestibule, when Fouquet, quite beside himself, hung to the bell-rope, and shouted, "My horses!--my lighter!" But nobody answered. The surintendant dressed himself with everything that came to hand. "Gourville!--Gourville!" cried he, while slipping his watch into his pocket. And the bell sounded again, whilst Fouquet repeated, "Gourville!--Gourville!" Gourville at length appeared, breathless and pale. "Let us be gone! Let us be gone!" cried Fouquet, as soon as he saw him. "It is too late!" said the surintendant's poor friend. "Too late!--why?" "Listen!" And they heard the sounds of trumpets and drums in front of the castle. "What does that mean, Gourville?" "It means the king is come, monseigneur." "The king!" "The king, who has ridden double stages, who has killed horses, and who is eight hours in advance of all our calculations." "We are lost!" murmured Fouquet. "Brave D'Artagnan, all is over, thou has spoken to me too late!" The king, in fact, was entering the city, which soon resounded with the cannon from the ramparts, and from a vessel which replied from the lower parts of the river. Fouquet's brow darkened; he called his _valets de chambre_ and dressed in ceremonial costume. From his window, behind the curtains, he could see the eagerness of the people, and the movement of a large troop, which had followed the prince. The king was conducted to the castle with great pomp, and Fouquet saw him dismount under the portcullis, and say something in the ear of D'Artagnan, who held his stirrup. D'Artagnan, when the king had passed under the arch, directed his steps towards the house Fouquet was in; but so slowly, and stopping so frequently to speak to his musketeers, drawn up like a hedge, that it might be said he was counting the seconds, or the steps, before accomplishing his object. Fouquet opened the window to speak to him in the court. "Ah!" cried D'Artagnan, on perceiving him, "are you still there, monseigneur?" And that word _still_ completed the proof to Fouquet of how much information and how many useful counsels were contained in the first visit the musketeer had paid him. The surintendant sighed deeply. "Good heavens! yes, monsieur," replied he. "The arrival of the king has interrupted me in the projects I had formed." "Oh, then you know that the king has arrived?" "Yes, monsieur, I have seen him; and this time you come from him--" "To inquire after you, monseigneur; and, if your health is not too bad, to beg you to have the kindness to repair to the castle." "Directly, Monsieur d'Artagnan, directly!" "Ah, _mordioux!_" said the captain, "now the king is come, there is no more walking for anybody--no more free will; the password governs all now, you as much as me, me as much as you." Fouquet heaved a last sigh, climbed with difficulty into his carriage, so great was his weakness, and went to the castle, escorted by D'Artagnan, whose politeness was not less terrifying this time than it had just before been consoling and cheerful.

Fouquet is not well. When D'Artagnan shows up at his door, he asks if it is now time for the arrest. D'Artagnan reassures Fouquet and tells him that when the time comes, he will announce his intentions loudly. Fouquet compliments D'Artagnan on his intelligence and heart. He then tells the captain about the race between the two boats. D'Artagnan agrees that does not bode well. D'Artagnan fills Fouquet in on the King's latest orders. They include forbidding any person, horse, or vehicle to leave Nantes without royal permission. Using very careful language, D'Artagnan tells Fouquet that this order goes into effect only once the King has arrived, and that Fouquet should bolt immediately and make for Belle-Isle. As soon as D'Artagnan leaves, Fouquet flies into action and attempts to flee. It is too late, however. Trumpets announce the arrival of the King. D'Artagnan comes by again, saying that the King is inquiring after Fouquet's health. D'Artagnan points out that now that the King has arrived no one can leave.

A very little quiet reflection was enough to satisfy Emma as to the nature of her agitation on hearing this news of Frank Churchill. She was soon convinced that it was not for herself she was feeling at all apprehensive or embarrassed; it was for him. Her own attachment had really subsided into a mere nothing; it was not worth thinking of;--but if he, who had undoubtedly been always so much the most in love of the two, were to be returning with the same warmth of sentiment which he had taken away, it would be very distressing. If a separation of two months should not have cooled him, there were dangers and evils before her:--caution for him and for herself would be necessary. She did not mean to have her own affections entangled again, and it would be incumbent on her to avoid any encouragement of his. She wished she might be able to keep him from an absolute declaration. That would be so very painful a conclusion of their present acquaintance! and yet, she could not help rather anticipating something decisive. She felt as if the spring would not pass without bringing a crisis, an event, a something to alter her present composed and tranquil state. It was not very long, though rather longer than Mr. Weston had foreseen, before she had the power of forming some opinion of Frank Churchill's feelings. The Enscombe family were not in town quite so soon as had been imagined, but he was at Highbury very soon afterwards. He rode down for a couple of hours; he could not yet do more; but as he came from Randalls immediately to Hartfield, she could then exercise all her quick observation, and speedily determine how he was influenced, and how she must act. They met with the utmost friendliness. There could be no doubt of his great pleasure in seeing her. But she had an almost instant doubt of his caring for her as he had done, of his feeling the same tenderness in the same degree. She watched him well. It was a clear thing he was less in love than he had been. Absence, with the conviction probably of her indifference, had produced this very natural and very desirable effect. He was in high spirits; as ready to talk and laugh as ever, and seemed delighted to speak of his former visit, and recur to old stories: and he was not without agitation. It was not in his calmness that she read his comparative difference. He was not calm; his spirits were evidently fluttered; there was restlessness about him. Lively as he was, it seemed a liveliness that did not satisfy himself; but what decided her belief on the subject, was his staying only a quarter of an hour, and hurrying away to make other calls in Highbury. "He had seen a group of old acquaintance in the street as he passed--he had not stopped, he would not stop for more than a word--but he had the vanity to think they would be disappointed if he did not call, and much as he wished to stay longer at Hartfield, he must hurry off." She had no doubt as to his being less in love--but neither his agitated spirits, nor his hurrying away, seemed like a perfect cure; and she was rather inclined to think it implied a dread of her returning power, and a discreet resolution of not trusting himself with her long. This was the only visit from Frank Churchill in the course of ten days. He was often hoping, intending to come--but was always prevented. His aunt could not bear to have him leave her. Such was his own account at Randall's. If he were quite sincere, if he really tried to come, it was to be inferred that Mrs. Churchill's removal to London had been of no service to the wilful or nervous part of her disorder. That she was really ill was very certain; he had declared himself convinced of it, at Randalls. Though much might be fancy, he could not doubt, when he looked back, that she was in a weaker state of health than she had been half a year ago. He did not believe it to proceed from any thing that care and medicine might not remove, or at least that she might not have many years of existence before her; but he could not be prevailed on, by all his father's doubts, to say that her complaints were merely imaginary, or that she was as strong as ever. It soon appeared that London was not the place for her. She could not endure its noise. Her nerves were under continual irritation and suffering; and by the ten days' end, her nephew's letter to Randalls communicated a change of plan. They were going to remove immediately to Richmond. Mrs. Churchill had been recommended to the medical skill of an eminent person there, and had otherwise a fancy for the place. A ready-furnished house in a favourite spot was engaged, and much benefit expected from the change. Emma heard that Frank wrote in the highest spirits of this arrangement, and seemed most fully to appreciate the blessing of having two months before him of such near neighbourhood to many dear friends--for the house was taken for May and June. She was told that now he wrote with the greatest confidence of being often with them, almost as often as he could even wish. Emma saw how Mr. Weston understood these joyous prospects. He was considering her as the source of all the happiness they offered. She hoped it was not so. Two months must bring it to the proof. Mr. Weston's own happiness was indisputable. He was quite delighted. It was the very circumstance he could have wished for. Now, it would be really having Frank in their neighbourhood. What were nine miles to a young man?--An hour's ride. He would be always coming over. The difference in that respect of Richmond and London was enough to make the whole difference of seeing him always and seeing him never. Sixteen miles--nay, eighteen--it must be full eighteen to Manchester-street--was a serious obstacle. Were he ever able to get away, the day would be spent in coming and returning. There was no comfort in having him in London; he might as well be at Enscombe; but Richmond was the very distance for easy intercourse. Better than nearer! One good thing was immediately brought to a certainty by this removal,--the ball at the Crown. It had not been forgotten before, but it had been soon acknowledged vain to attempt to fix a day. Now, however, it was absolutely to be; every preparation was resumed, and very soon after the Churchills had removed to Richmond, a few lines from Frank, to say that his aunt felt already much better for the change, and that he had no doubt of being able to join them for twenty-four hours at any given time, induced them to name as early a day as possible. Mr. Weston's ball was to be a real thing. A very few to-morrows stood between the young people of Highbury and happiness. Mr. Woodhouse was resigned. The time of year lightened the evil to him. May was better for every thing than February. Mrs. Bates was engaged to spend the evening at Hartfield, James had due notice, and he sanguinely hoped that neither dear little Henry nor dear little John would have any thing the matter with them, while dear Emma were gone.

Emma later thinks about Frank Churchill, and thinks that her agitation at his visit is not for her, but for him. She hopes that this two-month separation will have cooled his feelings for her, and that he might not make a declaration of love for her. When indeed they do meet, Emma thinks that he is less in love with her than he was. Soon Mrs. Churchill decides that she must move again, and this time it is even better, as Frank will be even closer to Highbury. It is decided that they will have their ball at the Crown after all

This might moreover have been taken to be the sense of a remark made by her stepfather as--one rainy day when the streets were all splash and two umbrellas unsociable and the wanderers had sought shelter in the National Gallery--Maisie sat beside him staring rather sightlessly at a roomful of pictures which he had mystified her much by speaking of with a bored sigh as a "silly superstition." They represented, with patches of gold and cataracts of purple, with stiff saints and angular angels, with ugly Madonnas and uglier babies, strange prayers and prostrations; so that she at first took his words for a protest against devotional idolatry--all the more that he had of late often come with her and with Mrs. Wix to morning church, a place of worship of Mrs. Wix's own choosing, where there was nothing of that sort; no haloes on heads, but only, during long sermons, beguiling backs of bonnets, and where, as her governess always afterwards observed, he gave the most earnest attention. It presently appeared, however, that his reference was merely to the affectation of admiring such ridiculous works--an admonition that she received from him as submissively as she received everything. What turn it gave to their talk needn't here be recorded: the transition to the colourless schoolroom and lonely Mrs. Wix was doubtless an effect of relaxed interest in what was before them. Maisie expressed in her own way the truth that she never went home nowadays without expecting to find the temple of her studies empty and the poor priestess cast out. This conveyed a full appreciation of her peril, and it was in rejoinder that Sir Claude uttered, acknowledging the source of that peril, the reassurance at which I have glanced. "Don't be afraid, my dear: I've squared her." It required indeed a supplement when he saw that it left the child momentarily blank. "I mean that your mother lets me do what I want so long as I let her do what SHE wants." "So you ARE doing what you want?" Maisie asked. "Rather, Miss Farange!" Miss Farange turned it over. "And she's doing the same?" "Up to the hilt!" Again she considered. "Then, please, what may it be?" "I wouldn't tell you for the whole world." She gazed at a gaunt Madonna; after which she broke into a slow smile. "Well, I don't care, so long as you do let her." "Oh you monster!"--and Sir Claude's gay vehemence brought him to his feet. Another day, in another place--a place in Baker Street where at a hungry hour she had sat down with him to tea and buns--he brought out a question disconnected from previous talk. "I say, you know, what do you suppose your father WOULD do?" Maisie hadn't long to cast about or to question his pleasant eyes. "If you were really to go with us? He'd make a great complaint." He seemed amused at the term she employed. "Oh I shouldn't mind a 'complaint'!" "He'd talk to every one about it," said Maisie. "Well, I shouldn't mind that either." "Of course not," the child hastened to respond. "You've told me you're not afraid of him." "The question is are you?" said Sir Claude. Maisie candidly considered; then she spoke resolutely. "No, not of papa." "But of somebody else?" "Certainly, of lots of people." "Of your mother first and foremost of course." "Dear, yes; more of mamma than of--than of--" "Than of what?" Sir Claude asked as she hesitated for a comparison. She thought over all objects of dread. "Than of a wild elephant!" she at last declared. "And you are too," she reminded him as he laughed. "Oh yes, I am too." Again she meditated. "Why then did you marry her?" "Just because I WAS afraid." "Even when she loved you?" "That made her the more alarming." For Maisie herself, though her companion seemed to find it droll, this opened up depths of gravity. "More alarming than she is now?" "Well, in a different way. Fear, unfortunately, is a very big thing, and there's a great variety of kinds." She took this in with complete intelligence. "Then I think I've got them all." "You?" her friend cried. "Nonsense! You're thoroughly 'game.'" "I'm awfully afraid of Mrs. Beale," Maisie objected. He raised his smooth brows. "That charming woman?" "Well," she answered, "you can't understand it because you're not in the same state." She had been going on with a luminous "But" when, across the table, he laid his hand on her arm. "I CAN understand it," he confessed. "I AM in the same state." "Oh but she likes you so!" Maisie promptly pleaded. Sir Claude literally coloured. "That has something to do with it." Maisie wondered again. "Being liked with being afraid?" "Yes, when it amounts to adoration." "Then why aren't you afraid of ME?" "Because with you it amounts to that?" He had kept his hand on her arm. "Well, what prevents is simply that you're the gentlest spirit on earth. Besides--" he pursued; but he came to a pause. "Besides--?" "I SHOULD be in fear if you were older--there! See--you already make me talk nonsense," the young man added. "The question's about your father. Is he likewise afraid of Mrs. Beale?" "I think not. And yet he loves her," Maisie mused. "Oh no--he doesn't; not a bit!" After which, as his companion stared, Sir Claude apparently felt that he must make this oddity fit with her recollections. "There's nothing of that sort NOW." But Maisie only stared the more. "They've changed?" "Like your mother and me." She wondered how he knew. "Then you've seen Mrs. Beale again?" He demurred. "Oh no. She has written to me," he presently subjoined. "SHE'S not afraid of your father either. No one at all is--really." Then he went on while Maisie's little mind, with its filial spring too relaxed from of old for a pang at this want of parental majesty, speculated on the vague relation between Mrs. Beale's courage and the question, for Mrs. Wix and herself, of a neat lodging with their friend. "She wouldn't care a bit if Mr. Farange should make a row." "Do you mean about you and me and Mrs. Wix? Why should she care? It wouldn't hurt HER." Sir Claude, with his legs out and his hand diving into his trousers-pocket, threw back his head with a laugh just perceptibly tempered, as she thought, by a sigh. "My dear stepchild, you're delightful! Look here, we must pay. You've had five buns?" "How CAN you?" Maisie demanded, crimson under the eye of the young woman who had stepped to their board. "I've had three." Shortly after this Mrs. Wix looked so ill that it was to be feared her ladyship had treated her to some unexampled passage. Maisie asked if anything worse than usual had occurred; whereupon the poor woman brought out with infinite gloom: "He has been seeing Mrs. Beale." "Sir Claude?" The child remembered what he had said. "Oh no--not SEEING her!" "I beg your pardon. I absolutely know it." Mrs. Wix was as positive as she was dismal. Maisie nevertheless ventured to challenge her. "And how, please, do you know it?" She faltered a moment. "From herself. I've been to see her." Then on Maisie's visible surprise: "I went yesterday while you were out with him. He has seen her repeatedly." It was not wholly clear to Maisie why Mrs. Wix should be prostrate at this discovery; but her general consciousness of the way things could be both perpetrated and resented always eased off for her the strain of the particular mystery. "There may be some mistake. He says he hasn't." Mrs. Wix turned paler, as if this were a still deeper ground for alarm. "He says so?--he denies that he has seen her?" "He told me so three days ago. Perhaps she's mistaken," Maisie suggested. "Do you mean perhaps she lies? She lies whenever it suits her, I'm very sure. But I know when people lie--and that's what I've loved in you, that YOU never do. Mrs. Beale didn't yesterday at any rate. He HAS seen her." Maisie was silent a little. "He says not," she then repeated. "Perhaps--perhaps--" Once more she paused. "Do you mean perhaps HE lies?" "Gracious goodness, no!" Maisie shouted. Mrs. Wix's bitterness, however, again overflowed. "He does, he does," she cried, "and it's that that's just the worst of it! They'll take you, they'll take you, and what in the world will then become of me?" She threw herself afresh upon her pupil and wept over her with the inevitable effect of causing the child's own tears to flow. But Maisie couldn't have told you if she had been crying at the image of their separation or at that of Sir Claude's untruth. As regards this deviation it was agreed between them that they were not in a position to bring it home to him. Mrs. Wix was in dread of doing anything to make him, as she said, "worse"; and Maisie was sufficiently initiated to be able to reflect that in speaking to her as he had done he had only wished to be tender of Mrs. Beale. It fell in with all her inclinations to think of him as tender, and she forbore to let him know that the two ladies had, as SHE would never do, betrayed him. She had not long to keep her secret, for the next day, when she went out with him, he suddenly said in reference to some errand he had first proposed: "No, we won't do that--we'll do something else." On this, a few steps from the door, he stopped a hansom and helped her in; then following her he gave the driver over the top an address that she lost. When he was seated beside her she asked him where they were going; to which he replied "My dear child, you'll see." She saw while she watched and wondered that they took the direction of the Regent's Park; but she didn't know why he should make a mystery of that, and it was not till they passed under a pretty arch and drew up at a white house in a terrace from which the view, she thought, must be lovely that, mystified, she clutched him and broke out: "I shall see papa?" He looked down at her with a kind smile. "No, probably not. I haven't brought you for that." "Then whose house is it?" "It's your father's. They've moved here." She looked about: she had known Mr. Farange in four or five houses, and there was nothing astonishing in this except that it was the nicest place yet. "But I shall see Mrs. Beale?" "It's to see her that I brought you." She stared, very white, and, with her hand on his arm, though they had stopped, kept him sitting in the cab. "To leave me, do you mean?" He could scarce bring it out. "It's not for me to say if you CAN stay. We must look into it." "But if I do I shall see papa?" "Oh some time or other, no doubt." Then Sir Claude went on: "Have you really so very great a dread of that?" Maisie glanced away over the apron of the cab--gazed a minute at the green expanse of the Regent's Park and, at this moment colouring to the roots of her hair, felt the full, hot rush of an emotion more mature than any she had yet known. It consisted of an odd unexpected shame at placing in an inferior light, to so perfect a gentleman and so charming a person as Sir Claude, so very near a relative as Mr. Farange. She remembered, however, her friend's telling her that no one was seriously afraid of her father, and she turned round with a small toss of her head. "Oh I dare say I can manage him!" Sir Claude smiled, but she noted that the violence with which she had just changed colour had brought into his own face a slight compunctious and embarrassed flush. It was as if he had caught his first glimpse of her sense of responsibility. Neither of them made a movement to get out, and after an instant he said to her: "Look here, if you say so we won't after all go in." "Ah but I want to see Mrs. Beale!" the child gently wailed. "But what if she does decide to take you? Then, you know, you'll have to remain." Maisie turned it over. "Straight on--and give you up?" "Well--I don't quite know about giving me up." "I mean as I gave up Mrs. Beale when I last went to mamma's. I couldn't do without you here for anything like so long a time as that." It struck her as a hundred years since she had seen Mrs. Beale, who was on the other side of the door they were so near and whom she yet had not taken the jump to clasp in her arms. "Oh I dare say you'll see more of me than you've seen of Mrs. Beale. It isn't in ME to be so beautifully discreet," Sir Claude said. "But all the same," he continued, "I leave the thing, now that we're here, absolutely WITH you. You must settle it. We'll only go in if you say so. If you don't say so we'll turn right round and drive away." "So in that case Mrs. Beale won't take me?" "Well--not by any act of ours." "And I shall be able to go on with mamma?" Maisie asked. "Oh I don't say that!" She considered. "But I thought you said you had squared her?" Sir Claude poked his stick at the splashboard of the cab. "Not, my dear child, to the point she now requires." "Then if she turns me out and I don't come here--" Sir Claude promptly took her up. "What do I offer you, you naturally enquire? My poor chick, that's just what I ask myself. I don't see it, I confess, quite as straight as Mrs. Wix." His companion gazed a moment at what Mrs. Wix saw. "You mean WE can't make a little family?" "It's very base of me, no doubt, but I can't wholly chuck your mother." Maisie, at this, emitted a low but lengthened sigh, a slight sound of reluctant assent which would certainly have been amusing to an auditor. "Then there isn't anything else?" "I vow I don't quite see what there is." Maisie waited; her silence seemed to signify that she too had no alternative to suggest. But she made another appeal. "If I come here you'll come to see me?" "I won't lose sight of you." "But how often will you come?" As he hung fire she pressed him. "Often and often?" Still he faltered. "My dear old woman--" he began. Then he paused again, going on the next moment with a change of tone. "You're too funny! Yes then," he said; "often and often." "All right!" Maisie jumped out. Mrs. Beale was at home, but not in the drawing-room, and when the butler had gone for her the child suddenly broke out: "But when I'm here what will Mrs. Wix do?" "Ah you should have thought of that sooner!" said her companion with the first faint note of asperity she had ever heard him sound.

Sir Claude continues to take Maisie on outings--those specifically mentioned at the beginning of this chapter are the National Gallery and a cafe on Baker Street. As they visit sites together, Sir Claude and Maisie have candid, mature conversations about the nature of Sir Claude's relationships with Ida and Mrs. Beale. When Maisie asks Sir Claude if he has seen Mrs. Beale in person since their first meeting, Sir Claude says that they haven't met in person but they have exchanged letters. He then cuts off the conversation by teasing Maisie about the number of buns she's eaten during tea time. When Maisie tells Mrs. Wix later about how Sir Claude has not seen Mrs. Beale in person, Mrs. Wix says that he actually has seen the woman, meaning he lied to Maisie. When Maisie asks how she knows this, Mrs. Wix says that she herself has gone to see Mrs. Beale and found out directly. Mrs. Wix reports that not only has he seen Mrs. Beale, "He has seen her repeatedly". Maisie and Mrs. Wix are both so disturbed by the idea that Sir Claude has lied, having idolized him until this point, that they weep together. The next day, when Sir Claude takes Maisie out, instead of going to town he takes her to a house: her father and Mrs. Beale's new house. Maisie asks if he's brought her here for her to live with her father again, and Sir Claude says that isn't for him to decide. Maisie is conflicted as to whether she would want to stay at her father's house; she does miss Mrs. Beale and feels it has been "a hundred years since she had seen " , but she also doesn't want to leave Sir Claude for such a long time. She brings up Mrs. Wix's plan for Sir Claude, Maisie, and herself to live together, and Sir Claude says it isn't possible. However, he promises to visit her often if she does move to her father's house. As the chapter ends, Maisie suddenly realizes that she hasn't thought about what will happen to Mrs. Wix if she stays with her father and Mrs. Beale, but Sir Claude only teases, "Ah you should have thought of that sooner

Soon after this, the general found himself obliged to go to London for a week; and he left Northanger earnestly regretting that any necessity should rob him even for an hour of Miss Morland's company, and anxiously recommending the study of her comfort and amusement to his children as their chief object in his absence. His departure gave Catherine the first experimental conviction that a loss may be sometimes a gain. The happiness with which their time now passed, every employment voluntary, every laugh indulged, every meal a scene of ease and good humour, walking where they liked and when they liked, their hours, pleasures, and fatigues at their own command, made her thoroughly sensible of the restraint which the general's presence had imposed, and most thankfully feel their present release from it. Such ease and such delights made her love the place and the people more and more every day; and had it not been for a dread of its soon becoming expedient to leave the one, and an apprehension of not being equally beloved by the other, she would at each moment of each day have been perfectly happy; but she was now in the fourth week of her visit; before the general came home, the fourth week would be turned, and perhaps it might seem an intrusion if she stayed much longer. This was a painful consideration whenever it occurred; and eager to get rid of such a weight on her mind, she very soon resolved to speak to Eleanor about it at once, propose going away, and be guided in her conduct by the manner in which her proposal might be taken. Aware that if she gave herself much time, she might feel it difficult to bring forward so unpleasant a subject, she took the first opportunity of being suddenly alone with Eleanor, and of Eleanor's being in the middle of a speech about something very different, to start forth her obligation of going away very soon. Eleanor looked and declared herself much concerned. She had "hoped for the pleasure of her company for a much longer time--had been misled (perhaps by her wishes) to suppose that a much longer visit had been promised--and could not but think that if Mr. and Mrs. Morland were aware of the pleasure it was to her to have her there, they would be too generous to hasten her return." Catherine explained: "Oh! As to that, Papa and Mamma were in no hurry at all. As long as she was happy, they would always be satisfied." "Then why, might she ask, in such a hurry herself to leave them?" "Oh! Because she had been there so long." "Nay, if you can use such a word, I can urge you no farther. If you think it long--" "Oh! No, I do not indeed. For my own pleasure, I could stay with you as long again." And it was directly settled that, till she had, her leaving them was not even to be thought of. In having this cause of uneasiness so pleasantly removed, the force of the other was likewise weakened. The kindness, the earnestness of Eleanor's manner in pressing her to stay, and Henry's gratified look on being told that her stay was determined, were such sweet proofs of her importance with them, as left her only just so much solicitude as the human mind can never do comfortably without. She did--almost always--believe that Henry loved her, and quite always that his father and sister loved and even wished her to belong to them; and believing so far, her doubts and anxieties were merely sportive irritations. Henry was not able to obey his father's injunction of remaining wholly at Northanger in attendance on the ladies, during his absence in London, the engagements of his curate at Woodston obliging him to leave them on Saturday for a couple of nights. His loss was not now what it had been while the general was at home; it lessened their gaiety, but did not ruin their comfort; and the two girls agreeing in occupation, and improving in intimacy, found themselves so well sufficient for the time to themselves, that it was eleven o'clock, rather a late hour at the abbey, before they quitted the supper-room on the day of Henry's departure. They had just reached the head of the stairs when it seemed, as far as the thickness of the walls would allow them to judge, that a carriage was driving up to the door, and the next moment confirmed the idea by the loud noise of the house-bell. After the first perturbation of surprise had passed away, in a "Good heaven! What can be the matter?" it was quickly decided by Eleanor to be her eldest brother, whose arrival was often as sudden, if not quite so unseasonable, and accordingly she hurried down to welcome him. Catherine walked on to her chamber, making up her mind as well as she could, to a further acquaintance with Captain Tilney, and comforting herself under the unpleasant impression his conduct had given her, and the persuasion of his being by far too fine a gentleman to approve of her, that at least they should not meet under such circumstances as would make their meeting materially painful. She trusted he would never speak of Miss Thorpe; and indeed, as he must by this time be ashamed of the part he had acted, there could be no danger of it; and as long as all mention of Bath scenes were avoided, she thought she could behave to him very civilly. In such considerations time passed away, and it was certainly in his favour that Eleanor should be so glad to see him, and have so much to say, for half an hour was almost gone since his arrival, and Eleanor did not come up. At that moment Catherine thought she heard her step in the gallery, and listened for its continuance; but all was silent. Scarcely, however, had she convicted her fancy of error, when the noise of something moving close to her door made her start; it seemed as if someone was touching the very doorway--and in another moment a slight motion of the lock proved that some hand must be on it. She trembled a little at the idea of anyone's approaching so cautiously; but resolving not to be again overcome by trivial appearances of alarm, or misled by a raised imagination, she stepped quietly forward, and opened the door. Eleanor, and only Eleanor, stood there. Catherine's spirits, however, were tranquillized but for an instant, for Eleanor's cheeks were pale, and her manner greatly agitated. Though evidently intending to come in, it seemed an effort to enter the room, and a still greater to speak when there. Catherine, supposing some uneasiness on Captain Tilney's account, could only express her concern by silent attention, obliged her to be seated, rubbed her temples with lavender-water, and hung over her with affectionate solicitude. "My dear Catherine, you must not--you must not indeed--" were Eleanor's first connected words. "I am quite well. This kindness distracts me--I cannot bear it--I come to you on such an errand!" "Errand! To me!" "How shall I tell you! Oh! How shall I tell you!" A new idea now darted into Catherine's mind, and turning as pale as her friend, she exclaimed, "'Tis a messenger from Woodston!" "You are mistaken, indeed," returned Eleanor, looking at her most compassionately; "it is no one from Woodston. It is my father himself." Her voice faltered, and her eyes were turned to the ground as she mentioned his name. His unlooked-for return was enough in itself to make Catherine's heart sink, and for a few moments she hardly supposed there were anything worse to be told. She said nothing; and Eleanor, endeavouring to collect herself and speak with firmness, but with eyes still cast down, soon went on. "You are too good, I am sure, to think the worse of me for the part I am obliged to perform. I am indeed a most unwilling messenger. After what has so lately passed, so lately been settled between us--how joyfully, how thankfully on my side!--as to your continuing here as I hoped for many, many weeks longer, how can I tell you that your kindness is not to be accepted--and that the happiness your company has hitherto given us is to be repaid by--But I must not trust myself with words. My dear Catherine, we are to part. My father has recollected an engagement that takes our whole family away on Monday. We are going to Lord Longtown's, near Hereford, for a fortnight. Explanation and apology are equally impossible. I cannot attempt either." "My dear Eleanor," cried Catherine, suppressing her feelings as well as she could, "do not be so distressed. A second engagement must give way to a first. I am very, very sorry we are to part--so soon, and so suddenly too; but I am not offended, indeed I am not. I can finish my visit here, you know, at any time; or I hope you will come to me. Can you, when you return from this lord's, come to Fullerton?" "It will not be in my power, Catherine." "Come when you can, then." Eleanor made no answer; and Catherine's thoughts recurring to something more directly interesting, she added, thinking aloud, "Monday--so soon as Monday; and you all go. Well, I am certain of--I shall be able to take leave, however. I need not go till just before you do, you know. Do not be distressed, Eleanor, I can go on Monday very well. My father and mother's having no notice of it is of very little consequence. The general will send a servant with me, I dare say, half the way--and then I shall soon be at Salisbury, and then I am only nine miles from home." "Ah, Catherine! Were it settled so, it would be somewhat less intolerable, though in such common attentions you would have received but half what you ought. But--how can I tell you?--tomorrow morning is fixed for your leaving us, and not even the hour is left to your choice; the very carriage is ordered, and will be here at seven o'clock, and no servant will be offered you." Catherine sat down, breathless and speechless. "I could hardly believe my senses, when I heard it; and no displeasure, no resentment that you can feel at this moment, however justly great, can be more than I myself--but I must not talk of what I felt. Oh! That I could suggest anything in extenuation! Good God! What will your father and mother say! After courting you from the protection of real friends to this--almost double distance from your home, to have you driven out of the house, without the considerations even of decent civility! Dear, dear Catherine, in being the bearer of such a message, I seem guilty myself of all its insult; yet, I trust you will acquit me, for you must have been long enough in this house to see that I am but a nominal mistress of it, that my real power is nothing." "Have I offended the general?" said Catherine in a faltering voice. "Alas! For my feelings as a daughter, all that I know, all that I answer for, is that you can have given him no just cause of offence. He certainly is greatly, very greatly discomposed; I have seldom seen him more so. His temper is not happy, and something has now occurred to ruffle it in an uncommon degree; some disappointment, some vexation, which just at this moment seems important, but which I can hardly suppose you to have any concern in, for how is it possible?" It was with pain that Catherine could speak at all; and it was only for Eleanor's sake that she attempted it. "I am sure," said she, "I am very sorry if I have offended him. It was the last thing I would willingly have done. But do not be unhappy, Eleanor. An engagement, you know, must be kept. I am only sorry it was not recollected sooner, that I might have written home. But it is of very little consequence." "I hope, I earnestly hope, that to your real safety it will be of none; but to everything else it is of the greatest consequence: to comfort, appearance, propriety, to your family, to the world. Were your friends, the Allens, still in Bath, you might go to them with comparative ease; a few hours would take you there; but a journey of seventy miles, to be taken post by you, at your age, alone, unattended!" "Oh, the journey is nothing. Do not think about that. And if we are to part, a few hours sooner or later, you know, makes no difference. I can be ready by seven. Let me be called in time." Eleanor saw that she wished to be alone; and believing it better for each that they should avoid any further conversation, now left her with, "I shall see you in the morning." Catherine's swelling heart needed relief. In Eleanor's presence friendship and pride had equally restrained her tears, but no sooner was she gone than they burst forth in torrents. Turned from the house, and in such a way! Without any reason that could justify, any apology that could atone for the abruptness, the rudeness, nay, the insolence of it. Henry at a distance--not able even to bid him farewell. Every hope, every expectation from him suspended, at least, and who could say how long? Who could say when they might meet again? And all this by such a man as General Tilney, so polite, so well bred, and heretofore so particularly fond of her! It was as incomprehensible as it was mortifying and grievous. From what it could arise, and where it would end, were considerations of equal perplexity and alarm. The manner in which it was done so grossly uncivil, hurrying her away without any reference to her own convenience, or allowing her even the appearance of choice as to the time or mode of her travelling; of two days, the earliest fixed on, and of that almost the earliest hour, as if resolved to have her gone before he was stirring in the morning, that he might not be obliged even to see her. What could all this mean but an intentional affront? By some means or other she must have had the misfortune to offend him. Eleanor had wished to spare her from so painful a notion, but Catherine could not believe it possible that any injury or any misfortune could provoke such ill will against a person not connected, or, at least, not supposed to be connected with it. Heavily passed the night. Sleep, or repose that deserved the name of sleep, was out of the question. That room, in which her disturbed imagination had tormented her on her first arrival, was again the scene of agitated spirits and unquiet slumbers. Yet how different now the source of her inquietude from what it had been then--how mournfully superior in reality and substance! Her anxiety had foundation in fact, her fears in probability; and with a mind so occupied in the contemplation of actual and natural evil, the solitude of her situation, the darkness of her chamber, the antiquity of the building, were felt and considered without the smallest emotion; and though the wind was high, and often produced strange and sudden noises throughout the house, she heard it all as she lay awake, hour after hour, without curiosity or terror. Soon after six Eleanor entered her room, eager to show attention or give assistance where it was possible; but very little remained to be done. Catherine had not loitered; she was almost dressed, and her packing almost finished. The possibility of some conciliatory message from the general occurred to her as his daughter appeared. What so natural, as that anger should pass away and repentance succeed it? And she only wanted to know how far, after what had passed, an apology might properly be received by her. But the knowledge would have been useless here; it was not called for; neither clemency nor dignity was put to the trial--Eleanor brought no message. Very little passed between them on meeting; each found her greatest safety in silence, and few and trivial were the sentences exchanged while they remained upstairs, Catherine in busy agitation completing her dress, and Eleanor with more goodwill than experience intent upon filling the trunk. When everything was done they left the room, Catherine lingering only half a minute behind her friend to throw a parting glance on every well-known, cherished object, and went down to the breakfast-parlour, where breakfast was prepared. She tried to eat, as well to save herself from the pain of being urged as to make her friend comfortable; but she had no appetite, and could not swallow many mouthfuls. The contrast between this and her last breakfast in that room gave her fresh misery, and strengthened her distaste for everything before her. It was not four and twenty hours ago since they had met there to the same repast, but in circumstances how different! With what cheerful ease, what happy, though false, security, had she then looked around her, enjoying everything present, and fearing little in future, beyond Henry's going to Woodston for a day! Happy, happy breakfast! For Henry had been there; Henry had sat by her and helped her. These reflections were long indulged undisturbed by any address from her companion, who sat as deep in thought as herself; and the appearance of the carriage was the first thing to startle and recall them to the present moment. Catherine's colour rose at the sight of it; and the indignity with which she was treated, striking at that instant on her mind with peculiar force, made her for a short time sensible only of resentment. Eleanor seemed now impelled into resolution and speech. "You must write to me, Catherine," she cried; "you must let me hear from you as soon as possible. Till I know you to be safe at home, I shall not have an hour's comfort. For one letter, at all risks, all hazards, I must entreat. Let me have the satisfaction of knowing that you are safe at Fullerton, and have found your family well, and then, till I can ask for your correspondence as I ought to do, I will not expect more. Direct to me at Lord Longtown's, and, I must ask it, under cover to Alice." "No, Eleanor, if you are not allowed to receive a letter from me, I am sure I had better not write. There can be no doubt of my getting home safe." Eleanor only replied, "I cannot wonder at your feelings. I will not importune you. I will trust to your own kindness of heart when I am at a distance from you." But this, with the look of sorrow accompanying it, was enough to melt Catherine's pride in a moment, and she instantly said, "Oh, Eleanor, I will write to you indeed." There was yet another point which Miss Tilney was anxious to settle, though somewhat embarrassed in speaking of. It had occurred to her that after so long an absence from home, Catherine might not be provided with money enough for the expenses of her journey, and, upon suggesting it to her with most affectionate offers of accommodation, it proved to be exactly the case. Catherine had never thought on the subject till that moment, but, upon examining her purse, was convinced that but for this kindness of her friend, she might have been turned from the house without even the means of getting home; and the distress in which she must have been thereby involved filling the minds of both, scarcely another word was said by either during the time of their remaining together. Short, however, was that time. The carriage was soon announced to be ready; and Catherine, instantly rising, a long and affectionate embrace supplied the place of language in bidding each other adieu; and, as they entered the hall, unable to leave the house without some mention of one whose name had not yet been spoken by either, she paused a moment, and with quivering lips just made it intelligible that she left "her kind remembrance for her absent friend." But with this approach to his name ended all possibility of restraining her feelings; and, hiding her face as well as she could with her handkerchief, she darted across the hall, jumped into the chaise, and in a moment was driven from the door.

The General has to go out of town, so it's party time at Northanger for Catherine, Henry, and Eleanor. Catherine starts to worry that she has overstayed her welcome, but Eleanor insists she can stay longer if she wants and that she's happy to have her there. Catherine is growing more confident in Henry's intentions towards her, and is pretty sure he loves her. Henry has to go out of town. The girls are startled at someone arriving late at night. Catherine guesses it must be Captain Tilney and Catherine decides to make an effort to be civil towards him. But Eleanor comes up to Catherine's room looking very distressed. It turns out the unexpected arrival was her father. Eleanor has come to inform Catherine that the General has remembered an engagement and that Catherine has to leave immediately. And she means really immediately: the General is insisting that Catherine go first thing in the morning and he won't even supply transportation for her. Catherine will have to ride post, which is like the Greyhound bus service of nineteenth-century England. Catherine is horrified, as is Eleanor. Catherine can't figure out what she did to make the General throw her out. Eleanor is really upset and worries about how Catherine's family will react to this rudeness. She's also concerned about Catherine's safety, since she'll be traveling alone. Catherine tries to reassure her, but she's too upset to do a good job of it. Catherine is appalled by how rude the General is being and is devastated about having to leave Henry. The whole thing is a mystery. She can't figure out the General's motives at all. Catherine has a very restless night. The next morning, Eleanor comes to help her pack. Things are strained between them. At breakfast Eleanor begs that Catherine write to her to let her know she got home all right. She also lends Catherine some money, since Catherine doesn't have enough cash to get home. The post carriage arrives and Catherine has to leave.

SCENE III MARIANE, DORINE DORINE Say, have you lost the tongue from out your head? And must I speak your role from A to Zed? You let them broach a project that's absurd, And don't oppose it with a single word! MARIANE What can I do? My father is the master. DORINE Do? Everything, to ward off such disaster. MARIANE But what? DORINE Tell him one doesn't love by proxy; Tell him you'll marry for yourself, not him; Since you're the one for whom the thing is done, You are the one, not he, the man must please; If his Tartuffe has charmed him so, why let him Just marry him himself--no one will hinder. MARIANE A father's rights are such, it seems to me, That I could never dare to say a word. DORINE Came, talk it out. Valere has asked your hand: Now do you love him, pray, or do you not? MARIANE Dorine! How can you wrong my love so much, And ask me such a question? Have I not A hundred times laid bare my heart to you? Do you know how ardently I love him? DORINE How do I know if heart and words agree, And if in honest truth you really love him? MARIANE Dorine, you wrong me greatly if you doubt it; I've shown my inmost feelings, all too plainly. DORINE So then, you love him? MARIANE Yes, devotedly. DORINE And he returns your love, apparently? MARIANE I think so. DORINE And you both alike are eager To be well married to each other? MARIANE Surely. DORINE Then what's your plan about this other match? MARIANE To kill myself, if it is forced upon me. DORINE Good! That's a remedy I hadn't thought of. Just die, and everything will be all right. This medicine is marvellous, indeed! It drives me mad to hear folk talk such nonsense. MARIANE Oh dear, Dorine you get in such a temper! You have no sympathy for people's troubles. DORINE I have no sympathy when folk talk nonsense, And flatten out as you do, at a pinch. MARIANE But what can you expect?--if one is timid?-- DORINE But what is love worth, if it has no courage? MARIANE Am I not constant in my love for him? Is't not his place to win me from my father? DORINE But if your father is a crazy fool, And quite bewitched with his Tartuffe? And breaks His bounden word? Is that your lover's fault? MARIANE But shall I publicly refuse and scorn This match, and make it plain that I'm in love? Shall I cast off for him, whate'er he be, Womanly modesty and filial duty? You ask me to display my love in public ... ? DORINE No, no, I ask you nothing. You shall be Mister Tartuffe's; why, now I think of it, I should be wrong to turn you from this marriage. What cause can I have to oppose your wishes? So fine a match! An excellent good match! Mister Tartuffe! Oh ho! No mean proposal! Mister Tartuffe, sure, take it all in all, Is not a man to sneeze at--oh, by no means! 'Tis no small luck to be his happy spouse. The whole world joins to sing his praise already; He's noble--in his parish; handsome too; Red ears and high complexion--oh, my lud! You'll be too happy, sure, with him for husband. MARIANE Oh dear! ... DORINE What joy and pride will fill your heart To be the bride of such a handsome fellow! MARIANE Oh, stop, I beg you; try to find some way To help break off the match. I quite give in, I'm ready to do anything you say. DORINE No, no, a daughter must obey her father, Though he should want to make her wed a monkey. Besides, your fate is fine. What could be better! You'll take the stage-coach to his little village, And find it full of uncles and of cousins, Whose conversation will delight you. Then You'll be presented in their best society. You'll even go to call, by way of welcome, On Mrs. Bailiff, Mrs. Tax-Collector, Who'll patronise you with a folding-stool. There, once a year, at carnival, you'll have Perhaps--a ball; with orchestra--two bag-pipes; And sometimes a trained ape, and Punch and Judy; Though if your husband ... MARIANE Oh, you'll kill me. Please Contrive to help me out with your advice. DORINE I thank you kindly. MARIANE Oh! Dorine, I beg you ... DORINE To serve you right, this marriage must go through. MARIANE Dear girl! DORINE No. MARIANE If I say I love Valere ... DORINE No, no. Tartuffe's your man, and you shall taste him. MARIANE You know I've always trusted you; now help me ... DORINE No, you shall be, my faith! Tartuffified. MARIANE Well, then, since you've no pity for my fate Let me take counsel only of despair; It will advise and help and give me courage; There's one sure cure, I know, for all my troubles. (She starts to go.) DORINE There, there! Come back. I can't be angry long. I must take pity on you, after all. MARIANE Oh, don't you see, Dorine, if I must bear This martyrdom, I certainly shall die. DORINE Now don't you fret. We'll surely find some way. To hinder this ... But here's Valere, your lover.

Dorine criticizes Mariane for not taking a stand against her father. Mariane doesn't really have a good answer. She's just used to doing what she's told; she's done it for so long. Dorine puts her on the spot. Do you love Valere, she asks, or don't you? Mariane is insulted for a bit, but then she tells Dorine how much she loves, really loves Valere, She says she would rather kill herself than marry Tartuffe. Dorine thinks this is just about the stupidest solution to the problem she can think of. She has no sympathy for that kind hopelessness. She tells Mariane to buck up. When Mariane agonizes over disobeying her father, Dorine mocks her, telling her how great a husband Tartuffe will make for her, how much fun she'll have visiting her awful in-laws, etc. This is too much for Mariane to take; she falls into despair again. This time, Dorine takes pity on her, and the two set about making a plan.

Isabel Archer was a young person of many theories; her imagination was remarkably active. It had been her fortune to possess a finer mind than most of the persons among whom her lot was cast; to have a larger perception of surrounding facts and to care for knowledge that was tinged with the unfamiliar. It is true that among her contemporaries she passed for a young woman of extraordinary profundity; for these excellent people never withheld their admiration from a reach of intellect of which they themselves were not conscious, and spoke of Isabel as a prodigy of learning, a creature reported to have read the classic authors--in translations. Her paternal aunt, Mrs. Varian, once spread the rumour that Isabel was writing a book--Mrs. Varian having a reverence for books, and averred that the girl would distinguish herself in print. Mrs. Varian thought highly of literature, for which she entertained that esteem that is connected with a sense of privation. Her own large house, remarkable for its assortment of mosaic tables and decorated ceilings, was unfurnished with a library, and in the way of printed volumes contained nothing but half a dozen novels in paper on a shelf in the apartment of one of the Miss Varians. Practically, Mrs. Varian's acquaintance with literature was confined to The New York Interviewer; as she very justly said, after you had read the Interviewer you had lost all faith in culture. Her tendency, with this, was rather to keep the Interviewer out of the way of her daughters; she was determined to bring them up properly, and they read nothing at all. Her impression with regard to Isabel's labours was quite illusory; the girl had never attempted to write a book and had no desire for the laurels of authorship. She had no talent for expression and too little of the consciousness of genius; she only had a general idea that people were right when they treated her as if she were rather superior. Whether or no she were superior, people were right in admiring her if they thought her so; for it seemed to her often that her mind moved more quickly than theirs, and this encouraged an impatience that might easily be confounded with superiority. It may be affirmed without delay that Isabel was probably very liable to the sin of self-esteem; she often surveyed with complacency the field of her own nature; she was in the habit of taking for granted, on scanty evidence, that she was right; she treated herself to occasions of homage. Meanwhile her errors and delusions were frequently such as a biographer interested in preserving the dignity of his subject must shrink from specifying. Her thoughts were a tangle of vague outlines which had never been corrected by the judgement of people speaking with authority. In matters of opinion she had had her own way, and it had led her into a thousand ridiculous zigzags. At moments she discovered she was grotesquely wrong, and then she treated herself to a week of passionate humility. After this she held her head higher than ever again; for it was of no use, she had an unquenchable desire to think well of herself. She had a theory that it was only under this provision life was worth living; that one should be one of the best, should be conscious of a fine organisation (she couldn't help knowing her organisation was fine), should move in a realm of light, of natural wisdom, of happy impulse, of inspiration gracefully chronic. It was almost as unnecessary to cultivate doubt of one's self as to cultivate doubt of one's best friend: one should try to be one's own best friend and to give one's self, in this manner, distinguished company. The girl had a certain nobleness of imagination which rendered her a good many services and played her a great many tricks. She spent half her time in thinking of beauty and bravery and magnanimity; she had a fixed determination to regard the world as a place of brightness, of free expansion, of irresistible action: she held it must be detestable to be afraid or ashamed. She had an infinite hope that she should never do anything wrong. She had resented so strongly, after discovering them, her mere errors of feeling (the discovery always made her tremble as if she had escaped from a trap which might have caught her and smothered her) that the chance of inflicting a sensible injury upon another person, presented only as a contingency, caused her at moments to hold her breath. That always struck her as the worst thing that could happen to her. On the whole, reflectively, she was in no uncertainty about the things that were wrong. She had no love of their look, but when she fixed them hard she recognised them. It was wrong to be mean, to be jealous, to be false, to be cruel; she had seen very little of the evil of the world, but she had seen women who lied and who tried to hurt each other. Seeing such things had quickened her high spirit; it seemed indecent not to scorn them. Of course the danger of a high spirit was the danger of inconsistency--the danger of keeping up the flag after the place has surrendered; a sort of behaviour so crooked as to be almost a dishonour to the flag. But Isabel, who knew little of the sorts of artillery to which young women are exposed, flattered herself that such contradictions would never be noted in her own conduct. Her life should always be in harmony with the most pleasing impression she should produce; she would be what she appeared, and she would appear what she was. Sometimes she went so far as to wish that she might find herself some day in a difficult position, so that she should have the pleasure of being as heroic as the occasion demanded. Altogether, with her meagre knowledge, her inflated ideals, her confidence at once innocent and dogmatic, her temper at once exacting and indulgent, her mixture of curiosity and fastidiousness, of vivacity and indifference, her desire to look very well and to be if possible even better, her determination to see, to try, to know, her combination of the delicate, desultory, flame-like spirit and the eager and personal creature of conditions: she would be an easy victim of scientific criticism if she were not intended to awaken on the reader's part an impulse more tender and more purely expectant. It was one of her theories that Isabel Archer was very fortunate in being independent, and that she ought to make some very enlightened use of that state. She never called it the state of solitude, much less of singleness; she thought such descriptions weak, and, besides, her sister Lily constantly urged her to come and abide. She had a friend whose acquaintance she had made shortly before her father's death, who offered so high an example of useful activity that Isabel always thought of her as a model. Henrietta Stackpole had the advantage of an admired ability; she was thoroughly launched in journalism, and her letters to the Interviewer, from Washington, Newport, the White Mountains and other places, were universally quoted. Isabel pronounced them with confidence "ephemeral," but she esteemed the courage, energy and good-humour of the writer, who, without parents and without property, had adopted three of the children of an infirm and widowed sister and was paying their school-bills out of the proceeds of her literary labour. Henrietta was in the van of progress and had clear-cut views on most subjects; her cherished desire had long been to come to Europe and write a series of letters to the Interviewer from the radical point of view--an enterprise the less difficult as she knew perfectly in advance what her opinions would be and to how many objections most European institutions lay open. When she heard that Isabel was coming she wished to start at once; thinking, naturally, that it would be delightful the two should travel together. She had been obliged, however, to postpone this enterprise. She thought Isabel a glorious creature, and had spoken of her covertly in some of her letters, though she never mentioned the fact to her friend, who would not have taken pleasure in it and was not a regular student of the Interviewer. Henrietta, for Isabel, was chiefly a proof that a woman might suffice to herself and be happy. Her resources were of the obvious kind; but even if one had not the journalistic talent and a genius for guessing, as Henrietta said, what the public was going to want, one was not therefore to conclude that one had no vocation, no beneficent aptitude of any sort, and resign one's self to being frivolous and hollow. Isabel was stoutly determined not to be hollow. If one should wait with the right patience one would find some happy work to one's hand. Of course, among her theories, this young lady was not without a collection of views on the subject of marriage. The first on the list was a conviction of the vulgarity of thinking too much of it. From lapsing into eagerness on this point she earnestly prayed she might be delivered; she held that a woman ought to be able to live to herself, in the absence of exceptional flimsiness, and that it was perfectly possible to be happy without the society of a more or less coarse-minded person of another sex. The girl's prayer was very sufficiently answered; something pure and proud that there was in her--something cold and dry an unappreciated suitor with a taste for analysis might have called it--had hitherto kept her from any great vanity of conjecture on the article of possible husbands. Few of the men she saw seemed worth a ruinous expenditure, and it made her smile to think that one of them should present himself as an incentive to hope and a reward of patience. Deep in her soul--it was the deepest thing there--lay a belief that if a certain light should dawn she could give herself completely; but this image, on the whole, was too formidable to be attractive. Isabel's thoughts hovered about it, but they seldom rested on it long; after a little it ended in alarms. It often seemed to her that she thought too much about herself; you could have made her colour, any day in the year, by calling her a rank egoist. She was always planning out her development, desiring her perfection, observing her progress. Her nature had, in her conceit, a certain garden-like quality, a suggestion of perfume and murmuring boughs, of shady bowers and lengthening vistas, which made her feel that introspection was, after all, an exercise in the open air, and that a visit to the recesses of one's spirit was harmless when one returned from it with a lapful of roses. But she was often reminded that there were other gardens in the world than those of her remarkable soul, and that there were moreover a great many places which were not gardens at all--only dusky pestiferous tracts, planted thick with ugliness and misery. In the current of that repaid curiosity on which she had lately been floating, which had conveyed her to this beautiful old England and might carry her much further still, she often checked herself with the thought of the thousands of people who were less happy than herself--a thought which for the moment made her fine, full consciousness appear a kind of immodesty. What should one do with the misery of the world in a scheme of the agreeable for one's self? It must be confessed that this question never held her long. She was too young, too impatient to live, too unacquainted with pain. She always returned to her theory that a young woman whom after all every one thought clever should begin by getting a general impression of life. This impression was necessary to prevent mistakes, and after it should be secured she might make the unfortunate condition of others a subject of special attention. England was a revelation to her, and she found herself as diverted as a child at a pantomime. In her infantine excursions to Europe she had seen only the Continent, and seen it from the nursery window; Paris, not London, was her father's Mecca, and into many of his interests there his children had naturally not entered. The images of that time moreover had grown faint and remote, and the old-world quality in everything that she now saw had all the charm of strangeness. Her uncle's house seemed a picture made real; no refinement of the agreeable was lost upon Isabel; the rich perfection of Gardencourt at once revealed a world and gratified a need. The large, low rooms, with brown ceilings and dusky corners, the deep embrasures and curious casements, the quiet light on dark, polished panels, the deep greenness outside, that seemed always peeping in, the sense of well-ordered privacy in the centre of a "property"--a place where sounds were felicitously accidental, where the tread was muffed by the earth itself and in the thick mild air all friction dropped out of contact and all shrillness out of talk--these things were much to the taste of our young lady, whose taste played a considerable part in her emotions. She formed a fast friendship with her uncle, and often sat by his chair when he had had it moved out to the lawn. He passed hours in the open air, sitting with folded hands like a placid, homely household god, a god of service, who had done his work and received his wages and was trying to grow used to weeks and months made up only of off-days. Isabel amused him more than she suspected--the effect she produced upon people was often different from what she supposed--and he frequently gave himself the pleasure of making her chatter. It was by this term that he qualified her conversation, which had much of the "point" observable in that of the young ladies of her country, to whom the ear of the world is more directly presented than to their sisters in other lands. Like the mass of American girls Isabel had been encouraged to express herself; her remarks had been attended to; she had been expected to have emotions and opinions. Many of her opinions had doubtless but a slender value, many of her emotions passed away in the utterance; but they had left a trace in giving her the habit of seeming at least to feel and think, and in imparting moreover to her words when she was really moved that prompt vividness which so many people had regarded as a sign of superiority. Mr. Touchett used to think that she reminded him of his wife when his wife was in her teens. It was because she was fresh and natural and quick to understand, to speak--so many characteristics of her niece--that he had fallen in love with Mrs. Touchett. He never expressed this analogy to the girl herself, however; for if Mrs. Touchett had once been like Isabel, Isabel was not at all like Mrs. Touchett. The old man was full of kindness for her; it was a long time, as he said, since they had had any young life in the house; and our rustling, quickly-moving, clear-voiced heroine was as agreeable to his sense as the sound of flowing water. He wanted to do something for her and wished she would ask it of him. She would ask nothing but questions; it is true that of these she asked a quantity. Her uncle had a great fund of answers, though her pressure sometimes came in forms that puzzled him. She questioned him immensely about England, about the British constitution, the English character, the state of politics, the manners and customs of the royal family, the peculiarities of the aristocracy, the way of living and thinking of his neighbours; and in begging to be enlightened on these points she usually enquired whether they corresponded with the descriptions in the books. The old man always looked at her a little with his fine dry smile while he smoothed down the shawl spread across his legs. "The books?" he once said; "well, I don't know much about the books. You must ask Ralph about that. I've always ascertained for myself--got my information in the natural form. I never asked many questions even; I just kept quiet and took notice. Of course I've had very good opportunities--better than what a young lady would naturally have. I'm of an inquisitive disposition, though you mightn't think it if you were to watch me: however much you might watch me I should be watching you more. I've been watching these people for upwards of thirty-five years, and I don't hesitate to say that I've acquired considerable information. It's a very fine country on the whole--finer perhaps than what we give it credit for on the other side. Several improvements I should like to see introduced; but the necessity of them doesn't seem to be generally felt as yet. When the necessity of a thing is generally felt they usually manage to accomplish it; but they seem to feel pretty comfortable about waiting till then. I certainly feel more at home among them than I expected to when I first came over; I suppose it's because I've had a considerable degree of success. When you're successful you naturally feel more at home." "Do you suppose that if I'm successful I shall feel at home?" Isabel asked. "I should think it very probable, and you certainly will be successful. They like American young ladies very much over here; they show them a great deal of kindness. But you mustn't feel too much at home, you know." "Oh, I'm by no means sure it will satisfy me," Isabel judicially emphasised. "I like the place very much, but I'm not sure I shall like the people." "The people are very good people; especially if you like them." "I've no doubt they're good," Isabel rejoined; "but are they pleasant in society? They won't rob me nor beat me; but will they make themselves agreeable to me? That's what I like people to do. I don't hesitate to say so, because I always appreciate it. I don't believe they're very nice to girls; they're not nice to them in the novels." "I don't know about the novels," said Mr. Touchett. "I believe the novels have a great deal but I don't suppose they're very accurate. We once had a lady who wrote novels staying here; she was a friend of Ralph's and he asked her down. She was very positive, quite up to everything; but she was not the sort of person you could depend on for evidence. Too free a fancy--I suppose that was it. She afterwards published a work of fiction in which she was understood to have given a representation--something in the nature of a caricature, as you might say--of my unworthy self. I didn't read it, but Ralph just handed me the book with the principal passages marked. It was understood to be a description of my conversation; American peculiarities, nasal twang, Yankee notions, stars and stripes. Well, it was not at all accurate; she couldn't have listened very attentively. I had no objection to her giving a report of my conversation, if she liked but I didn't like the idea that she hadn't taken the trouble to listen to it. Of course I talk like an American--I can't talk like a Hottentot. However I talk, I've made them understand me pretty well over here. But I don't talk like the old gentleman in that lady's novel. He wasn't an American; we wouldn't have him over there at any price. I just mention that fact to show you that they're not always accurate. Of course, as I've no daughters, and as Mrs. Touchett resides in Florence, I haven't had much chance to notice about the young ladies. It sometimes appears as if the young women in the lower class were not very well treated; but I guess their position is better in the upper and even to some extent in the middle." "Gracious," Isabel exclaimed; "how many classes have they? About fifty, I suppose." "Well, I don't know that I ever counted them. I never took much notice of the classes. That's the advantage of being an American here; you don't belong to any class." "I hope so," said Isabel. "Imagine one's belonging to an English class!" "Well, I guess some of them are pretty comfortable--especially towards the top. But for me there are only two classes: the people I trust and the people I don't. Of those two, my dear Isabel, you belong to the first." "I'm much obliged to you," said the girl quickly. Her way of taking compliments seemed sometimes rather dry; she got rid of them as rapidly as possible. But as regards this she was sometimes misjudged; she was thought insensible to them, whereas in fact she was simply unwilling to show how infinitely they pleased her. To show that was to show too much. "I'm sure the English are very conventional," she added. "They've got everything pretty well fixed," Mr. Touchett admitted. "It's all settled beforehand--they don't leave it to the last moment." "I don't like to have everything settled beforehand," said the girl. "I like more unexpectedness." Her uncle seemed amused at her distinctness of preference. "Well, it's settled beforehand that you'll have great success," he rejoined. "I suppose you'll like that." "I shall not have success if they're too stupidly conventional. I'm not in the least stupidly conventional. I'm just the contrary. That's what they won't like." "No, no, you're all wrong," said the old man. "You can't tell what they'll like. They're very inconsistent; that's their principal interest." "Ah well," said Isabel, standing before her uncle with her hands clasped about the belt of her black dress and looking up and down the lawn--"that will suit me perfectly!"

Finally, we get a detailed glimpse of young Miss Archer. Isabel thinks quite highly of herself - actually, everyone thinks quite highly of her. She's intelligent, creative, and, most certainly, in the words of Lord Warburton, an interesting woman. Her pride is one of her distinguishing characteristics - though it can come off as arrogance sometimes, she is the first to admit when she's made a mistake. Her greatest desire is to perfect herself. Isabel's best friend is Henrietta Stackpole, another independent, intelligent, and apparently quite interesting young woman. Henrietta is some kind of intrepid girl-reporter, and supports her sister's young children with her earnings. Isabel, like Henrietta, considers independence very important, and thinks that women should be able to live without men. She vaguely wonders about marriage, but has never been in love. Isabel reminds Mr. Touchett a little of the young Mrs. Touchett. Newly planted in English soil, Isabel is very curious to know about the country and its people. She asks Mr. Touchett if England really is how it's depicted in books. Mr. Touchett says that anything he's learned he's learned by observation and participation, not from second-hand sources. The amiable pair discusses the role of the American in England, undefined by social class. Mr. Touchett says that English people are very "inconsistent," which pleases Isabel, since she herself is unpredictable, too.

About twelve o'clock that night was born the Catherine you saw at Wuthering Heights: a puny, seven-months' child; and two hours after the mother died, having never recovered sufficient consciousness to miss Heathcliff, or know Edgar. The latter's distraction at his bereavement is a subject too painful to be dwelt on; its after-effects showed how deep the sorrow sunk. A great addition, in my eyes, was his being left without an heir. I bemoaned that, as I gazed on the feeble orphan; and I mentally abused old Linton for (what was only natural partiality) the securing his estate to his own daughter, instead of his son's. An unwelcomed infant it was, poor thing! It might have wailed out of life, and nobody cared a morsel, during those first hours of existence. We redeemed the neglect afterwards; but its beginning was as friendless as its end is likely to be. Next morning--bright and cheerful out of doors--stole softened in through the blinds of the silent room, and suffused the couch and its occupant with a mellow, tender glow. Edgar Linton had his head laid on the pillow, and his eyes shut. His young and fair features were almost as deathlike as those of the form beside him, and almost as fixed: but _his_ was the hush of exhausted anguish, and _hers_ of perfect peace. Her brow smooth, her lids closed, her lips wearing the expression of a smile; no angel in heaven could be more beautiful than she appeared. And I partook of the infinite calm in which she lay: my mind was never in a holier frame than while I gazed on that untroubled image of Divine rest. I instinctively echoed the words she had uttered a few hours before: 'Incomparably beyond and above us all! Whether still on earth or now in heaven, her spirit is at home with God!' I don't know if it be a peculiarity in me, but I am seldom otherwise than happy while watching in the chamber of death, should no frenzied or despairing mourner share the duty with me. I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break, and I feel an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter--the Eternity they have entered--where life is boundless in its duration, and love in its sympathy, and joy in its fulness. I noticed on that occasion how much selfishness there is even in a love like Mr. Linton's, when he so regretted Catherine's blessed release! To be sure, one might have doubted, after the wayward and impatient existence she had led, whether she merited a haven of peace at last. One might doubt in seasons of cold reflection; but not then, in the presence of her corpse. It asserted its own tranquillity, which seemed a pledge of equal quiet to its former inhabitant. Do you believe such people are happy in the other world, sir? I'd give a great deal to know. I declined answering Mrs. Dean's question, which struck me as something heterodox. She proceeded: Retracing the course of Catherine Linton, I fear we have no right to think she is; but we'll leave her with her Maker. The master looked asleep, and I ventured soon after sunrise to quit the room and steal out to the pure refreshing air. The servants thought me gone to shake off the drowsiness of my protracted watch; in reality, my chief motive was seeing Mr. Heathcliff. If he had remained among the larches all night, he would have heard nothing of the stir at the Grange; unless, perhaps, he might catch the gallop of the messenger going to Gimmerton. If he had come nearer, he would probably be aware, from the lights flitting to and fro, and the opening and shutting of the outer doors, that all was not right within. I wished, yet feared, to find him. I felt the terrible news must be told, and I longed to get it over; but how to do it I did not know. He was there--at least, a few yards further in the park; leant against an old ash-tree, his hat off, and his hair soaked with the dew that had gathered on the budded branches, and fell pattering round him. He had been standing a long time in that position, for I saw a pair of ousels passing and repassing scarcely three feet from him, busy in building their nest, and regarding his proximity no more than that of a piece of timber. They flew off at my approach, and he raised his eyes and spoke:--'She's dead!' he said; 'I've not waited for you to learn that. Put your handkerchief away--don't snivel before me. Damn you all! she wants none of your tears!' I was weeping as much for him as her: we do sometimes pity creatures that have none of the feeling either for themselves or others. When I first looked into his face, I perceived that he had got intelligence of the catastrophe; and a foolish notion struck me that his heart was quelled and he prayed, because his lips moved and his gaze was bent on the ground. 'Yes, she's dead!' I answered, checking my sobs and drying my cheeks. 'Gone to heaven, I hope; where we may, every one, join her, if we take due warning and leave our evil ways to follow good!' 'Did _she_ take due warning, then?' asked Heathcliff, attempting a sneer. 'Did she die like a saint? Come, give me a true history of the event. How did--?' He endeavoured to pronounce the name, but could not manage it; and compressing his mouth he held a silent combat with his inward agony, defying, meanwhile, my sympathy with an unflinching, ferocious stare. 'How did she die?' he resumed, at last--fain, notwithstanding his hardihood, to have a support behind him; for, after the struggle, he trembled, in spite of himself, to his very finger-ends. 'Poor wretch!' I thought; 'you have a heart and nerves the same as your brother men! Why should you be anxious to conceal them? Your pride cannot blind God! You tempt him to wring them, till he forces a cry of humiliation.' 'Quietly as a lamb!' I answered, aloud. 'She drew a sigh, and stretched herself, like a child reviving, and sinking again to sleep; and five minutes after I felt one little pulse at her heart, and nothing more!' 'And--did she ever mention me?' he asked, hesitating, as if he dreaded the answer to his question would introduce details that he could not bear to hear. 'Her senses never returned: she recognised nobody from the time you left her,' I said. 'She lies with a sweet smile on her face; and her latest ideas wandered back to pleasant early days. Her life closed in a gentle dream--may she wake as kindly in the other world!' 'May she wake in torment!' he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. 'Why, she's a liar to the end! Where is she? Not _there_--not in heaven--not perished--where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer--I repeat it till my tongue stiffens--Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living; you said I killed you--haunt me, then! The murdered _do_ haunt their murderers, I believe. I know that ghosts _have_ wandered on earth. Be with me always--take any form--drive me mad! only _do_ not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I _cannot_ live without my life! I _cannot_ live without my soul!' He dashed his head against the knotted trunk; and, lifting up his eyes, howled, not like a man, but like a savage beast being goaded to death with knives and spears. I observed several splashes of blood about the bark of the tree, and his hand and forehead were both stained; probably the scene I witnessed was a repetition of others acted during the night. It hardly moved my compassion--it appalled me: still, I felt reluctant to quit him so. But the moment he recollected himself enough to notice me watching, he thundered a command for me to go, and I obeyed. He was beyond my skill to quiet or console! Mrs. Linton's funeral was appointed to take place on the Friday following her decease; and till then her coffin remained uncovered, and strewn with flowers and scented leaves, in the great drawing-room. Linton spent his days and nights there, a sleepless guardian; and--a circumstance concealed from all but me--Heathcliff spent his nights, at least, outside, equally a stranger to repose. I held no communication with him: still, I was conscious of his design to enter, if he could; and on the Tuesday, a little after dark, when my master, from sheer fatigue, had been compelled to retire a couple of hours, I went and opened one of the windows; moved by his perseverance to give him a chance of bestowing on the faded image of his idol one final adieu. He did not omit to avail himself of the opportunity, cautiously and briefly; too cautiously to betray his presence by the slightest noise. Indeed, I shouldn't have discovered that he had been there, except for the disarrangement of the drapery about the corpse's face, and for observing on the floor a curl of light hair, fastened with a silver thread; which, on examination, I ascertained to have been taken from a locket hung round Catherine's neck. Heathcliff had opened the trinket and cast out its contents, replacing them by a black lock of his own. I twisted the two, and enclosed them together. Mr. Earnshaw was, of course, invited to attend the remains of his sister to the grave; he sent no excuse, but he never came; so that, besides her husband, the mourners were wholly composed of tenants and servants. Isabella was not asked. The place of Catherine's interment, to the surprise of the villagers, was neither in the chapel under the carved monument of the Lintons, nor yet by the tombs of her own relations, outside. It was dug on a green slope in a corner of the kirk-yard, where the wall is so low that heath and bilberry-plants have climbed over it from the moor; and peat-mould almost buries it. Her husband lies in the same spot now; and they have each a simple headstone above, and a plain grey block at their feet, to mark the graves.

On the night of Heathcliff's visit, Catherine gives birth to a baby girl and then dies. Edgar's sorrow is great, for he has lost his wife without gaining an heir to his property. Nelly breaks the news of the birth and death to Heathcliff. After her master retires, she admits Heathcliff in the house to bid his final farewell to Catherine. Hindley does not attend his sister's funeral although he is invited; Isabella is not asked. The only mourners beside Edgar are the tenants and the servants. As she requested, Catherine is buried neither with the Lintons nor with the Earnshaws, but on an open slope in a corner of the churchyard.

V. The Wine-shop A large cask of wine had been dropped and broken, in the street. The accident had happened in getting it out of a cart; the cask had tumbled out with a run, the hoops had burst, and it lay on the stones just outside the door of the wine-shop, shattered like a walnut-shell. All the people within reach had suspended their business, or their idleness, to run to the spot and drink the wine. The rough, irregular stones of the street, pointing every way, and designed, one might have thought, expressly to lame all living creatures that approached them, had dammed it into little pools; these were surrounded, each by its own jostling group or crowd, according to its size. Some men kneeled down, made scoops of their two hands joined, and sipped, or tried to help women, who bent over their shoulders, to sip, before the wine had all run out between their fingers. Others, men and women, dipped in the puddles with little mugs of mutilated earthenware, or even with handkerchiefs from women's heads, which were squeezed dry into infants' mouths; others made small mud-embankments, to stem the wine as it ran; others, directed by lookers-on up at high windows, darted here and there, to cut off little streams of wine that started away in new directions; others devoted themselves to the sodden and lee-dyed pieces of the cask, licking, and even champing the moister wine-rotted fragments with eager relish. There was no drainage to carry off the wine, and not only did it all get taken up, but so much mud got taken up along with it, that there might have been a scavenger in the street, if anybody acquainted with it could have believed in such a miraculous presence. A shrill sound of laughter and of amused voices--voices of men, women, and children--resounded in the street while this wine game lasted. There was little roughness in the sport, and much playfulness. There was a special companionship in it, an observable inclination on the part of every one to join some other one, which led, especially among the luckier or lighter-hearted, to frolicsome embraces, drinking of healths, shaking of hands, and even joining of hands and dancing, a dozen together. When the wine was gone, and the places where it had been most abundant were raked into a gridiron-pattern by fingers, these demonstrations ceased, as suddenly as they had broken out. The man who had left his saw sticking in the firewood he was cutting, set it in motion again; the women who had left on a door-step the little pot of hot ashes, at which she had been trying to soften the pain in her own starved fingers and toes, or in those of her child, returned to it; men with bare arms, matted locks, and cadaverous faces, who had emerged into the winter light from cellars, moved away, to descend again; and a gloom gathered on the scene that appeared more natural to it than sunshine. The wine was red wine, and had stained the ground of the narrow street in the suburb of Saint Antoine, in Paris, where it was spilled. It had stained many hands, too, and many faces, and many naked feet, and many wooden shoes. The hands of the man who sawed the wood, left red marks on the billets; and the forehead of the woman who nursed her baby, was stained with the stain of the old rag she wound about her head again. Those who had been greedy with the staves of the cask, had acquired a tigerish smear about the mouth; and one tall joker so besmirched, his head more out of a long squalid bag of a nightcap than in it, scrawled upon a wall with his finger dipped in muddy wine-lees--BLOOD. The time was to come, when that wine too would be spilled on the street-stones, and when the stain of it would be red upon many there. And now that the cloud settled on Saint Antoine, which a momentary gleam had driven from his sacred countenance, the darkness of it was heavy--cold, dirt, sickness, ignorance, and want, were the lords in waiting on the saintly presence--nobles of great power all of them; but, most especially the last. Samples of a people that had undergone a terrible grinding and regrinding in the mill, and certainly not in the fabulous mill which ground old people young, shivered at every corner, passed in and out at every doorway, looked from every window, fluttered in every vestige of a garment that the wind shook. The mill which had worked them down, was the mill that grinds young people old; the children had ancient faces and grave voices; and upon them, and upon the grown faces, and ploughed into every furrow of age and coming up afresh, was the sigh, Hunger. It was prevalent everywhere. Hunger was pushed out of the tall houses, in the wretched clothing that hung upon poles and lines; Hunger was patched into them with straw and rag and wood and paper; Hunger was repeated in every fragment of the small modicum of firewood that the man sawed off; Hunger stared down from the smokeless chimneys, and started up from the filthy street that had no offal, among its refuse, of anything to eat. Hunger was the inscription on the baker's shelves, written in every small loaf of his scanty stock of bad bread; at the sausage-shop, in every dead-dog preparation that was offered for sale. Hunger rattled its dry bones among the roasting chestnuts in the turned cylinder; Hunger was shred into atomics in every farthing porringer of husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant drops of oil. Its abiding place was in all things fitted to it. A narrow winding street, full of offence and stench, with other narrow winding streets diverging, all peopled by rags and nightcaps, and all smelling of rags and nightcaps, and all visible things with a brooding look upon them that looked ill. In the hunted air of the people there was yet some wild-beast thought of the possibility of turning at bay. Depressed and slinking though they were, eyes of fire were not wanting among them; nor compressed lips, white with what they suppressed; nor foreheads knitted into the likeness of the gallows-rope they mused about enduring, or inflicting. The trade signs (and they were almost as many as the shops) were, all, grim illustrations of Want. The butcher and the porkman painted up, only the leanest scrags of meat; the baker, the coarsest of meagre loaves. The people rudely pictured as drinking in the wine-shops, croaked over their scanty measures of thin wine and beer, and were gloweringly confidential together. Nothing was represented in a flourishing condition, save tools and weapons; but, the cutler's knives and axes were sharp and bright, the smith's hammers were heavy, and the gunmaker's stock was murderous. The crippling stones of the pavement, with their many little reservoirs of mud and water, had no footways, but broke off abruptly at the doors. The kennel, to make amends, ran down the middle of the street--when it ran at all: which was only after heavy rains, and then it ran, by many eccentric fits, into the houses. Across the streets, at wide intervals, one clumsy lamp was slung by a rope and pulley; at night, when the lamplighter had let these down, and lighted, and hoisted them again, a feeble grove of dim wicks swung in a sickly manner overhead, as if they were at sea. Indeed they were at sea, and the ship and crew were in peril of tempest. For, the time was to come, when the gaunt scarecrows of that region should have watched the lamplighter, in their idleness and hunger, so long, as to conceive the idea of improving on his method, and hauling up men by those ropes and pulleys, to flare upon the darkness of their condition. But, the time was not come yet; and every wind that blew over France shook the rags of the scarecrows in vain, for the birds, fine of song and feather, took no warning. The wine-shop was a corner shop, better than most others in its appearance and degree, and the master of the wine-shop had stood outside it, in a yellow waistcoat and green breeches, looking on at the struggle for the lost wine. "It's not my affair," said he, with a final shrug of the shoulders. "The people from the market did it. Let them bring another." There, his eyes happening to catch the tall joker writing up his joke, he called to him across the way: "Say, then, my Gaspard, what do you do there?" The fellow pointed to his joke with immense significance, as is often the way with his tribe. It missed its mark, and completely failed, as is often the way with his tribe too. "What now? Are you a subject for the mad hospital?" said the wine-shop keeper, crossing the road, and obliterating the jest with a handful of mud, picked up for the purpose, and smeared over it. "Why do you write in the public streets? Is there--tell me thou--is there no other place to write such words in?" In his expostulation he dropped his cleaner hand (perhaps accidentally, perhaps not) upon the joker's heart. The joker rapped it with his own, took a nimble spring upward, and came down in a fantastic dancing attitude, with one of his stained shoes jerked off his foot into his hand, and held out. A joker of an extremely, not to say wolfishly practical character, he looked, under those circumstances. "Put it on, put it on," said the other. "Call wine, wine; and finish there." With that advice, he wiped his soiled hand upon the joker's dress, such as it was--quite deliberately, as having dirtied the hand on his account; and then recrossed the road and entered the wine-shop. This wine-shop keeper was a bull-necked, martial-looking man of thirty, and he should have been of a hot temperament, for, although it was a bitter day, he wore no coat, but carried one slung over his shoulder. His shirt-sleeves were rolled up, too, and his brown arms were bare to the elbows. Neither did he wear anything more on his head than his own crisply-curling short dark hair. He was a dark man altogether, with good eyes and a good bold breadth between them. Good-humoured looking on the whole, but implacable-looking, too; evidently a man of a strong resolution and a set purpose; a man not desirable to be met, rushing down a narrow pass with a gulf on either side, for nothing would turn the man. Madame Defarge, his wife, sat in the shop behind the counter as he came in. Madame Defarge was a stout woman of about his own age, with a watchful eye that seldom seemed to look at anything, a large hand heavily ringed, a steady face, strong features, and great composure of manner. There was a character about Madame Defarge, from which one might have predicated that she did not often make mistakes against herself in any of the reckonings over which she presided. Madame Defarge being sensitive to cold, was wrapped in fur, and had a quantity of bright shawl twined about her head, though not to the concealment of her large earrings. Her knitting was before her, but she had laid it down to pick her teeth with a toothpick. Thus engaged, with her right elbow supported by her left hand, Madame Defarge said nothing when her lord came in, but coughed just one grain of cough. This, in combination with the lifting of her darkly defined eyebrows over her toothpick by the breadth of a line, suggested to her husband that he would do well to look round the shop among the customers, for any new customer who had dropped in while he stepped over the way. The wine-shop keeper accordingly rolled his eyes about, until they rested upon an elderly gentleman and a young lady, who were seated in a corner. Other company were there: two playing cards, two playing dominoes, three standing by the counter lengthening out a short supply of wine. As he passed behind the counter, he took notice that the elderly gentleman said in a look to the young lady, "This is our man." "What the devil do _you_ do in that galley there?" said Monsieur Defarge to himself; "I don't know you." But, he feigned not to notice the two strangers, and fell into discourse with the triumvirate of customers who were drinking at the counter. "How goes it, Jacques?" said one of these three to Monsieur Defarge. "Is all the spilt wine swallowed?" "Every drop, Jacques," answered Monsieur Defarge. When this interchange of Christian name was effected, Madame Defarge, picking her teeth with her toothpick, coughed another grain of cough, and raised her eyebrows by the breadth of another line. "It is not often," said the second of the three, addressing Monsieur Defarge, "that many of these miserable beasts know the taste of wine, or of anything but black bread and death. Is it not so, Jacques?" "It is so, Jacques," Monsieur Defarge returned. At this second interchange of the Christian name, Madame Defarge, still using her toothpick with profound composure, coughed another grain of cough, and raised her eyebrows by the breadth of another line. The last of the three now said his say, as he put down his empty drinking vessel and smacked his lips. "Ah! So much the worse! A bitter taste it is that such poor cattle always have in their mouths, and hard lives they live, Jacques. Am I right, Jacques?" "You are right, Jacques," was the response of Monsieur Defarge. This third interchange of the Christian name was completed at the moment when Madame Defarge put her toothpick by, kept her eyebrows up, and slightly rustled in her seat. "Hold then! True!" muttered her husband. "Gentlemen--my wife!" The three customers pulled off their hats to Madame Defarge, with three flourishes. She acknowledged their homage by bending her head, and giving them a quick look. Then she glanced in a casual manner round the wine-shop, took up her knitting with great apparent calmness and repose of spirit, and became absorbed in it. "Gentlemen," said her husband, who had kept his bright eye observantly upon her, "good day. The chamber, furnished bachelor-fashion, that you wished to see, and were inquiring for when I stepped out, is on the fifth floor. The doorway of the staircase gives on the little courtyard close to the left here," pointing with his hand, "near to the window of my establishment. But, now that I remember, one of you has already been there, and can show the way. Gentlemen, adieu!" They paid for their wine, and left the place. The eyes of Monsieur Defarge were studying his wife at her knitting when the elderly gentleman advanced from his corner, and begged the favour of a word. "Willingly, sir," said Monsieur Defarge, and quietly stepped with him to the door. Their conference was very short, but very decided. Almost at the first word, Monsieur Defarge started and became deeply attentive. It had not lasted a minute, when he nodded and went out. The gentleman then beckoned to the young lady, and they, too, went out. Madame Defarge knitted with nimble fingers and steady eyebrows, and saw nothing. Mr. Jarvis Lorry and Miss Manette, emerging from the wine-shop thus, joined Monsieur Defarge in the doorway to which he had directed his own company just before. It opened from a stinking little black courtyard, and was the general public entrance to a great pile of houses, inhabited by a great number of people. In the gloomy tile-paved entry to the gloomy tile-paved staircase, Monsieur Defarge bent down on one knee to the child of his old master, and put her hand to his lips. It was a gentle action, but not at all gently done; a very remarkable transformation had come over him in a few seconds. He had no good-humour in his face, nor any openness of aspect left, but had become a secret, angry, dangerous man. "It is very high; it is a little difficult. Better to begin slowly." Thus, Monsieur Defarge, in a stern voice, to Mr. Lorry, as they began ascending the stairs. "Is he alone?" the latter whispered. "Alone! God help him, who should be with him!" said the other, in the same low voice. "Is he always alone, then?" "Yes." "Of his own desire?" "Of his own necessity. As he was, when I first saw him after they found me and demanded to know if I would take him, and, at my peril be discreet--as he was then, so he is now." "He is greatly changed?" "Changed!" The keeper of the wine-shop stopped to strike the wall with his hand, and mutter a tremendous curse. No direct answer could have been half so forcible. Mr. Lorry's spirits grew heavier and heavier, as he and his two companions ascended higher and higher. Such a staircase, with its accessories, in the older and more crowded parts of Paris, would be bad enough now; but, at that time, it was vile indeed to unaccustomed and unhardened senses. Every little habitation within the great foul nest of one high building--that is to say, the room or rooms within every door that opened on the general staircase--left its own heap of refuse on its own landing, besides flinging other refuse from its own windows. The uncontrollable and hopeless mass of decomposition so engendered, would have polluted the air, even if poverty and deprivation had not loaded it with their intangible impurities; the two bad sources combined made it almost insupportable. Through such an atmosphere, by a steep dark shaft of dirt and poison, the way lay. Yielding to his own disturbance of mind, and to his young companion's agitation, which became greater every instant, Mr. Jarvis Lorry twice stopped to rest. Each of these stoppages was made at a doleful grating, by which any languishing good airs that were left uncorrupted, seemed to escape, and all spoilt and sickly vapours seemed to crawl in. Through the rusted bars, tastes, rather than glimpses, were caught of the jumbled neighbourhood; and nothing within range, nearer or lower than the summits of the two great towers of Notre-Dame, had any promise on it of healthy life or wholesome aspirations. At last, the top of the staircase was gained, and they stopped for the third time. There was yet an upper staircase, of a steeper inclination and of contracted dimensions, to be ascended, before the garret story was reached. The keeper of the wine-shop, always going a little in advance, and always going on the side which Mr. Lorry took, as though he dreaded to be asked any question by the young lady, turned himself about here, and, carefully feeling in the pockets of the coat he carried over his shoulder, took out a key. "The door is locked then, my friend?" said Mr. Lorry, surprised. "Ay. Yes," was the grim reply of Monsieur Defarge. "You think it necessary to keep the unfortunate gentleman so retired?" "I think it necessary to turn the key." Monsieur Defarge whispered it closer in his ear, and frowned heavily. "Why?" "Why! Because he has lived so long, locked up, that he would be frightened--rave--tear himself to pieces--die--come to I know not what harm--if his door was left open." "Is it possible!" exclaimed Mr. Lorry. "Is it possible!" repeated Defarge, bitterly. "Yes. And a beautiful world we live in, when it _is_ possible, and when many other such things are possible, and not only possible, but done--done, see you!--under that sky there, every day. Long live the Devil. Let us go on." This dialogue had been held in so very low a whisper, that not a word of it had reached the young lady's ears. But, by this time she trembled under such strong emotion, and her face expressed such deep anxiety, and, above all, such dread and terror, that Mr. Lorry felt it incumbent on him to speak a word or two of reassurance. "Courage, dear miss! Courage! Business! The worst will be over in a moment; it is but passing the room-door, and the worst is over. Then, all the good you bring to him, all the relief, all the happiness you bring to him, begin. Let our good friend here, assist you on that side. That's well, friend Defarge. Come, now. Business, business!" They went up slowly and softly. The staircase was short, and they were soon at the top. There, as it had an abrupt turn in it, they came all at once in sight of three men, whose heads were bent down close together at the side of a door, and who were intently looking into the room to which the door belonged, through some chinks or holes in the wall. On hearing footsteps close at hand, these three turned, and rose, and showed themselves to be the three of one name who had been drinking in the wine-shop. "I forgot them in the surprise of your visit," explained Monsieur Defarge. "Leave us, good boys; we have business here." The three glided by, and went silently down. There appearing to be no other door on that floor, and the keeper of the wine-shop going straight to this one when they were left alone, Mr. Lorry asked him in a whisper, with a little anger: "Do you make a show of Monsieur Manette?" "I show him, in the way you have seen, to a chosen few." "Is that well?" "_I_ think it is well." "Who are the few? How do you choose them?" "I choose them as real men, of my name--Jacques is my name--to whom the sight is likely to do good. Enough; you are English; that is another thing. Stay there, if you please, a little moment." With an admonitory gesture to keep them back, he stooped, and looked in through the crevice in the wall. Soon raising his head again, he struck twice or thrice upon the door--evidently with no other object than to make a noise there. With the same intention, he drew the key across it, three or four times, before he put it clumsily into the lock, and turned it as heavily as he could. The door slowly opened inward under his hand, and he looked into the room and said something. A faint voice answered something. Little more than a single syllable could have been spoken on either side. He looked back over his shoulder, and beckoned them to enter. Mr. Lorry got his arm securely round the daughter's waist, and held her; for he felt that she was sinking. "A-a-a-business, business!" he urged, with a moisture that was not of business shining on his cheek. "Come in, come in!" "I am afraid of it," she answered, shuddering. "Of it? What?" "I mean of him. Of my father." Rendered in a manner desperate, by her state and by the beckoning of their conductor, he drew over his neck the arm that shook upon his shoulder, lifted her a little, and hurried her into the room. He sat her down just within the door, and held her, clinging to him. Defarge drew out the key, closed the door, locked it on the inside, took out the key again, and held it in his hand. All this he did, methodically, and with as loud and harsh an accompaniment of noise as he could make. Finally, he walked across the room with a measured tread to where the window was. He stopped there, and faced round. The garret, built to be a depository for firewood and the like, was dim and dark: for, the window of dormer shape, was in truth a door in the roof, with a little crane over it for the hoisting up of stores from the street: unglazed, and closing up the middle in two pieces, like any other door of French construction. To exclude the cold, one half of this door was fast closed, and the other was opened but a very little way. Such a scanty portion of light was admitted through these means, that it was difficult, on first coming in, to see anything; and long habit alone could have slowly formed in any one, the ability to do any work requiring nicety in such obscurity. Yet, work of that kind was being done in the garret; for, with his back towards the door, and his face towards the window where the keeper of the wine-shop stood looking at him, a white-haired man sat on a low bench, stooping forward and very busy, making shoes.

In the Paris suburb of St. Antoine there is a scene of mayhem as a crowd gather in front of a wine shop scooping up wine from a broken cask as it flows down the cobbled street. This is a very poor area of Paris and for many this fortune of free wine is a rare gift. Those that grovel in the wine have red hands, faces and feet and little do they know that in future years it will be blood on them. Inside the wine shop we find M. and Mme. Defarge who are in conversation with three other men all called Jacques. They are sent upstairs. Mr. Lorry and Lucie enter the shop and M. Defarge too sends them upstairs. They come across the three Jacques peering inside a room through holes in the wall. Defarge unlocks the door where they find a white haired man sitting on a bench making shoes.

Pete took note of Maggie. "Say, Mag, I'm stuck on yer shape. It's outa sight," he said, parenthetically, with an affable grin. As he became aware that she was listening closely, he grew still more eloquent in his descriptions of various happenings in his career. It appeared that he was invincible in fights. "Why," he said, referring to a man with whom he had had a misunderstanding, "dat mug scrapped like a damn dago. Dat's right. He was dead easy. See? He tau't he was a scrapper. But he foun' out diff'ent! Hully gee." He walked to and fro in the small room, which seemed then to grow even smaller and unfit to hold his dignity, the attribute of a supreme warrior. That swing of the shoulders that had frozen the timid when he was but a lad had increased with his growth and education at the ratio of ten to one. It, combined with the sneer upon his mouth, told mankind that there was nothing in space which could appall him. Maggie marvelled at him and surrounded him with greatness. She vaguely tried to calculate the altitude of the pinnacle from which he must have looked down upon her. "I met a chump deh odder day way up in deh city," he said. "I was goin' teh see a frien' of mine. When I was a-crossin' deh street deh chump runned plump inteh me, an' den he turns aroun' an' says, 'Yer insolen' ruffin,' he says, like dat. 'Oh, gee,' I says, 'oh, gee, go teh hell and git off deh eart',' I says, like dat. See? 'Go teh hell an' git off deh eart',' like dat. Den deh blokie he got wild. He says I was a contempt'ble scoun'el, er somet'ing like dat, an' he says I was doom' teh everlastin' pe'dition an' all like dat. 'Gee,' I says, 'gee! Deh hell I am,' I says. 'Deh hell I am,' like dat. An' den I slugged 'im. See?" With Jimmie in his company, Pete departed in a sort of a blaze of glory from the Johnson home. Maggie, leaning from the window, watched him as he walked down the street. Here was a formidable man who disdained the strength of a world full of fists. Here was one who had contempt for brass-clothed power; one whose knuckles could defiantly ring against the granite of law. He was a knight. The two men went from under the glimmering street-lamp and passed into shadows. Turning, Maggie contemplated the dark, dust-stained walls, and the scant and crude furniture of her home. A clock, in a splintered and battered oblong box of varnished wood, she suddenly regarded as an abomination. She noted that it ticked raspingly. The almost vanished flowers in the carpet-pattern, she conceived to be newly hideous. Some faint attempts she had made with blue ribbon, to freshen the appearance of a dingy curtain, she now saw to be piteous. She wondered what Pete dined on. She reflected upon the collar and cuff factory. It began to appear to her mind as a dreary place of endless grinding. Pete's elegant occupation brought him, no doubt, into contact with people who had money and manners. It was probable that he had a large acquaintance of pretty girls. He must have great sums of money to spend. To her the earth was composed of hardships and insults. She felt instant admiration for a man who openly defied it. She thought that if the grim angel of death should clutch his heart, Pete would shrug his shoulders and say: "Oh, ev'ryt'ing goes." She anticipated that he would come again shortly. She spent some of her week's pay in the purchase of flowered cretonne for a lambrequin. She made it with infinite care and hung it to the slightly-careening mantel, over the stove, in the kitchen. She studied it with painful anxiety from different points in the room. She wanted it to look well on Sunday night when, perhaps, Jimmie's friend would come. On Sunday night, however, Pete did not appear. Afterward the girl looked at it with a sense of humiliation. She was now convinced that Pete was superior to admiration for lambrequins. A few evenings later Pete entered with fascinating innovations in his apparel. As she had seen him twice and he had different suits on each time, Maggie had a dim impression that his wardrobe was prodigiously extensive. "Say, Mag," he said, "put on yer bes' duds Friday night an' I'll take yehs teh deh show. See?" He spent a few moments in flourishing his clothes and then vanished, without having glanced at the lambrequin. Over the eternal collars and cuffs in the factory Maggie spent the most of three days in making imaginary sketches of Pete and his daily environment. She imagined some half dozen women in love with him and thought he must lean dangerously toward an indefinite one, whom she pictured with great charms of person, but with an altogether contemptible disposition. She thought he must live in a blare of pleasure. He had friends, and people who were afraid of him. She saw the golden glitter of the place where Pete was to take her. An entertainment of many hues and many melodies where she was afraid she might appear small and mouse-colored. Her mother drank whiskey all Friday morning. With lurid face and tossing hair she cursed and destroyed furniture all Friday afternoon. When Maggie came home at half-past six her mother lay asleep amidst the wreck of chairs and a table. Fragments of various household utensils were scattered about the floor. She had vented some phase of drunken fury upon the lambrequin. It lay in a bedraggled heap in the corner. "Hah," she snorted, sitting up suddenly, "where deh hell yeh been? Why deh hell don' yeh come home earlier? Been loafin' 'round deh streets. Yer gettin' teh be a reg'lar devil." When Pete arrived Maggie, in a worn black dress, was waiting for him in the midst of a floor strewn with wreckage. The curtain at the window had been pulled by a heavy hand and hung by one tack, dangling to and fro in the draft through the cracks at the sash. The knots of blue ribbons appeared like violated flowers. The fire in the stove had gone out. The displaced lids and open doors showed heaps of sullen grey ashes. The remnants of a meal, ghastly, like dead flesh, lay in a corner. Maggie's red mother, stretched on the floor, blasphemed and gave her daughter a bad name.

Pete continues to tell Jimmie about his triumphant fights. Pete notices that Maggie is paying close attention and his descriptions become more boastful. He says to Maggie: "Say, Mag, I'm stuck on your shape. It's outa sight." As he walks back and forth in the small apartment Maggie begins to think that he is truly a great person and very much out of place in her family's apartment. Pete details an experience in which a nicely dressed man bumped into him on the street and called him an "insolen' ruffin" to which Pete responded "Go teh hell an' git off deh eart'. " This upset the fellow who insisted on giving Pete a lecture so Pete struck him to the ground and went about his business. After Pete and Jimmie leave to go to the boxing match Maggie comes to the conclusion that Pete is a gentleman who knows the ways of the better classes. She knows only a world full of hardship and struggle and Pete, she believes, is a man who can stand against it. She imagines that Pete's job at the bar must bring him into contact with interesting people and lots of pretty girls who admire him because he has money to spend. She believes that Pete will return for another visit so she spends some of her precious earnings on a flowered lambrequin. She hangs it on the mantle above the stove and deludes herself that it adds an element of refinement to the apartment. The following Sunday Pete fails to appear and Maggie is ashamed at her feeble attempt to beautify the apartment. A few days later, however, Pete does appear - in a new suit. "Say, Mag," he prompts, "put on her bes' duds Friday night an' I'll take yehs teh deh show. See?" He departs immediately. Maggie spends the next three days at the collar factory dreaming of Pete's life and the various women who must vie for his attention. She imagines that there must be one woman among the many who Pete favors. Maggie imagines Pete's favorite girl to be charming but with a contemptible disposition. She also imagines the place he intends to take her. She is very afraid that she will seem small and ugly, "mouse-like" in comparison to what she is sure will be glamorous surroundings. When Maggie arrives home from work Friday evening she finds that her mother has been on a whiskey binge and has broken all the furniture and torn down the lambrequin before collapsing on the floor. Mary wakes up long enough to curse at Maggie. Later that evening Pete arrives to find Maggie dressed in a worn black dress and waiting for him in the cold room among the rubble of the apartment. Mary, still lying on the floor swears at her daughter. Maggie and Pete depart.

It has not occurred to me to mention Peggotty since I ran away; but, of course, I wrote her a letter almost as soon as I was housed at Dover, and another, and a longer letter, containing all particulars fully related, when my aunt took me formally under her protection. On my being settled at Doctor Strong's I wrote to her again, detailing my happy condition and prospects. I never could have derived anything like the pleasure from spending the money Mr. Dick had given me, that I felt in sending a gold half-guinea to Peggotty, per post, enclosed in this last letter, to discharge the sum I had borrowed of her: in which epistle, not before, I mentioned about the young man with the donkey-cart. To these communications Peggotty replied as promptly, if not as concisely, as a merchant's clerk. Her utmost powers of expression (which were certainly not great in ink) were exhausted in the attempt to write what she felt on the subject of my journey. Four sides of incoherent and interjectional beginnings of sentences, that had no end, except blots, were inadequate to afford her any relief. But the blots were more expressive to me than the best composition; for they showed me that Peggotty had been crying all over the paper, and what could I have desired more? I made out, without much difficulty, that she could not take quite kindly to my aunt yet. The notice was too short after so long a prepossession the other way. We never knew a person, she wrote; but to think that Miss Betsey should seem to be so different from what she had been thought to be, was a Moral!--that was her word. She was evidently still afraid of Miss Betsey, for she sent her grateful duty to her but timidly; and she was evidently afraid of me, too, and entertained the probability of my running away again soon: if I might judge from the repeated hints she threw out, that the coach-fare to Yarmouth was always to be had of her for the asking. She gave me one piece of intelligence which affected me very much, namely, that there had been a sale of the furniture at our old home, and that Mr. and Miss Murdstone were gone away, and the house was shut up, to be let or sold. God knows I had no part in it while they remained there, but it pained me to think of the dear old place as altogether abandoned; of the weeds growing tall in the garden, and the fallen leaves lying thick and wet upon the paths. I imagined how the winds of winter would howl round it, how the cold rain would beat upon the window-glass, how the moon would make ghosts on the walls of the empty rooms, watching their solitude all night. I thought afresh of the grave in the churchyard, underneath the tree: and it seemed as if the house were dead too, now, and all connected with my father and mother were faded away. There was no other news in Peggotty's letters. Mr. Barkis was an excellent husband, she said, though still a little near; but we all had our faults, and she had plenty (though I am sure I don't know what they were); and he sent his duty, and my little bedroom was always ready for me. Mr. Peggotty was well, and Ham was well, and Mrs. Gummidge was but poorly, and little Em'ly wouldn't send her love, but said that Peggotty might send it, if she liked. All this intelligence I dutifully imparted to my aunt, only reserving to myself the mention of little Em'ly, to whom I instinctively felt that she would not very tenderly incline. While I was yet new at Doctor Strong's, she made several excursions over to Canterbury to see me, and always at unseasonable hours: with the view, I suppose, of taking me by surprise. But, finding me well employed, and bearing a good character, and hearing on all hands that I rose fast in the school, she soon discontinued these visits. I saw her on a Saturday, every third or fourth week, when I went over to Dover for a treat; and I saw Mr. Dick every alternate Wednesday, when he arrived by stage-coach at noon, to stay until next morning. On these occasions Mr. Dick never travelled without a leathern writing-desk, containing a supply of stationery and the Memorial; in relation to which document he had a notion that time was beginning to press now, and that it really must be got out of hand. Mr. Dick was very partial to gingerbread. To render his visits the more agreeable, my aunt had instructed me to open a credit for him at a cake shop, which was hampered with the stipulation that he should not be served with more than one shilling's-worth in the course of any one day. This, and the reference of all his little bills at the county inn where he slept, to my aunt, before they were paid, induced me to suspect that he was only allowed to rattle his money, and not to spend it. I found on further investigation that this was so, or at least there was an agreement between him and my aunt that he should account to her for all his disbursements. As he had no idea of deceiving her, and always desired to please her, he was thus made chary of launching into expense. On this point, as well as on all other possible points, Mr. Dick was convinced that my aunt was the wisest and most wonderful of women; as he repeatedly told me with infinite secrecy, and always in a whisper. 'Trotwood,' said Mr. Dick, with an air of mystery, after imparting this confidence to me, one Wednesday; 'who's the man that hides near our house and frightens her?' 'Frightens my aunt, sir?' Mr. Dick nodded. 'I thought nothing would have frightened her,' he said, 'for she's--' here he whispered softly, 'don't mention it--the wisest and most wonderful of women.' Having said which, he drew back, to observe the effect which this description of her made upon me. 'The first time he came,' said Mr. Dick, 'was--let me see--sixteen hundred and forty-nine was the date of King Charles's execution. I think you said sixteen hundred and forty-nine?' 'Yes, sir.' 'I don't know how it can be,' said Mr. Dick, sorely puzzled and shaking his head. 'I don't think I am as old as that.' 'Was it in that year that the man appeared, sir?' I asked. 'Why, really' said Mr. Dick, 'I don't see how it can have been in that year, Trotwood. Did you get that date out of history?' 'Yes, sir.' 'I suppose history never lies, does it?' said Mr. Dick, with a gleam of hope. 'Oh dear, no, sir!' I replied, most decisively. I was ingenuous and young, and I thought so. 'I can't make it out,' said Mr. Dick, shaking his head. 'There's something wrong, somewhere. However, it was very soon after the mistake was made of putting some of the trouble out of King Charles's head into my head, that the man first came. I was walking out with Miss Trotwood after tea, just at dark, and there he was, close to our house.' 'Walking about?' I inquired. 'Walking about?' repeated Mr. Dick. 'Let me see, I must recollect a bit. N-no, no; he was not walking about.' I asked, as the shortest way to get at it, what he WAS doing. 'Well, he wasn't there at all,' said Mr. Dick, 'until he came up behind her, and whispered. Then she turned round and fainted, and I stood still and looked at him, and he walked away; but that he should have been hiding ever since (in the ground or somewhere), is the most extraordinary thing!' 'HAS he been hiding ever since?' I asked. 'To be sure he has,' retorted Mr. Dick, nodding his head gravely. 'Never came out, till last night! We were walking last night, and he came up behind her again, and I knew him again.' 'And did he frighten my aunt again?' 'All of a shiver,' said Mr. Dick, counterfeiting that affection and making his teeth chatter. 'Held by the palings. Cried. But, Trotwood, come here,' getting me close to him, that he might whisper very softly; 'why did she give him money, boy, in the moonlight?' 'He was a beggar, perhaps.' Mr. Dick shook his head, as utterly renouncing the suggestion; and having replied a great many times, and with great confidence, 'No beggar, no beggar, no beggar, sir!' went on to say, that from his window he had afterwards, and late at night, seen my aunt give this person money outside the garden rails in the moonlight, who then slunk away--into the ground again, as he thought probable--and was seen no more: while my aunt came hurriedly and secretly back into the house, and had, even that morning, been quite different from her usual self; which preyed on Mr. Dick's mind. I had not the least belief, in the outset of this story, that the unknown was anything but a delusion of Mr. Dick's, and one of the line of that ill-fated Prince who occasioned him so much difficulty; but after some reflection I began to entertain the question whether an attempt, or threat of an attempt, might have been twice made to take poor Mr. Dick himself from under my aunt's protection, and whether my aunt, the strength of whose kind feeling towards him I knew from herself, might have been induced to pay a price for his peace and quiet. As I was already much attached to Mr. Dick, and very solicitous for his welfare, my fears favoured this supposition; and for a long time his Wednesday hardly ever came round, without my entertaining a misgiving that he would not be on the coach-box as usual. There he always appeared, however, grey-headed, laughing, and happy; and he never had anything more to tell of the man who could frighten my aunt. These Wednesdays were the happiest days of Mr. Dick's life; they were far from being the least happy of mine. He soon became known to every boy in the school; and though he never took an active part in any game but kite-flying, was as deeply interested in all our sports as anyone among us. How often have I seen him, intent upon a match at marbles or pegtop, looking on with a face of unutterable interest, and hardly breathing at the critical times! How often, at hare and hounds, have I seen him mounted on a little knoll, cheering the whole field on to action, and waving his hat above his grey head, oblivious of King Charles the Martyr's head, and all belonging to it! How many a summer hour have I known to be but blissful minutes to him in the cricket-field! How many winter days have I seen him, standing blue-nosed, in the snow and east wind, looking at the boys going down the long slide, and clapping his worsted gloves in rapture! He was an universal favourite, and his ingenuity in little things was transcendent. He could cut oranges into such devices as none of us had an idea of. He could make a boat out of anything, from a skewer upwards. He could turn cramp-bones into chessmen; fashion Roman chariots from old court cards; make spoked wheels out of cotton reels, and bird-cages of old wire. But he was greatest of all, perhaps, in the articles of string and straw; with which we were all persuaded he could do anything that could be done by hands. Mr. Dick's renown was not long confined to us. After a few Wednesdays, Doctor Strong himself made some inquiries of me about him, and I told him all my aunt had told me; which interested the Doctor so much that he requested, on the occasion of his next visit, to be presented to him. This ceremony I performed; and the Doctor begging Mr. Dick, whensoever he should not find me at the coach office, to come on there, and rest himself until our morning's work was over, it soon passed into a custom for Mr. Dick to come on as a matter of course, and, if we were a little late, as often happened on a Wednesday, to walk about the courtyard, waiting for me. Here he made the acquaintance of the Doctor's beautiful young wife (paler than formerly, all this time; more rarely seen by me or anyone, I think; and not so gay, but not less beautiful), and so became more and more familiar by degrees, until, at last, he would come into the school and wait. He always sat in a particular corner, on a particular stool, which was called 'Dick', after him; here he would sit, with his grey head bent forward, attentively listening to whatever might be going on, with a profound veneration for the learning he had never been able to acquire. This veneration Mr. Dick extended to the Doctor, whom he thought the most subtle and accomplished philosopher of any age. It was long before Mr. Dick ever spoke to him otherwise than bareheaded; and even when he and the Doctor had struck up quite a friendship, and would walk together by the hour, on that side of the courtyard which was known among us as The Doctor's Walk, Mr. Dick would pull off his hat at intervals to show his respect for wisdom and knowledge. How it ever came about that the Doctor began to read out scraps of the famous Dictionary, in these walks, I never knew; perhaps he felt it all the same, at first, as reading to himself. However, it passed into a custom too; and Mr. Dick, listening with a face shining with pride and pleasure, in his heart of hearts believed the Dictionary to be the most delightful book in the world. As I think of them going up and down before those schoolroom windows--the Doctor reading with his complacent smile, an occasional flourish of the manuscript, or grave motion of his head; and Mr. Dick listening, enchained by interest, with his poor wits calmly wandering God knows where, upon the wings of hard words--I think of it as one of the pleasantest things, in a quiet way, that I have ever seen. I feel as if they might go walking to and fro for ever, and the world might somehow be the better for it--as if a thousand things it makes a noise about, were not one half so good for it, or me. Agnes was one of Mr. Dick's friends, very soon; and in often coming to the house, he made acquaintance with Uriah. The friendship between himself and me increased continually, and it was maintained on this odd footing: that, while Mr. Dick came professedly to look after me as my guardian, he always consulted me in any little matter of doubt that arose, and invariably guided himself by my advice; not only having a high respect for my native sagacity, but considering that I inherited a good deal from my aunt. One Thursday morning, when I was about to walk with Mr. Dick from the hotel to the coach office before going back to school (for we had an hour's school before breakfast), I met Uriah in the street, who reminded me of the promise I had made to take tea with himself and his mother: adding, with a writhe, 'But I didn't expect you to keep it, Master Copperfield, we're so very umble.' I really had not yet been able to make up my mind whether I liked Uriah or detested him; and I was very doubtful about it still, as I stood looking him in the face in the street. But I felt it quite an affront to be supposed proud, and said I only wanted to be asked. 'Oh, if that's all, Master Copperfield,' said Uriah, 'and it really isn't our umbleness that prevents you, will you come this evening? But if it is our umbleness, I hope you won't mind owning to it, Master Copperfield; for we are well aware of our condition.' I said I would mention it to Mr. Wickfield, and if he approved, as I had no doubt he would, I would come with pleasure. So, at six o'clock that evening, which was one of the early office evenings, I announced myself as ready, to Uriah. 'Mother will be proud, indeed,' he said, as we walked away together. 'Or she would be proud, if it wasn't sinful, Master Copperfield.' 'Yet you didn't mind supposing I was proud this morning,' I returned. 'Oh dear, no, Master Copperfield!' returned Uriah. 'Oh, believe me, no! Such a thought never came into my head! I shouldn't have deemed it at all proud if you had thought US too umble for you. Because we are so very umble.' 'Have you been studying much law lately?' I asked, to change the subject. 'Oh, Master Copperfield,' he said, with an air of self-denial, 'my reading is hardly to be called study. I have passed an hour or two in the evening, sometimes, with Mr. Tidd.' 'Rather hard, I suppose?' said I. 'He is hard to me sometimes,' returned Uriah. 'But I don't know what he might be to a gifted person.' After beating a little tune on his chin as he walked on, with the two forefingers of his skeleton right hand, he added: 'There are expressions, you see, Master Copperfield--Latin words and terms--in Mr. Tidd, that are trying to a reader of my umble attainments.' 'Would you like to be taught Latin?' I said briskly. 'I will teach it you with pleasure, as I learn it.' 'Oh, thank you, Master Copperfield,' he answered, shaking his head. 'I am sure it's very kind of you to make the offer, but I am much too umble to accept it.' 'What nonsense, Uriah!' 'Oh, indeed you must excuse me, Master Copperfield! I am greatly obliged, and I should like it of all things, I assure you; but I am far too umble. There are people enough to tread upon me in my lowly state, without my doing outrage to their feelings by possessing learning. Learning ain't for me. A person like myself had better not aspire. If he is to get on in life, he must get on umbly, Master Copperfield!' I never saw his mouth so wide, or the creases in his cheeks so deep, as when he delivered himself of these sentiments: shaking his head all the time, and writhing modestly. 'I think you are wrong, Uriah,' I said. 'I dare say there are several things that I could teach you, if you would like to learn them.' 'Oh, I don't doubt that, Master Copperfield,' he answered; 'not in the least. But not being umble yourself, you don't judge well, perhaps, for them that are. I won't provoke my betters with knowledge, thank you. I'm much too umble. Here is my umble dwelling, Master Copperfield!' We entered a low, old-fashioned room, walked straight into from the street, and found there Mrs. Heep, who was the dead image of Uriah, only short. She received me with the utmost humility, and apologized to me for giving her son a kiss, observing that, lowly as they were, they had their natural affections, which they hoped would give no offence to anyone. It was a perfectly decent room, half parlour and half kitchen, but not at all a snug room. The tea-things were set upon the table, and the kettle was boiling on the hob. There was a chest of drawers with an escritoire top, for Uriah to read or write at of an evening; there was Uriah's blue bag lying down and vomiting papers; there was a company of Uriah's books commanded by Mr. Tidd; there was a corner cupboard: and there were the usual articles of furniture. I don't remember that any individual object had a bare, pinched, spare look; but I do remember that the whole place had. It was perhaps a part of Mrs. Heep's humility, that she still wore weeds. Notwithstanding the lapse of time that had occurred since Mr. Heep's decease, she still wore weeds. I think there was some compromise in the cap; but otherwise she was as weedy as in the early days of her mourning. 'This is a day to be remembered, my Uriah, I am sure,' said Mrs. Heep, making the tea, 'when Master Copperfield pays us a visit.' 'I said you'd think so, mother,' said Uriah. 'If I could have wished father to remain among us for any reason,' said Mrs. Heep, 'it would have been, that he might have known his company this afternoon.' I felt embarrassed by these compliments; but I was sensible, too, of being entertained as an honoured guest, and I thought Mrs. Heep an agreeable woman. 'My Uriah,' said Mrs. Heep, 'has looked forward to this, sir, a long while. He had his fears that our umbleness stood in the way, and I joined in them myself. Umble we are, umble we have been, umble we shall ever be,' said Mrs. Heep. 'I am sure you have no occasion to be so, ma'am,' I said, 'unless you like.' 'Thank you, sir,' retorted Mrs. Heep. 'We know our station and are thankful in it.' I found that Mrs. Heep gradually got nearer to me, and that Uriah gradually got opposite to me, and that they respectfully plied me with the choicest of the eatables on the table. There was nothing particularly choice there, to be sure; but I took the will for the deed, and felt that they were very attentive. Presently they began to talk about aunts, and then I told them about mine; and about fathers and mothers, and then I told them about mine; and then Mrs. Heep began to talk about fathers-in-law, and then I began to tell her about mine--but stopped, because my aunt had advised me to observe a silence on that subject. A tender young cork, however, would have had no more chance against a pair of corkscrews, or a tender young tooth against a pair of dentists, or a little shuttlecock against two battledores, than I had against Uriah and Mrs. Heep. They did just what they liked with me; and wormed things out of me that I had no desire to tell, with a certainty I blush to think of, the more especially, as in my juvenile frankness, I took some credit to myself for being so confidential and felt that I was quite the patron of my two respectful entertainers. They were very fond of one another: that was certain. I take it, that had its effect upon me, as a touch of nature; but the skill with which the one followed up whatever the other said, was a touch of art which I was still less proof against. When there was nothing more to be got out of me about myself (for on the Murdstone and Grinby life, and on my journey, I was dumb), they began about Mr. Wickfield and Agnes. Uriah threw the ball to Mrs. Heep, Mrs. Heep caught it and threw it back to Uriah, Uriah kept it up a little while, then sent it back to Mrs. Heep, and so they went on tossing it about until I had no idea who had got it, and was quite bewildered. The ball itself was always changing too. Now it was Mr. Wickfield, now Agnes, now the excellence of Mr. Wickfield, now my admiration of Agnes; now the extent of Mr. Wickfield's business and resources, now our domestic life after dinner; now, the wine that Mr. Wickfield took, the reason why he took it, and the pity that it was he took so much; now one thing, now another, then everything at once; and all the time, without appearing to speak very often, or to do anything but sometimes encourage them a little, for fear they should be overcome by their humility and the honour of my company, I found myself perpetually letting out something or other that I had no business to let out and seeing the effect of it in the twinkling of Uriah's dinted nostrils. I had begun to be a little uncomfortable, and to wish myself well out of the visit, when a figure coming down the street passed the door--it stood open to air the room, which was warm, the weather being close for the time of year--came back again, looked in, and walked in, exclaiming loudly, 'Copperfield! Is it possible?' It was Mr. Micawber! It was Mr. Micawber, with his eye-glass, and his walking-stick, and his shirt-collar, and his genteel air, and the condescending roll in his voice, all complete! 'My dear Copperfield,' said Mr. Micawber, putting out his hand, 'this is indeed a meeting which is calculated to impress the mind with a sense of the instability and uncertainty of all human--in short, it is a most extraordinary meeting. Walking along the street, reflecting upon the probability of something turning up (of which I am at present rather sanguine), I find a young but valued friend turn up, who is connected with the most eventful period of my life; I may say, with the turning-point of my existence. Copperfield, my dear fellow, how do you do?' I cannot say--I really cannot say--that I was glad to see Mr. Micawber there; but I was glad to see him too, and shook hands with him, heartily, inquiring how Mrs. Micawber was. 'Thank you,' said Mr. Micawber, waving his hand as of old, and settling his chin in his shirt-collar. 'She is tolerably convalescent. The twins no longer derive their sustenance from Nature's founts--in short,' said Mr. Micawber, in one of his bursts of confidence, 'they are weaned--and Mrs. Micawber is, at present, my travelling companion. She will be rejoiced, Copperfield, to renew her acquaintance with one who has proved himself in all respects a worthy minister at the sacred altar of friendship.' I said I should be delighted to see her. 'You are very good,' said Mr. Micawber. Mr. Micawber then smiled, settled his chin again, and looked about him. 'I have discovered my friend Copperfield,' said Mr. Micawber genteelly, and without addressing himself particularly to anyone, 'not in solitude, but partaking of a social meal in company with a widow lady, and one who is apparently her offspring--in short,' said Mr. Micawber, in another of his bursts of confidence, 'her son. I shall esteem it an honour to be presented.' I could do no less, under these circumstances, than make Mr. Micawber known to Uriah Heep and his mother; which I accordingly did. As they abased themselves before him, Mr. Micawber took a seat, and waved his hand in his most courtly manner. 'Any friend of my friend Copperfield's,' said Mr. Micawber, 'has a personal claim upon myself.' 'We are too umble, sir,' said Mrs. Heep, 'my son and me, to be the friends of Master Copperfield. He has been so good as take his tea with us, and we are thankful to him for his company, also to you, sir, for your notice.' 'Ma'am,' returned Mr. Micawber, with a bow, 'you are very obliging: and what are you doing, Copperfield? Still in the wine trade?' I was excessively anxious to get Mr. Micawber away; and replied, with my hat in my hand, and a very red face, I have no doubt, that I was a pupil at Doctor Strong's. 'A pupil?' said Mr. Micawber, raising his eyebrows. 'I am extremely happy to hear it. Although a mind like my friend Copperfield's'--to Uriah and Mrs. Heep--'does not require that cultivation which, without his knowledge of men and things, it would require, still it is a rich soil teeming with latent vegetation--in short,' said Mr. Micawber, smiling, in another burst of confidence, 'it is an intellect capable of getting up the classics to any extent.' Uriah, with his long hands slowly twining over one another, made a ghastly writhe from the waist upwards, to express his concurrence in this estimation of me. 'Shall we go and see Mrs. Micawber, sir?' I said, to get Mr. Micawber away. 'If you will do her that favour, Copperfield,' replied Mr. Micawber, rising. 'I have no scruple in saying, in the presence of our friends here, that I am a man who has, for some years, contended against the pressure of pecuniary difficulties.' I knew he was certain to say something of this kind; he always would be so boastful about his difficulties. 'Sometimes I have risen superior to my difficulties. Sometimes my difficulties have--in short, have floored me. There have been times when I have administered a succession of facers to them; there have been times when they have been too many for me, and I have given in, and said to Mrs. Micawber, in the words of Cato, "Plato, thou reasonest well. It's all up now. I can show fight no more." But at no time of my life,' said Mr. Micawber, 'have I enjoyed a higher degree of satisfaction than in pouring my griefs (if I may describe difficulties, chiefly arising out of warrants of attorney and promissory notes at two and four months, by that word) into the bosom of my friend Copperfield.' Mr. Micawber closed this handsome tribute by saying, 'Mr. Heep! Good evening. Mrs. Heep! Your servant,' and then walking out with me in his most fashionable manner, making a good deal of noise on the pavement with his shoes, and humming a tune as we went. It was a little inn where Mr. Micawber put up, and he occupied a little room in it, partitioned off from the commercial room, and strongly flavoured with tobacco-smoke. I think it was over the kitchen, because a warm greasy smell appeared to come up through the chinks in the floor, and there was a flabby perspiration on the walls. I know it was near the bar, on account of the smell of spirits and jingling of glasses. Here, recumbent on a small sofa, underneath a picture of a race-horse, with her head close to the fire, and her feet pushing the mustard off the dumb-waiter at the other end of the room, was Mrs. Micawber, to whom Mr. Micawber entered first, saying, 'My dear, allow me to introduce to you a pupil of Doctor Strong's.' I noticed, by the by, that although Mr. Micawber was just as much confused as ever about my age and standing, he always remembered, as a genteel thing, that I was a pupil of Doctor Strong's. Mrs. Micawber was amazed, but very glad to see me. I was very glad to see her too, and, after an affectionate greeting on both sides, sat down on the small sofa near her. 'My dear,' said Mr. Micawber, 'if you will mention to Copperfield what our present position is, which I have no doubt he will like to know, I will go and look at the paper the while, and see whether anything turns up among the advertisements.' 'I thought you were at Plymouth, ma'am,' I said to Mrs. Micawber, as he went out. 'My dear Master Copperfield,' she replied, 'we went to Plymouth.' 'To be on the spot,' I hinted. 'Just so,' said Mrs. Micawber. 'To be on the spot. But, the truth is, talent is not wanted in the Custom House. The local influence of my family was quite unavailing to obtain any employment in that department, for a man of Mr. Micawber's abilities. They would rather NOT have a man of Mr. Micawber's abilities. He would only show the deficiency of the others. Apart from which,' said Mrs. Micawber, 'I will not disguise from you, my dear Master Copperfield, that when that branch of my family which is settled in Plymouth, became aware that Mr. Micawber was accompanied by myself, and by little Wilkins and his sister, and by the twins, they did not receive him with that ardour which he might have expected, being so newly released from captivity. In fact,' said Mrs. Micawber, lowering her voice,--'this is between ourselves--our reception was cool.' 'Dear me!' I said. 'Yes,' said Mrs. Micawber. 'It is truly painful to contemplate mankind in such an aspect, Master Copperfield, but our reception was, decidedly, cool. There is no doubt about it. In fact, that branch of my family which is settled in Plymouth became quite personal to Mr. Micawber, before we had been there a week.' I said, and thought, that they ought to be ashamed of themselves. 'Still, so it was,' continued Mrs. Micawber. 'Under such circumstances, what could a man of Mr. Micawber's spirit do? But one obvious course was left. To borrow, of that branch of my family, the money to return to London, and to return at any sacrifice.' 'Then you all came back again, ma'am?' I said. 'We all came back again,' replied Mrs. Micawber. 'Since then, I have consulted other branches of my family on the course which it is most expedient for Mr. Micawber to take--for I maintain that he must take some course, Master Copperfield,' said Mrs. Micawber, argumentatively. 'It is clear that a family of six, not including a domestic, cannot live upon air.' 'Certainly, ma'am,' said I. 'The opinion of those other branches of my family,' pursued Mrs. Micawber, 'is, that Mr. Micawber should immediately turn his attention to coals.' 'To what, ma'am?' 'To coals,' said Mrs. Micawber. 'To the coal trade. Mr. Micawber was induced to think, on inquiry, that there might be an opening for a man of his talent in the Medway Coal Trade. Then, as Mr. Micawber very properly said, the first step to be taken clearly was, to come and see the Medway. Which we came and saw. I say "we", Master Copperfield; for I never will,' said Mrs. Micawber with emotion, 'I never will desert Mr. Micawber.' I murmured my admiration and approbation. 'We came,' repeated Mrs. Micawber, 'and saw the Medway. My opinion of the coal trade on that river is, that it may require talent, but that it certainly requires capital. Talent, Mr. Micawber has; capital, Mr. Micawber has not. We saw, I think, the greater part of the Medway; and that is my individual conclusion. Being so near here, Mr. Micawber was of opinion that it would be rash not to come on, and see the Cathedral. Firstly, on account of its being so well worth seeing, and our never having seen it; and secondly, on account of the great probability of something turning up in a cathedral town. We have been here,' said Mrs. Micawber, 'three days. Nothing has, as yet, turned up; and it may not surprise you, my dear Master Copperfield, so much as it would a stranger, to know that we are at present waiting for a remittance from London, to discharge our pecuniary obligations at this hotel. Until the arrival of that remittance,' said Mrs. Micawber with much feeling, 'I am cut off from my home (I allude to lodgings in Pentonville), from my boy and girl, and from my twins.' I felt the utmost sympathy for Mr. and Mrs. Micawber in this anxious extremity, and said as much to Mr. Micawber, who now returned: adding that I only wished I had money enough, to lend them the amount they needed. Mr. Micawber's answer expressed the disturbance of his mind. He said, shaking hands with me, 'Copperfield, you are a true friend; but when the worst comes to the worst, no man is without a friend who is possessed of shaving materials.' At this dreadful hint Mrs. Micawber threw her arms round Mr. Micawber's neck and entreated him to be calm. He wept; but so far recovered, almost immediately, as to ring the bell for the waiter, and bespeak a hot kidney pudding and a plate of shrimps for breakfast in the morning. When I took my leave of them, they both pressed me so much to come and dine before they went away, that I could not refuse. But, as I knew I could not come next day, when I should have a good deal to prepare in the evening, Mr. Micawber arranged that he would call at Doctor Strong's in the course of the morning (having a presentiment that the remittance would arrive by that post), and propose the day after, if it would suit me better. Accordingly I was called out of school next forenoon, and found Mr. Micawber in the parlour; who had called to say that the dinner would take place as proposed. When I asked him if the remittance had come, he pressed my hand and departed. As I was looking out of window that same evening, it surprised me, and made me rather uneasy, to see Mr. Micawber and Uriah Heep walk past, arm in arm: Uriah humbly sensible of the honour that was done him, and Mr. Micawber taking a bland delight in extending his patronage to Uriah. But I was still more surprised, when I went to the little hotel next day at the appointed dinner-hour, which was four o'clock, to find, from what Mr. Micawber said, that he had gone home with Uriah, and had drunk brandy-and-water at Mrs. Heep's. 'And I'll tell you what, my dear Copperfield,' said Mr. Micawber, 'your friend Heep is a young fellow who might be attorney-general. If I had known that young man, at the period when my difficulties came to a crisis, all I can say is, that I believe my creditors would have been a great deal better managed than they were.' I hardly understood how this could have been, seeing that Mr. Micawber had paid them nothing at all as it was; but I did not like to ask. Neither did I like to say, that I hoped he had not been too communicative to Uriah; or to inquire if they had talked much about me. I was afraid of hurting Mr. Micawber's feelings, or, at all events, Mrs. Micawber's, she being very sensitive; but I was uncomfortable about it, too, and often thought about it afterwards. We had a beautiful little dinner. Quite an elegant dish of fish; the kidney-end of a loin of veal, roasted; fried sausage-meat; a partridge, and a pudding. There was wine, and there was strong ale; and after dinner Mrs. Micawber made us a bowl of hot punch with her own hands. Mr. Micawber was uncommonly convivial. I never saw him such good company. He made his face shine with the punch, so that it looked as if it had been varnished all over. He got cheerfully sentimental about the town, and proposed success to it; observing that Mrs. Micawber and himself had been made extremely snug and comfortable there and that he never should forget the agreeable hours they had passed in Canterbury. He proposed me afterwards; and he, and Mrs. Micawber, and I, took a review of our past acquaintance, in the course of which we sold the property all over again. Then I proposed Mrs. Micawber: or, at least, said, modestly, 'If you'll allow me, Mrs. Micawber, I shall now have the pleasure of drinking your health, ma'am.' On which Mr. Micawber delivered an eulogium on Mrs. Micawber's character, and said she had ever been his guide, philosopher, and friend, and that he would recommend me, when I came to a marrying time of life, to marry such another woman, if such another woman could be found. As the punch disappeared, Mr. Micawber became still more friendly and convivial. Mrs. Micawber's spirits becoming elevated, too, we sang 'Auld Lang Syne'. When we came to 'Here's a hand, my trusty frere', we all joined hands round the table; and when we declared we would 'take a right gude Willie Waught', and hadn't the least idea what it meant, we were really affected. In a word, I never saw anybody so thoroughly jovial as Mr. Micawber was, down to the very last moment of the evening, when I took a hearty farewell of himself and his amiable wife. Consequently, I was not prepared, at seven o'clock next morning, to receive the following communication, dated half past nine in the evening; a quarter of an hour after I had left him:-- 'My DEAR YOUNG FRIEND, 'The die is cast--all is over. Hiding the ravages of care with a sickly mask of mirth, I have not informed you, this evening, that there is no hope of the remittance! Under these circumstances, alike humiliating to endure, humiliating to contemplate, and humiliating to relate, I have discharged the pecuniary liability contracted at this establishment, by giving a note of hand, made payable fourteen days after date, at my residence, Pentonville, London. When it becomes due, it will not be taken up. The result is destruction. The bolt is impending, and the tree must fall. 'Let the wretched man who now addresses you, my dear Copperfield, be a beacon to you through life. He writes with that intention, and in that hope. If he could think himself of so much use, one gleam of day might, by possibility, penetrate into the cheerless dungeon of his remaining existence--though his longevity is, at present (to say the least of it), extremely problematical. 'This is the last communication, my dear Copperfield, you will ever receive 'From 'The 'Beggared Outcast, 'WILKINS MICAWBER.' I was so shocked by the contents of this heart-rending letter, that I ran off directly towards the little hotel with the intention of taking it on my way to Doctor Strong's, and trying to soothe Mr. Micawber with a word of comfort. But, half-way there, I met the London coach with Mr. and Mrs. Micawber up behind; Mr. Micawber, the very picture of tranquil enjoyment, smiling at Mrs. Micawber's conversation, eating walnuts out of a paper bag, with a bottle sticking out of his breast pocket. As they did not see me, I thought it best, all things considered, not to see them. So, with a great weight taken off my mind, I turned into a by-street that was the nearest way to school, and felt, upon the whole, relieved that they were gone; though I still liked them very much, nevertheless.

Somebody turns up. David receives a letter from Peggotty telling him that the furniture at his mother's house has been sold, that the Murdstones have moved away, and that the house is to be let or sold. Mr. Dick asks David if he knows the identity of the man who hides near Betsey's house and frightens her by creeping up behind her. One night, she was so frightened that she fainted. Mr. Dick has seen Betsey give him money. David has no idea who the man is. Mr. Dick takes to visiting the school, and becomes a good friend of Dr. Strong's. Uriah invites David to tea with him and his mother. David cannot decide whether he likes Uriah or detests him, but he agrees to the invitation because he does not wish to be thought too proud to visit the Heeps, as Uriah suggests he might be. David offers to teach Uriah some Latin to help with his law studies, but Uriah insists that he is too humble; he does not wish to outrage the feelings of his superiors by becoming too learned. David accompanies Uriah to his mother's house. Mrs. Heep is an older version of her son, and is equally keen to impress David with her humbleness. The Heeps pump David for information about Mr. Wickfield and Agnes, and David, not wanting to appear aloof, lets out more than he intends. He begins to feel manipulated. The gathering is interrupted by the appearance of Mr. Micawber, who happened to be passing in the street and saw David through the open door. David introduces Mr. Micawber to the Heeps. David accompanies Mr. Micawber to the hotel where he and his family are staying. Mrs. Micawber tells David that her husband did not succeed in finding a job in Plymouth and that her relatives there did not make them welcome. They are once again in a perilous financial situation. The next day, David feels uneasy when he sees Mr. Micawber walking arm-in-arm with Uriah. Despite the Micawbers' poverty, David enjoys a lavish dinner with them, at which they are very merry. However, the next day, he receives a letter from Mr. Micawber lamenting that he is unable to pay his hotel bill and that he expects his imminent "destruction. Alarmed, David hurries to the hotel, but is relieved to see the Micawbers looking cheerful aboard the coach to London

Some seven hours' incessant, hard travelling brought us early in the morning to the end of a range of mountains. In front of us there lay a piece of low, broken, desert land, which we must now cross. The sun was not long up, and shone straight in our eyes; a little, thin mist went up from the face of the moorland like a smoke; so that (as Alan said) there might have been twenty squadron of dragoons there and we none the wiser. We sat down, therefore, in a howe of the hill-side till the mist should have risen, and made ourselves a dish of drammach, and held a council of war. "David," said Alan, "this is the kittle bit. Shall we lie here till it comes night, or shall we risk it, and stave on ahead?" "Well," said I, "I am tired indeed, but I could walk as far again, if that was all." "Ay, but it isnae," said Alan, "nor yet the half. This is how we stand: Appin's fair death to us. To the south it's all Campbells, and no to be thought of. To the north; well, there's no muckle to be gained by going north; neither for you, that wants to get to Queensferry, nor yet for me, that wants to get to France. Well, then, we'll can strike east." "East be it!" says I, quite cheerily; but I was thinking in to myself: "O, man, if you would only take one point of the compass and let me take any other, it would be the best for both of us." "Well, then, east, ye see, we have the muirs," said Alan. "Once there, David, it's mere pitch-and-toss. Out on yon bald, naked, flat place, where can a body turn to? Let the red-coats come over a hill, they can spy you miles away; and the sorrow's in their horses' heels, they would soon ride you down. It's no good place, David; and I'm free to say, it's worse by daylight than by dark." "Alan," said I, "hear my way of it. Appin's death for us; we have none too much money, nor yet meal; the longer they seek, the nearer they may guess where we are; it's all a risk; and I give my word to go ahead until we drop." Alan was delighted. "There are whiles," said he, "when ye are altogether too canny and Whiggish to be company for a gentleman like me; but there come other whiles when ye show yoursel' a mettle spark; and it's then, David, that I love ye like a brother." The mist rose and died away, and showed us that country lying as waste as the sea; only the moorfowl and the pewees crying upon it, and far over to the east, a herd of deer, moving like dots. Much of it was red with heather; much of the rest broken up with bogs and hags and peaty pools; some had been burnt black in a heath fire; and in another place there was quite a forest of dead firs, standing like skeletons. A wearier-looking desert man never saw; but at least it was clear of troops, which was our point. We went down accordingly into the waste, and began to make our toilsome and devious travel towards the eastern verge. There were the tops of mountains all round (you are to remember) from whence we might be spied at any moment; so it behoved us to keep in the hollow parts of the moor, and when these turned aside from our direction to move upon its naked face with infinite care. Sometimes, for half an hour together, we must crawl from one heather bush to another, as hunters do when they are hard upon the deer. It was a clear day again, with a blazing sun; the water in the brandy bottle was soon gone; and altogether, if I had guessed what it would be to crawl half the time upon my belly and to walk much of the rest stooping nearly to the knees, I should certainly have held back from such a killing enterprise. Toiling and resting and toiling again, we wore away the morning; and about noon lay down in a thick bush of heather to sleep. Alan took the first watch; and it seemed to me I had scarce closed my eyes before I was shaken up to take the second. We had no clock to go by; and Alan stuck a sprig of heath in the ground to serve instead; so that as soon as the shadow of the bush should fall so far to the east, I might know to rouse him. But I was by this time so weary that I could have slept twelve hours at a stretch; I had the taste of sleep in my throat; my joints slept even when my mind was waking; the hot smell of the heather, and the drone of the wild bees, were like possets to me; and every now and again I would give a jump and find I had been dozing. The last time I woke I seemed to come back from farther away, and thought the sun had taken a great start in the heavens. I looked at the sprig of heath, and at that I could have cried aloud: for I saw I had betrayed my trust. My head was nearly turned with fear and shame; and at what I saw, when I looked out around me on the moor, my heart was like dying in my body. For sure enough, a body of horse-soldiers had come down during my sleep, and were drawing near to us from the south-east, spread out in the shape of a fan and riding their horses to and fro in the deep parts of the heather. When I waked Alan, he glanced first at the soldiers, then at the mark and the position of the sun, and knitted his brows with a sudden, quick look, both ugly and anxious, which was all the reproach I had of him. "What are we to do now?" I asked. "We'll have to play at being hares," said he. "Do ye see yon mountain?" pointing to one on the north-eastern sky. "Ay," said I. "Well, then," says he, "let us strike for that. Its name is Ben Alder. it is a wild, desert mountain full of hills and hollows, and if we can win to it before the morn, we may do yet." "But, Alan," cried I, "that will take us across the very coming of the soldiers!" "I ken that fine," said he; "but if we are driven back on Appin, we are two dead men. So now, David man, be brisk!" With that he began to run forward on his hands and knees with an incredible quickness, as though it were his natural way of going. All the time, too, he kept winding in and out in the lower parts of the moorland where we were the best concealed. Some of these had been burned or at least scathed with fire; and there rose in our faces (which were close to the ground) a blinding, choking dust as fine as smoke. The water was long out; and this posture of running on the hands and knees brings an overmastering weakness and weariness, so that the joints ache and the wrists faint under your weight. Now and then, indeed, where was a big bush of heather, we lay awhile, and panted, and putting aside the leaves, looked back at the dragoons. They had not spied us, for they held straight on; a half-troop, I think, covering about two miles of ground, and beating it mighty thoroughly as they went. I had awakened just in time; a little later, and we must have fled in front of them, instead of escaping on one side. Even as it was, the least misfortune might betray us; and now and again, when a grouse rose out of the heather with a clap of wings, we lay as still as the dead and were afraid to breathe. The aching and faintness of my body, the labouring of my heart, the soreness of my hands, and the smarting of my throat and eyes in the continual smoke of dust and ashes, had soon grown to be so unbearable that I would gladly have given up. Nothing but the fear of Alan lent me enough of a false kind of courage to continue. As for himself (and you are to bear in mind that he was cumbered with a great-coat) he had first turned crimson, but as time went on the redness began to be mingled with patches of white; his breath cried and whistled as it came; and his voice, when he whispered his observations in my ear during our halts, sounded like nothing human. Yet he seemed in no way dashed in spirits, nor did he at all abate in his activity, so that I was driven to marvel at the man's endurance. At length, in the first gloaming of the night, we heard a trumpet sound, and looking back from among the heather, saw the troop beginning to collect. A little after, they had built a fire and camped for the night, about the middle of the waste. At this I begged and besought that we might lie down and sleep. "There shall be no sleep the night!" said Alan. "From now on, these weary dragoons of yours will keep the crown of the muirland, and none will get out of Appin but winged fowls. We got through in the nick of time, and shall we jeopard what we've gained? Na, na, when the day comes, it shall find you and me in a fast place on Ben Alder." "Alan," I said, "it's not the want of will: it's the strength that I want. If I could, I would; but as sure as I'm alive I cannot." "Very well, then," said Alan. "I'll carry ye." I looked to see if he were jesting; but no, the little man was in dead earnest; and the sight of so much resolution shamed me. "Lead away!" said I. "I'll follow." He gave me one look as much as to say, "Well done, David!" and off he set again at his top speed. It grew cooler and even a little darker (but not much) with the coming of the night. The sky was cloudless; it was still early in July, and pretty far north; in the darkest part of that night, you would have needed pretty good eyes to read, but for all that, I have often seen it darker in a winter mid-day. Heavy dew fell and drenched the moor like rain; and this refreshed me for a while. When we stopped to breathe, and I had time to see all about me, the clearness and sweetness of the night, the shapes of the hills like things asleep, and the fire dwindling away behind us, like a bright spot in the midst of the moor, anger would come upon me in a clap that I must still drag myself in agony and eat the dust like a worm. By what I have read in books, I think few that have held a pen were ever really wearied, or they would write of it more strongly. I had no care of my life, neither past nor future, and I scarce remembered there was such a lad as David Balfour. I did not think of myself, but just of each fresh step which I was sure would be my last, with despair--and of Alan, who was the cause of it, with hatred. Alan was in the right trade as a soldier; this is the officer's part to make men continue to do things, they know not wherefore, and when, if the choice was offered, they would lie down where they were and be killed. And I dare say I would have made a good enough private; for in these last hours it never occurred to me that I had any choice but just to obey as long as I was able, and die obeying. Day began to come in, after years, I thought; and by that time we were past the greatest danger, and could walk upon our feet like men, instead of crawling like brutes. But, dear heart have mercy! what a pair we must have made, going double like old grandfathers, stumbling like babes, and as white as dead folk. Never a word passed between us; each set his mouth and kept his eyes in front of him, and lifted up his foot and set it down again, like people lifting weights at a country play;* all the while, with the moorfowl crying "peep!" in the heather, and the light coming slowly clearer in the east. * Village fair. I say Alan did as I did. Not that ever I looked at him, for I had enough ado to keep my feet; but because it is plain he must have been as stupid with weariness as myself, and looked as little where we were going, or we should not have walked into an ambush like blind men. It fell in this way. We were going down a heathery brae, Alan leading and I following a pace or two behind, like a fiddler and his wife; when upon a sudden the heather gave a rustle, three or four ragged men leaped out, and the next moment we were lying on our backs, each with a dirk at his throat. I don't think I cared; the pain of this rough handling was quite swallowed up by the pains of which I was already full; and I was too glad to have stopped walking to mind about a dirk. I lay looking up in the face of the man that held me; and I mind his face was black with the sun, and his eyes very light, but I was not afraid of him. I heard Alan and another whispering in the Gaelic; and what they said was all one to me. Then the dirks were put up, our weapons were taken away, and we were set face to face, sitting in the heather. "They are Cluny's men," said Alan. "We couldnae have fallen better. We're just to bide here with these, which are his out-sentries, till they can get word to the chief of my arrival." Now Cluny Macpherson, the chief of the clan Vourich, had been one of the leaders of the great rebellion six years before; there was a price on his life; and I had supposed him long ago in France, with the rest of the heads of that desperate party. Even tired as I was, the surprise of what I heard half wakened me. "What," I cried, "is Cluny still here?" "Ay, is he so!" said Alan. "Still in his own country and kept by his own clan. King George can do no more." I think I would have asked farther, but Alan gave me the put-off. "I am rather wearied," he said, "and I would like fine to get a sleep." And without more words, he rolled on his face in a deep heather bush, and seemed to sleep at once. There was no such thing possible for me. You have heard grasshoppers whirring in the grass in the summer time? Well, I had no sooner closed my eyes, than my body, and above all my head, belly, and wrists, seemed to be filled with whirring grasshoppers; and I must open my eyes again at once, and tumble and toss, and sit up and lie down; and look at the sky which dazzled me, or at Cluny's wild and dirty sentries, peering out over the top of the brae and chattering to each other in the Gaelic. That was all the rest I had, until the messenger returned; when, as it appeared that Cluny would be glad to receive us, we must get once more upon our feet and set forward. Alan was in excellent good spirits, much refreshed by his sleep, very hungry, and looking pleasantly forward to a dram and a dish of hot collops, of which, it seems, the messenger had brought him word. For my part, it made me sick to hear of eating. I had been dead-heavy before, and now I felt a kind of dreadful lightness, which would not suffer me to walk. I drifted like a gossamer; the ground seemed to me a cloud, the hills a feather-weight, the air to have a current, like a running burn, which carried me to and fro. With all that, a sort of horror of despair sat on my mind, so that I could have wept at my own helplessness. I saw Alan knitting his brows at me, and supposed it was in anger; and that gave me a pang of light-headed fear, like what a child may have. I remember, too, that I was smiling, and could not stop smiling, hard as I tried; for I thought it was out of place at such a time. But my good companion had nothing in his mind but kindness; and the next moment, two of the gillies had me by the arms, and I began to be carried forward with great swiftness (or so it appeared to me, although I dare say it was slowly enough in truth), through a labyrinth of dreary glens and hollows and into the heart of that dismal mountain of Ben Alder.

Alan and Davie travel for a solid seven hours until they reach a patch of barren, open ground they have to cross. Alan says that this is a "kittle" bit - Scots for tricky or perplexing. Davie is confused: he thinks that Alan is just asking if Davie can go on when he must be tired. But no, says Alan, the issue is this: behind them is Appin, crawling with English soldiers. To the south is the country of the Campbells, so that's obviously no good. There's no point in going north because Alan's trying to get to France, Davie to Queensferry. So they have to go east. But east is the moors, a long area of flat, boggy country that gives very little cover for them if they're spotted by soldiers. Davie says whatever, it's dangerous whichever way they go; they may as well go forward. Alan's psyched and compliments Davie on his courage. So they go on, crawling under whatever cover they can find and startling at every sound. They lie down for a rest and Davie takes watch - but he manages to fall asleep. Davie wakes with a start and realizes that he's drowsed off. As he's been sleeping, a group of soldiers has started coming closer to them from the southeast. Davie wakes Alan, who immediately works out that Davie has fallen asleep on his watch . Alan points to a distant mountain, Ben Alder, and says that if they can make it there by the next morning, they'll be safe. So they have to run across the moors on their hands and knees, ducking behind shrubs of heather and generally trying not to be seen. Davie is absolutely exhausted and wishes desperately that he could just give up. But he's afraid of Alan's anger. Finally, Davie is on the verge of collapsing and says that he can't go on. Alan replies that they can't rest: they've gotten away from Appin just in time, and if they don't keep going, they'll waste the lead they've established over the English. Alan offers to carry Davie. Davie is so stunned by this offer that he says he'll go on. But he's feeling like death as he keeps putting one foot in front of the other. The two of them keep staggering forward, bent in half and keeping low to the ground. They're both so tired that they walk straight into an ambush. Three or four guys suddenly jump out from the heather and press their knives against Davie and Alan's throats. Alan and the guys start chatting in Gaelic. It turns out that these fellows are "Cluny's men" . They send a messenger to Cluny Macpherson with news of who they've found on the moors. Cluny Macpherson was one of the major rebels in the 1745 Bonnie Prince Charlie uprising, so Davie is surprised to hear that he is still hanging around Scotland with a price on his head after six years. Alan's feeling relieved to have fallen in with fellow Jacobites. Alan lies down to sleep, but Davie, even though he's tired, keeps tossing and turning. The messenger returns from Cluny with the news that the clan will welcome them. Davie, meanwhile, feels too sick to eat anything, and he's become so lightheaded that he can't concentrate. Two of Cluny's guards help him to Cluny's home in the mountain of Ben Alder.

When the two youths turned with the flag they saw that much of the regiment had crumbled away, and the dejected remnant was coming slowly back. The men, having hurled themselves in projectile fashion, had presently expended their forces. They slowly retreated, with their faces still toward the spluttering woods, and their hot rifles still replying to the din. Several officers were giving orders, their voices keyed to screams. "Where in hell yeh goin'?" the lieutenant was asking in a sarcastic howl. And a red-bearded officer, whose voice of triple brass could plainly be heard, was commanding: "Shoot into 'em! Shoot into 'em, Gawd damn their souls!" There was a melee of screeches, in which the men were ordered to do conflicting and impossible things. The youth and his friend had a small scuffle over the flag. "Give it t' me!" "No, let me keep it!" Each felt satisfied with the other's possession of it, but each felt bound to declare, by an offer to carry the emblem, his willingness to further risk himself. The youth roughly pushed his friend away. The regiment fell back to the stolid trees. There it halted for a moment to blaze at some dark forms that had begun to steal upon its track. Presently it resumed its march again, curving among the tree trunks. By the time the depleted regiment had again reached the first open space they were receiving a fast and merciless fire. There seemed to be mobs all about them. The greater part of the men, discouraged, their spirits worn by the turmoil, acted as if stunned. They accepted the pelting of the bullets with bowed and weary heads. It was of no purpose to strive against walls. It was of no use to batter themselves against granite. And from this consciousness that they had attempted to conquer an unconquerable thing there seemed to arise a feeling that they had been betrayed. They glowered with bent brows, but dangerously, upon some of the officers, more particularly upon the red-bearded one with the voice of triple brass. However, the rear of the regiment was fringed with men, who continued to shoot irritably at the advancing foes. They seemed resolved to make every trouble. The youthful lieutenant was perhaps the last man in the disordered mass. His forgotten back was toward the enemy. He had been shot in the arm. It hung straight and rigid. Occasionally he would cease to remember it, and be about to emphasize an oath with a sweeping gesture. The multiplied pain caused him to swear with incredible power. The youth went along with slipping, uncertain feet. He kept watchful eyes rearward. A scowl of mortification and rage was upon his face. He had thought of a fine revenge upon the officer who had referred to him and his fellows as mule drivers. But he saw that it could not come to pass. His dreams had collapsed when the mule drivers, dwindling rapidly, had wavered and hesitated on the little clearing, and then had recoiled. And now the retreat of the mule drivers was a march of shame to him. A dagger-pointed gaze from without his blackened face was held toward the enemy, but his greater hatred was riveted upon the man, who, not knowing him, had called him a mule driver. When he knew that he and his comrades had failed to do anything in successful ways that might bring the little pangs of a kind of remorse upon the officer, the youth allowed the rage of the baffled to possess him. This cold officer upon a monument, who dropped epithets unconcernedly down, would be finer as a dead man, he thought. So grievous did he think it that he could never possess the secret right to taunt truly in answer. He had pictured red letters of curious revenge. "We ARE mule drivers, are we?" And now he was compelled to throw them away. He presently wrapped his heart in the cloak of his pride and kept the flag erect. He harangued his fellows, pushing against their chests with his free hand. To those he knew well he made frantic appeals, beseeching them by name. Between him and the lieutenant, scolding and near to losing his mind with rage, there was felt a subtle fellowship and equality. They supported each other in all manner of hoarse, howling protests. But the regiment was a machine run down. The two men babbled at a forceless thing. The soldiers who had heart to go slowly were continually shaken in their resolves by a knowledge that comrades were slipping with speed back to the lines. It was difficult to think of reputation when others were thinking of skins. Wounded men were left crying on this black journey. The smoke fringes and flames blustered always. The youth, peering once through a sudden rift in a cloud, saw a brown mass of troops, interwoven and magnified until they appeared to be thousands. A fierce-hued flag flashed before his vision. Immediately, as if the uplifting of the smoke had been prearranged, the discovered troops burst into a rasping yell, and a hundred flames jetted toward the retreating band. A rolling gray cloud again interposed as the regiment doggedly replied. The youth had to depend again upon his misused ears, which were trembling and buzzing from the melee of musketry and yells. The way seemed eternal. In the clouded haze men became panicstricken with the thought that the regiment had lost its path, and was proceeding in a perilous direction. Once the men who headed the wild procession turned and came pushing back against their comrades, screaming that they were being fired upon from points which they had considered to be toward their own lines. At this cry a hysterical fear and dismay beset the troops. A soldier, who heretofore had been ambitious to make the regiment into a wise little band that would proceed calmly amid the huge-appearing difficulties, suddenly sank down and buried his face in his arms with an air of bowing to a doom. From another a shrill lamentation rang out filled with profane allusions to a general. Men ran hither and thither, seeking with their eyes roads of escape. With serene regularity, as if controlled by a schedule, bullets buffed into men. The youth walked stolidly into the midst of the mob, and with his flag in his hands took a stand as if he expected an attempt to push him to the ground. He unconsciously assumed the attitude of the color bearer in the fight of the preceding day. He passed over his brow a hand that trembled. His breath did not come freely. He was choking during this small wait for the crisis. His friend came to him. "Well, Henry, I guess this is good-by--John." "Oh, shut up, you damned fool!" replied the youth, and he would not look at the other. The officers labored like politicians to beat the mass into a proper circle to face the menaces. The ground was uneven and torn. The men curled into depressions and fitted themselves snugly behind whatever would frustrate a bullet. The youth noted with vague surprise that the lieutenant was standing mutely with his legs far apart and his sword held in the manner of a cane. The youth wondered what had happened to his vocal organs that he no more cursed. There was something curious in this little intent pause of the lieutenant. He was like a babe which, having wept its fill, raises its eyes and fixes upon a distant toy. He was engrossed in this contemplation, and the soft under lip quivered from self-whispered words. Some lazy and ignorant smoke curled slowly. The men, hiding from the bullets, waited anxiously for it to lift and disclose the plight of the regiment. The silent ranks were suddenly thrilled by the eager voice of the youthful lieutenant bawling out: "Here they come! Right onto us, b'Gawd!" His further words were lost in a roar of wicked thunder from the men's rifles. The youth's eyes had instantly turned in the direction indicated by the awakened and agitated lieutenant, and he had seen the haze of treachery disclosing a body of soldiers of the enemy. They were so near that he could see their features. There was a recognition as he looked at the types of faces. Also he perceived with dim amazement that their uniforms were rather gay in effect, being light gray, accented with a brilliant-hued facing. Too, the clothes seemed new. These troops had apparently been going forward with caution, their rifles held in readiness, when the youthful lieutenant had discovered them and their movement had been interrupted by the volley from the blue regiment. From the moment's glimpse, it was derived that they had been unaware of the proximity of their dark-suited foes or had mistaken the direction. Almost instantly they were shut utterly from the youth's sight by the smoke from the energetic rifles of his companions. He strained his vision to learn the accomplishment of the volley, but the smoke hung before him. The two bodies of troops exchanged blows in the manner of a pair of boxers. The fast angry firings went back and forth. The men in blue were intent with the despair of their circumstances and they seized upon the revenge to be had at close range. Their thunder swelled loud and valiant. Their curving front bristled with flashes and the place resounded with the clangor of their ramrods. The youth ducked and dodged for a time and achieved a few unsatisfactory views of the enemy. There appeared to be many of them and they were replying swiftly. They seemed moving toward the blue regiment, step by step. He seated himself gloomily on the ground with his flag between his knees. As he noted the vicious, wolflike temper of his comrades he had a sweet thought that if the enemy was about to swallow the regimental broom as a large prisoner, it could at least have the consolation of going down with bristles forward. But the blows of the antagonist began to grow more weak. Fewer bullets ripped the air, and finally, when the men slackened to learn of the fight, they could see only dark, floating smoke. The regiment lay still and gazed. Presently some chance whim came to the pestering blur, and it began to coil heavily away. The men saw a ground vacant of fighters. It would have been an empty stage if it were not for a few corpses that lay thrown and twisted into fantastic shapes upon the sward. At sight of this tableau, many of the men in blue sprang from behind their covers and made an ungainly dance of joy. Their eyes burned and a hoarse cheer of elation broke from their dry lips. It had begun to seem to them that events were trying to prove that they were impotent. These little battles had evidently endeavored to demonstrate that the men could not fight well. When on the verge of submission to these opinions, the small duel had showed them that the proportions were not impossible, and by it they had revenged themselves upon their misgivings and upon the foe. The impetus of enthusiasm was theirs again. They gazed about them with looks of uplifted pride, feeling new trust in the grim, always confident weapons in their hands. And they were men.

The men begin to slowly retreat. The lieutenant bellows at them to turn around. Another officer with a red beard yells at the soldiers to shoot into the enemy. Meanwhile, Wilson and Henry have a minor scuffle over who should carry the flag, both wanting to do so out of deference for the other's safety and their own pride. The youth pushes his friend away. The regiment falls back to some trees and soon resumes its path amongst the trunks. Their numbers are depleted and they are receiving heavy fire. Most of them act discouraged, receiving the bullets like a deserved sentence. They feel as if they have tried to conquer an unconquerable thing. The rear of the regiment is still firing the occasional bullet at the enemy lines. The lieutenant has been hit in the arm; this makes him swear even louder. The youth feels anger at the officer that called his regiment mule drivers. He hates the enemy, but hates the man who called them mule drivers even more. Despite all this, Henry keeps the flag erect. He yells at his fellows, but the regiment is running out of energy quickly. The smoke clears slightly, and he sees the enemy troops amassed across the way. They yell at once and fire a rallying shot at the regiment. The way in front seems eternal. Dismay descends on the men in a clouded haze. They begin to panic. Henry stays solid and strong with the flag. One soldier even approaches Henry to say goodbye. The lieutenant, leaning on his sword like a cane, looks as if he feels all is lost. The smoke curls lazily as men hide from bullets. Suddenly, the lieutenant sees that the Rebels are attempting to sneak up on the regiment. The troops fire a quick volley at the approaching foes. Their uniforms were gray and looked new. They were not expecting the resistance that met them. The two groups of soldiers exchange volleys like boxers exchange blows. By ducking and dodging, Henry has glimpses of these men through the smoke. Eventually, less resistance is offered and the troops stop firing. As the smoke clears, they see the ground in front of them, clear of fighters save for some corpses. The regiment had revenged themselves. They feel full of pride, trusting their weapons. And they were men

SCENE II. The forest Enter ORLANDO, with a paper ORLANDO. Hang there, my verse, in witness of my love; And thou, thrice-crowned Queen of Night, survey With thy chaste eye, from thy pale sphere above, Thy huntress' name that my full life doth sway. O Rosalind! these trees shall be my books, And in their barks my thoughts I'll character, That every eye which in this forest looks Shall see thy virtue witness'd every where. Run, run, Orlando; carve on every tree, The fair, the chaste, and unexpressive she. Exit Enter CORIN and TOUCHSTONE CORIN. And how like you this shepherd's life, Master Touchstone? TOUCHSTONE. Truly, shepherd, in respect of itself, it is a good life; but in respect that it is a shepherd's life, it is nought. In respect that it is solitary, I like it very well; but in respect that it is private, it is a very vile life. Now in respect it is in the fields, it pleaseth me well; but in respect it is not in the court, it is tedious. As it is a spare life, look you, it fits my humour well; but as there is no more plenty in it, it goes much against my stomach. Hast any philosophy in thee, shepherd? CORIN. No more but that I know the more one sickens the worse at ease he is; and that he that wants money, means, and content, is without three good friends; that the property of rain is to wet, and fire to burn; that good pasture makes fat sheep; and that a great cause of the night is lack of the sun; that he that hath learned no wit by nature nor art may complain of good breeding, or comes of a very dull kindred. TOUCHSTONE. Such a one is a natural philosopher. Wast ever in court, shepherd? CORIN. No, truly. TOUCHSTONE. Then thou art damn'd. CORIN. Nay, I hope. TOUCHSTONE. Truly, thou art damn'd, like an ill-roasted egg, all on one side. CORIN. For not being at court? Your reason. TOUCHSTONE. Why, if thou never wast at court thou never saw'st good manners; if thou never saw'st good manners, then thy manners must be wicked; and wickedness is sin, and sin is damnation. Thou art in a parlous state, shepherd. CORIN. Not a whit, Touchstone. Those that are good manners at the court are as ridiculous in the country as the behaviour of the country is most mockable at the court. You told me you salute not at the court, but you kiss your hands; that courtesy would be uncleanly if courtiers were shepherds. TOUCHSTONE. Instance, briefly; come, instance. CORIN. Why, we are still handling our ewes; and their fells, you know, are greasy. TOUCHSTONE. Why, do not your courtier's hands sweat? And is not the grease of a mutton as wholesome as the sweat of a man? Shallow, shallow. A better instance, I say; come. CORIN. Besides, our hands are hard. TOUCHSTONE. Your lips will feel them the sooner. Shallow again. A more sounder instance; come. CORIN. And they are often tarr'd over with the surgery of our sheep; and would you have us kiss tar? The courtier's hands are perfum'd with civet. TOUCHSTONE. Most shallow man! thou worm's meat in respect of a good piece of flesh indeed! Learn of the wise, and perpend: civet is of a baser birth than tar- the very uncleanly flux of a cat. Mend the instance, shepherd. CORIN. You have too courtly a wit for me; I'll rest. TOUCHSTONE. Wilt thou rest damn'd? God help thee, shallow man! God make incision in thee! thou art raw. CORIN. Sir, I am a true labourer: I earn that I eat, get that I wear; owe no man hate, envy no man's happiness; glad of other men's good, content with my harm; and the greatest of my pride is to see my ewes graze and my lambs suck. TOUCHSTONE. That is another simple sin in you: to bring the ewes and the rams together, and to offer to get your living by the copulation of cattle; to be bawd to a bell-wether, and to betray a she-lamb of a twelvemonth to crooked-pated, old, cuckoldly ram, out of all reasonable match. If thou beest not damn'd for this, the devil himself will have no shepherds; I cannot see else how thou shouldst scape. CORIN. Here comes young Master Ganymede, my new mistress's brother. Enter ROSALIND, reading a paper ROSALIND. 'From the east to western Inde, No jewel is like Rosalinde. Her worth, being mounted on the wind, Through all the world bears Rosalinde. All the pictures fairest lin'd Are but black to Rosalinde. Let no face be kept in mind But the fair of Rosalinde.' TOUCHSTONE. I'll rhyme you so eight years together, dinners, and suppers, and sleeping hours, excepted. It is the right butter-women's rank to market. ROSALIND. Out, fool! TOUCHSTONE. For a taste: If a hart do lack a hind, Let him seek out Rosalinde. If the cat will after kind, So be sure will Rosalinde. Winter garments must be lin'd, So must slender Rosalinde. They that reap must sheaf and bind, Then to cart with Rosalinde. Sweetest nut hath sourest rind, Such a nut is Rosalinde. He that sweetest rose will find Must find love's prick and Rosalinde. This is the very false gallop of verses; why do you infect yourself with them? ROSALIND. Peace, you dull fool! I found them on a tree. TOUCHSTONE. Truly, the tree yields bad fruit. ROSALIND. I'll graff it with you, and then I shall graff it with a medlar. Then it will be the earliest fruit i' th' country; for you'll be rotten ere you be half ripe, and that's the right virtue of the medlar. TOUCHSTONE. You have said; but whether wisely or no, let the forest judge. Enter CELIA, with a writing ROSALIND. Peace! Here comes my sister, reading; stand aside. CELIA. 'Why should this a desert be? For it is unpeopled? No; Tongues I'll hang on every tree That shall civil sayings show. Some, how brief the life of man Runs his erring pilgrimage, That the streching of a span Buckles in his sum of age; Some, of violated vows 'Twixt the souls of friend and friend; But upon the fairest boughs, Or at every sentence end, Will I Rosalinda write, Teaching all that read to know The quintessence of every sprite Heaven would in little show. Therefore heaven Nature charg'd That one body should be fill'd With all graces wide-enlarg'd. Nature presently distill'd Helen's cheek, but not her heart, Cleopatra's majesty, Atalanta's better part, Sad Lucretia's modesty. Thus Rosalinde of many parts By heavenly synod was devis'd, Of many faces, eyes, and hearts, To have the touches dearest priz'd. Heaven would that she these gifts should have, And I to live and die her slave.' ROSALIND. O most gentle pulpiter! What tedious homily of love have you wearied your parishioners withal, and never cried 'Have patience, good people.' CELIA. How now! Back, friends; shepherd, go off a little; go with him, sirrah. TOUCHSTONE. Come, shepherd, let us make an honourable retreat; though not with bag and baggage, yet with scrip and scrippage. Exeunt CORIN and TOUCHSTONE CELIA. Didst thou hear these verses? ROSALIND. O, yes, I heard them all, and more too; for some of them had in them more feet than the verses would bear. CELIA. That's no matter; the feet might bear the verses. ROSALIND. Ay, but the feet were lame, and could not bear themselves without the verse, and therefore stood lamely in the verse. CELIA. But didst thou hear without wondering how thy name should be hang'd and carved upon these trees? ROSALIND. I was seven of the nine days out of the wonder before you came; for look here what I found on a palm-tree. I was never so berhym'd since Pythagoras' time that I was an Irish rat, which I can hardly remember. CELIA. Trow you who hath done this? ROSALIND. Is it a man? CELIA. And a chain, that you once wore, about his neck. Change you colour? ROSALIND. I prithee, who? CELIA. O Lord, Lord! it is a hard matter for friends to meet; but mountains may be remov'd with earthquakes, and so encounter. ROSALIND. Nay, but who is it? CELIA. Is it possible? ROSALIND. Nay, I prithee now, with most petitionary vehemence, tell me who it is. CELIA. O wonderful, wonderful, most wonderful wonderful, and yet again wonderful, and after that, out of all whooping! ROSALIND. Good my complexion! dost thou think, though I am caparison'd like a man, I have a doublet and hose in my disposition? One inch of delay more is a South Sea of discovery. I prithee tell me who is it quickly, and speak apace. I would thou could'st stammer, that thou mightst pour this conceal'd man out of thy mouth, as wine comes out of narrow-mouth'd bottle- either too much at once or none at all. I prithee take the cork out of thy mouth that I may drink thy tidings. CELIA. So you may put a man in your belly. ROSALIND. Is he of God's making? What manner of man? Is his head worth a hat or his chin worth a beard? CELIA. Nay, he hath but a little beard. ROSALIND. Why, God will send more if the man will be thankful. Let me stay the growth of his beard, if thou delay me not the knowledge of his chin. CELIA. It is young Orlando, that tripp'd up the wrestler's heels and your heart both in an instant. ROSALIND. Nay, but the devil take mocking! Speak sad brow and true maid. CELIA. I' faith, coz, 'tis he. ROSALIND. Orlando? CELIA. Orlando. ROSALIND. Alas the day! what shall I do with my doublet and hose? What did he when thou saw'st him? What said he? How look'd he? Wherein went he? What makes he here? Did he ask for me? Where remains he? How parted he with thee? And when shalt thou see him again? Answer me in one word. CELIA. You must borrow me Gargantua's mouth first; 'tis a word too great for any mouth of this age's size. To say ay and no to these particulars is more than to answer in a catechism. ROSALIND. But doth he know that I am in this forest, and in man's apparel? Looks he as freshly as he did the day he wrestled? CELIA. It is as easy to count atomies as to resolve the propositions of a lover; but take a taste of my finding him, and relish it with good observance. I found him under a tree, like a dropp'd acorn. ROSALIND. It may well be call'd Jove's tree, when it drops forth such fruit. CELIA. Give me audience, good madam. ROSALIND. Proceed. CELIA. There lay he, stretch'd along like a wounded knight. ROSALIND. Though it be pity to see such a sight, it well becomes the ground. CELIA. Cry 'Holla' to thy tongue, I prithee; it curvets unseasonably. He was furnish'd like a hunter. ROSALIND. O, ominous! he comes to kill my heart. CELIA. I would sing my song without a burden; thou bring'st me out of tune. ROSALIND. Do you not know I am a woman? When I think, I must speak. Sweet, say on. CELIA. You bring me out. Soft! comes he not here? Enter ORLANDO and JAQUES ROSALIND. 'Tis he; slink by, and note him. JAQUES. I thank you for your company; but, good faith, I had as lief have been myself alone. ORLANDO. And so had I; but yet, for fashion sake, I thank you too for your society. JAQUES. God buy you; let's meet as little as we can. ORLANDO. I do desire we may be better strangers. JAQUES. I pray you mar no more trees with writing love songs in their barks. ORLANDO. I pray you mar no more of my verses with reading them ill-favouredly. JAQUES. Rosalind is your love's name? ORLANDO. Yes, just. JAQUES. I do not like her name. ORLANDO. There was no thought of pleasing you when she was christen'd. JAQUES. What stature is she of? ORLANDO. Just as high as my heart. JAQUES. You are full of pretty answers. Have you not been acquainted with goldsmiths' wives, and conn'd them out of rings? ORLANDO. Not so; but I answer you right painted cloth, from whence you have studied your questions. JAQUES. You have a nimble wit; I think 'twas made of Atalanta's heels. Will you sit down with me? and we two will rail against our mistress the world, and all our misery. ORLANDO. I will chide no breather in the world but myself, against whom I know most faults. JAQUES. The worst fault you have is to be in love. ORLANDO. 'Tis a fault I will not change for your best virtue. I am weary of you. JAQUES. By my troth, I was seeking for a fool when I found you. ORLANDO. He is drown'd in the brook; look but in, and you shall see him. JAQUES. There I shall see mine own figure. ORLANDO. Which I take to be either a fool or a cipher. JAQUES. I'll tarry no longer with you; farewell, good Signior Love. ORLANDO. I am glad of your departure; adieu, good Monsieur Melancholy. Exit JAQUES ROSALIND. [Aside to CELIA] I will speak to him like a saucy lackey, and under that habit play the knave with him.- Do you hear, forester? ORLANDO. Very well; what would you? ROSALIND. I pray you, what is't o'clock? ORLANDO. You should ask me what time o' day; there's no clock in the forest. ROSALIND. Then there is no true lover in the forest, else sighing every minute and groaning every hour would detect the lazy foot of Time as well as a clock. ORLANDO. And why not the swift foot of Time? Had not that been as proper? ROSALIND. By no means, sir. Time travels in divers paces with divers persons. I'll tell you who Time ambles withal, who Time trots withal, who Time gallops withal, and who he stands still withal. ORLANDO. I prithee, who doth he trot withal? ROSALIND. Marry, he trots hard with a young maid between the contract of her marriage and the day it is solemniz'd; if the interim be but a se'nnight, Time's pace is so hard that it seems the length of seven year. ORLANDO. Who ambles Time withal? ROSALIND. With a priest that lacks Latin and a rich man that hath not the gout; for the one sleeps easily because he cannot study, and the other lives merrily because he feels no pain; the one lacking the burden of lean and wasteful learning, the other knowing no burden of heavy tedious penury. These Time ambles withal. ORLANDO. Who doth he gallop withal? ROSALIND. With a thief to the gallows; for though he go as softly as foot can fall, he thinks himself too soon there. ORLANDO. Who stays it still withal? ROSALIND. With lawyers in the vacation; for they sleep between term and term, and then they perceive not how Time moves. ORLANDO. Where dwell you, pretty youth? ROSALIND. With this shepherdess, my sister; here in the skirts of the forest, like fringe upon a petticoat. ORLANDO. Are you native of this place? ROSALIND. As the coney that you see dwell where she is kindled. ORLANDO. Your accent is something finer than you could purchase in so removed a dwelling. ROSALIND. I have been told so of many; but indeed an old religious uncle of mine taught me to speak, who was in his youth an inland man; one that knew courtship too well, for there he fell in love. I have heard him read many lectures against it; and I thank God I am not a woman, to be touch'd with so many giddy offences as he hath generally tax'd their whole sex withal. ORLANDO. Can you remember any of the principal evils that he laid to the charge of women? ROSALIND. There were none principal; they were all like one another as halfpence are; every one fault seeming monstrous till his fellow-fault came to match it. ORLANDO. I prithee recount some of them. ROSALIND. No; I will not cast away my physic but on those that are sick. There is a man haunts the forest that abuses our young plants with carving 'Rosalind' on their barks; hangs odes upon hawthorns and elegies on brambles; all, forsooth, deifying the name of Rosalind. If I could meet that fancy-monger, I would give him some good counsel, for he seems to have the quotidian of love upon him. ORLANDO. I am he that is so love-shak'd; I pray you tell me your remedy. ROSALIND. There is none of my uncle's marks upon you; he taught me how to know a man in love; in which cage of rushes I am sure you are not prisoner. ORLANDO. What were his marks? ROSALIND. A lean cheek, which you have not; a blue eye and sunken, which you have not; an unquestionable spirit, which you have not; a beard neglected, which you have not; but I pardon you for that, for simply your having in beard is a younger brother's revenue. Then your hose should be ungarter'd, your bonnet unbanded, your sleeve unbutton'd, your shoe untied, and every thing about you demonstrating a careless desolation. But you are no such man; you are rather point-device in your accoutrements, as loving yourself than seeming the lover of any other. ORLANDO. Fair youth, I would I could make thee believe I love. ROSALIND. Me believe it! You may as soon make her that you love believe it; which, I warrant, she is apter to do than to confess she does. That is one of the points in the which women still give the lie to their consciences. But, in good sooth, are you he that hangs the verses on the trees wherein Rosalind is so admired? ORLANDO. I swear to thee, youth, by the white hand of Rosalind, I am that he, that unfortunate he. ROSALIND. But are you so much in love as your rhymes speak? ORLANDO. Neither rhyme nor reason can express how much. ROSALIND. Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as well a dark house and a whip as madmen do; and the reason why they are not so punish'd and cured is that the lunacy is so ordinary that the whippers are in love too. Yet I profess curing it by counsel. ORLANDO. Did you ever cure any so? ROSALIND. Yes, one; and in this manner. He was to imagine me his love, his mistress; and I set him every day to woo me; at which time would I, being but a moonish youth, grieve, be effeminate, changeable, longing and liking, proud, fantastical, apish, shallow, inconstant, full of tears, full of smiles; for every passion something and for no passion truly anything, as boys and women are for the most part cattle of this colour; would now like him, now loathe him; then entertain him, then forswear him; now weep for him, then spit at him; that I drave my suitor from his mad humour of love to a living humour of madness; which was, to forswear the full stream of the world and to live in a nook merely monastic. And thus I cur'd him; and this way will I take upon me to wash your liver as clean as a sound sheep's heart, that there shall not be one spot of love in 't. ORLANDO. I would not be cured, youth. ROSALIND. I would cure you, if you would but call me Rosalind, and come every day to my cote and woo me. ORLANDO. Now, by the faith of my love, I will. Tell me where it is. ROSALIND. Go with me to it, and I'll show it you; and, by the way, you shall tell me where in the forest you live. Will you go? ORLANDO. With all my heart, good youth. ROSALIND. Nay, you must call me Rosalind. Come, sister, will you go? Exeunt

Orlando runs through the Forest of Ardenne, mad with love. He hangs poems that he has composed in Rosalind's honor on every tree, hoping that passersby will see her "virtue witnessed everywhere". Corin and Touchstone enter, but are too engrossed in a conversation about the relative merits of court and country life to pay attention to Orlando's verses. Corin argues that polite manners at court are of no consequence in the country. Touchstone asks him to provide evidence to support this thesis and then challenges the shepherd's reasoning. Rosalind enters, disguised as Ganymede. She reads one of Orlando's poems, which compares her to a priceless jewel. Touchstone mocks the verse, claiming that he could easily churn out a comparable succession of rhymes. He does so with couplets that liken Rosalind to a cat in heat, a thorny rose, and a prostitute who is transported to the pillory on a cart. Rosalind rebukes Touchstone for his meddling. Just then, Celia enters disguised as the shepherdess Aliena. She, too, has found one of Orlando's verses and reads it aloud. The women agree that the verses are terribly written, yet Rosalind is eager to learn the identity of their author. Celia teases her friend, hesitating to reveal this secret until Rosalind is nearly insane with anticipation. When Celia admits that Orlando has penned the poems, Rosalind can hardly believe it. Like a smitten schoolgirl, she asks a dozen questions about her intended lover, wanting to know everything from where he is to what he looks like. As Celia does her best to answer these questions, despite Rosalind's incessant interruptions, Orlando and Jaques enter. Hiding, the women eavesdrop on their conversation. Orlando and Jaques clearly do not care for one another's company and exchange a series of barbed insults. Jaques dislikes Orlando's sentimental love, declaring it the worst possible fault, while Orlando scoffs at Jaques's melancholy. Eager to part, Jaques walks off into the forest, leaving Orlando alone. Rosalind decides to confront Orlando. She approaches him as the young man Ganymede, and speaks of a man that has been carving the name Rosalind on the trees. Orlando insists that he is the man so "love-shaked" and begs her for a "remedy". She claims to recognize the symptoms of those who have fallen under the spell of true love, and assures Orlando that he exhibits none of them. He is, she says, too neatly dressed to be madly in love. She promises to cure him if he promises to woo Ganymede as though Ganymede were Rosalind. As Ganymede, Rosalind vows to make the very idea of love unappealing to Orlando by acting the part of a fickle lover. Orlando is quite sure he is beyond cure, but Rosalind says, "I would cure you if you would but call me Rosalind and come every day to my cot, and woo me". With all his heart, Orlando agrees

James Crawley's Pipe Is Put Out The amiable behaviour of Mr. Crawley, and Lady Jane's kind reception of her, highly flattered Miss Briggs, who was enabled to speak a good word for the latter, after the cards of the Southdown family had been presented to Miss Crawley. A Countess's card left personally too for her, Briggs, was not a little pleasing to the poor friendless companion. "What could Lady Southdown mean by leaving a card upon you, I wonder, Miss Briggs?" said the republican Miss Crawley; upon which the companion meekly said "that she hoped there could be no harm in a lady of rank taking notice of a poor gentlewoman," and she put away this card in her work-box amongst her most cherished personal treasures. Furthermore, Miss Briggs explained how she had met Mr. Crawley walking with his cousin and long affianced bride the day before: and she told how kind and gentle-looking the lady was, and what a plain, not to say common, dress she had, all the articles of which, from the bonnet down to the boots, she described and estimated with female accuracy. Miss Crawley allowed Briggs to prattle on without interrupting her too much. As she got well, she was pining for society. Mr. Creamer, her medical man, would not hear of her returning to her old haunts and dissipation in London. The old spinster was too glad to find any companionship at Brighton, and not only were the cards acknowledged the very next day, but Pitt Crawley was graciously invited to come and see his aunt. He came, bringing with him Lady Southdown and her daughter. The dowager did not say a word about the state of Miss Crawley's soul; but talked with much discretion about the weather: about the war and the downfall of the monster Bonaparte: and above all, about doctors, quacks, and the particular merits of Dr. Podgers, whom she then patronised. During their interview Pitt Crawley made a great stroke, and one which showed that, had his diplomatic career not been blighted by early neglect, he might have risen to a high rank in his profession. When the Countess Dowager of Southdown fell foul of the Corsican upstart, as the fashion was in those days, and showed that he was a monster stained with every conceivable crime, a coward and a tyrant not fit to live, one whose fall was predicted, &c., Pitt Crawley suddenly took up the cudgels in favour of the man of Destiny. He described the First Consul as he saw him at Paris at the peace of Amiens; when he, Pitt Crawley, had the gratification of making the acquaintance of the great and good Mr. Fox, a statesman whom, however much he might differ with him, it was impossible not to admire fervently--a statesman who had always had the highest opinion of the Emperor Napoleon. And he spoke in terms of the strongest indignation of the faithless conduct of the allies towards this dethroned monarch, who, after giving himself generously up to their mercy, was consigned to an ignoble and cruel banishment, while a bigoted Popish rabble was tyrannising over France in his stead. This orthodox horror of Romish superstition saved Pitt Crawley in Lady Southdown's opinion, whilst his admiration for Fox and Napoleon raised him immeasurably in Miss Crawley's eyes. Her friendship with that defunct British statesman was mentioned when we first introduced her in this history. A true Whig, Miss Crawley had been in opposition all through the war, and though, to be sure, the downfall of the Emperor did not very much agitate the old lady, or his ill-treatment tend to shorten her life or natural rest, yet Pitt spoke to her heart when he lauded both her idols; and by that single speech made immense progress in her favour. "And what do you think, my dear?" Miss Crawley said to the young lady, for whom she had taken a liking at first sight, as she always did for pretty and modest young people; though it must be owned her affections cooled as rapidly as they rose. Lady Jane blushed very much, and said "that she did not understand politics, which she left to wiser heads than hers; but though Mamma was, no doubt, correct, Mr. Crawley had spoken beautifully." And when the ladies were retiring at the conclusion of their visit, Miss Crawley hoped "Lady Southdown would be so kind as to send her Lady Jane sometimes, if she could be spared to come down and console a poor sick lonely old woman." This promise was graciously accorded, and they separated upon great terms of amity. "Don't let Lady Southdown come again, Pitt," said the old lady. "She is stupid and pompous, like all your mother's family, whom I never could endure. But bring that nice good-natured little Jane as often as ever you please." Pitt promised that he would do so. He did not tell the Countess of Southdown what opinion his aunt had formed of her Ladyship, who, on the contrary, thought that she had made a most delightful and majestic impression on Miss Crawley. And so, nothing loth to comfort a sick lady, and perhaps not sorry in her heart to be freed now and again from the dreary spouting of the Reverend Bartholomew Irons, and the serious toadies who gathered round the footstool of the pompous Countess, her mamma, Lady Jane became a pretty constant visitor to Miss Crawley, accompanied her in her drives, and solaced many of her evenings. She was so naturally good and soft, that even Firkin was not jealous of her; and the gentle Briggs thought her friend was less cruel to her when kind Lady Jane was by. Towards her Ladyship Miss Crawley's manners were charming. The old spinster told her a thousand anecdotes about her youth, talking to her in a very different strain from that in which she had been accustomed to converse with the godless little Rebecca; for there was that in Lady Jane's innocence which rendered light talking impertinence before her, and Miss Crawley was too much of a gentlewoman to offend such purity. The young lady herself had never received kindness except from this old spinster, and her brother and father: and she repaid Miss Crawley's engoument by artless sweetness and friendship. In the autumn evenings (when Rebecca was flaunting at Paris, the gayest among the gay conquerors there, and our Amelia, our dear wounded Amelia, ah! where was she?) Lady Jane would be sitting in Miss Crawley's drawing-room singing sweetly to her, in the twilight, her little simple songs and hymns, while the sun was setting and the sea was roaring on the beach. The old spinster used to wake up when these ditties ceased, and ask for more. As for Briggs, and the quantity of tears of happiness which she now shed as she pretended to knit, and looked out at the splendid ocean darkling before the windows, and the lamps of heaven beginning more brightly to shine--who, I say can measure the happiness and sensibility of Briggs? Pitt meanwhile in the dining-room, with a pamphlet on the Corn Laws or a Missionary Register by his side, took that kind of recreation which suits romantic and unromantic men after dinner. He sipped Madeira: built castles in the air: thought himself a fine fellow: felt himself much more in love with Jane than he had been any time these seven years, during which their liaison had lasted without the slightest impatience on Pitt's part--and slept a good deal. When the time for coffee came, Mr. Bowls used to enter in a noisy manner, and summon Squire Pitt, who would be found in the dark very busy with his pamphlet. "I wish, my love, I could get somebody to play piquet with me," Miss Crawley said one night when this functionary made his appearance with the candles and the coffee. "Poor Briggs can no more play than an owl, she is so stupid" (the spinster always took an opportunity of abusing Briggs before the servants); "and I think I should sleep better if I had my game." At this Lady Jane blushed to the tips of her little ears, and down to the ends of her pretty fingers; and when Mr. Bowls had quitted the room, and the door was quite shut, she said: "Miss Crawley, I can play a little. I used to--to play a little with poor dear papa." "Come and kiss me. Come and kiss me this instant, you dear good little soul," cried Miss Crawley in an ecstasy: and in this picturesque and friendly occupation Mr. Pitt found the old lady and the young one, when he came upstairs with him pamphlet in his hand. How she did blush all the evening, that poor Lady Jane! It must not be imagined that Mr. Pitt Crawley's artifices escaped the attention of his dear relations at the Rectory at Queen's Crawley. Hampshire and Sussex lie very close together, and Mrs. Bute had friends in the latter county who took care to inform her of all, and a great deal more than all, that passed at Miss Crawley's house at Brighton. Pitt was there more and more. He did not come for months together to the Hall, where his abominable old father abandoned himself completely to rum-and-water, and the odious society of the Horrocks family. Pitt's success rendered the Rector's family furious, and Mrs. Bute regretted more (though she confessed less) than ever her monstrous fault in so insulting Miss Briggs, and in being so haughty and parsimonious to Bowls and Firkin, that she had not a single person left in Miss Crawley's household to give her information of what took place there. "It was all Bute's collar-bone," she persisted in saying; "if that had not broke, I never would have left her. I am a martyr to duty and to your odious unclerical habit of hunting, Bute." "Hunting; nonsense! It was you that frightened her, Barbara," the divine interposed. "You're a clever woman, but you've got a devil of a temper; and you're a screw with your money, Barbara." "You'd have been screwed in gaol, Bute, if I had not kept your money." "I know I would, my dear," said the Rector, good-naturedly. "You ARE a clever woman, but you manage too well, you know": and the pious man consoled himself with a big glass of port. "What the deuce can she find in that spooney of a Pitt Crawley?" he continued. "The fellow has not pluck enough to say Bo to a goose. I remember when Rawdon, who is a man, and be hanged to him, used to flog him round the stables as if he was a whipping-top: and Pitt would go howling home to his ma--ha, ha! Why, either of my boys would whop him with one hand. Jim says he's remembered at Oxford as Miss Crawley still--the spooney. "I say, Barbara," his reverence continued, after a pause. "What?" said Barbara, who was biting her nails, and drumming the table. "I say, why not send Jim over to Brighton to see if he can do anything with the old lady. He's very near getting his degree, you know. He's only been plucked twice--so was I--but he's had the advantages of Oxford and a university education. He knows some of the best chaps there. He pulls stroke in the Boniface boat. He's a handsome feller. D---- it, ma'am, let's put him on the old woman, hey, and tell him to thrash Pitt if he says anything. Ha, ha, ha! "Jim might go down and see her, certainly," the housewife said; adding with a sigh, "If we could but get one of the girls into the house; but she could never endure them, because they are not pretty!" Those unfortunate and well-educated women made themselves heard from the neighbouring drawing-room, where they were thrumming away, with hard fingers, an elaborate music-piece on the piano-forte, as their mother spoke; and indeed, they were at music, or at backboard, or at geography, or at history, the whole day long. But what avail all these accomplishments, in Vanity Fair, to girls who are short, poor, plain, and have a bad complexion? Mrs. Bute could think of nobody but the Curate to take one of them off her hands; and Jim coming in from the stable at this minute, through the parlour window, with a short pipe stuck in his oilskin cap, he and his father fell to talking about odds on the St. Leger, and the colloquy between the Rector and his wife ended. Mrs. Bute did not augur much good to the cause from the sending of her son James as an ambassador, and saw him depart in rather a despairing mood. Nor did the young fellow himself, when told what his mission was to be, expect much pleasure or benefit from it; but he was consoled by the thought that possibly the old lady would give him some handsome remembrance of her, which would pay a few of his most pressing bills at the commencement of the ensuing Oxford term, and so took his place by the coach from Southampton, and was safely landed at Brighton on the same evening with his portmanteau, his favourite bull-dog Towzer, and an immense basket of farm and garden produce, from the dear Rectory folks to the dear Miss Crawley. Considering it was too late to disturb the invalid lady on the first night of his arrival, he put up at an inn, and did not wait upon Miss Crawley until a late hour in the noon of next day. James Crawley, when his aunt had last beheld him, was a gawky lad, at that uncomfortable age when the voice varies between an unearthly treble and a preternatural bass; when the face not uncommonly blooms out with appearances for which Rowland's Kalydor is said to act as a cure; when boys are seen to shave furtively with their sister's scissors, and the sight of other young women produces intolerable sensations of terror in them; when the great hands and ankles protrude a long way from garments which have grown too tight for them; when their presence after dinner is at once frightful to the ladies, who are whispering in the twilight in the drawing-room, and inexpressibly odious to the gentlemen over the mahogany, who are restrained from freedom of intercourse and delightful interchange of wit by the presence of that gawky innocence; when, at the conclusion of the second glass, papa says, "Jack, my boy, go out and see if the evening holds up," and the youth, willing to be free, yet hurt at not being yet a man, quits the incomplete banquet. James, then a hobbadehoy, was now become a young man, having had the benefits of a university education, and acquired the inestimable polish which is gained by living in a fast set at a small college, and contracting debts, and being rusticated, and being plucked. He was a handsome lad, however, when he came to present himself to his aunt at Brighton, and good looks were always a title to the fickle old lady's favour. Nor did his blushes and awkwardness take away from it: she was pleased with these healthy tokens of the young gentleman's ingenuousness. He said "he had come down for a couple of days to see a man of his college, and--and to pay my respects to you, Ma'am, and my father's and mother's, who hope you are well." Pitt was in the room with Miss Crawley when the lad was announced, and looked very blank when his name was mentioned. The old lady had plenty of humour, and enjoyed her correct nephew's perplexity. She asked after all the people at the Rectory with great interest; and said she was thinking of paying them a visit. She praised the lad to his face, and said he was well-grown and very much improved, and that it was a pity his sisters had not some of his good looks; and finding, on inquiry, that he had taken up his quarters at an hotel, would not hear of his stopping there, but bade Mr. Bowls send for Mr. James Crawley's things instantly; "and hark ye, Bowls," she added, with great graciousness, "you will have the goodness to pay Mr. James's bill." She flung Pitt a look of arch triumph, which caused that diplomatist almost to choke with envy. Much as he had ingratiated himself with his aunt, she had never yet invited him to stay under her roof, and here was a young whipper-snapper, who at first sight was made welcome there. "I beg your pardon, sir," says Bowls, advancing with a profound bow; "what 'otel, sir, shall Thomas fetch the luggage from?" "O, dam," said young James, starting up, as if in some alarm, "I'll go." "What!" said Miss Crawley. "The Tom Cribb's Arms," said James, blushing deeply. Miss Crawley burst out laughing at this title. Mr. Bowls gave one abrupt guffaw, as a confidential servant of the family, but choked the rest of the volley; the diplomatist only smiled. "I--I didn't know any better," said James, looking down. "I've never been here before; it was the coachman told me." The young story-teller! The fact is, that on the Southampton coach, the day previous, James Crawley had met the Tutbury Pet, who was coming to Brighton to make a match with the Rottingdean Fibber; and enchanted by the Pet's conversation, had passed the evening in company with that scientific man and his friends, at the inn in question. "I--I'd best go and settle the score," James continued. "Couldn't think of asking you, Ma'am," he added, generously. This delicacy made his aunt laugh the more. "Go and settle the bill, Bowls," she said, with a wave of her hand, "and bring it to me." Poor lady, she did not know what she had done! "There--there's a little dawg," said James, looking frightfully guilty. "I'd best go for him. He bites footmen's calves." All the party cried out with laughing at this description; even Briggs and Lady Jane, who was sitting mute during the interview between Miss Crawley and her nephew: and Bowls, without a word, quitted the room. Still, by way of punishing her elder nephew, Miss Crawley persisted in being gracious to the young Oxonian. There were no limits to her kindness or her compliments when they once began. She told Pitt he might come to dinner, and insisted that James should accompany her in her drive, and paraded him solemnly up and down the cliff, on the back seat of the barouche. During all this excursion, she condescended to say civil things to him: she quoted Italian and French poetry to the poor bewildered lad, and persisted that he was a fine scholar, and was perfectly sure he would gain a gold medal, and be a Senior Wrangler. "Haw, haw," laughed James, encouraged by these compliments; "Senior Wrangler, indeed; that's at the other shop." "What is the other shop, my dear child?" said the lady. "Senior Wranglers at Cambridge, not Oxford," said the scholar, with a knowing air; and would probably have been more confidential, but that suddenly there appeared on the cliff in a tax-cart, drawn by a bang-up pony, dressed in white flannel coats, with mother-of-pearl buttons, his friends the Tutbury Pet and the Rottingdean Fibber, with three other gentlemen of their acquaintance, who all saluted poor James there in the carriage as he sate. This incident damped the ingenuous youth's spirits, and no word of yea or nay could he be induced to utter during the rest of the drive. On his return he found his room prepared, and his portmanteau ready, and might have remarked that Mr. Bowls's countenance, when the latter conducted him to his apartments, wore a look of gravity, wonder, and compassion. But the thought of Mr. Bowls did not enter his head. He was deploring the dreadful predicament in which he found himself, in a house full of old women, jabbering French and Italian, and talking poetry to him. "Reglarly up a tree, by jingo!" exclaimed the modest boy, who could not face the gentlest of her sex--not even Briggs--when she began to talk to him; whereas, put him at Iffley Lock, and he could out-slang the boldest bargeman. At dinner, James appeared choking in a white neckcloth, and had the honour of handing my Lady Jane downstairs, while Briggs and Mr. Crawley followed afterwards, conducting the old lady, with her apparatus of bundles, and shawls, and cushions. Half of Briggs's time at dinner was spent in superintending the invalid's comfort, and in cutting up chicken for her fat spaniel. James did not talk much, but he made a point of asking all the ladies to drink wine, and accepted Mr. Crawley's challenge, and consumed the greater part of a bottle of champagne which Mr. Bowls was ordered to produce in his honour. The ladies having withdrawn, and the two cousins being left together, Pitt, the ex-diplomatist, he came very communicative and friendly. He asked after James's career at college--what his prospects in life were--hoped heartily he would get on; and, in a word, was frank and amiable. James's tongue unloosed with the port, and he told his cousin his life, his prospects, his debts, his troubles at the little-go, and his rows with the proctors, filling rapidly from the bottles before him, and flying from Port to Madeira with joyous activity. "The chief pleasure which my aunt has," said Mr. Crawley, filling his glass, "is that people should do as they like in her house. This is Liberty Hall, James, and you can't do Miss Crawley a greater kindness than to do as you please, and ask for what you will. I know you have all sneered at me in the country for being a Tory. Miss Crawley is liberal enough to suit any fancy. She is a Republican in principle, and despises everything like rank or title." "Why are you going to marry an Earl's daughter?" said James. "My dear friend, remember it is not poor Lady Jane's fault that she is well born," Pitt replied, with a courtly air. "She cannot help being a lady. Besides, I am a Tory, you know." "Oh, as for that," said Jim, "there's nothing like old blood; no, dammy, nothing like it. I'm none of your radicals. I know what it is to be a gentleman, dammy. See the chaps in a boat-race; look at the fellers in a fight; aye, look at a dawg killing rats--which is it wins? the good-blooded ones. Get some more port, Bowls, old boy, whilst I buzz this bottle here. What was I asaying?" "I think you were speaking of dogs killing rats," Pitt remarked mildly, handing his cousin the decanter to "buzz." "Killing rats was I? Well, Pitt, are you a sporting man? Do you want to see a dawg as CAN kill a rat? If you do, come down with me to Tom Corduroy's, in Castle Street Mews, and I'll show you such a bull-terrier as--Pooh! gammon," cried James, bursting out laughing at his own absurdity--"YOU don't care about a dawg or rat; it's all nonsense. I'm blest if I think you know the difference between a dog and a duck." "No; by the way," Pitt continued with increased blandness, "it was about blood you were talking, and the personal advantages which people derive from patrician birth. Here's the fresh bottle." "Blood's the word," said James, gulping the ruby fluid down. "Nothing like blood, sir, in hosses, dawgs, AND men. Why, only last term, just before I was rusticated, that is, I mean just before I had the measles, ha, ha--there was me and Ringwood of Christchurch, Bob Ringwood, Lord Cinqbars' son, having our beer at the Bell at Blenheim, when the Banbury bargeman offered to fight either of us for a bowl of punch. I couldn't. My arm was in a sling; couldn't even take the drag down--a brute of a mare of mine had fell with me only two days before, out with the Abingdon, and I thought my arm was broke. Well, sir, I couldn't finish him, but Bob had his coat off at once--he stood up to the Banbury man for three minutes, and polished him off in four rounds easy. Gad, how he did drop, sir, and what was it? Blood, sir, all blood." "You don't drink, James," the ex-attache continued. "In my time at Oxford, the men passed round the bottle a little quicker than you young fellows seem to do." "Come, come," said James, putting his hand to his nose and winking at his cousin with a pair of vinous eyes, "no jokes, old boy; no trying it on on me. You want to trot me out, but it's no go. In vino veritas, old boy. Mars, Bacchus, Apollo virorum, hey? I wish my aunt would send down some of this to the governor; it's a precious good tap." "You had better ask her," Machiavel continued, "or make the best of your time now. What says the bard? 'Nunc vino pellite curas, Cras ingens iterabimus aequor,'" and the Bacchanalian, quoting the above with a House of Commons air, tossed off nearly a thimbleful of wine with an immense flourish of his glass. At the Rectory, when the bottle of port wine was opened after dinner, the young ladies had each a glass from a bottle of currant wine. Mrs. Bute took one glass of port, honest James had a couple commonly, but as his father grew very sulky if he made further inroads on the bottle, the good lad generally refrained from trying for more, and subsided either into the currant wine, or to some private gin-and-water in the stables, which he enjoyed in the company of the coachman and his pipe. At Oxford, the quantity of wine was unlimited, but the quality was inferior: but when quantity and quality united as at his aunt's house, James showed that he could appreciate them indeed; and hardly needed any of his cousin's encouragement in draining off the second bottle supplied by Mr. Bowls. When the time for coffee came, however, and for a return to the ladies, of whom he stood in awe, the young gentleman's agreeable frankness left him, and he relapsed into his usual surly timidity; contenting himself by saying yes and no, by scowling at Lady Jane, and by upsetting one cup of coffee during the evening. If he did not speak he yawned in a pitiable manner, and his presence threw a damp upon the modest proceedings of the evening, for Miss Crawley and Lady Jane at their piquet, and Miss Briggs at her work, felt that his eyes were wildly fixed on them, and were uneasy under that maudlin look. "He seems a very silent, awkward, bashful lad," said Miss Crawley to Mr. Pitt. "He is more communicative in men's society than with ladies," Machiavel dryly replied: perhaps rather disappointed that the port wine had not made Jim speak more. He had spent the early part of the next morning in writing home to his mother a most flourishing account of his reception by Miss Crawley. But ah! he little knew what evils the day was bringing for him, and how short his reign of favour was destined to be. A circumstance which Jim had forgotten--a trivial but fatal circumstance--had taken place at the Cribb's Arms on the night before he had come to his aunt's house. It was no other than this--Jim, who was always of a generous disposition, and when in his cups especially hospitable, had in the course of the night treated the Tutbury champion and the Rottingdean man, and their friends, twice or thrice to the refreshment of gin-and-water--so that no less than eighteen glasses of that fluid at eightpence per glass were charged in Mr. James Crawley's bill. It was not the amount of eightpences, but the quantity of gin which told fatally against poor James's character, when his aunt's butler, Mr. Bowls, went down at his mistress's request to pay the young gentleman's bill. The landlord, fearing lest the account should be refused altogether, swore solemnly that the young gent had consumed personally every farthing's worth of the liquor: and Bowls paid the bill finally, and showed it on his return home to Mrs. Firkin, who was shocked at the frightful prodigality of gin; and took the bill to Miss Briggs as accountant-general; who thought it her duty to mention the circumstance to her principal, Miss Crawley. Had he drunk a dozen bottles of claret, the old spinster could have pardoned him. Mr. Fox and Mr. Sheridan drank claret. Gentlemen drank claret. But eighteen glasses of gin consumed among boxers in an ignoble pot-house--it was an odious crime and not to be pardoned readily. Everything went against the lad: he came home perfumed from the stables, whither he had been to pay his dog Towzer a visit--and whence he was going to take his friend out for an airing, when he met Miss Crawley and her wheezy Blenheim spaniel, which Towzer would have eaten up had not the Blenheim fled squealing to the protection of Miss Briggs, while the atrocious master of the bull-dog stood laughing at the horrible persecution. This day too the unlucky boy's modesty had likewise forsaken him. He was lively and facetious at dinner. During the repast he levelled one or two jokes against Pitt Crawley: he drank as much wine as upon the previous day; and going quite unsuspiciously to the drawing-room, began to entertain the ladies there with some choice Oxford stories. He described the different pugilistic qualities of Molyneux and Dutch Sam, offered playfully to give Lady Jane the odds upon the Tutbury Pet against the Rottingdean man, or take them, as her Ladyship chose: and crowned the pleasantry by proposing to back himself against his cousin Pitt Crawley, either with or without the gloves. "And that's a fair offer, my buck," he said, with a loud laugh, slapping Pitt on the shoulder, "and my father told me to make it too, and he'll go halves in the bet, ha, ha!" So saying, the engaging youth nodded knowingly at poor Miss Briggs, and pointed his thumb over his shoulder at Pitt Crawley in a jocular and exulting manner. Pitt was not pleased altogether perhaps, but still not unhappy in the main. Poor Jim had his laugh out: and staggered across the room with his aunt's candle, when the old lady moved to retire, and offered to salute her with the blandest tipsy smile: and he took his own leave and went upstairs to his bedroom perfectly satisfied with himself, and with a pleased notion that his aunt's money would be left to him in preference to his father and all the rest of the family. Once up in the bedroom, one would have thought he could not make matters worse; and yet this unlucky boy did. The moon was shining very pleasantly out on the sea, and Jim, attracted to the window by the romantic appearance of the ocean and the heavens, thought he would further enjoy them while smoking. Nobody would smell the tobacco, he thought, if he cunningly opened the window and kept his head and pipe in the fresh air. This he did: but being in an excited state, poor Jim had forgotten that his door was open all this time, so that the breeze blowing inwards and a fine thorough draught being established, the clouds of tobacco were carried downstairs, and arrived with quite undiminished fragrance to Miss Crawley and Miss Briggs. The pipe of tobacco finished the business: and the Bute-Crawleys never knew how many thousand pounds it cost them. Firkin rushed downstairs to Bowls who was reading out the "Fire and the Frying Pan" to his aide-de-camp in a loud and ghostly voice. The dreadful secret was told to him by Firkin with so frightened a look, that for the first moment Mr. Bowls and his young man thought that robbers were in the house, the legs of whom had probably been discovered by the woman under Miss Crawley's bed. When made aware of the fact, however--to rush upstairs at three steps at a time to enter the unconscious James's apartment, calling out, "Mr. James," in a voice stifled with alarm, and to cry, "For Gawd's sake, sir, stop that 'ere pipe," was the work of a minute with Mr. Bowls. "O, Mr. James, what 'AVE you done!" he said in a voice of the deepest pathos, as he threw the implement out of the window. "What 'ave you done, sir! Missis can't abide 'em." "Missis needn't smoke," said James with a frantic misplaced laugh, and thought the whole matter an excellent joke. But his feelings were very different in the morning, when Mr. Bowls's young man, who operated upon Mr. James's boots, and brought him his hot water to shave that beard which he was so anxiously expecting, handed a note in to Mr. James in bed, in the handwriting of Miss Briggs. "Dear sir," it said, "Miss Crawley has passed an exceedingly disturbed night, owing to the shocking manner in which the house has been polluted by tobacco; Miss Crawley bids me say she regrets that she is too unwell to see you before you go--and above all that she ever induced you to remove from the ale-house, where she is sure you will be much more comfortable during the rest of your stay at Brighton." And herewith honest James's career as a candidate for his aunt's favour ended. He had in fact, and without knowing it, done what he menaced to do. He had fought his cousin Pitt with the gloves. Where meanwhile was he who had been once first favourite for this race for money? Becky and Rawdon, as we have seen, were come together after Waterloo, and were passing the winter of 1815 at Paris in great splendour and gaiety. Rebecca was a good economist, and the price poor Jos Sedley had paid for her two horses was in itself sufficient to keep their little establishment afloat for a year, at the least; there was no occasion to turn into money "my pistols, the same which I shot Captain Marker," or the gold dressing-case, or the cloak lined with sable. Becky had it made into a pelisse for herself, in which she rode in the Bois de Boulogne to the admiration of all: and you should have seen the scene between her and her delighted husband, whom she rejoined after the army had entered Cambray, and when she unsewed herself, and let out of her dress all those watches, knick-knacks, bank-notes, cheques, and valuables, which she had secreted in the wadding, previous to her meditated flight from Brussels! Tufto was charmed, and Rawdon roared with delighted laughter, and swore that she was better than any play he ever saw, by Jove. And the way in which she jockeyed Jos, and which she described with infinite fun, carried up his delight to a pitch of quite insane enthusiasm. He believed in his wife as much as the French soldiers in Napoleon. Her success in Paris was remarkable. All the French ladies voted her charming. She spoke their language admirably. She adopted at once their grace, their liveliness, their manner. Her husband was stupid certainly--all English are stupid--and, besides, a dull husband at Paris is always a point in a lady's favour. He was the heir of the rich and spirituelle Miss Crawley, whose house had been open to so many of the French noblesse during the emigration. They received the colonel's wife in their own hotels--"Why," wrote a great lady to Miss Crawley, who had bought her lace and trinkets at the Duchess's own price, and given her many a dinner during the pinching times after the Revolution--"Why does not our dear Miss come to her nephew and niece, and her attached friends in Paris? All the world raffoles of the charming Mistress and her espiegle beauty. Yes, we see in her the grace, the charm, the wit of our dear friend Miss Crawley! The King took notice of her yesterday at the Tuileries, and we are all jealous of the attention which Monsieur pays her. If you could have seen the spite of a certain stupid Miladi Bareacres (whose eagle-beak and toque and feathers may be seen peering over the heads of all assemblies) when Madame, the Duchess of Angouleme, the august daughter and companion of kings, desired especially to be presented to Mrs. Crawley, as your dear daughter and protegee, and thanked her in the name of France, for all your benevolence towards our unfortunates during their exile! She is of all the societies, of all the balls--of the balls--yes--of the dances, no; and yet how interesting and pretty this fair creature looks surrounded by the homage of the men, and so soon to be a mother! To hear her speak of you, her protectress, her mother, would bring tears to the eyes of ogres. How she loves you! how we all love our admirable, our respectable Miss Crawley!" It is to be feared that this letter of the Parisian great lady did not by any means advance Mrs. Becky's interest with her admirable, her respectable, relative. On the contrary, the fury of the old spinster was beyond bounds, when she found what was Rebecca's situation, and how audaciously she had made use of Miss Crawley's name, to get an entree into Parisian society. Too much shaken in mind and body to compose a letter in the French language in reply to that of her correspondent, she dictated to Briggs a furious answer in her own native tongue, repudiating Mrs. Rawdon Crawley altogether, and warning the public to beware of her as a most artful and dangerous person. But as Madame the Duchess of X--had only been twenty years in England, she did not understand a single word of the language, and contented herself by informing Mrs. Rawdon Crawley at their next meeting, that she had received a charming letter from that chere Mees, and that it was full of benevolent things for Mrs. Crawley, who began seriously to have hopes that the spinster would relent. Meanwhile, she was the gayest and most admired of Englishwomen: and had a little European congress on her reception-night. Prussians and Cossacks, Spanish and English--all the world was at Paris during this famous winter: to have seen the stars and cordons in Rebecca's humble saloon would have made all Baker Street pale with envy. Famous warriors rode by her carriage in the Bois, or crowded her modest little box at the Opera. Rawdon was in the highest spirits. There were no duns in Paris as yet: there were parties every day at Very's or Beauvilliers'; play was plentiful and his luck good. Tufto perhaps was sulky. Mrs. Tufto had come over to Paris at her own invitation, and besides this contretemps, there were a score of generals now round Becky's chair, and she might take her choice of a dozen bouquets when she went to the play. Lady Bareacres and the chiefs of the English society, stupid and irreproachable females, writhed with anguish at the success of the little upstart Becky, whose poisoned jokes quivered and rankled in their chaste breasts. But she had all the men on her side. She fought the women with indomitable courage, and they could not talk scandal in any tongue but their own. So in fetes, pleasures, and prosperity, the winter of 1815-16 passed away with Mrs. Rawdon Crawley, who accommodated herself to polite life as if her ancestors had been people of fashion for centuries past--and who from her wit, talent, and energy, indeed merited a place of honour in Vanity Fair. In the early spring of 1816, Galignani's Journal contained the following announcement in an interesting corner of the paper: "On the 26th of March--the Lady of Lieutenant-Colonel Crawley, of the Life Guards Green--of a son and heir." This event was copied into the London papers, out of which Miss Briggs read the statement to Miss Crawley, at breakfast, at Brighton. The intelligence, expected as it might have been, caused a crisis in the affairs of the Crawley family. The spinster's rage rose to its height, and sending instantly for Pitt, her nephew, and for the Lady Southdown, from Brunswick Square, she requested an immediate celebration of the marriage which had been so long pending between the two families. And she announced that it was her intention to allow the young couple a thousand a year during her lifetime, at the expiration of which the bulk of her property would be settled upon her nephew and her dear niece, Lady Jane Crawley. Waxy came down to ratify the deeds--Lord Southdown gave away his sister--she was married by a Bishop, and not by the Rev. Bartholomew Irons--to the disappointment of the irregular prelate. When they were married, Pitt would have liked to take a hymeneal tour with his bride, as became people of their condition. But the affection of the old lady towards Lady Jane had grown so strong, that she fairly owned she could not part with her favourite. Pitt and his wife came therefore and lived with Miss Crawley: and (greatly to the annoyance of poor Pitt, who conceived himself a most injured character--being subject to the humours of his aunt on one side, and of his mother-in-law on the other). Lady Southdown, from her neighbouring house, reigned over the whole family--Pitt, Lady Jane, Miss Crawley, Briggs, Bowls, Firkin, and all. She pitilessly dosed them with her tracts and her medicine, she dismissed Creamer, she installed Rodgers, and soon stripped Miss Crawley of even the semblance of authority. The poor soul grew so timid that she actually left off bullying Briggs any more, and clung to her niece, more fond and terrified every day. Peace to thee, kind and selfish, vain and generous old heathen!--We shall see thee no more. Let us hope that Lady Jane supported her kindly, and led her with gentle hand out of the busy struggle of Vanity Fair.

