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I got hold of Mrs. Grose as soon after this as I could; and I can give no intelligible account of how I fought out the interval. Yet I still hear myself cry as I fairly threw myself into her arms: "They KNOW--it's too monstrous: they know, they know!" "And what on earth--?" I felt her incredulity as she held me. "Why, all that WE know--and heaven knows what else besides!" Then, as she released me, I made it out to her, made it out perhaps only now with full coherency even to myself. "Two hours ago, in the garden"--I could scarce articulate--"Flora SAW!" Mrs. Grose took it as she might have taken a blow in the stomach. "She has told you?" she panted. "Not a word--that's the horror. She kept it to herself! The child of eight, THAT child!" Unutterable still, for me, was the stupefaction of it. Mrs. Grose, of course, could only gape the wider. "Then how do you know?" "I was there--I saw with my eyes: saw that she was perfectly aware." "Do you mean aware of HIM?" "No--of HER." I was conscious as I spoke that I looked prodigious things, for I got the slow reflection of them in my companion's face. "Another person--this time; but a figure of quite as unmistakable horror and evil: a woman in black, pale and dreadful--with such an air also, and such a face!--on the other side of the lake. I was there with the child--quiet for the hour; and in the midst of it she came." "Came how--from where?" "From where they come from! She just appeared and stood there--but not so near." "And without coming nearer?" "Oh, for the effect and the feeling, she might have been as close as you!" My friend, with an odd impulse, fell back a step. "Was she someone you've never seen?" "Yes. But someone the child has. Someone YOU have." Then, to show how I had thought it all out: "My predecessor--the one who died." "Miss Jessel?" "Miss Jessel. You don't believe me?" I pressed. She turned right and left in her distress. "How can you be sure?" This drew from me, in the state of my nerves, a flash of impatience. "Then ask Flora--SHE'S sure!" But I had no sooner spoken than I caught myself up. "No, for God's sake, DON'T! She'll say she isn't--she'll lie!" Mrs. Grose was not too bewildered instinctively to protest. "Ah, how CAN you?" "Because I'm clear. Flora doesn't want me to know." "It's only then to spare you." "No, no--there are depths, depths! The more I go over it, the more I see in it, and the more I see in it, the more I fear. I don't know what I DON'T see--what I DON'T fear!" Mrs. Grose tried to keep up with me. "You mean you're afraid of seeing her again?" "Oh, no; that's nothing--now!" Then I explained. "It's of NOT seeing her." But my companion only looked wan. "I don't understand you." "Why, it's that the child may keep it up--and that the child assuredly WILL--without my knowing it." At the image of this possibility Mrs. Grose for a moment collapsed, yet presently to pull herself together again, as if from the positive force of the sense of what, should we yield an inch, there would really be to give way to. "Dear, dear--we must keep our heads! And after all, if she doesn't mind it--!" She even tried a grim joke. "Perhaps she likes it!" "Likes SUCH things--a scrap of an infant!" "Isn't it just a proof of her blessed innocence?" my friend bravely inquired. She brought me, for the instant, almost round. "Oh, we must clutch at THAT--we must cling to it! If it isn't a proof of what you say, it's a proof of--God knows what! For the woman's a horror of horrors." Mrs. Grose, at this, fixed her eyes a minute on the ground; then at last raising them, "Tell me how you know," she said. "Then you admit it's what she was?" I cried. "Tell me how you know," my friend simply repeated. "Know? By seeing her! By the way she looked." "At you, do you mean--so wickedly?" "Dear me, no--I could have borne that. She gave me never a glance. She only fixed the child." Mrs. Grose tried to see it. "Fixed her?" "Ah, with such awful eyes!" She stared at mine as if they might really have resembled them. "Do you mean of dislike?" "God help us, no. Of something much worse." "Worse than dislike?--this left her indeed at a loss. "With a determination--indescribable. With a kind of fury of intention." I made her turn pale. "Intention?" "To get hold of her." Mrs. Grose--her eyes just lingering on mine--gave a shudder and walked to the window; and while she stood there looking out I completed my statement. "THAT'S what Flora knows." After a little she turned round. "The person was in black, you say?" "In mourning--rather poor, almost shabby. But--yes--with extraordinary beauty." I now recognized to what I had at last, stroke by stroke, brought the victim of my confidence, for she quite visibly weighed this. "Oh, handsome--very, very," I insisted; "wonderfully handsome. But infamous." She slowly came back to me. "Miss Jessel--WAS infamous." She once more took my hand in both her own, holding it as tight as if to fortify me against the increase of alarm I might draw from this disclosure. "They were both infamous," she finally said. So, for a little, we faced it once more together; and I found absolutely a degree of help in seeing it now so straight. "I appreciate," I said, "the great decency of your not having hitherto spoken; but the time has certainly come to give me the whole thing." She appeared to assent to this, but still only in silence; seeing which I went on: "I must have it now. Of what did she die? Come, there was something between them." "There was everything." "In spite of the difference--?" "Oh, of their rank, their condition"--she brought it woefully out. "SHE was a lady." I turned it over; I again saw. "Yes--she was a lady." "And he so dreadfully below," said Mrs. Grose. I felt that I doubtless needn't press too hard, in such company, on the place of a servant in the scale; but there was nothing to prevent an acceptance of my companion's own measure of my predecessor's abasement. There was a way to deal with that, and I dealt; the more readily for my full vision--on the evidence--of our employer's late clever, good-looking "own" man; impudent, assured, spoiled, depraved. "The fellow was a hound." Mrs. Grose considered as if it were perhaps a little a case for a sense of shades. "I've never seen one like him. He did what he wished." "With HER?" "With them all." It was as if now in my friend's own eyes Miss Jessel had again appeared. I seemed at any rate, for an instant, to see their evocation of her as distinctly as I had seen her by the pond; and I brought out with decision: "It must have been also what SHE wished!" Mrs. Grose's face signified that it had been indeed, but she said at the same time: "Poor woman--she paid for it!" "Then you do know what she died of?" I asked. "No--I know nothing. I wanted not to know; I was glad enough I didn't; and I thanked heaven she was well out of this!" "Yet you had, then, your idea--" "Of her real reason for leaving? Oh, yes--as to that. She couldn't have stayed. Fancy it here--for a governess! And afterward I imagined--and I still imagine. And what I imagine is dreadful." "Not so dreadful as what _I_ do," I replied; on which I must have shown her--as I was indeed but too conscious--a front of miserable defeat. It brought out again all her compassion for me, and at the renewed touch of her kindness my power to resist broke down. I burst, as I had, the other time, made her burst, into tears; she took me to her motherly breast, and my lamentation overflowed. "I don't do it!" I sobbed in despair; "I don't save or shield them! It's far worse than I dreamed--they're lost!"

The narrative moves forward to later that afternoon, when the governess informs Mrs. Grose of the encounter. She claims that the children "know" and are keeping things to themselves, explaining that Flora saw a woman at the lake but said nothing. The governess describes the vision as dressed in black, with a dreadful face, and says the woman appeared out of nowhere. Responding to Mrs. Grose's questions, the governess claims the woman is Miss Jessel, her predecessor, and that she is certain Flora will lie about it. Mrs. Grose defends Flora as innocent, then inquires further. The governess says Miss Jessel "fixed" Flora with determined eyes and remarks on Miss Jessel's beauty. At this, Mrs. Grose speaks of Miss Jessel as "infamous" and reveals that Miss Jessel had an inappropriate relationship with Quint. Clinging to Mrs. Grose in distress, the governess laments that the children are lost beyond her control

Enlightened When Mr. Woodcourt arrived in London, he went, that very same day, to Mr. Vholes's in Symond's Inn. For he never once, from the moment when I entreated him to be a friend to Richard, neglected or forgot his promise. He had told me that he accepted the charge as a sacred trust, and he was ever true to it in that spirit. He found Mr. Vholes in his office and informed Mr. Vholes of his agreement with Richard that he should call there to learn his address. "Just so, sir," said Mr. Vholes. "Mr. C.'s address is not a hundred miles from here, sir, Mr. C.'s address is not a hundred miles from here. Would you take a seat, sir?" Mr. Woodcourt thanked Mr. Vholes, but he had no business with him beyond what he had mentioned. "Just so, sir. I believe, sir," said Mr. Vholes, still quietly insisting on the seat by not giving the address, "that you have influence with Mr. C. Indeed I am aware that you have." "I was not aware of it myself," returned Mr. Woodcourt; "but I suppose you know best." "Sir," rejoined Mr. Vholes, self-contained as usual, voice and all, "it is a part of my professional duty to know best. It is a part of my professional duty to study and to understand a gentleman who confides his interests to me. In my professional duty I shall not be wanting, sir, if I know it. I may, with the best intentions, be wanting in it without knowing it; but not if I know it, sir." Mr. Woodcourt again mentioned the address. "Give me leave, sir," said Mr. Vholes. "Bear with me for a moment. Sir, Mr. C. is playing for a considerable stake, and cannot play without--need I say what?" "Money, I presume?" "Sir," said Mr. Vholes, "to be honest with you (honesty being my golden rule, whether I gain by it or lose, and I find that I generally lose), money is the word. Now, sir, upon the chances of Mr. C.'s game I express to you no opinion, NO opinion. It might be highly impolitic in Mr. C., after playing so long and so high, to leave off; it might be the reverse; I say nothing. No, sir," said Mr. Vholes, bringing his hand flat down upon his desk in a positive manner, "nothing." "You seem to forget," returned Mr. Woodcourt, "that I ask you to say nothing and have no interest in anything you say." "Pardon me, sir!" retorted Mr. Vholes. "You do yourself an injustice. No, sir! Pardon me! You shall not--shall not in my office, if I know it--do yourself an injustice. You are interested in anything, and in everything, that relates to your friend. I know human nature much better, sir, than to admit for an instant that a gentleman of your appearance is not interested in whatever concerns his friend." "Well," replied Mr. Woodcourt, "that may be. I am particularly interested in his address." "The number, sir," said Mr. Vholes parenthetically, "I believe I have already mentioned. If Mr. C. is to continue to play for this considerable stake, sir, he must have funds. Understand me! There are funds in hand at present. I ask for nothing; there are