Miss Crawley, bored in Brighton, is happy to meet Pitt, Lady Jane, and her mother. The visit goes well, with Pitt mediating between the two bossy old women with a skill "which showed that, had his diplomatic career not been blighted by early neglect, he might have risen to a high rank in his profession" . Miss Crawley loves Lady Jane, who is just naive and dumb enough to be extremely nice and kind to everyone. So Pitt and Jane visit Miss Crawley often, until Mrs. Bute down in the country gets wind of the arrangement and becomes crazily jealous . She and her husband decide to send their son Jim - the only good-looking one of their children - down to Brighton to see whether Miss Crawley would like him. Jim is still in college and so isn't really used to polite society. And being descended from Bute Crawley doesn't help him much in the brains department. He goes down to Brighton with his dog and, after spending a night at an inn, comes to his aunt's house. At first she likes him because he's handsome and kind of awkward, and on top of that she pretends to really, really like him in order to make Pitt uncomfortable. They're a nice, loving family that way - everyone just wants to make each other feel as bad as possible. To really stick it to Pitt, Miss Crawley asks Jim to leave the inn and stay at her house instead. She sends off her butler, Mr. Bowls, to go pay his hotel bill. That night Jim is still charmingly shy at dinner, so after dinner Pitt tries to get him to embarrass himself by getting him totally wasted. Pitt also tells him that Miss Crawley is super-liberal and wants everyone to just do whatever they want in her house. Jim does get wasted, but when they rejoin the ladies, he clams up again. But suddenly, Jim's luck begins to change. Turns out that when he stayed at the inn, he made friends with a bunch of prizefighters and treated them to several rounds of gin. When Bowls went to pay the hotel bill, the innkeeper told him that Jim himself had drunk every one of these gin shots , worried that otherwise Bowls wouldn't pay. Bowls told Briggs about the 18 gins, and she tells Miss Crawley, who is totally scandalized. Mostly she is shocked that Jim drinks gin, which is considered a vulgar, low-class alcohol. If were claret or sherry it would have been OK. In any case, that's strike one. Strike two is that on the second day, Jim loses his shyness. His giant dog attacks Miss Crawley's little lap dog, and he just laughs about it. That night Jim gets totally wasted again after dinner, and this time he tries to be the life of the party. He tells the ladies all about his boxing friends and jokes that he wants to fight Pitt with or without gloves on . Strike three! In his room Jim lights up a tobacco pipe and smokes and smokes and smokes. He thinks he's being very clever because he opens the window, but he's so drunk that he doesn't realize the door of his room is also open. This creates a cross-breeze and blows all the smoke into the house. Miss Crawley is totally grossed out by the smoking, which makes her ill. The next morning Jim gets a note from Bowls asking him to get the heck out of there ASAP. The narrator laughs and says that Jim has gotten his wish of fighting Pitt with his gloves off. And what are Becky and Rawdon up to? Well, Becky is the toast of Paris, meeting the king's official mistress and generally living the high life. And she's pregnant! Rawdon is happy there, too. After a while Miss Crawley reads an announcement in the paper that Becky has given birth to a son. She freaks out, because this son is the only heir to the Crawley family fortune. She demands that Jane and Pitt get married instantly and rewrites her will to leave them all her money. The ceremony takes place on the spot. Pitt wants to go on a honeymoon, but Miss Crawley says she's so attached to Jane that she won't let them go. So now Pitt has to deal with Miss Crawley and Lady Southdown bossing him around even more. Finally, Miss Crawley dies. A moment of silence, everyone.

When Mr. St. John went, it was beginning to snow; the whirling storm continued all night. The next day a keen wind brought fresh and blinding falls; by twilight the valley was drifted up and almost impassable. I had closed my shutter, laid a mat to the door to prevent the snow from blowing in under it, trimmed my fire, and after sitting nearly an hour on the hearth listening to the muffled fury of the tempest, I lit a candle, took down "Marmion," and beginning-- "Day set on Norham's castled steep, And Tweed's fair river broad and deep, And Cheviot's mountains lone; The massive towers, the donjon keep, The flanking walls that round them sweep, In yellow lustre shone"-- I soon forgot storm in music. I heard a noise: the wind, I thought, shook the door. No; it was St. John Rivers, who, lifting the latch, came in out of the frozen hurricane--the howling darkness--and stood before me: the cloak that covered his tall figure all white as a glacier. I was almost in consternation, so little had I expected any guest from the blocked-up vale that night. "Any ill news?" I demanded. "Has anything happened?" "No. How very easily alarmed you are!" he answered, removing his cloak and hanging it up against the door, towards which he again coolly pushed the mat which his entrance had deranged. He stamped the snow from his boots. "I shall sully the purity of your floor," said he, "but you must excuse me for once." Then he approached the fire. "I have had hard work to get here, I assure you," he observed, as he warmed his hands over the flame. "One drift took me up to the waist; happily the snow is quite soft yet." "But why are you come?" I could not forbear saying. "Rather an inhospitable question to put to a visitor; but since you ask it, I answer simply to have a little talk with you; I got tired of my mute books and empty rooms. Besides, since yesterday I have experienced the excitement of a person to whom a tale has been half-told, and who is impatient to hear the sequel." He sat down. I recalled his singular conduct of yesterday, and really I began to fear his wits were touched. If he were insane, however, his was a very cool and collected insanity: I had never seen that handsome-featured face of his look more like chiselled marble than it did just now, as he put aside his snow-wet hair from his forehead and let the firelight shine free on his pale brow and cheek as pale, where it grieved me to discover the hollow trace of care or sorrow now so plainly graved. I waited, expecting he would say something I could at least comprehend; but his hand was now at his chin, his finger on his lip: he was thinking. It struck me that his hand looked wasted like his face. A perhaps uncalled-for gush of pity came over my heart: I was moved to say-- "I wish Diana or Mary would come and live with you: it is too bad that you should be quite alone; and you are recklessly rash about your own health." "Not at all," said he: "I care for myself when necessary. I am well now. What do you see amiss in me?" This was said with a careless, abstracted indifference, which showed that my solicitude was, at least in his opinion, wholly superfluous. I was silenced. He still slowly moved his finger over his upper lip, and still his eye dwelt dreamily on the glowing grate; thinking it urgent to say something, I asked him presently if he felt any cold draught from the door, which was behind him. "No, no!" he responded shortly and somewhat testily. "Well," I reflected, "if you won't talk, you may be still; I'll let you alone now, and return to my book." So I snuffed the candle and resumed the perusal of "Marmion." He soon stirred; my eye was instantly drawn to his movements; he only took out a morocco pocket-book, thence produced a letter, which he read in silence, folded it, put it back, relapsed into meditation. It was vain to try to read with such an inscrutable fixture before me; nor could I, in impatience, consent to be dumb; he might rebuff me if he liked, but talk I would. "Have you heard from Diana and Mary lately?" "Not since the letter I showed you a week ago." "There has not been any change made about your own arrangements? You will not be summoned to leave England sooner than you expected?" "I fear not, indeed: such chance is too good to befall me." Baffled so far, I changed my ground. I bethought myself to talk about the school and my scholars. "Mary Garrett's mother is better, and Mary came back to the school this morning, and I shall have four new girls next week from the Foundry Close--they would have come to-day but for the snow." "Indeed!" "Mr. Oliver pays for two." "Does he?" "He means to give the whole school a treat at Christmas." "I know." "Was it your suggestion?" "No." "Whose, then?" "His daughter's, I think." "It is like her: she is so good-natured." "Yes." Again came the blank of a pause: the clock struck eight strokes. It aroused him; he uncrossed his legs, sat erect, turned to me. "Leave your book a moment, and come a little nearer the fire," he said. Wondering, and of my wonder finding no end, I complied. "Half-an-hour ago," he pursued, "I spoke of my impatience to hear the sequel of a tale: on reflection, I find the matter will be better managed by my assuming the narrator's part, and converting you into a listener. Before commencing, it is but fair to warn you that the story will sound somewhat hackneyed in your ears; but stale details often regain a degree of freshness when they pass through new lips. For the rest, whether trite or novel, it is short. "Twenty years ago, a poor curate--never mind his name at this moment--fell in love with a rich man's daughter; she fell in love with him, and married him, against the advice of all her friends, who consequently disowned her immediately after the wedding. Before two years passed, the rash pair were both dead, and laid quietly side by side under one slab. (I have seen their grave; it formed part of the pavement of a huge churchyard surrounding the grim, soot-black old cathedral of an overgrown manufacturing town in ---shire.) They left a daughter, which, at its very birth, Charity received in her lap--cold as that of the snow-drift I almost stuck fast in to-night. Charity carried the friendless thing to the house of its rich maternal relations; it was reared by an aunt-in- law, called (I come to names now) Mrs. Reed of Gateshead. You start--did you hear a noise? I daresay it is only a rat scrambling along the rafters of the adjoining schoolroom: it was a barn before I had it repaired and altered, and barns are generally haunted by rats.--To proceed. Mrs. Reed kept the orphan ten years: whether it was happy or not with her, I cannot say, never having been told; but at the end of that time she transferred it to a place you know--being no other than Lowood School, where you so long resided yourself. It seems her career there was very honourable: from a pupil, she became a teacher, like yourself--really it strikes me there are parallel points in her history and yours--she left it to be a governess: there, again, your fates were analogous; she undertook the education of the ward of a certain Mr. Rochester." "Mr. Rivers!" I interrupted. "I can guess your feelings," he said, "but restrain them for a while: I have nearly finished; hear me to the end. Of Mr. Rochester's character I know nothing, but the one fact that he professed to offer honourable marriage to this young girl, and that at the very altar she discovered he had a wife yet alive, though a lunatic. What his subsequent conduct and proposals were is a matter of pure conjecture; but when an event transpired which rendered inquiry after the governess necessary, it was discovered she was gone--no one could tell when, where, or how. She had left Thornfield Hall in the night; every research after her course had been vain: the country had been scoured far and wide; no vestige of information could be gathered respecting her. Yet that she should be found is become a matter of serious urgency: advertisements have been put in all the papers; I myself have received a letter from one Mr. Briggs, a solicitor, communicating the details I have just imparted. Is it not an odd tale?" "Just tell me this," said I, "and since you know so much, you surely can tell it me--what of Mr. Rochester? How and where is he? What is he doing? Is he well?" "I am ignorant of all concerning Mr. Rochester: the letter never mentions him but to narrate the fraudulent and illegal attempt I have adverted to. You should rather ask the name of the governess--the nature of the event which requires her appearance." "Did no one go to Thornfield Hall, then? Did no one see Mr. Rochester?" "I suppose not." "But they wrote to him?" "Of course." "And what did he say? Who has his letters?" "Mr. Briggs intimates that the answer to his application was not from Mr. Rochester, but from a lady: it is signed 'Alice Fairfax.'" I felt cold and dismayed: my worst fears then were probably true: he had in all probability left England and rushed in reckless desperation to some former haunt on the Continent. And what opiate for his severe sufferings--what object for his strong passions--had he sought there? I dared not answer the question. Oh, my poor master--once almost my husband--whom I had often called "my dear Edward!" "He must have been a bad man," observed Mr. Rivers. "You don't know him--don't pronounce an opinion upon him," I said, with warmth. "Very well," he answered quietly: "and indeed my head is otherwise occupied than with him: I have my tale to finish. Since you won't ask the governess's name, I must tell it of my own accord. Stay! I have it here--it is always more satisfactory to see important points written down, fairly committed to black and white." And the pocket-book was again deliberately produced, opened, sought through; from one of its compartments was extracted a shabby slip of paper, hastily torn off: I recognised in its texture and its stains of ultra-marine, and lake, and vermillion, the ravished margin of the portrait-cover. He got up, held it close to my eyes: and I read, traced in Indian ink, in my own handwriting, the words "JANE EYRE"--the work doubtless of some moment of abstraction. "Briggs wrote to me of a Jane Eyre:" he said, "the advertisements demanded a Jane Eyre: I knew a Jane Elliott.--I confess I had my suspicions, but it was only yesterday afternoon they were at once resolved into certainty. You own the name and renounce the _alias_?" "Yes--yes; but where is Mr. Briggs? He perhaps knows more of Mr. Rochester than you do." "Briggs is in London. I should doubt his knowing anything at all about Mr. Rochester; it is not in Mr. Rochester he is interested. Meantime, you forget essential points in pursuing trifles: you do not inquire why Mr. Briggs sought after you--what he wanted with you." "Well, what did he want?" "Merely to tell you that your uncle, Mr. Eyre of Madeira, is dead; that he has left you all his property, and that you are now rich--merely that--nothing more." "I!--rich?" "Yes, you, rich--quite an heiress." Silence succeeded. "You must prove your identity of course," resumed St. John presently: "a step which will offer no difficulties; you can then enter on immediate possession. Your fortune is vested in the English funds; Briggs has the will and the necessary documents." Here was a new card turned up! It is a fine thing, reader, to be lifted in a moment from indigence to wealth--a very fine thing; but not a matter one can comprehend, or consequently enjoy, all at once. And then there are other chances in life far more thrilling and rapture-giving: _this_ is solid, an affair of the actual world, nothing ideal about it: all its associations are solid and sober, and its manifestations are the same. One does not jump, and spring, and shout hurrah! at hearing one has got a fortune; one begins to consider responsibilities, and to ponder business; on a base of steady satisfaction rise certain grave cares, and we contain ourselves, and brood over our bliss with a solemn brow. Besides, the words Legacy, Bequest, go side by side with the words, Death, Funeral. My uncle I had heard was dead--my only relative; ever since being made aware of his existence, I had cherished the hope of one day seeing him: now, I never should. And then this money came only to me: not to me and a rejoicing family, but to my isolated self. It was a grand boon doubtless; and independence would be glorious--yes, I felt that--that thought swelled my heart. "You unbend your forehead at last," said Mr. Rivers. "I thought Medusa had looked at you, and that you were turning to stone. Perhaps now you will ask how much you are worth?" "How much am I worth?" "Oh, a trifle! Nothing of course to speak of--twenty thousand pounds, I think they say--but what is that?" "Twenty thousand pounds?" Here was a new stunner--I had been calculating on four or five thousand. This news actually took my breath for a moment: Mr. St. John, whom I had never heard laugh before, laughed now. "Well," said he, "if you had committed a murder, and I had told you your crime was discovered, you could scarcely look more aghast." "It is a large sum--don't you think there is a mistake?" "No mistake at all." "Perhaps you have read the figures wrong--it may be two thousand!" "It is written in letters, not figures,--twenty thousand." I again felt rather like an individual of but average gastronomical powers sitting down to feast alone at a table spread with provisions for a hundred. Mr. Rivers rose now and put his cloak on. "If it were not such a very wild night," he said, "I would send Hannah down to keep you company: you look too desperately miserable to be left alone. But Hannah, poor woman! could not stride the drifts so well as I: her legs are not quite so long: so I must e'en leave you to your sorrows. Good-night." He was lifting the latch: a sudden thought occurred to me. "Stop one minute!" I cried. "Well?" "It puzzles me to know why Mr. Briggs wrote to you about me; or how he knew you, or could fancy that you, living in such an out-of-the-way place, had the power to aid in my discovery." "Oh! I am a clergyman," he said; "and the clergy are often appealed to about odd matters." Again the latch rattled. "No; that does not satisfy me!" I exclaimed: and indeed there was something in the hasty and unexplanatory reply which, instead of allaying, piqued my curiosity more than ever. "It is a very strange piece of business," I added; "I must know more about it." "Another time." "No; to-night!--to-night!" and as he turned from the door, I placed myself between it and him. He looked rather embarrassed. "You certainly shall not go till you have told me all," I said. "I would rather not just now." "You shall!--you must!" "I would rather Diana or Mary informed you." Of course these objections wrought my eagerness to a climax: gratified it must be, and that without delay; and I told him so. "But I apprised you that I was a hard man," said he, "difficult to persuade." "And I am a hard woman,--impossible to put off." {And I am a hard woman,--impossible to put off: p369.jpg} "And then," he pursued, "I am cold: no fervour infects me." "Whereas I am hot, and fire dissolves ice. The blaze there has thawed all the snow from your cloak; by the same token, it has streamed on to my floor, and made it like a trampled street. As you hope ever to be forgiven, Mr. Rivers, the high crime and misdemeanour of spoiling a sanded kitchen, tell me what I wish to know." "Well, then," he said, "I yield; if not to your earnestness, to your perseverance: as stone is worn by continual dropping. Besides, you must know some day,--as well now as later. Your name is Jane Eyre?" "Of course: that was all settled before." "You are not, perhaps, aware that I am your namesake?--that I was christened St. John Eyre Rivers?" "No, indeed! I remember now seeing the letter E. comprised in your initials written in books you have at different times lent me; but I never asked for what name it stood. But what then? Surely--" I stopped: I could not trust myself to entertain, much less to express, the thought that rushed upon me--that embodied itself,--that, in a second, stood out a strong, solid probability. Circumstances knit themselves, fitted themselves, shot into order: the chain that had been lying hitherto a formless lump of links was drawn out straight,--every ring was perfect, the connection complete. I knew, by instinct, how the matter stood, before St. John had said another word; but I cannot expect the reader to have the same intuitive perception, so I must repeat his explanation. "My mother's name was Eyre; she had two brothers; one a clergyman, who married Miss Jane Reed, of Gateshead; the other, John Eyre, Esq., merchant, late of Funchal, Madeira. Mr. Briggs, being Mr. Eyre's solicitor, wrote to us last August to inform us of our uncle's death, and to say that he had left his property to his brother the clergyman's orphan daughter, overlooking us, in consequence of a quarrel, never forgiven, between him and my father. He wrote again a few weeks since, to intimate that the heiress was lost, and asking if we knew anything of her. A name casually written on a slip of paper has enabled me to find her out. You know the rest." Again he was going, but I set my back against the door. "Do let me speak," I said; "let me have one moment to draw breath and reflect." I paused--he stood before me, hat in hand, looking composed enough. I resumed-- "Your mother was my father's sister?" "Yes." "My aunt, consequently?" He bowed. "My uncle John was your uncle John? You, Diana, and Mary are his sister's children, as I am his brother's child?" "Undeniably." "You three, then, are my cousins; half our blood on each side flows from the same source?" "We are cousins; yes." I surveyed him. It seemed I had found a brother: one I could be proud of,--one I could love; and two sisters, whose qualities were such, that, when I knew them but as mere strangers, they had inspired me with genuine affection and admiration. The two girls, on whom, kneeling down on the wet ground, and looking through the low, latticed window of Moor House kitchen, I had gazed with so bitter a mixture of interest and despair, were my near kinswomen; and the young and stately gentleman who had found me almost dying at his threshold was my blood relation. Glorious discovery to a lonely wretch! This was wealth indeed!--wealth to the heart!--a mine of pure, genial affections. This was a blessing, bright, vivid, and exhilarating;--not like the ponderous gift of gold: rich and welcome enough in its way, but sobering from its weight. I now clapped my hands in sudden joy--my pulse bounded, my veins thrilled. "Oh, I am glad!--I am glad!" I exclaimed. St. John smiled. "Did I not say you neglected essential points to pursue trifles?" he asked. "You were serious when I told you you had got a fortune; and now, for a matter of no moment, you are excited." "What can you mean? It may be of no moment to you; you have sisters and don't care for a cousin; but I had nobody; and now three relations,--or two, if you don't choose to be counted,--are born into my world full-grown. I say again, I am glad!" I walked fast through the room: I stopped, half suffocated with the thoughts that rose faster than I could receive, comprehend, settle them:--thoughts of what might, could, would, and should be, and that ere long. I looked at the blank wall: it seemed a sky thick with ascending stars,--every one lit me to a purpose or delight. Those who had saved my life, whom, till this hour, I had loved barrenly, I could now benefit. They were under a yoke,--I could free them: they were scattered,--I could reunite them: the independence, the affluence which was mine, might be theirs too. Were we not four? Twenty thousand pounds shared equally would be five thousand each, justice--enough and to spare: justice would be done,--mutual happiness secured. Now the wealth did not weigh on me: now it was not a mere bequest of coin,--it was a legacy of life, hope, enjoyment. How I looked while these ideas were taking my spirit by storm, I cannot tell; but I perceived soon that Mr. Rivers had placed a chair behind me, and was gently attempting to make me sit down on it. He also advised me to be composed; I scorned the insinuation of helplessness and distraction, shook off his hand, and began to walk about again. "Write to Diana and Mary to-morrow," I said, "and tell them to come home directly. Diana said they would both consider themselves rich with a thousand pounds, so with five thousand they will do very well." "Tell me where I can get you a glass of water," said St. John; "you must really make an effort to tranquillise your feelings." "Nonsense! and what sort of an effect will the bequest have on you? Will it keep you in England, induce you to marry Miss Oliver, and settle down like an ordinary mortal?" "You wander: your head becomes confused. I have been too abrupt in communicating the news; it has excited you beyond your strength." "Mr. Rivers! you quite put me out of patience: I am rational enough; it is you who misunderstand, or rather who affect to misunderstand." "Perhaps, if you explained yourself a little more fully, I should comprehend better." "Explain! What is there to explain? You cannot fail to see that twenty thousand pounds, the sum in question, divided equally between the nephew and three nieces of our uncle, will give five thousand to each? What I want is, that you should write to your sisters and tell them of the fortune that has accrued to them." "To you, you mean." "I have intimated my view of the case: I am incapable of taking any other. I am not brutally selfish, blindly unjust, or fiendishly ungrateful. Besides, I am resolved I will have a home and connections. I like Moor House, and I will live at Moor House; I like Diana and Mary, and I will attach myself for life to Diana and Mary. It would please and benefit me to have five thousand pounds; it would torment and oppress me to have twenty thousand; which, moreover, could never be mine in justice, though it might in law. I abandon to you, then, what is absolutely superfluous to me. Let there be no opposition, and no discussion about it; let us agree amongst each other, and decide the point at once." "This is acting on first impulses; you must take days to consider such a matter, ere your word can be regarded as valid." "Oh! if all you doubt is my sincerity, I am easy: you see the justice of the case?" "I _do_ see a certain justice; but it is contrary to all custom. Besides, the entire fortune is your right: my uncle gained it by his own efforts; he was free to leave it to whom he would: he left it to you. After all, justice permits you to keep it: you may, with a clear conscience, consider it absolutely your own." "With me," said I, "it is fully as much a matter of feeling as of conscience: I must indulge my feelings; I so seldom have had an opportunity of doing so. Were you to argue, object, and annoy me for a year, I could not forego the delicious pleasure of which I have caught a glimpse--that of repaying, in part, a mighty obligation, and winning to myself lifelong friends." "You think so now," rejoined St. John, "because you do not know what it is to possess, nor consequently to enjoy wealth: you cannot form a notion of the importance twenty thousand pounds would give you; of the place it would enable you to take in society; of the prospects it would open to you: you cannot--" "And you," I interrupted, "cannot at all imagine the craving I have for fraternal and sisterly love. I never had a home, I never had brothers or sisters; I must and will have them now: you are not reluctant to admit me and own me, are you?" "Jane, I will be your brother--my sisters will be your sisters--without stipulating for this sacrifice of your just rights." "Brother? Yes; at the distance of a thousand leagues! Sisters? Yes; slaving amongst strangers! I, wealthy--gorged with gold I never earned and do not merit! You, penniless! Famous equality and fraternisation! Close union! Intimate attachment!" "But, Jane, your aspirations after family ties and domestic happiness may be realised otherwise than by the means you contemplate: you may marry." "Nonsense, again! Marry! I don't want to marry, and never shall marry." "That is saying too much: such hazardous affirmations are a proof of the excitement under which you labour." "It is not saying too much: I know what I feel, and how averse are my inclinations to the bare thought of marriage. No one would take me for love; and I will not be regarded in the light of a mere money speculation. And I do not want a stranger--unsympathising, alien, different from me; I want my kindred: those with whom I have full fellow- feeling. Say again you will be my brother: when you uttered the words I was satisfied, happy; repeat them, if you can, repeat them sincerely." "I think I can. I know I have always loved my own sisters; and I know on what my affection for them is grounded,--respect for their worth and admiration of their talents. You too have principle and mind: your tastes and habits resemble Diana's and Mary's; your presence is always agreeable to me; in your conversation I have already for some time found a salutary solace. I feel I can easily and naturally make room in my heart for you, as my third and youngest sister." "Thank you: that contents me for to-night. Now you had better go; for if you stay longer, you will perhaps irritate me afresh by some mistrustful scruple." "And the school, Miss Eyre? It must now be shut up, I suppose?" "No. I will retain my post of mistress till you get a substitute." He smiled approbation: we shook hands, and he took leave. I need not narrate in detail the further struggles I had, and arguments I used, to get matters regarding the legacy settled as I wished. My task was a very hard one; but, as I was absolutely resolved--as my cousins saw at length that my mind was really and immutably fixed on making a just division of the property--as they must in their own hearts have felt the equity of the intention; and must, besides, have been innately conscious that in my place they would have done precisely what I wished to do--they yielded at length so far as to consent to put the affair to arbitration. The judges chosen were Mr. Oliver and an able lawyer: both coincided in my opinion: I carried my point. The instruments of transfer were drawn out: St. John, Diana, Mary, and I, each became possessed of a competency.

While a snowstorm whirls outside, Jane sits reading Marmion. Suddenly, she hears a noise at the door: it's St. John. After a long delay, he tells Jane's own story, ending by saying that finding Jane Eyre has become a matter of serious urgency. St. John explains that he discovered her true identity from the paper he tore from her art supplies, which had the name Jane Eyre inscribed on it. The reason everyone has been looking for Jane is that her uncle, Mr. Eyre of Madeira, is dead and has left his entire fortune to her, so she is now rich. Jane is astonished to learn she has inherited twenty thousand pounds and wishes she had a family to share it with. As St. John prepares to leave, Jane asks why Mr. Briggs, Eyre's attorney, sent him a letter inquiring about Jane's whereabouts. St. John completes the story: his full name is St. John Eyre Rivers, so the Rivers are Jane's cousins. Jane feels she's found a brother and two sisters to love and admire; relatives, in her opinion, are real wealth, "wealth to the heart." Now she has the opportunity to benefit those who saved her life. She decides to share her legacy with them, to divide it into four pieces, making five thousand pounds each. That way, justice will be done, and Jane will have a home and family. St. John reminds her of the lofty place should could take in society with twenty thousand pounds, but Jane insists that she'd rather have love.

CHAPTER XXIII. IN WHICH THE POWERFUL EFFECT OF NATURAL SCENERY IS EVINCED IN THE CASE OF THE MISSOURIAN, WHO, IN VIEW OF THE REGION ROUND-ABOUT CAIRO, HAS A RETURN OF HIS CHILLY FIT. At Cairo, the old established firm of Fever & Ague is still settling up its unfinished business; that Creole grave-digger, Yellow Jack--his hand at the mattock and spade has not lost its cunning; while Don Saturninus Typhus taking his constitutional with Death, Calvin Edson and three undertakers, in the morass, snuffs up the mephitic breeze with zest. In the dank twilight, fanned with mosquitoes, and sparkling with fire-flies, the boat now lies before Cairo. She has landed certain passengers, and tarries for the coming of expected ones. Leaning over the rail on the inshore side, the Missourian eyes through the dubious medium that swampy and squalid domain; and over it audibly mumbles his cynical mind to himself, as Apermantus' dog may have mumbled his bone. He bethinks him that the man with the brass-plate was to land on this villainous bank, and for that cause, if no other, begins to suspect him. Like one beginning to rouse himself from a dose of chloroform treacherously given, he half divines, too, that he, the philosopher, had unwittingly been betrayed into being an unphilosophical dupe. To what vicissitudes of light and shade is man subject! He ponders the mystery of human subjectivity in general. He thinks he perceives with Crossbones, his favorite author, that, as one may wake up well in the morning, very well, indeed, and brisk as a buck, I thank you, but ere bed-time get under the weather, there is no telling how--so one may wake up wise, and slow of assent, very wise and very slow, I assure you, and for all that, before night, by like trick in the atmosphere, be left in the lurch a ninny. Health and wisdom equally precious, and equally little as unfluctuating possessions to be relied on. But where was slipped in the entering wedge? Philosophy, knowledge, experience--were those trusty knights of the castle recreant? No, but unbeknown to them, the enemy stole on the castle's south side, its genial one, where Suspicion, the warder, parleyed. In fine, his too indulgent, too artless and companionable nature betrayed him. Admonished by which, he thinks he must be a little splenetic in his intercourse henceforth. He revolves the crafty process of sociable chat, by which, as he fancies, the man with the brass-plate wormed into him, and made such a fool of him as insensibly to persuade him to waive, in his exceptional case, that general law of distrust systematically applied to the race. He revolves, but cannot comprehend, the operation, still less the operator. Was the man a trickster, it must be more for the love than the lucre. Two or three dirty dollars the motive to so many nice wiles? And yet how full of mean needs his seeming. Before his mental vision the person of that threadbare Talleyrand, that impoverished Machiavelli, that seedy Rosicrucian--for something of all these he vaguely deems him--passes now in puzzled review. Fain, in his disfavor, would he make out a logical case. The doctrine of analogies recurs. Fallacious enough doctrine when wielded against one's prejudices, but in corroboration of cherished suspicions not without likelihood. Analogically, he couples the slanting cut of the equivocator's coat-tails with the sinister cast in his eye; he weighs slyboot's sleek speech in the light imparted by the oblique import of the smooth slope of his worn boot-heels; the insinuator's undulating flunkyisms dovetail into those of the flunky beast that windeth his way on his belly. From these uncordial reveries he is roused by a cordial slap on the shoulder, accompanied by a spicy volume of tobacco-smoke, out of which came a voice, sweet as a seraph's: "A penny for your thoughts, my fine fellow."

Taking in the scenery of Cairo, Illinois, Pitch considers it a hotbed of disease and corruption. PIO had mentioned this was his stop. This makes Pitch associate disease and corruption with PIO. The association makes Pitch suspect that he was swindled. Pitch muses over how this occurred and thinks about PIO's threadbare outfit, jovial but slippery words, and sly facial expressions. In the throes of these unhappy thoughts, a stranger comes up to Pitch and offers the metaphorical penny to know what his thoughts are.

[HIERONIMO's house.] Enter HIERONIMO. HIER. Where shall I run to breath abroad my woes,-- My woes whose weight hath wearied the earth, Or mine exclaims that have surcharg'd the air With ceaseless plaints for my deceased son? The blust'ring winds, conspiring with my words, At my lament have mov'd to leafless trees, Disrob'd the meadows of their flower'd green, Made mountains marsh with spring-tides of my tears, And broken through the brazen gates of hell; Yet still tormented is my tortur'd soul With broken sighs and restless passions, That, winged, mount, and hovering in the air, Beat at the windows of the brightest heav'ns, Soliciting for justice and revenge. But they are plac'd in those empyreal heights, Where, countermur'd with walls of diamond, I find the place impregnable, and they Resist my woes and give my words no way. Enter HANGMAN with a letter. HANG. O Lord, sir! God bless you, sir! The man, sir,-- Petergade, sir: he that was so full of merry conceits-- HIER. Well, what of him? HANG. O Lord, sir! he went the wrong way; the fellow had a fair commission to the contrary. Sir, here is his passport, I pray you, sir; we have done him wrong. HIERO. I warrant thee; give it me. HANG. You will stand between the gallows and me? HIERO. Aye, aye! HANG. I thank your lord's worship. Exit HANGMAN. HIERO. And yet, though somewhat nearer me concerns I will, to ease the grief that I sustain, Take truce with sorrow while I read on this. [Reads] "My lord, I writ, as mine extremes requir'd, That you would labour my delivery: If you neglect, my life is desperate, And in my death I shall reveal the troth. You know, my lord, I slew him for your sake, And was confed'rate with the prince and you; Won by rewards and hopeful promises, I holp to murder Don Horatio too."-- Holp he to murder mine Horatio? And actors in th' accursed tragedy Wast thou, Lorenzo? Balthazar and thou, Of whom my son, my son deserv'd so well? What have I heard? what have mine eyes beheld? O sacred heav'ns, may it come to pass That such a monstrous and detested deed, So closely smoother'd and so long conceal'd, Shall thus by this be venged or reveal'd? Now see I what I durst not then suspect, That Bel-imperia's letter was not feign'd, Nor feigned she, though falsely they have wrong'd Both her, myself, Horatio and themselves. Now may I make compare 'twixt hers and this Of every accident. I ne'er could find Till now, and now I feelingly perceive, They did what Heav'n unpunish'd should not leave. O false Lorenzo! are these thy flattering looks? Is this the honour that thou didst my son? And, Balthazar,--bane to thy soul and me!-- What this the ransom he reserv'd for thee? Woe to the cause of these constrained wars! Woe to thy baseness and captivity! Woe to thy birth, thy body and thy soul, Thy cursed father, and thy conquer'd self! And bann'd with bitter execrations be The day and place where he did pity thee! But wherefore waste I mine unfruitful words, When naught but blood will satisfy my woes? I will go plain me to my lord the king, And cry aloud for justice through the court, Wearing the flints with these my wither'd feet, And either purchase justice by entreats Or tire them all with my revenging threats. Exit.

Hieronimo is once again alone, deploring the weight of his sufferance. His "tortured soul" has so far has been unable to reach the "empyreal heights" of justice and revenge. The hangman enters frantically with a letter in hand, claiming that they should not have killed Pedringano. Hieronimo sends him away with a promise to protect him from harm and opens the letter: Pedringano has written his final words to Lorenzo, threatening to reveal the truth before he is hanged. From the letter, Hieronimo deduces that it was Lorenzo and Balthazar who murdered his son. He now realizes the truth behind Bellimperia's letter and resolves to demand justice in front of the King

The Same Subject Continued (Concerning Dangers From Foreign Force and Influence) For the Independent Journal. Saturday, November 10, 1787 JAY To the People of the State of New York: QUEEN ANNE, in her letter of the 1st July, 1706, to the Scotch Parliament, makes some observations on the importance of the UNION then forming between England and Scotland, which merit our attention. I shall present the public with one or two extracts from it: "An entire and perfect union will be the solid foundation of lasting peace: It will secure your religion, liberty, and property; remove the animosities amongst yourselves, and the jealousies and differences betwixt our two kingdoms. It must increase your strength, riches, and trade; and by this union the whole island, being joined in affection and free from all apprehensions of different interest, will be ENABLED TO RESIST ALL ITS ENEMIES." "We most earnestly recommend to you calmness and unanimity in this great and weighty affair, that the union may be brought to a happy conclusion, being the only EFFECTUAL way to secure our present and future happiness, and disappoint the designs of our and your enemies, who will doubtless, on this occasion, USE THEIR UTMOST ENDEAVORS TO PREVENT OR DELAY THIS UNION." It was remarked in the preceding paper, that weakness and divisions at home would invite dangers from abroad; and that nothing would tend more to secure us from them than union, strength, and good government within ourselves. This subject is copious and cannot easily be exhausted. The history of Great Britain is the one with which we are in general the best acquainted, and it gives us many useful lessons. We may profit by their experience without paying the price which it cost them. Although it seems obvious to common sense that the people of such an island should be but one nation, yet we find that they were for ages divided into three, and that those three were almost constantly embroiled in quarrels and wars with one another. Notwithstanding their true interest with respect to the continental nations was really the same, yet by the arts and policy and practices of those nations, their mutual jealousies were perpetually kept inflamed, and for a long series of years they were far more inconvenient and troublesome than they were useful and assisting to each other. Should the people of America divide themselves into three or four nations, would not the same thing happen? Would not similar jealousies arise, and be in like manner cherished? Instead of their being "joined in affection" and free from all apprehension of different "interests," envy and jealousy would soon extinguish confidence and affection, and the partial interests of each confederacy, instead of the general interests of all America, would be the only objects of their policy and pursuits. Hence, like most other BORDERING nations, they would always be either involved in disputes and war, or live in the constant apprehension of them. The most sanguine advocates for three or four confederacies cannot reasonably suppose that they would long remain exactly on an equal footing in point of strength, even if it was possible to form them so at first; but, admitting that to be practicable, yet what human contrivance can secure the continuance of such equality? Independent of those local circumstances which tend to beget and increase power in one part and to impede its progress in another, we must advert to the effects of that superior policy and good management which would probably distinguish the government of one above the rest, and by which their relative equality in strength and consideration would be destroyed. For it cannot be presumed that the same degree of sound policy, prudence, and foresight would uniformly be observed by each of these confederacies for a long succession of years. Whenever, and from whatever causes, it might happen, and happen it would, that any one of these nations or confederacies should rise on the scale of political importance much above the degree of her neighbors, that moment would those neighbors behold her with envy and with fear. Both those passions would lead them to countenance, if not to promote, whatever might promise to diminish her importance; and would also restrain them from measures calculated to advance or even to secure her prosperity. Much time would not be necessary to enable her to discern these unfriendly dispositions. She would soon begin, not only to lose confidence in her neighbors, but also to feel a disposition equally unfavorable to them. Distrust naturally creates distrust, and by nothing is good-will and kind conduct more speedily changed than by invidious jealousies and uncandid imputations, whether expressed or implied. The North is generally the region of strength, and many local circumstances render it probable that the most Northern of the proposed confederacies would, at a period not very distant, be unquestionably more formidable than any of the others. No sooner would this become evident than the NORTHERN HIVE would excite the same ideas and sensations in the more southern parts of America which it formerly did in the southern parts of Europe. Nor does it appear to be a rash conjecture that its young swarms might often be tempted to gather honey in the more blooming fields and milder air of their luxurious and more delicate neighbors. They who well consider the history of similar divisions and confederacies will find abundant reason to apprehend that those in contemplation would in no other sense be neighbors than as they would be borderers; that they would neither love nor trust one another, but on the contrary would be a prey to discord, jealousy, and mutual injuries; in short, that they would place us exactly in the situations in which some nations doubtless wish to see us, viz., FORMIDABLE ONLY TO EACH OTHER. From these considerations it appears that those gentlemen are greatly mistaken who suppose that alliances offensive and defensive might be formed between these confederacies, and would produce that combination and union of wills of arms and of resources, which would be necessary to put and keep them in a formidable state of defense against foreign enemies. When did the independent states, into which Britain and Spain were formerly divided, combine in such alliance, or unite their forces against a foreign enemy? The proposed confederacies will be DISTINCT NATIONS. Each of them would have its commerce with foreigners to regulate by distinct treaties; and as their productions and commodities are different and proper for different markets, so would those treaties be essentially different. Different commercial concerns must create different interests, and of course different degrees of political attachment to and connection with different foreign nations. Hence it might and probably would happen that the foreign nation with whom the SOUTHERN confederacy might be at war would be the one with whom the NORTHERN confederacy would be the most desirous of preserving peace and friendship. An alliance so contrary to their immediate interest would not therefore be easy to form, nor, if formed, would it be observed and fulfilled with perfect good faith. Nay, it is far more probable that in America, as in Europe, neighboring nations, acting under the impulse of opposite interests and unfriendly passions, would frequently be found taking different sides. Considering our distance from Europe, it would be more natural for these confederacies to apprehend danger from one another than from distant nations, and therefore that each of them should be more desirous to guard against the others by the aid of foreign alliances, than to guard against foreign dangers by alliances between themselves. And here let us not forget how much more easy it is to receive foreign fleets into our ports, and foreign armies into our country, than it is to persuade or compel them to depart. How many conquests did the Romans and others make in the characters of allies, and what innovations did they under the same character introduce into the governments of those whom they pretended to protect. Let candid men judge, then, whether the division of America into any given number of independent sovereignties would tend to secure us against the hostilities and improper interference of foreign nations. PUBLIUS

John Jay continues his argument against dividing the U.S. into multiple independent sovereign states in this paper. Drawing on examples from British history, Jay argues that if America were divided into three or four nations, then it would be constantly beset by jealousies, tensions, disputes, and war. He argues that these different American nations would inevitably reach different levels of power and progress. This would lead to envy, fear, and destructive competition. The different nations would furthermore have different commercial concerns, which would, in turn, lead to different interests. These differences would likely result in the American nations forming different alliances with foreign powers, culminating perhaps in a situation in which one American nation would go to war with one of another American nation's allies.

He went to see Madame Merle on the morrow, and to his surprise she let him off rather easily. But she made him promise that he would stop there till something should have been decided. Mr. Osmond had had higher expectations; it was very true that as he had no intention of giving his daughter a portion such expectations were open to criticism or even, if one would, to ridicule. But she would advise Mr. Rosier not to take that tone; if he would possess his soul in patience he might arrive at his felicity. Mr. Osmond was not favourable to his suit, but it wouldn't be a miracle if he should gradually come round. Pansy would never defy her father, he might depend on that; so nothing was to be gained by precipitation. Mr. Osmond needed to accustom his mind to an offer of a sort that he had not hitherto entertained, and this result must come of itself--it was useless to try to force it. Rosier remarked that his own situation would be in the meanwhile the most uncomfortable in the world, and Madame Merle assured him that she felt for him. But, as she justly declared, one couldn't have everything one wanted; she had learned that lesson for herself. There would be no use in his writing to Gilbert Osmond, who had charged her to tell him as much. He wished the matter dropped for a few weeks and would himself write when he should have anything to communicate that it might please Mr. Rosier to hear. "He doesn't like your having spoken to Pansy, Ah, he doesn't like it at all," said Madame Merle. "I'm perfectly willing to give him a chance to tell me so!" "If you do that he'll tell you more than you care to hear. Go to the house, for the next month, as little as possible, and leave the rest to me." "As little as possible? Who's to measure the possibility?" "Let me measure it. Go on Thursday evenings with the rest of the world, but don't go at all at odd times, and don't fret about Pansy. I'll see that she understands everything. She's a calm little nature; she'll take it quietly." Edward Rosier fretted about Pansy a good deal, but he did as he was advised, and awaited another Thursday evening before returning to Palazzo Roccanera. There had been a party at dinner, so that though he went early the company was already tolerably numerous. Osmond, as usual, was in the first room, near the fire, staring straight at the door, so that, not to be distinctly uncivil, Rosier had to go and speak to him. "I'm glad that you can take a hint," Pansy's father said, slightly closing his keen, conscious eyes. "I take no hints. But I took a message, as I supposed it to be." "You took it? Where did you take it?" It seemed to poor Rosier he was being insulted, and he waited a moment, asking himself how much a true lover ought to submit to. "Madame Merle gave me, as I understood it, a message from you--to the effect that you declined to give me the opportunity I desire, the opportunity to explain my wishes to you." And he flattered himself he spoke rather sternly. "I don't see what Madame Merle has to do with it. Why did you apply to Madame Merle?" "I asked her for an opinion--for nothing more. I did so because she had seemed to me to know you very well." "She doesn't know me so well as she thinks," said Osmond. "I'm sorry for that, because she has given me some little ground for hope." Osmond stared into the fire a moment. "I set a great price on my daughter." "You can't set a higher one than I do. Don't I prove it by wishing to marry her?" "I wish to marry her very well," Osmond went on with a dry impertinence which, in another mood, poor Rosier would have admired. "Of course I pretend she'd marry well in marrying me. She couldn't marry a man who loves her more--or whom, I may venture to add, she loves more." "I'm not bound to accept your theories as to whom my daughter loves"--and Osmond looked up with a quick, cold smile. "I'm not theorising. Your daughter has spoken." "Not to me," Osmond continued, now bending forward a little and dropping his eyes to his boot-toes. "I have her promise, sir!" cried Rosier with the sharpness of exasperation. As their voices had been pitched very low before, such a note attracted some attention from the company. Osmond waited till this little movement had subsided; then he said, all undisturbed: "I think she has no recollection of having given it." They had been standing with their faces to the fire, and after he had uttered these last words the master of the house turned round again to the room. Before Rosier had time to reply he perceived that a gentleman--a stranger--had just come in, unannounced, according to the Roman custom, and was about to present himself to his host. The latter smiled blandly, but somewhat blankly; the visitor had a handsome face and a large, fair beard, and was evidently an Englishman. "You apparently don't recognise me," he said with a smile that expressed more than Osmond's. "Ah yes, now I do. I expected so little to see you." Rosier departed and went in direct pursuit of Pansy. He sought her, as usual, in the neighbouring room, but he again encountered Mrs. Osmond in his path. He gave his hostess no greeting--he was too righteously indignant, but said to her crudely: "Your husband's awfully cold-blooded." She gave the same mystical smile he had noticed before. "You can't expect every one to be as hot as yourself." "I don't pretend to be cold, but I'm cool. What has he been doing to his daughter?" "I've no idea." "Don't you take any interest?" Rosier demanded with his sense that she too was irritating. For a moment she answered nothing; then, "No!" she said abruptly and with a quickened light in her eyes which directly contradicted the word. "Pardon me if I don't believe that. Where's Miss Osmond?" "In the corner, making tea. Please leave her there." Rosier instantly discovered his friend, who had been hidden by intervening groups. He watched her, but her own attention was entirely given to her occupation. "What on earth has he done to her?" he asked again imploringly. "He declares to me she has given me up." "She has not given you up," Isabel said in a low tone and without looking at him. "Ah, thank you for that! Now I'll leave her alone as long as you think proper!" He had hardly spoken when he saw her change colour, and became aware that Osmond was coming toward her accompanied by the gentleman who had just entered. He judged the latter, in spite of the advantage of good looks and evident social experience, a little embarrassed. "Isabel," said her husband, "I bring you an old friend." Mrs. Osmond's face, though it wore a smile, was, like her old friend's, not perfectly confident. "I'm very happy to see Lord Warburton," she said. Rosier turned away and, now that his talk with her had been interrupted, felt absolved from the little pledge he had just taken. He had a quick impression that Mrs. Osmond wouldn't notice what he did. Isabel in fact, to do him justice, for some time quite ceased to observe him. She had been startled; she hardly knew if she felt a pleasure or a pain. Lord Warburton, however, now that he was face to face with her, was plainly quite sure of his own sense of the matter; though his grey eyes had still their fine original property of keeping recognition and attestation strictly sincere. He was "heavier" than of yore and looked older; he stood there very solidly and sensibly. "I suppose you didn't expect to see me," he said; "I've but just arrived. Literally, I only got here this evening. You see I've lost no time in coming to pay you my respects. I knew you were at home on Thursdays." "You see the fame of your Thursdays has spread to England," Osmond remarked to his wife. "It's very kind of Lord Warburton to come so soon; we're greatly flattered," Isabel said. "Ah well, it's better than stopping in one of those horrible inns," Osmond went on. "The hotel seems very good; I think it's the same at which I saw you four years since. You know it was here in Rome that we first met; it's a long time ago. Do you remember where I bade you good-bye?" his lordship asked of his hostess. "It was in the Capitol, in the first room." "I remember that myself," said Osmond. "I was there at the time." "Yes, I remember you there. I was very sorry to leave Rome--so sorry that, somehow or other, it became almost a dismal memory, and I've never cared to come back till to-day. But I knew you were living here," her old friend went on to Isabel, "and I assure you I've often thought of you. It must be a charming place to live in," he added with a look, round him, at her established home, in which she might have caught the dim ghost of his old ruefulness. "We should have been glad to see you at any time," Osmond observed with propriety. "Thank you very much. I haven't been out of England since then. Till a month ago I really supposed my travels over." "I've heard of you from time to time," said Isabel, who had already, with her rare capacity for such inward feats, taken the measure of what meeting him again meant for her. "I hope you've heard no harm. My life has been a remarkably complete blank." "Like the good reigns in history," Osmond suggested. He appeared to think his duties as a host now terminated--he had performed them so conscientiously. Nothing could have been more adequate, more nicely measured, than his courtesy to his wife's old friend. It was punctilious, it was explicit, it was everything but natural--a deficiency which Lord Warburton, who, himself, had on the whole a good deal of nature, may be supposed to have perceived. "I'll leave you and Mrs. Osmond together," he added. "You have reminiscences into which I don't enter." "I'm afraid you lose a good deal!" Lord Warburton called after him, as he moved away, in a tone which perhaps betrayed overmuch an appreciation of his generosity. Then the visitor turned on Isabel the deeper, the deepest, consciousness of his look, which gradually became more serious. "I'm really very glad to see you." "It's very pleasant. You're very kind." "Do you know that you're changed--a little?" She just hesitated. "Yes--a good deal." "I don't mean for the worse, of course; and yet how can I say for the better?" "I think I shall have no scruple in saying that to YOU," she bravely returned. "Ah well, for me--it's a long time. It would be a pity there shouldn't be something to show for it." They sat down and she asked him about his sisters, with other enquiries of a somewhat perfunctory kind. He answered her questions as if they interested him, and in a few moments she saw--or believed she saw--that he would press with less of his whole weight than of yore. Time had breathed upon his heart and, without chilling it, given it a relieved sense of having taken the air. Isabel felt her usual esteem for Time rise at a bound. Her friend's manner was certainly that of a contented man, one who would rather like people, or like her at least, to know him for such. "There's something I must tell you without more delay," he resumed. "I've brought Ralph Touchett with me." "Brought him with you?" Isabel's surprise was great. "He's at the hotel; he was too tired to come out and has gone to bed." "I'll go to see him," she immediately said. "That's exactly what I hoped you'd do. I had an idea you hadn't seen much of him since your marriage, that in fact your relations were a--a little more formal. That's why I hesitated--like an awkward Briton." "I'm as fond of Ralph as ever," Isabel answered. "But why has he come to Rome?" The declaration was very gentle, the question a little sharp. "Because he's very far gone, Mrs. Osmond." "Rome then is no place for him. I heard from him that he had determined to give up his custom of wintering abroad and to remain in England, indoors, in what he called an artificial climate." "Poor fellow, he doesn't succeed with the artificial! I went to see him three weeks ago, at Gardencourt, and found him thoroughly ill. He has been getting worse every year, and now he has no strength left. He smokes no more cigarettes! He had got up an artificial climate indeed; the house was as hot as Calcutta. Nevertheless he had suddenly taken it into his head to start for Sicily. I didn't believe in it--neither did the doctors, nor any of his friends. His mother, as I suppose you know, is in America, so there was no one to prevent him. He stuck to his idea that it would be the saving of him to spend the winter at Catania. He said he could take servants and furniture, could make himself comfortable, but in point of fact he hasn't brought anything. I wanted him at least to go by sea, to save fatigue; but he said he hated the sea and wished to stop at Rome. After that, though I thought it all rubbish, I made up my mind to come with him. I'm acting as--what do you call it in America?--as a kind of moderator. Poor Ralph's very moderate now. We left England a fortnight ago, and he has been very bad on the way. He can't keep warm, and the further south we come the more he feels the cold. He has got rather a good man, but I'm afraid he's beyond human help. I wanted him to take with him some clever fellow--I mean some sharp young doctor; but he wouldn't hear of it. If you don't mind my saying so, I think it was a most extraordinary time for Mrs. Touchett to decide on going to America." Isabel had listened eagerly; her face was full of pain and wonder. "My aunt does that at fixed periods and lets nothing turn her aside. When the date comes round she starts; I think she'd have started if Ralph had been dying." "I sometimes think he IS dying," Lord Warburton said. Isabel sprang up. "I'll go to him then now." He checked her; he was a little disconcerted at the quick effect of his words. "I don't mean I thought so to-night. On the contrary, to-day, in the train, he seemed particularly well; the idea of our reaching Rome--he's very fond of Rome, you know--gave him strength. An hour ago, when I bade him goodnight, he told me he was very tired, but very happy. Go to him in the morning; that's all I mean. I didn't tell him I was coming here; I didn't decide to till after we had separated. Then I remembered he had told me you had an evening, and that it was this very Thursday. It occurred to me to come in and tell you he's here, and let you know you had perhaps better not wait for him to call. I think he said he hadn't written to you." There was no need of Isabel's declaring that she would act upon Lord Warburton's information; she looked, as she sat there, like a winged creature held back. "Let alone that I wanted to see you for myself," her visitor gallantly added. "I don't understand Ralph's plan; it seems to me very wild," she said. "I was glad to think of him between those thick walls at Gardencourt." "He was completely alone there; the thick walls were his only company." "You went to see him; you've been extremely kind." "Oh dear, I had nothing to do," said Lord Warburton. "We hear, on the contrary, that you're doing great things. Every one speaks of you as a great statesman, and I'm perpetually seeing your name in the Times, which, by the way, doesn't appear to hold it in reverence. You're apparently as wild a radical as ever." "I don't feel nearly so wild; you know the world has come round to me. Touchett and I have kept up a sort of parliamentary debate all the way from London. I tell him he's the last of the Tories, and he calls me the King of the Goths--says I have, down to the details of my personal appearance, every sign of the brute. So you see there's life in him yet." Isabel had many questions to ask about Ralph, but she abstained from asking them all. She would see for herself on the morrow. She perceived that after a little Lord Warburton would tire of that subject--he had a conception of other possible topics. She was more and more able to say to herself that he had recovered, and, what is more to the point, she was able to say it without bitterness. He had been for her, of old, such an image of urgency, of insistence, of something to be resisted and reasoned with, that his reappearance at first menaced her with a new trouble. But she was now reassured; she could see he only wished to live with her on good terms, that she was to understand he had forgiven her and was incapable of the bad taste of making pointed allusions. This was not a form of revenge, of course; she had no suspicion of his wishing to punish her by an exhibition of disillusionment; she did him the justice to believe it had simply occurred to him that she would now take a good-natured interest in knowing he was resigned. It was the resignation of a healthy, manly nature, in which sentimental wounds could never fester. British politics had cured him; she had known they would. She gave an envious thought to the happier lot of men, who are always free to plunge into the healing waters of action. Lord Warburton of course spoke of the past, but he spoke of it without implications; he even went so far as to allude to their former meeting in Rome as a very jolly time. And he told her he had been immensely interested in hearing of her marriage and that it was a great pleasure for him to make Mr. Osmond's acquaintance--since he could hardly be said to have made it on the other occasion. He had not written to her at the time of that passage in her history, but he didn't apologise to her for this. The only thing he implied was that they were old friends, intimate friends. It was very much as an intimate friend that he said to her, suddenly, after a short pause which he had occupied in smiling, as he looked about him, like a person amused, at a provincial entertainment, by some innocent game of guesses-- "Well now, I suppose you're very happy and all that sort of thing?" Isabel answered with a quick laugh; the tone of his remark struck her almost as the accent of comedy. "Do you suppose if I were not I'd tell you?" "Well, I don't know. I don't see why not." "I do then. Fortunately, however, I'm very happy." "You've got an awfully good house." "Yes, it's very pleasant. But that's not my merit--it's my husband's." "You mean he has arranged it?" "Yes, it was nothing when we came." "He must be very clever." "He has a genius for upholstery," said Isabel. "There's a great rage for that sort of thing now. But you must have a taste of your own." "I enjoy things when they're done, but I've no ideas. I can never propose anything." "Do you mean you accept what others propose?" "Very willingly, for the most part." "That's a good thing to know. I shall propose to you something." "It will be very kind. I must say, however, that I've in a few small ways a certain initiative. I should like for instance to introduce you to some of these people." "Oh, please don't; I prefer sitting here. Unless it be to that young lady in the blue dress. She has a charming face." "The one talking to the rosy young man? That's my husband's daughter." "Lucky man, your husband. What a dear little maid!" "You must make her acquaintance." "In a moment--with pleasure. I like looking at her from here." He ceased to look at her, however, very soon; his eyes constantly reverted to Mrs. Osmond. "Do you know I was wrong just now in saying you had changed?" he presently went on. "You seem to me, after all, very much the same." "And yet I find it a great change to be married," said Isabel with mild gaiety. "It affects most people more than it has affected you. You see I haven't gone in for that." "It rather surprises me." "You ought to understand it, Mrs. Osmond. But I do want to marry," he added more simply. "It ought to be very easy," Isabel said, rising--after which she reflected, with a pang perhaps too visible, that she was hardly the person to say this. It was perhaps because Lord Warburton divined the pang that he generously forbore to call her attention to her not having contributed then to the facility. Edward Rosier had meanwhile seated himself on an ottoman beside Pansy's tea-table. He pretended at first to talk to her about trifles, and she asked him who was the new gentleman conversing with her stepmother. "He's an English lord," said Rosier. "I don't know more." "I wonder if he'll have some tea. The English are so fond of tea." "Never mind that; I've something particular to say to you." "Don't speak so loud every one will hear," said Pansy. "They won't hear if you continue to look that way: as if your only thought in life was the wish the kettle would boil." "It has just been filled; the servants never know!"--and she sighed with the weight of her responsibility. "Do you know what your father said to me just now? That you didn't mean what you said a week ago." "I don't mean everything I say. How can a young girl do that? But I mean what I say to you." "He told me you had forgotten me." "Ah no, I don't forget," said Pansy, showing her pretty teeth in a fixed smile. "Then everything's just the very same?" "Ah no, not the very same. Papa has been terribly severe." "What has he done to you?" "He asked me what you had done to me, and I told him everything. Then he forbade me to marry you." "You needn't mind that." "Oh yes, I must indeed. I can't disobey papa." "Not for one who loves you as I do, and whom you pretend to love?" She raised the lid of the tea-pot, gazing into this vessel for a moment; then she dropped six words into its aromatic depths. "I love you just as much." "What good will that do me?" "Ah," said Pansy, raising her sweet, vague eyes, "I don't know that." "You disappoint me," groaned poor Rosier. She was silent a little; she handed a tea-cup to a servant. "Please don't talk any more." "Is this to be all my satisfaction?" "Papa said I was not to talk with you." "Do you sacrifice me like that? Ah, it's too much!" "I wish you'd wait a little," said the girl in a voice just distinct enough to betray a quaver. "Of course I'll wait if you'll give me hope. But you take my life away." "I'll not give you up--oh no!" Pansy went on. "He'll try and make you marry some one else." "I'll never do that." "What then are we to wait for?" She hesitated again. "I'll speak to Mrs. Osmond and she'll help us." It was in this manner that she for the most part designated her stepmother. "She won't help us much. She's afraid." "Afraid of what?" "Of your father, I suppose." Pansy shook her little head. "She's not afraid of any one. We must have patience." "Ah, that's an awful word," Rosier groaned; he was deeply disconcerted. Oblivious of the customs of good society, he dropped his head into his hands and, supporting it with a melancholy grace, sat staring at the carpet. Presently he became aware of a good deal of movement about him and, as he looked up, saw Pansy making a curtsey--it was still her little curtsey of the convent--to the English lord whom Mrs. Osmond had introduced.

Edward Rosier goes to see Madame Merle the next day and is surprised that she doesnt scold him for going against her advice. She tells him to be very patient and to visit Pansy only on Thursday evenings when everyone else does. He agrees. The next Thursday he enters the Osmonds and greets Mr. Osmond who tells him he is glad to see he can take a hint. He adds that he sets a "great price on daughter." He tells Edward that Pansy never gave him her pledge of love and that she will not marry him. Lord Warburton enters and greets Mr. Osmond who chats with him. Meanwhile, Rosier goes to speak briefly to Isabel who tells him Pansy has not given up on him as Mr. Osmond has asserted. He notices Isabel change color and sees that Mr. Osmond is approaching with Lord Warburton. They greet each other warmly and after a brief time of conversation, Osmond leaves them to talk alone. Warburton tells Isabel she has changed a bit since he last saw her in Rome. She says shes changed a good deal. He says he has come to Rome with Ralph Touchett who is in a very bad way and has decided unaccountably to spend the winter in Catania, Sicily against the advice of all the medical authorities. Ralph wanted to stop in Rome on the way. Isabel is alarmed but Warburton tells her she should go see Ralph in the morning, that when he left him that night, Ralph had said he was happy. Isabel tells Warburton she has heard that he has been doing good things with his reform plans. He tells her he keeps up a constant debate with Ralph, who is a conservative. She sees that he is contented with his life and realizes he has had the luxury of a man to plunge himself into his work. He asks her if shes happy and she says she is very happy after asking him if he really thinks she would tell him if she werent. He compliments her on her house and she says its all Osmonds doing. She says, "Ive no ideas. I can never propose anything." Isabel wants to introduce him to some of her guests and he says he only wants to speak to her. Then he notices Pansy and says he wouldnt mind meeting her. Isabel tells him who Pansy is. Warburton tells Isabel she hasnt changed after all. Isabel says marriage has changed her a great deal. Warburton says he does wish to marry. Meanwhile, Edward Rosier is speaking to Pansy who is busy pouring tea. She assures him that she hasnt forgotten him as her father said she had. She says she wont give him up, but that shell appeal to Mrs. Osmond for help. He says Mrs. Osmond can do nothing since shes afraid of Mr. Osmond, and Pansy says Mrs. Osmond isnt afraid of anyone.

Mrs. Touchett was certainly a person of many oddities, of which her behaviour on returning to her husband's house after many months was a noticeable specimen. She had her own way of doing all that she did, and this is the simplest description of a character which, although by no means without liberal motions, rarely succeeded in giving an impression of suavity. Mrs. Touchett might do a great deal of good, but she never pleased. This way of her own, of which she was so fond, was not intrinsically offensive--it was just unmistakeably distinguished from the ways of others. The edges of her conduct were so very clear-cut that for susceptible persons it sometimes had a knife-like effect. That hard fineness came out in her deportment during the first hours of her return from America, under circumstances in which it might have seemed that her first act would have been to exchange greetings with her husband and son. Mrs. Touchett, for reasons which she deemed excellent, always retired on such occasions into impenetrable seclusion, postponing the more sentimental ceremony until she had repaired the disorder of dress with a completeness which had the less reason to be of high importance as neither beauty nor vanity were concerned in it. She was a plain-faced old woman, without graces and without any great elegance, but with an extreme respect for her own motives. She was usually prepared to explain these--when the explanation was asked as a favour; and in such a case they proved totally different from those that had been attributed to her. She was virtually separated from her husband, but she appeared to perceive nothing irregular in the situation. It had become clear, at an early stage of their community, that they should never desire the same thing at the same moment, and this appearance had prompted her to rescue disagreement from the vulgar realm of accident. She did what she could to erect it into a law--a much more edifying aspect of it--by going to live in Florence, where she bought a house and established herself; and by leaving her husband to take care of the English branch of his bank. This arrangement greatly pleased her; it was so felicitously definite. It struck her husband in the same light, in a foggy square in London, where it was at times the most definite fact he discerned; but he would have preferred that such unnatural things should have a greater vagueness. To agree to disagree had cost him an effort; he was ready to agree to almost anything but that, and saw no reason why either assent or dissent should be so terribly consistent. Mrs. Touchett indulged in no regrets nor speculations, and usually came once a year to spend a month with her husband, a period during which she apparently took pains to convince him that she had adopted the right system. She was not fond of the English style of life, and had three or four reasons for it to which she currently alluded; they bore upon minor points of that ancient order, but for Mrs. Touchett they amply justified non-residence. She detested bread-sauce, which, as she said, looked like a poultice and tasted like soap; she objected to the consumption of beer by her maid-servants; and she affirmed that the British laundress (Mrs. Touchett was very particular about the appearance of her linen) was not a mistress of her art. At fixed intervals she paid a visit to her own country; but this last had been longer than any of its predecessors. She had taken up her niece--there was little doubt of that. One wet afternoon, some four months earlier than the occurrence lately narrated, this young lady had been seated alone with a book. To say she was so occupied is to say that her solitude did not press upon her; for her love of knowledge had a fertilising quality and her imagination was strong. There was at this time, however, a want of fresh taste in her situation which the arrival of an unexpected visitor did much to correct. The visitor had not been announced; the girl heard her at last walking about the adjoining room. It was in an old house at Albany, a large, square, double house, with a notice of sale in the windows of one of the lower apartments. There were two entrances, one of which had long been out of use but had never been removed. They were exactly alike--large white doors, with an arched frame and wide side-lights, perched upon little "stoops" of red stone, which descended sidewise to the brick pavement of the street. The two houses together formed a single dwelling, the party-wall having been removed and the rooms placed in communication. These rooms, above-stairs, were extremely numerous, and were painted all over exactly alike, in a yellowish white which had grown sallow with time. On the third floor there was a sort of arched passage, connecting the two sides of the house, which Isabel and her sisters used in their childhood to call the tunnel and which, though it was short and well lighted, always seemed to the girl to be strange and lonely, especially on winter afternoons. She had been in the house, at different periods, as a child; in those days her grandmother lived there. Then there had been an absence of ten years, followed by a return to Albany before her father's death. Her grandmother, old Mrs. Archer, had exercised, chiefly within the limits of the family, a large hospitality in the early period, and the little girls often spent weeks under her roof--weeks of which Isabel had the happiest memory. The manner of life was different from that of her own home--larger, more plentiful, practically more festal; the discipline of the nursery was delightfully vague and the opportunity of listening to the conversation of one's elders (which with Isabel was a highly-valued pleasure) almost unbounded. There was a constant coming and going; her grandmother's sons and daughters and their children appeared to be in the enjoyment of standing invitations to arrive and remain, so that the house offered to a certain extent the appearance of a bustling provincial inn kept by a gentle old landlady who sighed a great deal and never presented a bill. Isabel of course knew nothing about bills; but even as a child she thought her grandmother's home romantic. There was a covered piazza behind it, furnished with a swing which was a source of tremulous interest; and beyond this was a long garden, sloping down to the stable and containing peach-trees of barely credible familiarity. Isabel had stayed with her grandmother at various seasons, but somehow all her visits had a flavour of peaches. On the other side, across the street, was an old house that was called the Dutch House--a peculiar structure dating from the earliest colonial time, composed of bricks that had been painted yellow, crowned with a gable that was pointed out to strangers, defended by a rickety wooden paling and standing sidewise to the street. It was occupied by a primary school for children of both sexes, kept or rather let go, by a demonstrative lady of whom Isabel's chief recollection was that her hair was fastened with strange bedroomy combs at the temples and that she was the widow of some one of consequence. The little girl had been offered the opportunity of laying a foundation of knowledge in this establishment; but having spent a single day in it, she had protested against its laws and had been allowed to stay at home, where, in the September days, when the windows of the Dutch House were open, she used to hear the hum of childish voices repeating the multiplication table--an incident in which the elation of liberty and the pain of exclusion were indistinguishably mingled. The foundation of her knowledge was really laid in the idleness of her grandmother's house, where, as most of the other inmates were not reading people, she had uncontrolled use of a library full of books with frontispieces, which she used to climb upon a chair to take down. When she had found one to her taste--she was guided in the selection chiefly by the frontispiece--she carried it into a mysterious apartment which lay beyond the library and which was called, traditionally, no one knew why, the office. Whose office it had been and at what period it had flourished, she never learned; it was enough for her that it contained an echo and a pleasant musty smell and that it was a chamber of disgrace for old pieces of furniture whose infirmities were not always apparent (so that the disgrace seemed unmerited and rendered them victims of injustice) and with which, in the manner of children, she had established relations almost human, certainly dramatic. There was an old haircloth sofa in especial, to which she had confided a hundred childish sorrows. The place owed much of its mysterious melancholy to the fact that it was properly entered from the second door of the house, the door that had been condemned, and that it was secured by bolts which a particularly slender little girl found it impossible to slide. She knew that this silent, motionless portal opened into the street; if the sidelights had not been filled with green paper she might have looked out upon the little brown stoop and the well-worn brick pavement. But she had no wish to look out, for this would have interfered with her theory that there was a strange, unseen place on the other side--a place which became to the child's imagination, according to its different moods, a region of delight or of terror. It was in the "office" still that Isabel was sitting on that melancholy afternoon of early spring which I have just mentioned. At this time she might have had the whole house to choose from, and the room she had selected was the most depressed of its scenes. She had never opened the bolted door nor removed the green paper (renewed by other hands) from its sidelights; she had never assured herself that the vulgar street lay beyond. A crude, cold rain fell heavily; the spring-time was indeed an appeal--and it seemed a cynical, insincere appeal--to patience. Isabel, however, gave as little heed as possible to cosmic treacheries; she kept her eyes on her book and tried to fix her mind. It had lately occurred to her that her mind was a good deal of a vagabond, and she had spent much ingenuity in training it to a military step and teaching it to advance, to halt, to retreat, to perform even more complicated manoeuvres, at the word of command. Just now she had given it marching orders and it had been trudging over the sandy plains of a history of German Thought. Suddenly she became aware of a step very different from her own intellectual pace; she listened a little and perceived that some one was moving in the library, which communicated with the office. It struck her first as the step of a person from whom she was looking for a visit, then almost immediately announced itself as the tread of a woman and a stranger--her possible visitor being neither. It had an inquisitive, experimental quality which suggested that it would not stop short of the threshold of the office; and in fact the doorway of this apartment was presently occupied by a lady who paused there and looked very hard at our heroine. She was a plain, elderly woman, dressed in a comprehensive waterproof mantle; she had a face with a good deal of rather violent point. "Oh," she began, "is that where you usually sit?" She looked about at the heterogeneous chairs and tables. "Not when I have visitors," said Isabel, getting up to receive the intruder. She directed their course back to the library while the visitor continued to look about her. "You seem to have plenty of other rooms; they're in rather better condition. But everything's immensely worn." "Have you come to look at the house?" Isabel asked. "The servant will show it to you." "Send her away; I don't want to buy it. She has probably gone to look for you and is wandering about upstairs; she didn't seem at all intelligent. You had better tell her it's no matter." And then, since the girl stood there hesitating and wondering, this unexpected critic said to her abruptly: "I suppose you're one of the daughters?" Isabel thought she had very strange manners. "It depends upon whose daughters you mean." "The late Mr. Archer's--and my poor sister's." "Ah," said Isabel slowly, "you must be our crazy Aunt Lydia!" "Is that what your father told you to call me? I'm your Aunt Lydia, but I'm not at all crazy: I haven't a delusion! And which of the daughters are you?" "I'm the youngest of the three, and my name's Isabel." "Yes; the others are Lilian and Edith. And are you the prettiest?" "I haven't the least idea," said the girl. "I think you must be." And in this way the aunt and the niece made friends. The aunt had quarrelled years before with her brother-in-law, after the death of her sister, taking him to task for the manner in which he brought up his three girls. Being a high-tempered man he had requested her to mind her own business, and she had taken him at his word. For many years she held no communication with him and after his death had addressed not a word to his daughters, who had been bred in that disrespectful view of her which we have just seen Isabel betray. Mrs. Touchett's behaviour was, as usual, perfectly deliberate. She intended to go to America to look after her investments (with which her husband, in spite of his great financial position, had nothing to do) and would take advantage of this opportunity to enquire into the condition of her nieces. There was no need of writing, for she should attach no importance to any account of them she should elicit by letter; she believed, always, in seeing for one's self. Isabel found, however, that she knew a good deal about them, and knew about the marriage of the two elder girls; knew that their poor father had left very little money, but that the house in Albany, which had passed into his hands, was to be sold for their benefit; knew, finally, that Edmund Ludlow, Lilian's husband, had taken upon himself to attend to this matter, in consideration of which the young couple, who had come to Albany during Mr. Archer's illness, were remaining there for the present and, as well as Isabel herself, occupying the old place. "How much money do you expect for it?" Mrs. Touchett asked of her companion, who had brought her to sit in the front parlour, which she had inspected without enthusiasm. "I haven't the least idea," said the girl. "That's the second time you have said that to me," her aunt rejoined. "And yet you don't look at all stupid." "I'm not stupid; but I don't know anything about money." "Yes, that's the way you were brought up--as if you were to inherit a million. What have you in point of fact inherited?" "I really can't tell you. You must ask Edmund and Lilian; they'll be back in half an hour." "In Florence we should call it a very bad house," said Mrs. Touchett; "but here, I dare say, it will bring a high price. It ought to make a considerable sum for each of you. In addition to that you must have something else; it's most extraordinary your not knowing. The position's of value, and they'll probably pull it down and make a row of shops. I wonder you don't do that yourself; you might let the shops to great advantage." Isabel stared; the idea of letting shops was new to her. "I hope they won't pull it down," she said; "I'm extremely fond of it." "I don't see what makes you fond of it; your father died here." "Yes; but I don't dislike it for that," the girl rather strangely returned. "I like places in which things have happened--even if they're sad things. A great many people have died here; the place has been full of life." "Is that what you call being full of life?" "I mean full of experience--of people's feelings and sorrows. And not of their sorrows only, for I've been very happy here as a child." "You should go to Florence if you like houses in which things have happened--especially deaths. I live in an old palace in which three people have been murdered; three that were known and I don't know how many more besides." "In an old palace?" Isabel repeated. "Yes, my dear; a very different affair from this. This is very bourgeois." Isabel felt some emotion, for she had always thought highly of her grandmother's house. But the emotion was of a kind which led her to say: "I should like very much to go to Florence." "Well, if you'll be very good, and do everything I tell you I'll take you there," Mrs. Touchett declared. Our young woman's emotion deepened; she flushed a little and smiled at her aunt in silence. "Do everything you tell me? I don't think I can promise that." "No, you don't look like a person of that sort. You're fond of your own way; but it's not for me to blame you." "And yet, to go to Florence," the girl exclaimed in a moment, "I'd promise almost anything!" Edmund and Lilian were slow to return, and Mrs. Touchett had an hour's uninterrupted talk with her niece, who found her a strange and interesting figure: a figure essentially--almost the first she had ever met. She was as eccentric as Isabel had always supposed; and hitherto, whenever the girl had heard people described as eccentric, she had thought of them as offensive or alarming. The term had always suggested to her something grotesque and even sinister. But her aunt made it a matter of high but easy irony, or comedy, and led her to ask herself if the common tone, which was all she had known, had ever been as interesting. No one certainly had on any occasion so held her as this little thin-lipped, bright-eyed, foreign-looking woman, who retrieved an insignificant appearance by a distinguished manner and, sitting there in a well-worn waterproof, talked with striking familiarity of the courts of Europe. There was nothing flighty about Mrs. Touchett, but she recognised no social superiors, and, judging the great ones of the earth in a way that spoke of this, enjoyed the consciousness of making an impression on a candid and susceptible mind. Isabel at first had answered a good many questions, and it was from her answers apparently that Mrs. Touchett derived a high opinion of her intelligence. But after this she had asked a good many, and her aunt's answers, whatever turn they took, struck her as food for deep reflexion. Mrs. Touchett waited for the return of her other niece as long as she thought reasonable, but as at six o'clock Mrs. Ludlow had not come in she prepared to take her departure. "Your sister must be a great gossip. Is she accustomed to staying out so many hours?" "You've been out almost as long as she," Isabel replied; "she can have left the house but a short time before you came in." Mrs. Touchett looked at the girl without resentment; she appeared to enjoy a bold retort and to be disposed to be gracious. "Perhaps she hasn't had so good an excuse as I. Tell her at any rate that she must come and see me this evening at that horrid hotel. She may bring her husband if she likes, but she needn't bring you. I shall see plenty of you later."

Mrs. Touchett is a rather eccentric lady, and insists on things just as she likes them. For this reason, she keeps a house in Florence where she resides, while Mr. Touchett stays in England at Gardencourt. Now that we've met our heroine, we get her back-story. Mrs. Touchett "discovered" Isabel at her deceased grandmother's house in Albany, New York, where she spent most of her childhood. The house is next to a school, which a younger Isabel elected not to attend. She read a lot of books on her own instead. We begin to see that Isabel is as independent as her aunt, even as a child. Isabel is sitting in the "office," a kind of quiet, informal room, when Mrs. Touchett unexpectedly arrives. She recognizes her as "crazy Aunt Lydia," whom she'd heard of from her late father. Mrs. Touchett intrigues Isabel, and Isabel interests Mrs. Touchett as well. The two ladies talk for about an hour, waiting for Isabel's sister and brother-in-law, Lilian and Edmund, to return. Mrs. Touchett offers Isabel the chance to go to Florence. Isabel is excited by the idea, but cannot promise to do everything Mrs. Touchett asks her to do. Mrs. Touchett tells Isabel to ask Lilian to meet her at her hotel.

The guests arrived early in carriages, in one-horse chaises, two-wheeled cars, old open gigs, waggonettes with leather hoods, and the young people from the nearer villages in carts, in which they stood up in rows, holding on to the sides so as not to fall, going at a trot and well shaken up. Some came from a distance of thirty miles, from Goderville, from Normanville, and from Cany. All the relatives of both families had been invited, quarrels between friends arranged, acquaintances long since lost sight of written to. From time to time one heard the crack of a whip behind the hedge; then the gates opened, a chaise entered. Galloping up to the foot of the steps, it stopped short and emptied its load. They got down from all sides, rubbing knees and stretching arms. The ladies, wearing bonnets, had on dresses in the town fashion, gold watch chains, pelerines with the ends tucked into belts, or little coloured fichus fastened down behind with a pin, and that left the back of the neck bare. The lads, dressed like their papas, seemed uncomfortable in their new clothes (many that day hand-sewed their first pair of boots), and by their sides, speaking never a work, wearing the white dress of their first communion lengthened for the occasion were some big girls of fourteen or sixteen, cousins or elder sisters no doubt, rubicund, bewildered, their hair greasy with rose pomade, and very much afraid of dirtying their gloves. As there were not enough stable-boys to unharness all the carriages, the gentlemen turned up their sleeves and set about it themselves. According to their different social positions they wore tail-coats, overcoats, shooting jackets, cutaway-coats; fine tail-coats, redolent of family respectability, that only came out of the wardrobe on state occasions; overcoats with long tails flapping in the wind and round capes and pockets like sacks; shooting jackets of coarse cloth, generally worn with a cap with a brass-bound peak; very short cutaway-coats with two small buttons in the back, close together like a pair of eyes, and the tails of which seemed cut out of one piece by a carpenter's hatchet. Some, too (but these, you may be sure, would sit at the bottom of the table), wore their best blouses--that is to say, with collars turned down to the shoulders, the back gathered into small plaits and the waist fastened very low down with a worked belt. And the shirts stood out from the chests like cuirasses! Everyone had just had his hair cut; ears stood out from the heads; they had been close-shaved; a few, even, who had had to get up before daybreak, and not been able to see to shave, had diagonal gashes under their noses or cuts the size of a three-franc piece along the jaws, which the fresh air en route had enflamed, so that the great white beaming faces were mottled here and there with red dabs. The mairie was a mile and a half from the farm, and they went thither on foot, returning in the same way after the ceremony in the church. The procession, first united like one long coloured scarf that undulated across the fields, along the narrow path winding amid the green corn, soon lengthened out, and broke up into different groups that loitered to talk. The fiddler walked in front with his violin, gay with ribbons at its pegs. Then came the married pair, the relations, the friends, all following pell-mell; the children stayed behind amusing themselves plucking the bell-flowers from oat-ears, or playing amongst themselves unseen. Emma's dress, too long, trailed a little on the ground; from time to time she stopped to pull it up, and then delicately, with her gloved hands, she picked off the coarse grass and the thistledowns, while Charles, empty handed, waited till she had finished. Old Rouault, with a new silk hat and the cuffs of his black coat covering his hands up to the nails, gave his arm to Madame Bovary senior. As to Monsieur Bovary senior, who, heartily despising all these folk, had come simply in a frock-coat of military cut with one row of buttons--he was passing compliments of the bar to a fair young peasant. She bowed, blushed, and did not know what to say. The other wedding guests talked of their business or played tricks behind each other's backs, egging one another on in advance to be jolly. Those who listened could always catch the squeaking of the fiddler, who went on playing across the fields. When he saw that the rest were far behind he stopped to take breath, slowly rosined his bow, so that the strings should sound more shrilly, then set off again, by turns lowering and raising his neck, the better to mark time for himself. The noise of the instrument drove away the little birds from afar. The table was laid under the cart-shed. On it were four sirloins, six chicken fricassees, stewed veal, three legs of mutton, and in the middle a fine roast suckling pig, flanked by four chitterlings with sorrel. At the corners were decanters of brandy. Sweet bottled-cider frothed round the corks, and all the glasses had been filled to the brim with wine beforehand. Large dishes of yellow cream, that trembled with the least shake of the table, had designed on their smooth surface the initials of the newly wedded pair in nonpareil arabesques. A confectioner of Yvetot had been intrusted with the tarts and sweets. As he had only just set up on the place, he had taken a lot of trouble, and at dessert he himself brought in a set dish that evoked loud cries of wonderment. To begin with, at its base there was a square of blue cardboard, representing a temple with porticoes, colonnades, and stucco statuettes all round, and in the niches constellations of gilt paper stars; then on the second stage was a dungeon of Savoy cake, surrounded by many fortifications in candied angelica, almonds, raisins, and quarters of oranges; and finally, on the upper platform a green field with rocks set in lakes of jam, nutshell boats, and a small Cupid balancing himself in a chocolate swing whose two uprights ended in real roses for balls at the top. Until night they ate. When any of them were too tired of sitting, they went out for a stroll in the yard, or for a game with corks in the granary, and then returned to table. Some towards the finish went to sleep and snored. But with the coffee everyone woke up. Then they began songs, showed off tricks, raised heavy weights, performed feats with their fingers, then tried lifting carts on their shoulders, made broad jokes, kissed the women. At night when they left, the horses, stuffed up to the nostrils with oats, could hardly be got into the shafts; they kicked, reared, the harness broke, their masters laughed or swore; and all night in the light of the moon along country roads there were runaway carts at full gallop plunging into the ditches, jumping over yard after yard of stones, clambering up the hills, with women leaning out from the tilt to catch hold of the reins. Those who stayed at the Bertaux spent the night drinking in the kitchen. The children had fallen asleep under the seats. The bride had begged her father to be spared the usual marriage pleasantries. However, a fishmonger, one of their cousins (who had even brought a pair of soles for his wedding present), began to squirt water from his mouth through the keyhole, when old Rouault came up just in time to stop him, and explain to him that the distinguished position of his son-in-law would not allow of such liberties. The cousin all the same did not give in to these reasons readily. In his heart he accused old Rouault of being proud, and he joined four or five other guests in a corner, who having, through mere chance, been several times running served with the worst helps of meat, also were of opinion they had been badly used, and were whispering about their host, and with covered hints hoping he would ruin himself. Madame Bovary, senior, had not opened her mouth all day. She had been consulted neither as to the dress of her daughter-in-law nor as to the arrangement of the feast; she went to bed early. Her husband, instead of following her, sent to Saint-Victor for some cigars, and smoked till daybreak, drinking kirsch-punch, a mixture unknown to the company. This added greatly to the consideration in which he was held. Charles, who was not of a facetious turn, did not shine at the wedding. He answered feebly to the puns, doubles entendres*, compliments, and chaff that it was felt a duty to let off at him as soon as the soup appeared. *Double meanings. The next day, on the other hand, he seemed another man. It was he who might rather have been taken for the virgin of the evening before, whilst the bride gave no sign that revealed anything. The shrewdest did not know what to make of it, and they looked at her when she passed near them with an unbounded concentration of mind. But Charles concealed nothing. He called her "my wife", tutoyed* her, asked for her of everyone, looked for her everywhere, and often he dragged her into the yards, where he could be seen from far between the trees, putting his arm around her waist, and walking half-bending over her, ruffling the chemisette of her bodice with his head. *Used the familiar form of address. Two days after the wedding the married pair left. Charles, on account of his patients, could not be away longer. Old Rouault had them driven back in his cart, and himself accompanied them as far as Vassonville. Here he embraced his daughter for the last time, got down, and went his way. When he had gone about a hundred paces he stopped, and as he saw the cart disappearing, its wheels turning in the dust, he gave a deep sigh. Then he remembered his wedding, the old times, the first pregnancy of his wife; he, too, had been very happy the day when he had taken her from her father to his home, and had carried her off on a pillion, trotting through the snow, for it was near Christmas-time, and the country was all white. She held him by one arm, her basket hanging from the other; the wind blew the long lace of her Cauchois headdress so that it sometimes flapped across his mouth, and when he turned his head he saw near him, on his shoulder, her little rosy face, smiling silently under the gold bands of her cap. To warm her hands she put them from time to time in his breast. How long ago it all was! Their son would have been thirty by now. Then he looked back and saw nothing on the road. He felt dreary as an empty house; and tender memories mingling with the sad thoughts in his brain, addled by the fumes of the feast, he felt inclined for a moment to take a turn towards the church. As he was afraid, however, that this sight would make him yet more sad, he went right away home. Monsieur and Madame Charles arrived at Tostes about six o'clock. The neighbors came to the windows to see their doctor's new wife. The old servant presented herself, curtsied to her, apologised for not having dinner ready, and suggested that madame, in the meantime, should look over her house.

In this chapter, the wedding takes place, and "all relatives on both sides had been invited" to the celebration. After the ceremony, the bridal couple, along with a band of well-wishers, make their way from the mayor's office to the church on foot. The sumptuous wedding feast is laid in a cart-shed. In the midst of all this joy and merry-making is Charles' mother, who is upset because "she had not been consulted about the bride's dress, nor about the feast. " The lively description of the wedding celebration is given in great detail and reflects the social status of the characters. The guests who attend are a mixed lot, ranging from the prosperous to the not- so-well-to-do. It is obvious that for many people this a special occasion calling for special clothing. The men are dressed according to their wealth, wearing dress-coats, frock-coats, waistcoats, or jackets. Many ladies are wearing new dresses, tailored to the prevailing style of the day. For many of the children, it is the first time for them to wear boots or gloves. After the wedding night, Charles appears to be a renewed man, while Emma appears just as innocent and demure as she did before the marriage. When the couple arrives in Tostes two days later, the neighbors gather in their windows to see the doctor's new wife. The maid suggests to Emma that she should look over the house once dinner is ready.

Chapter XLII. Belle-Ile-en-Mer. At the extremity of the mole, against which the furious sea beats at the evening tide, two men, holding each other by the arm, were conversing in an animated and expansive tone, without the possibility of any other human being hearing their words, borne away, as they were, one by one, by the gusts of wind, with the white foam swept from the crests of the waves. The sun had just gone down in the vast sheet of the crimsoned ocean, like a gigantic crucible. From time to time, one of these men, turning towards the east, cast an anxious, inquiring look over the sea. The other, interrogating the features of his companion, seemed to seek for information in his looks. Then, both silent, busied with dismal thoughts, they resumed their walk. Every one has already perceived that these two men were our proscribed heroes, Porthos and Aramis, who had taken refuge in Belle-Isle, since the ruin of their hopes, since the discomfiture of the colossal schemes of M. d'Herblay. "If is of no use your saying anything to the contrary, my dear Aramis," repeated Porthos, inhaling vigorously the salt breeze with which he charged his massive chest, "It is of no use, Aramis. The disappearance of all the fishing-boats that went out two days ago is not an ordinary circumstance. There has been no storm at sea; the weather has been constantly calm, not even the lightest gale; and even if we had had a tempest, all our boats would not have foundered. I repeat, it is strange. This complete disappearance astonishes me, I tell you." "True," murmured Aramis. "You are right, friend Porthos; it is true, there is something strange in it." "And further," added Porthos, whose ideas the assent of the bishop of Vannes seemed to enlarge; "and, further, do you not observe that if the boats have perished, not a single plank has washed ashore?" "I have remarked it as well as yourself." "And do you not think it strange that the two only boats we had left in the whole island, and which I sent in search of the others--" Aramis here interrupted his companion by a cry, and by so sudden a movement, that Porthos stopped as if he were stupefied. "What do you say, Porthos? What!--You have sent the two boats--" "In search of the others! Yes, to be sure I have," replied Porthos, calmly. "Unhappy man! What have you done? Then we are indeed lost," cried the bishop. "Lost!--what did you say?" exclaimed the terrified Porthos. "How lost, Aramis? How are we lost?" Aramis bit his lips. "Nothing! nothing! Your pardon, I meant to say--" "What?" "That if we were inclined--if we took a fancy to make an excursion by sea, we could not." "Very good! and why should that vex you? A precious pleasure, _ma foi!_ For my part, I don't regret it at all. What I regret is certainly not the more or less amusement we can find at Belle-Isle: what I regret, Aramis, is Pierrefonds; Bracieux; le Vallon; beautiful France! Here, we are not in France, my dear friend; we are--I know not where. Oh! I tell you, in full sincerity of soul, and your affection will excuse my frankness, but I declare to you I am not happy at Belle-Isle. No; in good truth, I am not happy!" Aramis breathed a long, but stifled sigh. "Dear friend," replied he: "that is why it is so sad a thing you have sent the two boats we had left in search of the boats which disappeared two days ago. If you had not sent them away, we would have departed." "'Departed!' And the orders, Aramis?" "What orders?" "_Parbleu!_ Why, the orders you have been constantly, in and out of season, repeating to me--that we were to hold Belle-Isle against the usurper. You know very well!" "That is true!" murmured Aramis again. "You see, then, plainly, my friend, that we could not depart; and that the sending away of the boats in search of the others cannot prove prejudicial to us in the very least." Aramis was silent; and his vague glances, luminous as that of an albatross, hovered for a long time over the sea, interrogating space, seeking to pierce the very horizon. "With all that, Aramis," continued Porthos, who adhered to his idea, and that the more closely from the bishop having apparently endorsed it,--"with all that, you give me no explanation about what can have happened to these unfortunate boats. I am assailed by cries and complaints whichever way I go. The children cry to see the desolation of the women, as if I could restore the absent husbands and fathers. What do you suppose, my friend, and how ought I to answer them?" "Think all you like, my good Porthos, and say nothing." This reply did not satisfy Porthos at all. He turned away grumbling something in ill-humor. Aramis stopped the valiant musketeer. "Do you remember," said he, in a melancholy tone, kneading the two hands of the giant between his own with affectionate cordiality, "do you remember, my friend, that in the glorious days of youth--do you remember, Porthos, when we were all strong and valiant--we, and the other two--if we had then had an inclination to return to France, do you think this sheet of salt water would have stopped us?" "Oh!" said Porthos; "but six leagues." "If you had seen me get astride of a plank, would you have remained on land, Porthos?" "No, _pardieu!_ No, Aramis. But, nowadays, what sort of a plank should we want, my friend! I, in particular." And the Seigneur de Bracieux cast a profound glance over his colossal rotundity with a loud laugh. "And do you mean seriously to say you are not tired of Belle-Isle a little, and that you would not prefer the comforts of your dwelling--of your episcopal palace, at Vannes? Come, confess." "No," replied Aramis, without daring to look at Porthos. "Let us stay where we are, then," said his friend, with a sigh, which, in spite of the efforts he made to restrain it, escaped his echoing breast. "Let us remain!--let us remain! And yet," added he, "and yet, if we seriously wished, but that decidedly--if we had a fixed idea, one firmly taken, to return to France, and there were not boats--" "Have you remarked another thing, my friend--that is, since the disappearance of our barks, during the last two days' absence of fishermen, not a single small boat has landed on the shores of the isle?" "Yes, certainly! you are right. I, too, have remarked it, and the observation was the more naturally made, for, before the last two fatal days, barks and shallops were as plentiful as shrimps." "I must inquire," said Aramis, suddenly, and with great agitation. "And then, if we had a raft constructed--" "But there are some canoes, my friend; shall I board one?" "A canoe!--a canoe! Can you think of such a thing, Porthos? A canoe to be upset in. No, no," said the bishop of Vannes; "it is not our trade to ride upon the waves. We will wait, we will wait." And Aramis continued walking about with increased agitation. Porthos, who grew tired of following all the feverish movements of his friend--Porthos, who in his faith and calmness understood nothing of the sort of exasperation which was betrayed by his companion's continual convulsive starts--Porthos stopped him. "Let us sit down upon this rock," said he. "Place yourself there, close to me, Aramis, and I conjure you, for the last time, to explain to me in a manner I can comprehend--explain to me what we are doing here." "Porthos," said Aramis, much embarrassed. "I know that the false king wished to dethrone the true king. That is a fact, that I understand. Well--" "Yes?" said Aramis. "I know that the false king formed the project of selling Belle-Isle to the English. I understand that, too." "Yes?" "I know that we engineers and captains came and threw ourselves into Belle-Isle to take direction of the works, and the command of ten companies levied and paid by M. Fouquet, or rather the ten companies of his son-in-law. All that is plain." Aramis rose in a state of great impatience. He might be said to be a lion importuned by a gnat. Porthos held him by the arm. "But what I cannot understand, what, in spite of all the efforts of my mind, and all my reflections, I cannot comprehend, and never shall comprehend, is, that instead of sending us troops, instead of sending us reinforcements of men, munitions, provisions, they leave us without boats, they leave Belle-Isle without arrivals, without help; it is that instead of establishing with us a correspondence, whether by signals, or written or verbal communications, all relations with the shore are intercepted. Tell me, Aramis, answer me, or rather, before answering me, will you allow me to tell you what I have thought? Will you hear what my idea is, the plan I have conceived?" The bishop raised his head. "Well! Aramis," continued Porthos, "I have dreamed, I have imagined that an event has taken place in France. I dreamt of M. Fouquet all the night, of lifeless fish, of broken eggs, of chambers badly furnished, meanly kept. Villainous dreams, my dear D'Herblay; very unlucky, such dreams!" "Porthos, what is that yonder?" interrupted Aramis, rising suddenly, and pointing out to his friend a black spot upon the empurpled line of the water. "A bark!" said Porthos; "yes, it is a bark! Ah! we shall have some news at last." "There are two!" cried the bishop, on discovering another mast; "two! three! four!" "Five!" said Porthos, in his turn. "Six! seven! Ah! _mon Dieu! mon Dieu!_ it is a fleet!" "Our boats returning, probably," said Aramis, very uneasily, in spite of the assurance he affected. "They are very large for fishing-boats," observed Porthos, "and do you not remark, my friend, that they come from the Loire?" "They come from the Loire--yes--" "And look! everybody here sees them as well as ourselves; look, women and children are beginning to crowd the jetty." An old fisherman passed. "Are those our barks, yonder?" asked Aramis. The old man looked steadily into the eye of the horizon. "No, monseigneur," replied he, "they are lighter boars, boats in the king's service." "Boats in the royal service?" replied Aramis, starting. "How do you know that?" said he. "By the flag." "But," said Porthos, "the boat is scarcely visible; how the devil, my friend, can you distinguish the flag?" "I see there is one," replied the old man; "our boats, trade lighters, do not carry any. That sort of craft is generally used for transport of troops." "Ah!" groaned Aramis. "_Vivat!_" cried Porthos, "they are sending us reinforcements, don't you think they are, Aramis?" "Probably." "Unless it is the English coming." "By the Loire? That would have an evil look, Porthos; for they must have come through Paris!" "You are right; they are reinforcements, decidedly, or provisions." Aramis leaned his head upon his hands, and made no reply. Then, all at once,--"Porthos," said he, "have the alarm sounded." "The alarm! do you imagine such a thing?" "Yes, and let the cannoniers mount their batteries, the artillerymen be at their pieces, and be particularly watchful of the coast batteries." Porthos opened his eyes to their widest extent. He looked attentively at his friend, to convince himself he was in his proper senses. "_I_ will do it, my dear Porthos," continued Aramis, in his blandest tone; "I will go and have these orders executed myself, if you do not go, my friend." "Well! I will--instantly!" said Porthos, who went to execute the orders, casting all the while looks behind him, to see if the bishop of Vannes were not deceived; and if, on recovering more rational ideas, he would not recall him. The alarm was sounded, trumpets brayed, drums rolled; the great bronze bell swung in horror from its lofty belfry. The dikes and moles were quickly filled with the curious and soldiers; matches sparkled in the hands of the artillerymen, placed behind the large cannon bedded in their stone carriages. When every man was at his post, when all the preparations for defense were made: "Permit me, Aramis, to try to comprehend," whispered Porthos, timidly, in Aramis's ear. "My dear friend, you will comprehend but too soon," murmured M. d'Herblay, in reply to this question of his lieutenant. "The fleet which is coming yonder, with sails unfurled, straight towards the port of Belle-Isle, is a royal fleet, is it not?" "But as there are two kings in France, Porthos, to which of these two kings does this fleet belong?" "Oh! you open my eyes," replied the giant, stunned by the insinuation. And Porthos, whose eyes this reply of his friend's had at last opened, or rather thickened the bandage which covered his sight, went with his best speed to the batteries to overlook his people, and exhort every one to do his duty. In the meantime, Aramis, with his eye fixed on the horizon, saw the ships continually drawing nearer. The people and the soldiers, perched on the summits of the rocks, could distinguish the masts, then the lower sails, and at last the hulls of the lighters, bearing at the masthead the royal flag of France. It was night when one of these vessels, which had created such a sensation among the inhabitants of Belle-Isle, dropped anchor within cannon shot of the place. It was soon seen, notwithstanding the darkness, that some sort of agitation reigned on board the vessel, from the side of which a skiff was lowered, of which the three rowers, bending to their oars, took the direction of the port, and in a few instants struck land at the foot of the fort. The commander jumped ashore. He had a letter in his hand, which he waved in the air, and seemed to wish to communicate with somebody. This man was soon recognized by several soldiers as one of the pilots of the island. He was the captain of one of the two barks retained by Aramis, but which Porthos, in his anxiety with regard to the fate of the fishermen who had disappeared, had sent in search of the missing boats. He asked to be conducted to M. d'Herblay. Two soldiers, at a signal from a sergeant, marched him between them, and escorted him. Aramis was upon the quay. The envoy presented himself before the bishop of Vannes. The darkness was almost absolute, notwithstanding the flambeaux borne at a small distance by the soldiers who were following Aramis in his rounds. "Well, Jonathan, from whom do you come?" "Monseigneur, from those who captured me." "Who captured you?" "You know, monseigneur, we set out in search of our comrades?" "Yes; and afterwards?" "Well! monseigneur, within a short league we were captured by a _chasse maree_ belonging to the king." "Ah!" said Aramis. "Of which king?" cried Porthos. Jonathan started. "Speak!" continued the bishop. "We were captured, monseigneur, and joined to those who had been taken yesterday morning." "What was the cause of the mania for capturing you all?" said Porthos. "Monsieur, to prevent us from telling you," replied Jonathan. Porthos was again at a loss to comprehend. "And they have released you to-day?" asked he. "That I might tell you they have captured us, monsieur." "Trouble upon trouble," thought honest Porthos. During this time Aramis was reflecting. "Humph!" said he, "then I suppose it is a royal fleet blockading the coasts?" "Yes, monseigneur." "Who commands it?" "The captain of the king's musketeers." "D'Artagnan?" "D'Artagnan!" exclaimed Porthos. "I believe that is the name." "And did he give you this letter?" "Yes, monseigneur." "Bring the torches nearer." "It is his writing," said Porthos. Aramis eagerly read the following lines: "Order of the king to take Belle-Isle; or to put the garrison to the sword, if they resist; order to make prisoners of all the men of the garrison; signed, D'ARTAGNAN, who, the day before yesterday, arrested M. Fouquet, for the purpose of his being sent to the Bastile." Aramis turned pale, and crushed the paper in his hands. "What is it?" asked Porthos. "Nothing, my friend, nothing." "Tell me, Jonathan?" "Monseigneur?" "Did you speak to M. d'Artagnan?" "Yes, monseigneur." "What did he say to you?" "That for ampler information, he would speak with monseigneur." "Where?" "On board his own vessel." "On board his vessel!" and Porthos repeated, "On board his vessel!" "M. le mousquetaire," continued Jonathan, "told me to take you both on board my canoe, and bring you to him." "Let us go at once," exclaimed Porthos. "Dear D'Artagnan!" But Aramis stopped him. "Are you mad?" cried he. "Who knows that it is not a snare?" "Of the other king's?" said Porthos, mysteriously. "A snare, in fact! That's what it is, my friend." "Very possibly; what is to be done, then? If D'Artagnan sends for us--" "Who assures you that D'Artagnan sends for us?" "Well, but--but his writing--" "Writing is easily counterfeited. This looks counterfeited--unsteady--" "You are always right; but, in the meantime, we know nothing." Aramis was silent. "It is true," said the good Porthos, "we do not want to know anything." "What shall I do?" asked Jonathan. "You will return on board this captain's vessel." "Yes, monseigneur." "And will tell him that we beg he will himself come into the island." "Ah! I comprehend!" said Porthos. "Yes, monseigneur," replied Jonathan; "but if the captain should refuse to come to Belle-Isle?" "If he refuses, as we have cannon, we will make use of them." "What! against D'Artagnan?" "If it is D'Artagnan, Porthos, he will come. Go, Jonathan, go!" "_Ma foi!_ I no longer comprehend anything," murmured Porthos. "I will make you comprehend it all, my dear friend; the time for it has come; sit down upon this gun-carriage, open your ears, and listen well to me." "Oh! _pardieu!_ I will listen, no fear of that." "May I depart, monseigneur?" cried Jonathan. "Yes, begone, and bring back an answer. Allow the canoe to pass, you men there!" And the canoe pushed off to regain the fleet. Aramis took Porthos by the hand, and commenced his explanations.

We return to Belle-Isle where Aramis and Porthos are walking around the island, and discussing the curious disappearance of all the fishing boats. Much to Aramis's chagrin, Porthos reveals that he sent the only two remaining fishing boats out to look for the others. Porthos confesses that he is unhappy at Belle-Isle and would much rather be in France. Aramis tells Porthos that they could have left had he not sent out the two remaining fishing boats. Porthos then asks about the orders Aramis has been issuing, which are to hold Belle-Isle against the usurper of the throne. Porthos tells Aramis to sit down on a rock and explain the full story to him. Aramis has told Porthos that they are to hold Belle-Isle against a false king who wants to sell the island to the British. Porthos asks why no other reinforcements have arrived Suddenly a whole fleet of boats appears on the horizon, coming from the direction of the Loire. They are clearly flying a royal flag. These are boats from the King. Aramis asks Porthos to sound the alarm preparing the island for battle. Porthos is confused, but does it anyway. Aramis effectively tells Porthos that the fleet belongs to the false king of France. Porthos believes himself to be enlightened. At night a man lands on the island, asking to see Aramis. He is the captain of one of the two fishing vessels that Porthos had earlier sent out in search of its lost companions. The captain tells Porthos and Aramis that all the fishing vessels have been captured by the royal fleet, which has set up a blockade around the island. The fleet is under the command of D'Artagnan, who is sending them a letter through this captain. The letter reads like this: the King ordered me to take Belle-Isle and capture all of its inhabitants. Aramis turns pale. This is clearly not good news. D'Artagnan requests that Porthos and Aramis come over for a visit. Porthos is all set to go, but Aramis warns that it may be a trap. He asks the fishing captain to tell D'Artagnan to come to the island instead. Porthos is confused. Aramis finally relents and promises to explain.

Enter two Gentlemen, meeting one another. 1 Y'are well met once againe 2 So are you 1 You come to take your stand heere, and behold The Lady Anne, passe from her Corronation 2 'Tis all my businesse. At our last encounter, The Duke of Buckingham came from his Triall 1 'Tis very true. But that time offer'd sorrow, This generall ioy 2 'Tis well: The Citizens I am sure haue shewne at full their Royall minds, As let 'em haue their rights, they are euer forward In Celebration of this day with Shewes, Pageants, and Sights of Honor 1 Neuer greater, Nor Ile assure you better taken Sir 2 May I be bold to aske what that containes, That Paper in your hand 1 Yes, 'tis the List Of those that claime their Offices this day, By custome of the Coronation. The Duke of Suffolke is the first, and claimes To be high Steward; Next the Duke of Norfolke, He to be Earle Marshall: you may reade the rest 1 I thanke you Sir: Had I not known those customs, I should haue beene beholding to your Paper: But I beseech you, what's become of Katherine The Princesse Dowager? How goes her businesse? 1 That I can tell you too. The Archbishop Of Canterbury, accompanied with other Learned, and Reuerend Fathers of his Order, Held a late Court at Dunstable; sixe miles off From Ampthill, where the Princesse lay, to which She was often cyted by them, but appear'd not: And to be short, for not Appearance, and The Kings late Scruple, by the maine assent Of all these Learned men, she was diuorc'd, And the late Marriage made of none effect: Since which, she was remou'd to Kymmalton, Where she remaines now sicke 2 Alas good Lady. The Trumpets sound: Stand close, The Queene is comming. Ho-boyes. The Order of the Coronation. 1 A liuely Flourish of Trumpets. 2 Then, two Iudges. 3 Lord Chancellor, with Purse and Mace before him. 4 Quirristers singing. Musicke. 5 Maior of London, bearing the Mace. Then Garter, in his Coate of Armes, and on his head he wore a Gilt Copper Crowne. 6 Marquesse Dorset, bearing a Scepter of Gold, on his head, a Demy Coronall of Gold. With him, the Earle of Surrey, bearing the Rod of Siluer with the Doue, Crowned with an Earles Coronet. Collars of Esses. 7 Duke of Suffolke, in his Robe of Estate, his Coronet on his head, bearing a long white Wand, as High Steward. With him, the Duke of Norfolke, with the Rod of Marshalship, a Coronet on his head. Collars of Esses. 8 A Canopy, borne by foure of the Cinque-Ports, vnder it the Queene in her Robe, in her haire, richly adorned with Pearle, Crowned. On each side her, the Bishops of London, and Winchester. 9 The Olde Dutchesse of Norfolke, in a Coronall of Gold, wrought with Flowers bearing the Queenes Traine. 10 Certaine Ladies or Countesses, with plaine Circlets of Gold, without Flowers. Exeunt, first passing ouer the Stage in Order and State, and then, A great Flourish of Trumpets. 2 A Royall Traine beleeue me: These I know: Who's that that beares the Scepter? 1 Marquesse Dorset, And that the Earle of Surrey, with the Rod 2 A bold braue Gentleman. That should bee The Duke of Suffolke 1 'Tis the same: high Steward 2 And that my Lord of Norfolke? 1 Yes 2 Heauen blesse thee, Thou hast the sweetest face I euer look'd on. Sir, as I haue a Soule, she is an Angell; Our King ha's all the Indies in his Armes, And more, and richer, when he straines that Lady, I cannot blame his Conscience 1 They that beare The Cloath of Honour ouer her, are foure Barons Of the Cinque-Ports 2 Those men are happy, And so are all, are neere her. I take it, she that carries vp the Traine, Is that old Noble Lady, Dutchesse of Norfolke 1 It is, and all the rest are Countesses 2 Their Coronets say so. These are Starres indeed, And sometimes falling ones 2 No more of that. Enter a third Gentleman. 1 God saue you Sir. Where haue you bin broiling? 3 Among the crowd i'th' Abbey, where a finger Could not be wedg'd in more: I am stifled With the meere ranknesse of their ioy 2 You saw the Ceremony? 3 That I did 1 How was it? 3 Well worth the seeing 2 Good Sir, speake it to vs? 3 As well as I am able. The rich streame Of Lords, and Ladies, hauing brought the Queene To a prepar'd place in the Quire, fell off A distance from her; while her Grace sate downe To rest a while, some halfe an houre, or so, In a rich Chaire of State, opposing freely The Beauty of her Person to the People. Beleeue me Sir, she is the goodliest Woman That euer lay by man: which when the people Had the full view of, such a noyse arose, As the shrowdes make at Sea, in a stiffe Tempest, As lowd, and to as many Tunes. Hats, Cloakes, (Doublets, I thinke) flew vp, and had their Faces Bin loose, this day they had beene lost. Such ioy I neuer saw before. Great belly'd women, That had not halfe a weeke to go, like Rammes In the old time of Warre, would shake the prease And make 'em reele before 'em. No man liuing Could say this is my wife there, all were wouen So strangely in one peece 2 But what follow'd? 3 At length, her Grace rose, and with modest paces Came to the Altar, where she kneel'd, and Saint-like Cast her faire eyes to Heauen, and pray'd deuoutly. Then rose againe, and bow'd her to the people: When by the Arch-byshop of Canterbury, She had all the Royall makings of a Queene; As holy Oyle, Edward Confessors Crowne, The Rod, and Bird of Peace, and all such Emblemes Laid Nobly on her: which perform'd, the Quire With all the choysest Musicke of the Kingdome, Together sung Te Deum. So she parted, And with the same full State pac'd backe againe To Yorke-Place, where the Feast is held 1 Sir, You must no more call it Yorke-place, that's past: For since the Cardinall fell, that Titles lost, 'Tis now the Kings, and call'd White-Hall 3 I know it: But 'tis so lately alter'd, that the old name Is fresh about me 2 What two Reuerend Byshops Were those that went on each side of the Queene? 3 Stokeley and Gardiner, the one of Winchester, Newly preferr'd from the Kings Secretary: The other London 2 He of Winchester Is held no great good louer of the Archbishops, The vertuous Cranmer 3 All the Land knowes that: How euer, yet there is no great breach, when it comes Cranmer will finde a Friend will not shrinke from him 2 Who may that be, I pray you 3 Thomas Cromwell, A man in much esteeme with th' King, and truly A worthy Friend. The King ha's made him Master o'th' Iewell House, And one already of the Priuy Councell 2 He will deserue more 3 Yes without all doubt. Come Gentlemen, ye shall go my way, Which is to'th Court, and there ye shall be my Guests: Something I can command. As I walke thither, Ile tell ye more Both. You may command vs Sir. Exeunt. Enter Katherine Dowager, sicke, lead betweene Griffith, her Gentleman Vsher, and Patience her Woman. Grif. How do's your Grace? Kath. O Griffith, sicke to death: My Legges like loaden Branches bow to'th' Earth, Willing to leaue their burthen: Reach a Chaire, So now (me thinkes) I feele a little ease. Did'st thou not tell me Griffith, as thou lead'st mee, That the great Childe of Honor, Cardinall Wolsey Was dead? Grif. Yes Madam: but I thinke your Grace Out of the paine you suffer'd, gaue no eare too't Kath. Pre'thee good Griffith, tell me how he dy'de. If well, he stept before me happily For my example Grif. Well, the voyce goes Madam, For after the stout Earle Northumberland Arrested him at Yorke, and brought him forward As a man sorely tainted, to his Answer, He fell sicke sodainly, and grew so ill He could not sit his Mule Kath. Alas poore man Grif. At last, with easie Rodes, he came to Leicester, Lodg'd in the Abbey; where the reuerend Abbot With all his Couent, honourably receiu'd him; To whom he gaue these words. O Father Abbot, An old man, broken with the stormes of State, Is come to lay his weary bones among ye: Giue him a little earth for Charity. So went to bed; where eagerly his sicknesse Pursu'd him still, and three nights after this, About the houre of eight, which he himselfe Foretold should be his last, full of Repentance, Continuall Meditations, Teares, and Sorrowes, He gaue his Honors to the world agen, His blessed part to Heauen, and slept in peace Kath. So may he rest, His Faults lye gently on him: Yet thus farre Griffith, giue me leaue to speake him, And yet with Charity. He was a man Of an vnbounded stomacke, euer ranking Himselfe with Princes. One that by suggestion Ty'de all the Kingdome. Symonie, was faire play, His owne Opinion was his Law. I'th' presence He would say vntruths, and be euer double Both in his words, and meaning. He was neuer (But where he meant to Ruine) pittifull. His Promises, were as he then was, Mighty: But his performance, as he is now, Nothing: Of his owne body he was ill, and gaue The Clergy ill example Grif. Noble Madam: Mens euill manners, liue in Brasse, their Vertues We write in Water. May it please your Highnesse To heare me speake his good now? Kath. Yes good Griffith, I were malicious else Grif. This Cardinall, Though from an humble Stocke, vndoubtedly Was fashion'd to much Honor. From his Cradle He was a Scholler, and a ripe, and good one: Exceeding wise, faire spoken, and perswading: Lofty, and sowre to them that lou'd him not: But, to those men that sought him, sweet as Summer. And though he were vnsatisfied in getting, (Which was a sinne) yet in bestowing, Madam, He was most Princely: Euer witnesse for him Those twinnes of Learning, that he rais'd in you, Ipswich and Oxford: one of which, fell with him, Vnwilling to out-liue the good that did it. The other (though vnfinish'd) yet so Famous, So excellent in Art, and still so rising, That Christendome shall euer speake his Vertue. His Ouerthrow, heap'd Happinesse vpon him: For then, and not till then, he felt himselfe, And found the Blessednesse of being little. And to adde greater Honors to his Age Then man could giue him; he dy'de, fearing God Kath. After my death, I wish no other Herald, No other speaker of my liuing Actions, To keepe mine Honor, from Corruption, But such an honest Chronicler as Griffith. Whom I most hated Liuing, thou hast made mee With thy Religious Truth, and Modestie, (Now in his Ashes) Honor: Peace be with him. Patience, be neere me still, and set me lower, I haue not long to trouble thee. Good Griffith, Cause the Musitians play me that sad note I nam'd my Knell; whil'st I sit meditating On that Coelestiall Harmony I go too. Sad and solemne Musicke. Grif. She is asleep: Good wench, let's sit down quiet, For feare we wake her. Softly, gentle Patience. The Vision. Enter solemnely tripping one after another, sixe Personages, clad in white Robes, wearing on their heades Garlands of Bayes, and golden Vizards on their faces, Branches of Bayes or Palme in their hands. They first Conge vnto her, then Dance: and at certaine Changes, the first two hold a spare Garland ouer her Head, at which the other foure make reuerend Curtsies. Then the two that held the Garland, deliuer the same to the other next two, who obserue the same order in their Changes, and holding the Garland ouer her head. Which done, they deliuer the same Garland to the last two: who likewise obserue the same Order. At which (as it were by inspiration) she makes (in her sleepe) signes of reioycing, and holdeth vp her hands to heauen. And so, in their Dancing vanish, carrying the Garland with them. The Musicke continues. Kath. Spirits of peace, where are ye? Are ye all gone? And leaue me heere in wretchednesse, behinde ye? Grif. Madam, we are heere Kath. It is not you I call for, Saw ye none enter since I slept? Grif. None Madam Kath. No? Saw you not euen now a blessed Troope Inuite me to a Banquet, whose bright faces Cast thousand beames vpon me, like the Sun? They promis'd me eternall Happinesse, And brought me Garlands (Griffith) which I feele I am not worthy yet to weare: I shall assuredly Grif. I am most ioyfull Madam, such good dreames Possesse your Fancy Kath. Bid the Musicke leaue, They are harsh and heauy to me. Musicke ceases. Pati. Do you note How much her Grace is alter'd on the sodaine? How long her face is drawne? How pale she lookes, And of an earthy cold? Marke her eyes? Grif. She is going Wench. Pray, pray Pati. Heauen comfort her. Enter a Messenger. Mes. And't like your Grace - Kath. You are a sawcy Fellow, Deserue we no more Reuerence? Grif. You are too blame, Knowing she will not loose her wonted Greatnesse To vse so rude behauiour. Go too, kneele Mes. I humbly do entreat your Highnesse pardon, My hast made me vnmannerly. There is staying A Gentleman sent from the King, to see you Kath. Admit him entrance Griffith. But this Fellow Let me ne're see againe. Exit Messeng. Enter Lord Capuchius. If my sight faile not, You should be Lord Ambassador from the Emperor, My Royall Nephew, and your name Capuchius Cap. Madam the same. Your Seruant Kath. O my Lord, The Times and Titles now are alter'd strangely With me, since first you knew me. But I pray you, What is your pleasure with me? Cap. Noble Lady, First mine owne seruice to your Grace, the next The Kings request, that I would visit you, Who greeues much for your weaknesse, and by me Sends you his Princely Commendations, And heartily entreats you take good comfort Kath. O my good Lord, that comfort comes too late, 'Tis like a Pardon after Execution; That gentle Physicke giuen in time, had cur'd me: But now I am past all Comforts heere, but Prayers. How does his Highnesse? Cap. Madam, in good health Kath. So may he euer do, and euer flourish, When I shall dwell with Wormes, and my poore name Banish'd the Kingdome. Patience, is that Letter I caus'd you write, yet sent away? Pat. No Madam Kath. Sir, I most humbly pray you to deliuer This to my Lord the King Cap. Most willing Madam Kath. In which I haue commended to his goodnesse The Modell of our chaste loues: his yong daughter, The dewes of Heauen fall thicke in Blessings on her, Beseeching him to giue her vertuous breeding. She is yong, and of a Noble modest Nature, I hope she will deserue well; and a little To loue her for her Mothers sake, that lou'd him, Heauen knowes how deerely. My next poore Petition, Is, that his Noble Grace would haue some pittie Vpon my wretched women, that so long Haue follow'd both my Fortunes, faithfully, Of which there is not one, I dare auow (And now I should not lye) but will deserue For Vertue, and true Beautie of the Soule, For honestie, and decent Carriage A right good Husband (let him be a Noble) And sure those men are happy that shall haue 'em. The last is for my men, they are the poorest, (But pouerty could neuer draw 'em from me) That they may haue their wages, duly paid 'em, And something ouer to remember me by. If Heauen had pleas'd to haue giuen me longer life And able meanes, we had not parted thus. These are the whole Contents, and good my Lord, By that you loue the deerest in this world, As you wish Christian peace to soules departed, Stand these poore peoples Friend, and vrge the King To do me this last right Cap. By Heauen I will, Or let me loose the fashion of a man Kath. I thanke you honest Lord. Remember me In all humilitie vnto his Highnesse: Say his long trouble now is passing Out of this world. Tell him in death I blest him (For so I will) mine eyes grow dimme. Farewell My Lord. Griffith farewell. Nay Patience, You must not leaue me yet. I must to bed, Call in more women. When I am dead, good Wench, Let me be vs'd with Honor; strew me ouer With Maiden Flowers, that all the world may know I was a chaste Wife, to my Graue: Embalme me, Then lay me forth (although vnqueen'd) yet like A Queene, and Daughter to a King enterre me. I can no more. Exeunt. leading Katherine.

One gentleman meets another in the city street, where they wait to see Anne, now queen, pass on the way to her coronation. The last time they met in the street was for the sad event of Buckingham's trial, so they are glad for a return to the more usual pomp of the royalty. They discuss a list of those who are to be promoted today, including Suffolk and Norfolk, and they note that Katharine has been renamed "Princess Dowager" after the divorce. The coronation passes with Suffolk, Norfolk, Anne, Surrey, and other important state officials. The gentlemen comment on who holds which decoration of state and how impressed they are with Anne. A third gentleman arrives, having just seen the coronation ceremony. He relates it to the other two. He tells how everyone filed into the Abbey and that the people were so impressed with the beauty of Anne. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Cranmer, performed the ceremony making her queen, the choir performed, and the procession passed out of the church to the court for celebrations. The third gentlemen notes that Gardiner was there and is not fond of Cranmer. But the gentlemen agree that nothing can come of this rivalry, as Cranmer has one friend who will not abandon him--namely Cromwell, who is in favor with the king and just got a promotion. The gentlemen depart. In Katharine's apartments, she asks her attendants to tell her about the death of Cardinal Wolsey. Apparently, after his arrest Wolsey grew ill and died a broken man. Katharine says she will speak of him with charity but goes on to mention how his enormous ambition shackled the kingdom; he used bribes for ecclesiastical favors, he said lies and was duplicitous in words and actions, and he was generally a bad example for the clergy. But her attendant Griffith speaks well of Wolsey, noting that he was a good scholar, kind and generous to his friends, and a patron of education. Upon his demise he discovered humility and found himself and died fearing God. Katharine listens to Griffith's speech and says she hopes Griffith will eulogize her when she dies, since he speaks so well. Griffith's words have made her want to honor the man who she hated most. She wishes Wolsey peace in death. Katharine goes to sleep with her attendants by her. She sees a vision of six people in white robes with garlands around their heads. They dance around Katharine, offering her a garland, and then dance away. Katharine wakes and calls to her attendants, asking if they have seen anything. She tells about the vision, saying it promised her eternal happiness. The attendants note to each other that they think she has not yet long to live if she is seeing such visions. A messenger enters, announcing the arrival of Capucius, an ambassador from Katharine's father, Charles V of Spain. Capucius says he has been sent by Henry to ask after her health, but Katharine says he is too late, since she is already dying. She gives Capucius a letter for the king, in which she asks Henry to care for their daughter and to provide for her servants, who have all been faithful during Katharine's life. Katharine asks Capucius to tell the king of her in all humility, saying that she will soon die and not be a trouble to him. Calling to her servants, she prepares for bed.

A sputtering of musketry was always to be heard. Later, the cannon had entered the dispute. In the fog-filled air their voices made a thudding sound. The reverberations were continued. This part of the world led a strange, battleful existence. The youth's regiment was marched to relieve a command that had lain long in some damp trenches. The men took positions behind a curving line of rifle pits that had been turned up, like a large furrow, along the line of woods. Before them was a level stretch, peopled with short, deformed stumps. From the woods beyond came the dull popping of the skirmishers and pickets, firing in the fog. From the right came the noise of a terrific fracas. The men cuddled behind the small embankment and sat in easy attitudes awaiting their turn. Many had their backs to the firing. The youth's friend lay down, buried his face in his arms, and almost instantly, it seemed, he was in a deep sleep. The youth leaned his breast against the brown dirt and peered over at the woods and up and down the line. Curtains of trees interfered with his ways of vision. He could see the low line of trenches but for a short distance. A few idle flags were perched on the dirt hills. Behind them were rows of dark bodies with a few heads sticking curiously over the top. Always the noise of skirmishers came from the woods on the front and left, and the din on the right had grown to frightful proportions. The guns were roaring without an instant's pause for breath. It seemed that the cannon had come from all parts and were engaged in a stupendous wrangle. It became impossible to make a sentence heard. The youth wished to launch a joke--a quotation from newspapers. He desired to say, "All quiet on the Rappahannock," but the guns refused to permit even a comment upon their uproar. He never successfully concluded the sentence. But at last the guns stopped, and among the men in the rifle pits rumors again flew, like birds, but they were now for the most part black creatures who flapped their wings drearily near to the ground and refused to rise on any wings of hope. The men's faces grew doleful from the interpreting of omens. Tales of hesitation and uncertainty on the part of those high in place and responsibility came to their ears. Stories of disaster were borne into their minds with many proofs. This din of musketry on the right, growing like a released genie of sound, expressed and emphasized the army's plight. The men were disheartened and began to mutter. They made gestures expressive of the sentence: "Ah, what more can we do?" And it could always be seen that they were bewildered by the alleged news and could not fully comprehend a defeat. Before the gray mists had been totally obliterated by the sun rays, the regiment was marching in a spread column that was retiring carefully through the woods. The disordered, hurrying lines of the enemy could sometimes be seen down through the groves and little fields. They were yelling, shrill and exultant. At this sight the youth forgot many personal matters and became greatly enraged. He exploded in loud sentences. "B'jiminey, we're generaled by a lot 'a lunkheads." "More than one feller has said that t'-day," observed a man. His friend, recently aroused, was still very drowsy. He looked behind him until his mind took in the meaning of the movement. Then he sighed. "Oh, well, I s'pose we got licked," he remarked sadly. The youth had a thought that it would not be handsome for him to freely condemn other men. He made an attempt to restrain himself, but the words upon his tongue were too bitter. He presently began a long and intricate denunciation of the commander of the forces. "Mebbe, it wa'n't all his fault--not all together. He did th' best he knowed. It's our luck t' git licked often," said his friend in a weary tone. He was trudging along with stooped shoulders and shifting eyes like a man who has been caned and kicked. "Well, don't we fight like the devil? Don't we do all that men can?" demanded the youth loudly. He was secretly dumfounded at this sentiment when it came from his lips. For a moment his face lost its valor and he looked guiltily about him. But no one questioned his right to deal in such words, and presently he recovered his air of courage. He went on to repeat a statement he had heard going from group to group at the camp that morning. "The brigadier said he never saw a new reg'ment fight the way we fought yestirday, didn't he? And we didn't do better than many another reg'ment, did we? Well, then, you can't say it's th' army's fault, can you?" In his reply, the friend's voice was stern. "'A course not," he said. "No man dare say we don't fight like th' devil. No man will ever dare say it. Th' boys fight like hell-roosters. But still--still, we don't have no luck." "Well, then, if we fight like the devil an' don't ever whip, it must be the general's fault," said the youth grandly and decisively. "And I don't see any sense in fighting and fighting and fighting, yet always losing through some derned old lunkhead of a general." A sarcastic man who was tramping at the youth's side, then spoke lazily. "Mebbe yeh think yeh fit th' hull battle yestirday, Fleming," he remarked. The speech pierced the youth. Inwardly he was reduced to an abject pulp by these chance words. His legs quaked privately. He cast a frightened glance at the sarcastic man. "Why, no," he hastened to say in a conciliating voice, "I don't think I fought the whole battle yesterday." But the other seemed innocent of any deeper meaning. Apparently, he had no information. It was merely his habit. "Oh!" he replied in the same tone of calm derision. The youth, nevertheless, felt a threat. His mind shrank from going near to the danger, and thereafter he was silent. The significance of the sarcastic man's words took from him all loud moods that would make him appear prominent. He became suddenly a modest person. There was low-toned talk among the troops. The officers were impatient and snappy, their countenances clouded with the tales of misfortune. The troops, sifting through the forest, were sullen. In the youth's company once a man's laugh rang out. A dozen soldiers turned their faces quickly toward him and frowned with vague displeasure. The noise of firing dogged their footsteps. Sometimes, it seemed to be driven a little way, but it always returned again with increased insolence. The men muttered and cursed, throwing black looks in its direction. In a clear space the troops were at last halted. Regiments and brigades, broken and detached through their encounters with thickets, grew together again and lines were faced toward the pursuing bark of the enemy's infantry. This noise, following like the yellings of eager, metallic hounds, increased to a loud and joyous burst, and then, as the sun went serenely up the sky, throwing illuminating rays into the gloomy thickets, it broke forth into prolonged pealings. The woods began to crackle as if afire. "Whoop-a-dadee," said a man, "here we are! Everybody fightin'. Blood an' destruction." "I was willin' t' bet they'd attack as soon as th' sun got fairly up," savagely asserted the lieutenant who commanded the youth's company. He jerked without mercy at his little mustache. He strode to and fro with dark dignity in the rear of his men, who were lying down behind whatever protection they had collected. A battery had trundled into position in the rear and was thoughtfully shelling the distance. The regiment, unmolested as yet, awaited the moment when the gray shadows of the woods before them should be slashed by the lines of flame. There was much growling and swearing. "Good Gawd," the youth grumbled, "we're always being chased around like rats! It makes me sick. Nobody seems to know where we go or why we go. We just get fired around from pillar to post and get licked here and get licked there, and nobody knows what it's done for. It makes a man feel like a damn' kitten in a bag. Now, I'd like to know what the eternal thunders we was marched into these woods for anyhow, unless it was to give the rebs a regular pot shot at us. We came in here and got our legs all tangled up in these cussed briers, and then we begin to fight and the rebs had an easy time of it. Don't tell me it's just luck! I know better. It's this derned old--" The friend seemed jaded, but he interrupted his comrade with a voice of calm confidence. "It'll turn out all right in th' end," he said. "Oh, the devil it will! You always talk like a dog-hanged parson. Don't tell me! I know--" At this time there was an interposition by the savage-minded lieutenant, who was obliged to vent some of his inward dissatisfaction upon his men. "You boys shut right up! There no need 'a your wastin' your breath in long-winded arguments about this an' that an' th' other. You've been jawin' like a lot 'a old hens. All you've got t' do is to fight, an' you'll get plenty 'a that t' do in about ten minutes. Less talkin' an' more fightin' is what's best for you boys. I never saw sech gabbling jackasses." He paused, ready to pounce upon any man who might have the temerity to reply. No words being said, he resumed his dignified pacing. "There's too much chin music an' too little fightin' in this war, anyhow," he said to them, turning his head for a final remark. The day had grown more white, until the sun shed his full radiance upon the thronged forest. A sort of a gust of battle came sweeping toward that part of the line where lay the youth's regiment. The front shifted a trifle to meet it squarely. There was a wait. In this part of the field there passed slowly the intense moments that precede the tempest. A single rifle flashed in a thicket before the regiment. In an instant it was joined by many others. There was a mighty song of clashes and crashes that went sweeping through the woods. The guns in the rear, aroused and enraged by shells that had been thrown burlike at them, suddenly involved themselves in a hideous altercation with another band of guns. The battle roar settled to a rolling thunder, which was a single, long explosion. In the regiment there was a peculiar kind of hesitation denoted in the attitudes of the men. They were worn, exhausted, having slept but little and labored much. They rolled their eyes toward the advancing battle as they stood awaiting the shock. Some shrank and flinched. They stood as men tied to stakes.

Henry's regiment moves toward the front line to relieve a unit which has been engaged in battle. While marching toward the battle line, the men are surrounded by the noise of battle. Henry and Wilson march together. As they march, they hear talk of disasters befalling their comrades, and the troops begin to grumble about their leadership. Henry, whose confidence is soaring, voices his criticism of their situation as he places the blame for the army's losses on their generals. At one point, a soldier walking next to Henry questions his bravery by asking him if he thinks that he fought the whole battle on the previous day. This comment has a chilling effect on Henry because it forces him to think about his retreat on the previous day. The troops take up their positions and wait. As they wait, they note the enemy's movements, and the troops again become restless. At this point, their company's lieutenant loses his temper after listening to the men's complaints, and the lieutenant's comments silence the soldiers. Finally, the regiment hears the increasing sounds of rifle fire and the roar of guns, and the battle begins. There is little enthusiasm for what is to come because the men are already worn out and exhausted from previous battles.

Clerval then put the following letter into my hands. "_To_ V. FRANKENSTEIN. "MY DEAR COUSIN, "I cannot describe to you the uneasiness we have all felt concerning your health. We cannot help imagining that your friend Clerval conceals the extent of your disorder: for it is now several months since we have seen your hand-writing; and all this time you have been obliged to dictate your letters to Henry. Surely, Victor, you must have been exceedingly ill; and this makes us all very wretched, as much so nearly as after the death of your dear mother. My uncle was almost persuaded that you were indeed dangerously ill, and could hardly be restrained from undertaking a journey to Ingolstadt. Clerval always writes that you are getting better; I eagerly hope that you will confirm this intelligence soon in your own hand-writing; for indeed, indeed, Victor, we are all very miserable on this account. Relieve us from this fear, and we shall be the happiest creatures in the world. Your father's health is now so vigorous, that he appears ten years younger since last winter. Ernest also is so much improved, that you would hardly know him: he is now nearly sixteen, and has lost that sickly appearance which he had some years ago; he is grown quite robust and active. "My uncle and I conversed a long time last night about what profession Ernest should follow. His constant illness when young has deprived him of the habits of application; and now that he enjoys good health, he is continually in the open air, climbing the hills, or rowing on the lake. I therefore proposed that he should be a farmer; which you know, Cousin, is a favourite scheme of mine. A farmer's is a very healthy happy life; and the least hurtful, or rather the most beneficial profession of any. My uncle had an idea of his being educated as an advocate, that through his interest he might become a judge. But, besides that he is not at all fitted for such an occupation, it is certainly more creditable to cultivate the earth for the sustenance of man, than to be the confidant, and sometimes the accomplice, of his vices; which is the profession of a lawyer. I said, that the employments of a prosperous farmer, if they were not a more honourable, they were at least a happier species of occupation than that of a judge, whose misfortune it was always to meddle with the dark side of human nature. My uncle smiled, and said, that I ought to be an advocate myself, which put an end to the conversation on that subject. "And now I must tell you a little story that will please, and perhaps amuse you. Do you not remember Justine Moritz? Probably you do not; I will relate her history, therefore, in a few words. Madame Moritz, her mother, was a widow with four children, of whom Justine was the third. This girl had always been the favourite of her father; but, through a strange perversity, her mother could not endure her, and, after the death of M. Moritz, treated her very ill. My aunt observed this; and, when Justine was twelve years of age, prevailed on her mother to allow her to live at her house. The republican institutions of our country have produced simpler and happier manners than those which prevail in the great monarchies that surround it. Hence there is less distinction between the several classes of its inhabitants; and the lower orders being neither so poor nor so despised, their manners are more refined and moral. A servant in Geneva does not mean the same thing as a servant in France and England. Justine, thus received in our family, learned the duties of a servant; a condition which, in our fortunate country, does not include the idea of ignorance, and a sacrifice of the dignity of a human being. "After what I have said, I dare say you well remember the heroine of my little tale: for Justine was a great favourite of your's; and I recollect you once remarked, that if you were in an ill humour, one glance from Justine could dissipate it, for the same reason that Ariosto gives concerning the beauty of Angelica--she looked so frank-hearted and happy. My aunt conceived a great attachment for her, by which she was induced to give her an education superior to that which she had at first intended. This benefit was fully repaid; Justine was the most grateful little creature in the world: I do not mean that she made any professions, I never heard one pass her lips; but you could see by her eyes that she almost adored her protectress. Although her disposition was gay, and in many respects inconsiderate, yet she paid the greatest attention to every gesture of my aunt. She thought her the model of all excellence, and endeavoured to imitate her phraseology and manners, so that even now she often reminds me of her. "When my dearest aunt died, every one was too much occupied in their own grief to notice poor Justine, who had attended her during her illness with the most anxious affection. Poor Justine was very ill; but other trials were reserved for her. "One by one, her brothers and sister died; and her mother, with the exception of her neglected daughter, was left childless. The conscience of the woman was troubled; she began to think that the deaths of her favourites was a judgment from heaven to chastise her partiality. She was a Roman Catholic; and I believe her confessor confirmed the idea which she had conceived. Accordingly, a few months after your departure for Ingolstadt, Justine was called home by her repentant mother. Poor girl! she wept when she quitted our house: she was much altered since the death of my aunt; grief had given softness and a winning mildness to her manners, which had before been remarkable for vivacity. Nor was her residence at her mother's house of a nature to restore her gaiety. The poor woman was very vacillating in her repentance. She sometimes begged Justine to forgive her unkindness, but much oftener accused her of having caused the deaths of her brothers and sister. Perpetual fretting at length threw Madame Moritz into a decline, which at first increased her irritability, but she is now at peace for ever. She died on the first approach of cold weather, at the beginning of this last winter. Justine has returned to us; and I assure you I love her tenderly. She is very clever and gentle, and extremely pretty; as I mentioned before, her mien and her expressions continually remind me of my dear aunt. "I must say also a few words to you, my dear cousin, of little darling William. I wish you could see him; he is very tall of his age, with sweet laughing blue eyes, dark eye-lashes, and curling hair. When he smiles, two little dimples appear on each cheek, which are rosy with health. He has already had one or two little _wives_, but Louisa Biron is his favourite, a pretty little girl of five years of age. "Now, dear Victor, I dare say you wish to be indulged in a little gossip concerning the good people of Geneva. The pretty Miss Mansfield has already received the congratulatory visits on her approaching marriage with a young Englishman, John Melbourne, Esq. Her ugly sister, Manon, married M. Duvillard, the rich banker, last autumn. Your favourite schoolfellow, Louis Manoir, has suffered several misfortunes since the departure of Clerval from Geneva. But he has already recovered his spirits, and is reported to be on the point of marrying a very lively pretty Frenchwoman, Madame Tavernier. She is a widow, and much older than Manoir; but she is very much admired, and a favourite with every body. "I have written myself into good spirits, dear cousin; yet I cannot conclude without again anxiously inquiring concerning your health. Dear Victor, if you are not very ill, write yourself, and make your father and all of us happy; or----I cannot bear to think of the other side of the question; my tears already flow. Adieu, my dearest cousin." "ELIZABETH LAVENZA. "Geneva, March 18th, 17--." * * * * * "Dear, dear Elizabeth!" I exclaimed when I had read her letter, "I will write instantly, and relieve them from the anxiety they must feel." I wrote, and this exertion greatly fatigued me; but my convalescence had commenced, and proceeded regularly. In another fortnight I was able to leave my chamber. One of my first duties on my recovery was to introduce Clerval to the several professors of the university. In doing this, I underwent a kind of rough usage, ill befitting the wounds that my mind had sustained. Ever since the fatal night, the end of my labours, and the beginning of my misfortunes, I had conceived a violent antipathy even to the name of natural philosophy. When I was otherwise quite restored to health, the sight of a chemical instrument would renew all the agony of my nervous symptoms. Henry saw this, and had removed all my apparatus from my view. He had also changed my apartment; for he perceived that I had acquired a dislike for the room which had previously been my laboratory. But these cares of Clerval were made of no avail when I visited the professors. M. Waldman inflicted torture when he praised, with kindness and warmth, the astonishing progress I had made in the sciences. He soon perceived that I disliked the subject; but, not guessing the real cause, he attributed my feelings to modesty, and changed the subject from my improvement to the science itself, with a desire, as I evidently saw, of drawing me out. What could I do? He meant to please, and he tormented me. I felt as if he had placed carefully, one by one, in my view those instruments which were to be afterwards used in putting me to a slow and cruel death. I writhed under his words, yet dared not exhibit the pain I felt. Clerval, whose eyes and feelings were always quick in discerning the sensations of others, declined the subject, alleging, in excuse, his total ignorance; and the conversation took a more general turn. I thanked my friend from my heart, but I did not speak. I saw plainly that he was surprised, but he never attempted to draw my secret from me; and although I loved him with a mixture of affection and reverence that knew no bounds, yet I could never persuade myself to confide to him that event which was so often present to my recollection, but which I feared the detail to another would only impress more deeply. M. Krempe was not equally docile; and in my condition at that time, of almost insupportable sensitiveness, his harsh blunt encomiums gave me even more pain than the benevolent approbation of M. Waldman. "D--n the fellow!" cried he; "why, M. Clerval, I assure you he has outstript us all. Aye, stare if you please; but it is nevertheless true. A youngster who, but a few years ago, believed Cornelius Agrippa as firmly as the gospel, has now set himself at the head of the university; and if he is not soon pulled down, we shall all be out of countenance.--Aye, aye," continued he, observing my face expressive of suffering, "M. Frankenstein is modest; an excellent quality in a young man. Young men should be diffident of themselves, you know, M. Clerval; I was myself when young: but that wears out in a very short time." M. Krempe had now commenced an eulogy on himself, which happily turned the conversation from a subject that was so annoying to me. Clerval was no natural philosopher. His imagination was too vivid for the minutiae of science. Languages were his principal study; and he sought, by acquiring their elements, to open a field for self-instruction on his return to Geneva. Persian, Arabic, and Hebrew, gained his attention, after he had made himself perfectly master of Greek and Latin. For my own part, idleness had ever been irksome to me; and now that I wished to fly from reflection, and hated my former studies, I felt great relief in being the fellow-pupil with my friend, and found not only instruction but consolation in the works of the orientalists. Their melancholy is soothing, and their joy elevating to a degree I never experienced in studying the authors of any other country. When you read their writings, life appears to consist in a warm sun and garden of roses,--in the smiles and frowns of a fair enemy, and the fire that consumes your own heart. How different from the manly and heroical poetry of Greece and Rome. Summer passed away in these occupations, and my return to Geneva was fixed for the latter end of autumn; but being delayed by several accidents, winter and snow arrived, the roads were deemed impassable, and my journey was retarded until the ensuing spring. I felt this delay very bitterly; for I longed to see my native town, and my beloved friends. My return had only been delayed so long from an unwillingness to leave Clerval in a strange place, before he had become acquainted with any of its inhabitants. The winter, however, was spent cheerfully; and although the spring was uncommonly late, when it came, its beauty compensated for its dilatoriness. The month of May had already commenced, and I expected the letter daily which was to fix the date of my departure, when Henry proposed a pedestrian tour in the environs of Ingolstadt that I might bid a personal farewell to the country I had so long inhabited. I acceded with pleasure to this proposition: I was fond of exercise, and Clerval had always been my favourite companion in the rambles of this nature that I had taken among the scenes of my native country. We passed a fortnight in these perambulations: my health and spirits had long been restored, and they gained additional strength from the salubrious air I breathed, the natural incidents of our progress, and the conversation of my friend. Study had before secluded me from the intercourse of my fellow-creatures, and rendered me unsocial; but Clerval called forth the better feelings of my heart; he again taught me to love the aspect of nature, and the cheerful faces of children. Excellent friend! how sincerely did you love me, and endeavour to elevate my mind, until it was on a level with your own. A selfish pursuit had cramped and narrowed me, until your gentleness and affection warmed and opened my senses; I became the same happy creature who, a few years ago, loving and beloved by all, had no sorrow or care. When happy, inanimate nature had the power of bestowing on me the most delightful sensations. A serene sky and verdant fields filled me with ecstacy. The present season was indeed divine; the flowers of spring bloomed in the hedges, while those of summer were already in bud: I was undisturbed by thoughts which during the preceding year had pressed upon me, notwithstanding my endeavours to throw them off, with an invincible burden. Henry rejoiced in my gaiety, and sincerely sympathized in my feelings: he exerted himself to amuse me, while he expressed the sensations that filled his soul. The resources of his mind on this occasion were truly astonishing: his conversation was full of imagination; and very often, in imitation of the Persian and Arabic writers, he invented tales of wonderful fancy and passion. At other times he repeated my favourite poems, or drew me out into arguments, which he supported with great ingenuity. We returned to our college on a Sunday afternoon: the peasants were dancing, and every one we met appeared gay and happy. My own spirits were high, and I bounded along with feelings of unbridled joy and hilarity.

Elizabeth's letter is the kind one would expect from a concerned family member. It is full of news from home that delights Victor and restores him to better health. Elizabeth tells of Justine Moritz, the Frankenstein's housekeeper and confidant. Even though Justine was treated poorly by her own family, she is a martyr for being a good, loyal friend to the Frankenstein family. Victor introduces Henry to his professors, who praise Victor highly. Victor and Henry begin their studies together, studying ancient and foreign languages in order to engage their minds. Both men are happy to be hard-working college students. Plans are made for Victor to return to Geneva in the fall, after his spring recovery, but weather and other delays make the trip impossible, and winter sets in. He revises his plans to depart in May.

Chapter V. A Laceration In The Drawing-Room But in the drawing-room the conversation was already over. Katerina Ivanovna was greatly excited, though she looked resolute. At the moment Alyosha and Madame Hohlakov entered, Ivan Fyodorovitch stood up to take leave. His face was rather pale, and Alyosha looked at him anxiously. For this moment was to solve a doubt, a harassing enigma which had for some time haunted Alyosha. During the preceding month it had been several times suggested to him that his brother Ivan was in love with Katerina Ivanovna, and, what was more, that he meant "to carry her off" from Dmitri. Until quite lately the idea seemed to Alyosha monstrous, though it worried him extremely. He loved both his brothers, and dreaded such rivalry between them. Meantime, Dmitri had said outright on the previous day that he was glad that Ivan was his rival, and that it was a great assistance to him, Dmitri. In what way did it assist him? To marry Grushenka? But that Alyosha considered the worst thing possible. Besides all this, Alyosha had till the evening before implicitly believed that Katerina Ivanovna had a steadfast and passionate love for Dmitri; but he had only believed it till the evening before. He had fancied, too, that she was incapable of loving a man like Ivan, and that she did love Dmitri, and loved him just as he was, in spite of all the strangeness of such a passion. But during yesterday's scene with Grushenka another idea had struck him. The word "lacerating," which Madame Hohlakov had just uttered, almost made him start, because half waking up towards daybreak that night he had cried out "Laceration, laceration," probably applying it to his dream. He had been dreaming all night of the previous day's scene at Katerina Ivanovna's. Now Alyosha was impressed by Madame Hohlakov's blunt and persistent assertion that Katerina Ivanovna was in love with Ivan, and only deceived herself through some sort of pose, from "self-laceration," and tortured herself by her pretended love for Dmitri from some fancied duty of gratitude. "Yes," he thought, "perhaps the whole truth lies in those words." But in that case what was Ivan's position? Alyosha felt instinctively that a character like Katerina Ivanovna's must dominate, and she could only dominate some one like Dmitri, and never a man like Ivan. For Dmitri might at last submit to her domination "to his own happiness" (which was what Alyosha would have desired), but Ivan--no, Ivan could not submit to her, and such submission would not give him happiness. Alyosha could not help believing that of Ivan. And now all these doubts and reflections flitted through his mind as he entered the drawing-room. Another idea, too, forced itself upon him: "What if she loved neither of them--neither Ivan nor Dmitri?" It must be noted that Alyosha felt as it were ashamed of his own thoughts and blamed himself when they kept recurring to him during the last month. "What do I know about love and women and how can I decide such questions?" he thought reproachfully, after such doubts and surmises. And yet it was impossible not to think about it. He felt instinctively that this rivalry was of immense importance in his brothers' lives and that a great deal depended upon it. "One reptile will devour the other," Ivan had pronounced the day before, speaking in anger of his father and Dmitri. So Ivan looked upon Dmitri as a reptile, and perhaps had long done so. Was it perhaps since he had known Katerina Ivanovna? That phrase had, of course, escaped Ivan unawares yesterday, but that only made it more important. If he felt like that, what chance was there of peace? Were there not, on the contrary, new grounds for hatred and hostility in their family? And with which of them was Alyosha to sympathize? And what was he to wish for each of them? He loved them both, but what could he desire for each in the midst of these conflicting interests? He might go quite astray in this maze, and Alyosha's heart could not endure uncertainty, because his love was always of an active character. He was incapable of passive love. If he loved any one, he set to work at once to help him. And to do so he must know what he was aiming at; he must know for certain what was best for each, and having ascertained this it was natural for him to help them both. But instead of a definite aim, he found nothing but uncertainty and perplexity on all sides. "It was lacerating," as was said just now. But what could he understand even in this "laceration"? He did not understand the first word in this perplexing maze. Seeing Alyosha, Katerina Ivanovna said quickly and joyfully to Ivan, who had already got up to go, "A minute! Stay another minute! I want to hear the opinion of this person here whom I trust absolutely. Don't go away," she added, addressing Madame Hohlakov. She made Alyosha sit down beside her, and Madame Hohlakov sat opposite, by Ivan. "You are all my friends here, all I have in the world, my dear friends," she began warmly, in a voice which quivered with genuine tears of suffering, and Alyosha's heart warmed to her at once. "You, Alexey Fyodorovitch, were witness yesterday of that abominable scene, and saw what I did. You did not see it, Ivan Fyodorovitch, he did. What he thought of me yesterday I don't know. I only know one thing, that if it were repeated to-day, this minute, I should express the same feelings again as yesterday--the same feelings, the same words, the same actions. You remember my actions, Alexey Fyodorovitch; you checked me in one of them" ... (as she said that, she flushed and her eyes shone). "I must tell you that I can't get over it. Listen, Alexey Fyodorovitch. I don't even know whether I still love _him_. I feel _pity_ for him, and that is a poor sign of love. If I loved him, if I still loved him, perhaps I shouldn't be sorry for him now, but should hate him." Her voice quivered, and tears glittered on her eyelashes. Alyosha shuddered inwardly. "That girl is truthful and sincere," he thought, "and she does not love Dmitri any more." "That's true, that's true," cried Madame Hohlakov. "Wait, dear. I haven't told you the chief, the final decision I came to during the night. I feel that perhaps my decision is a terrible one--for me, but I foresee that nothing will induce me to change it--nothing. It will be so all my life. My dear, kind, ever-faithful and generous adviser, the one friend I have in the world, Ivan Fyodorovitch, with his deep insight into the heart, approves and commends my decision. He knows it." "Yes, I approve of it," Ivan assented, in a subdued but firm voice. "But I should like Alyosha, too (Ah! Alexey Fyodorovitch, forgive my calling you simply Alyosha), I should like Alexey Fyodorovitch, too, to tell me before my two friends whether I am right. I feel instinctively that you, Alyosha, my dear brother (for you are a dear brother to me)," she said again ecstatically, taking his cold hand in her hot one, "I foresee that your decision, your approval, will bring me peace, in spite of all my sufferings, for, after your words, I shall be calm and submit--I feel that." "I don't know what you are asking me," said Alyosha, flushing. "I only know that I love you and at this moment wish for your happiness more than my own!... But I know nothing about such affairs," something impelled him to add hurriedly. "In such affairs, Alexey Fyodorovitch, in such affairs, the chief thing is honor and duty and something higher--I don't know what--but higher perhaps even than duty. I am conscious of this irresistible feeling in my heart, and it compels me irresistibly. But it may all be put in two words. I've already decided, even if he marries that--creature," she began solemnly, "whom I never, never can forgive, _even then I will not abandon him_. Henceforward I will never, never abandon him!" she cried, breaking into a sort of pale, hysterical ecstasy. "Not that I would run after him continually, get in his way and worry him. Oh, no! I will go away to another town--where you like--but I will watch over him all my life--I will watch over him all my life unceasingly. When he becomes unhappy with that woman, and that is bound to happen quite soon, let him come to me and he will find a friend, a sister.... Only a sister, of course, and so for ever; but he will learn at least that that sister is really his sister, who loves him and has sacrificed all her life to him. I will gain my point. I will insist on his knowing me and confiding entirely in me, without reserve," she cried, in a sort of frenzy. "I will be a god to whom he can pray--and that, at least, he owes me for his treachery and for what I suffered yesterday through him. And let him see that all my life I will be true to him and the promise I gave him, in spite of his being untrue and betraying me. I will--I will become nothing but a means for his happiness, or--how shall I say?--an instrument, a machine for his happiness, and that for my whole life, my whole life, and that he may see that all his life! That's my decision. Ivan Fyodorovitch fully approves me." She was breathless. She had perhaps intended to express her idea with more dignity, art and naturalness, but her speech was too hurried and crude. It was full of youthful impulsiveness, it betrayed that she was still smarting from yesterday's insult, and that her pride craved satisfaction. She felt this herself. Her face suddenly darkened, an unpleasant look came into her eyes. Alyosha at once saw it and felt a pang of sympathy. His brother Ivan made it worse by adding: "I've only expressed my own view," he said. "From any one else, this would have been affected and overstrained, but from you--no. Any other woman would have been wrong, but you are right. I don't know how to explain it, but I see that you are absolutely genuine and, therefore, you are right." "But that's only for the moment. And what does this moment stand for? Nothing but yesterday's insult." Madame Hohlakov obviously had not intended to interfere, but she could not refrain from this very just comment. "Quite so, quite so," cried Ivan, with peculiar eagerness, obviously annoyed at being interrupted, "in any one else this moment would be only due to yesterday's impression and would be only a moment. But with Katerina Ivanovna's character, that moment will last all her life. What for any one else would be only a promise is for her an everlasting burdensome, grim perhaps, but unflagging duty. And she will be sustained by the feeling of this duty being fulfilled. Your life, Katerina Ivanovna, will henceforth be spent in painful brooding over your own feelings, your own heroism, and your own suffering; but in the end that suffering will be softened and will pass into sweet contemplation of the fulfillment of a bold and proud design. Yes, proud it certainly is, and desperate in any case, but a triumph for you. And the consciousness of it will at last be a source of complete satisfaction and will make you resigned to everything else." This was unmistakably said with some malice and obviously with intention; even perhaps with no desire to conceal that he spoke ironically and with intention. "Oh, dear, how mistaken it all is!" Madame Hohlakov cried again. "Alexey Fyodorovitch, you speak. I want dreadfully to know what you will say!" cried Katerina Ivanovna, and burst into tears. Alyosha got up from the sofa. "It's nothing, nothing!" she went on through her tears. "I'm upset, I didn't sleep last night. But by the side of two such friends as you and your brother I still feel strong--for I know--you two will never desert me." "Unluckily I am obliged to return to Moscow--perhaps to-morrow--and to leave you for a long time--And, unluckily, it's unavoidable," Ivan said suddenly. "To-morrow--to Moscow!" her face was suddenly contorted; "but--but, dear me, how fortunate!" she cried in a voice suddenly changed. In one instant there was no trace left of her tears. She underwent an instantaneous transformation, which amazed Alyosha. Instead of a poor, insulted girl, weeping in a sort of "laceration," he saw a woman completely self- possessed and even exceedingly pleased, as though something agreeable had just happened. "Oh, not fortunate that I am losing you, of course not," she corrected herself suddenly, with a charming society smile. "Such a friend as you are could not suppose that. I am only too unhappy at losing you." She rushed impulsively at Ivan, and seizing both his hands, pressed them warmly. "But what is fortunate is that you will be able in Moscow to see auntie and Agafya and to tell them all the horror of my present position. You can speak with complete openness to Agafya, but spare dear auntie. You will know how to do that. You can't think how wretched I was yesterday and this morning, wondering how I could write them that dreadful letter--for one can never tell such things in a letter.... Now it will be easy for me to write, for you will see them and explain everything. Oh, how glad I am! But I am only glad of that, believe me. Of course, no one can take your place.... I will run at once to write the letter," she finished suddenly, and took a step as though to go out of the room. "And what about Alyosha and his opinion, which you were so desperately anxious to hear?" cried Madame Hohlakov. There was a sarcastic, angry note in her voice. "I had not forgotten that," cried Katerina Ivanovna, coming to a sudden standstill, "and why are you so antagonistic at such a moment?" she added, with warm and bitter reproachfulness. "What I said, I repeat. I must have his opinion. More than that, I must have his decision! As he says, so it shall be. You see how anxious I am for your words, Alexey Fyodorovitch.... But what's the matter?" "I couldn't have believed it. I can't understand it!" Alyosha cried suddenly in distress. "What? What?" "He is going to Moscow, and you cry out that you are glad. You said that on purpose! And you begin explaining that you are not glad of that but sorry to be--losing a friend. But that was acting, too--you were playing a part--as in a theater!" "In a theater? What? What do you mean?" exclaimed Katerina Ivanovna, profoundly astonished, flushing crimson, and frowning. "Though you assure him you are sorry to lose a friend in him, you persist in telling him to his face that it's fortunate he is going," said Alyosha breathlessly. He was standing at the table and did not sit down. "What are you talking about? I don't understand." "I don't understand myself.... I seemed to see in a flash ... I know I am not saying it properly, but I'll say it all the same," Alyosha went on in the same shaking and broken voice. "What I see is that perhaps you don't love Dmitri at all ... and never have, from the beginning.... And Dmitri, too, has never loved you ... and only esteems you.... I really don't know how I dare to say all this, but somebody must tell the truth ... for nobody here will tell the truth." "What truth?" cried Katerina Ivanovna, and there was an hysterical ring in her voice. "I'll tell you," Alyosha went on with desperate haste, as though he were jumping from the top of a house. "Call Dmitri; I will fetch him--and let him come here and take your hand and take Ivan's and join your hands. For you're torturing Ivan, simply because you love him--and torturing him, because you love Dmitri through 'self-laceration'--with an unreal love--because you've persuaded yourself." Alyosha broke off and was silent. "You ... you ... you are a little religious idiot--that's what you are!" Katerina Ivanovna snapped. Her face was white and her lips were moving with anger. Ivan suddenly laughed and got up. His hat was in his hand. "You are mistaken, my good Alyosha," he said, with an expression Alyosha had never seen in his face before--an expression of youthful sincerity and strong, irresistibly frank feeling. "Katerina Ivanovna has never cared for me! She has known all the time that I cared for her--though I never said a word of my love to her--she knew, but she didn't care for me. I have never been her friend either, not for one moment; she is too proud to need my friendship. She kept me at her side as a means of revenge. She revenged with me and on me all the insults which she has been continually receiving from Dmitri ever since their first meeting. For even that first meeting has rankled in her heart as an insult--that's what her heart is like! She has talked to me of nothing but her love for him. I am going now; but, believe me, Katerina Ivanovna, you really love him. And the more he insults you, the more you love him--that's your 'laceration.' You love him just as he is; you love him for insulting you. If he reformed, you'd give him up at once and cease to love him. But you need him so as to contemplate continually your heroic fidelity and to reproach him for infidelity. And it all comes from your pride. Oh, there's a great deal of humiliation and self-abasement about it, but it all comes from pride.... I am too young and I've loved you too much. I know that I ought not to say this, that it would be more dignified on my part simply to leave you, and it would be less offensive for you. But I am going far away, and shall never come back.... It is for ever. I don't want to sit beside a 'laceration.'... But I don't know how to speak now. I've said everything.... Good-by, Katerina Ivanovna; you can't be angry with me, for I am a hundred times more severely punished than you, if only by the fact that I shall never see you again. Good-by! I don't want your hand. You have tortured me too deliberately for me to be able to forgive you at this moment. I shall forgive you later, but now I don't want your hand. 'Den Dank, Dame, begehr ich nicht,' " he added, with a forced smile, showing, however, that he could read Schiller, and read him till he knew him by heart--which Alyosha would never have believed. He went out of the room without saying good-by even to his hostess, Madame Hohlakov. Alyosha clasped his hands. "Ivan!" he cried desperately after him. "Come back, Ivan! No, nothing will induce him to come back now!" he cried again, regretfully realizing it; "but it's my fault, my fault. I began it! Ivan spoke angrily, wrongly. Unjustly and angrily. He must come back here, come back," Alyosha kept exclaiming frantically. Katerina Ivanovna went suddenly into the next room. "You have done no harm. You behaved beautifully, like an angel," Madame Hohlakov whispered rapidly and ecstatically to Alyosha. "I will do my utmost to prevent Ivan Fyodorovitch from going." Her face beamed with delight, to the great distress of Alyosha, but Katerina Ivanovna suddenly returned. She had two hundred-rouble notes in her hand. "I have a great favor to ask of you, Alexey Fyodorovitch," she began, addressing Alyosha with an apparently calm and even voice, as though nothing had happened. "A week--yes, I think it was a week ago--Dmitri Fyodorovitch was guilty of a hasty and unjust action--a very ugly action. There is a low tavern here, and in it he met that discharged officer, that captain, whom your father used to employ in some business. Dmitri Fyodorovitch somehow lost his temper with this captain, seized him by the beard and dragged him out into the street and for some distance along it, in that insulting fashion. And I am told that his son, a boy, quite a child, who is at the school here, saw it and ran beside them crying and begging for his father, appealing to every one to defend him, while every one laughed. You must forgive me, Alexey Fyodorovitch, I cannot think without indignation of that disgraceful action of _his_ ... one of those actions of which only Dmitri Fyodorovitch would be capable in his anger ... and in his passions! I can't describe it even.... I can't find my words. I've made inquiries about his victim, and find he is quite a poor man. His name is Snegiryov. He did something wrong in the army and was discharged. I can't tell you what. And now he has sunk into terrible destitution, with his family--an unhappy family of sick children, and, I believe, an insane wife. He has been living here a long time; he used to work as a copying clerk, but now he is getting nothing. I thought if you ... that is I thought ... I don't know. I am so confused. You see, I wanted to ask you, my dear Alexey Fyodorovitch, to go to him, to find some excuse to go to them--I mean to that captain--oh, goodness, how badly I explain it!--and delicately, carefully, as only you know how to" (Alyosha blushed), "manage to give him this assistance, these two hundred roubles. He will be sure to take it.... I mean, persuade him to take it.... Or, rather, what do I mean? You see it's not by way of compensation to prevent him from taking proceedings (for I believe he meant to), but simply a token of sympathy, of a desire to assist him from me, Dmitri Fyodorovitch's betrothed, not from himself.... But you know.... I would go myself, but you'll know how to do it ever so much better. He lives in Lake Street, in the house of a woman called Kalmikov.... For God's sake, Alexey Fyodorovitch, do it for me, and now ... now I am rather ... tired. Good- by!" She turned and disappeared behind the portiere so quickly that Alyosha had not time to utter a word, though he wanted to speak. He longed to beg her pardon, to blame himself, to say something, for his heart was full and he could not bear to go out of the room without it. But Madame Hohlakov took him by the hand and drew him along with her. In the hall she stopped him again as before. "She is proud, she is struggling with herself; but kind, charming, generous," she exclaimed, in a half-whisper. "Oh, how I love her, especially sometimes, and how glad I am again of everything! Dear Alexey Fyodorovitch, you didn't know, but I must tell you, that we all, all--both her aunts, I and all of us, Lise, even--have been hoping and praying for nothing for the last month but that she may give up your favorite Dmitri, who takes no notice of her and does not care for her, and may marry Ivan Fyodorovitch--such an excellent and cultivated young man, who loves her more than anything in the world. We are in a regular plot to bring it about, and I am even staying on here perhaps on that account." "But she has been crying--she has been wounded again," cried Alyosha. "Never trust a woman's tears, Alexey Fyodorovitch. I am never for the women in such cases. I am always on the side of the men." "Mamma, you are spoiling him," Lise's little voice cried from behind the door. "No, it was all my fault. I am horribly to blame," Alyosha repeated unconsoled, hiding his face in his hands in an agony of remorse for his indiscretion. "Quite the contrary; you behaved like an angel, like an angel. I am ready to say so a thousand times over." "Mamma, how has he behaved like an angel?" Lise's voice was heard again. "I somehow fancied all at once," Alyosha went on as though he had not heard Lise, "that she loved Ivan, and so I said that stupid thing.... What will happen now?" "To whom, to whom?" cried Lise. "Mamma, you really want to be the death of me. I ask you and you don't answer." At the moment the maid ran in. "Katerina Ivanovna is ill.... She is crying, struggling ... hysterics." "What is the matter?" cried Lise, in a tone of real anxiety. "Mamma, I shall be having hysterics, and not she!" "Lise, for mercy's sake, don't scream, don't persecute me. At your age one can't know everything that grown-up people know. I'll come and tell you everything you ought to know. Oh, mercy on us! I am coming, I am coming.... Hysterics is a good sign, Alexey Fyodorovitch; it's an excellent thing that she is hysterical. That's just as it ought to be. In such cases I am always against the woman, against all these feminine tears and hysterics. Run and say, Yulia, that I'll fly to her. As for Ivan Fyodorovitch's going away like that, it's her own fault. But he won't go away. Lise, for mercy's sake, don't scream! Oh, yes; you are not screaming. It's I am screaming. Forgive your mamma; but I am delighted, delighted, delighted! Did you notice, Alexey Fyodorovitch, how young, how young Ivan Fyodorovitch was just now when he went out, when he said all that and went out? I thought he was so learned, such a _savant_, and all of a sudden he behaved so warmly, openly, and youthfully, with such youthful inexperience, and it was all so fine, like you.... And the way he repeated that German verse, it was just like you! But I must fly, I must fly! Alexey Fyodorovitch, make haste to carry out her commission, and then make haste back. Lise, do you want anything now? For mercy's sake, don't keep Alexey Fyodorovitch a minute. He will come back to you at once." Madame Hohlakov at last ran off. Before leaving, Alyosha would have opened the door to see Lise. "On no account," cried Lise. "On no account now. Speak through the door. How have you come to be an angel? That's the only thing I want to know." "For an awful piece of stupidity, Lise! Good-by!" "Don't dare to go away like that!" Lise was beginning. "Lise, I have a real sorrow! I'll be back directly, but I have a great, great sorrow!" And he ran out of the room.

Alyosha leaves Lise and follows Madame Khokhlakov into the drawing room, where Katerina and Ivan seem to have just finished a conversation. Alyosha is struck by Madame Khokhlakov's description of Katerina as loving Dmitri only out of "strain," because he had woken up in the middle of the night uttering that very word. Katerina announces that although she is unsure whether she loves Dmitri, she will never leave him, out of a sense of duty. Alyosha notices that Katerina seems to recognize her own pridefulness and feels sorry for her. Ivan announces his agreement with Katerina's proposal, but Alyosha detects a note of malice in his words. Ivan then announces that he's leaving for Moscow. Katerina seems disconcerted but quickly recovers and expresses how glad she is that Ivan's leaving, because Ivan gets to tell her aunt about all of her and Dmitri's shenanigans. Madame Khokhlakov is beside herself with what she views as Katerina and Ivan's irrationality, because she believes they love each other. Alyosha is suddenly moved to chide Katerina for being so dramatic and faking her happiness at Ivan's departure. He tells her that he believes she and Dmitri perhaps never loved each other, and that she really loves Ivan. This drives Katerina into hysterics. Ivan is amused and explains to Alyosha that what motivates Katerina isn't love but pride, and that Katerina has only tolerated Ivan's friendship to take revenge on Dmitri. He then leaves the room. Katerina is still beside herself, but then offers Alyosha a couple hundred roubles. She asks Alyosha to take them to a retired captain named Snegiryov, whom Dmitri apparently insulted in front of Snegiryov's son. The captain lives in poverty with his wife and children, and Katerina wants to offer the roubles as charity. Then she abruptly leaves the room. Madame Khokhlakov praises Alyosha for his outburst, but Alyosha is utterly chagrined at the havoc he believes he caused. Madame Khokhlakov then runs off to take care of the hysterical Katerina. Lise, who is again behind the door to her room, won't let Alyosha open it to see her, but asks him how he became such an "angel." Alyosha is just confused and distraught and tells her that he has to go.

Chapter V. Not You, Not You! On the way to Ivan he had to pass the house where Katerina Ivanovna was living. There was light in the windows. He suddenly stopped and resolved to go in. He had not seen Katerina Ivanovna for more than a week. But now it struck him that Ivan might be with her, especially on the eve of the terrible day. Ringing, and mounting the staircase, which was dimly lighted by a Chinese lantern, he saw a man coming down, and as they met, he recognized him as his brother. So he was just coming from Katerina Ivanovna. "Ah, it's only you," said Ivan dryly. "Well, good-by! You are going to her?" "Yes." "I don't advise you to; she's upset and you'll upset her more." A door was instantly flung open above, and a voice cried suddenly: "No, no! Alexey Fyodorovitch, have you come from him?" "Yes, I have been with him." "Has he sent me any message? Come up, Alyosha, and you, Ivan Fyodorovitch, you must come back, you must. Do you hear?" There was such a peremptory note in Katya's voice that Ivan, after a moment's hesitation, made up his mind to go back with Alyosha. "She was listening," he murmured angrily to himself, but Alyosha heard it. "Excuse my keeping my greatcoat on," said Ivan, going into the drawing- room. "I won't sit down. I won't stay more than a minute." "Sit down, Alexey Fyodorovitch," said Katerina Ivanovna, though she remained standing. She had changed very little during this time, but there was an ominous gleam in her dark eyes. Alyosha remembered afterwards that she had struck him as particularly handsome at that moment. "What did he ask you to tell me?" "Only one thing," said Alyosha, looking her straight in the face, "that you would spare yourself and say nothing at the trial of what" (he was a little confused) "... passed between you ... at the time of your first acquaintance ... in that town." "Ah! that I bowed down to the ground for that money!" She broke into a bitter laugh. "Why, is he afraid for me or for himself? He asks me to spare--whom? Him or myself? Tell me, Alexey Fyodorovitch!" Alyosha watched her intently, trying to understand her. "Both yourself and him," he answered softly. "I am glad to hear it," she snapped out maliciously, and she suddenly blushed. "You don't know me yet, Alexey Fyodorovitch," she said menacingly. "And I don't know myself yet. Perhaps you'll want to trample me under foot after my examination to-morrow." "You will give your evidence honorably," said Alyosha; "that's all that's wanted." "Women are often dishonorable," she snarled. "Only an hour ago I was thinking I felt afraid to touch that monster ... as though he were a reptile ... but no, he is still a human being to me! But did he do it? Is he the murderer?" she cried, all of a sudden, hysterically, turning quickly to Ivan. Alyosha saw at once that she had asked Ivan that question before, perhaps only a moment before he came in, and not for the first time, but for the hundredth, and that they had ended by quarreling. "I've been to see Smerdyakov.... It was you, you who persuaded me that he murdered his father. It's only you I believed!" she continued, still addressing Ivan. He gave her a sort of strained smile. Alyosha started at her tone. He had not suspected such familiar intimacy between them. "Well, that's enough, anyway," Ivan cut short the conversation. "I am going. I'll come to-morrow." And turning at once, he walked out of the room and went straight downstairs. With an imperious gesture, Katerina Ivanovna seized Alyosha by both hands. "Follow him! Overtake him! Don't leave him alone for a minute!" she said, in a hurried whisper. "He's mad! Don't you know that he's mad? He is in a fever, nervous fever. The doctor told me so. Go, run after him...." Alyosha jumped up and ran after Ivan, who was not fifty paces ahead of him. "What do you want?" He turned quickly on Alyosha, seeing that he was running after him. "She told you to catch me up, because I'm mad. I know it all by heart," he added irritably. "She is mistaken, of course; but she is right that you are ill," said Alyosha. "I was looking at your face just now. You look very ill, Ivan." Ivan walked on without stopping. Alyosha followed him. "And do you know, Alexey Fyodorovitch, how people do go out of their mind?" Ivan asked in a voice suddenly quiet, without a trace of irritation, with a note of the simplest curiosity. "No, I don't. I suppose there are all kinds of insanity." "And can one observe that one's going mad oneself?" "I imagine one can't see oneself clearly in such circumstances," Alyosha answered with surprise. Ivan paused for half a minute. "If you want to talk to me, please change the subject," he said suddenly. "Oh, while I think of it, I have a letter for you," said Alyosha timidly, and he took Lise's note from his pocket and held it out to Ivan. They were just under a lamp-post. Ivan recognized the handwriting at once. "Ah, from that little demon!" he laughed maliciously, and, without opening the envelope, he tore it into bits and threw it in the air. The bits were scattered by the wind. "She's not sixteen yet, I believe, and already offering herself," he said contemptuously, striding along the street again. "How do you mean, offering herself?" exclaimed Alyosha. "As wanton women offer themselves, to be sure." "How can you, Ivan, how can you?" Alyosha cried warmly, in a grieved voice. "She is a child; you are insulting a child! She is ill; she is very ill, too. She is on the verge of insanity, too, perhaps.... I had hoped to hear something from you ... that would save her." "You'll hear nothing from me. If she is a child I am not her nurse. Be quiet, Alexey. Don't go on about her. I am not even thinking about it." They were silent again for a moment. "She will be praying all night now to the Mother of God to show her how to act to-morrow at the trial," he said sharply and angrily again. "You ... you mean Katerina Ivanovna?" "Yes. Whether she's to save Mitya or ruin him. She'll pray for light from above. She can't make up her mind for herself, you see. She has not had time to decide yet. She takes me for her nurse, too. She wants me to sing lullabies to her." "Katerina Ivanovna loves you, brother," said Alyosha sadly. "Perhaps; but I am not very keen on her." "She is suffering. Why do you ... sometimes say things to her that give her hope?" Alyosha went on, with timid reproach. "I know that you've given her hope. Forgive me for speaking to you like this," he added. "I can't behave to her as I ought--break off altogether and tell her so straight out," said Ivan, irritably. "I must wait till sentence is passed on the murderer. If I break off with her now, she will avenge herself on me by ruining that scoundrel to-morrow at the trial, for she hates him and knows she hates him. It's all a lie--lie upon lie! As long as I don't break off with her, she goes on hoping, and she won't ruin that monster, knowing how I want to get him out of trouble. If only that damned verdict would come!" The words "murderer" and "monster" echoed painfully in Alyosha's heart. "But how can she ruin Mitya?" he asked, pondering on Ivan's words. "What evidence can she give that would ruin Mitya?" "You don't know that yet. She's got a document in her hands, in Mitya's own writing, that proves conclusively that he did murder Fyodor Pavlovitch." "That's impossible!" cried Alyosha. "Why is it impossible? I've read it myself." "There can't be such a document!" Alyosha repeated warmly. "There can't be, because he's not the murderer. It's not he murdered father, not he!" Ivan suddenly stopped. "Who is the murderer then, according to you?" he asked, with apparent coldness. There was even a supercilious note in his voice. "You know who," Alyosha pronounced in a low, penetrating voice. "Who? You mean the myth about that crazy idiot, the epileptic, Smerdyakov?" Alyosha suddenly felt himself trembling all over. "You know who," broke helplessly from him. He could scarcely breathe. "Who? Who?" Ivan cried almost fiercely. All his restraint suddenly vanished. "I only know one thing," Alyosha went on, still almost in a whisper, "_it wasn't you_ killed father." " 'Not you'! What do you mean by 'not you'?" Ivan was thunderstruck. "It was not you killed father, not you!" Alyosha repeated firmly. The silence lasted for half a minute. "I know I didn't. Are you raving?" said Ivan, with a pale, distorted smile. His eyes were riveted on Alyosha. They were standing again under a lamp-post. "No, Ivan. You've told yourself several times that you are the murderer." "When did I say so? I was in Moscow.... When have I said so?" Ivan faltered helplessly. "You've said so to yourself many times, when you've been alone during these two dreadful months," Alyosha went on softly and distinctly as before. Yet he was speaking now, as it were, not of himself, not of his own will, but obeying some irresistible command. "You have accused yourself and have confessed to yourself that you are the murderer and no one else. But you didn't do it: you are mistaken: you are not the murderer. Do you hear? It was not you! God has sent me to tell you so." They were both silent. The silence lasted a whole long minute. They were both standing still, gazing into each other's eyes. They were both pale. Suddenly Ivan began trembling all over, and clutched Alyosha's shoulder. "You've been in my room!" he whispered hoarsely. "You've been there at night, when he came.... Confess ... have you seen him, have you seen him?" "Whom do you mean--Mitya?" Alyosha asked, bewildered. "Not him, damn the monster!" Ivan shouted, in a frenzy. "Do you know that he visits me? How did you find out? Speak!" "Who is _he_! I don't know whom you are talking about," Alyosha faltered, beginning to be alarmed. "Yes, you do know ... or how could you--? It's impossible that you don't know." Suddenly he seemed to check himself. He stood still and seemed to reflect. A strange grin contorted his lips. "Brother," Alyosha began again, in a shaking voice, "I have said this to you, because you'll believe my word, I know that. I tell you once and for all, it's not you. You hear, once for all! God has put it into my heart to say this to you, even though it may make you hate me from this hour." But by now Ivan had apparently regained his self-control. "Alexey Fyodorovitch," he said, with a cold smile, "I can't endure prophets and epileptics--messengers from God especially--and you know that only too well. I break off all relations with you from this moment and probably for ever. I beg you to leave me at this turning. It's the way to your lodgings, too. You'd better be particularly careful not to come to me to-day! Do you hear?" He turned and walked on with a firm step, not looking back. "Brother," Alyosha called after him, "if anything happens to you to-day, turn to me before any one!" But Ivan made no reply. Alyosha stood under the lamp-post at the cross roads, till Ivan had vanished into the darkness. Then he turned and walked slowly homewards. Both Alyosha and Ivan were living in lodgings; neither of them was willing to live in Fyodor Pavlovitch's empty house. Alyosha had a furnished room in the house of some working people. Ivan lived some distance from him. He had taken a roomy and fairly comfortable lodge attached to a fine house that belonged to a well-to-do lady, the widow of an official. But his only attendant was a deaf and rheumatic old crone who went to bed at six o'clock every evening and got up at six in the morning. Ivan had become remarkably indifferent to his comforts of late, and very fond of being alone. He did everything for himself in the one room he lived in, and rarely entered any of the other rooms in his abode. He reached the gate of the house and had his hand on the bell, when he suddenly stopped. He felt that he was trembling all over with anger. Suddenly he let go of the bell, turned back with a curse, and walked with rapid steps in the opposite direction. He walked a mile and a half to a tiny, slanting, wooden house, almost a hut, where Marya Kondratyevna, the neighbor who used to come to Fyodor Pavlovitch's kitchen for soup and to whom Smerdyakov had once sung his songs and played on the guitar, was now lodging. She had sold their little house, and was now living here with her mother. Smerdyakov, who was ill--almost dying--had been with them ever since Fyodor Pavlovitch's death. It was to him Ivan was going now, drawn by a sudden and irresistible prompting.

On his way to look for Ivan, Alyosha notes that the lights are on at Katerina's, and figures Ivan must be visiting her. Sure enough, he meets Ivan just as he's leaving Katerina's. They both go up to see her. Alyosha tells Katerina that Dmitri doesn't want her to testify, but Katerina scoffs at him. She reveals that she's been to visit Smerdyakov because Ivan has told her that Smerdyakov is the real killer, but she still seems unconvinced. When Ivan leaves, Alyosha chases after him and gives him Lise's note. Ivan tears up the letter. Ivan then tells Alyosha that he's only staying friendly with Katerina because he doesn't want her to ruin Dmitri's chances at the trial. Ivan claims he's no longer in love with Katerina, but he also believes that Katerina has a document that "mathematically" proves that Dmitri killed their father, an idea that Alyosha rejects. When Ivan asks Alyosha who he thinks killed their father, Alyosha insists that he doesn't think it was Dmitri. Ivan is strangely disturbed, then accuses Alyosha of spying on him in his room when he was visited by an unnamed man. Alyosha is completely mystified and denies spying on his brother. Ivan tells Alyosha to leave him alone, and they go their separate ways. Instead of going home, Ivan decides on impulse to go to Smerdyakov's.

The faithful Cacambo had already prevailed upon the Turkish skipper, who was to conduct the Sultan Achmet to Constantinople, to receive Candide and Martin on his ship. They both embarked after having made their obeisance to his miserable Highness. "You see," said Candide to Martin on the way, "we supped with six dethroned kings, and of those six there was one to whom I gave charity. Perhaps there are many other princes yet more unfortunate. For my part, I have only lost a hundred sheep; and now I am flying into Cunegonde's arms. My dear Martin, yet once more Pangloss was right: all is for the best." "I wish it," answered Martin. "But," said Candide, "it was a very strange adventure we met with at Venice. It has never before been seen or heard that six dethroned kings have supped together at a public inn." "It is not more extraordinary," said Martin, "than most of the things that have happened to us. It is a very common thing for kings to be dethroned; and as for the honour we have had of supping in their company, it is a trifle not worth our attention." No sooner had Candide got on board the vessel than he flew to his old valet and friend Cacambo, and tenderly embraced him. "Well," said he, "what news of Cunegonde? Is she still a prodigy of beauty? Does she love me still? How is she? Thou hast doubtless bought her a palace at Constantinople?" "My dear master," answered Cacambo, "Cunegonde washes dishes on the banks of the Propontis, in the service of a prince, who has very few dishes to wash; she is a slave in the family of an ancient sovereign named Ragotsky,[35] to whom the Grand Turk allows three crowns a day in his exile. But what is worse still is, that she has lost her beauty and has become horribly ugly." "Well, handsome or ugly," replied Candide, "I am a man of honour, and it is my duty to love her still. But how came she to be reduced to so abject a state with the five or six millions that you took to her?" "Ah!" said Cacambo, "was I not to give two millions to Senor Don Fernando d'Ibaraa, y Figueora, y Mascarenes, y Lampourdos, y Souza, Governor of Buenos Ayres, for permitting Miss Cunegonde to come away? And did not a corsair bravely rob us of all the rest? Did not this corsair carry us to Cape Matapan, to Milo, to Nicaria, to Samos, to Petra, to the Dardanelles, to Marmora, to Scutari? Cunegonde and the old woman serve the prince I now mentioned to you, and I am slave to the dethroned Sultan." "What a series of shocking calamities!" cried Candide. "But after all, I have some diamonds left; and I may easily pay Cunegonde's ransom. Yet it is a pity that she is grown so ugly." Then, turning towards Martin: "Who do you think," said he, "is most to be pitied--the Sultan Achmet, the Emperor Ivan, King Charles Edward, or I?" "How should I know!" answered Martin. "I must see into your hearts to be able to tell." "Ah!" said Candide, "if Pangloss were here, he could tell." "I know not," said Martin, "in what sort of scales your Pangloss would weigh the misfortunes of mankind and set a just estimate on their sorrows. All that I can presume to say is, that there are millions of people upon earth who have a hundred times more to complain of than King Charles Edward, the Emperor Ivan, or the Sultan Achmet." "That may well be," said Candide. In a few days they reached the Bosphorus, and Candide began by paying a very high ransom for Cacambo. Then without losing time, he and his companions went on board a galley, in order to search on the banks of the Propontis for his Cunegonde, however ugly she might have become. Among the crew there were two slaves who rowed very badly, and to whose bare shoulders the Levantine captain would now and then apply blows from a bull's pizzle. Candide, from a natural impulse, looked at these two slaves more attentively than at the other oarsmen, and approached them with pity. Their features though greatly disfigured, had a slight resemblance to those of Pangloss and the unhappy Jesuit and Westphalian Baron, brother to Miss Cunegonde. This moved and saddened him. He looked at them still more attentively. "Indeed," said he to Cacambo, "if I had not seen Master Pangloss hanged, and if I had not had the misfortune to kill the Baron, I should think it was they that were rowing." At the names of the Baron and of Pangloss, the two galley-slaves uttered a loud cry, held fast by the seat, and let drop their oars. The captain ran up to them and redoubled his blows with the bull's pizzle. "Stop! stop! sir," cried Candide. "I will give you what money you please." "What! it is Candide!" said one of the slaves. "What! it is Candide!" said the other. "Do I dream?" cried Candide; "am I awake? or am I on board a galley? Is this the Baron whom I killed? Is this Master Pangloss whom I saw hanged?" "It is we! it is we!" answered they. "Well! is this the great philosopher?" said Martin. "Ah! captain," said Candide, "what ransom will you take for Monsieur de Thunder-ten-Tronckh, one of the first barons of the empire, and for Monsieur Pangloss, the profoundest metaphysician in Germany?" "Dog of a Christian," answered the Levantine captain, "since these two dogs of Christian slaves are barons and metaphysicians, which I doubt not are high dignities in their country, you shall give me fifty thousand sequins." "You shall have them, sir. Carry me back at once to Constantinople, and you shall receive the money directly. But no; carry me first to Miss Cunegonde." Upon the first proposal made by Candide, however, the Levantine captain had already tacked about, and made the crew ply their oars quicker than a bird cleaves the air. Candide embraced the Baron and Pangloss a hundred times. "And how happened it, my dear Baron, that I did not kill you? And, my dear Pangloss, how came you to life again after being hanged? And why are you both in a Turkish galley?" "And it is true that my dear sister is in this country?" said the Baron. "Yes," answered Cacambo. "Then I behold, once more, my dear Candide," cried Pangloss. Candide presented Martin and Cacambo to them; they embraced each other, and all spoke at once. The galley flew; they were already in the port. Instantly Candide sent for a Jew, to whom he sold for fifty thousand sequins a diamond worth a hundred thousand, though the fellow swore to him by Abraham that he could give him no more. He immediately paid the ransom for the Baron and Pangloss. The latter threw himself at the feet of his deliverer, and bathed them with his tears; the former thanked him with a nod, and promised to return him the money on the first opportunity. "But is it indeed possible that my sister can be in Turkey?" said he. "Nothing is more possible," said Cacambo, "since she scours the dishes in the service of a Transylvanian prince." Candide sent directly for two Jews and sold them some more diamonds, and then they all set out together in another galley to deliver Cunegonde from slavery.

The ship captain responsible for one of the former kings, Sultan Achmet, agrees to take Candide and Martin to Constantinople. Cacambo tells Candide that Cunegonde works alongside the Old Woman as a servant for a Turkish prince. Also, Cunegonde is now ugly. Cacambo reveals that he is a slave of the dethroned Sultan Achmet. Candide learns that most of the money he gave to Cacambo was stolen by pirates. When they dock, Candide buys Cacambo's freedom and sets out in pursuit of Cunegonde. Candide takes a close look at two of the galley slaves and identifies one as Pangloss and the other as Cunegonde's Jesuit brother , whom Candide thought he stabbed to death. Candide buys the two men their freedom.

I had so perfectly expected that the return of my pupils would be marked by a demonstration that I was freshly upset at having to take into account that they were dumb about my absence. Instead of gaily denouncing and caressing me, they made no allusion to my having failed them, and I was left, for the time, on perceiving that she too said nothing, to study Mrs. Grose's odd face. I did this to such purpose that I made sure they had in some way bribed her to silence; a silence that, however, I would engage to break down on the first private opportunity. This opportunity came before tea: I secured five minutes with her in the housekeeper's room, where, in the twilight, amid a smell of lately baked bread, but with the place all swept and garnished, I found her sitting in pained placidity before the fire. So I see her still, so I see her best: facing the flame from her straight chair in the dusky, shining room, a large clean image of the "put away"--of drawers closed and locked and rest without a remedy. "Oh, yes, they asked me to say nothing; and to please them--so long as they were there--of course I promised. But what had happened to you?" "I only went with you for the walk," I said. "I had then to come back to meet a friend." She showed her surprise. "A friend--YOU?" "Oh, yes, I have a couple!" I laughed. "But did the children give you a reason?" "For not alluding to your leaving us? Yes; they said you would like it better. Do you like it better?" My face had made her rueful. "No, I like it worse!" But after an instant I added: "Did they say why I should like it better?" "No; Master Miles only said, 'We must do nothing but what she likes!'" "I wish indeed he would. And what did Flora say?" "Miss Flora was too sweet. She said, 'Oh, of course, of course!'--and I said the same." I thought a moment. "You were too sweet, too--I can hear you all. But nonetheless, between Miles and me, it's now all out." "All out?" My companion stared. "But what, miss?" "Everything. It doesn't matter. I've made up my mind. I came home, my dear," I went on, "for a talk with Miss Jessel." I had by this time formed the habit of having Mrs. Grose literally well in hand in advance of my sounding that note; so that even now, as she bravely blinked under the signal of my word, I could keep her comparatively firm. "A talk! Do you mean she spoke?" "It came to that. I found her, on my return, in the schoolroom." "And what did she say?" I can hear the good woman still, and the candor of her stupefaction. "That she suffers the torments--!" It was this, of a truth, that made her, as she filled out my picture, gape. "Do you mean," she faltered, "--of the lost?" "Of the lost. Of the damned. And that's why, to share them-" I faltered myself with the horror of it. But my companion, with less imagination, kept me up. "To share them--?" "She wants Flora." Mrs. Grose might, as I gave it to her, fairly have fallen away from me had I not been prepared. I still held her there, to show I was. "As I've told you, however, it doesn't matter." "Because you've made up your mind? But to what?" "To everything." "And what do you call 'everything'?" "Why, sending for their uncle." "Oh, miss, in pity do," my friend broke out. "ah, but I will, I WILL! I see it's the only way. What's 'out,' as I told you, with Miles is that if he thinks I'm afraid to--and has ideas of what he gains by that--he shall see he's mistaken. Yes, yes; his uncle shall have it here from me on the spot (and before the boy himself, if necessary) that if I'm to be reproached with having done nothing again about more school--" "Yes, miss--" my companion pressed me. "Well, there's that awful reason." There were now clearly so many of these for my poor colleague that she was excusable for being vague. "But--a--which?" "Why, the letter from his old place." "You'll show it to the master?" "I ought to have done so on the instant." "Oh, no!" said Mrs. Grose with decision. "I'll put it before him," I went on inexorably, "that I can't undertake to work the question on behalf of a child who has been expelled--" "For we've never in the least known what!" Mrs. Grose declared. "For wickedness. For what else--when he's so clever and beautiful and perfect? Is he stupid? Is he untidy? Is he infirm? Is he ill-natured? He's exquisite--so it can be only THAT; and that would open up the whole thing. After all," I said, "it's their uncle's fault. If he left here such people--!" "He didn't really in the least know them. The fault's mine." She had turned quite pale. "Well, you shan't suffer," I answered. "The children shan't!" she emphatically returned. I was silent awhile; we looked at each other. "Then what am I to tell him?" "You needn't tell him anything. _I_'ll tell him." I measured this. "Do you mean you'll write--?" Remembering she couldn't, I caught myself up. "How do you communicate?" "I tell the bailiff. HE writes." "And should you like him to write our story?" My question had a sarcastic force that I had not fully intended, and it made her, after a moment, inconsequently break down. The tears were again in her eyes. "Ah, miss, YOU write!" "Well--tonight," I at last answered; and on this we separated.

When Mrs. Grose and the children return from church, none of them mention the governess's absence, and immediately, the governess suspects the children of "bribing" Mrs. Grose into doing so. Before tea, she visits Mrs. Grose's room, where the housekeeper tells her that the children asked her not to ask why she had left because she would like it better. The governess tells Mrs. Grose that she went for a walk - to meet some "friends. The governess informs Mrs. Grose that she in fact did not like their silence and then tells her that it is "all out" between her and Miles. Though Mrs. Grose asks, what "all" means, the governess interrupts her to say that she saw Miss Jessel and that the two had "a talk. She found her in the schoolroom, and she says that Miss Jessel said that she suffers the torments of the damned and that she wants to share them with Flora. Mrs. Grose is terrified. The governess says all that doesn't matter, though, because she will send for her employer. Mrs. Grose begs her to do so, and the governess says that she will, even though Miles tries using her fear of doing so against her. The employer will not be able to reproach her for not sending Miles to school because she will show him the letter from the old school master. What's more, she now believes that Miles was expelled for "wickedness" - since he is clearly perfect in all other respects. She believes it is the uncle's fault for leaving the children for Quint and Miss Jessel, but Mrs. Grose tries to take the blame on herself. Mrs. Grose tries to take charge of sending for the uncle, by having the town bailiff write to him for her, but the governess scoffs at having a stranger tell their incredible story and says instead that she will write.

'Already the legend had gifted him with supernatural powers. Yes, it was said, there had been many ropes cunningly disposed, and a strange contrivance that turned by the efforts of many men, and each gun went up tearing slowly through the bushes, like a wild pig rooting its way in the undergrowth, but . . . and the wisest shook their heads. There was something occult in all this, no doubt; for what is the strength of ropes and of men's arms? There is a rebellious soul in things which must be overcome by powerful charms and incantations. Thus old Sura--a very respectable householder of Patusan--with whom I had a quiet chat one evening. However, Sura was a professional sorcerer also, who attended all the rice sowings and reapings for miles around for the purpose of subduing the stubborn souls of things. This occupation he seemed to think a most arduous one, and perhaps the souls of things are more stubborn than the souls of men. As to the simple folk of outlying villages, they believed and said (as the most natural thing in the world) that Jim had carried the guns up the hill on his back--two at a time. 'This would make Jim stamp his foot in vexation and exclaim with an exasperated little laugh, "What can you do with such silly beggars? They will sit up half the night talking bally rot, and the greater the lie the more they seem to like it." You could trace the subtle influence of his surroundings in this irritation. It was part of his captivity. The earnestness of his denials was amusing, and at last I said, "My dear fellow, you don't suppose _I_ believe this." He looked at me quite startled. "Well, no! I suppose not," he said, and burst into a Homeric peal of laughter. "Well, anyhow the guns were there, and went off all together at sunrise. Jove! You should have seen the splinters fly," he cried. By his side Dain Waris, listening with a quiet smile, dropped his eyelids and shuffled his feet a little. It appears that the success in mounting the guns had given Jim's people such a feeling of confidence that he ventured to leave the battery under charge of two elderly Bugis who had seen some fighting in their day, and went to join Dain Waris and the storming party who were concealed in the ravine. In the small hours they began creeping up, and when two-thirds of the way up, lay in the wet grass waiting for the appearance of the sun, which was the agreed signal. He told me with what impatient anguishing emotion he watched the swift coming of the dawn; how, heated with the work and the climbing, he felt the cold dew chilling his very bones; how afraid he was he would begin to shiver and shake like a leaf before the time came for the advance. "It was the slowest half-hour in my life," he declared. Gradually the silent stockade came out on the sky above him. Men scattered all down the slope were crouching amongst the dark stones and dripping bushes. Dain Waris was lying flattened by his side. "We looked at each other," Jim said, resting a gentle hand on his friend's shoulder. "He smiled at me as cheery as you please, and I dared not stir my lips for fear I would break out into a shivering fit. 'Pon my word, it's true! I had been streaming with perspiration when we took cover--so you may imagine . . ." He declared, and I believe him, that he had no fears as to the result. He was only anxious as to his ability to repress these shivers. He didn't bother about the result. He was bound to get to the top of that hill and stay there, whatever might happen. There could be no going back for him. Those people had trusted him implicitly. Him alone! His bare word. . . . 'I remember how, at this point, he paused with his eyes fixed upon me. "As far as he knew, they never had an occasion to regret it yet," he said. "Never. He hoped to God they never would. Meantime--worse luck!--they had got into the habit of taking his word for anything and everything. I could have no idea! Why, only the other day an old fool he had never seen in his life came from some village miles away to find out if he should divorce his wife. Fact. Solemn word. That's the sort of thing. . . He wouldn't have believed it. Would I? Squatted on the verandah chewing betel-nut, sighing and spitting all over the place for more than an hour, and as glum as an undertaker before he came out with that dashed conundrum. That's the kind of thing that isn't so funny as it looks. What was a fellow to say?--Good wife?--Yes. Good wife--old though. Started a confounded long story about some brass pots. Been living together for fifteen years--twenty years--could not tell. A long, long time. Good wife. Beat her a little--not much--just a little, when she was young. Had to--for the sake of his honour. Suddenly in her old age she goes and lends three brass pots to her sister's son's wife, and begins to abuse him every day in a loud voice. His enemies jeered at him; his face was utterly blackened. Pots totally lost. Awfully cut up about it. Impossible to fathom a story like that; told him to go home, and promised to come along myself and settle it all. It's all very well to grin, but it was the dashedest nuisance! A day's journey through the forest, another day lost in coaxing a lot of silly villagers to get at the rights of the affair. There was the making of a sanguinary shindy in the thing. Every bally idiot took sides with one family or the other, and one half of the village was ready to go for the other half with anything that came handy. Honour bright! No joke! . . . Instead of attending to their bally crops. Got him the infernal pots back of course--and pacified all hands. No trouble to settle it. Of course not. Could settle the deadliest quarrel in the country by crooking his little finger. The trouble was to get at the truth of anything. Was not sure to this day whether he had been fair to all parties. It worried him. And the talk! Jove! There didn't seem to be any head or tail to it. Rather storm a twenty-foot-high old stockade any day. Much! Child's play to that other job. Wouldn't take so long either. Well, yes; a funny set out, upon the whole--the fool looked old enough to be his grandfather. But from another point of view it was no joke. His word decided everything--ever since the smashing of Sherif Ali. An awful responsibility," he repeated. "No, really--joking apart, had it been three lives instead of three rotten brass pots it would have been the same. . . ." 'Thus he illustrated the moral effect of his victory in war. It was in truth immense. It had led him from strife to peace, and through death into the innermost life of the people; but the gloom of the land spread out under the sunshine preserved its appearance of inscrutable, of secular repose. The sound of his fresh young voice--it's extraordinary how very few signs of wear he showed--floated lightly, and passed away over the unchanged face of the forests like the sound of the big guns on that cold dewy morning when he had no other concern on earth but the proper control of the chills in his body. With the first slant of sun-rays along these immovable tree-tops the summit of one hill wreathed itself, with heavy reports, in white clouds of smoke, and the other burst into an amazing noise of yells, war-cries, shouts of anger, of surprise, of dismay. Jim and Dain Waris were the first to lay their hands on the stakes. The popular story has it that Jim with a touch of one finger had thrown down the gate. He was, of course, anxious to disclaim this achievement. The whole stockade--he would insist on explaining to you--was a poor affair (Sherif Ali trusted mainly to the inaccessible position); and, anyway, the thing had been already knocked to pieces and only hung together by a miracle. He put his shoulder to it like a little fool and went in head over heels. Jove! If it hadn't been for Dain Waris, a pock-marked tattooed vagabond would have pinned him with his spear to a baulk of timber like one of Stein's beetles. The third man in, it seems, had been Tamb' Itam, Jim's own servant. This was a Malay from the north, a stranger who had wandered into Patusan, and had been forcibly detained by Rajah Allang as paddler of one of the state boats. He had made a bolt of it at the first opportunity, and finding a precarious refuge (but very little to eat) amongst the Bugis settlers, had attached himself to Jim's person. His complexion was very dark, his face flat, his eyes prominent and injected with bile. There was something excessive, almost fanatical, in his devotion to his "white lord." He was inseparable from Jim like a morose shadow. On state occasions he would tread on his master's heels, one hand on the haft of his kriss, keeping the common people at a distance by his truculent brooding glances. Jim had made him the headman of his establishment, and all Patusan respected and courted him as a person of much influence. At the taking of the stockade he had distinguished himself greatly by the methodical ferocity of his fighting. The storming party had come on so quick--Jim said--that notwithstanding the panic of the garrison, there was a "hot five minutes hand-to-hand inside that stockade, till some bally ass set fire to the shelters of boughs and dry grass, and we all had to clear out for dear life." 'The rout, it seems, had been complete. Doramin, waiting immovably in his chair on the hillside, with the smoke of the guns spreading slowly above his big head, received the news with a deep grunt. When informed that his son was safe and leading the pursuit, he, without another sound, made a mighty effort to rise; his attendants hurried to his help, and, held up reverently, he shuffled with great dignity into a bit of shade, where he laid himself down to sleep, covered entirely with a piece of white sheeting. In Patusan the excitement was intense. Jim told me that from the hill, turning his back on the stockade with its embers, black ashes, and half-consumed corpses, he could see time after time the open spaces between the houses on both sides of the stream fill suddenly with a seething rush of people and get empty in a moment. His ears caught feebly from below the tremendous din of gongs and drums; the wild shouts of the crowd reached him in bursts of faint roaring. A lot of streamers made a flutter as of little white, red, yellow birds amongst the brown ridges of roofs. "You must have enjoyed it," I murmured, feeling the stir of sympathetic emotion. '"It was . . . it was immense! Immense!" he cried aloud, flinging his arms open. The sudden movement startled me as though I had seen him bare the secrets of his breast to the sunshine, to the brooding forests, to the steely sea. Below us the town reposed in easy curves upon the banks of a stream whose current seemed to sleep. "Immense!" he repeated for a third time, speaking in a whisper, for himself alone. 'Immense! No doubt it was immense; the seal of success upon his words, the conquered ground for the soles of his feet, the blind trust of men, the belief in himself snatched from the fire, the solitude of his achievement. All this, as I've warned you, gets dwarfed in the telling. I can't with mere words convey to you the impression of his total and utter isolation. I know, of course, he was in every sense alone of his kind there, but the unsuspected qualities of his nature had brought him in such close touch with his surroundings that this isolation seemed only the effect of his power. His loneliness added to his stature. There was nothing within sight to compare him with, as though he had been one of those exceptional men who can be only measured by the greatness of their fame; and his fame, remember, was the greatest thing around for many a day's journey. You would have to paddle, pole, or track a long weary way through the jungle before you passed beyond the reach of its voice. Its voice was not the trumpeting of the disreputable goddess we all know--not blatant--not brazen. It took its tone from the stillness and gloom of the land without a past, where his word was the one truth of every passing day. It shared something of the nature of that silence through which it accompanied you into unexplored depths, heard continuously by your side, penetrating, far-reaching--tinged with wonder and mystery on the lips of whispering men.'

Jim's attack on Ali is successful, and after the battle, he becomes a legendary island leader. We also learn that Jim's servant, Tamb' Itam, was very brave during the battle. Now the people of Patusan seem to think that Jim has supernatural powers, which Marlow notes.

PART III. OF A CHRISTIAN COMMON-WEALTH. CHAPTER XXXII. OF THE PRINCIPLES OF CHRISTIAN POLITIQUES The Word Of God Delivered By Prophets Is The Main Principle Of Christian Politiques I have derived the Rights of Soveraigne Power, and the duty of Subjects hitherto, from the Principles of Nature onely; such as Experience has found true, or Consent (concerning the use of words) has made so; that is to say, from the nature of Men, known to us by Experience, and from Definitions (of such words as are Essentiall to all Politicall reasoning) universally agreed on. But in that I am next to handle, which is the Nature and Rights of a CHRISTIAN COMMON-WEALTH, whereof there dependeth much upon Supernaturall Revelations of the Will of God; the ground of my Discourse must be, not only the Naturall Word of God, but also the Propheticall. Neverthelesse, we are not to renounce our Senses, and Experience; nor (that which is the undoubted Word of God) our naturall Reason. For they are the talents which he hath put into our hands to negotiate, till the coming again of our blessed Saviour; and therefore not to be folded up in the Napkin of an Implicate Faith, but employed in the purchase of Justice, Peace, and true Religion, For though there be many things in Gods Word above Reason; that is to say, which cannot by naturall reason be either demonstrated, or confuted; yet there is nothing contrary to it; but when it seemeth so, the fault is either in our unskilfull Interpretation, or erroneous Ratiocination. Therefore, when any thing therein written is too hard for our examination, wee are bidden to captivate our understanding to the Words; and not to labour in sifting out a Philosophicall truth by Logick, of such mysteries as are not comprehensible, nor fall under any rule of naturall science. For it is with the mysteries of our Religion, as with wholsome pills for the sick, which swallowed whole, have the vertue to cure; but chewed, are for the most part cast up again without effect. What It Is To Captivate The Understanding But by the Captivity of our Understanding, is not meant a Submission of the Intellectual faculty, to the Opinion of any other man; but of the Will to Obedience, where obedience is due. For Sense, Memory, Understanding, Reason, and Opinion are not in our power to change; but alwaies, and necessarily such, as the things we see, hear, and consider suggest unto us; and therefore are not effects of our Will, but our Will of them. We then Captivate our Understanding and Reason, when we forbear contradiction; when we so speak, as (by lawfull Authority) we are commanded; and when we live accordingly; which in sum, is Trust, and Faith reposed in him that speaketh, though the mind be incapable of any Notion at all from the words spoken. How God Speaketh To Men When God speaketh to man, it must be either immediately; or by mediation of another man, to whom he had formerly spoken by himself immediately. How God speaketh to a man immediately, may be understood by those well enough, to whom he hath so spoken; but how the same should be understood by another, is hard, if not impossible to know. For if a man pretend to me, that God hath spoken to him supernaturally, and immediately, and I make doubt of it, I cannot easily perceive what argument he can produce, to oblige me to beleeve it. It is true, that if he be my Soveraign, he may oblige me to obedience, so, as not by act or word to declare I beleeve him not; but not to think any otherwise then my reason perswades me. But if one that hath not such authority over me, shall pretend the same, there is nothing that exacteth either beleefe, or obedience. For to say that God hath spoken to him in the Holy Scripture, is not to say God hath spoken to him immediately, but by mediation of the Prophets, or of the Apostles, or of the Church, in such manner as he speaks to all other Christian men. To say he hath spoken to him in a Dream, is no more than to say he dreamed that God spake to him; which is not of force to win beleef from any man, that knows dreams are for the most part naturall, and may proceed from former thoughts; and such dreams as that, from selfe conceit, and foolish arrogance, and false opinion of a mans own godlinesse, or other vertue, by which he thinks he hath merited the favour of extraordinary Revelation. To say he hath seen a Vision, or heard a Voice, is to say, that he hath dreamed between sleeping and waking: for in such manner a man doth many times naturally take his dream for a vision, as not having well observed his own slumbering. To say he speaks by supernaturall Inspiration, is to say he finds an ardent desire to speak, or some strong opinion of himself, for which he can alledge no naturall and sufficient reason. So that though God Almighty can speak to a man, by Dreams, Visions, Voice, and Inspiration; yet he obliges no man to beleeve he hath so done to him that pretends it; who (being a man), may erre, and (which is more) may lie. By What Marks Prophets Are Known How then can he, to whom God hath never revealed his Wil immediately (saving by the way of natural reason) know when he is to obey, or not to obey his Word, delivered by him, that sayes he is a Prophet? (1 Kings 22) Of 400 Prophets, of whom the K. of Israel asked counsel, concerning the warre he made against Ramoth Gilead, only Micaiah was a true one.(1 Kings 13) The Prophet that was sent to prophecy against the Altar set up by Jeroboam, though a true Prophet, and that by two miracles done in his presence appears to be a Prophet sent from God, was yet deceived by another old Prophet, that perswaded him as from the mouth of God, to eat and drink with him. If one Prophet deceive another, what certainty is there of knowing the will of God, by other way than that of Reason? To which I answer out of the Holy Scripture, that there be two marks, by which together, not asunder, a true Prophet is to be known. One is the doing of miracles; the other is the not teaching any other Religion than that which is already established. Asunder (I say) neither of these is sufficient. (Deut. 13 v. 1,2,3,4,5 ) "If a Prophet rise amongst you, or a Dreamer of dreams, and shall pretend the doing of a miracle, and the miracle come to passe; if he say, Let us follow strange Gods, which thou hast not known, thou shalt not hearken to him, &c. But that Prophet and Dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he hath spoken to you to Revolt from the Lord your God." In which words two things are to be observed, First, that God wil not have miracles alone serve for arguments, to approve the Prophets calling; but (as it is in the third verse) for an experiment of the constancy of our adherence to himself. For the works of the Egyptian Sorcerers, though not so great as those of Moses, yet were great miracles. Secondly, that how great soever the miracle be, yet if it tend to stir up revolt against the King, or him that governeth by the Kings authority, he that doth such miracle, is not to be considered otherwise than as sent to make triall of their allegiance. For these words, "revolt from the Lord your God," are in this place equivalent to "revolt from your King." For they had made God their King by pact at the foot of Mount Sinai; who ruled them by Moses only; for he only spake with God, and from time to time declared Gods Commandements to the people. In like manner, after our Saviour Christ had made his Disciples acknowledge him for the Messiah, (that is to say, for Gods anointed, whom the nation of the Jews daily expected for their King, but refused when he came,) he omitted not to advertise them of the danger of miracles. "There shall arise," (saith he) "false Christs, and false Prophets, and shall doe great wonders and miracles, even to the seducing (if it were possible) of the very Elect." (Mat. 24. 24) By which it appears, that false Prophets may have the power of miracles; yet are wee not to take their doctrin for Gods Word. St. Paul says further to the Galatians, that "if himself, or an Angell from heaven preach another Gospel to them, than he had preached, let him be accursed." (Gal. 1. 8) That Gospel was, that Christ was King; so that all preaching against the power of the King received, in consequence to these words, is by St. Paul accursed. For his speech is addressed to those, who by his preaching had already received Jesus for the Christ, that is to say, for King of the Jews. The Marks Of A Prophet In The Old Law, Miracles, And Doctrine Conformable To The Law And as Miracles, without preaching that Doctrine which God hath established; so preaching the true Doctrine, without the doing of Miracles, is an unsufficient argument of immediate Revelation. For if a man that teacheth not false Doctrine, should pretend to bee a Prophet without shewing any Miracle, he is never the more to bee regarded for his pretence, as is evident by Deut. 18. v. 21, 22. "If thou say in thy heart, How shall we know that the Word (of the Prophet) is not that which the Lord hath spoken. When the Prophet shall have spoken in the name of the Lord, that which shall not come to passe, that's the word which the Lord hath not spoken, but the Prophet has spoken it out of the pride of his own heart, fear him not." But a man may here again ask, When the Prophet hath foretold a thing, how shal we know whether it will come to passe or not? For he may foretel it as a thing to arrive after a certain long time, longer then the time of mans life; or indefinitely, that it will come to passe one time or other: in which case this mark of a Prophet is unusefull; and therefore the miracles that oblige us to beleeve a Prophet, ought to be confirmed by an immediate, or a not long deferr'd event. So that it is manifest, that the teaching of the Religion which God hath established, and the showing of a present Miracle, joined together, were the only marks whereby the Scripture would have a true Prophet, that is to say immediate Revelation to be acknowledged; neither of them being singly sufficient to oblige any other man to regard what he saith. Miracles Ceasing, Prophets Cease, The Scripture Supplies Their Place Seeing therefore Miracles now cease, we have no sign left, whereby to acknowledge the pretended Revelations, or Inspirations of any private man; nor obligation to give ear to any Doctrine, farther than it is conformable to the Holy Scriptures, which since the time of our Saviour, supply the want of all other Prophecy; and from which, by wise and careful ratiocination, all rules and precepts necessary to the knowledge of our duty both to God and man, without Enthusiasme, or supernaturall Inspiration, may easily be deduced. And this Scripture is it, out of which I am to take the Principles of my Discourse, concerning the Rights of those that are the Supream Govenors on earth, of Christian Common-wealths; and of the duty of Christian Subjects towards their Soveraigns. And to that end, I shall speak in the next Chapter, or the Books, Writers, Scope and Authority of the Bible.

Aboard the walker once more, Deryn realizes Klopp is ready to help shoot down the zeppelins, who will both destroy the Leviathan and capture, kill, or report on Alek. The zeppelins start putting men down on the ground, and Dr. Barlow says their goal is to capture the ship. Alek puts Deryn on the machine guns to fire at the Germans on the ground--one group of Germans is heading for the Leviathan, and the other is getting ready to fire on the walker. In the battle, Alek manages to stomp on the anti-walker gun, and things seem to be going their way. Then there's a loud explosion and the walker tips over.

Hitherto I have recorded in detail the events of my insignificant existence: to the first ten years of my life I have given almost as many chapters. But this is not to be a regular autobiography. I am only bound to invoke Memory where I know her responses will possess some degree of interest; therefore I now pass a space of eight years almost in silence: a few lines only are necessary to keep up the links of connection. When the typhus fever had fulfilled its mission of devastation at Lowood, it gradually disappeared from thence; but not till its virulence and the number of its victims had drawn public attention on the school. Inquiry was made into the origin of the scourge, and by degrees various facts came out which excited public indignation in a high degree. The unhealthy nature of the site; the quantity and quality of the children's food; the brackish, fetid water used in its preparation; the pupils' wretched clothing and accommodations--all these things were discovered, and the discovery produced a result mortifying to Mr. Brocklehurst, but beneficial to the institution. Several wealthy and benevolent individuals in the county subscribed largely for the erection of a more convenient building in a better situation; new regulations were made; improvements in diet and clothing introduced; the funds of the school were intrusted to the management of a committee. Mr. Brocklehurst, who, from his wealth and family connections, could not be overlooked, still retained the post of treasurer; but he was aided in the discharge of his duties by gentlemen of rather more enlarged and sympathising minds: his office of inspector, too, was shared by those who knew how to combine reason with strictness, comfort with economy, compassion with uprightness. The school, thus improved, became in time a truly useful and noble institution. I remained an inmate of its walls, after its regeneration, for eight years: six as pupil, and two as teacher; and in both capacities I bear my testimony to its value and importance. During these eight years my life was uniform: but not unhappy, because it was not inactive. I had the means of an excellent education placed within my reach; a fondness for some of my studies, and a desire to excel in all, together with a great delight in pleasing my teachers, especially such as I loved, urged me on: I availed myself fully of the advantages offered me. In time I rose to be the first girl of the first class; then I was invested with the office of teacher; which I discharged with zeal for two years: but at the end of that time I altered. Miss Temple, through all changes, had thus far continued superintendent of the seminary: to her instruction I owed the best part of my acquirements; her friendship and society had been my continual solace; she had stood me in the stead of mother, governess, and, latterly, companion. At this period she married, removed with her husband (a clergyman, an excellent man, almost worthy of such a wife) to a distant county, and consequently was lost to me. From the day she left I was no longer the same: with her was gone every settled feeling, every association that had made Lowood in some degree a home to me. I had imbibed from her something of her nature and much of her habits: more harmonious thoughts: what seemed better regulated feelings had become the inmates of my mind. I had given in allegiance to duty and order; I was quiet; I believed I was content: to the eyes of others, usually even to my own, I appeared a disciplined and subdued character. But destiny, in the shape of the Rev. Mr. Nasmyth, came between me and Miss Temple: I saw her in her travelling dress step into a post-chaise, shortly after the marriage ceremony; I watched the chaise mount the hill and disappear beyond its brow; and then retired to my own room, and there spent in solitude the greatest part of the half-holiday granted in honour of the occasion. I walked about the chamber most of the time. I imagined myself only to be regretting my loss, and thinking how to repair it; but when my reflections were concluded, and I looked up and found that the afternoon was gone, and evening far advanced, another discovery dawned on me, namely, that in the interval I had undergone a transforming process; that my mind had put off all it had borrowed of Miss Temple--or rather that she had taken with her the serene atmosphere I had been breathing in her vicinity--and that now I was left in my natural element, and beginning to feel the stirring of old emotions. It did not seem as if a prop were withdrawn, but rather as if a motive were gone: it was not the power to be tranquil which had failed me, but the reason for tranquillity was no more. My world had for some years been in Lowood: my experience had been of its rules and systems; now I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had courage to go forth into its expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils. I went to my window, opened it, and looked out. There were the two wings of the building; there was the garden; there were the skirts of Lowood; there was the hilly horizon. My eye passed all other objects to rest on those most remote, the blue peaks; it was those I longed to surmount; all within their boundary of rock and heath seemed prison-ground, exile limits. I traced the white road winding round the base of one mountain, and vanishing in a gorge between two; how I longed to follow it farther! I recalled the time when I had travelled that very road in a coach; I remembered descending that hill at twilight; an age seemed to have elapsed since the day which brought me first to Lowood, and I had never quitted it since. My vacations had all been spent at school: Mrs. Reed had never sent for me to Gateshead; neither she nor any of her family had ever been to visit me. I had had no communication by letter or message with the outer world: school-rules, school-duties, school-habits and notions, and voices, and faces, and phrases, and costumes, and preferences, and antipathies--such was what I knew of existence. And now I felt that it was not enough; I tired of the routine of eight years in one afternoon. I desired liberty; for liberty I gasped; for liberty I uttered a prayer; it seemed scattered on the wind then faintly blowing. I abandoned it and framed a humbler supplication; for change, stimulus: that petition, too, seemed swept off into vague space: "Then," I cried, half desperate, "grant me at least a new servitude!" Here a bell, ringing the hour of supper, called me downstairs. I was not free to resume the interrupted chain of my reflections till bedtime: even then a teacher who occupied the same room with me kept me from the subject to which I longed to recur, by a prolonged effusion of small talk. How I wished sleep would silence her. It seemed as if, could I but go back to the idea which had last entered my mind as I stood at the window, some inventive suggestion would rise for my relief. Miss Gryce snored at last; she was a heavy Welshwoman, and till now her habitual nasal strains had never been regarded by me in any other light than as a nuisance; to-night I hailed the first deep notes with satisfaction; I was debarrassed of interruption; my half-effaced thought instantly revived. "A new servitude! There is something in that," I soliloquised (mentally, be it understood; I did not talk aloud), "I know there is, because it does not sound too sweet; it is not like such words as Liberty, Excitement, Enjoyment: delightful sounds truly; but no more than sounds for me; and so hollow and fleeting that it is mere waste of time to listen to them. But Servitude! That must be matter of fact. Any one may serve: I have served here eight years; now all I want is to serve elsewhere. Can I not get so much of my own will? Is not the thing feasible? Yes--yes--the end is not so difficult; if I had only a brain active enough to ferret out the means of attaining it." I sat up in bed by way of arousing this said brain: it was a chilly night; I covered my shoulders with a shawl, and then I proceeded _to think_ again with all my might. "What do I want? A new place, in a new house, amongst new faces, under new circumstances: I want this because it is of no use wanting anything better. How do people do to get a new place? They apply to friends, I suppose: I have no friends. There are many others who have no friends, who must look about for themselves and be their own helpers; and what is their resource?" I could not tell: nothing answered me; I then ordered my brain to find a response, and quickly. It worked and worked faster: I felt the pulses throb in my head and temples; but for nearly an hour it worked in chaos; and no result came of its efforts. Feverish with vain labour, I got up and took a turn in the room; undrew the curtain, noted a star or two, shivered with cold, and again crept to bed. A kind fairy, in my absence, had surely dropped the required suggestion on my pillow; for as I lay down, it came quietly and naturally to my mind.--"Those who want situations advertise; you must advertise in the _---shire Herald_." "How? I know nothing about advertising." Replies rose smooth and prompt now:-- "You must enclose the advertisement and the money to pay for it under a cover directed to the editor of the _Herald_; you must put it, the first opportunity you have, into the post at Lowton; answers must be addressed to J.E., at the post-office there; you can go and inquire in about a week after you send your letter, if any are come, and act accordingly." This scheme I went over twice, thrice; it was then digested in my mind; I had it in a clear practical form: I felt satisfied, and fell asleep. With earliest day, I was up: I had my advertisement written, enclosed, and directed before the bell rang to rouse the school; it ran thus:-- "A young lady accustomed to tuition" (had I not been a teacher two years?) "is desirous of meeting with a situation in a private family where the children are under fourteen" (I thought that as I was barely eighteen, it would not do to undertake the guidance of pupils nearer my own age). "She is qualified to teach the usual branches of a good English education, together with French, Drawing, and Music" (in those days, reader, this now narrow catalogue of accomplishments, would have been held tolerably comprehensive). "Address, J.E., Post-office, Lowton, --- shire." This document remained locked in my drawer all day: after tea, I asked leave of the new superintendent to go to Lowton, in order to perform some small commissions for myself and one or two of my fellow-teachers; permission was readily granted; I went. It was a walk of two miles, and the evening was wet, but the days were still long; I visited a shop or two, slipped the letter into the post-office, and came back through heavy rain, with streaming garments, but with a relieved heart. The succeeding week seemed long: it came to an end at last, however, like all sublunary things, and once more, towards the close of a pleasant autumn day, I found myself afoot on the road to Lowton. A picturesque track it was, by the way; lying along the side of the beck and through the sweetest curves of the dale: but that day I thought more of the letters, that might or might not be awaiting me at the little burgh whither I was bound, than of the charms of lea and water. My ostensible errand on this occasion was to get measured for a pair of shoes; so I discharged that business first, and when it was done, I stepped across the clean and quiet little street from the shoemaker's to the post-office: it was kept by an old dame, who wore horn spectacles on her nose, and black mittens on her hands. "Are there any letters for J.E.?" I asked. She peered at me over her spectacles, and then she opened a drawer and fumbled among its contents for a long time, so long that my hopes began to falter. At last, having held a document before her glasses for nearly five minutes, she presented it across the counter, accompanying the act by another inquisitive and mistrustful glance--it was for J.E. "Is there only one?" I demanded. "There are no more," said she; and I put it in my pocket and turned my face homeward: I could not open it then; rules obliged me to be back by eight, and it was already half-past seven. Various duties awaited me on my arrival. I had to sit with the girls during their hour of study; then it was my turn to read prayers; to see them to bed: afterwards I supped with the other teachers. Even when we finally retired for the night, the inevitable Miss Gryce was still my companion: we had only a short end of candle in our candlestick, and I dreaded lest she should talk till it was all burnt out; fortunately, however, the heavy supper she had eaten produced a soporific effect: she was already snoring before I had finished undressing. There still remained an inch of candle: I now took out my letter; the seal was an initial F.; I broke it; the contents were brief. "If J.E., who advertised in the _---shire Herald_ of last Thursday, possesses the acquirements mentioned, and if she is in a position to give satisfactory references as to character and competency, a situation can be offered her where there is but one pupil, a little girl, under ten years of age; and where the salary is thirty pounds per annum. J.E. is requested to send references, name, address, and all particulars to the direction:-- "Mrs. Fairfax, Thornfield, near Millcote, ---shire." I examined the document long: the writing was old-fashioned and rather uncertain, like that of an elderly lady. This circumstance was satisfactory: a private fear had haunted me, that in thus acting for myself, and by my own guidance, I ran the risk of getting into some scrape; and, above all things, I wished the result of my endeavours to be respectable, proper, _en regle_. I now felt that an elderly lady was no bad ingredient in the business I had on hand. Mrs. Fairfax! I saw her in a black gown and widow's cap; frigid, perhaps, but not uncivil: a model of elderly English respectability. Thornfield! that, doubtless, was the name of her house: a neat orderly spot, I was sure; though I failed in my efforts to conceive a correct plan of the premises. Millcote, ---shire; I brushed up my recollections of the map of England, yes, I saw it; both the shire and the town. ---shire was seventy miles nearer London than the remote county where I now resided: that was a recommendation to me. I longed to go where there was life and movement: Millcote was a large manufacturing town on the banks of the A-; a busy place enough, doubtless: so much the better; it would be a complete change at least. Not that my fancy was much captivated by the idea of long chimneys and clouds of smoke--"but," I argued, "Thornfield will, probably, be a good way from the town." Here the socket of the candle dropped, and the wick went out. Next day new steps were to be taken; my plans could no longer be confined to my own breast; I must impart them in order to achieve their success. Having sought and obtained an audience of the superintendent during the noontide recreation, I told her I had a prospect of getting a new situation where the salary would be double what I now received (for at Lowood I only got 15 pounds per annum); and requested she would break the matter for me to Mr. Brocklehurst, or some of the committee, and ascertain whether they would permit me to mention them as references. She obligingly consented to act as mediatrix in the matter. The next day she laid the affair before Mr. Brocklehurst, who said that Mrs. Reed must be written to, as she was my natural guardian. A note was accordingly addressed to that lady, who returned for answer, that "I might do as I pleased: she had long relinquished all interference in my affairs." This note went the round of the committee, and at last, after what appeared to me most tedious delay, formal leave was given me to better my condition if I could; and an assurance added, that as I had always conducted myself well, both as teacher and pupil, at Lowood, a testimonial of character and capacity, signed by the inspectors of that institution, should forthwith be furnished me. This testimonial I accordingly received in about a month, forwarded a copy of it to Mrs. Fairfax, and got that lady's reply, stating that she was satisfied, and fixing that day fortnight as the period for my assuming the post of governess in her house. I now busied myself in preparations: the fortnight passed rapidly. I had not a very large wardrobe, though it was adequate to my wants; and the last day sufficed to pack my trunk,--the same I had brought with me eight years ago from Gateshead. The box was corded, the card nailed on. In half-an-hour the carrier was to call for it to take it to Lowton, whither I myself was to repair at an early hour the next morning to meet the coach. I had brushed my black stuff travelling-dress, prepared my bonnet, gloves, and muff; sought in all my drawers to see that no article was left behind; and now having nothing more to do, I sat down and tried to rest. I could not; though I had been on foot all day, I could not now repose an instant; I was too much excited. A phase of my life was closing to-night, a new one opening to-morrow: impossible to slumber in the interval; I must watch feverishly while the change was being accomplished. "Miss," said a servant who met me in the lobby, where I was wandering like a troubled spirit, "a person below wishes to see you." "The carrier, no doubt," I thought, and ran downstairs without inquiry. I was passing the back-parlour or teachers' sitting-room, the door of which was half open, to go to the kitchen, when some one ran out-- "It's her, I am sure!--I could have told her anywhere!" cried the individual who stopped my progress and took my hand. I looked: I saw a woman attired like a well-dressed servant, matronly, yet still young; very good-looking, with black hair and eyes, and lively complexion. "Well, who is it?" she asked, in a voice and with a smile I half recognised; "you've not quite forgotten me, I think, Miss Jane?" In another second I was embracing and kissing her rapturously: "Bessie! Bessie! Bessie!" that was all I said; whereat she half laughed, half cried, and we both went into the parlour. By the fire stood a little fellow of three years old, in plaid frock and trousers. "That is my little boy," said Bessie directly. "Then you are married, Bessie?" "Yes; nearly five years since to Robert Leaven, the coachman; and I've a little girl besides Bobby there, that I've christened Jane." "And you don't live at Gateshead?" "I live at the lodge: the old porter has left." "Well, and how do they all get on? Tell me everything about them, Bessie: but sit down first; and, Bobby, come and sit on my knee, will you?" but Bobby preferred sidling over to his mother. "You're not grown so very tall, Miss Jane, nor so very stout," continued Mrs. Leaven. "I dare say they've not kept you too well at school: Miss Reed is the head and shoulders taller than you are; and Miss Georgiana would make two of you in breadth." "Georgiana is handsome, I suppose, Bessie?" "Very. She went up to London last winter with her mama, and there everybody admired her, and a young lord fell in love with her: but his relations were against the match; and--what do you think?--he and Miss Georgiana made it up to run away; but they were found out and stopped. It was Miss Reed that found them out: I believe she was envious; and now she and her sister lead a cat and dog life together; they are always quarrelling--" "Well, and what of John Reed?" "Oh, he is not doing so well as his mama could wish. He went to college, and he got--plucked, I think they call it: and then his uncles wanted him to be a barrister, and study the law: but he is such a dissipated young man, they will never make much of him, I think." "What does he look like?" "He is very tall: some people call him a fine-looking young man; but he has such thick lips." "And Mrs. Reed?" "Missis looks stout and well enough in the face, but I think she's not quite easy in her mind: Mr. John's conduct does not please her--he spends a deal of money." "Did she send you here, Bessie?" "No, indeed: but I have long wanted to see you, and when I heard that there had been a letter from you, and that you were going to another part of the country, I thought I'd just set off, and get a look at you before you were quite out of my reach." "I am afraid you are disappointed in me, Bessie." I said this laughing: I perceived that Bessie's glance, though it expressed regard, did in no shape denote admiration. "No, Miss Jane, not exactly: you are genteel enough; you look like a lady, and it is as much as ever I expected of you: you were no beauty as a child." I smiled at Bessie's frank answer: I felt that it was correct, but I confess I was not quite indifferent to its import: at eighteen most people wish to please, and the conviction that they have not an exterior likely to second that desire brings anything but gratification. "I dare say you are clever, though," continued Bessie, by way of solace. "What can you do? Can you play on the piano?" "A little." There was one in the room; Bessie went and opened it, and then asked me to sit down and give her a tune: I played a waltz or two, and she was charmed. "The Miss Reeds could not play as well!" said she exultingly. "I always said you would surpass them in learning: and can you draw?" "That is one of my paintings over the chimney-piece." It was a landscape in water colours, of which I had made a present to the superintendent, in acknowledgment of her obliging mediation with the committee on my behalf, and which she had framed and glazed. "Well, that is beautiful, Miss Jane! It is as fine a picture as any Miss Reed's drawing-master could paint, let alone the young ladies themselves, who could not come near it: and have you learnt French?" "Yes, Bessie, I can both read it and speak it." "And you can work on muslin and canvas?" "I can." "Oh, you are quite a lady, Miss Jane! I knew you would be: you will get on whether your relations notice you or not. There was something I wanted to ask you. Have you ever heard anything from your father's kinsfolk, the Eyres?" "Never in my life." "Well, you know Missis always said they were poor and quite despicable: and they may be poor; but I believe they are as much gentry as the Reeds are; for one day, nearly seven years ago, a Mr. Eyre came to Gateshead and wanted to see you; Missis said you were at school fifty miles off; he seemed so much disappointed, for he could not stay: he was going on a voyage to a foreign country, and the ship was to sail from London in a day or two. He looked quite a gentleman, and I believe he was your father's brother." "What foreign country was he going to, Bessie?" "An island thousands of miles off, where they make wine--the butler did tell me--" "Madeira?" I suggested. "Yes, that is it--that is the very word." "So he went?" "Yes; he did not stay many minutes in the house: Missis was very high with him; she called him afterwards a 'sneaking tradesman.' My Robert believes he was a wine-merchant." "Very likely," I returned; "or perhaps clerk or agent to a wine-merchant." Bessie and I conversed about old times an hour longer, and then she was obliged to leave me: I saw her again for a few minutes the next morning at Lowton, while I was waiting for the coach. We parted finally at the door of the Brocklehurst Arms there: each went her separate way; she set off for the brow of Lowood Fell to meet the conveyance which was to take her back to Gateshead, I mounted the vehicle which was to bear me to new duties and a new life in the unknown environs of Millcote.

After Mr. Brocklehurst's negligent treatment of the girls at Lowood is found to be one of the causes of the typhus epidemic, a new group of overseers is brought in to run the school. Conditions improve dramatically for the young girls, and Jane excels in her studies for the next six years. After spending two more years at Lowood as a teacher, Jane decides she is ready for a change, partly because Miss Temple gets married and leaves the school. She advertises in search of a post as a governess and accepts a position at a manor called Thornfield. Before leaving, Jane receives a visit from Bessie, who tells her what has happened at Gateshead since Jane departed for Lowood. Georgiana attempted to run away in secret with a man named Lord Edwin Vere, but Eliza foiled the plan by revealing it to Mrs. Reed. John has fallen into a life of debauchery and dissolution. Bessie also tells Jane that her father's brother, John Eyre, appeared at Gateshead seven years ago, looking for Jane. He did not have the time to travel to Lowood and went away to Madeira in search of wealth. Jane and Bessie part ways, Bessie returning to Gateshead, and Jane leaving for her new life at Thornfield

<CHAPTER> 7--A Coalition between Beauty and Oddness The old captain's prevailing indifference to his granddaughter's movements left her free as a bird to follow her own courses; but it so happened that he did take upon himself the next morning to ask her why she had walked out so late. "Only in search of events, Grandfather," she said, looking out of the window with that drowsy latency of manner which discovered so much force behind it whenever the trigger was pressed. "Search of events--one would think you were one of the bucks I knew at one-and-twenty." "It is lonely here." "So much the better. If I were living in a town my whole time would be taken up in looking after you. I fully expected you would have been home when I returned from the Woman." "I won't conceal what I did. I wanted an adventure, and I went with the mummers. I played the part of the Turkish Knight." "No, never? Ha, ha! Good gad! I didn't expect it of you, Eustacia." "It was my first performance, and it certainly will be my last. Now I have told you--and remember it is a secret." "Of course. But, Eustacia, you never did--ha! ha! Dammy, how 'twould have pleased me forty years ago! But remember, no more of it, my girl. You may walk on the heath night or day, as you choose, so that you don't bother me; but no figuring in breeches again." "You need have no fear for me, Grandpapa." Here the conversation ceased, Eustacia's moral training never exceeding in severity a dialogue of this sort, which, if it ever became profitable to good works, would be a result not dear at the price. But her thoughts soon strayed far from her own personality; and, full of a passionate and indescribable solicitude for one to whom she was not even a name, she went forth into the amplitude of tanned wild around her, restless as Ahasuerus the Jew. She was about half a mile from her residence when she beheld a sinister redness arising from a ravine a little way in advance--dull and lurid like a flame in sunlight and she guessed it to signify Diggory Venn. When the farmers who had wished to buy in a new stock of reddle during the last month had inquired where Venn was to be found, people replied, "On Egdon Heath." Day after day the answer was the same. Now, since Egdon was populated with heath-croppers and furze-cutters rather than with sheep and shepherds, and the downs where most of the latter were to be found lay some to the north, some to the west of Egdon, his reason for camping about there like Israel in Zin was not apparent. The position was central and occasionally desirable. But the sale of reddle was not Diggory's primary object in remaining on the heath, particularly at so late a period of the year, when most travellers of his class had gone into winter quarters. Eustacia looked at the lonely man. Wildeve had told her at their last meeting that Venn had been thrust forward by Mrs. Yeobright as one ready and anxious to take his place as Thomasin's betrothed. His figure was perfect, his face young and well outlined, his eye bright, his intelligence keen, and his position one which he could readily better if he chose. But in spite of possibilities it was not likely that Thomasin would accept this Ishmaelitish creature while she had a cousin like Yeobright at her elbow, and Wildeve at the same time not absolutely indifferent. Eustacia was not long in guessing that poor Mrs. Yeobright, in her anxiety for her niece's future, had mentioned this lover to stimulate the zeal of the other. Eustacia was on the side of the Yeobrights now, and entered into the spirit of the aunt's desire. "Good morning, miss," said the reddleman, taking off his cap of hareskin, and apparently bearing her no ill-will from recollection of their last meeting. "Good morning, reddleman," she said, hardly troubling to lift her heavily shaded eyes to his. "I did not know you were so near. Is your van here too?" Venn moved his elbow towards a hollow in which a dense brake of purple-stemmed brambles had grown to such vast dimensions as almost to form a dell. Brambles, though churlish when handled, are kindly shelter in early winter, being the latest of the deciduous bushes to lose their leaves. The roof and chimney of Venn's caravan showed behind the tracery and tangles of the brake. "You remain near this part?" she asked with more interest. "Yes, I have business here." "Not altogether the selling of reddle?" "It has nothing to do with that." "It has to do with Miss Yeobright?" Her face seemed to ask for an armed peace, and he therefore said frankly, "Yes, miss; it is on account of her." "On account of your approaching marriage with her?" Venn flushed through his stain. "Don't make sport of me, Miss Vye," he said. "It isn't true?" "Certainly not." She was thus convinced that the reddleman was a mere pis aller in Mrs. Yeobright's mind; one, moreover, who had not even been informed of his promotion to that lowly standing. "It was a mere notion of mine," she said quietly; and was about to pass by without further speech, when, looking round to the right, she saw a painfully well-known figure serpentining upwards by one of the little paths which led to the top where she stood. Owing to the necessary windings of his course his back was at present towards them. She glanced quickly round; to escape that man there was only one way. Turning to Venn, she said, "Would you allow me to rest a few minutes in your van? The banks are damp for sitting on." "Certainly, miss; I'll make a place for you." She followed him behind the dell of brambles to his wheeled dwelling into which Venn mounted, placing the three-legged stool just within the door. "That is the best I can do for you," he said, stepping down and retiring to the path, where he resumed the smoking of his pipe as he walked up and down. Eustacia bounded into the vehicle and sat on the stool, ensconced from view on the side towards the trackway. Soon she heard the brushing of other feet than the reddleman's, a not very friendly "Good day" uttered by two men in passing each other, and then the dwindling of the foot-fall of one of them in a direction onwards. Eustacia stretched her neck forward till she caught a glimpse of a receding back and shoulders; and she felt a wretched twinge of misery, she knew not why. It was the sickening feeling which, if the changed heart has any generosity at all in its composition, accompanies the sudden sight of a once-loved one who is beloved no more. When Eustacia descended to proceed on her way the reddleman came near. "That was Mr. Wildeve who passed, miss," he said slowly, and expressed by his face that he expected her to feel vexed at having been sitting unseen. "Yes, I saw him coming up the hill," replied Eustacia. "Why should you tell me that?" It was a bold question, considering the reddleman's knowledge of her past love; but her undemonstrative manner had power to repress the opinions of those she treated as remote from her. "I am glad to hear that you can ask it," said the reddleman bluntly. "And, now I think of it, it agrees with what I saw last night." "Ah--what was that?" Eustacia wished to leave him, but wished to know. "Mr. Wildeve stayed at Rainbarrow a long time waiting for a lady who didn't come." "You waited too, it seems?" "Yes, I always do. I was glad to see him disappointed. He will be there again tonight." "To be again disappointed. The truth is, reddleman, that that lady, so far from wishing to stand in the way of Thomasin's marriage with Mr. Wildeve, would be very glad to promote it." Venn felt much astonishment at this avowal, though he did not show it clearly; that exhibition may greet remarks which are one remove from expectation, but it is usually withheld in complicated cases of two removes and upwards. "Indeed, miss," he replied. "How do you know that Mr. Wildeve will come to Rainbarrow again tonight?" she asked. "I heard him say to himself that he would. He's in a regular temper." Eustacia looked for a moment what she felt, and she murmured, lifting her deep dark eyes anxiously to his, "I wish I knew what to do. I don't want to be uncivil to him; but I don't wish to see him again; and I have some few little things to return to him." "If you choose to send 'em by me, miss, and a note to tell him that you wish to say no more to him, I'll take it for you quite privately. That would be the most straightforward way of letting him know your mind." "Very well," said Eustacia. "Come towards my house, and I will bring it out to you." She went on, and as the path was an infinitely small parting in the shaggy locks of the heath, the reddleman followed exactly in her trail. She saw from a distance that the captain was on the bank sweeping the horizon with his telescope; and bidding Venn to wait where he stood she entered the house alone. In ten minutes she returned with a parcel and a note, and said, in placing them in his hand, "Why are you so ready to take these for me?" "Can you ask that?" "I suppose you think to serve Thomasin in some way by it. Are you as anxious as ever to help on her marriage?" Venn was a little moved. "I would sooner have married her myself," he said in a low voice. "But what I feel is that if she cannot be happy without him I will do my duty in helping her to get him, as a man ought." Eustacia looked curiously at the singular man who spoke thus. What a strange sort of love, to be entirely free from that quality of selfishness which is frequently the chief constituent of the passion, and sometimes its only one! The reddleman's disinterestedness was so well deserving of respect that it overshot respect by being barely comprehended; and she almost thought it absurd. "Then we are both of one mind at last," she said. "Yes," replied Venn gloomily. "But if you would tell me, miss, why you take such an interest in her, I should be easier. It is so sudden and strange." Eustacia appeared at a loss. "I cannot tell you that, reddleman," she said coldly. Venn said no more. He pocketed the letter, and, bowing to Eustacia, went away. Rainbarrow had again become blended with night when Wildeve ascended the long acclivity at its base. On his reaching the top a shape grew up from the earth immediately behind him. It was that of Eustacia's emissary. He slapped Wildeve on the shoulder. The feverish young inn-keeper and ex-engineer started like Satan at the touch of Ithuriel's spear. "The meeting is always at eight o'clock, at this place," said Venn, "and here we are--we three." "We three?" said Wildeve, looking quickly round. "Yes; you, and I, and she. This is she." He held up the letter and parcel. Wildeve took them wonderingly. "I don't quite see what this means," he said. "How do you come here? There must be some mistake." "It will be cleared from your mind when you have read the letter. Lanterns for one." The reddleman struck a light, kindled an inch of tallow-candle which he had brought, and sheltered it with his cap. "Who are you?" said Wildeve, discerning by the candle-light an obscure rubicundity of person in his companion. "You are the reddleman I saw on the hill this morning--why, you are the man who----" "Please read the letter." "If you had come from the other one I shouldn't have been surprised," murmured Wildeve as he opened the letter and read. His face grew serious. TO MR. WILDEVE. After some thought I have decided once and for all that we must hold no further communication. The more I consider the matter the more I am convinced that there must be an end to our acquaintance. Had you been uniformly faithful to me throughout these two years you might now have some ground for accusing me of heartlessness; but if you calmly consider what I bore during the period of your desertion, and how I passively put up with your courtship of another without once interfering, you will, I think, own that I have a right to consult my own feelings when you come back to me again. That these are not what they were towards you may, perhaps, be a fault in me, but it is one which you can scarcely reproach me for when you remember how you left me for Thomasin. The little articles you gave me in the early part of our friendship are returned by the bearer of this letter. They should rightly have been sent back when I first heard of your engagement to her. EUSTACIA. By the time that Wildeve reached her name the blankness with which he had read the first half of the letter intensified to mortification. "I am made a great fool of, one way and another," he said pettishly. "Do you know what is in this letter?" The reddleman hummed a tune. "Can't you answer me?" asked Wildeve warmly. "Ru-um-tum-tum," sang the reddleman. Wildeve stood looking on the ground beside Venn's feet, till he allowed his eyes to travel upwards over Diggory's form, as illuminated by the candle, to his head and face. "Ha-ha! Well, I suppose I deserve it, considering how I have played with them both," he said at last, as much to himself as to Venn. "But of all the odd things that ever I knew, the oddest is that you should so run counter to your own interests as to bring this to me." "My interests?" "Certainly. 'Twas your interest not to do anything which would send me courting Thomasin again, now she has accepted you--or something like it. Mrs. Yeobright says you are to marry her. 'Tisn't true, then?" "Good Lord! I heard of this before, but didn't believe it. When did she say so?" Wildeve began humming as the reddleman had done. "I don't believe it now," cried Venn. "Ru-um-tum-tum," sang Wildeve. "O Lord--how we can imitate!" said Venn contemptuously. "I'll have this out. I'll go straight to her." Diggory withdrew with an emphatic step, Wildeve's eye passing over his form in withering derision, as if he were no more than a heath-cropper. When the reddleman's figure could no longer be seen, Wildeve himself descended and plunged into the rayless hollow of the vale. To lose the two women--he who had been the well-beloved of both--was too ironical an issue to be endured. He could only decently save himself by Thomasin; and once he became her husband, Eustacia's repentance, he thought, would set in for a long and bitter term. It was no wonder that Wildeve, ignorant of the new man at the back of the scene, should have supposed Eustacia to be playing a part. To believe that the letter was not the result of some momentary pique, to infer that she really gave him up to Thomasin, would have required previous knowledge of her transfiguration by that man's influence. Who was to know that she had grown generous in the greediness of a new passion, that in coveting one cousin she was dealing liberally with another, that in her eagerness to appropriate she gave way? Full of this resolve to marry in haste, and wring the heart of the proud girl, Wildeve went his way. Meanwhile Diggory Venn had returned to his van, where he stood looking thoughtfully into the stove. A new vista was opened up to him. But, however promising Mrs. Yeobright's views of him might be as a candidate for her niece's hand, one condition was indispensable to the favour of Thomasin herself, and that was a renunciation of his present wild mode of life. In this he saw little difficulty. He could not afford to wait till the next day before seeing Thomasin and detailing his plan. He speedily plunged himself into toilet operations, pulled a suit of cloth clothes from a box, and in about twenty minutes stood before the van-lantern as a reddleman in nothing but his face, the vermilion shades of which were not to be removed in a day. Closing the door and fastening it with a padlock, Venn set off towards Blooms-End. He had reached the white palings and laid his hand upon the gate when the door of the house opened, and quickly closed again. A female form had glided in. At the same time a man, who had seemingly been standing with the woman in the porch, came forward from the house till he was face to face with Venn. It was Wildeve again. "Man alive, you've been quick at it," said Diggory sarcastically. "And you slow, as you will find," said Wildeve. "And," lowering his voice, "you may as well go back again now. I've claimed her, and got her. Good night, reddleman!" Thereupon Wildeve walked away. Venn's heart sank within him, though it had not risen unduly high. He stood leaning over the palings in an indecisive mood for nearly a quarter of an hour. Then he went up the garden path, knocked, and asked for Mrs. Yeobright. Instead of requesting him to enter she came to the porch. A discourse was carried on between them in low measured tones for the space of ten minutes or more. At the end of the time Mrs. Yeobright went in, and Venn sadly retraced his steps into the heath. When he had again regained his van he lit the lantern, and with an apathetic face at once began to pull off his best clothes, till in the course of a few minutes he reappeared as the confirmed and irretrievable reddleman that he had seemed before. </CHAPTER> <CHAPTER> 8--Firmness Is Discovered in a Gentle Heart On that evening the interior of Blooms-End, though cosy and comfortable, had been rather silent. Clym Yeobright was not at home. Since the Christmas party he had gone on a few days' visit to a friend about ten miles off. The shadowy form seen by Venn to part from Wildeve in the porch, and quickly withdraw into the house, was Thomasin's. On entering she threw down a cloak which had been carelessly wrapped round her, and came forward to the light, where Mrs. Yeobright sat at her work-table, drawn up within the settle, so that part of it projected into the chimney-corner. "I don't like your going out after dark alone, Tamsin," said her aunt quietly, without looking up from her work. "I have only been just outside the door." "Well?" inquired Mrs. Yeobright, struck by a change in the tone of Thomasin's voice, and observing her. Thomasin's cheek was flushed to a pitch far beyond that which it had reached before her troubles, and her eyes glittered. "It was HE who knocked," she said. "I thought as much." "He wishes the marriage to be at once." "Indeed! What--is he anxious?" Mrs. Yeobright directed a searching look upon her niece. "Why did not Mr. Wildeve come in?" "He did not wish to. You are not friends with him, he says. He would like the wedding to be the day after tomorrow, quite privately; at the church of his parish--not at ours." "Oh! And what did you say?" "I agreed to it," Thomasin answered firmly. "I am a practical woman now. I don't believe in hearts at all. I would marry him under any circumstances since--since Clym's letter." A letter was lying on Mrs. Yeobright's work-basket, and at Thomasin's words her aunt reopened it, and silently read for the tenth time that day:-- What is the meaning of this silly story that people are circulating about Thomasin and Mr. Wildeve? I should call such a scandal humiliating if there was the least chance of its being true. How could such a gross falsehood have arisen? It is said that one should go abroad to hear news of home, and I appear to have done it. Of course I contradict the tale everywhere; but it is very vexing, and I wonder how it could have originated. It is too ridiculous that such a girl as Thomasin could so mortify us as to get jilted on the wedding day. What has she done? "Yes," Mrs. Yeobright said sadly, putting down the letter. "If you think you can marry him, do so. And since Mr. Wildeve wishes it to be unceremonious, let it be that too. I can do nothing. It is all in your own hands now. My power over your welfare came to an end when you left this house to go with him to Anglebury." She continued, half in bitterness, "I may almost ask, why do you consult me in the matter at all? If you had gone and married him without saying a word to me, I could hardly have been angry--simply because, poor girl, you can't do a better thing." "Don't say that and dishearten me." "You are right--I will not." "I do not plead for him, Aunt. Human nature is weak, and I am not a blind woman to insist that he is perfect. I did think so, but I don't now. But I know my course, and you know that I know it. I hope for the best." "And so do I, and we will both continue to," said Mrs. Yeobright, rising and kissing her. "Then the wedding, if it comes off, will be on the morning of the very day Clym comes home?" "Yes. I decided that it ought to be over before he came. After that you can look him in the face, and so can I. Our concealments will matter nothing." Mrs. Yeobright moved her head in thoughtful assent, and presently said, "Do you wish me to give you away? I am willing to undertake that, you know, if you wish, as I was last time. After once forbidding the banns I think I can do no less." "I don't think I will ask you to come," said Thomasin reluctantly, but with decision. "It would be unpleasant, I am almost sure. Better let there be only strangers present, and none of my relations at all. I would rather have it so. I do not wish to do anything which may touch your credit, and I feel that I should be uncomfortable if you were there, after what has passed. I am only your niece, and there is no necessity why you should concern yourself more about me." "Well, he has beaten us," her aunt said. "It really seems as if he had been playing with you in this way in revenge for my humbling him as I did by standing up against him at first." "O no, Aunt," murmured Thomasin. They said no more on the subject then. Diggory Venn's knock came soon after; and Mrs. Yeobright, on returning from her interview with him in the porch, carelessly observed, "Another lover has come to ask for you." "No?" "Yes, that queer young man Venn." "Asks to pay his addresses to me?" "Yes; and I told him he was too late." Thomasin looked silently into the candle-flame. "Poor Diggory!" she said, and then aroused herself to other things. The next day was passed in mere mechanical deeds of preparation, both the women being anxious to immerse themselves in these to escape the emotional aspect of the situation. Some wearing apparel and other articles were collected anew for Thomasin, and remarks on domestic details were frequently made, so as to obscure any inner misgivings about her future as Wildeve's wife. The appointed morning came. The arrangement with Wildeve was that he should meet her at the church to guard against any unpleasant curiosity which might have affected them had they been seen walking off together in the usual country way. Aunt and niece stood together in the bedroom where the bride was dressing. The sun, where it could catch it, made a mirror of Thomasin's hair, which she always wore braided. It was braided according to a calendar system--the more important the day the more numerous the strands in the braid. On ordinary working-days she braided it in threes; on ordinary Sundays in fours; at Maypolings, gipsyings, and the like, she braided it in fives. Years ago she had said that when she married she would braid it in sevens. She had braided it in sevens today. "I have been thinking that I will wear my blue silk after all," she said. "It is my wedding day, even though there may be something sad about the time. I mean," she added, anxious to correct any wrong impression, "not sad in itself, but in its having had great disappointment and trouble before it." Mrs. Yeobright breathed in a way which might have been called a sigh. "I almost wish Clym had been at home," she said. "Of course you chose the time because of his absence." "Partly. I have felt that I acted unfairly to him in not telling him all; but, as it was done not to grieve him, I thought I would carry out the plan to its end, and tell the whole story when the sky was clear." "You are a practical little woman," said Mrs. Yeobright, smiling. "I wish you and he--no, I don't wish anything. There, it is nine o'clock," she interrupted, hearing a whizz and a dinging downstairs. "I told Damon I would leave at nine," said Thomasin, hastening out of the room. Her aunt followed. When Thomasin was going up the little walk from the door to the wicket-gate, Mrs. Yeobright looked reluctantly at her, and said, "It is a shame to let you go alone." "It is necessary," said Thomasin. "At any rate," added her aunt with forced cheerfulness, "I shall call upon you this afternoon, and bring the cake with me. If Clym has returned by that time he will perhaps come too. I wish to show Mr. Wildeve that I bear him no ill-will. Let the past be forgotten. Well, God bless you! There, I don't believe in old superstitions, but I'll do it." She threw a slipper at the retreating figure of the girl, who turned, smiled, and went on again. A few steps further, and she looked back. "Did you call me, Aunt?" she tremulously inquired. "Good-bye!" Moved by an uncontrollable feeling as she looked upon Mrs. Yeobright's worn, wet face, she ran back, when her aunt came forward, and they met again. "O--Tamsie," said the elder, weeping, "I don't like to let you go." "I--I am--" Thomasin began, giving way likewise. But, quelling her grief, she said "Good-bye!" again and went on. Then Mrs. Yeobright saw a little figure wending its way between the scratching furze-bushes, and diminishing far up the valley--a pale-blue spot in a vast field of neutral brown, solitary and undefended except by the power of her own hope. But the worst feature in the case was one which did not appear in the landscape; it was the man. The hour chosen for the ceremony by Thomasin and Wildeve had been so timed as to enable her to escape the awkwardness of meeting her cousin Clym, who was returning the same morning. To own to the partial truth of what he had heard would be distressing as long as the humiliating position resulting from the event was unimproved. It was only after a second and successful journey to the altar that she could lift up her head and prove the failure of the first attempt a pure accident. She had not been gone from Blooms-End more than half an hour when Yeobright came by the meads from the other direction and entered the house. "I had an early breakfast," he said to his mother after greeting her. "Now I could eat a little more." They sat down to the repeated meal, and he went on in a low, anxious voice, apparently imagining that Thomasin had not yet come downstairs, "What's this I have heard about Thomasin and Mr. Wildeve?" "It is true in many points," said Mrs. Yeobright quietly; "but it is all right now, I hope." She looked at the clock. "True?" "Thomasin is gone to him today." Clym pushed away his breakfast. "Then there is a scandal of some sort, and that's what's the matter with Thomasin. Was it this that made her ill?" "Yes. Not a scandal--a misfortune. I will tell you all about it, Clym. You must not be angry, but you must listen, and you'll find that what we have done has been done for the best." She then told him the circumstances. All that he had known of the affair before he returned from Paris was that there had existed an attachment between Thomasin and Wildeve, which his mother had at first discountenanced, but had since, owing to the arguments of Thomasin, looked upon in a little more favourable light. When she, therefore, proceeded to explain all he was greatly surprised and troubled. "And she determined that the wedding should be over before you came back," said Mrs. Yeobright, "that there might be no chance of her meeting you, and having a very painful time of it. That's why she has gone to him; they have arranged to be married this morning." "But I can't understand it," said Yeobright, rising. "'Tis so unlike her. I can see why you did not write to me after her unfortunate return home. But why didn't you let me know when the wedding was going to be--the first time?" "Well, I felt vexed with her just then. She seemed to me to be obstinate; and when I found that you were nothing in her mind I vowed that she should be nothing in yours. I felt that she was only my niece after all; I told her she might marry, but that I should take no interest in it, and should not bother you about it either." "It wouldn't have been bothering me. Mother, you did wrong." "I thought it might disturb you in your business, and that you might throw up your situation, or injure your prospects in some way because of it, so I said nothing. Of course, if they had married at that time in a proper manner, I should have told you at once." "Tamsin actually being married while we are sitting here!" "Yes. Unless some accident happens again, as it did the first time. It may, considering he's the same man." "Yes, and I believe it will. Was it right to let her go? Suppose Wildeve is really a bad fellow?" "Then he won't come, and she'll come home again." "You should have looked more into it." "It is useless to say that," his mother answered with an impatient look of sorrow. "You don't know how bad it has been here with us all these weeks, Clym. You don't know what a mortification anything of that sort is to a woman. You don't know the sleepless nights we've had in this house, and the almost bitter words that have passed between us since that Fifth of November. I hope never to pass seven such weeks again. Tamsin has not gone outside the door, and I have been ashamed to look anybody in the face; and now you blame me for letting her do the only thing that can be done to set that trouble straight." "No," he said slowly. "Upon the whole I don't blame you. But just consider how sudden it seems to me. Here was I, knowing nothing; and then I am told all at once that Tamsie is gone to be married. Well, I suppose there was nothing better to do. Do you know, Mother," he continued after a moment or two, looking suddenly interested in his own past history, "I once thought of Tamsin as a sweetheart? Yes, I did. How odd boys are! And when I came home and saw her this time she seemed so much more affectionate than usual, that I was quite reminded of those days, particularly on the night of the party, when she was unwell. We had the party just the same--was not that rather cruel to her?" "It made no difference. I had arranged to give one, and it was not worth while to make more gloom than necessary. To begin by shutting ourselves up and telling you of Tamsin's misfortunes would have been a poor sort of welcome." Clym remained thinking. "I almost wish you had not had that party," he said; "and for other reasons. But I will tell you in a day or two. We must think of Tamsin now." They lapsed into silence. "I'll tell you what," said Yeobright again, in a tone which showed some slumbering feeling still. "I don't think it kind to Tamsin to let her be married like this, and neither of us there to keep up her spirits or care a bit about her. She hasn't disgraced herself, or done anything to deserve that. It is bad enough that the wedding should be so hurried and unceremonious, without our keeping away from it in addition. Upon my soul, 'tis almost a shame. I'll go." "It is over by this time," said his mother with a sigh; "unless they were late, or he--" "Then I shall be soon enough to see them come out. I don't quite like your keeping me in ignorance, Mother, after all. Really, I half hope he has failed to meet her!" "And ruined her character?" "Nonsense--that wouldn't ruin Thomasin." He took up his hat and hastily left the house. Mrs. Yeobright looked rather unhappy, and sat still, deep in thought. But she was not long left alone. A few minutes later Clym came back again, and in his company came Diggory Venn. "I find there isn't time for me to get there," said Clym. "Is she married?" Mrs. Yeobright inquired, turning to the reddleman a face in which a strange strife of wishes, for and against, was apparent. Venn bowed. "She is, ma'am." "How strange it sounds," murmured Clym. "And he didn't disappoint her this time?" said Mrs. Yeobright. "He did not. And there is now no slight on her name. I was hastening ath'art to tell you at once, as I saw you were not there." "How came you to be there? How did you know it?" she asked. "I have been in that neighbourhood for some time, and I saw them go in," said the reddleman. "Wildeve came up to the door, punctual as the clock. I didn't expect it of him." He did not add, as he might have added, that how he came to be in that neighbourhood was not by accident; that, since Wildeve's resumption of his right to Thomasin, Venn, with the thoroughness which was part of his character, had determined to see the end of the episode. "Who was there?" said Mrs. Yeobright. "Nobody hardly. I stood right out of the way, and she did not see me." The reddleman spoke huskily, and looked into the garden. "Who gave her away?" "Miss Vye." "How very remarkable! Miss Vye! It is to be considered an honour, I suppose?" "Who's Miss Vye?" said Clym. "Captain Vye's granddaughter, of Mistover Knap." "A proud girl from Budmouth," said Mrs. Yeobright. "One not much to my liking. People say she's a witch, but of course that's absurd." The reddleman kept to himself his acquaintance with that fair personage, and also that Eustacia was there because he went to fetch her, in accordance with a promise he had given as soon as he learnt that the marriage was to take place. He merely said, in continuation of the story---- "I was sitting on the churchyard wall when they came up, one from one way, the other from the other; and Miss Vye was walking thereabouts, looking at the headstones. As soon as they had gone in I went to the door, feeling I should like to see it, as I knew her so well. I pulled off my boots because they were so noisy, and went up into the gallery. I saw then that the parson and clerk were already there." "How came Miss Vye to have anything to do with it, if she was only on a walk that way?" "Because there was nobody else. She had gone into the church just before me, not into the gallery. The parson looked round before beginning, and as she was the only one near he beckoned to her, and she went up to the rails. After that, when it came to signing the book, she pushed up her veil and signed; and Tamsin seemed to thank her for her kindness." The reddleman told the tale thoughtfully for there lingered upon his vision the changing colour of Wildeve, when Eustacia lifted the thick veil which had concealed her from recognition and looked calmly into his face. "And then," said Diggory sadly, "I came away, for her history as Tamsin Yeobright was over." "I offered to go," said Mrs. Yeobright regretfully. "But she said it was not necessary." "Well, it is no matter," said the reddleman. "The thing is done at last as it was meant to be at first, and God send her happiness. Now I'll wish you good morning." He placed his cap on his head and went out. From that instant of leaving Mrs. Yeobright's door, the reddleman was seen no more in or about Egdon Heath for a space of many months. He vanished entirely. The nook among the brambles where his van had been standing was as vacant as ever the next morning, and scarcely a sign remained to show that he had been there, excepting a few straws, and a little redness on the turf, which was washed away by the next storm of rain. The report that Diggory had brought of the wedding, correct as far as it went, was deficient in one significant particular, which had escaped him through his being at some distance back in the church. When Thomasin was tremblingly engaged in signing her name Wildeve had flung towards Eustacia a glance that said plainly, "I have punished you now." She had replied in a low tone--and he little thought how truly--"You mistake; it gives me sincerest pleasure to see her your wife today." </CHAPTER>

Clym's wedding takes place in the parish church in Mistover. Thomasin attends the wedding, but Wildeve does not. Mrs. Yeobright sits at home torturing herself and feeling resentful. While Thomasin is at the wedding, Wildeve calls upon Mrs. Yeobright to pick up a package for his wife. Since the package contains money for her niece, Mrs. Yeobright refuses to give it to Wildeve, not trusting that Thomasin will ever see it. Instead, she entrusts Christian Cantle with money for both Thomasin and Clym and asks him to deliver it safely into the hands of her relatives, who are both in Mistover. On the way to Mistover, Christian stops by the Quiet Woman Inn and is surprised when he wins a raffle there. Seeing his childish fascination with the dice with which he has won the raffle, Wildeve gives them to Christian to keep. Wildeve then leaves with Christian to accompany him to Mistover. On the way, Christian reveals that he is carrying money for Thomasin. Seething with rage and humiliation that Mrs. Yeobright has refused to trust him with the money over Christian, Wildeve plays a dice game with Christian, gambling for guineas. Wildeve manages to win all the money, both that belonging to Thomasin and to Clym. Only later does Wildeve discover that half the money belongs to Clym. Diggory Venn suddenly appears out of the shadows from where he has been watching and challenges Wildeve to continue the game. One of the dice gets lost in the surrounding darkness, and on one occasion the candle get extinguished, owing to a blundering moth. But the two men play on by the light of thirteen imprisoned glow worms. Finally Venn wins back all the money. Not knowing that part of it was meant for Clym, Venn meets Thomasin on her way back from the wedding and presents it all to her.

With one member trimming beef in a cannery, and another working in a sausage factory, the family had a first-hand knowledge of the great majority of Packingtown swindles. For it was the custom, as they found, whenever meat was so spoiled that it could not be used for anything else, either to can it or else to chop it up into sausage. With what had been told them by Jonas, who had worked in the pickle rooms, they could now study the whole of the spoiled-meat industry on the inside, and read a new and grim meaning into that old Packingtown jest--that they use everything of the pig except the squeal. Jonas had told them how the meat that was taken out of pickle would often be found sour, and how they would rub it up with soda to take away the smell, and sell it to be eaten on free-lunch counters; also of all the miracles of chemistry which they performed, giving to any sort of meat, fresh or salted, whole or chopped, any color and any flavor and any odor they chose. In the pickling of hams they had an ingenious apparatus, by which they saved time and increased the capacity of the plant--a machine consisting of a hollow needle attached to a pump; by plunging this needle into the meat and working with his foot, a man could fill a ham with pickle in a few seconds. And yet, in spite of this, there would be hams found spoiled, some of them with an odor so bad that a man could hardly bear to be in the room with them. To pump into these the packers had a second and much stronger pickle which destroyed the odor--a process known to the workers as "giving them thirty per cent." Also, after the hams had been smoked, there would be found some that had gone to the bad. Formerly these had been sold as "Number Three Grade," but later on some ingenious person had hit upon a new device, and now they would extract the bone, about which the bad part generally lay, and insert in the hole a white-hot iron. After this invention there was no longer Number One, Two, and Three Grade--there was only Number One Grade. The packers were always originating such schemes--they had what they called "boneless hams," which were all the odds and ends of pork stuffed into casings; and "California hams," which were the shoulders, with big knuckle joints, and nearly all the meat cut out; and fancy "skinned hams," which were made of the oldest hogs, whose skins were so heavy and coarse that no one would buy them--that is, until they had been cooked and chopped fine and labeled "head cheese!" It was only when the whole ham was spoiled that it came into the department of Elzbieta. Cut up by the two-thousand-revolutions-a-minute flyers, and mixed with half a ton of other meat, no odor that ever was in a ham could make any difference. There was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage; there would come all the way back from Europe old sausage that had been rejected, and that was moldy and white--it would be dosed with borax and glycerine, and dumped into the hoppers, and made over again for home consumption. There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs. There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it. It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats. These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together. This is no fairy story and no joke; the meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one--there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit. There was no place for the men to wash their hands before they ate their dinner, and so they made a practice of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into the sausage. There were the butt-ends of smoked meat, and the scraps of corned beef, and all the odds and ends of the waste of the plants, that would be dumped into old barrels in the cellar and left there. Under the system of rigid economy which the packers enforced, there were some jobs that it only paid to do once in a long time, and among these was the cleaning out of the waste barrels. Every spring they did it; and in the barrels would be dirt and rust and old nails and stale water--and cartload after cartload of it would be taken up and dumped into the hoppers with fresh meat, and sent out to the public's breakfast. Some of it they would make into "smoked" sausage--but as the smoking took time, and was therefore expensive, they would call upon their chemistry department, and preserve it with borax and color it with gelatine to make it brown. All of their sausage came out of the same bowl, but when they came to wrap it they would stamp some of it "special," and for this they would charge two cents more a pound. Such were the new surroundings in which Elzbieta was placed, and such was the work she was compelled to do. It was stupefying, brutalizing work; it left her no time to think, no strength for anything. She was part of the machine she tended, and every faculty that was not needed for the machine was doomed to be crushed out of existence. There was only one mercy about the cruel grind--that it gave her the gift of insensibility. Little by little she sank into a torpor--she fell silent. She would meet Jurgis and Ona in the evening, and the three would walk home together, often without saying a word. Ona, too, was falling into a habit of silence--Ona, who had once gone about singing like a bird. She was sick and miserable, and often she would barely have strength enough to drag herself home. And there they would eat what they had to eat, and afterward, because there was only their misery to talk of, they would crawl into bed and fall into a stupor and never stir until it was time to get up again, and dress by candlelight, and go back to the machines. They were so numbed that they did not even suffer much from hunger, now; only the children continued to fret when the food ran short. Yet the soul of Ona was not dead--the souls of none of them were dead, but only sleeping; and now and then they would waken, and these were cruel times. The gates of memory would roll open--old joys would stretch out their arms to them, old hopes and dreams would call to them, and they would stir beneath the burden that lay upon them, and feel its forever immeasurable weight. They could not even cry out beneath it; but anguish would seize them, more dreadful than the agony of death. It was a thing scarcely to be spoken--a thing never spoken by all the world, that will not know its own defeat. They were beaten; they had lost the game, they were swept aside. It was not less tragic because it was so sordid, because it had to do with wages and grocery bills and rents. They had dreamed of freedom; of a chance to look about them and learn something; to be decent and clean, to see their child grow up to be strong. And now it was all gone--it would never be! They had played the game and they had lost. Six years more of toil they had to face before they could expect the least respite, the cessation of the payments upon the house; and how cruelly certain it was that they could never stand six years of such a life as they were living! They were lost, they were going down--and there was no deliverance for them, no hope; for all the help it gave them the vast city in which they lived might have been an ocean waste, a wilderness, a desert, a tomb. So often this mood would come to Ona, in the nighttime, when something wakened her; she would lie, afraid of the beating of her own heart, fronting the blood-red eyes of the old primeval terror of life. Once she cried aloud, and woke Jurgis, who was tired and cross. After that she learned to weep silently--their moods so seldom came together now! It was as if their hopes were buried in separate graves. Jurgis, being a man, had troubles of his own. There was another specter following him. He had never spoken of it, nor would he allow any one else to speak of it--he had never acknowledged its existence to himself. Yet the battle with it took all the manhood that he had--and once or twice, alas, a little more. Jurgis had discovered drink. He was working in the steaming pit of hell; day after day, week after week--until now, there was not an organ of his body that did its work without pain, until the sound of ocean breakers echoed in his head day and night, and the buildings swayed and danced before him as he went down the street. And from all the unending horror of this there was a respite, a deliverance--he could drink! He could forget the pain, he could slip off the burden; he would see clearly again, he would be master of his brain, of his thoughts, of his will. His dead self would stir in him, and he would find himself laughing and cracking jokes with his companions--he would be a man again, and master of his life. It was not an easy thing for Jurgis to take more than two or three drinks. With the first drink he could eat a meal, and he could persuade himself that that was economy; with the second he could eat another meal--but there would come a time when he could eat no more, and then to pay for a drink was an unthinkable extravagance, a defiance of the age-long instincts of his hunger-haunted class. One day, however, he took the plunge, and drank up all that he had in his pockets, and went home half "piped," as the men phrase it. He was happier than he had been in a year; and yet, because he knew that the happiness would not last, he was savage, too with those who would wreck it, and with the world, and with his life; and then again, beneath this, he was sick with the shame of himself. Afterward, when he saw the despair of his family, and reckoned up the money he had spent, the tears came into his eyes, and he began the long battle with the specter. It was a battle that had no end, that never could have one. But Jurgis did not realize that very clearly; he was not given much time for reflection. He simply knew that he was always fighting. Steeped in misery and despair as he was, merely to walk down the street was to be put upon the rack. There was surely a saloon on the corner--perhaps on all four corners, and some in the middle of the block as well; and each one stretched out a hand to him each one had a personality of its own, allurements unlike any other. Going and coming--before sunrise and after dark--there was warmth and a glow of light, and the steam of hot food, and perhaps music, or a friendly face, and a word of good cheer. Jurgis developed a fondness for having Ona on his arm whenever he went out on the street, and he would hold her tightly, and walk fast. It was pitiful to have Ona know of this--it drove him wild to think of it; the thing was not fair, for Ona had never tasted drink, and so could not understand. Sometimes, in desperate hours, he would find himself wishing that she might learn what it was, so that he need not be ashamed in her presence. They might drink together, and escape from the horror--escape for a while, come what would. So there came a time when nearly all the conscious life of Jurgis consisted of a struggle with the craving for liquor. He would have ugly moods, when he hated Ona and the whole family, because they stood in his way. He was a fool to have married; he had tied himself down, had made himself a slave. It was all because he was a married man that he was compelled to stay in the yards; if it had not been for that he might have gone off like Jonas, and to hell with the packers. There were few single men in the fertilizer mill--and those few were working only for a chance to escape. Meantime, too, they had something to think about while they worked,--they had the memory of the last time they had been drunk, and the hope of the time when they would be drunk again. As for Jurgis, he was expected to bring home every penny; he could not even go with the men at noontime--he was supposed to sit down and eat his dinner on a pile of fertilizer dust. This was not always his mood, of course; he still loved his family. But just now was a time of trial. Poor little Antanas, for instance--who had never failed to win him with a smile--little Antanas was not smiling just now, being a mass of fiery red pimples. He had had all the diseases that babies are heir to, in quick succession, scarlet fever, mumps, and whooping cough in the first year, and now he was down with the measles. There was no one to attend him but Kotrina; there was no doctor to help him, because they were too poor, and children did not die of the measles--at least not often. Now and then Kotrina would find time to sob over his woes, but for the greater part of the time he had to be left alone, barricaded upon the bed. The floor was full of drafts, and if he caught cold he would die. At night he was tied down, lest he should kick the covers off him, while the family lay in their stupor of exhaustion. He would lie and scream for hours, almost in convulsions; and then, when he was worn out, he would lie whimpering and wailing in his torment. He was burning up with fever, and his eyes were running sores; in the daytime he was a thing uncanny and impish to behold, a plaster of pimples and sweat, a great purple lump of misery. Yet all this was not really as cruel as it sounds, for, sick as he was, little Antanas was the least unfortunate member of that family. He was quite able to bear his sufferings--it was as if he had all these complaints to show what a prodigy of health he was. He was the child of his parents' youth and joy; he grew up like the conjurer's rosebush, and all the world was his oyster. In general, he toddled around the kitchen all day with a lean and hungry look--the portion of the family's allowance that fell to him was not enough, and he was unrestrainable in his demand for more. Antanas was but little over a year old, and already no one but his father could manage him. It seemed as if he had taken all of his mother's strength--had left nothing for those that might come after him. Ona was with child again now, and it was a dreadful thing to contemplate; even Jurgis, dumb and despairing as he was, could not but understand that yet other agonies were on the way, and shudder at the thought of them. For Ona was visibly going to pieces. In the first place she was developing a cough, like the one that had killed old Dede Antanas. She had had a trace of it ever since that fatal morning when the greedy streetcar corporation had turned her out into the rain; but now it was beginning to grow serious, and to wake her up at night. Even worse than that was the fearful nervousness from which she suffered; she would have frightful headaches and fits of aimless weeping; and sometimes she would come home at night shuddering and moaning, and would fling herself down upon the bed and burst into tears. Several times she was quite beside herself and hysterical; and then Jurgis would go half-mad with fright. Elzbieta would explain to him that it could not be helped, that a woman was subject to such things when she was pregnant; but he was hardly to be persuaded, and would beg and plead to know what had happened. She had never been like this before, he would argue--it was monstrous and unthinkable. It was the life she had to live, the accursed work she had to do, that was killing her by inches. She was not fitted for it--no woman was fitted for it, no woman ought to be allowed to do such work; if the world could not keep them alive any other way it ought to kill them at once and be done with it. They ought not to marry, to have children; no workingman ought to marry--if he, Jurgis, had known what a woman was like, he would have had his eyes torn out first. So he would carry on, becoming half hysterical himself, which was an unbearable thing to see in a big man; Ona would pull herself together and fling herself into his arms, begging him to stop, to be still, that she would be better, it would be all right. So she would lie and sob out her grief upon his shoulder, while he gazed at her, as helpless as a wounded animal, the target of unseen enemies.

With two family members working in the cannery and the sausage making plant, the family sees all of the tricks that the packing industry uses to sell meat. The industry is especially good at manipulating spoiled meat so that it does not smell or look spoiled so that it can be sold. They pump meat full of pickling chemicals to rid it of its smells. They remove the bone from a ham, along with its rotted meat, and replace it with a hot piece of iron. They stop labeling meat as One, Two, or Three Grade and instead label it all as One Grade. They use "everything of the pig except the squeal," and they find new ways to market and sell each part. Teta Elzbieta's factory is especially bad. Rats are a problem in the storage sheds, and the men that work there put out poison bread. When the rats die, they often end up in the piles of meat. There are other things that go into the sausage as well, too horrible to name. Every few months, men are hired to clean out the waste barrels of spoiled meat, trash, rusty nails, and other things. It is "taken up and dumped into the hoppers with fresh meat, and sent out to the public's breakfast. Soon, Elzbieta sinks into torpor. She and Ona become silent most of the time, too tired to speak. They are both sick and miserable from their work. They are "so numbed that they not even suffer much from hunger. Often, they remember what life had been like before, and their souls cry out in agony. They had dreamed of freedom in America, but now they cannot even see their child grow up to be strong. Ona sometimes cries about it at night, but Jurgis is tired and cross. She learns to weep silently. Jurgis becomes addicted to alcohol. He struggles with wanting to drink although he knows that he must bring every penny he can home with him. He has a drink with his meals, sometimes, and it makes him happy and allows him to loosen some of his burden. When he drinks, "his dead self would stir in him, and he would find himself laughing and cracking jokes with his companions - he would be a man again, and master of his life. He grows to resent his married life and his family, for they keep him from being able to drink more. He wishes that Ona would drink so that they could "escape from the horror. Soon, "nearly all the conscious life of Jurgis consisted of a struggle with the craving for liquor. Little Antanas is the least unfortunate member of the family. He is able to bear his sufferings and is healthy. He has so much strength and energy that his mother cannot handle him and cannot give him enough food. Only Jurgis can calm the child. Antanas soon gets sick with the measles and his crying and wailing are terrible. The family, however, is too tired to care for him, and since children do not often die of the measles, they simply let him cry until his disease passes. Ona's work is slowly killing her, and Jurgis thinks to himself that workingmen should not marry and have families because their women become too hysterical to manage

The Porter at the iron gate which shut the court-yard from the street, had left the little wicket of his house open, and was gone away; no doubt to mingle in the distant noise at the door of the great staircase. Lifting the latch softly, Carker crept out, and shutting the jangling gate after him with as little noise as possible, hurried off. In the fever of his mortification and unavailing rage, the panic that had seized upon him mastered him completely. It rose to such a height that he would have blindly encountered almost any risk, rather than meet the man of whom, two hours ago, he had been utterly regardless. His fierce arrival, which he had never expected; the sound of his voice; their having been so near a meeting, face to face; he would have braved out this, after the first momentary shock of alarm, and would have put as bold a front upon his guilt as any villain. But the springing of his mine upon himself, seemed to have rent and shivered all his hardihood and self-reliance. Spurned like any reptile; entrapped and mocked; turned upon, and trodden down by the proud woman whose mind he had slowly poisoned, as he thought, until she had sunk into the mere creature of his pleasure; undeceived in his deceit, and with his fox's hide stripped off, he sneaked away, abashed, degraded, and afraid. Some other terror came upon hIm quite removed from this of being pursued, suddenly, like an electric shock, as he was creeping through the streets Some visionary terror, unintelligible and inexplicable, associated with a trembling of the ground,--a rush and sweep of something through the air, like Death upon the wing. He shrunk, as if to let the thing go by. It was not gone, it never had been there, yet what a startling horror it had left behind. He raised his wicked face so full of trouble, to the night sky, where the stars, so full of peace, were shining on him as they had been when he first stole out into the air; and stopped to think what he should do. The dread of being hunted in a strange remote place, where the laws might not protect him--the novelty of the feeling that it was strange and remote, originating in his being left alone so suddenly amid the ruins of his plans--his greater dread of seeking refuge now, in Italy or in Sicily, where men might be hired to assassinate him, he thought, at any dark street corner--the waywardness of guilt and fear--perhaps some sympathy of action with the turning back of all his schemes--impelled him to turn back too, and go to England. 'I am safer there, in any case. If I should not decide,' he thought, 'to give this fool a meeting, I am less likely to be traced there, than abroad here, now. And if I should (this cursed fit being over), at least I shall not be alone, without a soul to speak to, or advise with, or stand by me. I shall not be run in upon and worried like a rat.' He muttered Edith's name, and clenched his hand. As he crept along, in the shadow of the massive buildings, he set his teeth, and muttered dreadful imprecations on her head, and looked from side to side, as if in search of her. Thus, he stole on to the gate of an inn-yard. The people were a-bed; but his ringing at the bell soon produced a man with a lantern, in company with whom he was presently in a dim coach-house, bargaining for the hire of an old phaeton, to Paris. The bargain was a short one; and the horses were soon sent for. Leaving word that the carriage was to follow him when they came, he stole away again, beyond the town, past the old ramparts, out on the open road, which seemed to glide away along the dark plain, like a stream. Whither did it flow? What was the end of it? As he paused, with some such suggestion within him, looking over the gloomy flat where the slender trees marked out the way, again that flight of Death came rushing up, again went on, impetuous and resistless, again was nothing but a horror in his mind, dark as the scene and undefined as its remotest verge. There was no wind; there was no passing shadow on the deep shade of the night; there was no noise. The city lay behind hIm, lighted here and there, and starry worlds were hidden by the masonry of spire and roof that hardly made out any shapes against the sky. Dark and lonely distance lay around him everywhere, and the clocks were faintly striking two. He went forward for what appeared a long time, and a long way; often stopping to listen. At last the ringing of horses' bells greeted his anxious ears. Now softer, and now louder, now inaudible, now ringing very slowly over bad ground, now brisk and merry, it came on; until with a loud shouting and lashing, a shadowy postillion muffled to the eyes, checked his four struggling horses at his side. 'Who goes there! Monsieur?' 'Yes.' 'Monsieur has walked a long way in the dark midnight.' 'No matter. Everyone to his task. Were there any other horses ordered at the Post-house?' 'A thousand devils!--and pardons! other horses? at this hour? No.' 'Listen, my friend. I am much hurried. Let us see how fast we can travel! The faster, the more money there will be to drink. Off we go then! Quick!' 'Halloa! whoop! Halloa! Hi!' Away, at a gallop, over the black landscape, scattering the dust and dirt like spray! The clatter and commotion echoed to the hurry and discordance of the fugitive's ideas. Nothing clear without, and nothing clear within. Objects flitting past, merging into one another, dimly descried, confusedly lost sight of, gone! Beyond the changing scraps of fence and cottage immediately upon the road, a lowering waste. Beyond the shifting images that rose up in his mind and vanished as they showed themselves, a black expanse of dread and rage and baffled villainy. Occasionally, a sigh of mountain air came from the distant Jura, fading along the plain. Sometimes that rush which was so furious and horrible, again came sweeping through his fancy, passed away, and left a chill upon his blood. The lamps, gleaming on the medley of horses' heads, jumbled with the shadowy driver, and the fluttering of his cloak, made a thousand indistinct shapes, answering to his thoughts. Shadows of familiar people, stooping at their desks and books, in their remembered attitudes; strange apparitions of the man whom he was flying from, or of Edith; repetitions in the ringing bells and rolling wheels, of words that had been spoken; confusions of time and place, making last night a month ago, a month ago last night--home now distant beyond hope, now instantly accessible; commotion, discord, hurry, darkness, and confusion in his mind, and all around him.--Hallo! Hi! away at a gallop over the black landscape; dust and dirt flying like spray, the smoking horses snorting and plunging as if each of them were ridden by a demon, away in a frantic triumph on the dark road--whither? Again the nameless shock comes speeding up, and as it passes, the bells ring in his ears 'whither?' The wheels roar in his ears 'whither?' All the noise and rattle shapes itself into that cry. The lights and shadows dance upon the horses' heads like imps. No stopping now: no slackening! On, on! Away with him upon the dark road wildly! He could not think to any purpose. He could not separate one subject of reflection from another, sufficiently to dwell upon it, by itself, for a minute at a time. The crash of his project for the gaining of a voluptuous compensation for past restraint; the overthrow of his treachery to one who had been true and generous to him, but whose least proud word and look he had treasured up, at interest, for years--for false and subtle men will always secretly despise and dislike the object upon which they fawn and always resent the payment and receipt of homage that they know to be worthless; these were the themes uppermost in his mind. A lurking rage against the woman who had so entrapped him and avenged herself was always there; crude and misshapen schemes of retaliation upon her, floated in his brain; but nothing was distinct. A hurry and contradiction pervaded all his thoughts. Even while he was so busy with this fevered, ineffectual thinking, his one constant idea was, that he would postpone reflection until some indefinite time. Then, the old days before the second marriage rose up in his remembrance. He thought how jealous he had been of the boy, how jealous he had been of the girl, how artfully he had kept intruders at a distance, and drawn a circle round his dupe that none but himself should cross; and then he thought, had he done all this to be flying now, like a scared thief, from only the poor dupe? He could have laid hands upon himself for his cowardice, but it was the very shadow of his defeat, and could not be separated from it. To have his confidence in his own knavery so shattered at a blow--to be within his own knowledge such a miserable tool--was like being paralysed. With an impotent ferocity he raged at Edith, and hated Mr Dombey and hated himself, but still he fled, and could do nothing else. Again and again he listened for the sound of wheels behind. Again and again his fancy heard it, coming on louder and louder. At last he was so persuaded of this, that he cried out, 'Stop' preferring even the loss of ground to such uncertainty. The word soon brought carriage, horses, driver, all in a heap together, across the road. 'The devil!' cried the driver, looking over his shoulder, 'what's the matter?' 'Hark! What's that?' 'What?' 'That noise?' 'Ah Heaven, be quiet, cursed brigand!' to a horse who shook his bells 'What noise?' 'Behind. Is it not another carriage at a gallop? There! what's that?' 'Miscreant with a Pig's head, stand still!' to another horse, who bit another, who frightened the other two, who plunged and backed. 'There is nothing coming.' 'Nothing.' 'No, nothing but the day yonder.' 'You are right, I think. I hear nothing now, indeed. Go on!' The entangled equipage, half hidden in the reeking cloud from the horses, goes on slowly at first, for the driver, checked unnecessarily in his progress, sulkily takes out a pocket-knife, and puts a new lash to his whip. Then 'Hallo, whoop! Hallo, hi!' Away once more, savagely. And now the stars faded, and the day glimmered, and standing in the carriage, looking back, he could discern the track by which he had come, and see that there was no traveller within view, on all the heavy expanse. And soon it was broad day, and the sun began to shine on cornfields and vineyards; and solitary labourers, risen from little temporary huts by heaps of stones upon the road, were, here and there, at work repairing the highway, or eating bread. By and by, there were peasants going to their daily labour, or to market, or lounging at the doors of poor cottages, gazing idly at him as he passed. And then there was a postyard, ankle-deep in mud, with steaming dunghills and vast outhouses half ruined; and looking on this dainty prospect, an immense, old, shadeless, glaring, stone chateau, with half its windows blinded, and green damp crawling lazily over it, from the balustraded terrace to the taper tips of the extinguishers upon the turrets. Gathered up moodily in a corner of the carriage, and only intent on going fast--except when he stood up, for a mile together, and looked back; which he would do whenever there was a piece of open country--he went on, still postponing thought indefinitely, and still always tormented with thinking to no purpose. Shame, disappointment, and discomfiture gnawed at his heart; a constant apprehension of being overtaken, or met--for he was groundlessly afraid even of travellers, who came towards him by the way he was going--oppressed him heavily. The same intolerable awe and dread that had come upon him in the night, returned unweakened in the day. The monotonous ringing of the bells and tramping of the horses; the monotony of his anxiety, and useless rage; the monotonous wheel of fear, regret, and passion, he kept turning round and round; made the journey like a vision, in which nothing was quite real but his own torment. It was a vision of long roads, that stretched away to an horizon, always receding and never gained; of ill-paved towns, up hill and down, where faces came to dark doors and ill-glazed windows, and where rows of mudbespattered cows and oxen were tied up for sale in the long narrow streets, butting and lowing, and receiving blows on their blunt heads from bludgeons that might have beaten them in; of bridges, crosses, churches, postyards, new horses being put in against their wills, and the horses of the last stage reeking, panting, and laying their drooping heads together dolefully at stable doors; of little cemeteries with black crosses settled sideways in the graves, and withered wreaths upon them dropping away; again of long, long roads, dragging themselves out, up hill and down, to the treacherous horizon. Of morning, noon, and sunset; night, and the rising of an early moon. Of long roads temporarily left behind, and a rough pavement reached; of battering and clattering over it, and looking up, among house-roofs, at a great church-tower; of getting out and eating hastily, and drinking draughts of wine that had no cheering influence; of coming forth afoot, among a host of beggars--blind men with quivering eyelids, led by old women holding candles to their faces; idiot girls; the lame, the epileptic, and the palsied--of passing through the clamour, and looking from his seat at the upturned countenances and outstretched hands, with a hurried dread of recognising some pursuer pressing forward--of galloping away again, upon the long, long road, gathered up, dull and stunned, in his corner, or rising to see where the moon shone faintly on a patch of the same endless road miles away, or looking back to see who followed. Of never sleeping, but sometimes dozing with unclosed eyes, and springing up with a start, and a reply aloud to an imaginary voice. Of cursing himself for being there, for having fled, for having let her go, for not having confronted and defied him. Of having a deadly quarrel with the whole world, but chiefly with himself. Of blighting everything with his black mood as he was carried on and away. It was a fevered vision of things past and present all confounded together; of his life and journey blended into one. Of being madly hurried somewhere, whither he must go. Of old scenes starting up among the novelties through which he travelled. Of musing and brooding over what was past and distant, and seeming to take no notice of the actual objects he encountered, but with a wearisome exhausting consciousness of being bewildered by them, and having their images all crowded in his hot brain after they were gone. A vision of change upon change, and still the same monotony of bells and wheels, and horses' feet, and no rest. Of town and country, postyards, horses, drivers, hill and valley, light and darkness, road and pavement, height and hollow, wet weather and dry, and still the same monotony of bells and wheels, and horses' feet, and no rest. A vision of tending on at last, towards the distant capital, by busier roads, and sweeping round, by old cathedrals, and dashing through small towns and villages, less thinly scattered on the road than formerly, and sitting shrouded in his corner, with his cloak up to his face, as people passing by looked at him. Of rolling on and on, always postponing thought, and always racked with thinking; of being unable to reckon up the hours he had been upon the road, or to comprehend the points of time and place in his journey. Of being parched and giddy, and half mad. Of pressing on, in spite of all, as if he could not stop, and coming into Paris, where the turbid river held its swift course undisturbed, between two brawling streams of life and motion. A troubled vision, then, of bridges, quays, interminable streets; of wine-shops, water-carriers, great crowds of people, soldiers, coaches, military drums, arcades. Of the monotony of bells and wheels and horses' feet being at length lost in the universal din and uproar. Of the gradual subsidence of that noise as he passed out in another carriage by a different barrier from that by which he had entered. Of the restoration, as he travelled on towards the seacoast, of the monotony of bells and wheels, and horses' feet, and no rest. Of sunset once again, and nightfall. Of long roads again, and dead of night, and feeble lights in windows by the roadside; and still the old monotony of bells and wheels, and horses' feet, and no rest. Of dawn, and daybreak, and the rising of the sun. Of tolling slowly up a hill, and feeling on its top the fresh sea-breeze; and seeing the morning light upon the edges of the distant waves. Of coming down into a harbour when the tide was at its full, and seeing fishing-boats float on, and glad women and children waiting for them. Of nets and seamen's clothes spread out to dry upon the shore; of busy sailors, and their voices high among ships' masts and rigging; of the buoyancy and brightness of the water, and the universal sparkling. Of receding from the coast, and looking back upon it from the deck when it was a haze upon the water, with here and there a little opening of bright land where the Sun struck. Of the swell, and flash, and murmur of the calm sea. Of another grey line on the ocean, on the vessel's track, fast growing clearer and higher. Of cliffs and buildings, and a windmill, and a church, becoming more and more visible upon it. Of steaming on at last into smooth water, and mooring to a pier whence groups of people looked down, greeting friends on board. Of disembarking, passing among them quickly, shunning every one; and of being at last again in England. He had thought, in his dream, of going down into a remote country-place he knew, and lying quiet there, while he secretly informed himself of what transpired, and determined how to act, Still in the same stunned condition, he remembered a certain station on the railway, where he would have to branch off to his place of destination, and where there was a quiet Inn. Here, he indistinctly resolved to tarry and rest. With this purpose he slunk into a railway carriage as quickly as he could, and lying there wrapped in his cloak as if he were asleep, was soon borne far away from the sea, and deep into the inland green. Arrived at his destination he looked out, and surveyed it carefully. He was not mistaken in his impression of the place. It was a retired spot, on the borders of a little wood. Only one house, newly-built or altered for the purpose, stood there, surrounded by its neat garden; the small town that was nearest, was some miles away. Here he alighted then; and going straight into the tavern, unobserved by anyone, secured two rooms upstairs communicating with each other, and sufficiently retired. His object was to rest, and recover the command of himself, and the balance of his mind. Imbecile discomfiture and rage--so that, as he walked about his room, he ground his teeth--had complete possession of him. His thoughts, not to be stopped or directed, still wandered where they would, and dragged him after them. He was stupefied, and he was wearied to death. But, as if there were a curse upon him that he should never rest again, his drowsy senses would not lose their consciousness. He had no more influence with them, in this regard, than if they had been another man's. It was not that they forced him to take note of present sounds and objects, but that they would not be diverted from the whole hurried vision of his journey. It was constantly before him all at once. She stood there, with her dark disdainful eyes again upon him; and he was riding on nevertheless, through town and country, light and darkness, wet weather and dry, over road and pavement, hill and valley, height and hollow, jaded and scared by the monotony of bells and wheels, and horses' feet, and no rest. 'What day is this?' he asked of the waiter, who was making preparations for his dinner. 'Day, Sir?' 'Is it Wednesday?' 'Wednesday, Sir? No, Sir. Thursday, Sir.' 'I forgot. How goes the time? My watch is unwound.' 'Wants a few minutes of five o'clock, Sir. Been travelling a long time, Sir, perhaps?' 'Yes' 'By rail, Sir?' 'Yes' 'Very confusing, Sir. Not much in the habit of travelling by rail myself, Sir, but gentlemen frequently say so.' 'Do many gentlemen come here? 'Pretty well, Sir, in general. Nobody here at present. Rather slack just now, Sir. Everything is slack, Sir.' He made no answer; but had risen into a sitting posture on the sofa where he had been lying, and leaned forward with an arm on each knee, staring at the ground. He could not master his own attention for a minute together. It rushed away where it would, but it never, for an instant, lost itself in sleep. He drank a quantity of wine after dinner, in vain. No such artificial means would bring sleep to his eyes. His thoughts, more incoherent, dragged him more unmercifully after them--as if a wretch, condemned to such expiation, were drawn at the heels of wild horses. No oblivion, and no rest. How long he sat, drinking and brooding, and being dragged in imagination hither and thither, no one could have told less correctly than he. But he knew that he had been sitting a long time by candle-light, when he started up and listened, in a sudden terror. For now, indeed, it was no fancy. The ground shook, the house rattled, the fierce impetuous rush was in the air! He felt it come up, and go darting by; and even when he had hurried to the window, and saw what it was, he stood, shrinking from it, as if it were not safe to look. A curse upon the fiery devil, thundering along so smoothly, tracked through the distant valley by a glare of light and lurid smoke, and gone! He felt as if he had been plucked out of its path, and saved from being torn asunder. It made him shrink and shudder even now, when its faintest hum was hushed, and when the lines of iron road he could trace in the moonlight, running to a point, were as empty and as silent as a desert. Unable to rest, and irresistibly attracted--or he thought so--to this road, he went out, and lounged on the brink of it, marking the way the train had gone, by the yet smoking cinders that were lying in its track. After a lounge of some half hour in the direction by which it had disappeared, he turned and walked the other way--still keeping to the brink of the road--past the inn garden, and a long way down; looking curiously at the bridges, signals, lamps, and wondering when another Devil would come by. A trembling of the ground, and quick vibration in his ears; a distant shriek; a dull light advancing, quickly changed to two red eyes, and a fierce fire, dropping glowing coals; an irresistible bearing on of a great roaring and dilating mass; a high wind, and a rattle--another come and gone, and he holding to a gate, as if to save himself! He waited for another, and for another. He walked back to his former point, and back again to that, and still, through the wearisome vision of his journey, looked for these approaching monsters. He loitered about the station, waiting until one should stay to call there; and when one did, and was detached for water, he stood parallel with it, watching its heavy wheels and brazen front, and thinking what a cruel power and might it had. Ugh! To see the great wheels slowly turning, and to think of being run down and crushed! Disordered with wine and want of rest--that want which nothing, although he was so weary, would appease--these ideas and objects assumed a diseased importance in his thoughts. When he went back to his room, which was not until near midnight, they still haunted him, and he sat listening for the coming of another. So in his bed, whither he repaired with no hope of sleep. He still lay listening; and when he felt the trembling and vibration, got up and went to the window, to watch (as he could from its position) the dull light changing to the two red eyes, and the fierce fire dropping glowing coals, and the rush of the giant as it fled past, and the track of glare and smoke along the valley. Then he would glance in the direction by which he intended to depart at sunrise, as there was no rest for him there; and would lie down again, to be troubled by the vision of his journey, and the old monotony of bells and wheels and horses' feet, until another came. This lasted all night. So far from resuming the mastery of himself, he seemed, if possible, to lose it more and more, as the night crept on. When the dawn appeared, he was still tormented with thinking, still postponing thought until he should be in a better state; the past, present, and future all floated confusedly before him, and he had lost all power of looking steadily at any one of them. 'At what time,' he asked the man who had waited on hIm over-night, now entering with a candle, 'do I leave here, did you say?' 'About a quarter after four, Sir. Express comes through at four, Sir.--It don't stop.' He passed his hand across his throbbing head, and looked at his watch. Nearly half-past three. 'Nobody going with you, Sir, probably,' observed the man. 'Two gentlemen here, Sir, but they're waiting for the train to London.' 'I thought you said there was nobody here,' said Carker, turning upon him with the ghost of his old smile, when he was angry or suspicious. 'Not then, sir. Two gentlemen came in the night by the short train that stops here, Sir. Warm water, Sir?' 'No; and take away the candle. There's day enough for me.' Having thrown himself upon the bed, half-dressed he was at the window as the man left the room. The cold light of morning had succeeded to night and there was already, in the sky, the red suffusion of the coming sun. He bathed his head and face with water--there was no cooling influence in it for him--hurriedly put on his clothes, paid what he owed, and went out. The air struck chill and comfortless as it breathed upon him. There was a heavy dew; and, hot as he was, it made him shiver. After a glance at the place where he had walked last night, and at the signal-lights burning in the morning, and bereft of their significance, he turned to where the sun was rising, and beheld it, in its glory, as it broke upon the scene. So awful, so transcendent in its beauty, so divinely solemn. As he cast his faded eyes upon it, where it rose, tranquil and serene, unmoved by all the wrong and wickedness on which its beams had shone since the beginning of the world, who shall say that some weak sense of virtue upon Earth, and its in Heaven, did not manifest itself, even to him? If ever he remembered sister or brother with a touch of tenderness and remorse, who shall say it was not then? He needed some such touch then. Death was on him. He was marked off--the living world, and going down into his grave. He paid the money for his journey to the country-place he had thought of; and was walking to and fro, alone, looking along the lines of iron, across the valley in one direction, and towards a dark bridge near at hand in the other; when, turning in his walk, where it was bounded by one end of the wooden stage on which he paced up and down, he saw the man from whom he had fled, emerging from the door by which he himself had entered. And their eyes met. In the quick unsteadiness of the surprise, he staggered, and slipped on to the road below him. But recovering his feet immediately, he stepped back a pace or two upon that road, to interpose some wider space between them, and looked at his pursuer, breathing short and quick. He heard a shout--another--saw the face change from its vindictive passion to a faint sickness and terror--felt the earth tremble--knew in a moment that the rush was come--uttered a shriek--looked round--saw the red eyes, bleared and dim, in the daylight, close upon him--was beaten down, caught up, and whirled away upon a jagged mill, that spun him round and round, and struck him limb from limb, and licked his stream of life up with its fiery heat, and cast his mutilated fragments in the air. When the traveller, who had been recognised, recovered from a swoon, he saw them bringing from a distance something covered, that lay heavy and still, upon a board, between four men, and saw that others drove some dogs away that sniffed upon the road, and soaked his blood up, with a train of ashes.

Once outside, Carker decides that the best thing to do is head back to England. He hires a coach and driver, and flees. As they drive, he becomes more and more paranoid about being pursued. He manages to flee back to England in a paranoid haze. As he waits on a train platform, anxious to get even further away, he recognizes Dombey coming towards him. Panicked, he falls onto the tracks and is struck by a train and killed

Day after day, week after week, passed away on my return to Geneva; and I could not collect the courage to recommence my work. I feared the vengeance of the disappointed fiend, yet I was unable to overcome my repugnance to the task which was enjoined me. I found that I could not compose a female without again devoting several months to profound study and laborious disquisition. I had heard of some discoveries having been made by an English philosopher, the knowledge of which was material to my success, and I sometimes thought of obtaining my father's consent to visit England for this purpose; but I clung to every pretence of delay, and could not resolve to interrupt my returning tranquillity. My health, which had hitherto declined, was now much restored; and my spirits, when unchecked by the memory of my unhappy promise, rose proportionably. My father saw this change with pleasure, and he turned his thoughts towards the best method of eradicating the remains of my melancholy, which every now and then would return by fits, and with a devouring blackness overcast the approaching sunshine. At these moments I took refuge in the most perfect solitude. I passed whole days on the lake alone in a little boat, watching the clouds, and listening to the rippling of the waves, silent and listless. But the fresh air and bright sun seldom failed to restore me to some degree of composure; and, on my return, I met the salutations of my friends with a readier smile and a more cheerful heart. It was after my return from one of these rambles that my father, calling me aside, thus addressed me:-- "I am happy to remark, my dear son, that you have resumed your former pleasures, and seem to be returning to yourself. And yet you are still unhappy, and still avoid our society. For some time I was lost in conjecture as to the cause of this; but yesterday an idea struck me, and if it is well founded, I conjure you to avow it. Reserve on such a point would be not only useless, but draw down treble misery on us all." I trembled violently at this exordium, and my father continued-- "I confess, my son, that I have always looked forward to your marriage with your cousin as the tie of our domestic comfort, and the stay of my declining years. You were attached to each other from your earliest infancy; you studied together, and appeared, in dispositions and tastes, entirely suited to one another. But so blind is the experience of man, that what I conceived to be the best assistants to my plan may have entirely destroyed it. You, perhaps, regard her as your sister, without any wish that she might become your wife. Nay, you may have met with another whom you may love; and, considering yourself as bound in honour to your cousin, this struggle may occasion the poignant misery which you appear to feel." "My dear father, re-assure yourself. I love my cousin tenderly and sincerely. I never saw any woman who excited, as Elizabeth does, my warmest admiration and affection. My future hopes and prospects are entirely bound up in the expectation of our union." "The expression of your sentiments on this subject, my dear Victor, gives me more pleasure than I have for some time experienced. If you feel thus, we shall assuredly be happy, however present events may cast a gloom over us. But it is this gloom, which appears to have taken so strong a hold of your mind, that I wish to dissipate. Tell me, therefore, whether you object to an immediate solemnization of the marriage. We have been unfortunate, and recent events have drawn us from that every-day tranquillity befitting my years and infirmities. You are younger; yet I do not suppose, possessed as you are of a competent fortune, that an early marriage would at all interfere with any future plans of honour and utility that you may have formed. Do not suppose, however, that I wish to dictate happiness to you, or that a delay on your part would cause me any serious uneasiness. Interpret my words with candour, and answer me, I conjure you, with confidence and sincerity." I listened to my father in silence, and remained for some time incapable of offering any reply. I revolved rapidly in my mind a multitude of thoughts, and endeavoured to arrive at some conclusion. Alas! to me the idea of an immediate union with my cousin was one of horror and dismay. I was bound by a solemn promise, which I had not yet fulfilled, and dared not break; or, if I did, what manifold miseries might not impend over me and my devoted family! Could I enter into a festival with this deadly weight yet hanging round my neck, and bowing me to the ground. I must perform my engagement, and let the monster depart with his mate, before I allowed myself to enjoy the delight of an union from which I expected peace. I remembered also the necessity imposed upon me of either journeying to England, or entering into a long correspondence with those philosophers of that country, whose knowledge and discoveries were of indispensable use to me in my present undertaking. The latter method of obtaining the desired intelligence was dilatory and unsatisfactory: besides, any variation was agreeable to me, and I was delighted with the idea of spending a year or two in change of scene and variety of occupation, in absence from my family; during which period some event might happen which would restore me to them in peace and happiness: my promise might be fulfilled, and the monster have departed; or some accident might occur to destroy him, and put an end to my slavery for ever. These feelings dictated my answer to my father. I expressed a wish to visit England; but, concealing the true reasons of this request, I clothed my desires under the guise of wishing to travel and see the world before I sat down for life within the walls of my native town. I urged my entreaty with earnestness, and my father was easily induced to comply; for a more indulgent and less dictatorial parent did not exist upon earth. Our plan was soon arranged. I should travel to Strasburgh, where Clerval would join me. Some short time would be spent in the towns of Holland, and our principal stay would be in England. We should return by France; and it was agreed that the tour should occupy the space of two years. My father pleased himself with the reflection, that my union with Elizabeth should take place immediately on my return to Geneva. "These two years," said he, "will pass swiftly, and it will be the last delay that will oppose itself to your happiness. And, indeed, I earnestly desire that period to arrive, when we shall all be united, and neither hopes or fears arise to disturb our domestic calm." "I am content," I replied, "with your arrangement. By that time we shall both have become wiser, and I hope happier, than we at present are." I sighed; but my father kindly forbore to question me further concerning the cause of my dejection. He hoped that new scenes, and the amusement of travelling, would restore my tranquillity. I now made arrangements for my journey; but one feeling haunted me, which filled me with fear and agitation. During my absence I should leave my friends unconscious of the existence of their enemy, and unprotected from his attacks, exasperated as he might be by my departure. But he had promised to follow me wherever I might go; and would he not accompany me to England? This imagination was dreadful in itself, but soothing, inasmuch as it supposed the safety of my friends. I was agonized with the idea of the possibility that the reverse of this might happen. But through the whole period during which I was the slave of my creature, I allowed myself to be governed by the impulses of the moment; and my present sensations strongly intimated that the fiend would follow me, and exempt my family from the danger of his machinations. It was in the latter end of August that I departed, to pass two years of exile. Elizabeth approved of the reasons of my departure, and only regretted that she had not the same opportunities of enlarging her experience, and cultivating her understanding. She wept, however, as she bade me farewell, and entreated me to return happy and tranquil. "We all," said she, "depend upon you; and if you are miserable, what must be our feelings?" I threw myself into the carriage that was to convey me away, hardly knowing whither I was going, and careless of what was passing around. I remembered only, and it was with a bitter anguish that I reflected on it, to order that my chemical instruments should be packed to go with me: for I resolved to fulfil my promise while abroad, and return, if possible, a free man. Filled with dreary imaginations, I passed through many beautiful and majestic scenes; but my eyes were fixed and unobserving. I could only think of the bourne of my travels, and the work which was to occupy me whilst they endured. After some days spent in listless indolence, during which I traversed many leagues, I arrived at Strasburgh, where I waited two days for Clerval. He came. Alas, how great was the contrast between us! He was alive to every new scene; joyful when he saw the beauties of the setting sun, and more happy when he beheld it rise, and recommence a new day. He pointed out to me the shifting colours of the landscape, and the appearances of the sky. "This is what it is to live;" he cried, "now I enjoy existence! But you, my dear Frankenstein, wherefore are you desponding and sorrowful?" In truth, I was occupied by gloomy thoughts, and neither saw the descent of the evening star, nor the golden sun-rise reflected in the Rhine.--And you, my friend, would be far more amused with the journal of Clerval, who observed the scenery with an eye of feeling and delight, than to listen to my reflections. I, a miserable wretch, haunted by a curse that shut up every avenue to enjoyment. We had agreed to descend the Rhine in a boat from Strasburgh to Rotterdam, whence we might take shipping for London. During this voyage, we passed by many willowy islands, and saw several beautiful towns. We staid a day at Manheim, and, on the fifth from our departure from Strasburgh, arrived at Mayence. The course of the Rhine below Mayence becomes much more picturesque. The river descends rapidly, and winds between hills, not high, but steep, and of beautiful forms. We saw many ruined castles standing on the edges of precipices, surrounded by black woods, high and inaccessible. This part of the Rhine, indeed, presents a singularly variegated landscape. In one spot you view rugged hills, ruined castles overlooking tremendous precipices, with the dark Rhine rushing beneath; and, on the sudden turn of a promontory, flourishing vineyards, with green sloping banks, and a meandering river, and populous towns, occupy the scene. We travelled at the time of the vintage, and heard the song of the labourers, as we glided down the stream. Even I, depressed in mind, and my spirits continually agitated by gloomy feelings, even I was pleased. I lay at the bottom of the boat, and, as I gazed on the cloudless blue sky, I seemed to drink in a tranquillity to which I had long been a stranger. And if these were my sensations, who can describe those of Henry? He felt as if he had been transported to Fairy-land, and enjoyed a happiness seldom tasted by man. "I have seen," he said, "the most beautiful scenes of my own country; I have visited the lakes of Lucerne and Uri, where the snowy mountains descend almost perpendicularly to the water, casting black and impenetrable shades, which would cause a gloomy and mournful appearance, were it not for the most verdant islands that relieve the eye by their gay appearance; I have seen this lake agitated by a tempest, when the wind tore up whirlwinds of water, and gave you an idea of what the water-spout must be on the great ocean, and the waves dash with fury the base of the mountain, where the priest and his mistress were overwhelmed by an avalanche, and where their dying voices are still said to be heard amid the pauses of the nightly wind; I have seen the mountains of La Valais, and the Pays de Vaud: but this country, Victor, pleases me more than all those wonders. The mountains of Switzerland are more majestic and strange; but there is a charm in the banks of this divine river, that I never before saw equalled. Look at that castle which overhangs yon precipice; and that also on the island, almost concealed amongst the foliage of those lovely trees; and now that group of labourers coming from among their vines; and that village half-hid in the recess of the mountain. Oh, surely, the spirit that inhabits and guards this place has a soul more in harmony with man, than those who pile the glacier, or retire to the inaccessible peaks of the mountains of our own country." Clerval! beloved friend! even now it delights me to record your words, and to dwell on the praise of which you are so eminently deserving. He was a being formed in the "very poetry of nature." His wild and enthusiastic imagination was chastened by the sensibility of his heart. His soul overflowed with ardent affections, and his friendship was of that devoted and wondrous nature that the worldly-minded teach us to look for only in the imagination. But even human sympathies were not sufficient to satisfy his eager mind. The scenery of external nature, which others regard only with admiration, he loved with ardour: ---- ----"The sounding cataract Haunted _him_ like a passion: the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colours and their forms, were then to him An appetite; a feeling, and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, or any interest Unborrowed from the eye." And where does he now exist? Is this gentle and lovely being lost for ever? Has this mind so replete with ideas, imaginations fanciful and magnificent, which formed a world, whose existence depended on the life of its creator; has this mind perished? Does it now only exist in my memory? No, it is not thus; your form so divinely wrought, and beaming with beauty, has decayed, but your spirit still visits and consoles your unhappy friend. Pardon this gush of sorrow; these ineffectual words are but a slight tribute to the unexampled worth of Henry, but they soothe my heart, overflowing with the anguish which his remembrance creates. I will proceed with my tale. Beyond Cologne we descended to the plains of Holland; and we resolved to post the remainder of our way; for the wind was contrary, and the stream of the river was too gentle to aid us. Our journey here lost the interest arising from beautiful scenery; but we arrived in a few days at Rotterdam, whence we proceeded by sea to England. It was on a clear morning, in the latter days of December, that I first saw the white cliffs of Britain. The banks of the Thames presented a new scene; they were flat, but fertile, and almost every town was marked by the remembrance of some story. We saw Tilbury Fort, and remembered the Spanish armada; Gravesend, Woolwich, and Greenwich, places which I had heard of even in my country. At length we saw the numerous steeples of London, St. Paul's towering above all, and the Tower famed in English history. London was our present point of rest; we determined to remain several months in this wonderful and celebrated city. Clerval desired the intercourse of the men of genius and talent who flourished at this time; but this was with me a secondary object; I was principally occupied with the means of obtaining the information necessary for the completion of my promise, and quickly availed myself of the letters of introduction that I had brought with me, addressed to the most distinguished natural philosophers. If this journey had taken place during my days of study and happiness, it would have afforded me inexpressible pleasure. But a blight had come over my existence, and I only visited these people for the sake of the information they might give me on the subject in which my interest was so terribly profound. Company was irksome to me; when alone, I could fill my mind with the sights of heaven and earth; the voice of Henry soothed me, and I could thus cheat myself into a transitory peace. But busy uninteresting joyous faces brought back despair to my heart. I saw an insurmountable barrier placed between me and my fellow-men; this barrier was sealed with the blood of William and Justine; and to reflect on the events connected with those names filled my soul with anguish. But in Clerval I saw the image of my former self; he was inquisitive, and anxious to gain experience and instruction. The difference of manners which he observed was to him an inexhaustible source of instruction and amusement. He was for ever busy; and the only check to his enjoyments was my sorrowful and dejected mien. I tried to conceal this as much as possible, that I might not debar him from the pleasures natural to one who was entering on a new scene of life, undisturbed by any care or bitter recollection. I often refused to accompany him, alleging another engagement, that I might remain alone. I now also began to collect the materials necessary for my new creation, and this was to me like the torture of single drops of water continually falling on the head. Every thought that was devoted to it was an extreme anguish, and every word that I spoke in allusion to it caused my lips to quiver, and my heart to palpitate. After passing some months in London, we received a letter from a person in Scotland, who had formerly been our visitor at Geneva. He mentioned the beauties of his native country, and asked us if those were not sufficient allurements to induce us to prolong our journey as far north as Perth, where he resided. Clerval eagerly desired to accept this invitation; and I, although I abhorred society, wished to view again mountains and streams, and all the wondrous works with which Nature adorns her chosen dwelling-places. We had arrived in England at the beginning of October, and it was now February. We accordingly determined to commence our journey towards the north at the expiration of another month. In this expedition we did not intend to follow the great road to Edinburgh, but to visit Windsor, Oxford, Matlock, and the Cumberland lakes, resolving to arrive at the completion of this tour about the end of July. I packed my chemical instruments, and the materials I had collected, resolving to finish my labours in some obscure nook in the northern highlands of Scotland. We quitted London on the 27th of March, and remained a few days at Windsor, rambling in its beautiful forest. This was a new scene to us mountaineers; the majestic oaks, the quantity of game, and the herds of stately deer, were all novelties to us. From thence we proceeded to Oxford. As we entered this city, our minds were filled with the remembrance of the events that had been transacted there more than a century and a half before. It was here that Charles I. had collected his forces. This city had remained faithful to him, after the whole nation had forsaken his cause to join the standard of parliament and liberty. The memory of that unfortunate king, and his companions, the amiable Falkland, the insolent Gower, his queen, and son, gave a peculiar interest to every part of the city, which they might be supposed to have inhabited. The spirit of elder days found a dwelling here, and we delighted to trace its footsteps. If these feelings had not found an imaginary gratification, the appearance of the city had yet in itself sufficient beauty to obtain our admiration. The colleges are ancient and picturesque; the streets are almost magnificent; and the lovely Isis, which flows beside it through meadows of exquisite verdure, is spread forth into a placid expanse of waters, which reflects its majestic assemblage of towers, and spires, and domes, embosomed among aged trees. I enjoyed this scene; and yet my enjoyment was embittered both by the memory of the past, and the anticipation of the future. I was formed for peaceful happiness. During my youthful days discontent never visited my mind; and if I was ever overcome by _ennui_, the sight of what is beautiful in nature, or the study of what is excellent and sublime in the productions of man, could always interest my heart, and communicate elasticity to my spirits. But I am a blasted tree; the bolt has entered my soul; and I felt then that I should survive to exhibit, what I shall soon cease to be--a miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity, pitiable to others, and abhorrent to myself. We passed a considerable period at Oxford, rambling among its environs, and endeavouring to identify every spot which might relate to the most animating epoch of English history. Our little voyages of discovery were often prolonged by the successive objects that presented themselves. We visited the tomb of the illustrious Hampden, and the field on which that patriot fell. For a moment my soul was elevated from its debasing and miserable fears to contemplate the divine ideas of liberty and self-sacrifice, of which these sights were the monuments and the remembrancers. For an instant I dared to shake off my chains, and look around me with a free and lofty spirit; but the iron had eaten into my flesh, and I sank again, trembling and hopeless, into my miserable self. We left Oxford with regret, and proceeded to Matlock, which was our next place of rest. The country in the neighbourhood of this village resembled, to a greater degree, the scenery of Switzerland; but every thing is on a lower scale, and the green hills want the crown of distant white Alps, which always attend on the piny mountains of my native country. We visited the wondrous cave, and the little cabinets of natural history, where the curiosities are disposed in the same manner as in the collections at Servox and Chamounix. The latter name made me tremble, when pronounced by Henry; and I hastened to quit Matlock, with which that terrible scene was thus associated. From Derby still journeying northward, we passed two months in Cumberland and Westmoreland. I could now almost fancy myself among the Swiss mountains. The little patches of snow which yet lingered on the northern sides of the mountains, the lakes, and the dashing of the rocky streams, were all familiar and dear sights to me. Here also we made some acquaintances, who almost contrived to cheat me into happiness. The delight of Clerval was proportionably greater than mine; his mind expanded in the company of men of talent, and he found in his own nature greater capacities and resources than he could have imagined himself to have possessed while he associated with his inferiors. "I could pass my life here," said he to me; "and among these mountains I should scarcely regret Switzerland and the Rhine." But he found that a traveller's life is one that includes much pain amidst its enjoyments. His feelings are for ever on the stretch; and when he begins to sink into repose, he finds himself obliged to quit that on which he rests in pleasure for something new, which again engages his attention, and which also he forsakes for other novelties. We had scarcely visited the various lakes of Cumberland and Westmoreland, and conceived an affection for some of the inhabitants, when the period of our appointment with our Scotch friend approached, and we left them to travel on. For my own part I was not sorry. I had now neglected my promise for some time, and I feared the effects of the daemon's disappointment. He might remain in Switzerland, and wreak his vengeance on my relatives. This idea pursued me, and tormented me at every moment from which I might otherwise have snatched repose and peace. I waited for my letters with feverish impatience: if they were delayed, I was miserable, and overcome by a thousand fears; and when they arrived, and I saw the superscription of Elizabeth or my father, I hardly dared to read and ascertain my fate. Sometimes I thought that the fiend followed me, and might expedite my remissness by murdering my companion. When these thoughts possessed me, I would not quit Henry for a moment, but followed him as his shadow, to protect him from the fancied rage of his destroyer. I felt as if I had committed some great crime, the consciousness of which haunted me. I was guiltless, but I had indeed drawn down a horrible curse upon my head, as mortal as that of crime. I visited Edinburgh with languid eyes and mind; and yet that city might have interested the most unfortunate being. Clerval did not like it so well as Oxford; for the antiquity of the latter city was more pleasing to him. But the beauty and regularity of the new town of Edinburgh, its romantic castle, and its environs, the most delightful in the world, Arthur's Seat, St. Bernard's Well, and the Pentland Hills, compensated him for the change, and filled him with cheerfulness and admiration. But I was impatient to arrive at the termination of my journey. We left Edinburgh in a week, passing through Coupar, St. Andrews, and along the banks of the Tay, to Perth, where our friend expected us. But I was in no mood to laugh and talk with strangers, or enter into their feelings or plans with the good humour expected from a guest; and accordingly I told Clerval that I wished to make the tour of Scotland alone. "Do you," said I, "enjoy yourself, and let this be our rendezvous. I may be absent a month or two; but do not interfere with my motions, I entreat you: leave me to peace and solitude for a short time; and when I return, I hope it will be with a lighter heart, more congenial to your own temper." Henry wished to dissuade me; but, seeing me bent on this plan, ceased to remonstrate. He entreated me to write often. "I had rather be with you," he said, "in your solitary rambles, than with these Scotch people, whom I do not know: hasten then, my dear friend, to return, that I may again feel myself somewhat at home, which I cannot do in your absence." Having parted from my friend, I determined to visit some remote spot of Scotland, and finish my work in solitude. I did not doubt but that the monster followed me, and would discover himself to me when I should have finished, that he might receive his companion. With this resolution I traversed the northern highlands, and fixed on one of the remotest of the Orkneys as the scene labours. It was a place fitted for such a work, being hardly more than a rock, whose high sides were continually beaten upon by the waves. The soil was barren, scarcely affording pasture for a few miserable cows, and oatmeal for its inhabitants, which consisted of five persons, whose gaunt and scraggy limbs gave tokens of their miserable fare. Vegetables and bread, when they indulged in such luxuries, and even fresh water, was to be procured from the main land, which was about five miles distant. On the whole island there were but three miserable huts, and one of these was vacant when I arrived. This I hired. It contained but two rooms, and these exhibited all the squalidness of the most miserable penury. The thatch had fallen in, the walls were unplastered, and the door was off its hinges. I ordered it to be repaired, bought some furniture, and took possession; an incident which would, doubtless, have occasioned some surprise, had not all the senses of the cottagers been benumbed by want and squalid poverty. As it was, I lived ungazed at and unmolested, hardly thanked for the pittance of food and clothes which I gave; so much does suffering blunt even the coarsest sensations of men. In this retreat I devoted the morning to labour; but in the evening, when the weather permitted, I walked on the stony beach of the sea, to listen to the waves as they roared, and dashed at my feet. It was a monotonous, yet ever-changing scene. I thought of Switzerland; it was far different from this desolate and appalling landscape. Its hills are covered with vines, and its cottages are scattered thickly in the plains. Its fair lakes reflect a blue and gentle sky; and, when troubled by the winds, their tumult is but as the play of a lively infant, when compared to the roarings of the giant ocean. In this manner I distributed my occupations when I first arrived; but, as I proceeded in my labour, it became every day more horrible and irksome to me. Sometimes I could not prevail on myself to enter my laboratory for several days; and at other times I toiled day and night in order to complete my work. It was indeed a filthy process in which I was engaged. During my first experiment, a kind of enthusiastic frenzy had blinded me to the horror of my employment; my mind was intently fixed on the sequel of my labour, and my eyes were shut to the horror of my proceedings. But now I went to it in cold blood, and my heart often sickened at the work of my hands. Thus situated, employed in the most detestable occupation, immersed in a solitude where nothing could for an instant call my attention from the actual scene in which I was engaged, my spirits became unequal; I grew restless and nervous. Every moment I feared to meet my persecutor. Sometimes I sat with my eyes fixed on the ground, fearing to raise them lest they should encounter the object which I so much dreaded to behold. I feared to wander from the sight of my fellow-creatures, lest when alone he should come to claim his companion. In the mean time I worked on, and my labour was already considerably advanced. I looked towards its completion with a tremulous and eager hope, which I dared not trust myself to question, but which was intermixed with obscure forebodings of evil, that made my heart sicken in my bosom.

These chapters concentrate on Victor' leaving Geneva. He initially goes to England, where he can access further information that he needs for the new creation. Next, he looks for a desolate place where he can work in peace on this project. Although Victor is afraid of the monster, his conscience does not allow him to continue working on his new assignment. Therefore, he keeps delaying the work. Victor's father suggests that he should marry Elizabeth. But he puts it off until the year after he returns from his tour abroad. He is also supposed to meet his friend, Henry, in Strasbourg. He leaves for his tour with his instruments towards the end of September and arrives at Strasbourg. He waits for Clerval to arrive here. They travel along the Rhine from Strasbourg to Rotterdam and then go to London. They also visit Cologne and Holland, and they reach Britain in December. In London they receive a letter from an acquaintance, inviting them to visit Scotland. By March they leave for Scotland, visiting Oxford, Matlock, Cumberland and Windsor, and completing their tour by the end of July. Victor expresses his desire to visit Scotland alone. He wants to look for a remote place where he can start on his work. He comes to the northern highlands and settles on "one of the remotest of the Orkneys as the scene of labors. " There are three huts on the island, one of which is very isolated. He rents it for his laboratory. The hut is in a miserable condition, and he has it repaired and buys some furniture for it. His choice of such a place raises a few eyebrows, but it does not matter to Victor, who has started working on the creature. In no time he has nearly finished it.

At the flat that evening Carrie felt a new phase of its atmosphere. The fact that it was unchanged, while her feelings were different, increased her knowledge of its character. Minnie, after the good spirits Carrie manifested at first, expected a fair report. Hanson supposed that Carrie would be satisfied. "Well," he said, as he came in from the hall in his working clothes, and looked at Carrie through the dining-room door, "how did you make out?" "Oh," said Carrie, "it's pretty hard. I don't like it." There was an air about her which showed plainer than any words that she was both weary and disappointed. "What sort of work is it?" he asked, lingering a moment as he turned upon his heel to go into the bathroom. "Running a machine," answered Carrie. It was very evident that it did not concern him much, save from the side of the flat's success. He was irritated a shade because it could not have come about in the throw of fortune for Carrie to be pleased. Minnie worked with less elation than she had just before Carrie arrived. The sizzle of the meat frying did not sound quite so pleasing now that Carrie had reported her discontent. To Carrie, the one relief of the whole day would have been a jolly home, a sympathetic reception, a bright supper table, and some one to say: "Oh, well, stand it a little while. You will get something better," but now this was ashes. She began to see that they looked upon her complaint as unwarranted, and that she was supposed to work on and say nothing. She knew that she was to pay four dollars for her board and room, and now she felt that it would be an exceedingly gloomy round, living with these people. Minnie was no companion for her sister--she was too old. Her thoughts were staid and solemnly adapted to a condition. If Hanson had any pleasant thoughts or happy feelings he concealed them. He seemed to do all his mental operations without the aid of physical expression. He was as still as a deserted chamber. Carrie, on the other hand, had the blood of youth and some imagination. Her day of love and the mysteries of courtship were still ahead. She could think of things she would like to do, of clothes she would like to wear, and of places she would like to visit. These were the things upon which her mind ran, and it was like meeting with opposition at every turn to find no one here to call forth or respond to her feelings. She had forgotten, in considering and explaining the result of her day, that Drouet might come. Now, when she saw how unreceptive these two people were, she hoped he would not. She did not know exactly what she would do or how she would explain to Drouet, if he came. After supper she changed her clothes. When she was trimly dressed she was rather a sweet little being, with large eyes and a sad mouth. Her face expressed the mingled expectancy, dissatisfaction, and depression she felt. She wandered about after the dishes were put away, talked a little with Minnie, and then decided to go down and stand in the door at the foot of the stairs. If Drouet came, she could meet him there. Her face took on the semblance of a look of happiness as she put on her hat to go below. "Carrie doesn't seem to like her place very well," said Minnie to her husband when the latter came out, paper in hand, to sit in the dining-room a few minutes. "She ought to keep it for a time, anyhow," said Hanson. "Has she gone downstairs?" "Yes," said Minnie. "I'd tell her to keep it if I were you. She might be here weeks without getting another one." Minnie said she would, and Hanson read his paper. "If I were you," he said a little later, "I wouldn't let her stand in the door down there. It don't look good." "I'll tell her," said Minnie. The life of the streets continued for a long time to interest Carrie. She never wearied of wondering where the people in the cars were going or what their enjoyments were. Her imagination trod a very narrow round, always winding up at points which concerned money, looks, clothes, or enjoyment. She would have a far-off thought of Columbia City now and then, or an irritating rush of feeling concerning her experiences of the present day, but, on the whole, the little world about her enlisted her whole attention. The first floor of the building, of which Hanson's flat was the third, was occupied by a bakery, and to this, while she was standing there, Hanson came down to buy a loaf of bread. She was not aware of his presence until he was quite near her. "I'm after bread," was all he said as he passed. The contagion of thought here demonstrated itself. While Hanson really came for bread, the thought dwelt with him that now he would see what Carrie was doing. No sooner did he draw near her with that in mind than she felt it. Of course, she had no understanding of what put it into her head, but, nevertheless, it aroused in her the first shade of real antipathy to him. She knew now that she did not like him. He was suspicious. A thought will colour a world for us. The flow of Carrie's meditations had been disturbed, and Hanson had not long gone upstairs before she followed. She had realised with the lapse of the quarter hours that Drouet was not coming, and somehow she felt a little resentful, a little as if she had been forsaken--was not good enough. She went upstairs, where everything was silent. Minnie was sewing by a lamp at the table. Hanson had already turned in for the night. In her weariness and disappointment Carrie did no more than announce that she was going to bed. "Yes, you'd better," returned Minnie. "You've got to get up early, you know." The morning was no better. Hanson was just going out the door as Carrie came from her room. Minnie tried to talk with her during breakfast, but there was not much of interest which they could mutually discuss. As on the previous morning, Carrie walked down town, for she began to realise now that her four-fifty would not even allow her car fare after she paid her board. This seemed a miserable arrangement. But the morning light swept away the first misgivings of the day, as morning light is ever wont to do. At the shoe factory she put in a long day, scarcely so wearisome as the preceding, but considerably less novel. The head foreman, on his round, stopped by her machine. "Where did you come from?" he inquired. "Mr. Brown hired me," she replied. "Oh, he did, eh!" and then, "See that you keep things going." The machine girls impressed her even less favourably. They seemed satisfied with their lot, and were in a sense "common." Carrie had more imagination than they. She was not used to slang. Her instinct in the matter of dress was naturally better. She disliked to listen to the girl next to her, who was rather hardened by experience. "I'm going to quit this," she heard her remark to her neighbour. "What with the stipend and being up late, it's too much for me health." They were free with the fellows, young and old, about the place, and exchanged banter in rude phrases, which at first shocked her. She saw that she was taken to be of the same sort and addressed accordingly. "Hello," remarked one of the stout-wristed sole-workers to her at noon. "You're a daisy." He really expected to hear the common "Aw! go chase yourself!" in return, and was sufficiently abashed, by Carrie's silently moving away, to retreat, awkwardly grinning. That night at the flat she was even more lonely--the dull situation was becoming harder to endure. She could see that the Hansons seldom or never had any company. Standing at the street door looking out, she ventured to walk out a little way. Her easy gait and idle manner attracted attention of an offensive but common sort. She was slightly taken back at the overtures of a well-dressed man of thirty, who in passing looked at her, reduced his pace, turned back, and said: "Out for a little stroll, are you, this evening?" Carrie looked at him in amazement, and then summoned sufficient thought to reply: "Why, I don't know you," backing away as she did so. "Oh, that don't matter," said the other affably. She bandied no more words with him, but hurried away, reaching her own door quite out of breath. There was something in the man's look which frightened her. During the remainder of the week it was very much the same. One or two nights she found herself too tired to walk home, and expended car fare. She was not very strong, and sitting all day affected her back. She went to bed one night before Hanson. Transplantation is not always successful in the matter of flowers or maidens. It requires sometimes a richer soil, a better atmosphere to continue even a natural growth. It would have been better if her acclimatization had been more gradual--less rigid. She would have done better if she had not secured a position so quickly, and had seen more of the city which she constantly troubled to know about. On the first morning it rained she found that she had no umbrella. Minnie loaned her one of hers, which was worn and faded. There was the kind of vanity in Carrie that troubled at this. She went to one of the great department stores and bought herself one, using a dollar and a quarter of her small store to pay for it. "What did you do that for, Carrie?" asked Minnie when she saw it. "Oh, I need one," said Carrie. "You foolish girl." Carrie resented this, though she did not reply. She was not going to be a common shop-girl, she thought; they need not think it, either. On the first Saturday night Carrie paid her board, four dollars. Minnie had a quaver of conscience as she took it, but did not know how to explain to Hanson if she took less. That worthy gave up just four dollars less toward the household expenses with a smile of satisfaction. He contemplated increasing his Building and Loan payments. As for Carrie, she studied over the problem of finding clothes and amusement on fifty cents a week. She brooded over this until she was in a state of mental rebellion. "I'm going up the street for a walk," she said after supper. "Not alone, are you?" asked Hanson. "Yes," returned Carrie. "I wouldn't," said Minnie. "I want to see SOMETHING," said Carrie, and by the tone she put into the last word they realised for the first time she was not pleased with them. "What's the matter with her?" asked Hanson, when she went into the front room to get her hat. "I don't know," said Minnie. "Well, she ought to know better than to want to go out alone." Carrie did not go very far, after all. She returned and stood in the door. The next day they went out to Garfield Park, but it did not please her. She did not look well enough. In the shop next day she heard the highly coloured reports which girls give of their trivial amusements. They had been happy. On several days it rained and she used up car fare. One night she got thoroughly soaked, going to catch the car at Van Buren Street. All that evening she sat alone in the front room looking out upon the street, where the lights were reflected on the wet pavements, thinking. She had imagination enough to be moody. On Saturday she paid another four dollars and pocketed her fifty cents in despair. The speaking acquaintanceship which she formed with some of the girls at the shop discovered to her the fact that they had more of their earnings to use for themselves than she did. They had young men of the kind whom she, since her experience with Drouet, felt above, who took them about. She came to thoroughly dislike the light-headed young fellows of the shop. Not one of them had a show of refinement. She saw only their workday side. There came a day when the first premonitory blast of winter swept over the city. It scudded the fleecy clouds in the heavens, trailed long, thin streamers of smoke from the tall stacks, and raced about the streets and corners in sharp and sudden puffs. Carrie now felt the problem of winter clothes. What was she to do? She had no winter jacket, no hat, no shoes. It was difficult to speak to Minnie about this, but at last she summoned the courage. "I don't know what I'm going to do about clothes," she said one evening when they were together. "I need a hat." Minnie looked serious. "Why don't you keep part of your money and buy yourself one?" she suggested, worried over the situation which the withholding of Carrie's money would create. "I'd like to for a week or so, if you don't mind," ventured Carrie. "Could you pay two dollars?" asked Minnie. Carrie readily acquiesced, glad to escape the trying situation, and liberal now that she saw a way out. She was elated and began figuring at once. She needed a hat first of all. How Minnie explained to Hanson she never knew. He said nothing at all, but there were thoughts in the air which left disagreeable impressions. The new arrangement might have worked if sickness had not intervened. It blew up cold after a rain one afternoon when Carrie was still without a jacket. She came out of the warm shop at six and shivered as the wind struck her. In the morning she was sneezing, and going down town made it worse. That day her bones ached and she felt light-headed. Towards evening she felt very ill, and when she reached home was not hungry. Minnie noticed her drooping actions and asked her about herself. "I don't know," said Carrie. "I feel real bad." She hung about the stove, suffered a chattering chill, and went to bed sick. The next morning she was thoroughly feverish. Minnie was truly distressed at this, but maintained a kindly demeanour. Hanson said perhaps she had better go back home for a while. When she got up after three days, it was taken for granted that her position was lost. The winter was near at hand, she had no clothes, and now she was out of work. "I don't know," said Carrie; "I'll go down Monday and see if I can't get something." If anything, her efforts were more poorly rewarded on this trial than the last. Her clothes were nothing suitable for fall wearing. Her last money she had spent for a hat. For three days she wandered about, utterly dispirited. The attitude of the flat was fast becoming unbearable. She hated to think of going back there each evening. Hanson was so cold. She knew it could not last much longer. Shortly she would have to give up and go home. On the fourth day she was down town all day, having borrowed ten cents for lunch from Minnie. She had applied in the cheapest kind of places without success. She even answered for a waitress in a small restaurant where she saw a card in the window, but they wanted an experienced girl. She moved through the thick throng of strangers, utterly subdued in spirit. Suddenly a hand pulled her arm and turned her about. "Well, well!" said a voice. In the first glance she beheld Drouet. He was not only rosy-cheeked, but radiant. He was the essence of sunshine and good-humour. "Why, how are you, Carrie?" he said. "You're a daisy. Where have you been?" Carrie smiled under his irresistible flood of geniality. "I've been out home," she said. "Well," he said, "I saw you across the street there. I thought it was you. I was just coming out to your place. How are you, anyhow?" "I'm all right," said Carrie, smiling. Drouet looked her over and saw something different. "Well," he said, "I want to talk to you. You're not going anywhere in particular, are you?" "Not just now," said Carrie. "Let's go up here and have something to eat. George! but I'm glad to see you again." She felt so relieved in his radiant presence, so much looked after and cared for, that she assented gladly, though with the slightest air of holding back. "Well," he said, as he took her arm--and there was an exuberance of good-fellowship in the word which fairly warmed the cockles of her heart. They went through Monroe Street to the old Windsor dining-room, which was then a large, comfortable place, with an excellent cuisine and substantial service. Drouet selected a table close by the window, where the busy rout of the street could be seen. He loved the changing panorama of the street--to see and be seen as he dined. "Now," he said, getting Carrie and himself comfortably settled, "what will you have?" Carrie looked over the large bill of fare which the waiter handed her without really considering it. She was very hungry, and the things she saw there awakened her desires, but the high prices held her attention. "Half broiled spring chicken--seventy-five. Sirloin steak with mushrooms--one twenty-five." She had dimly heard of these things, but it seemed strange to be called to order from the list. "I'll fix this," exclaimed Drouet. "Sst! waiter." That officer of the board, a full-chested, round-faced negro, approached, and inclined his ear. "Sirloin with mushrooms," said Drouet. "Stuffed tomatoes." "Yassah," assented the negro, nodding his head. "Hashed brown potatoes." "Yassah." "Asparagus." "Yassah." "And a pot of coffee." Drouet turned to Carrie. "I haven't had a thing since breakfast. Just got in from Rock Island. I was going off to dine when I saw you." Carrie smiled and smiled. "What have you been doing?" he went on. "Tell me all about yourself. How is your sister?" "She's well," returned Carrie, answering the last query. He looked at her hard. "Say," he said, "you haven't been sick, have you?" Carrie nodded. "Well, now, that's a blooming shame, isn't it? You don't look very well. I thought you looked a little pale. What have you been doing?" "Working," said Carrie. "You don't say so! At what?" She told him. "Rhodes, Morgenthau and Scott--why, I know that house over here on Fifth Avenue, isn't it? They're a close-fisted concern. What made you go there?" "I couldn't get anything else," said Carrie frankly. "Well, that's an outrage," said Drouet. "You oughtn't to be working for those people. Have the factory right back of the store, don't they?" "Yes," said Carrie. "That isn't a good house," said Drouet. "You don't want to work at anything like that, anyhow." He chatted on at a great rate, asking questions, explaining things about himself, telling her what a good restaurant it was, until the waiter returned with an immense tray, bearing the hot savoury dishes which had been ordered. Drouet fairly shone in the matter of serving. He appeared to great advantage behind the white napery and silver platters of the table and displaying his arms with a knife and fork. As he cut the meat his rings almost spoke. His new suit creaked as he stretched to reach the plates, break the bread, and pour the coffee. He helped Carrie to a rousing plateful and contributed the warmth of his spirit to her body until she was a new girl. He was a splendid fellow in the true popular understanding of the term, and captivated Carrie completely. That little soldier of fortune took her good turn in an easy way. She felt a little out of place, but the great room soothed her and the view of the well-dressed throng outside seemed a splendid thing. Ah, what was it not to have money! What a thing it was to be able to come in here and dine! Drouet must be fortunate. He rode on trains, dressed in such nice clothes, was so strong, and ate in these fine places. He seemed quite a figure of a man, and she wondered at his friendship and regard for her. "So you lost your place because you got sick, eh?" he said. "What are you going to do now?" "Look around," she said, a thought of the need that hung outside this fine restaurant like a hungry dog at her heels passing into her eyes. "Oh, no," said Drouet, "that won't do. How long have you been looking?" "Four days," she answered. "Think of that!" he said, addressing some problematical individual. "You oughtn't to be doing anything like that. These girls," and he waved an inclusion of all shop and factory girls, "don't get anything. Why, you can't live on it, can you?" He was a brotherly sort of creature in his demeanour. When he had scouted the idea of that kind of toil, he took another tack. Carrie was really very pretty. Even then, in her commonplace garb, her figure was evidently not bad, and her eyes were large and gentle. Drouet looked at her and his thoughts reached home. She felt his admiration. It was powerfully backed by his liberality and good-humour. She felt that she liked him--that she could continue to like him ever so much. There was something even richer than that, running as a hidden strain, in her mind. Every little while her eyes would meet his, and by that means the interchanging current of feeling would be fully connected. "Why don't you stay down town and go to the theatre with me?" he said, hitching his chair closer. The table was not very wide. "Oh, I can't," she said. "What are you going to do to-night?" "Nothing," she answered, a little drearily. "You don't like out there where you are, do you?" "Oh, I don't know." "What are you going to do if you don't get work?" "Go back home, I guess." There was the least quaver in her voice as she said this. Somehow, the influence he was exerting was powerful. They came to an understanding of each other without words--he of her situation, she of the fact that he realised it. "No," he said, "you can't make it!" genuine sympathy filling his mind for the time. "Let me help you. You take some of my money." "Oh, no!" she said, leaning back. "What are you going to do?" he said. She sat meditating, merely shaking her head. He looked at her quite tenderly for his kind. There were some loose bills in his vest pocket--greenbacks. They were soft and noiseless, and he got his fingers about them and crumpled them up in his hand. "Come on," he said, "I'll see you through all right. Get yourself some clothes." It was the first reference he had made to that subject, and now she realised how bad off she was. In his crude way he had struck the key-note. Her lips trembled a little. She had her hand out on the table before her. They were quite alone in their corner, and he put his larger, warmer hand over it. "Aw, come, Carrie," he said, "what can you do alone? Let me help you." He pressed her hand gently and she tried to withdraw it. At this he held it fast, and she no longer protested. Then he slipped the greenbacks he had into her palm, and when she began to protest, he whispered: "I'll loan it to you--that's all right. I'll loan it to you." He made her take it. She felt bound to him by a strange tie of affection now. They went out, and he walked with her far out south toward Polk Street, talking. "You don't want to live with those people?" he said in one place, abstractedly. Carrie heard it, but it made only a slight impression. "Come down and meet me to morrow," he said, "and we'll go to the matinee. Will you?" Carrie protested a while, but acquiesced. "You're not doing anything. Get yourself a nice pair of shoes and a jacket." She scarcely gave a thought to the complication which would trouble her when he was gone. In his presence, she was of his own hopeful, easy-way-out mood. "Don't you bother about those people out there," he said at parting. "I'll help you." Carrie left him, feeling as though a great arm had slipped out before her to draw off trouble. The money she had accepted was two soft, green, handsome ten-dollar bills.

Carrie returns to her sister's flat and reports to Minnie and Mr. Hanson that her new job stinks; unsurprisingly, they're not particularly sympathetic. This bums Carrie out further. She realizes Minnie and Mr. Hanson just don't get her, and that she's really starting to loathe life in their apartment. Then it dawns on her that Drouet might disregard her warning and show up tonight. Oh, geez--What's she going do if that happens? She decides to preempt any trouble by hanging out again at "the foot of the stairs" in case he shows. The minute she leaves, Minnie and her husband start talking about her. Mr. Hanson stresses how important it is for Carrie to keep her job at the factory, adding that she probably shouldn't be standing down by the door because "it doesn't look good." Meanwhile, Carrie enjoys checking out the street action downstairs. Using the excuse that he's going out to get a loaf of bread, Hanson leaves the apartment. Yup--he's actually trying to spy on Carrie, but she knows it. And she doesn't like it. Drouet's a no-show, so Carrie goes back upstairs and hits the hay. Her second day at the factory is just about as bad as the first one, and Carrie gets yelled at by the foreman for going too slowly. She's still not fitting in with her new coworkers either, and really hates the "rude banter" between the girls and the guys; she is totally grossed out when one of the guys starts verbally harassing her. Deja vu time--life at Chez Hanson that night is so unbearable that Carrie returns to her favorite hang-out--that's right, the ever-exciting apartment doorway. This time though, she has a creepy encounter with a dude passing by on the street who seems to want to take her for a stroll. For once she's glad to return to the flat. The rest of the work week follows suit with the first two days, and then--to add insult to injury--one morning it starts to rain and Carrie realizes she has no umbrella. But wait--it gets worse: Minnie lends Carrie a faded umbrella, and horrified, Carrie rushes to the department store to buy a more suitable one, which of course leads to a bicker-fest with Minnie. A few nights later, Carrie forks over to Minnie the money she'd promised to pay for board . Minnie feels a little guilty taking it, but pockets it anyway, and Carrie is left wondering how on earth she's going amuse herself with the two quarters she's got left. She gets snippy with Minnie and Hanson, telling them she's going out because she wants to see something, and as usual, they start talking about her the moment she leaves. She ends up going to... you guessed it, the bottom of the stairs. But the next day, she ventures out to a park. She's not happy with that, though, because she realizes she hates her clothes. During the next few days at work, Carrie overhears girls chatting about how much of their paycheck they get to spend on themselves. When Carrie goes home and complains to Minnie about needing winter clothes, Minnie is actually cool about it and tells her to keep more of her paycheck to spruce up her wardrobe. Everything's coming up roses it seems... well, not quite. Just as Carrie's about to go on her shopping spree, she catches a bad cold. She ends up so sick that she can't work for three days, which causes her to lose her job. Yikes. And it's back to job hunting. This time things seem even worse, but on her fourth day, her luck takes a turn for the better. No, she doesn't get a job, silly... She runs smack into Drouet. Suddenly she's all tingles and he's just as thrilled to see her; he invites her to lunch at a fancy restaurant. Carrie's not sure what to order and is a little freaked out by the prices , but no worries--Drouet steps in to order for her. Carrie fills him in on what she's been up to since arriving. She covers all the highlights, er, lowlights: working a miserable job and getting sick. Drouet is astonished to hear that she's been working in the shoe factory and assures her she's way too good to be working there. The food rocks. And she and Drouet seem to have some major chemistry. Drouet tries to convince her to abandon the job search. He has a much better idea about what she should be doing with her time: going to the theater with him tonight. But Carrie hesitates. Ah, Drouet sees what's going on: she needs money. And that's where his wallet comes in. He hands her some cash and tells her to get some clothes. She protests a little at first, but... oh, those dollars in her hand feel so good . He assures her it's just a loan, and then he suddenly turns psychic and tells her that he knows she doesn't want to live with her sister; he suggests that she come and meet him tomorrow to check out the matinee. Carrie feels like her nightmare has just turned to a dream.

It is the threshing of the last wheat-rick at Flintcomb-Ash farm. The dawn of the March morning is singularly inexpressive, and there is nothing to show where the eastern horizon lies. Against the twilight rises the trapezoidal top of the stack, which has stood forlornly here through the washing and bleaching of the wintry weather. When Izz Huett and Tess arrived at the scene of operations only a rustling denoted that others had preceded them; to which, as the light increased, there were presently added the silhouettes of two men on the summit. They were busily "unhaling" the rick, that is, stripping off the thatch before beginning to throw down the sheaves; and while this was in progress Izz and Tess, with the other women-workers, in their whitey-brown pinners, stood waiting and shivering, Farmer Groby having insisted upon their being on the spot thus early to get the job over if possible by the end of the day. Close under the eaves of the stack, and as yet barely visible, was the red tyrant that the women had come to serve--a timber-framed construction, with straps and wheels appertaining-- the threshing-machine which, whilst it was going, kept up a despotic demand upon the endurance of their muscles and nerves. A little way off there was another indistinct figure; this one black, with a sustained hiss that spoke of strength very much in reserve. The long chimney running up beside an ash-tree, and the warmth which radiated from the spot, explained without the necessity of much daylight that here was the engine which was to act as the _primum mobile_ of this little world. By the engine stood a dark, motionless being, a sooty and grimy embodiment of tallness, in a sort of trance, with a heap of coals by his side: it was the engine-man. The isolation of his manner and colour lent him the appearance of a creature from Tophet, who had strayed into the pellucid smokelessness of this region of yellow grain and pale soil, with which he had nothing in common, to amaze and to discompose its aborigines. What he looked he felt. He was in the agricultural world, but not of it. He served fire and smoke; these denizens of the fields served vegetation, weather, frost, and sun. He travelled with his engine from farm to farm, from county to county, for as yet the steam threshing-machine was itinerant in this part of Wessex. He spoke in a strange northern accent; his thoughts being turned inwards upon himself, his eye on his iron charge, hardly perceiving the scenes around him, and caring for them not at all: holding only strictly necessary intercourse with the natives, as if some ancient doom compelled him to wander here against his will in the service of his Plutonic master. The long strap which ran from the driving-wheel of his engine to the red thresher under the rick was the sole tie-line between agriculture and him. While they uncovered the sheaves he stood apathetic beside his portable repository of force, round whose hot blackness the morning air quivered. He had nothing to do with preparatory labour. His fire was waiting incandescent, his steam was at high pressure, in a few seconds he could make the long strap move at an invisible velocity. Beyond its extent the environment might be corn, straw, or chaos; it was all the same to him. If any of the autochthonous idlers asked him what he called himself, he replied shortly, "an engineer." The rick was unhaled by full daylight; the men then took their places, the women mounted, and the work began. Farmer Groby--or, as they called him, "he"--had arrived ere this, and by his orders Tess was placed on the platform of the machine, close to the man who fed it, her business being to untie every sheaf of corn handed on to her by Izz Huett, who stood next, but on the rick; so that the feeder could seize it and spread it over the revolving drum, which whisked out every grain in one moment. They were soon in full progress, after a preparatory hitch or two, which rejoiced the hearts of those who hated machinery. The work sped on till breakfast time, when the thresher was stopped for half an hour; and on starting again after the meal the whole supplementary strength of the farm was thrown into the labour of constructing the straw-rick, which began to grow beside the stack of corn. A hasty lunch was eaten as they stood, without leaving their positions, and then another couple of hours brought them near to dinner-time; the inexorable wheel continuing to spin, and the penetrating hum of the thresher to thrill to the very marrow all who were near the revolving wire-cage. The old men on the rising straw-rick talked of the past days when they had been accustomed to thresh with flails on the oaken barn-floor; when everything, even to winnowing, was effected by hand-labour, which, to their thinking, though slow, produced better results. Those, too, on the corn-rick talked a little; but the perspiring ones at the machine, including Tess, could not lighten their duties by the exchange of many words. It was the ceaselessness of the work which tried her so severely, and began to make her wish that she had never some to Flintcomb-Ash. The women on the corn-rick--Marian, who was one of them, in particular--could stop to drink ale or cold tea from the flagon now and then, or to exchange a few gossiping remarks while they wiped their faces or cleared the fragments of straw and husk from their clothing; but for Tess there was no respite; for, as the drum never stopped, the man who fed it could not stop, and she, who had to supply the man with untied sheaves, could not stop either, unless Marian changed places with her, which she sometimes did for half an hour in spite of Groby's objections that she was too slow-handed for a feeder. For some probably economical reason it was usually a woman who was chosen for this particular duty, and Groby gave as his motive in selecting Tess that she was one of those who best combined strength with quickness in untying, and both with staying power, and this may have been true. The hum of the thresher, which prevented speech, increased to a raving whenever the supply of corn fell short of the regular quantity. As Tess and the man who fed could never turn their heads she did not know that just before the dinner-hour a person had come silently into the field by the gate, and had been standing under a second rick watching the scene and Tess in particular. He was dressed in a tweed suit of fashionable pattern, and he twirled a gay walking-cane. "Who is that?" said Izz Huett to Marian. She had at first addressed the inquiry to Tess, but the latter could not hear it. "Somebody's fancy-man, I s'pose," said Marian laconically. "I'll lay a guinea he's after Tess." "O no. 'Tis a ranter pa'son who's been sniffing after her lately; not a dandy like this." "Well--this is the same man." "The same man as the preacher? But he's quite different!" "He hev left off his black coat and white neckercher, and hev cut off his whiskers; but he's the same man for all that." "D'ye really think so? Then I'll tell her," said Marian. "Don't. She'll see him soon enough, good-now." "Well, I don't think it at all right for him to join his preaching to courting a married woman, even though her husband mid be abroad, and she, in a sense, a widow." "Oh--he can do her no harm," said Izz drily. "Her mind can no more be heaved from that one place where it do bide than a stooded waggon from the hole he's in. Lord love 'ee, neither court-paying, nor preaching, nor the seven thunders themselves, can wean a woman when 'twould be better for her that she should be weaned." Dinner-time came, and the whirling ceased; whereupon Tess left her post, her knees trembling so wretchedly with the shaking of the machine that she could scarcely walk. "You ought to het a quart o' drink into 'ee, as I've done," said Marian. "You wouldn't look so white then. Why, souls above us, your face is as if you'd been hagrode!" It occurred to the good-natured Marian that, as Tess was so tired, her discovery of her visitor's presence might have the bad effect of taking away her appetite; and Marian was thinking of inducing Tess to descend by a ladder on the further side of the stack when the gentleman came forward and looked up. Tess uttered a short little "Oh!" And a moment after she said, quickly, "I shall eat my dinner here--right on the rick." Sometimes, when they were so far from their cottages, they all did this; but as there was rather a keen wind going to-day, Marian and the rest descended, and sat under the straw-stack. The newcomer was, indeed, Alec d'Urberville, the late Evangelist, despite his changed attire and aspect. It was obvious at a glance that the original _Weltlust_ had come back; that he had restored himself, as nearly as a man could do who had grown three or four years older, to the old jaunty, slapdash guise under which Tess had first known her admirer, and cousin so-called. Having decided to remain where she was, Tess sat down among the bundles, out of sight of the ground, and began her meal; till, by-and-by, she heard footsteps on the ladder, and immediately after Alec appeared upon the stack--now an oblong and level platform of sheaves. He strode across them, and sat down opposite of her without a word. Tess continued to eat her modest dinner, a slice of thick pancake which she had brought with her. The other workfolk were by this time all gathered under the rick, where the loose straw formed a comfortable retreat. "I am here again, as you see," said d'Urberville. "Why do you trouble me so!" she cried, reproach flashing from her very finger-ends. "I trouble YOU? I think I may ask, why do you trouble me?" "Sure, I don't trouble you any-when!" "You say you don't? But you do! You haunt me. Those very eyes that you turned upon me with such a bitter flash a moment ago, they come to me just as you showed them then, in the night and in the day! Tess, ever since you told me of that child of ours, it is just as if my feelings, which have been flowing in a strong puritanical stream, had suddenly found a way open in the direction of you, and had all at once gushed through. The religious channel is left dry forthwith; and it is you who have done it!" She gazed in silence. "What--you have given up your preaching entirely?" she asked. She had gathered from Angel sufficient of the incredulity of modern thought to despise flash enthusiasm; but, as a woman, she was somewhat appalled. In affected severity d'Urberville continued-- "Entirely. I have broken every engagement since that afternoon I was to address the drunkards at Casterbridge Fair. The deuce only knows what I am thought of by the brethren. Ah-ha! The brethren! No doubt they pray for me--weep for me; for they are kind people in their way. But what do I care? How could I go on with the thing when I had lost my faith in it?--it would have been hypocrisy of the basest kind! Among them I should have stood like Hymenaeus and Alexander, who were delivered over to Satan that they might learn not to blaspheme. What a grand revenge you have taken! I saw you innocent, and I deceived you. Four years after, you find me a Christian enthusiast; you then work upon me, perhaps to my complete perdition! But Tess, my coz, as I used to call you, this is only my way of talking, and you must not look so horribly concerned. Of course you have done nothing except retain your pretty face and shapely figure. I saw it on the rick before you saw me--that tight pinafore-thing sets it off, and that wing-bonnet--you field-girls should never wear those bonnets if you wish to keep out of danger." He regarded her silently for a few moments, and with a short cynical laugh resumed: "I believe that if the bachelor-apostle, whose deputy I thought I was, had been tempted by such a pretty face, he would have let go the plough for her sake as I do!" Tess attempted to expostulate, but at this juncture all her fluency failed her, and without heeding he added: "Well, this paradise that you supply is perhaps as good as any other, after all. But to speak seriously, Tess." D'Urberville rose and came nearer, reclining sideways amid the sheaves, and resting upon his elbow. "Since I last saw you, I have been thinking of what you said that HE said. I have come to the conclusion that there does seem rather a want of common-sense in these threadbare old propositions; how I could have been so fired by poor Parson Clare's enthusiasm, and have gone so madly to work, transcending even him, I cannot make out! As for what you said last time, on the strength of your wonderful husband's intelligence--whose name you have never told me--about having what they call an ethical system without any dogma, I don't see my way to that at all." "Why, you can have the religion of loving-kindness and purity at least, if you can't have--what do you call it--dogma." "O no! I'm a different sort of fellow from that! If there's nobody to say, 'Do this, and it will be a good thing for you after you are dead; do that, and if will be a bad thing for you,' I can't warm up. Hang it, I am not going to feel responsible for my deeds and passions if there's nobody to be responsible to; and if I were you, my dear, I wouldn't either!" She tried to argue, and tell him that he had mixed in his dull brain two matters, theology and morals, which in the primitive days of mankind had been quite distinct. But owing to Angel Clare's reticence, to her absolute want of training, and to her being a vessel of emotions rather than reasons, she could not get on. "Well, never mind," he resumed. "Here I am, my love, as in the old times!" "Not as then--never as then--'tis different!" she entreated. "And there was never warmth with me! O why didn't you keep your faith, if the loss of it has brought you to speak to me like this!" "Because you've knocked it out of me; so the evil be upon your sweet head! Your husband little thought how his teaching would recoil upon him! Ha-ha--I'm awfully glad you have made an apostate of me all the same! Tess, I am more taken with you than ever, and I pity you too. For all your closeness, I see you are in a bad way--neglected by one who ought to cherish you." She could not get her morsels of food down her throat; her lips were dry, and she was ready to choke. The voices and laughs of the workfolk eating and drinking under the rick came to her as if they were a quarter of a mile off. "It is cruelty to me!" she said. "How--how can you treat me to this talk, if you care ever so little for me?" "True, true," he said, wincing a little. "I did not come to reproach you for my deeds. I came Tess, to say that I don't like you to be working like this, and I have come on purpose for you. You say you have a husband who is not I. Well, perhaps you have; but I've never seen him, and you've not told me his name; and altogether he seems rather a mythological personage. However, even if you have one, I think I am nearer to you than he is. I, at any rate, try to help you out of trouble, but he does not, bless his invisible face! The words of the stern prophet Hosea that I used to read come back to me. Don't you know them, Tess?--'And she shall follow after her lover, but she shall not overtake him; and she shall seek him, but shall not find him; then shall she say, I will go and return to my first husband; for then was it better with me than now!' ... Tess, my trap is waiting just under the hill, and--darling mine, not his!--you know the rest." Her face had been rising to a dull crimson fire while he spoke; but she did not answer. "You have been the cause of my backsliding," he continued, stretching his arm towards her waist; "you should be willing to share it, and leave that mule you call husband for ever." One of her leather gloves, which she had taken off to eat her skimmer-cake, lay in her lap, and without the slightest warning she passionately swung the glove by the gauntlet directly in his face. It was heavy and thick as a warrior's, and it struck him flat on the mouth. Fancy might have regarded the act as the recrudescence of a trick in which her armed progenitors were not unpractised. Alec fiercely started up from his reclining position. A scarlet oozing appeared where her blow had alighted, and in a moment the blood began dropping from his mouth upon the straw. But he soon controlled himself, calmly drew his handkerchief from his pocket, and mopped his bleeding lips. She too had sprung up, but she sank down again. "Now, punish me!" she said, turning up her eyes to him with the hopeless defiance of the sparrow's gaze before its captor twists its neck. "Whip me, crush me; you need not mind those people under the rick! I shall not cry out. Once victim, always victim--that's the law!" "O no, no, Tess," he said blandly. "I can make full allowance for this. Yet you most unjustly forget one thing, that I would have married you if you had not put it out of my power to do so. Did I not ask you flatly to be my wife--hey? Answer me." "You did." "And you cannot be. But remember one thing!" His voice hardened as his temper got the better of him with the recollection of his sincerity in asking her and her present ingratitude, and he stepped across to her side and held her by the shoulders, so that she shook under his grasp. "Remember, my lady, I was your master once! I will be your master again. If you are any man's wife you are mine!" The threshers now began to stir below. "So much for our quarrel," he said, letting her go. "Now I shall leave you, and shall come again for your answer during the afternoon. You don't know me yet! But I know you." She had not spoken again, remaining as if stunned. D'Urberville retreated over the sheaves, and descended the ladder, while the workers below rose and stretched their arms, and shook down the beer they had drunk. Then the threshing-machine started afresh; and amid the renewed rustle of the straw Tess resumed her position by the buzzing drum as one in a dream, untying sheaf after sheaf in endless succession.

In March, the mean-spirited Farmer Groby picks Tess to be on the thresher-machine, a physically taxing job usually assigned to men. Tess is completely exhausted when, yet once again, Alec approaches her and begs Tess to leave the farm. He feels a husband's responsibility for her, especially since she told him about the death of their child, and he castigates Angel for leaving her penniless. Tess slaps his face with a work glove and draws blood. No longer a preacher, he says he is her real husband and will not give up

SCENE V. Another part of the field. [Enter Brutus, Dardanius, Clitus, Strato, and Volumnius.] BRUTUS. Come, poor remains of friends, rest on this rock. CLITUS. Statilius show'd the torch-light; but, my lord, He came not back: he is or ta'en or slain. BRUTUS. Sit thee down, Clitus: slaying is the word; It is a deed in fashion. Hark thee, Clitus. [Whispering.] CLITUS. What, I, my lord? No, not for all the world. BRUTUS. Peace then! no words. CLITUS. I'll rather kill myself. BRUTUS. Hark thee, Dardanius. [Whispers him.] DARDANIUS. Shall I do such a deed? CLITUS. O Dardanius! DARDANIUS. O Clitus! CLITUS. What ill request did Brutus make to thee? DARDANIUS. To kill him, Clitus. Look, he meditates. CLITUS. Now is that noble vessel full of grief, That it runs over even at his eyes. BRUTUS. Come hither, good Volumnius; list a word. VOLUMNIUS. What says my lord? BRUTUS. Why, this, Volumnius: The ghost of Caesar hath appear'd to me Two several times by night; at Sardis once, And this last night here in Philippi fields: I know my hour is come. VOLUMNIUS. Not so, my lord. BRUTUS. Nay I am sure it is, Volumnius. Thou seest the world, Volumnius, how it goes; Our enemies have beat us to the pit: [Low alarums.] It is more worthy to leap in ourselves Than tarry till they push us. Good Volumnius, Thou know'st that we two went to school together; Even for that our love of old, I pr'ythee, Hold thou my sword-hilts, whilst I run on it. VOLUMNIUS. That's not an office for a friend, my lord. [Alarums still.] CLITUS. Fly, fly, my lord! there is no tarrying here. BRUTUS. Farewell to you;--and you;--and you, Volumnius.-- Strato, thou hast been all this while asleep; Farewell to thee too, Strato.--Countrymen, My heart doth joy, that yet in all my life I found no man but he was true to me. I shall have glory by this losing day, More than Octavius and Mark Antony By this vile conquest shall attain unto. So, fare you well at once; for Brutus' tongue Hath almost ended his life's history: Night hangs upon mine eyes; my bones would rest That have but labour'd to attain this hour. [Alarums. Cry within, "Fly, fly, fly!"] CLITUS. Fly, my lord, fly! BRUTUS. Hence! I will follow.-- [Exeunt Clitus, Dardanius, and Volumnius.] I pr'ythee, Strato, stay thou by thy lord: Thou art a fellow of a good respect; Thy life hath had some smack of honor in it: Hold, then, my sword, and turn away thy face, While I do run upon it. Wilt thou, Strato? STRATO. Give me your hand first: fare you well, my lord. BRUTUS. Farewell, good Strato.--Caesar, now be still: I kill'd not thee with half so good a will. [He runs on his sword, and dies.] [Alarum. Retreat. Enter Octavius, Antony, Messala, Lucilius, and Army.] OCTAVIUS. What man is that? MESSALA. My master's man.--Strato, where is thy master? STRATO. Free from the bondage you are in, Messala: The conquerors can but make a fire of him; For Brutus only overcame himself, And no man else hath honour by his death. LUCILIUS. So Brutus should be found.--I thank thee, Brutus, That thou hast proved Lucilius' saying true. OCTAVIUS. All that served Brutus, I will entertain them.-- Fellow, wilt thou bestow thy time with me? STRATO. Ay, if Messala will prefer me to you. OCTAVIUS. Do so, good Messala. MESSALA. How died my master, Strato? STRATO. I held the sword, and he did run on it. MESSALA. Octavius, then take him to follow thee, That did the latest service to my master. ANTONY. This was the noblest Roman of them all: All the conspirators, save only he, Did that they did in envy of great Caesar; He only, in a general-honest thought And common good to all, made one of them. His life was gentle; and the elements So mix'd in him that Nature might stand up And say to all the world, "This was a man!" OCTAVIUS. According to his virtue let us use him With all respect and rites of burial. Within my tent his bones to-night shall lie, Most like a soldier, order'd honorably.-- So, call the field to rest; and let's away, To part the glories of this happy day. [Exeunt.] THE END

Elsewhere in the field, Brutus stops and asks his remaining friends to rest on a rock. He calls Clitus aside and asks him to do something in a whisper. Clitus declines to do the mystery deed, saying he'd rather kill himself. The process is repeated with Dardanius. The two men, Clitus and Dardanius, reveal to each other that Brutus has asked them to kill him. They share the news while Brutus tears up a little bit. Brutus calls Volumnius over now and tells him that Caesar's ghost has appeared to him twice, once at night and once again in the fields of Philippi. Brutus knows his hour has come and he would rather leap into the pit than loiter around and wait for his enemies to push him in. He asks Volumnius to kill him, since they were old friends from school. Volumnius points out that this is the very reason he can't do it. Just then the alarums are sounding, so Clitus urges everyone to get away before the enemy arrives. Brutus speaks to his men valiantly. He says that even though he has lost to Antony and Octavius, he will find more glory in this day than either of them can hope to achieve through their vile conquest of Rome. As the alarums continue to sound out, Brutus tells everyone to flee and promises to follow after everyone else has left. The only man left with Brutus now is Strato, who's slept through all the speeches and sadness. Strato has woken up just in time to be asked to hold Brutus' sword while he runs into it. Strato thinks this is a good idea and asks only to shake hands with Brutus before doing the deed. Brutus' final words assure that what he does now is twice as pure as what he did to Caesar, who is avenged by this act: "Caesar, now be still, I kill'd not thee with half so good a will." Antony, Octavius, and their armies, along with the captive Lucilius and Messala, now approach the site of Brutus' death. Messala asks Strato where their master is, and Strato says that Brutus is free. Only Brutus overcame Brutus, Strato says, and Brutus himself is the only one who gained honor in his death. There's a bit of a conference, and Octavius will entertain all the men who nobly served Brutus. Brutus' enemies are a lot friendlier to him now that he's dead. Antony declares Brutus the "noblest Roman" of them all, as he alone among the conspirators killed Caesar not out of envy but out of concern and care for the public good. Octavius says Brutus will be buried as an honorable soldier, and his body will stay in Octavius' tent for the night. After that, they agree it's time to celebrate and share "the glories of this happy day."