funds in hand. But for the onward play, more funds must be provided, unless Mr. C. is to throw away what he has already ventured, which is wholly and solely a point for his consideration. This, sir, I take the opportunity of stating openly to you as the friend of Mr. C. Without funds I shall always be happy to appear and act for Mr. C. to the extent of all such costs as are safe to be allowed out of the estate, not beyond that. I could not go beyond that, sir, without wronging some one. I must either wrong my three dear girls or my venerable father, who is entirely dependent on me, in the Vale of Taunton; or some one. Whereas, sir, my resolution is (call it weakness or folly if you please) to wrong no one." Mr. Woodcourt rather sternly rejoined that he was glad to hear it. "I wish, sir," said Mr. Vholes, "to leave a good name behind me. Therefore I take every opportunity of openly stating to a friend of Mr. C. how Mr. C. is situated. As to myself, sir, the labourer is worthy of his hire. If I undertake to put my shoulder to the wheel, I do it, and I earn what I get. I am here for that purpose. My name is painted on the door outside, with that object." "And Mr. Carstone's address, Mr. Vholes?" "Sir," returned Mr. Vholes, "as I believe I have already mentioned, it is next door. On the second story you will find Mr. C.'s apartments. Mr. C. desires to be near his professional adviser, and I am far from objecting, for I court inquiry." Upon this Mr. Woodcourt wished Mr. Vholes good day and went in search of Richard, the change in whose appearance he began to understand now but too well. He found him in a dull room, fadedly furnished, much as I had found him in his barrack-room but a little while before, except that he was not writing but was sitting with a book before him, from which his eyes and thoughts were far astray. As the door chanced to be standing open, Mr. Woodcourt was in his presence for some moments without being perceived, and he told me that he never could forget the haggardness of his face and the dejection of his manner before he was aroused from his dream. "Woodcourt, my dear fellow," cried Richard, starting up with extended hands, "you come upon my vision like a ghost." "A friendly one," he replied, "and only waiting, as they say ghosts do, to be addressed. How does the mortal world go?" They were seated now, near together. "Badly enough, and slowly enough," said Richard, "speaking at least for my part of it." "What part is that?" "The Chancery part." "I never heard," returned Mr. Woodcourt, shaking his head, "of its going well yet." "Nor I," said Richard moodily. "Who ever did?" He brightened again in a moment and said with his natural openness, "Woodcourt, I should be sorry to be misunderstood by you, even if I gained by it in your estimation. You must know that I have done no good this long time. I have not intended to do much harm, but I seem to have been capable of nothing else. It may be that I should have done better by keeping out of the net into which my destiny has worked me, but I think not, though I dare say you will soon hear, if you have not already heard, a very different opinion. To make short of a long story, I am afraid I have wanted an object; but I have an object now--or it has me--and it is too late to discuss it. Take me as I am, and make the best of me." "A bargain," said Mr. Woodcourt. "Do as much by me in return." "Oh! You," returned Richard, "you can pursue your art for its own sake, and can put your hand upon the plough and never turn, and can strike a purpose out of anything. You and I are very different creatures." He spoke regretfully and lapsed for a moment into his weary condition. "Well, well!" he cried, shaking it off. "Everything has an end. We shall see! So you will take me as I am, and make the best of me?" "Aye! Indeed I will." They shook hands upon it laughingly, but in deep earnestness. I can answer for one of them with my heart of hearts. "You come as a godsend," said Richard, "for I have seen nobody here yet but Vholes. Woodcourt, there is one subject I should like to mention, for once and for all, in the beginning of our treaty. You can hardly make the best of me if I don't. You know, I dare say, that I have an attachment to my cousin Ada?" Mr. Woodcourt replied that I had hinted as much to him. "Now pray," returned Richard, "don't think me a heap of selfishness. Don't suppose that I am splitting my head and half breaking my heart over this miserable Chancery suit for my own rights and interests alone. Ada's are bound up with mine; they can't be separated; Vholes works for both of us. Do think of that!" He was so very solicitous on this head that Mr. Woodcourt gave him the strongest assurances that he did him no injustice. "You see," said Richard, with something pathetic in his manner of lingering on the point, though it was off-hand and unstudied, "to an upright fellow like you, bringing a friendly face like yours here, I cannot bear the thought of appearing selfish and mean. I want to see Ada righted, Woodcourt, as well as myself; I want to do my utmost to right her, as well as myself; I venture what I can scrape together to extricate her, as well as myself. Do, I beseech you, think of that!" Afterwards, when Mr. Woodcourt came to reflect on what had passed, he was so very much impressed by the strength of Richard's anxiety on this point that in telling me generally of his first visit to Symond's Inn he particularly dwelt upon it. It revived a fear I had had before that my dear girl's little property would be absorbed by Mr. Vholes and that Richard's justification to himself would be sincerely this. It was just as I began to take care of Caddy that the interview took place, and I now return to the time when Caddy had recovered and the shade was still between me and my darling. I proposed to Ada that morning that we should go and see Richard. It a little surprised me to find that she hesitated and was not so radiantly willing as I had expected. "My dear," said I, "you have not had any difference with Richard since I have been so much away?" "No, Esther." "Not heard of him, perhaps?" said I. "Yes, I have heard of him," said Ada. Such tears in her eyes, and such love in her face. I could not make my darling out. Should I go to Richard's by myself? I said. No, Ada thought I had better not go by myself. Would she go with me? Yes, Ada thought she had better go with me. Should we go now? Yes, let us go now. Well, I could not understand my darling, with the tears in her eyes and the love in her face! We were soon equipped and went out. It was a sombre day, and drops of chill rain fell at intervals. It was one of those colourless days when everything looks heavy and harsh. The houses frowned at us, the dust rose at us, the smoke swooped at us, nothing made any compromise about itself or wore a softened aspect. I fancied my beautiful girl quite out of place in the rugged streets, and I thought there were more funerals passing along the dismal pavements than I had ever seen before. We had first to find out Symond's Inn. We were going to inquire in a shop when Ada said she thought it was near Chancery Lane. "We are not likely to be far out, my love, if we go in that direction," said I. So to Chancery Lane we went, and there, sure enough, we saw it written up. Symond's Inn. We had next to find out the number. "Or Mr. Vholes's office will do," I recollected, "for Mr. Vholes's office is next door." Upon which Ada said, perhaps that was Mr. Vholes's office in the corner there. And it really was. Then came the question, which of the two next doors? I was going for the one, and my darling was going for the other; and my darling was right again. So up we went to the second story, when we came to Richard's name in great white letters on a hearse-like panel. I should have knocked, but Ada said perhaps we had better turn the handle and go in. Thus we came to Richard, poring over a table covered with dusty bundles of papers which seemed to me like dusty mirrors reflecting his own mind. Wherever I looked I saw the ominous words that ran in it repeated. Jarndyce and Jarndyce. He received us very affectionately, and we sat down. "If you had come a little earlier," he said, "you would have found Woodcourt here. There never was such a good fellow as Woodcourt is. He finds time to look in between-whiles, when anybody else with half his work to do would be thinking about not being able to come. And he is so cheery, so fresh, so sensible, so earnest, so--everything that I am not, that the place brightens whenever he comes, and darkens whenever he goes again." "God bless him," I thought, "for his truth to me!" "He is not so sanguine, Ada," continued Richard, casting his dejected look over the bundles of papers, "as Vholes and I are usually, but he is only an outsider and is not in the mysteries. We have gone into them, and he has not. He can't be expected to know much of such a labyrinth." As his look wandered over the papers again and he passed his two hands over his head, I noticed how sunken and how large his eyes appeared, how dry his lips were, and how his finger-nails were all bitten away. "Is this a healthy place to live in, Richard, do you think?" said I. "Why, my dear Minerva," answered Richard with his old gay laugh, "it is neither a rural nor a cheerful place; and when the sun shines here, you may lay a pretty heavy wager that it is shining brightly in an open spot. But it's well enough for the time. It's near the offices and near Vholes." "Perhaps," I hinted, "a change from both--" "Might do me good?" said Richard, forcing a laugh as he finished the sentence. "I shouldn't wonder! But it can only come in one way now--in one of two ways, I should rather say. Either the suit must be ended, Esther, or the suitor. But it shall be the suit, my dear girl, the suit, my dear girl!" These latter words were addressed to Ada, who was sitting nearest to him. Her face being turned away from me and towards him, I could not see it. "We are doing very well," pursued Richard. "Vholes will tell you so. We are really spinning along. Ask Vholes. We are giving them no rest. Vholes knows all their windings and turnings, and we are upon them everywhere. We have astonished them already. We shall rouse up that nest of sleepers, mark my words!" His hopefulness had long been more painful to me than his despondency; it was so unlike hopefulness, had something so fierce in its determination to be it, was so hungry and eager, and yet so conscious of being forced and unsustainable that it had long touched me to the heart. But the commentary upon it now indelibly written in his handsome face made it far more distressing than it used to be. I say indelibly, for I felt persuaded that if the fatal cause could have been for ever terminated, according to his brightest visions, in that same hour, the traces of the premature anxiety, self-reproach, and disappointment it had occasioned him would have remained upon his features to the hour of his death. "The sight of our dear little woman," said Richard, Ada still remaining silent and quiet, "is so natural to me, and her compassionate face is so like the face of old days--" Ah! No, no. I smiled and shook my head. "--So exactly like the face of old days," said Richard in his cordial voice, and taking my hand with the brotherly regard which nothing ever changed, "that I can't make pretences with her. I fluctuate a little; that's the truth. Sometimes I hope, my dear, and sometimes