THE THOUSAND AND ONE BOTTLES So it was that on the twenty-ninth day of February, at the beginning of the thaw, this singular person fell out of infinity into Iping village. Next day his luggage arrived through the slush--and very remarkable luggage it was. There were a couple of trunks indeed, such as a rational man might need, but in addition there were a box of books--big, fat books, of which some were just in an incomprehensible handwriting--and a dozen or more crates, boxes, and cases, containing objects packed in straw, as it seemed to Hall, tugging with a casual curiosity at the straw--glass bottles. The stranger, muffled in hat, coat, gloves, and wrapper, came out impatiently to meet Fearenside's cart, while Hall was having a word or so of gossip preparatory to helping bring them in. Out he came, not noticing Fearenside's dog, who was sniffing in a _dilettante_ spirit at Hall's legs. "Come along with those boxes," he said. "I've been waiting long enough." And he came down the steps towards the tail of the cart as if to lay hands on the smaller crate. No sooner had Fearenside's dog caught sight of him, however, than it began to bristle and growl savagely, and when he rushed down the steps it gave an undecided hop, and then sprang straight at his hand. "Whup!" cried Hall, jumping back, for he was no hero with dogs, and Fearenside howled, "Lie down!" and snatched his whip. They saw the dog's teeth had slipped the hand, heard a kick, saw the dog execute a flanking jump and get home on the stranger's leg, and heard the rip of his trousering. Then the finer end of Fearenside's whip reached his property, and the dog, yelping with dismay, retreated under the wheels of the waggon. It was all the business of a swift half-minute. No one spoke, everyone shouted. The stranger glanced swiftly at his torn glove and at his leg, made as if he would stoop to the latter, then turned and rushed swiftly up the steps into the inn. They heard him go headlong across the passage and up the uncarpeted stairs to his bedroom. "You brute, you!" said Fearenside, climbing off the waggon with his whip in his hand, while the dog watched him through the wheel. "Come here," said Fearenside--"You'd better." Hall had stood gaping. "He wuz bit," said Hall. "I'd better go and see to en," and he trotted after the stranger. He met Mrs. Hall in the passage. "Carrier's darg," he said "bit en." He went straight upstairs, and the stranger's door being ajar, he pushed it open and was entering without any ceremony, being of a naturally sympathetic turn of mind. The blind was down and the room dim. He caught a glimpse of a most singular thing, what seemed a handless arm waving towards him, and a face of three huge indeterminate spots on white, very like the face of a pale pansy. Then he was struck violently in the chest, hurled back, and the door slammed in his face and locked. It was so rapid that it gave him no time to observe. A waving of indecipherable shapes, a blow, and a concussion. There he stood on the dark little landing, wondering what it might be that he had seen. A couple of minutes after, he rejoined the little group that had formed outside the "Coach and Horses." There was Fearenside telling about it all over again for the second time; there was Mrs. Hall saying his dog didn't have no business to bite her guests; there was Huxter, the general dealer from over the road, interrogative; and Sandy Wadgers from the forge, judicial; besides women and children, all of them saying fatuities: "Wouldn't let en bite _me_, I knows"; "'Tasn't right _have_ such dargs"; "Whad _'e_ bite 'n for, then?" and so forth. Mr. Hall, staring at them from the steps and listening, found it incredible that he had seen anything so very remarkable happen upstairs. Besides, his vocabulary was altogether too limited to express his impressions. "He don't want no help, he says," he said in answer to his wife's inquiry. "We'd better be a-takin' of his luggage in." "He ought to have it cauterised at once," said Mr. Huxter; "especially if it's at all inflamed." "I'd shoot en, that's what I'd do," said a lady in the group. Suddenly the dog began growling again. "Come along," cried an angry voice in the doorway, and there stood the muffled stranger with his collar turned up, and his hat-brim bent down. "The sooner you get those things in the better I'll be pleased." It is stated by an anonymous bystander that his trousers and gloves had been changed. "Was you hurt, sir?" said Fearenside. "I'm rare sorry the darg--" "Not a bit," said the stranger. "Never broke the skin. Hurry up with those things." He then swore to himself, so Mr. Hall asserts. Directly the first crate was, in accordance with his directions, carried into the parlour, the stranger flung himself upon it with extraordinary eagerness, and began to unpack it, scattering the straw with an utter disregard of Mrs. Hall's carpet. And from it he began to produce bottles--little fat bottles containing powders, small and slender bottles containing coloured and white fluids, fluted blue bottles labeled Poison, bottles with round bodies and slender necks, large green-glass bottles, large white-glass bottles, bottles with glass stoppers and frosted labels, bottles with fine corks, bottles with bungs, bottles with wooden caps, wine bottles, salad-oil bottles--putting them in rows on the chiffonnier, on the mantel, on the table under the window, round the floor, on the bookshelf--everywhere. The chemist's shop in Bramblehurst could not boast half so many. Quite a sight it was. Crate after crate yielded bottles, until all six were empty and the table high with straw; the only things that came out of these crates besides the bottles were a number of test-tubes and a carefully packed balance. And directly the crates were unpacked, the stranger went to the window and set to work, not troubling in the least about the litter of straw, the fire which had gone out, the box of books outside, nor for the trunks and other luggage that had gone upstairs. When Mrs. Hall took his dinner in to him, he was already so absorbed in his work, pouring little drops out of the bottles into test-tubes, that he did not hear her until she had swept away the bulk of the straw and put the tray on the table, with some little emphasis perhaps, seeing the state that the floor was in. Then he half turned his head and immediately turned it away again. But she saw he had removed his glasses; they were beside him on the table, and it seemed to her that his eye sockets were extraordinarily hollow. He put on his spectacles again, and then turned and faced her. She was about to complain of the straw on the floor when he anticipated her. "I wish you wouldn't come in without knocking," he said in the tone of abnormal exasperation that seemed so characteristic of him. "I knocked, but seemingly--" "Perhaps you did. But in my investigations--my really very urgent and necessary investigations--the slightest disturbance, the jar of a door--I must ask you--" "Certainly, sir. You can turn the lock if you're like that, you know. Any time." "A very good idea," said the stranger. "This stror, sir, if I might make so bold as to remark--" "Don't. If the straw makes trouble put it down in the bill." And he mumbled at her--words suspiciously like curses. He was so odd, standing there, so aggressive and explosive, bottle in one hand and test-tube in the other, that Mrs. Hall was quite alarmed. But she was a resolute woman. "In which case, I should like to know, sir, what you consider--" "A shilling--put down a shilling. Surely a shilling's enough?" "So be it," said Mrs. Hall, taking up the table-cloth and beginning to spread it over the table. "If you're satisfied, of course--" He turned and sat down, with his coat-collar toward her. All the afternoon he worked with the door locked and, as Mrs. Hall testifies, for the most part in silence. But once there was a concussion and a sound of bottles ringing together as though the table had been hit, and the smash of a bottle flung violently down, and then a rapid pacing athwart the room. Fearing "something was the matter," she went to the door and listened, not caring to knock. "I can't go on," he was raving. "I _can't_ go on. Three hundred thousand, four hundred thousand! The huge multitude! Cheated! All my life it may take me! ... Patience! Patience indeed! ... Fool! fool!" There was a noise of hobnails on the bricks in the bar, and Mrs. Hall had very reluctantly to leave the rest of his soliloquy. When she returned the room was silent again, save for the faint crepitation of his chair and the occasional clink of a bottle. It was all over; the stranger had resumed work. When she took in his tea she saw broken glass in the corner of the room under the concave mirror, and a golden stain that had been carelessly wiped. She called attention to it. "Put it down in the bill," snapped her visitor. "For God's sake don't worry me. If there's damage done, put it down in the bill," and he went on ticking a list in the exercise book before him. "I'll tell you something," said Fearenside, mysteriously. It was late in the afternoon, and they were in the little beer-shop of Iping Hanger. "Well?" said Teddy Henfrey. "This chap you're speaking of, what my dog bit. Well--he's black. Leastways, his legs are. I seed through the tear of his trousers and the tear of his glove. You'd have expected a sort of pinky to show, wouldn't you? Well--there wasn't none. Just blackness. I tell you, he's as black as my hat." "My sakes!" said Henfrey. "It's a rummy case altogether. Why, his nose is as pink as paint!" "That's true," said Fearenside. "I knows that. And I tell 'ee what I'm thinking. That marn's a piebald, Teddy. Black here and white there--in patches. And he's ashamed of it. He's a kind of half-breed, and the colour's come off patchy instead of mixing. I've heard of such things before. And it's the common way with horses, as any one can see."

Black veterans from an insane asylum are walking down the road toward the Golden Day, blocking the narrator and Mr. Norton from passing them in the car. The insane men are mostly professionals suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. The narrator tells one of the veterans that the car belongs to General Pershing in order to be allowed to pass. The narrator continues to worry, for he knows the veterans are also headed to the Golden Day to find prostitutes. On such occasions, the bar becomes quite rowdy. The narrator leaves Mr. Norton outside and goes in to order a whiskey. The bartender, Big Halley, refuses to serve him any liquor to take outside. As a result, some of the veterans help bring the faint Mr. Norton inside. To wake him up, someone hits him in the face and someone else pours brandy in his mouth. Mr. Norton is surprised by the men standing around him and wants to know where he is. Halley tells a woman upstairs to sober up Supercargo, the bouncer, and send him down. When he appears at the top of the stairs, the veterans charge up after him. The men pull him down the stairs, allowing his head to thump each step. At the bottom of the stairs, the men kick him and jump on him. They give him beer to wake him up and pounce on him until he is unconscious again. Finally, they lay his body on the bar, as if he were dead. Halley serves them drinks while the narrator searches for Mr. Norton, who lies unconscious again under the stairs. The narrator yells at Mr. Norton to wake up, fearing that something bad has happened to him. The crowd reacts by pushing him on top of the millionaire. Finally, one of the veterans steps in to help. The man arranges for Mr. Norton to be taken upstairs to a clean bed, where he begins to perform a medical examination on him. He tells the narrator that though he is now a patient at the insane asylum, he was once a physician. Edna, a prostitute, and her friend enter the room where Mr. Norton has been put. She comments to her friend that she likes white men because they cannot ever get enough sex. The friend says she would rather kill the whites. The veteran asks the two women to leave the room, fearing they will shock the fainting white man. When the veteran begins talking to Mr. Norton about his condition, the millionaire is amazed at his knowledge and wants to hear the veteran's story. The veteran says he was trained as a surgeon, but was chased and beaten for trying to practice medicine in the United States. The conversation changes to Mr. Norton and the narrator. The veteran tells Mr. Norton that the narrator is an invisible man, an automaton. The narrator is extremely uncomfortable with the free and somewhat alarming conversation between the crazy black man and the rich white benefactor. Mr. Norton becomes equally distressed and wants to leave. As they try to depart, the veteran surgeon threatens them, and the mob downstairs attacks them. Halley helps them escape to the car.

The Structure of the Government Must Furnish the Proper Checks and Balances Between the Different Departments. For the Independent Journal. Wednesday, February 6, 1788. MADISON To the People of the State of New York: TO WHAT expedient, then, shall we finally resort, for maintaining in practice the necessary partition of power among the several departments, as laid down in the Constitution? The only answer that can be given is, that as all these exterior provisions are found to be inadequate, the defect must be supplied, by so contriving the interior structure of the government as that its several constituent parts may, by their mutual relations, be the means of keeping each other in their proper places. Without presuming to undertake a full development of this important idea, I will hazard a few general observations, which may perhaps place it in a clearer light, and enable us to form a more correct judgment of the principles and structure of the government planned by the convention. In order to lay a due foundation for that separate and distinct exercise of the different powers of government, which to a certain extent is admitted on all hands to be essential to the preservation of liberty, it is evident that each department should have a will of its own; and consequently should be so constituted that the members of each should have as little agency as possible in the appointment of the members of the others. Were this principle rigorously adhered to, it would require that all the appointments for the supreme executive, legislative, and judiciary magistracies should be drawn from the same fountain of authority, the people, through channels having no communication whatever with one another. Perhaps such a plan of constructing the several departments would be less difficult in practice than it may in contemplation appear. Some difficulties, however, and some additional expense would attend the execution of it. Some deviations, therefore, from the principle must be admitted. In the constitution of the judiciary department in particular, it might be inexpedient to insist rigorously on the principle: first, because peculiar qualifications being essential in the members, the primary consideration ought to be to select that mode of choice which best secures these qualifications; secondly, because the permanent tenure by which the appointments are held in that department, must soon destroy all sense of dependence on the authority conferring them. It is equally evident, that the members of each department should be as little dependent as possible on those of the others, for the emoluments annexed to their offices. Were the executive magistrate, or the judges, not independent of the legislature in this particular, their independence in every other would be merely nominal. But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions. This policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as well as public. We see it particularly displayed in all the subordinate distributions of power, where the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other--that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights. These inventions of prudence cannot be less requisite in the distribution of the supreme powers of the State. But it is not possible to give to each department an equal power of self-defense. In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates. The remedy for this inconveniency is to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them, by different modes of election and different principles of action, as little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions and their common dependence on the society will admit. It may even be necessary to guard against dangerous encroachments by still further precautions. As the weight of the legislative authority requires that it should be thus divided, the weakness of the executive may require, on the other hand, that it should be fortified. An absolute negative on the legislature appears, at first view, to be the natural defense with which the executive magistrate should be armed. But perhaps it would be neither altogether safe nor alone sufficient. On ordinary occasions it might not be exerted with the requisite firmness, and on extraordinary occasions it might be perfidiously abused. May not this defect of an absolute negative be supplied by some qualified connection between this weaker department and the weaker branch of the stronger department, by which the latter may be led to support the constitutional rights of the former, without being too much detached from the rights of its own department? If the principles on which these observations are founded be just, as I persuade myself they are, and they be applied as a criterion to the several State constitutions, and to the federal Constitution it will be found that if the latter does not perfectly correspond with them, the former are infinitely less able to bear such a test. There are, moreover, two considerations particularly applicable to the federal system of America, which place that system in a very interesting point of view. First. In a single republic, all the power surrendered by the people is submitted to the administration of a single government; and the usurpations are guarded against by a division of the government into distinct and separate departments. In the compound republic of America, the power surrendered by the people is first divided between two distinct governments, and then the portion allotted to each subdivided among distinct and separate departments. Hence a double security arises to the rights of the people. The different governments will control each other, at the same time that each will be controlled by itself. Second. It is of great importance in a republic not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers, but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part. Different interests necessarily exist in different classes of citizens. If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure. There are but two methods of providing against this evil: the one by creating a will in the community independent of the majority--that is, of the society itself; the other, by comprehending in the society so many separate descriptions of citizens as will render an unjust combination of a majority of the whole very improbable, if not impracticable. The first method prevails in all governments possessing an hereditary or self-appointed authority. This, at best, is but a precarious security; because a power independent of the society may as well espouse the unjust views of the major, as the rightful interests of the minor party, and may possibly be turned against both parties. The second method will be exemplified in the federal republic of the United States. Whilst all authority in it will be derived from and dependent on the society, the society itself will be broken into so many parts, interests, and classes of citizens, that the rights of individuals, or of the minority, will be in little danger from interested combinations of the majority. In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of sects. The degree of security in both cases will depend on the number of interests and sects; and this may be presumed to depend on the extent of country and number of people comprehended under the same government. This view of the subject must particularly recommend a proper federal system to all the sincere and considerate friends of republican government, since it shows that in exact proportion as the territory of the Union may be formed into more circumscribed Confederacies, or States oppressive combinations of a majority will be facilitated: the best security, under the republican forms, for the rights of every class of citizens, will be diminished: and consequently the stability and independence of some member of the government, the only other security, must be proportionately increased. Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature, where the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger; and as, in the latter state, even the stronger individuals are prompted, by the uncertainty of their condition, to submit to a government which may protect the weak as well as themselves; so, in the former state, will the more powerful factions or parties be gradually induced, by a like motive, to wish for a government which will protect all parties, the weaker as well as the more powerful. It can be little doubted that if the State of Rhode Island was separated from the Confederacy and left to itself, the insecurity of rights under the popular form of government within such narrow limits would be displayed by such reiterated oppressions of factious majorities that some power altogether independent of the people would soon be called for by the voice of the very factions whose misrule had proved the necessity of it. In the extended republic of the United States, and among the great variety of interests, parties, and sects which it embraces, a coalition of a majority of the whole society could seldom take place on any other principles than those of justice and the general good; whilst there being thus less danger to a minor from the will of a major party, there must be less pretext, also, to provide for the security of the former, by introducing into the government a will not dependent on the latter, or, in other words, a will independent of the society itself. It is no less certain than it is important, notwithstanding the contrary opinions which have been entertained, that the larger the society, provided it lie within a practical sphere, the more duly capable it will be of self-government. And happily for the REPUBLICAN CAUSE, the practicable sphere may be carried to a very great extent, by a judicious modification and mixture of the FEDERAL PRINCIPLE. PUBLIUS

James Madison begins his famous federalist paper by explaining that the purpose of this essay is to help the readers understand how the structure of the proposed government makes liberty possible. Each branch should be, in Madison's opinion, mostly independent. To assure such independence, no one branch should have too much power in selecting members of the other two branches. If this principle were strictly followed, it would mean that the citizens should select the president, the legislators, and the judges. But the framers recognized certain practical difficulties in making every office elective. In particular, the judicial branch would suffer because the average person is not aware of the qualifications judges should possess. Judges should have great ability, but also be free of political pressures. Since federal judges are appointed for life, their thinking will not be influenced by the president who appoints them, nor the senators whose consent the president will seek. The members of each branch should not be too dependent on the members of the other two branches in the determination of their salaries. The best security against a gradual concentration of power in any one branch is to provide constitutional safeguards that would make such concentration difficult. The constitutional rights of all must check one man's personal interests and ambitions. We may not like to admit that men abuse power, but the very need for government itself proves they do: "if men were angels, no government would be necessary." Unfortunately, all men are imperfect, the rulers and the ruled. Consequently, the great problem in framing a government is that the government must be able to control the people, but equally important, must be forced to control itself. The dependence of the government on the will of the people is undoubtedly the best control, but experience teaches that other controls are necessary. Dividing power helps to check its growth in any one direction, but power cannot be divided absolutely equally. In the republican form of government, the legislative branch tends to be the most powerful. That is why the framers divided the Congress into two branches, the House of Representatives and the Senate, and provided for a different method of election in each branch. Further safeguards against legislative tyranny may be necessary. In a representative democracy it is not only important to guard against the oppression of rulers, it is equally important to guard against the injustice which may be inflicted by certain citizens or groups. Majorities often threaten the rights of minorities. There are only two methods of avoiding evil. The first is to construct a powerful government, a "community will." Such a "will' is larger than, and independent of, the simple majority. This "solution" is dangerous because such a government might throw its power behind a group in society working against the public good. In our country, the authority to govern comes from the entire society. In addition, under the Constitution society is divided into many groups of people who hold different views and have different interests. This makes it very difficult for one group to dominate or threaten the minority groups. Justice is the purpose of government and civil society. If government allows or encourages strong groups to combine together against the weak, liberty will be lost and anarchy will result. And the condition of anarchy tempts even strong individuals and groups to submit to any form of government, no matter how bad, which they hope will protect them as well as the weak. Madison concludes that self-government flourishes in a large country containing many different groups. Some countries are too large for self-government, but the proposed plan modifies the federal principle enough to make self-government both possible and practical in the United States.

XXIV. GOSSIP. In order that we may start afresh, and go to Meg's wedding with free minds, it will be well to begin with a little gossip about the Marches. And here let me premise, that if any of the elders think there is too much "lovering" in the story, as I fear they may (I'm not afraid the young folks will make that objection), I can only say with Mrs. March, "What _can_ you expect when I have four gay girls in the house, and a dashing young neighbor over the way?" The three years that have passed have brought but few changes to the quiet family. The war is over, and Mr. March safely at home, busy with his books and the small parish which found in him a minister by nature as by grace,--a quiet, studious man, rich in the wisdom that is better than learning, the charity which calls all mankind "brother," the piety that blossoms into character, making it august and lovely. These attributes, in spite of poverty and the strict integrity which shut him out from the more worldly successes, attracted to him many admirable persons, as naturally as sweet herbs draw bees, and as naturally he gave them the honey into which fifty years of hard experience had distilled no bitter drop. Earnest young men found the gray-headed scholar as young at heart as they; thoughtful or troubled women instinctively brought their doubts and sorrows to him, sure of finding the gentlest sympathy, the wisest counsel; sinners told their sins to the pure-hearted old man, and were both rebuked and saved; gifted men found a companion in him; ambitious men caught glimpses of nobler ambitions than their own; and even worldlings confessed that his beliefs were beautiful and true, although "they wouldn't pay." To outsiders, the five energetic women seemed to rule the house, and so they did in many things; but the quiet scholar, sitting among his books, was still the head of the family, the household conscience, anchor, and comforter; for to him the busy, anxious women always turned in troublous times, finding him, in the truest sense of those sacred words, husband and father. The girls gave their hearts into their mother's keeping, their souls into their father's; and to both parents, who lived and labored so faithfully for them, they gave a love that grew with their growth, and bound them tenderly together by the sweetest tie which blesses life and outlives death. Mrs. March is as brisk and cheery, though rather grayer, than when we saw her last, and just now so absorbed in Meg's affairs that the hospitals and homes, still full of wounded "boys" and soldiers' widows, decidedly miss the motherly missionary's visits. John Brooke did his duty manfully for a year, got wounded, was sent home, and not allowed to return. He received no stars or bars, but he deserved them, for he cheerfully risked all he had; and life and love are very precious when both are in full bloom. Perfectly resigned to his discharge, he devoted himself to getting well, preparing for business, and earning a home for Meg. With the good sense and sturdy independence that characterized him, he refused Mr. Laurence's more generous offers, and accepted the place of book-keeper feeling better satisfied to begin with an honestly-earned salary, than by running any risks with borrowed money. Meg had spent the time in working as well as waiting, growing womanly in character, wise in housewifely arts, and prettier than ever; for love is a great beautifier. She had her girlish ambitions and hopes, and felt some disappointment at the humble way in which the new life must begin. Ned Moffat had just married Sallie Gardiner, and Meg couldn't help contrasting their fine house and carriage, many gifts, and splendid outfit, with her own, and secretly wishing she could have the same. But somehow envy and discontent soon vanished when she thought of all the patient love and labor John had put into the little home awaiting her; and when they sat together in the twilight, talking over their small plans, the future always grew so beautiful and bright that she forgot Sallie's splendor, and felt herself the richest, happiest girl in Christendom. Jo never went back to Aunt March, for the old lady took such a fancy to Amy that she bribed her with the offer of drawing lessons from one of the best teachers going; and for the sake of this advantage, Amy would have served a far harder mistress. So she gave her mornings to duty, her afternoons to pleasure, and prospered finely. Jo, meantime, devoted herself to literature and Beth, who remained delicate long after the fever was a thing of the past. Not an invalid exactly, but never again the rosy, healthy creature she had been; yet always hopeful, happy, and serene, busy with the quiet duties she loved, every one's friend, and an angel in the house, long before those who loved her most had learned to know it. As long as "The Spread Eagle" paid her a dollar a column for her "rubbish," as she called it, Jo felt herself a woman of means, and spun her little romances diligently. But great plans fermented in her busy brain and ambitious mind, and the old tin kitchen in the garret held a slowly increasing pile of blotted manuscript, which was one day to place the name of March upon the roll of fame. Laurie, having dutifully gone to college to please his grandfather, was now getting through it in the easiest possible manner to please himself. A universal favorite, thanks to money, manners, much talent, and the kindest heart that ever got its owner into scrapes by trying to get other people out of them, he stood in great danger of being spoilt, and probably would have been, like many another promising boy, if he had not possessed a talisman against evil in the memory of the kind old man who was bound up in his success, the motherly friend who watched over him as if he were her son, and last, but not least by any means, the knowledge that four innocent girls loved, admired, and believed in him with all their hearts. Being only "a glorious human boy," of course he frolicked and flirted, grew dandified, aquatic, sentimental, or gymnastic, as college fashions ordained; hazed and was hazed, talked slang, and more than once came perilously near suspension and expulsion. But as high spirits and the love of fun were the causes of these pranks, he always managed to save himself by frank confession, honorable atonement, or the irresistible power of persuasion which he possessed in perfection. In fact, he rather prided himself on his narrow escapes, and liked to thrill the girls with graphic accounts of his triumphs over wrathful tutors, dignified professors, and vanquished enemies. The "men of my class" were heroes in the eyes of the girls, who never wearied of the exploits of "our fellows," and were frequently allowed to bask in the smiles of these great creatures, when Laurie brought them home with him. Amy especially enjoyed this high honor, and became quite a belle among them; for her ladyship early felt and learned to use the gift of fascination with which she was endowed. Meg was too much absorbed in her private and particular John to care for any other lords of creation, and Beth too shy to do more than peep at them, and wonder how Amy dared to order them about so; but Jo felt quite in her element, and found it very difficult to refrain from imitating the gentlemanly attitudes, phrases, and feats, which seemed more natural to her than the decorums prescribed for young ladies. They all liked Jo immensely, but never fell in love with her, though very few escaped without paying the tribute of a sentimental sigh or two at Amy's shrine. And speaking of sentiment brings us very naturally to the "Dove-cote." That was the name of the little brown house which Mr. Brooke had prepared for Meg's first home. Laurie had christened it, saying it was highly appropriate to the gentle lovers, who "went on together like a pair of turtle-doves, with first a bill and then a coo." It was a tiny house, with a little garden behind, and a lawn about as big as a pocket-handkerchief in front. Here Meg meant to have a fountain, shrubbery, and a profusion of lovely flowers; though just at present, the fountain was represented by a weather-beaten urn, very like a dilapidated slop-bowl; the shrubbery consisted of several young larches, undecided whether to live or die; and the profusion of flowers was merely hinted by regiments of sticks, to show where seeds were planted. But inside, it was altogether charming, and the happy bride saw no fault from garret to cellar. To be sure, the hall was so narrow, it was fortunate that they had no piano, for one never could have been got in whole; the dining-room was so small that six people were a tight fit; and the kitchen stairs seemed built for the express purpose of precipitating both servants and china pell-mell into the coal-bin. But once get used to these slight blemishes, and nothing could be more complete, for good sense and good taste had presided over the furnishing, and the result was highly satisfactory. There were no marble-topped tables, long mirrors, or lace curtains in the little parlor, but simple furniture, plenty of books, a fine picture or two, a stand of flowers in the bay-window, and, scattered all about, the pretty gifts which came from friendly hands, and were the fairer for the loving messages they brought. I don't think the Parian Psyche Laurie gave lost any of its beauty because John put up the bracket it stood upon; that any upholsterer could have draped the plain muslin curtains more gracefully than Amy's artistic hand; or that any store-room was ever better provided with good wishes, merry words, and happy hopes, than that in which Jo and her mother put away Meg's few boxes, barrels, and bundles; and I am morally certain that the spandy-new kitchen never _could_ have looked so cosey and neat if Hannah had not arranged every pot and pan a dozen times over, and laid the fire all ready for lighting, the minute "Mis. Brooke came home." I also doubt if any young matron ever began life with so rich a supply of dusters, holders, and piece-bags; for Beth made enough to last till the silver wedding came round, and invented three different kinds of dishcloths for the express service of the bridal china. People who hire all these things done for them never know what they lose; for the homeliest tasks get beautified if loving hands do them, and Meg found so many proofs of this, that everything in her small nest, from the kitchen roller to the silver vase on her parlor table, was eloquent of home love and tender forethought. What happy times they had planning together, what solemn shopping excursions; what funny mistakes they made, and what shouts of laughter arose over Laurie's ridiculous bargains. In his love of jokes, this young gentleman, though nearly through college, was as much of a boy as ever. His last whim had been to bring with him, on his weekly visits, some new, useful, and ingenious article for the young housekeeper. Now a bag of remarkable clothes-pins; next, a wonderful nutmeg-grater, which fell to pieces at the first trial; a knife-cleaner that spoilt all the knives; or a sweeper that picked the nap neatly off the carpet, and left the dirt; labor-saving soap that took the skin off one's hands; infallible cements which stuck firmly to nothing but the fingers of the deluded buyer; and every kind of tin-ware, from a toy savings-bank for odd pennies, to a wonderful boiler which would wash articles in its own steam, with every prospect of exploding in the process. In vain Meg begged him to stop. John laughed at him, and Jo called him "Mr. Toodles." He was possessed with a mania for patronizing Yankee ingenuity, and seeing his friends fitly furnished forth. So each week beheld some fresh absurdity. Everything was done at last, even to Amy's arranging different colored soaps to match the different colored rooms, and Beth's setting the table for the first meal. "Are you satisfied? Does it seem like home, and do you feel as if you should be happy here?" asked Mrs. March, as she and her daughter went through the new kingdom, arm-in-arm; for just then they seemed to cling together more tenderly than ever. "Yes, mother, perfectly satisfied, thanks to you all, and _so_ happy that I can't talk about it," answered Meg, with a look that was better than words. "If she only had a servant or two it would be all right," said Amy, coming out of the parlor, where she had been trying to decide whether the bronze Mercury looked best on the whatnot or the mantle-piece. "Mother and I have talked that over, and I have made up my mind to try her way first. There will be so little to do, that, with Lotty to run my errands and help me here and there, I shall only have enough work to keep me from getting lazy or homesick," answered Meg tranquilly. "Sallie Moffat has four," began Amy. "If Meg had four the house wouldn't hold them, and master and missis would have to camp in the garden," broke in Jo, who, enveloped in a big blue pinafore, was giving the last polish to the door-handles. "Sallie isn't a poor man's wife, and many maids are in keeping with her fine establishment. Meg and John begin humbly, but I have a feeling that there will be quite as much happiness in the little house as in the big one. It's a great mistake for young girls like Meg to leave themselves nothing to do but dress, give orders, and gossip. When I was first married, I used to long for my new clothes to wear out or get torn, so that I might have the pleasure of mending them; for I got heartily sick of doing fancy work and tending my pocket handkerchief." "Why didn't you go into the kitchen and make messes, as Sallie says she does, to amuse herself, though they never turn out well, and the servants laugh at her," said Meg. "I did, after a while; not to 'mess,' but to learn of Hannah how things should be done, that my servants need _not_ laugh at me. It was play then; but there came a time when I was truly grateful that I not only possessed the will but the power to cook wholesome food for my little girls, and help myself when I could no longer afford to hire help. You begin at the other end, Meg, dear; but the lessons you learn now will be of use to you by and by, when John is a richer man, for the mistress of a house, however splendid, should know how work ought to be done, if she wishes to be well and honestly served." "Yes, mother, I'm sure of that," said Meg, listening respectfully to the little lecture; for the best of women will hold forth upon the all-absorbing subject of housekeeping. "Do you know I like this room most of all in my baby-house," added Meg, a minute after, as they went upstairs, and she looked into her well-stored linen-closet. Beth was there, laying the snowy piles smoothly on the shelves, and exulting over the goodly array. All three laughed as Meg spoke; for that linen-closet was a joke. You see, having said that if Meg married "that Brooke" she shouldn't have a cent of her money, Aunt March was rather in a quandary, when time had appeased her wrath and made her repent her vow. She never broke her word, and was much exercised in her mind how to get round it, and at last devised a plan whereby she could satisfy herself. Mrs. Carrol, Florence's mamma, was ordered to buy, have made, and marked, a generous supply of house and table linen, and send it as _her_ present, all of which was faithfully done; but the secret leaked out, and was greatly enjoyed by the family; for Aunt March tried to look utterly unconscious, and insisted that she could give nothing but the old-fashioned pearls, long promised to the first bride. "That's a housewifely taste which I am glad to see. I had a young friend who set up housekeeping with six sheets, but she had finger bowls for company, and that satisfied her," said Mrs. March, patting the damask table-cloths, with a truly feminine appreciation of their fineness. "I haven't a single finger-bowl, but this is a 'set out' that will last me all my days, Hannah says;" and Meg looked quite contented, as well she might. "Toodles is coming," cried Jo from below; and they all went down to meet Laurie, whose weekly visit was an important event in their quiet lives. A tall, broad-shouldered young fellow, with a cropped head, a felt-basin of a hat, and a fly-away coat, came tramping down the road at a great pace, walked over the low fence without stopping to open the gate, straight up to Mrs. March, with both hands out, and a hearty-- "Here I am, mother! Yes, it's all right." The last words were in answer to the look the elder lady gave him; a kindly questioning look, which the handsome eyes met so frankly that the little ceremony closed, as usual, with a motherly kiss. "For Mrs. John Brooke, with the maker's congratulations and compliments. Bless you, Beth! What a refreshing spectacle you are, Jo. Amy, you are getting altogether too handsome for a single lady." As Laurie spoke, he delivered a brown paper parcel to Meg, pulled Beth's hair-ribbon, stared at Jo's big pinafore, and fell into an attitude of mock rapture before Amy, then shook hands all round, and every one began to talk. "Where is John?" asked Meg anxiously. "Stopped to get the license for to-morrow, ma'am." "Which side won the last match, Teddy?" inquired Jo, who persisted in feeling an interest in manly sports, despite her nineteen years. "Ours, of course. Wish you'd been there to see." "How is the lovely Miss Randal?" asked Amy, with a significant smile. "More cruel than ever; don't you see how I'm pining away?" and Laurie gave his broad chest a sounding slap and heaved a melodramatic sigh. "What's the last joke? Undo the bundle and see, Meg," said Beth, eying the knobby parcel with curiosity. "It's a useful thing to have in the house in case of fire or thieves," observed Laurie, as a watchman's rattle appeared, amid the laughter of the girls. [Illustration: A small watchman's rattle] "Any time when John is away, and you get frightened, Mrs. Meg, just swing that out of the front window, and it will rouse the neighborhood in a jiffy. Nice thing, isn't it?" and Laurie gave them a sample of its powers that made them cover up their ears. "There's gratitude for you! and speaking of gratitude reminds me to mention that you may thank Hannah for saving your wedding-cake from destruction. I saw it going into your house as I came by, and if she hadn't defended it manfully I'd have had a pick at it, for it looked like a remarkably plummy one." "I wonder if you will ever grow up, Laurie," said Meg, in a matronly tone. "I'm doing my best, ma'am, but can't get much higher, I'm afraid, as six feet is about all men can do in these degenerate days," responded the young gentleman, whose head was about level with the little chandelier. "I suppose it would be profanation to eat anything in this spick and span new bower, so, as I'm tremendously hungry, I propose an adjournment," he added presently. "Mother and I are going to wait for John. There are some last things to settle," said Meg, bustling away. "Beth and I are going over to Kitty Bryant's to get more flowers for to-morrow," added Amy, tying a picturesque hat over her picturesque curls, and enjoying the effect as much as anybody. "Come, Jo, don't desert a fellow. I'm in such a state of exhaustion I can't get home without help. Don't take off your apron, whatever you do; it's peculiarly becoming," said Laurie, as Jo bestowed his especial aversion in her capacious pocket, and offered him her arm to support his feeble steps. "Now, Teddy, I want to talk seriously to you about to-morrow," began Jo, as they strolled away together. "You _must_ promise to behave well, and not cut up any pranks, and spoil our plans." "Not a prank." "And don't say funny things when we ought to be sober." "I never do; you are the one for that." "And I implore you not to look at me during the ceremony; I shall certainly laugh if you do." "You won't see me; you'll be crying so hard that the thick fog round you will obscure the prospect." "I never cry unless for some great affliction." "Such as fellows going to college, hey?" cut in Laurie, with a suggestive laugh. "Don't be a peacock. I only moaned a trifle to keep the girls company." "Exactly. I say, Jo, how is grandpa this week; pretty amiable?" "Very; why, have you got into a scrape, and want to know how he'll take it?" asked Jo rather sharply. "Now, Jo, do you think I'd look your mother in the face, and say 'All right,' if it wasn't?" and Laurie stopped short, with an injured air. "No, I don't." "Then don't go and be suspicious; I only want some money," said Laurie, walking on again, appeased by her hearty tone. "You spend a great deal, Teddy." "Bless you, _I_ don't spend it; it spends itself, somehow, and is gone before I know it." "You are so generous and kind-hearted that you let people borrow, and can't say 'No' to any one. We heard about Henshaw, and all you did for him. If you always spent money in that way, no one would blame you," said Jo warmly. "Oh, he made a mountain out of a mole-hill. You wouldn't have me let that fine fellow work himself to death, just for the want of a little help, when he is worth a dozen of us lazy chaps, would you?" "Of course not; but I don't see the use of your having seventeen waistcoats, endless neckties, and a new hat every time you come home. I thought you'd got over the dandy period; but every now and then it breaks out in a new spot. Just now it's the fashion to be hideous,--to make your head look like a scrubbing-brush, wear a strait-jacket, orange gloves, and clumping, square-toed boots. If it was cheap ugliness, I'd say nothing; but it costs as much as the other, and I don't get any satisfaction out of it." Laurie threw back his head, and laughed so heartily at this attack, that the felt-basin fell off, and Jo walked on it, which insult only afforded him an opportunity for expatiating on the advantages of a rough-and-ready costume, as he folded up the maltreated hat, and stuffed it into his pocket. "Don't lecture any more, there's a good soul! I have enough all through the week, and like to enjoy myself when I come home. I'll get myself up regardless of expense, to-morrow, and be a satisfaction to my friends." "I'll leave you in peace if you'll _only_ let your hair grow. I'm not aristocratic, but I do object to being seen with a person who looks like a young prize-fighter," observed Jo severely. "This unassuming style promotes study; that's why we adopt it," returned Laurie, who certainly could not be accused of vanity, having voluntarily sacrificed a handsome curly crop to the demand for quarter-of-an-inch-long stubble. "By the way, Jo, I think that little Parker is really getting desperate about Amy. He talks of her constantly, writes poetry, and moons about in a most suspicious manner. He'd better nip his little passion in the bud, hadn't he?" added Laurie, in a confidential, elder-brotherly tone, after a minute's silence. "Of course he had; we don't want any more marrying in this family for years to come. Mercy on us, what _are_ the children thinking of?" and Jo looked as much scandalized as if Amy and little Parker were not yet in their teens. "It's a fast age, and I don't know what we are coming to, ma'am. You are a mere infant, but you'll go next, Jo, and we'll be left lamenting," said Laurie, shaking his head over the degeneracy of the times. "Don't be alarmed; I'm not one of the agreeable sort. Nobody will want me, and it's a mercy, for there should always be one old maid in a family." "You won't give any one a chance," said Laurie, with a sidelong glance, and a little more color than before in his sunburnt face. "You won't show the soft side of your character; and if a fellow gets a peep at it by accident, and can't help showing that he likes it, you treat him as Mrs. Gummidge did her sweetheart,--throw cold water over him,--and get so thorny no one dares touch or look at you." "I don't like that sort of thing; I'm too busy to be worried with nonsense, and I think it's dreadful to break up families so. Now don't say any more about it; Meg's wedding has turned all our heads, and we talk of nothing but lovers and such absurdities. I don't wish to get cross, so let's change the subject;" and Jo looked quite ready to fling cold water on the slightest provocation. Whatever his feelings might have been, Laurie found a vent for them in a long low whistle, and the fearful prediction, as they parted at the gate, "Mark my words, Jo, you'll go next." [Illustration: Tail-piece] [Illustration: The First Wedding]

Gossip The narrator begins Part II with some "gossip" about the March family. Three years later, the war has ended, and Mr. March is a minister and still quietly heads the household as its conscience and guide. John Brooke served in the army, was wounded and discharged, and is working as a bookkeeper to earn a home for Meg. Meg is preparing for married life, learning housekeeping, and she is greatly in love, although occasionally envious of the grand wedding and life had by her newlywed friends Sallie and Ned Moffat. Dovecote, Meg's new home, is modest but fitted out with great care and love from family and friends. Even Aunt March, who swore not to give a penny, found a way to give a full set of linens through another relative. Jo has devoted herself to writing and Beth, who was weakened permanently by the scarlet fever, and is forever struggling to get well. Amy works as a companion for Aunt March, who tempted Amy with drawing lessons. Laurie, at college to please his grandfather, spends a good deal of time frolicking and enjoying and helping friends, with the love of his grandfather and the Marches his best talisman against idle indulgence. Laurie often brings his college friends home, who enjoy Jo's boyish camaraderie and Amy's pretty and charming companionship. Laurie occasionally implies that he has feelings for Jo, but she spurns his overtures

The Particular Structure of the New Government and the Distribution of Power Among Its Different Parts. For the Independent Journal. Wednesday, January 30, 1788. MADISON To the People of the State of New York: HAVING reviewed the general form of the proposed government and the general mass of power allotted to it, I proceed to examine the particular structure of this government, and the distribution of this mass of power among its constituent parts. One of the principal objections inculcated by the more respectable adversaries to the Constitution, is its supposed violation of the political maxim, that the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments ought to be separate and distinct. In the structure of the federal government, no regard, it is said, seems to have been paid to this essential precaution in favor of liberty. The several departments of power are distributed and blended in such a manner as at once to destroy all symmetry and beauty of form, and to expose some of the essential parts of the edifice to the danger of being crushed by the disproportionate weight of other parts. No political truth is certainly of greater intrinsic value, or is stamped with the authority of more enlightened patrons of liberty, than that on which the objection is founded. The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. Were the federal Constitution, therefore, really chargeable with the accumulation of power, or with a mixture of powers, having a dangerous tendency to such an accumulation, no further arguments would be necessary to inspire a universal reprobation of the system. I persuade myself, however, that it will be made apparent to every one, that the charge cannot be supported, and that the maxim on which it relies has been totally misconceived and misapplied. In order to form correct ideas on this important subject, it will be proper to investigate the sense in which the preservation of liberty requires that the three great departments of power should be separate and distinct. The oracle who is always consulted and cited on this subject is the celebrated Montesquieu. If he be not the author of this invaluable precept in the science of politics, he has the merit at least of displaying and recommending it most effectually to the attention of mankind. Let us endeavor, in the first place, to ascertain his meaning on this point. The British Constitution was to Montesquieu what Homer has been to the didactic writers on epic poetry. As the latter have considered the work of the immortal bard as the perfect model from which the principles and rules of the epic art were to be drawn, and by which all similar works were to be judged, so this great political critic appears to have viewed the Constitution of England as the standard, or to use his own expression, as the mirror of political liberty; and to have delivered, in the form of elementary truths, the several characteristic principles of that particular system. That we may be sure, then, not to mistake his meaning in this case, let us recur to the source from which the maxim was drawn. On the slightest view of the British Constitution, we must perceive that the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments are by no means totally separate and distinct from each other. The executive magistrate forms an integral part of the legislative authority. He alone has the prerogative of making treaties with foreign sovereigns, which, when made, have, under certain limitations, the force of legislative acts. All the members of the judiciary department are appointed by him, can be removed by him on the address of the two Houses of Parliament, and form, when he pleases to consult them, one of his constitutional councils. One branch of the legislative department forms also a great constitutional council to the executive chief, as, on another hand, it is the sole depositary of judicial power in cases of impeachment, and is invested with the supreme appellate jurisdiction in all other cases. The judges, again, are so far connected with the legislative department as often to attend and participate in its deliberations, though not admitted to a legislative vote. From these facts, by which Montesquieu was guided, it may clearly be inferred that, in saying "There can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or body of magistrates," or, "if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers," he did not mean that these departments ought to have no PARTIAL AGENCY in, or no CONTROL over, the acts of each other. His meaning, as his own words import, and still more conclusively as illustrated by the example in his eye, can amount to no more than this, that where the WHOLE power of one department is exercised by the same hands which possess the WHOLE power of another department, the fundamental principles of a free constitution are subverted. This would have been the case in the constitution examined by him, if the king, who is the sole executive magistrate, had possessed also the complete legislative power, or the supreme administration of justice; or if the entire legislative body had possessed the supreme judiciary, or the supreme executive authority. This, however, is not among the vices of that constitution. The magistrate in whom the whole executive power resides cannot of himself make a law, though he can put a negative on every law; nor administer justice in person, though he has the appointment of those who do administer it. The judges can exercise no executive prerogative, though they are shoots from the executive stock; nor any legislative function, though they may be advised with by the legislative councils. The entire legislature can perform no judiciary act, though by the joint act of two of its branches the judges may be removed from their offices, and though one of its branches is possessed of the judicial power in the last resort. The entire legislature, again, can exercise no executive prerogative, though one of its branches constitutes the supreme executive magistracy, and another, on the impeachment of a third, can try and condemn all the subordinate officers in the executive department. The reasons on which Montesquieu grounds his maxim are a further demonstration of his meaning. "When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person or body," says he, "there can be no liberty, because apprehensions may arise lest THE SAME monarch or senate should ENACT tyrannical laws to EXECUTE them in a tyrannical manner." Again: "Were the power of judging joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control, for THE JUDGE would then be THE LEGISLATOR. Were it joined to the executive power, THE JUDGE might behave with all the violence of AN OPPRESSOR." Some of these reasons are more fully explained in other passages; but briefly stated as they are here, they sufficiently establish the meaning which we have put on this celebrated maxim of this celebrated author. If we look into the constitutions of the several States, we find that, notwithstanding the emphatical and, in some instances, the unqualified terms in which this axiom has been laid down, there is not a single instance in which the several departments of power have been kept absolutely separate and distinct. New Hampshire, whose constitution was the last formed, seems to have been fully aware of the impossibility and inexpediency of avoiding any mixture whatever of these departments, and has qualified the doctrine by declaring "that the legislative, executive, and judiciary powers ought to be kept as separate from, and independent of, each other AS THE NATURE OF A FREE GOVERNMENT WILL ADMIT; OR AS IS CONSISTENT WITH THAT CHAIN OF CONNECTION THAT BINDS THE WHOLE FABRIC OF THE CONSTITUTION IN ONE INDISSOLUBLE BOND OF UNITY AND AMITY." Her constitution accordingly mixes these departments in several respects. The Senate, which is a branch of the legislative department, is also a judicial tribunal for the trial of impeachments. The President, who is the head of the executive department, is the presiding member also of the Senate; and, besides an equal vote in all cases, has a casting vote in case of a tie. The executive head is himself eventually elective every year by the legislative department, and his council is every year chosen by and from the members of the same department. Several of the officers of state are also appointed by the legislature. And the members of the judiciary department are appointed by the executive department. The constitution of Massachusetts has observed a sufficient though less pointed caution, in expressing this fundamental article of liberty. It declares "that the legislative department shall never exercise the executive and judicial powers, or either of them; the executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them; the judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive powers, or either of them." This declaration corresponds precisely with the doctrine of Montesquieu, as it has been explained, and is not in a single point violated by the plan of the convention. It goes no farther than to prohibit any one of the entire departments from exercising the powers of another department. In the very Constitution to which it is prefixed, a partial mixture of powers has been admitted. The executive magistrate has a qualified negative on the legislative body, and the Senate, which is a part of the legislature, is a court of impeachment for members both of the executive and judiciary departments. The members of the judiciary department, again, are appointable by the executive department, and removable by the same authority on the address of the two legislative branches. Lastly, a number of the officers of government are annually appointed by the legislative department. As the appointment to offices, particularly executive offices, is in its nature an executive function, the compilers of the Constitution have, in this last point at least, violated the rule established by themselves. I pass over the constitutions of Rhode Island and Connecticut, because they were formed prior to the Revolution, and even before the principle under examination had become an object of political attention. The constitution of New York contains no declaration on this subject; but appears very clearly to have been framed with an eye to the danger of improperly blending the different departments. It gives, nevertheless, to the executive magistrate, a partial control over the legislative department; and, what is more, gives a like control to the judiciary department; and even blends the executive and judiciary departments in the exercise of this control. In its council of appointment members of the legislative are associated with the executive authority, in the appointment of officers, both executive and judiciary. And its court for the trial of impeachments and correction of errors is to consist of one branch of the legislature and the principal members of the judiciary department. The constitution of New Jersey has blended the different powers of government more than any of the preceding. The governor, who is the executive magistrate, is appointed by the legislature; is chancellor and ordinary, or surrogate of the State; is a member of the Supreme Court of Appeals, and president, with a casting vote, of one of the legislative branches. The same legislative branch acts again as executive council of the governor, and with him constitutes the Court of Appeals. The members of the judiciary department are appointed by the legislative department and removable by one branch of it, on the impeachment of the other. According to the constitution of Pennsylvania, the president, who is the head of the executive department, is annually elected by a vote in which the legislative department predominates. In conjunction with an executive council, he appoints the members of the judiciary department, and forms a court of impeachment for trial of all officers, judiciary as well as executive. The judges of the Supreme Court and justices of the peace seem also to be removable by the legislature; and the executive power of pardoning in certain cases, to be referred to the same department. The members of the executive council are made EX-OFFICIO justices of peace throughout the State. In Delaware, the chief executive magistrate is annually elected by the legislative department. The speakers of the two legislative branches are vice-presidents in the executive department. The executive chief, with six others, appointed, three by each of the legislative branches constitutes the Supreme Court of Appeals; he is joined with the legislative department in the appointment of the other judges. Throughout the States, it appears that the members of the legislature may at the same time be justices of the peace; in this State, the members of one branch of it are EX-OFFICIO justices of the peace; as are also the members of the executive council. The principal officers of the executive department are appointed by the legislative; and one branch of the latter forms a court of impeachments. All officers may be removed on address of the legislature. Maryland has adopted the maxim in the most unqualified terms; declaring that the legislative, executive, and judicial powers of government ought to be forever separate and distinct from each other. Her constitution, notwithstanding, makes the executive magistrate appointable by the legislative department; and the members of the judiciary by the executive department. The language of Virginia is still more pointed on this subject. Her constitution declares, "that the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments shall be separate and distinct; so that neither exercise the powers properly belonging to the other; nor shall any person exercise the powers of more than one of them at the same time, except that the justices of county courts shall be eligible to either House of Assembly." Yet we find not only this express exception, with respect to the members of the inferior courts, but that the chief magistrate, with his executive council, are appointable by the legislature; that two members of the latter are triennially displaced at the pleasure of the legislature; and that all the principal offices, both executive and judiciary, are filled by the same department. The executive prerogative of pardon, also, is in one case vested in the legislative department. The constitution of North Carolina, which declares "that the legislative, executive, and supreme judicial powers of government ought to be forever separate and distinct from each other," refers, at the same time, to the legislative department, the appointment not only of the executive chief, but all the principal officers within both that and the judiciary department. In South Carolina, the constitution makes the executive magistracy eligible by the legislative department. It gives to the latter, also, the appointment of the members of the judiciary department, including even justices of the peace and sheriffs; and the appointment of officers in the executive department, down to captains in the army and navy of the State. In the constitution of Georgia, where it is declared "that the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments shall be separate and distinct, so that neither exercise the powers properly belonging to the other," we find that the executive department is to be filled by appointments of the legislature; and the executive prerogative of pardon to be finally exercised by the same authority. Even justices of the peace are to be appointed by the legislature. In citing these cases, in which the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments have not been kept totally separate and distinct, I wish not to be regarded as an advocate for the particular organizations of the several State governments. I am fully aware that among the many excellent principles which they exemplify, they carry strong marks of the haste, and still stronger of the inexperience, under which they were framed. It is but too obvious that in some instances the fundamental principle under consideration has been violated by too great a mixture, and even an actual consolidation, of the different powers; and that in no instance has a competent provision been made for maintaining in practice the separation delineated on paper. What I have wished to evince is, that the charge brought against the proposed Constitution, of violating the sacred maxim of free government, is warranted neither by the real meaning annexed to that maxim by its author, nor by the sense in which it has hitherto been understood in America. This interesting subject will be resumed in the ensuing paper. PUBLIUS

James Madison begins this paper by telling his readers that he is going to examine a specific principle of republican government: "separation of powers." One of the principal objections to the constitution is that it violates this important principle. Its opponents claim that the three branches of government are not sufficiently separate and independent and that power is too unevenly distributed. It is feared that the new government will collapse, and that liberty will be threatened. Madison agrees with those who place great importance on the separation of powers, especially on the point that an unequal division of power could result in the loss of liberty. If one branch has too much power, it does not matter how many men govern or how they obtain office. Too much power in one branch of government "is the very definition of tyranny." If these claims were true, Madison says that no other arguments would need oppose it. He, however, is convinced that this charge cannot be supported. How separate should each branch of government be? Montesquieu, the French political writer, formulated this principle of government. He took the British constitution as his model, which he called "the mirror of political liberty." However, the most casual glance at that constitution reveals that the branches of the British government are far from totally separate or distinct. For example, the English king acts in a legislative capacity when he enters into treaties with foreign sovereigns: once treaties are signed they have the force of legislative acts. The English king not only appoints and removes judges; he frequently consults them. The judicial branch, then, acts in an advisory capacity to the executive branch. The legislative branch advises the king on constitutional matters and, in cases of impeachment, the Houses of Lords assumes judicial power. From these few facts, Madison infers that Montesquieu, when he wrote that "there can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person . . . or, if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers," did not mean that the powers should remain absolutely separate or that each branch should not have any control over the other branches. Madison continues that if one looks at the state constitutions, there is no state in which the branches of government are absolutely separate and distinct. The state constitutions do not violate the separation of power doctrine set forth by Montesquieu, Madison concludes, and neither does the United States Constitution.

|IT was broad daylight when Anne awoke and sat up in bed, staring confusedly at the window through which a flood of cheery sunshine was pouring and outside of which something white and feathery waved across glimpses of blue sky. For a moment she could not remember where she was. First came a delightful thrill, as something very pleasant; then a horrible remembrance. This was Green Gables and they didn't want her because she wasn't a boy! But it was morning and, yes, it was a cherry-tree in full bloom outside of her window. With a bound she was out of bed and across the floor. She pushed up the sash--it went up stiffly and creakily, as if it hadn't been opened for a long time, which was the case; and it stuck so tight that nothing was needed to hold it up. Anne dropped on her knees and gazed out into the June morning, her eyes glistening with delight. Oh, wasn't it beautiful? Wasn't it a lovely place? Suppose she wasn't really going to stay here! She would imagine she was. There was scope for imagination here. A huge cherry-tree grew outside, so close that its boughs tapped against the house, and it was so thick-set with blossoms that hardly a leaf was to be seen. On both sides of the house was a big orchard, one of apple-trees and one of cherry-trees, also showered over with blossoms; and their grass was all sprinkled with dandelions. In the garden below were lilac-trees purple with flowers, and their dizzily sweet fragrance drifted up to the window on the morning wind. Below the garden a green field lush with clover sloped down to the hollow where the brook ran and where scores of white birches grew, upspringing airily out of an undergrowth suggestive of delightful possibilities in ferns and mosses and woodsy things generally. Beyond it was a hill, green and feathery with spruce and fir; there was a gap in it where the gray gable end of the little house she had seen from the other side of the Lake of Shining Waters was visible. Off to the left were the big barns and beyond them, away down over green, low-sloping fields, was a sparkling blue glimpse of sea. Anne's beauty-loving eyes lingered on it all, taking everything greedily in. She had looked on so many unlovely places in her life, poor child; but this was as lovely as anything she had ever dreamed. She knelt there, lost to everything but the loveliness around her, until she was startled by a hand on her shoulder. Marilla had come in unheard by the small dreamer. "It's time you were dressed," she said curtly. Marilla really did not know how to talk to the child, and her uncomfortable ignorance made her crisp and curt when she did not mean to be. Anne stood up and drew a long breath. "Oh, isn't it wonderful?" she said, waving her hand comprehensively at the good world outside. "It's a big tree," said Marilla, "and it blooms great, but the fruit don't amount to much never--small and wormy." "Oh, I don't mean just the tree; of course it's lovely--yes, it's _radiantly_ lovely--it blooms as if it meant it--but I meant everything, the garden and the orchard and the brook and the woods, the whole big dear world. Don't you feel as if you just loved the world on a morning like this? And I can hear the brook laughing all the way up here. Have you ever noticed what cheerful things brooks are? They're always laughing. Even in winter-time I've heard them under the ice. I'm so glad there's a brook near Green Gables. Perhaps you think it doesn't make any difference to me when you're not going to keep me, but it does. I shall always like to remember that there is a brook at Green Gables even if I never see it again. If there wasn't a brook I'd be _haunted_ by the uncomfortable feeling that there ought to be one. I'm not in the depths of despair this morning. I never can be in the morning. Isn't it a splendid thing that there are mornings? But I feel very sad. I've just been imagining that it was really me you wanted after all and that I was to stay here for ever and ever. It was a great comfort while it lasted. But the worst of imagining things is that the time comes when you have to stop and that hurts." "You'd better get dressed and come down-stairs and never mind your imaginings," said Marilla as soon as she could get a word in edgewise. "Breakfast is waiting. Wash your face and comb your hair. Leave the window up and turn your bedclothes back over the foot of the bed. Be as smart as you can." Anne could evidently be smart to some purpose for she was down-stairs in ten minutes' time, with her clothes neatly on, her hair brushed and braided, her face washed, and a comfortable consciousness pervading her soul that she had fulfilled all Marilla's requirements. As a matter of fact, however, she had forgotten to turn back the bedclothes. "I'm pretty hungry this morning," she announced as she slipped into the chair Marilla placed for her. "The world doesn't seem such a howling wilderness as it did last night. I'm so glad it's a sunshiny morning. But I like rainy mornings real well, too. All sorts of mornings are interesting, don't you think? You don't know what's going to happen through the day, and there's so much scope for imagination. But I'm glad it's not rainy today because it's easier to be cheerful and bear up under affliction on a sunshiny day. I feel that I have a good deal to bear up under. It's all very well to read about sorrows and imagine yourself living through them heroically, but it's not so nice when you really come to have them, is it?" "For pity's sake hold your tongue," said Marilla. "You talk entirely too much for a little girl." Thereupon Anne held her tongue so obediently and thoroughly that her continued silence made Marilla rather nervous, as if in the presence of something not exactly natural. Matthew also held his tongue,--but this was natural,--so that the meal was a very silent one. As it progressed Anne became more and more abstracted, eating mechanically, with her big eyes fixed unswervingly and unseeingly on the sky outside the window. This made Marilla more nervous than ever; she had an uncomfortable feeling that while this odd child's body might be there at the table her spirit was far away in some remote airy cloudland, borne aloft on the wings of imagination. Who would want such a child about the place? Yet Matthew wished to keep her, of all unaccountable things! Marilla felt that he wanted it just as much this morning as he had the night before, and that he would go on wanting it. That was Matthew's way--take a whim into his head and cling to it with the most amazing silent persistency--a persistency ten times more potent and effectual in its very silence than if he had talked it out. When the meal was ended Anne came out of her reverie and offered to wash the dishes. "Can you wash dishes right?" asked Marilla distrustfully. "Pretty well. I'm better at looking after children, though. I've had so much experience at that. It's such a pity you haven't any here for me to look after." "I don't feel as if I wanted any more children to look after than I've got at present. _You're_ problem enough in all conscience. What's to be done with you I don't know. Matthew is a most ridiculous man." "I think he's lovely," said Anne reproachfully. "He is so very sympathetic. He didn't mind how much I talked--he seemed to like it. I felt that he was a kindred spirit as soon as ever I saw him." "You're both queer enough, if that's what you mean by kindred spirits," said Marilla with a sniff. "Yes, you may wash the dishes. Take plenty of hot water, and be sure you dry them well. I've got enough to attend to this morning for I'll have to drive over to White Sands in the afternoon and see Mrs. Spencer. You'll come with me and we'll settle what's to be done with you. After you've finished the dishes go up-stairs and make your bed." Anne washed the dishes deftly enough, as Marilla who kept a sharp eye on the process, discerned. Later on she made her bed less successfully, for she had never learned the art of wrestling with a feather tick. But is was done somehow and smoothed down; and then Marilla, to get rid of her, told her she might go out-of-doors and amuse herself until dinner time. Anne flew to the door, face alight, eyes glowing. On the very threshold she stopped short, wheeled about, came back and sat down by the table, light and glow as effectually blotted out as if some one had clapped an extinguisher on her. "What's the matter now?" demanded Marilla. "I don't dare go out," said Anne, in the tone of a martyr relinquishing all earthly joys. "If I can't stay here there is no use in my loving Green Gables. And if I go out there and get acquainted with all those trees and flowers and the orchard and the brook I'll not be able to help loving it. It's hard enough now, so I won't make it any harder. I want to go out so much--everything seems to be calling to me, 'Anne, Anne, come out to us. Anne, Anne, we want a playmate'--but it's better not. There is no use in loving things if you have to be torn from them, is there? And it's so hard to keep from loving things, isn't it? That was why I was so glad when I thought I was going to live here. I thought I'd have so many things to love and nothing to hinder me. But that brief dream is over. I am resigned to my fate now, so I don't think I'll go out for fear I'll get unresigned again. What is the name of that geranium on the window-sill, please?" "That's the apple-scented geranium." "Oh, I don't mean that sort of a name. I mean just a name you gave it yourself. Didn't you give it a name? May I give it one then? May I call it--let me see--Bonny would do--may I call it Bonny while I'm here? Oh, do let me!" "Goodness, I don't care. But where on earth is the sense of naming a geranium?" "Oh, I like things to have handles even if they are only geraniums. It makes them seem more like people. How do you know but that it hurts a geranium's feelings just to be called a geranium and nothing else? You wouldn't like to be called nothing but a woman all the time. Yes, I shall call it Bonny. I named that cherry-tree outside my bedroom window this morning. I called it Snow Queen because it was so white. Of course, it won't always be in blossom, but one can imagine that it is, can't one?" "I never in all my life saw or heard anything to equal her," muttered Marilla, beating a retreat down to the cellar after potatoes. "She is kind of interesting as Matthew says. I can feel already that I'm wondering what on earth she'll say next. She'll be casting a spell over me, too. She's cast it over Matthew. That look he gave me when he went out said everything he said or hinted last night over again. I wish he was like other men and would talk things out. A body could answer back then and argue him into reason. But what's to be done with a man who just _looks?_" Anne had relapsed into reverie, with her chin in her hands and her eyes on the sky, when Marilla returned from her cellar pilgrimage. There Marilla left her until the early dinner was on the table. "I suppose I can have the mare and buggy this afternoon, Matthew?" said Marilla. Matthew nodded and looked wistfully at Anne. Marilla intercepted the look and said grimly: "I'm going to drive over to White Sands and settle this thing. I'll take Anne with me and Mrs. Spencer will probably make arrangements to send her back to Nova Scotia at once. I'll set your tea out for you and I'll be home in time to milk the cows." Still Matthew said nothing and Marilla had a sense of having wasted words and breath. There is nothing more aggravating than a man who won't talk back--unless it is a woman who won't. Matthew hitched the sorrel into the buggy in due time and Marilla and Anne set off. Matthew opened the yard gate for them and as they drove slowly through, he said, to nobody in particular as it seemed: "Little Jerry Buote from the Creek was here this morning, and I told him I guessed I'd hire him for the summer." Marilla made no reply, but she hit the unlucky sorrel such a vicious clip with the whip that the fat mare, unused to such treatment, whizzed indignantly down the lane at an alarming pace. Marilla looked back once as the buggy bounced along and saw that aggravating Matthew leaning over the gate, looking wistfully after them.

Anne wakes up feeling a little better than the night before. She spends the early morning looking out the window of the east gable at the beautiful nature outside. Marilla comes to the bedroom and tells Anne to wash up, get dressed, and come downstairs for breakfast. Anne tries her best to look nice and leave the room looking neat. After breakfast, Anne offers to wash the dishes. Marilla allows her to do so and determines that Anne is relatively skilled at doing household chores. Marilla tells Anne that she can go outside for a couple of hours, but Anne responds that she doesn't want to because she will fall in love with Green Gables and it will make it even harder to leave. Anne tells Marilla about the names she has already given some of the plants and trees at Green Gables. Marilla thinks to herself that Anne has cast a spell over Matthew and that she is beginning to fall under Anne's spell as well. That afternoon, Marilla and Anne ride in the buggy to Mrs. Spencer's house to see about sending Anne back to the orphan asylum. As the buggy pulls away from Green Gables, Marilla sees Matthew looking after them wistfully

ACT V SCENE I. --The Library Enter SURFACE and SERVANT SURFACE. Mr. Stanley! and why should you think I would see him?--you must know he came to ask something! SERVANT. Sir--I shouldn't have let him in but that Mr. Rowley came to the Door with him. SURFACE. Pshaw!--Blockhead to suppose that I should now be in a Temper to receive visits from poor Relations!--well why don't you show the Fellow up? SERVANT. I will--Sir--Why, Sir--it was not my Fault that Sir Peter discover'd my Lady---- SURFACE. Go, fool!-- [Exit SERVANT.] Sure Fortune never play'd a man of my policy such a Trick before--my character with Sir Peter!--my Hopes with Maria!--destroy'd in a moment!--I'm in a rare Humour to listen to other People's Distresses!--I shan't be able to bestow even a benevolent sentiment on Stanley--So! here--He comes and Rowley with him--I MUST try to recover myself, and put a little Charity into my Face however.---- [Exit.] Enter SIR OLIVER and ROWLEY SIR OLIVER. What! does He avoid us? that was He--was it not? ROWLEY. It was Sir--but I doubt you are come a little too abruptly--his Nerves are so weak that the sight of a poor Relation may be too much for him--I should have gone first to break you to him. SIR OLIVER. A Plague of his Nerves--yet this is He whom Sir Peter extolls as a Man of the most Benevolent way of thinking!-- ROWLEY. As to his way of thinking--I can't pretend to decide[,] for, to do him justice He appears to have as much speculative Benevolence as any private Gentleman in the Kingdom--though he is seldom so sensual as to indulge himself in the exercise of it---- SIR OLIVER. Yet [he] has a string of charitable Sentiments I suppose at his Fingers' ends!-- ROWLEY. Or, rather at his Tongue's end Sir Oliver; for I believe there is no sentiment he has more faith in than that 'Charity begins at Home.' SIR OLIVER. And his I presume is of that domestic sort which never stirs abroad at all. ROWLEY. I doubt you'll find it so--but He's coming--I mustn't seem to interrupt you--and you know immediately--as you leave him--I come in to announce--your arrival in your real Character. SIR OLIVER. True--and afterwards you'll meet me at Sir Peter's---- ROWLEY. Without losing a moment. [Exit.] SIR OLIVER. So--I see he has premeditated a Denial by the Complaisance of his Features. Enter SURFACE SURFACE. Sir--I beg you ten thousand Pardons for keeping--you a moment waiting--Mr. Stanley--I presume---- SIR OLIVER. At your Service. SURFACE. Sir--I beg you will do me the honour to sit down--I entreat you Sir. SIR OLIVER. Dear Sir there's no occasion--too civil by half! SURFACE. I have not the Pleasure of knowing you, Mr. Stanley--but I am extremely happy to see you look so well--you were nearly related to my mother--I think Mr. Stanley---- SIR OLIVER. I was Sir--so nearly that my present Poverty I fear may do discredit to her Wealthy Children--else I should not have presumed to trouble you.-- SURFACE. Dear Sir--there needs no apology--He that is in Distress tho' a stranger has a right to claim kindred with the wealthy--I am sure I wish I was of that class, and had it in my power to offer you even a small relief. SIR OLIVER. If your Unkle, Sir Oliver were here--I should have a Friend---- SURFACE. I wish He was Sir, with all my Heart--you should not want an advocate with him--believe me Sir. SIR OLIVER. I should not need one--my Distresses would recommend me.--but I imagined--his Bounty had enabled you to become the agent of his Charity. SURFACE. My dear Sir--you are strangely misinformed--Sir Oliver is a worthy Man, a worthy man--a very worthy sort of Man--but avarice Mr. Stanley is the vice of age--I will tell you my good Sir in confidence:--what he has done for me has been a mere--nothing[;] tho' People I know have thought otherwise and for my Part I never chose to contradict the Report. SIR OLIVER. What!--has he never transmitted--you--Bullion--Rupees--Pagodas! SURFACE. O Dear Sir--Nothing of the kind--no--no--a few Presents now and then--china, shawls, congo Tea, Avadavats--and indian Crackers--little more, believe me. SIR OLIVER. Here's Gratitude for twelve thousand pounds!--Avadavats and indian Crackers. SURFACE. Then my dear--Sir--you have heard, I doubt not, of the extravagance of my Brother--Sir--there are very few would credit what I have done for that unfortunate young man. SIR OLIVER. Not I for one! SURFACE. The sums I have lent him! indeed--I have been exceedingly to blame--it was an amiable weakness! however I don't pretend to defend it--and now I feel it doubly culpable--since it has deprived me of the power of serving YOU Mr. Stanley as my Heart directs---- SIR OLIVER. Dissembler! Then Sir--you cannot assist me? SURFACE. At Present it grieves me to say I cannot--but whenever I have the ability, you may depend upon hearing from me. SIR OLIVER. I am extremely sorry---- SURFACE. Not more than I am believe me--to pity without the Power to relieve is still more painful than to ask and be denied---- SIR OLIVER. Kind Sir--your most obedient humble servant. SURFACE. You leave me deeply affected Mr. Stanley--William--be ready to open the door---- SIR OLIVER. O, Dear Sir, no ceremony---- SURFACE. Your very obedient---- SIR OLIVER. Your most obsequious---- SURFACE. You may depend on hearing from me whenever I can be of service---- SIR OLIVER. Sweet Sir--you are too good---- SURFACE. In the mean time I wish you Health and Spirits---- SIR OLIVER. Your ever grateful and perpetual humble Servant---- SURFACE. Sir--yours as sincerely---- SIR OLIVER. Charles!--you are my Heir. [Exit.] SURFACE, solus Soh!--This is one bad effect of a good Character--it invites applications from the unfortunate and there needs no small degree of address to gain the reputation of Benevolence without incurring the expence.--The silver ore of pure Charity is an expensive article in the catalogue of a man's good Qualities--whereas the sentimental French Plate I use instead of it makes just as good a shew--and pays no tax. Enter ROWLEY ROWLEY. Mr. Surface--your Servant: I was apprehensive of interrupting you, tho' my Business demands immediate attention--as this Note will inform you---- SURFACE. Always Happy to see Mr. Rowley--how--Oliver--Surface!--My Unkle arrived! ROWLEY. He is indeed--we have just parted--quite well--after a speedy voyage--and impatient to embrace his worthy Nephew. SURFACE. I am astonished!--William[!] stop Mr. Stanley, if He's not gone---- ROWLEY. O--He's out of reach--I believe. SURFACE. Why didn't you let me know this when you came in together.-- ROWLEY. I thought you had particular--Business--but must be gone to inform your Brother, and appoint him here to meet his Uncle. He will be with you in a quarter of an hour---- SURFACE. So he says. Well--I am strangely overjoy'd at his coming--never to be sure was anything so damn'd unlucky! ROWLEY. You will be delighted to see how well He looks. SURFACE. O--I'm rejoiced to hear it--just at this time---- ROWLEY. I'll tell him how impatiently you expect him---- SURFACE. Do--do--pray--give my best duty and affection--indeed, I cannot express the sensations I feel at the thought of seeing him!--certainly his coming just at this Time is the cruellest piece of ill Fortune---- [Exeunt.] SCENE II. --At SIR PETER'S House Enter MRS. CANDOUR and SERVANT SERVANT. Indeed Ma'am, my Lady will see nobody at Present. MRS. CANDOUR. Did you tell her it was her Friend Mrs. Candour---- SERVANT. Yes Ma'am but she begs you will excuse her---- MRS. CANDOUR. Do go again--I shall be glad to see her if it be only for a moment--for I am sure she must be in great Distress [exit MAID] --Dear Heart--how provoking!--I'm not mistress of half the circumstances!--We shall have the whole affair in the newspapers with the Names of the Parties at length before I have dropt the story at a dozen houses. Enter SIR BENJAMIN Sir Benjamin you have heard, I suppose---- SIR BENJAMIN. Of Lady Teazle and Mr. Surface---- MRS. CANDOUR. And Sir Peter's Discovery---- SIR BENJAMIN. O the strangest Piece of Business to be sure---- MRS. CANDOUR. Well I never was so surprised in my life!--I am so sorry for all Parties--indeed, SIR BENJAMIN. Now I don't Pity Sir Peter at all--he was so extravagant--partial to Mr. Surface---- MRS. CANDOUR. Mr. Surface!--why 'twas with Charles Lady Teazle was detected. SIR BENJAMIN. No such thing Mr. Surface is the gallant. MRS. CANDOUR. No--no--Charles is the man--'twas Mr. Surface brought Sir Peter on purpose to discover them---- SIR BENJAMIN. I tell you I have it from one---- MRS. CANDOUR. And I have it from one---- SIR BENJAMIN. Who had it from one who had it---- MRS. CANDOUR. From one immediately--but here comes Lady Sneerwell--perhaps she knows the whole affair. Enter LADY SNEERWELL LADY SNEERWELL. So--my dear Mrs. Candour Here's a sad affair of our Friend Teazle---- MRS. CANDOUR. Aye my dear Friend, who could have thought it. LADY SNEERWELL. Well there is no trusting to appearances[;] tho'--indeed she was always too lively for me. MRS. CANDOUR. To be sure, her manners were a little too--free--but she was very young---- LADY SNEERWELL. And had indeed some good Qualities. MRS. CANDOUR. So she had indeed--but have you heard the Particulars? LADY SNEERWELL. No--but everybody says that Mr. Surface---- SIR BENJAMIN. Aye there I told you--Mr. Surface was the Man. MRS. CANDOUR. No--no--indeed the assignation was with Charles---- LADY SNEERWELL. With Charles!--You alarm me Mrs. Candour! MRS. CANDOUR. Yes--yes He was the Lover--Mr. Surface--do him justice--was only the Informer. SIR BENJAMIN. Well I'll not dispute with you Mrs. Candour--but be it which it may--I hope that Sir Peter's wound will not---- MRS. CANDOUR. Sir Peter's wound! O mercy! I didn't hear a word of their Fighting---- LADY SNEERWELL. Nor I a syllable! SIR BENJAMIN. No--what no mention of the Duel---- MRS. CANDOUR. Not a word-- SIR BENJAMIN. O, Lord--yes--yes--they fought before they left the Room. LADY SNEERWELL. Pray let us hear. MRS. CANDOUR. Aye--do oblige--us with the Duel---- SIR BENJAMIN. 'Sir'--says Sir Peter--immediately after the Discovery, 'you are a most ungrateful Fellow.' MRS. CANDOUR. Aye to Charles---- SIR BENJAMIN. No, no--to Mr. Surface--'a most ungrateful Fellow; and old as I am, Sir,' says He, 'I insist on immediate satisfaction.' MRS. CANDOUR. Aye that must have been to Charles for 'tis very unlikely Mr. Surface should go to fight in his own House. SIR BENJAMIN. Gad's Life, Ma'am, not at all--giving me immediate satisfaction--on this, Madam--Lady Teazle seeing Sir Peter in such Danger--ran out of the Room in strong Hysterics--and Charles after her calling out for Hartshorn and Water! Then Madam--they began to fight with Swords---- Enter CRABTREE CRABTREE. With Pistols--Nephew--I have it from undoubted authority. MRS. CANDOUR. Oh, Mr. Crabtree then it is all true---- CRABTREE. Too true indeed Ma'am, and Sir Peter Dangerously wounded---- SIR BENJAMIN. By a thrust in second--quite thro' his left side CRABTREE. By a Bullet lodged in the Thorax---- MRS. CANDOUR. Mercy--on me[!] Poor Sir Peter---- CRABTREE. Yes, ma'am tho' Charles would have avoided the matter if he could---- MRS. CANDOUR. I knew Charles was the Person---- SIR BENJAMIN. O my Unkle I see knows nothing of the matter---- CRABTREE. But Sir Peter tax'd him with the basest ingratitude---- SIR BENJAMIN. That I told you, you know---- CRABTREE. Do Nephew let me speak--and insisted on immediate---- SIR BENJAMIN. Just as I said---- CRABTREE. Odds life! Nephew allow others to know something too--A Pair of Pistols lay on the Bureau--for Mr. Surface--it seems, had come home the Night before late from Salt-Hill where He had been to see the Montem with a Friend, who has a Son at Eton--so unluckily the Pistols were left Charged---- SIR BENJAMIN. I heard nothing of this---- CRABTREE. Sir Peter forced Charles to take one and they fired--it seems pretty nearly together--Charles's shot took Place as I tell you--and Sir Peter's miss'd--but what is very extraordinary the Ball struck against a little Bronze Pliny that stood over the Fire Place--grazed out of the window at a right angle--and wounded the Postman, who was just coming to the Door with a double letter from Northamptonshire. SIR BENJAMIN. My Unkle's account is more circumstantial I must confess--but I believe mine is the true one for all that. LADY SNEERWELL. I am more interested in this Affair than they imagine--and must have better information.-- [Exit.] SIR BENJAMIN. Ah! Lady Sneerwell's alarm is very easily accounted for.-- CRABTREE. Yes yes, they certainly DO say--but that's neither here nor there. MRS. CANDOUR. But pray where is Sir Peter at present---- CRABTREE. Oh! they--brought him home and He is now in the House, tho' the Servants are order'd to deny it---- MRS. CANDOUR. I believe so--and Lady Teazle--I suppose attending him---- CRABTREE. Yes yes--and I saw one of the Faculty enter just before me---- SIR BENJAMIN. Hey--who comes here---- CRABTREE. Oh, this is He--the Physician depend on't. MRS. CANDOUR. O certainly it must be the Physician and now we shall know---- Enter SIR OLIVER CRABTREE. Well, Doctor--what Hopes? MRS. CANDOUR. Aye Doctor how's your Patient? SIR BENJAMIN. Now Doctor isn't it a wound with a small sword---- CRABTREE. A bullet lodged in the Thorax--for a hundred! SIR OLIVER. Doctor!--a wound with a small sword! and a Bullet in the Thorax!--oon's are you mad, good People? SIR BENJAMIN. Perhaps, Sir, you are not a Doctor. SIR OLIVER. Truly Sir I am to thank you for my degree If I am. CRABTREE. Only a Friend of Sir Peter's then I presume--but, sir, you must have heard of this accident-- SIR OLIVER. Not a word! CRABTREE. Not of his being dangerously wounded? SIR OLIVER. The Devil he is! SIR BENJAMIN. Run thro' the Body---- CRABTREE. Shot in the breast---- SIR BENJAMIN. By one Mr. Surface---- CRABTREE. Aye the younger. SIR OLIVER. Hey! what the plague! you seem to differ strangely in your accounts--however you agree that Sir Peter is dangerously wounded. SIR BENJAMIN. Oh yes, we agree in that. CRABTREE. Yes, yes, I believe there can be no doubt in that. SIR OLIVER. Then, upon my word, for a person in that Situation, he is the most imprudent man alive--For here he comes walking as if nothing at all was the matter. Enter SIR PETER Odd's heart, sir Peter! you are come in good time I promise you, for we had just given you over! SIR BENJAMIN. 'Egad, Uncle this is the most sudden Recovery! SIR OLIVER. Why, man, what do you do out of Bed with a Small Sword through your Body, and a Bullet lodg'd in your Thorax? SIR PETER. A Small Sword and a Bullet-- SIR OLIVER. Aye these Gentlemen would have kill'd you without Law or Physic, and wanted to dub me a Doctor to make me an accomplice. SIR PETER. Why! what is all this? SIR BENJAMIN. We rejoice, Sir Peter, that the Story of the Duel is not true--and are sincerely sorry for your other Misfortune. SIR PETER. So--so--all over the Town already! [Aside.] CRABTREE. Tho', Sir Peter, you were certainly vastly to blame to marry at all at your years. SIR PETER. Sir, what Business is that of yours? MRS. CANDOUR. Tho' Indeed, as Sir Peter made so good a Husband, he's very much to be pitied. SIR PETER. Plague on your pity, Ma'am, I desire none of it. SIR BENJAMIN. However Sir Peter, you must not mind the Laughing and jests you will meet with on the occasion. SIR PETER. Sir, I desire to be master in my own house. CRABTREE. 'Tis no Uncommon Case, that's one comfort. SIR PETER. I insist on being left to myself, without ceremony,--I insist on your leaving my house directly! MRS. CANDOUR. Well, well, we are going and depend on't, we'll make the best report of you we can. SIR PETER. Leave my house! CRABTREE. And tell how hardly you have been treated. SIR PETER. Leave my House-- SIR BENJAMIN. And how patiently you bear it. SIR PETER. Friends! Vipers! Furies! Oh that their own Venom would choke them! SIR OLIVER. They are very provoking indeed, Sir Peter. Enter ROWLEY ROWLEY. I heard high words: what has ruffled you Sir Peter-- SIR PETER. Pshaw what signifies asking--do I ever pass a Day without my Vexations? SIR OLIVER. Well I'm not Inquisitive--I come only to tell you, that I have seen both my Nephews in the manner we proposed. SIR PETER. A Precious Couple they are! ROWLEY. Yes and Sir Oliver--is convinced that your judgment was right Sir Peter. SIR OLIVER. Yes I find Joseph is Indeed the Man after all. ROWLEY. Aye as Sir Peter says, He's a man of Sentiment. SIR OLIVER. And acts up to the Sentiments he professes. ROWLEY. It certainly is Edification to hear him talk. SIR OLIVER. Oh, He's a model for the young men of the age! But how's this, Sir Peter? you don't Join us in your Friend Joseph's Praise as I expected. SIR PETER. Sir Oliver, we live in a damned wicked world, and the fewer we praise the better. ROWLEY. What do YOU say so, Sir Peter--who were never mistaken in your Life? SIR PETER. Pshaw--Plague on you both--I see by your sneering you have heard--the whole affair--I shall go mad among you! ROWLEY. Then to fret you no longer Sir Peter--we are indeed acquainted with it all--I met Lady Teazle coming from Mr. Surface's so humbled, that she deigned to request ME to be her advocate with you-- SIR PETER. And does Sir Oliver know all too? SIR OLIVER. Every circumstance! SIR PETER. What of the closet and the screen--hey[?] SIR OLIVER. Yes yes--and the little French Milliner. Oh, I have been vastly diverted with the story! ha! ha! ha! SIR PETER. 'Twas very pleasant! SIR OLIVER. I never laugh'd more in my life, I assure you: ha! ha! SIR PETER. O vastly diverting! ha! ha! ROWLEY. To be sure Joseph with his Sentiments! ha! ha! SIR PETER. Yes his sentiments! ha! ha! a hypocritical Villain! SIR OLIVER. Aye and that Rogue Charles--to pull Sir Peter out of the closet: ha! ha! SIR PETER. Ha! ha! 'twas devilish entertaining to be sure-- SIR OLIVER. Ha! ha! Egad, Sir Peter I should like to have seen your Face when the screen was thrown down--ha! ha! SIR PETER. Yes, my face when the Screen was thrown down: ha! ha! ha! O I must never show my head again! SIR OLIVER. But come--come it isn't fair to laugh at you neither my old Friend--tho' upon my soul I can't help it-- SIR PETER. O pray don't restrain your mirth on my account: it does not hurt me at all--I laugh at the whole affair myself--Yes--yes--I think being a standing Jest for all one's acquaintance a very happy situation--O yes--and then of a morning to read the Paragraphs about Mr. S----, Lady T----, and Sir P----, will be so entertaining!--I shall certainly leave town tomorrow and never look mankind in the Face again! ROWLEY. Without affectation Sir Peter, you may despise the ridicule of Fools--but I see Lady Teazle going towards the next Room--I am sure you must desire a Reconciliation as earnestly as she does. SIR OLIVER. Perhaps MY being here prevents her coming to you--well I'll leave honest Rowley to mediate between you; but he must bring you all presently to Mr. Surface's--where I am now returning--if not to reclaim a Libertine, at least to expose Hypocrisy. SIR PETER. Ah! I'll be present at your discovering yourself there with all my heart; though 'tis a vile unlucky Place for discoveries. SIR OLIVER. However it is very convenient to the carrying on of my Plot that you all live so near one another! [Exit SIR OLIVER.] ROWLEY. We'll follow-- SIR PETER. She is not coming here you see, Rowley-- ROWLEY. No but she has left the Door of that Room open you perceive.--see she is in Tears--! SIR PETER. She seems indeed to wish I should go to her.--how dejected she appears-- ROWLEY. And will you refrain from comforting her-- SIR PETER. Certainly a little mortification appears very becoming in a wife--don't you think it will do her good to let her Pine a little. ROWLEY. O this is ungenerous in you-- SIR PETER. Well I know not what to think--you remember Rowley the Letter I found of her's--evidently intended for Charles? ROWLEY. A mere forgery, Sir Peter--laid in your way on Purpose--this is one of the Points which I intend Snake shall give you conviction on-- SIR PETER. I wish I were once satisfied of that--She looks this way----what a remarkably elegant Turn of the Head she has! Rowley I'll go to her-- ROWLEY. Certainly-- SIR PETER. Tho' when it is known that we are reconciled, People will laugh at me ten times more! ROWLEY. Let--them laugh--and retort their malice only by showing them you are happy in spite of it. SIR PETER. Efaith so I will--and, if I'm not mistaken we may yet be the happiest couple in the country-- ROWLEY. Nay Sir Peter--He who once lays aside suspicion---- SIR PETER. Hold Master Rowley--if you have any Regard for me--never let me hear you utter anything like a Sentiment. I have had enough of THEM to serve me the rest of my Life. [Exeunt.] SCENE THE LAST. --The Library SURFACE and LADY SNEERWELL LADY SNEERWELL. Impossible! will not Sir Peter immediately be reconciled to CHARLES? and of consequence no longer oppose his union with MARIA? the thought is Distraction to me! SURFACE. Can Passion--furnish a Remedy? LADY SNEERWELL. No--nor cunning either. O I was a Fool, an Ideot--to league with such a Blunderer! SURFACE. Surely Lady Sneerwell I am the greatest Sufferer--yet you see I bear the accident with Calmness. LADY SNEERWELL. Because the Disappointment hasn't reached your HEART--your interest only attached you to Maria--had you felt for her--what I have for that ungrateful Libertine--neither your Temper nor Hypocrisy could prevent your showing the sharpness of your Vexation. SURFACE. But why should your Reproaches fall on me for this Disappointment? LADY SNEERWELL. Are not you the cause of it? what had you to bate in your Pursuit of Maria to pervert Lady Teazle by the way.--had you not a sufficient field for your Roguery in blinding Sir Peter and supplanting your Brother--I hate such an avarice of crimes--'tis an unfair monopoly and never prospers. SURFACE. Well I admit I have been to blame--I confess I deviated from the direct Road of wrong but I don't think we're so totally defeated neither. LADY SNEERWELL. No! SURFACE. You tell me you have made a trial of Snake since we met--and that you still believe him faithful to us-- LADY SNEERWELL. I do believe so. SURFACE. And that he has undertaken should it be necessary--to swear and prove that Charles is at this Time contracted by vows and Honour to your Ladyship--which some of his former letters to you will serve to support-- LADY SNEERWELL. This, indeed, might have assisted-- SURFACE. Come--come it is not too late yet--but hark! this is probably my Unkle Sir Oliver--retire to that Room--we'll consult further when He's gone.-- LADY SNEERWELL. Well but if HE should find you out to-- SURFACE. O I have no fear of that--Sir Peter will hold his tongue for his own credit sake--and you may depend on't I shall soon Discover Sir Oliver's weak side!-- LADY SNEERWELL. I have no diffidence of your abilities--only be constant to one roguery at a time-- [Exit.] SURFACE. I will--I will--So 'tis confounded hard after such bad Fortune, to be baited by one's confederate in evil--well at all events my character is so much better than Charles's, that I certainly--hey--what!--this is not Sir Oliver--but old Stanley again!--Plague on't that He should return to teaze me just now--I shall have Sir Oliver come and find him here--and---- Enter SIR OLIVER Gad's life, Mr. Stanley--why have you come back to plague me at this time? you must not stay now upon my word! SIR OLIVER. Sir--I hear your Unkle Oliver is expected here--and tho' He has been so penurious to you, I'll try what He'll do for me-- SURFACE. Sir! 'tis impossible for you to stay now--so I must beg----come any other time and I promise you you shall be assisted. SIR OLIVER. No--Sir Oliver and I must be acquainted-- SURFACE. Zounds Sir then [I] insist on your quitting the--Room directly-- SIR OLIVER. Nay Sir---- SURFACE. Sir--I insist on't--here William show this Gentleman out. Since you compel me Sir--not one moment--this is such insolence. [Going to push him out.] Enter CHARLES CHARLES. Heyday! what's the matter now?--what the Devil have you got hold of my little Broker here! Zounds--Brother, don't hurt little Premium. What's the matter--my little Fellow? SURFACE. So! He has been with you, too, has He-- CHARLES. To be sure He has! Why, 'tis as honest a little----But sure Joseph you have not been borrowing money too have you? SURFACE. Borrowing--no!--But, Brother--you know sure we expect Sir Oliver every---- CHARLES. O Gad, that's true--Noll mustn't find the little Broker here to be sure-- SURFACE. Yet Mr. Stanley insists---- CHARLES. Stanley--why his name's Premium-- SURFACE. No no Stanley. CHARLES. No, no--Premium. SURFACE. Well no matter which--but---- CHARLES. Aye aye Stanley or Premium, 'tis the same thing as you say--for I suppose He goes by half a hundred Names, besides A. B's at the Coffee-House. [Knock.] SURFACE. 'Sdeath--here's Sir Oliver at the Door----Now I beg--Mr. Stanley---- CHARLES. Aye aye and I beg Mr. Premium---- SIR OLIVER. Gentlemen---- SURFACE. Sir, by Heaven you shall go-- CHARLES. Aye out with him certainly---- SIR OLIVER. This violence---- SURFACE. 'Tis your own Fault. CHARLES. Out with him to be sure. [Both forcing SIR OLIVER out.] Enter SIR PETER TEAZLE, LADY TEAZLE, MARIA, and ROWLEY SIR PETER. My old Friend, Sir Oliver!--hey! what in the name of wonder!--Here are dutiful Nephews!--assault their Unkle at his first Visit! LADY TEAZLE. Indeed Sir Oliver 'twas well we came in to rescue you. ROWLEY. Truly it was--for I perceive Sir Oliver the character of old Stanley was no Protection to you. SIR OLIVER. Nor of Premium either--the necessities of the former could not extort a shilling from that benevolent Gentleman; and with the other I stood a chance of faring worse than my Ancestors, and being knocked down without being bid for. SURFACE. Charles! CHARLES. Joseph! SURFACE. 'Tis compleat! CHARLES. Very! SIR OLIVER. Sir Peter--my Friend and Rowley too--look on that elder Nephew of mine--You know what He has already received from my Bounty and you know also how gladly I would have look'd on half my Fortune as held in trust for him--judge then my Disappointment in discovering him to be destitute of Truth--Charity--and Gratitude-- SIR PETER. Sir Oliver--I should be more surprized at this Declaration, if I had not myself found him to be selfish--treacherous and Hypocritical. LADY TEAZLE. And if the Gentleman pleads not guilty to these pray let him call ME to his Character. SIR PETER. Then I believe we need add no more--if He knows himself He will consider it as the most perfect Punishment that He is known to the world-- CHARLES. If they talk this way to Honesty--what will they say to ME by and bye! SIR OLIVER. As for that Prodigal--his Brother there---- CHARLES. Aye now comes my Turn--the damn'd Family Pictures will ruin me-- SURFACE. Sir Oliver--Unkle--will you honour me with a hearing-- CHARLES. I wish Joseph now would make one of his long speeches and I might recollect myself a little-- SIR OLIVER. And I suppose you would undertake to vindicate yourself entirely-- SURFACE. I trust I could-- SIR OLIVER. Nay--if you desert your Roguery in its Distress and try to be justified--you have even less principle than I thought you had.--[To CHARLES SURFACE] Well, Sir--and YOU could JUSTIFY yourself too I suppose-- CHARLES. Not that I know of, Sir Oliver. SIR OLIVER. What[!] little Premium has been let too much into the secret I presume. CHARLES. True--Sir--but they were Family Secrets, and should not be mentioned again you know. ROWLEY. Come Sir Oliver I know you cannot speak of Charles's Follies with anger. SIR OLIVER. Odd's heart no more I can--nor with gravity either--Sir Peter do you know the Rogue bargain'd with me for all his Ancestors--sold me judges and Generals by the Foot, and Maiden Aunts as cheap as broken China! CHARLES. To be sure, Sir Oliver, I did make a little free with the Family Canvas that's the truth on't:--my Ancestors may certainly rise in judgment against me there's no denying it--but believe me sincere when I tell you, and upon my soul I would not say so if I was not--that if I do not appear mortified at the exposure of my Follies, it is because I feel at this moment the warmest satisfaction in seeing you, my liberal benefactor. SIR OLIVER. Charles--I believe you--give me your hand again: the ill-looking little fellow over the Couch has made your Peace. CHARLES. Then Sir--my Gratitude to the original is still encreased. LADY TEAZLE. [Advancing.] Yet I believe, Sir Oliver, here is one whom Charles is still more anxious to be reconciled to. SIR OLIVER. O I have heard of his Attachment there--and, with the young Lady's Pardon if I construe right that Blush---- SIR PETER. Well--Child--speak your sentiments--you know--we are going to be reconciled to Charles-- MARIA. Sir--I have little to say--but that I shall rejoice to hear that He is happy--For me--whatever claim I had to his Affection--I willing resign to one who has a better title. CHARLES. How Maria! SIR PETER. Heyday--what's the mystery now? while he appeared an incorrigible Rake, you would give your hand to no one else and now that He's likely to reform I'll warrant You won't have him! MARIA. His own Heart--and Lady Sneerwell know the cause. [CHARLES.] Lady Sneerwell! SURFACE. Brother it is with great concern--I am obliged to speak on this Point, but my Regard to justice obliges me--and Lady Sneerwell's injuries can no longer--be concealed--[Goes to the Door.] Enter LADY SNEERWELL SIR PETER. Soh! another French milliner egad! He has one in every Room in the House I suppose-- LADY SNEERWELL. Ungrateful Charles! Well may you be surprised and feel for the indelicate situation which your Perfidy has forced me into. CHARLES. Pray Unkle, is this another Plot of yours? for as I have Life I don't understand it. SURFACE. I believe Sir there is but the evidence of one Person more necessary to make it extremely clear. SIR PETER. And that Person--I imagine, is Mr. Snake--Rowley--you were perfectly right to bring him with us--and pray let him appear. ROWLEY. Walk in, Mr. Snake-- Enter SNAKE I thought his Testimony might be wanted--however it happens unluckily that He comes to confront Lady Sneerwell and not to support her-- LADY SNEERWELL. A Villain!--Treacherous to me at last! Speak, Fellow, have you too conspired against me? SNAKE. I beg your Ladyship--ten thousand Pardons--you paid me extremely Liberally for the Lie in question--but I unfortunately have been offer'd double to speak the Truth. LADY SNEERWELL. The Torments of Shame and Disappointment on you all! LADY TEAZLE. Hold--Lady Sneerwell--before you go let me thank you for the trouble you and that Gentleman have taken in writing Letters from me to Charles and answering them yourself--and let me also request you to make my Respects to the Scandalous College--of which you are President--and inform them that Lady Teazle, Licentiate, begs leave to return the diploma they granted her--as she leaves of[f] Practice and kills Characters no longer. LADY SNEERWELL. Provoking--insolent!--may your Husband live these fifty years! [Exit.] SIR PETER. Oons what a Fury---- LADY TEAZLE. A malicious Creature indeed! SIR PETER. Hey--not for her last wish?-- LADY TEAZLE. O No-- SIR OLIVER. Well Sir, and what have you to say now? SURFACE. Sir, I am so confounded, to find that Lady Sneerwell could be guilty of suborning Mr. Snake in this manner to impose on us all that I know not what to say----however, lest her Revengeful Spirit should prompt her to injure my Brother I had certainly better follow her directly. [Exit.] SIR PETER. Moral to the last drop! SIR OLIVER. Aye and marry her Joseph if you can.--Oil and Vinegar egad:--you'll do very well together. ROWLEY. I believe we have no more occasion for Mr. Snake at Present-- SNAKE. Before I go--I beg Pardon once for all for whatever uneasiness I have been the humble instrument of causing to the Parties present. SIR PETER. Well--well you have made atonement by a good Deed at last-- SNAKE. But I must Request of the Company that it shall never be known-- SIR PETER. Hey!--what the Plague--are you ashamed of having done a right thing once in your life? SNAKE. Ah: Sir--consider I live by the Badness of my Character!--I have nothing but my Infamy to depend on!--and, if it were once known that I had been betray'd into an honest Action, I should lose every Friend I have in the world. SIR OLIVER. Well--well we'll not traduce you by saying anything to your Praise never fear. [Exit SNAKE.] SIR PETER. There's a precious Rogue--Yet that fellow is a Writer and a Critic. LADY TEAZLE. See[,] Sir Oliver[,] there needs no persuasion now to reconcile your Nephew and Maria-- SIR OLIVER. Aye--aye--that's as it should be and egad we'll have the wedding to-morrow morning-- CHARLES. Thank you, dear Unkle! SIR PETER. What! you rogue don't you ask the Girl's consent first-- CHARLES. Oh, I have done that a long time--above a minute ago--and She has look'd yes-- MARIA. For Shame--Charles--I protest Sir Peter, there has not been a word---- SIR OLIVER. Well then the fewer the Better--may your love for each other never know--abatement. SIR PETER. And may you live as happily together as Lady Teazle and I--intend to do-- CHARLES. Rowley my old Friend--I am sure you congratulate me and I suspect too that I owe you much. SIR OLIVER. You do, indeed, Charles-- ROWLEY. If my Efforts to serve you had not succeeded you would have been in my debt for the attempt--but deserve to be happy--and you over-repay me. SIR PETER. Aye honest Rowley always said you would reform. CHARLES. Why as to reforming Sir Peter I'll make no promises--and that I take to be a proof that I intend to set about it--But here shall be my Monitor--my gentle Guide.--ah! can I leave the Virtuous path those Eyes illumine? Tho' thou, dear Maid, should'st wave [waive] thy Beauty's Sway, --Thou still must Rule--because I will obey: An humbled fugitive from Folly View, No sanctuary near but Love and YOU: You can indeed each anxious Fear remove, For even Scandal dies if you approve. [To the audience.] EPILOGUE BY MR. COLMAN SPOKEN BY LADY TEAZLE I, who was late so volatile and gay, Like a trade-wind must now blow all one way, Bend all my cares, my studies, and my vows, To one dull rusty weathercock--my spouse! So wills our virtuous bard--the motley Bayes Of crying epilogues and laughing plays! Old bachelors, who marry smart young wives, Learn from our play to regulate your lives: Each bring his dear to town, all faults upon her-- London will prove the very source of honour. Plunged fairly in, like a cold bath it serves, When principles relax, to brace the nerves: Such is my case; and yet I must deplore That the gay dream of dissipation's o'er. And say, ye fair! was ever lively wife, Born with a genius for the highest life, Like me untimely blasted in her bloom, Like me condemn'd to such a dismal doom? Save money--when I just knew how to waste it! Leave London--just as I began to taste it! Must I then watch the early crowing cock, The melancholy ticking of a clock; In a lone rustic hall for ever pounded, With dogs, cats, rats, and squalling brats surrounded? With humble curate can I now retire, (While good Sir Peter boozes with the squire,) And at backgammon mortify my soul, That pants for loo, or flutters at a vole? Seven's the main! Dear sound that must expire, Lost at hot cockles round a Christmas fire; The transient hour of fashion too soon spent, Farewell the tranquil mind, farewell content! Farewell the plumed head, the cushion'd tete, That takes the cushion from its proper seat! That spirit-stirring drum!--card drums I mean, Spadille--odd trick--pam--basto--king and queen! And you, ye knockers, that, with brazen throat, The welcome visitors' approach denote; Farewell all quality of high renown, Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious town! Farewell! your revels I partake no more, And Lady Teazle's occupation's o'er! All this I told our bard; he smiled, and said 'twas clear, I ought to play deep tragedy next year. Meanwhile he drew wise morals from his play, And in these solemn periods stalk'd away:-- "Bless'd were the fair like you; her faults who stopp'd, And closed her follies when the curtain dropp'd! No more in vice or error to engage, Or play the fool at large on life's great stage." END OF PLAY <1> This PORTRAIT and Garrick's PROLOGUE are not included in Fraser Rae's text. <2> From Sheridan's manuscript. <3> The story in Act I. Scene I., told by Crabtree about Miss Letitia Piper, is repeated here, the speaker being Sir Peter: SIR PETER. O nine out of ten malicious inventions are founded on some ridiculous misrepresentation--Mrs. Candour you remember how poor Miss Shepherd lost her Lover and her Character one Summer at Tunbridge. MRS. C. To be sure that was a very ridiculous affair. CRABTREE. Pray tell us Sir Peter how it was. SIR P. Why madam--[The story follows.] MRS. C. Ha ha strange indeed-- SIR P. Matter of Fact I assure you.... LADY T. As sure as can be--Sir Peter will grow scandalous himself--if you encourage him to tell stories. [Fraser Rae's footnote--Ed.] <4> The words which follow this title are not inserted in the manuscript of the play. [Fraser Rae's footnote.--Ed.] <5> From this place to Scene ii. Act IV. several sheets are missing. [Fraser Rae's footnote.--Ed.]

Sir Oliver, along with Rowley, goes to visit Joseph, who is not pleased with the timing of the visit. Sir Oliver is disguised as Mr. Stanley, Joseph's poor relative. Joseph refuses to help Stanley financially, claiming that he has no money, even though Sir Oliver sent him a large sum of money from India. Sir Oliver is angered by this and declares, "Charles! You are my heir" as he exits. After "Mr. Stanley" leaves, Rowley returns and tells Joseph that his uncle has arrived in town. Joseph asks Rowley to stop Mr. Stanley, but Rowley says he thinks it won't be possible. Joseph is still upset that all this business is happening at such an inopportune time, but he is excited to see his uncle. Scene II takes place at Sir Peter's house. Lady Sneerwell, Mrs. Candour, Sir Benjamin, and eventually Crabtree talk about the rumors surrounding Lady Teazle. The rumors are blown out of proportion as they report to one another that Charles and Sir Peter supposedly dueled with either swords or guns. Lady Sneerwell hides her involvement in the issue somewhat, and leaves the group discussing the rumor. Soon after Lady Sneerwell leaves, Sir Oliver arrives at the house. They believe him to be the doctor, present to tend to Sir Peter's wound from the supposed duel. Sir Oliver tells them he is not a doctor, calling attention to the differences in the stories he is being told--the parties still not agreeing on whether the wound came from a sword or a bullet. Sir Peter then arrives and everyone makes a fuss about him not being wounded after all. The group makes fun of him and he throws them out of his house, telling them he wants neither their jokes nor their pity. Finally, only Sir Oliver remains, and Rowley returns. Sir Oliver tells Sir Peter about his visits with both nephews. Sir Oliver also says that he too has heard the story of Sir Peter, Lady Teazle, Joseph, and Charles, and laughs at his friend. They all laugh together, and Sir Peter laments without much feeling how the gossip will continue to circulate through the papers. Sir Oliver leaves so that Sir Peter can reconcile with his wife. Rowley and Sir Peter discuss how badly Lady Teazle is feeling about what happened and Sir Peter suggests that he might leave her to feel bad for a while instead of going to speak to her. Rowley chides him, and Sir Peter agrees to go make up with her. Lady Sneerwell and Joseph meet to discuss whether Sir Peter will now reconcile with Charles and let him marry Maria. Lady Sneerwell scolds him for ruining the plot. Joseph suggests that if Snake is still faithful to them, it may not be too late. They hear a knocking at the door; Joseph thinks this will be his uncle coming to call, so Lady Sneerwell leaves. Indeed, it is Sir Oliver at the door, but due to Sir Oliver's disguise, Joseph thinks it is Mr. Stanley. Sir Oliver keeps pretending to be Mr. Stanley, saying he wants to meet with Sir Oliver as well in order to get some financial help. Joseph does not want this, and tries to push Mr. Stanley out the door. Charles arrives and thinks Sir Oliver is Mr. Premium. Both Charles and Joseph try to get the man to leave; in the confusion, Sir Peter, Lady Teazle, Maria, and Rowley all come in. Sir Oliver reveals to his nephews who he is, and that he decided to leave his money to Charles. Maria arrives, but she refuses to marry Charles because she heard rumors about a relationship between him and Lady Sneerwell. Snake reveals the truth, and then Maria agrees to marry Charles. The play ends with an epilogue, spoken by Lady Teazle to the audience.

Summer drew to an end, and early autumn: it was past Michaelmas, but the harvest was late that year, and a few of our fields were still uncleared. Mr. Linton and his daughter would frequently walk out among the reapers; at the carrying of the last sheaves they stayed till dusk, and the evening happening to be chill and damp, my master caught a bad cold, that settled obstinately on his lungs, and confined him indoors throughout the whole of the winter, nearly without intermission. Poor Cathy, frightened from her little romance, had been considerably sadder and duller since its abandonment; and her father insisted on her reading less, and taking more exercise. She had his companionship no longer; I esteemed it a duty to supply its lack, as much as possible, with mine: an inefficient substitute; for I could only spare two or three hours, from my numerous diurnal occupations, to follow her footsteps, and then my society was obviously less desirable than his. On an afternoon in October, or the beginning of November--a fresh watery afternoon, when the turf and paths were rustling with moist, withered leaves, and the cold blue sky was half hidden by clouds--dark grey streamers, rapidly mounting from the west, and boding abundant rain--I requested my young lady to forego her ramble, because I was certain of showers. She refused; and I unwillingly donned a cloak, and took my umbrella to accompany her on a stroll to the bottom of the park: a formal walk which she generally affected if low-spirited--and that she invariably was when Mr. Edgar had been worse than ordinary, a thing never known from his confession, but guessed both by her and me from his increased silence and the melancholy of his countenance. She went sadly on: there was no running or bounding now, though the chill wind might well have tempted her to race. And often, from the side of my eye, I could detect her raising a hand, and brushing something off her cheek. I gazed round for a means of diverting her thoughts. On one side of the road rose a high, rough bank, where hazels and stunted oaks, with their roots half exposed, held uncertain tenure: the soil was too loose for the latter; and strong winds had blown some nearly horizontal. In summer Miss Catherine delighted to climb along these trunks, and sit in the branches, swinging twenty feet above the ground; and I, pleased with her agility and her light, childish heart, still considered it proper to scold every time I caught her at such an elevation, but so that she knew there was no necessity for descending. From dinner to tea she would lie in her breeze-rocked cradle, doing nothing except singing old songs--my nursery lore--to herself, or watching the birds, joint tenants, feed and entice their young ones to fly: or nestling with closed lids, half thinking, half dreaming, happier than words can express. 'Look, Miss!' I exclaimed, pointing to a nook under the roots of one twisted tree. 'Winter is not here yet. There's a little flower up yonder, the last bud from the multitude of bluebells that clouded those turf steps in July with a lilac mist. Will you clamber up, and pluck it to show to papa?' Cathy stared a long time at the lonely blossom trembling in its earthy shelter, and replied, at length--'No, I'll not touch it: but it looks melancholy, does it not, Ellen?' 'Yes,' I observed, 'about as starved and suckless as you: your cheeks are bloodless; let us take hold of hands and run. You're so low, I daresay I shall keep up with you.' 'No,' she repeated, and continued sauntering on, pausing at intervals to muse over a bit of moss, or a tuft of blanched grass, or a fungus spreading its bright orange among the heaps of brown foliage; and, ever and anon, her hand was lifted to her averted face. 'Catherine, why are you crying, love?' I asked, approaching and putting my arm over her shoulder. 'You mustn't cry because papa has a cold; be thankful it is nothing worse.' She now put no further restraint on her tears; her breath was stifled by sobs. 'Oh, it will be something worse,' she said. 'And what shall I do when papa and you leave me, and I am by myself? I can't forget your words, Ellen; they are always in my ear. How life will be changed, how dreary the world will be, when papa and you are dead.' 'None can tell whether you won't die before us,' I replied. 'It's wrong to anticipate evil. We'll hope there are years and years to come before any of us go: master is young, and I am strong, and hardly forty-five. My mother lived till eighty, a canty dame to the last. And suppose Mr. Linton were spared till he saw sixty, that would be more years than you have counted, Miss. And would it not be foolish to mourn a calamity above twenty years beforehand?' 'But Aunt Isabella was younger than papa,' she remarked, gazing up with timid hope to seek further consolation. 'Aunt Isabella had not you and me to nurse her,' I replied. 'She wasn't as happy as Master: she hadn't as much to live for. All you need do, is to wait well on your father, and cheer him by letting him see you cheerful; and avoid giving him anxiety on any subject: mind that, Cathy! I'll not disguise but you might kill him if you were wild and reckless, and cherished a foolish, fanciful affection for the son of a person who would be glad to have him in his grave; and allowed him to discover that you fretted over the separation he has judged it expedient to make.' 'I fret about nothing on earth except papa's illness,' answered my companion. 'I care for nothing in comparison with papa. And I'll never--never--oh, never, while I have my senses, do an act or say a word to vex him. I love him better than myself, Ellen; and I know it by this: I pray every night that I may live after him; because I would rather be miserable than that he should be: that proves I love him better than myself.' 'Good words,' I replied. 'But deeds must prove it also; and after he is well, remember you don't forget resolutions formed in the hour of fear.' As we talked, we neared a door that opened on the road; and my young lady, lightening into sunshine again, climbed up and seated herself on the top of the wall, reaching over to gather some hips that bloomed scarlet on the summit branches of the wild-rose trees shadowing the highway side: the lower fruit had disappeared, but only birds could touch the upper, except from Cathy's present station. In stretching to pull them, her hat fell off; and as the door was locked, she proposed scrambling down to recover it. I bid her be cautious lest she got a fall, and she nimbly disappeared. But the return was no such easy matter: the stones were smooth and neatly cemented, and the rose-bushes and black-berry stragglers could yield no assistance in re-ascending. I, like a fool, didn't recollect that, till I heard her laughing and exclaiming--'Ellen! you'll have to fetch the key, or else I must run round to the porter's lodge. I can't scale the ramparts on this side!' 'Stay where you are,' I answered; 'I have my bundle of keys in my pocket: perhaps I may manage to open it; if not, I'll go.' Catherine amused herself with dancing to and fro before the door, while I tried all the large keys in succession. I had applied the last, and found that none would do; so, repeating my desire that she would remain there, I was about to hurry home as fast as I could, when an approaching sound arrested me. It was the trot of a horse; Cathy's dance stopped also. 'Who is that?' I whispered. 'Ellen, I wish you could open the door,' whispered back my companion, anxiously. 'Ho, Miss Linton!' cried a deep voice (the rider's), 'I'm glad to meet you. Don't be in haste to enter, for I have an explanation to ask and obtain.' 'I sha'n't speak to you, Mr. Heathcliff,' answered Catherine. 'Papa says you are a wicked man, and you hate both him and me; and Ellen says the same.' 'That is nothing to the purpose,' said Heathcliff. (He it was.) 'I don't hate my son, I suppose; and it is concerning him that I demand your attention. Yes; you have cause to blush. Two or three months since, were you not in the habit of writing to Linton? making love in play, eh? You deserved, both of you, flogging for that! You especially, the elder; and less sensitive, as it turns out. I've got your letters, and if you give me any pertness I'll send them to your father. I presume you grew weary of the amusement and dropped it, didn't you? Well, you dropped Linton with it into a Slough of Despond. He was in earnest: in love, really. As true as I live, he's dying for you; breaking his heart at your fickleness: not figuratively, but actually. Though Hareton has made him a standing jest for six weeks, and I have used more serious measures, and attempted to frighten him out of his idiotcy, he gets worse daily; and he'll be under the sod before summer, unless you restore him!' 'How can you lie so glaringly to the poor child?' I called from the inside. 'Pray ride on! How can you deliberately get up such paltry falsehoods? Miss Cathy, I'll knock the lock off with a stone: you won't believe that vile nonsense. You can feel in yourself it is impossible that a person should die for love of a stranger.' 'I was not aware there were eavesdroppers,' muttered the detected villain. 'Worthy Mrs. Dean, I like you, but I don't like your double-dealing,' he added aloud. 'How could _you_ lie so glaringly as to affirm I hated the "poor child"? and invent bugbear stories to terrify her from my door-stones? Catherine Linton (the very name warms me), my bonny lass, I shall be from home all this week; go and see if have not spoken truth: do, there's a darling! Just imagine your father in my place, and Linton in yours; then think how you would value your careless lover if he refused to stir a step to comfort you, when your father himself entreated him; and don't, from pure stupidity, fall into the same error. I swear, on my salvation, he's going to his grave, and none but you can save him!' The lock gave way and I issued out. 'I swear Linton is dying,' repeated Heathcliff, looking hard at me. 'And grief and disappointment are hastening his death. Nelly, if you won't let her go, you can walk over yourself. But I shall not return till this time next week; and I think your master himself would scarcely object to her visiting her cousin.' 'Come in,' said I, taking Cathy by the arm and half forcing her to re-enter; for she lingered, viewing with troubled eyes the features of the speaker, too stern to express his inward deceit. He pushed his horse close, and, bending down, observed--'Miss Catherine, I'll own to you that I have little patience with Linton; and Hareton and Joseph have less. I'll own that he's with a harsh set. He pines for kindness, as well as love; and a kind word from you would be his best medicine. Don't mind Mrs. Dean's cruel cautions; but be generous, and contrive to see him. He dreams of you day and night, and cannot be persuaded that you don't hate him, since you neither write nor call.' I closed the door, and rolled a stone to assist the loosened lock in holding it; and spreading my umbrella, I drew my charge underneath: for the rain began to drive through the moaning branches of the trees, and warned us to avoid delay. Our hurry prevented any comment on the encounter with Heathcliff, as we stretched towards home; but I divined instinctively that Catherine's heart was clouded now in double darkness. Her features were so sad, they did not seem hers: she evidently regarded what she had heard as every syllable true. The master had retired to rest before we came in. Cathy stole to his room to inquire how he was; he had fallen asleep. She returned, and asked me to sit with her in the library. We took our tea together; and afterwards she lay down on the rug, and told me not to talk, for she was weary. I got a book, and pretended to read. As soon as she supposed me absorbed in my occupation, she recommenced her silent weeping: it appeared, at present, her favourite diversion. I suffered her to enjoy it a while; then I expostulated: deriding and ridiculing all Mr. Heathcliff's assertions about his son, as if I were certain she would coincide. Alas! I hadn't skill to counteract the effect his account had produced: it was just what he intended. 'You may be right, Ellen,' she answered; 'but I shall never feel at ease till I know. And I must tell Linton it is not my fault that I don't write, and convince him that I shall not change.' What use were anger and protestations against her silly credulity? We parted that night--hostile; but next day beheld me on the road to Wuthering Heights, by the side of my wilful young mistress's pony. I couldn't bear to witness her sorrow: to see her pale, dejected countenance, and heavy eyes: and I yielded, in the faint hope that Linton himself might prove, by his reception of us, how little of the tale was founded on fact.

Edgar's health begins to fail, and, as a result, he spends less time with Catherine. Nelly attempts in vain to fill the companionship role formerly played by the girl's father. One winter day, during a walk in the garden, Catherine climbs the wall and stretches for some fruit on a tree. In the process, her hat falls off her head and down to the other side of the wall. Nelly allows Catherine to climb down the wall to retrieve it, but, once on the other side, Catherine is unable to get back over the wall by herself. Nelly looks for the key to the gate, and suddenly Heathcliff appears, telling Catherine that it was cruel of her to break off her correspondence with Linton. He accuses her of toying with his son's affections, and he urges her to visit Linton while he is away the following week. He claims that Linton may be dying of a broken heart. Catherine believes him and convinces Nelly to take her to Wuthering Heights the next morning. Nelly assents in the hope that the sight of Linton will expose Heathcliff's lie

"If you deny me, fie upon your law! There is no force in the decrees of Venice: I stand for judgment; answer, shall I have it?" _Merchant of Venice._ The silence continued unbroken by human sounds for many anxious minutes. Then the waving multitude opened and shut again, and Uncas stood in the living circle. All those eyes, which had been curiously studying the lineaments of the sage, as the source of their own intelligence, turned on the instant, and were now bent in secret admiration on the erect, agile, and faultless person of the captive. But neither the presence in which he found himself, nor the exclusive attention that he attracted, in any manner disturbed the self-possession of the young Mohican. He cast a deliberate and observing look on every side of him, meeting the settled expression of hostility that lowered in the visages of the chiefs, with the same calmness as the curious gaze of the attentive children. But when, last in his haughty scrutiny, the person of Tamenund came under his glance, his eye became fixed, as though all other objects were already forgotten. Then advancing with a slow and noiseless step up the area, he placed himself immediately before the footstool of the sage. Here he stood unnoted, though keenly observant himself, until one of the chiefs apprised the latter of his presence. "With what tongue does the prisoner speak to the Manitou?" demanded the patriarch, without unclosing his eyes. "Like his fathers," Uncas replied; "with the tongue of a Delaware." At this sudden and unexpected annunciation, a low, fierce yell ran through the multitude, that might not inaptly be compared to the growl of the lion, as his choler is first awakened--a fearful omen of the weight of his future anger. The effect was equally strong on the sage, though differently exhibited. He passed a hand before his eyes, as if to exclude the least evidence of so shameful a spectacle, while he repeated, in his low, guttural tones, the words he had just heard. "A Delaware! I have lived to see the tribes of the Lenape driven from their council-fires, and scattered, like broken herds of deer, among the hills of the Iroquois! I have seen the hatchets of a strange people sweep woods from the valleys, that the winds of heaven had spared! The beasts that run on the mountains, and the birds that fly above the trees, have I seen living in the wigwams of men; but never before have I found a Delaware so base as to creep, like a poisonous serpent, into the camps of his nation." "The singing-birds have opened their bills," returned Uncas, in the softest notes of his own musical voice; "and Tamenund has heard their song." The sage started, and bent his head aside, as if to catch the fleeting sounds of some passing melody. "Does Tamenund dream!" he exclaimed. "What voice is at his ear! Have the winters gone backward! Will summer come again to the children of the Lenape!" A solemn and respectful silence succeeded this incoherent burst from the lips of the Delaware prophet. His people steadily construed his unintelligible language into one of those mysterious conferences he was believed to hold so frequently with a superior intelligence, and they awaited the issue of the revelation in awe. After a patient pause, however, one of the aged men, perceiving that the sage had lost the recollection of the subject before them, ventured to remind him again of the presence of the prisoner. "The false Delaware trembles lest he should hear the words of Tamenund," he said. "'Tis a hound that howls, when the Yengeese show him a trail." "And ye," returned Uncas, looking sternly around him, "are dogs that whine, when the Frenchman casts ye the offals of his deer!" Twenty knives gleamed in the air, and as many warriors sprang to their feet, at this biting, and perhaps merited retort; but a motion from one of the chiefs suppressed the outbreaking of their tempers, and restored the appearance of quiet. The task might probably have been more difficult, had not a movement made by Tamenund indicated that he was again about to speak. "Delaware!" resumed the sage, "little art thou worthy of thy name. My people have not seen a bright sun in many winters; and the warrior who deserts his tribe when hid in clouds is doubly a traitor. The law of the Manitou is just. It is so; while the rivers run and the mountains stand, while the blossoms come and go on the trees, it must be so. He is thine, my children; deal justly by him." Not a limb was moved, nor was a breath drawn louder and longer than common, until the closing syllable of this final decree had passed the lips of Tamenund. Then a cry of vengeance burst at once, as it might be, from the united lips of the nation; a frightful augury of their ruthless intentions. In the midst of these prolonged and savage yells, a chief proclaimed, in a high voice, that the captive was condemned to endure the dreadful trial of torture by fire. The circle broke its order, and screams of delight mingled with the bustle and tumult of preparation. Heyward struggled madly with his captors; the anxious eyes of Hawkeye began to look around him, with an expression of peculiar earnestness; and Cora again threw herself at the feet of the patriarch, once more a suppliant for mercy. Throughout the whole of these trying moments, Uncas had alone preserved his serenity. He looked on the preparations with a steady eye, and when the tormentors came to seize him, he met them with a firm and upright attitude. One among them, if possible, more fierce and savage than his fellows, seized the hunting-shirt of the young warrior, and at a single effort tore it from his body. Then, with a yell of frantic pleasure, he leaped towards his unresisting victim, and prepared to lead him to the stake. But, at that moment, when he appeared most a stranger to the feelings of humanity, the purpose of the savage was arrested as suddenly as if a supernatural agency had interposed in the behalf of Uncas. The eyeballs of the Delaware seemed to start from their sockets; his mouth opened, and his whole form became frozen in an attitude of amazement. Raising his hand with a slow and regulated motion, he pointed with a finger to the bosom of the captive. His companions crowded about him in wonder, and every eye was, like his own, fastened intently on the figure of a small tortoise, beautifully tattooed on the breast of the prisoner, in a bright blue tint. For a single instant Uncas enjoyed his triumph, smiling calmly on the scene. Then motioning the crowd away with a high and haughty sweep of his arm, he advanced in front of the nation with the air of a king, and spoke in a voice louder than the murmur of admiration that ran through the multitude. "Men of the Lenni Lenape!" he said, "my race upholds the earth! Your feeble tribe stands on my shell![27] What fire that a Delaware can light would burn the child of my fathers," he added, pointing proudly to the simple blazonry on his skin; "the blood that came from such a stock would smother your flames! My race is the grandfather of nations!" "Who art thou?" demanded Tamenund, rising at the startling tones he heard, more than at any meaning conveyed by the language of the prisoner. "Uncas, the son of Chingachgook," answered the captive modestly, turning from the nation, and bending his head in reverence to the other's character and years; "a son of the great Unamis." "The hour of Tamenund is nigh!" exclaimed the sage; "the day is come, at last, to the night! I thank the Manitou, that one is here to fill my place at the council-fire. Uncas, the child of Uncas, is found! Let the eyes of a dying eagle gaze on the rising sun." The youth stepped lightly, but proudly, on the platform, where he became visible to the whole agitated and wondering multitude. Tamenund held him long at the length of his arm, and read every turn in the fine lineaments of his countenance, with the untiring gaze of one who recalled days of happiness. "Is Tamenund a boy?" at length the bewildered prophet exclaimed. "Have I dreamt of so many snows--that my people were scattered like floating sands--of Yengeese, more plenty than the leaves on the trees! The arrow of Tamenund would not frighten the fawn; his arm is withered like the branch of a dead oak; the snail would be swifter in the race; yet is Uncas before him as they went to battle against the pale-faces! Uncas, the panther of his tribe, the eldest son of the Lenape, the wisest Sagamore of the Mohicans! Tell me, ye Delawares, has Tamenund been a sleeper for a hundred winters?" The calm and deep silence which succeeded these words, sufficiently announced the awful reverence with which his people received the communication of the patriarch. None dared to answer, though all listened in breathless expectation of what might follow. Uncas, however, looking in his face with the fondness and veneration of a favored child, presumed on his own high and acknowledged rank, to reply. "Four warriors of his race have lived, and died," he said, "since the friend of Tamenund led his people in battle. The blood of the turtle has been in many chiefs, but all have gone back into the earth from whence they came except Chingachgook and his son." "It is true--it is true," returned the sage; a flash of recollection destroying all his pleasing fancies, and restoring him at once to a consciousness of the true history of his nation. "Our wise men have often said that two warriors of the unchanged race were in the hills of the Yengeese; why have their seats at the council-fires of the Delawares been so long empty?" At these words the young man raised his head, which he had still kept bowed a little, in reverence; and lifting his voice so as to be heard by the multitude, as if to explain at once and forever the policy of his family, he said aloud,-- "Once we slept where we could hear the salt lake speak in its anger. Then we were rulers and sagamores over the land. But when a pale-face was seen on every brook, we followed the deer back to the river of our nation. The Delawares were gone. Few warriors of them all stayed to drink of the stream they loved. Then said my fathers, 'Here will we hunt. The waters of the river go into the salt lake. If we go towards the setting sun, we shall find streams that run into the great lakes of sweet water; there would a Mohican die, like fishes of the sea, in the clear springs. When the Manitou is ready, and shall say "Come," we will follow the river to the sea, and take our own again.' Such, Delawares, is the belief of the children of the Turtle. Our eyes are on the rising, and not towards the setting sun. We know whence he comes, but we know not whither he goes. It is enough." The men of the Lenape listened to his words with all the respect that superstition could lend, finding a secret charm even in the figurative language with which the young Sagamore imparted his ideas. Uncas himself watched the effect of his brief explanation with intelligent eyes, and gradually dropped the air of authority he had assumed, as he perceived that his auditors were content. Then permitting his looks to wander over the silent throng that crowded around the elevated seat of Tamenund, he first perceived Hawkeye in his bonds. Stepping eagerly from his stand, he made way for himself to the side of his friend; and cutting his thongs with a quick and angry stroke of his own knife, he motioned to the crowd to divide. The Indians silently obeyed, and once more they stood ranged in their circle, as before his appearance among them. Uncas took the scout by the hand, and led him to the feet of the patriarch. "Father," he said, "look at this pale-face; a just man, and the friend of the Delawares." "Is he a son of Minquon?" "Not so; a warrior known to the Yengeese, and feared by the Maquas." "What name has he gained by his deeds?" "We call him Hawkeye," Uncas replied, using the Delaware phrase; "for his sight never fails. The Mingos know him better by the death he gives their warriors; with them he is 'The Long Rifle.'" "La Longue Carabine!" exclaimed Tamenund, opening his eyes, and regarding the scout sternly. "My son has not done well to call him friend." "I call him so who proves himself such," returned the young chief, with great calmness, but with a steady mien. "If Uncas is welcome among the Delawares, then is Hawkeye with his friends." "The pale-face has slain my young men; his name is great for the blows he has struck the Lenape." "If a Mingo has whispered that much in the ear of the Delaware, he has only shown that he is a singing-bird," said the scout, who now believed that it was time to vindicate himself from such offensive charges, and who spoke in the tongue of the man he addressed, modifying his Indian figures, however, with his own peculiar notions. "That I have slain the Maquas I am not the man to deny, even at their own council-fires; but that, knowingly, my hand has ever harmed a Delaware, is opposed to the reason of my gifts, which is friendly to them, and all that belongs to their nation." A low exclamation of applause passed among the warriors, who exchanged looks with each other like men that first began to perceive their error. "Where is the Huron?" demanded Tamenund. "Has he stopped my ears?" Magua, whose feelings during that scene in which Uncas had triumphed may be much better imagined than described, answered to the call by stepping boldly in front of the patriarch. "The just Tamenund," he said, "will not keep what a Huron has lent." "Tell me, son of my brother," returned the sage, avoiding the dark countenance of Le Subtil, and turning gladly to the more ingenuous features of Uncas, "has the stranger a conqueror's right over you?" "He has none. The panther may get into snares set by the women; but he is strong, and knows how to leap through them." "La Longue Carabine?" "Laughs at the Mingoes. Go, Huron, ask your squaws the color of a bear." "The stranger and the white maiden that came into my camp together?" "Should journey on an open path." "And the woman that Huron left with my warriors?" Uncas made no reply. "And the woman that the Mingo has brought into my camp," repeated Tamenund, gravely. "She is mine," cried Magua, shaking his hand in triumph at Uncas. "Mohican, you know that she is mine." "My son is silent," said Tamenund, endeavoring to read the expression of the face that the youth turned from him in sorrow. "It is so," was the low answer. A short and impressive pause succeeded, during which it was very apparent with what reluctance the multitude admitted the justice of the Mingo's claim. At length the sage, in whom alone the decision depended, said, in a firm voice,-- "Huron, depart." "As he came, just Tamenund," demanded the wily Magua; "or with hands filled with the faith of the Delawares? The wigwam of Le Renard Subtil is empty. Make him strong with his own." The aged man mused with himself for a time; and then bending his head towards one of his venerable companions, he asked,-- "Are my ears open?" "It is true." "Is this Mingo a chief?" "The first in his nation." "Girl, what wouldst thou? A great warrior takes thee to wife. Go! thy race will not end." "Better, a thousand times, it should," exclaimed the horror-struck Cora, "than meet with such a degradation!" "Huron, her mind is in the tents of her fathers. An unwilling maiden makes an unhappy wigwam." "She speaks with the tongue of her people," returned Magua, regarding his victim with a look of bitter irony. "She is of a race of traders, and will bargain for a bright look. Let Tamenund speak the words." "Take you the wampum, and our love." "Nothing hence but what Magua brought hither." "Then depart with thine own. The great Manitou forbids that a Delaware should be unjust." Magua advanced, and seized his captive strongly by the arm; the Delawares fell back, in silence; and Cora, as if conscious that remonstrance would be useless, prepared to submit to her fate without resistance. "Hold, hold!" cried Duncan, springing forward; "Huron, have mercy! her ransom shall make thee richer than any of thy people were ever yet known to be." "Magua is a redskin; he wants not the beads of the pale-faces." "Gold, silver, powder, lead--all that a warrior needs shall be in thy wigwam; all that becomes the greatest chief." "Le Subtil is very strong," cried Magua, violently shaking the hand which grasped the unresisting arm of Cora; "he has his revenge!" "Mighty ruler of providence!" exclaimed Heyward, clasping his hands together in agony, "can this be suffered! To you, just Tamenund, I appeal for mercy." "The words of the Delaware are said," returned the sage, closing his eyes, and dropping back into his seat, alike wearied with his mental and his bodily exertion. "Men speak not twice." "That a chief should not misspend his time in unsaying what had once been spoken, is wise and reasonable," said Hawkeye, motioning to Duncan to be silent; "but it is also prudent in every warrior to consider well before he strikes his tomahawk into the head of his prisoner. Huron, I love you not; nor can I say that any Mingo has ever received much favor at my hands. It is fair to conclude that, if this war does not soon end, many more of your warriors will meet me in the woods. Put it to your judgment, then, whether you would prefer taking such a prisoner as that into your encampment, or one like myself, who am a man that it would greatly rejoice your nation to see with naked hands." "Will 'The Long Rifle' give his life for the woman?" demanded Magua, hesitatingly; for he had already made a motion towards quitting the place with his victim. "No, no; I have not said so much as that," returned Hawkeye, drawing back with suitable discretion, when he noted the eagerness with which Magua listened to his proposal. "It would be an unequal exchange, to give a warrior, in the prime of his age and usefulness, for the best woman on the frontiers. I might consent to go into winter-quarters, now--at least six weeks afore the leaves will turn--on condition you will release the maiden." Magua shook his head, and made an impatient sign for the crowd to open. "Well, then," added the scout, with the musing air of a man who had not half made up his mind, "I will throw 'Killdeer' into the bargain. Take the word of an experienced hunter, the piece has not its equal atween the provinces." Magua still disdained to reply, continuing his efforts to disperse the crowd. "Perhaps," added the scout, losing his dissembled coolness, exactly in proportion as the other manifested an indifference to the exchange, "if I should condition to teach your young men the real virtue of the we'pon, it would smooth the little differences in our judgments." Le Renard fiercely ordered the Delawares, who still lingered in an impenetrable belt around him, in hopes he would listen to the amicable proposal, to open his path, threatening, by the glance of his eye, another appeal to the infallible justice of their "prophet." "What is ordered must sooner or later arrive," continued Hawkeye, turning with a sad and humbled look to Uncas. "The varlet knows his advantage, and will keep it! God bless you, boy; you have found friends among your natural kin and I hope they will prove as true as some you have met who had no Indian cross. As for me, sooner or later, I must die; it is therefore fortunate there are but few to make my death-howl. After all, it is likely the imps would have managed to master my scalp, so a day or two will make no great difference in the everlasting reckoning of time. God bless you," added the rugged woodsman, bending his head aside, and then instantly changing its direction again, with a wistful look towards the youth; "I loved both you and your father, Uncas, though our skins are not altogether of a color, and our gifts are somewhat different. Tell the Sagamore I never lost sight of him in my greatest trouble; and, as for you, think of me sometimes when on a lucky trail; and depend on it, boy, whether there be one heaven or two, there is a path in the other world by which honest men may come together again. You'll find the rifle in the place we hid it; take it, and keep it for my sake; and harkee, lad, as your natural gifts don't deny you the use of vengeance, use it a little freely on the Mingos; it may unburden grief at my loss, and ease your mind. Huron, I accept your offer; release the woman. I am your prisoner!" A suppressed, but still distinct murmur of approbation, ran through the crowd at this generous proposition; even the fiercest among the Delaware warriors manifesting pleasure at the manliness of the intended sacrifice. Magua paused, and for an anxious moment, it might be said, he doubted; then casting his eyes on Cora, with an expression in which ferocity and admiration were strangely mingled, his purpose became fixed forever. He intimated his contempt of the offer with a backward motion of his head, and said, in a steady and settled voice,-- "Le Renard Subtil is a great chief; he has but one mind. Come," he added, laying his hand too familiarly on the shoulder of his captive to urge her onward; "a Huron is no tattler; we will go." The maiden drew back in lofty womanly reserve, and her dark eye kindled, while the rich blood shot, like the passing brightness of the sun, into her very temples, at the indignity. "I am your prisoner, and at a fitting time shall be ready to follow, even to my death. But violence is unnecessary," she coldly said; and immediately turning to Hawkeye, added, "Generous hunter! from my soul I thank you. Your offer is in vain, neither could it be accepted; but still you may serve me, even more than in your own noble intention. Look at that drooping, humbled child! Abandon her not until you leave her in the habitation of civilized men. I will not say," wringing the hard hand of the scout, "that her father will reward you--for such as you are above the rewards of men--but he will thank you, and bless you. And, believe me, the blessing of a just and aged man has virtue in the sight of Heaven. Would to God, I could hear one from his lips at this awful moment!" Her voice became choked, and, for an instant, she was silent; then advancing a step nigher to Duncan, who was supporting her unconscious sister, she continued, in more subdued tones, but in which feeling and the habits of her sex maintained a fearful struggle,--"I need not tell you to cherish the treasure you will possess. You love her, Heyward; that would conceal a thousand faults, though she had them. She is kind, gentle, sweet, good, as mortal may be. There is not a blemish in mind or person at which the proudest of you all would sicken. She is fair--O! how surpassingly fair!" laying her own beautiful, but less brilliant hand, in melancholy affection on the alabaster forehead of Alice, and parting the golden hair which clustered about her brows; "and yet her soul is pure and spotless as her skin! I could say much--more, perhaps, than cooler reason would approve; but I will spare you and myself"--Her voice became inaudible, and her face was bent over the form of her sister. After a long and burning kiss, she arose, and with features of the hue of death, but without even a tear in her feverish eye, she turned away, and added, to the savage, with all her former elevation of manner,--"Now, sir, if it be your pleasure, I will follow." "Ay, go," cried Duncan, placing Alice in the arms of an Indian girl; "go, Magua, go. These Delawares have their laws, which forbid them to detain you; but I--I have no such obligation. Go, malignant monster--why do you delay?" It would be difficult to describe the expression with which Magua listened to this threat to follow. There was at first a fierce and manifest display of joy, and then it was instantly subdued in a look of cunning coldness. "The woods are open," he was content with answering. "'The Open Hand' can come." "Hold," cried Hawkeye, seizing Duncan by the arm, and detaining him by violence; "you know not the craft of the imp. He would lead you to an ambushment, and your death--" "Huron," interrupted Uncas, who, submissive to the stern customs of his people, had been an attentive and grave listener to all that passed; "Huron, the justice of the Delawares comes from the Manitou. Look at the sun. He is now in the upper branches of the hemlock. Your path is short and open. When he is seen above the trees, there will be men on your trail." "I hear a crow!" exclaimed Magua, with a taunting laugh. "Go!" he added, shaking his hand at the crowd, which had slowly opened to admit his passage,--"Where are the petticoats of the Delawares! Let them send their arrows and their guns to the Wyandots; they shall have venison to eat, and corn to hoe. Dogs, rabbits, thieves--I spit on you!" His parting gibes were listened to in a dead, boding silence, and, with these biting words in his mouth, the triumphant Magua passed unmolested into the forest, followed by his passive captive, and protected by the inviolable laws of Indian hospitality.

Uncas appears before Tamenund. Uncas is serene, confident in his identity as a Delaware descendant. However, when Uncas insults Magua by calling him a liar, Tamenund reacts angrily, instructing the warriors to torture Uncas by fire. One of the warriors tears off Uncas's hunting shirt, and the assembled Indians stare with amazement at a small blue tortoise tattooed on Uncas's chest. The old man Tamenund seems to think the tattoo shows that Uncas is a reincarnation of Tamenund's grandfather, a legendary Indian also named Uncas, who was famed for his valor during Tamenund's youth. Tamenund releases Uncas immediately, and Uncas in turn frees Hawkeye. Uncas uses his newfound power to convince the Delawares that Magua has maliciously deceived them. In response, Magua insists that he deserves to retain his prisoners. Tamenund asks Uncas for his opinion, and Uncas reluctantly admits that although Magua should release most of his prisoners, Cora is his rightful prisoner. Magua flees with Cora, refusing Hawkeye's offer to die in her place even when Hawkeye offers to throw Killdeer, his rifle, into the bargain. The others, now unable to stop the villainous Huron because of Tamenund's ruling, vow to pursue him as soon as an appropriate time has passed

'I told some of you last Thursday of the principles of the Time Machine, and showed you the actual thing itself, incomplete in the workshop. There it is now, a little travel-worn, truly; and one of the ivory bars is cracked, and a brass rail bent; but the rest of it's sound enough. I expected to finish it on Friday, but on Friday, when the putting together was nearly done, I found that one of the nickel bars was exactly one inch too short, and this I had to get remade; so that the thing was not complete until this morning. It was at ten o'clock to-day that the first of all Time Machines began its career. I gave it a last tap, tried all the screws again, put one more drop of oil on the quartz rod, and sat myself in the saddle. I suppose a suicide who holds a pistol to his skull feels much the same wonder at what will come next as I felt then. I took the starting lever in one hand and the stopping one in the other, pressed the first, and almost immediately the second. I seemed to reel; I felt a nightmare sensation of falling; and, looking round, I saw the laboratory exactly as before. Had anything happened? For a moment I suspected that my intellect had tricked me. Then I noted the clock. A moment before, as it seemed, it had stood at a minute or so past ten; now it was nearly half-past three! 'I drew a breath, set my teeth, gripped the starting lever with both hands, and went off with a thud. The laboratory got hazy and went dark. Mrs. Watchett came in and walked, apparently without seeing me, towards the garden door. I suppose it took her a minute or so to traverse the place, but to me she seemed to shoot across the room like a rocket. I pressed the lever over to its extreme position. The night came like the turning out of a lamp, and in another moment came to-morrow. The laboratory grew faint and hazy, then fainter and ever fainter. To-morrow night came black, then day again, night again, day again, faster and faster still. An eddying murmur filled my ears, and a strange, dumb confusedness descended on my mind. 'I am afraid I cannot convey the peculiar sensations of time travelling. They are excessively unpleasant. There is a feeling exactly like that one has upon a switchback--of a helpless headlong motion! I felt the same horrible anticipation, too, of an imminent smash. As I put on pace, night followed day like the flapping of a black wing. The dim suggestion of the laboratory seemed presently to fall away from me, and I saw the sun hopping swiftly across the sky, leaping it every minute, and every minute marking a day. I supposed the laboratory had been destroyed and I had come into the open air. I had a dim impression of scaffolding, but I was already going too fast to be conscious of any moving things. The slowest snail that ever crawled dashed by too fast for me. The twinkling succession of darkness and light was excessively painful to the eye. Then, in the intermittent darknesses, I saw the moon spinning swiftly through her quarters from new to full, and had a faint glimpse of the circling stars. Presently, as I went on, still gaining velocity, the palpitation of night and day merged into one continuous greyness; the sky took on a wonderful deepness of blue, a splendid luminous color like that of early twilight; the jerking sun became a streak of fire, a brilliant arch, in space; the moon a fainter fluctuating band; and I could see nothing of the stars, save now and then a brighter circle flickering in the blue. 'The landscape was misty and vague. I was still on the hill-side upon which this house now stands, and the shoulder rose above me grey and dim. I saw trees growing and changing like puffs of vapour, now brown, now green; they grew, spread, shivered, and passed away. I saw huge buildings rise up faint and fair, and pass like dreams. The whole surface of the earth seemed changed--melting and flowing under my eyes. The little hands upon the dials that registered my speed raced round faster and faster. Presently I noted that the sun belt swayed up and down, from solstice to solstice, in a minute or less, and that consequently my pace was over a year a minute; and minute by minute the white snow flashed across the world, and vanished, and was followed by the bright, brief green of spring. 'The unpleasant sensations of the start were less poignant now. They merged at last into a kind of hysterical exhilaration. I remarked indeed a clumsy swaying of the machine, for which I was unable to account. But my mind was too confused to attend to it, so with a kind of madness growing upon me, I flung myself into futurity. At first I scarce thought of stopping, scarce thought of anything but these new sensations. But presently a fresh series of impressions grew up in my mind--a certain curiosity and therewith a certain dread--until at last they took complete possession of me. What strange developments of humanity, what wonderful advances upon our rudimentary civilization, I thought, might not appear when I came to look nearly into the dim elusive world that raced and fluctuated before my eyes! I saw great and splendid architecture rising about me, more massive than any buildings of our own time, and yet, as it seemed, built of glimmer and mist. I saw a richer green flow up the hill-side, and remain there, without any wintry intermission. Even through the veil of my confusion the earth seemed very fair. And so my mind came round to the business of stopping. 'The peculiar risk lay in the possibility of my finding some substance in the space which I, or the machine, occupied. So long as I travelled at a high velocity through time, this scarcely mattered; I was, so to speak, attenuated--was slipping like a vapour through the interstices of intervening substances! But to come to a stop involved the jamming of myself, molecule by molecule, into whatever lay in my way; meant bringing my atoms into such intimate contact with those of the obstacle that a profound chemical reaction--possibly a far-reaching explosion--would result, and blow myself and my apparatus out of all possible dimensions--into the Unknown. This possibility had occurred to me again and again while I was making the machine; but then I had cheerfully accepted it as an unavoidable risk--one of the risks a man has got to take! Now the risk was inevitable, I no longer saw it in the same cheerful light. The fact is that, insensibly, the absolute strangeness of everything, the sickly jarring and swaying of the machine, above all, the feeling of prolonged falling, had absolutely upset my nerve. I told myself that I could never stop, and with a gust of petulance I resolved to stop forthwith. Like an impatient fool, I lugged over the lever, and incontinently the thing went reeling over, and I was flung headlong through the air. 'There was the sound of a clap of thunder in my ears. I may have been stunned for a moment. A pitiless hail was hissing round me, and I was sitting on soft turf in front of the overset machine. Everything still seemed grey, but presently I remarked that the confusion in my ears was gone. I looked round me. I was on what seemed to be a little lawn in a garden, surrounded by rhododendron bushes, and I noticed that their mauve and purple blossoms were dropping in a shower under the beating of the hail-stones. The rebounding, dancing hail hung in a cloud over the machine, and drove along the ground like smoke. In a moment I was wet to the skin. "Fine hospitality," said I, "to a man who has travelled innumerable years to see you." 'Presently I thought what a fool I was to get wet. I stood up and looked round me. A colossal figure, carved apparently in some white stone, loomed indistinctly beyond the rhododendrons through the hazy downpour. But all else of the world was invisible. 'My sensations would be hard to describe. As the columns of hail grew thinner, I saw the white figure more distinctly. It was very large, for a silver birch-tree touched its shoulder. It was of white marble, in shape something like a winged sphinx, but the wings, instead of being carried vertically at the sides, were spread so that it seemed to hover. The pedestal, it appeared to me, was of bronze, and was thick with verdigris. It chanced that the face was towards me; the sightless eyes seemed to watch me; there was the faint shadow of a smile on the lips. It was greatly weather-worn, and that imparted an unpleasant suggestion of disease. I stood looking at it for a little space--half a minute, perhaps, or half an hour. It seemed to advance and to recede as the hail drove before it denser or thinner. At last I tore my eyes from it for a moment and saw that the hail curtain had worn threadbare, and that the sky was lightening with the promise of the sun. 'I looked up again at the crouching white shape, and the full temerity of my voyage came suddenly upon me. What might appear when that hazy curtain was altogether withdrawn? What might not have happened to men? What if cruelty had grown into a common passion? What if in this interval the race had lost its manliness and had developed into something inhuman, unsympathetic, and overwhelmingly powerful? I might seem some old-world savage animal, only the more dreadful and disgusting for our common likeness--a foul creature to be incontinently slain. 'Already I saw other vast shapes--huge buildings with intricate parapets and tall columns, with a wooded hill-side dimly creeping in upon me through the lessening storm. I was seized with a panic fear. I turned frantically to the Time Machine, and strove hard to readjust it. As I did so the shafts of the sun smote through the thunderstorm. The grey downpour was swept aside and vanished like the trailing garments of a ghost. Above me, in the intense blue of the summer sky, some faint brown shreds of cloud whirled into nothingness. The great buildings about me stood out clear and distinct, shining with the wet of the thunderstorm, and picked out in white by the unmelted hailstones piled along their courses. I felt naked in a strange world. I felt as perhaps a bird may feel in the clear air, knowing the hawk wings above and will swoop. My fear grew to frenzy. I took a breathing space, set my teeth, and again grappled fiercely, wrist and knee, with the machine. It gave under my desperate onset and turned over. It struck my chin violently. One hand on the saddle, the other on the lever, I stood panting heavily in attitude to mount again. 'But with this recovery of a prompt retreat my courage recovered. I looked more curiously and less fearfully at this world of the remote future. In a circular opening, high up in the wall of the nearer house, I saw a group of figures clad in rich soft robes. They had seen me, and their faces were directed towards me. 'Then I heard voices approaching me. Coming through the bushes by the White Sphinx were the heads and shoulders of men running. One of these emerged in a pathway leading straight to the little lawn upon which I stood with my machine. He was a slight creature--perhaps four feet high--clad in a purple tunic, girdled at the waist with a leather belt. Sandals or buskins--I could not clearly distinguish which--were on his feet; his legs were bare to the knees, and his head was bare. Noticing that, I noticed for the first time how warm the air was. 'He struck me as being a very beautiful and graceful creature, but indescribably frail. His flushed face reminded me of the more beautiful kind of consumptive--that hectic beauty of which we used to hear so much. At the sight of him I suddenly regained confidence. I took my hands from the machine.

The Time Traveller begins his story, which will last until Chapter 12. Here's how it goes: He finishes his machine in the morning and travels a few hours into the future as an experiment. He feels dizzy, but it works. He decides to go farther. He travels faster and sees the world in fast-forward, like a time-lapse video. The Time Traveller sees several things happen quickly. His housekeeper, Mrs. Watchett, zooms across his laboratory. Day and night speed by, one after the other, "like the flapping of a black wing" . He can't really describe his sensations, but he feels kind of sick, as if he were on a switchback . He sees the landscape change. .) The Time Traveller is excited and nervous about what the future will be like. Then he realizes that if there's something else in the same space as him when he stops, there may be an explosion, because two objects can't occupy the same space at the same time. We think this is something that maybe he should've thought about before. He stops anyway, and suddenly that the Time Machine turns over on its side. He's in the future, sitting in a hailstorm. Again, he can't really describe his sensations. He sees a statue of a sphinx made of white marble on a bronze pedestal. He worries about what he might find in the future and lifts the Time Machine off its side, just in case he needs to make a quick getaway. But as soon as he's ready to leave, he stops worrying. That's when the people of the future show up. They seem short and frail to the Time Traveller, but also graceful and beautiful.

|SPRING had come once more to Green Gables--the beautiful capricious, reluctant Canadian spring, lingering along through April and May in a succession of sweet, fresh, chilly days, with pink sunsets and miracles of resurrection and growth. The maples in Lover's Lane were red budded and little curly ferns pushed up around the Dryad's Bubble. Away up in the barrens, behind Mr. Silas Sloane's place, the Mayflowers blossomed out, pink and white stars of sweetness under their brown leaves. All the school girls and boys had one golden afternoon gathering them, coming home in the clear, echoing twilight with arms and baskets full of flowery spoil. "I'm so sorry for people who live in lands where there are no Mayflowers," said Anne. "Diana says perhaps they have something better, but there couldn't be anything better than Mayflowers, could there, Marilla? And Diana says if they don't know what they are like they don't miss them. But I think that is the saddest thing of all. I think it would be _tragic_, Marilla, not to know what Mayflowers are like and _not_ to miss them. Do you know what I think Mayflowers are, Marilla? I think they must be the souls of the flowers that died last summer and this is their heaven. But we had a splendid time today, Marilla. We had our lunch down in a big mossy hollow by an old well--such a _romantic_ spot. Charlie Sloane dared Arty Gillis to jump over it, and Arty did because he wouldn't take a dare. Nobody would in school. It is very _fashionable_ to dare. Mr. Phillips gave all the Mayflowers he found to Prissy Andrews and I heard him to say 'sweets to the sweet.' He got that out of a book, I know; but it shows he has some imagination. I was offered some Mayflowers too, but I rejected them with scorn. I can't tell you the person's name because I have vowed never to let it cross my lips. We made wreaths of the Mayflowers and put them on our hats; and when the time came to go home we marched in procession down the road, two by two, with our bouquets and wreaths, singing 'My Home on the Hill.' Oh, it was so thrilling, Marilla. All Mr. Silas Sloane's folks rushed out to see us and everybody we met on the road stopped and stared after us. We made a real sensation." "Not much wonder! Such silly doings!" was Marilla's response. After the Mayflowers came the violets, and Violet Vale was empurpled with them. Anne walked through it on her way to school with reverent steps and worshiping eyes, as if she trod on holy ground. "Somehow," she told Diana, "when I'm going through here I don't really care whether Gil--whether anybody gets ahead of me in class or not. But when I'm up in school it's all different and I care as much as ever. There's such a lot of different Annes in me. I sometimes think that is why I'm such a troublesome person. If I was just the one Anne it would be ever so much more comfortable, but then it wouldn't be half so interesting." One June evening, when the orchards were pink blossomed again, when the frogs were singing silverly sweet in the marshes about the head of the Lake of Shining Waters, and the air was full of the savor of clover fields and balsamic fir woods, Anne was sitting by her gable window. She had been studying her lessons, but it had grown too dark to see the book, so she had fallen into wide-eyed reverie, looking out past the boughs of the Snow Queen, once more bestarred with its tufts of blossom. In all essential respects the little gable chamber was unchanged. The walls were as white, the pincushion as hard, the chairs as stiffly and yellowly upright as ever. Yet the whole character of the room was altered. It was full of a new vital, pulsing personality that seemed to pervade it and to be quite independent of schoolgirl books and dresses and ribbons, and even of the cracked blue jug full of apple blossoms on the table. It was as if all the dreams, sleeping and waking, of its vivid occupant had taken a visible although unmaterial form and had tapestried the bare room with splendid filmy tissues of rainbow and moonshine. Presently Marilla came briskly in with some of Anne's freshly ironed school aprons. She hung them over a chair and sat down with a short sigh. She had had one of her headaches that afternoon, and although the pain had gone she felt weak and "tuckered out," as she expressed it. Anne looked at her with eyes limpid with sympathy. "I do truly wish I could have had the headache in your place, Marilla. I would have endured it joyfully for your sake." "I guess you did your part in attending to the work and letting me rest," said Marilla. "You seem to have got on fairly well and made fewer mistakes than usual. Of course it wasn't exactly necessary to starch Matthew's handkerchiefs! And most people when they put a pie in the oven to warm up for dinner take it out and eat it when it gets hot instead of leaving it to be burned to a crisp. But that doesn't seem to be your way evidently." Headaches always left Marilla somewhat sarcastic. "Oh, I'm so sorry," said Anne penitently. "I never thought about that pie from the moment I put it in the oven till now, although I felt _instinctively_ that there was something missing on the dinner table. I was firmly resolved, when you left me in charge this morning, not to imagine anything, but keep my thoughts on facts. I did pretty well until I put the pie in, and then an irresistible temptation came to me to imagine I was an enchanted princess shut up in a lonely tower with a handsome knight riding to my rescue on a coal-black steed. So that is how I came to forget the pie. I didn't know I starched the handkerchiefs. All the time I was ironing I was trying to think of a name for a new island Diana and I have discovered up the brook. It's the most ravishing spot, Marilla. There are two maple trees on it and the brook flows right around it. At last it struck me that it would be splendid to call it Victoria Island because we found it on the Queen's birthday. Both Diana and I are very loyal. But I'm sorry about that pie and the handkerchiefs. I wanted to be extra good today because it's an anniversary. Do you remember what happened this day last year, Marilla?" "No, I can't think of anything special." "Oh, Marilla, it was the day I came to Green Gables. I shall never forget it. It was the turning point in my life. Of course it wouldn't seem so important to you. I've been here for a year and I've been so happy. Of course, I've had my troubles, but one can live down troubles. Are you sorry you kept me, Marilla?" "No, I can't say I'm sorry," said Marilla, who sometimes wondered how she could have lived before Anne came to Green Gables, "no, not exactly sorry. If you've finished your lessons, Anne, I want you to run over and ask Mrs. Barry if she'll lend me Diana's apron pattern." "Oh--it's--it's too dark," cried Anne. "Too dark? Why, it's only twilight. And goodness knows you've gone over often enough after dark." "I'll go over early in the morning," said Anne eagerly. "I'll get up at sunrise and go over, Marilla." "What has got into your head now, Anne Shirley? I want that pattern to cut out your new apron this evening. Go at once and be smart too." "I'll have to go around by the road, then," said Anne, taking up her hat reluctantly. "Go by the road and waste half an hour! I'd like to catch you!" "I can't go through the Haunted Wood, Marilla," cried Anne desperately. Marilla stared. "The Haunted Wood! Are you crazy? What under the canopy is the Haunted Wood?" "The spruce wood over the brook," said Anne in a whisper. "Fiddlesticks! There is no such thing as a haunted wood anywhere. Who has been telling you such stuff?" "Nobody," confessed Anne. "Diana and I just imagined the wood was haunted. All the places around here are so--so--_commonplace_. We just got this up for our own amusement. We began it in April. A haunted wood is so very romantic, Marilla. We chose the spruce grove because it's so gloomy. Oh, we have imagined the most harrowing things. There's a white lady walks along the brook just about this time of the night and wrings her hands and utters wailing cries. She appears when there is to be a death in the family. And the ghost of a little murdered child haunts the corner up by Idlewild; it creeps up behind you and lays its cold fingers on your hand--so. Oh, Marilla, it gives me a shudder to think of it. And there's a headless man stalks up and down the path and skeletons glower at you between the boughs. Oh, Marilla, I wouldn't go through the Haunted Wood after dark now for anything. I'd be sure that white things would reach out from behind the trees and grab me." "Did ever anyone hear the like!" ejaculated Marilla, who had listened in dumb amazement. "Anne Shirley, do you mean to tell me you believe all that wicked nonsense of your own imagination?" "Not believe _exactly_," faltered Anne. "At least, I don't believe it in daylight. But after dark, Marilla, it's different. That is when ghosts walk." "There are no such things as ghosts, Anne." "Oh, but there are, Marilla," cried Anne eagerly. "I know people who have seen them. And they are respectable people. Charlie Sloane says that his grandmother saw his grandfather driving home the cows one night after he'd been buried for a year. You know Charlie Sloane's grandmother wouldn't tell a story for anything. She's a very religious woman. And Mrs. Thomas's father was pursued home one night by a lamb of fire with its head cut off hanging by a strip of skin. He said he knew it was the spirit of his brother and that it was a warning he would die within nine days. He didn't, but he died two years after, so you see it was really true. And Ruby Gillis says--" "Anne Shirley," interrupted Marilla firmly, "I never want to hear you talking in this fashion again. I've had my doubts about that imagination of yours right along, and if this is going to be the outcome of it, I won't countenance any such doings. You'll go right over to Barry's, and you'll go through that spruce grove, just for a lesson and a warning to you. And never let me hear a word out of your head about haunted woods again." Anne might plead and cry as she liked--and did, for her terror was very real. Her imagination had run away with her and she held the spruce grove in mortal dread after nightfall. But Marilla was inexorable. She marched the shrinking ghost-seer down to the spring and ordered her to proceed straightaway over the bridge and into the dusky retreats of wailing ladies and headless specters beyond. "Oh, Marilla, how can you be so cruel?" sobbed Anne. "What would you feel like if a white thing did snatch me up and carry me off?" "I'll risk it," said Marilla unfeelingly. "You know I always mean what I say. I'll cure you of imagining ghosts into places. March, now." Anne marched. That is, she stumbled over the bridge and went shuddering up the horrible dim path beyond. Anne never forgot that walk. Bitterly did she repent the license she had given to her imagination. The goblins of her fancy lurked in every shadow about her, reaching out their cold, fleshless hands to grasp the terrified small girl who had called them into being. A white strip of birch bark blowing up from the hollow over the brown floor of the grove made her heart stand still. The long-drawn wail of two old boughs rubbing against each other brought out the perspiration in beads on her forehead. The swoop of bats in the darkness over her was as the wings of unearthly creatures. When she reached Mr. William Bell's field she fled across it as if pursued by an army of white things, and arrived at the Barry kitchen door so out of breath that she could hardly gasp out her request for the apron pattern. Diana was away so that she had no excuse to linger. The dreadful return journey had to be faced. Anne went back over it with shut eyes, preferring to take the risk of dashing her brains out among the boughs to that of seeing a white thing. When she finally stumbled over the log bridge she drew one long shivering breath of relief. "Well, so nothing caught you?" said Marilla unsympathetically. "Oh, Mar--Marilla," chattered Anne, "I'll b-b-be contt-tented with c-c-commonplace places after this."

Spring begins and Anne is entranced by the beautiful flowers blooming in Avonlea. Soon, it is June, and Anne asks Marilla one night if she knows what it is the anniversary of. Marilla doesn't remember, so Anne tells her: it has been one year since Anne came to Green Gables. Marilla does not make a big fuss over this, but the narratpr notes that Marilla "sometimes wondered how she could have lived before Anne came". Marilla sends Anne to ask Mrs. Barry for a sewing pattern, and Anne says she doesn't want to because it is too dark and she is afraid to go through a wood which she has named the Haunted Wood. Anne has made up elaborate fantasies about the Haunted Wood that do not scare her during the day but make her to afraid to go into it at night. Marilla forces Anne to walk through the wood anyway. Anne fears the entire way to the Barry house that she will be grabbed by a goblin. On the way back from the Barry house, Anne keeps her eyes closed while she walks. When Anne returns, she says to Marilla that she won't imagine so much anymore

Let the high Muse chant loves Olympian: We are but mortals, and must sing of man. An eminent philosopher among my friends, who can dignify even your ugly furniture by lifting it into the serene light of science, has shown me this pregnant little fact. Your pier-glass or extensive surface of polished steel made to be rubbed by a housemaid, will be minutely and multitudinously scratched in all directions; but place now against it a lighted candle as a centre of illumination, and lo! the scratches will seem to arrange themselves in a fine series of concentric circles round that little sun. It is demonstrable that the scratches are going everywhere impartially and it is only your candle which produces the flattering illusion of a concentric arrangement, its light falling with an exclusive optical selection. These things are a parable. The scratches are events, and the candle is the egoism of any person now absent--of Miss Vincy, for example. Rosamond had a Providence of her own who had kindly made her more charming than other girls, and who seemed to have arranged Fred's illness and Mr. Wrench's mistake in order to bring her and Lydgate within effective proximity. It would have been to contravene these arrangements if Rosamond had consented to go away to Stone Court or elsewhere, as her parents wished her to do, especially since Mr. Lydgate thought the precaution needless. Therefore, while Miss Morgan and the children were sent away to a farmhouse the morning after Fred's illness had declared itself, Rosamond refused to leave papa and mamma. Poor mamma indeed was an object to touch any creature born of woman; and Mr. Vincy, who doted on his wife, was more alarmed on her account than on Fred's. But for his insistence she would have taken no rest: her brightness was all bedimmed; unconscious of her costume which had always been so fresh and gay, she was like a sick bird with languid eye and plumage ruffled, her senses dulled to the sights and sounds that used most to interest her. Fred's delirium, in which he seemed to be wandering out of her reach, tore her heart. After her first outburst against Mr. Wrench she went about very quietly: her one low cry was to Lydgate. She would follow him out of the room and put her hand on his arm moaning out, "Save my boy." Once she pleaded, "He has always been good to me, Mr. Lydgate: he never had a hard word for his mother,"--as if poor Fred's suffering were an accusation against him. All the deepest fibres of the mother's memory were stirred, and the young man whose voice took a gentler tone when he spoke to her, was one with the babe whom she had loved, with a love new to her, before he was born. "I have good hope, Mrs. Vincy," Lydgate would say. "Come down with me and let us talk about the food." In that way he led her to the parlor where Rosamond was, and made a change for her, surprising her into taking some tea or broth which had been prepared for her. There was a constant understanding between him and Rosamond on these matters. He almost always saw her before going to the sickroom, and she appealed to him as to what she could do for mamma. Her presence of mind and adroitness in carrying out his hints were admirable, and it is not wonderful that the idea of seeing Rosamond began to mingle itself with his interest in the case. Especially when the critical stage was passed, and he began to feel confident of Fred's recovery. In the more doubtful time, he had advised calling in Dr. Sprague (who, if he could, would rather have remained neutral on Wrench's account); but after two consultations, the conduct of the case was left to Lydgate, and there was every reason to make him assiduous. Morning and evening he was at Mr. Vincy's, and gradually the visits became cheerful as Fred became simply feeble, and lay not only in need of the utmost petting but conscious of it, so that Mrs. Vincy felt as if, after all, the illness had made a festival for her tenderness. Both father and mother held it an added reason for good spirits, when old Mr. Featherstone sent messages by Lydgate, saying that Fred must make haste and get well, as he, Peter Featherstone, could not do without him, and missed his visits sadly. The old man himself was getting bedridden. Mrs. Vincy told these messages to Fred when he could listen, and he turned towards her his delicate, pinched face, from which all the thick blond hair had been cut away, and in which the eyes seemed to have got larger, yearning for some word about Mary--wondering what she felt about his illness. No word passed his lips; but "to hear with eyes belongs to love's rare wit," and the mother in the fulness of her heart not only divined Fred's longing, but felt ready for any sacrifice in order to satisfy him. "If I can only see my boy strong again," she said, in her loving folly; "and who knows?--perhaps master of Stone Court! and he can marry anybody he likes then." "Not if they won't have me, mother," said Fred. The illness had made him childish, and tears came as he spoke. "Oh, take a bit of jelly, my dear," said Mrs. Vincy, secretly incredulous of any such refusal. She never left Fred's side when her husband was not in the house, and thus Rosamond was in the unusual position of being much alone. Lydgate, naturally, never thought of staying long with her, yet it seemed that the brief impersonal conversations they had together were creating that peculiar intimacy which consists in shyness. They were obliged to look at each other in speaking, and somehow the looking could not be carried through as the matter of course which it really was. Lydgate began to feel this sort of consciousness unpleasant and one day looked down, or anywhere, like an ill-worked puppet. But this turned out badly: the next day, Rosamond looked down, and the consequence was that when their eyes met again, both were more conscious than before. There was no help for this in science, and as Lydgate did not want to flirt, there seemed to be no help for it in folly. It was therefore a relief when neighbors no longer considered the house in quarantine, and when the chances of seeing Rosamond alone were very much reduced. But that intimacy of mutual embarrassment, in which each feels that the other is feeling something, having once existed, its effect is not to be done away with. Talk about the weather and other well-bred topics is apt to seem a hollow device, and behavior can hardly become easy unless it frankly recognizes a mutual fascination--which of course need not mean anything deep or serious. This was the way in which Rosamond and Lydgate slid gracefully into ease, and made their intercourse lively again. Visitors came and went as usual, there was once more music in the drawing-room, and all the extra hospitality of Mr. Vincy's mayoralty returned. Lydgate, whenever he could, took his seat by Rosamond's side, and lingered to hear her music, calling himself her captive--meaning, all the while, not to be her captive. The preposterousness of the notion that he could at once set up a satisfactory establishment as a married man was a sufficient guarantee against danger. This play at being a little in love was agreeable, and did not interfere with graver pursuits. Flirtation, after all, was not necessarily a singeing process. Rosamond, for her part, had never enjoyed the days so much in her life before: she was sure of being admired by some one worth captivating, and she did not distinguish flirtation from love, either in herself or in another. She seemed to be sailing with a fair wind just whither she would go, and her thoughts were much occupied with a handsome house in Lowick Gate which she hoped would by-and-by be vacant. She was quite determined, when she was married, to rid herself adroitly of all the visitors who were not agreeable to her at her father's; and she imagined the drawing-room in her favorite house with various styles of furniture. Certainly her thoughts were much occupied with Lydgate himself; he seemed to her almost perfect: if he had known his notes so that his enchantment under her music had been less like an emotional elephant's, and if he had been able to discriminate better the refinements of her taste in dress, she could hardly have mentioned a deficiency in him. How different he was from young Plymdale or Mr. Caius Larcher! Those young men had not a notion of French, and could speak on no subject with striking knowledge, except perhaps the dyeing and carrying trades, which of course they were ashamed to mention; they were Middlemarch gentry, elated with their silver-headed whips and satin stocks, but embarrassed in their manners, and timidly jocose: even Fred was above them, having at least the accent and manner of a university man. Whereas Lydgate was always listened to, bore himself with the careless politeness of conscious superiority, and seemed to have the right clothes on by a certain natural affinity, without ever having to think about them. Rosamond was proud when he entered the room, and when he approached her with a distinguishing smile, she had a delicious sense that she was the object of enviable homage. If Lydgate had been aware of all the pride he excited in that delicate bosom, he might have been just as well pleased as any other man, even the most densely ignorant of humoral pathology or fibrous tissue: he held it one of the prettiest attitudes of the feminine mind to adore a man's pre-eminence without too precise a knowledge of what it consisted in. But Rosamond was not one of those helpless girls who betray themselves unawares, and whose behavior is awkwardly driven by their impulses, instead of being steered by wary grace and propriety. Do you imagine that her rapid forecast and rumination concerning house-furniture and society were ever discernible in her conversation, even with her mamma? On the contrary, she would have expressed the prettiest surprise and disapprobation if she had heard that another young lady had been detected in that immodest prematureness--indeed, would probably have disbelieved in its possibility. For Rosamond never showed any unbecoming knowledge, and was always that combination of correct sentiments, music, dancing, drawing, elegant note-writing, private album for extracted verse, and perfect blond loveliness, which made the irresistible woman for the doomed man of that date. Think no unfair evil of her, pray: she had no wicked plots, nothing sordid or mercenary; in fact, she never thought of money except as something necessary which other people would always provide. She was not in the habit of devising falsehoods, and if her statements were no direct clew to fact, why, they were not intended in that light--they were among her elegant accomplishments, intended to please. Nature had inspired many arts in finishing Mrs. Lemon's favorite pupil, who by general consent (Fred's excepted) was a rare compound of beauty, cleverness, and amiability. Lydgate found it more and more agreeable to be with her, and there was no constraint now, there was a delightful interchange of influence in their eyes, and what they said had that superfluity of meaning for them, which is observable with some sense of flatness by a third person; still they had no interviews or asides from which a third person need have been excluded. In fact, they flirted; and Lydgate was secure in the belief that they did nothing else. If a man could not love and be wise, surely he could flirt and be wise at the same time? Really, the men in Middlemarch, except Mr. Farebrother, were great bores, and Lydgate did not care about commercial politics or cards: what was he to do for relaxation? He was often invited to the Bulstrodes'; but the girls there were hardly out of the schoolroom; and Mrs. Bulstrode's _naive_ way of conciliating piety and worldliness, the nothingness of this life and the desirability of cut glass, the consciousness at once of filthy rags and the best damask, was not a sufficient relief from the weight of her husband's invariable seriousness. The Vincys' house, with all its faults, was the pleasanter by contrast; besides, it nourished Rosamond--sweet to look at as a half-opened blush-rose, and adorned with accomplishments for the refined amusement of man. But he made some enemies, other than medical, by his success with Miss Vincy. One evening he came into the drawing-room rather late, when several other visitors were there. The card-table had drawn off the elders, and Mr. Ned Plymdale (one of the good matches in Middlemarch, though not one of its leading minds) was in tete-a-tete with Rosamond. He had brought the last "Keepsake," the gorgeous watered-silk publication which marked modern progress at that time; and he considered himself very fortunate that he could be the first to look over it with her, dwelling on the ladies and gentlemen with shiny copper-plate cheeks and copper-plate smiles, and pointing to comic verses as capital and sentimental stories as interesting. Rosamond was gracious, and Mr. Ned was satisfied that he had the very best thing in art and literature as a medium for "paying addresses"--the very thing to please a nice girl. He had also reasons, deep rather than ostensible, for being satisfied with his own appearance. To superficial observers his chin had too vanishing an aspect, looking as if it were being gradually reabsorbed. And it did indeed cause him some difficulty about the fit of his satin stocks, for which chins were at that time useful. "I think the Honorable Mrs. S. is something like you," said Mr. Ned. He kept the book open at the bewitching portrait, and looked at it rather languishingly. "Her back is very large; she seems to have sat for that," said Rosamond, not meaning any satire, but thinking how red young Plymdale's hands were, and wondering why Lydgate did not come. She went on with her tatting all the while. "I did not say she was as beautiful as you are," said Mr. Ned, venturing to look from the portrait to its rival. "I suspect you of being an adroit flatterer," said Rosamond, feeling sure that she should have to reject this young gentleman a second time. But now Lydgate came in; the book was closed before he reached Rosamond's corner, and as he took his seat with easy confidence on the other side of her, young Plymdale's jaw fell like a barometer towards the cheerless side of change. Rosamond enjoyed not only Lydgate's presence but its effect: she liked to excite jealousy. "What a late comer you are!" she said, as they shook hands. "Mamma had given you up a little while ago. How do you find Fred?" "As usual; going on well, but slowly. I want him to go away--to Stone Court, for example. But your mamma seems to have some objection." "Poor fellow!" said Rosamond, prettily. "You will see Fred so changed," she added, turning to the other suitor; "we have looked to Mr. Lydgate as our guardian angel during this illness." Mr. Ned smiled nervously, while Lydgate, drawing the "Keepsake" towards him and opening it, gave a short scornful laugh and tossed up his chin, as if in wonderment at human folly. "What are you laughing at so profanely?" said Rosamond, with bland neutrality. "I wonder which would turn out to be the silliest--the engravings or the writing here," said Lydgate, in his most convinced tone, while he turned over the pages quickly, seeming to see all through the book in no time, and showing his large white hands to much advantage, as Rosamond thought. "Do look at this bridegroom coming out of church: did you ever see such a 'sugared invention'--as the Elizabethans used to say? Did any haberdasher ever look so smirking? Yet I will answer for it the story makes him one of the first gentlemen in the land." "You are so severe, I am frightened at you," said Rosamond, keeping her amusement duly moderate. Poor young Plymdale had lingered with admiration over this very engraving, and his spirit was stirred. "There are a great many celebrated people writing in the 'Keepsake,' at all events," he said, in a tone at once piqued and timid. "This is the first time I have heard it called silly." "I think I shall turn round on you and accuse you of being a Goth," said Rosamond, looking at Lydgate with a smile. "I suspect you know nothing about Lady Blessington and L. E. L." Rosamond herself was not without relish for these writers, but she did not readily commit herself by admiration, and was alive to the slightest hint that anything was not, according to Lydgate, in the very highest taste. "But Sir Walter Scott--I suppose Mr. Lydgate knows him," said young Plymdale, a little cheered by this advantage. "Oh, I read no literature now," said Lydgate, shutting the book, and pushing it away. "I read so much when I was a lad, that I suppose it will last me all my life. I used to know Scott's poems by heart." "I should like to know when you left off," said Rosamond, "because then I might be sure that I knew something which you did not know." "Mr. Lydgate would say that was not worth knowing," said Mr. Ned, purposely caustic. "On the contrary," said Lydgate, showing no smart; but smiling with exasperating confidence at Rosamond. "It would be worth knowing by the fact that Miss Vincy could tell it me." Young Plymdale soon went to look at the whist-playing, thinking that Lydgate was one of the most conceited, unpleasant fellows it had ever been his ill-fortune to meet. "How rash you are!" said Rosamond, inwardly delighted. "Do you see that you have given offence?" "What! is it Mr. Plymdale's book? I am sorry. I didn't think about it." "I shall begin to admit what you said of yourself when you first came here--that you are a bear, and want teaching by the birds." "Well, there is a bird who can teach me what she will. Don't I listen to her willingly?" To Rosamond it seemed as if she and Lydgate were as good as engaged. That they were some time to be engaged had long been an idea in her mind; and ideas, we know, tend to a more solid kind of existence, the necessary materials being at hand. It is true, Lydgate had the counter-idea of remaining unengaged; but this was a mere negative, a shadow cast by other resolves which themselves were capable of shrinking. Circumstance was almost sure to be on the side of Rosamond's idea, which had a shaping activity and looked through watchful blue eyes, whereas Lydgate's lay blind and unconcerned as a jelly-fish which gets melted without knowing it. That evening when he went home, he looked at his phials to see how a process of maceration was going on, with undisturbed interest; and he wrote out his daily notes with as much precision as usual. The reveries from which it was difficult for him to detach himself were ideal constructions of something else than Rosamond's virtues, and the primitive tissue was still his fair unknown. Moreover, he was beginning to feel some zest for the growing though half-suppressed feud between him and the other medical men, which was likely to become more manifest, now that Bulstrode's method of managing the new hospital was about to be declared; and there were various inspiriting signs that his non-acceptance by some of Peacock's patients might be counterbalanced by the impression he had produced in other quarters. Only a few days later, when he had happened to overtake Rosamond on the Lowick road and had got down from his horse to walk by her side until he had quite protected her from a passing drove, he had been stopped by a servant on horseback with a message calling him in to a house of some importance where Peacock had never attended; and it was the second instance of this kind. The servant was Sir James Chettam's, and the house was Lowick Manor.

Mrs. Vincy becomes completely consumed by Fred and his illness, to an unhealthy extent; Lydgate is around the house frequently, and sees a good bit of Rosamond as well. Lydgate's attentions to Rosamond are causing some resentment in the neighborhood, as rivals for her affection become jealous of him; Rosamond continues to believe that Lydgate is in love with her and intends marriage, while Lydgate merely enjoys her pleasant company. At the end of the chapter, Lydgate receives a summons from Sir James Chettam, who he has not attended to before.

Within a few days after this meeting, the newspapers announced to the world, that the lady of Thomas Palmer, Esq. was safely delivered of a son and heir; a very interesting and satisfactory paragraph, at least to all those intimate connections who knew it before. This event, highly important to Mrs. Jennings's happiness, produced a temporary alteration in the disposal of her time, and influenced, in a like degree, the engagements of her young friends; for as she wished to be as much as possible with Charlotte, she went thither every morning as soon as she was dressed, and did not return till late in the evening; and the Miss Dashwoods, at the particular request of the Middletons, spent the whole of every day in Conduit Street. For their own comfort they would much rather have remained, at least all the morning, in Mrs. Jennings's house; but it was not a thing to be urged against the wishes of everybody. Their hours were therefore made over to Lady Middleton and the two Miss Steeles, by whom their company, in fact was as little valued, as it was professedly sought. They had too much sense to be desirable companions to the former; and by the latter they were considered with a jealous eye, as intruding on THEIR ground, and sharing the kindness which they wanted to monopolize. Though nothing could be more polite than Lady Middleton's behaviour to Elinor and Marianne, she did not really like them at all. Because they neither flattered herself nor her children, she could not believe them good-natured; and because they were fond of reading, she fancied them satirical: perhaps without exactly knowing what it was to be satirical; but THAT did not signify. It was censure in common use, and easily given. Their presence was a restraint both on her and on Lucy. It checked the idleness of one, and the business of the other. Lady Middleton was ashamed of doing nothing before them, and the flattery which Lucy was proud to think of and administer at other times, she feared they would despise her for offering. Miss Steele was the least discomposed of the three, by their presence; and it was in their power to reconcile her to it entirely. Would either of them only have given her a full and minute account of the whole affair between Marianne and Mr. Willoughby, she would have thought herself amply rewarded for the sacrifice of the best place by the fire after dinner, which their arrival occasioned. But this conciliation was not granted; for though she often threw out expressions of pity for her sister to Elinor, and more than once dropt a reflection on the inconstancy of beaux before Marianne, no effect was produced, but a look of indifference from the former, or of disgust in the latter. An effort even yet lighter might have made her their friend. Would they only have laughed at her about the Doctor! But so little were they, anymore than the others, inclined to oblige her, that if Sir John dined from home, she might spend a whole day without hearing any other raillery on the subject, than what she was kind enough to bestow on herself. All these jealousies and discontents, however, were so totally unsuspected by Mrs. Jennings, that she thought it a delightful thing for the girls to be together; and generally congratulated her young friends every night, on having escaped the company of a stupid old woman so long. She joined them sometimes at Sir John's, sometimes at her own house; but wherever it was, she always came in excellent spirits, full of delight and importance, attributing Charlotte's well doing to her own care, and ready to give so exact, so minute a detail of her situation, as only Miss Steele had curiosity enough to desire. One thing DID disturb her; and of that she made her daily complaint. Mr. Palmer maintained the common, but unfatherly opinion among his sex, of all infants being alike; and though she could plainly perceive, at different times, the most striking resemblance between this baby and every one of his relations on both sides, there was no convincing his father of it; no persuading him to believe that it was not exactly like every other baby of the same age; nor could he even be brought to acknowledge the simple proposition of its being the finest child in the world. I come now to the relation of a misfortune, which about this time befell Mrs. John Dashwood. It so happened that while her two sisters with Mrs. Jennings were first calling on her in Harley Street, another of her acquaintance had dropt in--a circumstance in itself not apparently likely to produce evil to her. But while the imaginations of other people will carry them away to form wrong judgments of our conduct, and to decide on it by slight appearances, one's happiness must in some measure be always at the mercy of chance. In the present instance, this last-arrived lady allowed her fancy to so far outrun truth and probability, that on merely hearing the name of the Miss Dashwoods, and understanding them to be Mr. Dashwood's sisters, she immediately concluded them to be staying in Harley Street; and this misconstruction produced within a day or two afterwards, cards of invitation for them as well as for their brother and sister, to a small musical party at her house. The consequence of which was, that Mrs. John Dashwood was obliged to submit not only to the exceedingly great inconvenience of sending her carriage for the Miss Dashwoods, but, what was still worse, must be subject to all the unpleasantness of appearing to treat them with attention: and who could tell that they might not expect to go out with her a second time? The power of disappointing them, it was true, must always be hers. But that was not enough; for when people are determined on a mode of conduct which they know to be wrong, they feel injured by the expectation of any thing better from them. Marianne had now been brought by degrees, so much into the habit of going out every day, that it was become a matter of indifference to her, whether she went or not: and she prepared quietly and mechanically for every evening's engagement, though without expecting the smallest amusement from any, and very often without knowing, till the last moment, where it was to take her. To her dress and appearance she was grown so perfectly indifferent, as not to bestow half the consideration on it, during the whole of her toilet, which it received from Miss Steele in the first five minutes of their being together, when it was finished. Nothing escaped HER minute observation and general curiosity; she saw every thing, and asked every thing; was never easy till she knew the price of every part of Marianne's dress; could have guessed the number of her gowns altogether with better judgment than Marianne herself, and was not without hopes of finding out before they parted, how much her washing cost per week, and how much she had every year to spend upon herself. The impertinence of these kind of scrutinies, moreover, was generally concluded with a compliment, which though meant as its douceur, was considered by Marianne as the greatest impertinence of all; for after undergoing an examination into the value and make of her gown, the colour of her shoes, and the arrangement of her hair, she was almost sure of being told that upon "her word she looked vastly smart, and she dared to say she would make a great many conquests." With such encouragement as this, was she dismissed on the present occasion, to her brother's carriage; which they were ready to enter five minutes after it stopped at the door, a punctuality not very agreeable to their sister-in-law, who had preceded them to the house of her acquaintance, and was there hoping for some delay on their part that might inconvenience either herself or her coachman. The events of this evening were not very remarkable. The party, like other musical parties, comprehended a great many people who had real taste for the performance, and a great many more who had none at all; and the performers themselves were, as usual, in their own estimation, and that of their immediate friends, the first private performers in England. As Elinor was neither musical, nor affecting to be so, she made no scruple of turning her eyes from the grand pianoforte, whenever it suited her, and unrestrained even by the presence of a harp, and violoncello, would fix them at pleasure on any other object in the room. In one of these excursive glances she perceived among a group of young men, the very he, who had given them a lecture on toothpick-cases at Gray's. She perceived him soon afterwards looking at herself, and speaking familiarly to her brother; and had just determined to find out his name from the latter, when they both came towards her, and Mr. Dashwood introduced him to her as Mr. Robert Ferrars. He addressed her with easy civility, and twisted his head into a bow which assured her as plainly as words could have done, that he was exactly the coxcomb she had heard him described to be by Lucy. Happy had it been for her, if her regard for Edward had depended less on his own merit, than on the merit of his nearest relations! For then his brother's bow must have given the finishing stroke to what the ill-humour of his mother and sister would have begun. But while she wondered at the difference of the two young men, she did not find that the emptiness of conceit of the one, put her out of all charity with the modesty and worth of the other. Why they WERE different, Robert exclaimed to her himself in the course of a quarter of an hour's conversation; for, talking of his brother, and lamenting the extreme GAUCHERIE which he really believed kept him from mixing in proper society, he candidly and generously attributed it much less to any natural deficiency, than to the misfortune of a private education; while he himself, though probably without any particular, any material superiority by nature, merely from the advantage of a public school, was as well fitted to mix in the world as any other man. "Upon my soul," he added, "I believe it is nothing more; and so I often tell my mother, when she is grieving about it. 'My dear Madam,' I always say to her, 'you must make yourself easy. The evil is now irremediable, and it has been entirely your own doing. Why would you be persuaded by my uncle, Sir Robert, against your own judgment, to place Edward under private tuition, at the most critical time of his life? If you had only sent him to Westminster as well as myself, instead of sending him to Mr. Pratt's, all this would have been prevented.' This is the way in which I always consider the matter, and my mother is perfectly convinced of her error." Elinor would not oppose his opinion, because, whatever might be her general estimation of the advantage of a public school, she could not think of Edward's abode in Mr. Pratt's family, with any satisfaction. "You reside in Devonshire, I think,"--was his next observation, "in a cottage near Dawlish." Elinor set him right as to its situation; and it seemed rather surprising to him that anybody could live in Devonshire, without living near Dawlish. He bestowed his hearty approbation however on their species of house. "For my own part," said he, "I am excessively fond of a cottage; there is always so much comfort, so much elegance about them. And I protest, if I had any money to spare, I should buy a little land and build one myself, within a short distance of London, where I might drive myself down at any time, and collect a few friends about me, and be happy. I advise every body who is going to build, to build a cottage. My friend Lord Courtland came to me the other day on purpose to ask my advice, and laid before me three different plans of Bonomi's. I was to decide on the best of them. 'My dear Courtland,' said I, immediately throwing them all into the fire, 'do not adopt either of them, but by all means build a cottage.' And that I fancy, will be the end of it. "Some people imagine that there can be no accommodations, no space in a cottage; but this is all a mistake. I was last month at my friend Elliott's, near Dartford. Lady Elliott wished to give a dance. 'But how can it be done?' said she; 'my dear Ferrars, do tell me how it is to be managed. There is not a room in this cottage that will hold ten couple, and where can the supper be?' I immediately saw that there could be no difficulty in it, so I said, 'My dear Lady Elliott, do not be uneasy. The dining parlour will admit eighteen couple with ease; card-tables may be placed in the drawing-room; the library may be open for tea and other refreshments; and let the supper be set out in the saloon.' Lady Elliott was delighted with the thought. We measured the dining-room, and found it would hold exactly eighteen couple, and the affair was arranged precisely after my plan. So that, in fact, you see, if people do but know how to set about it, every comfort may be as well enjoyed in a cottage as in the most spacious dwelling." Elinor agreed to it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition. As John Dashwood had no more pleasure in music than his eldest sister, his mind was equally at liberty to fix on any thing else; and a thought struck him during the evening, which he communicated to his wife, for her approbation, when they got home. The consideration of Mrs. Dennison's mistake, in supposing his sisters their guests, had suggested the propriety of their being really invited to become such, while Mrs. Jennings's engagements kept her from home. The expense would be nothing, the inconvenience not more; and it was altogether an attention which the delicacy of his conscience pointed out to be requisite to its complete enfranchisement from his promise to his father. Fanny was startled at the proposal. "I do not see how it can be done," said she, "without affronting Lady Middleton, for they spend every day with her; otherwise I should be exceedingly glad to do it. You know I am always ready to pay them any attention in my power, as my taking them out this evening shews. But they are Lady Middleton's visitors. How can I ask them away from her?" Her husband, but with great humility, did not see the force of her objection. "They had already spent a week in this manner in Conduit Street, and Lady Middleton could not be displeased at their giving the same number of days to such near relations." Fanny paused a moment, and then, with fresh vigor, said, "My love I would ask them with all my heart, if it was in my power. But I had just settled within myself to ask the Miss Steeles to spend a few days with us. They are very well behaved, good kind of girls; and I think the attention is due to them, as their uncle did so very well by Edward. We can ask your sisters some other year, you know; but the Miss Steeles may not be in town any more. I am sure you will like them; indeed, you DO like them, you know, very much already, and so does my mother; and they are such favourites with Harry!" Mr. Dashwood was convinced. He saw the necessity of inviting the Miss Steeles immediately, and his conscience was pacified by the resolution of inviting his sisters another year; at the same time, however, slyly suspecting that another year would make the invitation needless, by bringing Elinor to town as Colonel Brandon's wife, and Marianne as THEIR visitor. Fanny, rejoicing in her escape, and proud of the ready wit that had procured it, wrote the next morning to Lucy, to request her company and her sister's, for some days, in Harley Street, as soon as Lady Middleton could spare them. This was enough to make Lucy really and reasonably happy. Mrs. Dashwood seemed actually working for her, herself; cherishing all her hopes, and promoting all her views! Such an opportunity of being with Edward and his family was, above all things, the most material to her interest, and such an invitation the most gratifying to her feelings! It was an advantage that could not be too gratefully acknowledged, nor too speedily made use of; and the visit to Lady Middleton, which had not before had any precise limits, was instantly discovered to have been always meant to end in two days' time. When the note was shown to Elinor, as it was within ten minutes after its arrival, it gave her, for the first time, some share in the expectations of Lucy; for such a mark of uncommon kindness, vouchsafed on so short an acquaintance, seemed to declare that the good-will towards her arose from something more than merely malice against herself; and might be brought, by time and address, to do every thing that Lucy wished. Her flattery had already subdued the pride of Lady Middleton, and made an entry into the close heart of Mrs. John Dashwood; and these were effects that laid open the probability of greater. The Miss Steeles removed to Harley Street, and all that reached Elinor of their influence there, strengthened her expectation of the event. Sir John, who called on them more than once, brought home such accounts of the favour they were in, as must be universally striking. Mrs. Dashwood had never been so much pleased with any young women in her life, as she was with them; had given each of them a needle book made by some emigrant; called Lucy by her Christian name; and did not know whether she should ever be able to part with them. [At this point in the first and second editions, Volume II ended.]

Mrs. Palmer, Mrs. Jennings' daughter, has a son; Mrs. Jennings is with her daughter most days, which means Elinor and Marianne are obliged to spend their days at the Middletons'. Lady Middleton does not care for them because they do not flatter her or the children, and the Miss Steeles are too jealous of the Dashwood girls to like them. The Dashwood girls are invited to a party, although the invitation is mistakenly sent to their brother's house; Marianne, who is much recovered, goes, although she gets little pleasure from any company in town. Robert Ferrars, Edward's brother, is there; he is arrogant and a fool, like the whole of his family, excepting poor, modest Edward. John wishes to invite the Miss Dashwoods to stay with them; but, as usual, Fanny talks him out of it in favor of inviting the Miss Steeles. Elinor worries that Lucy might be able to gain the favor of the Ferrars family, and marry Edward after all.

For a week after the commission of the impious and profane offence of asking for more, Oliver remained a close prisoner in the dark and solitary room to which he had been consigned by the wisdom and mercy of the board. It appears, at first sight not unreasonable to suppose, that, if he had entertained a becoming feeling of respect for the prediction of the gentleman in the white waistcoat, he would have established that sage individual's prophetic character, once and for ever, by tying one end of his pocket-handkerchief to a hook in the wall, and attaching himself to the other. To the performance of this feat, however, there was one obstacle: namely, that pocket-handkerchiefs being decided articles of luxury, had been, for all future times and ages, removed from the noses of paupers by the express order of the board, in council assembled: solemnly given and pronounced under their hands and seals. There was a still greater obstacle in Oliver's youth and childishness. He only cried bitterly all day; and, when the long, dismal night came on, spread his little hands before his eyes to shut out the darkness, and crouching in the corner, tried to sleep: ever and anon waking with a start and tremble, and drawing himself closer and closer to the wall, as if to feel even its cold hard surface were a protection in the gloom and loneliness which surrounded him. Let it not be supposed by the enemies of 'the system,' that, during the period of his solitary incarceration, Oliver was denied the benefit of exercise, the pleasure of society, or the advantages of religious consolation. As for exercise, it was nice cold weather, and he was allowed to perform his ablutions every morning under the pump, in a stone yard, in the presence of Mr. Bumble, who prevented his catching cold, and caused a tingling sensation to pervade his frame, by repeated applications of the cane. As for society, he was carried every other day into the hall where the boys dined, and there sociably flogged as a public warning and example. And so far from being denied the advantages of religious consolation, he was kicked into the same apartment every evening at prayer-time, and there permitted to listen to, and console his mind with, a general supplication of the boys, containing a special clause, therein inserted by authority of the board, in which they entreated to be made good, virtuous, contented, and obedient, and to be guarded from the sins and vices of Oliver Twist: whom the supplication distinctly set forth to be under the exclusive patronage and protection of the powers of wickedness, and an article direct from the manufactory of the very Devil himself. It chanced one morning, while Oliver's affairs were in this auspicious and comfortable state, that Mr. Gamfield, chimney-sweep, went his way down the High Street, deeply cogitating in his mind his ways and means of paying certain arrears of rent, for which his landlord had become rather pressing. Mr. Gamfield's most sanguine estimate of his finances could not raise them within full five pounds of the desired amount; and, in a species of arithmetical desperation, he was alternately cudgelling his brains and his donkey, when passing the workhouse, his eyes encountered the bill on the gate. 'Wo--o!' said Mr. Gamfield to the donkey. The donkey was in a state of profound abstraction: wondering, probably, whether he was destined to be regaled with a cabbage-stalk or two when he had disposed of the two sacks of soot with which the little cart was laden; so, without noticing the word of command, he jogged onward. Mr. Gamfield growled a fierce imprecation on the donkey generally, but more particularly on his eyes; and, running after him, bestowed a blow on his head, which would inevitably have beaten in any skull but a donkey's. Then, catching hold of the bridle, he gave his jaw a sharp wrench, by way of gentle reminder that he was not his own master; and by these means turned him round. He then gave him another blow on the head, just to stun him till he came back again. Having completed these arrangements, he walked up to the gate, to read the bill. The gentleman with the white waistcoat was standing at the gate with his hands behind him, after having delivered himself of some profound sentiments in the board-room. Having witnessed the little dispute between Mr. Gamfield and the donkey, he smiled joyously when that person came up to read the bill, for he saw at once that Mr. Gamfield was exactly the sort of master Oliver Twist wanted. Mr. Gamfield smiled, too, as he perused the document; for five pounds was just the sum he had been wishing for; and, as to the boy with which it was encumbered, Mr. Gamfield, knowing what the dietary of the workhouse was, well knew he would be a nice small pattern, just the very thing for register stoves. So, he spelt the bill through again, from beginning to end; and then, touching his fur cap in token of humility, accosted the gentleman in the white waistcoat. 'This here boy, sir, wot the parish wants to 'prentis,' said Mr. Gamfield. 'Ay, my man,' said the gentleman in the white waistcoat, with a condescending smile. 'What of him?' 'If the parish vould like him to learn a right pleasant trade, in a good 'spectable chimbley-sweepin' bisness,' said Mr. Gamfield, 'I wants a 'prentis, and I am ready to take him.' 'Walk in,' said the gentleman in the white waistcoat. Mr. Gamfield having lingered behind, to give the donkey another blow on the head, and another wrench of the jaw, as a caution not to run away in his absence, followed the gentleman with the white waistcoat into the room where Oliver had first seen him. 'It's a nasty trade,' said Mr. Limbkins, when Gamfield had again stated his wish. 'Young boys have been smothered in chimneys before now,' said another gentleman. 'That's acause they damped the straw afore they lit it in the chimbley to make 'em come down again,' said Gamfield; 'that's all smoke, and no blaze; vereas smoke ain't o' no use at all in making a boy come down, for it only sinds him to sleep, and that's wot he likes. Boys is wery obstinit, and wery lazy, Gen'l'men, and there's nothink like a good hot blaze to make 'em come down vith a run. It's humane too, gen'l'men, acause, even if they've stuck in the chimbley, roasting their feet makes 'em struggle to hextricate theirselves.' The gentleman in the white waistcoat appeared very much amused by this explanation; but his mirth was speedily checked by a look from Mr. Limbkins. The board then proceeded to converse among themselves for a few minutes, but in so low a tone, that the words 'saving of expenditure,' 'looked well in the accounts,' 'have a printed report published,' were alone audible. These only chanced to be heard, indeed, or account of their being very frequently repeated with great emphasis. At length the whispering ceased; and the members of the board, having resumed their seats and their solemnity, Mr. Limbkins said: 'We have considered your proposition, and we don't approve of it.' 'Not at all,' said the gentleman in the white waistcoat. 'Decidedly not,' added the other members. As Mr. Gamfield did happen to labour under the slight imputation of having bruised three or four boys to death already, it occurred to him that the board had, perhaps, in some unaccountable freak, taken it into their heads that this extraneous circumstance ought to influence their proceedings. It was very unlike their general mode of doing business, if they had; but still, as he had no particular wish to revive the rumour, he twisted his cap in his hands, and walked slowly from the table. 'So you won't let me have him, gen'l'men?' said Mr. Gamfield, pausing near the door. 'No,' replied Mr. Limbkins; 'at least, as it's a nasty business, we think you ought to take something less than the premium we offered.' Mr. Gamfield's countenance brightened, as, with a quick step, he returned to the table, and said, 'What'll you give, gen'l'men? Come! Don't be too hard on a poor man. What'll you give?' 'I should say, three pound ten was plenty,' said Mr. Limbkins. 'Ten shillings too much,' said the gentleman in the white waistcoat. 'Come!' said Gamfield; 'say four pound, gen'l'men. Say four pound, and you've got rid of him for good and all. There!' 'Three pound ten,' repeated Mr. Limbkins, firmly. 'Come! I'll split the diff'erence, gen'l'men,' urged Gamfield. 'Three pound fifteen.' 'Not a farthing more,' was the firm reply of Mr. Limbkins. 'You're desperate hard upon me, gen'l'men,' said Gamfield, wavering. 'Pooh! pooh! nonsense!' said the gentleman in the white waistcoat. 'He'd be cheap with nothing at all, as a premium. Take him, you silly fellow! He's just the boy for you. He wants the stick, now and then: it'll do him good; and his board needn't come very expensive, for he hasn't been overfed since he was born. Ha! ha! ha!' Mr. Gamfield gave an arch look at the faces round the table, and, observing a smile on all of them, gradually broke into a smile himself. The bargain was made. Mr. Bumble, was at once instructed that Oliver Twist and his indentures were to be conveyed before the magistrate, for signature and approval, that very afternoon. In pursuance of this determination, little Oliver, to his excessive astonishment, was released from bondage, and ordered to put himself into a clean shirt. He had hardly achieved this very unusual gymnastic performance, when Mr. Bumble brought him, with his own hands, a basin of gruel, and the holiday allowance of two ounces and a quarter of bread. At this tremendous sight, Oliver began to cry very piteously: thinking, not unnaturally, that the board must have determined to kill him for some useful purpose, or they never would have begun to fatten him up in that way. 'Don't make your eyes red, Oliver, but eat your food and be thankful,' said Mr. Bumble, in a tone of impressive pomposity. 'You're a going to be made a 'prentice of, Oliver.' 'A prentice, sir!' said the child, trembling. 'Yes, Oliver,' said Mr. Bumble. 'The kind and blessed gentleman which is so many parents to you, Oliver, when you have none of your own: are a going to 'prentice' you: and to set you up in life, and make a man of you: although the expense to the parish is three pound ten!--three pound ten, Oliver!--seventy shillins--one hundred and forty sixpences!--and all for a naughty orphan which nobody can't love.' As Mr. Bumble paused to take breath, after delivering this address in an awful voice, the tears rolled down the poor child's face, and he sobbed bitterly. 'Come,' said Mr. Bumble, somewhat less pompously, for it was gratifying to his feelings to observe the effect his eloquence had produced; 'Come, Oliver! Wipe your eyes with the cuffs of your jacket, and don't cry into your gruel; that's a very foolish action, Oliver.' It certainly was, for there was quite enough water in it already. On their way to the magistrate, Mr. Bumble instructed Oliver that all he would have to do, would be to look very happy, and say, when the gentleman asked him if he wanted to be apprenticed, that he should like it very much indeed; both of which injunctions Oliver promised to obey: the rather as Mr. Bumble threw in a gentle hint, that if he failed in either particular, there was no telling what would be done to him. When they arrived at the office, he was shut up in a little room by himself, and admonished by Mr. Bumble to stay there, until he came back to fetch him. There the boy remained, with a palpitating heart, for half an hour. At the expiration of which time Mr. Bumble thrust in his head, unadorned with the cocked hat, and said aloud: 'Now, Oliver, my dear, come to the gentleman.' As Mr. Bumble said this, he put on a grim and threatening look, and added, in a low voice, 'Mind what I told you, you young rascal!' Oliver stared innocently in Mr. Bumble's face at this somewhat contradictory style of address; but that gentleman prevented his offering any remark thereupon, by leading him at once into an adjoining room: the door of which was open. It was a large room, with a great window. Behind a desk, sat two old gentleman with powdered heads: one of whom was reading the newspaper; while the other was perusing, with the aid of a pair of tortoise-shell spectacles, a small piece of parchment which lay before him. Mr. Limbkins was standing in front of the desk on one side; and Mr. Gamfield, with a partially washed face, on the other; while two or three bluff-looking men, in top-boots, were lounging about. The old gentleman with the spectacles gradually dozed off, over the little bit of parchment; and there was a short pause, after Oliver had been stationed by Mr. Bumble in front of the desk. 'This is the boy, your worship,' said Mr. Bumble. The old gentleman who was reading the newspaper raised his head for a moment, and pulled the other old gentleman by the sleeve; whereupon, the last-mentioned old gentleman woke up. 'Oh, is this the boy?' said the old gentleman. 'This is him, sir,' replied Mr. Bumble. 'Bow to the magistrate, my dear.' Oliver roused himself, and made his best obeisance. He had been wondering, with his eyes fixed on the magistrates' powder, whether all boards were born with that white stuff on their heads, and were boards from thenceforth on that account. 'Well,' said the old gentleman, 'I suppose he's fond of chimney-sweeping?' 'He doats on it, your worship,' replied Bumble; giving Oliver a sly pinch, to intimate that he had better not say he didn't. 'And he _will_ be a sweep, will he?' inquired the old gentleman. 'If we was to bind him to any other trade to-morrow, he'd run away simultaneous, your worship,' replied Bumble. 'And this man that's to be his master--you, sir--you'll treat him well, and feed him, and do all that sort of thing, will you?' said the old gentleman. 'When I says I will, I means I will,' replied Mr. Gamfield doggedly. 'You're a rough speaker, my friend, but you look an honest, open-hearted man,' said the old gentleman: turning his spectacles in the direction of the candidate for Oliver's premium, whose villainous countenance was a regular stamped receipt for cruelty. But the magistrate was half blind and half childish, so he couldn't reasonably be expected to discern what other people did. 'I hope I am, sir,' said Mr. Gamfield, with an ugly leer. 'I have no doubt you are, my friend,' replied the old gentleman: fixing his spectacles more firmly on his nose, and looking about him for the inkstand. It was the critical moment of Oliver's fate. If the inkstand had been where the old gentleman thought it was, he would have dipped his pen into it, and signed the indentures, and Oliver would have been straightway hurried off. But, as it chanced to be immediately under his nose, it followed, as a matter of course, that he looked all over his desk for it, without finding it; and happening in the course of his search to look straight before him, his gaze encountered the pale and terrified face of Oliver Twist: who, despite all the admonitory looks and pinches of Bumble, was regarding the repulsive countenance of his future master, with a mingled expression of horror and fear, too palpable to be mistaken, even by a half-blind magistrate. The old gentleman stopped, laid down his pen, and looked from Oliver to Mr. Limbkins; who attempted to take snuff with a cheerful and unconcerned aspect. 'My boy!' said the old gentleman, 'you look pale and alarmed. What is the matter?' 'Stand a little away from him, Beadle,' said the other magistrate: laying aside the paper, and leaning forward with an expression of interest. 'Now, boy, tell us what's the matter: don't be afraid.' Oliver fell on his knees, and clasping his hands together, prayed that they would order him back to the dark room--that they would starve him--beat him--kill him if they pleased--rather than send him away with that dreadful man. 'Well!' said Mr. Bumble, raising his hands and eyes with most impressive solemnity. 'Well! of all the artful and designing orphans that ever I see, Oliver, you are one of the most bare-facedest.' 'Hold your tongue, Beadle,' said the second old gentleman, when Mr. Bumble had given vent to this compound adjective. 'I beg your worship's pardon,' said Mr. Bumble, incredulous of having heard aright. 'Did your worship speak to me?' 'Yes. Hold your tongue.' Mr. Bumble was stupefied with astonishment. A beadle ordered to hold his tongue! A moral revolution! The old gentleman in the tortoise-shell spectacles looked at his companion, he nodded significantly. 'We refuse to sanction these indentures,' said the old gentleman: tossing aside the piece of parchment as he spoke. 'I hope,' stammered Mr. Limbkins: 'I hope the magistrates will not form the opinion that the authorities have been guilty of any improper conduct, on the unsupported testimony of a child.' 'The magistrates are not called upon to pronounce any opinion on the matter,' said the second old gentleman sharply. 'Take the boy back to the workhouse, and treat him kindly. He seems to want it.' That same evening, the gentleman in the white waistcoat most positively and decidedly affirmed, not only that Oliver would be hung, but that he would be drawn and quartered into the bargain. Mr. Bumble shook his head with gloomy mystery, and said he wished he might come to good; whereunto Mr. Gamfield replied, that he wished he might come to him; which, although he agreed with the beadle in most matters, would seem to be a wish of a totally opposite description. The next morning, the public were once informed that Oliver Twist was again To Let, and that five pounds would be paid to anybody who would take possession of him. In great families, when an advantageous place cannot be obtained, either in possession, reversion, remainder, or expectancy, for the young man who is growing up, it is a very general custom to send him to sea. The board, in imitation of so wise and salutary an example, took counsel together on the expediency of shipping off Oliver Twist, in some small trading vessel bound to a good unhealthy port. This suggested itself as the very best thing that could possibly be done with him: the probability being, that the skipper would flog him to death, in a playful mood, some day after dinner, or would knock his brains out with an iron bar; both pastimes being, as is pretty generally known, very favourite and common recreations among gentleman of that class. The more the case presented itself to the board, in this point of view, the more manifold the advantages of the step appeared; so, they came to the conclusion that the only way of providing for Oliver effectually, was to send him to sea without delay. Mr. Bumble had been despatched to make various preliminary inquiries, with the view of finding out some captain or other who wanted a cabin-boy without any friends; and was returning to the workhouse to communicate the result of his mission; when he encountered at the gate, no less a person than Mr. Sowerberry, the parochial undertaker. Mr. Sowerberry was a tall gaunt, large-jointed man, attired in a suit of threadbare black, with darned cotton stockings of the same colour, and shoes to answer. His features were not naturally intended to wear a smiling aspect, but he was in general rather given to professional jocosity. His step was elastic, and his face betokened inward pleasantry, as he advanced to Mr. Bumble, and shook him cordially by the hand. 'I have taken the measure of the two women that died last night, Mr. Bumble,' said the undertaker. 'You'll make your fortune, Mr. Sowerberry,' said the beadle, as he thrust his thumb and forefinger into the proffered snuff-box of the undertaker: which was an ingenious little model of a patent coffin. 'I say you'll make your fortune, Mr. Sowerberry,' repeated Mr. Bumble, tapping the undertaker on the shoulder, in a friendly manner, with his cane. 'Think so?' said the undertaker in a tone which half admitted and half disputed the probability of the event. 'The prices allowed by the board are very small, Mr. Bumble.' 'So are the coffins,' replied the beadle: with precisely as near an approach to a laugh as a great official ought to indulge in. Mr. Sowerberry was much tickled at this: as of course he ought to be; and laughed a long time without cessation. 'Well, well, Mr. Bumble,' he said at length, 'there's no denying that, since the new system of feeding has come in, the coffins are something narrower and more shallow than they used to be; but we must have some profit, Mr. Bumble. Well-seasoned timber is an expensive article, sir; and all the iron handles come, by canal, from Birmingham.' 'Well, well,' said Mr. Bumble, 'every trade has its drawbacks. A fair profit is, of course, allowable.' 'Of course, of course,' replied the undertaker; 'and if I don't get a profit upon this or that particular article, why, I make it up in the long-run, you see--he! he! he!' 'Just so,' said Mr. Bumble. 'Though I must say,' continued the undertaker, resuming the current of observations which the beadle had interrupted: 'though I must say, Mr. Bumble, that I have to contend against one very great disadvantage: which is, that all the stout people go off the quickest. The people who have been better off, and have paid rates for many years, are the first to sink when they come into the house; and let me tell you, Mr. Bumble, that three or four inches over one's calculation makes a great hole in one's profits: especially when one has a family to provide for, sir.' As Mr. Sowerberry said this, with the becoming indignation of an ill-used man; and as Mr. Bumble felt that it rather tended to convey a reflection on the honour of the parish; the latter gentleman thought it advisable to change the subject. Oliver Twist being uppermost in his mind, he made him his theme. 'By the bye,' said Mr. Bumble, 'you don't know anybody who wants a boy, do you? A porochial 'prentis, who is at present a dead-weight; a millstone, as I may say, round the porochial throat? Liberal terms, Mr. Sowerberry, liberal terms?' As Mr. Bumble spoke, he raised his cane to the bill above him, and gave three distinct raps upon the words 'five pounds': which were printed thereon in Roman capitals of gigantic size. 'Gadso!' said the undertaker: taking Mr. Bumble by the gilt-edged lappel of his official coat; 'that's just the very thing I wanted to speak to you about. You know--dear me, what a very elegant button this is, Mr. Bumble! I never noticed it before.' 'Yes, I think it rather pretty,' said the beadle, glancing proudly downwards at the large brass buttons which embellished his coat. 'The die is the same as the porochial seal--the Good Samaritan healing the sick and bruised man. The board presented it to me on Newyear's morning, Mr. Sowerberry. I put it on, I remember, for the first time, to attend the inquest on that reduced tradesman, who died in a doorway at midnight.' 'I recollect,' said the undertaker. 'The jury brought it in, "Died from exposure to the cold, and want of the common necessaries of life," didn't they?' Mr. Bumble nodded. 'And they made it a special verdict, I think,' said the undertaker, 'by adding some words to the effect, that if the relieving officer had--' 'Tush! Foolery!' interposed the beadle. 'If the board attended to all the nonsense that ignorant jurymen talk, they'd have enough to do.' 'Very true,' said the undertaker; 'they would indeed.' 'Juries,' said Mr. Bumble, grasping his cane tightly, as was his wont when working into a passion: 'juries is ineddicated, vulgar, grovelling wretches.' 'So they are,' said the undertaker. 'They haven't no more philosophy nor political economy about 'em than that,' said the beadle, snapping his fingers contemptuously. 'No more they have,' acquiesced the undertaker. 'I despise 'em,' said the beadle, growing very red in the face. 'So do I,' rejoined the undertaker. 'And I only wish we'd a jury of the independent sort, in the house for a week or two,' said the beadle; 'the rules and regulations of the board would soon bring their spirit down for 'em.' 'Let 'em alone for that,' replied the undertaker. So saying, he smiled, approvingly: to calm the rising wrath of the indignant parish officer. Mr Bumble lifted off his cocked hat; took a handkerchief from the inside of the crown; wiped from his forehead the perspiration which his rage had engendered; fixed the cocked hat on again; and, turning to the undertaker, said in a calmer voice: 'Well; what about the boy?' 'Oh!' replied the undertaker; 'why, you know, Mr. Bumble, I pay a good deal towards the poor's rates.' 'Hem!' said Mr. Bumble. 'Well?' 'Well,' replied the undertaker, 'I was thinking that if I pay so much towards 'em, I've a right to get as much out of 'em as I can, Mr. Bumble; and so--I think I'll take the boy myself.' Mr. Bumble grasped the undertaker by the arm, and led him into the building. Mr. Sowerberry was closeted with the board for five minutes; and it was arranged that Oliver should go to him that evening 'upon liking'--a phrase which means, in the case of a parish apprentice, that if the master find, upon a short trial, that he can get enough work out of a boy without putting too much food into him, he shall have him for a term of years, to do what he likes with. When little Oliver was taken before 'the gentlemen' that evening; and informed that he was to go, that night, as general house-lad to a coffin-maker's; and that if he complained of his situation, or ever came back to the parish again, he would be sent to sea, there to be drowned, or knocked on the head, as the case might be, he evinced so little emotion, that they by common consent pronounced him a hardened young rascal, and ordered Mr. Bumble to remove him forthwith. Now, although it was very natural that the board, of all people in the world, should feel in a great state of virtuous astonishment and horror at the smallest tokens of want of feeling on the part of anybody, they were rather out, in this particular instance. The simple fact was, that Oliver, instead of possessing too little feeling, possessed rather too much; and was in a fair way of being reduced, for life, to a state of brutal stupidity and sullenness by the ill usage he had received. He heard the news of his destination, in perfect silence; and, having had his luggage put into his hand--which was not very difficult to carry, inasmuch as it was all comprised within the limits of a brown paper parcel, about half a foot square by three inches deep--he pulled his cap over his eyes; and once more attaching himself to Mr. Bumble's coat cuff, was led away by that dignitary to a new scene of suffering. For some time, Mr. Bumble drew Oliver along, without notice or remark; for the beadle carried his head very erect, as a beadle always should: and, it being a windy day, little Oliver was completely enshrouded by the skirts of Mr. Bumble's coat as they blew open, and disclosed to great advantage his flapped waistcoat and drab plush knee-breeches. As they drew near to their destination, however, Mr. Bumble thought it expedient to look down, and see that the boy was in good order for inspection by his new master: which he accordingly did, with a fit and becoming air of gracious patronage. 'Oliver!' said Mr. Bumble. 'Yes, sir,' replied Oliver, in a low, tremulous voice. 'Pull that cap off your eyes, and hold up your head, sir.' Although Oliver did as he was desired, at once; and passed the back of his unoccupied hand briskly across his eyes, he left a tear in them when he looked up at his conductor. As Mr. Bumble gazed sternly upon him, it rolled down his cheek. It was followed by another, and another. The child made a strong effort, but it was an unsuccessful one. Withdrawing his other hand from Mr. Bumble's he covered his face with both; and wept until the tears sprung out from between his chin and bony fingers. 'Well!' exclaimed Mr. Bumble, stopping short, and darting at his little charge a look of intense malignity. 'Well! Of _all_ the ungratefullest, and worst-disposed boys as ever I see, Oliver, you are the--' 'No, no, sir,' sobbed Oliver, clinging to the hand which held the well-known cane; 'no, no, sir; I will be good indeed; indeed, indeed I will, sir! I am a very little boy, sir; and it is so--so--' 'So what?' inquired Mr. Bumble in amazement. 'So lonely, sir! So very lonely!' cried the child. 'Everybody hates me. Oh! sir, don't, don't pray be cross to me!' The child beat his hand upon his heart; and looked in his companion's face, with tears of real agony. Mr. Bumble regarded Oliver's piteous and helpless look, with some astonishment, for a few seconds; hemmed three or four times in a husky manner; and after muttering something about 'that troublesome cough,' bade Oliver dry his eyes and be a good boy. Then once more taking his hand, he walked on with him in silence. The undertaker, who had just put up the shutters of his shop, was making some entries in his day-book by the light of a most appropriate dismal candle, when Mr. Bumble entered. 'Aha!' said the undertaker; looking up from the book, and pausing in the middle of a word; 'is that you, Bumble?' 'No one else, Mr. Sowerberry,' replied the beadle. 'Here! I've brought the boy.' Oliver made a bow. 'Oh! that's the boy, is it?' said the undertaker: raising the candle above his head, to get a better view of Oliver. 'Mrs. Sowerberry, will you have the goodness to come here a moment, my dear?' Mrs. Sowerberry emerged from a little room behind the shop, and presented the form of a short, then, squeezed-up woman, with a vixenish countenance. 'My dear,' said Mr. Sowerberry, deferentially, 'this is the boy from the workhouse that I told you of.' Oliver bowed again. 'Dear me!' said the undertaker's wife, 'he's very small.' 'Why, he _is_ rather small,' replied Mr. Bumble: looking at Oliver as if it were his fault that he was no bigger; 'he is small. There's no denying it. But he'll grow, Mrs. Sowerberry--he'll grow.' 'Ah! I dare say he will,' replied the lady pettishly, 'on our victuals and our drink. I see no saving in parish children, not I; for they always cost more to keep, than they're worth. However, men always think they know best. There! Get downstairs, little bag o' bones.' With this, the undertaker's wife opened a side door, and pushed Oliver down a steep flight of stairs into a stone cell, damp and dark: forming the ante-room to the coal-cellar, and denominated 'kitchen'; wherein sat a slatternly girl, in shoes down at heel, and blue worsted stockings very much out of repair. 'Here, Charlotte,' said Mr. Sowerberry, who had followed Oliver down, 'give this boy some of the cold bits that were put by for Trip. He hasn't come home since the morning, so he may go without 'em. I dare say the boy isn't too dainty to eat 'em--are you, boy?' Oliver, whose eyes had glistened at the mention of meat, and who was trembling with eagerness to devour it, replied in the negative; and a plateful of coarse broken victuals was set before him. I wish some well-fed philosopher, whose meat and drink turn to gall within him; whose blood is ice, whose heart is iron; could have seen Oliver Twist clutching at the dainty viands that the dog had neglected. I wish he could have witnessed the horrible avidity with which Oliver tore the bits asunder with all the ferocity of famine. There is only one thing I should like better; and that would be to see the Philosopher making the same sort of meal himself, with the same relish. 'Well,' said the undertaker's wife, when Oliver had finished his supper: which she had regarded in silent horror, and with fearful auguries of his future appetite: 'have you done?' There being nothing eatable within his reach, Oliver replied in the affirmative. 'Then come with me,' said Mrs. Sowerberry: taking up a dim and dirty lamp, and leading the way upstairs; 'your bed's under the counter. You don't mind sleeping among the coffins, I suppose? But it doesn't much matter whether you do or don't, for you can't sleep anywhere else. Come; don't keep me here all night!' Oliver lingered no longer, but meekly followed his new mistress.

For a week, Oliver remains a solitary prisoner except for the rituals of being flogged every other day before the assembled boys and being exhibited at prayer time as an example of consummate wickedness. One morning, a passing chimney sweep, Gamfield, catches sight of the notice posted to rid the workhouse of Oliver. Since he happens to badly need five pounds, Gamfield enters and volunteers to take Oliver as an apprentice for the advertised sum. Mr. Limbkins of the board points out that "It's a nasty trade." After a consultation, the board rejects Gamfield's offer. But with a bit of haggling, they agree to dispose of Oliver for three pounds, ten shillings; legal papers binding Oliver to an apprenticeship with Gamfield are drawn up for final approval. When Oliver is brought before the magistrates, he is terrified at the sight of Gamfield's cruel appearance. Just as one of the old gentlemen is about to sign the documents that will assign Oliver to Gamfield, he glimpses Oliver's fear-stricken features. The magistrate hesitates and questions Oliver, who pleads desperately that he be condemned to any fate rather than be delivered into the custody of the malicious-looking chimney sweep. The kindly old man is moved and the proceedings are terminated. Oliver goes back to the workhouse; the sign again adorns the gate. Inquiries are made to determine whether Oliver could be shipped out as a cabin boy on some vessel, but the undertaker, Mr. Sowerberry, agrees to take the boy to be a general drudge, on a trial basis. Arrangements are concluded at once. When Oliver is informed, he receives the news without expression, leading to the consensus that he is "a hardened young rascal." The truth is that the boy is "in a fair way of being reduced, for life, to a state of brutal stupidity and sullenness by the ill usage he had received." Bumble conducts the emaciated child "to a new scene of suffering." When they arrive at the undertaker's establishment, Mrs. Sowerberry permits Oliver to feast on leftovers neglected by the dog, Trip. Oliver hungrily gobbles up the scraps, alarming the peevish woman at the prospects of having to cater to such an abnormal appetite. The mistress then shows Oliver where he is to sleep, under the counter, among the coffins.

The library looked tranquil enough as I entered it, and the Sibyl--if Sibyl she were--was seated snugly enough in an easy-chair at the chimney- corner. She had on a red cloak and a black bonnet: or rather, a broad- brimmed gipsy hat, tied down with a striped handkerchief under her chin. An extinguished candle stood on the table; she was bending over the fire, and seemed reading in a little black book, like a prayer-book, by the light of the blaze: she muttered the words to herself, as most old women do, while she read; she did not desist immediately on my entrance: it appeared she wished to finish a paragraph. I stood on the rug and warmed my hands, which were rather cold with sitting at a distance from the drawing-room fire. I felt now as composed as ever I did in my life: there was nothing indeed in the gipsy's appearance to trouble one's calm. She shut her book and slowly looked up; her hat-brim partially shaded her face, yet I could see, as she raised it, that it was a strange one. It looked all brown and black: elf- locks bristled out from beneath a white band which passed under her chin, and came half over her cheeks, or rather jaws: her eye confronted me at once, with a bold and direct gaze. "Well, and you want your fortune told?" she said, in a voice as decided as her glance, as harsh as her features. "I don't care about it, mother; you may please yourself: but I ought to warn you, I have no faith." "It's like your impudence to say so: I expected it of you; I heard it in your step as you crossed the threshold." "Did you? You've a quick ear." "I have; and a quick eye and a quick brain." "You need them all in your trade." "I do; especially when I've customers like you to deal with. Why don't you tremble?" "I'm not cold." "Why don't you turn pale?" "I am not sick." "Why don't you consult my art?" "I'm not silly." The old crone "nichered" a laugh under her bonnet and bandage; she then drew out a short black pipe, and lighting it began to smoke. Having indulged a while in this sedative, she raised her bent body, took the pipe from her lips, and while gazing steadily at the fire, said very deliberately--"You are cold; you are sick; and you are silly." "Prove it," I rejoined. "I will, in few words. You are cold, because you are alone: no contact strikes the fire from you that is in you. You are sick; because the best of feelings, the highest and the sweetest given to man, keeps far away from you. You are silly, because, suffer as you may, you will not beckon it to approach, nor will you stir one step to meet it where it waits you." She again put her short black pipe to her lips, and renewed her smoking with vigour. "You might say all that to almost any one who you knew lived as a solitary dependent in a great house." "I might say it to almost any one: but would it be true of almost any one?" "In my circumstances." "Yes; just so, in _your_ circumstances: but find me another precisely placed as you are." "It would be easy to find you thousands." "You could scarcely find me one. If you knew it, you are peculiarly situated: very near happiness; yes, within reach of it. The materials are all prepared; there only wants a movement to combine them. Chance laid them somewhat apart; let them be once approached and bliss results." "I don't understand enigmas. I never could guess a riddle in my life." "If you wish me to speak more plainly, show me your palm." "And I must cross it with silver, I suppose?" "To be sure." I gave her a shilling: she put it into an old stocking-foot which she took out of her pocket, and having tied it round and returned it, she told me to hold out my hand. I did. She approached her face to the palm, and pored over it without touching it. "It is too fine," said she. "I can make nothing of such a hand as that; almost without lines: besides, what is in a palm? Destiny is not written there." "I believe you," said I. "No," she continued, "it is in the face: on the forehead, about the eyes, in the lines of the mouth. Kneel, and lift up your head." "Ah! now you are coming to reality," I said, as I obeyed her. "I shall begin to put some faith in you presently." I knelt within half a yard of her. She stirred the fire, so that a ripple of light broke from the disturbed coal: the glare, however, as she sat, only threw her face into deeper shadow: mine, it illumined. "I wonder with what feelings you came to me to-night," she said, when she had examined me a while. "I wonder what thoughts are busy in your heart during all the hours you sit in yonder room with the fine people flitting before you like shapes in a magic-lantern: just as little sympathetic communion passing between you and them as if they were really mere shadows of human forms, and not the actual substance." "I feel tired often, sleepy sometimes, but seldom sad." "Then you have some secret hope to buoy you up and please you with whispers of the future?" "Not I. The utmost I hope is, to save money enough out of my earnings to set up a school some day in a little house rented by myself." "A mean nutriment for the spirit to exist on: and sitting in that window- seat (you see I know your habits )--" "You have learned them from the servants." "Ah! you think yourself sharp. Well, perhaps I have: to speak truth, I have an acquaintance with one of them, Mrs. Poole--" I started to my feet when I heard the name. "You have--have you?" thought I; "there is diablerie in the business after all, then!" "Don't be alarmed," continued the strange being; "she's a safe hand is Mrs. Poole: close and quiet; any one may repose confidence in her. But, as I was saying: sitting in that window-seat, do you think of nothing but your future school? Have you no present interest in any of the company who occupy the sofas and chairs before you? Is there not one face you study? one figure whose movements you follow with at least curiosity?" "I like to observe all the faces and all the figures." "But do you never single one from the rest--or it may be, two?" "I do frequently; when the gestures or looks of a pair seem telling a tale: it amuses me to watch them." "What tale do you like best to hear?" "Oh, I have not much choice! They generally run on the same theme--courtship; and promise to end in the same catastrophe--marriage." "And do you like that monotonous theme?" "Positively, I don't care about it: it is nothing to me." "Nothing to you? When a lady, young and full of life and health, charming with beauty and endowed with the gifts of rank and fortune, sits and smiles in the eyes of a gentleman you--" "I what?" "You know--and perhaps think well of." "I don't know the gentlemen here. I have scarcely interchanged a syllable with one of them; and as to thinking well of them, I consider some respectable, and stately, and middle-aged, and others young, dashing, handsome, and lively: but certainly they are all at liberty to be the recipients of whose smiles they please, without my feeling disposed to consider the transaction of any moment to me." "You don't know the gentlemen here? You have not exchanged a syllable with one of them? Will you say that of the master of the house!" "He is not at home." "A profound remark! A most ingenious quibble! He went to Millcote this morning, and will be back here to-night or to-morrow: does that circumstance exclude him from the list of your acquaintance--blot him, as it were, out of existence?" "No; but I can scarcely see what Mr. Rochester has to do with the theme you had introduced." "I was talking of ladies smiling in the eyes of gentlemen; and of late so many smiles have been shed into Mr. Rochester's eyes that they overflow like two cups filled above the brim: have you never remarked that?" "Mr. Rochester has a right to enjoy the society of his guests." "No question about his right: but have you never observed that, of all the tales told here about matrimony, Mr. Rochester has been favoured with the most lively and the most continuous?" "The eagerness of a listener quickens the tongue of a narrator." I said this rather to myself than to the gipsy, whose strange talk, voice, manner, had by this time wrapped me in a kind of dream. One unexpected sentence came from her lips after another, till I got involved in a web of mystification; and wondered what unseen spirit had been sitting for weeks by my heart watching its workings and taking record of every pulse. "Eagerness of a listener!" repeated she: "yes; Mr. Rochester has sat by the hour, his ear inclined to the fascinating lips that took such delight in their task of communicating; and Mr. Rochester was so willing to receive and looked so grateful for the pastime given him; you have noticed this?" "Grateful! I cannot remember detecting gratitude in his face." "Detecting! You have analysed, then. And what did you detect, if not gratitude?" I said nothing. "You have seen love: have you not?--and, looking forward, you have seen him married, and beheld his bride happy?" "Humph! Not exactly. Your witch's skill is rather at fault sometimes." "What the devil have you seen, then?" "Never mind: I came here to inquire, not to confess. Is it known that Mr. Rochester is to be married?" "Yes; and to the beautiful Miss Ingram." "Shortly?" "Appearances would warrant that conclusion: and, no doubt (though, with an audacity that wants chastising out of you, you seem to question it), they will be a superlatively happy pair. He must love such a handsome, noble, witty, accomplished lady; and probably she loves him, or, if not his person, at least his purse. I know she considers the Rochester estate eligible to the last degree; though (God pardon me!) I told her something on that point about an hour ago which made her look wondrous grave: the corners of her mouth fell half an inch. I would advise her blackaviced suitor to look out: if another comes, with a longer or clearer rent-roll,--he's dished--" "But, mother, I did not come to hear Mr. Rochester's fortune: I came to hear my own; and you have told me nothing of it." "Your fortune is yet doubtful: when I examined your face, one trait contradicted another. Chance has meted you a measure of happiness: that I know. I knew it before I came here this evening. She has laid it carefully on one side for you. I saw her do it. It depends on yourself to stretch out your hand, and take it up: but whether you will do so, is the problem I study. Kneel again on the rug." "Don't keep me long; the fire scorches me." {She did not stoop towards me, but only gazed, leaning back in her chair: p190.jpg} I knelt. She did not stoop towards me, but only gazed, leaning back in her chair. She began muttering,-- "The flame flickers in the eye; the eye shines like dew; it looks soft and full of feeling; it smiles at my jargon: it is susceptible; impression follows impression through its clear sphere; where it ceases to smile, it is sad; an unconscious lassitude weighs on the lid: that signifies melancholy resulting from loneliness. It turns from me; it will not suffer further scrutiny; it seems to deny, by a mocking glance, the truth of the discoveries I have already made,--to disown the charge both of sensibility and chagrin: its pride and reserve only confirm me in my opinion. The eye is favourable. "As to the mouth, it delights at times in laughter; it is disposed to impart all that the brain conceives; though I daresay it would be silent on much the heart experiences. Mobile and flexible, it was never intended to be compressed in the eternal silence of solitude: it is a mouth which should speak much and smile often, and have human affection for its interlocutor. That feature too is propitious. "I see no enemy to a fortunate issue but in the brow; and that brow professes to say,--'I can live alone, if self-respect, and circumstances require me so to do. I need not sell my soul to buy bliss. I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all extraneous delights should be withheld, or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.' The forehead declares, 'Reason sits firm and holds the reins, and she will not let the feelings burst away and hurry her to wild chasms. The passions may rage furiously, like true heathens, as they are; and the desires may imagine all sorts of vain things: but judgment shall still have the last word in every argument, and the casting vote in every decision. Strong wind, earthquake-shock, and fire may pass by: but I shall follow the guiding of that still small voice which interprets the dictates of conscience.' "Well said, forehead; your declaration shall be respected. I have formed my plans--right plans I deem them--and in them I have attended to the claims of conscience, the counsels of reason. I know how soon youth would fade and bloom perish, if, in the cup of bliss offered, but one dreg of shame, or one flavour of remorse were detected; and I do not want sacrifice, sorrow, dissolution--such is not my taste. I wish to foster, not to blight--to earn gratitude, not to wring tears of blood--no, nor of brine: my harvest must be in smiles, in endearments, in sweet--That will do. I think I rave in a kind of exquisite delirium. I should wish now to protract this moment _ad infinitum_; but I dare not. So far I have governed myself thoroughly. I have acted as I inwardly swore I would act; but further might try me beyond my strength. Rise, Miss Eyre: leave me; the play is played out'." Where was I? Did I wake or sleep? Had I been dreaming? Did I dream still? The old woman's voice had changed: her accent, her gesture, and all were familiar to me as my own face in a glass--as the speech of my own tongue. I got up, but did not go. I looked; I stirred the fire, and I looked again: but she drew her bonnet and her bandage closer about her face, and again beckoned me to depart. The flame illuminated her hand stretched out: roused now, and on the alert for discoveries, I at once noticed that hand. It was no more the withered limb of eld than my own; it was a rounded supple member, with smooth fingers, symmetrically turned; a broad ring flashed on the little finger, and stooping forward, I looked at it, and saw a gem I had seen a hundred times before. Again I looked at the face; which was no longer turned from me--on the contrary, the bonnet was doffed, the bandage displaced, the head advanced. "Well, Jane, do you know me?" asked the familiar voice. "Only take off the red cloak, sir, and then--" "But the string is in a knot--help me." "Break it, sir." "There, then--'Off, ye lendings!'" And Mr. Rochester stepped out of his disguise. "Now, sir, what a strange idea!" "But well carried out, eh? Don't you think so?" "With the ladies you must have managed well." "But not with you?" "You did not act the character of a gipsy with me." "What character did I act? My own?" "No; some unaccountable one. In short, I believe you have been trying to draw me out--or in; you have been talking nonsense to make me talk nonsense. It is scarcely fair, sir." "Do you forgive me, Jane?" "I cannot tell till I have thought it all over. If, on reflection, I find I have fallen into no great absurdity, I shall try to forgive you; but it was not right." "Oh, you have been very correct--very careful, very sensible." I reflected, and thought, on the whole, I had. It was a comfort; but, indeed, I had been on my guard almost from the beginning of the interview. Something of masquerade I suspected. I knew gipsies and fortune-tellers did not express themselves as this seeming old woman had expressed herself; besides I had noted her feigned voice, her anxiety to conceal her features. But my mind had been running on Grace Poole--that living enigma, that mystery of mysteries, as I considered her. I had never thought of Mr. Rochester. "Well," said he, "what are you musing about? What does that grave smile signify?" "Wonder and self-congratulation, sir. I have your permission to retire now, I suppose?" "No; stay a moment; and tell me what the people in the drawing-room yonder are doing." "Discussing the gipsy, I daresay." "Sit down!--Let me hear what they said about me." "I had better not stay long, sir; it must be near eleven o'clock. Oh, are you aware, Mr. Rochester, that a stranger has arrived here since you left this morning?" "A stranger!--no; who can it be? I expected no one; is he gone?" "No; he said he had known you long, and that he could take the liberty of installing himself here till you returned." "The devil he did! Did he give his name?" "His name is Mason, sir; and he comes from the West Indies; from Spanish Town, in Jamaica, I think." Mr. Rochester was standing near me; he had taken my hand, as if to lead me to a chair. As I spoke he gave my wrist a convulsive grip; the smile on his lips froze: apparently a spasm caught his breath. "Mason!--the West Indies!" he said, in the tone one might fancy a speaking automaton to enounce its single words; "Mason!--the West Indies!" he reiterated; and he went over the syllables three times, growing, in the intervals of speaking, whiter than ashes: he hardly seemed to know what he was doing. "Do you feel ill, sir?" I inquired. "Jane, I've got a blow; I've got a blow, Jane!" He staggered. "Oh, lean on me, sir." "Jane, you offered me your shoulder once before; let me have it now." "Yes, sir, yes; and my arm." He sat down, and made me sit beside him. Holding my hand in both his own, he chafed it; gazing on me, at the same time, with the most troubled and dreary look. "My little friend!" said he, "I wish I were in a quiet island with only you; and trouble, and danger, and hideous recollections removed from me." "Can I help you, sir?--I'd give my life to serve you." "Jane, if aid is wanted, I'll seek it at your hands; I promise you that." "Thank you, sir. Tell me what to do,--I'll try, at least, to do it." "Fetch me now, Jane, a glass of wine from the dining-room: they will be at supper there; and tell me if Mason is with them, and what he is doing." I went. I found all the party in the dining-room at supper, as Mr. Rochester had said; they were not seated at table,--the supper was arranged on the sideboard; each had taken what he chose, and they stood about here and there in groups, their plates and glasses in their hands. Every one seemed in high glee; laughter and conversation were general and animated. Mr. Mason stood near the fire, talking to Colonel and Mrs. Dent, and appeared as merry as any of them. I filled a wine-glass (I saw Miss Ingram watch me frowningly as I did so: she thought I was taking a liberty, I daresay), and I returned to the library. Mr. Rochester's extreme pallor had disappeared, and he looked once more firm and stern. He took the glass from my hand. "Here is to your health, ministrant spirit!" he said. He swallowed the contents and returned it to me. "What are they doing, Jane?" "Laughing and talking, sir." "They don't look grave and mysterious, as if they had heard something strange?" "Not at all: they are full of jests and gaiety." "And Mason?" "He was laughing too." "If all these people came in a body and spat at me, what would you do, Jane?" "Turn them out of the room, sir, if I could." He half smiled. "But if I were to go to them, and they only looked at me coldly, and whispered sneeringly amongst each other, and then dropped off and left me one by one, what then? Would you go with them?" "I rather think not, sir: I should have more pleasure in staying with you." "To comfort me?" "Yes, sir, to comfort you, as well as I could." "And if they laid you under a ban for adhering to me?" "I, probably, should know nothing about their ban; and if I did, I should care nothing about it." "Then, you could dare censure for my sake?" "I could dare it for the sake of any friend who deserved my adherence; as you, I am sure, do." "Go back now into the room; step quietly up to Mason, and whisper in his ear that Mr. Rochester is come and wishes to see him: show him in here and then leave me." "Yes, sir." I did his behest. The company all stared at me as I passed straight among them. I sought Mr. Mason, delivered the message, and preceded him from the room: I ushered him into the library, and then I went upstairs. At a late hour, after I had been in bed some time, I heard the visitors repair to their chambers: I distinguished Mr. Rochester's voice, and heard him say, "This way, Mason; this is your room." He spoke cheerfully: the gay tones set my heart at ease. I was soon asleep.

Jane enters the room and tells the gypsy that she can tell her fortune, but that she has no faith. They talk for a while, and the gypsy tells Jane that she knows that she sits with the rest of the party every night, and asks if she studies one person more than the others. Jane says that she looks at them all. The gypsy tells Jane that it is hard to tell her fortune, as one trait contradicts another. Their talk continues, until the gypsy gets closer to the fire and Jane realizes that it is Rochester. Jane is surprised and tries to remember if she had said anything absurd. She feels that she had not, and Rochester says that she had been very careful and correct. He wants to know what the others had said about him. Jane tells him, and then mentions that Mr. Mason had arrived. Mr. Rochester's smile leaves him and he gets quite white, leaning on Jane. Rochester asks Jane what she would do if all of his friends suddenly turned on him, and she says that she would not leave, but would stay and comfort him. He tells her to go and get him a glass of wine and for her to lead Mason to him. Later, after she had been in bed awhile, she hears Rochester lead Mason to a room

The schoolmaster sat in his homely dwelling attached to the school, both being modern erections; and he looked across the way at the old house in which his teacher Sue had a lodging. The arrangement had been concluded very quickly. A pupil-teacher who was to have been transferred to Mr. Phillotson's school had failed him, and Sue had been taken as stop-gap. All such provisional arrangements as these could only last till the next annual visit of H.M. Inspector, whose approval was necessary to make them permanent. Having taught for some two years in London, though she had abandoned that vocation of late, Miss Bridehead was not exactly a novice, and Phillotson thought there would be no difficulty in retaining her services, which he already wished to do, though she had only been with him three or four weeks. He had found her quite as bright as Jude had described her; and what master-tradesman does not wish to keep an apprentice who saves him half his labour? It was a little over half-past eight o'clock in the morning and he was waiting to see her cross the road to the school, when he would follow. At twenty minutes to nine she did cross, a light hat tossed on her head; and he watched her as a curiosity. A new emanation, which had nothing to do with her skill as a teacher, seemed to surround her this morning. He went to the school also, and Sue remained governing her class at the other end of the room, all day under his eye. She certainly was an excellent teacher. It was part of his duty to give her private lessons in the evening, and some article in the Code made it necessary that a respectable, elderly woman should be present at these lessons when the teacher and the taught were of different sexes. Richard Phillotson thought of the absurdity of the regulation in this case, when he was old enough to be the girl's father; but he faithfully acted up to it; and sat down with her in a room where Mrs. Hawes, the widow at whose house Sue lodged, occupied herself with sewing. The regulation was, indeed, not easy to evade, for there was no other sitting-room in the dwelling. Sometimes as she figured--it was arithmetic that they were working at--she would involuntarily glance up with a little inquiring smile at him, as if she assumed that, being the master, he must perceive all that was passing in her brain, as right or wrong. Phillotson was not really thinking of the arithmetic at all, but of her, in a novel way which somehow seemed strange to him as preceptor. Perhaps she knew that he was thinking of her thus. For a few weeks their work had gone on with a monotony which in itself was a delight to him. Then it happened that the children were to be taken to Christminster to see an itinerant exhibition, in the shape of a model of Jerusalem, to which schools were admitted at a penny a head in the interests of education. They marched along the road two and two, she beside her class with her simple cotton sunshade, her little thumb cocked up against its stem; and Phillotson behind in his long dangling coat, handling his walking-stick genteelly, in the musing mood which had come over him since her arrival. The afternoon was one of sun and dust, and when they entered the exhibition room few people were present but themselves. The model of the ancient city stood in the middle of the apartment, and the proprietor, with a fine religious philanthropy written on his features, walked round it with a pointer in his hand, showing the young people the various quarters and places known to them by name from reading their Bibles; Mount Moriah, the Valley of Jehoshaphat, the City of Zion, the walls and the gates, outside one of which there was a large mound like a tumulus, and on the mound a little white cross. The spot, he said, was Calvary. "I think," said Sue to the schoolmaster, as she stood with him a little in the background, "that this model, elaborate as it is, is a very imaginary production. How does anybody know that Jerusalem was like this in the time of Christ? I am sure this man doesn't." "It is made after the best conjectural maps, based on actual visits to the city as it now exists." "I fancy we have had enough of Jerusalem," she said, "considering we are not descended from the Jews. There was nothing first-rate about the place, or people, after all--as there was about Athens, Rome, Alexandria, and other old cities." "But my dear girl, consider what it is to us!" She was silent, for she was easily repressed; and then perceived behind the group of children clustered round the model a young man in a white flannel jacket, his form being bent so low in his intent inspection of the Valley of Jehoshaphat that his face was almost hidden from view by the Mount of Olives. "Look at your cousin Jude," continued the schoolmaster. "He doesn't think we have had enough of Jerusalem!" "Ah--I didn't see him!" she cried in her quick, light voice. "Jude--how seriously you are going into it!" Jude started up from his reverie, and saw her. "Oh--Sue!" he said, with a glad flush of embarrassment. "These are your school-children, of course! I saw that schools were admitted in the afternoons, and thought you might come; but I got so deeply interested that I didn't remember where I was. How it carries one back, doesn't it! I could examine it for hours, but I have only a few minutes, unfortunately; for I am in the middle of a job out here." "Your cousin is so terribly clever that she criticizes it unmercifully," said Phillotson, with good-humoured satire. "She is quite sceptical as to its correctness." "No, Mr. Phillotson, I am not--altogether! I hate to be what is called a clever girl--there are too many of that sort now!" answered Sue sensitively. "I only meant--I don't know what I meant--except that it was what you don't understand!" "_I_ know your meaning," said Jude ardently (although he did not). "And I think you are quite right." "That's a good Jude--I know YOU believe in me!" She impulsively seized his hand, and leaving a reproachful look on the schoolmaster turned away to Jude, her voice revealing a tremor which she herself felt to be absurdly uncalled for by sarcasm so gentle. She had not the least conception how the hearts of the twain went out to her at this momentary revelation of feeling, and what a complication she was building up thereby in the futures of both. The model wore too much of an educational aspect for the children not to tire of it soon, and a little later in the afternoon they were all marched back to Lumsdon, Jude returning to his work. He watched the juvenile flock in their clean frocks and pinafores, filing down the street towards the country beside Phillotson and Sue, and a sad, dissatisfied sense of being out of the scheme of the latters' lives had possession of him. Phillotson had invited him to walk out and see them on Friday evening, when there would be no lessons to give to Sue, and Jude had eagerly promised to avail himself of the opportunity. Meanwhile the scholars and teachers moved homewards, and the next day, on looking on the blackboard in Sue's class, Phillotson was surprised to find upon it, skilfully drawn in chalk, a perspective view of Jerusalem, with every building shown in its place. "I thought you took no interest in the model, and hardly looked at it?" he said. "I hardly did," said she, "but I remembered that much of it." "It is more than I had remembered myself." Her Majesty's school-inspector was at that time paying "surprise-visits" in this neighbourhood to test the teaching unawares; and two days later, in the middle of the morning lessons, the latch of the door was softly lifted, and in walked my gentleman, the king of terrors--to pupil-teachers. To Mr. Phillotson the surprise was not great; like the lady in the story, he had been played that trick too many times to be unprepared. But Sue's class was at the further end of the room, and her back was towards the entrance; the inspector therefore came and stood behind her and watched her teaching some half-minute before she became aware of his presence. She turned, and realized that an oft-dreaded moment had come. The effect upon her timidity was such that she uttered a cry of fright. Phillotson, with a strange instinct of solicitude quite beyond his control, was at her side just in time to prevent her falling from faintness. She soon recovered herself, and laughed; but when the inspector had gone there was a reaction, and she was so white that Phillotson took her into his room, and gave her some brandy to bring her round. She found him holding her hand. "You ought to have told me," she gasped petulantly, "that one of the inspector's surprise-visits was imminent! Oh, what shall I do! Now he'll write and tell the managers that I am no good, and I shall be disgraced for ever!" "He won't do that, my dear little girl. You are the best teacher ever I had!" He looked so gently at her that she was moved, and regretted that she had upbraided him. When she was better she went home. Jude in the meantime had been waiting impatiently for Friday. On both Wednesday and Thursday he had been so much under the influence of his desire to see her that he walked after dark some distance along the road in the direction of the village, and, on returning to his room to read, found himself quite unable to concentrate his mind on the page. On Friday, as soon as he had got himself up as he thought Sue would like to see him, and made a hasty tea, he set out, notwithstanding that the evening was wet. The trees overhead deepened the gloom of the hour, and they dripped sadly upon him, impressing him with forebodings--illogical forebodings; for though he knew that he loved her he also knew that he could not be more to her than he was. On turning the corner and entering the village the first sight that greeted his eyes was that of two figures under one umbrella coming out of the vicarage gate. He was too far back for them to notice him, but he knew in a moment that they were Sue and Phillotson. The latter was holding the umbrella over her head, and they had evidently been paying a visit to the vicar--probably on some business connected with the school work. And as they walked along the wet and deserted lane Jude saw Phillotson place his arm round the girl's waist; whereupon she gently removed it; but he replaced it; and she let it remain, looking quickly round her with an air of misgiving. She did not look absolutely behind her, and therefore did not see Jude, who sank into the hedge like one struck with a blight. There he remained hidden till they had reached Sue's cottage and she had passed in, Phillotson going on to the school hard by. "Oh, he's too old for her--too old!" cried Jude in all the terrible sickness of hopeless, handicapped love. He could not interfere. Was he not Arabella's? He was unable to go on further, and retraced his steps towards Christminster. Every tread of his feet seemed to say to him that he must on no account stand in the schoolmaster's way with Sue. Phillotson was perhaps twenty years her senior, but many a happy marriage had been made in such conditions of age. The ironical clinch to his sorrow was given by the thought that the intimacy between his cousin and the schoolmaster had been brought about entirely by himself.

Phillotson's interest in Sue quickly becomes more than that of a master in a new teacher. Though he is impressed by her ability as a teacher, he is also attracted to her as a person. On the occasion of their taking the pupils to Christminster to see a model of Jerusalem, Sue questions the authenticity of the reproduction and remarks, to Phillotson's surprise, that Jerusalem was certainly not first-rate by comparison with other ancient cities. They encounter Jude at the exhibition, and when Phillotson mentions Sue's criticizing the model Jude says he understands what she means. A few days later a school inspector visits the school to observe Sue at work, and she is so upset that Phillotson has to look after her, assuring her with more than professional interest that she is the best teacher he's ever had. When Jude comes to visit them at Lumsdon, at their request, he observes their coming out of the vicarage together and Sue's not objecting to Phillotson's putting his arm around her waist. Jude returns to the city without calling on them, appalled at what he has been responsible for.

Leon soon put on an air of superiority before his comrades, avoided their company, and completely neglected his work. He waited for her letters; he re-read them; he wrote to her. He called her to mind with all the strength of his desires and of his memories. Instead of lessening with absence, this longing to see her again grew, so that at last on Saturday morning he escaped from his office. When, from the summit of the hill, he saw in the valley below the church-spire with its tin flag swinging in the wind, he felt that delight mingled with triumphant vanity and egoistic tenderness that millionaires must experience when they come back to their native village. He went rambling round her house. A light was burning in the kitchen. He watched for her shadow behind the curtains, but nothing appeared. Mere Lefrancois, when she saw him, uttered many exclamations. She thought he "had grown and was thinner," while Artemise, on the contrary, thought him stouter and darker. He dined in the little room as of yore, but alone, without the tax-gatherer; for Binet, tired of waiting for the "Hirondelle," had definitely put forward his meal one hour, and now he dined punctually at five, and yet he declared usually the rickety old concern "was late." Leon, however, made up his mind, and knocked at the doctor's door. Madame was in her room, and did not come down for a quarter of an hour. The doctor seemed delighted to see him, but he never stirred out that evening, nor all the next day. He saw her alone in the evening, very late, behind the garden in the lane; in the lane, as she had the other one! It was a stormy night, and they talked under an umbrella by lightning flashes. Their separation was becoming intolerable. "I would rather die!" said Emma. She was writhing in his arms, weeping. "Adieu! adieu! When shall I see you again?" They came back again to embrace once more, and it was then that she promised him to find soon, by no matter what means, a regular opportunity for seeing one another in freedom at least once a week. Emma never doubted she should be able to do this. Besides, she was full of hope. Some money was coming to her. On the strength of it she bought a pair of yellow curtains with large stripes for her room, whose cheapness Monsieur Lheureux had commended; she dreamed of getting a carpet, and Lheureux, declaring that it wasn't "drinking the sea," politely undertook to supply her with one. She could no longer do without his services. Twenty times a day she sent for him, and he at once put by his business without a murmur. People could not understand either why Mere Rollet breakfasted with her every day, and even paid her private visits. It was about this time, that is to say, the beginning of winter, that she seemed seized with great musical fervour. One evening when Charles was listening to her, she began the same piece four times over, each time with much vexation, while he, not noticing any difference, cried-- "Bravo! very goodl You are wrong to stop. Go on!" "Oh, no; it is execrable! My fingers are quite rusty." The next day he begged her to play him something again. "Very well; to please you!" And Charles confessed she had gone off a little. She played wrong notes and blundered; then, stopping short-- "Ah! it is no use. I ought to take some lessons; but--" She bit her lips and added, "Twenty francs a lesson, that's too dear!" "Yes, so it is--rather," said Charles, giggling stupidly. "But it seems to me that one might be able to do it for less; for there are artists of no reputation, and who are often better than the celebrities." "Find them!" said Emma. The next day when he came home he looked at her shyly, and at last could no longer keep back the words. "How obstinate you are sometimes! I went to Barfucheres to-day. Well, Madame Liegard assured me that her three young ladies who are at La Misericorde have lessons at fifty sous apiece, and that from an excellent mistress!" She shrugged her shoulders and did not open her piano again. But when she passed by it (if Bovary were there), she sighed-- "Ah! my poor piano!" And when anyone came to see her, she did not fail to inform them she had given up music, and could not begin again now for important reasons. Then people commiserated her-- "What a pity! she had so much talent!" They even spoke to Bovary about it. They put him to shame, and especially the chemist. "You are wrong. One should never let any of the faculties of nature lie fallow. Besides, just think, my good friend, that by inducing madame to study; you are economising on the subsequent musical education of your child. For my own part, I think that mothers ought themselves to instruct their children. That is an idea of Rousseau's, still rather new perhaps, but that will end by triumphing, I am certain of it, like mothers nursing their own children and vaccination." So Charles returned once more to this question of the piano. Emma replied bitterly that it would be better to sell it. This poor piano, that had given her vanity so much satisfaction--to see it go was to Bovary like the indefinable suicide of a part of herself. "If you liked," he said, "a lesson from time to time, that wouldn't after all be very ruinous." "But lessons," she replied, "are only of use when followed up." And thus it was she set about obtaining her husband's permission to go to town once a week to see her lover. At the end of a month she was even considered to have made considerable progress.

Early one Saturday morning Lon travels to Yonville. As in the old days, he dines at the inn and afterward calls on the Bovary's but does not see Emma. Finally, late Sunday evening they meet in the lane and she promises to arrange things so that she can see him regularly. She is confident and hopeful for the future. On the strength of the imminent inheritance money she purchases more items from Lheureux and comes to increasingly rely on his services. She begins to take an interest in music again but pretends that she is rusty on the piano and needs expensive lessons. Charles eventually concedes that she should take weekly lessons in Rouen.

ACT V. SCENE 3. Troy. Before PRIAM'S palace Enter HECTOR and ANDROMACHE ANDROMACHE. When was my lord so much ungently temper'd To stop his ears against admonishment? Unarm, unarm, and do not fight to-day. HECTOR. You train me to offend you; get you in. By all the everlasting gods, I'll go. ANDROMACHE. My dreams will, sure, prove ominous to the day. HECTOR. No more, I say. Enter CASSANDRA CASSANDRA. Where is my brother Hector? ANDROMACHE. Here, sister, arm'd, and bloody in intent. Consort with me in loud and dear petition, Pursue we him on knees; for I have dreamt Of bloody turbulence, and this whole night Hath nothing been but shapes and forms of slaughter. CASSANDRA. O, 'tis true! HECTOR. Ho! bid my trumpet sound. CASSANDRA. No notes of sally, for the heavens, sweet brother! HECTOR. Be gone, I say. The gods have heard me swear. CASSANDRA. The gods are deaf to hot and peevish vows; They are polluted off'rings, more abhorr'd Than spotted livers in the sacrifice. ANDROMACHE. O, be persuaded! Do not count it holy To hurt by being just. It is as lawful, For we would give much, to use violent thefts And rob in the behalf of charity. CASSANDRA. It is the purpose that makes strong the vow; But vows to every purpose must not hold. Unarm, sweet Hector. HECTOR. Hold you still, I say. Mine honour keeps the weather of my fate. Life every man holds dear; but the dear man Holds honour far more precious dear than life. Enter TROILUS How now, young man! Mean'st thou to fight to-day? ANDROMACHE. Cassandra, call my father to persuade. Exit CASSANDRA HECTOR. No, faith, young Troilus; doff thy harness, youth; I am to-day i' th' vein of chivalry. Let grow thy sinews till their knots be strong, And tempt not yet the brushes of the war. Unarm thee, go; and doubt thou not, brave boy, I'll stand to-day for thee and me and Troy. TROILUS. Brother, you have a vice of mercy in you Which better fits a lion than a man. HECTOR. What vice is that, good Troilus? Chide me for it. TROILUS. When many times the captive Grecian falls, Even in the fan and wind of your fair sword, You bid them rise and live. HECTOR. O, 'tis fair play! TROILUS. Fool's play, by heaven, Hector. HECTOR. How now! how now! TROILUS. For th' love of all the gods, Let's leave the hermit Pity with our mother; And when we have our armours buckled on, The venom'd vengeance ride upon our swords, Spur them to ruthful work, rein them from ruth! HECTOR. Fie, savage, fie! TROILUS. Hector, then 'tis wars. HECTOR. Troilus, I would not have you fight to-day. TROILUS. Who should withhold me? Not fate, obedience, nor the hand of Mars Beck'ning with fiery truncheon my retire; Not Priamus and Hecuba on knees, Their eyes o'ergalled with recourse of tears; Nor you, my brother, with your true sword drawn, Oppos'd to hinder me, should stop my way, But by my ruin. Re-enter CASSANDRA, with PRIAM CASSANDRA. Lay hold upon him, Priam, hold him fast; He is thy crutch; now if thou lose thy stay, Thou on him leaning, and all Troy on thee, Fall all together. PRIAM. Come, Hector, come, go back. Thy wife hath dreamt; thy mother hath had visions; Cassandra doth foresee; and I myself Am like a prophet suddenly enrapt To tell thee that this day is ominous. Therefore, come back. HECTOR. Aeneas is a-field; And I do stand engag'd to many Greeks, Even in the faith of valour, to appear This morning to them. PRIAM. Ay, but thou shalt not go. HECTOR. I must not break my faith. You know me dutiful; therefore, dear sir, Let me not shame respect; but give me leave To take that course by your consent and voice Which you do here forbid me, royal Priam. CASSANDRA. O Priam, yield not to him! ANDROMACHE. Do not, dear father. HECTOR. Andromache, I am offended with you. Upon the love you bear me, get you in. Exit ANDROMACHE TROILUS. This foolish, dreaming, superstitious girl Makes all these bodements. CASSANDRA. O, farewell, dear Hector! Look how thou diest. Look how thy eye turns pale. Look how thy wounds do bleed at many vents. Hark how Troy roars; how Hecuba cries out; How poor Andromache shrills her dolours forth; Behold distraction, frenzy, and amazement, Like witless antics, one another meet, And all cry, Hector! Hector's dead! O Hector! TROILUS. Away, away! CASSANDRA. Farewell!-yet, soft! Hector, I take my leave. Thou dost thyself and all our Troy deceive. Exit HECTOR. You are amaz'd, my liege, at her exclaim. Go in, and cheer the town; we'll forth, and fight, Do deeds worth praise and tell you them at night. PRIAM. Farewell. The gods with safety stand about thee! Exeunt severally PRIAM and HECTOR. Alarums TROILUS. They are at it, hark! Proud Diomed, believe, I come to lose my arm or win my sleeve. Enter PANDARUS PANDARUS. Do you hear, my lord? Do you hear? TROILUS. What now? PANDARUS. Here's a letter come from yond poor girl. TROILUS. Let me read. PANDARUS. A whoreson tisick, a whoreson rascally tisick so troubles me, and the foolish fortune of this girl, and what one thing, what another, that I shall leave you one o' th's days; and I have a rheum in mine eyes too, and such an ache in my bones that unless a man were curs'd I cannot tell what to think on't. What says she there? TROILUS. Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart; Th' effect doth operate another way. [Tearing the letter] Go, wind, to wind, there turn and change together. My love with words and errors still she feeds, But edifies another with her deeds. Exeunt severally

The next morning, in Troy, Hector's wife Andromache begs her husband not to fight today. Hector says something horrible like, "Woman, you're asking for it with all this nagging." We find out that Andromache has been having some "ominous" dreams. Speaking of female premonitions, here's crazy Cassandra. Hector's wife and sister beg him not to go because they've both had premonitions of "bloody turbulence" and "slaughter"--presumably, Hector's. But Hector insists that his "honor" is way more important to him than his life. Troilus shows up and Cassandra runs off to get Priam to talk Hector out of fighting. Hector greets Troilus and is all "Listen, kid, I don't think it's a good idea for you to fight today. Why don't you stay home and let me kill some Greeks for you." But Troilus is ready to get his battle on, finally. Prima shows up with Cassandra and begs Hector not to go to battle since Hector's wife, sister, mom, and even Priam have all had visions of his death. Hector goes to battle anyway. Alone on stage, Troilus tells us that he's going to get his "sleeve" back from Diomedes on the battlefield. In pops Pandarus with a letter from Cressida. As Troilus reads it, Pandarus gives us way too much information about how he's been feeling sick lately. He's got a nasty cough, a mucous oozing from his eyes, and his bones ache . Troilus announces the letter is full of "words, words, mere words" and tears it to shreds. Okay, Troilus, but seriously: what else did you expect a letter to be full of?

In his capacity as delicatessen vender, Jokubas Szedvilas had many acquaintances. Among these was one of the special policemen employed by Durham, whose duty it frequently was to pick out men for employment. Jokubas had never tried it, but he expressed a certainty that he could get some of his friends a job through this man. It was agreed, after consultation, that he should make the effort with old Antanas and with Jonas. Jurgis was confident of his ability to get work for himself, unassisted by any one. As we have said before, he was not mistaken in this. He had gone to Brown's and stood there not more than half an hour before one of the bosses noticed his form towering above the rest, and signaled to him. The colloquy which followed was brief and to the point: "Speak English?" "No; Lit-uanian." (Jurgis had studied this word carefully.) "Job?" "Je." (A nod.) "Worked here before?" "No 'stand." (Signals and gesticulations on the part of the boss. Vigorous shakes of the head by Jurgis.) "Shovel guts?" "No 'stand." (More shakes of the head.) "Zarnos. Pagaiksztis. Szluofa!" (Imitative motions.) "Je." "See door. Durys?" (Pointing.) "Je." "To-morrow, seven o'clock. Understand? Rytoj! Prieszpietys! Septyni!" "Dekui, tamistai!" (Thank you, sir.) And that was all. Jurgis turned away, and then in a sudden rush the full realization of his triumph swept over him, and he gave a yell and a jump, and started off on a run. He had a job! He had a job! And he went all the way home as if upon wings, and burst into the house like a cyclone, to the rage of the numerous lodgers who had just turned in for their daily sleep. Meantime Jokubas had been to see his friend the policeman, and received encouragement, so it was a happy party. There being no more to be done that day, the shop was left under the care of Lucija, and her husband sallied forth to show his friends the sights of Packingtown. Jokubas did this with the air of a country gentleman escorting a party of visitors over his estate; he was an old-time resident, and all these wonders had grown up under his eyes, and he had a personal pride in them. The packers might own the land, but he claimed the landscape, and there was no one to say nay to this. They passed down the busy street that led to the yards. It was still early morning, and everything was at its high tide of activity. A steady stream of employees was pouring through the gate--employees of the higher sort, at this hour, clerks and stenographers and such. For the women there were waiting big two-horse wagons, which set off at a gallop as fast as they were filled. In the distance there was heard again the lowing of the cattle, a sound as of a far-off ocean calling. They followed it, this time, as eager as children in sight of a circus menagerie--which, indeed, the scene a good deal resembled. They crossed the railroad tracks, and then on each side of the street were the pens full of cattle; they would have stopped to look, but Jokubas hurried them on, to where there was a stairway and a raised gallery, from which everything could be seen. Here they stood, staring, breathless with wonder. There is over a square mile of space in the yards, and more than half of it is occupied by cattle pens; north and south as far as the eye can reach there stretches a sea of pens. And they were all filled--so many cattle no one had ever dreamed existed in the world. Red cattle, black, white, and yellow cattle; old cattle and young cattle; great bellowing bulls and little calves not an hour born; meek-eyed milch cows and fierce, long-horned Texas steers. The sound of them here was as of all the barnyards of the universe; and as for counting them--it would have taken all day simply to count the pens. Here and there ran long alleys, blocked at intervals by gates; and Jokubas told them that the number of these gates was twenty-five thousand. Jokubas had recently been reading a newspaper article which was full of statistics such as that, and he was very proud as he repeated them and made his guests cry out with wonder. Jurgis too had a little of this sense of pride. Had he not just gotten a job, and become a sharer in all this activity, a cog in this marvelous machine? Here and there about the alleys galloped men upon horseback, booted, and carrying long whips; they were very busy, calling to each other, and to those who were driving the cattle. They were drovers and stock raisers, who had come from far states, and brokers and commission merchants, and buyers for all the big packing houses. Here and there they would stop to inspect a bunch of cattle, and there would be a parley, brief and businesslike. The buyer would nod or drop his whip, and that would mean a bargain; and he would note it in his little book, along with hundreds of others he had made that morning. Then Jokubas pointed out the place where the cattle were driven to be weighed, upon a great scale that would weigh a hundred thousand pounds at once and record it automatically. It was near to the east entrance that they stood, and all along this east side of the yards ran the railroad tracks, into which the cars were run, loaded with cattle. All night long this had been going on, and now the pens were full; by tonight they would all be empty, and the same thing would be done again. "And what will become of all these creatures?" cried Teta Elzbieta. "By tonight," Jokubas answered, "they will all be killed and cut up; and over there on the other side of the packing houses are more railroad tracks, where the cars come to take them away." There were two hundred and fifty miles of track within the yards, their guide went on to tell them. They brought about ten thousand head of cattle every day, and as many hogs, and half as many sheep--which meant some eight or ten million live creatures turned into food every year. One stood and watched, and little by little caught the drift of the tide, as it set in the direction of the packing houses. There were groups of cattle being driven to the chutes, which were roadways about fifteen feet wide, raised high above the pens. In these chutes the stream of animals was continuous; it was quite uncanny to watch them, pressing on to their fate, all unsuspicious a very river of death. Our friends were not poetical, and the sight suggested to them no metaphors of human destiny; they thought only of the wonderful efficiency of it all. The chutes into which the hogs went climbed high up--to the very top of the distant buildings; and Jokubas explained that the hogs went up by the power of their own legs, and then their weight carried them back through all the processes necessary to make them into pork. "They don't waste anything here," said the guide, and then he laughed and added a witticism, which he was pleased that his unsophisticated friends should take to be his own: "They use everything about the hog except the squeal." In front of Brown's General Office building there grows a tiny plot of grass, and this, you may learn, is the only bit of green thing in Packingtown; likewise this jest about the hog and his squeal, the stock in trade of all the guides, is the one gleam of humor that you will find there. After they had seen enough of the pens, the party went up the street, to the mass of buildings which occupy the center of the yards. These buildings, made of brick and stained with innumerable layers of Packingtown smoke, were painted all over with advertising signs, from which the visitor realized suddenly that he had come to the home of many of the torments of his life. It was here that they made those products with the wonders of which they pestered him so--by placards that defaced the landscape when he traveled, and by staring advertisements in the newspapers and magazines--by silly little jingles that he could not get out of his mind, and gaudy pictures that lurked for him around every street corner. Here was where they made Brown's Imperial Hams and Bacon, Brown's Dressed Beef, Brown's Excelsior Sausages! Here was the headquarters of Durham's Pure Leaf Lard, of Durham's Breakfast Bacon, Durham's Canned Beef, Potted Ham, Deviled Chicken, Peerless Fertilizer! Entering one of the Durham buildings, they found a number of other visitors waiting; and before long there came a guide, to escort them through the place. They make a great feature of showing strangers through the packing plants, for it is a good advertisement. But Ponas Jokubas whispered maliciously that the visitors did not see any more than the packers wanted them to. They climbed a long series of stairways outside of the building, to the top of its five or six stories. Here was the chute, with its river of hogs, all patiently toiling upward; there was a place for them to rest to cool off, and then through another passageway they went into a room from which there is no returning for hogs. It was a long, narrow room, with a gallery along it for visitors. At the head there was a great iron wheel, about twenty feet in circumference, with rings here and there along its edge. Upon both sides of this wheel there was a narrow space, into which came the hogs at the end of their journey; in the midst of them stood a great burly Negro, bare-armed and bare-chested. He was resting for the moment, for the wheel had stopped while men were cleaning up. In a minute or two, however, it began slowly to revolve, and then the men upon each side of it sprang to work. They had chains which they fastened about the leg of the nearest hog, and the other end of the chain they hooked into one of the rings upon the wheel. So, as the wheel turned, a hog was suddenly jerked off his feet and borne aloft. At the same instant the car was assailed by a most terrifying shriek; the visitors started in alarm, the women turned pale and shrank back. The shriek was followed by another, louder and yet more agonizing--for once started upon that journey, the hog never came back; at the top of the wheel he was shunted off upon a trolley, and went sailing down the room. And meantime another was swung up, and then another, and another, until there was a double line of them, each dangling by a foot and kicking in frenzy--and squealing. The uproar was appalling, perilous to the eardrums; one feared there was too much sound for the room to hold--that the walls must give way or the ceiling crack. There were high squeals and low squeals, grunts, and wails of agony; there would come a momentary lull, and then a fresh outburst, louder than ever, surging up to a deafening climax. It was too much for some of the visitors--the men would look at each other, laughing nervously, and the women would stand with hands clenched, and the blood rushing to their faces, and the tears starting in their eyes. Meantime, heedless of all these things, the men upon the floor were going about their work. Neither squeals of hogs nor tears of visitors made any difference to them; one by one they hooked up the hogs, and one by one with a swift stroke they slit their throats. There was a long line of hogs, with squeals and lifeblood ebbing away together; until at last each started again, and vanished with a splash into a huge vat of boiling water. It was all so very businesslike that one watched it fascinated. It was porkmaking by machinery, porkmaking by applied mathematics. And yet somehow the most matter-of-fact person could not help thinking of the hogs; they were so innocent, they came so very trustingly; and they were so very human in their protests--and so perfectly within their rights! They had done nothing to deserve it; and it was adding insult to injury, as the thing was done here, swinging them up in this cold-blooded, impersonal way, without a pretense of apology, without the homage of a tear. Now and then a visitor wept, to be sure; but this slaughtering machine ran on, visitors or no visitors. It was like some horrible crime committed in a dungeon, all unseen and unheeded, buried out of sight and of memory. One could not stand and watch very long without becoming philosophical, without beginning to deal in symbols and similes, and to hear the hog squeal of the universe. Was it permitted to believe that there was nowhere upon the earth, or above the earth, a heaven for hogs, where they were requited for all this suffering? Each one of these hogs was a separate creature. Some were white hogs, some were black; some were brown, some were spotted; some were old, some young; some were long and lean, some were monstrous. And each of them had an individuality of his own, a will of his own, a hope and a heart's desire; each was full of self-confidence, of self-importance, and a sense of dignity. And trusting and strong in faith he had gone about his business, the while a black shadow hung over him and a horrid Fate waited in his pathway. Now suddenly it had swooped upon him, and had seized him by the leg. Relentless, remorseless, it was; all his protests, his screams, were nothing to it--it did its cruel will with him, as if his wishes, his feelings, had simply no existence at all; it cut his throat and watched him gasp out his life. And now was one to believe that there was nowhere a god of hogs, to whom this hog personality was precious, to whom these hog squeals and agonies had a meaning? Who would take this hog into his arms and comfort him, reward him for his work well done, and show him the meaning of his sacrifice? Perhaps some glimpse of all this was in the thoughts of our humble-minded Jurgis, as he turned to go on with the rest of the party, and muttered: "Dieve--but I'm glad I'm not a hog!" The carcass hog was scooped out of the vat by machinery, and then it fell to the second floor, passing on the way through a wonderful machine with numerous scrapers, which adjusted themselves to the size and shape of the animal, and sent it out at the other end with nearly all of its bristles removed. It was then again strung up by machinery, and sent upon another trolley ride; this time passing between two lines of men, who sat upon a raised platform, each doing a certain single thing to the carcass as it came to him. One scraped the outside of a leg; another scraped the inside of the same leg. One with a swift stroke cut the throat; another with two swift strokes severed the head, which fell to the floor and vanished through a hole. Another made a slit down the body; a second opened the body wider; a third with a saw cut the breastbone; a fourth loosened the entrails; a fifth pulled them out--and they also slid through a hole in the floor. There were men to scrape each side and men to scrape the back; there were men to clean the carcass inside, to trim it and wash it. Looking down this room, one saw, creeping slowly, a line of dangling hogs a hundred yards in length; and for every yard there was a man, working as if a demon were after him. At the end of this hog's progress every inch of the carcass had been gone over several times; and then it was rolled into the chilling room, where it stayed for twenty-four hours, and where a stranger might lose himself in a forest of freezing hogs. Before the carcass was admitted here, however, it had to pass a government inspector, who sat in the doorway and felt of the glands in the neck for tuberculosis. This government inspector did not have the manner of a man who was worked to death; he was apparently not haunted by a fear that the hog might get by him before he had finished his testing. If you were a sociable person, he was quite willing to enter into conversation with you, and to explain to you the deadly nature of the ptomaines which are found in tubercular pork; and while he was talking with you you could hardly be so ungrateful as to notice that a dozen carcasses were passing him untouched. This inspector wore a blue uniform, with brass buttons, and he gave an atmosphere of authority to the scene, and, as it were, put the stamp of official approval upon the things which were done in Durham's. Jurgis went down the line with the rest of the visitors, staring open-mouthed, lost in wonder. He had dressed hogs himself in the forest of Lithuania; but he had never expected to live to see one hog dressed by several hundred men. It was like a wonderful poem to him, and he took it all in guilelessly--even to the conspicuous signs demanding immaculate cleanliness of the employees. Jurgis was vexed when the cynical Jokubas translated these signs with sarcastic comments, offering to take them to the secret rooms where the spoiled meats went to be doctored. The party descended to the next floor, where the various waste materials were treated. Here came the entrails, to be scraped and washed clean for sausage casings; men and women worked here in the midst of a sickening stench, which caused the visitors to hasten by, gasping. To another room came all the scraps to be "tanked," which meant boiling and pumping off the grease to make soap and lard; below they took out the refuse, and this, too, was a region in which the visitors did not linger. In still other places men were engaged in cutting up the carcasses that had been through the chilling rooms. First there were the "splitters," the most expert workmen in the plant, who earned as high as fifty cents an hour, and did not a thing all day except chop hogs down the middle. Then there were "cleaver men," great giants with muscles of iron; each had two men to attend him--to slide the half carcass in front of him on the table, and hold it while he chopped it, and then turn each piece so that he might chop it once more. His cleaver had a blade about two feet long, and he never made but one cut; he made it so neatly, too, that his implement did not smite through and dull itself--there was just enough force for a perfect cut, and no more. So through various yawning holes there slipped to the floor below--to one room hams, to another forequarters, to another sides of pork. One might go down to this floor and see the pickling rooms, where the hams were put into vats, and the great smoke rooms, with their airtight iron doors. In other rooms they prepared salt pork--there were whole cellars full of it, built up in great towers to the ceiling. In yet other rooms they were putting up meats in boxes and barrels, and wrapping hams and bacon in oiled paper, sealing and labeling and sewing them. From the doors of these rooms went men with loaded trucks, to the platform where freight cars were waiting to be filled; and one went out there and realized with a start that he had come at last to the ground floor of this enormous building. Then the party went across the street to where they did the killing of beef--where every hour they turned four or five hundred cattle into meat. Unlike the place they had left, all this work was done on one floor; and instead of there being one line of carcasses which moved to the workmen, there were fifteen or twenty lines, and the men moved from one to another of these. This made a scene of intense activity, a picture of human power wonderful to watch. It was all in one great room, like a circus amphitheater, with a gallery for visitors running over the center. Along one side of the room ran a narrow gallery, a few feet from the floor; into which gallery the cattle were driven by men with goads which gave them electric shocks. Once crowded in here, the creatures were prisoned, each in a separate pen, by gates that shut, leaving them no room to turn around; and while they stood bellowing and plunging, over the top of the pen there leaned one of the "knockers," armed with a sledge hammer, and watching for a chance to deal a blow. The room echoed with the thuds in quick succession, and the stamping and kicking of the steers. The instant the animal had fallen, the "knocker" passed on to another; while a second man raised a lever, and the side of the pen was raised, and the animal, still kicking and struggling, slid out to the "killing bed." Here a man put shackles about one leg, and pressed another lever, and the body was jerked up into the air. There were fifteen or twenty such pens, and it was a matter of only a couple of minutes to knock fifteen or twenty cattle and roll them out. Then once more the gates were opened, and another lot rushed in; and so out of each pen there rolled a steady stream of carcasses, which the men upon the killing beds had to get out of the way. The manner in which they did this was something to be seen and never forgotten. They worked with furious intensity, literally upon the run--at a pace with which there is nothing to be compared except a football game. It was all highly specialized labor, each man having his task to do; generally this would consist of only two or three specific cuts, and he would pass down the line of fifteen or twenty carcasses, making these cuts upon each. First there came the "butcher," to bleed them; this meant one swift stroke, so swift that you could not see it--only the flash of the knife; and before you could realize it, the man had darted on to the next line, and a stream of bright red was pouring out upon the floor. This floor was half an inch deep with blood, in spite of the best efforts of men who kept shoveling it through holes; it must have made the floor slippery, but no one could have guessed this by watching the men at work. The carcass hung for a few minutes to bleed; there was no time lost, however, for there were several hanging in each line, and one was always ready. It was let down to the ground, and there came the "headsman," whose task it was to sever the head, with two or three swift strokes. Then came the "floorsman," to make the first cut in the skin; and then another to finish ripping the skin down the center; and then half a dozen more in swift succession, to finish the skinning. After they were through, the carcass was again swung up; and while a man with a stick examined the skin, to make sure that it had not been cut, and another rolled it up and tumbled it through one of the inevitable holes in the floor, the beef proceeded on its journey. There were men to cut it, and men to split it, and men to gut it and scrape it clean inside. There were some with hose which threw jets of boiling water upon it, and others who removed the feet and added the final touches. In the end, as with the hogs, the finished beef was run into the chilling room, to hang its appointed time. The visitors were taken there and shown them, all neatly hung in rows, labeled conspicuously with the tags of the government inspectors--and some, which had been killed by a special process, marked with the sign of the kosher rabbi, certifying that it was fit for sale to the orthodox. And then the visitors were taken to the other parts of the building, to see what became of each particle of the waste material that had vanished through the floor; and to the pickling rooms, and the salting rooms, the canning rooms, and the packing rooms, where choice meat was prepared for shipping in refrigerator cars, destined to be eaten in all the four corners of civilization. Afterward they went outside, wandering about among the mazes of buildings in which was done the work auxiliary to this great industry. There was scarcely a thing needed in the business that Durham and Company did not make for themselves. There was a great steam power plant and an electricity plant. There was a barrel factory, and a boiler-repair shop. There was a building to which the grease was piped, and made into soap and lard; and then there was a factory for making lard cans, and another for making soap boxes. There was a building in which the bristles were cleaned and dried, for the making of hair cushions and such things; there was a building where the skins were dried and tanned, there was another where heads and feet were made into glue, and another where bones were made into fertilizer. No tiniest particle of organic matter was wasted in Durham's. Out of the horns of the cattle they made combs, buttons, hairpins, and imitation ivory; out of the shinbones and other big bones they cut knife and toothbrush handles, and mouthpieces for pipes; out of the hoofs they cut hairpins and buttons, before they made the rest into glue. From such things as feet, knuckles, hide clippings, and sinews came such strange and unlikely products as gelatin, isinglass, and phosphorus, bone black, shoe blacking, and bone oil. They had curled-hair works for the cattle tails, and a "wool pullery" for the sheepskins; they made pepsin from the stomachs of the pigs, and albumen from the blood, and violin strings from the ill-smelling entrails. When there was nothing else to be done with a thing, they first put it into a tank and got out of it all the tallow and grease, and then they made it into fertilizer. All these industries were gathered into buildings near by, connected by galleries and railroads with the main establishment; and it was estimated that they had handled nearly a quarter of a billion of animals since the founding of the plant by the elder Durham a generation and more ago. If you counted with it the other big plants--and they were now really all one--it was, so Jokubas informed them, the greatest aggregation of labor and capital ever gathered in one place. It employed thirty thousand men; it supported directly two hundred and fifty thousand people in its neighborhood, and indirectly it supported half a million. It sent its products to every country in the civilized world, and it furnished the food for no less than thirty million people! To all of these things our friends would listen open-mouthed--it seemed to them impossible of belief that anything so stupendous could have been devised by mortal man. That was why to Jurgis it seemed almost profanity to speak about the place as did Jokubas, skeptically; it was a thing as tremendous as the universe--the laws and ways of its working no more than the universe to be questioned or understood. All that a mere man could do, it seemed to Jurgis, was to take a thing like this as he found it, and do as he was told; to be given a place in it and a share in its wonderful activities was a blessing to be grateful for, as one was grateful for the sunshine and the rain. Jurgis was even glad that he had not seen the place before meeting with his triumph, for he felt that the size of it would have overwhelmed him. But now he had been admitted--he was a part of it all! He had the feeling that this whole huge establishment had taken him under its protection, and had become responsible for his welfare. So guileless was he, and ignorant of the nature of business, that he did not even realize that he had become an employee of Brown's, and that Brown and Durham were supposed by all the world to be deadly rivals--were even required to be deadly rivals by the law of the land, and ordered to try to ruin each other under penalty of fine and imprisonment!

Szedvilas attempts to find a job for both Antanas and Jonas, but Jurgis refuses his help and is determined to find a job himself. After waiting just half an hour, Jurgis does indeed get a job shoveling guts from a killing floor. Upon hearing Jurgis' news, Szedvilas takes the new arrivals on a tour of Packingtown. First they see the seemingly endless supply of railroads and cattle. Next Szedvilas takes them to a hog factory. Here Jurgis sees the work of the packers -- at least what the owners allow the public to see. The technologically advanced pork assembly-line type of killing mechanism enables the industry to "use everything about the hog except the squeal." The dismembering of pigs contrasts with the beef plant Jurgis sees next. Not willing to waste a single portion of the animal, the Beef Trust -- the organization of meat industry owners -- even uses parts of the animal in the making of fertilizer. Tomorrow, Jurgis becomes a part of the system.

He was not Mr Wentworth, the former curate of Monkford, however suspicious appearances may be, but a Captain Frederick Wentworth, his brother, who being made commander in consequence of the action off St Domingo, and not immediately employed, had come into Somersetshire, in the summer of 1806; and having no parent living, found a home for half a year at Monkford. He was, at that time, a remarkably fine young man, with a great deal of intelligence, spirit, and brilliancy; and Anne an extremely pretty girl, with gentleness, modesty, taste, and feeling. Half the sum of attraction, on either side, might have been enough, for he had nothing to do, and she had hardly anybody to love; but the encounter of such lavish recommendations could not fail. They were gradually acquainted, and when acquainted, rapidly and deeply in love. It would be difficult to say which had seen highest perfection in the other, or which had been the happiest: she, in receiving his declarations and proposals, or he in having them accepted. A short period of exquisite felicity followed, and but a short one. Troubles soon arose. Sir Walter, on being applied to, without actually withholding his consent, or saying it should never be, gave it all the negative of great astonishment, great coldness, great silence, and a professed resolution of doing nothing for his daughter. He thought it a very degrading alliance; and Lady Russell, though with more tempered and pardonable pride, received it as a most unfortunate one. Anne Elliot, with all her claims of birth, beauty, and mind, to throw herself away at nineteen; involve herself at nineteen in an engagement with a young man, who had nothing but himself to recommend him, and no hopes of attaining affluence, but in the chances of a most uncertain profession, and no connexions to secure even his farther rise in the profession, would be, indeed, a throwing away, which she grieved to think of! Anne Elliot, so young; known to so few, to be snatched off by a stranger without alliance or fortune; or rather sunk by him into a state of most wearing, anxious, youth-killing dependence! It must not be, if by any fair interference of friendship, any representations from one who had almost a mother's love, and mother's rights, it would be prevented. Captain Wentworth had no fortune. He had been lucky in his profession; but spending freely, what had come freely, had realized nothing. But he was confident that he should soon be rich: full of life and ardour, he knew that he should soon have a ship, and soon be on a station that would lead to everything he wanted. He had always been lucky; he knew he should be so still. Such confidence, powerful in its own warmth, and bewitching in the wit which often expressed it, must have been enough for Anne; but Lady Russell saw it very differently. His sanguine temper, and fearlessness of mind, operated very differently on her. She saw in it but an aggravation of the evil. It only added a dangerous character to himself. He was brilliant, he was headstrong. Lady Russell had little taste for wit, and of anything approaching to imprudence a horror. She deprecated the connexion in every light. Such opposition, as these feelings produced, was more than Anne could combat. Young and gentle as she was, it might yet have been possible to withstand her father's ill-will, though unsoftened by one kind word or look on the part of her sister; but Lady Russell, whom she had always loved and relied on, could not, with such steadiness of opinion, and such tenderness of manner, be continually advising her in vain. She was persuaded to believe the engagement a wrong thing: indiscreet, improper, hardly capable of success, and not deserving it. But it was not a merely selfish caution, under which she acted, in putting an end to it. Had she not imagined herself consulting his good, even more than her own, she could hardly have given him up. The belief of being prudent, and self-denying, principally for his advantage, was her chief consolation, under the misery of a parting, a final parting; and every consolation was required, for she had to encounter all the additional pain of opinions, on his side, totally unconvinced and unbending, and of his feeling himself ill used by so forced a relinquishment. He had left the country in consequence. A few months had seen the beginning and the end of their acquaintance; but not with a few months ended Anne's share of suffering from it. Her attachment and regrets had, for a long time, clouded every enjoyment of youth, and an early loss of bloom and spirits had been their lasting effect. More than seven years were gone since this little history of sorrowful interest had reached its close; and time had softened down much, perhaps nearly all of peculiar attachment to him, but she had been too dependent on time alone; no aid had been given in change of place (except in one visit to Bath soon after the rupture), or in any novelty or enlargement of society. No one had ever come within the Kellynch circle, who could bear a comparison with Frederick Wentworth, as he stood in her memory. No second attachment, the only thoroughly natural, happy, and sufficient cure, at her time of life, had been possible to the nice tone of her mind, the fastidiousness of her taste, in the small limits of the society around them. She had been solicited, when about two-and-twenty, to change her name, by the young man, who not long afterwards found a more willing mind in her younger sister; and Lady Russell had lamented her refusal; for Charles Musgrove was the eldest son of a man, whose landed property and general importance were second in that country, only to Sir Walter's, and of good character and appearance; and however Lady Russell might have asked yet for something more, while Anne was nineteen, she would have rejoiced to see her at twenty-two so respectably removed from the partialities and injustice of her father's house, and settled so permanently near herself. But in this case, Anne had left nothing for advice to do; and though Lady Russell, as satisfied as ever with her own discretion, never wished the past undone, she began now to have the anxiety which borders on hopelessness for Anne's being tempted, by some man of talents and independence, to enter a state for which she held her to be peculiarly fitted by her warm affections and domestic habits. They knew not each other's opinion, either its constancy or its change, on the one leading point of Anne's conduct, for the subject was never alluded to; but Anne, at seven-and-twenty, thought very differently from what she had been made to think at nineteen. She did not blame Lady Russell, she did not blame herself for having been guided by her; but she felt that were any young person, in similar circumstances, to apply to her for counsel, they would never receive any of such certain immediate wretchedness, such uncertain future good. She was persuaded that under every disadvantage of disapprobation at home, and every anxiety attending his profession, all their probable fears, delays, and disappointments, she should yet have been a happier woman in maintaining the engagement, than she had been in the sacrifice of it; and this, she fully believed, had the usual share, had even more than the usual share of all such solicitudes and suspense been theirs, without reference to the actual results of their case, which, as it happened, would have bestowed earlier prosperity than could be reasonably calculated on. All his sanguine expectations, all his confidence had been justified. His genius and ardour had seemed to foresee and to command his prosperous path. He had, very soon after their engagement ceased, got employ: and all that he had told her would follow, had taken place. He had distinguished himself, and early gained the other step in rank, and must now, by successive captures, have made a handsome fortune. She had only navy lists and newspapers for her authority, but she could not doubt his being rich; and, in favour of his constancy, she had no reason to believe him married. How eloquent could Anne Elliot have been! how eloquent, at least, were her wishes on the side of early warm attachment, and a cheerful confidence in futurity, against that over-anxious caution which seems to insult exertion and distrust Providence! She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned romance as she grew older: the natural sequel of an unnatural beginning. With all these circumstances, recollections and feelings, she could not hear that Captain Wentworth's sister was likely to live at Kellynch without a revival of former pain; and many a stroll, and many a sigh, were necessary to dispel the agitation of the idea. She often told herself it was folly, before she could harden her nerves sufficiently to feel the continual discussion of the Crofts and their business no evil. She was assisted, however, by that perfect indifference and apparent unconsciousness, among the only three of her own friends in the secret of the past, which seemed almost to deny any recollection of it. She could do justice to the superiority of Lady Russell's motives in this, over those of her father and Elizabeth; she could honour all the better feelings of her calmness; but the general air of oblivion among them was highly important from whatever it sprung; and in the event of Admiral Croft's really taking Kellynch Hall, she rejoiced anew over the conviction which had always been most grateful to her, of the past being known to those three only among her connexions, by whom no syllable, she believed, would ever be whispered, and in the trust that among his, the brother only with whom he had been residing, had received any information of their short-lived engagement. That brother had been long removed from the country and being a sensible man, and, moreover, a single man at the time, she had a fond dependence on no human creature's having heard of it from him. The sister, Mrs Croft, had then been out of England, accompanying her husband on a foreign station, and her own sister, Mary, had been at school while it all occurred; and never admitted by the pride of some, and the delicacy of others, to the smallest knowledge of it afterwards. With these supports, she hoped that the acquaintance between herself and the Crofts, which, with Lady Russell, still resident in Kellynch, and Mary fixed only three miles off, must be anticipated, need not involve any particular awkwardness.

Anne's love interest is Captain Frederick Wentworth, the brother of the former curate of Monkford and of Mrs. Croft. The narrator recounts the events of the summer of 1806 in which Captain Wentworth was visiting his brother in the area and became aquainted with Anne. They fell in love and had hoped to marry but Anne's family and her trusted friend Lady Russell thought it a degrading alliance. In 1806 Captain Wentworth was without fortune or high birth. Lady Russell thought it was her duty, in the absence of Anne's mother, to persuade her not to marry beneath her social class. She vehemently opposed the match. Anne, very young and gentle at this time, did not want to contradict her father's wishes and her friend's advice. She was persuaded that their engagement was improper and impractical, and she ended it. Her consolation was that her prudence and self-denial was for his good, as well as her own, and that Captain Wentworth would be better off unattached to her. But he was angry at being given up so easily, and he proudly left the country. Anne suffered from the lonely effects of her decision for the seven years from their short engagement to the present time. She did not stop thinking about her Captain, who by now, she reasons, must have made a large fortune. Since that time, there was no man who matched Captain Wentworth in Anne's affections, though Charles Musgrove proposed to her. Although her father condoned this match, she refused him, and he married instead her younger sister, Mary. Anne regretted her refusal of Captain Wentworth, but she did not blame Lady Russell for her unwanted advice. She understood that Lady Russell's motives were good, however selfish her father's might be. Seven years let Anne mature, and her maturity brought a greater understanding of love, romance, and happiness. The thought of Captain Wentworth's sister inhabiting Kellynch Hall brings all these emotions to the forefront of Anne's mind.

Edward remained a week at the cottage; he was earnestly pressed by Mrs. Dashwood to stay longer; but, as if he were bent only on self-mortification, he seemed resolved to be gone when his enjoyment among his friends was at the height. His spirits, during the last two or three days, though still very unequal, were greatly improved--he grew more and more partial to the house and environs--never spoke of going away without a sigh--declared his time to be wholly disengaged--even doubted to what place he should go when he left them--but still, go he must. Never had any week passed so quickly--he could hardly believe it to be gone. He said so repeatedly; other things he said too, which marked the turn of his feelings and gave the lie to his actions. He had no pleasure at Norland; he detested being in town; but either to Norland or London, he must go. He valued their kindness beyond any thing, and his greatest happiness was in being with them. Yet, he must leave them at the end of a week, in spite of their wishes and his own, and without any restraint on his time. Elinor placed all that was astonishing in this way of acting to his mother's account; and it was happy for her that he had a mother whose character was so imperfectly known to her, as to be the general excuse for every thing strange on the part of her son. Disappointed, however, and vexed as she was, and sometimes displeased with his uncertain behaviour to herself, she was very well disposed on the whole to regard his actions with all the candid allowances and generous qualifications, which had been rather more painfully extorted from her, for Willoughby's service, by her mother. His want of spirits, of openness, and of consistency, were most usually attributed to his want of independence, and his better knowledge of Mrs. Ferrars's disposition and designs. The shortness of his visit, the steadiness of his purpose in leaving them, originated in the same fettered inclination, the same inevitable necessity of temporizing with his mother. The old well-established grievance of duty against will, parent against child, was the cause of all. She would have been glad to know when these difficulties were to cease, this opposition was to yield,--when Mrs. Ferrars would be reformed, and her son be at liberty to be happy. But from such vain wishes she was forced to turn for comfort to the renewal of her confidence in Edward's affection, to the remembrance of every mark of regard in look or word which fell from him while at Barton, and above all to that flattering proof of it which he constantly wore round his finger. "I think, Edward," said Mrs. Dashwood, as they were at breakfast the last morning, "you would be a happier man if you had any profession to engage your time and give an interest to your plans and actions. Some inconvenience to your friends, indeed, might result from it--you would not be able to give them so much of your time. But (with a smile) you would be materially benefited in one particular at least--you would know where to go when you left them." "I do assure you," he replied, "that I have long thought on this point, as you think now. It has been, and is, and probably will always be a heavy misfortune to me, that I have had no necessary business to engage me, no profession to give me employment, or afford me any thing like independence. But unfortunately my own nicety, and the nicety of my friends, have made me what I am, an idle, helpless being. We never could agree in our choice of a profession. I always preferred the church, as I still do. But that was not smart enough for my family. They recommended the army. That was a great deal too smart for me. The law was allowed to be genteel enough; many young men, who had chambers in the Temple, made a very good appearance in the first circles, and drove about town in very knowing gigs. But I had no inclination for the law, even in this less abstruse study of it, which my family approved. As for the navy, it had fashion on its side, but I was too old when the subject was first started to enter it--and, at length, as there was no necessity for my having any profession at all, as I might be as dashing and expensive without a red coat on my back as with one, idleness was pronounced on the whole to be most advantageous and honourable, and a young man of eighteen is not in general so earnestly bent on being busy as to resist the solicitations of his friends to do nothing. I was therefore entered at Oxford and have been properly idle ever since." "The consequence of which, I suppose, will be," said Mrs. Dashwood, "since leisure has not promoted your own happiness, that your sons will be brought up to as many pursuits, employments, professions, and trades as Columella's." "They will be brought up," said he, in a serious accent, "to be as unlike myself as is possible. In feeling, in action, in condition, in every thing." "Come, come; this is all an effusion of immediate want of spirits, Edward. You are in a melancholy humour, and fancy that any one unlike yourself must be happy. But remember that the pain of parting from friends will be felt by every body at times, whatever be their education or state. Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience--or give it a more fascinating name, call it hope. Your mother will secure to you, in time, that independence you are so anxious for; it is her duty, and it will, it must ere long become her happiness to prevent your whole youth from being wasted in discontent. How much may not a few months do?" "I think," replied Edward, "that I may defy many months to produce any good to me." This desponding turn of mind, though it could not be communicated to Mrs. Dashwood, gave additional pain to them all in the parting, which shortly took place, and left an uncomfortable impression on Elinor's feelings especially, which required some trouble and time to subdue. But as it was her determination to subdue it, and to prevent herself from appearing to suffer more than what all her family suffered on his going away, she did not adopt the method so judiciously employed by Marianne, on a similar occasion, to augment and fix her sorrow, by seeking silence, solitude and idleness. Their means were as different as their objects, and equally suited to the advancement of each. Elinor sat down to her drawing-table as soon as he was out of the house, busily employed herself the whole day, neither sought nor avoided the mention of his name, appeared to interest herself almost as much as ever in the general concerns of the family, and if, by this conduct, she did not lessen her own grief, it was at least prevented from unnecessary increase, and her mother and sisters were spared much solicitude on her account. Such behaviour as this, so exactly the reverse of her own, appeared no more meritorious to Marianne, than her own had seemed faulty to her. The business of self-command she settled very easily;--with strong affections it was impossible, with calm ones it could have no merit. That her sister's affections WERE calm, she dared not deny, though she blushed to acknowledge it; and of the strength of her own, she gave a very striking proof, by still loving and respecting that sister, in spite of this mortifying conviction. Without shutting herself up from her family, or leaving the house in determined solitude to avoid them, or lying awake the whole night to indulge meditation, Elinor found every day afforded her leisure enough to think of Edward, and of Edward's behaviour, in every possible variety which the different state of her spirits at different times could produce,--with tenderness, pity, approbation, censure, and doubt. There were moments in abundance, when, if not by the absence of her mother and sisters, at least by the nature of their employments, conversation was forbidden among them, and every effect of solitude was produced. Her mind was inevitably at liberty; her thoughts could not be chained elsewhere; and the past and the future, on a subject so interesting, must be before her, must force her attention, and engross her memory, her reflection, and her fancy. From a reverie of this kind, as she sat at her drawing-table, she was roused one morning, soon after Edward's leaving them, by the arrival of company. She happened to be quite alone. The closing of the little gate, at the entrance of the green court in front of the house, drew her eyes to the window, and she saw a large party walking up to the door. Amongst them were Sir John and Lady Middleton and Mrs. Jennings, but there were two others, a gentleman and lady, who were quite unknown to her. She was sitting near the window, and as soon as Sir John perceived her, he left the rest of the party to the ceremony of knocking at the door, and stepping across the turf, obliged her to open the casement to speak to him, though the space was so short between the door and the window, as to make it hardly possible to speak at one without being heard at the other. "Well," said he, "we have brought you some strangers. How do you like them?" "Hush! they will hear you." "Never mind if they do. It is only the Palmers. Charlotte is very pretty, I can tell you. You may see her if you look this way." As Elinor was certain of seeing her in a couple of minutes, without taking that liberty, she begged to be excused. "Where is Marianne? Has she run away because we are come? I see her instrument is open." "She is walking, I believe." They were now joined by Mrs. Jennings, who had not patience enough to wait till the door was opened before she told HER story. She came hallooing to the window, "How do you do, my dear? How does Mrs. Dashwood do? And where are your sisters? What! all alone! you will be glad of a little company to sit with you. I have brought my other son and daughter to see you. Only think of their coming so suddenly! I thought I heard a carriage last night, while we were drinking our tea, but it never entered my head that it could be them. I thought of nothing but whether it might not be Colonel Brandon come back again; so I said to Sir John, I do think I hear a carriage; perhaps it is Colonel Brandon come back again"-- Elinor was obliged to turn from her, in the middle of her story, to receive the rest of the party; Lady Middleton introduced the two strangers; Mrs. Dashwood and Margaret came down stairs at the same time, and they all sat down to look at one another, while Mrs. Jennings continued her story as she walked through the passage into the parlour, attended by Sir John. Mrs. Palmer was several years younger than Lady Middleton, and totally unlike her in every respect. She was short and plump, had a very pretty face, and the finest expression of good humour in it that could possibly be. Her manners were by no means so elegant as her sister's, but they were much more prepossessing. She came in with a smile, smiled all the time of her visit, except when she laughed, and smiled when she went away. Her husband was a grave looking young man of five or six and twenty, with an air of more fashion and sense than his wife, but of less willingness to please or be pleased. He entered the room with a look of self-consequence, slightly bowed to the ladies, without speaking a word, and, after briefly surveying them and their apartments, took up a newspaper from the table, and continued to read it as long as he staid. Mrs. Palmer, on the contrary, who was strongly endowed by nature with a turn for being uniformly civil and happy, was hardly seated before her admiration of the parlour and every thing in it burst forth. "Well! what a delightful room this is! I never saw anything so charming! Only think, Mama, how it is improved since I was here last! I always thought it such a sweet place, ma'am! (turning to Mrs. Dashwood) but you have made it so charming! Only look, sister, how delightful every thing is! How I should like such a house for myself! Should not you, Mr. Palmer?" Mr. Palmer made her no answer, and did not even raise his eyes from the newspaper. "Mr. Palmer does not hear me," said she, laughing; "he never does sometimes. It is so ridiculous!" This was quite a new idea to Mrs. Dashwood; she had never been used to find wit in the inattention of any one, and could not help looking with surprise at them both. Mrs. Jennings, in the meantime, talked on as loud as she could, and continued her account of their surprise, the evening before, on seeing their friends, without ceasing till every thing was told. Mrs. Palmer laughed heartily at the recollection of their astonishment, and every body agreed, two or three times over, that it had been quite an agreeable surprise. "You may believe how glad we all were to see them," added Mrs. Jennings, leaning forward towards Elinor, and speaking in a low voice as if she meant to be heard by no one else, though they were seated on different sides of the room; "but, however, I can't help wishing they had not travelled quite so fast, nor made such a long journey of it, for they came all round by London upon account of some business, for you know (nodding significantly and pointing to her daughter) it was wrong in her situation. I wanted her to stay at home and rest this morning, but she would come with us; she longed so much to see you all!" Mrs. Palmer laughed, and said it would not do her any harm. "She expects to be confined in February," continued Mrs. Jennings. Lady Middleton could no longer endure such a conversation, and therefore exerted herself to ask Mr. Palmer if there was any news in the paper. "No, none at all," he replied, and read on. "Here comes Marianne," cried Sir John. "Now, Palmer, you shall see a monstrous pretty girl." He immediately went into the passage, opened the front door, and ushered her in himself. Mrs. Jennings asked her, as soon as she appeared, if she had not been to Allenham; and Mrs. Palmer laughed so heartily at the question, as to show she understood it. Mr. Palmer looked up on her entering the room, stared at her some minutes, and then returned to his newspaper. Mrs. Palmer's eye was now caught by the drawings which hung round the room. She got up to examine them. "Oh! dear, how beautiful these are! Well! how delightful! Do but look, mama, how sweet! I declare they are quite charming; I could look at them for ever." And then sitting down again, she very soon forgot that there were any such things in the room. When Lady Middleton rose to go away, Mr. Palmer rose also, laid down the newspaper, stretched himself and looked at them all around. "My love, have you been asleep?" said his wife, laughing. He made her no answer; and only observed, after again examining the room, that it was very low pitched, and that the ceiling was crooked. He then made his bow, and departed with the rest. Sir John had been very urgent with them all to spend the next day at the park. Mrs. Dashwood, who did not chuse to dine with them oftener than they dined at the cottage, absolutely refused on her own account; her daughters might do as they pleased. But they had no curiosity to see how Mr. and Mrs. Palmer ate their dinner, and no expectation of pleasure from them in any other way. They attempted, therefore, likewise, to excuse themselves; the weather was uncertain, and not likely to be good. But Sir John would not be satisfied--the carriage should be sent for them and they must come. Lady Middleton too, though she did not press their mother, pressed them. Mrs. Jennings and Mrs. Palmer joined their entreaties, all seemed equally anxious to avoid a family party; and the young ladies were obliged to yield. "Why should they ask us?" said Marianne, as soon as they were gone. "The rent of this cottage is said to be low; but we have it on very hard terms, if we are to dine at the park whenever any one is staying either with them, or with us." "They mean no less to be civil and kind to us now," said Elinor, "by these frequent invitations, than by those which we received from them a few weeks ago. The alteration is not in them, if their parties are grown tedious and dull. We must look for the change elsewhere."

Edward stays with the Dashwoods for a week, then leaves, despite the fact that he's obviously having a great time. Mrs. Dashwood asks him to stay longer, but he resists, against his own wishes. Elinor is surprised by Edward's rather odd actions, but assumes that he has to leave because his mother needs him - and, after all, he's financially dependent upon his family. She's still really disappointed by his departure, but cheers herself up with what she sees as sure proofs of his affection . On the last morning of Edward's stay, Mrs. Dashwood gently advises Edward to find some kind of career, so that he might have something to occupy his time. Edward himself says that he's often thought about this novel idea, but that he and his mother can never agree on a suitable career for him. He wants to settle down and be a clergyman, but she only wants him to be important, and doesn't think the church is impressive enough. His family has suggested that he look into the army, navy, or the law, but he's not into any of these options. Since Edward didn't want to go into any of the career paths chosen by his domineering mother, she decided that he would become an educated, idle gentleman . Edward's so not down with this plan - and he says that his own kids will be raised to be totally different from him. Aww, poor guy. Mrs. Dashwood tries to cheer him up, to no avail. Edward leaves Barton Cottage, much to everyone's dismay. Elinor is particularly sad, but unlike Marianne, she doesn't make a big show of her feelings. Instead, she keeps herself busy with her artwork. Marianne can't see that this is simply a coping mechanism. She just doesn't get Elinor, but she loves her seemingly unemotional sister all the same. Though Elinor is busy, she still can't help but think about Edward. One day, as she sits alone, drawing, Elinor receives a visit from Sir John, Lady Middleton, and Mrs. Jennings. Sir John announces that they've brought some visitors to meet the Dashwoods. Mrs. Jennings comes up, and explains that her other daughter, Charlotte Palmer, is there with her husband on a surprise visit. Next, the rest of the party shows up. Lady Middleton introduces her sister and brother-in-law, and Mrs. Dashwood and Margaret come downstairs to meet everyone. Mrs. Palmer is nothing like her older sister - she's good-natured, unfashionably friendly, beautiful, and bubbly. Her husband, on the other hand, is sensible, serious, and reserved . He submits to introductions, but goes off to read the newspaper instead of socializing. Mrs. Palmer, on the other hand, talks her hosts' ears off. She's full of praise for the cottage; her husband, obviously used to her gushing, ignores her. Their relationship is clearly rather odd. Mrs. Jennings and Mrs. Palmer relate the circumstances of the visit again... and again... and again. It turns out that Mrs. Palmer is pregnant, but despite the fact that her mother thought she needed rest after her voyage, she wanted desperately to meet the new neighbors. Like mother, like daughter. Lady Middleton obviously is not like her mother or sister. Bored, she asks Mr. Palmer if the newspaper has any news - to which he dryly replies that it doesn't. Marianne finally shows up, and is subjected to a round of questioning by the guests. It becomes clear that Mrs. Jennings has told her daughter all about Marianne and Willoughby. Mrs. Palmer is fortunately distracted by Elinor's drawings, which are displayed around the room. Finally, Lady Middleton prepares to leave, and Mr. Palmer, after observing sourly that the room's flaws , also departs, followed by everyone else. Sir John insists that his tenants join the family for dinner then next day. Though all of the Dashwoods desperately try to turn him down, he and Lady Middleton pressure the girls into saying yes . After the guests leave, Marianne moans and groans about their dinner date the next evening, saying that the cottage's low rent is more than made up for by the burden of hanging out with their talkative landlords. Elinor chastises her sister for the uncharitable comment, saying that it's not the Middletons who have grown more boring or unpleasant - rather, something else must have changed .

For two months the fugitives remained absent; in those two months, Mrs. Linton encountered and conquered the worst shock of what was denominated a brain fever. No mother could have nursed an only child more devotedly than Edgar tended her. Day and night he was watching, and patiently enduring all the annoyances that irritable nerves and a shaken reason could inflict; and, though Kenneth remarked that what he saved from the grave would only recompense his care by forming the source of constant future anxiety--in fact, that his health and strength were being sacrificed to preserve a mere ruin of humanity--he knew no limits in gratitude and joy when Catherine's life was declared out of danger; and hour after hour he would sit beside her, tracing the gradual return to bodily health, and flattering his too sanguine hopes with the illusion that her mind would settle back to its right balance also, and she would soon be entirely her former self. The first time she left her chamber was at the commencement of the following March. Mr. Linton had put on her pillow, in the morning, a handful of golden crocuses; her eye, long stranger to any gleam of pleasure, caught them in waking, and shone delighted as she gathered them eagerly together. 'These are the earliest flowers at the Heights,' she exclaimed. 'They remind me of soft thaw winds, and warm sunshine, and nearly melted snow. Edgar, is there not a south wind, and is not the snow almost gone?' 'The snow is quite gone down here, darling,' replied her husband; 'and I only see two white spots on the whole range of moors: the sky is blue, and the larks are singing, and the becks and brooks are all brim full. Catherine, last spring at this time, I was longing to have you under this roof; now, I wish you were a mile or two up those hills: the air blows so sweetly, I feel that it would cure you.' 'I shall never be there but once more,' said the invalid; 'and then you'll leave me, and I shall remain for ever. Next spring you'll long again to have me under this roof, and you'll look back and think you were happy to-day.' Linton lavished on her the kindest caresses, and tried to cheer her by the fondest words; but, vaguely regarding the flowers, she let the tears collect on her lashes and stream down her cheeks unheeding. We knew she was really better, and, therefore, decided that long confinement to a single place produced much of this despondency, and it might be partially removed by a change of scene. The master told me to light a fire in the many-weeks' deserted parlour, and to set an easy-chair in the sunshine by the window; and then he brought her down, and she sat a long while enjoying the genial heat, and, as we expected, revived by the objects round her: which, though familiar, were free from the dreary associations investing her hated sick chamber. By evening she seemed greatly exhausted; yet no arguments could persuade her to return to that apartment, and I had to arrange the parlour sofa for her bed, till another room could be prepared. To obviate the fatigue of mounting and descending the stairs, we fitted up this, where you lie at present--on the same floor with the parlour; and she was soon strong enough to move from one to the other, leaning on Edgar's arm. Ah, I thought myself, she might recover, so waited on as she was. And there was double cause to desire it, for on her existence depended that of another: we cherished the hope that in a little while Mr. Linton's heart would be gladdened, and his lands secured from a stranger's grip, by the birth of an heir. I should mention that Isabella sent to her brother, some six weeks from her departure, a short note, announcing her marriage with Heathcliff. It appeared dry and cold; but at the bottom was dotted in with pencil an obscure apology, and an entreaty for kind remembrance and reconciliation, if her proceeding had offended him: asserting that she could not help it then, and being done, she had now no power to repeal it. Linton did not reply to this, I believe; and, in a fortnight more, I got a long letter, which I considered odd, coming from the pen of a bride just out of the honeymoon. I'll read it: for I keep it yet. Any relic of the dead is precious, if they were valued living. * * * * * DEAR ELLEN, it begins,--I came last night to Wuthering Heights, and heard, for the first time, that Catherine has been, and is yet, very ill. I must not write to her, I suppose, and my brother is either too angry or too distressed to answer what I sent him. Still, I must write to somebody, and the only choice left me is you. Inform Edgar that I'd give the world to see his face again--that my heart returned to Thrushcross Grange in twenty-four hours after I left it, and is there at this moment, full of warm feelings for him, and Catherine! _I can't follow it though_--(these words are underlined)--they need not expect me, and they may draw what conclusions they please; taking care, however, to lay nothing at the door of my weak will or deficient affection. The remainder of the letter is for yourself alone. I want to ask you two questions: the first is,--How did you contrive to preserve the common sympathies of human nature when you resided here? I cannot recognise any sentiment which those around share with me. The second question I have great interest in; it is this--Is Mr. Heathcliff a man? If so, is he mad? And if not, is he a devil? I sha'n't tell my reasons for making this inquiry; but I beseech you to explain, if you can, what I have married: that is, when you call to see me; and you must call, Ellen, very soon. Don't write, but come, and bring me something from Edgar. Now, you shall hear how I have been received in my new home, as I am led to imagine the Heights will be. It is to amuse myself that I dwell on such subjects as the lack of external comforts: they never occupy my thoughts, except at the moment when I miss them. I should laugh and dance for joy, if I found their absence was the total of my miseries, and the rest was an unnatural dream! The sun set behind the Grange as we turned on to the moors; by that, I judged it to be six o'clock; and my companion halted half an hour, to inspect the park, and the gardens, and, probably, the place itself, as well as he could; so it was dark when we dismounted in the paved yard of the farm-house, and your old fellow-servant, Joseph, issued out to receive us by the light of a dip candle. He did it with a courtesy that redounded to his credit. His first act was to elevate his torch to a level with my face, squint malignantly, project his under-lip, and turn away. Then he took the two horses, and led them into the stables; reappearing for the purpose of locking the outer gate, as if we lived in an ancient castle. Heathcliff stayed to speak to him, and I entered the kitchen--a dingy, untidy hole; I daresay you would not know it, it is so changed since it was in your charge. By the fire stood a ruffianly child, strong in limb and dirty in garb, with a look of Catherine in his eyes and about his mouth. 'This is Edgar's legal nephew,' I reflected--'mine in a manner; I must shake hands, and--yes--I must kiss him. It is right to establish a good understanding at the beginning.' I approached, and, attempting to take his chubby fist, said--'How do you do, my dear?' He replied in a jargon I did not comprehend. 'Shall you and I be friends, Hareton?' was my next essay at conversation. An oath, and a threat to set Throttler on me if I did not 'frame off' rewarded my perseverance. 'Hey, Throttler, lad!' whispered the little wretch, rousing a half-bred bull-dog from its lair in a corner. 'Now, wilt thou be ganging?' he asked authoritatively. Love for my life urged a compliance; I stepped over the threshold to wait till the others should enter. Mr. Heathcliff was nowhere visible; and Joseph, whom I followed to the stables, and requested to accompany me in, after staring and muttering to himself, screwed up his nose and replied--'Mim! mim! mim! Did iver Christian body hear aught like it? Mincing un' munching! How can I tell whet ye say?' 'I say, I wish you to come with me into the house!' I cried, thinking him deaf, yet highly disgusted at his rudeness. 'None o' me! I getten summut else to do,' he answered, and continued his work; moving his lantern jaws meanwhile, and surveying my dress and countenance (the former a great deal too fine, but the latter, I'm sure, as sad as he could desire) with sovereign contempt. I walked round the yard, and through a wicket, to another door, at which I took the liberty of knocking, in hopes some more civil servant might show himself. After a short suspense, it was opened by a tall, gaunt man, without neckerchief, and otherwise extremely slovenly; his features were lost in masses of shaggy hair that hung on his shoulders; and _his_ eyes, too, were like a ghostly Catherine's with all their beauty annihilated. 'What's your business here?' he demanded, grimly. 'Who are you?' 'My name was Isabella Linton,' I replied. 'You've seen me before, sir. I'm lately married to Mr. Heathcliff, and he has brought me here--I suppose, by your permission.' 'Is he come back, then?' asked the hermit, glaring like a hungry wolf. 'Yes--we came just now,' I said; 'but he left me by the kitchen door; and when I would have gone in, your little boy played sentinel over the place, and frightened me off by the help of a bull-dog.' 'It's well the hellish villain has kept his word!' growled my future host, searching the darkness beyond me in expectation of discovering Heathcliff; and then he indulged in a soliloquy of execrations, and threats of what he would have done had the 'fiend' deceived him. I repented having tried this second entrance, and was almost inclined to slip away before he finished cursing, but ere I could execute that intention, he ordered me in, and shut and re-fastened the door. There was a great fire, and that was all the light in the huge apartment, whose floor had grown a uniform grey; and the once brilliant pewter-dishes, which used to attract my gaze when I was a girl, partook of a similar obscurity, created by tarnish and dust. I inquired whether I might call the maid, and be conducted to a bedroom! Mr. Earnshaw vouchsafed no answer. He walked up and down, with his hands in his pockets, apparently quite forgetting my presence; and his abstraction was evidently so deep, and his whole aspect so misanthropical, that I shrank from disturbing him again. You'll not be surprised, Ellen, at my feeling particularly cheerless, seated in worse than solitude on that inhospitable hearth, and remembering that four miles distant lay my delightful home, containing the only people I loved on earth; and there might as well be the Atlantic to part us, instead of those four miles: I could not overpass them! I questioned with myself--where must I turn for comfort? and--mind you don't tell Edgar, or Catherine--above every sorrow beside, this rose pre-eminent: despair at finding nobody who could or would be my ally against Heathcliff! I had sought shelter at Wuthering Heights, almost gladly, because I was secured by that arrangement from living alone with him; but he knew the people we were coming amongst, and he did not fear their intermeddling. I sat and thought a doleful time: the clock struck eight, and nine, and still my companion paced to and fro, his head bent on his breast, and perfectly silent, unless a groan or a bitter ejaculation forced itself out at intervals. I listened to detect a woman's voice in the house, and filled the interim with wild regrets and dismal anticipations, which, at last, spoke audibly in irrepressible sighing and weeping. I was not aware how openly I grieved, till Earnshaw halted opposite, in his measured walk, and gave me a stare of newly-awakened surprise. Taking advantage of his recovered attention, I exclaimed--'I'm tired with my journey, and I want to go to bed! Where is the maid-servant? Direct me to her, as she won't come to me!' 'We have none,' he answered; 'you must wait on yourself!' 'Where must I sleep, then?' I sobbed; I was beyond regarding self-respect, weighed down by fatigue and wretchedness. 'Joseph will show you Heathcliff's chamber,' said he; 'open that door--he's in there.' I was going to obey, but he suddenly arrested me, and added in the strangest tone--'Be so good as to turn your lock, and draw your bolt--don't omit it!' 'Well!' I said. 'But why, Mr. Earnshaw?' I did not relish the notion of deliberately fastening myself in with Heathcliff. 'Look here!' he replied, pulling from his waistcoat a curiously-constructed pistol, having a double-edged spring knife attached to the barrel. 'That's a great tempter to a desperate man, is it not? I cannot resist going up with this every night, and trying his door. If once I find it open he's done for; I do it invariably, even though the minute before I have been recalling a hundred reasons that should make me refrain: it is some devil that urges me to thwart my own schemes by killing him. You fight against that devil for love as long as you may; when the time comes, not all the angels in heaven shall save him!' I surveyed the weapon inquisitively. A hideous notion struck me: how powerful I should be possessing such an instrument! I took it from his hand, and touched the blade. He looked astonished at the expression my face assumed during a brief second: it was not horror, it was covetousness. He snatched the pistol back, jealously; shut the knife, and returned it to its concealment. 'I don't care if you tell him,' said he. 'Put him on his guard, and watch for him. You know the terms we are on, I see: his danger does not shock you.' 'What has Heathcliff done to you?' I asked. 'In what has he wronged you, to warrant this appalling hatred? Wouldn't it be wiser to bid him quit the house?' 'No!' thundered Earnshaw; 'should he offer to leave me, he's a dead man: persuade him to attempt it, and you are a murderess! Am I to lose _all_, without a chance of retrieval? Is Hareton to be a beggar? Oh, damnation! I _will_ have it back; and I'll have _his_ gold too; and then his blood; and hell shall have his soul! It will be ten times blacker with that guest than ever it was before!' You've acquainted me, Ellen, with your old master's habits. He is clearly on the verge of madness: he was so last night at least. I shuddered to be near him, and thought on the servant's ill-bred moroseness as comparatively agreeable. He now recommenced his moody walk, and I raised the latch, and escaped into the kitchen. Joseph was bending over the fire, peering into a large pan that swung above it; and a wooden bowl of oatmeal stood on the settle close by. The contents of the pan began to boil, and he turned to plunge his hand into the bowl; I conjectured that this preparation was probably for our supper, and, being hungry, I resolved it should be eatable; so, crying out sharply, '_I'll_ make the porridge!' I removed the vessel out of his reach, and proceeded to take off my hat and riding-habit. 'Mr. Earnshaw,' I continued, 'directs me to wait on myself: I will. I'm not going to act the lady among you, for fear I should starve.' 'Gooid Lord!' he muttered, sitting down, and stroking his ribbed stockings from the knee to the ankle. 'If there's to be fresh ortherings--just when I getten used to two maisters, if I mun hev' a _mistress_ set o'er my heead, it's like time to be flitting. I niver _did_ think to see t' day that I mud lave th' owld place--but I doubt it's nigh at hand!' This lamentation drew no notice from me: I went briskly to work, sighing to remember a period when it would have been all merry fun; but compelled speedily to drive off the remembrance. It racked me to recall past happiness and the greater peril there was of conjuring up its apparition, the quicker the thible ran round, and the faster the handfuls of meal fell into the water. Joseph beheld my style of cookery with growing indignation. 'Thear!' he ejaculated. 'Hareton, thou willn't sup thy porridge to-neeght; they'll be naught but lumps as big as my neive. Thear, agean! I'd fling in bowl un' all, if I wer ye! There, pale t' guilp off, un' then ye'll hae done wi' 't. Bang, bang. It's a mercy t' bothom isn't deaved out!' It _was_ rather a rough mess, I own, when poured into the basins; four had been provided, and a gallon pitcher of new milk was brought from the dairy, which Hareton seized and commenced drinking and spilling from the expansive lip. I expostulated, and desired that he should have his in a mug; affirming that I could not taste the liquid treated so dirtily. The old cynic chose to be vastly offended at this nicety; assuring me, repeatedly, that 'the barn was every bit as good' as I, 'and every bit as wollsome,' and wondering how I could fashion to be so conceited. Meanwhile, the infant ruffian continued sucking; and glowered up at me defyingly, as he slavered into the jug. 'I shall have my supper in another room,' I said. 'Have you no place you call a parlour?' '_Parlour_!' he echoed, sneeringly, '_parlour_! Nay, we've noa _parlours_. If yah dunnut loike wer company, there's maister's; un' if yah dunnut loike maister, there's us.' 'Then I shall go up-stairs,' I answered; 'show me a chamber.' I put my basin on a tray, and went myself to fetch some more milk. With great grumblings, the fellow rose, and preceded me in my ascent: we mounted to the garrets; he opened a door, now and then, to look into the apartments we passed. 'Here's a rahm,' he said, at last, flinging back a cranky board on hinges. 'It's weel eneugh to ate a few porridge in. There's a pack o' corn i' t' corner, thear, meeterly clane; if ye're feared o' muckying yer grand silk cloes, spread yer hankerchir o' t' top on't.' The 'rahm' was a kind of lumber-hole smelling strong of malt and grain; various sacks of which articles were piled around, leaving a wide, bare space in the middle. 'Why, man,' I exclaimed, facing him angrily, 'this is not a place to sleep in. I wish to see my bed-room.' '_Bed-rume_!' he repeated, in a tone of mockery. 'Yah's see all t' _bed-rumes_ thear is--yon's mine.' He pointed into the second garret, only differing from the first in being more naked about the walls, and having a large, low, curtainless bed, with an indigo-coloured quilt, at one end. 'What do I want with yours?' I retorted. 'I suppose Mr. Heathcliff does not lodge at the top of the house, does he?' 'Oh! it's Maister _Hathecliff's_ ye're wanting?' cried he, as if making a new discovery. 'Couldn't ye ha' said soa, at onst? un' then, I mud ha' telled ye, baht all this wark, that that's just one ye cannut see--he allas keeps it locked, un' nob'dy iver mells on't but hisseln.' 'You've a nice house, Joseph,' I could not refrain from observing, 'and pleasant inmates; and I think the concentrated essence of all the madness in the world took up its abode in my brain the day I linked my fate with theirs! However, that is not to the present purpose--there are other rooms. For heaven's sake be quick, and let me settle somewhere!' He made no reply to this adjuration; only plodding doggedly down the wooden steps, and halting, before an apartment which, from that halt and the superior quality of its furniture, I conjectured to be the best one. There was a carpet--a good one, but the pattern was obliterated by dust; a fireplace hung with cut-paper, dropping to pieces; a handsome oak-bedstead with ample crimson curtains of rather expensive material and modern make; but they had evidently experienced rough usage: the vallances hung in festoons, wrenched from their rings, and the iron rod supporting them was bent in an arc on one side, causing the drapery to trail upon the floor. The chairs were also damaged, many of them severely; and deep indentations deformed the panels of the walls. I was endeavouring to gather resolution for entering and taking possession, when my fool of a guide announced,--'This here is t' maister's.' My supper by this time was cold, my appetite gone, and my patience exhausted. I insisted on being provided instantly with a place of refuge, and means of repose. 'Whear the divil?' began the religious elder. 'The Lord bless us! The Lord forgie us! Whear the _hell_ wold ye gang? ye marred, wearisome nowt! Ye've seen all but Hareton's bit of a cham'er. There's not another hoile to lig down in i' th' hahse!' I was so vexed, I flung my tray and its contents on the ground; and then seated myself at the stairs'-head, hid my face in my hands, and cried. 'Ech! ech!' exclaimed Joseph. 'Weel done, Miss Cathy! weel done, Miss Cathy! Howsiver, t' maister sall just tum'le o'er them brooken pots; un' then we's hear summut; we's hear how it's to be. Gooid-for-naught madling! ye desarve pining fro' this to Chrustmas, flinging t' precious gifts o'God under fooit i' yer flaysome rages! But I'm mista'en if ye shew yer sperrit lang. Will Hathecliff bide sich bonny ways, think ye? I nobbut wish he may catch ye i' that plisky. I nobbut wish he may.' And so he went on scolding to his den beneath, taking the candle with him; and I remained in the dark. The period of reflection succeeding this silly action compelled me to admit the necessity of smothering my pride and choking my wrath, and bestirring myself to remove its effects. An unexpected aid presently appeared in the shape of Throttler, whom I now recognised as a son of our old Skulker: it had spent its whelphood at the Grange, and was given by my father to Mr. Hindley. I fancy it knew me: it pushed its nose against mine by way of salute, and then hastened to devour the porridge; while I groped from step to step, collecting the shattered earthenware, and drying the spatters of milk from the banister with my pocket-handkerchief. Our labours were scarcely over when I heard Earnshaw's tread in the passage; my assistant tucked in his tail, and pressed to the wall; I stole into the nearest doorway. The dog's endeavour to avoid him was unsuccessful; as I guessed by a scutter down-stairs, and a prolonged, piteous yelping. I had better luck: he passed on, entered his chamber, and shut the door. Directly after Joseph came up with Hareton, to put him to bed. I had found shelter in Hareton's room, and the old man, on seeing me, said,--'They's rahm for boath ye un' yer pride, now, I sud think i' the hahse. It's empty; ye may hev' it all to yerseln, un' Him as allus maks a third, i' sich ill company!' Gladly did I take advantage of this intimation; and the minute I flung myself into a chair, by the fire, I nodded, and slept. My slumber was deep and sweet, though over far too soon. Mr. Heathcliff awoke me; he had just come in, and demanded, in his loving manner, what I was doing there? I told him the cause of my staying up so late--that he had the key of our room in his pocket. The adjective _our_ gave mortal offence. He swore it was not, nor ever should be, mine; and he'd--but I'll not repeat his language, nor describe his habitual conduct: he is ingenious and unresting in seeking to gain my abhorrence! I sometimes wonder at him with an intensity that deadens my fear: yet, I assure you, a tiger or a venomous serpent could not rouse terror in me equal to that which he wakens. He told me of Catherine's illness, and accused my brother of causing it promising that I should be Edgar's proxy in suffering, till he could get hold of him. I do hate him--I am wretched--I have been a fool! Beware of uttering one breath of this to any one at the Grange. I shall expect you every day--don't disappoint me!--ISABELLA.

Edgar and Nelly spend two months nursing Catherine through her illness, and, though she never entirely recovers, she learns that she has become pregnant. Six weeks after Isabella and Heathcliff's marriage, Isabella sends a letter to Edgar begging his forgiveness. When Edgar ignores her pleas, she sends a letter to Nelly, describing her horrible experiences at Wuthering Heights. In her letter, she explains that Hindley, Joseph, and Hareton have all treated her cruelly, and that Heathcliff declares that since he cannot punish Edgar for causing Catherine's illness, he will punish Isabella in his place. Isabella also tells Nelly that Hindley has developed a mad obsession with Heathcliff, who has assumed the position of power at Wuthering Heights. Hindley hopes that somehow he will be able to obtain Heathcliff's vast fortune for himself, and he has shown Isabella the weapon with which he hopes to kill Heathcliff--a pistol with a knife attached to its barrel. Isabella says that she has made a terrible mistake, and she begs Nelly to visit her at Wuthering Heights, where she and Heathcliff are now living

Harriet slept at Hartfield that night. For some weeks past she had been spending more than half her time there, and gradually getting to have a bed-room appropriated to herself; and Emma judged it best in every respect, safest and kindest, to keep her with them as much as possible just at present. She was obliged to go the next morning for an hour or two to Mrs. Goddard's, but it was then to be settled that she should return to Hartfield, to make a regular visit of some days. While she was gone, Mr. Knightley called, and sat some time with Mr. Woodhouse and Emma, till Mr. Woodhouse, who had previously made up his mind to walk out, was persuaded by his daughter not to defer it, and was induced by the entreaties of both, though against the scruples of his own civility, to leave Mr. Knightley for that purpose. Mr. Knightley, who had nothing of ceremony about him, was offering by his short, decided answers, an amusing contrast to the protracted apologies and civil hesitations of the other. "Well, I believe, if you will excuse me, Mr. Knightley, if you will not consider me as doing a very rude thing, I shall take Emma's advice and go out for a quarter of an hour. As the sun is out, I believe I had better take my three turns while I can. I treat you without ceremony, Mr. Knightley. We invalids think we are privileged people." "My dear sir, do not make a stranger of me." "I leave an excellent substitute in my daughter. Emma will be happy to entertain you. And therefore I think I will beg your excuse and take my three turns--my winter walk." "You cannot do better, sir." "I would ask for the pleasure of your company, Mr. Knightley, but I am a very slow walker, and my pace would be tedious to you; and, besides, you have another long walk before you, to Donwell Abbey." "Thank you, sir, thank you; I am going this moment myself; and I think the sooner _you_ go the better. I will fetch your greatcoat and open the garden door for you." Mr. Woodhouse at last was off; but Mr. Knightley, instead of being immediately off likewise, sat down again, seemingly inclined for more chat. He began speaking of Harriet, and speaking of her with more voluntary praise than Emma had ever heard before. "I cannot rate her beauty as you do," said he; "but she is a pretty little creature, and I am inclined to think very well of her disposition. Her character depends upon those she is with; but in good hands she will turn out a valuable woman." "I am glad you think so; and the good hands, I hope, may not be wanting." "Come," said he, "you are anxious for a compliment, so I will tell you that you have improved her. You have cured her of her school-girl's giggle; she really does you credit." "Thank you. I should be mortified indeed if I did not believe I had been of some use; but it is not every body who will bestow praise where they may. _You_ do not often overpower me with it." "You are expecting her again, you say, this morning?" "Almost every moment. She has been gone longer already than she intended." "Something has happened to delay her; some visitors perhaps." "Highbury gossips!--Tiresome wretches!" "Harriet may not consider every body tiresome that you would." Emma knew this was too true for contradiction, and therefore said nothing. He presently added, with a smile, "I do not pretend to fix on times or places, but I must tell you that I have good reason to believe your little friend will soon hear of something to her advantage." "Indeed! how so? of what sort?" "A very serious sort, I assure you;" still smiling. "Very serious! I can think of but one thing--Who is in love with her? Who makes you their confidant?" Emma was more than half in hopes of Mr. Elton's having dropt a hint. Mr. Knightley was a sort of general friend and adviser, and she knew Mr. Elton looked up to him. "I have reason to think," he replied, "that Harriet Smith will soon have an offer of marriage, and from a most unexceptionable quarter:--Robert Martin is the man. Her visit to Abbey-Mill, this summer, seems to have done his business. He is desperately in love and means to marry her." "He is very obliging," said Emma; "but is he sure that Harriet means to marry him?" "Well, well, means to make her an offer then. Will that do? He came to the Abbey two evenings ago, on purpose to consult me about it. He knows I have a thorough regard for him and all his family, and, I believe, considers me as one of his best friends. He came to ask me whether I thought it would be imprudent in him to settle so early; whether I thought her too young: in short, whether I approved his choice altogether; having some apprehension perhaps of her being considered (especially since _your_ making so much of her) as in a line of society above him. I was very much pleased with all that he said. I never hear better sense from any one than Robert Martin. He always speaks to the purpose; open, straightforward, and very well judging. He told me every thing; his circumstances and plans, and what they all proposed doing in the event of his marriage. He is an excellent young man, both as son and brother. I had no hesitation in advising him to marry. He proved to me that he could afford it; and that being the case, I was convinced he could not do better. I praised the fair lady too, and altogether sent him away very happy. If he had never esteemed my opinion before, he would have thought highly of me then; and, I dare say, left the house thinking me the best friend and counsellor man ever had. This happened the night before last. Now, as we may fairly suppose, he would not allow much time to pass before he spoke to the lady, and as he does not appear to have spoken yesterday, it is not unlikely that he should be at Mrs. Goddard's to-day; and she may be detained by a visitor, without thinking him at all a tiresome wretch." "Pray, Mr. Knightley," said Emma, who had been smiling to herself through a great part of this speech, "how do you know that Mr. Martin did not speak yesterday?" "Certainly," replied he, surprized, "I do not absolutely know it; but it may be inferred. Was not she the whole day with you?" "Come," said she, "I will tell you something, in return for what you have told me. He did speak yesterday--that is, he wrote, and was refused." This was obliged to be repeated before it could be believed; and Mr. Knightley actually looked red with surprize and displeasure, as he stood up, in tall indignation, and said, "Then she is a greater simpleton than I ever believed her. What is the foolish girl about?" "Oh! to be sure," cried Emma, "it is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage. A man always imagines a woman to be ready for any body who asks her." "Nonsense! a man does not imagine any such thing. But what is the meaning of this? Harriet Smith refuse Robert Martin? madness, if it is so; but I hope you are mistaken." "I saw her answer!--nothing could be clearer." "You saw her answer!--you wrote her answer too. Emma, this is your doing. You persuaded her to refuse him." "And if I did, (which, however, I am far from allowing) I should not feel that I had done wrong. Mr. Martin is a very respectable young man, but I cannot admit him to be Harriet's equal; and am rather surprized indeed that he should have ventured to address her. By your account, he does seem to have had some scruples. It is a pity that they were ever got over." "Not Harriet's equal!" exclaimed Mr. Knightley loudly and warmly; and with calmer asperity, added, a few moments afterwards, "No, he is not her equal indeed, for he is as much her superior in sense as in situation. Emma, your infatuation about that girl blinds you. What are Harriet Smith's claims, either of birth, nature or education, to any connexion higher than Robert Martin? She is the natural daughter of nobody knows whom, with probably no settled provision at all, and certainly no respectable relations. She is known only as parlour-boarder at a common school. She is not a sensible girl, nor a girl of any information. She has been taught nothing useful, and is too young and too simple to have acquired any thing herself. At her age she can have no experience, and with her little wit, is not very likely ever to have any that can avail her. She is pretty, and she is good tempered, and that is all. My only scruple in advising the match was on his account, as being beneath his deserts, and a bad connexion for him. I felt that, as to fortune, in all probability he might do much better; and that as to a rational companion or useful helpmate, he could not do worse. But I could not reason so to a man in love, and was willing to trust to there being no harm in her, to her having that sort of disposition, which, in good hands, like his, might be easily led aright and turn out very well. The advantage of the match I felt to be all on her side; and had not the smallest doubt (nor have I now) that there would be a general cry-out upon her extreme good luck. Even _your_ satisfaction I made sure of. It crossed my mind immediately that you would not regret your friend's leaving Highbury, for the sake of her being settled so well. I remember saying to myself, 'Even Emma, with all her partiality for Harriet, will think this a good match.'" "I cannot help wondering at your knowing so little of Emma as to say any such thing. What! think a farmer, (and with all his sense and all his merit Mr. Martin is nothing more,) a good match for my intimate friend! Not regret her leaving Highbury for the sake of marrying a man whom I could never admit as an acquaintance of my own! I wonder you should think it possible for me to have such feelings. I assure you mine are very different. I must think your statement by no means fair. You are not just to Harriet's claims. They would be estimated very differently by others as well as myself; Mr. Martin may be the richest of the two, but he is undoubtedly her inferior as to rank in society.--The sphere in which she moves is much above his.--It would be a degradation." "A degradation to illegitimacy and ignorance, to be married to a respectable, intelligent gentleman-farmer!" "As to the circumstances of her birth, though in a legal sense she may be called Nobody, it will not hold in common sense. She is not to pay for the offence of others, by being held below the level of those with whom she is brought up.--There can scarcely be a doubt that her father is a gentleman--and a gentleman of fortune.--Her allowance is very liberal; nothing has ever been grudged for her improvement or comfort.--That she is a gentleman's daughter, is indubitable to me; that she associates with gentlemen's daughters, no one, I apprehend, will deny.--She is superior to Mr. Robert Martin." "Whoever might be her parents," said Mr. Knightley, "whoever may have had the charge of her, it does not appear to have been any part of their plan to introduce her into what you would call good society. After receiving a very indifferent education she is left in Mrs. Goddard's hands to shift as she can;--to move, in short, in Mrs. Goddard's line, to have Mrs. Goddard's acquaintance. Her friends evidently thought this good enough for her; and it _was_ good enough. She desired nothing better herself. Till you chose to turn her into a friend, her mind had no distaste for her own set, nor any ambition beyond it. She was as happy as possible with the Martins in the summer. She had no sense of superiority then. If she has it now, you have given it. You have been no friend to Harriet Smith, Emma. Robert Martin would never have proceeded so far, if he had not felt persuaded of her not being disinclined to him. I know him well. He has too much real feeling to address any woman on the haphazard of selfish passion. And as to conceit, he is the farthest from it of any man I know. Depend upon it he had encouragement." It was most convenient to Emma not to make a direct reply to this assertion; she chose rather to take up her own line of the subject again. "You are a very warm friend to Mr. Martin; but, as I said before, are unjust to Harriet. Harriet's claims to marry well are not so contemptible as you represent them. She is not a clever girl, but she has better sense than you are aware of, and does not deserve to have her understanding spoken of so slightingly. Waiving that point, however, and supposing her to be, as you describe her, only pretty and good-natured, let me tell you, that in the degree she possesses them, they are not trivial recommendations to the world in general, for she is, in fact, a beautiful girl, and must be thought so by ninety-nine people out of an hundred; and till it appears that men are much more philosophic on the subject of beauty than they are generally supposed; till they do fall in love with well-informed minds instead of handsome faces, a girl, with such loveliness as Harriet, has a certainty of being admired and sought after, of having the power of chusing from among many, consequently a claim to be nice. Her good-nature, too, is not so very slight a claim, comprehending, as it does, real, thorough sweetness of temper and manner, a very humble opinion of herself, and a great readiness to be pleased with other people. I am very much mistaken if your sex in general would not think such beauty, and such temper, the highest claims a woman could possess." "Upon my word, Emma, to hear you abusing the reason you have, is almost enough to make me think so too. Better be without sense, than misapply it as you do." "To be sure!" cried she playfully. "I know _that_ is the feeling of you all. I know that such a girl as Harriet is exactly what every man delights in--what at once bewitches his senses and satisfies his judgment. Oh! Harriet may pick and chuse. Were you, yourself, ever to marry, she is the very woman for you. And is she, at seventeen, just entering into life, just beginning to be known, to be wondered at because she does not accept the first offer she receives? No--pray let her have time to look about her." "I have always thought it a very foolish intimacy," said Mr. Knightley presently, "though I have kept my thoughts to myself; but I now perceive that it will be a very unfortunate one for Harriet. You will puff her up with such ideas of her own beauty, and of what she has a claim to, that, in a little while, nobody within her reach will be good enough for her. Vanity working on a weak head, produces every sort of mischief. Nothing so easy as for a young lady to raise her expectations too high. Miss Harriet Smith may not find offers of marriage flow in so fast, though she is a very pretty girl. Men of sense, whatever you may chuse to say, do not want silly wives. Men of family would not be very fond of connecting themselves with a girl of such obscurity--and most prudent men would be afraid of the inconvenience and disgrace they might be involved in, when the mystery of her parentage came to be revealed. Let her marry Robert Martin, and she is safe, respectable, and happy for ever; but if you encourage her to expect to marry greatly, and teach her to be satisfied with nothing less than a man of consequence and large fortune, she may be a parlour-boarder at Mrs. Goddard's all the rest of her life--or, at least, (for Harriet Smith is a girl who will marry somebody or other,) till she grow desperate, and is glad to catch at the old writing-master's son." "We think so very differently on this point, Mr. Knightley, that there can be no use in canvassing it. We shall only be making each other more angry. But as to my _letting_ her marry Robert Martin, it is impossible; she has refused him, and so decidedly, I think, as must prevent any second application. She must abide by the evil of having refused him, whatever it may be; and as to the refusal itself, I will not pretend to say that I might not influence her a little; but I assure you there was very little for me or for any body to do. His appearance is so much against him, and his manner so bad, that if she ever were disposed to favour him, she is not now. I can imagine, that before she had seen any body superior, she might tolerate him. He was the brother of her friends, and he took pains to please her; and altogether, having seen nobody better (that must have been his great assistant) she might not, while she was at Abbey-Mill, find him disagreeable. But the case is altered now. She knows now what gentlemen are; and nothing but a gentleman in education and manner has any chance with Harriet." "Nonsense, errant nonsense, as ever was talked!" cried Mr. Knightley.--"Robert Martin's manners have sense, sincerity, and good-humour to recommend them; and his mind has more true gentility than Harriet Smith could understand." Emma made no answer, and tried to look cheerfully unconcerned, but was really feeling uncomfortable and wanting him very much to be gone. She did not repent what she had done; she still thought herself a better judge of such a point of female right and refinement than he could be; but yet she had a sort of habitual respect for his judgment in general, which made her dislike having it so loudly against her; and to have him sitting just opposite to her in angry state, was very disagreeable. Some minutes passed in this unpleasant silence, with only one attempt on Emma's side to talk of the weather, but he made no answer. He was thinking. The result of his thoughts appeared at last in these words. "Robert Martin has no great loss--if he can but think so; and I hope it will not be long before he does. Your views for Harriet are best known to yourself; but as you make no secret of your love of match-making, it is fair to suppose that views, and plans, and projects you have;--and as a friend I shall just hint to you that if Elton is the man, I think it will be all labour in vain." Emma laughed and disclaimed. He continued, "Depend upon it, Elton will not do. Elton is a very good sort of man, and a very respectable vicar of Highbury, but not at all likely to make an imprudent match. He knows the value of a good income as well as any body. Elton may talk sentimentally, but he will act rationally. He is as well acquainted with his own claims, as you can be with Harriet's. He knows that he is a very handsome young man, and a great favourite wherever he goes; and from his general way of talking in unreserved moments, when there are only men present, I am convinced that he does not mean to throw himself away. I have heard him speak with great animation of a large family of young ladies that his sisters are intimate with, who have all twenty thousand pounds apiece." "I am very much obliged to you," said Emma, laughing again. "If I had set my heart on Mr. Elton's marrying Harriet, it would have been very kind to open my eyes; but at present I only want to keep Harriet to myself. I have done with match-making indeed. I could never hope to equal my own doings at Randalls. I shall leave off while I am well." "Good morning to you,"--said he, rising and walking off abruptly. He was very much vexed. He felt the disappointment of the young man, and was mortified to have been the means of promoting it, by the sanction he had given; and the part which he was persuaded Emma had taken in the affair, was provoking him exceedingly. Emma remained in a state of vexation too; but there was more indistinctness in the causes of her's, than in his. She did not always feel so absolutely satisfied with herself, so entirely convinced that her opinions were right and her adversary's wrong, as Mr. Knightley. He walked off in more complete self-approbation than he left for her. She was not so materially cast down, however, but that a little time and the return of Harriet were very adequate restoratives. Harriet's staying away so long was beginning to make her uneasy. The possibility of the young man's coming to Mrs. Goddard's that morning, and meeting with Harriet and pleading his own cause, gave alarming ideas. The dread of such a failure after all became the prominent uneasiness; and when Harriet appeared, and in very good spirits, and without having any such reason to give for her long absence, she felt a satisfaction which settled her with her own mind, and convinced her, that let Mr. Knightley think or say what he would, she had done nothing which woman's friendship and woman's feelings would not justify. He had frightened her a little about Mr. Elton; but when she considered that Mr. Knightley could not have observed him as she had done, neither with the interest, nor (she must be allowed to tell herself, in spite of Mr. Knightley's pretensions) with the skill of such an observer on such a question as herself, that he had spoken it hastily and in anger, she was able to believe, that he had rather said what he wished resentfully to be true, than what he knew any thing about. He certainly might have heard Mr. Elton speak with more unreserve than she had ever done, and Mr. Elton might not be of an imprudent, inconsiderate disposition as to money matters; he might naturally be rather attentive than otherwise to them; but then, Mr. Knightley did not make due allowance for the influence of a strong passion at war with all interested motives. Mr. Knightley saw no such passion, and of course thought nothing of its effects; but she saw too much of it to feel a doubt of its overcoming any hesitations that a reasonable prudence might originally suggest; and more than a reasonable, becoming degree of prudence, she was very sure did not belong to Mr. Elton. Harriet's cheerful look and manner established hers: she came back, not to think of Mr. Martin, but to talk of Mr. Elton. Miss Nash had been telling her something, which she repeated immediately with great delight. Mr. Perry had been to Mrs. Goddard's to attend a sick child, and Miss Nash had seen him, and he had told Miss Nash, that as he was coming back yesterday from Clayton Park, he had met Mr. Elton, and found to his great surprize, that Mr. Elton was actually on his road to London, and not meaning to return till the morrow, though it was the whist-club night, which he had been never known to miss before; and Mr. Perry had remonstrated with him about it, and told him how shabby it was in him, their best player, to absent himself, and tried very much to persuade him to put off his journey only one day; but it would not do; Mr. Elton had been determined to go on, and had said in a _very_ _particular_ way indeed, that he was going on business which he would not put off for any inducement in the world; and something about a very enviable commission, and being the bearer of something exceedingly precious. Mr. Perry could not quite understand him, but he was very sure there must be a _lady_ in the case, and he told him so; and Mr. Elton only looked very conscious and smiling, and rode off in great spirits. Miss Nash had told her all this, and had talked a great deal more about Mr. Elton; and said, looking so very significantly at her, "that she did not pretend to understand what his business might be, but she only knew that any woman whom Mr. Elton could prefer, she should think the luckiest woman in the world; for, beyond a doubt, Mr. Elton had not his equal for beauty or agreeableness."

Emma allots a bedroom to Harriet at Hartfield, hoping to keep the young girl under her supervision. She does, however, still go to Mrs. Goddard's boarding school. While Harriet is away, Knightley calls on the Woodhouses. When Emma's father goes out for his morning walk, Knightley compliments Emma on Harriet's improved manners. He then tells Emma that Martin has come to his house to talk to him about Harriet; he is afraid that Harriet now considers herself socially superior to him. Knightley judges Martin as an extremely sensible, open, and straightforward man, who is a good judge of people and matters. In his opinion, Martin is the perfect match for Harriet. Emma tells Knightley that Martin has proposed to Harriet through a letter, and she has rejected the offer. Knightley knows that Emma has influenced her young friend and does not approve of her interference in Harriet's life. Knightley reminds Emma that Harriet is in no way socially superior to Martin. Even though she is a pretty girl, she is only a boarding school student with uncertain parentage. He feels that Harriet would have been lucky to have married Martin. Knightley is shocked when Emma tells him that if Harriet had married Martin, it would have socially degraded her. In Emma's romanticized opinion, the generous allowance of money which Harriet receives every month proves that she is a gentleman's daughter and, therefore, superior to Martin. Emma also expresses the thought that men are more attracted by beauty than brains. Since Harriet is so pretty, she certainly can attract better suitors than Martin. Knightley is amazed at Emma's lack of logic and sorry to see her misuse her intelligence. He warns Emma not to make Harriet vain about her beauty, for no sensible man wants to marry a silly girl, and no respectable man wants to marry a girl with uncertain parentage. He tells Emma that Harriet will never get an offer of marriage from a man of social superiority or wealth. Emma believes she is a better judge of a woman's sensibility than Knightley, but she is upset over his open anger and displeasure. Before leaving, Knightley tells Emma that her efforts to make Elton propose to Harriet will never succeed. Elton is conscious of his good looks and is ambitious about marriage, wanting to find a wife from the upper social hierarchy. After he leaves Hartfield, Knightley is mad for two reasons; he feels he is partially to blame in Martin's humiliation, because he had encouraged the young man, and secondly, he is upset that Emma had played an undesirable role in the rejection.

The housemaid's folding back her window-shutters at eight o'clock the next day was the sound which first roused Catherine; and she opened her eyes, wondering that they could ever have been closed, on objects of cheerfulness; her fire was already burning, and a bright morning had succeeded the tempest of the night. Instantaneously, with the consciousness of existence, returned her recollection of the manuscript; and springing from the bed in the very moment of the maid's going away, she eagerly collected every scattered sheet which had burst from the roll on its falling to the ground, and flew back to enjoy the luxury of their perusal on her pillow. She now plainly saw that she must not expect a manuscript of equal length with the generality of what she had shuddered over in books, for the roll, seeming to consist entirely of small disjointed sheets, was altogether but of trifling size, and much less than she had supposed it to be at first. Her greedy eye glanced rapidly over a page. She started at its import. Could it be possible, or did not her senses play her false? An inventory of linen, in coarse and modern characters, seemed all that was before her! If the evidence of sight might be trusted, she held a washing-bill in her hand. She seized another sheet, and saw the same articles with little variation; a third, a fourth, and a fifth presented nothing new. Shirts, stockings, cravats, and waistcoats faced her in each. Two others, penned by the same hand, marked an expenditure scarcely more interesting, in letters, hair-powder, shoe-string, and breeches-ball. And the larger sheet, which had enclosed the rest, seemed by its first cramp line, "To poultice chestnut mare"--a farrier's bill! Such was the collection of papers (left perhaps, as she could then suppose, by the negligence of a servant in the place whence she had taken them) which had filled her with expectation and alarm, and robbed her of half her night's rest! She felt humbled to the dust. Could not the adventure of the chest have taught her wisdom? A corner of it, catching her eye as she lay, seemed to rise up in judgment against her. Nothing could now be clearer than the absurdity of her recent fancies. To suppose that a manuscript of many generations back could have remained undiscovered in a room such as that, so modern, so habitable!--Or that she should be the first to possess the skill of unlocking a cabinet, the key of which was open to all! How could she have so imposed on herself? Heaven forbid that Henry Tilney should ever know her folly! And it was in a great measure his own doing, for had not the cabinet appeared so exactly to agree with his description of her adventures, she should never have felt the smallest curiosity about it. This was the only comfort that occurred. Impatient to get rid of those hateful evidences of her folly, those detestable papers then scattered over the bed, she rose directly, and folding them up as nearly as possible in the same shape as before, returned them to the same spot within the cabinet, with a very hearty wish that no untoward accident might ever bring them forward again, to disgrace her even with herself. Why the locks should have been so difficult to open, however, was still something remarkable, for she could now manage them with perfect ease. In this there was surely something mysterious, and she indulged in the flattering suggestion for half a minute, till the possibility of the door's having been at first unlocked, and of being herself its fastener, darted into her head, and cost her another blush. She got away as soon as she could from a room in which her conduct produced such unpleasant reflections, and found her way with all speed to the breakfast-parlour, as it had been pointed out to her by Miss Tilney the evening before. Henry was alone in it; and his immediate hope of her having been undisturbed by the tempest, with an arch reference to the character of the building they inhabited, was rather distressing. For the world would she not have her weakness suspected, and yet, unequal to an absolute falsehood, was constrained to acknowledge that the wind had kept her awake a little. "But we have a charming morning after it," she added, desiring to get rid of the subject; "and storms and sleeplessness are nothing when they are over. What beautiful hyacinths! I have just learnt to love a hyacinth." "And how might you learn? By accident or argument?" "Your sister taught me; I cannot tell how. Mrs. Allen used to take pains, year after year, to make me like them; but I never could, till I saw them the other day in Milsom Street; I am naturally indifferent about flowers." "But now you love a hyacinth. So much the better. You have gained a new source of enjoyment, and it is well to have as many holds upon happiness as possible. Besides, a taste for flowers is always desirable in your sex, as a means of getting you out of doors, and tempting you to more frequent exercise than you would otherwise take. And though the love of a hyacinth may be rather domestic, who can tell, the sentiment once raised, but you may in time come to love a rose?" "But I do not want any such pursuit to get me out of doors. The pleasure of walking and breathing fresh air is enough for me, and in fine weather I am out more than half my time. Mamma says I am never within." "At any rate, however, I am pleased that you have learnt to love a hyacinth. The mere habit of learning to love is the thing; and a teachableness of disposition in a young lady is a great blessing. Has my sister a pleasant mode of instruction?" Catherine was saved the embarrassment of attempting an answer by the entrance of the general, whose smiling compliments announced a happy state of mind, but whose gentle hint of sympathetic early rising did not advance her composure. The elegance of the breakfast set forced itself on Catherine's notice when they were seated at table; and, luckily, it had been the general's choice. He was enchanted by her approbation of his taste, confessed it to be neat and simple, thought it right to encourage the manufacture of his country; and for his part, to his uncritical palate, the tea was as well flavoured from the clay of Staffordshire, as from that of Dresden or Save. But this was quite an old set, purchased two years ago. The manufacture was much improved since that time; he had seen some beautiful specimens when last in town, and had he not been perfectly without vanity of that kind, might have been tempted to order a new set. He trusted, however, that an opportunity might ere long occur of selecting one--though not for himself. Catherine was probably the only one of the party who did not understand him. Shortly after breakfast Henry left them for Woodston, where business required and would keep him two or three days. They all attended in the hall to see him mount his horse, and immediately on re-entering the breakfast-room, Catherine walked to a window in the hope of catching another glimpse of his figure. "This is a somewhat heavy call upon your brother's fortitude," observed the general to Eleanor. "Woodston will make but a sombre appearance today." "Is it a pretty place?" asked Catherine. "What say you, Eleanor? Speak your opinion, for ladies can best tell the taste of ladies in regard to places as well as men. I think it would be acknowledged by the most impartial eye to have many recommendations. The house stands among fine meadows facing the south-east, with an excellent kitchen-garden in the same aspect; the walls surrounding which I built and stocked myself about ten years ago, for the benefit of my son. It is a family living, Miss Morland; and the property in the place being chiefly my own, you may believe I take care that it shall not be a bad one. Did Henry's income depend solely on this living, he would not be ill-provided for. Perhaps it may seem odd, that with only two younger children, I should think any profession necessary for him; and certainly there are moments when we could all wish him disengaged from every tie of business. But though I may not exactly make converts of you young ladies, I am sure your father, Miss Morland, would agree with me in thinking it expedient to give every young man some employment. The money is nothing, it is not an object, but employment is the thing. Even Frederick, my eldest son, you see, who will perhaps inherit as considerable a landed property as any private man in the county, has his profession." The imposing effect of this last argument was equal to his wishes. The silence of the lady proved it to be unanswerable. Something had been said the evening before of her being shown over the house, and he now offered himself as her conductor; and though Catherine had hoped to explore it accompanied only by his daughter, it was a proposal of too much happiness in itself, under any circumstances, not to be gladly accepted; for she had been already eighteen hours in the abbey, and had seen only a few of its rooms. The netting-box, just leisurely drawn forth, was closed with joyful haste, and she was ready to attend him in a moment. "And when they had gone over the house, he promised himself moreover the pleasure of accompanying her into the shrubberies and garden." She curtsied her acquiescence. "But perhaps it might be more agreeable to her to make those her first object. The weather was at present favourable, and at this time of year the uncertainty was very great of its continuing so. Which would she prefer? He was equally at her service. Which did his daughter think would most accord with her fair friend's wishes? But he thought he could discern. Yes, he certainly read in Miss Morland's eyes a judicious desire of making use of the present smiling weather. But when did she judge amiss? The abbey would be always safe and dry. He yielded implicitly, and would fetch his hat and attend them in a moment." He left the room, and Catherine, with a disappointed, anxious face, began to speak of her unwillingness that he should be taking them out of doors against his own inclination, under a mistaken idea of pleasing her; but she was stopped by Miss Tilney's saying, with a little confusion, "I believe it will be wisest to take the morning while it is so fine; and do not be uneasy on my father's account; he always walks out at this time of day." Catherine did not exactly know how this was to be understood. Why was Miss Tilney embarrassed? Could there be any unwillingness on the general's side to show her over the abbey? The proposal was his own. And was not it odd that he should always take his walk so early? Neither her father nor Mr. Allen did so. It was certainly very provoking. She was all impatience to see the house, and had scarcely any curiosity about the grounds. If Henry had been with them indeed! But now she should not know what was picturesque when she saw it. Such were her thoughts, but she kept them to herself, and put on her bonnet in patient discontent. She was struck, however, beyond her expectation, by the grandeur of the abbey, as she saw it for the first time from the lawn. The whole building enclosed a large court; and two sides of the quadrangle, rich in Gothic ornaments, stood forward for admiration. The remainder was shut off by knolls of old trees, or luxuriant plantations, and the steep woody hills rising behind, to give it shelter, were beautiful even in the leafless month of March. Catherine had seen nothing to compare with it; and her feelings of delight were so strong, that without waiting for any better authority, she boldly burst forth in wonder and praise. The general listened with assenting gratitude; and it seemed as if his own estimation of Northanger had waited unfixed till that hour. The kitchen-garden was to be next admired, and he led the way to it across a small portion of the park. The number of acres contained in this garden was such as Catherine could not listen to without dismay, being more than double the extent of all Mr. Allen's, as well as her father's, including church-yard and orchard. The walls seemed countless in number, endless in length; a village of hot-houses seemed to arise among them, and a whole parish to be at work within the enclosure. The general was flattered by her looks of surprise, which told him almost as plainly, as he soon forced her to tell him in words, that she had never seen any gardens at all equal to them before; and he then modestly owned that, "without any ambition of that sort himself--without any solicitude about it--he did believe them to be unrivalled in the kingdom. If he had a hobby-horse, it was that. He loved a garden. Though careless enough in most matters of eating, he loved good fruit--or if he did not, his friends and children did. There were great vexations, however, attending such a garden as his. The utmost care could not always secure the most valuable fruits. The pinery had yielded only one hundred in the last year. Mr. Allen, he supposed, must feel these inconveniences as well as himself." "No, not at all. Mr. Allen did not care about the garden, and never went into it." With a triumphant smile of self-satisfaction, the general wished he could do the same, for he never entered his, without being vexed in some way or other, by its falling short of his plan. "How were Mr. Allen's succession-houses worked?" describing the nature of his own as they entered them. "Mr. Allen had only one small hot-house, which Mrs. Allen had the use of for her plants in winter, and there was a fire in it now and then." "He is a happy man!" said the general, with a look of very happy contempt. Having taken her into every division, and led her under every wall, till she was heartily weary of seeing and wondering, he suffered the girls at last to seize the advantage of an outer door, and then expressing his wish to examine the effect of some recent alterations about the tea-house, proposed it as no unpleasant extension of their walk, if Miss Morland were not tired. "But where are you going, Eleanor? Why do you choose that cold, damp path to it? Miss Morland will get wet. Our best way is across the park." "This is so favourite a walk of mine," said Miss Tilney, "that I always think it the best and nearest way. But perhaps it may be damp." It was a narrow winding path through a thick grove of old Scotch firs; and Catherine, struck by its gloomy aspect, and eager to enter it, could not, even by the general's disapprobation, be kept from stepping forward. He perceived her inclination, and having again urged the plea of health in vain, was too polite to make further opposition. He excused himself, however, from attending them: "The rays of the sun were not too cheerful for him, and he would meet them by another course." He turned away; and Catherine was shocked to find how much her spirits were relieved by the separation. The shock, however, being less real than the relief, offered it no injury; and she began to talk with easy gaiety of the delightful melancholy which such a grove inspired. "I am particularly fond of this spot," said her companion, with a sigh. "It was my mother's favourite walk." Catherine had never heard Mrs. Tilney mentioned in the family before, and the interest excited by this tender remembrance showed itself directly in her altered countenance, and in the attentive pause with which she waited for something more. "I used to walk here so often with her!" added Eleanor; "though I never loved it then, as I have loved it since. At that time indeed I used to wonder at her choice. But her memory endears it now." "And ought it not," reflected Catherine, "to endear it to her husband? Yet the general would not enter it." Miss Tilney continuing silent, she ventured to say, "Her death must have been a great affliction!" "A great and increasing one," replied the other, in a low voice. "I was only thirteen when it happened; and though I felt my loss perhaps as strongly as one so young could feel it, I did not, I could not, then know what a loss it was." She stopped for a moment, and then added, with great firmness, "I have no sister, you know--and though Henry--though my brothers are very affectionate, and Henry is a great deal here, which I am most thankful for, it is impossible for me not to be often solitary." "To be sure you must miss him very much." "A mother would have been always present. A mother would have been a constant friend; her influence would have been beyond all other." "Was she a very charming woman? Was she handsome? Was there any picture of her in the abbey? And why had she been so partial to that grove? Was it from dejection of spirits?"--were questions now eagerly poured forth; the first three received a ready affirmative, the two others were passed by; and Catherine's interest in the deceased Mrs. Tilney augmented with every question, whether answered or not. Of her unhappiness in marriage, she felt persuaded. The general certainly had been an unkind husband. He did not love her walk: could he therefore have loved her? And besides, handsome as he was, there was a something in the turn of his features which spoke his not having behaved well to her. "Her picture, I suppose," blushing at the consummate art of her own question, "hangs in your father's room?" "No; it was intended for the drawing-room; but my father was dissatisfied with the painting, and for some time it had no place. Soon after her death I obtained it for my own, and hung it in my bed-chamber--where I shall be happy to show it you; it is very like." Here was another proof. A portrait--very like--of a departed wife, not valued by the husband! He must have been dreadfully cruel to her! Catherine attempted no longer to hide from herself the nature of the feelings which, in spite of all his attentions, he had previously excited; and what had been terror and dislike before, was now absolute aversion. Yes, aversion! His cruelty to such a charming woman made him odious to her. She had often read of such characters, characters which Mr. Allen had been used to call unnatural and overdrawn; but here was proof positive of the contrary. She had just settled this point when the end of the path brought them directly upon the general; and in spite of all her virtuous indignation, she found herself again obliged to walk with him, listen to him, and even to smile when he smiled. Being no longer able, however, to receive pleasure from the surrounding objects, she soon began to walk with lassitude; the general perceived it, and with a concern for her health, which seemed to reproach her for her opinion of him, was most urgent for returning with his daughter to the house. He would follow them in a quarter of an hour. Again they parted--but Eleanor was called back in half a minute to receive a strict charge against taking her friend round the abbey till his return. This second instance of his anxiety to delay what she so much wished for struck Catherine as very remarkable.

Catherine wakes up the next day and quickly investigates the papers she found. They turn out to be a laundry list and some receipts. Catherine feels ridiculous and admits that a secret, scandalous manuscript wouldn't be hidden in a nice room like hers. She also realizes that she must have locked the cabinet accidentally, hence the problems getting it open. Still embarrassed, Catherine heads down to breakfast. Henry is there alone and they chat about flowers, which Catherine has learned to like thanks to Eleanor. The General and Eleanor arrive and the General keeps dropping hints about Catherine and Henry's future marriage, which Catherine doesn't get. Henry leaves to Woodston after breakfast and the General tells Catherine about it and his house there. He notes that even though he's loaded he made his sons get jobs, so they won't be lazy. Catherine is like, "Super, thanks for sharing." The General offers to give her a tour and says they should check out the gardens first. Catherine complies, even though she'd rather see the house first. Gothic novels don't generally take place in nice gardens after all. They walk around and "ooh" over the flowers. The General grills Catherine about the Allens again and is happy to find out that his gardens are better. The General was totally that kid who had to one-up everybody, for sure. Eleanor starts to take Catherine down a gloomy path and the General protests. But he sees that Catherine is interested and agrees to meet up with them later. Eleanor shares that this path was her mother's favorite. Eleanor shares some about her mom and Catherine asks about her. Eleanor says that her mom's death has been really hard and Catherine starts grilling Eleanor about her, trying to see if she's anything like a tragic character in a novel. Catherine decides that, since the General doesn't love his wife's favorite path, he didn't love her. Catherine should probably not become a lawyer with evidence analysis skills like those. Catherine is further convinced that the General was a terrible husband when she learns that he doesn't have his wife's portrait hanging in his study. The General is totally a Gothic villain. The General pops back up and tells Eleanor to hold off on the tour of the house till he can join them. The man's a control freak.

The Diamond Mines Again When Sara entered the holly-hung schoolroom in the afternoon, she did so as the head of a sort of procession. Miss Minchin, in her grandest silk dress, led her by the hand. A manservant followed, carrying the box containing the Last Doll, a housemaid carried a second box, and Becky brought up the rear, carrying a third and wearing a clean apron and a new cap. Sara would have much preferred to enter in the usual way, but Miss Minchin had sent for her, and, after an interview in her private sitting room, had expressed her wishes. "This is not an ordinary occasion," she said. "I do not desire that it should be treated as one." So Sara was led grandly in and felt shy when, on her entry, the big girls stared at her and touched each other's elbows, and the little ones began to squirm joyously in their seats. "Silence, young ladies!" said Miss Minchin, at the murmur which arose. "James, place the box on the table and remove the lid. Emma, put yours upon a chair. Becky!" suddenly and severely. Becky had quite forgotten herself in her excitement, and was grinning at Lottie, who was wriggling with rapturous expectation. She almost dropped her box, the disapproving voice so startled her, and her frightened, bobbing curtsy of apology was so funny that Lavinia and Jessie tittered. "It is not your place to look at the young ladies," said Miss Minchin. "You forget yourself. Put your box down." Becky obeyed with alarmed haste and hastily backed toward the door. "You may leave us," Miss Minchin announced to the servants with a wave of her hand. Becky stepped aside respectfully to allow the superior servants to pass out first. She could not help casting a longing glance at the box on the table. Something made of blue satin was peeping from between the folds of tissue paper. "If you please, Miss Minchin," said Sara, suddenly, "mayn't Becky stay?" It was a bold thing to do. Miss Minchin was betrayed into something like a slight jump. Then she put her eyeglass up, and gazed at her show pupil disturbedly. "Becky!" she exclaimed. "My dearest Sara!" Sara advanced a step toward her. "I want her because I know she will like to see the presents," she explained. "She is a little girl, too, you know." Miss Minchin was scandalized. She glanced from one figure to the other. "My dear Sara," she said, "Becky is the scullery maid. Scullery maids--er--are not little girls." It really had not occurred to her to think of them in that light. Scullery maids were machines who carried coal scuttles and made fires. "But Becky is," said Sara. "And I know she would enjoy herself. Please let her stay--because it is my birthday." Miss Minchin replied with much dignity: "As you ask it as a birthday favor--she may stay. Rebecca, thank Miss Sara for her great kindness." Becky had been backing into the corner, twisting the hem of her apron in delighted suspense. She came forward, bobbing curtsies, but between Sara's eyes and her own there passed a gleam of friendly understanding, while her words tumbled over each other. "Oh, if you please, miss! I'm that grateful, miss! I did want to see the doll, miss, that I did. Thank you, miss. And thank you, ma'am,"--turning and making an alarmed bob to Miss Minchin--"for letting me take the liberty." Miss Minchin waved her hand again--this time it was in the direction of the corner near the door. "Go and stand there," she commanded. "Not too near the young ladies." Becky went to her place, grinning. She did not care where she was sent, so that she might have the luck of being inside the room, instead of being downstairs in the scullery, while these delights were going on. She did not even mind when Miss Minchin cleared her throat ominously and spoke again. "Now, young ladies, I have a few words to say to you," she announced. "She's going to make a speech," whispered one of the girls. "I wish it was over." Sara felt rather uncomfortable. As this was her party, it was probable that the speech was about her. It is not agreeable to stand in a schoolroom and have a speech made about you. "You are aware, young ladies," the speech began--for it was a speech--"that dear Sara is eleven years old today." "DEAR Sara!" murmured Lavinia. "Several of you here have also been eleven years old, but Sara's birthdays are rather different from other little girls' birthdays. When she is older she will be heiress to a large fortune, which it will be her duty to spend in a meritorious manner." "The diamond mines," giggled Jessie, in a whisper. Sara did not hear her; but as she stood with her green-gray eyes fixed steadily on Miss Minchin, she felt herself growing rather hot. When Miss Minchin talked about money, she felt somehow that she always hated her--and, of course, it was disrespectful to hate grown-up people. "When her dear papa, Captain Crewe, brought her from India and gave her into my care," the speech proceeded, "he said to me, in a jesting way, 'I am afraid she will be very rich, Miss Minchin.' My reply was, 'Her education at my seminary, Captain Crewe, shall be such as will adorn the largest fortune.' Sara has become my most accomplished pupil. Her French and her dancing are a credit to the seminary. Her manners--which have caused you to call her Princess Sara--are perfect. Her amiability she exhibits by giving you this afternoon's party. I hope you appreciate her generosity. I wish you to express your appreciation of it by saying aloud all together, 'Thank you, Sara!'" The entire schoolroom rose to its feet as it had done the morning Sara remembered so well. "Thank you, Sara!" it said, and it must be confessed that Lottie jumped up and down. Sara looked rather shy for a moment. She made a curtsy--and it was a very nice one. "Thank you," she said, "for coming to my party." "Very pretty, indeed, Sara," approved Miss Minchin. "That is what a real princess does when the populace applauds her. Lavinia"--scathingly--"the sound you just made was extremely like a snort. If you are jealous of your fellow-pupil, I beg you will express your feelings in some more lady-like manner. Now I will leave you to enjoy yourselves." The instant she had swept out of the room the spell her presence always had upon them was broken. The door had scarcely closed before every seat was empty. The little girls jumped or tumbled out of theirs; the older ones wasted no time in deserting theirs. There was a rush toward the boxes. Sara had bent over one of them with a delighted face. "These are books, I know," she said. The little children broke into a rueful murmur, and Ermengarde looked aghast. "Does your papa send you books for a birthday present?" she exclaimed. "Why, he's as bad as mine. Don't open them, Sara." "I like them," Sara laughed, but she turned to the biggest box. When she took out the Last Doll it was so magnificent that the children uttered delighted groans of joy, and actually drew back to gaze at it in breathless rapture. "She is almost as big as Lottie," someone gasped. Lottie clapped her hands and danced about, giggling. "She's dressed for the theater," said Lavinia. "Her cloak is lined with ermine." "Oh," cried Ermengarde, darting forward, "she has an opera-glass in her hand--a blue-and-gold one!" "Here is her trunk," said Sara. "Let us open it and look at her things." She sat down upon the floor and turned the key. The children crowded clamoring around her, as she lifted tray after tray and revealed their contents. Never had the schoolroom been in such an uproar. There were lace collars and silk stockings and handkerchiefs; there was a jewel case containing a necklace and a tiara which looked quite as if they were made of real diamonds; there was a long sealskin and muff, there were ball dresses and walking dresses and visiting dresses; there were hats and tea gowns and fans. Even Lavinia and Jessie forgot that they were too elderly to care for dolls, and uttered exclamations of delight and caught up things to look at them. "Suppose," Sara said, as she stood by the table, putting a large, black-velvet hat on the impassively smiling owner of all these splendors--"suppose she understands human talk and feels proud of being admired." "You are always supposing things," said Lavinia, and her air was very superior. "I know I am," answered Sara, undisturbedly. "I like it. There is nothing so nice as supposing. It's almost like being a fairy. If you suppose anything hard enough it seems as if it were real." "It's all very well to suppose things if you have everything," said Lavinia. "Could you suppose and pretend if you were a beggar and lived in a garret?" Sara stopped arranging the Last Doll's ostrich plumes, and looked thoughtful. "I BELIEVE I could," she said. "If one was a beggar, one would have to suppose and pretend all the time. But it mightn't be easy." She often thought afterward how strange it was that just as she had finished saying this--just at that very moment--Miss Amelia came into the room. "Sara," she said, "your papa's solicitor, Mr. Barrow, has called to see Miss Minchin, and, as she must talk to him alone and the refreshments are laid in her parlor, you had all better come and have your feast now, so that my sister can have her interview here in the schoolroom." Refreshments were not likely to be disdained at any hour, and many pairs of eyes gleamed. Miss Amelia arranged the procession into decorum, and then, with Sara at her side heading it, she led it away, leaving the Last Doll sitting upon a chair with the glories of her wardrobe scattered about her; dresses and coats hung upon chair backs, piles of lace-frilled petticoats lying upon their seats. Becky, who was not expected to partake of refreshments, had the indiscretion to linger a moment to look at these beauties--it really was an indiscretion. "Go back to your work, Becky," Miss Amelia had said; but she had stopped to pick up reverently first a muff and then a coat, and while she stood looking at them adoringly, she heard Miss Minchin upon the threshold, and, being smitten with terror at the thought of being accused of taking liberties, she rashly darted under the table, which hid her by its tablecloth. Miss Minchin came into the room, accompanied by a sharp-featured, dry little gentleman, who looked rather disturbed. Miss Minchin herself also looked rather disturbed, it must be admitted, and she gazed at the dry little gentleman with an irritated and puzzled expression. She sat down with stiff dignity, and waved him to a chair. "Pray, be seated, Mr. Barrow," she said. Mr. Barrow did not sit down at once. His attention seemed attracted by the Last Doll and the things which surrounded her. He settled his eyeglasses and looked at them in nervous disapproval. The Last Doll herself did not seem to mind this in the least. She merely sat upright and returned his gaze indifferently. "A hundred pounds," Mr. Barrow remarked succinctly. "All expensive material, and made at a Parisian modiste's. He spent money lavishly enough, that young man." Miss Minchin felt offended. This seemed to be a disparagement of her best patron and was a liberty. Even solicitors had no right to take liberties. "I beg your pardon, Mr. Barrow," she said stiffly. "I do not understand." "Birthday presents," said Mr. Barrow in the same critical manner, "to a child eleven years old! Mad extravagance, I call it." Miss Minchin drew herself up still more rigidly. "Captain Crewe is a man of fortune," she said. "The diamond mines alone--" Mr. Barrow wheeled round upon her. "Diamond mines!" he broke out. "There are none! Never were!" Miss Minchin actually got up from her chair. "What!" she cried. "What do you mean?" "At any rate," answered Mr. Barrow, quite snappishly, "it would have been much better if there never had been any." "Any diamond mines?" ejaculated Miss Minchin, catching at the back of a chair and feeling as if a splendid dream was fading away from her. "Diamond mines spell ruin oftener than they spell wealth," said Mr. Barrow. "When a man is in the hands of a very dear friend and is not a businessman himself, he had better steer clear of the dear friend's diamond mines, or gold mines, or any other kind of mines dear friends want his money to put into. The late Captain Crewe--" Here Miss Minchin stopped him with a gasp. "The LATE Captain Crewe!" she cried out. "The LATE! You don't come to tell me that Captain Crewe is--" "He's dead, ma'am," Mr. Barrow answered with jerky brusqueness. "Died of jungle fever and business troubles combined. The jungle fever might not have killed him if he had not been driven mad by the business troubles, and the business troubles might not have put an end to him if the jungle fever had not assisted. Captain Crewe is dead!" Miss Minchin dropped into her chair again. The words he had spoken filled her with alarm. "What WERE his business troubles?" she said. "What WERE they?" "Diamond mines," answered Mr. Barrow, "and dear friends--and ruin." Miss Minchin lost her breath. "Ruin!" she gasped out. "Lost every penny. That young man had too much money. The dear friend was mad on the subject of the diamond mine. He put all his own money into it, and all Captain Crewe's. Then the dear friend ran away--Captain Crewe was already stricken with fever when the news came. The shock was too much for him. He died delirious, raving about his little girl--and didn't leave a penny." Now Miss Minchin understood, and never had she received such a blow in her life. Her show pupil, her show patron, swept away from the Select Seminary at one blow. She felt as if she had been outraged and robbed, and that Captain Crewe and Sara and Mr. Barrow were equally to blame. "Do you mean to tell me," she cried out, "that he left NOTHING! That Sara will have no fortune! That the child is a beggar! That she is left on my hands a little pauper instead of an heiress?" Mr. Barrow was a shrewd businessman, and felt it as well to make his own freedom from responsibility quite clear without any delay. "She is certainly left a beggar," he replied. "And she is certainly left on your hands, ma'am--as she hasn't a relation in the world that we know of." Miss Minchin started forward. She looked as if she was going to open the door and rush out of the room to stop the festivities going on joyfully and rather noisily that moment over the refreshments. "It is monstrous!" she said. "She's in my sitting room at this moment, dressed in silk gauze and lace petticoats, giving a party at my expense." "She's giving it at your expense, madam, if she's giving it," said Mr. Barrow, calmly. "Barrow & Skipworth are not responsible for anything. There never was a cleaner sweep made of a man's fortune. Captain Crewe died without paying OUR last bill--and it was a big one." Miss Minchin turned back from the door in increased indignation. This was worse than anyone could have dreamed of its being. "That is what has happened to me!" she cried. "I was always so sure of his payments that I went to all sorts of ridiculous expenses for the child. I paid the bills for that ridiculous doll and her ridiculous fantastic wardrobe. The child was to have anything she wanted. She has a carriage and a pony and a maid, and I've paid for all of them since the last cheque came." Mr. Barrow evidently did not intend to remain to listen to the story of Miss Minchin's grievances after he had made the position of his firm clear and related the mere dry facts. He did not feel any particular sympathy for irate keepers of boarding schools. "You had better not pay for anything more, ma'am," he remarked, "unless you want to make presents to the young lady. No one will remember you. She hasn't a brass farthing to call her own." "But what am I to do?" demanded Miss Minchin, as if she felt it entirely his duty to make the matter right. "What am I to do?" "There isn't anything to do," said Mr. Barrow, folding up his eyeglasses and slipping them into his pocket. "Captain Crewe is dead. The child is left a pauper. Nobody is responsible for her but you." "I am not responsible for her, and I refuse to be made responsible!" Miss Minchin became quite white with rage. Mr. Barrow turned to go. "I have nothing to do with that, madam," he said uninterestedly. "Barrow & Skipworth are not responsible. Very sorry the thing has happened, of course." "If you think she is to be foisted off on me, you are greatly mistaken," Miss Minchin gasped. "I have been robbed and cheated; I will turn her into the street!" If she had not been so furious, she would have been too discreet to say quite so much. She saw herself burdened with an extravagantly brought-up child whom she had always resented, and she lost all self-control. Mr. Barrow undisturbedly moved toward the door. "I wouldn't do that, madam," he commented; "it wouldn't look well. Unpleasant story to get about in connection with the establishment. Pupil bundled out penniless and without friends." He was a clever business man, and he knew what he was saying. He also knew that Miss Minchin was a business woman, and would be shrewd enough to see the truth. She could not afford to do a thing which would make people speak of her as cruel and hard-hearted. "Better keep her and make use of her," he added. "She's a clever child, I believe. You can get a good deal out of her as she grows older." "I will get a good deal out of her before she grows older!" exclaimed Miss Minchin. "I am sure you will, ma'am," said Mr. Barrow, with a little sinister smile. "I am sure you will. Good morning!" He bowed himself out and closed the door, and it must be confessed that Miss Minchin stood for a few moments and glared at it. What he had said was quite true. She knew it. She had absolutely no redress. Her show pupil had melted into nothingness, leaving only a friendless, beggared little girl. Such money as she herself had advanced was lost and could not be regained. And as she stood there breathless under her sense of injury, there fell upon her ears a burst of gay voices from her own sacred room, which had actually been given up to the feast. She could at least stop this. But as she started toward the door it was opened by Miss Amelia, who, when she caught sight of the changed, angry face, fell back a step in alarm. "What IS the matter, sister?" she ejaculated. Miss Minchin's voice was almost fierce when she answered: "Where is Sara Crewe?" Miss Amelia was bewildered. "Sara!" she stammered. "Why, she's with the children in your room, of course." "Has she a black frock in her sumptuous wardrobe?"--in bitter irony. "A black frock?" Miss Amelia stammered again. "A BLACK one?" "She has frocks of every other color. Has she a black one?" Miss Amelia began to turn pale. "No--ye-es!" she said. "But it is too short for her. She has only the old black velvet, and she has outgrown it." "Go and tell her to take off that preposterous pink silk gauze, and put the black one on, whether it is too short or not. She has done with finery!" Then Miss Amelia began to wring her fat hands and cry. "Oh, sister!" she sniffed. "Oh, sister! What CAN have happened?" Miss Minchin wasted no words. "Captain Crewe is dead," she said. "He has died without a penny. That spoiled, pampered, fanciful child is left a pauper on my hands." Miss Amelia sat down quite heavily in the nearest chair. "Hundreds of pounds have I spent on nonsense for her. And I shall never see a penny of it. Put a stop to this ridiculous party of hers. Go and make her change her frock at once." "I?" panted Miss Amelia. "M-must I go and tell her now?" "This moment!" was the fierce answer. "Don't sit staring like a goose. Go!" Poor Miss Amelia was accustomed to being called a goose. She knew, in fact, that she was rather a goose, and that it was left to geese to do a great many disagreeable things. It was a somewhat embarrassing thing to go into the midst of a room full of delighted children, and tell the giver of the feast that she had suddenly been transformed into a little beggar, and must go upstairs and put on an old black frock which was too small for her. But the thing must be done. This was evidently not the time when questions might be asked. She rubbed her eyes with her handkerchief until they looked quite red. After which she got up and went out of the room, without venturing to say another word. When her older sister looked and spoke as she had done just now, the wisest course to pursue was to obey orders without any comment. Miss Minchin walked across the room. She spoke to herself aloud without knowing that she was doing it. During the last year the story of the diamond mines had suggested all sorts of possibilities to her. Even proprietors of seminaries might make fortunes in stocks, with the aid of owners of mines. And now, instead of looking forward to gains, she was left to look back upon losses. "The Princess Sara, indeed!" she said. "The child has been pampered as if she were a QUEEN." She was sweeping angrily past the corner table as she said it, and the next moment she started at the sound of a loud, sobbing sniff which issued from under the cover. "What is that!" she exclaimed angrily. The loud, sobbing sniff was heard again, and she stooped and raised the hanging folds of the table cover. "How DARE you!" she cried out. "How dare you! Come out immediately!" It was poor Becky who crawled out, and her cap was knocked on one side, and her face was red with repressed crying. "If you please, 'm--it's me, mum," she explained. "I know I hadn't ought to. But I was lookin' at the doll, mum--an' I was frightened when you come in--an' slipped under the table." "You have been there all the time, listening," said Miss Minchin. "No, mum," Becky protested, bobbing curtsies. "Not listenin'--I thought I could slip out without your noticin', but I couldn't an' I had to stay. But I didn't listen, mum--I wouldn't for nothin'. But I couldn't help hearin'." Suddenly it seemed almost as if she lost all fear of the awful lady before her. She burst into fresh tears. "Oh, please, 'm," she said; "I dare say you'll give me warnin', mum--but I'm so sorry for poor Miss Sara--I'm so sorry!" "Leave the room!" ordered Miss Minchin. Becky curtsied again, the tears openly streaming down her cheeks. "Yes, 'm; I will, 'm," she said, trembling; "but oh, I just wanted to arst you: Miss Sara--she's been such a rich young lady, an' she's been waited on, 'and and foot; an' what will she do now, mum, without no maid? If--if, oh please, would you let me wait on her after I've done my pots an' kettles? I'd do 'em that quick--if you'd let me wait on her now she's poor. Oh," breaking out afresh, "poor little Miss Sara, mum--that was called a princess." Somehow, she made Miss Minchin feel more angry than ever. That the very scullery maid should range herself on the side of this child--whom she realized more fully than ever that she had never liked--was too much. She actually stamped her foot. "No--certainly not," she said. "She will wait on herself, and on other people, too. Leave the room this instant, or you'll leave your place." Becky threw her apron over her head and fled. She ran out of the room and down the steps into the scullery, and there she sat down among her pots and kettles, and wept as if her heart would break. "It's exactly like the ones in the stories," she wailed. "Them pore princess ones that was drove into the world." Miss Minchin had never looked quite so still and hard as she did when Sara came to her, a few hours later, in response to a message she had sent her. Even by that time it seemed to Sara as if the birthday party had either been a dream or a thing which had happened years ago, and had happened in the life of quite another little girl. Every sign of the festivities had been swept away; the holly had been removed from the schoolroom walls, and the forms and desks put back into their places. Miss Minchin's sitting room looked as it always did--all traces of the feast were gone, and Miss Minchin had resumed her usual dress. The pupils had been ordered to lay aside their party frocks; and this having been done, they had returned to the schoolroom and huddled together in groups, whispering and talking excitedly. "Tell Sara to come to my room," Miss Minchin had said to her sister. "And explain to her clearly that I will have no crying or unpleasant scenes." "Sister," replied Miss Amelia, "she is the strangest child I ever saw. She has actually made no fuss at all. You remember she made none when Captain Crewe went back to India. When I told her what had happened, she just stood quite still and looked at me without making a sound. Her eyes seemed to get bigger and bigger, and she went quite pale. When I had finished, she still stood staring for a few seconds, and then her chin began to shake, and she turned round and ran out of the room and upstairs. Several of the other children began to cry, but she did not seem to hear them or to be alive to anything but just what I was saying. It made me feel quite queer not to be answered; and when you tell anything sudden and strange, you expect people will say SOMETHING--whatever it is." Nobody but Sara herself ever knew what had happened in her room after she had run upstairs and locked her door. In fact, she herself scarcely remembered anything but that she walked up and down, saying over and over again to herself in a voice which did not seem her own, "My papa is dead! My papa is dead!" Once she stopped before Emily, who sat watching her from her chair, and cried out wildly, "Emily! Do you hear? Do you hear--papa is dead? He is dead in India--thousands of miles away." When she came into Miss Minchin's sitting room in answer to her summons, her face was white and her eyes had dark rings around them. Her mouth was set as if she did not wish it to reveal what she had suffered and was suffering. She did not look in the least like the rose-colored butterfly child who had flown about from one of her treasures to the other in the decorated schoolroom. She looked instead a strange, desolate, almost grotesque little figure. She had put on, without Mariette's help, the cast-aside black-velvet frock. It was too short and tight, and her slender legs looked long and thin, showing themselves from beneath the brief skirt. As she had not found a piece of black ribbon, her short, thick, black hair tumbled loosely about her face and contrasted strongly with its pallor. She held Emily tightly in one arm, and Emily was swathed in a piece of black material. "Put down your doll," said Miss Minchin. "What do you mean by bringing her here?" "No," Sara answered. "I will not put her down. She is all I have. My papa gave her to me." She had always made Miss Minchin feel secretly uncomfortable, and she did so now. She did not speak with rudeness so much as with a cold steadiness with which Miss Minchin felt it difficult to cope--perhaps because she knew she was doing a heartless and inhuman thing. "You will have no time for dolls in future," she said. "You will have to work and improve yourself and make yourself useful." Sara kept her big, strange eyes fixed on her, and said not a word. "Everything will be very different now," Miss Minchin went on. "I suppose Miss Amelia has explained matters to you." "Yes," answered Sara. "My papa is dead. He left me no money. I am quite poor." "You are a beggar," said Miss Minchin, her temper rising at the recollection of what all this meant. "It appears that you have no relations and no home, and no one to take care of you." For a moment the thin, pale little face twitched, but Sara again said nothing. "What are you staring at?" demanded Miss Minchin, sharply. "Are you so stupid that you cannot understand? I tell you that you are quite alone in the world, and have no one to do anything for you, unless I choose to keep you here out of charity." "I understand," answered Sara, in a low tone; and there was a sound as if she had gulped down something which rose in her throat. "I understand." "That doll," cried Miss Minchin, pointing to the splendid birthday gift seated near--"that ridiculous doll, with all her nonsensical, extravagant things--I actually paid the bill for her!" Sara turned her head toward the chair. "The Last Doll," she said. "The Last Doll." And her little mournful voice had an odd sound. "The Last Doll, indeed!" said Miss Minchin. "And she is mine, not yours. Everything you own is mine." "Please take it away from me, then," said Sara. "I do not want it." If she had cried and sobbed and seemed frightened, Miss Minchin might almost have had more patience with her. She was a woman who liked to domineer and feel her power, and as she looked at Sara's pale little steadfast face and heard her proud little voice, she quite felt as if her might was being set at naught. "Don't put on grand airs," she said. "The time for that sort of thing is past. You are not a princess any longer. Your carriage and your pony will be sent away--your maid will be dismissed. You will wear your oldest and plainest clothes--your extravagant ones are no longer suited to your station. You are like Becky--you must work for your living." To her surprise, a faint gleam of light came into the child's eyes--a shade of relief. "Can I work?" she said. "If I can work it will not matter so much. What can I do?" "You can do anything you are told," was the answer. "You are a sharp child, and pick up things readily. If you make yourself useful I may let you stay here. You speak French well, and you can help with the younger children." "May I?" exclaimed Sara. "Oh, please let me! I know I can teach them. I like them, and they like me." "Don't talk nonsense about people liking you," said Miss Minchin. "You will have to do more than teach the little ones. You will run errands and help in the kitchen as well as in the schoolroom. If you don't please me, you will be sent away. Remember that. Now go." Sara stood still just a moment, looking at her. In her young soul, she was thinking deep and strange things. Then she turned to leave the room. "Stop!" said Miss Minchin. "Don't you intend to thank me?" Sara paused, and all the deep, strange thoughts surged up in her breast. "What for?" she said. "For my kindness to you," replied Miss Minchin. "For my kindness in giving you a home." Sara made two or three steps toward her. Her thin little chest heaved up and down, and she spoke in a strange un-childishly fierce way. "You are not kind," she said. "You are NOT kind, and it is NOT a home." And she had turned and run out of the room before Miss Minchin could stop her or do anything but stare after her with stony anger. She went up the stairs slowly, but panting for breath and she held Emily tightly against her side. "I wish she could talk," she said to herself. "If she could speak--if she could speak!" She meant to go to her room and lie down on the tiger-skin, with her cheek upon the great cat's head, and look into the fire and think and think and think. But just before she reached the landing Miss Amelia came out of the door and closed it behind her, and stood before it, looking nervous and awkward. The truth was that she felt secretly ashamed of the thing she had been ordered to do. "You--you are not to go in there," she said. "Not go in?" exclaimed Sara, and she fell back a pace. "That is not your room now," Miss Amelia answered, reddening a little. Somehow, all at once, Sara understood. She realized that this was the beginning of the change Miss Minchin had spoken of. "Where is my room?" she asked, hoping very much that her voice did not shake. "You are to sleep in the attic next to Becky." Sara knew where it was. Becky had told her about it. She turned, and mounted up two flights of stairs. The last one was narrow, and covered with shabby strips of old carpet. She felt as if she were walking away and leaving far behind her the world in which that other child, who no longer seemed herself, had lived. This child, in her short, tight old frock, climbing the stairs to the attic, was quite a different creature. When she reached the attic door and opened it, her heart gave a dreary little thump. Then she shut the door and stood against it and looked about her. Yes, this was another world. The room had a slanting roof and was whitewashed. The whitewash was dingy and had fallen off in places. There was a rusty grate, an old iron bedstead, and a hard bed covered with a faded coverlet. Some pieces of furniture too much worn to be used downstairs had been sent up. Under the skylight in the roof, which showed nothing but an oblong piece of dull gray sky, there stood an old battered red footstool. Sara went to it and sat down. She seldom cried. She did not cry now. She laid Emily across her knees and put her face down upon her and her arms around her, and sat there, her little black head resting on the black draperies, not saying one word, not making one sound. And as she sat in this silence there came a low tap at the door--such a low, humble one that she did not at first hear it, and, indeed, was not roused until the door was timidly pushed open and a poor tear-smeared face appeared peeping round it. It was Becky's face, and Becky had been crying furtively for hours and rubbing her eyes with her kitchen apron until she looked strange indeed. "Oh, miss," she said under her breath. "Might I--would you allow me--jest to come in?" Sara lifted her head and looked at her. She tried to begin a smile, and somehow she could not. Suddenly--and it was all through the loving mournfulness of Becky's streaming eyes--her face looked more like a child's not so much too old for her years. She held out her hand and gave a little sob. "Oh, Becky," she said. "I told you we were just the same--only two little girls--just two little girls. You see how true it is. There's no difference now. I'm not a princess anymore." Becky ran to her and caught her hand, and hugged it to her breast, kneeling beside her and sobbing with love and pain. "Yes, miss, you are," she cried, and her words were all broken. "Whats'ever 'appens to you--whats'ever--you'd be a princess all the same--an' nothin' couldn't make you nothin' different."