I--don't quite despair, but nearly. I get," said Richard, relinquishing my hand gently and walking across the room, "so tired!" He took a few turns up and down and sunk upon the sofa. "I get," he repeated gloomily, "so tired. It is such weary, weary work!" He was leaning on his arm saying these words in a meditative voice and looking at the ground when my darling rose, put off her bonnet, kneeled down beside him with her golden hair falling like sunlight on his head, clasped her two arms round his neck, and turned her face to me. Oh, what a loving and devoted face I saw! "Esther, dear," she said very quietly, "I am not going home again." A light shone in upon me all at once. "Never any more. I am going to stay with my dear husband. We have been married above two months. Go home without me, my own Esther; I shall never go home any more!" With those words my darling drew his head down on her breast and held it there. And if ever in my life I saw a love that nothing but death could change, I saw it then before me. "Speak to Esther, my dearest," said Richard, breaking the silence presently. "Tell her how it was." I met her before she could come to me and folded her in my arms. We neither of us spoke, but with her cheek against my own I wanted to hear nothing. "My pet," said I. "My love. My poor, poor girl!" I pitied her so much. I was very fond of Richard, but the impulse that I had upon me was to pity her so much. "Esther, will you forgive me? Will my cousin John forgive me?" "My dear," said I, "to doubt it for a moment is to do him a great wrong. And as to me!" Why, as to me, what had I to forgive! I dried my sobbing darling's eyes and sat beside her on the sofa, and Richard sat on my other side; and while I was reminded of that so different night when they had first taken me into their confidence and had gone on in their own wild happy way, they told me between them how it was. "All I had was Richard's," Ada said; "and Richard would not take it, Esther, and what could I do but be his wife when I loved him dearly!" "And you were so fully and so kindly occupied, excellent Dame Durden," said Richard, "that how could we speak to you at such a time! And besides, it was not a long-considered step. We went out one morning and were married." "And when it was done, Esther," said my darling, "I was always thinking how to tell you and what to do for the best. And sometimes I thought you ought to know it directly, and sometimes I thought you ought not to know it and keep it from my cousin John; and I could not tell what to do, and I fretted very much." How selfish I must have been not to have thought of this before! I don't know what I said now. I was so sorry, and yet I was so fond of them and so glad that they were fond of me; I pitied them so much, and yet I felt a kind of pride in their loving one another. I never had experienced such painful and pleasurable emotion at one time, and in my own heart I did not know which predominated. But I was not there to darken their way; I did not do that. When I was less foolish and more composed, my darling took her wedding-ring from her bosom, and kissed it, and put it on. Then I remembered last night and told Richard that ever since her marriage she had worn it at night when there was no one to see. Then Ada blushingly asked me how did I know that, my dear. Then I told Ada how I had seen her hand concealed under her pillow and had little thought why, my dear. Then they began telling me how it was all over again, and I began to be sorry and glad again, and foolish again, and to hide my plain old face as much as I could lest I should put them out of heart. Thus the time went on until it became necessary for me to think of returning. When that time arrived it was the worst of all, for then my darling completely broke down. She clung round my neck, calling me by every dear name she could think of and saying what should she do without me! Nor was Richard much better; and as for me, I should have been the worst of the three if I had not severely said to myself, "Now Esther, if you do, I'll never speak to you again!" "Why, I declare," said I, "I never saw such a wife. I don't think she loves her husband at all. Here, Richard, take my child, for goodness' sake." But I held her tight all the while, and could have wept over her I don't know how long. "I give this dear young couple notice," said I, "that I am only going away to come back to-morrow and that I shall be always coming backwards and forwards until Symond's Inn is tired of the sight of me. So I shall not say good-bye, Richard. For what would be the use of that, you know, when I am coming back so soon!" I had given my darling to him now, and I meant to go; but I lingered for one more look of the precious face which it seemed to rive my heart to turn from. So I said (in a merry, bustling manner) that unless they gave me some encouragement to come back, I was not sure that I could take that liberty, upon which my dear girl looked up, faintly smiling through her tears, and I folded her lovely face between my hands, and gave it one last kiss, and laughed, and ran away. And when I got downstairs, oh, how I cried! It almost seemed to me that I had lost my Ada for ever. I was so lonely and so blank without her, and it was so desolate to be going home with no hope of seeing her there, that I could get no comfort for a little while as I walked up and down in a dim corner sobbing and crying. I came to myself by and by, after a little scolding, and took a coach home. The poor boy whom I had found at St. Albans had reappeared a short time before and was lying at the point of death; indeed, was then dead, though I did not know it. My guardian had gone out to inquire about him and did not return to dinner. Being quite alone, I cried a little again, though on the whole I don't think I behaved so very, very ill. It was only natural that I should not be quite accustomed to the loss of my darling yet. Three or four hours were not a long time after years. But my mind dwelt so much upon the uncongenial scene in which I had left her, and I pictured it as such an overshadowed stony-hearted one, and I so longed to be near her and taking some sort of care of her, that I determined to go back in the evening only to look up at her windows. It was foolish, I dare say, but it did not then seem at all so to me, and it does not seem quite so even now. I took Charley into my confidence, and we went out at dusk. It was dark when we came to the new strange home of my dear girl, and there was a light behind the yellow blinds. We walked past cautiously three or four times, looking up, and narrowly missed encountering Mr. Vholes, who came out of his office while we were there and turned his head to look up too before going home. The sight of his lank black figure and the lonesome air of that nook in the dark were favourable to the state of my mind. I thought of the youth and love and beauty of my dear girl, shut up in such an ill-assorted refuge, almost as if it were a cruel place. It was very solitary and very dull, and I did not doubt that I might safely steal upstairs. I left Charley below and went up with a light foot, not distressed by any glare from the feeble oil lanterns on the way. I listened for a few moments, and in the musty rotting silence of the house believed that I could hear the murmur of their young voices. I put my lips to the hearse-like panel of the door as a kiss for my dear and came quietly down again, thinking that one of these days I would confess to the visit. And it really did me good, for though nobody but Charley and I knew anything about it, I somehow felt as if it had diminished the separation between Ada and me and had brought us together again for those moments. I went back, not quite accustomed yet to the change, but all the better for that hovering about my darling. My guardian had come home and was standing thoughtfully by the dark window. When I went in, his face cleared and he came to his seat, but he caught the light upon my face as I took mine. "Little woman," said he, "You have been crying." "Why, yes, guardian," said I, "I am afraid I have been, a little. Ada has been in such distress, and is so very sorry, guardian." I put my arm on the back of his chair, and I saw in his glance that my words and my look at her empty place had prepared him. "Is she married, my dear?" I told him all about it and how her first entreaties had referred to his forgiveness. "She has no need of it," said he. "Heaven bless her and her husband!" But just as my first impulse had been to pity her, so was his. "Poor girl, poor girl! Poor Rick! Poor Ada!" Neither of us spoke after that, until he said with a sigh, "Well, well, my dear! Bleak House is thinning fast." "But its mistress remains, guardian." Though I was timid about saying it, I ventured because of the sorrowful tone in which he had spoken. "She will do all she can to make it happy," said I. "She will succeed, my love!" The letter had made no difference between us except that the seat by his side had come to be mine; it made none now. He turned his old bright fatherly look upon me, laid his hand on my hand in his old way, and said again, "She will succeed, my dear. Nevertheless, Bleak House is thinning fast, O little woman!" I was sorry presently that this was all we said about that. I was rather disappointed. I feared I might not quite have been all I had meant to be since the letter and the answer.

True to his word, Woodcourt tries to meet up with Richard in London. He doesn't know where he's staying, so he goes to Vholes's office to find out. Their conversation goes something like this: W: Where does Richard live? V: Let's just say that he owes me a lot of money. W: Um, OK. But where does he live? V: He owes money to other people too. W: Dude, seriously, I'm just asking for his address. V: So as I was saying, money, money, money, money. And so on. Vholes is pretty annoying. Finally Vholes shows Woodcourt Richard's room, which is just upstairs. He's just as depressed and crazed as ever. Woodcourt is nice to him, and Richard tells him how stressed he is that Ada's money is tied up in the court case too. After Caddy starts getting better, Esther suggests going to visit Richard. Ada is kind of not into it, which is surprising and strange. But still, they go. Another surprise - Ada is very easily able to figure out where Richard lives without asking for directions. Miserable as always, Richard is happy to see them but depressed about life overall. After some complaining, Ada goes to hug him and says she's not going back to Bleak House because...they're married! Apparently, two months ago, as soon as Richard said no to Ada's letter offering him all of her money, she decided to marry him instead so that her money would be his legally. Oh, and of course because of all the love. Esther cries and cries and cries. Then she leaves and cries some more. She's not really expecting anything too good to come out of this marriage, and she feels bad for them. That night she and Charley sneak back to Richard's place and lurk around outside a little bit. For some reason, this makes her feel better. Back at Bleak House, Jarndyce figures out the truth when Ada doesn't come home for dinner. He wishes them well, but expects only ill. Esther tries to cheer him up by talking about becoming mistress of the house, but that attempt flags too. Esther feels guilty that their own marriage is so not an exciting topic for conversation.