Sara goes into the schoolroom for her big party and even gets Miss Minchin to agree to let Becky stay. Duh, to watch, not to actually participate. Miss Minchin gives a big, fake speech about "dear Sara" and thanks her for coming to the school. Then Sara gets her last doll with a trunkful of fancy clothes for it. However, at the same time, disaster is a'brewing. Captain Crewe's solicitor comes and demands to talk to Miss Minchin. He says that Captain Crewe is dead and that there were no diamonds in the diamond mines--so now "dear Sara" is both penniless AND an orphan. Sara's big party isn't being paid for and Miss Minchin is going to have to take care of her... forever. Of course she's furious. Miss Minchin tells Miss Amelia, who starts to cry. Becky turns out to be in the room and she starts to cry too. Miss Minchin calls Sara in and tells her that her papa is dead, and she'll have to make herself useful around the school. Wow, not much compassion here. Sara won't be able to keep playing with her dolls or keep all her fancy things. And? She's also going to start sleeping in the attic room next to Becky's. Sara is remarkably calm for a child who's just had her entire world taken away. She trudges up to the attic and lies down in the dingy little room. Then Becky comes in and they both cry together.

They said of old the Soul had human shape, But smaller, subtler than the fleshly self, So wandered forth for airing when it pleased. And see! beside her cherub-face there floats A pale-lipped form aerial whispering Its promptings in that little shell her ear." News is often dispersed as thoughtlessly and effectively as that pollen which the bees carry off (having no idea how powdery they are) when they are buzzing in search of their particular nectar. This fine comparison has reference to Fred Vincy, who on that evening at Lowick Parsonage heard a lively discussion among the ladies on the news which their old servant had got from Tantripp concerning Mr. Casaubon's strange mention of Mr. Ladislaw in a codicil to his will made not long before his death. Miss Winifred was astounded to find that her brother had known the fact before, and observed that Camden was the most wonderful man for knowing things and not telling them; whereupon Mary Garth said that the codicil had perhaps got mixed up with the habits of spiders, which Miss Winifred never would listen to. Mrs. Farebrother considered that the news had something to do with their having only once seen Mr. Ladislaw at Lowick, and Miss Noble made many small compassionate mewings. Fred knew little and cared less about Ladislaw and the Casaubons, and his mind never recurred to that discussion till one day calling on Rosamond at his mother's request to deliver a message as he passed, he happened to see Ladislaw going away. Fred and Rosamond had little to say to each other now that marriage had removed her from collision with the unpleasantness of brothers, and especially now that he had taken what she held the stupid and even reprehensible step of giving up the Church to take to such a business as Mr. Garth's. Hence Fred talked by preference of what he considered indifferent news, and "a propos of that young Ladislaw" mentioned what he had heard at Lowick Parsonage. Now Lydgate, like Mr. Farebrother, knew a great deal more than he told, and when he had once been set thinking about the relation between Will and Dorothea his conjectures had gone beyond the fact. He imagined that there was a passionate attachment on both sides, and this struck him as much too serious to gossip about. He remembered Will's irritability when he had mentioned Mrs. Casaubon, and was the more circumspect. On the whole his surmises, in addition to what he knew of the fact, increased his friendliness and tolerance towards Ladislaw, and made him understand the vacillation which kept him at Middlemarch after he had said that he should go away. It was significant of the separateness between Lydgate's mind and Rosamond's that he had no impulse to speak to her on the subject; indeed, he did not quite trust her reticence towards Will. And he was right there; though he had no vision of the way in which her mind would act in urging her to speak. When she repeated Fred's news to Lydgate, he said, "Take care you don't drop the faintest hint to Ladislaw, Rosy. He is likely to fly out as if you insulted him. Of course it is a painful affair." Rosamond turned her neck and patted her hair, looking the image of placid indifference. But the next time Will came when Lydgate was away, she spoke archly about his not going to London as he had threatened. "I know all about it. I have a confidential little bird," said she, showing very pretty airs of her head over the bit of work held high between her active fingers. "There is a powerful magnet in this neighborhood." "To be sure there is. Nobody knows that better than you," said Will, with light gallantry, but inwardly prepared to be angry. "It is really the most charming romance: Mr. Casaubon jealous, and foreseeing that there was no one else whom Mrs. Casaubon would so much like to marry, and no one who would so much like to marry her as a certain gentleman; and then laying a plan to spoil all by making her forfeit her property if she did marry that gentleman--and then--and then--and then--oh, I have no doubt the end will be thoroughly romantic." "Great God! what do you mean?" said Will, flushing over face and ears, his features seeming to change as if he had had a violent shake. "Don't joke; tell me what you mean." "You don't really know?" said Rosamond, no longer playful, and desiring nothing better than to tell in order that she might evoke effects. "No!" he returned, impatiently. "Don't know that Mr. Casaubon has left it in his will that if Mrs. Casaubon marries you she is to forfeit all her property?" "How do you know that it is true?" said Will, eagerly. "My brother Fred heard it from the Farebrothers." Will started up from his chair and reached his hat. "I dare say she likes you better than the property," said Rosamond, looking at him from a distance. "Pray don't say any more about it," said Will, in a hoarse undertone extremely unlike his usual light voice. "It is a foul insult to her and to me." Then he sat down absently, looking before him, but seeing nothing. "Now you are angry with _me_," said Rosamond. "It is too bad to bear _me_ malice. You ought to be obliged to me for telling you." "So I am," said Will, abruptly, speaking with that kind of double soul which belongs to dreamers who answer questions. "I expect to hear of the marriage," said Rosamond, playfully. "Never! You will never hear of the marriage!" With those words uttered impetuously, Will rose, put out his hand to Rosamond, still with the air of a somnambulist, and went away. When he was gone, Rosamond left her chair and walked to the other end of the room, leaning when she got there against a chiffonniere, and looking out of the window wearily. She was oppressed by ennui, and by that dissatisfaction which in women's minds is continually turning into a trivial jealousy, referring to no real claims, springing from no deeper passion than the vague exactingness of egoism, and yet capable of impelling action as well as speech. "There really is nothing to care for much," said poor Rosamond inwardly, thinking of the family at Quallingham, who did not write to her; and that perhaps Tertius when he came home would tease her about expenses. She had already secretly disobeyed him by asking her father to help them, and he had ended decisively by saying, "I am more likely to want help myself."

Fred Vincy hears about the notorious will of Casaubon from the old ladies at Lowick parsonage. He carries the news to Rosamond. Although Lydgate has known about the will, he has kept silent so far. Now, he warns Rosamond against repeating the story to Ladislaw. But she cant resist the temptation to tease Will. Thus, he hears the momentous news for the first time as a frivolous piece of gossip from Rosamond. Will is stupefied and then furious. To Rosamonds comment, "I daresay she likes you better than the property," he replies with anger that it is a foul insult to both parties. He walks out in a temper, leaving Rosamond rather dejected.

Everything was now in a regular train: theatre, actors, actresses, and dresses, were all getting forward; but though no other great impediments arose, Fanny found, before many days were past, that it was not all uninterrupted enjoyment to the party themselves, and that she had not to witness the continuance of such unanimity and delight as had been almost too much for her at first. Everybody began to have their vexation. Edmund had many. Entirely against _his_ judgment, a scene-painter arrived from town, and was at work, much to the increase of the expenses, and, what was worse, of the eclat of their proceedings; and his brother, instead of being really guided by him as to the privacy of the representation, was giving an invitation to every family who came in his way. Tom himself began to fret over the scene-painter's slow progress, and to feel the miseries of waiting. He had learned his part--all his parts, for he took every trifling one that could be united with the Butler, and began to be impatient to be acting; and every day thus unemployed was tending to increase his sense of the insignificance of all his parts together, and make him more ready to regret that some other play had not been chosen. Fanny, being always a very courteous listener, and often the only listener at hand, came in for the complaints and the distresses of most of them. _She_ knew that Mr. Yates was in general thought to rant dreadfully; that Mr. Yates was disappointed in Henry Crawford; that Tom Bertram spoke so quick he would be unintelligible; that Mrs. Grant spoiled everything by laughing; that Edmund was behindhand with his part, and that it was misery to have anything to do with Mr. Rushworth, who was wanting a prompter through every speech. She knew, also, that poor Mr. Rushworth could seldom get anybody to rehearse with him: _his_ complaint came before her as well as the rest; and so decided to her eye was her cousin Maria's avoidance of him, and so needlessly often the rehearsal of the first scene between her and Mr. Crawford, that she had soon all the terror of other complaints from _him_. So far from being all satisfied and all enjoying, she found everybody requiring something they had not, and giving occasion of discontent to the others. Everybody had a part either too long or too short; nobody would attend as they ought; nobody would remember on which side they were to come in; nobody but the complainer would observe any directions. Fanny believed herself to derive as much innocent enjoyment from the play as any of them; Henry Crawford acted well, and it was a pleasure to _her_ to creep into the theatre, and attend the rehearsal of the first act, in spite of the feelings it excited in some speeches for Maria. Maria, she also thought, acted well, too well; and after the first rehearsal or two, Fanny began to be their only audience; and sometimes as prompter, sometimes as spectator, was often very useful. As far as she could judge, Mr. Crawford was considerably the best actor of all: he had more confidence than Edmund, more judgment than Tom, more talent and taste than Mr. Yates. She did not like him as a man, but she must admit him to be the best actor, and on this point there were not many who differed from her. Mr. Yates, indeed, exclaimed against his tameness and insipidity; and the day came at last, when Mr. Rushworth turned to her with a black look, and said, "Do you think there is anything so very fine in all this? For the life and soul of me, I cannot admire him; and, between ourselves, to see such an undersized, little, mean-looking man, set up for a fine actor, is very ridiculous in my opinion." From this moment there was a return of his former jealousy, which Maria, from increasing hopes of Crawford, was at little pains to remove; and the chances of Mr. Rushworth's ever attaining to the knowledge of his two-and-forty speeches became much less. As to his ever making anything _tolerable_ of them, nobody had the smallest idea of that except his mother; _she_, indeed, regretted that his part was not more considerable, and deferred coming over to Mansfield till they were forward enough in their rehearsal to comprehend all his scenes; but the others aspired at nothing beyond his remembering the catchword, and the first line of his speech, and being able to follow the prompter through the rest. Fanny, in her pity and kindheartedness, was at great pains to teach him how to learn, giving him all the helps and directions in her power, trying to make an artificial memory for him, and learning every word of his part herself, but without his being much the forwarder. Many uncomfortable, anxious, apprehensive feelings she certainly had; but with all these, and other claims on her time and attention, she was as far from finding herself without employment or utility amongst them, as without a companion in uneasiness; quite as far from having no demand on her leisure as on her compassion. The gloom of her first anticipations was proved to have been unfounded. She was occasionally useful to all; she was perhaps as much at peace as any. There was a great deal of needlework to be done, moreover, in which her help was wanted; and that Mrs. Norris thought her quite as well off as the rest, was evident by the manner in which she claimed it--"Come, Fanny," she cried, "these are fine times for you, but you must not be always walking from one room to the other, and doing the lookings-on at your ease, in this way; I want you here. I have been slaving myself till I can hardly stand, to contrive Mr. Rushworth's cloak without sending for any more satin; and now I think you may give me your help in putting it together. There are but three seams; you may do them in a trice. It would be lucky for me if I had nothing but the executive part to do. _You_ are best off, I can tell you: but if nobody did more than _you_, we should not get on very fast." Fanny took the work very quietly, without attempting any defence; but her kinder aunt Bertram observed on her behalf-- "One cannot wonder, sister, that Fanny _should_ be delighted: it is all new to her, you know; you and I used to be very fond of a play ourselves, and so am I still; and as soon as I am a little more at leisure, _I_ mean to look in at their rehearsals too. What is the play about, Fanny? you have never told me." "Oh! sister, pray do not ask her now; for Fanny is not one of those who can talk and work at the same time. It is about Lovers' Vows." "I believe," said Fanny to her aunt Bertram, "there will be three acts rehearsed to-morrow evening, and that will give you an opportunity of seeing all the actors at once." "You had better stay till the curtain is hung," interposed Mrs. Norris; "the curtain will be hung in a day or two--there is very little sense in a play without a curtain--and I am much mistaken if you do not find it draw up into very handsome festoons." Lady Bertram seemed quite resigned to waiting. Fanny did not share her aunt's composure: she thought of the morrow a great deal, for if the three acts were rehearsed, Edmund and Miss Crawford would then be acting together for the first time; the third act would bring a scene between them which interested her most particularly, and which she was longing and dreading to see how they would perform. The whole subject of it was love--a marriage of love was to be described by the gentleman, and very little short of a declaration of love be made by the lady. She had read and read the scene again with many painful, many wondering emotions, and looked forward to their representation of it as a circumstance almost too interesting. She did not _believe_ they had yet rehearsed it, even in private. The morrow came, the plan for the evening continued, and Fanny's consideration of it did not become less agitated. She worked very diligently under her aunt's directions, but her diligence and her silence concealed a very absent, anxious mind; and about noon she made her escape with her work to the East room, that she might have no concern in another, and, as she deemed it, most unnecessary rehearsal of the first act, which Henry Crawford was just proposing, desirous at once of having her time to herself, and of avoiding the sight of Mr. Rushworth. A glimpse, as she passed through the hall, of the two ladies walking up from the Parsonage made no change in her wish of retreat, and she worked and meditated in the East room, undisturbed, for a quarter of an hour, when a gentle tap at the door was followed by the entrance of Miss Crawford. "Am I right? Yes; this is the East room. My dear Miss Price, I beg your pardon, but I have made my way to you on purpose to entreat your help." Fanny, quite surprised, endeavoured to shew herself mistress of the room by her civilities, and looked at the bright bars of her empty grate with concern. "Thank you; I am quite warm, very warm. Allow me to stay here a little while, and do have the goodness to hear me my third act. I have brought my book, and if you would but rehearse it with me, I should be _so_ obliged! I came here to-day intending to rehearse it with Edmund--by ourselves--against the evening, but he is not in the way; and if he _were_, I do not think I could go through it with _him_, till I have hardened myself a little; for really there is a speech or two. You will be so good, won't you?" Fanny was most civil in her assurances, though she could not give them in a very steady voice. "Have you ever happened to look at the part I mean?" continued Miss Crawford, opening her book. "Here it is. I did not think much of it at first--but, upon my word. There, look at _that_ speech, and _that_, and _that_. How am I ever to look him in the face and say such things? Could you do it? But then he is your cousin, which makes all the difference. You must rehearse it with me, that I may fancy _you_ him, and get on by degrees. You _have_ a look of _his_ sometimes." "Have I? I will do my best with the greatest readiness; but I must _read_ the part, for I can say very little of it." "_None_ of it, I suppose. You are to have the book, of course. Now for it. We must have two chairs at hand for you to bring forward to the front of the stage. There--very good school-room chairs, not made for a theatre, I dare say; much more fitted for little girls to sit and kick their feet against when they are learning a lesson. What would your governess and your uncle say to see them used for such a purpose? Could Sir Thomas look in upon us just now, he would bless himself, for we are rehearsing all over the house. Yates is storming away in the dining-room. I heard him as I came upstairs, and the theatre is engaged of course by those indefatigable rehearsers, Agatha and Frederick. If _they_ are not perfect, I _shall_ be surprised. By the bye, I looked in upon them five minutes ago, and it happened to be exactly at one of the times when they were trying _not_ to embrace, and Mr. Rushworth was with me. I thought he began to look a little queer, so I turned it off as well as I could, by whispering to him, 'We shall have an excellent Agatha; there is something so _maternal_ in her manner, so completely _maternal_ in her voice and countenance.' Was not that well done of me? He brightened up directly. Now for my soliloquy." She began, and Fanny joined in with all the modest feeling which the idea of representing Edmund was so strongly calculated to inspire; but with looks and voice so truly feminine as to be no very good picture of a man. With such an Anhalt, however, Miss Crawford had courage enough; and they had got through half the scene, when a tap at the door brought a pause, and the entrance of Edmund, the next moment, suspended it all. Surprise, consciousness, and pleasure appeared in each of the three on this unexpected meeting; and as Edmund was come on the very same business that had brought Miss Crawford, consciousness and pleasure were likely to be more than momentary in _them_. He too had his book, and was seeking Fanny, to ask her to rehearse with him, and help him to prepare for the evening, without knowing Miss Crawford to be in the house; and great was the joy and animation of being thus thrown together, of comparing schemes, and sympathising in praise of Fanny's kind offices. _She_ could not equal them in their warmth. _Her_ spirits sank under the glow of theirs, and she felt herself becoming too nearly nothing to both to have any comfort in having been sought by either. They must now rehearse together. Edmund proposed, urged, entreated it, till the lady, not very unwilling at first, could refuse no longer, and Fanny was wanted only to prompt and observe them. She was invested, indeed, with the office of judge and critic, and earnestly desired to exercise it and tell them all their faults; but from doing so every feeling within her shrank--she could not, would not, dared not attempt it: had she been otherwise qualified for criticism, her conscience must have restrained her from venturing at disapprobation. She believed herself to feel too much of it in the aggregate for honesty or safety in particulars. To prompt them must be enough for her; and it was sometimes _more_ than enough; for she could not always pay attention to the book. In watching them she forgot herself; and, agitated by the increasing spirit of Edmund's manner, had once closed the page and turned away exactly as he wanted help. It was imputed to very reasonable weariness, and she was thanked and pitied; but she deserved their pity more than she hoped they would ever surmise. At last the scene was over, and Fanny forced herself to add her praise to the compliments each was giving the other; and when again alone and able to recall the whole, she was inclined to believe their performance would, indeed, have such nature and feeling in it as must ensure their credit, and make it a very suffering exhibition to herself. Whatever might be its effect, however, she must stand the brunt of it again that very day. The first regular rehearsal of the three first acts was certainly to take place in the evening: Mrs. Grant and the Crawfords were engaged to return for that purpose as soon as they could after dinner; and every one concerned was looking forward with eagerness. There seemed a general diffusion of cheerfulness on the occasion. Tom was enjoying such an advance towards the end; Edmund was in spirits from the morning's rehearsal, and little vexations seemed everywhere smoothed away. All were alert and impatient; the ladies moved soon, the gentlemen soon followed them, and with the exception of Lady Bertram, Mrs. Norris, and Julia, everybody was in the theatre at an early hour; and having lighted it up as well as its unfinished state admitted, were waiting only the arrival of Mrs. Grant and the Crawfords to begin. They did not wait long for the Crawfords, but there was no Mrs. Grant. She could not come. Dr. Grant, professing an indisposition, for which he had little credit with his fair sister-in-law, could not spare his wife. "Dr. Grant is ill," said she, with mock solemnity. "He has been ill ever since he did not eat any of the pheasant today. He fancied it tough, sent away his plate, and has been suffering ever since". Here was disappointment! Mrs. Grant's non-attendance was sad indeed. Her pleasant manners and cheerful conformity made her always valuable amongst them; but _now_ she was absolutely necessary. They could not act, they could not rehearse with any satisfaction without her. The comfort of the whole evening was destroyed. What was to be done? Tom, as Cottager, was in despair. After a pause of perplexity, some eyes began to be turned towards Fanny, and a voice or two to say, "If Miss Price would be so good as to _read_ the part." She was immediately surrounded by supplications; everybody asked it; even Edmund said, "Do, Fanny, if it is not _very_ disagreeable to you." But Fanny still hung back. She could not endure the idea of it. Why was not Miss Crawford to be applied to as well? Or why had not she rather gone to her own room, as she had felt to be safest, instead of attending the rehearsal at all? She had known it would irritate and distress her; she had known it her duty to keep away. She was properly punished. "You have only to _read_ the part," said Henry Crawford, with renewed entreaty. "And I do believe she can say every word of it," added Maria, "for she could put Mrs. Grant right the other day in twenty places. Fanny, I am sure you know the part." Fanny could not say she did _not_; and as they all persevered, as Edmund repeated his wish, and with a look of even fond dependence on her good-nature, she must yield. She would do her best. Everybody was satisfied; and she was left to the tremors of a most palpitating heart, while the others prepared to begin. They _did_ begin; and being too much engaged in their own noise to be struck by an unusual noise in the other part of the house, had proceeded some way when the door of the room was thrown open, and Julia, appearing at it, with a face all aghast, exclaimed, "My father is come! He is in the hall at this moment."

Everyone is now super busy with the Theater Club. Tom's hired scene-painter arrives and Edmund gets increasingly annoyed by how overblown this production is getting. Fanny is stuck listening to everyone complain to her about everyone else. She's also forced to read through lines with everyone. The behind-the-scenes drama is intense. Henry and Maria rehearse together all the time, mainly their love scenes. Mr. Rushworth is increasingly jealous and, to make matters worse, he's also a terrible actor. Fanny starts trying to help him learn all his lines since she feels sorry for him. Mrs. Norris is sewing the costumes and makes Fanny help her. Fanny is increasingly anxious about the love scene between Edmund and Mary's characters, which has yet to be rehearsed. The next day Fanny is in her room when Mary comes up to see her. Mary wants Fanny to read through the love scene with her since she's nervous about reading it with Edmund. Fanny is horrified but agrees to do it. Before they start, Mary gossips a bit and sarcastically observes that Maria and Henry should be amazing since they rehearse so much together. She also notes that Sir Thomas wouldn't be so thrilled to see what they've done to his house. The girls start reading but then Edmund interrupts. He had the same idea as Mary and wanted Fanny to rehearse with him. The two then decide to rehearse together with Fanny as their prompter. Fanny would rather be run over by a cart than have to watch this, but she agrees. Fanny perhaps needs to learn the art of the white lie - it would get her out of a lot of these situations. Or she should start telling people to just go away. Fanny's emotional torture session ends when the two thespians notice she's tired and they decide to leave. A full rehearsal is set for that evening and everyone's in a great mood. The Theater Club was waiting for the Crawfords and the Grants to come over. They finally show up, but without Mrs. Grant. Mary informs them, mockingly, that Dr. Grant is "sick" since he didn't enjoy his dinner and Mrs. Grant is basically baby-sitting him. The others insist that Fanny read Mrs. Grant's part so they can rehearse and Fanny reluctantly agrees. But then Julia rushes in and calls a halt to the rehearsal: Sir Thomas has returned!

SCENE IV. Before Corioli Enter MARCIUS, TITUS LARTIUS, with drum and colours, with CAPTAINS and soldiers. To them a MESSENGER MARCIUS. Yonder comes news; a wager- they have met. LARTIUS. My horse to yours- no. MARCIUS. 'Tis done. LARTIUS. Agreed. MARCIUS. Say, has our general met the enemy? MESSENGER. They lie in view, but have not spoke as yet. LARTIUS. So, the good horse is mine. MARCIUS. I'll buy him of you. LARTIUS. No, I'll nor sell nor give him; lend you him I will For half a hundred years. Summon the town. MARCIUS. How far off lie these armies? MESSENGER. Within this mile and half. MARCIUS. Then shall we hear their 'larum, and they ours. Now, Mars, I prithee, make us quick in work, That we with smoking swords may march from hence To help our fielded friends! Come, blow thy blast. They sound a parley. Enter two SENATORS with others, on the walls of Corioli Tullus Aufidius, is he within your walls? FIRST SENATOR. No, nor a man that fears you less than he: That's lesser than a little. [Drum afar off] Hark, our drums Are bringing forth our youth. We'll break our walls Rather than they shall pound us up; our gates, Which yet seem shut, we have but pinn'd with rushes; They'll open of themselves. [Alarum far off] Hark you far off! There is Aufidius. List what work he makes Amongst your cloven army. MARCIUS. O, they are at it! LARTIUS. Their noise be our instruction. Ladders, ho! Enter the army of the Volsces MARCIUS. They fear us not, but issue forth their city. Now put your shields before your hearts, and fight With hearts more proof than shields. Advance, brave Titus. They do disdain us much beyond our thoughts, Which makes me sweat with wrath. Come on, my fellows. He that retires, I'll take him for a Volsce, And he shall feel mine edge. Alarum. The Romans are beat back to their trenches. Re-enter MARCIUS, cursing MARCIUS. All the contagion of the south light on you, You shames of Rome! you herd of- Boils and plagues Plaster you o'er, that you may be abhorr'd Farther than seen, and one infect another Against the wind a mile! You souls of geese That bear the shapes of men, how have you run From slaves that apes would beat! Pluto and hell! All hurt behind! Backs red, and faces pale With flight and agued fear! Mend and charge home, Or, by the fires of heaven, I'll leave the foe And make my wars on you. Look to't. Come on; If you'll stand fast we'll beat them to their wives, As they us to our trenches. Follow me. Another alarum. The Volsces fly, and MARCIUS follows them to the gates So, now the gates are ope; now prove good seconds; 'Tis for the followers fortune widens them, Not for the fliers. Mark me, and do the like. [MARCIUS enters the gates] FIRST SOLDIER. Fool-hardiness; not I. SECOND SOLDIER. Not I. [MARCIUS is shut in] FIRST SOLDIER. See, they have shut him in. ALL. To th' pot, I warrant him. [Alarum continues] Re-enter TITUS LARTIUS LARTIUS. What is become of Marcius? ALL. Slain, sir, doubtless. FIRST SOLDIER. Following the fliers at the very heels, With them he enters; who, upon the sudden, Clapp'd to their gates. He is himself alone, To answer all the city. LARTIUS. O noble fellow! Who sensibly outdares his senseless sword, And when it bows stand'st up. Thou art left, Marcius; A carbuncle entire, as big as thou art, Were not so rich a jewel. Thou wast a soldier Even to Cato's wish, not fierce and terrible Only in strokes; but with thy grim looks and The thunder-like percussion of thy sounds Thou mad'st thine enemies shake, as if the world Were feverous and did tremble. Re-enter MARCIUS, bleeding, assaulted by the enemy FIRST SOLDIER. Look, sir. LARTIUS. O, 'tis Marcius! Let's fetch him off, or make remain alike. [They fight, and all enter the city]

Cut to the city of Corioles, where Caius Martius and Titus Lartius take a little break from battering the city. A group of Volscian Senators show up on the city's walls and start talking trash about how their military leader, Tullus Aufidius, is going to show up any minute and make the Romans wish they had never come here. Next, the Senators send out their Volscian army to throw down with the Roman soldiers. Game on. Caius Martius leads the charge against the Volscians but the Romans are beaten back to their trenches outside the city walls. Martius then gives the Roman troops a little pep talk. And by "pep talk" we mean he curses them out and threatens to kill them himself if they don't start kicking some Volscian butt ASAP. You know, a little Coach Taylor style. Martius chases the Volscian soldiers inside the city gates and disappears while the rest of the soldiers hang back where it's nice and safe. Just as everyone is thinking Caius Martius is a total goner, he shows up at the city gates...covered in blood and sporting some new battle wounds. Now the other Roman soldiers rush through the gates and ravage the city. Brain Snack: In Ralph Fiennes' 2011 film version of Coriolanus, this battle scene takes place in a contemporary, urban setting that looks more like war-torn Serbia in the 1990's than ancient Rome.

It spoke much for the depth of Mrs. Trenor's friendship that her voice, in admonishing Miss Bart, took the same note of personal despair as if she had been lamenting the collapse of a house-party. "All I can say is, Lily, that I can't make you out!" She leaned back, sighing, in the morning abandon of lace and muslin, turning an indifferent shoulder to the heaped-up importunities of her desk, while she considered, with the eye of a physician who has given up the case, the erect exterior of the patient confronting her. "If you hadn't told me you were going in for him seriously--but I'm sure you made that plain enough from the beginning! Why else did you ask me to let you off bridge, and to keep away Carry and Kate Corby? I don't suppose you did it because he amused you; we could none of us imagine your putting up with him for a moment unless you meant to marry him. And I'm sure everybody played fair! They all wanted to help it along. Even Bertha kept her hands off--I will say that--till Lawrence came down and you dragged him away from her. After that she had a right to retaliate--why on earth did you interfere with her? You've known Lawrence Selden for years--why did you behave as if you had just discovered him? If you had a grudge against Bertha it was a stupid time to show it--you could have paid her back just as well after you were married! I told you Bertha was dangerous. She was in an odious mood when she came here, but Lawrence's turning up put her in a good humour, and if you'd only let her think he came for HER it would have never occurred to her to play you this trick. Oh, Lily, you'll never do anything if you're not serious!" Miss Bart accepted this exhortation in a spirit of the purest impartiality. Why should she have been angry? It was the voice of her own conscience which spoke to her through Mrs. Trenor's reproachful accents. But even to her own conscience she must trump up a semblance of defence. "I only took a day off--I thought he meant to stay on all this week, and I knew Mr. Selden was leaving this morning." Mrs. Trenor brushed aside the plea with a gesture which laid bare its weakness. "He did mean to stay--that's the worst of it. It shows that he's run away from you; that Bertha's done her work and poisoned him thoroughly." Lily gave a slight laugh. "Oh, if he's running I'll overtake him!" Her friend threw out an arresting hand. "Whatever you do, Lily, do nothing!" Miss Bart received the warning with a smile. "I don't mean, literally, to take the next train. There are ways----" But she did not go on to specify them. Mrs. Trenor sharply corrected the tense. "There WERE ways--plenty of them! I didn't suppose you needed to have them pointed out. But don't deceive yourself--he's thoroughly frightened. He has run straight home to his mother, and she'll protect him!" "Oh, to the death," Lily agreed, dimpling at the vision. "How you can LAUGH----" her friend rebuked her; and she dropped back to a soberer perception of things with the question: "What was it Bertha really told him?" "Don't ask me--horrors! She seemed to have raked up everything. Oh, you know what I mean--of course there isn't anything, REALLY; but I suppose she brought in Prince Varigliano--and Lord Hubert--and there was some story of your having borrowed money of old Ned Van Alstyne: did you ever?" "He is my father's cousin," Miss Bart interposed. "Well, of course she left THAT out. It seems Ned told Carry Fisher; and she told Bertha, naturally. They're all alike, you know: they hold their tongues for years, and you think you're safe, but when their opportunity comes they remember everything." Lily had grown pale: her voice had a harsh note in it. "It was some money I lost at bridge at the Van Osburghs'. I repaid it, of course." "Ah, well, they wouldn't remember that; besides, it was the idea of the gambling debt that frightened Percy. Oh, Bertha knew her man--she knew just what to tell him!" In this strain Mrs. Trenor continued for nearly an hour to admonish her friend. Miss Bart listened with admirable equanimity. Her naturally good temper had been disciplined by years of enforced compliance, since she had almost always had to attain her ends by the circuitous path of other people's; and, being naturally inclined to face unpleasant facts as soon as they presented themselves, she was not sorry to hear an impartial statement of what her folly was likely to cost, the more so as her own thoughts were still insisting on the other side of the case. Presented in the light of Mrs. Trenor's vigorous comments, the reckoning was certainly a formidable one, and Lily, as she listened, found herself gradually reverting to her friend's view of the situation. Mrs. Trenor's words were moreover emphasized for her hearer by anxieties which she herself could scarcely guess. Affluence, unless stimulated by a keen imagination, forms but the vaguest notion of the practical strain of poverty. Judy knew it must be "horrid" for poor Lily to have to stop to consider whether she could afford real lace on her petticoats, and not to have a motor-car and a steam-yacht at her orders; but the daily friction of unpaid bills, the daily nibble of small temptations to expenditure, were trials as far out of her experience as the domestic problems of the char-woman. Mrs. Trenor's unconsciousness of the real stress of the situation had the effect of making it more galling to Lily. While her friend reproached her for missing the opportunity to eclipse her rivals, she was once more battling in imagination with the mounting tide of indebtedness from which she had so nearly escaped. What wind of folly had driven her out again on those dark seas? If anything was needed to put the last touch to her self-abasement it was the sense of the way her old life was opening its ruts again to receive her. Yesterday her fancy had fluttered free pinions above a choice of occupations; now she had to drop to the level of the familiar routine, in which moments of seeming brilliancy and freedom alternated with long hours of subjection. She laid a deprecating hand on her friend's. "Dear Judy! I'm sorry to have been such a bore, and you are very good to me. But you must have some letters for me to answer--let me at least be useful." She settled herself at the desk, and Mrs. Trenor accepted her resumption of the morning's task with a sigh which implied that, after all, she had proved herself unfit for higher uses. The luncheon table showed a depleted circle. All the men but Jack Stepney and Dorset had returned to town (it seemed to Lily a last touch of irony that Selden and Percy Gryce should have gone in the same train), and Lady Cressida and the attendant Wetheralls had been despatched by motor to lunch at a distant country-house. At such moments of diminished interest it was usual for Mrs. Dorset to keep her room till the afternoon; but on this occasion she drifted in when luncheon was half over, hollowed-eyed and drooping, but with an edge of malice under her indifference. She raised her eyebrows as she looked about the table. "How few of us are left! I do so enjoy the quiet--don't you, Lily? I wish the men would always stop away--it's really much nicer without them. Oh, you don't count, George: one doesn't have to talk to one's husband. But I thought Mr. Gryce was to stay for the rest of the week?" she added enquiringly. "Didn't he intend to, Judy? He's such a nice boy--I wonder what drove him away? He is rather shy, and I'm afraid we may have shocked him: he has been brought up in such an old-fashioned way. Do you know, Lily, he told me he had never seen a girl play cards for money till he saw you doing it the other night? And he lives on the interest of his income, and always has a lot left over to invest!" Mrs. Fisher leaned forward eagerly. "I do believe it is some one's duty to educate that young man. It is shocking that he has never been made to realize his duties as a citizen. Every wealthy man should be compelled to study the laws of his country." Mrs. Dorset glanced at her quietly. "I think he HAS studied the divorce laws. He told me he had promised the Bishop to sign some kind of a petition against divorce." Mrs. Fisher reddened under her powder, and Stepney said with a laughing glance at Miss Bart: "I suppose he is thinking of marriage, and wants to tinker up the old ship before he goes aboard." His betrothed looked shocked at the metaphor, and George Dorset exclaimed with a sardonic growl: "Poor devil! It isn't the ship that will do for him, it's the crew." "Or the stowaways," said Miss Corby brightly. "If I contemplated a voyage with him I should try to start with a friend in the hold." Miss Van Osburgh's vague feeling of pique was struggling for appropriate expression. "I'm sure I don't see why you laugh at him; I think he's very nice," she exclaimed; "and, at any rate, a girl who married him would always have enough to be comfortable." She looked puzzled at the redoubled laughter which hailed her words, but it might have consoled her to know how deeply they had sunk into the breast of one of her hearers. Comfortable! At that moment the word was more eloquent to Lily Bart than any other in the language. She could not even pause to smile over the heiress's view of a colossal fortune as a mere shelter against want: her mind was filled with the vision of what that shelter might have been to her. Mrs. Dorset's pin-pricks did not smart, for her own irony cut deeper: no one could hurt her as much as she was hurting herself, for no one else--not even Judy Trenor--knew the full magnitude of her folly. She was roused from these unprofitable considerations by a whispered request from her hostess, who drew her apart as they left the luncheon-table. "Lily, dear, if you've nothing special to do, may I tell Carry Fisher that you intend to drive to the station and fetch Gus? He will be back at four, and I know she has it in her mind to meet him. Of course I'm very glad to have him amused, but I happen to know that she has bled him rather severely since she's been here, and she is so keen about going to fetch him that I fancy she must have got a lot more bills this morning. It seems to me," Mrs. Trenor feelingly concluded, "that most of her alimony is paid by other women's husbands!" Miss Bart, on her way to the station, had leisure to muse over her friend's words, and their peculiar application to herself. Why should she have to suffer for having once, for a few hours, borrowed money of an elderly cousin, when a woman like Carry Fisher could make a living unrebuked from the good-nature of her men friends and the tolerance of their wives? It all turned on the tiresome distinction between what a married woman might, and a girl might not, do. Of course it was shocking for a married woman to borrow money--and Lily was expertly aware of the implication involved--but still, it was the mere MALUM PROHIBITUM which the world decries but condones, and which, though it may be punished by private vengeance, does not provoke the collective disapprobation of society. To Miss Bart, in short, no such opportunities were possible. She could of course borrow from her women friends--a hundred here or there, at the utmost--but they were more ready to give a gown or a trinket, and looked a little askance when she hinted her preference for a cheque. Women are not generous lenders, and those among whom her lot was cast were either in the same case as herself, or else too far removed from it to understand its necessities. The result of her meditations was the decision to join her aunt at Richfield. She could not remain at Bellomont without playing bridge, and being involved in other expenses; and to continue her usual series of autumn visits would merely prolong the same difficulties. She had reached a point where abrupt retrenchment was necessary, and the only cheap life was a dull life. She would start the next morning for Richfield. At the station she thought Gus Trenor seemed surprised, and not wholly unrelieved, to see her. She yielded up the reins of the light runabout in which she had driven over, and as he climbed heavily to her side, crushing her into a scant third of the seat, he said: "Halloo! It isn't often you honour me. You must have been uncommonly hard up for something to do." The afternoon was warm, and propinquity made her more than usually conscious that he was red and massive, and that beads of moisture had caused the dust of the train to adhere unpleasantly to the broad expanse of cheek and neck which he turned to her; but she was aware also, from the look in his small dull eyes, that the contact with her freshness and slenderness was as agreeable to him as the sight of a cooling beverage. The perception of this fact helped her to answer gaily: "It's not often I have the chance. There are too many ladies to dispute the privilege with me." "The privilege of driving me home? Well, I'm glad you won the race, anyhow. But I know what really happened--my wife sent you. Now didn't she?" He had the dull man's unexpected flashes of astuteness, and Lily could not help joining in the laugh with which he had pounced on the truth. "You see, Judy thinks I'm the safest person for you to be with; and she's quite right," she rejoined. "Oh, is she, though? If she is, it's because you wouldn't waste your time on an old hulk like me. We married men have to put up with what we can get: all the prizes are for the clever chaps who've kept a free foot. Let me light a cigar, will you? I've had a beastly day of it." He drew up in the shade of the village street, and passed the reins to her while he held a match to his cigar. The little flame under his hand cast a deeper crimson on his puffing face, and Lily averted her eyes with a momentary feeling of repugnance. And yet some women thought him handsome! As she handed back the reins, she said sympathetically: "Did you have such a lot of tiresome things to do?" "I should say so--rather!" Trenor, who was seldom listened to, either by his wife or her friends, settled down into the rare enjoyment of a confidential talk. "You don't know how a fellow has to hustle to keep this kind of thing going." He waved his whip in the direction of the Bellomont acres, which lay outspread before them in opulent undulations. "Judy has no idea of what she spends--not that there isn't plenty to keep the thing going," he interrupted himself, "but a man has got to keep his eyes open and pick up all the tips he can. My father and mother used to live like fighting-cocks on their income, and put by a good bit of it too--luckily for me--but at the pace we go now, I don't know where I should be if it weren't for taking a flyer now and then. The women all think--I mean Judy thinks--I've nothing to do but to go down town once a month and cut off coupons, but the truth is it takes a devilish lot of hard work to keep the machinery running. Not that I ought to complain to-day, though," he went on after a moment, "for I did a very neat stroke of business, thanks to Stepney's friend Rosedale: by the way, Miss Lily, I wish you'd try to persuade Judy to be decently civil to that chap. He's going to be rich enough to buy us all out one of these days, and if she'd only ask him to dine now and then I could get almost anything out of him. The man is mad to know the people who don't want to know him, and when a fellow's in that state there is nothing he won't do for the first woman who takes him up." Lily hesitated a moment. The first part of her companion's discourse had started an interesting train of thought, which was rudely interrupted by the mention of Mr. Rosedale's name. She uttered a faint protest. "But you know Jack did try to take him about, and he was impossible." "Oh, hang it--because he's fat and shiny, and has a sloppy manner! Well, all I can say is that the people who are clever enough to be civil to him now will make a mighty good thing of it. A few years from now he'll be in it whether we want him or not, and then he won't be giving away a half-a-million tip for a dinner." Lily's mind had reverted from the intrusive personality of Mr. Rosedale to the train of thought set in motion by Trenor's first words. This vast mysterious Wall Street world of "tips" and "deals"--might she not find in it the means of escape from her dreary predicament? She had often heard of women making money in this way through their friends: she had no more notion than most of her sex of the exact nature of the transaction, and its vagueness seemed to diminish its indelicacy. She could not, indeed, imagine herself, in any extremity, stooping to extract a "tip" from Mr. Rosedale; but at her side was a man in possession of that precious commodity, and who, as the husband of her dearest friend, stood to her in a relation of almost fraternal intimacy. In her inmost heart Lily knew it was not by appealing to the fraternal instinct that she was likely to move Gus Trenor; but this way of explaining the situation helped to drape its crudity, and she was always scrupulous about keeping up appearances to herself. Her personal fastidiousness had a moral equivalent, and when she made a tour of inspection in her own mind there were certain closed doors she did not open. As they reached the gates of Bellomont she turned to Trenor with a smile. "The afternoon is so perfect--don't you want to drive me a little farther? I've been rather out of spirits all day, and it's so restful to be away from people, with some one who won't mind if I'm a little dull." She looked so plaintively lovely as she proffered the request, so trustfully sure of his sympathy and understanding, that Trenor felt himself wishing that his wife could see how other women treated him--not battered wire-pullers like Mrs. Fisher, but a girl that most men would have given their boots to get such a look from. "Out of spirits? Why on earth should you ever be out of spirits? Is your last box of Doucet dresses a failure, or did Judy rook you out of everything at bridge last night?" Lily shook her head with a sigh. "I have had to give up Doucet; and bridge too--I can't afford it. In fact I can't afford any of the things my friends do, and I am afraid Judy often thinks me a bore because I don't play cards any longer, and because I am not as smartly dressed as the other women. But you will think me a bore too if I talk to you about my worries, and I only mention them because I want you to do me a favour--the very greatest of favours." Her eyes sought his once more, and she smiled inwardly at the tinge of apprehension that she read in them. "Why, of course--if it's anything I can manage----" He broke off, and she guessed that his enjoyment was disturbed by the remembrance of Mrs. Fisher's methods. "The greatest of favours," she rejoined gently. "The fact is, Judy is angry with me, and I want you to make my peace." "Angry with you? Oh, come, nonsense----" his relief broke through in a laugh. "Why, you know she's devoted to you." "She is the best friend I have, and that is why I mind having to vex her. But I daresay you know what she has wanted me to do. She has set her heart--poor dear--on my marrying--marrying a great deal of money." She paused with a slight falter of embarrassment, and Trenor, turning abruptly, fixed on her a look of growing intelligence. "A great deal of money? Oh, by Jove--you don't mean Gryce? What--you do? Oh, no, of course I won't mention it--you can trust me to keep my mouth shut--but Gryce--good Lord, GRYCE! Did Judy really think you could bring yourself to marry that portentous little ass? But you couldn't, eh? And so you gave him the sack, and that's the reason why he lit out by the first train this morning?" He leaned back, spreading himself farther across the seat, as if dilated by the joyful sense of his own discernment. "How on earth could Judy think you would do such a thing? I could have told her you'd never put up with such a little milksop!" Lily sighed more deeply. "I sometimes think," she murmured, "that men understand a woman's motives better than other women do." "Some men--I'm certain of it! I could have TOLD Judy," he repeated, exulting in the implied superiority over his wife. "I thought you would understand; that's why I wanted to speak to you," Miss Bart rejoined. "I can't make that kind of marriage; it's impossible. But neither can I go on living as all the women in my set do. I am almost entirely dependent on my aunt, and though she is very kind to me she makes me no regular allowance, and lately I've lost money at cards, and I don't dare tell her about it. I have paid my card debts, of course, but there is hardly anything left for my other expenses, and if I go on with my present life I shall be in horrible difficulties. I have a tiny income of my own, but I'm afraid it's badly invested, for it seems to bring in less every year, and I am so ignorant of money matters that I don't know if my aunt's agent, who looks after it, is a good adviser." She paused a moment, and added in a lighter tone: "I didn't mean to bore you with all this, but I want your help in making Judy understand that I can't, at present, go on living as one must live among you all. I am going away tomorrow to join my aunt at Richfield, and I shall stay there for the rest of the autumn, and dismiss my maid and learn how to mend my own clothes." At this picture of loveliness in distress, the pathos of which was heightened by the light touch with which it was drawn, a murmur of indignant sympathy broke from Trenor. Twenty-four hours earlier, if his wife had consulted him on the subject of Miss Bart's future, he would have said that a girl with extravagant tastes and no money had better marry the first rich man she could get; but with the subject of discussion at his side, turning to him for sympathy, making him feel that he understood her better than her dearest friends, and confirming the assurance by the appeal of her exquisite nearness, he was ready to swear that such a marriage was a desecration, and that, as a man of honour, he was bound to do all he could to protect her from the results of her disinterestedness. This impulse was reinforced by the reflection that if she had married Gryce she would have been surrounded by flattery and approval, whereas, having refused to sacrifice herself to expediency, she was left to bear the whole cost of her resistance. Hang it, if he could find a way out of such difficulties for a professional sponge like Carry Fisher, who was simply a mental habit corresponding to the physical titillations of the cigarette or the cock-tail, he could surely do as much for a girl who appealed to his highest sympathies, and who brought her troubles to him with the trustfulness of a child. Trenor and Miss Bart prolonged their drive till long after sunset; and before it was over he had tried, with some show of success, to prove to her that, if she would only trust him, he could make a handsome sum of money for her without endangering the small amount she possessed. She was too genuinely ignorant of the manipulations of the stock-market to understand his technical explanations, or even perhaps to perceive that certain points in them were slurred; the haziness enveloping the transaction served as a veil for her embarrassment, and through the general blur her hopes dilated like lamps in a fog. She understood only that her modest investments were to be mysteriously multiplied without risk to herself; and the assurance that this miracle would take place within a short time, that there would be no tedious interval for suspense and reaction, relieved her of her lingering scruples. Again she felt the lightening of her load, and with it the release of repressed activities. Her immediate worries conjured, it was easy to resolve that she would never again find herself in such straits, and as the need of economy and self-denial receded from her foreground she felt herself ready to meet any other demand which life might make. Even the immediate one of letting Trenor, as they drove homeward, lean a little nearer and rest his hand reassuringly on hers, cost her only a momentary shiver of reluctance. It was part of the game to make him feel that her appeal had been an uncalculated impulse, provoked by the liking he inspired; and the renewed sense of power in handling men, while it consoled her wounded vanity, helped also to obscure the thought of the claim at which his manner hinted. He was a coarse dull man who, under all his show of authority, was a mere supernumerary in the costly show for which his money paid: surely, to a clever girl, it would be easy to hold him by his vanity, and so keep the obligation on his side.

Mrs. Trenor berates Lily for being completely flaky and indecisive. Because Lily took Selden away from Bertha, Bertha retaliated and turned Percy against Lily by giving him all the dirt on her. She told him how Lily gambles, smokes, and doesn't go to church. Now, Percy has left Bellomont, essentially to run away from Lily. It takes a while, but Lily finally realizes how screwed she is. At lunch, Lily discovers that Selden has departed from Bellomont, in addition to Percy. Mrs. Dorset is there, playing nice on the surface, but obviously mean underneath. She's all, "Oooh, Lily, I wonder why Mr. Gryce isn't here anymore! How curious!" and that sort of thing. Lily suffers inwardly at the thought of the rich life she just lost. As Lily heads away from the table, Mrs. Trenor asks her to go to the station and pick up her husband, Gus Trenor, and bring him back to Bellomont. She said she would send Carry Fisher, but she knows that Mrs. Fisher is always trying to get money out of Gus. On the way to the station, Lily devises a plan to get out of her hidden debt with the help of Gus Trenor. Of course, Lily knows that a married woman can do things that a single girl cannot . She decides that she'll have to tread carefully. Gus Trenor is "red and massive." Lily is well aware of the fact that he finds her attractive. Trenor starts talking about his work. He admits to Lily that it takes a lot of time to keep Judy in the lifestyle they live. He also says that he's made a good deal of money trading on tips from Simon Rosedale - he wishes his wife would stop being so snobbish and invite Rosedale to dinner, since he's such a useful business acquaintance to have. Lily realizes this is the angle she can work. When they arrive at Bellomont, she asks Trenor to keep driving, so they can enjoy this nice little carriage ride together a bit more. Lily starts lamenting how awful her financial situation is, how she can't play bridge anymore and can't buy such pretty dresses, etc. She asks for Trenor's help in explaining to Judy that Lily can't stay with them as she does. She needs to go back to her aunt's, where the social pressure to spend money all the time isn't there. This touches Trenor. He hates the thought of the beautiful Lily Bart having to do without. He asks for her to give him the small amount of money she has - about 500 dollars - and let him speculate with it on the stock market. Lily is relieved, and exhilarated with the sense of her own power.

Before we had done cleaning out the round-house, a breeze sprang up from a little to the east of north. This blew off the rain and brought out the sun. And here I must explain; and the reader would do well to look at a map. On the day when the fog fell and we ran down Alan's boat, we had been running through the Little Minch. At dawn after the battle, we lay becalmed to the east of the Isle of Canna or between that and Isle Eriska in the chain of the Long Island. Now to get from there to the Linnhe Loch, the straight course was through the narrows of the Sound of Mull. But the captain had no chart; he was afraid to trust his brig so deep among the islands; and the wind serving well, he preferred to go by west of Tiree and come up under the southern coast of the great Isle of Mull. All day the breeze held in the same point, and rather freshened than died down; and towards afternoon, a swell began to set in from round the outer Hebrides. Our course, to go round about the inner isles, was to the west of south, so that at first we had this swell upon our beam, and were much rolled about. But after nightfall, when we had turned the end of Tiree and began to head more to the east, the sea came right astern. Meanwhile, the early part of the day, before the swell came up, was very pleasant; sailing, as we were, in a bright sunshine and with many mountainous islands upon different sides. Alan and I sat in the round-house with the doors open on each side (the wind being straight astern), and smoked a pipe or two of the captain's fine tobacco. It was at this time we heard each other's stories, which was the more important to me, as I gained some knowledge of that wild Highland country on which I was so soon to land. In those days, so close on the back of the great rebellion, it was needful a man should know what he was doing when he went upon the heather. It was I that showed the example, telling him all my misfortune; which he heard with great good-nature. Only, when I came to mention that good friend of mine, Mr. Campbell the minister, Alan fired up and cried out that he hated all that were of that name. "Why," said I, "he is a man you should be proud to give your hand to." "I know nothing I would help a Campbell to," says he, "unless it was a leaden bullet. I would hunt all of that name like blackcocks. If I lay dying, I would crawl upon my knees to my chamber window for a shot at one." "Why, Alan," I cried, "what ails ye at the Campbells?" "Well," says he, "ye ken very well that I am an Appin Stewart, and the Campbells have long harried and wasted those of my name; ay, and got lands of us by treachery--but never with the sword," he cried loudly, and with the word brought down his fist upon the table. But I paid the less attention to this, for I knew it was usually said by those who have the underhand. "There's more than that," he continued, "and all in the same story: lying words, lying papers, tricks fit for a peddler, and the show of what's legal over all, to make a man the more angry." "You that are so wasteful of your buttons," said I, "I can hardly think you would be a good judge of business." "Ah!" says he, falling again to smiling, "I got my wastefulness from the same man I got the buttons from; and that was my poor father, Duncan Stewart, grace be to him! He was the prettiest man of his kindred; and the best swordsman in the Hielands, David, and that is the same as to say, in all the world, I should ken, for it was him that taught me. He was in the Black Watch, when first it was mustered; and, like other gentlemen privates, had a gillie at his back to carry his firelock for him on the march. Well, the King, it appears, was wishful to see Hieland swordsmanship; and my father and three more were chosen out and sent to London town, to let him see it at the best. So they were had into the palace and showed the whole art of the sword for two hours at a stretch, before King George and Queen Carline, and the Butcher Cumberland, and many more of whom I havenae mind. And when they were through, the King (for all he was a rank usurper) spoke them fair and gave each man three guineas in his hand. Now, as they were going out of the palace, they had a porter's lodge to go by; and it came in on my father, as he was perhaps the first private Hieland gentleman that had ever gone by that door, it was right he should give the poor porter a proper notion of their quality. So he gives the King's three guineas into the man's hand, as if it was his common custom; the three others that came behind him did the same; and there they were on the street, never a penny the better for their pains. Some say it was one, that was the first to fee the King's porter; and some say it was another; but the truth of it is, that it was Duncan Stewart, as I am willing to prove with either sword or pistol. And that was the father that I had, God rest him!" "I think he was not the man to leave you rich," said I. "And that's true," said Alan. "He left me my breeks to cover me, and little besides. And that was how I came to enlist, which was a black spot upon my character at the best of times, and would still be a sore job for me if I fell among the red-coats." "What," cried I, "were you in the English army?" "That was I," said Alan. "But I deserted to the right side at Preston Pans--and that's some comfort." I could scarcely share this view: holding desertion under arms for an unpardonable fault in honour. But for all I was so young, I was wiser than say my thought. "Dear, dear," says I, "the punishment is death." "Ay" said he, "if they got hands on me, it would be a short shrift and a lang tow for Alan! But I have the King of France's commission in my pocket, which would aye be some protection." "I misdoubt it much," said I. "I have doubts mysel'," said Alan drily. "And, good heaven, man," cried I, "you that are a condemned rebel, and a deserter, and a man of the French King's--what tempts ye back into this country? It's a braving of Providence." "Tut!" says Alan, "I have been back every year since forty-six!" "And what brings ye, man?" cried I. "Well, ye see, I weary for my friends and country," said he. "France is a braw place, nae doubt; but I weary for the heather and the deer. And then I have bit things that I attend to. Whiles I pick up a few lads to serve the King of France: recruits, ye see; and that's aye a little money. But the heart of the matter is the business of my chief, Ardshiel." "I thought they called your chief Appin," said I. "Ay, but Ardshiel is the captain of the clan," said he, which scarcely cleared my mind. "Ye see, David, he that was all his life so great a man, and come of the blood and bearing the name of kings, is now brought down to live in a French town like a poor and private person. He that had four hundred swords at his whistle, I have seen, with these eyes of mine, buying butter in the market-place, and taking it home in a kale-leaf. This is not only a pain but a disgrace to us of his family and clan. There are the bairns forby, the children and the hope of Appin, that must be learned their letters and how to hold a sword, in that far country. Now, the tenants of Appin have to pay a rent to King George; but their hearts are staunch, they are true to their chief; and what with love and a bit of pressure, and maybe a threat or two, the poor folk scrape up a second rent for Ardshiel. Well, David, I'm the hand that carries it." And he struck the belt about his body, so that the guineas rang. "Do they pay both?" cried I. "Ay, David, both," says he. "What! two rents?" I repeated. "Ay, David," said he. "I told a different tale to yon captain man; but this is the truth of it. And it's wonderful to me how little pressure is needed. But that's the handiwork of my good kinsman and my father's friend, James of the Glens: James Stewart, that is: Ardshiel's half-brother. He it is that gets the money in, and does the management." This was the first time I heard the name of that James Stewart, who was afterwards so famous at the time of his hanging. But I took little heed at the moment, for all my mind was occupied with the generosity of these poor Highlanders. "I call it noble," I cried. "I'm a Whig, or little better; but I call it noble." "Ay" said he, "ye're a Whig, but ye're a gentleman; and that's what does it. Now, if ye were one of the cursed race of Campbell, ye would gnash your teeth to hear tell of it. If ye were the Red Fox..." And at that name, his teeth shut together, and he ceased speaking. I have seen many a grim face, but never a grimmer than Alan's when he had named the Red Fox. "And who is the Red Fox?" I asked, daunted, but still curious. "Who is he?" cried Alan. "Well, and I'll tell you that. When the men of the clans were broken at Culloden, and the good cause went down, and the horses rode over the fetlocks in the best blood of the north, Ardshiel had to flee like a poor deer upon the mountains--he and his lady and his bairns. A sair job we had of it before we got him shipped; and while he still lay in the heather, the English rogues, that couldnae come at his life, were striking at his rights. They stripped him of his powers; they stripped him of his lands; they plucked the weapons from the hands of his clansmen, that had borne arms for thirty centuries; ay, and the very clothes off their backs--so that it's now a sin to wear a tartan plaid, and a man may be cast into a gaol if he has but a kilt about his legs. One thing they couldnae kill. That was the love the clansmen bore their chief. These guineas are the proof of it. And now, in there steps a man, a Campbell, red-headed Colin of Glenure----" "Is that him you call the Red Fox?" said I. "Will ye bring me his brush?" cries Alan, fiercely. "Ay, that's the man. In he steps, and gets papers from King George, to be so-called King's factor on the lands of Appin. And at first he sings small, and is hail-fellow-well-met with Sheamus--that's James of the Glens, my chieftain's agent. But by-and-by, that came to his ears that I have just told you; how the poor commons of Appin, the farmers and the crofters and the boumen, were wringing their very plaids to get a second rent, and send it over-seas for Ardshiel and his poor bairns. What was it ye called it, when I told ye?" "I called it noble, Alan," said I. "And you little better than a common Whig!" cries Alan. "But when it came to Colin Roy, the black Campbell blood in him ran wild. He sat gnashing his teeth at the wine table. What! should a Stewart get a bite of bread, and him not be able to prevent it? Ah! Red Fox, if ever I hold you at a gun's end, the Lord have pity upon ye!" (Alan stopped to swallow down his anger.) "Well, David, what does he do? He declares all the farms to let. And, thinks he, in his black heart, 'I'll soon get other tenants that'll overbid these Stewarts, and Maccolls, and Macrobs' (for these are all names in my clan, David); 'and then,' thinks he, 'Ardshiel will have to hold his bonnet on a French roadside.'" "Well," said I, "what followed?" Alan laid down his pipe, which he had long since suffered to go out, and set his two hands upon his knees. "Ay," said he, "ye'll never guess that! For these same Stewarts, and Maccolls, and Macrobs (that had two rents to pay, one to King George by stark force, and one to Ardshiel by natural kindness) offered him a better price than any Campbell in all broad Scotland; and far he sent seeking them--as far as to the sides of Clyde and the cross of Edinburgh--seeking, and fleeching, and begging them to come, where there was a Stewart to be starved and a red-headed hound of a Campbell to be pleasured!" "Well, Alan," said I, "that is a strange story, and a fine one, too. And Whig as I may be, I am glad the man was beaten." "Him beaten?" echoed Alan. "It's little ye ken of Campbells, and less of the Red Fox. Him beaten? No: nor will be, till his blood's on the hillside! But if the day comes, David man, that I can find time and leisure for a bit of hunting, there grows not enough heather in all Scotland to hide him from my vengeance!" "Man Alan," said I, "ye are neither very wise nor very Christian to blow off so many words of anger. They will do the man ye call the Fox no harm, and yourself no good. Tell me your tale plainly out. What did he next?" "And that's a good observe, David," said Alan. "Troth and indeed, they will do him no harm; the more's the pity! And barring that about Christianity (of which my opinion is quite otherwise, or I would be nae Christian), I am much of your mind." "Opinion here or opinion there," said I, "it's a kent thing that Christianity forbids revenge." "Ay" said he, "it's well seen it was a Campbell taught ye! It would be a convenient world for them and their sort, if there was no such a thing as a lad and a gun behind a heather bush! But that's nothing to the point. This is what he did." "Ay" said I, "come to that." "Well, David," said he, "since he couldnae be rid of the loyal commons by fair means, he swore he would be rid of them by foul. Ardshiel was to starve: that was the thing he aimed at. And since them that fed him in his exile wouldnae be bought out--right or wrong, he would drive them out. Therefore he sent for lawyers, and papers, and red-coats to stand at his back. And the kindly folk of that country must all pack and tramp, every father's son out of his father's house, and out of the place where he was bred and fed, and played when he was a callant. And who are to succeed them? Bare-leggit beggars! King George is to whistle for his rents; he maun dow with less; he can spread his butter thinner: what cares Red Colin? If he can hurt Ardshiel, he has his wish; if he can pluck the meat from my chieftain's table, and the bit toys out of his children's hands, he will gang hame singing to Glenure!" "Let me have a word," said I. "Be sure, if they take less rents, be sure Government has a finger in the pie. It's not this Campbell's fault, man--it's his orders. And if ye killed this Colin to-morrow, what better would ye be? There would be another factor in his shoes, as fast as spur can drive." "Ye're a good lad in a fight," said Alan; "but, man! ye have Whig blood in ye!" He spoke kindly enough, but there was so much anger under his contempt that I thought it was wise to change the conversation. I expressed my wonder how, with the Highlands covered with troops, and guarded like a city in a siege, a man in his situation could come and go without arrest. "It's easier than ye would think," said Alan. "A bare hillside (ye see) is like all one road; if there's a sentry at one place, ye just go by another. And then the heather's a great help. And everywhere there are friends' houses and friends' byres and haystacks. And besides, when folk talk of a country covered with troops, it's but a kind of a byword at the best. A soldier covers nae mair of it than his boot-soles. I have fished a water with a sentry on the other side of the brae, and killed a fine trout; and I have sat in a heather bush within six feet of another, and learned a real bonny tune from his whistling. This was it," said he, and whistled me the air. "And then, besides," he continued, "it's no sae bad now as it was in forty-six. The Hielands are what they call pacified. Small wonder, with never a gun or a sword left from Cantyre to Cape Wrath, but what tenty* folk have hidden in their thatch! But what I would like to ken, David, is just how long? Not long, ye would think, with men like Ardshiel in exile and men like the Red Fox sitting birling the wine and oppressing the poor at home. But it's a kittle thing to decide what folk'll bear, and what they will not. Or why would Red Colin be riding his horse all over my poor country of Appin, and never a pretty lad to put a bullet in him?" * Careful. And with this Alan fell into a muse, and for a long time sate very sad and silent. I will add the rest of what I have to say about my friend, that he was skilled in all kinds of music, but principally pipe-music; was a well-considered poet in his own tongue; had read several books both in French and English; was a dead shot, a good angler, and an excellent fencer with the small sword as well as with his own particular weapon. For his faults, they were on his face, and I now knew them all. But the worst of them, his childish propensity to take offence and to pick quarrels, he greatly laid aside in my case, out of regard for the battle of the round-house. But whether it was because I had done well myself, or because I had been a witness of his own much greater prowess, is more than I can tell. For though he had a great taste for courage in other men, yet he admired it most in Alan Breck.

The west coast of Scotland has a bunch of tiny islands and long inlets that are hard to picture without a map. In fact, Davie advises that you look at a map to see where the action's happening: they're currently approaching the island of Mull. Davie and Alan kick back and smoke some of Hoseason's tobacco in the round-house. Davie starts unloading all of his sorrows on Alan. But as soon as he mentions the minister Campbell's name, Alan tells Davie that he can't stand the Campbells. Alan says that he's an Appin Stewart , and that his family and the Campbells have lots of bad blood between them. The Campbells are always cheating the Stewarts, Alan claims. Alan does admit that his father, though he was a great guy, wasn't exactly good with money. Since he had no cash, Alan actually enlisted in the English army at one point -the same army that's hunting for him today. Alan abandoned the army, so now he's wanted not only for treason but for desertion. Davie is impressed that, even though Alan is both a rebel and a deserter, he keeps coming back to Britain. Why doesn't he just stay in France? Alan likes France well enough, he says, but he misses the heather and the deer of the Highlands. Also, he's very loyal to his clan chief, Ardshiel, and it's his responsibility to bring the rents from the tenants on Ardshiel's estate to Ardshiel's current home in France. Alan then curses the Campbell family and drops the name "Red Fox." He explains that Ardshiel has been stripped of his lands and titles by the English government for his part in the Jacobite rebellion. While he managed to escape the highlands with his life, wife, and kids, he's got nothing else legally left. Enter Colin Roy of Glenure, the "Red Fox" and member of the Campbell family. The English government puts him in charge of collecting rents on Ardshiel's lands in Appin. He finds out that Ardshiel's loyal tenants are scrimping and saving to send Ardshiel a second rent in addition to the rent that they're legally required to pay to the king. Red Fox wants to put a stop to this funding of Ardshiel's life in exile. So he looks for tenants who will pay more for the land than the people who are currently living there. Yet, even though the families living on Ardshiel's land are paying two rents, they still manage to outbid all of the Campbells in Red Fox's family, so they get to keep their places on Ardshiel's estates. Davie says that, even though he's a Whig, he's glad that Red Fox didn't succeed in ruining Ardshiel. Alan answers that Red Fox won't be beaten until he's actually been killed. After Red Fox realized that he couldn't get rid of Ardshiel's tenants by legal means, he brought in the army to chase them out. He replaced Ardshiel's tenants with people so poor that they couldn't afford both the king's rents and Ardshiel's. Davie tries to reason with Alan: it's the government's fault, not Red Fox's. Even if Alan were to kill Red Fox, someone else would just take his place. Alan is clearly disgusted by this thinking, so Davie quickly changes the subject. He wonders how Alan can come and go so openly in Scotland when he's a wanted criminal. Alan explains that because Scotland has been pretty much dominated by the English by now, you no longer see so many soldiers. This makes Alan sad: all the great men like Ardshiel have been tossed out of Scotland, and all the bad ones like Red Fox - the ones who won't give the English any trouble - remain. Davie sums up for us: Alan has many talents, but he also has a serious fault: he's sensitive and quick to anger. And one more thing: Alan admires a lot of people in this world, but none so much as himself. In other words: the man is vain.

ACT V. SCENE 1. London. The palace Sennet. Enter the KING, GLOUCESTER, and EXETER KING HENRY. Have you perus'd the letters from the Pope, The Emperor, and the Earl of Armagnac? GLOUCESTER. I have, my lord; and their intent is this: They humbly sue unto your Excellence To have a godly peace concluded of Between the realms of England and of France. KING HENRY. How doth your Grace affect their motion? GLOUCESTER. Well, my good lord, and as the only means To stop effusion of our Christian blood And stablish quietness on every side. KING HENRY. Ay, marry, uncle; for I always thought It was both impious and unnatural That such immanity and bloody strife Should reign among professors of one faith. GLOUCESTER. Beside, my lord, the sooner to effect And surer bind this knot of amity, The Earl of Armagnac, near knit to Charles, A man of great authority in France, Proffers his only daughter to your Grace In marriage, with a large and sumptuous dowry. KING HENRY. Marriage, uncle! Alas, my years are young And fitter is my study and my books Than wanton dalliance with a paramour. Yet call th' ambassadors, and, as you please, So let them have their answers every one. I shall be well content with any choice Tends to God's glory and my country's weal. Enter in Cardinal's habit BEAUFORT, the PAPAL LEGATE, and two AMBASSADORS EXETER. What! Is my Lord of Winchester install'd And call'd unto a cardinal's degree? Then I perceive that will be verified Henry the Fifth did sometime prophesy: 'If once he come to be a cardinal, He'll make his cap co-equal with the crown.' KING HENRY. My Lords Ambassadors, your several suits Have been consider'd and debated on. Your purpose is both good and reasonable, And therefore are we certainly resolv'd To draw conditions of a friendly peace, Which by my Lord of Winchester we mean Shall be transported presently to France. GLOUCESTER. And for the proffer of my lord your master, I have inform'd his Highness so at large, As, liking of the lady's virtuous gifts, Her beauty, and the value of her dower, He doth intend she shall be England's Queen. KING HENRY. [To AMBASSADOR] In argument and proof of which contract, Bear her this jewel, pledge of my affection. And so, my Lord Protector, see them guarded And safely brought to Dover; where inshipp'd, Commit them to the fortune of the sea. Exeunt all but WINCHESTER and the LEGATE WINCHESTER. Stay, my Lord Legate; you shall first receive The sum of money which I promised Should be delivered to his Holiness For clothing me in these grave ornaments. LEGATE. I will attend upon your lordship's leisure. WINCHESTER. [Aside] Now Winchester will not submit, I trow, Or be inferior to the proudest peer. Humphrey of Gloucester, thou shalt well perceive That neither in birth or for authority The Bishop will be overborne by thee. I'll either make thee stoop and bend thy knee, Or sack this country with a mutiny. Exeunt

Henry VI enters with Gloucester and Exeter. Henry asks the lords if they have read letters from the Pope in which he urges Henry to make peace with France. Henry asks their advice. Gloucester favors making peace, to prevent further loss of English lives. Henry agrees. Gloucester adds that the Earl of Armagnac, a French noble, has offered his daughter in marriage to Henry, with a generous dowry. Henry thinks he is too young to marry, preferring his studies, but agrees to meet the ambassadors from the Pope and Armagnac. . Winchester, who has been promoted from Bishop to Cardinal, enters with the ambassadors. Exeter remarks on Winchester's promotion aside to the audience that Henry V once prophesied that if Winchester was made a cardinal, he would want equal power with the king. . Henry tells the ambassadors that he agrees to peace. On Henry's behalf, Gloucester also accepts the Earl of Armagnac's offer of his daughter as a wife for Henry. . All exit except Winchester and the Papal Legate . Winchester gives to the Legate the money with which he has bribed the Pope to make him a cardinal. Left alone on the stage, Winchester says in a soliloquy that he considers himself to be Gloucester's social superior. If Gloucester will not submit, Winchester plans to lead a revolt.

The first act of business Miss Murdstone performed when the day of the solemnity was over, and light was freely admitted into the house, was to give Peggotty a month's warning. Much as Peggotty would have disliked such a service, I believe she would have retained it, for my sake, in preference to the best upon earth. She told me we must part, and told me why; and we condoled with one another, in all sincerity. As to me or my future, not a word was said, or a step taken. Happy they would have been, I dare say, if they could have dismissed me at a month's warning too. I mustered courage once, to ask Miss Murdstone when I was going back to school; and she answered dryly, she believed I was not going back at all. I was told nothing more. I was very anxious to know what was going to be done with me, and so was Peggotty; but neither she nor I could pick up any information on the subject. There was one change in my condition, which, while it relieved me of a great deal of present uneasiness, might have made me, if I had been capable of considering it closely, yet more uncomfortable about the future. It was this. The constraint that had been put upon me, was quite abandoned. I was so far from being required to keep my dull post in the parlour, that on several occasions, when I took my seat there, Miss Murdstone frowned to me to go away. I was so far from being warned off from Peggotty's society, that, provided I was not in Mr. Murdstone's, I was never sought out or inquired for. At first I was in daily dread of his taking my education in hand again, or of Miss Murdstone's devoting herself to it; but I soon began to think that such fears were groundless, and that all I had to anticipate was neglect. I do not conceive that this discovery gave me much pain then. I was still giddy with the shock of my mother's death, and in a kind of stunned state as to all tributary things. I can recollect, indeed, to have speculated, at odd times, on the possibility of my not being taught any more, or cared for any more; and growing up to be a shabby, moody man, lounging an idle life away, about the village; as well as on the feasibility of my getting rid of this picture by going away somewhere, like the hero in a story, to seek my fortune: but these were transient visions, daydreams I sat looking at sometimes, as if they were faintly painted or written on the wall of my room, and which, as they melted away, left the wall blank again. 'Peggotty,' I said in a thoughtful whisper, one evening, when I was warming my hands at the kitchen fire, 'Mr. Murdstone likes me less than he used to. He never liked me much, Peggotty; but he would rather not even see me now, if he can help it.' 'Perhaps it's his sorrow,' said Peggotty, stroking my hair. 'I am sure, Peggotty, I am sorry too. If I believed it was his sorrow, I should not think of it at all. But it's not that; oh, no, it's not that.' 'How do you know it's not that?' said Peggotty, after a silence. 'Oh, his sorrow is another and quite a different thing. He is sorry at this moment, sitting by the fireside with Miss Murdstone; but if I was to go in, Peggotty, he would be something besides.' 'What would he be?' said Peggotty. 'Angry,' I answered, with an involuntary imitation of his dark frown. 'If he was only sorry, he wouldn't look at me as he does. I am only sorry, and it makes me feel kinder.' Peggotty said nothing for a little while; and I warmed my hands, as silent as she. 'Davy,' she said at length. 'Yes, Peggotty?' 'I have tried, my dear, all ways I could think of--all the ways there are, and all the ways there ain't, in short--to get a suitable service here, in Blunderstone; but there's no such a thing, my love.' 'And what do you mean to do, Peggotty,' says I, wistfully. 'Do you mean to go and seek your fortune?' 'I expect I shall be forced to go to Yarmouth,' replied Peggotty, 'and live there.' 'You might have gone farther off,' I said, brightening a little, 'and been as bad as lost. I shall see you sometimes, my dear old Peggotty, there. You won't be quite at the other end of the world, will you?' 'Contrary ways, please God!' cried Peggotty, with great animation. 'As long as you are here, my pet, I shall come over every week of my life to see you. One day, every week of my life!' I felt a great weight taken off my mind by this promise: but even this was not all, for Peggotty went on to say: 'I'm a-going, Davy, you see, to my brother's, first, for another fortnight's visit--just till I have had time to look about me, and get to be something like myself again. Now, I have been thinking that perhaps, as they don't want you here at present, you might be let to go along with me.' If anything, short of being in a different relation to every one about me, Peggotty excepted, could have given me a sense of pleasure at that time, it would have been this project of all others. The idea of being again surrounded by those honest faces, shining welcome on me; of renewing the peacefulness of the sweet Sunday morning, when the bells were ringing, the stones dropping in the water, and the shadowy ships breaking through the mist; of roaming up and down with little Em'ly, telling her my troubles, and finding charms against them in the shells and pebbles on the beach; made a calm in my heart. It was ruffled next moment, to be sure, by a doubt of Miss Murdstone's giving her consent; but even that was set at rest soon, for she came out to take an evening grope in the store-closet while we were yet in conversation, and Peggotty, with a boldness that amazed me, broached the topic on the spot. 'The boy will be idle there,' said Miss Murdstone, looking into a pickle-jar, 'and idleness is the root of all evil. But, to be sure, he would be idle here--or anywhere, in my opinion.' Peggotty had an angry answer ready, I could see; but she swallowed it for my sake, and remained silent. 'Humph!' said Miss Murdstone, still keeping her eye on the pickles; 'it is of more importance than anything else--it is of paramount importance--that my brother should not be disturbed or made uncomfortable. I suppose I had better say yes.' I thanked her, without making any demonstration of joy, lest it should induce her to withdraw her assent. Nor could I help thinking this a prudent course, since she looked at me out of the pickle-jar, with as great an access of sourness as if her black eyes had absorbed its contents. However, the permission was given, and was never retracted; for when the month was out, Peggotty and I were ready to depart. Mr. Barkis came into the house for Peggotty's boxes. I had never known him to pass the garden-gate before, but on this occasion he came into the house. And he gave me a look as he shouldered the largest box and went out, which I thought had meaning in it, if meaning could ever be said to find its way into Mr. Barkis's visage. Peggotty was naturally in low spirits at leaving what had been her home so many years, and where the two strong attachments of her life--for my mother and myself--had been formed. She had been walking in the churchyard, too, very early; and she got into the cart, and sat in it with her handkerchief at her eyes. So long as she remained in this condition, Mr. Barkis gave no sign of life whatever. He sat in his usual place and attitude like a great stuffed figure. But when she began to look about her, and to speak to me, he nodded his head and grinned several times. I have not the least notion at whom, or what he meant by it. 'It's a beautiful day, Mr. Barkis!' I said, as an act of politeness. 'It ain't bad,' said Mr. Barkis, who generally qualified his speech, and rarely committed himself. 'Peggotty is quite comfortable now, Mr. Barkis,' I remarked, for his satisfaction. 'Is she, though?' said Mr. Barkis. After reflecting about it, with a sagacious air, Mr. Barkis eyed her, and said: 'ARE you pretty comfortable?' Peggotty laughed, and answered in the affirmative. 'But really and truly, you know. Are you?' growled Mr. Barkis, sliding nearer to her on the seat, and nudging her with his elbow. 'Are you? Really and truly pretty comfortable? Are you? Eh?' At each of these inquiries Mr. Barkis shuffled nearer to her, and gave her another nudge; so that at last we were all crowded together in the left-hand corner of the cart, and I was so squeezed that I could hardly bear it. Peggotty calling his attention to my sufferings, Mr. Barkis gave me a little more room at once, and got away by degrees. But I could not help observing that he seemed to think he had hit upon a wonderful expedient for expressing himself in a neat, agreeable, and pointed manner, without the inconvenience of inventing conversation. He manifestly chuckled over it for some time. By and by he turned to Peggotty again, and repeating, 'Are you pretty comfortable though?' bore down upon us as before, until the breath was nearly edged out of my body. By and by he made another descent upon us with the same inquiry, and the same result. At length, I got up whenever I saw him coming, and standing on the foot-board, pretended to look at the prospect; after which I did very well. He was so polite as to stop at a public-house, expressly on our account, and entertain us with broiled mutton and beer. Even when Peggotty was in the act of drinking, he was seized with one of those approaches, and almost choked her. But as we drew nearer to the end of our journey, he had more to do and less time for gallantry; and when we got on Yarmouth pavement, we were all too much shaken and jolted, I apprehend, to have any leisure for anything else. Mr. Peggotty and Ham waited for us at the old place. They received me and Peggotty in an affectionate manner, and shook hands with Mr. Barkis, who, with his hat on the very back of his head, and a shame-faced leer upon his countenance, and pervading his very legs, presented but a vacant appearance, I thought. They each took one of Peggotty's trunks, and we were going away, when Mr. Barkis solemnly made a sign to me with his forefinger to come under an archway. 'I say,' growled Mr. Barkis, 'it was all right.' I looked up into his face, and answered, with an attempt to be very profound: 'Oh!' 'It didn't come to a end there,' said Mr. Barkis, nodding confidentially. 'It was all right.' Again I answered, 'Oh!' 'You know who was willin',' said my friend. 'It was Barkis, and Barkis only.' I nodded assent. 'It's all right,' said Mr. Barkis, shaking hands; 'I'm a friend of your'n. You made it all right, first. It's all right.' In his attempts to be particularly lucid, Mr. Barkis was so extremely mysterious, that I might have stood looking in his face for an hour, and most assuredly should have got as much information out of it as out of the face of a clock that had stopped, but for Peggotty's calling me away. As we were going along, she asked me what he had said; and I told her he had said it was all right. 'Like his impudence,' said Peggotty, 'but I don't mind that! Davy dear, what should you think if I was to think of being married?' 'Why--I suppose you would like me as much then, Peggotty, as you do now?' I returned, after a little consideration. Greatly to the astonishment of the passengers in the street, as well as of her relations going on before, the good soul was obliged to stop and embrace me on the spot, with many protestations of her unalterable love. 'Tell me what should you say, darling?' she asked again, when this was over, and we were walking on. 'If you were thinking of being married--to Mr. Barkis, Peggotty?' 'Yes,' said Peggotty. 'I should think it would be a very good thing. For then you know, Peggotty, you would always have the horse and cart to bring you over to see me, and could come for nothing, and be sure of coming.' 'The sense of the dear!' cried Peggotty. 'What I have been thinking of, this month back! Yes, my precious; and I think I should be more independent altogether, you see; let alone my working with a better heart in my own house, than I could in anybody else's now. I don't know what I might be fit for, now, as a servant to a stranger. And I shall be always near my pretty's resting-place,' said Peggotty, musing, 'and be able to see it when I like; and when I lie down to rest, I may be laid not far off from my darling girl!' We neither of us said anything for a little while. 'But I wouldn't so much as give it another thought,' said Peggotty, cheerily 'if my Davy was anyways against it--not if I had been asked in church thirty times three times over, and was wearing out the ring in my pocket.' 'Look at me, Peggotty,' I replied; 'and see if I am not really glad, and don't truly wish it!' As indeed I did, with all my heart. 'Well, my life,' said Peggotty, giving me a squeeze, 'I have thought of it night and day, every way I can, and I hope the right way; but I'll think of it again, and speak to my brother about it, and in the meantime we'll keep it to ourselves, Davy, you and me. Barkis is a good plain creature,' said Peggotty, 'and if I tried to do my duty by him, I think it would be my fault if I wasn't--if I wasn't pretty comfortable,' said Peggotty, laughing heartily. This quotation from Mr. Barkis was so appropriate, and tickled us both so much, that we laughed again and again, and were quite in a pleasant humour when we came within view of Mr. Peggotty's cottage. It looked just the same, except that it may, perhaps, have shrunk a little in my eyes; and Mrs. Gummidge was waiting at the door as if she had stood there ever since. All within was the same, down to the seaweed in the blue mug in my bedroom. I went into the out-house to look about me; and the very same lobsters, crabs, and crawfish possessed by the same desire to pinch the world in general, appeared to be in the same state of conglomeration in the same old corner. But there was no little Em'ly to be seen, so I asked Mr. Peggotty where she was. 'She's at school, sir,' said Mr. Peggotty, wiping the heat consequent on the porterage of Peggotty's box from his forehead; 'she'll be home,' looking at the Dutch clock, 'in from twenty minutes to half-an-hour's time. We all on us feel the loss of her, bless ye!' Mrs. Gummidge moaned. 'Cheer up, Mawther!' cried Mr. Peggotty. 'I feel it more than anybody else,' said Mrs. Gummidge; 'I'm a lone lorn creetur', and she used to be a'most the only thing that didn't go contrary with me.' Mrs. Gummidge, whimpering and shaking her head, applied herself to blowing the fire. Mr. Peggotty, looking round upon us while she was so engaged, said in a low voice, which he shaded with his hand: 'The old 'un!' From this I rightly conjectured that no improvement had taken place since my last visit in the state of Mrs. Gummidge's spirits. Now, the whole place was, or it should have been, quite as delightful a place as ever; and yet it did not impress me in the same way. I felt rather disappointed with it. Perhaps it was because little Em'ly was not at home. I knew the way by which she would come, and presently found myself strolling along the path to meet her. A figure appeared in the distance before long, and I soon knew it to be Em'ly, who was a little creature still in stature, though she was grown. But when she drew nearer, and I saw her blue eyes looking bluer, and her dimpled face looking brighter, and her whole self prettier and gayer, a curious feeling came over me that made me pretend not to know her, and pass by as if I were looking at something a long way off. I have done such a thing since in later life, or I am mistaken. Little Em'ly didn't care a bit. She saw me well enough; but instead of turning round and calling after me, ran away laughing. This obliged me to run after her, and she ran so fast that we were very near the cottage before I caught her. 'Oh, it's you, is it?' said little Em'ly. 'Why, you knew who it was, Em'ly,' said I. 'And didn't YOU know who it was?' said Em'ly. I was going to kiss her, but she covered her cherry lips with her hands, and said she wasn't a baby now, and ran away, laughing more than ever, into the house. She seemed to delight in teasing me, which was a change in her I wondered at very much. The tea table was ready, and our little locker was put out in its old place, but instead of coming to sit by me, she went and bestowed her company upon that grumbling Mrs. Gummidge: and on Mr. Peggotty's inquiring why, rumpled her hair all over her face to hide it, and could do nothing but laugh. 'A little puss, it is!' said Mr. Peggotty, patting her with his great hand. 'So sh' is! so sh' is!' cried Ham. 'Mas'r Davy bor', so sh' is!' and he sat and chuckled at her for some time, in a state of mingled admiration and delight, that made his face a burning red. Little Em'ly was spoiled by them all, in fact; and by no one more than Mr. Peggotty himself, whom she could have coaxed into anything, by only going and laying her cheek against his rough whisker. That was my opinion, at least, when I saw her do it; and I held Mr. Peggotty to be thoroughly in the right. But she was so affectionate and sweet-natured, and had such a pleasant manner of being both sly and shy at once, that she captivated me more than ever. She was tender-hearted, too; for when, as we sat round the fire after tea, an allusion was made by Mr. Peggotty over his pipe to the loss I had sustained, the tears stood in her eyes, and she looked at me so kindly across the table, that I felt quite thankful to her. 'Ah!' said Mr. Peggotty, taking up her curls, and running them over his hand like water, 'here's another orphan, you see, sir. And here,' said Mr. Peggotty, giving Ham a backhanded knock in the chest, 'is another of 'em, though he don't look much like it.' 'If I had you for my guardian, Mr. Peggotty,' said I, shaking my head, 'I don't think I should FEEL much like it.' 'Well said, Mas'r Davy bor'!' cried Ham, in an ecstasy. 'Hoorah! Well said! Nor more you wouldn't! Hor! Hor!'--Here he returned Mr. Peggotty's back-hander, and little Em'ly got up and kissed Mr. Peggotty. 'And how's your friend, sir?' said Mr. Peggotty to me. 'Steerforth?' said I. 'That's the name!' cried Mr. Peggotty, turning to Ham. 'I knowed it was something in our way.' 'You said it was Rudderford,' observed Ham, laughing. 'Well!' retorted Mr. Peggotty. 'And ye steer with a rudder, don't ye? It ain't fur off. How is he, sir?' 'He was very well indeed when I came away, Mr. Peggotty.' 'There's a friend!' said Mr. Peggotty, stretching out his pipe. 'There's a friend, if you talk of friends! Why, Lord love my heart alive, if it ain't a treat to look at him!' 'He is very handsome, is he not?' said I, my heart warming with this praise. 'Handsome!' cried Mr. Peggotty. 'He stands up to you like--like a--why I don't know what he don't stand up to you like. He's so bold!' 'Yes! That's just his character,' said I. 'He's as brave as a lion, and you can't think how frank he is, Mr. Peggotty.' 'And I do suppose, now,' said Mr. Peggotty, looking at me through the smoke of his pipe, 'that in the way of book-larning he'd take the wind out of a'most anything.' 'Yes,' said I, delighted; 'he knows everything. He is astonishingly clever.' 'There's a friend!' murmured Mr. Peggotty, with a grave toss of his head. 'Nothing seems to cost him any trouble,' said I. 'He knows a task if he only looks at it. He is the best cricketer you ever saw. He will give you almost as many men as you like at draughts, and beat you easily.' Mr. Peggotty gave his head another toss, as much as to say: 'Of course he will.' 'He is such a speaker,' I pursued, 'that he can win anybody over; and I don't know what you'd say if you were to hear him sing, Mr. Peggotty.' Mr. Peggotty gave his head another toss, as much as to say: 'I have no doubt of it.' 'Then, he's such a generous, fine, noble fellow,' said I, quite carried away by my favourite theme, 'that it's hardly possible to give him as much praise as he deserves. I am sure I can never feel thankful enough for the generosity with which he has protected me, so much younger and lower in the school than himself.' I was running on, very fast indeed, when my eyes rested on little Em'ly's face, which was bent forward over the table, listening with the deepest attention, her breath held, her blue eyes sparkling like jewels, and the colour mantling in her cheeks. She looked so extraordinarily earnest and pretty, that I stopped in a sort of wonder; and they all observed her at the same time, for as I stopped, they laughed and looked at her. 'Em'ly is like me,' said Peggotty, 'and would like to see him.' Em'ly was confused by our all observing her, and hung down her head, and her face was covered with blushes. Glancing up presently through her stray curls, and seeing that we were all looking at her still (I am sure I, for one, could have looked at her for hours), she ran away, and kept away till it was nearly bedtime. I lay down in the old little bed in the stern of the boat, and the wind came moaning on across the flat as it had done before. But I could not help fancying, now, that it moaned of those who were gone; and instead of thinking that the sea might rise in the night and float the boat away, I thought of the sea that had risen, since I last heard those sounds, and drowned my happy home. I recollect, as the wind and water began to sound fainter in my ears, putting a short clause into my prayers, petitioning that I might grow up to marry little Em'ly, and so dropping lovingly asleep. The days passed pretty much as they had passed before, except--it was a great exception--that little Em'ly and I seldom wandered on the beach now. She had tasks to learn, and needle-work to do; and was absent during a great part of each day. But I felt that we should not have had those old wanderings, even if it had been otherwise. Wild and full of childish whims as Em'ly was, she was more of a little woman than I had supposed. She seemed to have got a great distance away from me, in little more than a year. She liked me, but she laughed at me, and tormented me; and when I went to meet her, stole home another way, and was laughing at the door when I came back, disappointed. The best times were when she sat quietly at work in the doorway, and I sat on the wooden step at her feet, reading to her. It seems to me, at this hour, that I have never seen such sunlight as on those bright April afternoons; that I have never seen such a sunny little figure as I used to see, sitting in the doorway of the old boat; that I have never beheld such sky, such water, such glorified ships sailing away into golden air. On the very first evening after our arrival, Mr. Barkis appeared in an exceedingly vacant and awkward condition, and with a bundle of oranges tied up in a handkerchief. As he made no allusion of any kind to this property, he was supposed to have left it behind him by accident when he went away; until Ham, running after him to restore it, came back with the information that it was intended for Peggotty. After that occasion he appeared every evening at exactly the same hour, and always with a little bundle, to which he never alluded, and which he regularly put behind the door and left there. These offerings of affection were of a most various and eccentric description. Among them I remember a double set of pigs' trotters, a huge pin-cushion, half a bushel or so of apples, a pair of jet earrings, some Spanish onions, a box of dominoes, a canary bird and cage, and a leg of pickled pork. Mr. Barkis's wooing, as I remember it, was altogether of a peculiar kind. He very seldom said anything; but would sit by the fire in much the same attitude as he sat in his cart, and stare heavily at Peggotty, who was opposite. One night, being, as I suppose, inspired by love, he made a dart at the bit of wax-candle she kept for her thread, and put it in his waistcoat-pocket and carried it off. After that, his great delight was to produce it when it was wanted, sticking to the lining of his pocket, in a partially melted state, and pocket it again when it was done with. He seemed to enjoy himself very much, and not to feel at all called upon to talk. Even when he took Peggotty out for a walk on the flats, he had no uneasiness on that head, I believe; contenting himself with now and then asking her if she was pretty comfortable; and I remember that sometimes, after he was gone, Peggotty would throw her apron over her face, and laugh for half-an-hour. Indeed, we were all more or less amused, except that miserable Mrs. Gummidge, whose courtship would appear to have been of an exactly parallel nature, she was so continually reminded by these transactions of the old one. At length, when the term of my visit was nearly expired, it was given out that Peggotty and Mr. Barkis were going to make a day's holiday together, and that little Em'ly and I were to accompany them. I had but a broken sleep the night before, in anticipation of the pleasure of a whole day with Em'ly. We were all astir betimes in the morning; and while we were yet at breakfast, Mr. Barkis appeared in the distance, driving a chaise-cart towards the object of his affections. Peggotty was dressed as usual, in her neat and quiet mourning; but Mr. Barkis bloomed in a new blue coat, of which the tailor had given him such good measure, that the cuffs would have rendered gloves unnecessary in the coldest weather, while the collar was so high that it pushed his hair up on end on the top of his head. His bright buttons, too, were of the largest size. Rendered complete by drab pantaloons and a buff waistcoat, I thought Mr. Barkis a phenomenon of respectability. When we were all in a bustle outside the door, I found that Mr. Peggotty was prepared with an old shoe, which was to be thrown after us for luck, and which he offered to Mrs. Gummidge for that purpose. 'No. It had better be done by somebody else, Dan'l,' said Mrs. Gummidge. 'I'm a lone lorn creetur' myself, and everythink that reminds me of creetur's that ain't lone and lorn, goes contrary with me.' 'Come, old gal!' cried Mr. Peggotty. 'Take and heave it.' 'No, Dan'l,' returned Mrs. Gummidge, whimpering and shaking her head. 'If I felt less, I could do more. You don't feel like me, Dan'l; thinks don't go contrary with you, nor you with them; you had better do it yourself.' But here Peggotty, who had been going about from one to another in a hurried way, kissing everybody, called out from the cart, in which we all were by this time (Em'ly and I on two little chairs, side by side), that Mrs. Gummidge must do it. So Mrs. Gummidge did it; and, I am sorry to relate, cast a damp upon the festive character of our departure, by immediately bursting into tears, and sinking subdued into the arms of Ham, with the declaration that she knowed she was a burden, and had better be carried to the House at once. Which I really thought was a sensible idea, that Ham might have acted on. Away we went, however, on our holiday excursion; and the first thing we did was to stop at a church, where Mr. Barkis tied the horse to some rails, and went in with Peggotty, leaving little Em'ly and me alone in the chaise. I took that occasion to put my arm round Em'ly's waist, and propose that as I was going away so very soon now, we should determine to be very affectionate to one another, and very happy, all day. Little Em'ly consenting, and allowing me to kiss her, I became desperate; informing her, I recollect, that I never could love another, and that I was prepared to shed the blood of anybody who should aspire to her affections. How merry little Em'ly made herself about it! With what a demure assumption of being immensely older and wiser than I, the fairy little woman said I was 'a silly boy'; and then laughed so charmingly that I forgot the pain of being called by that disparaging name, in the pleasure of looking at her. Mr. Barkis and Peggotty were a good while in the church, but came out at last, and then we drove away into the country. As we were going along, Mr. Barkis turned to me, and said, with a wink,--by the by, I should hardly have thought, before, that he could wink: 'What name was it as I wrote up in the cart?' 'Clara Peggotty,' I answered. 'What name would it be as I should write up now, if there was a tilt here?' 'Clara Peggotty, again?' I suggested. 'Clara Peggotty BARKIS!' he returned, and burst into a roar of laughter that shook the chaise. In a word, they were married, and had gone into the church for no other purpose. Peggotty was resolved that it should be quietly done; and the clerk had given her away, and there had been no witnesses of the ceremony. She was a little confused when Mr. Barkis made this abrupt announcement of their union, and could not hug me enough in token of her unimpaired affection; but she soon became herself again, and said she was very glad it was over. We drove to a little inn in a by-road, where we were expected, and where we had a very comfortable dinner, and passed the day with great satisfaction. If Peggotty had been married every day for the last ten years, she could hardly have been more at her ease about it; it made no sort of difference in her: she was just the same as ever, and went out for a stroll with little Em'ly and me before tea, while Mr. Barkis philosophically smoked his pipe, and enjoyed himself, I suppose, with the contemplation of his happiness. If so, it sharpened his appetite; for I distinctly call to mind that, although he had eaten a good deal of pork and greens at dinner, and had finished off with a fowl or two, he was obliged to have cold boiled bacon for tea, and disposed of a large quantity without any emotion. I have often thought, since, what an odd, innocent, out-of-the-way kind of wedding it must have been! We got into the chaise again soon after dark, and drove cosily back, looking up at the stars, and talking about them. I was their chief exponent, and opened Mr. Barkis's mind to an amazing extent. I told him all I knew, but he would have believed anything I might have taken it into my head to impart to him; for he had a profound veneration for my abilities, and informed his wife in my hearing, on that very occasion, that I was 'a young Roeshus'--by which I think he meant prodigy. When we had exhausted the subject of the stars, or rather when I had exhausted the mental faculties of Mr. Barkis, little Em'ly and I made a cloak of an old wrapper, and sat under it for the rest of the journey. Ah, how I loved her! What happiness (I thought) if we were married, and were going away anywhere to live among the trees and in the fields, never growing older, never growing wiser, children ever, rambling hand in hand through sunshine and among flowery meadows, laying down our heads on moss at night, in a sweet sleep of purity and peace, and buried by the birds when we were dead! Some such picture, with no real world in it, bright with the light of our innocence, and vague as the stars afar off, was in my mind all the way. I am glad to think there were two such guileless hearts at Peggotty's marriage as little Em'ly's and mine. I am glad to think the Loves and Graces took such airy forms in its homely procession. Well, we came to the old boat again in good time at night; and there Mr. and Mrs. Barkis bade us good-bye, and drove away snugly to their own home. I felt then, for the first time, that I had lost Peggotty. I should have gone to bed with a sore heart indeed under any other roof but that which sheltered little Em'ly's head. Mr. Peggotty and Ham knew what was in my thoughts as well as I did, and were ready with some supper and their hospitable faces to drive it away. Little Em'ly came and sat beside me on the locker for the only time in all that visit; and it was altogether a wonderful close to a wonderful day. It was a night tide; and soon after we went to bed, Mr. Peggotty and Ham went out to fish. I felt very brave at being left alone in the solitary house, the protector of Em'ly and Mrs. Gummidge, and only wished that a lion or a serpent, or any ill-disposed monster, would make an attack upon us, that I might destroy him, and cover myself with glory. But as nothing of the sort happened to be walking about on Yarmouth flats that night, I provided the best substitute I could by dreaming of dragons until morning. With morning came Peggotty; who called to me, as usual, under my window as if Mr. Barkis the carrier had been from first to last a dream too. After breakfast she took me to her own home, and a beautiful little home it was. Of all the moveables in it, I must have been impressed by a certain old bureau of some dark wood in the parlour (the tile-floored kitchen was the general sitting-room), with a retreating top which opened, let down, and became a desk, within which was a large quarto edition of Foxe's Book of Martyrs. This precious volume, of which I do not recollect one word, I immediately discovered and immediately applied myself to; and I never visited the house afterwards, but I kneeled on a chair, opened the casket where this gem was enshrined, spread my arms over the desk, and fell to devouring the book afresh. I was chiefly edified, I am afraid, by the pictures, which were numerous, and represented all kinds of dismal horrors; but the Martyrs and Peggotty's house have been inseparable in my mind ever since, and are now. I took leave of Mr. Peggotty, and Ham, and Mrs. Gummidge, and little Em'ly, that day; and passed the night at Peggotty's, in a little room in the roof (with the Crocodile Book on a shelf by the bed's head) which was to be always mine, Peggotty said, and should always be kept for me in exactly the same state. 'Young or old, Davy dear, as long as I am alive and have this house over my head,' said Peggotty, 'you shall find it as if I expected you here directly minute. I shall keep it every day, as I used to keep your old little room, my darling; and if you was to go to China, you might think of it as being kept just the same, all the time you were away.' I felt the truth and constancy of my dear old nurse, with all my heart, and thanked her as well as I could. That was not very well, for she spoke to me thus, with her arms round my neck, in the morning, and I was going home in the morning, and I went home in the morning, with herself and Mr. Barkis in the cart. They left me at the gate, not easily or lightly; and it was a strange sight to me to see the cart go on, taking Peggotty away, and leaving me under the old elm-trees looking at the house, in which there was no face to look on mine with love or liking any more. And now I fell into a state of neglect, which I cannot look back upon without compassion. I fell at once into a solitary condition,--apart from all friendly notice, apart from the society of all other boys of my own age, apart from all companionship but my own spiritless thoughts,--which seems to cast its gloom upon this paper as I write. What would I have given, to have been sent to the hardest school that ever was kept!--to have been taught something, anyhow, anywhere! No such hope dawned upon me. They disliked me; and they sullenly, sternly, steadily, overlooked me. I think Mr. Murdstone's means were straitened at about this time; but it is little to the purpose. He could not bear me; and in putting me from him he tried, as I believe, to put away the notion that I had any claim upon him--and succeeded. I was not actively ill-used. I was not beaten, or starved; but the wrong that was done to me had no intervals of relenting, and was done in a systematic, passionless manner. Day after day, week after week, month after month, I was coldly neglected. I wonder sometimes, when I think of it, what they would have done if I had been taken with an illness; whether I should have lain down in my lonely room, and languished through it in my usual solitary way, or whether anybody would have helped me out. When Mr. and Miss Murdstone were at home, I took my meals with them; in their absence, I ate and drank by myself. At all times I lounged about the house and neighbourhood quite disregarded, except that they were jealous of my making any friends: thinking, perhaps, that if I did, I might complain to someone. For this reason, though Mr. Chillip often asked me to go and see him (he was a widower, having, some years before that, lost a little small light-haired wife, whom I can just remember connecting in my own thoughts with a pale tortoise-shell cat), it was but seldom that I enjoyed the happiness of passing an afternoon in his closet of a surgery; reading some book that was new to me, with the smell of the whole Pharmacopoeia coming up my nose, or pounding something in a mortar under his mild directions. For the same reason, added no doubt to the old dislike of her, I was seldom allowed to visit Peggotty. Faithful to her promise, she either came to see me, or met me somewhere near, once every week, and never empty-handed; but many and bitter were the disappointments I had, in being refused permission to pay a visit to her at her house. Some few times, however, at long intervals, I was allowed to go there; and then I found out that Mr. Barkis was something of a miser, or as Peggotty dutifully expressed it, was 'a little near', and kept a heap of money in a box under his bed, which he pretended was only full of coats and trousers. In this coffer, his riches hid themselves with such a tenacious modesty, that the smallest instalments could only be tempted out by artifice; so that Peggotty had to prepare a long and elaborate scheme, a very Gunpowder Plot, for every Saturday's expenses. All this time I was so conscious of the waste of any promise I had given, and of my being utterly neglected, that I should have been perfectly miserable, I have no doubt, but for the old books. They were my only comfort; and I was as true to them as they were to me, and read them over and over I don't know how many times more. I now approach a period of my life, which I can never lose the remembrance of, while I remember anything: and the recollection of which has often, without my invocation, come before me like a ghost, and haunted happier times. I had been out, one day, loitering somewhere, in the listless, meditative manner that my way of life engendered, when, turning the corner of a lane near our house, I came upon Mr. Murdstone walking with a gentleman. I was confused, and was going by them, when the gentleman cried: 'What! Brooks!' 'No, sir, David Copperfield,' I said. 'Don't tell me. You are Brooks,' said the gentleman. 'You are Brooks of Sheffield. That's your name.' At these words, I observed the gentleman more attentively. His laugh coming to my remembrance too, I knew him to be Mr. Quinion, whom I had gone over to Lowestoft with Mr. Murdstone to see, before--it is no matter--I need not recall when. 'And how do you get on, and where are you being educated, Brooks?' said Mr. Quinion. He had put his hand upon my shoulder, and turned me about, to walk with them. I did not know what to reply, and glanced dubiously at Mr. Murdstone. 'He is at home at present,' said the latter. 'He is not being educated anywhere. I don't know what to do with him. He is a difficult subject.' That old, double look was on me for a moment; and then his eyes darkened with a frown, as it turned, in its aversion, elsewhere. 'Humph!' said Mr. Quinion, looking at us both, I thought. 'Fine weather!' Silence ensued, and I was considering how I could best disengage my shoulder from his hand, and go away, when he said: 'I suppose you are a pretty sharp fellow still? Eh, Brooks?' 'Aye! He is sharp enough,' said Mr. Murdstone, impatiently. 'You had better let him go. He will not thank you for troubling him.' On this hint, Mr. Quinion released me, and I made the best of my way home. Looking back as I turned into the front garden, I saw Mr. Murdstone leaning against the wicket of the churchyard, and Mr. Quinion talking to him. They were both looking after me, and I felt that they were speaking of me. Mr. Quinion lay at our house that night. After breakfast, the next morning, I had put my chair away, and was going out of the room, when Mr. Murdstone called me back. He then gravely repaired to another table, where his sister sat herself at her desk. Mr. Quinion, with his hands in his pockets, stood looking out of window; and I stood looking at them all. 'David,' said Mr. Murdstone, 'to the young this is a world for action; not for moping and droning in.' --'As you do,' added his sister. 'Jane Murdstone, leave it to me, if you please. I say, David, to the young this is a world for action, and not for moping and droning in. It is especially so for a young boy of your disposition, which requires a great deal of correcting; and to which no greater service can be done than to force it to conform to the ways of the working world, and to bend it and break it.' 'For stubbornness won't do here,' said his sister 'What it wants is, to be crushed. And crushed it must be. Shall be, too!' He gave her a look, half in remonstrance, half in approval, and went on: 'I suppose you know, David, that I am not rich. At any rate, you know it now. You have received some considerable education already. Education is costly; and even if it were not, and I could afford it, I am of opinion that it would not be at all advantageous to you to be kept at school. What is before you, is a fight with the world; and the sooner you begin it, the better.' I think it occurred to me that I had already begun it, in my poor way: but it occurs to me now, whether or no. 'You have heard the "counting-house" mentioned sometimes,' said Mr. Murdstone. 'The counting-house, sir?' I repeated. 'Of Murdstone and Grinby, in the wine trade,' he replied. I suppose I looked uncertain, for he went on hastily: 'You have heard the "counting-house" mentioned, or the business, or the cellars, or the wharf, or something about it.' 'I think I have heard the business mentioned, sir,' I said, remembering what I vaguely knew of his and his sister's resources. 'But I don't know when.' 'It does not matter when,' he returned. 'Mr. Quinion manages that business.' I glanced at the latter deferentially as he stood looking out of window. 'Mr. Quinion suggests that it gives employment to some other boys, and that he sees no reason why it shouldn't, on the same terms, give employment to you.' 'He having,' Mr. Quinion observed in a low voice, and half turning round, 'no other prospect, Murdstone.' Mr. Murdstone, with an impatient, even an angry gesture, resumed, without noticing what he had said: 'Those terms are, that you will earn enough for yourself to provide for your eating and drinking, and pocket-money. Your lodging (which I have arranged for) will be paid by me. So will your washing--' '--Which will be kept down to my estimate,' said his sister. 'Your clothes will be looked after for you, too,' said Mr. Murdstone; 'as you will not be able, yet awhile, to get them for yourself. So you are now going to London, David, with Mr. Quinion, to begin the world on your own account.' 'In short, you are provided for,' observed his sister; 'and will please to do your duty.' Though I quite understood that the purpose of this announcement was to get rid of me, I have no distinct remembrance whether it pleased or frightened me. My impression is, that I was in a state of confusion about it, and, oscillating between the two points, touched neither. Nor had I much time for the clearing of my thoughts, as Mr. Quinion was to go upon the morrow. Behold me, on the morrow, in a much-worn little white hat, with a black crape round it for my mother, a black jacket, and a pair of hard, stiff corduroy trousers--which Miss Murdstone considered the best armour for the legs in that fight with the world which was now to come off. Behold me so attired, and with my little worldly all before me in a small trunk, sitting, a lone lorn child (as Mrs. Gummidge might have said), in the post-chaise that was carrying Mr. Quinion to the London coach at Yarmouth! See, how our house and church are lessening in the distance; how the grave beneath the tree is blotted out by intervening objects; how the spire points upwards from my old playground no more, and the sky is empty!

I become Neglected, and am provided for Mr. and Miss Murdstone take no interest in David after his mother's death. They make it clear that they want him around as little as possible. Miss Murdstone fires Peggotty, who goes home to her family. Peggotty proposes to take David with her for a visit. On the ride there, Mr. Barkis flirts with Peggotty, who asks David what he would think if she married Mr. Barkis after all. David says he thinks it is a wonderful idea. At Mr. Peggotty's house, David finds Little Em'ly older and more beautiful than before, though she has become a bit spoiled and coy. Mr. Peggotty and Ham praise Steerforth, whom they have met at Salem House. Mr. Barkis and Peggotty get married in a private ceremony at a church one afternoon while Little Em'ly and David are out riding around. When David returns home, Mr. and Miss Murdstone completely ignore him. David falls into a state of neglect until Mr. Quinion, Mr. Murdstone's business partner, appears. When Mr. Quinion arrives, the Murdstones arrange for David to go to London to work in the wine-bottling industry.

A small shed had been added to my grandmother's house years ago. Some boards were laid across the joists at the top, and between these boards and the roof was a very small garret, never occupied by any thing but rats and mice. It was a pent roof, covered with nothing but shingles, according to the southern custom for such buildings. The garret was only nine feet long and seven wide. The highest part was three feet high, and sloped down abruptly to the loose board floor. There was no admission for either light or air. My uncle Phillip, who was a carpenter, had very skilfully made a concealed trap-door, which communicated with the storeroom. He had been doing this while I was waiting in the swamp. The storeroom opened upon a piazza. To this hole I was conveyed as soon as I entered the house. The air was stifling; the darkness total. A bed had been spread on the floor. I could sleep quite comfortably on one side; but the slope was so sudden that I could not turn on my other without hitting the roof. The rats and mice ran over my bed; but I was weary, and I slept such sleep as the wretched may, when a tempest has passed over them. Morning came. I knew it only by the noises I heard; for in my small den day and night were all the same. I suffered for air even more than for light. But I was not comfortless. I heard the voices of my children. There was joy and there was sadness in the sound. It made my tears flow. How I longed to speak to them! I was eager to look on their faces; but there was no hole, no crack, through which I could peep. This continued darkness was oppressive. It seemed horrible to sit or lie in a cramped position day after day, without one gleam of light. Yet I would have chosen this, rather than my lot as a slave, though white people considered it an easy one; and it was so compared with the fate of others. I was never cruelly overworked; I was never lacerated with the whip from head to foot; I was never so beaten and bruised that I could not turn from one side to the other; I never had my heel-strings cut to prevent my running away; I was never chained to a log and forced to drag it about, while I toiled in the fields from morning till night; I was never branded with hot iron, or torn by bloodhounds. On the contrary, I had always been kindly treated, and tenderly cared for, until I came into the hands of Dr. Flint. I had never wished for freedom till then. But though my life in slavery was comparatively devoid of hardships, God pity the woman who is compelled to lead such a life! My food was passed up to me through the trap-door my uncle had contrived; and my grandmother, my uncle Phillip, and aunt Nancy would seize such opportunities as they could, to mount up there and chat with me at the opening. But of course this was not safe in the daytime. It must all be done in darkness. It was impossible for me to move in an erect position, but I crawled about my den for exercise. One day I hit my head against something, and found it was a gimlet. My uncle had left it sticking there when he made the trap-door. I was as rejoiced as Robinson Crusoe could have been at finding such a treasure. It put a lucky thought into my head. I said to myself, "Now I will have some light. Now I will see my children." I did not dare to begin my work during the daytime, for fear of attracting attention. But I groped round; and having found the side next the street, where I could frequently see my children, I stuck the gimlet in and waited for evening. I bored three rows of holes, one above another; then I bored out the interstices between. I thus succeeded in making one hole about an inch long and an inch broad. I sat by it till late into the night, to enjoy the little whiff of air that floated in. In the morning I watched for my children. The first person I saw in the street was Dr. Flint. I had a shuddering, superstitious feeling that it was a bad omen. Several familiar faces passed by. At last I heard the merry laugh of children, and presently two sweet little faces were looking up at me, as though they knew I was there, and were conscious of the joy they imparted. How I longed to _tell_ them I was there! My condition was now a little improved. But for weeks I was tormented by hundreds of little red insects, fine as a needle's point, that pierced through my skin, and produced an intolerable burning. The good grandmother gave me herb teas and cooling medicines, and finally I got rid of them. The heat of my den was intense, for nothing but thin shingles protected me from the scorching summer's sun. But I had my consolations. Through my peeping-hole I could watch the children, and when they were near enough, I could hear their talk. Aunt Nancy brought me all the news she could hear at Dr. Flint's. From her I learned that the doctor had written to New York to a colored woman, who had been born and raised in our neighborhood, and had breathed his contaminating atmosphere. He offered her a reward if she could find out any thing about me. I know not what was the nature of her reply; but he soon after started for New York in haste, saying to his family that he had business of importance to transact. I peeped at him as he passed on his way to the steamboat. It was a satisfaction to have miles of land and water between us, even for a little while; and it was a still greater satisfaction to know that he believed me to be in the Free States. My little den seemed less dreary than it had done. He returned, as he did from his former journey to New York, without obtaining any satisfactory information. When he passed our house next morning, Benny was standing at the gate. He had heard them say that he had gone to find me, and he called out, "Dr. Flint, did you bring my mother home? I want to see her." The doctor stamped his foot at him in a rage, and exclaimed, "Get out of the way, you little damned rascal! If you don't, I'll cut off your head." Benny ran terrified into the house, saying, "You can't put me in jail again. I don't belong to you now." It was well that the wind carried the words away from the doctor's ear. I told my grandmother of it, when we had our next conference at the trap-door, and begged of her not to allow the children to be impertinent to the irascible old man. Autumn came, with a pleasant abatement of heat. My eyes had become accustomed to the dim light, and by holding my book or work in a certain position near the aperture I contrived to read and sew. That was a great relief to the tedious monotony of my life. But when winter came, the cold penetrated through the thin shingle roof, and I was dreadfully chilled. The winters there are not so long, or so severe, as in northern latitudes; but the houses are not built to shelter from cold, and my little den was peculiarly comfortless. The kind grandmother brought me bedclothes and warm drinks. Often I was obliged to lie in bed all day to keep comfortable; but with all my precautions, my shoulders and feet were frostbitten. O, those long, gloomy days, with no object for my eye to rest upon, and no thoughts to occupy my mind, except the dreary past and the uncertain future! I was thankful when there came a day sufficiently mild for me to wrap myself up and sit at the loophole to watch the passers by. Southerners have the habit of stopping and talking in the streets, and I heard many conversations not intended to meet my ears. I heard slave-hunters planning how to catch some poor fugitive. Several times I heard allusions to Dr. Flint, myself, and the history of my children, who, perhaps, were playing near the gate. One would say, "I wouldn't move my little finger to catch her, as old Flint's property." Another would say, "I'll catch _any_ nigger for the reward. A man ought to have what belongs to him, if he _is_ a damned brute." The opinion was often expressed that I was in the Free States. Very rarely did any one suggest that I might be in the vicinity. Had the least suspicion rested on my grandmother's house, it would have been burned to the ground. But it was the last place they thought of. Yet there was no place, where slavery existed, that could have afforded me so good a place of concealment. Dr. Flint and his family repeatedly tried to coax and bribe my children to tell something they had heard said about me. One day the doctor took them into a shop, and offered them some bright little silver pieces and gay handkerchiefs if they would tell where their mother was. Ellen shrank away from him, and would not speak; but Benny spoke up, and said, "Dr. Flint, I don't know where my mother is. I guess she's in New York; and when you go there again, I wish you'd ask her to come home, for I want to see her; but if you put her in jail, or tell her you'll cut her head off, I'll tell her to go right back."

The Loophole Of Retreat Harriet explains that there had been a shed built on her grandmother's property. There were boards laid across and then a triangular space made above them. This was to be Harriet's hiding place. No air or light was admitted. The highest part was only three feet tall. She was given a bed and laid there, even as rats and mice ran over her. This comfortless place was not terrible, however, because she could finally hear her children's voices below. Her hiding place was cramped and she longed for the light. All of this was preferable to slavery, of course, and she was grateful that she was not lacerated, beaten, worked to death, or chained up. One day she found a small tool that allowed her to make a one-inch hole. This admitted light and she sat near it, reveling in the whiff of air that came in. She also was able to look out on the street, but shuddered when she saw Dr. Flint. In her hiding place, she was attacked by hundreds of red insects and was burned by the hot sun. She was able to hear the conversations below her during the day, and heard that Dr. Flint traveled to New York to look for her again. This gave her some comfort. In the autumn the heat eased and she had become accustomed to the dim light and could sew and read. In the winter she was nearly always frostbitten and miserable. However, she was continually grateful for her place of concealment. No one suspected that she was there

Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure of being kindly spoken of. A week had not passed since Miss Hawkins's name was first mentioned in Highbury, before she was, by some means or other, discovered to have every recommendation of person and mind; to be handsome, elegant, highly accomplished, and perfectly amiable: and when Mr. Elton himself arrived to triumph in his happy prospects, and circulate the fame of her merits, there was very little more for him to do, than to tell her Christian name, and say whose music she principally played. Mr. Elton returned, a very happy man. He had gone away rejected and mortified--disappointed in a very sanguine hope, after a series of what appeared to him strong encouragement; and not only losing the right lady, but finding himself debased to the level of a very wrong one. He had gone away deeply offended--he came back engaged to another--and to another as superior, of course, to the first, as under such circumstances what is gained always is to what is lost. He came back gay and self-satisfied, eager and busy, caring nothing for Miss Woodhouse, and defying Miss Smith. The charming Augusta Hawkins, in addition to all the usual advantages of perfect beauty and merit, was in possession of an independent fortune, of so many thousands as would always be called ten; a point of some dignity, as well as some convenience: the story told well; he had not thrown himself away--he had gained a woman of 10,000 l. or thereabouts; and he had gained her with such delightful rapidity--the first hour of introduction had been so very soon followed by distinguishing notice; the history which he had to give Mrs. Cole of the rise and progress of the affair was so glorious--the steps so quick, from the accidental rencontre, to the dinner at Mr. Green's, and the party at Mrs. Brown's--smiles and blushes rising in importance--with consciousness and agitation richly scattered--the lady had been so easily impressed--so sweetly disposed--had in short, to use a most intelligible phrase, been so very ready to have him, that vanity and prudence were equally contented. He had caught both substance and shadow--both fortune and affection, and was just the happy man he ought to be; talking only of himself and his own concerns--expecting to be congratulated--ready to be laughed at--and, with cordial, fearless smiles, now addressing all the young ladies of the place, to whom, a few weeks ago, he would have been more cautiously gallant. The wedding was no distant event, as the parties had only themselves to please, and nothing but the necessary preparations to wait for; and when he set out for Bath again, there was a general expectation, which a certain glance of Mrs. Cole's did not seem to contradict, that when he next entered Highbury he would bring his bride. During his present short stay, Emma had barely seen him; but just enough to feel that the first meeting was over, and to give her the impression of his not being improved by the mixture of pique and pretension, now spread over his air. She was, in fact, beginning very much to wonder that she had ever thought him pleasing at all; and his sight was so inseparably connected with some very disagreeable feelings, that, except in a moral light, as a penance, a lesson, a source of profitable humiliation to her own mind, she would have been thankful to be assured of never seeing him again. She wished him very well; but he gave her pain, and his welfare twenty miles off would administer most satisfaction. The pain of his continued residence in Highbury, however, must certainly be lessened by his marriage. Many vain solicitudes would be prevented--many awkwardnesses smoothed by it. A _Mrs._ _Elton_ would be an excuse for any change of intercourse; former intimacy might sink without remark. It would be almost beginning their life of civility again. Of the lady, individually, Emma thought very little. She was good enough for Mr. Elton, no doubt; accomplished enough for Highbury--handsome enough--to look plain, probably, by Harriet's side. As to connexion, there Emma was perfectly easy; persuaded, that after all his own vaunted claims and disdain of Harriet, he had done nothing. On that article, truth seemed attainable. _What_ she was, must be uncertain; but _who_ she was, might be found out; and setting aside the 10,000 l., it did not appear that she was at all Harriet's superior. She brought no name, no blood, no alliance. Miss Hawkins was the youngest of the two daughters of a Bristol--merchant, of course, he must be called; but, as the whole of the profits of his mercantile life appeared so very moderate, it was not unfair to guess the dignity of his line of trade had been very moderate also. Part of every winter she had been used to spend in Bath; but Bristol was her home, the very heart of Bristol; for though the father and mother had died some years ago, an uncle remained--in the law line--nothing more distinctly honourable was hazarded of him, than that he was in the law line; and with him the daughter had lived. Emma guessed him to be the drudge of some attorney, and too stupid to rise. And all the grandeur of the connexion seemed dependent on the elder sister, who was _very_ _well_ _married_, to a gentleman in a _great_ _way_, near Bristol, who kept two carriages! That was the wind-up of the history; that was the glory of Miss Hawkins. Could she but have given Harriet her feelings about it all! She had talked her into love; but, alas! she was not so easily to be talked out of it. The charm of an object to occupy the many vacancies of Harriet's mind was not to be talked away. He might be superseded by another; he certainly would indeed; nothing could be clearer; even a Robert Martin would have been sufficient; but nothing else, she feared, would cure her. Harriet was one of those, who, having once begun, would be always in love. And now, poor girl! she was considerably worse from this reappearance of Mr. Elton. She was always having a glimpse of him somewhere or other. Emma saw him only once; but two or three times every day Harriet was sure _just_ to meet with him, or _just_ to miss him, _just_ to hear his voice, or see his shoulder, _just_ to have something occur to preserve him in her fancy, in all the favouring warmth of surprize and conjecture. She was, moreover, perpetually hearing about him; for, excepting when at Hartfield, she was always among those who saw no fault in Mr. Elton, and found nothing so interesting as the discussion of his concerns; and every report, therefore, every guess--all that had already occurred, all that might occur in the arrangement of his affairs, comprehending income, servants, and furniture, was continually in agitation around her. Her regard was receiving strength by invariable praise of him, and her regrets kept alive, and feelings irritated by ceaseless repetitions of Miss Hawkins's happiness, and continual observation of, how much he seemed attached!--his air as he walked by the house--the very sitting of his hat, being all in proof of how much he was in love! Had it been allowable entertainment, had there been no pain to her friend, or reproach to herself, in the waverings of Harriet's mind, Emma would have been amused by its variations. Sometimes Mr. Elton predominated, sometimes the Martins; and each was occasionally useful as a check to the other. Mr. Elton's engagement had been the cure of the agitation of meeting Mr. Martin. The unhappiness produced by the knowledge of that engagement had been a little put aside by Elizabeth Martin's calling at Mrs. Goddard's a few days afterwards. Harriet had not been at home; but a note had been prepared and left for her, written in the very style to touch; a small mixture of reproach, with a great deal of kindness; and till Mr. Elton himself appeared, she had been much occupied by it, continually pondering over what could be done in return, and wishing to do more than she dared to confess. But Mr. Elton, in person, had driven away all such cares. While he staid, the Martins were forgotten; and on the very morning of his setting off for Bath again, Emma, to dissipate some of the distress it occasioned, judged it best for her to return Elizabeth Martin's visit. How that visit was to be acknowledged--what would be necessary--and what might be safest, had been a point of some doubtful consideration. Absolute neglect of the mother and sisters, when invited to come, would be ingratitude. It must not be: and yet the danger of a renewal of the acquaintance--! After much thinking, she could determine on nothing better, than Harriet's returning the visit; but in a way that, if they had understanding, should convince them that it was to be only a formal acquaintance. She meant to take her in the carriage, leave her at the Abbey Mill, while she drove a little farther, and call for her again so soon, as to allow no time for insidious applications or dangerous recurrences to the past, and give the most decided proof of what degree of intimacy was chosen for the future. She could think of nothing better: and though there was something in it which her own heart could not approve--something of ingratitude, merely glossed over--it must be done, or what would become of Harriet?

The soon-to-be-Mrs. Elton is the talk of the town. Somehow all the gossips know all her dirty little secrets, even though she hasn't yet set foot in Highbury. Miss Augusta Hawkins has PS10,000 to her name . Hearing about Miss Hawkins, Emma decides that she's really no better than Harriet in anything but her pocketbook. Miss Hawkins is not from a good family - in fact, her only claim to fame is a newly-rich brother-in-law. . Now that Mr. Elton is back in town, Harriet starts mourning his marriage. OK, OK, she's a bit sappy - but she's got a broken heart. Give her a break! Emma decides that perhaps Harriet should accept an invitation from the Martins to visit them. After all, anything's better than hearing about Mr. Elton some more!

CANTO THE SIXTEENTH. The antique Persians taught three useful things, To draw the bow, to ride, and speak the truth. This was the mode of Cyrus, best of kings-- A mode adopted since by modern youth. Bows have they, generally with two strings; Horses they ride without remorse or ruth; At speaking truth perhaps they are less clever, But draw the long bow better now than ever. The cause of this effect, or this defect,-- 'For this effect defective comes by cause,'- Is what I have not leisure to inspect; But this I must say in my own applause, Of all the Muses that I recollect, Whate'er may be her follies or her flaws In some things, mine 's beyond all contradiction The most sincere that ever dealt in fiction. And as she treats all things, and ne'er retreats From any thing, this epic will contain A wilderness of the most rare conceits, Which you might elsewhere hope to find in vain. 'T is true there be some bitters with the sweets, Yet mix'd so slightly, that you can't complain, But wonder they so few are, since my tale is 'De rebus cunctis et quibusdam aliis.' But of all truths which she has told, the most True is that which she is about to tell. I said it was a story of a ghost-- What then? I only know it so befell. Have you explored the limits of the coast, Where all the dwellers of the earth must dwell? 'T is time to strike such puny doubters dumb as The sceptics who would not believe Columbus. Some people would impose now with authority, Turpin's or Monmouth Geoffry's Chronicle; Men whose historical superiority Is always greatest at a miracle. But Saint Augustine has the great priority, Who bids all men believe the impossible, Because 't is so. Who nibble, scribble, quibble, he Quiets at once with 'quia impossibile.' And therefore, mortals, cavil not at all; Believe:--if 't is improbable you must, And if it is impossible, you shall: 'T is always best to take things upon trust. I do not speak profanely, to recall Those holier mysteries which the wise and just Receive as gospel, and which grow more rooted, As all truths must, the more they are disputed: I merely mean to say what Johnson said, That in the course of some six thousand years, All nations have believed that from the dead A visitant at intervals appears; And what is strangest upon this strange head, Is, that whatever bar the reason rears 'Gainst such belief, there 's something stronger still In its behalf, let those deny who will. The dinner and the soiree too were done, The supper too discuss'd, the dames admired, The banqueteers had dropp'd off one by one-- The song was silent, and the dance expired: The last thin petticoats were vanish'd, gone Like fleecy Clouds into the sky retired, And nothing brighter gleam'd through the saloon Than dying tapers--and the peeping moon. The evaporation of a joyous day Is like the last glass of champagne, without The foam which made its virgin bumper gay; Or like a system coupled with a doubt; Or like a soda bottle when its spray Has sparkled and let half its spirit out; Or like a billow left by storms behind, Without the animation of the wind; Or like an opiate, which brings troubled rest, Or none; or like--like nothing that I know Except itself;--such is the human breast; A thing, of which similitudes can show No real likeness,--like the old Tyrian vest Dyed purple, none at present can tell how, If from a shell-fish or from cochineal. So perish every tyrant's robe piece-meal! But next to dressing for a rout or ball, Undressing is a woe; our robe de chambre May sit like that of Nessus, and recall Thoughts quite as yellow, but less clear than amber. Titus exclaim'd, 'I 've lost a day!' Of all The nights and days most people can remember (I have had of both, some not to be disdain'd), I wish they 'd state how many they have gain'd. And Juan, on retiring for the night, Felt restless, and perplex'd, and compromised: He thought Aurora Raby's eyes more bright Than Adeline (such is advice) advised; If he had known exactly his own plight, He probably would have philosophised: A great resource to all, and ne'er denied Till wanted; therefore Juan only sigh'd. He sigh'd;--the next resource is the full moon, Where all sighs are deposited; and now It happen'd luckily, the chaste orb shone As clear as such a climate will allow; And Juan's mind was in the proper tone To hail her with the apostrophe--'O thou!' Of amatory egotism the Tuism, Which further to explain would be a truism. But lover, poet, or astronomer, Shepherd, or swain, whoever may behold, Feel some abstraction when they gaze on her: Great thoughts we catch from thence (besides a cold Sometimes, unless my feelings rather err); Deep secrets to her rolling light are told; The ocean's tides and mortals' brains she sways, And also hearts, if there be truth in lays. Juan felt somewhat pensive, and disposed For contemplation rather than his pillow: The Gothic chamber, where he was enclosed, Let in the rippling sound of the lake's billow, With all the mystery by midnight caused; Below his window waved (of course) a willow; And he stood gazing out on the cascade That flash'd and after darken'd in the shade. Upon his table or his toilet,--which Of these is not exactly ascertain'd (I state this, for I am cautious to a pitch Of nicety, where a fact is to be gain'd),-- A lamp burn'd high, while he leant from a niche, Where many a Gothic ornament remain'd, In chisell'd stone and painted glass, and all That time has left our fathers of their hall. Then, as the night was clear though cold, he threw His chamber door wide open--and went forth Into a gallery, of a sombre hue, Long, furnish'd with old pictures of great worth, Of knights and dames heroic and chaste too, As doubtless should be people of high birth. But by dim lights the portraits of the dead Have something ghastly, desolate, and dread. The forms of the grim knight and pictured saint Look living in the moon; and as you turn Backward and forward to the echoes faint Of your own footsteps--voices from the urn Appear to wake, and shadows wild and quaint Start from the frames which fence their aspects stern, As if to ask how you can dare to keep A vigil there, where all but death should sleep. And the pale smile of beauties in the grave, The charms of other days, in starlight gleams, Glimmer on high; their buried locks still wave Along the canvas; their eyes glance like dreams On ours, or spars within some dusky cave, But death is imaged in their shadowy beams. A picture is the past; even ere its frame Be gilt, who sate hath ceased to be the same. As Juan mused on mutability, Or on his mistress--terms synonymous-- No sound except the echo of his sigh Or step ran sadly through that antique house; When suddenly he heard, or thought so, nigh, A supernatural agent--or a mouse, Whose little nibbling rustle will embarrass Most people as it plays along the arras. It was no mouse, but lo! a monk, array'd In cowl and beads and dusky garb, appear'd, Now in the moonlight, and now lapsed in shade, With steps that trod as heavy, yet unheard; His garments only a slight murmur made; He moved as shadowy as the sisters weird, But slowly; and as he pass'd Juan by, Glanced, without pausing, on him a bright eye. Juan was petrified; he had heard a hint Of such a spirit in these halls of old, But thought, like most men, there was nothing in 't Beyond the rumour which such spots unfold, Coin'd from surviving superstition's mint, Which passes ghosts in currency like gold, But rarely seen, like gold compared with paper. And did he see this? or was it a vapour? Once, twice, thrice pass'd, repass'd--the thing of air, Or earth beneath, or heaven, or t' other place; And Juan gazed upon it with a stare, Yet could not speak or move; but, on its base As stands a statue, stood: he felt his hair Twine like a knot of snakes around his face; He tax'd his tongue for words, which were not granted, To ask the reverend person what he wanted. The third time, after a still longer pause, The shadow pass'd away--but where? the hall Was long, and thus far there was no great cause To think his vanishing unnatural: Doors there were many, through which, by the laws Of physics, bodies whether short or tall Might come or go; but Juan could not state Through which the spectre seem'd to evaporate. He stood--how long he knew not, but it seem'd An age--expectant, powerless, with his eyes Strain'd on the spot where first the figure gleam'd; Then by degrees recall'd his energies, And would have pass'd the whole off as a dream, But could not wake; he was, he did surmise, Waking already, and return'd at length Back to his chamber, shorn of half his strength. All there was as he left it: still his taper Burnt, and not blue, as modest tapers use, Receiving sprites with sympathetic vapour; He rubb'd his eyes, and they did not refuse Their office; he took up an old newspaper; The paper was right easy to peruse; He read an article the king attacking, And a long eulogy of 'patent blacking.' This savour'd of this world; but his hand shook-- He shut his door, and after having read A paragraph, I think about Horne Tooke, Undrest, and rather slowly went to bed. There, couch'd all snugly on his pillow's nook, With what he had seen his phantasy he fed; And though it was no opiate, slumber crept Upon him by degrees, and so he slept. He woke betimes; and, as may be supposed, Ponder'd upon his visitant or vision, And whether it ought not to be disclosed, At risk of being quizz'd for superstition. The more he thought, the more his mind was posed: In the mean time, his valet, whose precision Was great, because his master brook'd no less, Knock'd to inform him it was time to dress. He dress'd; and like young people he was wont To take some trouble with his toilet, but This morning rather spent less time upon 't; Aside his very mirror soon was put; His curls fell negligently o'er his front, His clothes were not curb'd to their usual cut, His very neckcloth's Gordian knot was tied Almost an hair's breadth too much on one side. And when he walk'd down into the saloon, He sate him pensive o'er a dish of tea, Which he perhaps had not discover'd soon, Had it not happen'd scalding hot to be, Which made him have recourse unto his spoon; So much distrait he was, that all could see That something was the matter--Adeline The first--but what she could not well divine. She look'd, and saw him pale, and turn'd as pale Herself; then hastily look'd down, and mutter'd Something, but what 's not stated in my tale. Lord Henry said his muffin was ill butter'd; The Duchess of Fitz-Fulke play'd with her veil, And look'd at Juan hard, but nothing utter'd. Aurora Raby with her large dark eyes Survey'd him with a kind of calm surprise. But seeing him all cold and silent still, And everybody wondering more or less, Fair Adeline enquired, 'If he were ill?' He started, and said, 'Yes--no--rather--yes.' The family physician had great skill, And being present, now began to express His readiness to feel his pulse and tell The cause, but Juan said, 'He was quite well.' 'Quite well; yes,--no.'--These answers were mysterious, And yet his looks appear'd to sanction both, However they might savour of delirious; Something like illness of a sudden growth Weigh'd on his spirit, though by no means serious: But for the rest, as he himself seem'd loth To state the case, it might be ta'en for granted It was not the physician that he wanted. Lord Henry, who had now discuss'd his chocolate, Also the muffin whereof he complain'd, Said, Juan had not got his usual look elate, At which he marvell'd, since it had not rain'd; Then ask'd her Grace what news were of the duke of late? Her Grace replied, his Grace was rather pain'd With some slight, light, hereditary twinges Of gout, which rusts aristocratic hinges. Then Henry turn'd to Juan, and address'd A few words of condolence on his state: 'You look,' quoth he, 'as if you had had your rest Broke in upon by the Black Friar of late.' 'What friar?' said Juan; and he did his best To put the question with an air sedate, Or careless; but the effort was not valid To hinder him from growing still more pallid. 'Oh! have you never heard of the Black Friar? The spirit of these walls?'--'In truth not I.' 'Why Fame--but Fame you know 's sometimes a liar-- Tells an odd story, of which by and by: Whether with time the spectre has grown shyer, Or that our sires had a more gifted eye For such sights, though the tale is half believed, The friar of late has not been oft perceived. (Who watch'd the changes of Don Juan's brow, And from its context thought she could divine Connexions stronger then he chose to avow With this same legend)--'if you but design To jest, you 'll choose some other theme just now, Because the present tale has oft been told, And is not much improved by growing old.' 'Jest!' quoth Milor; 'why, Adeline, you know That we ourselves--'t was in the honey-moon-- But, come, I 'll set your story to a tune.' Graceful as Dian, when she draws her bow, She seized her harp, whose strings were kindled soon As touch'd, and plaintively began to play The air of ''T was a Friar of Orders Gray.' 'But add the words,' cried Henry, 'which you made; For Adeline is half a poetess,' Turning round to the rest, he smiling said. Of course the others could not but express In courtesy their wish to see display'd By one three talents, for there were no less-- The voice, the words, the harper's skill, at once Could hardly be united by a dunce. After some fascinating hesitation,-- The charming of these charmers, who seem bound, I can't tell why, to this dissimulation,-- Fair Adeline, with eyes fix'd on the ground At first, then kindling into animation, Added her sweet voice to the lyric sound, And sang with much simplicity,--a merit Not the less precious, that we seldom hear it. Beware! beware! of the Black Friar, Who sitteth by Norman stone, For he mutters his prayer in the midnight air, And his mass of the days that are gone. When the Lord of the Hill, Amundeville, Made Norman Church his prey, And expell'd the friars, one friar still Would not be driven away. Though he came in his might, with King Henry's right, To turn church lands to lay, With sword in hand, and torch to light Their walls, if they said nay; A monk remain'd, unchased, unchain'd, And he did not seem form'd of clay, For he 's seen in the porch, and he 's seen in the church, Though he is not seen by day. And whether for good, or whether for ill, It is not mine to say; But still with the house of Amundeville He abideth night and day. By the marriage-bed of their lords, 't is said, He flits on the bridal eve; And 't is held as faith, to their bed of death He comes--but not to grieve. When an heir is born, he 's heard to mourn, And when aught is to befall That ancient line, in the "we moonshine He walks from hall to hall. His form you may trace, but not his face, 'T is shadow'd by his cowl; But his eyes may be seen from the folds between, And they seem of a parted soul. But beware! beware! of the Black Friar, He still retains his sway, For he is yet the church's heir Whoever may be the lay. Amundeville is lord by day, But the monk is lord by night; Nor wine nor wassail could raise a vassal To question that friar's right. Say nought to him as he walks the hall, And he 'll say nought to you; He sweeps along in his dusky pall, As o'er the grass the dew. Then grammercy! for the Black Friar; Heaven sain him, fair or foul! And whatsoe'er may be his prayer, Let ours be for his soul. The lady's voice ceased, and the thrilling wires Died from the touch that kindled them to sound; And the pause follow'd, which when song expires Pervades a moment those who listen round; And then of course the circle much admires, Nor less applauds, as in politeness bound, The tones, the feeling, and the execution, To the performer's diffident confusion. Fair Adeline, though in a careless way, As if she rated such accomplishment As the mere pastime of an idle day, Pursued an instant for her own content, Would now and then as 't were without display, Yet with display in fact, at times relent To such performances with haughty smile, To show she could, if it were worth her while. Now this (but we will whisper it aside) Was--pardon the pedantic illustration-- Trampling on Plato's pride with greater pride, As did the Cynic on some like occasion; Deeming the sage would be much mortified, Or thrown into a philosophic passion, For a spoil'd carpet--but the 'Attic Bee' Was much consoled by his own repartee. Thus Adeline would throw into the shade (By doing easily, whene'er she chose, What dilettanti do with vast parade) Their sort of half profession; for it grows To something like this when too oft display'd; And that it is so everybody knows Who have heard Miss That or This, or Lady T'other, Show off--to please their company or mother. O! the long evenings of duets and trios! The admirations and the speculations; The 'Mamma Mia's!' and the 'Amor Mio's!' The 'Tanti palpiti's' on such occasions: The 'Lasciami's,' and quavering 'Addio's!' Amongst our own most musical of nations; With 'Tu mi chamas's' from Portingale, To soothe our ears, lest Italy should fail. In Babylon's bravuras--as the home Heart-ballads of Green Erin or Gray Highlands, That bring Lochaber back to eyes that roam O'er far Atlantic continents or islands, The calentures of music which o'ercome All mountaineers with dreams that they are nigh lands, No more to be beheld but in such visions-- Was Adeline well versed, as compositions. She also had a twilight tinge of 'Blue,' Could write rhymes, and compose more than she wrote, Made epigrams occasionally too Upon her friends, as everybody ought. But still from that sublimer azure hue, So much the present dye, she was remote; Was weak enough to deem Pope a great poet, And what was worse, was not ashamed to show it. Aurora--since we are touching upon taste, Which now-a-days is the thermometer By whose degrees all characters are class'd-- Was more Shakspearian, if I do not err. The worlds beyond this world's perplexing waste Had more of her existence, for in her There was a depth of feeling to embrace Thoughts, boundless, deep, but silent too as Space. Not so her gracious, graceful, graceless Grace, The full-grown Hebe of Fitz-Fulke, whose mind, If she had any, was upon her face, And that was of a fascinating kind. A little turn for mischief you might trace Also thereon,--but that 's not much; we find Few females without some such gentle leaven, For fear we should suppose us quite in heaven. I have not heard she was at all poetic, Though once she was seen reading the 'Bath Guide,' And 'Hayley's Triumphs,' which she deem'd pathetic, Because she said her temper had been tried So much, the bard had really been prophetic Of what she had gone through with--since a bride. But of all verse, what most ensured her praise Were sonnets to herself, or 'bouts rimes.' 'T were difficult to say what was the object Of Adeline, in bringing this same lay To bear on what appear'd to her the subject Of Juan's nervous feelings on that day. Perhaps she merely had the simple project To laugh him out of his supposed dismay; Perhaps she might wish to confirm him in it, Though why I cannot say--at least this minute. But so far the immediate effect Was to restore him to his self-propriety, A thing quite necessary to the elect, Who wish to take the tone of their society: In which you cannot be too circumspect, Whether the mode be persiflage or piety, But wear the newest mantle of hypocrisy, On pain of much displeasing the gynocracy. And therefore Juan now began to rally His spirits, and without more explanation To jest upon such themes in many a sally. Her Grace, too, also seized the same occasion, With various similar remarks to tally, But wish'd for a still more detail'd narration Of this same mystic friar's curious doings, About the present family's deaths and wooings. Of these few could say more than has been said; They pass'd as such things do, for superstition With some, while others, who had more in dread The theme, half credited the strange tradition; And much was talk'd on all sides on that head: But Juan, when cross-question'd on the vision, Which some supposed (though he had not avow'd it) Had stirr'd him, answer'd in a way to cloud it. And then, the mid-day having worn to one, The company prepared to separate; Some to their several pastimes, or to none, Some wondering 't was so early, some so late. There was a goodly match too, to be run Between some greyhounds on my lord's estate, And a young race-horse of old pedigree Match'd for the spring, whom several went to see. There was a picture-dealer who had brought A special Titian, warranted original, So precious that it was not to be bought, Though princes the possessor were besieging all. The king himself had cheapen'd it, but thought The civil list he deigns to accept (obliging all His subjects by his gracious acceptation) Too scanty, in these times of low taxation. But as Lord Henry was a connoisseur,-- The friend of artists, if not arts,--the owner, With motives the most classical and pure, So that he would have been the very donor, Rather than seller, had his wants been fewer, So much he deem'd his patronage an honour, Had brought the capo d'opera, not for sale, But for his judgment--never known to fail. There was a modern Goth, I mean a Gothic Bricklayer of Babel, call'd an architect, Brought to survey these grey walls, which though so thick, Might have from time acquired some slight defect; Who after rummaging the Abbey through thick And thin, produced a plan whereby to erect New buildings of correctest conformation, And throw down old--which he call'd restoration. The cost would be a trifle--an 'old song,' Set to some thousands ('t is the usual burden Of that same tune, when people hum it long)-- The price would speedily repay its worth in An edifice no less sublime than strong, By which Lord Henry's good taste would go forth in Its glory, through all ages shining sunny, For Gothic daring shown in English money. There were two lawyers busy on a mortgage Lord Henry wish'd to raise for a new purchase; Also a lawsuit upon tenures burgage, And one on tithes, which sure are Discord's torches, Kindling Religion till she throws down her gage, 'Untying' squires 'to fight against the churches;' There was a prize ox, a prize pig, and ploughman, For Henry was a sort of Sabine showman. There were two poachers caught in a steel trap, Ready for gaol, their place of convalescence; There was a country girl in a close cap And scarlet cloak (I hate the sight to see, since-- Since--since--in youth, I had the sad mishap-- But luckily I have paid few parish fees since): That scarlet cloak, alas! unclosed with rigour, Presents the problem of a double figure. A reel within a bottle is a mystery, One can't tell how it e'er got in or out; Therefore the present piece of natural history I leave to those who are fond of solving doubt; And merely state, though not for the consistory, Lord Henry was a justice, and that Scout The constable, beneath a warrant's banner, Had bagg'd this poacher upon Nature's manor. Now justices of peace must judge all pieces Of mischief of all kinds, and keep the game And morals of the country from caprices Of those who have not a license for the same; And of all things, excepting tithes and leases, Perhaps these are most difficult to tame: Preserving partridges and pretty wenches Are puzzles to the most precautious benches. The present culprit was extremely pale, Pale as if painted so; her cheek being red By nature, as in higher dames less hale 'T is white, at least when they just rise from bed. Perhaps she was ashamed of seeming frail, Poor soul! for she was country born and bred, And knew no better in her immorality Than to wax white--for blushes are for quality. Her black, bright, downcast, yet espiegle eye, Had gather'd a large tear into its corner, Which the poor thing at times essay'd to dry, For she was not a sentimental mourner Parading all her sensibility, Nor insolent enough to scorn the scorner, But stood in trembling, patient tribulation, To be call'd up for her examination. Of course these groups were scatter'd here and there, Not nigh the gay saloon of ladies gent. The lawyers in the study; and in air The prize pig, ploughman, poachers; the men sent From town, viz., architect and dealer, were Both busy (as a general in his tent Writing despatches) in their several stations, Exulting in their brilliant lucubrations. But this poor girl was left in the great hall, While Scout, the parish guardian of the frail, Discuss'd (he hated beer yclept the 'small') A mighty mug of moral double ale. She waited until justice could recall Its kind attentions to their proper pale, To name a thing in nomenclature rather Perplexing for most virgins--a child's father. You see here was enough of occupation For the Lord Henry, link'd with dogs and horses. There was much bustle too, and preparation Below stairs on the score of second courses; Because, as suits their rank and situation, Those who in counties have great land resources Have 'Public days,' when all men may carouse, Though not exactly what 's call'd 'open house.' But once a week or fortnight, uninvited (Thus we translate a general invitation), All country gentlemen, esquired or knighted, May drop in without cards, and take their station At the full board, and sit alike delighted With fashionable wines and conversation; And, as the isthmus of the grand connection, Talk o'er themselves the past and next election. Lord Henry was a great electioneerer, Burrowing for boroughs like a rat or rabbit; But county contests cost him rather dearer, Because the neighbouring Scotch Earl of Giftgabbit Had English influence in the self-same sphere here; His son, the Honourable Dick Dicedrabbit, Was member for the 'other interest' (meaning The same self-interest, with a different leaning). Courteous and cautious therefore in his county, He was all things to all men, and dispensed To some civility, to others bounty, And promises to all--which last commenced To gather to a somewhat large amount, he Not calculating how much they condensed; But what with keeping some, and breaking others, His word had the same value as another's. A friend to freedom and freeholders--yet No less a friend to government--he held, That he exactly the just medium hit 'Twixt place and patriotism--albeit compell'd, Such was his sovereign's pleasure (though unfit, He added modestly, when rebels rail'd), To hold some sinecures he wish'd abolish'd, But that with them all law would be demolish'd. He was 'free to confess' (whence comes this phrase? Is 't English? No--'t is only parliamentary) That innovation's spirit now-a-days Had made more progress than for the last century. He would not tread a factious path to praise, Though for the public weal disposed to venture high; As for his place, he could but say this of it, That the fatigue was greater than the profit. Heaven, and his friends, knew that a private life Had ever been his sole and whole ambition; But could he quit his king in times of strife, Which threaten'd the whole country with perdition? When demagogues would with a butcher's knife Cut through and through (oh! damnable incision!) The Gordian or the Geordi-an knot, whose strings Have tied together commons, lords, and kings. Sooner 'come lace into the civil list And champion him to the utmost'--he would keep it, Till duly disappointed or dismiss'd: Profit he care not for, let others reap it; But should the day come when place ceased to exist, The country would have far more cause to weep it: For how could it go on? Explain who can! He gloried in the name of Englishman. He was as independent--ay, much more-- Than those who were not paid for independence, As common soldiers, or a common--shore, Have in their several arts or parts ascendance O'er the irregulars in lust or gore, Who do not give professional attendance. Thus on the mob all statesmen are as eager To prove their pride, as footmen to a beggar. All this (save the last stanza) Henry said, And thought. I say no more--I 've said too much; For all of us have either heard or read-- Off--or upon the hustings--some slight such Hints from the independent heart or head Of the official candidate. I 'll touch No more on this--the dinner-bell hath rung, And grace is said; the grace I should have sung-- But I 'm too late, and therefore must make play. 'T was a great banquet, such as Albion old Was wont to boast--as if a glutton's tray Were something very glorious to behold. But 't was a public feast and public day,-- Quite full, right dull, guests hot, and dishes cold, Great plenty, much formality, small cheer, And every body out of their own sphere. The squires familiarly formal, and My lords and ladies proudly condescending; The very servants puzzling how to hand Their plates--without it might be too much bending From their high places by the sideboard's stand-- Yet, like their masters, fearful of offending. For any deviation from the graces Might cost both man and master too--their places. There were some hunters bold, and coursers keen, Whose hounds ne'er err'd, nor greyhounds deign'd to lurch; Some deadly shots too, Septembrizers, seen Earliest to rise, and last to quit the search Of the poor partridge through his stubble screen. There were some massy members of the church, Takers of tithes, and makers of good matches, And several who sung fewer psalms than catches. There were some country wags too--and, alas! Some exiles from the town, who had been driven To gaze, instead of pavement, upon grass, And rise at nine in lieu of long eleven. And lo! upon that day it came to pass, I sate next that o'erwhelming son of heaven, The very powerful parson, Peter Pith, The loudest wit I e'er was deafen'd with. I knew him in his livelier London days, A brilliant diner out, though but a curate; And not a joke he cut but earn'd its praise, Until preferment, coming at a sure rate (O Providence! how wondrous are thy ways! Who would suppose thy gifts sometimes obdurate?), Gave him, to lay the devil who looks o'er Lincoln, A fat fen vicarage, and nought to think on. His jokes were sermons, and his sermons jokes; But both were thrown away amongst the fens; For wit hath no great friend in aguish folks. No longer ready ears and short-hand pens Imbibed the gay bon-mot, or happy hoax: The poor priest was reduced to common sense, Or to coarse efforts very loud and long, To hammer a horse laugh from the thick throng. There is a difference, says the song, 'between A beggar and a queen,' or was (of late The latter worse used of the two we 've seen-- But we 'll say nothing of affairs of state); A difference ''twixt a bishop and a dean,' A difference between crockery ware and plate, As between English beef and Spartan broth-- And yet great heroes have been bred by both. But of all nature's discrepancies, none Upon the whole is greater than the difference Beheld between the country and the town, Of which the latter merits every preference From those who have few resources of their own, And only think, or act, or feel, with reference To some small plan of interest or ambition-- Both which are limited to no condition. But 'en avant!' The light loves languish o'er Long banquets and too many guests, although A slight repast makes people love much more, Bacchus and Ceres being, as we know Even from our grammar upwards, friends of yore With vivifying Venus, who doth owe To these the invention of champagne and truffles: Temperance delights her, but long fasting ruffles. Dully past o'er the dinner of the day; And Juan took his place, he knew not where, Confused, in the confusion, and distrait, And sitting as if nail'd upon his chair: Though knives and forks clank'd round as in a fray, He seem'd unconscious of all passing there, Till some one, with a groan, exprest a wish (Unheeded twice) to have a fin of fish. On which, at the third asking of the bans, He started; and perceiving smiles around Broadening to grins, he colour'd more than once, And hastily--as nothing can confound A wise man more than laughter from a dunce-- Inflicted on the dish a deadly wound, And with such hurry, that ere he could curb it He had paid his neighbour's prayer with half a turbot. This was no bad mistake, as it occurr'd, The supplicator being an amateur; But others, who were left with scarce a third, Were angry--as they well might, to be sure. They wonder'd how a young man so absurd Lord Henry at his table should endure; And this, and his not knowing how much oats Had fallen last market, cost his host three votes. They little knew, or might have sympathised, That he the night before had seen a ghost, A prologue which but slightly harmonised With the substantial company engross'd By matter, and so much materialised, That one scarce knew at what to marvel most Of two things--how (the question rather odd is) Such bodies could have souls, or souls such bodies. But what confused him more than smile or stare From all the 'squires and 'squiresses around, Who wonder'd at the abstraction of his air, Especially as he had been renown'd For some vivacity among the fair, Even in the country circle's narrow bound (For little things upon my lord's estate Were good small talk for others still less great)-- Was, that he caught Aurora's eye on his, And something like a smile upon her cheek. Now this he really rather took amiss: In those who rarely smile, their smiles bespeak A strong external motive; and in this Smile of Aurora's there was nought to pique Or hope, or love, with any of the wiles Which some pretend to trace in ladies' smiles. 'T was a mere quiet smile of contemplation, Indicative of some surprise and pity; And Juan grew carnation with vexation, Which was not very wise, and still less witty, Since he had gain'd at least her observation, A most important outwork of the city-- As Juan should have known, had not his senses By last night's ghost been driven from their defences. But what was bad, she did not blush in turn, Nor seem embarrass'd--quite the contrary; Her aspect was as usual, still--not stern-- And she withdrew, but cast not down, her eye, Yet grew a little pale--with what? concern? I know not; but her colour ne'er was high-- Though sometimes faintly flush'd--and always clear, As deep seas in a sunny atmosphere. But Adeline was occupied by fame This day; and watching, witching, condescending To the consumers of fish, fowl, and game, And dignity with courtesy so blending, As all must blend whose part it is to aim (Especially as the sixth year is ending) At their lord's, son's, or similar connection's Safe conduct through the rocks of re-elections. Though this was most expedient on the whole, And usual--Juan, when he cast a glance On Adeline while playing her grand role, Which she went through as though it were a dance, Betraying only now and then her soul By a look scarce perceptibly askance (Of weariness or scorn), began to feel Some doubt how much of Adeline was real; So well she acted all and every part By turns--with that vivacious versatility, Which many people take for want of heart. They err--'t is merely what is call'd mobility, A thing of temperament and not of art, Though seeming so, from its supposed facility; And false--though true; for surely they 're sincerest Who are strongly acted on by what is nearest. This makes your actors, artists, and romancers, Heroes sometimes, though seldom--sages never; But speakers, bards, diplomatists, and dancers, Little that 's great, but much of what is clever; Most orators, but very few financiers, Though all Exchequer chancellors endeavour, Of late years, to dispense with Cocker's rigours, And grow quite figurative with their figures. The poets of arithmetic are they Who, though they prove not two and two to be Five, as they might do in a modest way, Have plainly made it out that four are three, Judging by what they take, and what they pay. The Sinking Fund's unfathomable sea, That most unliquidating liquid, leaves The debt unsunk, yet sinks all it receives. While Adeline dispensed her airs and graces, The fair Fitz-Fulke seem'd very much at ease; Though too well bred to quiz men to their faces, Her laughing blue eyes with a glance could seize The ridicules of people in all places-- That honey of your fashionable bees-- And store it up for mischievous enjoyment; And this at present was her kind employment. However, the day closed, as days must close; The evening also waned--and coffee came. Each carriage was announced, and ladies rose, And curtsying off, as curtsies country dame, Retired: with most unfashionable bows Their docile esquires also did the same, Delighted with their dinner and their host, But with the Lady Adeline the most. Some praised her beauty; others her great grace; The warmth of her politeness, whose sincerity Was obvious in each feature of her face, Whose traits were radiant with the rays of verity. Yes; she was truly worthy her high place! No one could envy her deserved prosperity. And then her dress--what beautiful simplicity Draperied her form with curious felicity! Meanwhile Sweet Adeline deserved their praises, By an impartial indemnification For all her past exertion and soft phrases, In a most edifying conversation, Which turn'd upon their late guests' miens and faces, And families, even to the last relation; Their hideous wives, their horrid selves and dresses, And truculent distortion of their tresses. True, she said little--'t was the rest that broke Forth into universal epigram; But then 't was to the purpose what she spoke: Like Addison's 'faint praise,' so wont to damn, Her own but served to set off every joke, As music chimes in with a melodrame. How sweet the task to shield an absent friend! I ask but this of mine, to--not defend. There were but two exceptions to this keen Skirmish of wits o'er the departed; one Aurora, with her pure and placid mien; And Juan, too, in general behind none In gay remark on what he had heard or seen, Sate silent now, his usual spirits gone: In vain he heard the others rail or rally, He would not join them in a single sally. 'T is true he saw Aurora look as though She approved his silence; she perhaps mistook Its motive for that charity we owe But seldom pay the absent, nor would look Farther--it might or might not be so. But Juan, sitting silent in his nook, Observing little in his reverie, Yet saw this much, which he was glad to see. The ghost at least had done him this much good, In making him as silent as a ghost, If in the circumstances which ensued He gain'd esteem where it was worth the most. And certainly Aurora had renew'd In him some feelings he had lately lost, Or harden'd; feelings which, perhaps ideal, Are so divine, that I must deem them real:-- The love of higher things and better days; The unbounded hope, and heavenly ignorance Of what is call'd the world, and the world's ways; The moments when we gather from a glance More joy than from all future pride or praise, Which kindle manhood, but can ne'er entrance The heart in an existence of its own, Of which another's bosom is the zone. Who would not sigh Ai ai Tan Kuuerheian That hath a memory, or that had a heart? Alas! her star must fade like that of Dian: Ray fades on ray, as years on years depart. Anacreon only had the soul to tie an Unwithering myrtle round the unblunted dart Of Eros: but though thou hast play'd us many tricks, Still we respect thee, 'Alma Venus Genetrix!' And full of sentiments, sublime as billows Heaving between this world and worlds beyond, Don Juan, when the midnight hour of pillows Arrived, retired to his; but to despond Rather than rest. Instead of poppies, willows Waved o'er his couch; he meditated, fond Of those sweet bitter thoughts which banish sleep, And make the worldling sneer, the youngling weep. The night was as before: he was undrest, Saving his night-gown, which is an undress; Completely 'sans culotte,' and without vest; In short, he hardly could be clothed with less: But apprehensive of his spectral guest, He sate with feelings awkward to express (By those who have not had such visitations), Expectant of the ghost's fresh operations. And not in vain he listen'd;--Hush! what 's that? I see--I see--Ah, no!--'t is not--yet 't is-- Ye powers! it is the--the--the--Pooh! the cat! The devil may take that stealthy pace of his! So like a spiritual pit-a-pat, Or tiptoe of an amatory Miss, Gliding the first time to a rendezvous, And dreading the chaste echoes of her shoe. Again--what is 't? The wind? No, no--this time It is the sable friar as before, With awful footsteps regular as rhyme, Or (as rhymes may be in these days) much more. Again through shadows of the night sublime, When deep sleep fell on men, and the world wore The starry darkness round her like a girdle Spangled with gems--the monk made his blood curdle. A noise like to wet fingers drawn on glass, Which sets the teeth on edge; and a slight clatter, Like showers which on the midnight gusts will pass, Sounding like very supernatural water, Came over Juan's ear, which throbb'd, alas! For immaterialism 's a serious matter; So that even those whose faith is the most great In souls immortal, shun them tete-a-tete. Were his eyes open?--Yes! and his mouth too. Surprise has this effect--to make one dumb, Yet leave the gate which eloquence slips through As wide as if a long speech were to come. Nigh and more nigh the awful echoes drew, Tremendous to a mortal tympanum: His eyes were open, and (as was before Stated) his mouth. What open'd next?--the door. It open'd with a most infernal creak, Like that of hell. 'Lasciate ogni speranza Voi che entrate!' The hinge seem'd to speak, Dreadful as Dante's rhima, or this stanza; Or--but all words upon such themes are weak: A single shade 's sufficient to entrance Hero--for what is substance to a spirit? Or how is 't matter trembles to come near it? The door flew wide,--not swiftly, but, as fly The sea-gulls, with a steady, sober flight, And then swung back, nor close, but stood awry, Half letting in long shadows on the light, Which still in Juan's candlesticks burned high, For he had two, both tolerably bright, And in the doorway, darkening darkness, stood The sable Friar in his solemn hood. Between two worlds life hovers like a star, 'Twixt night and morn, upon the horizon's verge. How little do we know that which we are! How less what we may be! The eternal surge Of time and tide rolls on, and bears afar Our bubbles; as the old burst, new emerge, Lash'd from the foam of ages; while the graves Of empires heave but like some passing waves. Don Juan shook, as erst he had been shaken The night before, but being sick of shaking, He first inclined to think he had been mistaken, And then to be ashamed of such mistaking. His own internal ghost began to awaken Within him and to quell his corporal quaking, Hinting that soul and body on the whole Were odds against a disembodied soul. And then his dread grew wrath, and his wrath fierce, And he arose, advanced. The shade retreated, But Juan, eager now the truth to pierce, Followed, his veins no longer cold, but heated, Resolved to thrust the mystery carte and tierce, At whatsoever risk of being defeated. The ghost stopped, menaced, then retired, until He reached the ancient wall, then stood stone still. Juan put forth one arm. Eternal powers! It touched no soul nor body, but the wall, On which the moonbeams fell in silvery showers Checkered with all the tracery of the hall. He shuddered, as no doubt the bravest cowers When he can't tell what 'tis that doth appal. How odd, a single hobgoblin's nonentity Should cause more fear than a whole host's identity. But still the shade remained, the blue eyes glared, And rather variably for stony death. Yet one thing rather good the grave had spared; The ghost had a remarkably sweet breath. A straggling curl showed he had been fair-haired. A red lip with two rows of pearls beneath Gleamed forth, as through the casement's ivy shroud The moon peeped, just escaped from a grey cloud. And Juan, puzzled but still curious, thrust His other arm forth. Wonder upon wonder! It pressed upon a hard but glowing bust, Which beat as if there was a warm heart under. He found, as people on most trials must, That he had made at first a silly blunder And that in his confusion he had caught Only the wall, instead of what he sought The ghost, if ghost it were, seemed a sweet soul As ever lurked beneath a holy hood. A dimpled chin, a neck of ivory stole Forth into something much like flesh and blood. Back fell the sable frock and dreary cowl And they revealed, alas, that ere they should, In full, voluptuous, but not o'ergrown bulk, The phantom of her frolic Grace--Fitz-Fulke! [The end of the 1857 edition] * * * * *

Canto XVI is divided into four sections. The first section is a ghost episode. On the night of the great supper, Juan, after he has gone to bed, feels "restless, and perplexed, and compromised." His mind is filled with thoughts of the sixteen-year-old Aurora and her cool unworldliness. In addition, there is a full moon. He walks out into a gallery hung with pictures. The pictures add to his pensive mood. But by dim lights the portraits of the deadHave something ghastly, desolate and dread. Among them are portraits of once lovely women: And the pale smile of Beauties in the grave,The charms of other days, in starlight gleams,Glimmer on high; their buried locks still waveAlong the canvas; their eyes glance like dreamsOn ours, or spars within some dusky cave,But Death is imaged in their shadowy beams.A picture is the past; even ere its frameBe gilt, who sate hath ceased to be the same. Juan's state of mind, influenced by meditation on the pathos of the death of beauty, makes his succumb to paralyzing fear when "a monk, arrayed / In cowl and beads, and dusky garb" silently walks by him three times. In the morning he still shows the effects of the fright he has had. He is pensive, distraught, and pale. Both Adeline and Aurora notice the change in him. Lord Henry remarks that he looks as if he had seen the ghost of the Black Friar. Adeline then takes her harp and sings a ballad of her own composition on the Black Friar who haunts the house of the Amundevilles. Why she does this, Byron pretends he does not know: Perhaps she merely had the simple projectTo laugh him out of his supposed dismay;Perhaps she might wish to confirm him in it,Though why I cannot say-at least this minute. The effect of the song is to bring back Juan somewhat to his former self. In Stanza 55 the narrative turns away from the ghost of the Black Friar to the business of a typical day at Lord Henry's, which forms the second section of the canto. There is a race between greyhounds and a young race horse for the guests to watch. A picture dealer comes to Lord Henry to get his opinion on a Titian, for Lord Henry is a connoisseur and the friend of artists, if not of art. An architect comes with plans for the restoration of Norman Abbey; two lawyers come on Lord Henry's business; two poachers caught in a steel trap have to be taken care of; and a young unmarried pregnant country girl must be cross-examined, for Lord Henry is a justice, and justices of the peace, says Byron, must . . . keep the gameAnd morals of the country from capricesOf those who have not a license for the same. The third section of the canto describes one of Lord Henry's public days, which he has either once a week or twice a month, to keep his political fences mended. The public day is an open house for the local squirearchy, who may drop in without a formal invitation. There is a great banquet for them at Lord Henry's. There is Great plenty, much formality, small cheer, -- And everybody out of their own sphere. At the banquet Juan is again confused and distracted, and his blunders "cost his host three votes." Moreover, he notices that Aurora is looking at him: And something like a smile upon her cheek . . .Indicative of some surprise and pity. In the meantime Adeline is busy "playing her grand role" and Juan . . . began to feelSome doubt how much of Adeline was real; . . .So well she acted all and every partBy turns . . . After the last of the local guests have gone, Lady Adeline and her friends entertain themselves by making fun of those who have departed. Aurora and Juan do not take part in the game, Juan because he is still in a state of reverie. His silence is interpreted by Aurora as motivated by charity, and raises him in her esteem. Aurora has, in fact, renewed In him some feelings he had lately lost,Or hardened . . . The love of higher things and better days;The unbounded hope, and heavenly ignoranceOf what is called the World, and the World's ways. These feelings seem to be chiefly associated with young love untainted by the world. The last section of the canto is the resolution of the ghost episode. The feelings aroused in Juan by Aurora and the thoughts associated with them keep Juan awake that night and apprehensive of his spectral guest. As he sits in his bed, the door opens, and the ghost of the Black Friar enters his room. His first emotion is fear, which is soon succeeded by anger. He advances toward the ghost, reaches out a hand, and touches warm flesh. The ghost throws back its cowl and reveals the face of the Duchess Fitz-Fulke.

Cyrano, Ragueneau, poets, Carbon de Castel-Jaloux, the cadets, a crowd, then De Guiche. RAGUENEAU: Can we come in? CYRANO (without stirring): Yes. . . (Ragueneau signs to his friends, and they come in. At the same time, by door at back, enters Carbon de Castel-Jaloux, in Captain's uniform. He makes gestures of surprise on seeing Cyrano.) CARBON: Here he is! CYRANO (raising his head): Captain!. . . CARBON (delightedly): Our hero! We heard all! Thirty or more Of my cadets are there!. . . CYRANO (shrinking back): But. . . CARBON (trying to draw him away): Come with me! They will not rest until they see you! CYRANO: No! CARBON: They're drinking opposite, at The Bear's Head. CYRANO: I. . . CARBON (going to the door and calling across the street in a voice of thunder): He won't come! The hero's in the sulks! A VOICE (outside): Ah! Sandious! (Tumult outside. Noise of boots and swords is heard approaching.) CARBON (rubbing his hands): They are running 'cross the street! CADETS (entering): Mille dious! Capdedious! Pocapdedious! RAGUENEAU (drawing back startled): Gentlemen, are you all from Gascony? THE CADETS: All! A CADET (to Cyrano): Bravo! CYRANO: Baron! ANOTHER (shaking his hands): Vivat! CYRANO: Baron! THIRD CADET: Come! I must embrace you! CYRANO: Baron! SEVERAL GASCONS: We'll embrace Him, all in turn! CYRANO (not knowing whom to reply to): Baron!. . .Baron!. . .I beg. . . RAGUENEAU: Are you all Barons, Sirs? THE CADETS: Ay, every one! RAGUENEAU: Is it true?. . . FIRST CADET: Ay--why, you could build a tower With nothing but our coronets, my friend! LE BRET (entering, and running up to Cyrano): They're looking for you! Here's a crazy mob Led by the men who followed you last night. . . CYRANO (alarmed): What! Have you told them where to find me? LE BRET (rubbing his hands): Yes! A BURGHER (entering, followed by a group of men): Sir, all the Marais is a-coming here! (Outside the street has filled with people. Chaises a porteurs and carriages have drawn up.) LE BRET (in a low voice, smiling, to Cyrano): And Roxane? CYRANO (quickly): Hush! THE CROWD (calling outside): Cyrano!. . . (A crowd rush into the shop, pushing one another. Acclamations.) RAGUENEAU (standing on a table): Lo! my shop Invaded! They break all! Magnificent! PEOPLE (crowding round Cyrano): My friend!. . .my friend. . . Cyrano: Meseems that yesterday I had not all these friends! LE BRET (delighted): Success! A YOUNG MARQUIS (hurrying up with his hands held out): My friend, Didst thou but know. . . CYRANO: Thou!. . .Marry!. . .thou!. . .Pray when Did we herd swine together, you and I! ANOTHER: I would present you, Sir, to some fair dames Who in my carriage yonder. . . CYRANO (coldly): Ah! and who Will first present you, Sir, to me? LE BRET (astonished): What's wrong? CYRANO: Hush! A MAN OF LETTERS (with writing-board): A few details?. . . CYRANO: No. LE BRET (nudging his elbow): 'Tis Theophrast, Renaudet,. . .of the 'Court Gazette'! CYRANO: Who cares? LE BRET: This paper--but it is of great importance!. . . They say it will be an immense success! A POET (advancing): Sir. . . CYRANO: What, another! THE POET: . . .Pray permit I make A pentacrostic on your name. . . SOME ONE (also advancing): Pray, Sir. . . CYRANO: Enough! Enough! (A movement in the crowd. De Guiche appears, escorted by officers. Cuigy, Brissaille, the officers who went with Cyrano the night before. Cuigy comes rapidly up to Cyrano.) CUIGY (to Cyrano): Here is Monsieur de Guiche? (A murmur--every one makes way): He comes from the Marshal of Gassion! DE GUICHE (bowing to Cyrano): . . .Who would express his admiration, Sir, For your new exploit noised so loud abroad. THE CROWD: Bravo! CYRANO (bowing): The Marshal is a judge of valor. DE GUICHE: He could not have believed the thing, unless These gentlemen had sworn they witnessed it. CUIGY: With our own eyes! LE BRET (aside to Cyrano, who has an absent air): But. . .you. . . CYRANO: Hush! LE BRET: But. . .You suffer? CYRANO (starting): Before this rabble?--I?. . . (He draws himself up, twirls his mustache, and throws back his shoulders): Wait!. . .You shall see! DE GUICHE (to whom Cuigy has spoken in a low voice): In feats of arms, already your career Abounded.--You serve with those crazy pates Of Gascons? CYRANO: Ay, with the Cadets. A CADET (in a terrible voice): With us! DE GUICHE (looking at the cadets, ranged behind Cyrano): Ah!. . .All these gentlemen of haughty mien, Are they the famous?. . . CARBON: Cyrano! CYRANO: Ay, Captain! CARBON: Since all my company's assembled here, Pray favor me,--present them to my lord! CYRANO (making two steps toward De Guiche): My Lord de Guiche, permit that I present-- (pointing to the cadets): The bold Cadets of Gascony, Of Carbon of Castel-Jaloux! Brawling and swaggering boastfully, The bold Cadets of Gascony! Spouting of Armory, Heraldry, Their veins a-brimming with blood so blue, The bold Cadets of Gascony, Of Carbon of Castel-Jaloux: Eagle-eye, and spindle-shanks, Fierce mustache, and wolfish tooth! Slash-the-rabble and scatter-their-ranks; Eagle-eye and spindle-shanks, With a flaming feather that gayly pranks, Hiding the holes in their hats, forsooth! Eagle-eye and spindle-shanks, Fierce mustache, and wolfish tooth! 'Pink-your-Doublet' and 'Slit-your-Trunk' Are their gentlest sobriquets; With Fame and Glory their soul is drunk! 'Pink-your-Doublet' and 'Slit-your-Trunk,' In brawl and skirmish they show their spunk, Give rendezvous in broil and fray; 'Pink-your-Doublet' and 'Slit-your-Trunk' Are their gentlest sobriquets! What, ho! Cadets of Gascony! All jealous lovers are sport for you! O Woman! dear divinity! What, ho! Cadets of Gascony! Whom scowling husbands quake to see. Blow, 'taratara,' and cry 'Cuckoo.' What, ho! Cadets of Gascony! Husbands and lovers are game for you! DE GUICHE (seated with haughty carelessness in an armchair brought quickly by Ragueneau): A poet! 'Tis the fashion of the hour! --Will you be mine? CYRANO: No, Sir,--no man's! DE GUICHE: Last night Your fancy pleased my uncle Richelieu. I'll gladly say a word to him for you. LE BRET (overjoyed): Great Heavens! DE GUICHE: I imagine you have rhymed Five acts, or so? LE BRET (in Cyrano's ear): Your play!--your 'Agrippine!' You'll see it staged at last! DE GUICHE: Take them to him. CYRANO (beginning to be tempted and attracted): In sooth,--I would. . . DE GUICHE: He is a critic skilled: He may correct a line or two, at most. CYRANO (whose face stiffens at once): Impossible! My blood congeals to think That other hand should change a comma's dot. DE GUICHE: But when a verse approves itself to him He pays it dear, good friend. CYRANO: He pays less dear Than I myself; when a verse pleases me I pay myself, and sing it to myself! DE GUICHE: You are proud. CYRANO: Really? You have noticed that? A CADET (entering, with a string of old battered plumed beaver hats, full of holes, slung on his sword): See, Cyrano,--this morning, on the quay What strange bright-feathered game we caught! The hats O' the fugitives. . . CARBON: 'Spolia opima!' ALL (laughing): Ah! ah! ah! CUIGY: He who laid that ambush, 'faith! Must curse and swear! BRISSAILLE: Who was it? DE GUICHE: I myself. (The laughter stops): I charged them--work too dirty for my sword, To punish and chastise a rhymster sot. (Constrained silence.) The CADET (in a low voice, to Cyrano, showing him the beavers): What do with them? They're full of grease!--a stew? CYRANO (taking the sword and, with a salute, dropping the hats at De Guiche's feet): Sir, pray be good enough to render them Back to your friends. DE GUICHE (rising, sharply): My chair there--quick!--I go! (To Cyrano passionately): As to you, sirrah!. . . VOICE (in the street): Porters for my lord De Guiche! DE GUICHE (who has controlled himself--smiling): Have you read 'Don Quixote'? CYRANO: I have! And doff my hat at th' mad knight-errant's name. DE GUICHE: I counsel you to study. . . A PORTER (appearing at back): My lord's chair! DE GUICHE: . . .The windmill chapter! CYRANO (bowing): Chapter the Thirteenth. DE GUICHE: For when one tilts 'gainst windmills--it may chance. . . CYRANO: Tilt I 'gainst those who change with every breeze? DE GUICHE: . . .That windmill sails may sweep you with their arm Down--in the mire!. . . CYRANO: Or upward--to the stars! (De Guiche goes out, and mounts into his chair. The other lords go away whispering together. Le Bret goes to the door with them. The crowd disperses.)

Ragueneau, the poets, and the captain of the Guards, Carbon de Castel-Jaloux, enter with a crowd of people. Carbon tells Cyrano that everyone knows it was Cyrano who fought the hundred men, and they have come to congratulate him. Cyrano draws back, unwilling to be the center of attention. De Guiche arrives with a message of admiration from the Marechal de Gassion, an important man. Cyrano sings to him the song of the Guardsof Gascony. De Guiche asks Cyrano to accept his patronage, but Cyrano refuses, as he prefers to remain independent. De Guiche offers to introduce Cyrano to his uncle, Cardinal Richelieu, the most powerful man in France. Le Bret urges Cyrano to accept in order to further his literary career. But Cyrano is concerned that Richelieu will try to change his work, and again refuses. A cadet enters with some hats with broken feathers, left by at the Porte de Nesle by the men who ran away from Cyrano. Cyrano presents them to de Guiche, announcing that the hats belong to him, or his friends. De Guiche, furious, storms out. The crowd disperses

At the close of three weeks I was able to quit my chamber and move about the house. And on the first occasion of my sitting up in the evening I asked Catherine to read to me, because my eyes were weak. We were in the library, the master having gone to bed: she consented, rather unwillingly, I fancied; and imagining my sort of books did not suit her, I bid her please herself in the choice of what she perused. She selected one of her own favourites, and got forward steadily about an hour; then came frequent questions. 'Ellen, are not you tired? Hadn't you better lie down now? You'll be sick, keeping up so long, Ellen.' 'No, no, dear, I'm not tired,' I returned, continually. Perceiving me immovable, she essayed another method of showing her disrelish for her occupation. It changed to yawning, and stretching, and-- 'Ellen, I'm tired.' 'Give over then and talk,' I answered. That was worse: she fretted and sighed, and looked at her watch till eight, and finally went to her room, completely overdone with sleep; judging by her peevish, heavy look, and the constant rubbing she inflicted on her eyes. The following night she seemed more impatient still; and on the third from recovering my company she complained of a headache, and left me. I thought her conduct odd; and having remained alone a long while, I resolved on going and inquiring whether she were better, and asking her to come and lie on the sofa, instead of up-stairs in the dark. No Catherine could I discover up-stairs, and none below. The servants affirmed they had not seen her. I listened at Mr. Edgar's door; all was silence. I returned to her apartment, extinguished my candle, and seated myself in the window. The moon shone bright; a sprinkling of snow covered the ground, and I reflected that she might, possibly, have taken it into her head to walk about the garden, for refreshment. I did detect a figure creeping along the inner fence of the park; but it was not my young mistress: on its emerging into the light, I recognised one of the grooms. He stood a considerable period, viewing the carriage-road through the grounds; then started off at a brisk pace, as if he had detected something, and reappeared presently, leading Miss's pony; and there she was, just dismounted, and walking by its side. The man took his charge stealthily across the grass towards the stable. Cathy entered by the casement-window of the drawing-room, and glided noiselessly up to where I awaited her. She put the door gently too, slipped off her snowy shoes, untied her hat, and was proceeding, unconscious of my espionage, to lay aside her mantle, when I suddenly rose and revealed myself. The surprise petrified her an instant: she uttered an inarticulate exclamation, and stood fixed. 'My dear Miss Catherine,' I began, too vividly impressed by her recent kindness to break into a scold, 'where have you been riding out at this hour? And why should you try to deceive me by telling a tale? Where have you been? Speak!' 'To the bottom of the park,' she stammered. 'I didn't tell a tale.' 'And nowhere else?' I demanded. 'No,' was the muttered reply. 'Oh, Catherine!' I cried, sorrowfully. 'You know you have been doing wrong, or you wouldn't be driven to uttering an untruth to me. That does grieve me. I'd rather be three months ill, than hear you frame a deliberate lie.' She sprang forward, and bursting into tears, threw her arms round my neck. 'Well, Ellen, I'm so afraid of you being angry,' she said. 'Promise not to be angry, and you shall know the very truth: I hate to hide it.' We sat down in the window-seat; I assured her I would not scold, whatever her secret might be, and I guessed it, of course; so she commenced-- 'I've been to Wuthering Heights, Ellen, and I've never missed going a day since you fell ill; except thrice before, and twice after you left your room. I gave Michael books and pictures to prepare Minny every evening, and to put her back in the stable: you mustn't scold him either, mind. I was at the Heights by half-past six, and generally stayed till half-past eight, and then galloped home. It was not to amuse myself that I went: I was often wretched all the time. Now and then I was happy: once in a week perhaps. At first, I expected there would be sad work persuading you to let me keep my word to Linton: for I had engaged to call again next day, when we quitted him; but, as you stayed up-stairs on the morrow, I escaped that trouble. While Michael was refastening the lock of the park door in the afternoon, I got possession of the key, and told him how my cousin wished me to visit him, because he was sick, and couldn't come to the Grange; and how papa would object to my going: and then I negotiated with him about the pony. He is fond of reading, and he thinks of leaving soon to get married; so he offered, if I would lend him books out of the library, to do what I wished: but I preferred giving him my own, and that satisfied him better. 'On my second visit Linton seemed in lively spirits; and Zillah (that is their housekeeper) made us a clean room and a good fire, and told us that, as Joseph was out at a prayer-meeting and Hareton Earnshaw was off with his dogs--robbing our woods of pheasants, as I heard afterwards--we might do what we liked. She brought me some warm wine and gingerbread, and appeared exceedingly good-natured, and Linton sat in the arm-chair, and I in the little rocking chair on the hearth-stone, and we laughed and talked so merrily, and found so much to say: we planned where we would go, and what we would do in summer. I needn't repeat that, because you would call it silly. 'One time, however, we were near quarrelling. He said the pleasantest manner of spending a hot July day was lying from morning till evening on a bank of heath in the middle of the moors, with the bees humming dreamily about among the bloom, and the larks singing high up overhead, and the blue sky and bright sun shining steadily and cloudlessly. That was his most perfect idea of heaven's happiness: mine was rocking in a rustling green tree, with a west wind blowing, and bright white clouds flitting rapidly above; and not only larks, but throstles, and blackbirds, and linnets, and cuckoos pouring out music on every side, and the moors seen at a distance, broken into cool dusky dells; but close by great swells of long grass undulating in waves to the breeze; and woods and sounding water, and the whole world awake and wild with joy. He wanted all to lie in an ecstasy of peace; I wanted all to sparkle and dance in a glorious jubilee. I said his heaven would be only half alive; and he said mine would be drunk: I said I should fall asleep in his; and he said he could not breathe in mine, and began to grow very snappish. At last, we agreed to try both, as soon as the right weather came; and then we kissed each other and were friends. 'After sitting still an hour, I looked at the great room with its smooth uncarpeted floor, and thought how nice it would be to play in, if we removed the table; and I asked Linton to call Zillah in to help us, and we'd have a game at blindman's-buff; she should try to catch us: you used to, you know, Ellen. He wouldn't: there was no pleasure in it, he said; but he consented to play at ball with me. We found two in a cupboard, among a heap of old toys, tops, and hoops, and battledores and shuttlecocks. One was marked C., and the other H.; I wished to have the C., because that stood for Catherine, and the H. might be for Heathcliff, his name; but the bran came out of H., and Linton didn't like it. I beat him constantly: and he got cross again, and coughed, and returned to his chair. That night, though, he easily recovered his good humour: he was charmed with two or three pretty songs--_your_ songs, Ellen; and when I was obliged to go, he begged and entreated me to come the following evening; and I promised. Minny and I went flying home as light as air; and I dreamt of Wuthering Heights and my sweet, darling cousin, till morning. 'On the morrow I was sad; partly because you were poorly, and partly that I wished my father knew, and approved of my excursions: but it was beautiful moonlight after tea; and, as I rode on, the gloom cleared. I shall have another happy evening, I thought to myself; and what delights me more, my pretty Linton will. I trotted up their garden, and was turning round to the back, when that fellow Earnshaw met me, took my bridle, and bid me go in by the front entrance. He patted Minny's neck, and said she was a bonny beast, and appeared as if he wanted me to speak to him. I only told him to leave my horse alone, or else it would kick him. He answered in his vulgar accent, "It wouldn't do mitch hurt if it did;" and surveyed its legs with a smile. I was half inclined to make it try; however, he moved off to open the door, and, as he raised the latch, he looked up to the inscription above, and said, with a stupid mixture of awkwardness and elation: "Miss Catherine! I can read yon, now." '"Wonderful," I exclaimed. "Pray let us hear you--you _are_ grown clever!" 'He spelt, and drawled over by syllables, the name--"Hareton Earnshaw." '"And the figures?" I cried, encouragingly, perceiving that he came to a dead halt. '"I cannot tell them yet," he answered. '"Oh, you dunce!" I said, laughing heartily at his failure. 'The fool stared, with a grin hovering about his lips, and a scowl gathering over his eyes, as if uncertain whether he might not join in my mirth: whether it were not pleasant familiarity, or what it really was, contempt. I settled his doubts, by suddenly retrieving my gravity and desiring him to walk away, for I came to see Linton, not him. He reddened--I saw that by the moonlight--dropped his hand from the latch, and skulked off, a picture of mortified vanity. He imagined himself to be as accomplished as Linton, I suppose, because he could spell his own name; and was marvellously discomfited that I didn't think the same.' 'Stop, Miss Catherine, dear!'--I interrupted. 'I shall not scold, but I don't like your conduct there. If you had remembered that Hareton was your cousin as much as Master Heathcliff, you would have felt how improper it was to behave in that way. At least, it was praiseworthy ambition for him to desire to be as accomplished as Linton; and probably he did not learn merely to show off: you had made him ashamed of his ignorance before, I have no doubt; and he wished to remedy it and please you. To sneer at his imperfect attempt was very bad breeding. Had you been brought up in his circumstances, would you be less rude? He was as quick and as intelligent a child as ever you were; and I'm hurt that he should be despised now, because that base Heathcliff has treated him so unjustly.' 'Well, Ellen, you won't cry about it, will you?' she exclaimed, surprised at my earnestness. 'But wait, and you shall hear if he conned his A B C to please me; and if it were worth while being civil to the brute. I entered; Linton was lying on the settle, and half got up to welcome me. '"I'm ill to-night, Catherine, love," he said; "and you must have all the talk, and let me listen. Come, and sit by me. I was sure you wouldn't break your word, and I'll make you promise again, before you go." 'I knew now that I mustn't tease him, as he was ill; and I spoke softly and put no questions, and avoided irritating him in any way. I had brought some of my nicest books for him: he asked me to read a little of one, and I was about to comply, when Earnshaw burst the door open: having gathered venom with reflection. He advanced direct to us, seized Linton by the arm, and swung him off the seat. '"Get to thy own room!" he said, in a voice almost inarticulate with passion; and his face looked swelled and furious. "Take her there if she comes to see thee: thou shalln't keep me out of this. Begone wi' ye both!" 'He swore at us, and left Linton no time to answer, nearly throwing him into the kitchen; and he clenched his fist as I followed, seemingly longing to knock me down. I was afraid for a moment, and I let one volume fall; he kicked it after me, and shut us out. I heard a malignant, crackly laugh by the fire, and turning, beheld that odious Joseph standing rubbing his bony hands, and quivering. '"I wer sure he'd sarve ye out! He's a grand lad! He's getten t' raight sperrit in him! _He_ knaws--ay, he knaws, as weel as I do, who sud be t' maister yonder--Ech, ech, ech! He made ye skift properly! Ech, ech, ech!" '"Where must we go?" I asked of my cousin, disregarding the old wretch's mockery. 'Linton was white and trembling. He was not pretty then, Ellen: oh, no! he looked frightful; for his thin face and large eyes were wrought into an expression of frantic, powerless fury. He grasped the handle of the door, and shook it: it was fastened inside. '"If you don't let me in, I'll kill you!--If you don't let me in, I'll kill you!" he rather shrieked than said. "Devil! devil!--I'll kill you--I'll kill you!" Joseph uttered his croaking laugh again. '"Thear, that's t' father!" he cried. "That's father! We've allas summut o' either side in us. Niver heed, Hareton, lad--dunnut be 'feard--he cannot get at thee!" 'I took hold of Linton's hands, and tried to pull him away; but he shrieked so shockingly that I dared not proceed. At last his cries were choked by a dreadful fit of coughing; blood gushed from his mouth, and he fell on the ground. I ran into the yard, sick with terror; and called for Zillah, as loud as I could. She soon heard me: she was milking the cows in a shed behind the barn, and hurrying from her work, she inquired what there was to do? I hadn't breath to explain; dragging her in, I looked about for Linton. Earnshaw had come out to examine the mischief he had caused, and he was then conveying the poor thing up-stairs. Zillah and I ascended after him; but he stopped me at the top of the steps, and said I shouldn't go in: I must go home. I exclaimed that he had killed Linton, and I _would_ enter. Joseph locked the door, and declared I should do "no sich stuff," and asked me whether I were "bahn to be as mad as him." I stood crying till the housekeeper reappeared. She affirmed he would be better in a bit, but he couldn't do with that shrieking and din; and she took me, and nearly carried me into the house. 'Ellen, I was ready to tear my hair off my head! I sobbed and wept so that my eyes were almost blind; and the ruffian you have such sympathy with stood opposite: presuming every now and then to bid me "wisht," and denying that it was his fault; and, finally, frightened by my assertions that I would tell papa, and that he should be put in prison and hanged, he commenced blubbering himself, and hurried out to hide his cowardly agitation. Still, I was not rid of him: when at length they compelled me to depart, and I had got some hundred yards off the premises, he suddenly issued from the shadow of the road-side, and checked Minny and took hold of me. '"Miss Catherine, I'm ill grieved," he began, "but it's rayther too bad--" 'I gave him a cut with my whip, thinking perhaps he would murder me. He let go, thundering one of his horrid curses, and I galloped home more than half out of my senses. 'I didn't bid you good-night that evening, and I didn't go to Wuthering Heights the next: I wished to go exceedingly; but I was strangely excited, and dreaded to hear that Linton was dead, sometimes; and sometimes shuddered at the thought of encountering Hareton. On the third day I took courage: at least, I couldn't bear longer suspense, and stole off once more. I went at five o'clock, and walked; fancying I might manage to creep into the house, and up to Linton's room, unobserved. However, the dogs gave notice of my approach. Zillah received me, and saying "the lad was mending nicely," showed me into a small, tidy, carpeted apartment, where, to my inexpressible joy, I beheld Linton laid on a little sofa, reading one of my books. But he would neither speak to me nor look at me, through a whole hour, Ellen: he has such an unhappy temper. And what quite confounded me, when he did open his mouth, it was to utter the falsehood that I had occasioned the uproar, and Hareton was not to blame! Unable to reply, except passionately, I got up and walked from the room. He sent after me a faint "Catherine!" He did not reckon on being answered so: but I wouldn't turn back; and the morrow was the second day on which I stayed at home, nearly determined to visit him no more. But it was so miserable going to bed and getting up, and never hearing anything about him, that my resolution melted into air before it was properly formed. It had appeared wrong to take the journey once; now it seemed wrong to refrain. Michael came to ask if he must saddle Minny; I said "Yes," and considered myself doing a duty as she bore me over the hills. I was forced to pass the front windows to get to the court: it was no use trying to conceal my presence. '"Young master is in the house," said Zillah, as she saw me making for the parlour. I went in; Earnshaw was there also, but he quitted the room directly. Linton sat in the great arm-chair half asleep; walking up to the fire, I began in a serious tone, partly meaning it to be true-- '"As you don't like me, Linton, and as you think I come on purpose to hurt you, and pretend that I do so every time, this is our last meeting: let us say good-bye; and tell Mr. Heathcliff that you have no wish to see me, and that he mustn't invent any more falsehoods on the subject." '"Sit down and take your hat off, Catherine," he answered. "You are so much happier than I am, you ought to be better. Papa talks enough of my defects, and shows enough scorn of me, to make it natural I should doubt myself. I doubt whether I am not altogether as worthless as he calls me, frequently; and then I feel so cross and bitter, I hate everybody! I am worthless, and bad in temper, and bad in spirit, almost always; and, if you choose, you may say good-bye: you'll get rid of an annoyance. Only, Catherine, do me this justice: believe that if I might be as sweet, and as kind, and as good as you are, I would be; as willingly, and more so, than as happy and as healthy. And believe that your kindness has made me love you deeper than if I deserved your love: and though I couldn't, and cannot help showing my nature to you, I regret it and repent it; and shall regret and repent it till I die!" 'I felt he spoke the truth; and I felt I must forgive him: and, though we should quarrel the next moment, I must forgive him again. We were reconciled; but we cried, both of us, the whole time I stayed: not entirely for sorrow; yet I _was_ sorry Linton had that distorted nature. He'll never let his friends be at ease, and he'll never be at ease himself! I have always gone to his little parlour, since that night; because his father returned the day after. 'About three times, I think, we have been merry and hopeful, as we were the first evening; the rest of my visits were dreary and troubled: now with his selfishness and spite, and now with his sufferings: but I've learned to endure the former with nearly as little resentment as the latter. Mr. Heathcliff purposely avoids me: I have hardly seen him at all. Last Sunday, indeed, coming earlier than usual, I heard him abusing poor Linton cruelly for his conduct of the night before. I can't tell how he knew of it, unless he listened. Linton had certainly behaved provokingly: however, it was the business of nobody but me, and I interrupted Mr. Heathcliff's lecture by entering and telling him so. He burst into a laugh, and went away, saying he was glad I took that view of the matter. Since then, I've told Linton he must whisper his bitter things. Now, Ellen, you have heard all. I can't be prevented from going to Wuthering Heights, except by inflicting misery on two people; whereas, if you'll only not tell papa, my going need disturb the tranquillity of none. You'll not tell, will you? It will be very heartless, if you do.' 'I'll make up my mind on that point by to-morrow, Miss Catherine,' I replied. 'It requires some study; and so I'll leave you to your rest, and go think it over.' I thought it over aloud, in my master's presence; walking straight from her room to his, and relating the whole story: with the exception of her conversations with her cousin, and any mention of Hareton. Mr. Linton was alarmed and distressed, more than he would acknowledge to me. In the morning, Catherine learnt my betrayal of her confidence, and she learnt also that her secret visits were to end. In vain she wept and writhed against the interdict, and implored her father to have pity on Linton: all she got to comfort her was a promise that he would write and give him leave to come to the Grange when he pleased; but explaining that he must no longer expect to see Catherine at Wuthering Heights. Perhaps, had he been aware of his nephew's disposition and state of health, he would have seen fit to withhold even that slight consolation.