The twain cantered along for some time without speech, Tess as she clung to him still panting in her triumph, yet in other respects dubious. She had perceived that the horse was not the spirited one he sometimes rose, and felt no alarm on that score, though her seat was precarious enough despite her tight hold of him. She begged him to slow the animal to a walk, which Alec accordingly did. "Neatly done, was it not, dear Tess?" he said by and by. "Yes!" said she. "I am sure I ought to be much obliged to you." "And are you?" She did not reply. "Tess, why do you always dislike my kissing you?" "I suppose--because I don't love you." "You are quite sure?" "I am angry with you sometimes!" "Ah, I half feared as much." Nevertheless, Alec did not object to that confession. He knew that anything was better then frigidity. "Why haven't you told me when I have made you angry?" "You know very well why. Because I cannot help myself here." "I haven't offended you often by love-making?" "You have sometimes." "How many times?" "You know as well as I--too many times." "Every time I have tried?" She was silent, and the horse ambled along for a considerable distance, till a faint luminous fog, which had hung in the hollows all the evening, became general and enveloped them. It seemed to hold the moonlight in suspension, rendering it more pervasive than in clear air. Whether on this account, or from absent-mindedness, or from sleepiness, she did not perceive that they had long ago passed the point at which the lane to Trantridge branched from the highway, and that her conductor had not taken the Trantridge track. She was inexpressibly weary. She had risen at five o'clock every morning of that week, had been on foot the whole of each day, and on this evening had in addition walked the three miles to Chaseborough, waited three hours for her neighbours without eating or drinking, her impatience to start them preventing either; she had then walked a mile of the way home, and had undergone the excitement of the quarrel, till, with the slow progress of their steed, it was now nearly one o'clock. Only once, however, was she overcome by actual drowsiness. In that moment of oblivion her head sank gently against him. D'Urberville stopped the horse, withdrew his feet from the stirrups, turned sideways on the saddle, and enclosed her waist with his arm to support her. This immediately put her on the defensive, and with one of those sudden impulses of reprisal to which she was liable she gave him a little push from her. In his ticklish position he nearly lost his balance and only just avoided rolling over into the road, the horse, though a powerful one, being fortunately the quietest he rode. "That is devilish unkind!" he said. "I mean no harm--only to keep you from falling." She pondered suspiciously, till, thinking that this might after all be true, she relented, and said quite humbly, "I beg your pardon, sir." "I won't pardon you unless you show some confidence in me. Good God!" he burst out, "what am I, to be repulsed so by a mere chit like you? For near three mortal months have you trifled with my feelings, eluded me, and snubbed me; and I won't stand it!" "I'll leave you to-morrow, sir." "No, you will not leave me to-morrow! Will you, I ask once more, show your belief in me by letting me clasp you with my arm? Come, between us two and nobody else, now. We know each other well; and you know that I love you, and think you the prettiest girl in the world, which you are. Mayn't I treat you as a lover?" She drew a quick pettish breath of objection, writhing uneasily on her seat, looked far ahead, and murmured, "I don't know--I wish--how can I say yes or no when--" He settled the matter by clasping his arm round her as he desired, and Tess expressed no further negative. Thus they sidled slowly onward till it struck her they had been advancing for an unconscionable time--far longer than was usually occupied by the short journey from Chaseborough, even at this walking pace, and that they were no longer on hard road, but in a mere trackway. "Why, where be we?" she exclaimed. "Passing by a wood." "A wood--what wood? Surely we are quite out of the road?" "A bit of The Chase--the oldest wood in England. It is a lovely night, and why should we not prolong our ride a little?" "How could you be so treacherous!" said Tess, between archness and real dismay, and getting rid of his arm by pulling open his fingers one by one, though at the risk of slipping off herself. "Just when I've been putting such trust in you, and obliging you to please you, because I thought I had wronged you by that push! Please set me down, and let me walk home." "You cannot walk home, darling, even if the air were clear. We are miles away from Trantridge, if I must tell you, and in this growing fog you might wander for hours among these trees." "Never mind that," she coaxed. "Put me down, I beg you. I don't mind where it is; only let me get down, sir, please!" "Very well, then, I will--on one condition. Having brought you here to this out-of-the-way place, I feel myself responsible for your safe-conduct home, whatever you may yourself feel about it. As to your getting to Trantridge without assistance, it is quite impossible; for, to tell the truth, dear, owing to this fog, which so disguises everything, I don't quite know where we are myself. Now, if you will promise to wait beside the horse while I walk through the bushes till I come to some road or house, and ascertain exactly our whereabouts, I'll deposit you here willingly. When I come back I'll give you full directions, and if you insist upon walking you may; or you may ride--at your pleasure." She accepted these terms, and slid off on the near side, though not till he had stolen a cursory kiss. He sprang down on the other side. "I suppose I must hold the horse?" said she. "Oh no; it's not necessary," replied Alec, patting the panting creature. "He's had enough of it for to-night." He turned the horse's head into the bushes, hitched him on to a bough, and made a sort of couch or nest for her in the deep mass of dead leaves. "Now, you sit there," he said. "The leaves have not got damp as yet. Just give an eye to the horse--it will be quite sufficient." He took a few steps away from her, but, returning, said, "By the bye, Tess, your father has a new cob to-day. Somebody gave it to him." "Somebody? You!" D'Urberville nodded. "O how very good of you that is!" she exclaimed, with a painful sense of the awkwardness of having to thank him just then. "And the children have some toys." "I didn't know--you ever sent them anything!" she murmured, much moved. "I almost wish you had not--yes, I almost wish it!" "Why, dear?" "It--hampers me so." "Tessy--don't you love me ever so little now?" "I'm grateful," she reluctantly admitted. "But I fear I do not--" The sudden vision of his passion for herself as a factor in this result so distressed her that, beginning with one slow tear, and then following with another, she wept outright. "Don't cry, dear, dear one! Now sit down here, and wait till I come." She passively sat down amid the leaves he had heaped, and shivered slightly. "Are you cold?" he asked. "Not very--a little." He touched her with his fingers, which sank into her as into down. "You have only that puffy muslin dress on--how's that?" "It's my best summer one. 'Twas very warm when I started, and I didn't know I was going to ride, and that it would be night." "Nights grow chilly in September. Let me see." He pulled off a light overcoat that he had worn, and put it round her tenderly. "That's it--now you'll feel warmer," he continued. "Now, my pretty, rest there; I shall soon be back again." Having buttoned the overcoat round her shoulders he plunged into the webs of vapour which by this time formed veils between the trees. She could hear the rustling of the branches as he ascended the adjoining slope, till his movements were no louder than the hopping of a bird, and finally died away. With the setting of the moon the pale light lessened, and Tess became invisible as she fell into reverie upon the leaves where he had left her. In the meantime Alec d'Urberville had pushed on up the slope to clear his genuine doubt as to the quarter of The Chase they were in. He had, in fact, ridden quite at random for over an hour, taking any turning that came to hand in order to prolong companionship with her, and giving far more attention to Tess's moonlit person than to any wayside object. A little rest for the jaded animal being desirable, he did not hasten his search for landmarks. A clamber over the hill into the adjoining vale brought him to the fence of a highway whose contours he recognized, which settled the question of their whereabouts. D'Urberville thereupon turned back; but by this time the moon had quite gone down, and partly on account of the fog The Chase was wrapped in thick darkness, although morning was not far off. He was obliged to advance with outstretched hands to avoid contact with the boughs, and discovered that to hit the exact spot from which he had started was at first entirely beyond him. Roaming up and down, round and round, he at length heard a slight movement of the horse close at hand; and the sleeve of his overcoat unexpectedly caught his foot. "Tess!" said d'Urberville. There was no answer. The obscurity was now so great that he could see absolutely nothing but a pale nebulousness at his feet, which represented the white muslin figure he had left upon the dead leaves. Everything else was blackness alike. D'Urberville stooped; and heard a gentle regular breathing. He knelt and bent lower, till her breath warmed his face, and in a moment his cheek was in contact with hers. She was sleeping soundly, and upon her eyelashes there lingered tears. Darkness and silence ruled everywhere around. Above them rose the primeval yews and oaks of The Chase, in which there poised gentle roosting birds in their last nap; and about them stole the hopping rabbits and hares. But, might some say, where was Tess's guardian angel? where was the providence of her simple faith? Perhaps, like that other god of whom the ironical Tishbite spoke, he was talking, or he was pursuing, or he was in a journey, or he was sleeping and not to be awaked. Why it was that upon this beautiful feminine tissue, sensitive as gossamer, and practically blank as snow as yet, there should have been traced such a coarse pattern as it was doomed to receive; why so often the coarse appropriates the finer thus, the wrong man the woman, the wrong woman the man, many thousand years of analytical philosophy have failed to explain to our sense of order. One may, indeed, admit the possibility of a retribution lurking in the present catastrophe. Doubtless some of Tess d'Urberville's mailed ancestors rollicking home from a fray had dealt the same measure even more ruthlessly towards peasant girls of their time. But though to visit the sins of the fathers upon the children may be a morality good enough for divinities, it is scorned by average human nature; and it therefore does not mend the matter. As Tess's own people down in those retreats are never tired of saying among each other in their fatalistic way: "It was to be." There lay the pity of it. An immeasurable social chasm was to divide our heroine's personality thereafter from that previous self of hers who stepped from her mother's door to try her fortune at Trantridge poultry-farm. END OF PHASE THE FIRST Phase the Second: Maiden No More

Soon, Alec allows the horse to leave the path and Tess finds herself deep in the woods, lost in the fog. After she rebuffs his advances, he tells her that he has bought a new horse for her family and toys for her younger siblings. Although she is grateful, she is unhappy. Alec sets off to find a road, leaving her wrapped in his coat on a nest of leaves. Upon his return, he finds her asleep and takes advantage of her. The narrator attempts to understand why the wrong woman and the wrong man wind up together and states simply that "it was to be" and that "there lay the pity of it".

CHAPTER XXIII I WHEN America entered the Great European War, Vida sent Raymie off to an officers' training-camp--less than a year after her wedding. Raymie was diligent and rather strong. He came out a first lieutenant of infantry, and was one of the earliest sent abroad. Carol grew definitely afraid of Vida as Vida transferred the passion which had been released in marriage to the cause of the war; as she lost all tolerance. When Carol was touched by the desire for heroism in Raymie and tried tactfully to express it, Vida made her feel like an impertinent child. By enlistment and draft, the sons of Lyman Cass, Nat Hicks, Sam Clark joined the army. But most of the soldiers were the sons of German and Swedish farmers unknown to Carol. Dr. Terry Gould and Dr. McGanum became captains in the medical corps, and were stationed at camps in Iowa and Georgia. They were the only officers, besides Raymie, from the Gopher Prairie district. Kennicott wanted to go with them, but the several doctors of the town forgot medical rivalry and, meeting in council, decided that he would do better to wait and keep the town well till he should be needed. Kennicott was forty-two now; the only youngish doctor left in a radius of eighteen miles. Old Dr. Westlake, who loved comfort like a cat, protestingly rolled out at night for country calls, and hunted through his collar-box for his G. A. R. button. Carol did not quite know what she thought about Kennicott's going. Certainly she was no Spartan wife. She knew that he wanted to go; she knew that this longing was always in him, behind his unchanged trudging and remarks about the weather. She felt for him an admiring affection--and she was sorry that she had nothing more than affection. Cy Bogart was the spectacular warrior of the town. Cy was no longer the weedy boy who had sat in the loft speculating about Carol's egotism and the mysteries of generation. He was nineteen now, tall, broad, busy, the "town sport," famous for his ability to drink beer, to shake dice, to tell undesirable stories, and, from his post in front of Dyer's drug store, to embarrass the girls by "jollying" them as they passed. His face was at once peach-bloomed and pimply. Cy was to be heard publishing it abroad that if he couldn't get the Widow Bogart's permission to enlist, he'd run away and enlist without it. He shouted that he "hated every dirty Hun; by gosh, if he could just poke a bayonet into one big fat Heinie and learn him some decency and democracy, he'd die happy." Cy got much reputation by whipping a farmboy named Adolph Pochbauer for being a "damn hyphenated German." . . . This was the younger Pochbauer, who was killed in the Argonne, while he was trying to bring the body of his Yankee captain back to the lines. At this time Cy Bogart was still dwelling in Gopher Prairie and planning to go to war. II Everywhere Carol heard that the war was going to bring a basic change in psychology, to purify and uplift everything from marital relations to national politics, and she tried to exult in it. Only she did not find it. She saw the women who made bandages for the Red Cross giving up bridge, and laughing at having to do without sugar, but over the surgical-dressings they did not speak of God and the souls of men, but of Miles Bjornstam's impudence, of Terry Gould's scandalous carryings-on with a farmer's daughter four years ago, of cooking cabbage, and of altering blouses. Their references to the war touched atrocities only. She herself was punctual, and efficient at making dressings, but she could not, like Mrs. Lyman Cass and Mrs. Bogart, fill the dressings with hate for enemies. When she protested to Vida, "The young do the work while these old ones sit around and interrupt us and gag with hate because they're too feeble to do anything but hate," then Vida turned on her: "If you can't be reverent, at least don't be so pert and opinionated, now when men and women are dying. Some of us--we have given up so much, and we're glad to. At least we expect that you others sha'n't try to be witty at our expense." There was weeping. Carol did desire to see the Prussian autocracy defeated; she did persuade herself that there were no autocracies save that of Prussia; she did thrill to motion-pictures of troops embarking in New York; and she was uncomfortable when she met Miles Bjornstam on the street and he croaked: "How's tricks? Things going fine with me; got two new cows. Well, have you become a patriot? Eh? Sure, they'll bring democracy--the democracy of death. Yes, sure, in every war since the Garden of Eden the workmen have gone out to fight each other for perfectly good reasons--handed to them by their bosses. Now me, I'm wise. I'm so wise that I know I don't know anything about the war." It was not a thought of the war that remained with her after Miles's declamation but a perception that she and Vida and all of the good-intentioners who wanted to "do something for the common people" were insignificant, because the "common people" were able to do things for themselves, and highly likely to, as soon as they learned the fact. The conception of millions of workmen like Miles taking control frightened her, and she scuttled rapidly away from the thought of a time when she might no longer retain the position of Lady Bountiful to the Bjornstams and Beas and Oscarinas whom she loved--and patronized. III It was in June, two months after America's entrance into the war, that the momentous event happened--the visit of the great Percy Bresnahan, the millionaire president of the Velvet Motor Car Company of Boston, the one native son who was always to be mentioned to strangers. For two weeks there were rumors. Sam Clark cried to Kennicott, "Say, I hear Perce Bresnahan is coming! By golly it'll be great to see the old scout, eh?" Finally the Dauntless printed, on the front page with a No. 1 head, a letter from Bresnahan to Jackson Elder: DEAR JACK: Well, Jack, I find I can make it. I'm to go to Washington as a dollar a year man for the government, in the aviation motor section, and tell them how much I don't know about carburetors. But before I start in being a hero I want to shoot out and catch me a big black bass and cuss out you and Sam Clark and Harry Haydock and Will Kennicott and the rest of you pirates. I'll land in G. P. on June 7, on No. 7 from Mpls. Shake a day-day. Tell Bert Tybee to save me a glass of beer. Sincerely yours, Perce. All members of the social, financial, scientific, literary, and sporting sets were at No. 7 to meet Bresnahan; Mrs. Lyman Cass was beside Del Snafflin the barber, and Juanita Haydock almost cordial to Miss Villets the librarian. Carol saw Bresnahan laughing down at them from the train vestibule--big, immaculate, overjawed, with the eye of an executive. In the voice of the professional Good Fellow he bellowed, "Howdy, folks!" As she was introduced to him (not he to her) Bresnahan looked into her eyes, and his hand-shake was warm, unhurried. He declined the offers of motors; he walked off, his arm about the shoulder of Nat Hicks the sporting tailor, with the elegant Harry Haydock carrying one of his enormous pale leather bags, Del Snafflin the other, Jack Elder bearing an overcoat, and Julius Flickerbaugh the fishing-tackle. Carol noted that though Bresnahan wore spats and a stick, no small boy jeered. She decided, "I must have Will get a double-breasted blue coat and a wing collar and a dotted bow-tie like his." That evening, when Kennicott was trimming the grass along the walk with sheep-shears, Bresnahan rolled up, alone. He was now in corduroy trousers, khaki shirt open at the throat, a white boating hat, and marvelous canvas-and-leather shoes "On the job there, old Will! Say, my Lord, this is living, to come back and get into a regular man-sized pair of pants. They can talk all they want to about the city, but my idea of a good time is to loaf around and see you boys and catch a gamey bass!" He hustled up the walk and blared at Carol, "Where's that little fellow? I hear you've got one fine big he-boy that you're holding out on me!" "He's gone to bed," rather briefly. "I know. And rules are rules, these days. Kids get routed through the shop like a motor. But look here, sister; I'm one great hand at busting rules. Come on now, let Uncle Perce have a look at him. Please now, sister?" He put his arm about her waist; it was a large, strong, sophisticated arm, and very agreeable; he grinned at her with a devastating knowingness, while Kennicott glowed inanely. She flushed; she was alarmed by the ease with which the big-city man invaded her guarded personality. She was glad, in retreat, to scamper ahead of the two men up-stairs to the hall-room in which Hugh slept. All the way Kennicott muttered, "Well, well, say, gee whittakers but it's good to have you back, certainly is good to see you!" Hugh lay on his stomach, making an earnest business of sleeping. He burrowed his eyes in the dwarf blue pillow to escape the electric light, then sat up abruptly, small and frail in his woolly nightdrawers, his floss of brown hair wild, the pillow clutched to his breast. He wailed. He stared at the stranger, in a manner of patient dismissal. He explained confidentially to Carol, "Daddy wouldn't let it be morning yet. What does the pillow say?" Bresnahan dropped his arm caressingly on Carol's shoulder; he pronounced, "My Lord, you're a lucky girl to have a fine young husk like that. I figure Will knew what he was doing when he persuaded you to take a chance on an old bum like him! They tell me you come from St. Paul. We're going to get you to come to Boston some day." He leaned over the bed. "Young man, you're the slickest sight I've seen this side of Boston. With your permission, may we present you with a slight token of our regard and appreciation of your long service?" He held out a red rubber Pierrot. Hugh remarked, "Gimme it," hid it under the bedclothes, and stared at Bresnahan as though he had never seen the man before. For once Carol permitted herself the spiritual luxury of not asking "Why, Hugh dear, what do you say when some one gives you a present?" The great man was apparently waiting. They stood in inane suspense till Bresnahan led them out, rumbling, "How about planning a fishing-trip, Will?" He remained for half an hour. Always he told Carol what a charming person she was; always he looked at her knowingly. "Yes. He probably would make a woman fall in love with him. But it wouldn't last a week. I'd get tired of his confounded buoyancy. His hypocrisy. He's a spiritual bully. He makes me rude to him in self-defense. Oh yes, he is glad to be here. He does like us. He's so good an actor that he convinces his own self. . . . I'd HATE him in Boston. He'd have all the obvious big-city things. Limousines. Discreet evening-clothes. Order a clever dinner at a smart restaurant. Drawing-room decorated by the best firm--but the pictures giving him away. I'd rather talk to Guy Pollock in his dusty office. . . . How I lie! His arm coaxed my shoulder and his eyes dared me not to admire him. I'd be afraid of him. I hate him! . . . Oh, the inconceivable egotistic imagination of women! All this stew of analysis about a man, a good, decent, friendly, efficient man, because he was kind to me, as Will's wife!" IV The Kennicotts, the Elders, the Clarks, and Bresnahan went fishing at Red Squaw Lake. They drove forty miles to the lake in Elder's new Cadillac. There was much laughter and bustle at the start, much storing of lunch-baskets and jointed poles, much inquiry as to whether it would really bother Carol to sit with her feet up on a roll of shawls. When they were ready to go Mrs. Clark lamented, "Oh, Sam, I forgot my magazine," and Bresnahan bullied, "Come on now, if you women think you're going to be literary, you can't go with us tough guys!" Every one laughed a great deal, and as they drove on Mrs. Clark explained that though probably she would not have read it, still, she might have wanted to, while the other girls had a nap in the afternoon, and she was right in the middle of a serial--it was an awfully exciting story--it seems that this girl was a Turkish dancer (only she was really the daughter of an American lady and a Russian prince) and men kept running after her, just disgustingly, but she remained pure, and there was a scene---- While the men floated on the lake, casting for black bass, the women prepared lunch and yawned. Carol was a little resentful of the manner in which the men assumed that they did not care to fish. "I don't want to go with them, but I would like the privilege of refusing." The lunch was long and pleasant. It was a background for the talk of the great man come home, hints of cities and large imperative affairs and famous people, jocosely modest admissions that, yes, their friend Perce was doing about as well as most of these "Boston swells that think so much of themselves because they come from rich old families and went to college and everything. Believe me, it's us new business men that are running Beantown today, and not a lot of fussy old bucks snoozing in their clubs!" Carol realized that he was not one of the sons of Gopher Prairie who, if they do not actually starve in the East, are invariably spoken of as "highly successful"; and she found behind his too incessant flattery a genuine affection for his mates. It was in the matter of the war that he most favored and thrilled them. Dropping his voice while they bent nearer (there was no one within two miles to overhear), he disclosed the fact that in both Boston and Washington he'd been getting a lot of inside stuff on the war--right straight from headquarters--he was in touch with some men--couldn't name them but they were darn high up in both the War and State Departments--and he would say--only for Pete's sake they mustn't breathe one word