After Nelly recovers, she notices that Cathy is agitated in the evening. Cathy pretends to retire early, but when Nelly cannot find her anywhere in the house, she waits in Cathy's room for her to return. Cathy attempts a feeble lie at first but soon admits the truth. On one of her visits, Hareton stops her and tells her that he can read the name above the door; however, Cathy asks if he knows the numbers, and when he concedes he does not, she again makes fun of him. This enrages Hareton, and during her visit with Linton, Hareton storms into the room and forces Linton upstairs. Later Hareton attempts to apologize to Cathy, but she refuses to listen to him. Cathy visits three days later, but Linton blames her for the previous trouble, so she leaves. When she returns two days later, she tells Linton this is her last visit, but this news causes him trouble, and he apologizes for his behavior. Nelly listens to Cathy's tale, and then immediately tells Edgar everything. He forbids Cathy to continue visiting Linton but says he will write and invite Linton to visit the Grange.

Ere the half-hour ended, five o'clock struck; school was dismissed, and all were gone into the refectory to tea. I now ventured to descend: it was deep dusk; I retired into a corner and sat down on the floor. The spell by which I had been so far supported began to dissolve; reaction took place, and soon, so overwhelming was the grief that seized me, I sank prostrate with my face to the ground. Now I wept: Helen Burns was not here; nothing sustained me; left to myself I abandoned myself, and my tears watered the boards. I had meant to be so good, and to do so much at Lowood: to make so many friends, to earn respect and win affection. Already I had made visible progress: that very morning I had reached the head of my class; Miss Miller had praised me warmly; Miss Temple had smiled approbation; she had promised to teach me drawing, and to let me learn French, if I continued to make similar improvement two months longer: and then I was well received by my fellow-pupils; treated as an equal by those of my own age, and not molested by any; now, here I lay again crushed and trodden on; and could I ever rise more? "Never," I thought; and ardently I wished to die. While sobbing out this wish in broken accents, some one approached: I started up--again Helen Burns was near me; the fading fires just showed her coming up the long, vacant room; she brought my coffee and bread. "Come, eat something," she said; but I put both away from me, feeling as if a drop or a crumb would have choked me in my present condition. Helen regarded me, probably with surprise: I could not now abate my agitation, though I tried hard; I continued to weep aloud. She sat down on the ground near me, embraced her knees with her arms, and rested her head upon them; in that attitude she remained silent as an Indian. I was the first who spoke-- "Helen, why do you stay with a girl whom everybody believes to be a liar?" "Everybody, Jane? Why, there are only eighty people who have heard you called so, and the world contains hundreds of millions." "But what have I to do with millions? The eighty, I know, despise me." "Jane, you are mistaken: probably not one in the school either despises or dislikes you: many, I am sure, pity you much." "How can they pity me after what Mr. Brocklehurst has said?" "Mr. Brocklehurst is not a god: nor is he even a great and admired man: he is little liked here; he never took steps to make himself liked. Had he treated you as an especial favourite, you would have found enemies, declared or covert, all around you; as it is, the greater number would offer you sympathy if they dared. Teachers and pupils may look coldly on you for a day or two, but friendly feelings are concealed in their hearts; and if you persevere in doing well, these feelings will ere long appear so much the more evidently for their temporary suppression. Besides, Jane"--she paused. "Well, Helen?" said I, putting my hand into hers: she chafed my fingers gently to warm them, and went on-- "If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends." "No; I know I should think well of myself; but that is not enough: if others don't love me I would rather die than live--I cannot bear to be solitary and hated, Helen. Look here; to gain some real affection from you, or Miss Temple, or any other whom I truly love, I would willingly submit to have the bone of my arm broken, or to let a bull toss me, or to stand behind a kicking horse, and let it dash its hoof at my chest--" "Hush, Jane! you think too much of the love of human beings; you are too impulsive, too vehement; the sovereign hand that created your frame, and put life into it, has provided you with other resources than your feeble self, or than creatures feeble as you. Besides this earth, and besides the race of men, there is an invisible world and a kingdom of spirits: that world is round us, for it is everywhere; and those spirits watch us, for they are commissioned to guard us; and if we were dying in pain and shame, if scorn smote us on all sides, and hatred crushed us, angels see our tortures, recognise our innocence (if innocent we be: as I know you are of this charge which Mr. Brocklehurst has weakly and pompously repeated at second-hand from Mrs. Reed; for I read a sincere nature in your ardent eyes and on your clear front), and God waits only the separation of spirit from flesh to crown us with a full reward. Why, then, should we ever sink overwhelmed with distress, when life is so soon over, and death is so certain an entrance to happiness--to glory?" I was silent; Helen had calmed me; but in the tranquillity she imparted there was an alloy of inexpressible sadness. I felt the impression of woe as she spoke, but I could not tell whence it came; and when, having done speaking, she breathed a little fast and coughed a short cough, I momentarily forgot my own sorrows to yield to a vague concern for her. Resting my head on Helen's shoulder, I put my arms round her waist; she drew me to her, and we reposed in silence. We had not sat long thus, when another person came in. Some heavy clouds, swept from the sky by a rising wind, had left the moon bare; and her light, streaming in through a window near, shone full both on us and on the approaching figure, which we at once recognised as Miss Temple. "I came on purpose to find you, Jane Eyre," said she; "I want you in my room; and as Helen Burns is with you, she may come too." We went; following the superintendent's guidance, we had to thread some intricate passages, and mount a staircase before we reached her apartment; it contained a good fire, and looked cheerful. Miss Temple told Helen Burns to be seated in a low arm-chair on one side of the hearth, and herself taking another, she called me to her side. "Is it all over?" she asked, looking down at my face. "Have you cried your grief away?" "I am afraid I never shall do that." "Why?" "Because I have been wrongly accused; and you, ma'am, and everybody else, will now think me wicked." "We shall think you what you prove yourself to be, my child. Continue to act as a good girl, and you will satisfy us." "Shall I, Miss Temple?" "You will," said she, passing her arm round me. "And now tell me who is the lady whom Mr. Brocklehurst called your benefactress?" "Mrs. Reed, my uncle's wife. My uncle is dead, and he left me to her care." "Did she not, then, adopt you of her own accord?" "No, ma'am; she was sorry to have to do it: but my uncle, as I have often heard the servants say, got her to promise before he died that she would always keep me." "Well now, Jane, you know, or at least I will tell you, that when a criminal is accused, he is always allowed to speak in his own defence. You have been charged with falsehood; defend yourself to me as well as you can. Say whatever your memory suggests is true; but add nothing and exaggerate nothing." I resolved, in the depth of my heart, that I would be most moderate--most correct; and, having reflected a few minutes in order to arrange coherently what I had to say, I told her all the story of my sad childhood. Exhausted by emotion, my language was more subdued than it generally was when it developed that sad theme; and mindful of Helen's warnings against the indulgence of resentment, I infused into the narrative far less of gall and wormwood than ordinary. Thus restrained and simplified, it sounded more credible: I felt as I went on that Miss Temple fully believed me. In the course of the tale I had mentioned Mr. Lloyd as having come to see me after the fit: for I never forgot the, to me, frightful episode of the red-room: in detailing which, my excitement was sure, in some degree, to break bounds; for nothing could soften in my recollection the spasm of agony which clutched my heart when Mrs. Reed spurned my wild supplication for pardon, and locked me a second time in the dark and haunted chamber. I had finished: Miss Temple regarded me a few minutes in silence; she then said-- "I know something of Mr. Lloyd; I shall write to him; if his reply agrees with your statement, you shall be publicly cleared from every imputation; to me, Jane, you are clear now." She kissed me, and still keeping me at her side (where I was well contented to stand, for I derived a child's pleasure from the contemplation of her face, her dress, her one or two ornaments, her white forehead, her clustered and shining curls, and beaming dark eyes), she proceeded to address Helen Burns. "How are you to-night, Helen? Have you coughed much to-day?" "Not quite so much, I think, ma'am." "And the pain in your chest?" "It is a little better." Miss Temple got up, took her hand and examined her pulse; then she returned to her own seat: as she resumed it, I heard her sigh low. She was pensive a few minutes, then rousing herself, she said cheerfully-- "But you two are my visitors to-night; I must treat you as such." She rang her bell. "Barbara," she said to the servant who answered it, "I have not yet had tea; bring the tray and place cups for these two young ladies." And a tray was soon brought. How pretty, to my eyes, did the china cups and bright teapot look, placed on the little round table near the fire! How fragrant was the steam of the beverage, and the scent of the toast! of which, however, I, to my dismay (for I was beginning to be hungry) discerned only a very small portion: Miss Temple discerned it too. "Barbara," said she, "can you not bring a little more bread and butter? There is not enough for three." Barbara went out: she returned soon-- "Madam, Mrs. Harden says she has sent up the usual quantity." Mrs. Harden, be it observed, was the housekeeper: a woman after Mr. Brocklehurst's own heart, made up of equal parts of whalebone and iron. "Oh, very well!" returned Miss Temple; "we must make it do, Barbara, I suppose." And as the girl withdrew she added, smiling, "Fortunately, I have it in my power to supply deficiencies for this once." Having invited Helen and me to approach the table, and placed before each of us a cup of tea with one delicious but thin morsel of toast, she got up, unlocked a drawer, and taking from it a parcel wrapped in paper, disclosed presently to our eyes a good-sized seed-cake. "I meant to give each of you some of this to take with you," said she, "but as there is so little toast, you must have it now," and she proceeded to cut slices with a generous hand. We feasted that evening as on nectar and ambrosia; and not the least delight of the entertainment was the smile of gratification with which our hostess regarded us, as we satisfied our famished appetites on the delicate fare she liberally supplied. Tea over and the tray removed, she again summoned us to the fire; we sat one on each side of her, and now a conversation followed between her and Helen, which it was indeed a privilege to be admitted to hear. Miss Temple had always something of serenity in her air, of state in her mien, of refined propriety in her language, which precluded deviation into the ardent, the excited, the eager: something which chastened the pleasure of those who looked on her and listened to her, by a controlling sense of awe; and such was my feeling now: but as to Helen Burns, I was struck with wonder. The refreshing meal, the brilliant fire, the presence and kindness of her beloved instructress, or, perhaps, more than all these, something in her own unique mind, had roused her powers within her. They woke, they kindled: first, they glowed in the bright tint of her cheek, which till this hour I had never seen but pale and bloodless; then they shone in the liquid lustre of her eyes, which had suddenly acquired a beauty more singular than that of Miss Temple's--a beauty neither of fine colour nor long eyelash, nor pencilled brow, but of meaning, of movement, of radiance. Then her soul sat on her lips, and language flowed, from what source I cannot tell. Has a girl of fourteen a heart large enough, vigorous enough, to hold the swelling spring of pure, full, fervid eloquence? Such was the characteristic of Helen's discourse on that, to me, memorable evening; her spirit seemed hastening to live within a very brief span as much as many live during a protracted existence. They conversed of things I had never heard of; of nations and times past; of countries far away; of secrets of nature discovered or guessed at: they spoke of books: how many they had read! What stores of knowledge they possessed! Then they seemed so familiar with French names and French authors: but my amazement reached its climax when Miss Temple asked Helen if she sometimes snatched a moment to recall the Latin her father had taught her, and taking a book from a shelf, bade her read and construe a page of Virgil; and Helen obeyed, my organ of veneration expanding at every sounding line. She had scarcely finished ere the bell announced bedtime! no delay could be admitted; Miss Temple embraced us both, saying, as she drew us to her heart-- "God bless you, my children!" Helen she held a little longer than me: she let her go more reluctantly; it was Helen her eye followed to the door; it was for her she a second time breathed a sad sigh; for her she wiped a tear from her cheek. On reaching the bedroom, we heard the voice of Miss Scatcherd: she was examining drawers; she had just pulled out Helen Burns's, and when we entered Helen was greeted with a sharp reprimand, and told that to-morrow she should have half-a-dozen of untidily folded articles pinned to her shoulder. "My things were indeed in shameful disorder," murmured Helen to me, in a low voice: "I intended to have arranged them, but I forgot." Next morning, Miss Scatcherd wrote in conspicuous characters on a piece of pasteboard the word "Slattern," and bound it like a phylactery round Helen's large, mild, intelligent, and benign-looking forehead. She wore it till evening, patient, unresentful, regarding it as a deserved punishment. The moment Miss Scatcherd withdrew after afternoon school, I ran to Helen, tore it off, and thrust it into the fire: the fury of which she was incapable had been burning in my soul all day, and tears, hot and large, had continually been scalding my cheek; for the spectacle of her sad resignation gave me an intolerable pain at the heart. About a week subsequently to the incidents above narrated, Miss Temple, who had written to Mr. Lloyd, received his answer: it appeared that what he said went to corroborate my account. Miss Temple, having assembled the whole school, announced that inquiry had been made into the charges alleged against Jane Eyre, and that she was most happy to be able to pronounce her completely cleared from every imputation. The teachers then shook hands with me and kissed me, and a murmur of pleasure ran through the ranks of my companions. Thus relieved of a grievous load, I from that hour set to work afresh, resolved to pioneer my way through every difficulty: I toiled hard, and my success was proportionate to my efforts; my memory, not naturally tenacious, improved with practice; exercise sharpened my wits; in a few weeks I was promoted to a higher class; in less than two months I was allowed to commence French and drawing. I learned the first two tenses of the verb _Etre_, and sketched my first cottage (whose walls, by-the- bye, outrivalled in slope those of the leaning tower of Pisa), on the same day. That night, on going to bed, I forgot to prepare in imagination the Barmecide supper of hot roast potatoes, or white bread and new milk, with which I was wont to amuse my inward cravings: I feasted instead on the spectacle of ideal drawings, which I saw in the dark; all the work of my own hands: freely pencilled houses and trees, picturesque rocks and ruins, Cuyp-like groups of cattle, sweet paintings of butterflies hovering over unblown roses, of birds picking at ripe cherries, of wren's nests enclosing pearl-like eggs, wreathed about with young ivy sprays. I examined, too, in thought, the possibility of my ever being able to translate currently a certain little French story which Madame Pierrot had that day shown me; nor was that problem solved to my satisfaction ere I fell sweetly asleep. Well has Solomon said--"Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith." I would not now have exchanged Lowood with all its privations for Gateshead and its daily luxuries.

When the half-hour ends, the other girls have gone to tea, and Jane gets off the stool and weeps. Helen brings her coffee and bread, and tells her that the others will not scorn her because of what happened, as they do not like Mr. Brocklehurst. Soon Miss Temple arrives and asks them to her room where she gives them tea, bread and seed cake. Miss Temple asks for Jane's side of the story. She tells of her life at Gateshead, and when she mentions Mr. Lloyd, Miss Temple says that she knows him and will write to him to confirm her story, for while Miss Temple believes Jane, the others may want proof. In about a week, a return letter comes from Mr. Lloyd, and Miss Temple tells the school that Jane has been cleared of the charges against her. Jane does well at the school, is soon promoted to a higher class, and in two months starts French and drawing. She no longer goes to bed imagining a hot supper, but thinks about the work of her own hands in drawing. She realizes that she would not trade the privations of Lowood for the luxuries of Gateshead

The Letter and the Answer My guardian called me into his room next morning, and then I told him what had been left untold on the previous night. There was nothing to be done, he said, but to keep the secret and to avoid another such encounter as that of yesterday. He understood my feeling and entirely shared it. He charged himself even with restraining Mr. Skimpole from improving his opportunity. One person whom he need not name to me, it was not now possible for him to advise or help. He wished it were, but no such thing could be. If her mistrust of the lawyer whom she had mentioned were well-founded, which he scarcely doubted, he dreaded discovery. He knew something of him, both by sight and by reputation, and it was certain that he was a dangerous man. Whatever happened, he repeatedly impressed upon me with anxious affection and kindness, I was as innocent of as himself and as unable to influence. "Nor do I understand," said he, "that any doubts tend towards you, my dear. Much suspicion may exist without that connexion." "With the lawyer," I returned. "But two other persons have come into my mind since I have been anxious. Then I told him all about Mr. Guppy, who I feared might have had his vague surmises when I little understood his meaning, but in whose silence after our last interview I expressed perfect confidence. "Well," said my guardian. "Then we may dismiss him for the present. Who is the other?" I called to his recollection the French maid and the eager offer of herself she had made to me. "Ha!" he returned thoughtfully. "That is a more alarming person than the clerk. But after all, my dear, it was but seeking for a new service. She had seen you and Ada a little while before, and it was natural that you should come into her head. She merely proposed herself for your maid, you know. She did nothing more." "Her manner was strange," said I. "Yes, and her manner was strange when she took her shoes off and showed that cool relish for a walk that might have ended in her death-bed," said my guardian. "It would be useless self-distress and torment to reckon up such chances and possibilities. There are very few harmless circumstances that would not seem full of perilous meaning, so considered. Be hopeful, little woman. You can be nothing better than yourself; be that, through this knowledge, as you were before you had it. It is the best you can do for everybody's sake. I, sharing the secret with you--" "And lightening it, guardian, so much," said I. "--will be attentive to what passes in that family, so far as I can observe it from my distance. And if the time should come when I can stretch out a hand to render the least service to one whom it is better not to name even here, I will not fail to do it for her dear daughter's sake." I thanked him with my whole heart. What could I ever do but thank him! I was going out at the door when he asked me to stay a moment. Quickly turning round, I saw that same expression on his face again; and all at once, I don't know how, it flashed upon me as a new and far-off possibility that I understood it. "My dear Esther," said my guardian, "I have long had something in my thoughts that I have wished to say to you." "Indeed?" "I have had some difficulty in approaching it, and I still have. I should wish it to be so deliberately said, and so deliberately considered. Would you object to my writing it?" "Dear guardian, how could I object to your writing anything for ME to read?" "Then see, my love," said he with his cheery smile, "am I at this moment quite as plain and easy--do I seem as open, as honest and old-fashioned--as I am at any time?" I answered in all earnestness, "Quite." With the strictest truth, for his momentary hesitation was gone (it had not lasted a minute), and his fine, sensible, cordial, sterling manner was restored. "Do I look as if I suppressed anything, meant anything but what I said, had any reservation at all, no matter what?" said he with his bright clear eyes on mine. I answered, most assuredly he did not. "Can you fully trust me, and thoroughly rely on what I profess, Esther?" "Most thoroughly," said I with my whole heart. "My dear girl," returned my guardian, "give me your hand." He took it in his, holding me lightly with his arm, and looking down into my face with the same genuine freshness and faithfulness of manner--the old protecting manner which had made that house my home in a moment--said, "You have wrought changes in me, little woman, since the winter day in the stage-coach. First and last you have done me a world of good since that time." "Ah, guardian, what have you done for me since that time!" "But," said he, "that is not to be remembered now." "It never can be forgotten." "Yes, Esther," said he with a gentle seriousness, "it is to be forgotten now, to be forgotten for a while. You are only to remember now that nothing can change me as you know me. Can you feel quite assured of that, my dear?" "I can, and I do," I said. "That's much," he answered. "That's everything. But I must not take that at a word. I will not write this something in my thoughts until you have quite resolved within yourself that nothing can change me as you know me. If you doubt that in the least degree, I will never write it. If you are sure of that, on good consideration, send Charley to me this night week--'for the letter.' But if you are not quite certain, never send. Mind, I trust to your truth, in this thing as in everything. If you are not quite certain on that one point, never send!" "Guardian," said I, "I am already certain, I can no more be changed in that conviction than you can be changed towards me. I shall send Charley for the letter." He shook my hand and said no more. Nor was any more said in reference to this conversation, either by him or me, through the whole week. When the appointed night came, I said to Charley as soon as I was alone, "Go and knock at Mr. Jarndyce's door, Charley, and say you have come from me--'for the letter.'" Charley went up the stairs, and down the stairs, and along the passages--the zig-zag way about the old-fashioned house seemed very long in my listening ears that night--and so came back, along the passages, and down the stairs, and up the stairs, and brought the letter. "Lay it on the table, Charley," said I. So Charley laid it on the table and went to bed, and I sat looking at it without taking it up, thinking of many things. I began with my overshadowed childhood, and passed through those timid days to the heavy time when my aunt lay dead, with her resolute face so cold and set, and when I was more solitary with Mrs. Rachael than if I had had no one in the world to speak to or to look at. I passed to the altered days when I was so blest as to find friends in all around me, and to be beloved. I came to the time when I first saw my dear girl and was received into that sisterly affection which was the grace and beauty of my life. I recalled the first bright gleam of welcome which had shone out of those very windows upon our expectant faces on that cold bright night, and which had never paled. I lived my happy life there over again, I went through my illness and recovery, I thought of myself so altered and of those around me so unchanged; and all this happiness shone like a light from one central figure, represented before me by the letter on the table. I opened it and read it. It was so impressive in its love for me, and in the unselfish caution it gave me, and the consideration it showed for me in every word, that my eyes were too often blinded to read much at a time. But I read it through three times before I laid it down. I had thought beforehand that I knew its purport, and I did. It asked me, would I be the mistress of Bleak House. It was not a love letter, though it expressed so much love, but was written just as he would at any time have spoken to me. I saw his face, and heard his voice, and felt the influence of his kind protecting manner in every line. It addressed me as if our places were reversed, as if all the good deeds had been mine and all the feelings they had awakened his. It dwelt on my being young, and he past the prime of life; on his having attained a ripe age, while I was a child; on his writing to me with a silvered head, and knowing all this so well as to set it in full before me for mature deliberation. It told me that I would gain nothing by such a marriage and lose nothing by rejecting it, for no new relation could enhance the tenderness in which he held me, and whatever my decision was, he was certain it would be right. But he had considered this step anew since our late confidence and had decided on taking it, if it only served to show me through one poor instance that the whole world would readily unite to falsify the stern prediction of my childhood. I was the last to know what happiness I could bestow upon him, but of that he said no more, for I was always to remember that I owed him nothing and that he was my debtor, and for very much. He had often thought of our future, and foreseeing that the time must come, and fearing that it might come soon, when Ada (now very nearly of age) would leave us, and when our present mode of life must be broken up, had become accustomed to reflect on this proposal. Thus he made it. If I felt that I could ever give him the best right he could have to be my protector, and if I felt that I could happily and justly become the dear companion of his remaining life, superior to all lighter chances and changes than death, even then he could not have me bind myself irrevocably while this letter was yet so new to me, but even then I must have ample time for reconsideration. In that case, or in the opposite case, let him be unchanged in his old relation, in his old manner, in the old name by which I called him. And as to his bright Dame Durden and little housekeeper, she would ever be the same, he knew. This was the substance of the letter, written throughout with a justice and a dignity as if he were indeed my responsible guardian impartially representing the proposal of a friend against whom in his integrity he stated the full case. But he did not hint to me that when I had been better looking he had had this same proceeding in his thoughts and had refrained from it. That when my old face was gone from me, and I had no attractions, he could love me just as well as in my fairer days. That the discovery of my birth gave him no shock. That his generosity rose above my disfigurement and my inheritance of shame. That the more I stood in need of such fidelity, the more firmly I might trust in him to the last. But I knew it, I knew it well now. It came upon me as the close of the benignant history I had been pursuing, and I felt that I had but one thing to do. To devote my life to his happiness was to thank him poorly, and what had I wished for the other night but some new means of thanking him? Still I cried very much, not only in the fullness of my heart after reading the letter, not only in the strangeness of the prospect--for it was strange though I had expected the contents--but as if something for which there was no name or distinct idea were indefinitely lost to me. I was very happy, very thankful, very hopeful; but I cried very much. By and by I went to my old glass. My eyes were red and swollen, and I said, "Oh, Esther, Esther, can that be you!" I am afraid the face in the glass was going to cry again at this reproach, but I held up my finger at it, and it stopped. "That is more like the composed look you comforted me with, my dear, when you showed me such a change!" said I, beginning to let down my hair. "When you are mistress of Bleak House, you are to be as cheerful as a bird. In fact, you are always to be cheerful; so let us begin for once and for all." I went on with my hair now, quite comfortably. I sobbed a little still, but that was because I had been crying, not because I was crying then. "And so Esther, my dear, you are happy for life. Happy with your best friends, happy in your old home, happy in the power of doing a great deal of good, and happy in the undeserved love of the best of men." I thought, all at once, if my guardian had married some one else, how should I have felt, and what should I have done! That would have been a change indeed. It presented my life in such a new and blank form that I rang my housekeeping keys and gave them a kiss before I laid them down in their basket again. Then I went on to think, as I dressed my hair before the glass, how often had I considered within myself that the deep traces of my illness and the circumstances of my birth were only new reasons why I should be busy, busy, busy--useful, amiable, serviceable, in all honest, unpretending ways. This was a good time, to be sure, to sit down morbidly and cry! As to its seeming at all strange to me at first (if that were any excuse for crying, which it was not) that I was one day to be the mistress of Bleak House, why should it seem strange? Other people had thought of such things, if I had not. "Don't you remember, my plain dear," I asked myself, looking at the glass, "what Mrs. Woodcourt said before those scars were there about your marrying--" Perhaps the name brought them to my remembrance. The dried remains of the flowers. It would be better not to keep them now. They had only been preserved in memory of something wholly past and gone, but it would be better not to keep them now. They were in a book, and it happened to be in the next room--our sitting-room, dividing Ada's chamber from mine. I took a candle and went softly in to fetch it from its shelf. After I had it in my hand, I saw my beautiful darling, through the open door, lying asleep, and I stole in to kiss her. It was weak in me, I know, and I could have no reason for crying; but I dropped a tear upon her dear face, and another, and another. Weaker than that, I took the withered flowers out and put them for a moment to her lips. I thought about her love for Richard, though, indeed, the flowers had nothing to do with that. Then I took them into my own room and burned them at the candle, and they were dust in an instant. On entering the breakfast-room next morning, I found my guardian just as usual, quite as frank, as open, and free. There being not the least constraint in his manner, there was none (or I think there was none) in mine. I was with him several times in the course of the morning, in and out, when there was no one there, and I thought it not unlikely that he might speak to me about the letter, but he did not say a word. So, on the next morning, and the next, and for at least a week, over which time Mr. Skimpole prolonged his stay. I expected, every day, that my guardian might speak to me about the letter, but he never did. I thought then, growing uneasy, that I ought to write an answer. I tried over and over again in my own room at night, but I could not write an answer that at all began like a good answer, so I thought each night I would wait one more day. And I waited seven more days, and he never said a word. At last, Mr. Skimpole having departed, we three were one afternoon going out for a ride; and I, being dressed before Ada and going down, came upon my guardian, with his back towards me, standing at the drawing-room window looking out. He turned on my coming in and said, smiling, "Aye, it's you, little woman, is it?" and looked out again. I had made up my mind to speak to him now. In short, I had come down on purpose. "Guardian," I said, rather hesitating and trembling, "when would you like to have the answer to the letter Charley came for?" "When it's ready, my dear," he replied. "I think it is ready," said I. "Is Charley to bring it?" he asked pleasantly. "No. I have brought it myself, guardian," I returned. I put my two arms round his neck and kissed him, and he said was this the mistress of Bleak House, and I said yes; and it made no difference presently, and we all went out together, and I said nothing to my precious pet about it.

The Letter and the Answer Esther and Jarndyce speak of the Dedlock secret, realizing her mother's difficult position with both Tulkinghorn and the French maid trying to harm her. Esther says her guardian has lightened her secret. Jarndyce says he will be ever watchful to help Lady Dedlock if he can. He then says he has something particular to tell her, but he will not tell it to her unless she understands he will never change and that she can trust him. If so, he will write her a letter. He waits a week and then gives her the letter. She seems to know what it is and before she opens it, she reviews her life. She reads the letter three times. He asks her to be the mistress of Bleak House. She mentions that it was not a love letter but full of the most tender love and consideration. She had been wanting to devote her life to his happiness, but still she cries, "as if something . . . were indefinitely lost to me" . She knows that his love is strong enough to overlook her disfigurement and birth, and she takes out the dried flowers from Woodcourt and burns them. She makes Mr. Jarndyce wait two weeks for an answer, and he never pressures her, nor acts any differently towards her. Finally she puts her arms around his neck, kisses him and says, yes.

From a Correspondent. _Whitby_. One of the greatest and suddenest storms on record has just been experienced here, with results both strange and unique. The weather had been somewhat sultry, but not to any degree uncommon in the month of August. Saturday evening was as fine as was ever known, and the great body of holiday-makers laid out yesterday for visits to Mulgrave Woods, Robin Hood's Bay, Rig Mill, Runswick, Staithes, and the various trips in the neighbourhood of Whitby. The steamers _Emma_ and _Scarborough_ made trips up and down the coast, and there was an unusual amount of "tripping" both to and from Whitby. The day was unusually fine till the afternoon, when some of the gossips who frequent the East Cliff churchyard, and from that commanding eminence watch the wide sweep of sea visible to the north and east, called attention to a sudden show of "mares'-tails" high in the sky to the north-west. The wind was then blowing from the south-west in the mild degree which in barometrical language is ranked "No. 2: light breeze." The coastguard on duty at once made report, and one old fisherman, who for more than half a century has kept watch on weather signs from the East Cliff, foretold in an emphatic manner the coming of a sudden storm. The approach of sunset was so very beautiful, so grand in its masses of splendidly-coloured clouds, that there was quite an assemblage on the walk along the cliff in the old churchyard to enjoy the beauty. Before the sun dipped below the black mass of Kettleness, standing boldly athwart the western sky, its downward way was marked by myriad clouds of every sunset-colour--flame, purple, pink, green, violet, and all the tints of gold; with here and there masses not large, but of seemingly absolute blackness, in all sorts of shapes, as well outlined as colossal silhouettes. The experience was not lost on the painters, and doubtless some of the sketches of the "Prelude to the Great Storm" will grace the R. A. and R. I. walls in May next. More than one captain made up his mind then and there that his "cobble" or his "mule," as they term the different classes of boats, would remain in the harbour till the storm had passed. The wind fell away entirely during the evening, and at midnight there was a dead calm, a sultry heat, and that prevailing intensity which, on the approach of thunder, affects persons of a sensitive nature. There were but few lights in sight at sea, for even the coasting steamers, which usually "hug" the shore so closely, kept well to seaward, and but few fishing-boats were in sight. The only sail noticeable was a foreign schooner with all sails set, which was seemingly going westwards. The foolhardiness or ignorance of her officers was a prolific theme for comment whilst she remained in sight, and efforts were made to signal her to reduce sail in face of her danger. Before the night shut down she was seen with sails idly flapping as she gently rolled on the undulating swell of the sea, "As idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean." Shortly before ten o'clock the stillness of the air grew quite oppressive, and the silence was so marked that the bleating of a sheep inland or the barking of a dog in the town was distinctly heard, and the band on the pier, with its lively French air, was like a discord in the great harmony of nature's silence. A little after midnight came a strange sound from over the sea, and high overhead the air began to carry a strange, faint, hollow booming. Then without warning the tempest broke. With a rapidity which, at the time, seemed incredible, and even afterwards is impossible to realize, the whole aspect of nature at once became convulsed. The waves rose in growing fury, each overtopping its fellow, till in a very few minutes the lately glassy sea was like a roaring and devouring monster. White-crested waves beat madly on the level sands and rushed up the shelving cliffs; others broke over the piers, and with their spume swept the lanthorns of the lighthouses which rise from the end of either pier of Whitby Harbour. The wind roared like thunder, and blew with such force that it was with difficulty that even strong men kept their feet, or clung with grim clasp to the iron stanchions. It was found necessary to clear the entire piers from the mass of onlookers, or else the fatalities of the night would have been increased manifold. To add to the difficulties and dangers of the time, masses of sea-fog came drifting inland--white, wet clouds, which swept by in ghostly fashion, so dank and damp and cold that it needed but little effort of imagination to think that the spirits of those lost at sea were touching their living brethren with the clammy hands of death, and many a one shuddered as the wreaths of sea-mist swept by. At times the mist cleared, and the sea for some distance could be seen in the glare of the lightning, which now came thick and fast, followed by such sudden peals of thunder that the whole sky overhead seemed trembling under the shock of the footsteps of the storm. Some of the scenes thus revealed were of immeasurable grandeur and of absorbing interest--the sea, running mountains high, threw skywards with each wave mighty masses of white foam, which the tempest seemed to snatch at and whirl away into space; here and there a fishing-boat, with a rag of sail, running madly for shelter before the blast; now and again the white wings of a storm-tossed sea-bird. On the summit of the East Cliff the new searchlight was ready for experiment, but had not yet been tried. The officers in charge of it got it into working order, and in the pauses of the inrushing mist swept with it the surface of the sea. Once or twice its service was most effective, as when a fishing-boat, with gunwale under water, rushed into the harbour, able, by the guidance of the sheltering light, to avoid the danger of dashing against the piers. As each boat achieved the safety of the port there was a shout of joy from the mass of people on shore, a shout which for a moment seemed to cleave the gale and was then swept away in its rush. Before long the searchlight discovered some distance away a schooner with all sails set, apparently the same vessel which had been noticed earlier in the evening. The wind had by this time backed to the east, and there was a shudder amongst the watchers on the cliff as they realized the terrible danger in which she now was. Between her and the port lay the great flat reef on which so many good ships have from time to time suffered, and, with the wind blowing from its present quarter, it would be quite impossible that she should fetch the entrance of the harbour. It was now nearly the hour of high tide, but the waves were so great that in their troughs the shallows of the shore were almost visible, and the schooner, with all sails set, was rushing with such speed that, in the words of one old salt, "she must fetch up somewhere, if it was only in hell." Then came another rush of sea-fog, greater than any hitherto--a mass of dank mist, which seemed to close on all things like a grey pall, and left available to men only the organ of hearing, for the roar of the tempest, and the crash of the thunder, and the booming of the mighty billows came through the damp oblivion even louder than before. The rays of the searchlight were kept fixed on the harbour mouth across the East Pier, where the shock was expected, and men waited breathless. The wind suddenly shifted to the north-east, and the remnant of the sea-fog melted in the blast; and then, _mirabile dictu_, between the piers, leaping from wave to wave as it rushed at headlong speed, swept the strange schooner before the blast, with all sail set, and gained the safety of the harbour. The searchlight followed her, and a shudder ran through all who saw her, for lashed to the helm was a corpse, with drooping head, which swung horribly to and fro at each motion of the ship. No other form could be seen on deck at all. A great awe came on all as they realised that the ship, as if by a miracle, had found the harbour, unsteered save by the hand of a dead man! However, all took place more quickly than it takes to write these words. The schooner paused not, but rushing across the harbour, pitched herself on that accumulation of sand and gravel washed by many tides and many storms into the south-east corner of the pier jutting under the East Cliff, known locally as Tate Hill Pier. There was of course a considerable concussion as the vessel drove up on the sand heap. Every spar, rope, and stay was strained, and some of the "top-hammer" came crashing down. But, strangest of all, the very instant the shore was touched, an immense dog sprang up on deck from below, as if shot up by the concussion, and running forward, jumped from the bow on the sand. Making straight for the steep cliff, where the churchyard hangs over the laneway to the East Pier so steeply that some of the flat tombstones--"thruff-steans" or "through-stones," as they call them in the Whitby vernacular--actually project over where the sustaining cliff has fallen away, it disappeared in the darkness, which seemed intensified just beyond the focus of the searchlight. It so happened that there was no one at the moment on Tate Hill Pier, as all those whose houses are in close proximity were either in bed or were out on the heights above. Thus the coastguard on duty on the eastern side of the harbour, who at once ran down to the little pier, was the first to climb on board. The men working the searchlight, after scouring the entrance of the harbour without seeing anything, then turned the light on the derelict and kept it there. The coastguard ran aft, and when he came beside the wheel, bent over to examine it, and recoiled at once as though under some sudden emotion. This seemed to pique general curiosity, and quite a number of people began to run. It is a good way round from the West Cliff by the Drawbridge to Tate Hill Pier, but your correspondent is a fairly good runner, and came well ahead of the crowd. When I arrived, however, I found already assembled on the pier a crowd, whom the coastguard and police refused to allow to come on board. By the courtesy of the chief boatman, I was, as your correspondent, permitted to climb on deck, and was one of a small group who saw the dead seaman whilst actually lashed to the wheel. It was no wonder that the coastguard was surprised, or even awed, for not often can such a sight have been seen. The man was simply fastened by his hands, tied one over the other, to a spoke of the wheel. Between the inner hand and the wood was a crucifix, the set of beads on which it was fastened being around both wrists and wheel, and all kept fast by the binding cords. The poor fellow may have been seated at one time, but the flapping and buffeting of the sails had worked through the rudder of the wheel and dragged him to and fro, so that the cords with which he was tied had cut the flesh to the bone. Accurate note was made of the state of things, and a doctor--Surgeon J. M. Caffyn, of 33, East Elliot Place--who came immediately after me, declared, after making examination, that the man must have been dead for quite two days. In his pocket was a bottle, carefully corked, empty save for a little roll of paper, which proved to be the addendum to the log. The coastguard said the man must have tied up his own hands, fastening the knots with his teeth. The fact that a coastguard was the first on board may save some complications, later on, in the Admiralty Court; for coastguards cannot claim the salvage which is the right of the first civilian entering on a derelict. Already, however, the legal tongues are wagging, and one young law student is loudly asserting that the rights of the owner are already completely sacrificed, his property being held in contravention of the statutes of mortmain, since the tiller, as emblemship, if not proof, of delegated possession, is held in a _dead hand_. It is needless to say that the dead steersman has been reverently removed from the place where he held his honourable watch and ward till death--a steadfastness as noble as that of the young Casabianca--and placed in the mortuary to await inquest. Already the sudden storm is passing, and its fierceness is abating; crowds are scattering homeward, and the sky is beginning to redden over the Yorkshire wolds. I shall send, in time for your next issue, further details of the derelict ship which found her way so miraculously into harbour in the storm. _Whitby_ _9 August._--The sequel to the strange arrival of the derelict in the storm last night is almost more startling than the thing itself. It turns out that the schooner is a Russian from Varna, and is called the _Demeter_. She is almost entirely in ballast of silver sand, with only a small amount of cargo--a number of great wooden boxes filled with mould. This cargo was consigned to a Whitby solicitor, Mr. S. F. Billington, of 7, The Crescent, who this morning went aboard and formally took possession of the goods consigned to him. The Russian consul, too, acting for the charter-party, took formal possession of the ship, and paid all harbour dues, etc. Nothing is talked about here to-day except the strange coincidence; the officials of the Board of Trade have been most exacting in seeing that every compliance has been made with existing regulations. As the matter is to be a "nine days' wonder," they are evidently determined that there shall be no cause of after complaint. A good deal of interest was abroad concerning the dog which landed when the ship struck, and more than a few of the members of the S. P. C. A., which is very strong in Whitby, have tried to befriend the animal. To the general disappointment, however, it was not to be found; it seems to have disappeared entirely from the town. It may be that it was frightened and made its way on to the moors, where it is still hiding in terror. There are some who look with dread on such a possibility, lest later on it should in itself become a danger, for it is evidently a fierce brute. Early this morning a large dog, a half-bred mastiff belonging to a coal merchant close to Tate Hill Pier, was found dead in the roadway opposite to its master's yard. It had been fighting, and manifestly had had a savage opponent, for its throat was torn away, and its belly was slit open as if with a savage claw. * * * * * _Later._--By the kindness of the Board of Trade inspector, I have been permitted to look over the log-book of the _Demeter_, which was in order up to within three days, but contained nothing of special interest except as to facts of missing men. The greatest interest, however, is with regard to the paper found in the bottle, which was to-day produced at the inquest; and a more strange narrative than the two between them unfold it has not been my lot to come across. As there is no motive for concealment, I am permitted to use them, and accordingly send you a rescript, simply omitting technical details of seamanship and supercargo. It almost seems as though the captain had been seized with some kind of mania before he had got well into blue water, and that this had developed persistently throughout the voyage. Of course my statement must be taken _cum grano_, since I am writing from the dictation of a clerk of the Russian consul, who kindly translated for me, time being short. LOG OF THE "DEMETER." _Varna to Whitby._ _Written 18 July, things so strange happening, that I shall keep accurate note henceforth till we land._ * * * * * On 6 July we finished taking in cargo, silver sand and boxes of earth. At noon set sail. East wind, fresh. Crew, five hands ... two mates, cook, and myself (captain). * * * * * On 11 July at dawn entered Bosphorus. Boarded by Turkish Customs officers. Backsheesh. All correct. Under way at 4 p. m. * * * * * On 12 July through Dardanelles. More Customs officers and flagboat of guarding squadron. Backsheesh again. Work of officers thorough, but quick. Want us off soon. At dark passed into Archipelago. * * * * * On 13 July passed Cape Matapan. Crew dissatisfied about something. Seemed scared, but would not speak out. * * * * * On 14 July was somewhat anxious about crew. Men all steady fellows, who sailed with me before. Mate could not make out what was wrong; they only told him there was _something_, and crossed themselves. Mate lost temper with one of them that day and struck him. Expected fierce quarrel, but all was quiet. * * * * * On 16 July mate reported in the morning that one of crew, Petrofsky, was missing. Could not account for it. Took larboard watch eight bells last night; was relieved by Abramoff, but did not go to bunk. Men more downcast than ever. All said they expected something of the kind, but would not say more than there was _something_ aboard. Mate getting very impatient with them; feared some trouble ahead. * * * * * On 17 July, yesterday, one of the men, Olgaren, came to my cabin, and in an awestruck way confided to me that he thought there was a strange man aboard the ship. He said that in his watch he had been sheltering behind the deck-house, as there was a rain-storm, when he saw a tall, thin man, who was not like any of the crew, come up the companion-way, and go along the deck forward, and disappear. He followed cautiously, but when he got to bows found no one, and the hatchways were all closed. He was in a panic of superstitious fear, and I am afraid the panic may spread. To allay it, I shall to-day search entire ship carefully from stem to stern. * * * * * Later in the day I got together the whole crew, and told them, as they evidently thought there was some one in the ship, we would search from stem to stern. First mate angry; said it was folly, and to yield to such foolish ideas would demoralise the men; said he would engage to keep them out of trouble with a handspike. I let him take the helm, while the rest began thorough search, all keeping abreast, with lanterns: we left no corner unsearched. As there were only the big wooden boxes, there were no odd corners where a man could hide. Men much relieved when search over, and went back to work cheerfully. First mate scowled, but said nothing. * * * * * _22 July_.--Rough weather last three days, and all hands busy with sails--no time to be frightened. Men seem to have forgotten their dread. Mate cheerful again, and all on good terms. Praised men for work in bad weather. Passed Gibralter and out through Straits. All well. * * * * * _24 July_.--There seems some doom over this ship. Already a hand short, and entering on the Bay of Biscay with wild weather ahead, and yet last night another man lost--disappeared. Like the first, he came off his watch and was not seen again. Men all in a panic of fear; sent a round robin, asking to have double watch, as they fear to be alone. Mate angry. Fear there will be some trouble, as either he or the men will do some violence. * * * * * _28 July_.--Four days in hell, knocking about in a sort of maelstrom, and the wind a tempest. No sleep for any one. Men all worn out. Hardly know how to set a watch, since no one fit to go on. Second mate volunteered to steer and watch, and let men snatch a few hours' sleep. Wind abating; seas still terrific, but feel them less, as ship is steadier. * * * * * _29 July_.--Another tragedy. Had single watch to-night, as crew too tired to double. When morning watch came on deck could find no one except steersman. Raised outcry, and all came on deck. Thorough search, but no one found. Are now without second mate, and crew in a panic. Mate and I agreed to go armed henceforth and wait for any sign of cause. * * * * * _30 July_.--Last night. Rejoiced we are nearing England. Weather fine, all sails set. Retired worn out; slept soundly; awaked by mate telling me that both man of watch and steersman missing. Only self and mate and two hands left to work ship. * * * * * _1 August_.--Two days of fog, and not a sail sighted. Had hoped when in the English Channel to be able to signal for help or get in somewhere. Not having power to work sails, have to run before wind. Dare not lower, as could not raise them again. We seem to be drifting to some terrible doom. Mate now more demoralised than either of men. His stronger nature seems to have worked inwardly against himself. Men are beyond fear, working stolidly and patiently, with minds made up to worst. They are Russian, he Roumanian. * * * * * _2 August, midnight_.--Woke up from few minutes' sleep by hearing a cry, seemingly outside my port. Could see nothing in fog. Rushed on deck, and ran against mate. Tells me heard cry and ran, but no sign of man on watch. One more gone. Lord, help us! Mate says we must be past Straits of Dover, as in a moment of fog lifting he saw North Foreland, just as he heard the man cry out. If so we are now off in the North Sea, and only God can guide us in the fog, which seems to move with us; and God seems to have deserted us. * * * * * _3 August_.--At midnight I went to relieve the man at the wheel, and when I got to it found no one there. The wind was steady, and as we ran before it there was no yawing. I dared not leave it, so shouted for the mate. After a few seconds he rushed up on deck in his flannels. He looked wild-eyed and haggard, and I greatly fear his reason has given way. He came close to me and whispered hoarsely, with his mouth to my ear, as though fearing the very air might hear: "_It_ is here; I know it, now. On the watch last night I saw It, like a man, tall and thin, and ghastly pale. It was in the bows, and looking out. I crept behind It, and gave It my knife; but the knife went through It, empty as the air." And as he spoke he took his knife and drove it savagely into space. Then he went on: "But It is here, and I'll find It. It is in the hold, perhaps in one of those boxes. I'll unscrew them one by one and see. You work the helm." And, with a warning look and his finger on his lip, he went below. There was springing up a choppy wind, and I could not leave the helm. I saw him come out on deck again with a tool-chest and a lantern, and go down the forward hatchway. He is mad, stark, raving mad, and it's no use my trying to stop him. He can't hurt those big boxes: they are invoiced as "clay," and to pull them about is as harmless a thing as he can do. So here I stay, and mind the helm, and write these notes. I can only trust in God and wait till the fog clears. Then, if I can't steer to any harbour with the wind that is, I shall cut down sails and lie by, and signal for help.... * * * * * It is nearly all over now. Just as I was beginning to hope that the mate would come out calmer--for I heard him knocking away at something in the hold, and work is good for him--there came up the hatchway a sudden, startled scream, which made my blood run cold, and up on the deck he came as if shot from a gun--a raging madman, with his eyes rolling and his face convulsed with fear. "Save me! save me!" he cried, and then looked round on the blanket of fog. His horror turned to despair, and in a steady voice he said: "You had better come too, captain, before it is too late. _He_ is there. I know the secret now. The sea will save me from Him, and it is all that is left!" Before I could say a word, or move forward to seize him, he sprang on the bulwark and deliberately threw himself into the sea. I suppose I know the secret too, now. It was this madman who had got rid of the men one by one, and now he has followed them himself. God help me! How am I to account for all these horrors when I get to port? _When_ I get to port! Will that ever be? * * * * * _4 August._--Still fog, which the sunrise cannot pierce. I know there is sunrise because I am a sailor, why else I know not. I dared not go below, I dared not leave the helm; so here all night I stayed, and in the dimness of the night I saw It--Him! God forgive me, but the mate was right to jump overboard. It was better to die like a man; to die like a sailor in blue water no man can object. But I am captain, and I must not leave my ship. But I shall baffle this fiend or monster, for I shall tie my hands to the wheel when my strength begins to fail, and along with them I shall tie that which He--It!--dare not touch; and then, come good wind or foul, I shall save my soul, and my honour as a captain. I am growing weaker, and the night is coming on. If He can look me in the face again, I may not have time to act.... If we are wrecked, mayhap this bottle may be found, and those who find it may understand; if not, ... well, then all men shall know that I have been true to my trust. God and the Blessed Virgin and the saints help a poor ignorant soul trying to do his duty.... * * * * * Of course the verdict was an open one. There is no evidence to adduce; and whether or not the man himself committed the murders there is now none to say. The folk here hold almost universally that the captain is simply a hero, and he is to be given a public funeral. Already it is arranged that his body is to be taken with a train of boats up the Esk for a piece and then brought back to Tate Hill Pier and up the abbey steps; for he is to be buried in the churchyard on the cliff. The owners of more than a hundred boats have already given in their names as wishing to follow him to the grave. No trace has ever been found of the great dog; at which there is much mourning, for, with public opinion in its present state, he would, I believe, be adopted by the town. To-morrow will see the funeral; and so will end this one more "mystery of the sea." _Mina Murray's Journal._ _8 August._--Lucy was very restless all night, and I, too, could not sleep. The storm was fearful, and as it boomed loudly among the chimney-pots, it made me shudder. When a sharp puff came it seemed to be like a distant gun. Strangely enough, Lucy did not wake; but she got up twice and dressed herself. Fortunately, each time I awoke in time and managed to undress her without waking her, and got her back to bed. It is a very strange thing, this sleep-walking, for as soon as her will is thwarted in any physical way, her intention, if there be any, disappears, and she yields herself almost exactly to the routine of her life. Early in the morning we both got up and went down to the harbour to see if anything had happened in the night. There were very few people about, and though the sun was bright, and the air clear and fresh, the big, grim-looking waves, that seemed dark themselves because the foam that topped them was like snow, forced themselves in through the narrow mouth of the harbour--like a bullying man going through a crowd. Somehow I felt glad that Jonathan was not on the sea last night, but on land. But, oh, is he on land or sea? Where is he, and how? I am getting fearfully anxious about him. If I only knew what to do, and could do anything! * * * * * _10 August._--The funeral of the poor sea-captain to-day was most touching. Every boat in the harbour seemed to be there, and the coffin was carried by captains all the way from Tate Hill Pier up to the churchyard. Lucy came with me, and we went early to our old seat, whilst the cortege of boats went up the river to the Viaduct and came down again. We had a lovely view, and saw the procession nearly all the way. The poor fellow was laid to rest quite near our seat so that we stood on it when the time came and saw everything. Poor Lucy seemed much upset. She was restless and uneasy all the time, and I cannot but think that her dreaming at night is telling on her. She is quite odd in one thing: she will not admit to me that there is any cause for restlessness; or if there be, she does not understand it herself. There is an additional cause in that poor old Mr. Swales was found dead this morning on our seat, his neck being broken. He had evidently, as the doctor said, fallen back in the seat in some sort of fright, for there was a look of fear and horror on his face that the men said made them shudder. Poor dear old man! Perhaps he had seen Death with his dying eyes! Lucy is so sweet and sensitive that she feels influences more acutely than other people do. Just now she was quite upset by a little thing which I did not much heed, though I am myself very fond of animals. One of the men who came up here often to look for the boats was followed by his dog. The dog is always with him. They are both quiet persons, and I never saw the man angry, nor heard the dog bark. During the service the dog would not come to its master, who was on the seat with us, but kept a few yards off, barking and howling. Its master spoke to it gently, and then harshly, and then angrily; but it would neither come nor cease to make a noise. It was in a sort of fury, with its eyes savage, and all its hairs bristling out like a cat's tail when puss is on the war-path. Finally the man, too, got angry, and jumped down and kicked the dog, and then took it by the scruff of the neck and half dragged and half threw it on the tombstone on which the seat is fixed. The moment it touched the stone the poor thing became quiet and fell all into a tremble. It did not try to get away, but crouched down, quivering and cowering, and was in such a pitiable state of terror that I tried, though without effect, to comfort it. Lucy was full of pity, too, but she did not attempt to touch the dog, but looked at it in an agonised sort of way. I greatly fear that she is of too super-sensitive a nature to go through the world without trouble. She will be dreaming of this to-night, I am sure. The whole agglomeration of things--the ship steered into port by a dead man; his attitude, tied to the wheel with a crucifix and beads; the touching funeral; the dog, now furious and now in terror--will all afford material for her dreams. I think it will be best for her to go to bed tired out physically, so I shall take her for a long walk by the cliffs to Robin Hood's Bay and back. She ought not to have much inclination for sleep-walking then.

The chapter opens with a newspaper article that Mina has pasted in her journal about the great storm of August 8. The newspaper describes the storm very vividly--the tone doesn't sound much like a modern newspaper. As the storm was getting really rough, lots of townspeople gathered on the hill above town to watch the strange ship that was coming into town. Everyone commented on how strangely it was being steered. The storm was getting pretty ridiculous. Everyone was afraid the ship would be sunk on rocks or would crash into the pier as it came into the harbor. When it got close, the people watching realized why it was being steered so haphazardly: The pilot was dead. He was just tied to the helm and kind of flopped back and forth with every wave. Miraculously, though, the ship made it safely to the beach. As it hit the shore, a big dog leaped out and disappeared. Mina learns that the strange ship is from Varna and that its cargo was just a bunch of wooden boxes filled with dirt. No one ever found the strange dog that jumped out of the ship, although a lot of people looked for it. Mina gets permission from the Board of Trade inspector to copy down the log of the captain of the ship . The chapter continues with Mina's copy of the captain's log. The voyage starts out fine--they take on their cargo and leave as usual. The crew seems nervous about something, though. On July 16, one of the crew goes missing. On July 17, another member of the crew tells the captain that he saw a strange man on the ship. The captain thinks it is just superstition, but he has the ship searched anyway. On July 24, another man disappears. There is a big storm, and then another man disappears. At least they're getting close to England. On August 3, even the first mate starts acting weird--he claims to have seen something that he just calls "It" and swears he'll find it and kill it. The captain assumes the first mate has gone crazy. The first mate comes back out on deck and throws himself overboard. The captain finally believes that something is wrong... and he figures out what it is. He doesn't want to throw himself overboard, since he's the captain. So he ties himself to the helm with a rosary between his hands to keep "It" away. And so his log entries ended. Mina says that the captain was going to be given a hero's burial in Whitby because he stayed at his post until death. Mina plans on watching the funeral procession. Lucy is sleepwalking again--she got up twice during the night to get dressed, and so Mina kept having to get up and put Lucy back to bed again. The old man who had befriended Mina and Lucy is found dead at their favorite seat up on the hill above the town: His neck was broken. That was the day of the funeral procession for the ship's captain, which Lucy and Mina went to watch.

The next day, contrary to the prognostications of our guides, was fine, although clouded. We visited the source of the Arveiron, and rode about the valley until evening. These sublime and magnificent scenes afforded me the greatest consolation that I was capable of receiving. They elevated me from all littleness of feeling; and although they did not remove my grief, they subdued and tranquillized it. In some degree, also, they diverted my mind from the thoughts over which it had brooded for the last month. I returned in the evening, fatigued, but less unhappy, and conversed with my family with more cheerfulness than had been my custom for some time. My father was pleased, and Elizabeth overjoyed. "My dear cousin," said she, "you see what happiness you diffuse when you are happy; do not relapse again!" The following morning the rain poured down in torrents, and thick mists hid the summits of the mountains. I rose early, but felt unusually melancholy. The rain depressed me; my old feelings recurred, and I was miserable. I knew how disappointed my father would be at this sudden change, and I wished to avoid him until I had recovered myself so far as to be enabled to conceal those feelings that overpowered me. I knew that they would remain that day at the inn; and as I had ever inured myself to rain, moisture, and cold, I resolved to go alone to the summit of Montanvert. I remembered the effect that the view of the tremendous and ever-moving glacier had produced upon my mind when I first saw it. It had then filled me with a sublime ecstacy that gave wings to the soul, and allowed it to soar from the obscure world to light and joy. The sight of the awful and majestic in nature had indeed always the effect of solemnizing my mind, and causing me to forget the passing cares of life. I determined to go alone, for I was well acquainted with the path, and the presence of another would destroy the solitary grandeur of the scene. The ascent is precipitous, but the path is cut into continual and short windings, which enable you to surmount the perpendicularity of the mountain. It is a scene terrifically desolate. In a thousand spots the traces of the winter avalanche may be perceived, where trees lie broken and strewed on the ground; some entirely destroyed, others bent, leaning upon the jutting rocks of the mountain, or transversely upon other trees. The path, as you ascend higher, is intersected by ravines of snow, down which stones continually roll from above; one of them is particularly dangerous, as the slightest sound, such as even speaking in a loud voice, produces a concussion of air sufficient to draw destruction upon the head of the speaker. The pines are not tall or luxuriant, but they are sombre, and add an air of severity to the scene. I looked on the valley beneath; vast mists were rising from the rivers which ran through it, and curling in thick wreaths around the opposite mountains, whose summits were hid in the uniform clouds, while rain poured from the dark sky, and added to the melancholy impression I received from the objects around me. Alas! why does man boast of sensibilities superior to those apparent in the brute; it only renders them more necessary beings. If our impulses were confined to hunger, thirst, and desire, we might be nearly free; but now we are moved by every wind that blows, and a chance word or scene that that word may convey to us. We rest; a dream has power to poison sleep. We rise; one wand'ring thought pollutes the day. We feel, conceive, or reason; laugh, or weep, Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away; It is the same: for, be it joy or sorrow, The path of its departure still is free. Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow; Nought may endure but mutability! It was nearly noon when I arrived at the top of the ascent. For some time I sat upon the rock that overlooks the sea of ice. A mist covered both that and the surrounding mountains. Presently a breeze dissipated the cloud, and I descended upon the glacier. The surface is very uneven, rising like the waves of a troubled sea, descending low, and interspersed by rifts that sink deep. The field of ice is almost a league in width, but I spent nearly two hours in crossing it. The opposite mountain is a bare perpendicular rock. From the side where I now stood Montanvert was exactly opposite, at the distance of a league; and above it rose Mont Blanc, in awful majesty. I remained in a recess of the rock, gazing on this wonderful and stupendous scene. The sea, or rather the vast river of ice, wound among its dependent mountains, whose aerial summits hung over its recesses. Their icy and glittering peaks shone in the sunlight over the clouds. My heart, which was before sorrowful, now swelled with something like joy; I exclaimed--"Wandering spirits, if indeed ye wander, and do not rest in your narrow beds, allow me this faint happiness, or take me, as your companion, away from the joys of life." As I said this, I suddenly beheld the figure of a man, at some distance, advancing towards me with superhuman speed. He bounded over the crevices in the ice, among which I had walked with caution; his stature also, as he approached, seemed to exceed that of man. I was troubled: a mist came over my eyes, and I felt a faintness seize me; but I was quickly restored by the cold gale of the mountains. I perceived, as the shape came nearer, (sight tremendous and abhorred!) that it was the wretch whom I had created. I trembled with rage and horror, resolving to wait his approach, and then close with him in mortal combat. He approached; his countenance bespoke bitter anguish, combined with disdain and malignity, while its unearthly ugliness rendered it almost too horrible for human eyes. But I scarcely observed this; anger and hatred had at first deprived me of utterance, and I recovered only to overwhelm him with words expressive of furious detestation and contempt. "Devil!" I exclaimed, "do you dare approach me? and do not you fear the fierce vengeance of my arm wreaked on your miserable head? Begone, vile insect! or rather stay, that I may trample you to dust! and, oh, that I could, with the extinction of your miserable existence, restore those victims whom you have so diabolically murdered!" "I expected this reception," said the daemon. "All men hate the wretched; how then must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoluble by the annihilation of one of us. You purpose to kill me. How dare you sport thus with life? Do your duty towards me, and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind. If you will comply with my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace; but if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death, until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends." "Abhorred monster! fiend that thou art! the tortures of hell are too mild a vengeance for thy crimes. Wretched devil! you reproach me with your creation; come on then, that I may extinguish the spark which I so negligently bestowed." My rage was without bounds; I sprang on him, impelled by all the feelings which can arm one being against the existence of another. He easily eluded me, and said, "Be calm! I entreat you to hear me, before you give vent to your hatred on my devoted head. Have I not suffered enough, that you seek to increase my misery? Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it. Remember, thou hast made me more powerful than thyself; my height is superior to thine; my joints more supple. But I will not be tempted to set myself in opposition to thee. I am thy creature, and I will be even mild and docile to my natural lord and king, if thou wilt also perform thy part, the which thou owest me. Oh, Frankenstein, be not equitable to every other, and trample upon me alone, to whom thy justice, and even thy clemency and affection, is most due. Remember, that I am thy creature: I ought to be thy Adam; but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed. Every where I see bliss, from which I alone am irrevocably excluded. I was benevolent and good; misery made me a fiend. Make me happy, and I shall again be virtuous." "Begone! I will not hear you. There can be no community between you and me; we are enemies. Begone, or let us try our strength in a fight, in which one must fall." "How can I move thee? Will no entreaties cause thee to turn a favourable eye upon thy creature, who implores thy goodness and compassion? Believe me, Frankenstein: I was benevolent; my soul glowed with love and humanity: but am I not alone, miserably alone? You, my creator, abhor me; what hope can I gather from your fellow-creatures, who owe me nothing? they spurn and hate me. The desert mountains and dreary glaciers are my refuge. I have wandered here many days; the caves of ice, which I only do not fear, are a dwelling to me, and the only one which man does not grudge. These bleak skies I hail, for they are kinder to me than your fellow-beings. If the multitude of mankind knew of my existence, they would do as you do, and arm themselves for my destruction. Shall I not then hate them who abhor me? I will keep no terms with my enemies. I am miserable, and they shall share my wretchedness. Yet it is in your power to recompense me, and deliver them from an evil which it only remains for you to make so great, that not only you and your family, but thousands of others, shall be swallowed up in the whirlwinds of its rage. Let your compassion be moved, and do not disdain me. Listen to my tale: when you have heard that, abandon or commiserate me, as you shall judge that I deserve. But hear me. The guilty are allowed, by human laws, bloody as they may be, to speak in their own defence before they are condemned. Listen to me, Frankenstein. You accuse me of murder; and yet you would, with a satisfied conscience, destroy your own creature. Oh, praise the eternal justice of man! Yet I ask you not to spare me: listen to me; and then, if you can, and if you will, destroy the work of your hands." "Why do you call to my remembrance circumstances of which I shudder to reflect, that I have been the miserable origin and author? Cursed be the day, abhorred devil, in which you first saw light! Cursed (although I curse myself) be the hands that formed you! You have made me wretched beyond expression. You have left me no power to consider whether I am just to you, or not. Begone! relieve me from the sight of your detested form." "Thus I relieve thee, my creator," he said, and placed his hated hands before my eyes, which I flung from me with violence; "thus I take from thee a sight which you abhor. Still thou canst listen to me, and grant me thy compassion. By the virtues that I once possessed, I demand this from you. Hear my tale; it is long and strange, and the temperature of this place is not fitting to your fine sensations; come to the hut upon the mountain. The sun is yet high in the heavens; before it descends to hide itself behind yon snowy precipices, and illuminate another world, you will have heard my story, and can decide. On you it rests, whether I quit for ever the neighbourhood of man, and lead a harmless life, or become the scourge of your fellow-creatures, and the author of your own speedy ruin." As he said this, he led the way across the ice: I followed. My heart was full, and I did not answer him; but, as I proceeded, I weighed the various arguments that he had used, and determined at least to listen to his tale. I was partly urged by curiosity, and compassion confirmed my resolution. I had hitherto supposed him to be the murderer of my brother, and I eagerly sought a confirmation or denial of this opinion. For the first time, also, I felt what the duties of a creator towards his creature were, and that I ought to render him happy before I complained of his wickedness. These motives urged me to comply with his demand. We crossed the ice, therefore, and ascended the opposite rock. The air was cold, and the rain again began to descend: we entered the hut, the fiend with an air of exultation, I with a heavy heart, and depressed spirits. But I consented to listen; and, seating myself by the fire which my odious companion had lighted, he thus began his tale.

Victor's wanderings bring him to the glacier on Mount Montanvert and the monster confronts him again. Victor wishes to destroy his creation or die in the attempt, but the monster convinces Victor to listen to his story. The monster has been living in a hut and there he tells his story to Victor.

THE SIEGE OF KEMP'S HOUSE Kemp read a strange missive, written in pencil on a greasy sheet of paper. "You have been amazingly energetic and clever," this letter ran, "though what you stand to gain by it I cannot imagine. You are against me. For a whole day you have chased me; you have tried to rob me of a night's rest. But I have had food in spite of you, I have slept in spite of you, and the game is only beginning. The game is only beginning. There is nothing for it, but to start the Terror. This announces the first day of the Terror. Port Burdock is no longer under the Queen, tell your Colonel of Police, and the rest of them; it is under me--the Terror! This is day one of year one of the new epoch--the Epoch of the Invisible Man. I am Invisible Man the First. To begin with the rule will be easy. The first day there will be one execution for the sake of example--a man named Kemp. Death starts for him to-day. He may lock himself away, hide himself away, get guards about him, put on armour if he likes--Death, the unseen Death, is coming. Let him take precautions; it will impress my people. Death starts from the pillar box by midday. The letter will fall in as the postman comes along, then off! The game begins. Death starts. Help him not, my people, lest Death fall upon you also. To-day Kemp is to die." Kemp read this letter twice, "It's no hoax," he said. "That's his voice! And he means it." He turned the folded sheet over and saw on the addressed side of it the postmark Hintondean, and the prosaic detail "2d. to pay." He got up slowly, leaving his lunch unfinished--the letter had come by the one o'clock post--and went into his study. He rang for his housekeeper, and told her to go round the house at once, examine all the fastenings of the windows, and close all the shutters. He closed the shutters of his study himself. From a locked drawer in his bedroom he took a little revolver, examined it carefully, and put it into the pocket of his lounge jacket. He wrote a number of brief notes, one to Colonel Adye, gave them to his servant to take, with explicit instructions as to her way of leaving the house. "There is no danger," he said, and added a mental reservation, "to you." He remained meditative for a space after doing this, and then returned to his cooling lunch. He ate with gaps of thought. Finally he struck the table sharply. "We will have him!" he said; "and I am the bait. He will come too far." He went up to the belvedere, carefully shutting every door after him. "It's a game," he said, "an odd game--but the chances are all for me, Mr. Griffin, in spite of your invisibility. Griffin _contra mundum_ ... with a vengeance." He stood at the window staring at the hot hillside. "He must get food every day--and I don't envy him. Did he really sleep last night? Out in the open somewhere--secure from collisions. I wish we could get some good cold wet weather instead of the heat. "He may be watching me now." He went close to the window. Something rapped smartly against the brickwork over the frame, and made him start violently back. "I'm getting nervous," said Kemp. But it was five minutes before he went to the window again. "It must have been a sparrow," he said. Presently he heard the front-door bell ringing, and hurried downstairs. He unbolted and unlocked the door, examined the chain, put it up, and opened cautiously without showing himself. A familiar voice hailed him. It was Adye. "Your servant's been assaulted, Kemp," he said round the door. "What!" exclaimed Kemp. "Had that note of yours taken away from her. He's close about here. Let me in." Kemp released the chain, and Adye entered through as narrow an opening as possible. He stood in the hall, looking with infinite relief at Kemp refastening the door. "Note was snatched out of her hand. Scared her horribly. She's down at the station. Hysterics. He's close here. What was it about?" Kemp swore. "What a fool I was," said Kemp. "I might have known. It's not an hour's walk from Hintondean. Already?" "What's up?" said Adye. "Look here!" said Kemp, and led the way into his study. He handed Adye the Invisible Man's letter. Adye read it and whistled softly. "And you--?" said Adye. "Proposed a trap--like a fool," said Kemp, "and sent my proposal out by a maid servant. To him." Adye followed Kemp's profanity. "He'll clear out," said Adye. "Not he," said Kemp. A resounding smash of glass came from upstairs. Adye had a silvery glimpse of a little revolver half out of Kemp's pocket. "It's a window, upstairs!" said Kemp, and led the way up. There came a second smash while they were still on the staircase. When they reached the study they found two of the three windows smashed, half the room littered with splintered glass, and one big flint lying on the writing table. The two men stopped in the doorway, contemplating the wreckage. Kemp swore again, and as he did so the third window went with a snap like a pistol, hung starred for a moment, and collapsed in jagged, shivering triangles into the room. "What's this for?" said Adye. "It's a beginning," said Kemp. "There's no way of climbing up here?" "Not for a cat," said Kemp. "No shutters?" "Not here. All the downstairs rooms--Hullo!" Smash, and then whack of boards hit hard came from downstairs. "Confound him!" said Kemp. "That must be--yes--it's one of the bedrooms. He's going to do all the house. But he's a fool. The shutters are up, and the glass will fall outside. He'll cut his feet." Another window proclaimed its destruction. The two men stood on the landing perplexed. "I have it!" said Adye. "Let me have a stick or something, and I'll go down to the station and get the bloodhounds put on. That ought to settle him! They're hard by--not ten minutes--" Another window went the way of its fellows. "You haven't a revolver?" asked Adye. Kemp's hand went to his pocket. Then he hesitated. "I haven't one--at least to spare." "I'll bring it back," said Adye, "you'll be safe here." Kemp, ashamed of his momentary lapse from truthfulness, handed him the weapon. "Now for the door," said Adye. As they stood hesitating in the hall, they heard one of the first-floor bedroom windows crack and clash. Kemp went to the door and began to slip the bolts as silently as possible. His face was a little paler than usual. "You must step straight out," said Kemp. In another moment Adye was on the doorstep and the bolts were dropping back into the staples. He hesitated for a moment, feeling more comfortable with his back against the door. Then he marched, upright and square, down the steps. He crossed the lawn and approached the gate. A little breeze seemed to ripple over the grass. Something moved near him. "Stop a bit," said a Voice, and Adye stopped dead and his hand tightened on the revolver. "Well?" said Adye, white and grim, and every nerve tense. "Oblige me by going back to the house," said the Voice, as tense and grim as Adye's. "Sorry," said Adye a little hoarsely, and moistened his lips with his tongue. The Voice was on his left front, he thought. Suppose he were to take his luck with a shot? "What are you going for?" said the Voice, and there was a quick movement of the two, and a flash of sunlight from the open lip of Adye's pocket. Adye desisted and thought. "Where I go," he said slowly, "is my own business." The words were still on his lips, when an arm came round his neck, his back felt a knee, and he was sprawling backward. He drew clumsily and fired absurdly, and in another moment he was struck in the mouth and the revolver wrested from his grip. He made a vain clutch at a slippery limb, tried to struggle up and fell back. "Damn!" said Adye. The Voice laughed. "I'd kill you now if it wasn't the waste of a bullet," it said. He saw the revolver in mid-air, six feet off, covering him. "Well?" said Adye, sitting up. "Get up," said the Voice. Adye stood up. "Attention," said the Voice, and then fiercely, "Don't try any games. Remember I can see your face if you can't see mine. You've got to go back to the house." "He won't let me in," said Adye. "That's a pity," said the Invisible Man. "I've got no quarrel with you." Adye moistened his lips again. He glanced away from the barrel of the revolver and saw the sea far off very blue and dark under the midday sun, the smooth green down, the white cliff of the Head, and the multitudinous town, and suddenly he knew that life was very sweet. His eyes came back to this little metal thing hanging between heaven and earth, six yards away. "What am I to do?" he said sullenly. "What am _I_ to do?" asked the Invisible Man. "You will get help. The only thing is for you to go back." "I will try. If he lets me in will you promise not to rush the door?" "I've got no quarrel with you," said the Voice. Kemp had hurried upstairs after letting Adye out, and now crouching among the broken glass and peering cautiously over the edge of the study window sill, he saw Adye stand parleying with the Unseen. "Why doesn't he fire?" whispered Kemp to himself. Then the revolver moved a little and the glint of the sunlight flashed in Kemp's eyes. He shaded his eyes and tried to see the source of the blinding beam. "Surely!" he said, "Adye has given up the revolver." "Promise not to rush the door," Adye was saying. "Don't push a winning game too far. Give a man a chance." "You go back to the house. I tell you flatly I will not promise anything." Adye's decision seemed suddenly made. He turned towards the house, walking slowly with his hands behind him. Kemp watched him--puzzled. The revolver vanished, flashed again into sight, vanished again, and became evident on a closer scrutiny as a little dark object following Adye. Then things happened very quickly. Adye leapt backwards, swung around, clutched at this little object, missed it, threw up his hands and fell forward on his face, leaving a little puff of blue in the air. Kemp did not hear the sound of the shot. Adye writhed, raised himself on one arm, fell forward, and lay still. For a space Kemp remained staring at the quiet carelessness of Adye's attitude. The afternoon was very hot and still, nothing seemed stirring in all the world save a couple of yellow butterflies chasing each other through the shrubbery between the house and the road gate. Adye lay on the lawn near the gate. The blinds of all the villas down the hill-road were drawn, but in one little green summer-house was a white figure, apparently an old man asleep. Kemp scrutinised the surroundings of the house for a glimpse of the revolver, but it had vanished. His eyes came back to Adye. The game was opening well. Then came a ringing and knocking at the front door, that grew at last tumultuous, but pursuant to Kemp's instructions the servants had locked themselves into their rooms. This was followed by a silence. Kemp sat listening and then began peering cautiously out of the three windows, one after another. He went to the staircase head and stood listening uneasily. He armed himself with his bedroom poker, and went to examine the interior fastenings of the ground-floor windows again. Everything was safe and quiet. He returned to the belvedere. Adye lay motionless over the edge of the gravel just as he had fallen. Coming along the road by the villas were the housemaid and two policemen. Everything was deadly still. The three people seemed very slow in approaching. He wondered what his antagonist was doing. He started. There was a smash from below. He hesitated and went downstairs again. Suddenly the house resounded with heavy blows and the splintering of wood. He heard a smash and the destructive clang of the iron fastenings of the shutters. He turned the key and opened the kitchen door. As he did so, the shutters, split and splintering, came flying inward. He stood aghast. The window frame, save for one crossbar, was still intact, but only little teeth of glass remained in the frame. The shutters had been driven in with an axe, and now the axe was descending in sweeping blows upon the window frame and the iron bars defending it. Then suddenly it leapt aside and vanished. He saw the revolver lying on the path outside, and then the little weapon sprang into the air. He dodged back. The revolver cracked just too late, and a splinter from the edge of the closing door flashed over his head. He slammed and locked the door, and as he stood outside he heard Griffin shouting and laughing. Then the blows of the axe with its splitting and smashing consequences, were resumed. Kemp stood in the passage trying to think. In a moment the Invisible Man would be in the kitchen. This door would not keep him a moment, and then-- A ringing came at the front door again. It would be the policemen. He ran into the hall, put up the chain, and drew the bolts. He made the girl speak before he dropped the chain, and the three people blundered into the house in a heap, and Kemp slammed the door again. "The Invisible Man!" said Kemp. "He has a revolver, with two shots--left. He's killed Adye. Shot him anyhow. Didn't you see him on the lawn? He's lying there." "Who?" said one of the policemen. "Adye," said Kemp. "We came in the back way," said the girl. "What's that smashing?" asked one of the policemen. "He's in the kitchen--or will be. He has found an axe--" Suddenly the house was full of the Invisible Man's resounding blows on the kitchen door. The girl stared towards the kitchen, shuddered, and retreated into the dining-room. Kemp tried to explain in broken sentences. They heard the kitchen door give. "This way," said Kemp, starting into activity, and bundled the policemen into the dining-room doorway. "Poker," said Kemp, and rushed to the fender. He handed the poker he had carried to the policeman and the dining-room one to the other. He suddenly flung himself backward. "Whup!" said one policeman, ducked, and caught the axe on his poker. The pistol snapped its penultimate shot and ripped a valuable Sidney Cooper. The second policeman brought his poker down on the little weapon, as one might knock down a wasp, and sent it rattling to the floor. At the first clash the girl screamed, stood screaming for a moment by the fireplace, and then ran to open the shutters--possibly with an idea of escaping by the shattered window. The axe receded into the passage, and fell to a position about two feet from the ground. They could hear the Invisible Man breathing. "Stand away, you two," he said. "I want that man Kemp." "We want you," said the first policeman, making a quick step forward and wiping with his poker at the Voice. The Invisible Man must have started back, and he blundered into the umbrella stand. Then, as the policeman staggered with the swing of the blow he had aimed, the Invisible Man countered with the axe, the helmet crumpled like paper, and the blow sent the man spinning to the floor at the head of the kitchen stairs. But the second policeman, aiming behind the axe with his poker, hit something soft that snapped. There was a sharp exclamation of pain and then the axe fell to the ground. The policeman wiped again at vacancy and hit nothing; he put his foot on the axe, and struck again. Then he stood, poker clubbed, listening intent for the slightest movement. He heard the dining-room window open, and a quick rush of feet within. His companion rolled over and sat up, with the blood running down between his eye and ear. "Where is he?" asked the man on the floor. "Don't know. I've hit him. He's standing somewhere in the hall. Unless he's slipped past you. Doctor Kemp--sir." Pause. "Doctor Kemp," cried the policeman again. The second policeman began struggling to his feet. He stood up. Suddenly the faint pad of bare feet on the kitchen stairs could be heard. "Yap!" cried the first policeman, and incontinently flung his poker. It smashed a little gas bracket. He made as if he would pursue the Invisible Man downstairs. Then he thought better of it and stepped into the dining-room. "Doctor Kemp--" he began, and stopped short. "Doctor Kemp's a hero," he said, as his companion looked over his shoulder. The dining-room window was wide open, and neither housemaid nor Kemp was to be seen. The second policeman's opinion of Kemp was terse and vivid.

In the worst letter ever, Griffin tells Kemp that he is taking charge: "Port Burdock is no longer under the Queen, tell your Colonel of Police, and the rest of them; it is under me--the Terror! This is day one of year one of the new epoch--the Epoch of the Invisible Man. I am Invisible Man the First" . The letter also says that Griffin will kill Kemp that day. No big deal. What's even better is that Griffin sent that letter without a stamp, so Kemp had to pay for it upon delivery. As we said, worst letter ever. Kemp has his housekeeper lock up all the windows and gets his revolver ready. He writes a note for Adye, saying that Kemp will act as bait to catch Griffin. Adye shows up later, saying that Griffin grabbed the note from Kemp's servant. So now Griffin knows that Kemp wants to set a trap. Bummer. Then Griffin does what he does best: he breaks some windows. But there's no way for him to get into Kemp's house because they've anticipated his arrival. This is the siege of Kemp's house. Adye borrows Kemp's gun and tries to go for help, but Griffin trips him up and grabs the gun. At first, Adye refuses to help Griffin, but he changes his mind when he realizes "that life was very sweet" . The narrator switches point-of-view here, and goes from Adye to Kemp, who is watching all this from an upstairs window. Suddenly, he sees Adye attack Griffin and get shot. It sure looks like Adye is dead, but we're not sure. Kemp's housemaid is coming up the hill with two policemen. At the same time, Griffin has found an axe and is using it to break through the shutters over a window. This is what we call suspense. Luckily for Kemp, the police get there in time, and he gives them some fireplace pokers to use as clubs. So it's pokers vs. axe-and-revolver, though Griffin isn't a great shot. Griffin knocks out one of the cops, but the other cop hurts Griffin . There's a snapping sound, so maybe his arm gets broken. Griffin drops his weapons and runs away. But when the cops look around, they find that Kemp and his housemaid have also run away. That probably doesn't make them feel too great about the guy they just saved.

A very few days had passed after this adventure, when Harriet came one morning to Emma with a small parcel in her hand, and after sitting down and hesitating, thus began: "Miss Woodhouse--if you are at leisure--I have something that I should like to tell you--a sort of confession to make--and then, you know, it will be over." Emma was a good deal surprized; but begged her to speak. There was a seriousness in Harriet's manner which prepared her, quite as much as her words, for something more than ordinary. "It is my duty, and I am sure it is my wish," she continued, "to have no reserves with you on this subject. As I am happily quite an altered creature in _one_ _respect_, it is very fit that you should have the satisfaction of knowing it. I do not want to say more than is necessary--I am too much ashamed of having given way as I have done, and I dare say you understand me." "Yes," said Emma, "I hope I do." "How I could so long a time be fancying myself!..." cried Harriet, warmly. "It seems like madness! I can see nothing at all extraordinary in him now.--I do not care whether I meet him or not--except that of the two I had rather not see him--and indeed I would go any distance round to avoid him--but I do not envy his wife in the least; I neither admire her nor envy her, as I have done: she is very charming, I dare say, and all that, but I think her very ill-tempered and disagreeable--I shall never forget her look the other night!--However, I assure you, Miss Woodhouse, I wish her no evil.--No, let them be ever so happy together, it will not give me another moment's pang: and to convince you that I have been speaking truth, I am now going to destroy--what I ought to have destroyed long ago--what I ought never to have kept--I know that very well (blushing as she spoke).--However, now I will destroy it all--and it is my particular wish to do it in your presence, that you may see how rational I am grown. Cannot you guess what this parcel holds?" said she, with a conscious look. "Not the least in the world.--Did he ever give you any thing?" "No--I cannot call them gifts; but they are things that I have valued very much." She held the parcel towards her, and Emma read the words _Most_ _precious_ _treasures_ on the top. Her curiosity was greatly excited. Harriet unfolded the parcel, and she looked on with impatience. Within abundance of silver paper was a pretty little Tunbridge-ware box, which Harriet opened: it was well lined with the softest cotton; but, excepting the cotton, Emma saw only a small piece of court-plaister. "Now," said Harriet, "you _must_ recollect." "No, indeed I do not." "Dear me! I should not have thought it possible you could forget what passed in this very room about court-plaister, one of the very last times we ever met in it!--It was but a very few days before I had my sore throat--just before Mr. and Mrs. John Knightley came--I think the very evening.--Do not you remember his cutting his finger with your new penknife, and your recommending court-plaister?--But, as you had none about you, and knew I had, you desired me to supply him; and so I took mine out and cut him a piece; but it was a great deal too large, and he cut it smaller, and kept playing some time with what was left, before he gave it back to me. And so then, in my nonsense, I could not help making a treasure of it--so I put it by never to be used, and looked at it now and then as a great treat." "My dearest Harriet!" cried Emma, putting her hand before her face, and jumping up, "you make me more ashamed of myself than I can bear. Remember it? Aye, I remember it all now; all, except your saving this relic--I knew nothing of that till this moment--but the cutting the finger, and my recommending court-plaister, and saying I had none about me!--Oh! my sins, my sins!--And I had plenty all the while in my pocket!--One of my senseless tricks!--I deserve to be under a continual blush all the rest of my life.--Well--(sitting down again)--go on--what else?" "And had you really some at hand yourself? I am sure I never suspected it, you did it so naturally." "And so you actually put this piece of court-plaister by for his sake!" said Emma, recovering from her state of shame and feeling divided between wonder and amusement. And secretly she added to herself, "Lord bless me! when should I ever have thought of putting by in cotton a piece of court-plaister that Frank Churchill had been pulling about! I never was equal to this." "Here," resumed Harriet, turning to her box again, "here is something still more valuable, I mean that _has_ _been_ more valuable, because this is what did really once belong to him, which the court-plaister never did." Emma was quite eager to see this superior treasure. It was the end of an old pencil,--the part without any lead. "This was really his," said Harriet.--"Do not you remember one morning?--no, I dare say you do not. But one morning--I forget exactly the day--but perhaps it was the Tuesday or Wednesday before _that_ _evening_, he wanted to make a memorandum in his pocket-book; it was about spruce-beer. Mr. Knightley had been telling him something about brewing spruce-beer, and he wanted to put it down; but when he took out his pencil, there was so little lead that he soon cut it all away, and it would not do, so you lent him another, and this was left upon the table as good for nothing. But I kept my eye on it; and, as soon as I dared, caught it up, and never parted with it again from that moment." "I do remember it," cried Emma; "I perfectly remember it.--Talking about spruce-beer.--Oh! yes--Mr. Knightley and I both saying we liked it, and Mr. Elton's seeming resolved to learn to like it too. I perfectly remember it.--Stop; Mr. Knightley was standing just here, was not he? I have an idea he was standing just here." "Ah! I do not know. I cannot recollect.--It is very odd, but I cannot recollect.--Mr. Elton was sitting here, I remember, much about where I am now."-- "Well, go on." "Oh! that's all. I have nothing more to shew you, or to say--except that I am now going to throw them both behind the fire, and I wish you to see me do it." "My poor dear Harriet! and have you actually found happiness in treasuring up these things?" "Yes, simpleton as I was!--but I am quite ashamed of it now, and wish I could forget as easily as I can burn them. It was very wrong of me, you know, to keep any remembrances, after he was married. I knew it was--but had not resolution enough to part with them." "But, Harriet, is it necessary to burn the court-plaister?--I have not a word to say for the bit of old pencil, but the court-plaister might be useful." "I shall be happier to burn it," replied Harriet. "It has a disagreeable look to me. I must get rid of every thing.--There it goes, and there is an end, thank Heaven! of Mr. Elton." "And when," thought Emma, "will there be a beginning of Mr. Churchill?" She had soon afterwards reason to believe that the beginning was already made, and could not but hope that the gipsy, though she had _told_ no fortune, might be proved to have made Harriet's.--About a fortnight after the alarm, they came to a sufficient explanation, and quite undesignedly. Emma was not thinking of it at the moment, which made the information she received more valuable. She merely said, in the course of some trivial chat, "Well, Harriet, whenever you marry I would advise you to do so and so"--and thought no more of it, till after a minute's silence she heard Harriet say in a very serious tone, "I shall never marry." Emma then looked up, and immediately saw how it was; and after a moment's debate, as to whether it should pass unnoticed or not, replied, "Never marry!--This is a new resolution." "It is one that I shall never change, however." After another short hesitation, "I hope it does not proceed from--I hope it is not in compliment to Mr. Elton?" "Mr. Elton indeed!" cried Harriet indignantly.--"Oh! no"--and Emma could just catch the words, "so superior to Mr. Elton!" She then took a longer time for consideration. Should she proceed no farther?--should she let it pass, and seem to suspect nothing?--Perhaps Harriet might think her cold or angry if she did; or perhaps if she were totally silent, it might only drive Harriet into asking her to hear too much; and against any thing like such an unreserve as had been, such an open and frequent discussion of hopes and chances, she was perfectly resolved.--She believed it would be wiser for her to say and know at once, all that she meant to say and know. Plain dealing was always best. She had previously determined how far she would proceed, on any application of the sort; and it would be safer for both, to have the judicious law of her own brain laid down with speed.--She was decided, and thus spoke-- "Harriet, I will not affect to be in doubt of your meaning. Your resolution, or rather your expectation of never marrying, results from an idea that the person whom you might prefer, would be too greatly your superior in situation to think of you. Is not it so?" "Oh! Miss Woodhouse, believe me I have not the presumption to suppose-- Indeed I am not so mad.--But it is a pleasure to me to admire him at a distance--and to think of his infinite superiority to all the rest of the world, with the gratitude, wonder, and veneration, which are so proper, in me especially." "I am not at all surprized at you, Harriet. The service he rendered you was enough to warm your heart." "Service! oh! it was such an inexpressible obligation!--The very recollection of it, and all that I felt at the time--when I saw him coming--his noble look--and my wretchedness before. Such a change! In one moment such a change! From perfect misery to perfect happiness!" "It is very natural. It is natural, and it is honourable.--Yes, honourable, I think, to chuse so well and so gratefully.--But that it will be a fortunate preference is more than I can promise. I do not advise you to give way to it, Harriet. I do not by any means engage for its being returned. Consider what you are about. Perhaps it will be wisest in you to check your feelings while you can: at any rate do not let them carry you far, unless you are persuaded of his liking you. Be observant of him. Let his behaviour be the guide of your sensations. I give you this caution now, because I shall never speak to you again on the subject. I am determined against all interference. Henceforward I know nothing of the matter. Let no name ever pass our lips. We were very wrong before; we will be cautious now.--He is your superior, no doubt, and there do seem objections and obstacles of a very serious nature; but yet, Harriet, more wonderful things have taken place, there have been matches of greater disparity. But take care of yourself. I would not have you too sanguine; though, however it may end, be assured your raising your thoughts to _him_, is a mark of good taste which I shall always know how to value." Harriet kissed her hand in silent and submissive gratitude. Emma was very decided in thinking such an attachment no bad thing for her friend. Its tendency would be to raise and refine her mind--and it must be saving her from the danger of degradation.

Harriet comes to tell Emma that her infatuation with Mr. Elton has passed and to relinquish the trinkets she has kept to remember him by. First, she shows Emma a bit of court-plaster that she had lent to Mr. Elton when he cut himself. He had used what he needed but discarded the rest, which Harriet then kept. Emma feels guilty in recalling that she had lied and said that she did not have any court-plaster, so that Harriet would have the opportunity to be Elton's healer. Harriet's second trinket is a useless bit of pencil Elton had discarded. She throws both items into the fire, and Emma hopes that Frank might take Elton's place. Her hopes seem to be rewarded when, during another conversation, Harriet says she will never marry, inciting Emma's suspicion that Harriet does not think that she will marry because she is interested in someone of a higher class. After some hesitation, Emma asks if Harriet has feelings for someone of higher rank. Harriet says yes, and Emma comments that she is not surprised, given the service that this person rendered Harriet. Emma says that they must not discuss it anymore, and she advises Harriet to be cautious but not to give up all hope

ON Sunday morning, when the church bells in Stoniton were ringing for morning service, Bartle Massey re-entered Adam's room, after a short absence, and said, "Adam, here's a visitor wants to see you." Adam was seated with his back towards the door, but he started up and turned round instantly, with a flushed face and an eager look. His face was even thinner and more worn than we have seen it before, but he was washed and shaven this Sunday morning. "Is it any news?" he said. "Keep yourself quiet, my lad," said Bartle; "keep quiet. It's not what you're thinking of. It's the young Methodist woman come from the prison. She's at the bottom o' the stairs, and wants to know if you think well to see her, for she has something to say to you about that poor castaway; but she wouldn't come in without your leave, she said. She thought you'd perhaps like to go out and speak to her. These preaching women are not so back'ard commonly," Bartle muttered to himself. "Ask her to come in," said Adam. He was standing with his face towards the door, and as Dinah entered, lifting up her mild grey eyes towards him, she saw at once the great change that had come since the day when she had looked up at the tall man in the cottage. There was a trembling in her clear voice as she put her hand into his and said, "Be comforted, Adam Bede, the Lord has not forsaken her." "Bless you for coming to her," Adam said. "Mr. Massey brought me word yesterday as you was come." They could neither of them say any more just yet, but stood before each other in silence; and Bartle Massey, too, who had put on his spectacles, seemed transfixed, examining Dinah's face. But he recovered himself first, and said, "Sit down, young woman, sit down," placing the chair for her and retiring to his old seat on the bed. "Thank you, friend; I won't sit down," said Dinah, "for I must hasten back. She entreated me not to stay long away. What I came for, Adam Bede, was to pray you to go and see the poor sinner and bid her farewell. She desires to ask your forgiveness, and it is meet you should see her to-day, rather than in the early morning, when the time will be short." Adam stood trembling, and at last sank down on his chair again. "It won't be," he said, "it'll be put off--there'll perhaps come a pardon. Mr. Irwine said there was hope. He said, I needn't quite give it up." "That's a blessed thought to me," said Dinah, her eyes filling with tears. "It's a fearful thing hurrying her soul away so fast." "But let what will be," she added presently. "You will surely come, and let her speak the words that are in her heart. Although her poor soul is very dark and discerns little beyond the things of the flesh, she is no longer hard. She is contrite, she has confessed all to me. The pride of her heart has given way, and she leans on me for help and desires to be taught. This fills me with trust, for I cannot but think that the brethren sometimes err in measuring the Divine love by the sinner's knowledge. She is going to write a letter to the friends at the Hall Farm for me to give them when she is gone, and when I told her you were here, she said, 'I should like to say good-bye to Adam and ask him to forgive me.' You will come, Adam? Perhaps you will even now come back with me." "I can't," Adam said. "I can't say good-bye while there's any hope. I'm listening, and listening--I can't think o' nothing but that. It can't be as she'll die that shameful death--I can't bring my mind to it." He got up from his chair again and looked away out of the window, while Dinah stood with compassionate patience. In a minute or two he turned round and said, "I will come, Dinah...to-morrow morning...if it must be. I may have more strength to bear it, if I know it must be. Tell her, I forgive her; tell her I will come--at the very last." "I will not urge you against the voice of your own heart," said Dinah. "I must hasten back to her, for it is wonderful how she clings now, and was not willing to let me out of her sight. She used never to make any return to my affection before, but now tribulation has opened her heart. Farewell, Adam. Our heavenly Father comfort you and strengthen you to bear all things." Dinah put out her hand, and Adam pressed it in silence. Bartle Massey was getting up to lift the stiff latch of the door for her, but before he could reach it, she had said gently, "Farewell, friend," and was gone, with her light step down the stairs. "Well," said Bartle, taking off his spectacles and putting them into his pocket, "if there must be women to make trouble in the world, it's but fair there should be women to be comforters under it; and she's one--she's one. It's a pity she's a Methodist; but there's no getting a woman without some foolishness or other." Adam never went to bed that night. The excitement of suspense, heightening with every hour that brought him nearer the fatal moment, was too great, and in spite of his entreaties, in spite of his promises that he would be perfectly quiet, the schoolmaster watched too. "What does it matter to me, lad?" Bartle said: "a night's sleep more or less? I shall sleep long enough, by and by, underground. Let me keep thee company in trouble while I can." It was a long and dreary night in that small chamber. Adam would sometimes get up and tread backwards and forwards along the short space from wall to wall; then he would sit down and hide his face, and no sound would be heard but the ticking of the watch on the table, or the falling of a cinder from the fire which the schoolmaster carefully tended. Sometimes he would burst out into vehement speech, "If I could ha' done anything to save her--if my bearing anything would ha' done any good...but t' have to sit still, and know it, and do nothing...it's hard for a man to bear...and to think o' what might ha' been now, if it hadn't been for HIM....O God, it's the very day we should ha' been married." "Aye, my lad," said Bartle tenderly, "it's heavy--it's heavy. But you must remember this: when you thought of marrying her, you'd a notion she'd got another sort of a nature inside her. You didn't think she could have got hardened in that little while to do what she's done." "I know--I know that," said Adam. "I thought she was loving and tender-hearted, and wouldn't tell a lie, or act deceitful. How could I think any other way? And if he'd never come near her, and I'd married her, and been loving to her, and took care of her, she might never ha' done anything bad. What would it ha' signified--my having a bit o' trouble with her? It 'ud ha' been nothing to this." "There's no knowing, my lad--there's no knowing what might have come. The smart's bad for you to bear now: you must have time--you must have time. But I've that opinion of you, that you'll rise above it all and be a man again, and there may good come out of this that we don't see." "Good come out of it!" said Adam passionately. "That doesn't alter th' evil: HER ruin can't be undone. I hate that talk o' people, as if there was a way o' making amends for everything. They'd more need be brought to see as the wrong they do can never be altered. When a man's spoiled his fellow-creatur's life, he's no right to comfort himself with thinking good may come out of it. Somebody else's good doesn't alter her shame and misery." "Well, lad, well," said Bartle, in a gentle tone, strangely in contrast with his usual peremptoriness and impatience of contradiction, "it's likely enough I talk foolishness. I'm an old fellow, and it's a good many years since I was in trouble myself. It's easy finding reasons why other folks should be patient." "Mr. Massey," said Adam penitently, "I'm very hot and hasty. I owe you something different; but you mustn't take it ill of me." "Not I, lad--not I." So the night wore on in agitation till the chill dawn and the growing light brought the tremulous quiet that comes on the brink of despair. There would soon be no more suspense. "Let us go to the prison now, Mr. Massey," said Adam, when he saw the hand of his watch at six. "If there's any news come, we shall hear about it." The people were astir already, moving rapidly, in one direction, through the streets. Adam tried not to think where they were going, as they hurried past him in that short space between his lodging and the prison gates. He was thankful when the gates shut him in from seeing those eager people. No; there was no news come--no pardon--no reprieve. Adam lingered in the court half an hour before he could bring himself to send word to Dinah that he was come. But a voice caught his ear: he could not shut out the words. "The cart is to set off at half-past seven." It must be said--the last good-bye: there was no help. In ten minutes from that time, Adam was at the door of the cell. Dinah had sent him word that she could not come to him; she could not leave Hetty one moment; but Hetty was prepared for the meeting. He could not see her when he entered, for agitation deadened his senses, and the dim cell was almost dark to him. He stood a moment after the door closed behind him, trembling and stupefied. But he began to see through the dimness--to see the dark eyes lifted up to him once more, but with no smile in them. O God, how sad they looked! The last time they had met his was when he parted from her with his heart full of joyous hopeful love, and they looked out with a tearful smile from a pink, dimpled, childish face. The face was marble now; the sweet lips were pallid and half-open and quivering; the dimples were all gone--all but one, that never went; and the eyes--O, the worst of all was the likeness they had to Hetty's. They were Hetty's eyes looking at him with that mournful gaze, as if she had come back to him from the dead to tell him of her misery. She was clinging close to Dinah; her cheek was against Dinah's. It seemed as if her last faint strength and hope lay in that contact, and the pitying love that shone out from Dinah's face looked like a visible pledge of the Invisible Mercy. When the sad eyes met--when Hetty and Adam looked at each other--she felt the change in him too, and it seemed to strike her with fresh fear. It was the first time she had seen any being whose face seemed to reflect the change in herself: Adam was a new image of the dreadful past and the dreadful present. She trembled more as she looked at him. "Speak to him, Hetty," Dinah said; "tell him what is in your heart." Hetty obeyed her, like a little child. "Adam...I'm very sorry...I behaved very wrong to you...will you forgive me...before I die?" Adam answered with a half-sob, "Yes, I forgive thee Hetty. I forgave thee long ago." It had seemed to Adam as if his brain would burst with the anguish of meeting Hetty's eyes in the first moments, but the sound of her voice uttering these penitent words touched a chord which had been less strained. There was a sense of relief from what was becoming unbearable, and the rare tears came--they had never come before, since he had hung on Seth's neck in the beginning of his sorrow. Hetty made an involuntary movement towards him, some of the love that she had once lived in the midst of was come near her again. She kept hold of Dinah's hand, but she went up to Adam and said timidly, "Will you kiss me again, Adam, for all I've been so wicked?" Adam took the blanched wasted hand she put out to him, and they gave each other the solemn unspeakable kiss of a lifelong parting. "And tell him," Hetty said, in rather a stronger voice, "tell him...for there's nobody else to tell him...as I went after him and couldn't find him...and I hated him and cursed him once...but Dinah says I should forgive him...and I try...for else God won't forgive me." There was a noise at the door of the cell now--the key was being turned in the lock, and when the door opened, Adam saw indistinctly that there were several faces there. He was too agitated to see more--even to see that Mr. Irwine's face was one of them. He felt that the last preparations were beginning, and he could stay no longer. Room was silently made for him to depart, and he went to his chamber in loneliness, leaving Bartle Massey to watch and see the end.

Dinah goes to see Adam to ask him to visit Hetty before she is executed. He says he cannot until the very last moment, but he promises to come the morning of her death if there has been no stay of execution. In the morning, Adam prepares to go see Hetty and realizes that it is the day that they were supposed to be married. Mr. Massey tries to comfort Adam by saying that some good might come of this suffering, but Adam reacts violently to that idea. From Mr. Massey's point of view, Hetty will always have suffered, so no other good can redeem that suffering. When Adam reaches the cell door, he is still so troubled that he is trembling. After a moment, he sees Hetty and is deeply saddened by her appearance. Consoling Hetty, Dinah urges Hetty to speak to Adam. Helpless and clutching Dinah, Hetty asks for his forgiveness. Adam says he forgave her long ago. Holding out her hand, Hetty asks Adam for a kiss for the way she's treated him. They kiss goodbye. Hetty's voice is firmer when she asks Adam to tell Captain Donnithorne that she cursed him once, but Dinah says she should forgive him or else God will not forgive her

It was a long and gloomy night that gathered on me, haunted by the ghosts of many hopes, of many dear remembrances, many errors, many unavailing sorrows and regrets. I went away from England; not knowing, even then, how great the shock was, that I had to bear. I left all who were dear to me, and went away; and believed that I had borne it, and it was past. As a man upon a field of battle will receive a mortal hurt, and scarcely know that he is struck, so I, when I was left alone with my undisciplined heart, had no conception of the wound with which it had to strive. The knowledge came upon me, not quickly, but little by little, and grain by grain. The desolate feeling with which I went abroad, deepened and widened hourly. At first it was a heavy sense of loss and sorrow, wherein I could distinguish little else. By imperceptible degrees, it became a hopeless consciousness of all that I had lost--love, friendship, interest; of all that had been shattered--my first trust, my first affection, the whole airy castle of my life; of all that remained--a ruined blank and waste, lying wide around me, unbroken, to the dark horizon. If my grief were selfish, I did not know it to be so. I mourned for my child-wife, taken from her blooming world, so young. I mourned for him who might have won the love and admiration of thousands, as he had won mine long ago. I mourned for the broken heart that had found rest in the stormy sea; and for the wandering remnants of the simple home, where I had heard the night-wind blowing, when I was a child. From the accumulated sadness into which I fell, I had at length no hope of ever issuing again. I roamed from place to place, carrying my burden with me everywhere. I felt its whole weight now; and I drooped beneath it, and I said in my heart that it could never be lightened. When this despondency was at its worst, I believed that I should die. Sometimes, I thought that I would like to die at home; and actually turned back on my road, that I might get there soon. At other times, I passed on farther away,--from city to city, seeking I know not what, and trying to leave I know not what behind. It is not in my power to retrace, one by one, all the weary phases of distress of mind through which I passed. There are some dreams that can only be imperfectly and vaguely described; and when I oblige myself to look back on this time of my life, I seem to be recalling such a dream. I see myself passing on among the novelties of foreign towns, palaces, cathedrals, temples, pictures, castles, tombs, fantastic streets--the old abiding places of History and Fancy--as a dreamer might; bearing my painful load through all, and hardly conscious of the objects as they fade before me. Listlessness to everything, but brooding sorrow, was the night that fell on my undisciplined heart. Let me look up from it--as at last I did, thank Heaven!--and from its long, sad, wretched dream, to dawn. For many months I travelled with this ever-darkening cloud upon my mind. Some blind reasons that I had for not returning home--reasons then struggling within me, vainly, for more distinct expression--kept me on my pilgrimage. Sometimes, I had proceeded restlessly from place to place, stopping nowhere; sometimes, I had lingered long in one spot. I had had no purpose, no sustaining soul within me, anywhere. I was in Switzerland. I had come out of Italy, over one of the great passes of the Alps, and had since wandered with a guide among the by-ways of the mountains. If those awful solitudes had spoken to my heart, I did not know it. I had found sublimity and wonder in the dread heights and precipices, in the roaring torrents, and the wastes of ice and snow; but as yet, they had taught me nothing else. I came, one evening before sunset, down into a valley, where I was to rest. In the course of my descent to it, by the winding track along the mountain-side, from which I saw it shining far below, I think some long-unwonted sense of beauty and tranquillity, some softening influence awakened by its peace, moved faintly in my breast. I remember pausing once, with a kind of sorrow that was not all oppressive, not quite despairing. I remember almost hoping that some better change was possible within me. I came into the valley, as the evening sun was shining on the remote heights of snow, that closed it in, like eternal clouds. The bases of the mountains forming the gorge in which the little village lay, were richly green; and high above this gentler vegetation, grew forests of dark fir, cleaving the wintry snow-drift, wedge-like, and stemming the avalanche. Above these, were range upon range of craggy steeps, grey rock, bright ice, and smooth verdure-specks of pasture, all gradually blending with the crowning snow. Dotted here and there on the mountain's-side, each tiny dot a home, were lonely wooden cottages, so dwarfed by the towering heights that they appeared too small for toys. So did even the clustered village in the valley, with its wooden bridge across the stream, where the stream tumbled over broken rocks, and roared away among the trees. In the quiet air, there was a sound of distant singing--shepherd voices; but, as one bright evening cloud floated midway along the mountain's-side, I could almost have believed it came from there, and was not earthly music. All at once, in this serenity, great Nature spoke to me; and soothed me to lay down my weary head upon the grass, and weep as I had not wept yet, since Dora died! I had found a packet of letters awaiting me but a few minutes before, and had strolled out of the village to read them while my supper was making ready. Other packets had missed me, and I had received none for a long time. Beyond a line or two, to say that I was well, and had arrived at such a place, I had not had fortitude or constancy to write a letter since I left home. The packet was in my hand. I opened it, and read the writing of Agnes. She was happy and useful, was prospering as she had hoped. That was all she told me of herself. The rest referred to me. She gave me no advice; she urged no duty on me; she only told me, in her own fervent manner, what her trust in me was. She knew (she said) how such a nature as mine would turn affliction to good. She knew how trial and emotion would exalt and strengthen it. She was sure that in my every purpose I should gain a firmer and a higher tendency, through the grief I had undergone. She, who so gloried in my fame, and so looked forward to its augmentation, well knew that I would labour on. She knew that in me, sorrow could not be weakness, but must be strength. As the endurance of my childish days had done its part to make me what I was, so greater calamities would nerve me on, to be yet better than I was; and so, as they had taught me, would I teach others. She commended me to God, who had taken my innocent darling to His rest; and in her sisterly affection cherished me always, and was always at my side go where I would; proud of what I had done, but infinitely prouder yet of what I was reserved to do. I put the letter in my breast, and thought what had I been an hour ago! When I heard the voices die away, and saw the quiet evening cloud grow dim, and all the colours in the valley fade, and the golden snow upon the mountain-tops become a remote part of the pale night sky, yet felt that the night was passing from my mind, and all its shadows clearing, there was no name for the love I bore her, dearer to me, henceforward, than ever until then. I read her letter many times. I wrote to her before I slept. I told her that I had been in sore need of her help; that without her I was not, and I never had been, what she thought me; but that she inspired me to be that, and I would try. I did try. In three months more, a year would have passed since the beginning of my sorrow. I determined to make no resolutions until the expiration of those three months, but to try. I lived in that valley, and its neighbourhood, all the time. The three months gone, I resolved to remain away from home for some time longer; to settle myself for the present in Switzerland, which was growing dear to me in the remembrance of that evening; to resume my pen; to work. I resorted humbly whither Agnes had commended me; I sought out Nature, never sought in vain; and I admitted to my breast the human interest I had lately shrunk from. It was not long, before I had almost as many friends in the valley as in Yarmouth: and when I left it, before the winter set in, for Geneva, and came back in the spring, their cordial greetings had a homely sound to me, although they were not conveyed in English words. I worked early and late, patiently and hard. I wrote a Story, with a purpose growing, not remotely, out of my experience, and sent it to Traddles, and he arranged for its publication very advantageously for me; and the tidings of my growing reputation began to reach me from travellers whom I encountered by chance. After some rest and change, I fell to work, in my old ardent way, on a new fancy, which took strong possession of me. As I advanced in the execution of this task, I felt it more and more, and roused my utmost energies to do it well. This was my third work of fiction. It was not half written, when, in an interval of rest, I thought of returning home. For a long time, though studying and working patiently, I had accustomed myself to robust exercise. My health, severely impaired when I left England, was quite restored. I had seen much. I had been in many countries, and I hope I had improved my store of knowledge. I have now recalled all that I think it needful to recall here, of this term of absence--with one reservation. I have made it, thus far, with no purpose of suppressing any of my thoughts; for, as I have elsewhere said, this narrative is my written memory. I have desired to keep the most secret current of my mind apart, and to the last. I enter on it now. I cannot so completely penetrate the mystery of my own heart, as to know when I began to think that I might have set its earliest and brightest hopes on Agnes. I cannot say at what stage of my grief it first became associated with the reflection, that, in my wayward boyhood, I had thrown away the treasure of her love. I believe I may have heard some whisper of that distant thought, in the old unhappy loss or want of something never to be realized, of which I had been sensible. But the thought came into my mind as a new reproach and new regret, when I was left so sad and lonely in the world. If, at that time, I had been much with her, I should, in the weakness of my desolation, have betrayed this. It was what I remotely dreaded when I was first impelled to stay away from England. I could not have borne to lose the smallest portion of her sisterly affection; yet, in that betrayal, I should have set a constraint between us hitherto unknown. I could not forget that the feeling with which she now regarded me had grown up in my own free choice and course. That if she had ever loved me with another love--and I sometimes thought the time was when she might have done so--I had cast it away. It was nothing, now, that I had accustomed myself to think of her, when we were both mere children, as one who was far removed from my wild fancies. I had bestowed my passionate tenderness upon another object; and what I might have done, I had not done; and what Agnes was to me, I and her own noble heart had made her. In the beginning of the change that gradually worked in me, when I tried to get a better understanding of myself and be a better man, I did glance, through some indefinite probation, to a period when I might possibly hope to cancel the mistaken past, and to be so blessed as to marry her. But, as time wore on, this shadowy prospect faded, and departed from me. If she had ever loved me, then, I should hold her the more sacred; remembering the confidences I had reposed in her, her knowledge of my errant heart, the sacrifice she must have made to be my friend and sister, and the victory she had won. If she had never loved me, could I believe that she would love me now? I had always felt my weakness, in comparison with her constancy and fortitude; and now I felt it more and more. Whatever I might have been to her, or she to me, if I had been more worthy of her long ago, I was not now, and she was not. The time was past. I had let it go by, and had deservedly lost her. That I suffered much in these contentions, that they filled me with unhappiness and remorse, and yet that I had a sustaining sense that it was required of me, in right and honour, to keep away from myself, with shame, the thought of turning to the dear girl in the withering of my hopes, from whom I had frivolously turned when they were bright and fresh--which consideration was at the root of every thought I had concerning her--is all equally true. I made no effort to conceal from myself, now, that I loved her, that I was devoted to her; but I brought the assurance home to myself, that it was now too late, and that our long-subsisting relation must be undisturbed. I had thought, much and often, of my Dora's shadowing out to me what might have happened, in those years that were destined not to try us; I had considered how the things that never happen, are often as much realities to us, in their effects, as those that are accomplished. The very years she spoke of, were realities now, for my correction; and would have been, one day, a little later perhaps, though we had parted in our earliest folly. I endeavoured to convert what might have been between myself and Agnes, into a means of making me more self-denying, more resolved, more conscious of myself, and my defects and errors. Thus, through the reflection that it might have been, I arrived at the conviction that it could never be. These, with their perplexities and inconsistencies, were the shifting quicksands of my mind, from the time of my departure to the time of my return home, three years afterwards. Three years had elapsed since the sailing of the emigrant ship; when, at that same hour of sunset, and in the same place, I stood on the deck of the packet vessel that brought me home, looking on the rosy water where I had seen the image of that ship reflected. Three years. Long in the aggregate, though short as they went by. And home was very dear to me, and Agnes too--but she was not mine--she was never to be mine. She might have been, but that was past!

Absence David travels abroad and eventually settles in Switzerland. He mourns the deaths of Dora, Steerforth, and Ham and begins to feel the weight of his sorrows for the first time. David receives a letter from Agnes and reflects how much he loves her. He resolves not to make any decisions about love or marriage until a full year has passed since Dora's death. He decides to try to make himself a better man in the meantime.

CHAPTER XIX THINKING PRODUCES SUFFERING The grotesqueness of every-day events conceals the real unhappiness of the passions.--_Barnave_. As he was replacing the usual furniture in the room which M. de la Mole had occupied, Julien found a piece of very strong paper folded in four. He read at the bottom of the first page "To His Excellency M. le Marquis de la Mole, peer of France, Chevalier of the Orders of the King, etc. etc." It was a petition in the rough hand-writing of a cook. "Monsieur le Marquis, I have had religious principles all my life. I was in Lyons exposed to the bombs at the time of the siege, in '93 of execrable memory. I communicate, I go to Mass every Sunday in the parochial church. I have never missed the paschal duty, even in '93 of execrable memory. My cook used to keep servants before the revolution, my cook fasts on Fridays. I am universally respected in Verrieres, and I venture to say I deserve to be so. I walk under the canopy in the processions at the side of the cure and of the mayor. On great occasions I carry a big candle, bought at my own expense. "I ask Monsieur the marquis for the lottery appointment of Verrieres, which in one way or another is bound to be vacant shortly as the beneficiary is very ill, and moreover votes on the wrong side at elections, etc. De Cholin." In the margin of this petition was a recommendation signed "de Moirod" which began with this line, "I have had the honour, the worthy person who makes this request." "So even that imbecile de Cholin shows me the way to go about things," said Julien to himself. Eight days after the passage of the King of ---- through Verrieres, the one question which predominated over the innumerable falsehoods, foolish conjectures, and ridiculous discussions, etc., etc., which had had successively for their object the king, the Marquis de la Mole, the ten thousand bottles of wine, the fall of poor de Moirod, who, hoping to win a cross, only left his room a week after his fall, was the absolute indecency of having _foisted_ Julien Sorel, a carpenter's son, into the Guard of Honour. You should have heard on this point the rich manufacturers of printed calico, the very persons who used to bawl themselves hoarse in preaching equality, morning and evening in the cafe. That haughty woman, Madame de Renal, was of course responsible for this abomination. The reason? The fine eyes and fresh complexion of the little abbe Sorel explained everything else. A short time after their return to Vergy, Stanislas, the youngest of the children, caught the fever; Madame de Renal was suddenly attacked by an awful remorse. For the first time she reproached herself for her love with some logic. She seemed to understand as though by a miracle the enormity of the sin into which she had let herself be swept. Up to that moment, although deeply religious, she had never thought of the greatness of her crime in the eyes of God. In former times she had loved God passionately in the Convent of the Sacred Heart; in the present circumstances, she feared him with equal intensity. The struggles which lacerated her soul were all the more awful in that her fear was quite irrational. Julien found that the least argument irritated instead of soothing her. She saw in the illness the language of hell. Moreover, Julien was himself very fond of the little Stanislas. It soon assumed a serious character. Then incessant remorse deprived Madame de Renal of even her power of sleep. She ensconced herself in a gloomy silence: if she had opened her mouth, it would only have been to confess her crime to God and mankind. "I urge you," said Julien to her, as soon as they got alone, "not to speak to anyone. Let me be the sole confidant of your sufferings. If you still love me, do not speak. Your words will not be able to take away our Stanislas' fever." But his consolations produced no effect. He did not know that Madame de Renal had got it into her head that, in order to appease the wrath of a jealous God, it was necessary either to hate Julien, or let her son die. It was because she felt she could not hate her lover that she was so unhappy. "Fly from me," she said one day to Julien. "In the name of God leave this house. It is your presence here which kills my son. God punishes me," she added in a low voice. "He is just. I admire his fairness. My crime is awful, and I was living without remorse," she exclaimed. "That was the first sign of my desertion of God: I ought to be doubly punished." Julien was profoundly touched. He could see in this neither hypocrisy nor exaggeration. "She thinks that she is killing her son by loving me, and all the same the unhappy woman loves me more than her son. I cannot doubt it. It is remorse for that which is killing her. Those sentiments of hers have real greatness. But how could I have inspired such a love, I who am so poor, so badly-educated, so ignorant, and sometimes so coarse in my manners?" One night the child was extremely ill. At about two o'clock in the morning, M. de Renal came to see it. The child consumed by fever, and extremely flushed, could not recognise its father. Suddenly Madame de Renal threw herself at her husband's feet; Julien saw that she was going to confess everything and ruin herself for ever. Fortunately this extraordinary proceeding annoyed M. de Renal. "Adieu! Adieu!" he said, going away. "No, listen to me," cried his wife on her knees before him, trying to hold him back. "Hear the whole truth. It is I who am killing my son. I gave him life, and I am taking it back. Heaven is punishing me. In the eyes of God I am guilty of murder. It is necessary that I should ruin and humiliate myself. Perhaps that sacrifice will appease the the Lord." If M. de Renal had been a man of any imagination, he would then have realized everything. "Romantic nonsense," he cried, moving his wife away as she tried to embrace his knees. "All that is romantic nonsense! Julien, go and fetch the doctor at daybreak," and he went back to bed. Madame de Renal fell on her knees half-fainting, repelling Julien's help with a hysterical gesture. Julien was astonished. "So this is what adultery is," he said to himself. "Is it possible that those scoundrels of priests should be right, that they who commit so many sins themselves should have the privilege of knowing the true theory of sin? How droll!" For twenty minutes after M. de Renal had gone back to bed, Julien saw the woman he loved with her head resting on her son's little bed, motionless, and almost unconscious. "There," he said to himself, "is a woman of superior temperament brought to the depths of unhappiness simply because she has known me." "Time moves quickly. What can I do for her? I must make up my mind. I have not got simply myself to consider now. What do I care for men and their buffooneries? What can I do for her? Leave her? But I should be leaving her alone and a prey to the most awful grief. That automaton of a husband is more harm to her than good. He is so coarse that he is bound to speak harshly to her. She may go mad and throw herself out of the window." "If I leave her, if I cease to watch over her, she will confess everything, and who knows, in spite of the legacy which she is bound to bring him, he will create a scandal. She may confess everything (great God) to that scoundrel of an abbe who makes the illness of a child of six an excuse for not budging from this house, and not without a purpose either. In her grief and her fear of God, she forgets all she knows of the man; she only sees the priest." "Go away," said Madame de Renal suddenly to him, opening her eyes. "I would give my life a thousand times to know what could be of most use to you," answered Julien. "I have never loved you so much, my dear angel, or rather it is only from this last moment that I begin to adore you as you deserve to be adored. What would become of me far from you, and with the consciousness that you are unhappy owing to what I have done? But don't let my suffering come into the matter. I will go--yes, my love! But if I leave you, dear; if I cease to watch over you, to be incessantly between you and your husband, you will tell him everything. You will ruin yourself. Remember that he will hound you out of his house in disgrace. Besancon will talk of the scandal. You will be said to be absolutely in the wrong. You will never lift up your head again after that shame." "That's what I ask," she cried, standing up. "I shall suffer, so much the better." "But you will also make him unhappy through that awful scandal." "But I shall be humiliating myself, throwing myself into the mire, and by those means, perhaps, I shall save my son. Such a humiliation in the eyes of all is perhaps to be regarded as a public penitence. So far as my weak judgment goes, is it not the greatest sacrifice that I can make to God?--perhaps He will deign to accept my humiliation, and to leave me my son. Show me another sacrifice which is more painful and I will rush to it." "Let me punish myself. I too am guilty. Do you wish me to retire to the Trappist Monastery? The austerity of that life may appease your God. Oh, heaven, why cannot I take Stanislas's illness upon myself?" "Ah, do you love him then," said Madame de Renal, getting up and throwing herself in his arms. At the same time she repelled him with horror. "I believe you! I believe you! Oh, my one friend," she cried falling on her knees again. "Why are you not the father of Stanislas? In that case it would not be a terrible sin to love you more than your son." "Won't you allow me to stay and love you henceforth like a brother? It is the only rational atonement. It may appease the wrath of the Most High." "Am I," she cried, getting up and taking Julien's head between her two hands, and holding it some distance from her. "Am I to love you as if you were a brother? Is it in my power to love you like that?" Julien melted into tears. "I will obey you," he said, falling at her feet. "I will obey you in whatever you order me. That is all there is left for me to do. My mind is struck with blindness. I do not see any course to take. If I leave you you will tell your husband everything. You will ruin yourself and him as well. He will never be nominated deputy after incurring such ridicule. If I stay, you will think I am the cause of your son's death, and you will die of grief. Do you wish to try the effect of my departure. If you wish, I will punish myself for our sin by leaving you for eight days. I will pass them in any retreat you like. In the abbey of Bray-le-Haut, for instance. But swear that you will say nothing to your husband during my absence. Remember that if you speak I shall never be able to come back." She promised and he left, but was called back at the end of two days. "It is impossible for me to keep my oath without you. I shall speak to my husband if you are not constantly there to enjoin me to silence by your looks. Every hour of this abominable life seems to last a day." Finally heaven had pity on this unfortunate mother. Little by little Stanislas got out of danger. But the ice was broken. Her reason had realised the extent of her sin. She could not recover her equilibrium again. Her pangs of remorse remained, and were what they ought to have been in so sincere a heart. Her life was heaven and hell: hell when she did not see Julien; heaven when she was at his feet. "I do not deceive myself any more," she would say to him, even during the moments when she dared to surrender herself to his full love. "I am damned, irrevocably damned. You are young, heaven may forgive you, but I, I am damned. I know it by a certain sign. I am afraid, who would not be afraid at the sight of hell? but at the bottom of my heart I do not repent at all. I would commit my sin over again if I had the opportunity. If heaven will only forbear to punish me in this world and through my children, I shall have more than I deserve. But you, at any rate, my Julien," she would cry at other moments, "are you happy? Do you think I love you enough?" The suspiciousness and morbid pride of Julien, who needed, above all, a self-sacrificing love, altogether vanished when he saw at every hour of the day so great and indisputable a sacrifice. He adored Madame de Renal. "It makes no difference her being noble, and my being a labourer's son. She loves me.... she does not regard me as a valet charged with the functions of a lover." That fear once dismissed, Julien fell into all the madness of love, into all its deadly uncertainties. "At any rate," she would cry, seeing his doubts of her love, "let me feel quite happy during the three days we still have together. Let us make haste; perhaps to-morrow will be too late. If heaven strikes me through my children, it will be in vain that I shall try only to live to love you, and to be blind to the fact that it is my crime which has killed them. I could not survive that blow. Even if I wished I could not; I should go mad." "Ah, if only I could take your sin on myself as you so generously offered to take Stanislas' burning fever!" This great moral crisis changed the character of the sentiment which united Julien and his mistress. His love was no longer simply admiration for her beauty, and the pride of possessing her. Henceforth their happiness was of a quite superior character. The flame which consumed them was more intense. They had transports filled with madness. Judged by the worldly standard their happiness would have appeared intensified. But they no longer found that delicious serenity, that cloudless happiness, that facile joy of the first period of their love, when Madame de Renal's only fear was that Julien did not love her enough. Their happiness had at times the complexion of crime. In their happiest and apparently their most tranquil moments, Madame de Renal would suddenly cry out, "Oh, great God, I see hell," as she pressed Julien's hand with a convulsive grasp. "What horrible tortures! I have well deserved them." She grasped him and hung on to him like ivy onto a wall. Julien would try in vain to calm that agitated soul. She would take his hand, cover it with kisses. Then, relapsing into a gloomy reverie, she would say, "Hell itself would be a blessing for me. I should still have some days to pass with him on this earth, but hell on earth, the death of my children. Still, perhaps my crime will be forgiven me at that price. Oh, great God, do not grant me my pardon at so great a price. These poor children have in no way transgressed against You. I, I am the only culprit. I love a man who is not my husband." Julien subsequently saw Madame de Renal attain what were apparently moments of tranquillity. She was endeavouring to control herself; she did not wish to poison the life of the man she loved. They found the days pass with the rapidity of lightning amid these alternating moods of love, remorse, and voluptuousness. Julien lost the habit of reflecting. Mademoiselle Elisa went to attend to a little lawsuit which she had at Verrieres. She found Valenod very piqued against Julien. She hated the tutor and would often speak about him. "You will ruin me, Monsieur, if I tell the truth," she said one day to Valenod. "All masters have an understanding amongst themselves with regard to matters of importance. There are certain disclosures which poor servants are never forgiven." After these stereotyped phrases, which his curiosity managed to cut short, Monsieur Valenod received some information extremely mortifying to his self-conceit. This woman, who was the most distinguished in the district, the woman on whom he had lavished so much attention in the last six years, and made no secret of it, more was the pity, this woman who was so proud, whose disdain had put him to the blush times without number, had just taken for her lover a little workman masquerading as a tutor. And to fill the cup of his jealousy, Madame de Renal adored that lover. "And," added the housemaid with a sigh, "Julien did not put himself out at all to make his conquest, his manner was as cold as ever, even with Madame." Elisa had only become certain in the country, but she believed that this intrigue dated from much further back. "That is no doubt the reason," she added spitefully, "why he refused to marry me. And to think what a fool I was when I went to consult Madame de Renal and begged her to speak to the tutor." The very same evening, M. de Renal received from the town, together with his paper, a long anonymous letter which apprised him in the greatest detail of what was taking place in his house. Julien saw him pale as he read this letter written on blue paper, and look at him with a malicious expression. During all that evening the mayor failed to throw off his trouble. It was in vain that Julien paid him court by asking for explanations about the genealogy of the best families in Burgundy.

When the king's visit is over, Julien hangs around the room that the Marquis de La Mole stayed in. He finds a piece of folded paper that contains a note written by a guy to the Marquis who wants a government post that's about to open up. In the coming week, one of the biggest points of gossip in town is how Julien was allowed to ride with the Honor Guard. Even people who usually preach equality are furious with a carpenter's son being honored in this way. People suspect that Madame de Renal put in a good word for him because he's handsome. Soon afterward, Madame de Renal's son falls ill with a fever. She thinks that God is punishing her for having an affair with Julien. She tells Julien that she's going to spill her guts to her husband. Julien tells her not to. One day, Madame falls to her knees and tries to tell her husband that their son's illness is all her fault. But he thinks she's just being crazy and won't listen to her. Julien thinks about going away for a while. But he knows that Madame will tell her husband everything if he leaves. Julien has a long talk with Madame that ends with them both crying and swearing to stop their affair. Eventually, Madame's son regains his health. Madame's remorse stays strong though, now that she's accepted the sinfulness of what she's done. The servant Elisa becomes so frustrated that she one day goes into town and tells Monsieur de Renal's rival, Valenod, that Madame is sleeping with Julien Sorel. It's not clear whether she knows this for sure or is just talking out of suspicion. The news hurts Valenod's pride, since he has been trying to sleep with Madame de Renal for years. Next thing you know, Julien sees Monsieur de Renal reading an anonymous letter explaining everything going on between his wife and Julien. The man's face darkens as he reads.

Mrs. Wilcox cannot be accused of giving Margaret much information about life. And Margaret, on the other hand, has made a fair show of modesty, and has pretended to an inexperience that she certainly did not feel. She had kept house for over ten years; she had entertained, almost with distinction; she had brought up a charming sister, and was bringing up a brother. Surely, if experience is attainable, she had attained it. Yet the little luncheon-party that she gave in Mrs. Wilcox's honour was not a success. The new friend did not blend with the "one or two delightful people" who had been asked to meet her, and the atmosphere was one of polite bewilderment. Her tastes were simple, her knowledge of culture slight, and she was not interested in the New English Art Club, nor in the dividing-line between Journalism and Literature, which was started as a conversational hare. The delightful people darted after it with cries of joy, Margaret leading them, and not till the meal was half over did they realise that the principal guest had taken no part in the chase. There was no common topic. Mrs. Wilcox, whose life had been spent in the service of husband and sons, had little to say to strangers who had never shared it, and whose age was half her own. Clever talk alarmed her, and withered her delicate imaginings; it was the social counterpart of a motor-car, all jerks, and she was a wisp of hay, a flower. Twice she deplored the weather, twice criticised the train service on the Great Northern Railway. They vigorously assented, and rushed on, and when she inquired whether there was any news of Helen, her hostess was too much occupied in placing Rothenstein to answer. The question was repeated: "I hope that your sister is safe in Germany by now." Margaret checked herself and said, "Yes, thank you; I heard on Tuesday." But the demon of vociferation was in her, and the next moment she was off again. "Only on Tuesday, for they live right away at Stettin. Did you ever know any one living at Stettin?" "Never," said Mrs. Wilcox gravely, while her neighbour, a young man low down in the Education Office, began to discuss what people who lived at Stettin ought to look like. Was there such a thing as Stettininity? Margaret swept on. "People at Stettin drop things into boats out of overhanging warehouses. At least, our cousins do, but aren't particularly rich. The town isn't interesting, except for a clock that rolls its eyes, and the view of the Oder, which truly is something special. Oh, Mrs. Wilcox, you would love the Oder! The river, or rather rivers--there seem to be dozens of them--are intense blue, and the plain they run through an intensest green." "Indeed! That sounds like a most beautiful view, Miss Schlegel." "So I say, but Helen, who will muddle things, says no, it's like music. The course of the Oder is to be like music. It's obliged to remind her of a symphonic poem. The part by the landing-stage is in B minor, if I remember rightly, but lower down things get extremely mixed. There is a slodgy theme in several keys at once, meaning mud-banks, and another for the navigable canal, and the exit into the Baltic is in C sharp major, pianissimo." "What do the overhanging warehouses make of that?" asked the man, laughing. "They make a great deal of it," replied Margaret, unexpectedly rushing off on a new track. "I think it's affectation to compare the Oder to music, and so do you, but the overhanging warehouses of Stettin take beauty seriously, which we don't, and the average Englishman doesn't, and despises all who do. Now don't say 'Germans have no taste,' or I shall scream. They haven't. But--but--such a tremendous but!--they take poetry seriously. They do take poetry seriously." "Is anything gained by that?" "Yes, yes. The German is always on the lookout for beauty. He may miss it through stupidity, or misinterpret it, but he is always asking beauty to enter his life, and I believe that in the end it will come. At Heidelberg I met a fat veterinary surgeon whose voice broke with sobs as he repeated some mawkish poetry. So easy for me to laugh--I, who never repeat poetry, good or bad, and cannot remember one fragment of verse to thrill myself with. My blood boils--well, I 'm half German, so put it down to patriotism--when I listen to the tasteful contempt of the average islander for things Teutonic, whether they're Bocklin or my veterinary surgeon. 'Oh, Bocklin,' they say; 'he strains after beauty, he peoples Nature with gods too consciously.' Of course Bocklin strains, because he wants something--beauty and all the other intangible gifts that are floating about the world. So his landscapes don't come off, and Leader's do." "I am not sure that I agree. Do you?" said he, turning to Mrs. Wilcox. She replied: "I think Miss Schlegel puts everything splendidly;" and a chill fell on the conversation. "Oh, Mrs. Wilcox, say something nicer than that. It's such a snub to be told you put things splendidly." "I do not mean it as a snub. Your last speech interested me so much. Generally people do not seem quite to like Germany. I have long wanted to hear what is said on the other side." "The other side? Then you do disagree. Oh, good! Give us your side." "I have no side. But my husband"--her voice softened, the chill increased--"has very little faith in the Continent, and our children have all taken after him." "On what grounds? Do they feel that the Continent is in bad form?" Mrs. Wilcox had no idea; she paid little attention to grounds. She was not intellectual, nor even alert, and it was odd that, all the same, she should give the idea of greatness. Margaret, zigzagging with her friends over Thought and Art, was conscious of a personality that transcended their own and dwarfed their activities. There was no bitterness in Mrs. Wilcox; there was not even criticism; she was lovable, and no ungracious or uncharitable word had passed her lips. Yet she and daily life were out of focus; one or the other must show blurred. And at lunch she seemed more out of focus than usual, and nearer the line that divides daily life from a life that may be of greater importance. "You will admit, though, that the Continent--it seems silly to speak of 'the Continent,' but really it is all more like itself than any part of it is like England. England is unique. Do have another jelly first. I was going to say that the Continent, for good or for evil, is interested in ideas. Its Literature and Art have what one might call the kink of the unseen about them, and this persists even through decadence and affectation. There is more liberty of action in England, but for liberty of thought go to bureaucratic Prussia. People will there discuss with humility vital questions that we here think ourselves too good to touch with tongs." "I do not want to go to Prussia," said Mrs. Wilcox "not even to see that interesting view that you were describing. And for discussing with humility I am too old. We never discuss anything at Howards End." "Then you ought to!" said Margaret. "Discussion keeps a house alive. It cannot stand by bricks and mortar alone." "It cannot stand without them," said Mrs. Wilcox, unexpectedly catching on to the thought, and rousing, for the first and last time, a faint hope in the breasts of the delightful people. "It cannot stand without them, and I sometimes think--But I cannot expect your generation to agree, for even my daughter disagrees with me here." "Never mind us or her. Do say!" "I sometimes think that it is wiser to leave action and discussion to men." There was a little silence. "One admits that the arguments against the suffrage ARE extraordinarily strong," said a girl opposite, leaning forward and crumbling her bread. "Are they? I never follow any arguments. I am only too thankful not to have a vote myself." "We didn't mean the vote, though, did we?" supplied Margaret. "Aren't we differing on something much wider, Mrs. Wilcox? Whether women are to remain what they have been since the dawn of history; or whether, since men have moved forward so far, they too may move forward a little now. I say they may. I would even admit a biological change." "I don't know, I don't know." "I must be getting back to my overhanging warehouse," said the man. "They've turned disgracefully strict." Mrs. Wilcox also rose. "Oh, but come upstairs for a little. Miss Quested plays. Do you like MacDowell? Do you mind his only having two noises? If you must really go, I'll see you out. Won't you even have coffee?" They left the dining-room closing the door behind them, and as Mrs. Wilcox buttoned up her jacket, she said: "What an interesting life you all lead in London!" "No, we don't," said Margaret, with a sudden revulsion. "We lead the lives of gibbering monkeys. Mrs. Wilcox--really--We have something quiet and stable at the bottom. We really have. All my friends have. Don't pretend you enjoyed lunch, for you loathed it, but forgive me by coming again, alone, or by asking me to you." "I am used to young people," said Mrs. Wilcox, and with each word she spoke the outlines of known things grew dim. "I hear a great deal of chatter at home, for we, like you, entertain a great deal. With us it is more sport and politics, but--I enjoyed my lunch very much, Miss Schlegel, dear, and am not pretending, and only wish I could have joined in more. For one thing, I'm not particularly well just to-day. For another, you younger people move so quickly that it dazes me. Charles is the same, Dolly the same. But we are all in the same boat, old and young. I never forget that." They were silent for a moment. Then, with a newborn emotion, they shook hands. The conversation ceased suddenly when Margaret re-entered the dining-room; her friends had been talking over her new friend, and had dismissed her as uninteresting.

Margaret, it is revealed, wasn't being entirely honest with her new friend - in fact, she thinks of herself as quite experienced. Even so, she isn't experienced enough to foresee the disaster that arrives when she throws a luncheon party for Mrs. Wilcox. She invites some usual Schlegel guests over; these clever people with their witty, whimsical conversations are too much for Mrs. Wilcox, and she finds herself with nothing to contribute beyond small talk. Margaret and her friends chatter on and on, but Mrs. Wilcox doesn't fit in with them at all. She makes herself rather unpopular with some old-fashioned statements about a woman's proper place, and excuses herself early. All the same, Margaret has the odd feeling that there's something more to her new friend than meets the eye .

A Turn of the Screw "Now, what," says Mr. George, "may this be? Is it blank cartridge or ball? A flash in the pan or a shot?" An open letter is the subject of the trooper's speculations, and it seems to perplex him mightily. He looks at it at arm's length, brings it close to him, holds it in his right hand, holds it in his left hand, reads it with his head on this side, with his head on that side, contracts his eyebrows, elevates them, still cannot satisfy himself. He smooths it out upon the table with his heavy palm, and thoughtfully walking up and down the gallery, makes a halt before it every now and then to come upon it with a fresh eye. Even that won't do. "Is it," Mr. George still muses, "blank cartridge or ball?" Phil Squod, with the aid of a brush and paint-pot, is employed in the distance whitening the targets, softly whistling in quick-march time and in drum-and-fife manner that he must and will go back again to the girl he left behind him. "Phil!" The trooper beckons as he calls him. Phil approaches in his usual way, sidling off at first as if he were going anywhere else and then bearing down upon his commander like a bayonet-charge. Certain splashes of white show in high relief upon his dirty face, and he scrapes his one eyebrow with the handle of the brush. "Attention, Phil! Listen to this." "Steady, commander, steady." "'Sir. Allow me to remind you (though there is no legal necessity for my doing so, as you are aware) that the bill at two months' date drawn on yourself by Mr. Matthew Bagnet, and by you accepted, for the sum of ninety-seven pounds four shillings and ninepence, will become due to-morrow, when you will please be prepared to take up the same on presentation. Yours, Joshua Smallweed.' What do you make of that, Phil?" "Mischief, guv'ner." "Why?" "I think," replies Phil after pensively tracing out a cross-wrinkle in his forehead with the brush-handle, "that mischeevious consequences is always meant when money's asked for." "Lookye, Phil," says the trooper, sitting on the table. "First and last, I have paid, I may say, half as much again as this principal in interest and one thing and another." Phil intimates by sidling back a pace or two, with a very unaccountable wrench of his wry face, that he does not regard the transaction as being made more promising by this incident. "And lookye further, Phil," says the trooper, staying his premature conclusions with a wave of his hand. "There has always been an understanding that this bill was to be what they call renewed. And it has been renewed no end of times. What do you say now?" "I say that I think the times is come to a end at last." "You do? Humph! I am much of the same mind myself." "Joshua Smallweed is him that was brought here in a chair?" "The same." "Guv'ner," says Phil with exceeding gravity, "he's a leech in his dispositions, he's a screw and a wice in his actions, a snake in his twistings, and a lobster in his claws." Having thus expressively uttered his sentiments, Mr. Squod, after waiting a little to ascertain if any further remark be expected of him, gets back by his usual series of movements to the target he has in hand and vigorously signifies through his former musical medium that he must and he will return to that ideal young lady. George, having folded the letter, walks in that direction. "There IS a way, commander," says Phil, looking cunningly at him, "of settling this." "Paying the money, I suppose? I wish I could." Phil shakes his head. "No, guv'ner, no; not so bad as that. There IS a way," says Phil with a highly artistic turn of his brush; "what I'm a-doing at present." "Whitewashing." Phil nods. "A pretty way that would be! Do you know what would become of the Bagnets in that case? Do you know they would be ruined to pay off my old scores? YOU'RE a moral character," says the trooper, eyeing him in his large way with no small indignation; "upon my life you are, Phil!" Phil, on one knee at the target, is in course of protesting earnestly, though not without many allegorical scoops of his brush and smoothings of the white surface round the rim with his thumb, that he had forgotten the Bagnet responsibility and would not so much as injure a hair of the head of any member of that worthy family when steps are audible in the long passage without, and a cheerful voice is heard to wonder whether George is at home. Phil, with a look at his master, hobbles up, saying, "Here's the guv'ner, Mrs. Bagnet! Here he is!" and the old girl herself, accompanied by Mr. Bagnet, appears. The old girl never appears in walking trim, in any season of the year, without a grey cloth cloak, coarse and much worn but very clean, which is, undoubtedly, the identical garment rendered so interesting to Mr. Bagnet by having made its way home to Europe from another quarter of the globe in company with Mrs. Bagnet and an umbrella. The latter faithful appendage is also invariably a part of the old girl's presence out of doors. It is of no colour known in this life and has a corrugated wooden crook for a handle, with a metallic object let into its prow, or beak, resembling a little model of a fanlight over a street door or one of the oval glasses out of a pair of spectacles, which ornamental object has not that tenacious capacity of sticking to its post that might be desired in an article long associated with the British army. The old girl's umbrella is of a flabby habit of waist and seems to be in need of stays--an appearance that is possibly referable to its having served through a series of years at home as a cupboard and on journeys as a carpet bag. She never puts it up, having the greatest reliance on her well-proved cloak with its capacious hood, but generally uses the instrument as a wand with which to point out joints of meat or bunches of greens in marketing or to arrest the attention of tradesmen by a friendly poke. Without her market-basket, which is a sort of wicker well with two flapping lids, she never stirs abroad. Attended by these her trusty companions, therefore, her honest sunburnt face looking cheerily out of a rough straw bonnet, Mrs. Bagnet now arrives, fresh-coloured and bright, in George's Shooting Gallery. "Well, George, old fellow," says she, "and how do YOU do, this sunshiny morning?" Giving him a friendly shake of the hand, Mrs. Bagnet draws a long breath after her walk and sits down to enjoy a rest. Having a faculty, matured on the tops of baggage-waggons and in other such positions, of resting easily anywhere, she perches on a rough bench, unties her bonnet-strings, pushes back her bonnet, crosses her arms, and looks perfectly comfortable. Mr. Bagnet in the meantime has shaken hands with his old comrade and with Phil, on whom Mrs. Bagnet likewise bestows a good-humoured nod and smile. "Now, George," said Mrs. Bagnet briskly, "here we are, Lignum and myself"--she often speaks of her husband by this appellation, on account, as it is supposed, of Lignum Vitae having been his old regimental nickname when they first became acquainted, in compliment to the extreme hardness and toughness of his physiognomy--"just looked in, we have, to make it all correct as usual about that security. Give him the new bill to sign, George, and he'll sign it like a man." "I was coming to you this morning," observes the trooper reluctantly. "Yes, we thought you'd come to us this morning, but we turned out early and left Woolwich, the best of boys, to mind his sisters and came to you instead--as you see! For Lignum, he's tied so close now, and gets so little exercise, that a walk does him good. But what's the matter, George?" asks Mrs. Bagnet, stopping in her cheerful talk. "You don't look yourself." "I am not quite myself," returns the trooper; "I have been a little put out, Mrs. Bagnet." Her bright quick eye catches the truth directly. "George!" holding up her forefinger. "Don't tell me there's anything wrong about that security of Lignum's! Don't do it, George, on account of the children!" The trooper looks at her with a troubled visage. "George," says Mrs. Bagnet, using both her arms for emphasis and occasionally bringing down her open hands upon her knees. "If you have allowed anything wrong to come to that security of Lignum's, and if you have let him in for it, and if you have put us in danger of being sold up--and I see sold up in your face, George, as plain as print--you have done a shameful action and have deceived us cruelly. I tell you, cruelly, George. There!" Mr. Bagnet, otherwise as immovable as a pump or a lamp-post, puts his large right hand on the top of his bald head as if to defend it from a shower-bath and looks with great uneasiness at Mrs. Bagnet. "George," says that old girl, "I wonder at you! George, I am ashamed of you! George, I couldn't have believed you would have done it! I always knew you to be a rolling stone that gathered no moss, but I never thought you would have taken away what little moss there was for Bagnet and the children to lie upon. You know what a hard-working, steady-going chap he is. You know what Quebec and Malta and Woolwich are, and I never did think you would, or could, have had the heart to serve us so. Oh, George!" Mrs. Bagnet gathers up her cloak to wipe her eyes on in a very genuine manner, "How could you do it?" Mrs. Bagnet ceasing, Mr. Bagnet removes his hand from his head as if the shower-bath were over and looks disconsolately at Mr. George, who has turned quite white and looks distressfully at the grey cloak and straw bonnet. "Mat," says the trooper in a subdued voice, addressing him but still looking at his wife, "I am sorry you take it so much to heart, because I do hope it's not so bad as that comes to. I certainly have, this morning, received this letter"--which he reads aloud--"but I hope it may be set right yet. As to a rolling stone, why, what you say is true. I AM a rolling stone, and I never rolled in anybody's way, I fully believe, that I rolled the least good to. But it's impossible for an old vagabond comrade to like your wife and family better than I like 'em, Mat, and I trust you'll look upon me as forgivingly as you can. Don't think I've kept anything from you. I haven't had the letter more than a quarter of an hour." "Old girl," murmurs Mr. Bagnet after a short silence, "will you tell him my opinion?" "Oh! Why didn't he marry," Mrs. Bagnet answers, half laughing and half crying, "Joe Pouch's widder in North America? Then he wouldn't have got himself into these troubles." "The old girl," says Mr. Bagnet, "puts it correct--why didn't you?" "Well, she has a better husband by this time, I hope," returns the trooper. "Anyhow, here I stand, this present day, NOT married to Joe Pouch's widder. What shall I do? You see all I have got about me. It's not mine; it's yours. Give the word, and I'll sell off every morsel. If I could have hoped it would have brought in nearly the sum wanted, I'd have sold all long ago. Don't believe that I'll leave you or yours in the lurch, Mat. I'd sell myself first. I only wish," says the trooper, giving himself a disparaging blow in the chest, "that I knew of any one who'd buy such a second-hand piece of old stores." "Old girl," murmurs Mr. Bagnet, "give him another bit of my mind." "George," says the old girl, "you are not so much to be blamed, on full consideration, except for ever taking this business without the means." "And that was like me!" observes the penitent trooper, shaking his head. "Like me, I know." "Silence! The old girl," says Mr. Bagnet, "is correct--in her way of giving my opinions--hear me out!" "That was when you never ought to have asked for the security, George, and when you never ought to have got it, all things considered. But what's done can't be undone. You are always an honourable and straightforward fellow, as far as lays in your power, though a little flighty. On the other hand, you can't admit but what it's natural in us to be anxious with such a thing hanging over our heads. So forget and forgive all round, George. Come! Forget and forgive all round!" Mrs. Bagnet, giving him one of her honest hands and giving her husband the other, Mr. George gives each of them one of his and holds them while he speaks. "I do assure you both, there's nothing I wouldn't do to discharge this obligation. But whatever I have been able to scrape together has gone every two months in keeping it up. We have lived plainly enough here, Phil and I. But the gallery don't quite do what was expected of it, and it's not--in short, it's not the mint. It was wrong in me to take it? Well, so it was. But I was in a manner drawn into that step, and I thought it might steady me, and set me up, and you'll try to overlook my having such expectations, and upon my soul, I am very much obliged to you, and very much ashamed of myself." With these concluding words, Mr. George gives a shake to each of the hands he holds, and relinquishing them, backs a pace or two in a broad-chested, upright attitude, as if he had made a final confession and were immediately going to be shot with all military honours. "George, hear me out!" says Mr. Bagnet, glancing at his wife. "Old girl, go on!" Mr. Bagnet, being in this singular manner heard out, has merely to observe that the letter must be attended to without any delay, that it is advisable that George and he should immediately wait on Mr. Smallweed in person, and that the primary object is to save and hold harmless Mr. Bagnet, who had none of the money. Mr. George, entirely assenting, puts on his hat and prepares to march with Mr. Bagnet to the enemy's camp. "Don't you mind a woman's hasty word, George," says Mrs. Bagnet, patting him on the shoulder. "I trust my old Lignum to you, and I am sure you'll bring him through it." The trooper returns that this is kindly said and that he WILL bring Lignum through it somehow. Upon which Mrs. Bagnet, with her cloak, basket, and umbrella, goes home, bright-eyed again, to the rest of her family, and the comrades sally forth on the hopeful errand of mollifying Mr. Smallweed. Whether there are two people in England less likely to come satisfactorily out of any negotiation with Mr. Smallweed than Mr. George and Mr. Matthew Bagnet may be very reasonably questioned. Also, notwithstanding their martial appearance, broad square shoulders, and heavy tread, whether there are within the same limits two more simple and unaccustomed children in all the Smallweedy affairs of life. As they proceed with great gravity through the streets towards the region of Mount Pleasant, Mr. Bagnet, observing his companion to be thoughtful, considers it a friendly part to refer to Mrs. Bagnet's late sally. "George, you know the old girl--she's as sweet and as mild as milk. But touch her on the children--or myself--and she's off like gunpowder." "It does her credit, Mat!" "George," says Mr. Bagnet, looking straight before him, "the old girl--can't do anything--that don't do her credit. More or less. I never say so. Discipline must be maintained." "She's worth her weight in gold," says the trooper. "In gold?" says Mr. Bagnet. "I'll tell you what. The old girl's weight--is twelve stone six. Would I take that weight--in any metal--for the old girl? No. Why not? Because the old girl's metal is far more precious--than the preciousest metal. And she's ALL metal!" "You are right, Mat!" "When she took me--and accepted of the ring--she 'listed under me and the children--heart and head, for life. She's that earnest," says Mr. Bagnet, "and true to her colours--that, touch us with a finger--and she turns out--and stands to her arms. If the old girl fires wide--once in a way--at the call of duty--look over it, George. For she's loyal!" "Why, bless her, Mat," returns the trooper, "I think the higher of her for it!" "You are right!" says Mr. Bagnet with the warmest enthusiasm, though without relaxing the rigidity of a single muscle. "Think as high of the old girl--as the rock of Gibraltar--and still you'll be thinking low--of such merits. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained." These encomiums bring them to Mount Pleasant and to Grandfather Smallweed's house. The door is opened by the perennial Judy, who, having surveyed them from top to toe with no particular favour, but indeed with a malignant sneer, leaves them standing there while she consults the oracle as to their admission. The oracle may be inferred to give consent from the circumstance of her returning with the words on her honey lips that they can come in if they want to it. Thus privileged, they come in and find Mr. Smallweed with his feet in the drawer of his chair as if it were a paper foot-bath and Mrs. Smallweed obscured with the cushion like a bird that is not to sing. "My dear friend," says Grandfather Smallweed with those two lean affectionate arms of his stretched forth. "How de do? How de do? Who is our friend, my dear friend?" "Why this," returns George, not able to be very conciliatory at first, "is Matthew Bagnet, who has obliged me in that matter of ours, you know." "Oh! Mr. Bagnet? Surely!" The old man looks at him under his hand. "Hope you're well, Mr. Bagnet? Fine man, Mr. George! Military air, sir!" No chairs being offered, Mr. George brings one forward for Bagnet and one for himself. They sit down, Mr. Bagnet as if he had no power of bending himself, except at the hips, for that purpose. "Judy," says Mr. Smallweed, "bring the pipe." "Why, I don't know," Mr. George interposes, "that the young woman need give herself that trouble, for to tell you the truth, I am not inclined to smoke it to-day." "Ain't you?" returns the old man. "Judy, bring the pipe." "The fact is, Mr. Smallweed," proceeds George, "that I find myself in rather an unpleasant state of mind. It appears to me, sir, that your friend in the city has been playing tricks." "Oh, dear no!" says Grandfather Smallweed. "He never does that!" "Don't he? Well, I am glad to hear it, because I thought it might be HIS doing. This, you know, I am speaking of. This letter." Grandfather Smallweed smiles in a very ugly way in recognition of the letter. "What does it mean?" asks Mr. George. "Judy," says the old man. "Have you got the pipe? Give it to me. Did you say what does it mean, my good friend?" "Aye! Now, come, come, you know, Mr. Smallweed," urges the trooper, constraining himself to speak as smoothly and confidentially as he can, holding the open letter in one hand and resting the broad knuckles of the other on his thigh, "a good lot of money has passed between us, and we are face to face at the present moment, and are both well aware of the understanding there has always been. I am prepared to do the usual thing which I have done regularly and to keep this matter going. I never got a letter like this from you before, and I have been a little put about by it this morning, because here's my friend Matthew Bagnet, who, you know, had none of the money--" "I DON'T know it, you know," says the old man quietly. "Why, con-found you--it, I mean--I tell you so, don't I?" "Oh, yes, you tell me so," returns Grandfather Smallweed. "But I don't know it." "Well!" says the trooper, swallowing his fire. "I know it." Mr. Smallweed replies with excellent temper, "Ah! That's quite another thing!" And adds, "But it don't matter. Mr. Bagnet's situation is all one, whether or no." The unfortunate George makes a great effort to arrange the affair comfortably and to propitiate Mr. Smallweed by taking him upon his own terms. "That's just what I mean. As you say, Mr. Smallweed, here's Matthew Bagnet liable to be fixed whether or no. Now, you see, that makes his good lady very uneasy in her mind, and me too, for whereas I'm a harum-scarum sort of a good-for-nought that more kicks than halfpence come natural to, why he's a steady family man, don't you see? Now, Mr. Smallweed," says the trooper, gaining confidence as he proceeds in his soldierly mode of doing business, "although you and I are good friends enough in a certain sort of a way, I am well aware that I can't ask you to let my friend Bagnet off entirely." "Oh, dear, you are too modest. You can ASK me anything, Mr. George." (There is an ogreish kind of jocularity in Grandfather Smallweed to-day.) "And you can refuse, you mean, eh? Or not you so much, perhaps, as your friend in the city? Ha ha ha!" "Ha ha ha!" echoes Grandfather Smallweed. In such a very hard manner and with eyes so particularly green that Mr. Bagnet's natural gravity is much deepened by the contemplation of that venerable man. "Come!" says the sanguine George. "I am glad to find we can be pleasant, because I want to arrange this pleasantly. Here's my friend Bagnet, and here am I. We'll settle the matter on the spot, if you please, Mr. Smallweed, in the usual way. And you'll ease my friend Bagnet's mind, and his family's mind, a good deal if you'll just mention to him what our understanding is." Here some shrill spectre cries out in a mocking manner, "Oh, good gracious! Oh!" Unless, indeed, it be the sportive Judy, who is found to be silent when the startled visitors look round, but whose chin has received a recent toss, expressive of derision and contempt. Mr. Bagnet's gravity becomes yet more profound. "But I think you asked me, Mr. George"--old Smallweed, who all this time has had the pipe in his hand, is the speaker now--"I think you asked me, what did the letter mean?" "Why, yes, I did," returns the trooper in his off-hand way, "but I don't care to know particularly, if it's all correct and pleasant." Mr. Smallweed, purposely balking himself in an aim at the trooper's head, throws the pipe on the ground and breaks it to pieces. "That's what it means, my dear friend. I'll smash you. I'll crumble you. I'll powder you. Go to the devil!" The two friends rise and look at one another. Mr. Bagnet's gravity has now attained its profoundest point. "Go to the devil!" repeats the old man. "I'll have no more of your pipe-smokings and swaggerings. What? You're an independent dragoon, too! Go to my lawyer (you remember where; you have been there before) and show your independence now, will you? Come, my dear friend, there's a chance for you. Open the street door, Judy; put these blusterers out! Call in help if they don't go. Put 'em out!" He vociferates this so loudly that Mr. Bagnet, laying his hands on the shoulders of his comrade before the latter can recover from his amazement, gets him on the outside of the street door, which is instantly slammed by the triumphant Judy. Utterly confounded, Mr. George awhile stands looking at the knocker. Mr. Bagnet, in a perfect abyss of gravity, walks up and down before the little parlour window like a sentry and looks in every time he passes, apparently revolving something in his mind. "Come, Mat," says Mr. George when he has recovered himself, "we must try the lawyer. Now, what do you think of this rascal?" Mr. Bagnet, stopping to take a farewell look into the parlour, replies with one shake of his head directed at the interior, "If my old girl had been here--I'd have told him!" Having so discharged himself of the subject of his cogitations, he falls into step and marches off with the trooper, shoulder to shoulder. When they present themselves in Lincoln's Inn Fields, Mr. Tulkinghorn is engaged and not to be seen. He is not at all willing to see them, for when they have waited a full hour, and the clerk, on his bell being rung, takes the opportunity of mentioning as much, he brings forth no more encouraging message than that Mr. Tulkinghorn has nothing to say to them and they had better not wait. They do wait, however, with the perseverance of military tactics, and at last the bell rings again and the client in possession comes out of Mr. Tulkinghorn's room. The client is a handsome old lady, no other than Mrs. Rouncewell, housekeeper at Chesney Wold. She comes out of the sanctuary with a fair old-fashioned curtsy and softly shuts the door. She is treated with some distinction there, for the clerk steps out of his pew to show her through the outer office and to let her out. The old lady is thanking him for his attention when she observes the comrades in waiting. "I beg your pardon, sir, but I think those gentlemen are military?" The clerk referring the question to them with his eye, and Mr. George not turning round from the almanac over the fire-place. Mr. Bagnet takes upon himself to reply, "Yes, ma'am. Formerly." "I thought so. I was sure of it. My heart warms, gentlemen, at the sight of you. It always does at the sight of such. God bless you, gentlemen! You'll excuse an old woman, but I had a son once who went for a soldier. A fine handsome youth he was, and good in his bold way, though some people did disparage him to his poor mother. I ask your pardon for troubling you, sir. God bless you, gentlemen!" "Same to you, ma'am!" returns Mr. Bagnet with right good will. There is something very touching in the earnestness of the old lady's voice and in the tremble that goes through her quaint old figure. But Mr. George is so occupied with the almanac over the fire-place (calculating the coming months by it perhaps) that he does not look round until she has gone away and the door is closed upon her. "George," Mr. Bagnet gruffly whispers when he does turn from the almanac at last. "Don't be cast down! 'Why, soldiers, why--should we be melancholy, boys?' Cheer up, my hearty!" The clerk having now again gone in to say that they are still there and Mr. Tulkinghorn being heard to return with some irascibility, "Let 'em come in then!" they pass into the great room with the painted ceiling and find him standing before the fire. "Now, you men, what do you want? Sergeant, I told you the last time I saw you that I don't desire your company here." Sergeant replies--dashed within the last few minutes as to his usual manner of speech, and even as to his usual carriage--that he has received this letter, has been to Mr. Smallweed about it, and has been referred there. "I have nothing to say to you," rejoins Mr. Tulkinghorn. "If you get into debt, you must pay your debts or take the consequences. You have no occasion to come here to learn that, I suppose?" Sergeant is sorry to say that he is not prepared with the money. "Very well! Then the other man--this man, if this is he--must pay it for you." Sergeant is sorry to add that the other man is not prepared with the money either. "Very well! Then you must pay it between you or you must both be sued for it and both suffer. You have had the money and must refund it. You are not to pocket other people's pounds, shillings, and pence and escape scot-free." The lawyer sits down in his easy-chair and stirs the fire. Mr. George hopes he will have the goodness to--"I tell you, sergeant, I have nothing to say to you. I don't like your associates and don't want you here. This matter is not at all in my course of practice and is not in my office. Mr. Smallweed is good enough to offer these affairs to me, but they are not in my way. You must go to Melchisedech's in Clifford's Inn." "I must make an apology to you, sir," says Mr. George, "for pressing myself upon you with so little encouragement--which is almost as unpleasant to me as it can be to you--but would you let me say a private word to you?" Mr. Tulkinghorn rises with his hands in his pockets and walks into one of the window recesses. "Now! I have no time to waste." In the midst of his perfect assumption of indifference, he directs a sharp look at the trooper, taking care to stand with his own back to the light and to have the other with his face towards it. "Well, sir," says Mr. George, "this man with me is the other party implicated in this unfortunate affair--nominally, only nominally--and my sole object is to prevent his getting into trouble on my account. He is a most respectable man with a wife and family, formerly in the Royal Artillery--" "My friend, I don't care a pinch of snuff for the whole Royal Artillery establishment--officers, men, tumbrils, waggons, horses, guns, and ammunition." "'Tis likely, sir. But I care a good deal for Bagnet and his wife and family being injured on my account. And if I could bring them through this matter, I should have no help for it but to give up without any other consideration what you wanted of me the other day." "Have you got it here?" "I have got it here, sir." "Sergeant," the lawyer proceeds in his dry passionless manner, far more hopeless in the dealing with than any amount of vehemence, "make up your mind while I speak to you, for this is final. After I have finished speaking I have closed the subject, and I won't re-open it. Understand that. You can leave here, for a few days, what you say you have brought here if you choose; you can take it away at once if you choose. In case you choose to leave it here, I can do this for you--I can replace this matter on its old footing, and I can go so far besides as to give you a written undertaking that this man Bagnet shall never be troubled in any way until you have been proceeded against to the utmost, that your means shall be exhausted before the creditor looks to his. This is in fact all but freeing him. Have you decided?" The trooper puts his hand into his breast and answers with a long breath, "I must do it, sir." So Mr. Tulkinghorn, putting on his spectacles, sits down and writes the undertaking, which he slowly reads and explains to Bagnet, who has all this time been staring at the ceiling and who puts his hand on his bald head again, under this new verbal shower-bath, and seems exceedingly in need of the old girl through whom to express his sentiments. The trooper then takes from his breast-pocket a folded paper, which he lays with an unwilling hand at the lawyer's elbow. "'Tis only a letter of instructions, sir. The last I ever had from him." Look at a millstone, Mr. George, for some change in its expression, and you will find it quite as soon as in the face of Mr. Tulkinghorn when he opens and reads the letter! He refolds it and lays it in his desk with a countenance as unperturbable as death. Nor has he anything more to say or do but to nod once in the same frigid and discourteous manner and to say briefly, "You can go. Show these men out, there!" Being shown out, they repair to Mr. Bagnet's residence to dine. Boiled beef and greens constitute the day's variety on the former repast of boiled pork and greens, and Mrs. Bagnet serves out the meal in the same way and seasons it with the best of temper, being that rare sort of old girl that she receives Good to her arms without a hint that it might be Better and catches light from any little spot of darkness near her. The spot on this occasion is the darkened brow of Mr. George; he is unusually thoughtful and depressed. At first Mrs. Bagnet trusts to the combined endearments of Quebec and Malta to restore him, but finding those young ladies sensible that their existing Bluffy is not the Bluffy of their usual frolicsome acquaintance, she winks off the light infantry and leaves him to deploy at leisure on the open ground of the domestic hearth. But he does not. He remains in close order, clouded and depressed. During the lengthy cleaning up and pattening process, when he and Mr. Bagnet are supplied with their pipes, he is no better than he was at dinner. He forgets to smoke, looks at the fire and ponders, lets his pipe out, fills the breast of Mr. Bagnet with perturbation and dismay by showing that he has no enjoyment of tobacco. Therefore when Mrs. Bagnet at last appears, rosy from the invigorating pail, and sits down to her work, Mr. Bagnet growls, "Old girl!" and winks monitions to her to find out what's the matter. "Why, George!" says Mrs. Bagnet, quietly threading her needle. "How low you are!" "Am I? Not good company? Well, I am afraid I am not." "He ain't at all like Bluffy, mother!" cries little Malta. "Because he ain't well, I think, mother," adds Quebec. "Sure that's a bad sign not to be like Bluffy, too!" returns the trooper, kissing the young damsels. "But it's true," with a sigh, "true, I am afraid. These little ones are always right!" "George," says Mrs. Bagnet, working busily, "if I thought you cross enough to think of anything that a shrill old soldier's wife--who could have bitten her tongue off afterwards and ought to have done it almost--said this morning, I don't know what I shouldn't say to you now." "My kind soul of a darling," returns the trooper. "Not a morsel of it." "Because really and truly, George, what I said and meant to say was that I trusted Lignum to you and was sure you'd bring him through it. And you HAVE brought him through it, noble!" "Thankee, my dear!" says George. "I am glad of your good opinion." In giving Mrs. Bagnet's hand, with her work in it, a friendly shake--for she took her seat beside him--the trooper's attention is attracted to her face. After looking at it for a little while as she plies her needle, he looks to young Woolwich, sitting on his stool in the corner, and beckons that fifer to him. "See there, my boy," says George, very gently smoothing the mother's hair with his hand, "there's a good loving forehead for you! All bright with love of you, my boy. A little touched by the sun and the weather through following your father about and taking care of you, but as fresh and wholesome as a ripe apple on a tree." Mr. Bagnet's face expresses, so far as in its wooden material lies, the highest approbation and acquiescence. "The time will come, my boy," pursues the trooper, "when this hair of your mother's will be grey, and this forehead all crossed and re-crossed with wrinkles, and a fine old lady she'll be then. Take care, while you are young, that you can think in those days, 'I never whitened a hair of her dear head--I never marked a sorrowful line in her face!' For of all the many things that you can think of when you are a man, you had better have THAT by you, Woolwich!" Mr. George concludes by rising from his chair, seating the boy beside his mother in it, and saying, with something of a hurry about him, that he'll smoke his pipe in the street a bit.

The day before his two-month debt payment, Mr. George gets a letter from Smallweed that says that he has to pay the whole thing back immediately. He's freaked out - he obviously he doesn't have the money. Phil suggests declaring bankruptcy, but that's not a good idea because the debt was cosigned by Matt Bagnet, and if Mr. George doesn't pay, they'll go after the Bagnet family. Mr. George is beyond crushed. Then the Bagnets come to resign the loan like always, and Mrs. Bagnet immediately sees that something is wrong. She flies into a rage thinking that are about to lose everything - mostly because of her children. Mr. George is super sorry and feels horrible. Apparently the loan was to start his gym/shooting gallery business, which hasn't been doing well. Even if he sold it he wouldn't have nearly enough money to pay back the debt. Mrs. Bagnet reads the letter, calms down, and apologizes for yelling, since really it's not Mr. George's fault. Mr. George knows she is just trying to protect her family and feels nothing but respect and admiration for her. Us too. Bagnet and Mr. George go to talk to Smallweed. Smallweed is about as hostile as can be. He's a tiny, bitter, nasty monster of a man. After some threatening conversation about how much they owe and how little he cares about ruining the Bagnets, Smallweed takes the pipe Mr. George usually smokes on the payment days and crushes it, yelling, "I'll smash you. I'll crumble you. I'll powder you. Go to the devil!" . He's like Santa Claus, this guy. So Mr. George and Bagnet go to Tulkinghorn's office. Tulkinghorn is with a client who turns out to be Mrs. Rouncewell. When she comes out, Mr. George has his back to her, but she salutes the two army men and talks a little about her son who ran off to the army. She is happy to see men in uniform. Aww, lots of loving moms in this novel. Tulkinghorn pretends like he doesn't want to give them the time of day, until finally Mr. George says he is ready to give up the sample he has of Captain Hawdon's handwriting. Tulkinghorn immediately takes it, the loan is re-set up the old way with a small payment every two months, and Mr. George gets a letter saying that the Bagnets will be left alone about the money. Wow, that was quite a nifty piece of blackmail Smallweed and Tulkinghorn set up, right? Well played, gentlemen, well played. Mr. George goes over to the Bagnets and is totally depressed. Nothing works to cheer him up. He tells the oldest of the children to always be nice to his mom. Hmm, that doesn't seem to have anything to do with the events of the day...or does it? Stay tuned.

For three weeks after his injury Jurgis never got up from bed. It was a very obstinate sprain; the swelling would not go down, and the pain still continued. At the end of that time, however, he could contain himself no longer, and began trying to walk a little every day, laboring to persuade himself that he was better. No arguments could stop him, and three or four days later he declared that he was going back to work. He limped to the cars and got to Brown's, where he found that the boss had kept his place--that is, was willing to turn out into the snow the poor devil he had hired in the meantime. Every now and then the pain would force Jurgis to stop work, but he stuck it out till nearly an hour before closing. Then he was forced to acknowledge that he could not go on without fainting; it almost broke his heart to do it, and he stood leaning against a pillar and weeping like a child. Two of the men had to help him to the car, and when he got out he had to sit down and wait in the snow till some one came along. So they put him to bed again, and sent for the doctor, as they ought to have done in the beginning. It transpired that he had twisted a tendon out of place, and could never have gotten well without attention. Then he gripped the sides of the bed, and shut his teeth together, and turned white with agony, while the doctor pulled and wrenched away at his swollen ankle. When finally the doctor left, he told him that he would have to lie quiet for two months, and that if he went to work before that time he might lame himself for life. Three days later there came another heavy snowstorm, and Jonas and Marija and Ona and little Stanislovas all set out together, an hour before daybreak, to try to get to the yards. About noon the last two came back, the boy screaming with pain. His fingers were all frosted, it seemed. They had had to give up trying to get to the yards, and had nearly perished in a drift. All that they knew how to do was to hold the frozen fingers near the fire, and so little Stanislovas spent most of the day dancing about in horrible agony, till Jurgis flew into a passion of nervous rage and swore like a madman, declaring that he would kill him if he did not stop. All that day and night the family was half-crazed with fear that Ona and the boy had lost their places; and in the morning they set out earlier than ever, after the little fellow had been beaten with a stick by Jurgis. There could be no trifling in a case like this, it was a matter of life and death; little Stanislovas could not be expected to realize that he might a great deal better freeze in the snowdrift than lose his job at the lard machine. Ona was quite certain that she would find her place gone, and was all unnerved when she finally got to Brown's, and found that the forelady herself had failed to come, and was therefore compelled to be lenient. One of the consequences of this episode was that the first joints of three of the little boy's fingers were permanently disabled, and another that thereafter he always had to be beaten before he set out to work, whenever there was fresh snow on the ground. Jurgis was called upon to do the beating, and as it hurt his foot he did it with a vengeance; but it did not tend to add to the sweetness of his temper. They say that the best dog will turn cross if he be kept chained all the time, and it was the same with the man; he had not a thing to do all day but lie and curse his fate, and the time came when he wanted to curse everything. This was never for very long, however, for when Ona began to cry, Jurgis could not stay angry. The poor fellow looked like a homeless ghost, with his cheeks sunken in and his long black hair straggling into his eyes; he was too discouraged to cut it, or to think about his appearance. His muscles were wasting away, and what were left were soft and flabby. He had no appetite, and they could not afford to tempt him with delicacies. It was better, he said, that he should not eat, it was a saving. About the end of March he had got hold of Ona's bankbook, and learned that there was only three dollars left to them in the world. But perhaps the worst of the consequences of this long siege was that they lost another member of their family; Brother Jonas disappeared. One Saturday night he did not come home, and thereafter all their efforts to get trace of him were futile. It was said by the boss at Durham's that he had gotten his week's money and left there. That might not be true, of course, for sometimes they would say that when a man had been killed; it was the easiest way out of it for all concerned. When, for instance, a man had fallen into one of the rendering tanks and had been made into pure leaf lard and peerless fertilizer, there was no use letting the fact out and making his family unhappy. More probable, however, was the theory that Jonas had deserted them, and gone on the road, seeking happiness. He had been discontented for a long time, and not without some cause. He paid good board, and was yet obliged to live in a family where nobody had enough to eat. And Marija would keep giving them all her money, and of course he could not but feel that he was called upon to do the same. Then there were crying brats, and all sorts of misery; a man would have had to be a good deal of a hero to stand it all without grumbling, and Jonas was not in the least a hero--he was simply a weatherbeaten old fellow who liked to have a good supper and sit in the corner by the fire and smoke his pipe in peace before he went to bed. Here there was not room by the fire, and through the winter the kitchen had seldom been warm enough for comfort. So, with the springtime, what was more likely than that the wild idea of escaping had come to him? Two years he had been yoked like a horse to a half-ton truck in Durham's dark cellars, with never a rest, save on Sundays and four holidays in the year, and with never a word of thanks--only kicks and blows and curses, such as no decent dog would have stood. And now the winter was over, and the spring winds were blowing--and with a day's walk a man might put the smoke of Packingtown behind him forever, and be where the grass was green and the flowers all the colors of the rainbow! But now the income of the family was cut down more than one-third, and the food demand was cut only one-eleventh, so that they were worse off than ever. Also they were borrowing money from Marija, and eating up her bank account, and spoiling once again her hopes of marriage and happiness. And they were even going into debt to Tamoszius Kuszleika and letting him impoverish himself. Poor Tamoszius was a man without any relatives, and with a wonderful talent besides, and he ought to have made money and prospered; but he had fallen in love, and so given hostages to fortune, and was doomed to be dragged down too. So it was finally decided that two more of the children would have to leave school. Next to Stanislovas, who was now fifteen, there was a girl, little Kotrina, who was two years younger, and then two boys, Vilimas, who was eleven, and Nikalojus, who was ten. Both of these last were bright boys, and there was no reason why their family should starve when tens of thousands of children no older were earning their own livings. So one morning they were given a quarter apiece and a roll with a sausage in it, and, with their minds top-heavy with good advice, were sent out to make their way to the city and learn to sell newspapers. They came back late at night in tears, having walked for the five or six miles to report that a man had offered to take them to a place where they sold newspapers, and had taken their money and gone into a store to get them, and nevermore been seen. So they both received a whipping, and the next morning set out again. This time they found the newspaper place, and procured their stock; and after wandering about till nearly noontime, saying "Paper?" to every one they saw, they had all their stock taken away and received a thrashing besides from a big newsman upon whose territory they had trespassed. Fortunately, however, they had already sold some papers, and came back with nearly as much as they started with. After a week of mishaps such as these, the two little fellows began to learn the ways of the trade--the names of the different papers, and how many of each to get, and what sort of people to offer them to, and where to go and where to stay away from. After this, leaving home at four o'clock in the morning, and running about the streets, first with morning papers and then with evening, they might come home late at night with twenty or thirty cents apiece--possibly as much as forty cents. From this they had to deduct their carfare, since the distance was so great; but after a while they made friends, and learned still more, and then they would save their carfare. They would get on a car when the conductor was not looking, and hide in the crowd; and three times out of four he would not ask for their fares, either not seeing them, or thinking they had already paid; or if he did ask, they would hunt through their pockets, and then begin to cry, and either have their fares paid by some kind old lady, or else try the trick again on a new car. All this was fair play, they felt. Whose fault was it that at the hours when workingmen were going to their work and back, the cars were so crowded that the conductors could not collect all the fares? And besides, the companies were thieves, people said--had stolen all their franchises with the help of scoundrelly politicians! Now that the winter was by, and there was no more danger of snow, and no more coal to buy, and another room warm enough to put the children into when they cried, and enough money to get along from week to week with, Jurgis was less terrible than he had been. A man can get used to anything in the course of time, and Jurgis had gotten used to lying about the house. Ona saw this, and was very careful not to destroy his peace of mind, by letting him know how very much pain she was suffering. It was now the time of the spring rains, and Ona had often to ride to her work, in spite of the expense; she was getting paler every day, and sometimes, in spite of her good resolutions, it pained her that Jurgis did not notice it. She wondered if he cared for her as much as ever, if all this misery was not wearing out his love. She had to be away from him all the time, and bear her own troubles while he was bearing his; and then, when she came home, she was so worn out; and whenever they talked they had only their worries to talk of--truly it was hard, in such a life, to keep any sentiment alive. The woe of this would flame up in Ona sometimes--at night she would suddenly clasp her big husband in her arms and break into passionate weeping, demanding to know if he really loved her. Poor Jurgis, who had in truth grown more matter-of-fact, under the endless pressure of penury, would not know what to make of these things, and could only try to recollect when he had last been cross; and so Ona would have to forgive him and sob herself to sleep. The latter part of April Jurgis went to see the doctor, and was given a bandage to lace about his ankle, and told that he might go back to work. It needed more than the permission of the doctor, however, for when he showed up on the killing floor of Brown's, he was told by the foreman that it had not been possible to keep his job for him. Jurgis knew that this meant simply that the foreman had found some one else to do the work as well and did not want to bother to make a change. He stood in the doorway, looking mournfully on, seeing his friends and companions at work, and feeling like an outcast. Then he went out and took his place with the mob of the unemployed. This time, however, Jurgis did not have the same fine confidence, nor the same reason for it. He was no longer the finest-looking man in the throng, and the bosses no longer made for him; he was thin and haggard, and his clothes were seedy, and he looked miserable. And there were hundreds who looked and felt just like him, and who had been wandering about Packingtown for months begging for work. This was a critical time in Jurgis' life, and if he had been a weaker man he would have gone the way the rest did. Those out-of-work wretches would stand about the packing houses every morning till the police drove them away, and then they would scatter among the saloons. Very few of them had the nerve to face the rebuffs that they would encounter by trying to get into the buildings to interview the bosses; if they did not get a chance in the morning, there would be nothing to do but hang about the saloons the rest of the day and night. Jurgis was saved from all this--partly, to be sure, because it was pleasant weather, and there was no need to be indoors; but mainly because he carried with him always the pitiful little face of his wife. He must get work, he told himself, fighting the battle with despair every hour of the day. He must get work! He must have a place again and some money saved up, before the next winter came. But there was no work for him. He sought out all the members of his union--Jurgis had stuck to the union through all this--and begged them to speak a word for him. He went to every one he knew, asking for a chance, there or anywhere. He wandered all day through the buildings; and in a week or two, when he had been all over the yards, and into every room to which he had access, and learned that there was not a job anywhere, he persuaded himself that there might have been a change in the places he had first visited, and began the round all over; till finally the watchmen and the "spotters" of the companies came to know him by sight and to order him out with threats. Then there was nothing more for him to do but go with the crowd in the morning, and keep in the front row and look eager, and when he failed, go back home, and play with little Kotrina and the baby. The peculiar bitterness of all this was that Jurgis saw so plainly the meaning of it. In the beginning he had been fresh and strong, and he had gotten a job the first day; but now he was second-hand, a damaged article, so to speak, and they did not want him. They had got the best of him--they had worn him out, with their speeding-up and their carelessness, and now they had thrown him away! And Jurgis would make the acquaintance of others of these unemployed men and find that they had all had the same experience. There were some, of course, who had wandered in from other places, who had been ground up in other mills; there were others who were out from their own fault--some, for instance, who had not been able to stand the awful grind without drink. The vast majority, however, were simply the worn-out parts of the great merciless packing machine; they had toiled there, and kept up with the pace, some of them for ten or twenty years, until finally the time had come when they could not keep up with it any more. Some had been frankly told that they were too old, that a sprier man was needed; others had given occasion, by some act of carelessness or incompetence; with most, however, the occasion had been the same as with Jurgis. They had been overworked and underfed so long, and finally some disease had laid them on their backs; or they had cut themselves, and had blood poisoning, or met with some other accident. When a man came back after that, he would get his place back only by the courtesy of the boss. To this there was no exception, save when the accident was one for which the firm was liable; in that case they would send a slippery lawyer to see him, first to try to get him to sign away his claims, but if he was too smart for that, to promise him that he and his should always be provided with work. This promise they would keep, strictly and to the letter--for two years. Two years was the "statute of limitations," and after that the victim could not sue. What happened to a man after any of these things, all depended upon the circumstances. If he were of the highly skilled workers, he would probably have enough saved up to tide him over. The best paid men, the "splitters," made fifty cents an hour, which would be five or six dollars a day in the rush seasons, and one or two in the dullest. A man could live and save on that; but then there were only half a dozen splitters in each place, and one of them that Jurgis knew had a family of twenty-two children, all hoping to grow up to be splitters like their father. For an unskilled man, who made ten dollars a week in the rush seasons and five in the dull, it all depended upon his age and the number he had dependent upon him. An unmarried man could save, if he did not drink, and if he was absolutely selfish--that is, if he paid no heed to the demands of his old parents, or of his little brothers and sisters, or of any other relatives he might have, as well as of the members of his union, and his chums, and the people who might be starving to death next door.

Jurgis lies in bed for three weeks before deciding that he is healed and he has to go back to work. His boss is willing to take him back, and Jurgis manages to work almost a full day before he has to be led, crying, to a streetcar to go home. Finally, the family calls a doctor. It turns out that Jurgis hasn't just sprained his ankle - his tendon has been twisted out of place. He needs another two months of bed rest for it to heal. There is a heavy blizzard three days later. Jonas, Marija, Ona, and Stanislovas go to work together. Ona and Stanislovas come back at noon. Neither of them could get through the snowdrifts, and Stanislovas has gotten frostbite on several of his fingers. Jurgis beats Stanislovas the next morning to make him go out again into the cold the next morning. They cannot afford to have Stanislovas lose his job. This disastrous day has two results for Stanislovas: he loses the use of three of his fingers from the frostbite, and Jurgis has to beat him every morning to make him go out to work during the winter. Jurgis has become so bad-tempered that he beats Stanislovas cruelly, at least until it makes Ona cry. Jurgis has lost his appetite and will not eat. He decides it's better anyway, because he knows they have practically no savings left. Jonas also disappears. One Saturday, he doesn't come home, and they never see him again. Jonas's supervisor says he collected his week's pay and left. The family can't be sure if that's true, because sometimes the meatpacking plants won't tell the families the truth if one of their workers falls into the rendering tanks and gets processed into lard and fertilizer . Still, they are pretty sure that Jonas just got fed up and left - how could he want to stay at his terrible job? It's not like he's enjoying a decent home life, with the cold and the crying children. So they have no choice but to borrow more money from Marija, who is once again putting off her dreams of marriage. They are even borrowing money from Tamoszius Kuszleika. So the family decides that two more of the children have to enter the work force. The next oldest of Teta Elzbieta's children is a thirteen-year-old girl, Kotrina, who helps around the house. But Teta Elzbieta also has two smart sons whom they decide to send into the working world: Vilimas and Nikalojus . Vilimas and Nikalojus both enter the working world as paper boys. It takes them a long time to figure out which papers they should sell and how they could make their money - though they aren't pulling in much of a profit. Ona is growing thinner and paler, and she is distressed that Jurgis isn't noticing how much she has changed. Jurgis has no idea why she is sometimes angry with him. In late April, Jurgis gets the doctor's go-ahead to return to work. Jurgis has to rejoin the unemployed men waiting outside the factory for a job. Now he is worried: he is no longer the muscular guy he was two years ago. He can't be confident that he will be given preference for a job. Jurgis is eager for a job, and refuses to fall into despair. He doesn't do what so many of his unemployed fellows do, which is to hit the bars everyday. Even so, there just isn't work anywhere. He tries to use his union connections, and even that gets Jurgis nowhere. What makes Jurgis bitter is that it is the system itself that has drained his energy and muscle - when he was fresh from Lithuania, he got hired right away, but now he's damaged goods, and the same factory that destroyed his health won't hire him back again. The only way that an unskilled laborer can make any money is if he refuses to support his family and just looks to feed himself.