of this; it was strictly on the Q.T. and not generally known outside of Washington--but just between ourselves--and they could take this for gospel--Spain had finally decided to join the Entente allies in the Grand Scrap. Yes, sir, there'd be two million fully equipped Spanish soldiers fighting with us in France in one month now. Some surprise for Germany, all right! "How about the prospects for revolution in Germany?" reverently asked Kennicott. The authority grunted, "Nothing to it. The one thing you can bet on is that no matter what happens to the German people, win or lose, they'll stick by the Kaiser till hell freezes over. I got that absolutely straight, from a fellow who's on the inside of the inside in Washington. No, sir! I don't pretend to know much about international affairs but one thing you can put down as settled is that Germany will be a Hohenzollern empire for the next forty years. At that, I don't know as it's so bad. The Kaiser and the Junkers keep a firm hand on a lot of these red agitators who'd be worse than a king if they could get control." "I'm terribly interested in this uprising that overthrew the Czar in Russia," suggested Carol. She had finally been conquered by the man's wizard knowledge of affairs. Kennicott apologized for her: "Carrie's nuts about this Russian revolution. Is there much to it, Perce?" "There is not!" Bresnahan said flatly. "I can speak by the book there. Carol, honey, I'm surprised to find you talking like a New York Russian Jew, or one of these long-hairs! I can tell you, only you don't need to let every one in on it, this is confidential, I got it from a man who's close to the State Department, but as a matter of fact the Czar will be back in power before the end of the year. You read a lot about his retiring and about his being killed, but I know he's got a big army back of him, and he'll show these damn agitators, lazy beggars hunting for a soft berth bossing the poor goats that fall for 'em, he'll show 'em where they get off!" Carol was sorry to hear that the Czar was coming back, but she said nothing. The others had looked vacant at the mention of a country so far away as Russia. Now they edged in and asked Bresnahan what he thought about the Packard car, investments in Texas oil-wells, the comparative merits of young men born in Minnesota and in Massachusetts, the question of prohibition, the future cost of motor tires, and wasn't it true that American aviators put it all over these Frenchmen? They were glad to find that he agreed with them on every point. As she heard Bresnahan announce, "We're perfectly willing to talk to any committee the men may choose, but we're not going to stand for some outside agitator butting in and telling us how we're going to run our plant!" Carol remembered that Jackson Elder (now meekly receiving New Ideas) had said the same thing in the same words. While Sam Clark was digging up from his memory a long and immensely detailed story of the crushing things he had said to a Pullman porter, named George, Bresnahan hugged his knees and rocked and watched Carol. She wondered if he did not understand the laboriousness of the smile with which she listened to Kennicott's account of the "good one he had on Carrie," that marital, coyly improper, ten-times-told tale of how she had forgotten to attend to Hugh because she was "all het up pounding the box"--which may be translated as "eagerly playing the piano." She was certain that Bresnahan saw through her when she pretended not to hear Kennicott's invitation to join a game of cribbage. She feared the comments he might make; she was irritated by her fear. She was equally irritated, when the motor returned through Gopher Prairie, to find that she was proud of sharing in Bresnahan's kudos as people waved, and Juanita Haydock leaned from a window. She said to herself, "As though I cared whether I'm seen with this fat phonograph!" and simultaneously, "Everybody has noticed how much Will and I are playing with Mr. Bresnahan." The town was full of his stories, his friendliness, his memory for names, his clothes, his trout-flies, his generosity. He had given a hundred dollars to Father Klubok the priest, and a hundred to the Reverend Mr. Zitterel the Baptist minister, for Americanization work. At the Bon Ton, Carol heard Nat Hicks the tailor exulting: "Old Perce certainly pulled a good one on this fellow Bjornstam that always is shooting off his mouth. He's supposed to of settled down since he got married, but Lord, those fellows that think they know it all, they never change. Well, the Red Swede got the grand razz handed to him, all right. He had the nerve to breeze up to Perce, at Dave Dyer's, and he said, he said to Perce, 'I've always wanted to look at a man that was so useful that folks would pay him a million dollars for existing,' and Perce gave him the once-over and come right back, 'Have, eh?' he says. 'Well,' he says, 'I've been looking for a man so useful sweeping floors that I could pay him four dollars a day. Want the job, my friend?' Ha, ha, ha! Say, you know how lippy Bjornstam is? Well for once he didn't have a thing to say. He tried to get fresh, and tell what a rotten town this is, and Perce come right back at him, 'If you don't like this country, you better get out of it and go back to Germany, where you belong!' Say, maybe us fellows didn't give Bjornstam the horse-laugh though! Oh, Perce is the white-haired boy in this burg, all rightee!" V Bresnahan had borrowed Jackson Elder's motor; he stopped at the Kennicotts'; he bawled at Carol, rocking with Hugh on the porch, "Better come for a ride." She wanted to snub him. "Thanks so much, but I'm being maternal." "Bring him along! Bring him along!" Bresnahan was out of the seat, stalking up the sidewalk, and the rest of her protests and dignities were feeble. She did not bring Hugh along. Bresnahan was silent for a mile, in words, But he looked at her as though he meant her to know that he understood everything she thought. She observed how deep was his chest. "Lovely fields over there," he said. "You really like them? There's no profit in them." He chuckled. "Sister, you can't get away with it. I'm onto you. You consider me a big bluff. Well, maybe I am. But so are you, my dear--and pretty enough so that I'd try to make love to you, if I weren't afraid you'd slap me." "Mr. Bresnahan, do you talk that way to your wife's friends? And do you call them 'sister'?" "As a matter of fact, I do! And I make 'em like it. Score two!" But his chuckle was not so rotund, and he was very attentive to the ammeter. In a moment he was cautiously attacking: "That's a wonderful boy, Will Kennicott. Great work these country practitioners are doing. The other day, in Washington, I was talking to a big scientific shark, a professor in Johns Hopkins medical school, and he was saying that no one has ever sufficiently appreciated the general practitioner and the sympathy and help he gives folks. These crack specialists, the young scientific fellows, they're so cocksure and so wrapped up in their laboratories that they miss the human element. Except in the case of a few freak diseases that no respectable human being would waste his time having, it's the old doc that keeps a community well, mind and body. And strikes me that Will is one of the steadiest and clearest-headed counter practitioners I've ever met. Eh?" "I'm sure he is. He's a servant of reality." "Come again? Um. Yes. All of that, whatever that is. . . . Say, child, you don't care a whole lot for Gopher Prairie, if I'm not mistaken." "Nope." "There's where you're missing a big chance. There's nothing to these cities. Believe me, I KNOW! This is a good town, as they go. You're lucky to be here. I wish I could shy on!" "Very well, why don't you?" "Huh? Why--Lord--can't get away fr----" "You don't have to stay. I do! So I want to change it. Do you know that men like you, prominent men, do quite a reasonable amount of harm by insisting that your native towns and native states are perfect? It's you who encourage the denizens not to change. They quote you, and go on believing that they live in paradise, and----" She clenched her fist. "The incredible dullness of it!" "Suppose you were right. Even so, don't you think you waste a lot of thundering on one poor scared little town? Kind of mean!" "I tell you it's dull. DULL!" "The folks don't find it dull. These couples like the Haydocks have a high old time; dances and cards----" "They don't. They're bored. Almost every one here is. Vacuousness and bad manners and spiteful gossip--that's what I hate." "Those things--course they're here. So are they in Boston! And every place else! Why, the faults you find in this town are simply human nature, and never will be changed." "Perhaps. But in a Boston all the good Carols (I'll admit I have no faults) can find one another and play. But here--I'm alone, in a stale pool--except as it's stirred by the great Mr. Bresnahan!" "My Lord, to hear you tell it, a fellow 'd think that all the denizens, as you impolitely call 'em, are so confoundedly unhappy that it's a wonder they don't all up and commit suicide. But they seem to struggle along somehow!" "They don't know what they miss. And anybody can endure anything. Look at men in mines and in prisons." He drew up on the south shore of Lake Minniemashie. He glanced across the reeds reflected on the water, the quiver of wavelets like crumpled tinfoil, the distant shores patched with dark woods, silvery oats and deep yellow wheat. He patted her hand. "Sis----Carol, you're a darling girl, but you're difficult. Know what I think?" "Yes." "Humph. Maybe you do, but----My humble (not too humble!) opinion is that you like to be different. You like to think you're peculiar. Why, if you knew how many tens of thousands of women, especially in New York, say just what you do, you'd lose all the fun of thinking you're a lone genius and you'd be on the band-wagon whooping it up for Gopher Prairie and a good decent family life. There's always about a million young women just out of college who want to teach their grandmothers how to suck eggs." "How proud you are of that homely rustic metaphor! You use it at 'banquets' and directors' meetings, and boast of your climb from a humble homestead." "Huh! You may have my number. I'm not telling. But look here: You're so prejudiced against Gopher Prairie that you overshoot the mark; you antagonize those who might be inclined to agree with you in some particulars but----Great guns, the town can't be all wrong!" "No, it isn't. But it could be. Let me tell you a fable. Imagine a cavewoman complaining to her mate. She doesn't like one single thing; she hates the damp cave, the rats running over her bare legs, the stiff skin garments, the eating of half-raw meat, her husband's bushy face, the constant battles, and the worship of the spirits who will hoodoo her unless she gives the priests her best claw necklace. Her man protests, 'But it can't all be wrong!' and he thinks he has reduced her to absurdity. Now you assume that a world which produces a Percy Bresnahan and a Velvet Motor Company must be civilized. It is? Aren't we only about half-way along in barbarism? I suggest Mrs. Bogart as a test. And we'll continue in barbarism just as long as people as nearly intelligent as you continue to defend things as they are because they are." "You're a fair spieler, child. But, by golly, I'd like to see you try to design a new manifold, or run a factory and keep a lot of your fellow reds from Czech-slovenski-magyar-godknowswheria on the job! You'd drop your theories so darn quick! I'm not any defender of things as they are. Sure. They're rotten. Only I'm sensible." He preached his gospel: love of outdoors, Playing the Game, loyalty to friends. She had the neophyte's shock of discovery that, outside of tracts, conservatives do not tremble and find no answer when an iconoclast turns on them, but retort with agility and confusing statistics. He was so much the man, the worker, the friend, that she liked him when she most tried to stand out against him; he was so much the successful executive that she did not want him to despise her. His manner of sneering at what he called "parlor socialists" (though the phrase was not overwhelmingly new) had a power which made her wish to placate his company of well-fed, speed-loving administrators. When he demanded, "Would you like to associate with nothing but a lot of turkey-necked, horn-spectacled nuts that have adenoids and need a hair-cut, and that spend all their time kicking about 'conditions' and never do a lick of work?" she said, "No, but just the same----" When he asserted, "Even if your cavewoman was right in knocking the whole works, I bet some red-blooded Regular Fellow, some real He-man, found her a nice dry cave, and not any whining criticizing radical," she wriggled her head feebly, between a nod and a shake. His large hands, sensual lips, easy voice supported his self-confidence. He made her feel young and soft--as Kennicott had once made her feel. She had nothing to say when he bent his powerful head and experimented, "My dear, I'm sorry I'm going away from this town. You'd be a darling child to play with. You ARE pretty! Some day in Boston I'll show you how we buy a lunch. Well, hang it, got to be starting back." The only answer to his gospel of beef which she could find, when she was home, was a wail of "But just the same----" She did not see him again before he departed for Washington. His eyes remained. His glances at her lips and hair and shoulders had revealed to her that she was not a wife-and-mother alone, but a girl; that there still were men in the world, as there had been in college days. That admiration led her to study Kennicott, to tear at the shroud of intimacy, to perceive the strangeness of the most familiar.