He went late that evening to the Boulevard Malesherbes, having his impression that it would be vain to go early, and having also, more than once in the course of the day, made enquiries of the concierge. Chad hadn't come in and had left no intimation; he had affairs, apparently, at this juncture--as it occurred to Strether he so well might have--that kept him long abroad. Our friend asked once for him at the hotel in the Rue de Rivoli, but the only contribution offered there was the fact that every one was out. It was with the idea that he would have to come home to sleep that Strether went up to his rooms, from which however he was still absent, though, from the balcony, a few moments later, his visitor heard eleven o'clock strike. Chad's servant had by this time answered for his reappearance; he HAD, the visitor learned, come quickly in to dress for dinner and vanish again. Strether spent an hour in waiting for him--an hour full of strange suggestions, persuasions, recognitions; one of those that he was to recall, at the end of his adventure, as the particular handful that most had counted. The mellowest lamplight and the easiest chair had been placed at his disposal by Baptiste, subtlest of servants; the novel half-uncut, the novel lemon-coloured and tender, with the ivory knife athwart it like the dagger in a contadina's hair, had been pushed within the soft circle--a circle which, for some reason, affected Strether as softer still after the same Baptiste had remarked that in the absence of a further need of anything by Monsieur he would betake himself to bed. The night was hot and heavy and the single lamp sufficient; the great flare of the lighted city, rising high, spending itself afar, played up from the Boulevard and, through the vague vista of the successive rooms, brought objects into view and added to their dignity. Strether found himself in possession as he never yet had been; he had been there alone, had turned over books and prints, had invoked, in Chad's absence, the spirit of the place, but never at the witching hour and never with a relish quite so like a pang. He spent a long time on the balcony; he hung over it as he had seen little Bilham hang the day of his first approach, as he had seen Mamie hang over her own the day little Bilham himself might have seen her from below; he passed back into the rooms, the three that occupied the front and that communicated by wide doors; and, while he circulated and rested, tried to recover the impression that they had made on him three months before, to catch again the voice in which they had seemed then to speak to him. That voice, he had to note, failed audibly to sound; which he took as the proof of all the change in himself. He had heard, of old, only what he COULD then hear; what he could do now was to think of three months ago as a point in the far past. All voices had grown thicker and meant more things; they crowded on him as he moved about--it was the way they sounded together that wouldn't let him be still. He felt, strangely, as sad as if he had come for some wrong, and yet as excited as if he had come for some freedom. But the freedom was what was most in the place and the hour, it was the freedom that most brought him round again to the youth of his own that he had long ago missed. He could have explained little enough to-day either why he had missed it or why, after years and years, he should care that he had; the main truth of the actual appeal of everything was none the less that everything represented the substance of his loss put it within reach, within touch, made it, to a degree it had never been, an affair of the senses. That was what it became for him at this singular time, the youth he had long ago missed--a queer concrete presence, full of mystery, yet full of reality, which he could handle, taste, smell, the deep breathing of which he could positively hear. It was in the outside air as well as within; it was in the long watch, from the balcony, in the summer night, of the wide late life of Paris, the unceasing soft quick rumble, below, of the little lighted carriages that, in the press, always suggested the gamblers he had seen of old at Monte Carlo pushing up to the tables. This image was before him when he at last became aware that Chad was behind. "She tells me you put it all on ME"--he had arrived after this promptly enough at that information; which expressed the case however quite as the young man appeared willing for the moment to leave it. Other things, with this advantage of their virtually having the night before them, came up for them, and had, as well, the odd effect of making the occasion, instead of hurried and feverish, one of the largest, loosest and easiest to which Strether's whole adventure was to have treated him. He had been pursuing Chad from an early hour and had overtaken him only now; but now the delay was repaired by their being so exceptionally confronted. They had foregathered enough of course in all the various times; they had again and again, since that first night at the theatre, been face to face over their question; but they had never been so alone together as they were actually alone--their talk hadn't yet been so supremely for themselves. And if many things moreover passed before them, none passed more distinctly for Strether than that striking truth about Chad of which he had been so often moved to take note: the truth that everything came happily back with him to his knowing how to live. It had been seated in his pleased smile--a smile that pleased exactly in the right degree--as his visitor turned round, on the balcony, to greet his advent; his visitor in fact felt on the spot that there was nothing their meeting would so much do as bear witness to that facility. He surrendered himself accordingly to so approved a gift; for what was the meaning of the facility but that others DID surrender themselves? He didn't want, luckily, to prevent Chad from living; but he was quite aware that even if he had he would himself have thoroughly gone to pieces. It was in truth essentially by bringing down his personal life to a function all subsidiary to the young man's own that he held together. And the great point, above all, the sign of how completely Chad possessed the knowledge in question, was that one thus became, not only with a proper cheerfulness, but with wild native impulses, the feeder of his stream. Their talk had accordingly not lasted three minutes without Strether's feeling basis enough for the excitement in which he had waited. This overflow fairly deepened, wastefully abounded, as he observed the smallness of anything corresponding to it on the part of his friend. That was exactly this friend's happy case; he "put out" his excitement, or whatever other emotion the matter involved, as he put out his washing; than which no arrangement could make more for domestic order. It was quite for Strether himself in short to feel a personal analogy with the laundress bringing home the triumphs of the mangle. When he had reported on Sarah's visit, which he did very fully, Chad answered his question with perfect candour. "I positively referred her to you--told her she must absolutely see you. This was last night, and it all took place in ten minutes. It was our first free talk--really the first time she had tackled me. She knew I also knew what her line had been with yourself; knew moreover how little you had been doing to make anything difficult for her. So I spoke for you frankly--assured her you were all at her service. I assured her I was too," the young man continued; "and I pointed out how she could perfectly, at any time, have got at me. Her difficulty has been simply her not finding the moment she fancied." "Her difficulty," Strether returned, "has been simply that she finds she's afraid of you. She's not afraid of ME, Sarah, one little scrap; and it was just because she has seen how I can fidget when I give my mind to it that she has felt her best chance, rightly enough to be in making me as uneasy as possible. I think she's at bottom as pleased to HAVE you put it on me as you yourself can possibly be to put it." "But what in the world, my dear man," Chad enquired in objection to this luminosity, "have I done to make Sally afraid?" "You've been 'wonderful, wonderful,' as we say--we poor people who watch the play from the pit; and that's what has, admirably, made her. Made her all the more effectually that she could see you didn't set about it on purpose--I mean set about affecting her as with fear." Chad cast a pleasant backward glance over his possibilities of motive. "I've only wanted to be kind and friendly, to be decent and attentive--and I still only want to be." Strether smiled at his comfortable clearness. "Well, there can certainly be no way for it better than by my taking the onus. It reduces your personal friction and your personal offence to almost nothing." Ah but Chad, with his completer conception of the friendly, wouldn't quite have this! They had remained on the balcony, where, after their day of great and premature heat, the midnight air was delicious; and they leaned back in turn against the balustrade, all in harmony with the chairs and the flower-pots, the cigarettes and the starlight. "The onus isn't REALLY yours--after our agreeing so to wait together and judge together. That was all my answer to Sally," Chad pursued--"that we have been, that we are, just judging together." "I'm not afraid of the burden," Strether explained; "I haven't come in the least that you should take it off me. I've come very much, it seems to me, to double up my fore legs in the manner of the camel when he gets down on his knees to make his back convenient. But I've supposed you all this while to have been doing a lot of special and private judging--about which I haven't troubled you; and I've only wished to have your conclusion first from you. I don't ask more than that; I'm quite ready to take it as it has come." Chad turned up his face to the sky with a slow puff of his smoke. "Well, I've seen." Strether waited a little. "I've left you wholly alone; haven't, I think I may say, since the first hour or two--when I merely preached patience--so much as breathed on you." "Oh you've been awfully good!" "We've both been good then--we've played the game. We've given them the most liberal conditions." "Ah," said Chad, "splendid conditions! It was open to them, open to them"--he seemed to make it out, as he smoked, with his eyes still on the stars. He might in quiet sport have been reading their horoscope. Strether wondered meanwhile what had been open to them, and he finally let him have it. "It was open to them simply to let me alone; to have made up their minds, on really seeing me for themselves, that I could go on well enough as I was." Strether assented to this proposition with full lucidity, his companion's plural pronoun, which stood all for Mrs. Newsome and her daughter, having no ambiguity for him. There was nothing, apparently, to stand for Mamie and Jim; and this added to our friend's sense of Chad's knowing what he thought. "But they've made up their minds to the opposite--that you CAN'T go on as you are." "No," Chad continued in the same way; "they won't have it for a minute." Strether on his side also reflectively smoked. It was as if their high place really represented some moral elevation from which they could look down on their recent past. "There never was the smallest chance, do you know, that they WOULD have it for a moment." "Of course not--no real chance. But if they were willing to think there was--!" "They weren't willing." Strether had worked it all out. "It wasn't for you they came out, but for me. It wasn't to see for themselves what you're doing, but what I'm doing. The first branch of their curiosity was inevitably destined, under my culpable delay, to give way to the second; and it's on the second that, if I may use the expression and you don't mind my marking the invidious fact, they've been of late exclusively perched. When Sarah sailed it was me, in other words, they were after." Chad took it in both with intelligence and with indulgence. "It IS rather a business then--what I've let you in for!" Strether had again a brief pause; which ended in a reply that seemed to dispose once for all of this element of compunction. Chad was to treat it, at any rate, so far as they were again together, as having done so. "I was 'in' when you found me." "Ah but it was you," the young man laughed, "who found ME." "I only found you out. It was you who found me in. It was all in the day's work for them, at all events, that they should come. And they've greatly enjoyed it," Strether declared. "Well, I've tried to make them," said Chad. His companion did himself presently the same justice. "So have I. I tried even this very morning--while Mrs. Pocock was with me. She enjoys for instance, almost as much as anything else, not being, as I've said, afraid of me; and I think I gave her help in that." Chad took a deeper interest. "Was she very very nasty?" Strether debated. "Well, she was the most important thing--she was definite. She was--at last--crystalline. And I felt no remorse. I saw that they must have come." "Oh I wanted to see them for myself; so that if it were only for THAT--!" Chad's own remorse was as small. This appeared almost all Strether wanted. "Isn't your having seen them for yourself then THE thing, beyond all others, that has come of their visit?" Chad looked as if he thought it nice of his old friend to put it so. "Don't you count it as anything that you're dished--if you ARE dished? Are you, my dear man, dished?" It sounded as if he were asking if he had caught cold or hurt his foot, and Strether for a minute but smoked and smoked. "I want to see her again. I must see her." "Of course you must." Then Chad hesitated. "Do you mean--a--Mother herself?" "Oh your mother--that will depend." It was as if Mrs. Newsome had somehow been placed by the words very far off. Chad however endeavoured in spite of this to reach the place. "What do you mean it will depend on?" Strether, for all answer, gave him a longish look. "I was speaking of Sarah. I must positively--though she quite cast me off--see HER again. I can't part with her that way." "Then she was awfully unpleasant?" Again Strether exhaled. "She was what she had to be. I mean that from the moment they're not delighted they can only be--well what I admit she was. We gave them," he went on, "their chance to be delighted, and they've walked up to it, and looked all round it, and not taken it." "You can bring a horse to water--!" Chad suggested. "Precisely. And the tune to which this morning Sarah wasn't delighted--the tune to which, to adopt your metaphor, she refused to drink--leaves us on that side nothing more to hope." Chad had a pause, and then as if consolingly: "It was never of course really the least on the cards that they would be 'delighted.'" "Well, I don't know, after all," Strether mused. "I've had to come as far round. However"--he shook it off--"it's doubtless MY performance that's absurd." "There are certainly moments," said Chad, "when you seem to me too good to be true. Yet if you are true," he added, "that seems to be all that need concern me." "I'm true, but I'm incredible. I'm fantastic and ridiculous--I don't explain myself even TO myself. How can they then," Strether asked, "understand me? So I don't quarrel with them." "I see. They quarrel," said Chad rather comfortably, "with US." Strether noted once more the comfort, but his young friend had already gone on. "I should feel greatly ashamed, all the same, if I didn't put it before you again that you ought to think, after all, tremendously well. I mean before giving up beyond recall--" With which insistence, as from a certain delicacy, dropped. Ah but Strether wanted it. "Say it all, say it all." "Well, at your age, and with what--when all's said and done--Mother might do for you and be for you." Chad had said it all, from his natural scruple, only to that extent; so that Strether after an instant himself took a hand. "My absence of an assured future. The little I have to show toward the power to take care of myself. The way, the wonderful way, she would certainly take care of me. Her fortune, her kindness, and the constant miracle of her having been disposed to go even so far. Of course, of course"--he summed it up. "There are those sharp facts." Chad had meanwhile thought of another still. "And don't you really care--?" His friend slowly turned round to him. "Will you go?" "I'll go if you'll say you now consider I should. You know," he went on, "I was ready six weeks ago." "Ah," said Strether, "that was when you didn't know I wasn't! You're ready at present because you do know it." "That may be," Chad returned; "but all the same I'm sincere. You talk about taking the whole thing on your shoulders, but in what light do you regard me that you think me capable of letting you pay?" Strether patted his arm, as they stood together against the parapet, reassuringly--seeming to wish to contend that he HAD the wherewithal; but it was again round this question of purchase and price that the young man's sense of fairness continued to hover. "What it literally comes to for you, if you'll pardon my putting it so, is that you give up money. Possibly a good deal of money." "Oh," Strether laughed, "if it were only just enough you'd still be justified in putting it so! But I've on my side to remind you too that YOU give up money; and more than 'possibly'--quite certainly, as I should suppose--a good deal." "True enough; but I've got a certain quantity," Chad returned after a moment. "Whereas you, my dear man, you--" "I can't be at all said"--Strether took him up--"to have a 'quantity' certain or uncertain? Very true. Still, I shan't starve." "Oh you mustn't STARVE!" Chad pacifically emphasised; and so, in the pleasant conditions, they continued to talk; though there was, for that matter, a pause in which the younger companion might have been taken as weighing again the delicacy of his then and there promising the elder some provision against the possibility just mentioned. This, however, he presumably thought best not to do, for at the end of another minute they had moved in quite a different direction. Strether had broken in by returning to the subject of Chad's passage with Sarah and enquiring if they had arrived, in the event, at anything in the nature of a "scene." To this Chad replied that they had on the contrary kept tremendously polite; adding moreover that Sally was after all not the woman to have made the mistake of not being. "Her hands are a good deal tied, you see. I got so, from the first," he sagaciously observed, "the start of her." "You mean she has taken so much from you?" "Well, I couldn't of course in common decency give less: only she hadn't expected, I think, that I'd give her nearly so much. And she began to take it before she knew it." "And she began to like it," said Strether, "as soon as she began to take it!" "Yes, she has liked it--also more than she expected." After which Chad observed: "But she doesn't like ME. In fact she hates me." Strether's interest grew. "Then why does she want you at home?" "Because when you hate you want to triumph, and if she should get me neatly stuck there she WOULD triumph." Strether followed afresh, but looking as he went. "Certainly--in a manner. But it would scarce be a triumph worth having if, once entangled, feeling her dislike and possibly conscious in time of a certain quantity of your own, you should on the spot make yourself unpleasant to her." "Ah," said Chad, "she can bear ME--could bear me at least at home. It's my being there that would be her triumph. She hates me in Paris." "She hates in other words--" "Yes, THAT'S it!"--Chad had quickly understood this understanding; which formed on the part of each as near an approach as they had yet made to naming Madame de Vionnet. The limitations of their distinctness didn't, however, prevent its fairly lingering in the air that it was this lady Mrs. Pocock hated. It added one more touch moreover to their established recognition of the rare intimacy of Chad's association with her. He had never yet more twitched away the last light veil from this phenomenon than in presenting himself as confounded and submerged in the feeling she had created at Woollett. "And I'll tell you who hates me too," he immediately went on. Strether knew as immediately whom he meant, but with as prompt a protest. "Ah no! Mamie doesn't hate--well," he caught himself in time--"anybody at all. Mamie's beautiful." Chad shook his head. "That's just why I mind it. She certainly doesn't like me." "How much do you mind it? What would you do for her?" "Well, I'd like her if she'd like me. Really, really," Chad declared. It gave his companion a moment's pause. "You asked me just now if I don't, as you said, 'care' about a certain person. You rather tempt me therefore to put the question in my turn. Don't YOU care about a certain other person?" Chad looked at him hard in the lamplight of the window. "The difference is that I don't want to." Strether wondered. "'Don't want' to?" "I try not to--that is I HAVE tried. I've done my best. You can't be surprised," the young man easily went on, "when you yourself set me on it. I was indeed," he added, "already on it a little; but you set me harder. It was six weeks ago that I thought I had come out." Strether took it well in. "But you haven't come out!" "I don't know--it's what I WANT to know," said Chad. "And if I could have sufficiently wanted--by myself--to go back, I think I might have found out." "Possibly"--Strether considered. "But all you were able to achieve was to want to want to! And even then," he pursued, "only till our friends there came. Do you want to want to still?" As with a sound half-dolorous, half-droll and all vague and equivocal, Chad buried his face for a little in his hands, rubbing it in a whimsical way that amounted to an evasion, he brought it out more sharply: "DO you?" Chad kept for a time his attitude, but at last he looked up, and then abruptly, "Jim IS a damned dose!" he declared. "Oh I don't ask you to abuse or describe or in any way pronounce on your relatives; I simply put it to you once more whether you're NOW ready. You say you've 'seen.' Is what you've seen that you can't resist?" Chad gave him a strange smile--the nearest approach he had ever shown to a troubled one. "Can't you make me NOT resist?" "What it comes to," Strether went on very gravely now and as if he hadn't heard him, "what it comes to is that more has been done for you, I think, than I've ever seen done--attempted perhaps, but never so successfully done--by one human being for another." "Oh an immense deal certainly"--Chad did it full justice. "And you yourself are adding to it." It was without heeding this either that his visitor continued. "And our friends there won't have it." "No, they simply won't." "They demand you on the basis, as it were, of repudiation and ingratitude; and what has been the matter with me," Strether went on, "is that I haven't seen my way to working with you for repudiation." Chad appreciated this. "Then as you haven't seen yours you naturally haven't seen mine. There it is." After which he proceeded, with a certain abruptness, to a sharp interrogation. "NOW do you say she doesn't hate me?" Strether hesitated. "'She'--?" "Yes--Mother. We called it Sarah, but it comes to the same thing." "Ah," Strether objected, "not to the same thing as her hating YOU." On which--though as if for an instant it had hung fire--Chad remarkably replied: "Well, if they hate my good friend, THAT comes to the same thing." It had a note of inevitable truth that made Strether take it as enough, feel he wanted nothing more. The young man spoke in it for his "good friend" more than he had ever yet directly spoken, confessed to such deep identities between them as he might play with the idea of working free from, but which at a given moment could still draw him down like a whirlpool. And meanwhile he had gone on. "Their hating you too moreover--that also comes to a good deal." "Ah," said Strether, "your mother doesn't." Chad, however, loyally stuck to it--loyally, that is, to Strether. "She will if you don't look out." "Well, I do look out. I am, after all, looking out. That's just why," our friend explained, "I want to see her again." It drew from Chad again the same question. "To see Mother?" "To see--for the present--Sarah." "Ah then there you are! And what I don't for the life of me make out," Chad pursued with resigned perplexity, "is what you GAIN by it." Oh it would have taken his companion too long to say! "That's because you have, I verily believe, no imagination. You've other qualities. But no imagination, don't you see? at all." "I dare say. I do see." It was an idea in which Chad showed interest. "But haven't you yourself rather too much?" "Oh RATHER--!" So that after an instant, under this reproach and as if it were at last a fact really to escape from, Strether made his move for departure.

The evening after meeting with Sarah, Strether heads back to Madame de Vionnet's place. He's been looking for Chad, but can't find him, so he heads to Chad's apartment and lets himself in. . Standing on Chad's balcony, he looks out over the city and thinks about the first day he arrived in Paris. Lots has changed since then. In case you hadn't noticed. Finally, in the middle of the night, Chad gets back home. Strether confronts him about how he sold Strether out and told Sarah that staying in Paris was all Strether's idea. They were supposed to be in on this together. Chad says he didn't say anything of the sort: Strether must have been tricked! Strether tells Chad that Sarah is afraid of him . She's been exposed to a world outside Woollett and she wants to retreat from it immediately, to go back to her small town where she and her family are big shots. Basically, she's insecure and wants to feel powerful again. The two of them come to the conclusion that the Newsomes will never be able to leave Chad to be happy in Paris. They're kind of like the old person living in the apartment beneath yours who's always hitting the ceiling with a broom to tell you to keep it down. Quite frankly, the Newsomes hate fun, and they hate it even more when other people are having fun. Kind of like Waymarsh. Strether also informs Chad that the Pococks' trip to Paris hasn't been to report back on Chad, but to report back on Strether himself. Chad asks if this means that things are broken off between Strether and Mrs. Newsome, and the only answer Strether can give is, well, probably. In a tactful way, Chad asks if Strether will be able to survive financially without Mrs. Newsome's help. Strether again says, probably. Strether counters with the question of whether Chad is prepared to give up the fortune he'll inherit in order to stay in Paris. Chad says he doesn't really care about money. Strether says he needs to meet with Sarah Pocock one last time before she leaves. Chad says he can't imagine what good this will do , but Strether tells Chad that he just doesn't get it because he has no imagination. Chad admits that this is true, but it's okay because he's still charming and handsome. He also tells Strether that he might suffer from too much imagination. After all, isn't that what paranoia is? Think about it.

ACT 1. SCENE I. Rome. Before the Capitol Flourish. Enter the TRIBUNES and SENATORS aloft; and then enter below SATURNINUS and his followers at one door, and BASSIANUS and his followers at the other, with drums and trumpets SATURNINUS. Noble patricians, patrons of my right, Defend the justice of my cause with arms; And, countrymen, my loving followers, Plead my successive title with your swords. I am his first born son that was the last That wore the imperial diadem of Rome; Then let my father's honours live in me, Nor wrong mine age with this indignity. BASSIANUS. Romans, friends, followers, favourers of my right, If ever Bassianus, Caesar's son, Were gracious in the eyes of royal Rome, Keep then this passage to the Capitol; And suffer not dishonour to approach The imperial seat, to virtue consecrate, To justice, continence, and nobility; But let desert in pure election shine; And, Romans, fight for freedom in your choice. Enter MARCUS ANDRONICUS aloft, with the crown MARCUS. Princes, that strive by factions and by friends Ambitiously for rule and empery, Know that the people of Rome, for whom we stand A special party, have by common voice In election for the Roman empery Chosen Andronicus, surnamed Pius For many good and great deserts to Rome. A nobler man, a braver warrior, Lives not this day within the city walls. He by the Senate is accited home, From weary wars against the barbarous Goths, That with his sons, a terror to our foes, Hath yok'd a nation strong, train'd up in arms. Ten years are spent since first he undertook This cause of Rome, and chastised with arms Our enemies' pride; five times he hath return'd Bleeding to Rome, bearing his valiant sons In coffins from the field; and at this day To the monument of that Andronici Done sacrifice of expiation, And slain the noblest prisoner of the Goths. And now at last, laden with honour's spoils, Returns the good Andronicus to Rome, Renowned Titus, flourishing in arms. Let us entreat, by honour of his name Whom worthily you would have now succeed, And in the Capitol and Senate's right, Whom you pretend to honour and adore, That you withdraw you and abate your strength, Dismiss your followers, and, as suitors should, Plead your deserts in peace and humbleness. SATURNINUS. How fair the Tribune speaks to calm my thoughts. BASSIANUS. Marcus Andronicus, so I do affy In thy uprightness and integrity, And so I love and honour thee and thine, Thy noble brother Titus and his sons, And her to whom my thoughts are humbled all, Gracious Lavinia, Rome's rich ornament, That I will here dismiss my loving friends, And to my fortunes and the people's favour Commit my cause in balance to be weigh'd. Exeunt the soldiers of BASSIANUS SATURNINUS. Friends, that have been thus forward in my right, I thank you all and here dismiss you all, And to the love and favour of my country Commit myself, my person, and the cause. Exeunt the soldiers of SATURNINUS Rome, be as just and gracious unto me As I am confident and kind to thee. Open the gates and let me in. BASSIANUS. Tribunes, and me, a poor competitor. [Flourish. They go up into the Senate House] Enter a CAPTAIN CAPTAIN. Romans, make way. The good Andronicus, Patron of virtue, Rome's best champion, Successful in the battles that he fights, With honour and with fortune is return'd From where he circumscribed with his sword And brought to yoke the enemies of Rome. Sound drums and trumpets, and then enter MARTIUS and MUTIUS, two of TITUS' sons; and then two men bearing a coffin covered with black; then LUCIUS and QUINTUS, two other sons; then TITUS ANDRONICUS; and then TAMORA the Queen of Goths, with her three sons, ALARBUS, DEMETRIUS, and CHIRON, with AARON the Moor, and others, as many as can be. Then set down the coffin and TITUS speaks TITUS. Hail, Rome, victorious in thy mourning weeds! Lo, as the bark that hath discharg'd her fraught Returns with precious lading to the bay From whence at first she weigh'd her anchorage, Cometh Andronicus, bound with laurel boughs, To re-salute his country with his tears, Tears of true joy for his return to Rome. Thou great defender of this Capitol, Stand gracious to the rites that we intend! Romans, of five and twenty valiant sons, Half of the number that King Priam had, Behold the poor remains, alive and dead! These that survive let Rome reward with love; These that I bring unto their latest home, With burial amongst their ancestors. Here Goths have given me leave to sheathe my sword. Titus, unkind, and careless of thine own, Why suffer'st thou thy sons, unburied yet, To hover on the dreadful shore of Styx? Make way to lay them by their brethren. [They open the tomb] There greet in silence, as the dead are wont, And sleep in peace, slain in your country's wars. O sacred receptacle of my joys, Sweet cell of virtue and nobility, How many sons hast thou of mine in store That thou wilt never render to me more! LUCIUS. Give us the proudest prisoner of the Goths, That we may hew his limbs, and on a pile Ad manes fratrum sacrifice his flesh Before this earthy prison of their bones, That so the shadows be not unappeas'd, Nor we disturb'd with prodigies on earth. TITUS. I give him you- the noblest that survives, The eldest son of this distressed queen. TAMORA. Stay, Roman brethen! Gracious conqueror, Victorious Titus, rue the tears I shed, A mother's tears in passion for her son; And if thy sons were ever dear to thee, O, think my son to be as dear to me! Sufficeth not that we are brought to Rome To beautify thy triumphs, and return Captive to thee and to thy Roman yoke; But must my sons be slaughtered in the streets For valiant doings in their country's cause? O, if to fight for king and commonweal Were piety in thine, it is in these. Andronicus, stain not thy tomb with blood. Wilt thou draw near the nature of the gods? Draw near them then in being merciful. Sweet mercy is nobility's true badge. Thrice-noble Titus, spare my first-born son. TITUS. Patient yourself, madam, and pardon me. These are their brethren, whom your Goths beheld Alive and dead; and for their brethren slain Religiously they ask a sacrifice. To this your son is mark'd, and die he must T' appease their groaning shadows that are gone. LUCIUS. Away with him, and make a fire straight; And with our swords, upon a pile of wood, Let's hew his limbs till they be clean consum'd. Exeunt TITUS' SONS, with ALARBUS TAMORA. O cruel, irreligious piety! CHIRON. Was never Scythia half so barbarous! DEMETRIUS. Oppose not Scythia to ambitious Rome. Alarbus goes to rest, and we survive To tremble under Titus' threat'ning look. Then, madam, stand resolv'd, but hope withal The self-same gods that arm'd the Queen of Troy With opportunity of sharp revenge Upon the Thracian tyrant in his tent May favour Tamora, the Queen of Goths- When Goths were Goths and Tamora was queen- To quit the bloody wrongs upon her foes. Re-enter LUCIUS, QUINTUS, MARTIUS, and MUTIUS, the sons of ANDRONICUS, with their swords bloody LUCIUS. See, lord and father, how we have perform'd Our Roman rites: Alarbus' limbs are lopp'd, And entrails feed the sacrificing fire, Whose smoke like incense doth perfume the sky. Remaineth nought but to inter our brethren, And with loud 'larums welcome them to Rome. TITUS. Let it be so, and let Andronicus Make this his latest farewell to their souls. [Sound trumpets and lay the coffin in the tomb] In peace and honour rest you here, my sons; Rome's readiest champions, repose you here in rest, Secure from worldly chances and mishaps! Here lurks no treason, here no envy swells, Here grow no damned grudges, here are no storms, No noise, but silence and eternal sleep. In peace and honour rest you here, my sons! Enter LAVINIA LAVINIA. In peace and honour live Lord Titus long; My noble lord and father, live in fame! Lo, at this tomb my tributary tears I render for my brethren's obsequies; And at thy feet I kneel, with tears of joy Shed on this earth for thy return to Rome. O, bless me here with thy victorious hand, Whose fortunes Rome's best citizens applaud! TITUS. Kind Rome, that hast thus lovingly reserv'd The cordial of mine age to glad my heart! Lavinia, live; outlive thy father's days, And fame's eternal date, for virtue's praise! Enter, above, MARCUS ANDRONICUS and TRIBUNES; re-enter SATURNINUS, BASSIANUS, and attendants MARCUS. Long live Lord Titus, my beloved brother, Gracious triumpher in the eyes of Rome! TITUS. Thanks, gentle Tribune, noble brother Marcus. MARCUS. And welcome, nephews, from successful wars, You that survive and you that sleep in fame. Fair lords, your fortunes are alike in all That in your country's service drew your swords; But safer triumph is this funeral pomp That hath aspir'd to Solon's happiness And triumphs over chance in honour's bed. Titus Andronicus, the people of Rome, Whose friend in justice thou hast ever been, Send thee by me, their Tribune and their trust, This palliament of white and spotless hue; And name thee in election for the empire With these our late-deceased Emperor's sons: Be candidatus then, and put it on, And help to set a head on headless Rome. TITUS. A better head her glorious body fits Than his that shakes for age and feebleness. What, should I don this robe and trouble you? Be chosen with proclamations to-day, To-morrow yield up rule, resign my life, And set abroach new business for you all? Rome, I have been thy soldier forty years, And led my country's strength successfully, And buried one and twenty valiant sons, Knighted in field, slain manfully in arms, In right and service of their noble country. Give me a staff of honour for mine age, But not a sceptre to control the world. Upright he held it, lords, that held it last. MARCUS. Titus, thou shalt obtain and ask the empery. SATURNINUS. Proud and ambitious Tribune, canst thou tell? TITUS. Patience, Prince Saturninus. SATURNINUS. Romans, do me right. Patricians, draw your swords, and sheathe them not Till Saturninus be Rome's Emperor. Andronicus, would thou were shipp'd to hell Rather than rob me of the people's hearts! LUCIUS. Proud Saturnine, interrupter of the good That noble-minded Titus means to thee! TITUS. Content thee, Prince; I will restore to thee The people's hearts, and wean them from themselves. BASSIANUS. Andronicus, I do not flatter thee, But honour thee, and will do till I die. My faction if thou strengthen with thy friends, I will most thankful be; and thanks to men Of noble minds is honourable meed. TITUS. People of Rome, and people's Tribunes here, I ask your voices and your suffrages: Will ye bestow them friendly on Andronicus? TRIBUNES. To gratify the good Andronicus, And gratulate his safe return to Rome, The people will accept whom he admits. TITUS. Tribunes, I thank you; and this suit I make, That you create our Emperor's eldest son, Lord Saturnine; whose virtues will, I hope, Reflect on Rome as Titan's rays on earth, And ripen justice in this commonweal. Then, if you will elect by my advice, Crown him, and say 'Long live our Emperor!' MARCUS. With voices and applause of every sort, Patricians and plebeians, we create Lord Saturninus Rome's great Emperor; And say 'Long live our Emperor Saturnine!' [A long flourish till they come down] SATURNINUS. Titus Andronicus, for thy favours done To us in our election this day I give thee thanks in part of thy deserts, And will with deeds requite thy gentleness; And for an onset, Titus, to advance Thy name and honourable family, Lavinia will I make my empress, Rome's royal mistress, mistress of my heart, And in the sacred Pantheon her espouse. Tell me, Andronicus, doth this motion please thee? TITUS. It doth, my worthy lord, and in this match I hold me highly honoured of your Grace, And here in sight of Rome, to Saturnine, King and commander of our commonweal, The wide world's Emperor, do I consecrate My sword, my chariot, and my prisoners, Presents well worthy Rome's imperious lord; Receive them then, the tribute that I owe, Mine honour's ensigns humbled at thy feet. SATURNINUS. Thanks, noble Titus, father of my life. How proud I am of thee and of thy gifts Rome shall record; and when I do forget The least of these unspeakable deserts, Romans, forget your fealty to me. TITUS. [To TAMORA] Now, madam, are you prisoner to an emperor; To him that for your honour and your state Will use you nobly and your followers. SATURNINUS. [Aside] A goodly lady, trust me; of the hue That I would choose, were I to choose anew.- Clear up, fair Queen, that cloudy countenance; Though chance of war hath wrought this change of cheer, Thou com'st not to be made a scorn in Rome- Princely shall be thy usage every way. Rest on my word, and let not discontent Daunt all your hopes. Madam, he comforts you Can make you greater than the Queen of Goths. Lavinia, you are not displeas'd with this? LAVINIA. Not I, my lord, sith true nobility Warrants these words in princely courtesy. SATURNINUS. Thanks, sweet Lavinia. Romans, let us go. Ransomless here we set our prisoners free. Proclaim our honours, lords, with trump and drum. [Flourish] BASSIANUS. Lord Titus, by your leave, this maid is mine. [Seizing LAVINIA] TITUS. How, sir! Are you in earnest then, my lord? BASSIANUS. Ay, noble Titus, and resolv'd withal To do myself this reason and this right. MARCUS. Suum cuique is our Roman justice: This prince in justice seizeth but his own. LUCIUS. And that he will and shall, if Lucius live. TITUS. Traitors, avaunt! Where is the Emperor's guard? Treason, my lord- Lavinia is surpris'd! SATURNINUS. Surpris'd! By whom? BASSIANUS. By him that justly may Bear his betroth'd from all the world away. Exeunt BASSIANUS and MARCUS with LAVINIA MUTIUS. Brothers, help to convey her hence away, And with my sword I'll keep this door safe. Exeunt LUCIUS, QUINTUS, and MARTIUS TITUS. Follow, my lord, and I'll soon bring her back. MUTIUS. My lord, you pass not here. TITUS. What, villain boy! Bar'st me my way in Rome? MUTIUS. Help, Lucius, help! TITUS kills him. During the fray, exeunt SATURNINUS, TAMORA, DEMETRIUS, CHIRON, and AARON Re-enter Lucius LUCIUS. My lord, you are unjust, and more than so: In wrongful quarrel you have slain your son. TITUS. Nor thou nor he are any sons of mine; My sons would never so dishonour me. Re-enter aloft the EMPEROR with TAMORA and her two Sons, and AARON the Moor Traitor, restore Lavinia to the Emperor. LUCIUS. Dead, if you will; but not to be his wife, That is another's lawful promis'd love. Exit SATURNINUS. No, Titus, no; the Emperor needs her not, Nor her, nor thee, nor any of thy stock. I'll trust by leisure him that mocks me once; Thee never, nor thy traitorous haughty sons, Confederates all thus to dishonour me. Was there none else in Rome to make a stale But Saturnine? Full well, Andronicus, Agree these deeds with that proud brag of thine That saidst I begg'd the empire at thy hands. TITUS. O monstrous! What reproachful words are these? SATURNINUS. But go thy ways; go, give that changing piece To him that flourish'd for her with his sword. A valiant son-in-law thou shalt enjoy; One fit to bandy with thy lawless sons, To ruffle in the commonwealth of Rome. TITUS. These words are razors to my wounded heart. SATURNINUS. And therefore, lovely Tamora, Queen of Goths, That, like the stately Phoebe 'mongst her nymphs, Dost overshine the gallant'st dames of Rome, If thou be pleas'd with this my sudden choice, Behold, I choose thee, Tamora, for my bride And will create thee Empress of Rome. Speak, Queen of Goths, dost thou applaud my choice? And here I swear by all the Roman gods- Sith priest and holy water are so near, And tapers burn so bright, and everything In readiness for Hymenaeus stand- I will not re-salute the streets of Rome, Or climb my palace, till from forth this place I lead espous'd my bride along with me. TAMORA. And here in sight of heaven to Rome I swear, If Saturnine advance the Queen of Goths, She will a handmaid be to his desires, A loving nurse, a mother to his youth. SATURNINUS. Ascend, fair Queen, Pantheon. Lords, accompany Your noble Emperor and his lovely bride, Sent by the heavens for Prince Saturnine, Whose wisdom hath her fortune conquered; There shall we consummate our spousal rites. Exeunt all but TITUS TITUS. I am not bid to wait upon this bride. TITUS, when wert thou wont to walk alone, Dishonoured thus, and challenged of wrongs? Re-enter MARCUS, and TITUS' SONS, LUCIUS, QUINTUS, and MARTIUS MARCUS. O Titus, see, O, see what thou hast done! In a bad quarrel slain a virtuous son. TITUS. No, foolish Tribune, no; no son of mine- Nor thou, nor these, confederates in the deed That hath dishonoured all our family; Unworthy brother and unworthy sons! LUCIUS. But let us give him burial, as becomes; Give Mutius burial with our bretheren. TITUS. Traitors, away! He rests not in this tomb. This monument five hundred years hath stood, Which I have sumptuously re-edified; Here none but soldiers and Rome's servitors Repose in fame; none basely slain in brawls. Bury him where you can, he comes not here. MARCUS. My lord, this is impiety in you. My nephew Mutius' deeds do plead for him; He must be buried with his bretheren. QUINTUS & MARTIUS. And shall, or him we will accompany. TITUS. 'And shall!' What villain was it spake that word? QUINTUS. He that would vouch it in any place but here. TITUS. What, would you bury him in my despite? MARCUS. No, noble Titus, but entreat of thee To pardon Mutius and to bury him. TITUS. Marcus, even thou hast struck upon my crest, And with these boys mine honour thou hast wounded. My foes I do repute you every one; So trouble me no more, but get you gone. MARTIUS. He is not with himself; let us withdraw. QUINTUS. Not I, till Mutius' bones be buried. [The BROTHER and the SONS kneel] MARCUS. Brother, for in that name doth nature plead- QUINTUS. Father, and in that name doth nature speak- TITUS. Speak thou no more, if all the rest will speed. MARCUS. Renowned Titus, more than half my soul- LUCIUS. Dear father, soul and substance of us all- MARCUS. Suffer thy brother Marcus to inter His noble nephew here in virtue's nest, That died in honour and Lavinia's cause. Thou art a Roman- be not barbarous. The Greeks upon advice did bury Ajax, That slew himself; and wise Laertes' son Did graciously plead for his funerals. Let not young Mutius, then, that was thy joy, Be barr'd his entrance here. TITUS. Rise, Marcus, rise; The dismal'st day is this that e'er I saw, To be dishonoured by my sons in Rome! Well, bury him, and bury me the next. [They put MUTIUS in the tomb] LUCIUS. There lie thy bones, sweet Mutius, with thy friends, Till we with trophies do adorn thy tomb. ALL. [Kneeling] No man shed tears for noble Mutius; He lives in fame that died in virtue's cause. MARCUS. My lord- to step out of these dreary dumps- How comes it that the subtle Queen of Goths Is of a sudden thus advanc'd in Rome? TITUS. I know not, Marcus, but I know it is- Whether by device or no, the heavens can tell. Is she not, then, beholding to the man That brought her for this high good turn so far? MARCUS. Yes, and will nobly him remunerate. Flourish. Re-enter the EMPEROR, TAMORA and her two SONS, with the MOOR, at one door; at the other door, BASSIANUS and LAVINIA, with others SATURNINUS. So, Bassianus, you have play'd your prize: God give you joy, sir, of your gallant bride! BASSIANUS. And you of yours, my lord! I say no more, Nor wish no less; and so I take my leave. SATURNINUS. Traitor, if Rome have law or we have power, Thou and thy faction shall repent this rape. BASSIANUS. Rape, call you it, my lord, to seize my own, My true betrothed love, and now my wife? But let the laws of Rome determine all; Meanwhile am I possess'd of that is mine. SATURNINUS. 'Tis good, sir. You are very short with us; But if we live we'll be as sharp with you. BASSIANUS. My lord, what I have done, as best I may, Answer I must, and shall do with my life. Only thus much I give your Grace to know: By all the duties that I owe to Rome, This noble gentleman, Lord Titus here, Is in opinion and in honour wrong'd, That, in the rescue of Lavinia, With his own hand did slay his youngest son, In zeal to you, and highly mov'd to wrath To be controll'd in that he frankly gave. Receive him then to favour, Saturnine, That hath express'd himself in all his deeds A father and a friend to thee and Rome. TITUS. Prince Bassianus, leave to plead my deeds. 'Tis thou and those that have dishonoured me. Rome and the righteous heavens be my judge How I have lov'd and honoured Saturnine! TAMORA. My worthy lord, if ever Tamora Were gracious in those princely eyes of thine, Then hear me speak indifferently for all; And at my suit, sweet, pardon what is past. SATURNINUS. What, madam! be dishonoured openly, And basely put it up without revenge? TAMORA. Not so, my lord; the gods of Rome forfend I should be author to dishonour you! But on mine honour dare I undertake For good Lord Titus' innocence in all, Whose fury not dissembled speaks his griefs. Then at my suit look graciously on him; Lose not so noble a friend on vain suppose, Nor with sour looks afflict his gentle heart. [Aside to SATURNINUS] My lord, be rul'd by me, be won at last; Dissemble all your griefs and discontents. You are but newly planted in your throne; Lest, then, the people, and patricians too, Upon a just survey take Titus' part, And so supplant you for ingratitude, Which Rome reputes to be a heinous sin, Yield at entreats, and then let me alone: I'll find a day to massacre them all, And raze their faction and their family, The cruel father and his traitorous sons, To whom I sued for my dear son's life; And make them know what 'tis to let a queen Kneel in the streets and beg for grace in vain.- Come, come, sweet Emperor; come, Andronicus. Take up this good old man, and cheer the heart That dies in tempest of thy angry frown. SATURNINUS. Rise, Titus, rise; my Empress hath prevail'd. TITUS. I thank your Majesty and her, my lord; These words, these looks, infuse new life in me. TAMORA. Titus, I am incorporate in Rome, A Roman now adopted happily, And must advise the Emperor for his good. This day all quarrels die, Andronicus; And let it be mine honour, good my lord, That I have reconcil'd your friends and you. For you, Prince Bassianus, I have pass'd My word and promise to the Emperor That you will be more mild and tractable. And fear not, lords- and you, Lavinia. By my advice, all humbled on your knees, You shall ask pardon of his Majesty. LUCIUS. We do, and vow to heaven and to his Highness That what we did was mildly as we might, Tend'ring our sister's honour and our own. MARCUS. That on mine honour here do I protest. SATURNINUS. Away, and talk not; trouble us no more. TAMORA. Nay, nay, sweet Emperor, we must all be friends. The Tribune and his nephews kneel for grace. I will not be denied. Sweet heart, look back. SATURNINUS. Marcus, for thy sake, and thy brother's here, And at my lovely Tamora's entreats, I do remit these young men's heinous faults. Stand up. Lavinia, though you left me like a churl, I found a friend; and sure as death I swore I would not part a bachelor from the priest. Come, if the Emperor's court can feast two brides, You are my guest, Lavinia, and your friends. This day shall be a love-day, Tamora. TITUS. To-morrow, and it please your Majesty To hunt the panther and the hart with me, With horn and hound we'll give your Grace bonjour. SATURNINUS. Be it so, Titus, and gramercy too. Exeunt. Sound trumpets

Titus Andronicus opens in the twilight of the Roman Empire, in the aftermath of the Emperor's death. His two sons - Saturninus, his firstborn, and Bassianus, his second - are pleading to the Roman elite for their respective causes. Saturninus argues that because he is the emperor's eldest son the right to succession is naturally his, while Bassianus counters that Saturninus is unfit for the position and that he, the more honorable son, should succeed their father. This debate is interrupted when Marcus Andronicus, the tribune of Rome, announces that the people of Rome have elected his brother, Titus, to be the next emperor, on the basis of his recent successes in the wars against the Goths. Saturninus and Bassianus dismiss their factions and Titus enters victorious from battle, though greatly grief-stricken because he has lost twenty-one of his twenty-five sons. Titus' eldest remaining son, Lucius, orders that the eldest prince of the Goths, Alarbus, who has been taken in battle, be sacrificed to appease the Roman gods. The queen of the Goths, Tamora, falls to her knees to beg Titus not to kill her son; Titus, however, orders the sacrifice to commence and Tamora and her two remaining sons, Chiron and Demetrius, both swear that Romans are far more barbaric than Goths. Following Alarbus' death, Titus' beloved daughter, Lavinia, enters to receive her father's blessing. Close behind is Marcus, who announces that Titus is the new emperor. Titus rejects the honor, saying that he is too old and feeble to take on the role of emperor. Meanwhile, Saturninus rouses up his faction to seize the empery for himself; this action is rendered inconsequential, however, when Titus, with the blessing of the Tribune and above the protestations of Bassianus, bestows the empery upon Saturninus. Immediately upon becoming emperor, Saturninus declares Lavinia to be his wife, though she was promised to his brother Bassianus. Titus readily agrees to the match. Saturninus then turns his attention to the Goth prisoners, and finds himself instantly smitten by Tamora. He promises the Goth queen that she shall be made greater in Rome than she ever was as a Goth. As he is leaving with his entourage, Bassianus seizes Lavinia, declaring that she is rightfully his; Titus' sons, knowing that Bassianus and Lavinia were betrothed, defend Bassianus' right to seize her, an action that Titus interprets as treason. Titus pursues them and in his rage slays Mutius, one of his sons. Saturninus, for his part, declares Lavinia's fleeing to be Titus' fault and rebukes the general, while in his next breath he takes Tamora for his queen; they depart to consummate their marriage. Marcus and Lucius enter bearing Mutius and insisting that he receive proper funeral rites. Titus initially refuses, declaring Mutius and the rest of his family to be base traitors. However, rejected by the emperor and estranged from his family, Titus eventually agrees to entomb Mutius after his family kneels and begs him. Saturninus and Tamora return from their consummation, and Saturninus immediately rails against Bassianus and Titus. He threatens revenge until Tamora, the newly-crowned queen, interjects and entreats him to forgive them. She whispers to Saturninus that she will "find a day to massacre them all," promising revenge on Titus because he sacrificed Alarbus despite her pleas for his life. Saturninus agrees to forgive Titus and the rest of his family. Having regained the emperor's favor , Titus invites Saturninus to join him in a hunt the following day.

THE BIRTH OF A WOMAN-CHILD "Whose cradle's that?" the sick woman's thin querulous tones arrested the man at the threshold. "Onie Dillard's," he replied hollowly from the depths of the crib which he carried upside down upon his head, like some curious kind of overgrown helmet. "Now, why in the name o' common sense would ye go and borry a broken cradle?" came the wail from the bed. "I 'lowed you'd git Billy Spinner's, an' hit's as good as new." Uncle Pros set the small article of furniture down gently. "Don't you worry yo'se'f, Laurelly," he said enthusiastically. Pros Passmore, uncle of the sick woman and mainstay of the forlorn little Consadine household, was always full of enthusiasm. "Just a few nails and a little wrappin' of twine'll make it all right," he informed his niece. "I stopped a-past and borried the nails and the hammer from Jeff Dawes; I mighty nigh pounded my thumb off knockin' in nails with a rock an' a sad-iron last week." "Looks like nobody ain't got no sense," returned Laurella Consadine ungratefully. "Even you, Unc' Pros--while you borryin' why cain't ye borry whole things that don't need mendin'?" Out of the shadows that hoarded the further end of the room came a woman with a little bundle in her arm which had evidently created the necessity for the borrowed cradle. "Laurelly," the nurse hesitated, "I wouldn't name it to ye whilst ye was a-sufferin,' but I jest cain't find the baby's clothes nowhars. I've done washed the little trick and wrapped her in my flannen petticoat. I do despise to put anything on 'em that anybody else has wore ... hit don't seem right. But I've been plumb through everything, an' cain't find none of her coats. Whar did you put 'em?" "I didn't have no luck borryin' for this one," complained the sick woman fretfully. "Looks like everybody's got that mean that they wouldn't lend me a rag ... an' the Lord knows I only ast a _wearin'_ of the clothes for my chillen. Folks can make shore that I return what I borry--ef the Lord lets me." "Ain't they nothin' to put on the baby?" asked Mavity Bence, aghast. "No. Hit's jest like I been tellin' ye, I went to Tarver's wife--she's got a plenty. I knowed in reason she'd have baby clothes that she couldn't expect to wear out on her own chillen. I said as much to her, when she told me she was liable to need 'em befo' I did. I says, 'Ye cain't need more'n half of 'em, I reckon, an' half'll do me, an' I'll return 'em to ye when I'm done with 'em.' She acted jest as selfish--said she'd like to know how I was goin' to inshore her that it wouldn't be twins agin same as 'twas before. Some folks is powerful mean an' suspicious." All this time the nurse had been standing with the quiet small packet which was the storm centre of preparation lying like a cocoon or a giant seed-pod against her bosom. "She's a mighty likely little gal," said she finally. "Have ye any hopes o' gittin' anything to put on her?" The woman in the bed--she was scarcely more than a girl, with shining dark eyes and a profusion of jetty ringlets about her elfish, pretty little face--seemed to feel that this speech was in the nature of a reproach. She hastened to detail her further activities on behalf of the newcomer. "Consadine's a poor provider," she said plaintively, alluding to her absent husband. "Maw said to me when I would have him that he was a poor provider; and then he's got into this here way of goin' off like. Time things gets too bad here at home he's got a big scheme up for makin' his fortune somewhars else, and out he puts. He 'lowed he'd be home with a plenty before the baby come. But thar--he's the best man that ever was, when he's here, and I have no wish to miscall him. I reckon he thought I could borry what I'd need. Biney Meal lent me enough for the little un that died; but of course some o' the coats was buried with the child; and what was left, Sis' Elvira borried for her baby. I was layin' off to go over to the Deep Spring neighbourhood when I could git a lift in that direction--the folks over yon is mighty accommodative," she concluded, "but I was took sooner than I expected, and hyer we air without a stitch, I've done sont Bud an' Honey to Mandy Ann Foncher's mebby they'll bring in somethin'." The little cabin shrank back against the steep side of the mountain as though half terrified at the hollow immensity of the welkin above, or the almost sheer drop to the valley five hundred feet beneath. A sidling mountain trail passed the front of its rail fence, and stones continually rolled from the upper to the lower side of this highway. The day was darkening rapidly. A low line of red still burned behind the massive bulk of Big Unaka, and the solemn purple mountains raised their peaks against it in a jagged line. Within die single-roomed cabin the rich, broken light from the cavernous fireplace filled the smoke-browned interior full of shadow and shine in which things leaped oddly into life, or dropped out of knowledge with a startling effect. The four corners of the log room were utilized, three of them for beds, made by thrusting two poles through auger holes bored in the logs of the walls, setting a leg at the corner where these met and lacing the bottom with hickory withes. The fourth had some rude planks nailed in it for a table, and a knot-hole in one of the logs served the primitive purpose of a salt-cellar. A pack of gaunt hounds quarrelled under the floor, and the sick woman stirred uneasily on her bed and expressed a wish that her emissaries would return. Uncle Pros had taken the cradle to a back door to get the last of the evening sun upon his task. One would not have thought that he could hear what the women were saying at this distance, but the old hunter's ears were sharp. "Never you mind, Laurelly," he called cheerfully. "Wrop the baby up some fashion, and I'll hike out and get clothes for her, time I mend this cradle." "Ef that ain't just like Unc' Pros!" And the girlish mother laughed out suddenly. You saw the gypsy beauty of her face. "He ain't content with borryin' men's truck, but thinks he can turn in an' borry coats 'mongst the women. Well, I reckon he might have better luck than what I did." As she spoke a small boy and girl, her dead brother's children, came clattering in from the purple mysteries of dusk outside, hand clasped in hand, and stopped close to the bed, staring. "Mandy Ann, she wouldn't lend us a thing," Bud began in an aggrieved tone. "I traded for this--chopped wood for it--and hit was all she would give me." He laid a coarse little garment upon the ragged coverlet. "That!" cried Laurella Passmore, taking it up with angrily tremulous fingers. "My child shain't wear no sech. Hit ain't fittin' for my baby to put on. Oh, I wisht I could git up from here and do about; I'd git somethin' for her to wear!" "Son," said Mrs. Bence, approaching the bedside, "air ye afeared to go over as far as my house right now?" "I ain't skeered ef Honey'll go with me," returned the boy doubtfully, as he interrogated the twilit spaces beyond the open cabin door. "Well, you go ask Pap to look in the green chist and send me the spotted caliker poke that he'll find under the big bun'le. Don't you let him give you that thar big bun'le; 'caze that's not a thing but seed corn, and he'll be mad ef it's tetched. Fell Pap that what's in the spotted poke ain't nothin' that he wants. Tell him it's--well, tell him to look at it before he gives it to you." The two little souls scuttled away into the gathering dark, and the neighbour woman sat down by the fire to nurse the baby and croon and await the clothing for which she had sent. She was not an old woman, but already stiff and misshapen by toil and the lack of that saving salt of pride, the stimulation of joy, which keeps us erect and supple. Her broad back was bent; her hands as they shifted the infant tenderly were knotted and work-worn. Mavity Bence was a widow, living at home with her father, Gideon Himes; she had one child left, a daughter; but the clothing for which she had sent was an outfit made for a son, the posthumous offspring of his father; and the babe had not lived long enough to wear it. Outside, Uncle Pros began to sing at his work. He had a fluty old tenor voice, and he put in turns and quavers that no ear not of the mountains could possibly follow and fix. First it was a hymn, all abrupt, odd, minor cadences and monotonous refrain. Then he shifted to a ballad--and the mountains are full of old ballads of Scotland and England, come down from the time of the first settlers, and with local names quaintly substituted for the originals here and there. "She's gwine to walk in a silken gownd, An' ha'e plenty o' siller for to spare," chanted the old man above the little bed he was repairing. "Who's that you're a-namin' that's a-goin' to have silk dresses?" inquired Laurella, as he entered and set the mended cradle down by the bedside. "The baby." he returned. "Ef I find my silver mine--or ruther _when_ I find my silver mine, for you know in reason with the directions Pap's Grandpap left, and that word from Great Uncle Billy that helped the Injuns work it, I'm bound to run the thing down one o' these days--when I find my silver mine this here little gal's a-goin' to have everything she wants--ain't ye, Pretty?" And, having made a bed in the cradle from some folded covers, he lifted the baby with strange deftness and placed it in. "See thar," he called their attention proudly. "As good as new. And ef I git time I'm a-goin' to give it a few licks o' paint." Hands on knees, he bent to study the face of the new-born, that countenance so ambiguous to our eyes, scarce stamped yet with the common seal of humanity. "She's a mighty pretty little gal," he repeated Mavity Bence's words. "She's got the Passmore favour, as well as the Consadine. Reckon I better be steppin' over to Vander's and see can I borry their cow. If it's with you this time like it was with the last one, we'll have to have a cow. I always thought if we'd had a fresh cow for that other one, hit would 'a' lived. I know in reason Vander'll lend the cow for a spell"--Uncle Pros always had unbounded confidence in the good will of his neighbours toward himself, since his own generosity to them would have been fathomless--"I know in reason he'll lend hit, 'caze they ain't got no baby to their house." He bestowed one more proud, fond look upon the little face in the borrowed cradle, and walked out with as elated a step as though a queen had been born to the tribe. In the doorway he met Bud and Honey, returning with the spotted calico poke clutched fast between them. "I won't ask nothin' but a wearin' of em for my child," Laurella Consadine, born Laurella Passmore, reiterated when the small garments were laid out on the bed, and the baby was being dressed. "They're mighty fine, Mavity, an' I'll take good keer of 'em and always bear in mind that they're only borried." "No," returned Mavity Bence, with unwonted firmness, as she put the newcomer into the slip intended for her own son. "No, Laurelly, these clothes ain't loaned to you. I give 'em to this child. I'm a widder, and I never look to wed again, becaze Pap he has to have somebody to do for him, an' he'd just about tear up the ground if I was to name sech a thing. I'm mighty glad to give 'em to yo' little gal. I only wisht," she said wistfully, "that hit was a boy. Ef hit was a boy, mebbe you'd give hit the name that should 'a' went with the clothes. I was a-goin' to call the baby John after hit's pappy." Laurella Consadine lay quiescent for a moment, big black eyes studying the smoky logs that raftered the roof. Then all at once she laughed, with a flash of white teeth. "I don't see why Johnnie ain't a mighty fine name for a gal," she said. "I vow I'm a-goin' to name her Johnnie!" And so this one of the tribe of borrowing Passmores wore her own clothing from the first. No borrowed garment touched her. She rejected the milk from the borrowed cow, fiercely; lustily she demanded--and eventually received--her own legitimate, unborrowed sustenance. Perhaps such a beginning had its own influence upon her future.

The novel opens with Mr. Tench, an English dentist living and working in a small Mexican town, heading from his home to the riverside to pick up a canister of ether that he has ordered. The ships have come in, and Tench stands in the blazing Mexican sun, watching the rickety boats and continually forgetting why he has come to the river. He meets the stranger, a mysterious man who is waiting for a boat to Vera Cruz. Tench is interested in speaking with the man because he speaks English and, upon learning that the stranger has a bottle of contraband alcohol with him, becomes even more interested. Tench invites the stranger back to his house to share a drink. At Tench's home, the two men talk and drink for some time. Tench tells his guest that he left behind a family in England, but he has given up writing letters to his wife. The stranger looks like he has not been taking good care of himself. He seems wary and somewhat anxious. He makes strange comments that make Tench pause and wonder about the man. The men are interrupted by the boy who knocks, seeking help for a woman, his dying mother. Reluctantly, as if he had no choice, the stranger agrees to accompany the boy back to his house. He is aware that doing so will mean that he will most likely miss the boat to Vera Cruz. As he takes his leave of his host, the stranger tells him that he will pray for him. After his guest departs, Tench discovers that the stranger has left his book behind. He opens it and finds that it is a religious book about a Christian martyr, an illegal document in this state. Unsure of what it is, but dimly aware that he shouldn't have it in his possession, Tench hides the book in a little oven. He suddenly remembers that he forgot to pick up the canister of ether, and runs down to the river only to find that the ship has left the dock and is drifting downriver. On the boat, a young girl sings a sweet, melancholy song. She feels free and happy but she does not know why. Elsewhere, the stranger, walking along with the boy, hears the boat's whistle and realizes that he has, in fact, missed it. He feels despondent at being unable to leave, and angry towards the boy and his mother for keeping him from his boat.

Actus Quartus. Scoena Prima. Enter as to the Parliament, Bullingbrooke, Aumerle, Northumberland, Percie, FitzWater, Surrey, Carlile, Abbot of Westminster. Herauld, Officers, and Bagot. Bullingbrooke. Call forth Bagot. Now Bagot, freely speake thy minde, What thou do'st know of Noble Glousters death: Who wrought it with the King, and who perform'd The bloody Office of his Timelesse end Bag. Then set before my face, the Lord Aumerle Bul. Cosin, stand forth, and looke vpon that man Bag. My Lord Aumerle, I know your daring tongue Scornes to vnsay, what it hath once deliuer'd. In that dead time, when Glousters death was plotted, I heard you say, Is not my arme of length, That reacheth from the restfull English Court As farre as Callis, to my Vnkles head. Amongst much other talke, that very time, I heard you say, that you had rather refuse The offer of an hundred thousand Crownes, Then Bullingbrookes returne to England; adding withall, How blest this Land would be, in this your Cosins death Aum. Princes, and Noble Lords: What answer shall I make to this base man? Shall I so much dishonor my faire Starres, On equall termes to giue him chasticement? Either I must, or haue mine honor soyl'd With th' Attaindor of his sland'rous Lippes. There is my Gage, the manuall Seale of death That markes thee out for Hell. Thou lyest, And will maintaine what thou hast said, is false, In thy heart blood, though being all too base To staine the temper of my Knightly sword Bul. Bagot forbeare, thou shalt not take it vp Aum. Excepting one, I would he were the best In all this presence, that hath mou'd me so Fitz. If that thy valour stand on sympathize: There is my Gage, Aumerle, in Gage to thine: By that faire Sunne, that shewes me where thou stand'st, I heard thee say (and vauntingly thou spak'st it) That thou wer't cause of Noble Glousters death. If thou deniest it, twenty times thou lyest, And I will turne thy falshood to thy hart, Where it was forged with my Rapiers point Aum. Thou dar'st not (Coward) liue to see the day Fitz. Now by my Soule, I would it were this houre Aum. Fitzwater thou art damn'd to hell for this Per. Aumerle, thou lye'st: his Honor is as true In this Appeale, as thou art all vniust: And that thou art so, there I throw my Gage To proue it on thee, to th' extreamest point Of mortall breathing. Seize it, if thou dar'st Aum. And if I do not, may my hands rot off, And neuer brandish more reuengefull Steele, Ouer the glittering Helmet of my Foe Surrey. My Lord Fitzwater: I do remember well, the very time Aumerle, and you did talke Fitz. My Lord, 'Tis very true: You were in presence then, And you can witnesse with me, this is true Surrey. As false, by heauen, As Heauen it selfe is true Fitz. Surrey, thou Lyest Surrey. Dishonourable Boy; That Lye, shall lie so heauy on my Sword, That it shall render Vengeance, and Reuenge, Till thou the Lye-giuer, and that Lye, doe lye In earth as quiet, as thy Fathers Scull. In proofe whereof, there is mine Honors pawne, Engage it to the Triall, if thou dar'st Fitzw. How fondly do'st thou spurre a forward Horse? If I dare eate, or drinke, or breathe, or liue, I dare meete Surrey in a Wildernesse, And spit vpon him, whilest I say he Lyes, And Lyes, and Lyes: there is my Bond of Faith, To tye thee to my strong Correction. As I intend to thriue in this new World, Aumerle is guiltie of my true Appeale. Besides, I heard the banish'd Norfolke say, That thou Aumerle didst send two of thy men, To execute the Noble Duke at Callis Aum. Some honest Christian trust me with a Gage, That Norfolke lyes: here doe I throw downe this, If he may be repeal'd, to trie his Honor Bull. These differences shall all rest vnder Gage, Till Norfolke be repeal'd: repeal'd he shall be; And (though mine Enemie) restor'd againe To all his Lands and Seignories: when hee's return'd, Against Aumerle we will enforce his Tryall Carl. That honorable day shall ne're be seene. Many a time hath banish'd Norfolke fought For Iesu Christ, in glorious Christian field Streaming the Ensigne of the Christian Crosse, Against black Pagans, Turkes, and Saracens: And toyl'd with workes of Warre, retyr'd himselfe To Italy, and there at Venice gaue His Body to that pleasant Countries Earth, And his pure Soule vnto his Captaine Christ, Vnder whose Colours he had fought so long Bull. Why Bishop, is Norfolke dead? Carl. As sure as I liue, my Lord Bull. Sweet peace conduct his sweet Soule To the Bosome of good old Abraham. Lords Appealants, your differe[n]ces shal all rest vnder gage, Till we assigne you to your dayes of Tryall. Enter Yorke. Yorke. Great Duke of Lancaster, I come to thee From plume-pluckt Richard, who with willing Soule Adopts thee Heire, and his high Scepter yeelds To the possession of thy Royall Hand. Ascend his Throne, descending now from him, And long liue Henry, of that Name the Fourth Bull. In Gods Name, Ile ascend the Regall Throne Carl. Mary, Heauen forbid. Worst in this Royall Presence may I speake, Yet best beseeming me to speake the truth. Would God, that any in this Noble Presence Were enough Noble, to be vpright Iudge Of Noble Richard: then true Noblenesse would Learne him forbearance from so foule a Wrong. What Subiect can giue Sentence on his King? And who sits here, that is not Richards Subiect? Theeues are not iudg'd, but they are by to heare, Although apparant guilt be seene in them: And shall the figure of Gods Maiestie, His Captaine, Steward, Deputie elect, Anoynted, Crown'd, planted many yeeres, Be iudg'd by subiect, and inferior breathe, And he himselfe not present? Oh, forbid it, God, That in a Christian Climate, Soules refin'de Should shew so heynous, black, obscene a deed. I speake to Subiects, and a Subiect speakes, Stirr'd vp by Heauen, thus boldly for his King My Lord of Hereford here, whom you call King, Is a foule Traytor to prowd Herefords King. And if you Crowne him, let me prophecie, The blood of English shall manure the ground, And future Ages groane for his foule Act. Peace shall goe sleepe with Turkes and Infidels, And in this Seat of Peace, tumultuous Warres Shall Kinne with Kinne, and Kinde with Kinde confound. Disorder, Horror, Feare, and Mutinie Shall here inhabite, and this Land be call'd The field of Golgotha, and dead mens Sculls. Oh, if you reare this House, against this House It will the wofullest Diuision proue, That euer fell vpon this cursed Earth. Preuent it, resist it, and let it not be so, Least Child, Childs Children cry against you, Woe North. Well haue you argu'd Sir: and for your paines, Of Capitall Treason we arrest you here. My Lord of Westminster, be it your charge, To keepe him safely, till his day of Tryall. May it please you, Lords, to grant the Commons Suit? Bull. Fetch hither Richard, that in common view He may surrender: so we shall proceede Without suspition Yorke. I will be his Conduct. Enter. Bull. Lords, you that here are vnder our Arrest, Procure your Sureties for your Dayes of Answer: Little are we beholding to your Loue, And little look'd for at your helping Hands. Enter Richard and Yorke. Rich. Alack, why am I sent for to a King, Before I haue shooke off the Regall thoughts Wherewith I reign'd? I hardly yet haue learn'd To insinuate, flatter, bowe, and bend my Knee. Giue Sorrow leaue a while, to tuture me To this submission. Yet I well remember The fauors of these men: were they not mine? Did they not sometime cry, All hayle to me? So Iudas did to Christ: but he in twelue, Found truth in all, but one; I, in twelue thousand, none. God saue the King: will no man say, Amen? Am I both Priest, and Clarke? well then, Amen. God saue the King, although I be not hee: And yet Amen, if Heauen doe thinke him mee. To doe what seruice, am I sent for hither? Yorke. To doe that office of thine owne good will, Which tyred Maiestie did make thee offer: The Resignation of thy State and Crowne To Henry Bullingbrooke Rich. Giue me the Crown. Here Cousin, seize y Crown: Here Cousin, on this side my Hand, on that side thine. Now is this Golden Crowne like a deepe Well, That owes two Buckets, filling one another, The emptier euer dancing in the ayre, The other downe, vnseene, and full of Water: That Bucket downe, and full of Teares am I, Drinking my Griefes, whil'st you mount vp on high Bull. I thought you had been willing to resigne Rich. My Crowne I am, but still my Griefes are mine: You may my Glories and my State depose, But not my Griefes; still am I King of those Bull. Part of your Cares you giue me with your Crowne Rich. Your Cares set vp, do not pluck my Cares downe. My Care, is losse of Care, by old Care done, Your Care, is gaine of Care, by new Care wonne: The Cares I giue, I haue, though giuen away, They 'tend the Crowne, yet still with me they stay: Bull. Are you contented to resigne the Crowne? Rich. I, no; no, I: for I must nothing bee: Therefore no, no, for I resigne to thee. Now, marke me how I will vndoe my selfe. I giue this heauie Weight from off my Head, And this vnwieldie Scepter from my Hand, The pride of Kingly sway from out my Heart. With mine owne Teares I wash away my Balme, With mine owne Hands I giue away my Crowne, With mine owne Tongue denie my Sacred State, With mine owne Breath release all dutious Oathes; All Pompe and Maiestie I doe forsweare: My Manors, Rents, Reuenues, I forgoe; My Acts, Decrees, and Statutes I denie: God pardon all Oathes that are broke to mee, God keepe all Vowes vnbroke are made to thee. Make me that nothing haue, with nothing grieu'd, And thou with all pleas'd, that hast all atchieu'd. Long may'st thou liue in Richards Seat to sit, And soone lye Richard in an Earthie Pit. God saue King Henry, vn-King'd Richard sayes, And send him many yeeres of Sunne-shine dayes. What more remaines? North. No more: but that you reade These Accusations, and these grieuous Crymes, Committed by your Person, and your followers, Against the State, and Profit of this Land: That by confessing them, the Soules of men May deeme, that you are worthily depos'd Rich. Must I doe so? and must I rauell out My weau'd-vp follyes? Gentle Northumberland, If thy Offences were vpon Record, Would it not shame thee, in so faire a troupe, To reade a Lecture of them? If thou would'st, There should'st thou finde one heynous Article, Contayning the deposing of a King, And cracking the strong Warrant of an Oath, Mark'd with a Blot, damn'd in the Booke of Heauen. Nay, all of you, that stand and looke vpon me, Whil'st that my wretchednesse doth bait my selfe, Though some of you, with Pilate, wash your hands, Shewing an outward pittie: yet you Pilates Haue here deliuer'd me to my sowre Crosse, And Water cannot wash away your sinne North. My Lord dispatch, reade o're these Articles Rich. Mine Eyes are full of Teares, I cannot see: And yet salt-Water blindes them not so much, But they can see a sort of Traytors here. Nay, if I turne mine Eyes vpon my selfe, I finde my selfe a Traytor with the rest: For I haue giuen here my Soules consent, T' vndeck the pompous Body of a King; Made Glory base; a Soueraigntie, a Slaue; Prowd Maiestie, a Subiect; State, a Pesant North. My Lord Rich. No Lord of thine, thou haught-insulting man; No, nor no mans Lord: I haue no Name, no Title; No, not that Name was giuen me at the Font, But 'tis vsurpt: alack the heauie day, That I haue worne so many Winters out, And know not now, what Name to call my selfe. Oh, that I were a Mockerie, King of Snow, Standing before the Sunne of Bullingbrooke, To melt my selfe away in Water-drops. Good King, great King, and yet not greatly good, And if my word be Sterling yet in England, Let it command a Mirror hither straight, That it may shew me what a Face I haue, Since it is Bankrupt of his Maiestie Bull. Goe some of you, and fetch a Looking-Glasse North. Read o're this Paper, while y Glasse doth come Rich. Fiend, thou torments me, ere I come to Hell Bull. Vrge it no more, my Lord Northumberland North. The Commons will not then be satisfy'd Rich. They shall be satisfy'd: Ile reade enough, When I doe see the very Booke indeede, Where all my sinnes are writ, and that's my selfe. Enter one with a Glasse. Giue me that Glasse, and therein will I reade. No deeper wrinckles yet? hath Sorrow strucke So many Blowes vpon this Face of mine, And made no deeper Wounds? Oh flatt'ring Glasse, Like to my followers in prosperitie, Thou do'st beguile me. Was this Face, the Face That euery day, vnder his House-hold Roofe, Did keepe ten thousand men? Was this the Face, That like the Sunne, did make beholders winke? Is this the Face, which fac'd so many follyes, That was at last out-fac'd by Bullingbrooke? A brittle Glory shineth in this Face, As brittle as the Glory, is the Face, For there it is, crackt in an hundred shiuers. Marke silent King, the Morall of this sport, How soone my Sorrow hath destroy'd my Face Bull. The shadow of your Sorrow hath destroy'd The shadow of your Face Rich. Say that againe. The shadow of my Sorrow: ha, let's see, 'Tis very true, my Griefe lyes all within, And these externall manner of Laments, Are meerely shadowes, to the vnseene Griefe, That swells with silence in the tortur'd Soule. There lyes the substance: and I thanke thee King For thy great bountie, that not onely giu'st Me cause to wayle, but teachest me the way How to lament the cause. Ile begge one Boone, And then be gone, and trouble you no more. Shall I obtaine it? Bull. Name it, faire Cousin Rich. Faire Cousin? I am greater then a King: For when I was a King, my flatterers Were then but subiects; being now a subiect, I haue a King here to my flatterer: Being so great, I haue no neede to begge Bull. Yet aske Rich. And shall I haue? Bull. You shall Rich. Then giue me leaue to goe Bull. Whither? Rich. Whither you will, so I were from your sights Bull. Goe some of you, conuey him to the Tower Rich. Oh good: conuey: Conueyers are you all, That rise thus nimbly by a true Kings fall Bull. On Wednesday next, we solemnly set downe Our Coronation: Lords, prepare your selues. Exeunt. Abbot. A wofull Pageant haue we here beheld Carl. The Woes to come, the Children yet vnborne, Shall feele this day as sharpe to them as Thorne Aum. You holy Clergie-men, is there no Plot To rid the Realme of this pernicious Blot Abbot. Before I freely speake my minde herein, You shall not onely take the Sacrament, To bury mine intents, but also to effect What euer I shall happen to deuise. I see your Browes are full of Discontent, Your Heart of Sorrow, and your Eyes of Teares. Come home with me to Supper, Ile lay a Plot Shall shew vs all a merry day. Exeunt.

In Westminster Hall in London, Bolingbroke and the senior nobles are assembled. When called upon, Bagot accuses Aumerle of being involved in the murder of the Duke of Gloucester, the same murder that was the cause of the quarrel between Mowbray and Bolingbroke in Act 1, scene 1. Bagot also accuses Aumerle of advocating the death of Bolingbroke, when Bolingbroke was still in exile. Aumerle vigorously denies the charge, and challenges Bagot to a duel. Bolingbroke instructs Bagot not to accept the challenge. Fitzwater then challenges Aumerle, saying that Aumerle had admitted being the cause of Gloucester's death. Aumerle again denies the charge, but Percy accuses him of lying, and challenges him also. Another lord steps in and also issues a challenge to Aumerle. But then Surrey jumps into the fray, accusing Fitzwater of lying, and challenging him. Fitzwater sticks to his guns, repeating that Aumerle is guilty. He adds that he heard Norfolk say that Aumerle sent two of his men to Calais to murder the Duke of Gloucester. Aumerle issues yet another challenge, this time to Norfolk, should Norfolk's sentence of banishment be repealed. Bolingbroke agrees to this, saying that he will repeal the banishment and allow the trial of combat between Norfolk and Aumerle. At this point, Carlisle announces that Norfolk is dead. He died in Venice after fighting many years in the crusades. York enters and announces that Richard has renounced the throne in favor of Bolingbroke. Bolingbroke indicates his assent to this, but Carlisle protests. He says that the king's subjects cannot pronounce judgment on the king. He calls Bolingbroke a traitor, and warns that if Bolingbroke is crowned king, there will be a civil war. Northumberland promptly arrests Carlisle for treason. Bolingbroke asks for Richard to be brought in, so he may surrender the crown in public, thus giving legitimacy to the process. Richard enters. He makes a mocking speech about how he has been betrayed by everyone present. He asks why he has been sent for, and York replies it is so he can resign his crown in favor of Bolingbroke. Richard responds theatrically, placing his hand on one side of the crown and inviting Bolingbroke to take the other side. He speaks about the crown as a well with two buckets-as one fills up, the other empties. The empty one rises up, but the bucket that is full of water sinks. He is like the full bucket, weighed down with his tears. He plays with the idea of grief and care until Bolingbroke becomes impatient, asking Richard if he is content to resign the crown. Richard replies ceremoniously, describing all the things he will renounce-his scepter, his crown, his land and revenues, his decrees and statutes. He emphasizes that he now has nothing. He will soon be dead. He hails the new king and wishes him long life. Northumberland then asks Richard to read aloud a list of the crimes he and his followers committed, so that the deposition of the king can be seen to be just. Richard makes a defiant speech, pointing out that Northumberland is guilty of treason, as are all the others present, even though some of them pretend to pity him. Northumberland asks again for Richard to sign the document; again Richard is defiant and speaks of traitors in the room. But he also accuses himself of being a traitor, since he is consenting to be deposed. He asks for a mirror to be brought to him so he can see what he now looks like, since he is no longer a king. Bolingbroke grants his request, and asks Northumberland to stop insisting that Richard sign the document. Theatrically, Richard gazes into the mirror, and professes surprise that so many blows have not changed the appearance of his face. Concluding that the mirror, like his followers, is deceiving him, he throws the mirror to the ground, breaking it. He then asks one favor of the new king, that he should be allowed to leave. He does not mind where he goes, as long as it is out of the sight of Bolingbroke. Bolingbroke orders him to be taken to the Tower of London. Bolingbroke then announces a date for his own coronation. After the new king and most of the nobles depart, Carlisle, the Abbot of Westminster, and Aumerle remain. They decide to plot the downfall of the new Henry IV.

SCENE II. Rome. A street near the gate Enter the two Tribunes, SICINIUS and BRUTUS with the AEDILE SICINIUS. Bid them all home; he's gone, and we'll no further. The nobility are vex'd, whom we see have sided In his behalf. BRUTUS. Now we have shown our power, Let us seem humbler after it is done Than when it was a-doing. SICINIUS. Bid them home. Say their great enemy is gone, and they Stand in their ancient strength. BRUTUS. Dismiss them home. Exit AEDILE Here comes his mother. Enter VOLUMNIA, VIRGILIA, and MENENIUS SICINIUS. Let's not meet her. BRUTUS. Why? SICINIUS. They say she's mad. BRUTUS. They have ta'en note of us; keep on your way. VOLUMNIA. O, y'are well met; th' hoarded plague o' th' gods Requite your love! MENENIUS. Peace, peace, be not so loud. VOLUMNIA. If that I could for weeping, you should hear- Nay, and you shall hear some. [To BRUTUS] Will you be gone? VIRGILIA. [To SICINIUS] You shall stay too. I would I had the power To say so to my husband. SICINIUS. Are you mankind? VOLUMNIA. Ay, fool; is that a shame? Note but this, fool: Was not a man my father? Hadst thou foxship To banish him that struck more blows for Rome Than thou hast spoken words? SICINIUS. O blessed heavens! VOLUMNIA. More noble blows than ever thou wise words; And for Rome's good. I'll tell thee what- yet go! Nay, but thou shalt stay too. I would my son Were in Arabia, and thy tribe before him, His good sword in his hand. SICINIUS. What then? VIRGILIA. What then! He'd make an end of thy posterity. VOLUMNIA. Bastards and all. Good man, the wounds that he does bear for Rome! MENENIUS. Come, come, peace. SICINIUS. I would he had continued to his country As he began, and not unknit himself The noble knot he made. BRUTUS. I would he had. VOLUMNIA. 'I would he had!' 'Twas you incens'd the rabble- Cats that can judge as fitly of his worth As I can of those mysteries which heaven Will not have earth to know. BRUTUS. Pray, let's go. VOLUMNIA. Now, pray, sir, get you gone; You have done a brave deed. Ere you go, hear this: As far as doth the Capitol exceed The meanest house in Rome, so far my son- This lady's husband here, this, do you see?- Whom you have banish'd does exceed you all. BRUTUS. Well, well, we'll leave you. SICINIUS. Why stay we to be baited With one that wants her wits? Exeunt TRIBUNES VOLUMNIA. Take my prayers with you. I would the gods had nothing else to do But to confirm my curses. Could I meet 'em But once a day, it would unclog my heart Of what lies heavy to't. MENENIUS. You have told them home, And, by my troth, you have cause. You'll sup with me? VOLUMNIA. Anger's my meat; I sup upon myself, And so shall starve with feeding. Come, let's go. Leave this faint puling and lament as I do, In anger, Juno-like. Come, come, come. Exeunt VOLUMNIA and VIRGILIA MENENIUS. Fie, fie, fie! Exit

This scene opens on a street in Rome near the city gates. Sicinius and Brutus enter and are dismayed to find that Coriolanus has already left, spoiling their plans of hurling abuses at him. Sicinius remarks that Coriolanus supporters are liable to be angry; Brutus answers that the two of them must appear humble for awhile. The tribunes order the commoners to go home since their great enemy has left and they have regained their ancient strength. Volumnia, Virgilia, and Menenius enter after bidding Coriolanus their tearful farewell. The tribunes do not want to see them, especially Volumnia, since they know of her foul temper. Brutus remarks, however, that they have already been noticed and advises Sicinius to continue walking. Volumnia approaches and curses the tribunes for their actions; Menenius assumes his role as a mediator and attempts to restrain Volumnias wrath, to no avail. Even the silent and soft-spoken Virgilia joins her mother-in-law in criticizing the tribunes. Sicinius attempts to pacify the women by wishing that Coriolanus had only remained a soldier and not unknit himself/ The noble knot he made. Volumnia will not be placated and accuses the tribunes of causing all the trouble. Brutus, quite terrified of her, begs permission to leave. Volumnia bids them to be gone and sarcastically praises them for having done a great deed. After the tribunes have left, Volumnia wishes that the gods had nothing to do but carry out her curses. Menenius attempts to comfort her by saying that she has nobly rebuked the tribunes and invites her to have dinner with him. Volumnia, however, is inconsolable and says that Angers my meat; I sup upon myself,/and so shall starve with feeding.

A GREEN valley with a brook running through it, full almost to overflowing with the late rains, overhung by low stooping willows. Across this brook a plank is thrown, and over this plank Adam Bede is passing with his undoubting step, followed close by Gyp with the basket; evidently making his way to the thatched house, with a stack of timber by the side of it, about twenty yards up the opposite slope. The door of the house is open, and an elderly woman is looking out; but she is not placidly contemplating the evening sunshine; she has been watching with dim eyes the gradually enlarging speck which for the last few minutes she has been quite sure is her darling son Adam. Lisbeth Bede loves her son with the love of a woman to whom her first-born has come late in life. She is an anxious, spare, yet vigorous old woman, clean as a snowdrop. Her grey hair is turned neatly back under a pure linen cap with a black band round it; her broad chest is covered with a buff neckerchief, and below this you see a sort of short bedgown made of blue-checkered linen, tied round the waist and descending to the hips, from whence there is a considerable length of linsey-woolsey petticoat. For Lisbeth is tall, and in other points too there is a strong likeness between her and her son Adam. Her dark eyes are somewhat dim now--perhaps from too much crying--but her broadly marked eyebrows are still black, her teeth are sound, and as she stands knitting rapidly and unconsciously with her work-hardened hands, she has as firmly upright an attitude as when she is carrying a pail of water on her head from the spring. There is the same type of frame and the same keen activity of temperament in mother and son, but it was not from her that Adam got his well-filled brow and his expression of large-hearted intelligence. Family likeness has often a deep sadness in it. Nature, that great tragic dramatist, knits us together by bone and muscle, and divides us by the subtler web of our brains; blends yearning and repulsion; and ties us by our heart-strings to the beings that jar us at every movement. We hear a voice with the very cadence of our own uttering the thoughts we despise; we see eyes--ah, so like our mother's!--averted from us in cold alienation; and our last darling child startles us with the air and gestures of the sister we parted from in bitterness long years ago. The father to whom we owe our best heritage--the mechanical instinct, the keen sensibility to harmony, the unconscious skill of the modelling hand--galls us and puts us to shame by his daily errors; the long-lost mother, whose face we begin to see in the glass as our own wrinkles come, once fretted our young souls with her anxious humours and irrational persistence. It is such a fond anxious mother's voice that you hear, as Lisbeth says, "Well, my lad, it's gone seven by th' clock. Thee't allays stay till the last child's born. Thee wants thy supper, I'll warrand. Where's Seth? Gone arter some o's chapellin', I reckon?" "Aye, aye, Seth's at no harm, mother, thee mayst be sure. But where's father?" said Adam quickly, as he entered the house and glanced into the room on the left hand, which was used as a workshop. "Hasn't he done the coffin for Tholer? There's the stuff standing just as I left it this morning." "Done the coffin?" said Lisbeth, following him, and knitting uninterruptedly, though she looked at her son very anxiously. "Eh, my lad, he went aff to Treddles'on this forenoon, an's niver come back. I doubt he's got to th' 'Waggin Overthrow' again." A deep flush of anger passed rapidly over Adam's face. He said nothing, but threw off his jacket and began to roll up his shirt-sleeves again. "What art goin' to do, Adam?" said the mother, with a tone and look of alarm. "Thee wouldstna go to work again, wi'out ha'in thy bit o' supper?" Adam, too angry to speak, walked into the workshop. But his mother threw down her knitting, and, hurrying after him, took hold of his arm, and said, in a tone of plaintive remonstrance, "Nay, my lad, my lad, thee munna go wi'out thy supper; there's the taters wi' the gravy in 'em, just as thee lik'st 'em. I saved 'em o' purpose for thee. Come an' ha' thy supper, come." "Let be!" said Adam impetuously, shaking her off and seizing one of the planks that stood against the wall. "It's fine talking about having supper when here's a coffin promised to be ready at Brox'on by seven o'clock to-morrow morning, and ought to ha' been there now, and not a nail struck yet. My throat's too full to swallow victuals." "Why, thee canstna get the coffin ready," said Lisbeth. "Thee't work thyself to death. It 'ud take thee all night to do't." "What signifies how long it takes me? Isn't the coffin promised? Can they bury the man without a coffin? I'd work my right hand off sooner than deceive people with lies i' that way. It makes me mad to think on't. I shall overrun these doings before long. I've stood enough of 'em." Poor Lisbeth did not hear this threat for the first time, and if she had been wise she would have gone away quietly and said nothing for the next hour. But one of the lessons a woman most rarely learns is never to talk to an angry or a drunken man. Lisbeth sat down on the chopping bench and began to cry, and by the time she had cried enough to make her voice very piteous, she burst out into words. "Nay, my lad, my lad, thee wouldstna go away an' break thy mother's heart, an' leave thy feyther to ruin. Thee wouldstna ha' 'em carry me to th' churchyard, an' thee not to follow me. I shanna rest i' my grave if I donna see thee at th' last; an' how's they to let thee know as I'm a-dyin', if thee't gone a-workin' i' distant parts, an' Seth belike gone arter thee, and thy feyther not able to hold a pen for's hand shakin', besides not knowin' where thee art? Thee mun forgie thy feyther--thee munna be so bitter again' him. He war a good feyther to thee afore he took to th' drink. He's a clever workman, an' taught thee thy trade, remember, an's niver gen me a blow nor so much as an ill word--no, not even in 's drink. Thee wouldstna ha' 'm go to the workhus--thy own feyther--an' him as was a fine-growed man an' handy at everythin' amost as thee art thysen, five-an'-twenty 'ear ago, when thee wast a baby at the breast." Lisbeth's voice became louder, and choked with sobs--a sort of wail, the most irritating of all sounds where real sorrows are to be borne and real work to be done. Adam broke in impatiently. "Now, Mother, don't cry and talk so. Haven't I got enough to vex me without that? What's th' use o' telling me things as I only think too much on every day? If I didna think on 'em, why should I do as I do, for the sake o' keeping things together here? But I hate to be talking where it's no use: I like to keep my breath for doing i'stead o' talking." "I know thee dost things as nobody else 'ud do, my lad. But thee't allays so hard upo' thy feyther, Adam. Thee think'st nothing too much to do for Seth: thee snapp'st me up if iver I find faut wi' th' lad. But thee't so angered wi' thy feyther, more nor wi' anybody else." "That's better than speaking soft and letting things go the wrong way, I reckon, isn't it? If I wasn't sharp with him he'd sell every bit o' stuff i' th' yard and spend it on drink. I know there's a duty to be done by my father, but it isn't my duty to encourage him in running headlong to ruin. And what has Seth got to do with it? The lad does no harm as I know of. But leave me alone, Mother, and let me get on with the work." Lisbeth dared not say any more; but she got up and called Gyp, thinking to console herself somewhat for Adam's refusal of the supper she had spread out in the loving expectation of looking at him while he ate it, by feeding Adam's dog with extra liberality. But Gyp was watching his master with wrinkled brow and ears erect, puzzled at this unusual course of things; and though he glanced at Lisbeth when she called him, and moved his fore-paws uneasily, well knowing that she was inviting him to supper, he was in a divided state of mind, and remained seated on his haunches, again fixing his eyes anxiously on his master. Adam noticed Gyp's mental conflict, and though his anger had made him less tender than usual to his mother, it did not prevent him from caring as much as usual for his dog. We are apt to be kinder to the brutes that love us than to the women that love us. Is it because the brutes are dumb? "Go, Gyp; go, lad!" Adam said, in a tone of encouraging command; and Gyp, apparently satisfied that duty and pleasure were one, followed Lisbeth into the house-place. But no sooner had he licked up his supper than he went back to his master, while Lisbeth sat down alone to cry over her knitting. Women who are never bitter and resentful are often the most querulous; and if Solomon was as wise as he is reputed to be, I feel sure that when he compared a contentious woman to a continual dropping on a very rainy day, he had not a vixen in his eye--a fury with long nails, acrid and selfish. Depend upon it, he meant a good creature, who had no joy but in the happiness of the loved ones whom she contributed to make uncomfortable, putting by all the tid-bits for them and spending nothing on herself. Such a woman as Lisbeth, for example--at once patient and complaining, self-renouncing and exacting, brooding the livelong day over what happened yesterday and what is likely to happen to-morrow, and crying very readily both at the good and the evil. But a certain awe mingled itself with her idolatrous love of Adam, and when he said, "Leave me alone," she was always silenced. So the hours passed, to the loud ticking of the old day-clock and the sound of Adam's tools. At last he called for a light and a draught of water (beer was a thing only to be drunk on holidays), and Lisbeth ventured to say as she took it in, "Thy supper stan's ready for thee, when thee lik'st." "Donna thee sit up, mother," said Adam, in a gentle tone. He had worked off his anger now, and whenever he wished to be especially kind to his mother, he fell into his strongest native accent and dialect, with which at other times his speech was less deeply tinged. "I'll see to Father when he comes home; maybe he wonna come at all to-night. I shall be easier if thee't i' bed." "Nay, I'll bide till Seth comes. He wonna be long now, I reckon." It was then past nine by the clock, which was always in advance of the days, and before it had struck ten the latch was lifted and Seth entered. He had heard the sound of the tools as he was approaching. "Why, Mother," he said, "how is it as Father's working so late?" "It's none o' thy feyther as is a-workin'--thee might know that well anoof if thy head warna full o' chapellin'--it's thy brother as does iverything, for there's niver nobody else i' th' way to do nothin'." Lisbeth was going on, for she was not at all afraid of Seth, and usually poured into his ears all the querulousness which was repressed by her awe of Adam. Seth had never in his life spoken a harsh word to his mother, and timid people always wreak their peevishness on the gentle. But Seth, with an anxious look, had passed into the workshop and said, "Addy, how's this? What! Father's forgot the coffin?" "Aye, lad, th' old tale; but I shall get it done," said Adam, looking up and casting one of his bright keen glances at his brother. "Why, what's the matter with thee? Thee't in trouble." Seth's eyes were red, and there was a look of deep depression on his mild face. "Yes, Addy, but it's what must be borne, and can't be helped. Why, thee'st never been to the school, then?" "School? No, that screw can wait," said Adam, hammering away again. "Let me take my turn now, and do thee go to bed," said Seth. "No, lad, I'd rather go on, now I'm in harness. Thee't help me to carry it to Brox'on when it's done. I'll call thee up at sunrise. Go and eat thy supper, and shut the door so as I mayn't hear Mother's talk." Seth knew that Adam always meant what he said, and was not to be persuaded into meaning anything else. So he turned, with rather a heavy heart, into the house-place. "Adam's niver touched a bit o' victual sin' home he's come," said Lisbeth. "I reckon thee'st hed thy supper at some o' thy Methody folks." "Nay, Mother," said Seth, "I've had no supper yet." "Come, then," said Lisbeth, "but donna thee ate the taters, for Adam 'ull happen ate 'em if I leave 'em stannin'. He loves a bit o' taters an' gravy. But he's been so sore an' angered, he wouldn't ate 'em, for all I'd putten 'em by o' purpose for him. An' he's been a-threatenin' to go away again," she went on, whimpering, "an' I'm fast sure he'll go some dawnin' afore I'm up, an' niver let me know aforehand, an' he'll niver come back again when once he's gone. An' I'd better niver ha' had a son, as is like no other body's son for the deftness an' th' handiness, an' so looked on by th' grit folks, an' tall an' upright like a poplar-tree, an' me to be parted from him an' niver see 'm no more." "Come, Mother, donna grieve thyself in vain," said Seth, in a soothing voice. "Thee'st not half so good reason to think as Adam 'ull go away as to think he'll stay with thee. He may say such a thing when he's in wrath--and he's got excuse for being wrathful sometimes--but his heart 'ud never let him go. Think how he's stood by us all when it's been none so easy--paying his savings to free me from going for a soldier, an' turnin' his earnin's into wood for father, when he's got plenty o' uses for his money, and many a young man like him 'ud ha' been married and settled before now. He'll never turn round and knock down his own work, and forsake them as it's been the labour of his life to stand by." "Donna talk to me about's marr'in'," said Lisbeth, crying afresh. "He's set's heart on that Hetty Sorrel, as 'ull niver save a penny, an' 'ull toss up her head at's old mother. An' to think as he might ha' Mary Burge, an' be took partners, an' be a big man wi' workmen under him, like Mester Burge--Dolly's told me so o'er and o'er again--if it warna as he's set's heart on that bit of a wench, as is o' no more use nor the gillyflower on the wall. An' he so wise at bookin' an' figurin', an' not to know no better nor that!" "But, Mother, thee know'st we canna love just where other folks 'ud have us. There's nobody but God can control the heart of man. I could ha' wished myself as Adam could ha' made another choice, but I wouldn't reproach him for what he can't help. And I'm not sure but what he tries to o'ercome it. But it's a matter as he doesn't like to be spoke to about, and I can only pray to the Lord to bless and direct him." "Aye, thee't allays ready enough at prayin', but I donna see as thee gets much wi' thy prayin'. Thee wotna get double earnin's o' this side Yule. Th' Methodies 'll niver make thee half the man thy brother is, for all they're a-makin' a preacher on thee." "It's partly truth thee speak'st there, Mother," said Seth, mildly; "Adam's far before me, an's done more for me than I can ever do for him. God distributes talents to every man according as He sees good. But thee mustna undervally prayer. Prayer mayna bring money, but it brings us what no money can buy--a power to keep from sin and be content with God's will, whatever He may please to send. If thee wouldst pray to God to help thee, and trust in His goodness, thee wouldstna be so uneasy about things." "Unaisy? I'm i' th' right on't to be unaisy. It's well seen on THEE what it is niver to be unaisy. Thee't gi' away all thy earnin's, an' niver be unaisy as thee'st nothin' laid up again' a rainy day. If Adam had been as aisy as thee, he'd niver ha' had no money to pay for thee. Take no thought for the morrow--take no thought--that's what thee't allays sayin'; an' what comes on't? Why, as Adam has to take thought for thee." "Those are the words o' the Bible, Mother," said Seth. "They don't mean as we should be idle. They mean we shouldn't be overanxious and worreting ourselves about what'll happen to-morrow, but do our duty and leave the rest to God's will." "Aye, aye, that's the way wi' thee: thee allays makes a peck o' thy own words out o' a pint o' the Bible's. I donna see how thee't to know as 'take no thought for the morrow' means all that. An' when the Bible's such a big book, an' thee canst read all thro't, an' ha' the pick o' the texes, I canna think why thee dostna pick better words as donna mean so much more nor they say. Adam doesna pick a that'n; I can understan' the tex as he's allays a-sayin', 'God helps them as helps theirsens.'" "Nay, Mother," said Seth, "that's no text o' the Bible. It comes out of a book as Adam picked up at the stall at Treddles'on. It was wrote by a knowing man, but overworldly, I doubt. However, that saying's partly true; for the Bible tells us we must be workers together with God." "Well, how'm I to know? It sounds like a tex. But what's th' matter wi' th' lad? Thee't hardly atin' a bit o' supper. Dostna mean to ha' no more nor that bit o' oat-cake? An' thee lookst as white as a flick o' new bacon. What's th' matter wi' thee?" "Nothing to mind about, Mother; I'm not hungry. I'll just look in at Adam again, and see if he'll let me go on with the coffin." "Ha' a drop o' warm broth?" said Lisbeth, whose motherly feeling now got the better of her "nattering" habit. "I'll set two-three sticks a-light in a minute." "Nay, Mother, thank thee; thee't very good," said Seth, gratefully; and encouraged by this touch of tenderness, he went on: "Let me pray a bit with thee for Father, and Adam, and all of us--it'll comfort thee, happen, more than thee thinkst." "Well, I've nothin' to say again' it." Lisbeth, though disposed always to take the negative side in her conversations with Seth, had a vague sense that there was some comfort and safety in the fact of his piety, and that it somehow relieved her from the trouble of any spiritual transactions on her own behalf. So the mother and son knelt down together, and Seth prayed for the poor wandering father and for those who were sorrowing for him at home. And when he came to the petition that Adam might never be called to set up his tent in a far country, but that his mother might be cheered and comforted by his presence all the days of her pilgrimage, Lisbeth's ready tears flowed again, and she wept aloud. When they rose from their knees, Seth went to Adam again and said, "Wilt only lie down for an hour or two, and let me go on the while?" "No, Seth, no. Make Mother go to bed, and go thyself." Meantime Lisbeth had dried her eyes, and now followed Seth, holding something in her hands. It was the brown-and-yellow platter containing the baked potatoes with the gravy in them and bits of meat which she had cut and mixed among them. Those were dear times, when wheaten bread and fresh meat were delicacies to working people. She set the dish down rather timidly on the bench by Adam's side and said, "Thee canst pick a bit while thee't workin'. I'll bring thee another drop o' water." "Aye, Mother, do," said Adam, kindly; "I'm getting very thirsty." In half an hour all was quiet; no sound was to be heard in the house but the loud ticking of the old day-clock and the ringing of Adam's tools. The night was very still: when Adam opened the door to look out at twelve o'clock, the only motion seemed to be in the glowing, twinkling stars; every blade of grass was asleep. Bodily haste and exertion usually leave our thoughts very much at the mercy of our feelings and imagination; and it was so to-night with Adam. While his muscles were working lustily, his mind seemed as passive as a spectator at a diorama: scenes of the sad past, and probably sad future, floating before him and giving place one to the other in swift succession. He saw how it would be to-morrow morning, when he had carried the coffin to Broxton and was at home again, having his breakfast: his father perhaps would come in ashamed to meet his son's glance--would sit down, looking older and more tottering than he had done the morning before, and hang down his head, examining the floor-quarries; while Lisbeth would ask him how he supposed the coffin had been got ready, that he had slinked off and left undone--for Lisbeth was always the first to utter the word of reproach, although she cried at Adam's severity towards his father. "So it will go on, worsening and worsening," thought Adam; "there's no slipping uphill again, and no standing still when once you 've begun to slip down." And then the day came back to him when he was a little fellow and used to run by his father's side, proud to be taken out to work, and prouder still to hear his father boasting to his fellow-workmen how "the little chap had an uncommon notion o' carpentering." What a fine active fellow his father was then! When people asked Adam whose little lad he was, he had a sense of distinction as he answered, "I'm Thias Bede's lad." He was quite sure everybody knew Thias Bede--didn't he make the wonderful pigeon-house at Broxton parsonage? Those were happy days, especially when Seth, who was three years the younger, began to go out working too, and Adam began to be a teacher as well as a learner. But then came the days of sadness, when Adam was someway on in his teens, and Thias began to loiter at the public-houses, and Lisbeth began to cry at home, and to pour forth her plaints in the hearing of her sons. Adam remembered well the night of shame and anguish when he first saw his father quite wild and foolish, shouting a song out fitfully among his drunken companions at the "Waggon Overthrown." He had run away once when he was only eighteen, making his escape in the morning twilight with a little blue bundle over his shoulder, and his "mensuration book" in his pocket, and saying to himself very decidedly that he could bear the vexations of home no longer--he would go and seek his fortune, setting up his stick at the crossways and bending his steps the way it fell. But by the time he got to Stoniton, the thought of his mother and Seth, left behind to endure everything without him, became too importunate, and his resolution failed him. He came back the next day, but the misery and terror his mother had gone through in those two days had haunted her ever since. "No!" Adam said to himself to-night, "that must never happen again. It 'ud make a poor balance when my doings are cast up at the last, if my poor old mother stood o' the wrong side. My back's broad enough and strong enough; I should be no better than a coward to go away and leave the troubles to be borne by them as aren't half so able. 'They that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of those that are weak, and not to please themselves.' There's a text wants no candle to show't; it shines by its own light. It's plain enough you get into the wrong road i' this life if you run after this and that only for the sake o' making things easy and pleasant to yourself. A pig may poke his nose into the trough and think o' nothing outside it; but if you've got a man's heart and soul in you, you can't be easy a-making your own bed an' leaving the rest to lie on the stones. Nay, nay, I'll never slip my neck out o' the yoke, and leave the load to be drawn by the weak uns. Father's a sore cross to me, an's likely to be for many a long year to come. What then? I've got th' health, and the limbs, and the sperrit to bear it." At this moment a smart rap, as if with a willow wand, was given at the house door, and Gyp, instead of barking, as might have been expected, gave a loud howl. Adam, very much startled, went at once to the door and opened it. Nothing was there; all was still, as when he opened it an hour before; the leaves were motionless, and the light of the stars showed the placid fields on both sides of the brook quite empty of visible life. Adam walked round the house, and still saw nothing except a rat which darted into the woodshed as he passed. He went in again, wondering; the sound was so peculiar that the moment he heard it it called up the image of the willow wand striking the door. He could not help a little shudder, as he remembered how often his mother had told him of just such a sound coming as a sign when some one was dying. Adam was not a man to be gratuitously superstitious, but he had the blood of the peasant in him as well as of the artisan, and a peasant can no more help believing in a traditional superstition than a horse can help trembling when he sees a camel. Besides, he had that mental combination which is at once humble in the region of mystery and keen in the region of knowledge: it was the depth of his reverence quite as much as his hard common sense which gave him his disinclination to doctrinal religion, and he often checked Seth's argumentative spiritualism by saying, "Eh, it's a big mystery; thee know'st but little about it." And so it happened that Adam was at once penetrating and credulous. If a new building had fallen down and he had been told that this was a divine judgment, he would have said, "May be; but the bearing o' the roof and walls wasn't right, else it wouldn't ha' come down"; yet he believed in dreams and prognostics, and to his dying day he bated his breath a little when he told the story of the stroke with the willow wand. I tell it as he told it, not attempting to reduce it to its natural elements--in our eagerness to explain impressions, we often lose our hold of the sympathy that comprehends them. But he had the best antidote against imaginative dread in the necessity for getting on with the coffin, and for the next ten minutes his hammer was ringing so uninterruptedly, that other sounds, if there were any, might well be overpowered. A pause came, however, when he had to take up his ruler, and now again came the strange rap, and again Gyp howled. Adam was at the door without the loss of a moment; but again all was still, and the starlight showed there was nothing but the dew-laden grass in front of the cottage. Adam for a moment thought uncomfortably about his father; but of late years he had never come home at dark hours from Treddleston, and there was every reason for believing that he was then sleeping off his drunkenness at the "Waggon Overthrown." Besides, to Adam, the conception of the future was so inseparable from the painful image of his father that the fear of any fatal accident to him was excluded by the deeply infixed fear of his continual degradation. The next thought that occurred to him was one that made him slip off his shoes and tread lightly upstairs, to listen at the bedroom doors. But both Seth and his mother were breathing regularly. Adam came down and set to work again, saying to himself, "I won't open the door again. It's no use staring about to catch sight of a sound. Maybe there's a world about us as we can't see, but th' ear's quicker than the eye and catches a sound from't now and then. Some people think they get a sight on't too, but they're mostly folks whose eyes are not much use to 'em at anything else. For my part, I think it's better to see when your perpendicular's true than to see a ghost." Such thoughts as these are apt to grow stronger and stronger as daylight quenches the candles and the birds begin to sing. By the time the red sunlight shone on the brass nails that formed the initials on the lid of the coffin, any lingering foreboding from the sound of the willow wand was merged in satisfaction that the work was done and the promise redeemed. There was no need to call Seth, for he was already moving overhead, and presently came downstairs. "Now, lad," said Adam, as Seth made his appearance, "the coffin's done, and we can take it over to Brox'on, and be back again before half after six. I'll take a mouthful o' oat-cake, and then we'll be off." The coffin was soon propped on the tall shoulders of the two brothers, and they were making their way, followed close by Gyp, out of the little woodyard into the lane at the back of the house. It was but about a mile and a half to Broxton over the opposite slope, and their road wound very pleasantly along lanes and across fields, where the pale woodbines and the dog-roses were scenting the hedgerows, and the birds were twittering and trilling in the tall leafy boughs of oak and elm. It was a strangely mingled picture--the fresh youth of the summer morning, with its Edenlike peace and loveliness, the stalwart strength of the two brothers in their rusty working clothes, and the long coffin on their shoulders. They paused for the last time before a small farmhouse outside the village of Broxton. By six o'clock the task was done, the coffin nailed down, and Adam and Seth were on their way home. They chose a shorter way homewards, which would take them across the fields and the brook in front of the house. Adam had not mentioned to Seth what had happened in the night, but he still retained sufficient impression from it himself to say, "Seth, lad, if Father isn't come home by the time we've had our breakfast, I think it'll be as well for thee to go over to Treddles'on and look after him, and thee canst get me the brass wire I want. Never mind about losing an hour at thy work; we can make that up. What dost say?" "I'm willing," said Seth. "But see what clouds have gathered since we set out. I'm thinking we shall have more rain. It'll be a sore time for th' haymaking if the meadows are flooded again. The brook's fine and full now: another day's rain 'ud cover the plank, and we should have to go round by the road." They were coming across the valley now, and had entered the pasture through which the brook ran. "Why, what's that sticking against the willow?" continued Seth, beginning to walk faster. Adam's heart rose to his mouth: the vague anxiety about his father was changed into a great dread. He made no answer to Seth, but ran forward preceded by Gyp, who began to bark uneasily; and in two moments he was at the bridge. This was what the omen meant, then! And the grey-haired father, of whom he had thought with a sort of hardness a few hours ago, as certain to live to be a thorn in his side was perhaps even then struggling with that watery death! This was the first thought that flashed through Adam's conscience, before he had time to seize the coat and drag out the tall heavy body. Seth was already by his side, helping him, and when they had it on the bank, the two sons in the first moment knelt and looked with mute awe at the glazed eyes, forgetting that there was need for action--forgetting everything but that their father lay dead before them. Adam was the first to speak. "I'll run to Mother," he said, in a loud whisper. "I'll be back to thee in a minute." Poor Lisbeth was busy preparing her sons' breakfast, and their porridge was already steaming on the fire. Her kitchen always looked the pink of cleanliness, but this morning she was more than usually bent on making her hearth and breakfast-table look comfortable and inviting. "The lads 'ull be fine an' hungry," she said, half-aloud, as she stirred the porridge. "It's a good step to Brox'on, an' it's hungry air o'er the hill--wi' that heavy coffin too. Eh! It's heavier now, wi' poor Bob Tholer in't. Howiver, I've made a drap more porridge nor common this mornin'. The feyther 'ull happen come in arter a bit. Not as he'll ate much porridge. He swallers sixpenn'orth o' ale, an' saves a hap'orth o' por-ridge--that's his way o' layin' by money, as I've told him many a time, an' am likely to tell him again afore the day's out. Eh, poor mon, he takes it quiet enough; there's no denyin' that." But now Lisbeth heard the heavy "thud" of a running footstep on the turf, and, turning quickly towards the door, she saw Adam enter, looking so pale and overwhelmed that she screamed aloud and rushed towards him before he had time to speak. "Hush, Mother," Adam said, rather hoarsely, "don't be frightened. Father's tumbled into the water. Belike we may bring him round again. Seth and me are going to carry him in. Get a blanket and make it hot as the fire." In reality Adam was convinced that his father was dead but he knew there was no other way of repressing his mother's impetuous wailing grief than by occupying her with some active task which had hope in it. He ran back to Seth, and the two sons lifted the sad burden in heart-stricken silence. The wide-open glazed eyes were grey, like Seth's, and had once looked with mild pride on the boys before whom Thias had lived to hang his head in shame. Seth's chief feeling was awe and distress at this sudden snatching away of his father's soul; but Adam's mind rushed back over the past in a flood of relenting and pity. When death, the great Reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.

Adam and Gyp arrive home, where Adam's mother, Lisbeth, waits for them. Adam discovers that his father, who is a drunkard, has gone out without building the coffin he had promised to build for a family in town. After railing against his father, Adam stays up all night to finish the coffin, despite Seth's offer of help and Lisbeth's attempts to make him eat. Lisbeth and Seth talk while Adam eats dinner, and they both lament that Adam is in love with Hetty. Lisbeth becomes hysterical at the idea of Adam's leaving her. While Adam works, he hears a rap on the door twice, a sound he recalls his mother often referring to as an omen of death. The next morning, Adam and Seth take the coffin to town and, on their way home, find their father drowned in the stream by their house. Adam immediately feels guilty for the harshness with which he has treated his wayward father

Ragueneau, Lise, the musketeer. Cyrano at the little table writing. The poets, dressed in black, their stockings ungartered, and covered with mud. LISE (entering, to Ragueneau): Here they come, your mud-bespattered friends! FIRST POET (entering, to Ragueneau): Brother in art!. . . SECOND POET (to Ragueneau, shaking his hands): Dear brother! THIRD POET: High soaring eagle among pastry-cooks! (He sniffs): Marry! it smells good here in your eyrie! FOURTH POET: 'Tis at Phoebus' own rays that thy roasts turn! FIFTH POET: Apollo among master-cooks-- RAGUENEAU (whom they surround and embrace): Ah! how quick a man feels at his ease with them!. . . FIRST POET: We were stayed by the mob; they are crowded all round the Porte de Nesle!. . . SECOND POET: Eight bleeding brigand carcasses strew the pavements there--all slit open with sword-gashes! CYRANO (raising his head a minute): Eight?. . .hold, methought seven. (He goes on writing.) RAGUENEAU (to Cyrano): Know you who might be the hero of the fray? CYRANO (carelessly): Not I. LISE (to the musketeer): And you? Know you? THE MUSKETEER (twirling his mustache): Maybe! CYRANO (writing a little way off:--he is heard murmuring a word from time to time): 'I love thee!' FIRST POET: 'Twas one man, say they all, ay, swear to it, one man who, single-handed, put the whole band to the rout! SECOND POET: 'Twas a strange sight!--pikes and cudgels strewed thick upon the ground. CYRANO (writing): . . .'Thine eyes'. . . THIRD POET: And they were picking up hats all the way to the Quai d'Orfevres! FIRST POET: Sapristi! but he must have been a ferocious. . . CYRANO (same play): . . .'Thy lips'. . . FIRST POET: 'Twas a parlous fearsome giant that was the author of such exploits! CYRANO (same play): . . .'And when I see thee come, I faint for fear.' SECOND POET (filching a cake): What hast rhymed of late, Ragueneau? CYRANO (same play): . . .'Who worships thee'. . . (He stops, just as he is about to sign, and gets up, slipping the letter into his doublet): No need I sign, since I give it her myself. RAGUENEAU (to second poet): I have put a recipe into verse. THIRD POET (seating himself by a plate of cream-puffs): Go to! Let us hear these verses! FOURTH POET (looking at a cake which he has taken): Its cap is all a' one side! (He makes one bite of the top.) FIRST POET: See how this gingerbread woos the famished rhymer with its almond eyes, and its eyebrows of angelica! (He takes it.) SECOND POET: We listen. THIRD POET (squeezing a cream-puff gently): How it laughs! Till its very cream runs over! SECOND POET (biting a bit off the great lyre of pastry): This is the first time in my life that ever I drew any means of nourishing me from the lyre! RAGUENEAU (who has put himself ready for reciting, cleared his throat, settled his cap, struck an attitude): A recipe in verse!. . . SECOND POET (to first, nudging him): You are breakfasting? FIRST POET (to second): And you dining, methinks. RAGUENEAU: How almond tartlets are made. Beat your eggs up, light and quick; Froth them thick; Mingle with them while you beat Juice of lemon, essence fine; Then combine The burst milk of almonds sweet. Circle with a custard paste The slim waist Of your tartlet-molds; the top With a skillful finger print, Nick and dint, Round their edge, then, drop by drop, In its little dainty bed Your cream shed: In the oven place each mold: Reappearing, softly browned, The renowned Almond tartlets you behold! THE POETS (with mouths crammed full): Exquisite! Delicious! A POET (choking): Homph! (They go up, eating.) CYRANO (who has been watching, goes toward Ragueneau): Lulled by your voice, did you see how they were stuffing themselves? RAGUENEAU (in a low voice, smiling): Oh, ay! I see well enough, but I never will seem to look, fearing to distress them; thus I gain a double pleasure when I recite to them my poems; for I leave those poor fellows who have not breakfasted free to eat, even while I gratify my own dearest foible, see you? CYRANO (clapping him on the shoulder): Friend, I like you right well!. . . (Ragueneau goes after his friends. Cyrano follows him with his eyes, then, rather sharply): Ho there! Lise! (Lise, who is talking tenderly to the musketeer, starts, and comes down toward Cyrano): So this fine captain is laying siege to you? LISE (offended): One haughty glance of my eye can conquer any man that should dare venture aught 'gainst my virtue. CYRANO: Pooh! Conquering eyes, methinks, are oft conquered eyes. LISE (choking with anger): But-- CYRANO (incisively): I like Ragueneau well, and so--mark me, Dame Lise--I permit not that he be rendered a laughing-stock by any. . . LISE: But. . . CYRANO (who has raised his voice so as to be heard by the gallant): A word to the wise. . . (He bows to the musketeer, and goes to the doorway to watch, after looking at the clock.) LISE (to the musketeer, who has merely bowed in answer to Cyrano's bow): How now? Is this your courage?. . .Why turn you not a jest on his nose? THE MUSKETEER: On his nose?. . .ay, ay. . .his nose. (He goes quickly farther away; Lise follows him.) CYRANO (from the doorway, signing to Ragueneau to draw the poets away): Hist!. . . RAGUENEAU (showing them the door on the right): We shall be more private there. . . CYRANO (impatiently): Hist! Hist!. . . RAGUENEAU (drawing them farther): To read poetry, 'tis better here. . . FIRST POET (despairingly, with his mouth full): What! leave the cakes?. . . SECOND POET: Never! Let's take them with us! (They all follow Ragueneau in procession, after sweeping all the cakes off the trays.)

Several poets arrive at the bakery. They are talking about the fight that took place at the Porte de Nesle. During the fight, eight people were wounded by a single swordsman, whose identity is unknown. Cyrano pays the poets little attention. He is completely absorbed in writing his love letter and thinking about his meeting with Roxane. He can hardly believe that he is actually going to meet with her and constantly asks what time it is, worrying about the nearness of her arrival. The poets stuff themselves with pastry, for which they do not pay, and encourage Ragueneau to read his Almond Tart recipe in verse. Although he knows he is exploited by the poets, Ragueneau enjoys their company and tries to accommodate them. The moral Cyrano watches the actions of Lise as she flirts with the musketeer and warns her about deceiving Ragueneau. He then signals the baker to drive the poets away from the shop, for it is time for Roxane to arrive.

NARRATIVE CONTINUED BY THE DOCTOR--END OF THE FIRST DAY'S FIGHTING We made our best speed across the strip of wood that now divided us from the stockade, and at every step we took the voices of the buccaneers rang nearer. Soon we could hear their footfalls as they ran, and the cracking of the branches as they breasted across a bit of thicket. I began to see we should have a brush for it in earnest, and looked to my priming. "Captain," said I, "Trelawney is the dead shot. Give him your gun; his own is useless." They exchanged guns, and Trelawney, silent and cool, as he had been since the beginning of the bustle, hung a moment on his heel to see that all was fit for service. At the same time, observing Gray to be unarmed, I handed him my cutlass. It did all our hearts good to see him spit in his hand, knit his brows, and make the blade sing through the air. It was plain from every line of his body that our new hand was worth his salt. Forty paces farther we came to the edge of the wood and saw the stockade in front of us. We struck the inclosure about the middle of the south side, and, almost at the same time, seven mutineers--Job Anderson, the boatswain, at their head--appeared in full cry at the southwestern corner. They paused, as if taken aback, and before they recovered, not only the squire and I, but Hunter and Joyce from the blockhouse, had time to fire. The four shots came in rather a scattering volley, but they did the business; one of the enemy actually fell, and the rest, without hesitation, turned and plunged into the trees. After reloading we walked down the outside of the palisade to see to the fallen enemy. He was stone dead--shot through the heart. We began to rejoice over our good success, when just at that moment a pistol cracked in the bush, a ball whistled close past my ear and poor Tom Redruth stumbled and fell his length on the ground. Both the squire and I returned the shot, but as we had nothing to aim at, it is probable we only wasted powder. Then we reloaded and turned our attention to poor Tom. The captain and Gray were already examining him, and I saw with half an eye that all was over. I believe the readiness of our return volley had scattered the mutineers once more, for we were suffered without further molestation to get the poor old gamekeeper hoisted over the stockade, and carried, groaning and bleeding, into the log-house. Poor old fellow, he had not uttered one word of surprise, complaint, fear, or even acquiescence, from the very beginning of our troubles till now, when we had laid him down in the log-house to die! He had lain like a Trojan behind his mattress in the gallery; he had followed every order silently, doggedly, and well; he was the oldest of our party by a score of years; and now, sullen, old, serviceable servant, it was he that was to die. The squire dropped down beside him on his knees and kissed his hand, crying like a child. "Be I going, doctor?" he asked. "Tom, my man," said I, "you're going home." "I wish I had had a lick at them with the gun first," he replied. "Tom," said the squire, "say you forgive me, won't you?" "Would that be respectful like, from me to you, squire?" was the answer. "Howsoever, so be it, amen!" After a little while of silence he said he thought somebody might read a prayer. "It's the custom, sir," he added, apologetically. And not long after, without another word, he passed away. In the meantime the captain, whom I had observed to be wonderfully swollen about the chest and pockets, had turned out a great many various stores--the British colors, a Bible, a coil of stoutish rope, pen, ink, the log-book, and pounds of tobacco. He had found a longish fir tree lying felled and cleared in the inclosure, and, with the help of Hunter, he had set it up at the corner of the log-house, where the trunks crossed and made an angle. Then, climbing on the roof, he had with his own hand bent and run up the colors. This seemed mightily to relieve him. He re-entered the log-house and set about counting up the stores, as if nothing else existed. But he had an eye on Tom's passage for all that, and as soon as all was over came forward with another flag and reverently spread it on the body. "Don't you take on, sir," he said, shaking the squire's hand. "All's well with him; no fear for a hand that's been shot down in his duty to captain and owner. It mayn't be good divinity, but it's a fact." Then he pulled me aside. "Doctor Livesey," he said, "in how many weeks do you and squire expect the consort?" I told him it was a question, not of weeks, but of months; that if we were not back by the end of August Blandly was to send to find us, but neither sooner nor later. "You can calculate for yourself," I said. "Why, yes," returned the captain, scratching his head, "and making a large allowance, sir, for all the gifts of Providence, I should say we were pretty close hauled." "How do you mean?" I asked. "It's a pity, sir, we lost that second load. That's what I mean," replied the captain. "As for powder and shot, we'll do. But the rations are short, very short--so short, Doctor Livesey, that we're perhaps as well without that extra mouth." And he pointed to the dead body under the flag. Just then, with a roar and a whistle, a round shot passed high above the roof of the log-house and plumped far beyond us in the wood. "Oho!" said the captain. "Blaze away! You've little enough powder already, my lads." At the second trial the aim was better and the ball descended inside the stockade, scattering a cloud of sand, but doing no further damage. "Captain," said the squire, "the house is quite invisible from the ship. It must be the flag they are aiming at. Would it not be wiser to take it in?" "Strike my colors!" cried the captain. "No, sir, not I," and as soon as he had said the words I think we all agreed with him. For it was not only a piece of stout, seamanly good feeling; it was good policy besides, and showed our enemies that we despised their cannonade. All through the evening they kept thundering away. Ball after ball flew over or fell short, or kicked up the sand in the inclosure; but they had to fire so high that the shot fell dead and buried itself in the soft sand. We had no ricochet to fear; and though one popped in through the roof of the log-house and out again through the floor, we soon got used to that sort of horse-play and minded it no more than cricket. "There is one thing good about all this," observed the captain; "the wood in front of us is likely clear. The ebb has made a good while; our stores should be uncovered. Volunteers to go and bring in pork." Gray and Hunter were the first to come forward. Well armed, they stole out of the stockade, but it proved a useless mission. The mutineers were bolder than we fancied, or they put more trust in Israel's gunnery, for four or five of them were busy carrying off our stores and wading out with them to one of the gigs that lay close by, pulling an oar or so to hold her steady against the current. Silver was in the stern-sheets in command, and every man of them was now provided with a musket from some secret magazine of their own. The captain sat down to his log, and here is the beginning of the entry: "Alexander Smollett, master; David Livesey, ship's doctor; Abraham Gray, carpenter's mate; John Trelawney, owner; John Hunter and Richard Joyce, owner's servants, landsmen--being all that is left faithful of the ship's company--with stores for ten days at short rations, came ashore this day and flew British colors on the log-house in Treasure Island. Thomas Redruth, owner's servant, landsman, shot by the mutineers; James Hawkins, cabin-boy--" And at the same time I was wondering over poor Jim Hawkins' fate. A hail on the land side. "Somebody hailing us," said Hunter, who was on guard. "Doctor! squire! captain! Hallo, Hunter, is that you?" came the cries. And I ran to the door in time to see Jim Hawkins, safe and sound, come climbing over the stockade. [Illustration]

The crew makes it to the beach and runs toward the Stockade. They could hear the foot steps of the mutineers behind them. At the request of the doctor, the Captain hands over his gun to the Squire and the doctor gives him his cutlass. The first glimpse of the Stockade also brings them face to face with Job Anderson and seven other men. The fighting starts. In the initial rounds of firing one among the mutineers is killed, which makes some of the others run for cover. After a brief pause, the fighting resumes and Redruth is hit. The doctor recalls the way Redruth has served them. He had never complained whenever called to perform his duties. Now he is laid on the log house, bleeding. The Squire couldnt believe that Redruth was going to die. When Redruth asks if his end is near, the Squire bursts into tears. After requesting to read him prayers, Redruth dies. The Captain uses a fir tree as a flag pole to hoist the Union Jack above the Stockade. They spreads another flag on Redruths body and acknowledges his service as a person who died on duty. The Captain inquires about the consort . The doctor informs his that it will be months before they can expect that help. He is informed that if the mission takes long, they would run short of ration, though there is plenty of gunpowder. Just then a gunshot passes above the roof. The Captain turns down the doctors request to take off the Union Jack. The flag, the Captain proudly states, represents the strong feeling they have towards their duty. The gun fire continues all evening and they get used to it within the protection of the stockade. The Captain make a note that the woods ahead would be clear and orders his men to get the provisions. Though Gray and Hunter volunteer, they meet with disappointment as they find Silver and his men in a better position to attack them. The Captain makes a note of the days happenings. He records Redruths death, while the doctor wonders about what has happened to Jim Hawkins. Just then they are in for a big surprise. Hunter hears someone hailing them. The doctor rushes towards the door to see Jim Hawkins safe and sound, making his way to the stockade.

When Ellis, after this rebuff, had disconsolately taken his leave, Clara, much elated at the righteous punishment she had inflicted upon the slanderer, ran upstairs to the nursery, and, snatching Dodie from Mammy Jane's arms, began dancing gayly with him round the room. "Look a-hyuh, honey," said Mammy Jane, "you better be keerful wid dat chile, an' don' drap 'im on de flo'. You might let him fall on his head an' break his neck. My, my! but you two does make a pretty pictur'! You'll be wantin' ole Jane ter come an' nuss yo' child'en some er dese days," she chuckled unctuously. Mammy Jane had been very much disturbed by the recent dangers through which little Dodie had passed; and his escape from strangulation, in the first place, and then from the knife had impressed her as little less than miraculous. She was not certain whether this result had been brought about by her manipulation of the buried charm, or by the prayers which had been offered for the child, but was inclined to believe that both had cooperated to avert the threatened calamity. The favorable outcome of this particular incident had not, however, altered the general situation. Prayers and charms, after all, were merely temporary things, which must be constantly renewed, and might be forgotten or overlooked; while the mole, on the contrary, neither faded nor went away. If its malign influence might for a time seem to disappear, it was merely lying dormant, like the germs of some deadly disease, awaiting its opportunity to strike at an unguarded spot. Clara and the baby were laughing in great glee, when a mockingbird, perched on the topmost bough of a small tree opposite the nursery window, burst suddenly into song, with many a trill and quaver. Clara, with the child in her arms, sprang to the open window. "Sister Olivia," she cried, turning her face toward Mrs. Carteret, who at that moment entered the room, "come and look at Dodie." The baby was listening intently to the music, meanwhile gurgling with delight, and reaching his chubby hands toward the source of this pleasing sound. It seemed as though the mockingbird were aware of his appreciative audience, for he ran through the songs of a dozen different birds, selecting, with the discrimination of a connoisseur and entire confidence in his own powers, those which were most difficult and most alluring. Mrs. Carteret approached the window, followed by Mammy Jane, who waddled over to join the admiring party. So absorbed were the three women in the baby and the bird that neither one of them observed a neat top buggy, drawn by a sleek sorrel pony, passing slowly along the street before the house. In the buggy was seated a lady, and beside her a little boy, dressed in a child's sailor suit and a straw hat. The lady, with a wistful expression, was looking toward the party grouped in the open window. Mrs. Carteret, chancing to lower her eyes for an instant, caught the other woman's look directed toward her and her child. With a glance of cold aversion she turned away from the window. Old Mammy Jane had observed this movement, and had divined the reason for it. She stood beside Clara, watching the retreating buggy. "Uhhuh!" she said to herself, "it's huh sister Janet! She ma'ied a doctuh, an' all dat, an' she lives in a big house, an' she's be'n roun' de worl' an de Lawd knows where e'se: but Mis' 'Livy don' like de sight er her, an' never will, ez long ez de sun rises an' sets. Dey ce't'nly does favor one anudder,--anybody mought 'low dey wuz twins, ef dey didn' know better. Well, well! Fo'ty yeahs ago who'd 'a' ever expected ter see a nigger gal ridin' in her own buggy? My, my! but I don' know,--I don' know! It don' look right, an' it ain' gwine ter las'!--you can't make me b'lieve!" Meantime Janet, stung by Mrs. Carteret's look,--the nearest approach she had ever made to a recognition of her sister's existence,--had turned away with hardening face. She had struck her pony sharply with the whip, much to the gentle creature's surprise, when the little boy, who was still looking back, caught his mother's sleeve and exclaimed excitedly:-- "Look, look, mamma! The baby,--the baby!" Janet turned instantly, and with a mother's instinct gave an involuntary cry of alarm. At the moment when Mrs. Carteret had turned away from the window, and while Mammy Jane was watching Janet, Clara had taken a step forward, and was leaning against the window-sill. The baby, convulsed with delight, had given a spasmodic spring and slipped from Clara's arms. Instinctively the young woman gripped the long skirt as it slipped through her hands, and held it tenaciously, though too frightened for an instant to do more. Mammy Jane, ashen with sudden dread, uttered an inarticulate scream, but retained self-possession enough to reach down and draw up the child, which hung dangerously suspended, head downward, over the brick pavement below. "Oh, Clara, Clara, how could you!" exclaimed Mrs. Carteret reproachfully; "you might have killed my child!" She had snatched the child from Jane's arms, and was holding him closely to her own breast. Struck by a sudden thought, she drew near the window and looked out. Twice within a few weeks her child had been in serious danger, and upon each occasion a member of the Miller family had been involved, for she had heard of Dr. Miller's presumption in trying to force himself where he must have known he would be unwelcome. Janet was just turning her head away as the buggy moved slowly off. Olivia felt a violent wave of antipathy sweep over her toward this baseborn sister who had thus thrust herself beneath her eyes. If she had not cast her brazen glance toward the window, she herself would not have turned away and lost sight of her child. To this shameless intrusion, linked with Clara's carelessness, had been due the catastrophe, so narrowly averted, which might have darkened her own life forever. She took to her bed for several days, and for a long time was cold toward Clara, and did not permit her to touch the child. Mammy Jane entertained a theory of her own about the accident, by which the blame was placed, in another way, exactly where Mrs. Carteret had laid it. Julia's daughter, Janet, had been looking intently toward the window just before little Dodie had sprung from Clara's arms. Might she not have cast the evil eye upon the baby, and sought thereby to draw him out of the window? One would not ordinarily expect so young a woman to possess such a power, but she might have acquired it, for this very purpose, from some more experienced person. By the same reasoning, the mockingbird might have been a familiar of the witch, and the two might have conspired to lure the infant to destruction. Whether this were so or not, the transaction at least wore a peculiar look. There was no use telling Mis' 'Livy about it, for she didn't believe, or pretended not to believe, in witchcraft and conjuration. But one could not be too careful. The child was certainly born to be exposed to great dangers,--the mole behind the left ear was an unfailing sign,--and no precaution should be omitted to counteract its baleful influence. While adjusting the baby's crib, a few days later, Mrs. Carteret found fastened under one of the slats a small bag of cotton cloth, about half an inch long and tied with a black thread, upon opening which she found a few small roots or fibres and a pinch of dried and crumpled herbs. It was a good-luck charm which Mammy Jane had placed there to ward off the threatened evil from the grandchild of her dear old mistress. Mrs. Carteret's first impulse was to throw the bag into the fire, but on second thoughts she let it remain. To remove it would give unnecessary pain to the old nurse. Of course these old negro superstitions were absurd,--but if the charm did no good, it at least would do no harm.

After her rebuff of Ellis, Clara goes upstairs and begins joyfully dancing with little Dodie. Mammy Jane sternly warns her to be careful with the child. Mammy Jane is still very worried about the mole behind the child's ear and the bad luck that such a mark portends. She attributes her good luck charms and her prayers for saving the child from the evil spirits that almost caused him to suffocate and go under the knife. When Clara puts the child down, a mockingbird flies into the window and begins singing its songs. The bird delights the child, and all three women go to the window to watch the bird. As they watch, a carriage carrying Janet and her son passes by and Janet and Olivia Carteret exchange a cold glance. Mammy Jane is indignant and cries, "Fo'ty yeahs ago who'd 'a' ever expected ter see a nigger gal ridin' in her own buggy. In the moment that Mrs. Carteret turns away, Clara accidentally loses her grip on the child and he begins to plunge out of the window. She holds on tightly the child's skirt and Mammy Jane helps pull the child back in, narrowly avoiding falling to his death. Olivia is horrified and suddenly has a thought that in the past few weeks, every time her child had been in danger, a Miller was involved. Mammy Jane also has a suspicion that Janet cast an "evil eye" towards the child. For her own part, Janet begins to cultivate a cold hatred towards her half-sister for her dismissive attitude

Our Sundays at Blithedale were not ordinarily kept with such rigid observance as might have befitted the descendants of the Pilgrims, whose high enterprise, as we sometimes flattered ourselves, we had taken up, and were carrying it onward and aloft, to a point which they never dreamed of attaining. On that hallowed day, it is true, we rested from our labors. Our oxen, relieved from their week-day yoke, roamed at large through the pasture; each yoke-fellow, however, keeping close beside his mate, and continuing to acknowledge, from the force of habit and sluggish sympathy, the union which the taskmaster had imposed for his own hard ends. As for us human yoke-fellows, chosen companions of toil, whose hoes had clinked together throughout the week, we wandered off, in various directions, to enjoy our interval of repose. Some, I believe, went devoutly to the village church. Others, it may be, ascended a city or a country pulpit, wearing the clerical robe with so much dignity that you would scarcely have suspected the yeoman's frock to have been flung off only since milking-time. Others took long rambles among the rustic lanes and by-paths, pausing to look at black old farmhouses, with their sloping roofs; and at the modern cottage, so like a plaything that it seemed as if real joy or sorrow could have no scope within; and at the more pretending villa, with its range of wooden columns supporting the needless insolence of a great portico. Some betook themselves into the wide, dusky barn, and lay there for hours together on the odorous hay; while the sunstreaks and the shadows strove together,--these to make the barn solemn, those to make it cheerful,--and both were conquerors; and the swallows twittered a cheery anthem, flashing into sight, or vanishing as they darted to and fro among the golden rules of sunshine. And others went a little way into the woods, and threw themselves on mother earth, pillowing their heads on a heap of moss, the green decay of an old log; and, dropping asleep, the bumblebees and mosquitoes sung and buzzed about their ears, causing the slumberers to twitch and start, without awaking. With Hollingsworth, Zenobia, Priscilla, and myself, it grew to be a custom to spend the Sabbath afternoon at a certain rock. It was known to us under the name of Eliot's pulpit, from a tradition that the venerable Apostle Eliot had preached there, two centuries gone by, to an Indian auditory. The old pine forest, through which the Apostle's voice was wont to sound, had fallen an immemorial time ago. But the soil, being of the rudest and most broken surface, had apparently never been brought under tillage; other growths, maple and beech and birch, had succeeded to the primeval trees; so that it was still as wild a tract of woodland as the great-great-great-great grandson of one of Eliot's Indians (had any such posterity been in existence) could have desired for the site and shelter of his wigwam. These after-growths, indeed, lose the stately solemnity of the original forest. If left in due neglect, however, they run into an entanglement of softer wildness, among the rustling leaves of which the sun can scatter cheerfulness as it never could among the dark-browed pines. The rock itself rose some twenty or thirty feet, a shattered granite bowlder, or heap of bowlders, with an irregular outline and many fissures, out of which sprang shrubs, bushes, and even trees; as if the scanty soil within those crevices were sweeter to their roots than any other earth. At the base of the pulpit, the broken bowlders inclined towards each other, so as to form a shallow cave, within which our little party had sometimes found protection from a summer shower. On the threshold, or just across it, grew a tuft of pale columbines, in their season, and violets, sad and shadowy recluses, such as Priscilla was when we first knew her; children of the sun, who had never seen their father, but dwelt among damp mosses, though not akin to them. At the summit, the rock was overshadowed by the canopy of a birch-tree, which served as a sounding-board for the pulpit. Beneath this shade (with my eyes of sense half shut and those of the imagination widely opened) I used to see the holy Apostle of the Indians, with the sunlight flickering down upon him through the leaves, and glorifying his figure as with the half-perceptible glow of a transfiguration. I the more minutely describe the rock, and this little Sabbath solitude, because Hollingsworth, at our solicitation, often ascended Eliot's pulpit, and not exactly preached, but talked to us, his few disciples, in a strain that rose and fell as naturally as the wind's breath among the leaves of the birch-tree. No other speech of man has ever moved me like some of those discourses. It seemed most pitiful--a positive calamity to the world--that a treasury of golden thoughts should thus be scattered, by the liberal handful, down among us three, when a thousand hearers might have been the richer for them; and Hollingsworth the richer, likewise, by the sympathy of multitudes. After speaking much or little, as might happen, he would descend from his gray pulpit, and generally fling himself at full length on the ground, face downward. Meanwhile, we talked around him on such topics as were suggested by the discourse. Since her interview with Westervelt, Zenobia's continual inequalities of temper had been rather difficult for her friends to bear. On the first Sunday after that incident, when Hollingsworth had clambered down from Eliot's pulpit, she declaimed with great earnestness and passion, nothing short of anger, on the injustice which the world did to women, and equally to itself, by not allowing them, in freedom and honor, and with the fullest welcome, their natural utterance in public. "It shall not always be so!" cried she. "If I live another year, I will lift up my own voice in behalf of woman's wider liberty!" She perhaps saw me smile. "What matter of ridicule do you find in this, Miles Coverdale?" exclaimed Zenobia, with a flash of anger in her eyes. "That smile, permit me to say, makes me suspicious of a low tone of feeling and shallow thought. It is my belief--yes, and my prophecy, should I die before it happens--that, when my sex shall achieve its rights, there will be ten eloquent women where there is now one eloquent man. Thus far, no woman in the world has ever once spoken out her whole heart and her whole mind. The mistrust and disapproval of the vast bulk of society throttles us, as with two gigantic hands at our throats! We mumble a few weak words, and leave a thousand better ones unsaid. You let us write a little, it is true, on a limited range of subjects. But the pen is not for woman. Her power is too natural and immediate. It is with the living voice alone that she can compel the world to recognize the light of her intellect and the depth of her heart!" Now,--though I could not well say so to Zenobia,--I had not smiled from any unworthy estimate of woman, or in denial of the claims which she is beginning to put forth. What amused and puzzled me was the fact, that women, however intellectually superior, so seldom disquiet themselves about the rights or wrongs of their sex, unless their own individual affections chance to lie in idleness, or to be ill at ease. They are not natural reformers, but become such by the pressure of exceptional misfortune. I could measure Zenobia's inward trouble by the animosity with which she now took up the general quarrel of woman against man. "I will give you leave, Zenobia," replied I, "to fling your utmost scorn upon me, if you ever hear me utter a sentiment unfavorable to the widest liberty which woman has yet dreamed of. I would give her all she asks, and add a great deal more, which she will not be the party to demand, but which men, if they were generous and wise, would grant of their own free motion. For instance, I should love dearly--for the next thousand years, at least--to have all government devolve into the hands of women. I hate to be ruled by my own sex; it excites my jealousy, and wounds my pride. It is the iron sway of bodily force which abases us, in our compelled submission. But how sweet the free, generous courtesy with which I would kneel before a woman-ruler!" "Yes, if she were young and beautiful," said Zenobia, laughing. "But how if she were sixty, and a fright?" "Ah! it is you that rate womanhood low," said I. "But let me go on. I have never found it possible to suffer a bearded priest so near my heart and conscience as to do me any spiritual good. I blush at the very thought! Oh, in the better order of things, Heaven grant that the ministry of souls may be left in charge of women! The gates of the Blessed City will be thronged with the multitude that enter in, when that day comes! The task belongs to woman. God meant it for her. He has endowed her with the religious sentiment in its utmost depth and purity, refined from that gross, intellectual alloy with which every masculine theologist--save only One, who merely veiled himself in mortal and masculine shape, but was, in truth, divine--has been prone to mingle it. I have always envied the Catholics their faith in that sweet, sacred Virgin Mother, who stands between them and the Deity, intercepting somewhat of his awful splendor, but permitting his love to stream upon the worshipper more intelligibly to human comprehension through the medium of a woman's tenderness. Have I not said enough, Zenobia?" "I cannot think that this is true," observed Priscilla, who had been gazing at me with great, disapproving eyes. "And I am sure I do not wish it to be true!" "Poor child!" exclaimed Zenobia, rather contemptuously. "She is the type of womanhood, such as man has spent centuries in making it. He is never content unless he can degrade himself by stooping towards what he loves. In denying us our rights, he betrays even more blindness to his own interests than profligate disregard of ours!" "Is this true?" asked Priscilla with simplicity, turning to Hollingsworth. "Is it all true, that Mr. Coverdale and Zenobia have been saying?" "No, Priscilla!" answered Hollingsworth with his customary bluntness. "They have neither of them spoken one true word yet." "Do you despise woman?" said Zenobia. "Ah, Hollingsworth, that would be most ungrateful!" "Despise her? No!" cried Hollingsworth, lifting his great shaggy head and shaking it at us, while his eyes glowed almost fiercely. "She is the most admirable handiwork of God, in her true place and character. Her place is at man's side. Her office, that of the sympathizer; the unreserved, unquestioning believer; the recognition, withheld in every other manner, but given, in pity, through woman's heart, lest man should utterly lose faith in himself; the echo of God's own voice, pronouncing, 'It is well done!' All the separate action of woman is, and ever has been, and always shall be, false, foolish, vain, destructive of her own best and holiest qualities, void of every good effect, and productive of intolerable mischiefs! Man is a wretch without woman; but woman is a monster--and, thank Heaven, an almost impossible and hitherto imaginary monster--without man as her acknowledged principal! As true as I had once a mother whom I loved, were there any possible prospect of woman's taking the social stand which some of them,--poor, miserable, abortive creatures, who only dream of such things because they have missed woman's peculiar happiness, or because nature made them really neither man nor woman!--if there were a chance of their attaining the end which these petticoated monstrosities have in view, I would call upon my own sex to use its physical force, that unmistakable evidence of sovereignty, to scourge them back within their proper bounds! But it will not be needful. The heart of time womanhood knows where its own sphere is, and never seeks to stray beyond it!" Never was mortal blessed--if blessing it were--with a glance of such entire acquiescence and unquestioning faith, happy in its completeness, as our little Priscilla unconsciously bestowed on Hollingsworth. She seemed to take the sentiment from his lips into her heart, and brood over it in perfect content. The very woman whom he pictured--the gentle parasite, the soft reflection of a more powerful existence--sat there at his feet. I looked at Zenobia, however, fully expecting her to resent--as I felt, by the indignant ebullition of my own blood, that she ought this outrageous affirmation of what struck me as the intensity of masculine egotism. It centred everything in itself, and deprived woman of her very soul, her inexpressible and unfathomable all, to make it a mere incident in the great sum of man. Hollingsworth had boldly uttered what he, and millions of despots like him, really felt. Without intending it, he had disclosed the wellspring of all these troubled waters. Now, if ever, it surely behooved Zenobia to be the champion of her sex. But, to my surprise, and indignation too, she only looked humbled. Some tears sparkled in her eyes, but they were wholly of grief, not anger. "Well, be it so," was all she said. "I, at least, have deep cause to think you right. Let man be but manly and godlike, and woman is only too ready to become to him what you say!" I smiled--somewhat bitterly, it is true--in contemplation of my own ill-luck. How little did these two women care for me, who had freely conceded all their claims, and a great deal more, out of the fulness of my heart; while Hollingsworth, by some necromancy of his horrible injustice, seemed to have brought them both to his feet! "Women almost invariably behave thus," thought I. "What does the fact mean? Is it their nature? Or is it, at last, the result of ages of compelled degradation? And, in either case, will it be possible ever to redeem them?" An intuition now appeared to possess all the party, that, for this time, at least, there was no more to be said. With one accord, we arose from the ground, and made our way through the tangled undergrowth towards one of those pleasant wood-paths that wound among the overarching trees. Some of the branches hung so low as partly to conceal the figures that went before from those who followed. Priscilla had leaped up more lightly than the rest of us, and ran along in advance, with as much airy activity of spirit as was typified in the motion of a bird, which chanced to be flitting from tree to tree, in the same direction as herself. Never did she seem so happy as that afternoon. She skipt, and could not help it, from very playfulness of heart. Zenobia and Hollingsworth went next, in close contiguity, but not with arm in arm. Now, just when they had passed the impending bough of a birch-tree, I plainly saw Zenobia take the hand of Hollingsworth in both her own, press it to her bosom, and let it fall again! The gesture was sudden, and full of passion; the impulse had evidently taken her by surprise; it expressed all! Had Zenobia knelt before him, or flung herself upon his breast, and gasped out, "I love you, Hollingsworth!" I could not have been more certain of what it meant. They then walked onward, as before. But, methought, as the declining sun threw Zenobia's magnified shadow along the path, I beheld it tremulous; and the delicate stem of the flower which she wore in her hair was likewise responsive to her agitation. Priscilla--through the medium of her eyes, at least could not possibly have been aware of the gesture above described. Yet, at that instant, I saw her droop. The buoyancy, which just before had been so bird-like, was utterly departed; the life seemed to pass out of her, and even the substance of her figure to grow thin and gray. I almost imagined her a shadow, tiding gradually into the dimness of the wood. Her pace became so slow that Hollingsworth and Zenobia passed by, and I, without hastening my footsteps, overtook her. "Come, Priscilla," said I, looking her intently in the face, which was very pale and sorrowful, "we must make haste after our friends. Do you feel suddenly ill? A moment ago, you flitted along so lightly that I was comparing you to a bird. Now, on the contrary, it is as if you had a heavy heart, and a very little strength to bear it with. Pray take my arm!" "No," said Priscilla, "I do not think it would help me. It is my heart, as you say, that makes me heavy; and I know not why. Just now, I felt very happy." No doubt it was a kind of sacrilege in me to attempt to come within her maidenly mystery; but, as she appeared to be tossed aside by her other friends, or carelessly let fall, like a flower which they had done with, I could not resist the impulse to take just one peep beneath her folded petals. "Zenobia and yourself are dear friends of late," I remarked. "At first,--that first evening when you came to us,--she did not receive you quite so warmly as might have been wished." "I remember it," said Priscilla. "No wonder she hesitated to love me, who was then a stranger to her, and a girl of no grace or beauty,--she being herself so beautiful!" "But she loves you now, of course?" suggested I. "And at this very instant you feel her to be your dearest friend?" "Why do you ask me that question?" exclaimed Priscilla, as if frightened at the scrutiny into her feelings which I compelled her to make. "It somehow puts strange thoughts into my mind. But I do love Zenobia dearly! If she only loves me half as well, I shall be happy!" "How is it possible to doubt that, Priscilla?" I rejoined. "But observe how pleasantly and happily Zenobia and Hollingsworth are walking together. I call it a delightful spectacle. It truly rejoices me that Hollingsworth has found so fit and affectionate a friend! So many people in the world mistrust him,--so many disbelieve and ridicule, while hardly any do him justice, or acknowledge him for the wonderful man he is,--that it is really a blessed thing for him to have won the sympathy of such a woman as Zenobia. Any man might be proud of that. Any man, even if he be as great as Hollingsworth, might love so magnificent a woman. How very beautiful Zenobia is! And Hollingsworth knows it, too." There may have been some petty malice in what I said. Generosity is a very fine thing, at a proper time and within due limits. But it is an insufferable bore to see one man engrossing every thought of all the women, and leaving his friend to shiver in outer seclusion, without even the alternative of solacing himself with what the more fortunate individual has rejected. Yes, it was out of a foolish bitterness of heart that I had spoken. "Go on before," said Priscilla abruptly, and with true feminine imperiousness, which heretofore I had never seen her exercise. "It pleases me best to loiter along by myself. I do not walk so fast as you." With her hand she made a little gesture of dismissal. It provoked me; yet, on the whole, was the most bewitching thing that Priscilla had ever done. I obeyed her, and strolled moodily homeward, wondering--as I had wondered a thousand times already--how Hollingsworth meant to dispose of these two hearts, which (plainly to my perception, and, as I could not but now suppose, to his) he had engrossed into his own huge egotism. There was likewise another subject hardly less fruitful of speculation. In what attitude did Zenobia present herself to Hollingsworth? Was it in that of a free woman, with no mortgage on her affections nor claimant to her hand, but fully at liberty to surrender both, in exchange for the heart and hand which she apparently expected to receive? But was it a vision that I had witnessed in the wood? Was Westervelt a goblin? Were those words of passion and agony, which Zenobia had uttered in my hearing, a mere stage declamation? Were they formed of a material lighter than common air? Or, supposing them to bear sterling weight, was it a perilous and dreadful wrong which she was meditating towards herself and Hollingsworth? Arriving nearly at the farmhouse, I looked back over the long slope of pasture land, and beheld them standing together, in the light of sunset, just on the spot where, according to the gossip of the Community, they meant to build their cottage. Priscilla, alone and forgotten, was lingering in the shadow of the wood. XV. A CRISIS Thus the summer was passing away,--a summer of toil, of interest, of something that was not pleasure, but which went deep into my heart, and there became a rich experience. I found myself looking forward to years, if not to a lifetime, to be spent on the same system. The Community were now beginning to form their permanent plans. One of our purposes was to erect a Phalanstery (as I think we called it, after Fourier; but the phraseology of those days is not very fresh in my remembrance), where the great and general family should have its abiding-place. Individual members, too, who made it a point of religion to preserve the sanctity of an exclusive home, were selecting sites for their cottages, by the wood-side, or on the breezy swells, or in the sheltered nook of some little valley, according as their taste might lean towards snugness or the picturesque. Altogether, by projecting our minds outward, we had imparted a show of novelty to existence, and contemplated it as hopefully as if the soil beneath our feet had not been fathom-deep with the dust of deluded generations, on every one of which, as on ourselves, the world had imposed itself as a hitherto unwedded bride. Hollingsworth and myself had often discussed these prospects. It was easy to perceive, however, that he spoke with little or no fervor, but either as questioning the fulfilment of our anticipations, or, at any rate, with a quiet consciousness that it was no personal concern of his. Shortly after the scene at Eliot's pulpit, while he and I were repairing an old stone fence, I amused myself with sallying forward into the future time. "When we come to be old men," I said, "they will call us uncles, or fathers,--Father Hollingsworth and Uncle Coverdale,--and we will look back cheerfully to these early days, and make a romantic story for the young People (and if a little more romantic than truth may warrant, it will be no harm) out of our severe trials and hardships. In a century or two, we shall, every one of us, be mythical personages, or exceedingly picturesque and poetical ones, at all events. They will have a great public hall, in which your portrait, and mine, and twenty other faces that are living now, shall be hung up; and as for me, I will be painted in my shirtsleeves, and with the sleeves rolled up, to show my muscular development. What stories will be rife among them about our mighty strength!" continued I, lifting a big stone and putting it into its place, "though our posterity will really be far stronger than ourselves, after several generations of a simple, natural, and active life. What legends of Zenobia's beauty, and Priscilla's slender and shadowy grace, and those mysterious qualities which make her seem diaphanous with spiritual light! In due course of ages, we must all figure heroically in an epic poem; and we will ourselves--at least, I will--bend unseen over the future poet, and lend him inspiration while he writes it." "You seem," said Hollingsworth, "to be trying how much nonsense you can pour out in a breath." "I wish you would see fit to comprehend," retorted I, "that the profoundest wisdom must be mingled with nine tenths of nonsense, else it is not worth the breath that utters it. But I do long for the cottages to be built, that the creeping plants may begin to run over them, and the moss to gather on the walls, and the trees--which we will set out--to cover them with a breadth of shadow. This spick-and-span novelty does not quite suit my taste. It is time, too, for children to be born among us. The first-born child is still to come. And I shall never feel as if this were a real, practical, as well as poetical system of human life, until somebody has sanctified it by death." "A pretty occasion for martyrdom, truly!" said Hollingsworth. "As good as any other," I replied. "I wonder, Hollingsworth, who, of all these strong men, and fair women and maidens, is doomed the first to die. Would it not be well, even before we have absolute need of it, to fix upon a spot for a cemetery? Let us choose the rudest, roughest, most uncultivable spot, for Death's garden ground; and Death shall teach us to beautify it, grave by grave. By our sweet, calm way of dying, and the airy elegance out of which we will shape our funeral rites, and the cheerful allegories which we will model into tombstones, the final scene shall lose its terrors; so that hereafter it may be happiness to live, and bliss to die. None of us must die young. Yet, should Providence ordain it so, the event shall not be sorrowful, but affect us with a tender, delicious, only half-melancholy, and almost smiling pathos!" "That is to say," muttered Hollingsworth, "you will die like a heathen, as you certainly live like one. But, listen to me, Coverdale. Your fantastic anticipations make me discern all the more forcibly what a wretched, unsubstantial scheme is this, on which we have wasted a precious summer of our lives. Do you seriously imagine that any such realities as you, and many others here, have dreamed of, will ever be brought to pass?" "Certainly I do," said I. "Of course, when the reality comes, it will wear the every-day, commonplace, dusty, and rather homely garb that reality always does put on. But, setting aside the ideal charm, I hold that our highest anticipations have a solid footing on common sense." "You only half believe what you say," rejoined Hollingsworth; "and as for me, I neither have faith in your dream, nor would care the value of this pebble for its realization, were that possible. And what more do you want of it? It has given you a theme for poetry. Let that content you. But now I ask you to be, at last, a man of sobriety and earnestness, and aid me in an enterprise which is worth all our strength, and the strength of a thousand mightier than we." There can be no need of giving in detail the conversation that ensued. It is enough to say that Hollingsworth once more brought forward his rigid and unconquerable idea,--a scheme for the reformation of the wicked by methods moral, intellectual, and industrial, by the sympathy of pure, humble, and yet exalted minds, and by opening to his pupils the possibility of a worthier life than that which had become their fate. It appeared, unless he overestimated his own means, that Hollingsworth held it at his choice (and he did so choose) to obtain possession of the very ground on which we had planted our Community, and which had not yet been made irrevocably ours, by purchase. It was just the foundation that he desired. Our beginnings might readily be adapted to his great end. The arrangements already completed would work quietly into his system. So plausible looked his theory, and, more than that, so practical,--such an air of reasonableness had he, by patient thought, thrown over it,--each segment of it was contrived to dovetail into all the rest with such a complicated applicability, and so ready was he with a response for every objection, that, really, so far as logic and argument went, he had the matter all his own way. "But," said I, "whence can you, having no means of your own, derive the enormous capital which is essential to this experiment? State Street, I imagine, would not draw its purser strings very liberally in aid of such a speculation." "I have the funds--as much, at least, as is needed for a commencement--at command," he answered. "They can be produced within a month, if necessary." My thoughts reverted to Zenobia. It could only be her wealth which Hollingsworth was appropriating so lavishly. And on what conditions was it to be had? Did she fling it into the scheme with the uncalculating generosity that characterizes a woman when it is her impulse to be generous at all? And did she fling herself along with it? But Hollingsworth did not volunteer an explanation. "And have you no regrets," I inquired, "in overthrowing this fair system of our new life, which has been planned so deeply, and is now beginning to flourish so hopefully around us? How beautiful it is, and, so far as we can yet see, how practicable! The ages have waited for us, and here we are, the very first that have essayed to carry on our mortal existence in love and mutual help! Hollingsworth, I would be loath to take the ruin of this enterprise upon my conscience." "Then let it rest wholly upon mine!" he answered, knitting his black brows. "I see through the system. It is full of defects,--irremediable and damning ones!--from first to last, there is nothing else! I grasp it in my hand, and find no substance whatever. There is not human nature in it." "Why are you so secret in your operations?" I asked. "God forbid that I should accuse you of intentional wrong; but the besetting sin of a philanthropist, it appears to me, is apt to be a moral obliquity. His sense of honor ceases to be the sense of other honorable men. At some point of his course--I know not exactly when or where--he is tempted to palter with the right, and can scarcely forbear persuading himself that the importance of his public ends renders it allowable to throw aside his private conscience. Oh, my dear friend, beware this error! If you meditate the overthrow of this establishment, call together our companions, state your design, support it with all your eloquence, but allow them an opportunity of defending themselves." "It does not suit me," said Hollingsworth. "Nor is it my duty to do so." "I think it is," replied I. Hollingsworth frowned; not in passion, but, like fate, inexorably. "I will not argue the point," said he. "What I desire to know of you is,--and you can tell me in one word,--whether I am to look for your cooperation in this great scheme of good? Take it up with me! Be my brother in it! It offers you (what you have told me, over and over again, that you most need) a purpose in life, worthy of the extremest self-devotion,--worthy of martyrdom, should God so order it! In this view, I present it to you. You can greatly benefit mankind. Your peculiar faculties, as I shall direct them, are capable of being so wrought into this enterprise that not one of them need lie idle. Strike hands with me, and from this moment you shall never again feel the languor and vague wretchedness of an indolent or half-occupied man. There may be no more aimless beauty in your life; but, in its stead, there shall be strength, courage, immitigable will,--everything that a manly and generous nature should desire! We shall succeed! We shall have done our best for this miserable world; and happiness (which never comes but incidentally) will come to us unawares." It seemed his intention to say no more. But, after he had quite broken off, his deep eyes filled with tears, and he held out both his hands to me. "Coverdale," he murmured, "there is not the man in this wide world whom I can love as I could you. Do not forsake me!" As I look back upon this scene, through the coldness and dimness of so many years, there is still a sensation as if Hollingsworth had caught hold of my heart, and were pulling it towards him with an almost irresistible force. It is a mystery to me how I withstood it. But, in truth, I saw in his scheme of philanthropy nothing but what was odious. A loathsomeness that was to be forever in my daily work! A great black ugliness of sin, which he proposed to collect out of a thousand human hearts, and that we should spend our lives in an experiment of transmuting it into virtue! Had I but touched his extended hand, Hollingsworth's magnetism would perhaps have penetrated me with his own conception of all these matters. But I stood aloof. I fortified myself with doubts whether his strength of purpose had not been too gigantic for his integrity, impelling him to trample on considerations that should have been paramount to every other. "Is Zenobia to take a part in your enterprise?" I asked. "She is," said Hollingsworth. "She!--the beautiful!--the gorgeous!" I exclaimed. "And how have you prevailed with such a woman to work in this squalid element?" "Through no base methods, as you seem to suspect," he answered; "but by addressing whatever is best and noblest in her." Hollingsworth was looking on the ground. But, as he often did so,--generally, indeed, in his habitual moods of thought,--I could not judge whether it was from any special unwillingness now to meet my eyes. What it was that dictated my next question, I cannot precisely say. Nevertheless, it rose so inevitably into my mouth, and, as it were, asked itself so involuntarily, that there must needs have been an aptness in it. "What is to become of Priscilla?" Hollingsworth looked at me fiercely, and with glowing eyes. He could not have shown any other kind of expression than that, had he meant to strike me with a sword. "Why do you bring in the names of these women?" said he, after a moment of pregnant silence. "What have they to do with the proposal which I make you? I must have your answer! Will you devote yourself, and sacrifice all to this great end, and be my friend of friends forever?" "In Heaven's name, Hollingsworth," cried I, getting angry, and glad to be angry, because so only was it possible to oppose his tremendous concentrativeness and indomitable will, "cannot you conceive that a man may wish well to the world, and struggle for its good, on some other plan than precisely that which you have laid down? And will you cast off a friend for no unworthiness, but merely because he stands upon his right as an individual being, and looks at matters through his own optics, instead of yours?" "Be with me," said Hollingsworth, "or be against me! There is no third choice for you." "Take this, then, as my decision," I answered. "I doubt the wisdom of your scheme. Furthermore, I greatly fear that the methods by which you allow yourself to pursue it are such as cannot stand the scrutiny of an unbiassed conscience." "And you will not join me?" "No!" I never said the word--and certainly can never have it to say hereafter--that cost me a thousandth part so hard an effort as did that one syllable. The heart-pang was not merely figurative, but an absolute torture of the breast. I was gazing steadfastly at Hollingsworth. It seemed to me that it struck him, too, like a bullet. A ghastly paleness--always so terrific on a swarthy face--overspread his features. There was a convulsive movement of his throat, as if he were forcing down some words that struggled and fought for utterance. Whether words of anger, or words of grief, I cannot tell; although many and many a time I have vainly tormented myself with conjecturing which of the two they were. One other appeal to my friendship,--such as once, already, Hollingsworth had made,--taking me in the revulsion that followed a strenuous exercise of opposing will, would completely have subdued me. But he left the matter there. "Well!" said he. And that was all! I should have been thankful for one word more, even had it shot me through the heart, as mine did him. But he did not speak it; and, after a few moments, with one accord, we set to work again, repairing the stone fence. Hollingsworth, I observed, wrought like a Titan; and, for my own part, I lifted stones which at this day--or, in a calmer mood, at that one--I should no more have thought it possible to stir than to carry off the gates of Gaza on my back.

On Sundays those of Blithedale take their rest and do what they wish. Hollingsworth, Priscilla, Zenobia, and Coverdale frequent a place they call Eliot's Pulpit - a rock outcrop with a shallow cave and a tree canopy, with a built-in pulpit that Hollingsworth occasionally discourses from. Since she met with Westervelt, Zenobia's mood varies wildly. One evening at Eliot's Pulpit she lashes out at Coverdale about women. She proclaims that society throttles them and limits them. Coverdale thinks to himself that women might be superior intellectually but don't often rise up because they are not natural reformers. Aloud, he tells her that he would rather be ruled by women than men, because other men excite his jealousy and hurt his pride. Zenobia scoffs that he would not want to be ruled by an unsightly sixty-year old. Coverdale tries to appease her by saying he wishes women were religious leaders. Priscilla says she does not agree with this, and Zenobia cries out that she is the type of woman that man has spent centuries making. Hollingsworth tells Priscilla both are wrong, and Zenobia becomes angry and asks if he despises women. He replies that he does not, but that man "is a wretch without woman; but woman is a monster -and, thank Heaven, an almost impossible hitherto imagined monster -without man, as her acknowledged principal. he adds that the heart of true womanhood knows its place. Coverdale is surprised to see Zenobia humbled and tearful. He also comes to see that these two women are in the palm of Hollingsworth's hand, but care nothing for him. As they leave, Priscilla seems incredibly happy. Zenobia and Hollingsworth walk away, and Coverdale espies her take his hand and press it to her chest in a passion. Even though Priscilla does not see this, her spirits droop, and Coverdale asks if she is okay. He then presses more, asking if she really thinks Zenobia is her friend and saying how interesting it is that the other two found each other. Imperiously, Priscilla orders him away and says she wants to be alone. Coverdale finds this attractive. He wonders how Zenobia presents herself to Hollingsworth -unattached and unfettered

ADAM turned his face towards Broxton and walked with his swiftest stride, looking at his watch with the fear that Mr. Irwine might be gone out--hunting, perhaps. The fear and haste together produced a state of strong excitement before he reached the rectory gate, and outside it he saw the deep marks of a recent hoof on the gravel. But the hoofs were turned towards the gate, not away from it, and though there was a horse against the stable door, it was not Mr. Irwine's: it had evidently had a journey this morning, and must belong to some one who had come on business. Mr. Irwine was at home, then; but Adam could hardly find breath and calmness to tell Carroll that he wanted to speak to the rector. The double suffering of certain and uncertain sorrow had begun to shake the strong man. The butler looked at him wonderingly, as he threw himself on a bench in the passage and stared absently at the clock on the opposite wall. The master had somebody with him, he said, but he heard the study door open--the stranger seemed to be coming out, and as Adam was in a hurry, he would let the master know at once. Adam sat looking at the clock: the minute-hand was hurrying along the last five minutes to ten with a loud, hard, indifferent tick, and Adam watched the movement and listened to the sound as if he had had some reason for doing so. In our times of bitter suffering there are almost always these pauses, when our consciousness is benumbed to everything but some trivial perception or sensation. It is as if semi-idiocy came to give us rest from the memory and the dread which refuse to leave us in our sleep. Carroll, coming back, recalled Adam to the sense of his burden. He was to go into the study immediately. "I can't think what that strange person's come about," the butler added, from mere incontinence of remark, as he preceded Adam to the door, "he's gone i' the dining-room. And master looks unaccountable--as if he was frightened." Adam took no notice of the words: he could not care about other people's business. But when he entered the study and looked in Mr. Irwine's face, he felt in an instant that there was a new expression in it, strangely different from the warm friendliness it had always worn for him before. A letter lay open on the table, and Mr. Irwine's hand was on it, but the changed glance he cast on Adam could not be owing entirely to preoccupation with some disagreeable business, for he was looking eagerly towards the door, as if Adam's entrance were a matter of poignant anxiety to him. "You want to speak to me, Adam," he said, in that low constrainedly quiet tone which a man uses when he is determined to suppress agitation. "Sit down here." He pointed to a chair just opposite to him, at no more than a yard's distance from his own, and Adam sat down with a sense that this cold manner of Mr. Irwine's gave an additional unexpected difficulty to his disclosure. But when Adam had made up his mind to a measure, he was not the man to renounce it for any but imperative reasons. "I come to you, sir," he said, "as the gentleman I look up to most of anybody. I've something very painful to tell you--something as it'll pain you to hear as well as me to tell. But if I speak o' the wrong other people have done, you'll see I didn't speak till I'd good reason." Mr. Irwine nodded slowly, and Adam went on rather tremulously, "You was t' ha' married me and Hetty Sorrel, you know, sir, o' the fifteenth o' this month. I thought she loved me, and I was th' happiest man i' the parish. But a dreadful blow's come upon me." Mr. Irwine started up from his chair, as if involuntarily, but then, determined to control himself, walked to the window and looked out. "She's gone away, sir, and we don't know where. She said she was going to Snowfield o' Friday was a fortnight, and I went last Sunday to fetch her back; but she'd never been there, and she took the coach to Stoniton, and beyond that I can't trace her. But now I'm going a long journey to look for her, and I can't trust t' anybody but you where I'm going." Mr. Irwine came back from the window and sat down. "Have you no idea of the reason why she went away?" he said. "It's plain enough she didn't want to marry me, sir," said Adam. "She didn't like it when it came so near. But that isn't all, I doubt. There's something else I must tell you, sir. There's somebody else concerned besides me." A gleam of something--it was almost like relief or joy--came across the eager anxiety of Mr. Irwine's face at that moment. Adam was looking on the ground, and paused a little: the next words were hard to speak. But when he went on, he lifted up his head and looked straight at Mr. Irwine. He would do the thing he had resolved to do, without flinching. "You know who's the man I've reckoned my greatest friend," he said, "and used to be proud to think as I should pass my life i' working for him, and had felt so ever since we were lads...." Mr. Irwine, as if all self-control had forsaken him, grasped Adam's arm, which lay on the table, and, clutching it tightly like a man in pain, said, with pale lips and a low hurried voice, "No, Adam, no--don't say it, for God's sake!" Adam, surprised at the violence of Mr. Irwine's feeling, repented of the words that had passed his lips and sat in distressed silence. The grasp on his arm gradually relaxed, and Mr. Irwine threw himself back in his chair, saying, "Go on--I must know it." "That man played with Hetty's feelings, and behaved to her as he'd no right to do to a girl in her station o' life--made her presents and used to go and meet her out a-walking. I found it out only two days before he went away--found him a-kissing her as they were parting in the Grove. There'd been nothing said between me and Hetty then, though I'd loved her for a long while, and she knew it. But I reproached him with his wrong actions, and words and blows passed between us; and he said solemnly to me, after that, as it had been all nonsense and no more than a bit o' flirting. But I made him write a letter to tell Hetty he'd meant nothing, for I saw clear enough, sir, by several things as I hadn't understood at the time, as he'd got hold of her heart, and I thought she'd belike go on thinking of him and never come to love another man as wanted to marry her. And I gave her the letter, and she seemed to bear it all after a while better than I'd expected...and she behaved kinder and kinder to me...I daresay she didn't know her own feelings then, poor thing, and they came back upon her when it was too late...I don't want to blame her...I can't think as she meant to deceive me. But I was encouraged to think she loved me, and--you know the rest, sir. But it's on my mind as he's been false to me, and 'ticed her away, and she's gone to him--and I'm going now to see, for I can never go to work again till I know what's become of her." During Adam's narrative, Mr. Irwine had had time to recover his self-mastery in spite of the painful thoughts that crowded upon him. It was a bitter remembrance to him now--that morning when Arthur breakfasted with him and seemed as if he were on the verge of a confession. It was plain enough now what he had wanted to confess. And if their words had taken another turn...if he himself had been less fastidious about intruding on another man's secrets...it was cruel to think how thin a film had shut out rescue from all this guilt and misery. He saw the whole history now by that terrible illumination which the present sheds back upon the past. But every other feeling as it rushed upon his was thrown into abeyance by pity, deep respectful pity, for the man who sat before him--already so bruised, going forth with sad blind resignedness to an unreal sorrow, while a real one was close upon him, too far beyond the range of common trial for him ever to have feared it. His own agitation was quelled by a certain awe that comes over us in the presence of a great anguish, for the anguish he must inflict on Adam was already present to him. Again he put his hand on the arm that lay on the table, but very gently this time, as he said solemnly: "Adam, my dear friend, you have had some hard trials in your life. You can bear sorrow manfully, as well as act manfully. God requires both tasks at our hands. And there is a heavier sorrow coming upon you than any you have yet known. But you are not guilty--you have not the worst of all sorrows. God help him who has!" The two pale faces looked at each other; in Adam's there was trembling suspense, in Mr. Irwine's hesitating, shrinking pity. But he went on. "I have had news of Hetty this morning. She is not gone to him. She is in Stonyshire--at Stoniton." Adam started up from his chair, as if he thought he could have leaped to her that moment. But Mr. Irwine laid hold of his arm again and said, persuasively, "Wait, Adam, wait." So he sat down. "She is in a very unhappy position--one which will make it worse for you to find her, my poor friend, than to have lost her for ever." Adam's lips moved tremulously, but no sound came. They moved again, and he whispered, "Tell me." "She has been arrested...she is in prison." It was as if an insulting blow had brought back the spirit of resistance into Adam. The blood rushed to his face, and he said, loudly and sharply, "For what?" "For a great crime--the murder of her child." "It CAN'T BE!" Adam almost shouted, starting up from his chair and making a stride towards the door; but he turned round again, setting his back against the bookcase, and looking fiercely at Mr. Irwine. "It isn't possible. She never had a child. She can't be guilty. WHO says it?" "God grant she may be innocent, Adam. We can still hope she is." "But who says she is guilty?" said Adam violently. "Tell me everything." "Here is a letter from the magistrate before whom she was taken, and the constable who arrested her is in the dining-room. She will not confess her name or where she comes from; but I fear, I fear, there can be no doubt it is Hetty. The description of her person corresponds, only that she is said to look very pale and ill. She had a small red-leather pocket-book in her pocket with two names written in it--one at the beginning, 'Hetty Sorrel, Hayslope,' and the other near the end, 'Dinah Morris, Snowfield.' She will not say which is her own name--she denies everything, and will answer no questions, and application has been made to me, as a magistrate, that I may take measures for identifying her, for it was thought probable that the name which stands first is her own name." "But what proof have they got against her, if it IS Hetty?" said Adam, still violently, with an effort that seemed to shake his whole frame. "I'll not believe it. It couldn't ha' been, and none of us know it." "Terrible proof that she was under the temptation to commit the crime; but we have room to hope that she did not really commit it. Try and read that letter, Adam." Adam took the letter between his shaking hands and tried to fix his eyes steadily on it. Mr. Irwine meanwhile went out to give some orders. When he came back, Adam's eyes were still on the first page--he couldn't read--he could not put the words together and make out what they meant. He threw it down at last and clenched his fist. "It's HIS doing," he said; "if there's been any crime, it's at his door, not at hers. HE taught her to deceive--HE deceived me first. Let 'em put HIM on his trial--let him stand in court beside her, and I'll tell 'em how he got hold of her heart, and 'ticed her t' evil, and then lied to me. Is HE to go free, while they lay all the punishment on her...so weak and young?" The image called up by these last words gave a new direction to poor Adam's maddened feelings. He was silent, looking at the corner of the room as if he saw something there. Then he burst out again, in a tone of appealing anguish, "I can't bear it...O God, it's too hard to lay upon me--it's too hard to think she's wicked." Mr. Irwine had sat down again in silence. He was too wise to utter soothing words at present, and indeed, the sight of Adam before him, with that look of sudden age which sometimes comes over a young face in moments of terrible emotion--the hard bloodless look of the skin, the deep lines about the quivering mouth, the furrows in the brow--the sight of this strong firm man shattered by the invisible stroke of sorrow, moved him so deeply that speech was not easy. Adam stood motionless, with his eyes vacantly fixed in this way for a minute or two; in that short space he was living through all his love again. "She can't ha' done it," he said, still without moving his eyes, as if he were only talking to himself: "it was fear made her hide it...I forgive her for deceiving me...I forgive thee, Hetty...thee wast deceived too...it's gone hard wi' thee, my poor Hetty...but they'll never make me believe it." He was silent again for a few moments, and then he said, with fierce abruptness, "I'll go to him--I'll bring him back--I'll make him go and look at her in her misery--he shall look at her till he can't forget it--it shall follow him night and day--as long as he lives it shall follow him--he shan't escape wi' lies this time--I'll fetch him, I'll drag him myself." In the act of going towards the door, Adam paused automatically and looked about for his hat, quite unconscious where he was or who was present with him. Mr. Irwine had followed him, and now took him by the arm, saying, in a quiet but decided tone, "No, Adam, no; I'm sure you will wish to stay and see what good can be done for her, instead of going on a useless errand of vengeance. The punishment will surely fall without your aid. Besides, he is no longer in Ireland. He must be on his way home--or would be, long before you arrived, for his grandfather, I know, wrote for him to come at least ten days ago. I want you now to go with me to Stoniton. I have ordered a horse for you to ride with us, as soon as you can compose yourself." While Mr. Irwine was speaking, Adam recovered his consciousness of the actual scene. He rubbed his hair off his forehead and listened. "Remember," Mr. Irwine went on, "there are others to think of, and act for, besides yourself, Adam: there are Hetty's friends, the good Poysers, on whom this stroke will fall more heavily than I can bear to think. I expect it from your strength of mind, Adam--from your sense of duty to God and man--that you will try to act as long as action can be of any use." In reality, Mr. Irwine proposed this journey to Stoniton for Adam's own sake. Movement, with some object before him, was the best means of counteracting the violence of suffering in these first hours. "You will go with me to Stoniton, Adam?" he said again, after a moment's pause. "We have to see if it is really Hetty who is there, you know." "Yes, sir," said Adam, "I'll do what you think right. But the folks at th' Hall Farm?" "I wish them not to know till I return to tell them myself. I shall have ascertained things then which I am uncertain about now, and I shall return as soon as possible. Come now, the horses are ready."

The Tidings When Arthur arrives at the parsonage, he is kept waiting as Mr. Irwine talks to a strange man . When Adam is admitted, he tells Mr. Irwine that he has come to him for help because he looks up to him the most and must tell him some painful news. Mr. Irwine is looking at Adam strangely and has his hand on a letter. Adam tells him Hetty has run away and that he is going to look for her. Mr. Irwine asks if Adam knows why she ran away. Adam says there is someone else involved. Mr. Irwine looks relieved. Adam then tells him the other person is Arthur, and Mr. Irwine is shocked and full of grief as Adam tells about the secret meetings and how he made Arthur write the letter to Hetty. Mr. Irwine then tells Adam to prepare himself for a heavy blow. He can at least thank God he is not the guilty one. He shows Adam the letter from a magistrate in Stoniton with news of Hetty. She has been arrested for killing her baby. Adam is stricken, saying Hetty never had a child. The letter mentions that she denies having a baby, but there is evidence. Mr. Irwine says they can only hope she didn't do it. The trial is coming soon. Adam says he forgives Hetty, but he will bring Arthur back to see Hetty's misery; it is all his fault. Arthur, however, is on his way home already because his grandfather has sent for him. Mr. Irwine switches Adam's attention to Hetty and advises him to go to Stoniton with him to identify Hetty. He tells Adam there are others to think of in this crisis.

|MARILLA laid her knitting on her lap and leaned back in her chair. Her eyes were tired, and she thought vaguely that she must see about having her glasses changed the next time she went to town, for her eyes had grown tired very often of late. It was nearly dark, for the full November twilight had fallen around Green Gables, and the only light in the kitchen came from the dancing red flames in the stove. Anne was curled up Turk-fashion on the hearthrug, gazing into that joyous glow where the sunshine of a hundred summers was being distilled from the maple cordwood. She had been reading, but her book had slipped to the floor, and now she was dreaming, with a smile on her parted lips. Glittering castles in Spain were shaping themselves out of the mists and rainbows of her lively fancy; adventures wonderful and enthralling were happening to her in cloudland--adventures that always turned out triumphantly and never involved her in scrapes like those of actual life. Marilla looked at her with a tenderness that would never have been suffered to reveal itself in any clearer light than that soft mingling of fireshine and shadow. The lesson of a love that should display itself easily in spoken word and open look was one Marilla could never learn. But she had learned to love this slim, gray-eyed girl with an affection all the deeper and stronger from its very undemonstrativeness. Her love made her afraid of being unduly indulgent, indeed. She had an uneasy feeling that it was rather sinful to set one's heart so intensely on any human creature as she had set hers on Anne, and perhaps she performed a sort of unconscious penance for this by being stricter and more critical than if the girl had been less dear to her. Certainly Anne herself had no idea how Marilla loved her. She sometimes thought wistfully that Marilla was very hard to please and distinctly lacking in sympathy and understanding. But she always checked the thought reproachfully, remembering what she owed to Marilla. "Anne," said Marilla abruptly, "Miss Stacy was here this afternoon when you were out with Diana." Anne came back from her other world with a start and a sigh. "Was she? Oh, I'm so sorry I wasn't in. Why didn't you call me, Marilla? Diana and I were only over in the Haunted Wood. It's lovely in the woods now. All the little wood things--the ferns and the satin leaves and the crackerberries--have gone to sleep, just as if somebody had tucked them away until spring under a blanket of leaves. I think it was a little gray fairy with a rainbow scarf that came tiptoeing along the last moonlight night and did it. Diana wouldn't say much about that, though. Diana has never forgotten the scolding her mother gave her about imagining ghosts into the Haunted Wood. It had a very bad effect on Diana's imagination. It blighted it. Mrs. Lynde says Myrtle Bell is a blighted being. I asked Ruby Gillis why Myrtle was blighted, and Ruby said she guessed it was because her young man had gone back on her. Ruby Gillis thinks of nothing but young men, and the older she gets the worse she is. Young men are all very well in their place, but it doesn't do to drag them into everything, does it? Diana and I are thinking seriously of promising each other that we will never marry but be nice old maids and live together forever. Diana hasn't quite made up her mind though, because she thinks perhaps it would be nobler to marry some wild, dashing, wicked young man and reform him. Diana and I talk a great deal about serious subjects now, you know. We feel that we are so much older than we used to be that it isn't becoming to talk of childish matters. It's such a solemn thing to be almost fourteen, Marilla. Miss Stacy took all us girls who are in our teens down to the brook last Wednesday, and talked to us about it. She said we couldn't be too careful what habits we formed and what ideals we acquired in our teens, because by the time we were twenty our characters would be developed and the foundation laid for our whole future life. And she said if the foundation was shaky we could never build anything really worth while on it. Diana and I talked the matter over coming home from school. We felt extremely solemn, Marilla. And we decided that we would try to be very careful indeed and form respectable habits and learn all we could and be as sensible as possible, so that by the time we were twenty our characters would be properly developed. It's perfectly appalling to think of being twenty, Marilla. It sounds so fearfully old and grown up. But why was Miss Stacy here this afternoon?" "That is what I want to tell you, Anne, if you'll ever give me a chance to get a word in edgewise. She was talking about you." "About me?" Anne looked rather scared. Then she flushed and exclaimed: "Oh, I know what she was saying. I meant to tell you, Marilla, honestly I did, but I forgot. Miss Stacy caught me reading Ben Hur in school yesterday afternoon when I should have been studying my Canadian history. Jane Andrews lent it to me. I was reading it at dinner hour, and I had just got to the chariot race when school went in. I was simply wild to know how it turned out--although I felt sure Ben Hur must win, because it wouldn't be poetical justice if he didn't--so I spread the history open on my desk lid and then tucked Ben Hur between the desk and my knee. I just looked as if I were studying Canadian history, you know, while all the while I was reveling in Ben Hur. I was so interested in it that I never noticed Miss Stacy coming down the aisle until all at once I just looked up and there she was looking down at me, so reproachful-like. I can't tell you how ashamed I felt, Marilla, especially when I heard Josie Pye giggling. Miss Stacy took Ben Hur away, but she never said a word then. She kept me in at recess and talked to me. She said I had done very wrong in two respects. First, I was wasting the time I ought to have put on my studies; and secondly, I was deceiving my teacher in trying to make it appear I was reading a history when it was a storybook instead. I had never realized until that moment, Marilla, that what I was doing was deceitful. I was shocked. I cried bitterly, and asked Miss Stacy to forgive me and I'd never do such a thing again; and I offered to do penance by never so much as looking at Ben Hur for a whole week, not even to see how the chariot race turned out. But Miss Stacy said she wouldn't require that, and she forgave me freely. So I think it wasn't very kind of her to come up here to you about it after all." "Miss Stacy never mentioned such a thing to me, Anne, and its only your guilty conscience that's the matter with you. You have no business to be taking storybooks to school. You read too many novels anyhow. When I was a girl I wasn't so much as allowed to look at a novel." "Oh, how can you call Ben Hur a novel when it's really such a religious book?" protested Anne. "Of course it's a little too exciting to be proper reading for Sunday, and I only read it on weekdays. And I never read _any_ book now unless either Miss Stacy or Mrs. Allan thinks it is a proper book for a girl thirteen and three-quarters to read. Miss Stacy made me promise that. She found me reading a book one day called, The Lurid Mystery of the Haunted Hall. It was one Ruby Gillis had lent me, and, oh, Marilla, it was so fascinating and creepy. It just curdled the blood in my veins. But Miss Stacy said it was a very silly, unwholesome book, and she asked me not to read any more of it or any like it. I didn't mind promising not to read any more like it, but it was _agonizing_ to give back that book without knowing how it turned out. But my love for Miss Stacy stood the test and I did. It's really wonderful, Marilla, what you can do when you're truly anxious to please a certain person." "Well, I guess I'll light the lamp and get to work," said Marilla. "I see plainly that you don't want to hear what Miss Stacy had to say. You're more interested in the sound of your own tongue than in anything else." "Oh, indeed, Marilla, I do want to hear it," cried Anne contritely. "I won't say another word--not one. I know I talk too much, but I am really trying to overcome it, and although I say far too much, yet if you only knew how many things I want to say and don't, you'd give me some credit for it. Please tell me, Marilla." "Well, Miss Stacy wants to organize a class among her advanced students who mean to study for the entrance examination into Queen's. She intends to give them extra lessons for an hour after school. And she came to ask Matthew and me if we would like to have you join it. What do you think about it yourself, Anne? Would you like to go to Queen's and pass for a teacher?" "Oh, Marilla!" Anne straightened to her knees and clasped her hands. "It's been the dream of my life--that is, for the last six months, ever since Ruby and Jane began to talk of studying for the Entrance. But I didn't say anything about it, because I supposed it would be perfectly useless. I'd love to be a teacher. But won't it be dreadfully expensive? Mr. Andrews says it cost him one hundred and fifty dollars to put Prissy through, and Prissy wasn't a dunce in geometry." "I guess you needn't worry about that part of it. When Matthew and I took you to bring up we resolved we would do the best we could for you and give you a good education. I believe in a girl being fitted to earn her own living whether she ever has to or not. You'll always have a home at Green Gables as long as Matthew and I are here, but nobody knows what is going to happen in this uncertain world, and it's just as well to be prepared. So you can join the Queen's class if you like, Anne." "Oh, Marilla, thank you." Anne flung her arms about Marilla's waist and looked up earnestly into her face. "I'm extremely grateful to you and Matthew. And I'll study as hard as I can and do my very best to be a credit to you. I warn you not to expect much in geometry, but I think I can hold my own in anything else if I work hard." "I dare say you'll get along well enough. Miss Stacy says you are bright and diligent." Not for worlds would Marilla have told Anne just what Miss Stacy had said about her; that would have been to pamper vanity. "You needn't rush to any extreme of killing yourself over your books. There is no hurry. You won't be ready to try the Entrance for a year and a half yet. But it's well to begin in time and be thoroughly grounded, Miss Stacy says." "I shall take more interest than ever in my studies now," said Anne blissfully, "because I have a purpose in life. Mr. Allan says everybody should have a purpose in life and pursue it faithfully. Only he says we must first make sure that it is a worthy purpose. I would call it a worthy purpose to want to be a teacher like Miss Stacy, wouldn't you, Marilla? I think it's a very noble profession." The Queen's class was organized in due time. Gilbert Blythe, Anne Shirley, Ruby Gillis, Jane Andrews, Josie Pye, Charlie Sloane, and Moody Spurgeon MacPherson joined it. Diana Barry did not, as her parents did not intend to send her to Queen's. This seemed nothing short of a calamity to Anne. Never, since the night on which Minnie May had had the croup, had she and Diana been separated in anything. On the evening when the Queen's class first remained in school for the extra lessons and Anne saw Diana go slowly out with the others, to walk home alone through the Birch Path and Violet Vale, it was all the former could do to keep her seat and refrain from rushing impulsively after her chum. A lump came into her throat, and she hastily retired behind the pages of her uplifted Latin grammar to hide the tears in her eyes. Not for worlds would Anne have had Gilbert Blythe or Josie Pye see those tears. "But, oh, Marilla, I really felt that I had tasted the bitterness of death, as Mr. Allan said in his sermon last Sunday, when I saw Diana go out alone," she said mournfully that night. "I thought how splendid it would have been if Diana had only been going to study for the Entrance, too. But we can't have things perfect in this imperfect world, as Mrs. Lynde says. Mrs. Lynde isn't exactly a comforting person sometimes, but there's no doubt she says a great many very true things. And I think the Queen's class is going to be extremely interesting. Jane and Ruby are just going to study to be teachers. That is the height of their ambition. Ruby says she will only teach for two years after she gets through, and then she intends to be married. Jane says she will devote her whole life to teaching, and never, never marry, because you are paid a salary for teaching, but a husband won't pay you anything, and growls if you ask for a share in the egg and butter money. I expect Jane speaks from mournful experience, for Mrs. Lynde says that her father is a perfect old crank, and meaner than second skimmings. Josie Pye says she is just going to college for education's sake, because she won't have to earn her own living; she says of course it is different with orphans who are living on charity--_they_ have to hustle. Moody Spurgeon is going to be a minister. Mrs. Lynde says he couldn't be anything else with a name like that to live up to. I hope it isn't wicked of me, Marilla, but really the thought of Moody Spurgeon being a minister makes me laugh. He's such a funny-looking boy with that big fat face, and his little blue eyes, and his ears sticking out like flaps. But perhaps he will be more intellectual looking when he grows up. Charlie Sloane says he's going to go into politics and be a member of Parliament, but Mrs. Lynde says he'll never succeed at that, because the Sloanes are all honest people, and it's only rascals that get on in politics nowadays." "What is Gilbert Blythe going to be?" queried Marilla, seeing that Anne was opening her Caesar. "I don't happen to know what Gilbert Blythe's ambition in life is--if he has any," said Anne scornfully. There was open rivalry between Gilbert and Anne now. Previously the rivalry had been rather one-sided, but there was no longer any doubt that Gilbert was as determined to be first in class as Anne was. He was a foeman worthy of her steel. The other members of the class tacitly acknowledged their superiority, and never dreamed of trying to compete with them. Since the day by the pond when she had refused to listen to his plea for forgiveness, Gilbert, save for the aforesaid determined rivalry, had evinced no recognition whatever of the existence of Anne Shirley. He talked and jested with the other girls, exchanged books and puzzles with them, discussed lessons and plans, sometimes walked home with one or the other of them from prayer meeting or Debating Club. But Anne Shirley he simply ignored, and Anne found out that it is not pleasant to be ignored. It was in vain that she told herself with a toss of her head that she did not care. Deep down in her wayward, feminine little heart she knew that she did care, and that if she had that chance of the Lake of Shining Waters again she would answer very differently. All at once, as it seemed, and to her secret dismay, she found that the old resentment she had cherished against him was gone--gone just when she most needed its sustaining power. It was in vain that she recalled every incident and emotion of that memorable occasion and tried to feel the old satisfying anger. That day by the pond had witnessed its last spasmodic flicker. Anne realized that she had forgiven and forgotten without knowing it. But it was too late. And at least neither Gilbert nor anybody else, not even Diana, should ever suspect how sorry she was and how much she wished she hadn't been so proud and horrid! She determined to "shroud her feelings in deepest oblivion," and it may be stated here and now that she did it, so successfully that Gilbert, who possibly was not quite so indifferent as he seemed, could not console himself with any belief that Anne felt his retaliatory scorn. The only poor comfort he had was that she snubbed Charlie Sloane, unmercifully, continually, and undeservedly. Otherwise the winter passed away in a round of pleasant duties and studies. For Anne the days slipped by like golden beads on the necklace of the year. She was happy, eager, interested; there were lessons to be learned and honor to be won; delightful books to read; new pieces to be practiced for the Sunday-school choir; pleasant Saturday afternoons at the manse with Mrs. Allan; and then, almost before Anne realized it, spring had come again to Green Gables and all the world was abloom once more. Studies palled just a wee bit then; the Queen's class, left behind in school while the others scattered to green lanes and leafy wood cuts and meadow byways, looked wistfully out of the windows and discovered that Latin verbs and French exercises had somehow lost the tang and zest they had possessed in the crisp winter months. Even Anne and Gilbert lagged and grew indifferent. Teacher and taught were alike glad when the term was ended and the glad vacation days stretched rosily before them. "But you've done good work this past year," Miss Stacy told them on the last evening, "and you deserve a good, jolly vacation. Have the best time you can in the out-of-door world and lay in a good stock of health and vitality and ambition to carry you through next year. It will be the tug of war, you know--the last year before the Entrance." "Are you going to be back next year, Miss Stacy?" asked Josie Pye. Josie Pye never scrupled to ask questions; in this instance the rest of the class felt grateful to her; none of them would have dared to ask it of Miss Stacy, but all wanted to, for there had been alarming rumors running at large through the school for some time that Miss Stacy was not coming back the next year--that she had been offered a position in the grade school of her own home district and meant to accept. The Queen's class listened in breathless suspense for her answer. "Yes, I think I will," said Miss Stacy. "I thought of taking another school, but I have decided to come back to Avonlea. To tell the truth, I've grown so interested in my pupils here that I found I couldn't leave them. So I'll stay and see you through." "Hurrah!" said Moody Spurgeon. Moody Spurgeon had never been so carried away by his feelings before, and he blushed uncomfortably every time he thought about it for a week. "Oh, I'm so glad," said Anne, with shining eyes. "Dear Stacy, it would be perfectly dreadful if you didn't come back. I don't believe I could have the heart to go on with my studies at all if another teacher came here." When Anne got home that night she stacked all her textbooks away in an old trunk in the attic, locked it, and threw the key into the blanket box. "I'm not even going to look at a schoolbook in vacation," she told Marilla. "I've studied as hard all the term as I possibly could and I've pored over that geometry until I know every proposition in the first book off by heart, even when the letters _are_ changed. I just feel tired of everything sensible and I'm going to let my imagination run riot for the summer. Oh, you needn't be alarmed, Marilla. I'll only let it run riot within reasonable limits. But I want to have a real good jolly time this summer, for maybe it's the last summer I'll be a little girl. Mrs. Lynde says that if I keep stretching out next year as I've done this I'll have to put on longer skirts. She says I'm all running to legs and eyes. And when I put on longer skirts I shall feel that I have to live up to them and be very dignified. It won't even do to believe in fairies then, I'm afraid; so I'm going to believe in them with all my whole heart this summer. I think we're going to have a very gay vacation. Ruby Gillis is going to have a birthday party soon and there's the Sunday school picnic and the missionary concert next month. And Mr. Barry says that some evening he'll take Diana and me over to the White Sands Hotel and have dinner there. They have dinner there in the evening, you know. Jane Andrews was over once last summer and she says it was a dazzling sight to see the electric lights and the flowers and all the lady guests in such beautiful dresses. Jane says it was her first glimpse into high life and she'll never forget it to her dying day." Mrs. Lynde came up the next afternoon to find out why Marilla had not been at the Aid meeting on Thursday. When Marilla was not at Aid meeting people knew there was something wrong at Green Gables. "Matthew had a bad spell with his heart Thursday," Marilla explained, "and I didn't feel like leaving him. Oh, yes, he's all right again now, but he takes them spells oftener than he used to and I'm anxious about him. The doctor says he must be careful to avoid excitement. That's easy enough, for Matthew doesn't go about looking for excitement by any means and never did, but he's not to do any very heavy work either and you might as well tell Matthew not to breathe as not to work. Come and lay off your things, Rachel. You'll stay to tea?" "Well, seeing you're so pressing, perhaps I might as well, stay" said Mrs. Rachel, who had not the slightest intention of doing anything else. Mrs. Rachel and Marilla sat comfortably in the parlor while Anne got the tea and made hot biscuits that were light and white enough to defy even Mrs. Rachel's criticism. "I must say Anne has turned out a real smart girl," admitted Mrs. Rachel, as Marilla accompanied her to the end of the lane at sunset. "She must be a great help to you." "She is," said Marilla, "and she's real steady and reliable now. I used to be afraid she'd never get over her featherbrained ways, but she has and I wouldn't be afraid to trust her in anything now." "I never would have thought she'd have turned out so well that first day I was here three years ago," said Mrs. Rachel. "Lawful heart, shall I ever forget that tantrum of hers! When I went home that night I says to Thomas, says I, 'Mark my words, Thomas, Marilla Cuthbert 'll live to rue the step she's took.' But I was mistaken and I'm real glad of it. I ain't one of those kind of people, Marilla, as can never be brought to own up that they've made a mistake. No, that never was my way, thank goodness. I did make a mistake in judging Anne, but it weren't no wonder, for an odder, unexpecteder witch of a child there never was in this world, that's what. There was no ciphering her out by the rules that worked with other children. It's nothing short of wonderful how she's improved these three years, but especially in looks. She's a real pretty girl got to be, though I can't say I'm overly partial to that pale, big-eyed style myself. I like more snap and color, like Diana Barry has or Ruby Gillis. Ruby Gillis's looks are real showy. But somehow--I don't know how it is but when Anne and them are together, though she ain't half as handsome, she makes them look kind of common and overdone--something like them white June lilies she calls narcissus alongside of the big, red peonies, that's what."

The Queen's Class Is Organized One night Marilla rests after another one of her eye aches, which occur with increasing frequency and severity. She looks at Anne with an expression of fondness that she would never permit herself to show in the daylight when she could be seen. Because of Marilla's tendency to veil her affection, Anne does not know, we are told, that Marilla loves her so much. Marilla tells Anne that Miss Stacy visited that afternoon, and Anne, assuming Miss Stacy told Marilla about her recent misbehavior, quickly admits to sneaking a novel into class when she should have been studying. Anne also tells Marilla that she and Diana have been talking about serious subjects like the future and that they are thinking of becoming old maids and living together. Anne explains that Miss Stacy told the girls they must cultivate sound characters now, because once they reach their twenties the foundations of their characters will be set for life. Marilla tells Anne that Miss Stacy has invited Anne to join a group of advanced scholars who will study every day after school to prepare for the entrance exam to Queen's Academy in a year and a half. Marilla says that every woman should be able to support herself and that teaching is a good profession for a woman. Anne hesitates to accept the offer to attend college because she worries that the cost of college will be too high for the Cuthberts. However, after Marilla says that Anne's education is worth the cost, Anne expresses excitement. The other students in the advanced class are Gilbert Blythe, Ruby Gillis, Jane Andrews, Josie Pye, Charlie Sloane, and Moody Spurgeon MacPherson. They study for an hour every day, but begin to lose their drive when spring comes and the other students leave school early every day. For the first time since Minnie May was sick, Anne and Diana are separated, since the Barrys do not intend to send Diana to college. The rivalry between Gilbert and Anne rekindles. Gilbert decides to treat Anne just as coldly as she treats him. This icy treatment distresses Anne, but she acts unconcerned. She realizes that she no longer feels angry with Gilbert, and she regrets causing tension. The school year ends and Anne locks her books away, declaring that she wants to make the most of her last summer as a child. The next day Mrs. Rachel drops by Green Gables, and Marilla tells her that Matthew has had another bad spell with his heart, which is the first we hear of his condition. Marilla expresses her happiness that Anne is growing into a trustworthy person. Mrs. Rachel agrees that she was mistaken to doubt Anne when she arrived three years ago. She comments that Anne has improved in everything, especially in her looks. Though Anne lacks Diana's coloring and Ruby's flashy looks, there is something special and arresting in her "pale, big-eyed style