America enters the Great European War. Raymie enrolls in the army, becomes a first lieutenant of infantry and is sent abroad. The sons of Lymn Cass, Sam Clark and Nat Hicks join the army. Both Dr. Terry Gould and Dr. Mc Ganum join the army and become captains. They are stationed at Iowa and Georgia. Kennicott too is eager to join the army. But the doctor's council decides that one young doctor should remain in town to take care of the town's health. Carol knows his longing and she respects him all the more for it. Cy Bogart keeps bragging that he would enroll in the army even without his mother's permission. The people admire him for beating up a German farmer's son. Only Carol cares to remember the boy when he gets killed in the war while trying to bring his Yankee captain's body back to the lines. The ladies give up their bridge parties and sugar. They help in making bandages for the Red Cross. They talk about Bjornstam's impudence and Dr. Terry Gould's affair with a farmer's daughter four years ago. Carol does her work efficiently but she is unable to bear the way Mrs. Cass and Mrs. Bogart fill the bandages with hatred for the enemies. She mentions this to Vida and Vida admonishes her and makes her cry. Carol wishes that Prussian autocracy should be defeated. She watches with thrill the troops embarking in New York at the motion pictures. Bjornstam tells her that he had bought two more cows. He scorns the war and the soldiers who have gone to fight. He asserts that he is wise enough to know that he knows nothing about the war. Carol feels terrified that people like Bjornstam are capable of taking care of themselves because she will not be able to play 'Lady Bountiful' to them. Percy Bresnahan visits Gopher Prairie. The Haydocks, the Kennicott's, the Elders, Nat Hicks and Julius Flickerbaugh go to the station to receive him. Bresnahan shakes Carol's hand warmly. He decides to walk home. Harry carries his leather bag and Jack Elder carries his over coat. He calls on the Kennicotts to see Hugh. He puts his hand around Carol's waist. Carol does not like the liberty he takes. She does not tell Hugh to thank Uncle Bresnahan when he gives her a toy. He keeps complimenting Carol and tells Kennicott to arrange for a fishing trip. The Kennicotts, the Elders, the Clarks and Bresnahan go fishing to Red Squaw Lake. The men go floating and the women cook lunch. They spend a long time eating and talking. Carol discovers that Bresnahan is indeed very rich and that his love for his friends is genuine. The government had invited him to advise about carburetors. He informs them that Spain would join America in the war. He also tells them that the Germans are loyal to the Kaiser and that he will be back in power. Carol asks him about Russia and he assures her that the Czar would return to power. Carol is sorry to hear that. The others ask him about motor cars, about investment in Texas oil-wells. Carol is conscious of his eyes on her, feels irritated and does not join them in the game of Cribbage. Yet when she sees Juanita leaning out of her window to look at them she feels proud of the attention Bresnahan pays them. Nat Hicks narrates how Bresnahan ticked off Bjornstam. The latter walked up to him and said that he wanted to see the person who is so useful that he would get paid a million dollars. Bresnahan retorted that he was looking for a man to sweep the floor. He would pay 4 dollars a day if Bjornstam would take up the job.

CHAPTER LXVII A TURRET The tomb of a friend.--_Sterne_. He heard a loud noise in the corridor. It was not the time when the gaoler usually came up to his prison. The osprey flew away with a shriek. The door opened, and the venerable cure Chelan threw himself into his arms. He was trembling all over and had his stick in his hands. "Great God! Is it possible, my child--I ought to say monster?" The good old man could not add a single word. Julien was afraid he would fall down. He was obliged to lead him to a chair. The hand of time lay heavy on this man who had once been so active. He seemed to Julien the mere shadow of his former self. When he had regained his breath, he said, "It was only the day before yesterday that I received your letter from Strasbourg with your five hundred francs for the poor of Verrieres. They brought it to me in the mountains at Liveru where I am living in retirement with my nephew Jean. Yesterday I learnt of the catastrophe.... Heavens, is it possible?" And the old man left off weeping. He did not seem to have any ideas left, but added mechanically, "You will have need of your five hundred francs, I will bring them back to you." "I need to see you, my father," exclaimed Julien, really touched. "I have money, anyway." But he could not obtain any coherent answer. From time to time, M. Chelan shed some tears which coursed silently down his cheeks. He then looked at Julien, and was quite dazed when he saw him kiss his hands and carry them to his lips. That face which had once been so vivid, and which had once portrayed with such vigour the most noble emotions was now sunk in a perpetual apathy. A kind of peasant came soon to fetch the old man. "You must not fatigue him," he said to Julien, who understood that he was the nephew. This visit left Julien plunged in a cruel unhappiness which found no vent in tears. Everything seemed to him gloomy and disconsolate. He felt his heart frozen in his bosom. This moment was the cruellest which he had experienced since the crime. He had just seen death and seen it in all its ugliness. All his illusions about greatness of soul and nobility of character had been dissipated like a cloud before the hurricane. This awful plight lasted several hours. After moral poisoning, physical remedies and champagne are necessary. Julien would have considered himself a coward to have resorted to them. "What a fool I am," he exclaimed, towards the end of the horrible day that he had spent entirely in walking up and down his narrow turret. "It's only, if I had been going to die like anybody else, that the sight of that poor old man would have had any right to have thrown me into this awful fit of sadness: but a rapid death in the flower of my age simply puts me beyond the reach of such awful senility." In spite of all his argumentation, Julien felt as touched as any weak-minded person would have been, and consequently felt unhappy as the result of the visit. He no longer had any element of rugged greatness, or any Roman virtue. Death appeared to him at a great height and seemed a less easy proposition. "This is what I shall take for my thermometer," he said to himself. "To-night I am ten degrees below the courage requisite for guillotine-point level. I had that courage this morning. Anyway, what does it matter so long as it comes back to me at the necessary moment?" This thermometer idea amused him and finally managed to distract him. When he woke up the next day he was ashamed of the previous day. "My happiness and peace of mind are at stake." He almost made up his mind to write to the Procureur-General to request that no one should be admitted to see him. "And how about Fouque," he thought? "If he takes it upon himself to come to Besancon, his grief will be immense." It had perhaps been two months since he had given Fouque a thought. "I was a great fool at Strasbourg. My thoughts did not go beyond my coat-collar. He was much engrossed by the memory of Fouque, which left him more and more touched. He walked nervously about. Here I am, clearly twenty degrees below death point.... If this weakness increases, it will be better for me to kill myself. What joy for the abbe Maslon, and the Valenods, if I die like an usher." Fouque arrived. The good, simple man, was distracted by grief. His one idea, so far as he had any at all, was to sell all he possessed in order to bribe the gaoler and secure Julien's escape. He talked to him at length of M. de Lavalette's escape. "You pain me," Julien said to him. "M. de Lavalette was innocent--I am guilty. Though you did not mean to, you made me think of the difference...." "But is it true? What? were you going to sell all you possessed?" said Julien, suddenly becoming mistrustful and observant. Fouque was delighted at seeing his friend answer his obsessing idea, and detailed at length, and within a hundred francs, what he would get for each of his properties. "What a sublime effort for a small country land-owner," thought Julien. "He is ready to sacrifice for me the fruits of all the economies, and all the little semi-swindling tricks which I used to be ashamed of when I saw him practice them." "None of the handsome young people whom I saw in the Hotel de la Mole, and who read Rene, would have any of his ridiculous weaknesses: but, except those who are very young and who have also inherited riches and are ignorant of the value of money, which of all those handsome Parisians would be capable of such a sacrifice?" All Fouque's mistakes in French and all his common gestures seemed to disappear. He threw himself into his arms. Never have the provinces in comparison with Paris received so fine a tribute. Fouque was so delighted with the momentary enthusiasm which he read in his friend's eyes that he took it for consent to the flight. This view of the sublime recalled to Julien all the strength that the apparition of M. Chelan had made him lose. He was still very young; but in my view he was a fine specimen. Instead of his character passing from tenderness to cunning, as is the case with the majority of men, age would have given him that kindness of heart which is easily melted ... but what avail these vain prophecies. The interrogations became more frequent in spite of all the efforts of Julien, who always endeavoured by his answers to shorten the whole matter. "I killed, or at any rate, I wished to occasion death, and I did so with premeditation," he would repeat every day. But the judge was a pedant above everything. Julien's confessions had no effect in curtailing the interrogations. The judge's conceit was wounded. Julien did not know that they had wanted to transfer him into an awful cell, and that it was only, thanks to Fouque's efforts, that he was allowed to keep his pretty room at the top of a hundred and eighty steps. M. the abbe de Frilair was one of the important customers who entrusted Fouque with the purveying of their firewood. The good tradesmen managed to reach the all powerful grand vicar. M. de Frilair informed him, to his unspeakable delight, that he was so touched by Julien's good qualities, and by the services which he had formerly rendered to the seminary, that he intended to recommend him to the judges. Fouque thought he saw a hope of saving his friend, and as he went out, bowing down to the ground, requested M. the grand vicar, to distribute a sum of ten louis in masses to entreat the acquittal of the accused. Fouque was making a strange mistake. M. de Frilair was very far from being a Valenod. He refused, and even tried to make the good peasant understand that he would do better to keep his money. Seeing that it was impossible to be clear without being indiscreet, he advised him to give that sum as alms for the use of the poor prisoners, who, in point of fact, were destitute of everything. "This Julien is a singular person, his action is unintelligible," thought M. de Frilair, "and I ought to find nothing unintelligible. Perhaps it will be possible to make a martyr of him.... In any case, I shall get to the bottom of the matter, and shall perhaps find an opportunity of putting fear into the heart of that madame de Renal who has no respect for us, and at the bottom detests me.... Perhaps I might be able to utilise all this as a means of a brilliant reconciliation with M. de la Mole, who has a weakness for the little seminarist." The settlement of the lawsuit had been signed some weeks previously, and the abbe Pirard had left Besancon after having duly mentioned Julien's mysterious birth, on the very day when the unhappy man tried to assassinate madame de Renal in the church of Verrieres. There was only one disagreeable event between himself and his death which Julien anticipated. He consulted Fouque concerning his idea of writing to M. the Procureur-General asking to be exempt from all visits. This horror at the sight of a father, above all at a moment like this, deeply shocked the honest middle-class heart of the wood merchant. He thought he understood why so many people had a passionate hatred for his friend. He concealed his feelings out of respect for misfortune. "In any case," he answered coldly, "such an order for privacy would not be applied to your father."

Julien's old friend Father Chelan visits him. The man calls him a monster. His old buddy Fouqe comes and tells him he has a good chance of avoiding the death penalty in court, since Madame de Renal survived. Fouqe also offers to sell everything he owns to bribe Julien's way out of prison. Nonetheless, Julien tells every lawyer who visits him that he tried to kill Madame and that it was premeditated. If he lied, he could probably get off. But he won't.

"Cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live? Why, in that instant, did I not extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed? I know not; despair had not yet taken possession of me; my feelings were those of rage and revenge. I could with pleasure have destroyed the cottage and its inhabitants, and have glutted myself with their shrieks and misery. "When night came, I quitted my retreat, and wandered in the wood; and now, no longer restrained by the fear of discovery, I gave vent to my anguish in fearful howlings. I was like a wild beast that had broken the toils; destroying the objects that obstructed me, and ranging through the wood with a stag-like swiftness. Oh! what a miserable night I passed! the cold stars shone in mockery, and the bare trees waved their branches above me: now and then the sweet voice of a bird burst forth amidst the universal stillness. All, save I, were at rest or in enjoyment: I, like the arch fiend, bore a hell within me; and, finding myself unsympathized with, wished to tear up the trees, spread havoc and destruction around me, and then to have sat down and enjoyed the ruin. "But this was a luxury of sensation that could not endure; I became fatigued with excess of bodily exertion, and sank on the damp grass in the sick impotence of despair. There was none among the myriads of men that existed who would pity or assist me; and should I feel kindness towards my enemies? No: from that moment I declared everlasting war against the species, and, more than all, against him who had formed me, and sent me forth to this insupportable misery. "The sun rose; I heard the voices of men, and knew that it was impossible to return to my retreat during that day. Accordingly I hid myself in some thick underwood, determining to devote the ensuing hours to reflection on my situation. "The pleasant sunshine, and the pure air of day, restored me to some degree of tranquillity; and when I considered what had passed at the cottage, I could not help believing that I had been too hasty in my conclusions. I had certainly acted imprudently. It was apparent that my conversation had interested the father in my behalf, and I was a fool in having exposed my person to the horror of his children. I ought to have familiarized the old De Lacy to me, and by degrees have discovered myself to the rest of his family, when they should have been prepared for my approach. But I did not believe my errors to be irretrievable; and, after much consideration, I resolved to return to the cottage, seek the old man, and by my representations win him to my party. "These thoughts calmed me, and in the afternoon I sank into a profound sleep; but the fever of my blood did not allow me to be visited by peaceful dreams. The horrible scene of the preceding day was for ever acting before my eyes; the females were flying, and the enraged Felix tearing me from his father's feet. I awoke exhausted; and, finding that it was already night, I crept forth from my hiding-place, and went in search of food. "When my hunger was appeased, I directed my steps towards the well-known path that conducted to the cottage. All there was at peace. I crept into my hovel, and remained in silent expectation of the accustomed hour when the family arose. That hour past, the sun mounted high in the heavens, but the cottagers did not appear. I trembled violently, apprehending some dreadful misfortune. The inside of the cottage was dark, and I heard no motion; I cannot describe the agony of this suspence. "Presently two countrymen passed by; but, pausing near the cottage, they entered into conversation, using violent gesticulations; but I did not understand what they said, as they spoke the language of the country, which differed from that of my protectors. Soon after, however, Felix approached with another man: I was surprised, as I knew that he had not quitted the cottage that morning, and waited anxiously to discover, from his discourse, the meaning of these unusual appearances. "'Do you consider,' said his companion to him, 'that you will be obliged to pay three months' rent, and to lose the produce of your garden? I do not wish to take any unfair advantage, and I beg therefore that you will take some days to consider of your determination.' "'It is utterly useless,' replied Felix, 'we can never again inhabit your cottage. The life of my father is in the greatest danger, owing to the dreadful circumstance that I have related. My wife and my sister will never recover their horror. I entreat you not to reason with me any more. Take possession of your tenement, and let me fly from this place.' "Felix trembled violently as he said this. He and his companion entered the cottage, in which they remained for a few minutes, and then departed. I never saw any of the family of De Lacy more. "I continued for the remainder of the day in my hovel in a state of utter and stupid despair. My protectors had departed, and had broken the only link that held me to the world. For the first time the feelings of revenge and hatred filled my bosom, and I did not strive to controul them; but, allowing myself to be borne away by the stream, I bent my mind towards injury and death. When I thought of my friends, of the mild voice of De Lacy, the gentle eyes of Agatha, and the exquisite beauty of the Arabian, these thoughts vanished, and a gush of tears somewhat soothed me. But again, when I reflected that they had spurned and deserted me, anger returned, a rage of anger; and, unable to injure any thing human, I turned my fury towards inanimate objects. As night advanced, I placed a variety of combustibles around the cottage; and, after having destroyed every vestige of cultivation in the garden, I waited with forced impatience until the moon had sunk to commence my operations. "As the night advanced, a fierce wind arose from the woods, and quickly dispersed the clouds that had loitered in the heavens: the blast tore along like a mighty avalanche, and produced a kind of insanity in my spirits, that burst all bounds of reason and reflection. I lighted the dry branch of a tree, and danced with fury around the devoted cottage, my eyes still fixed on the western horizon, the edge of which the moon nearly touched. A part of its orb was at length hid, and I waved my brand; it sunk, and, with a loud scream, I fired the straw, and heath, and bushes, which I had collected. The wind fanned the fire, and the cottage was quickly enveloped by the flames, which clung to it, and licked it with their forked and destroying tongues. "As soon as I was convinced that no assistance could save any part of the habitation, I quitted the scene, and sought for refuge in the woods. "And now, with the world before me, whither should I bend my steps? I resolved to fly far from the scene of my misfortunes; but to me, hated and despised, every country must be equally horrible. At length the thought of you crossed my mind. I learned from your papers that you were my father, my creator; and to whom could I apply with more fitness than to him who had given me life? Among the lessons that Felix had bestowed upon Safie geography had not been omitted: I had learned from these the relative situations of the different countries of the earth. You had mentioned Geneva as the name of your native town; and towards this place I resolved to proceed. "But how was I to direct myself? I knew that I must travel in a south-westerly direction to reach my destination; but the sun was my only guide. I did not know the names of the towns that I was to pass through, nor could I ask information from a single human being; but I did not despair. From you only could I hope for succour, although towards you I felt no sentiment but that of hatred. Unfeeling, heartless creator! you had endowed me with perceptions and passions, and then cast me abroad an object for the scorn and horror of mankind. But on you only had I any claim for pity and redress, and from you I determined to seek that justice which I vainly attempted to gain from any other being that wore the human form. "My travels were long, and the sufferings I endured intense. It was late in autumn when I quitted the district where I had so long resided. I travelled only at night, fearful of encountering the visage of a human being. Nature decayed around me, and the sun became heatless; rain and snow poured around me; mighty rivers were frozen; the surface of the earth was hard, and chill, and bare, and I found no shelter. Oh, earth! how often did I imprecate curses on the cause of my being! The mildness of my nature had fled, and all within me was turned to gall and bitterness. The nearer I approached to your habitation, the more deeply did I feel the spirit of revenge enkindled in my heart. Snow fell, and the waters were hardened, but I rested not. A few incidents now and then directed me, and I possessed a map of the country; but I often wandered wide from my path. The agony of my feelings allowed me no respite: no incident occurred from which my rage and misery could not extract its food; but a circumstance that happened when I arrived on the confines of Switzerland, when the sun had recovered its warmth, and the earth again began to look green, confirmed in an especial manner the bitterness and horror of my feelings. "I generally rested during the day, and travelled only when I was secured by night from the view of man. One morning, however, finding that my path lay through a deep wood, I ventured to continue my journey after the sun had risen; the day, which was one of the first of spring, cheered even me by the loveliness of its sunshine and the balminess of the air. I felt emotions of gentleness and pleasure, that had long appeared dead, revive within me. Half surprised by the novelty of these sensations, I allowed myself to be borne away by them; and, forgetting my solitude and deformity, dared to be happy. Soft tears again bedewed my cheeks, and I even raised my humid eyes with thankfulness towards the blessed sun which bestowed such joy upon me. "I continued to wind among the paths of the wood, until I came to its boundary, which was skirted by a deep and rapid river, into which many of the trees bent their branches, now budding with the fresh spring. Here I paused, not exactly knowing what path to pursue, when I heard the sound of voices, that induced me to conceal myself under the shade of a cypress. I was scarcely hid, when a young girl came running towards the spot where I was concealed, laughing as if she ran from some one in sport. She continued her course along the precipitous sides of the river, when suddenly her foot slipt, and she fell into the rapid stream. I rushed from my hiding place, and, with extreme labour from the force of the current, saved her, and dragged her to shore. She was senseless; and I endeavoured, by every means in my power, to restore animation, when I was suddenly interrupted by the approach of a rustic, who was probably the person from whom she had playfully fled. On seeing me, he darted towards me, and, tearing the girl from my arms, hastened towards the deeper parts of the wood. I followed speedily, I hardly knew why; but when the man saw me draw near, he aimed a gun, which he carried, at my body, and fired. I sunk to the ground, and my injurer, with increased swiftness, escaped into the wood. "This was then the reward of my benevolence! I had saved a human being from destruction, and, as a recompence, I now writhed under the miserable pain of a wound, which shattered the flesh and bone. The feelings of kindness and gentleness, which I had entertained but a few moments before, gave place to hellish rage and gnashing of teeth. Inflamed by pain, I vowed eternal hatred and vengeance to all mankind. But the agony of my wound overcame me; my pulses paused, and I fainted. "For some weeks I led a miserable life in the woods, endeavouring to cure the wound which I had received. The ball had entered my shoulder, and I knew not whether it had remained there or passed through; at any rate I had no means of extracting it. My sufferings were augmented also by the oppressive sense of the injustice and ingratitude of their infliction. My daily vows rose for revenge--a deep and deadly revenge, such as would alone compensate for the outrages and anguish I had endured. "After some weeks my wound healed, and I continued my journey. The labours I endured were no longer to be alleviated by the bright sun or gentle breezes of spring; all joy was but a mockery, which insulted my desolate state, and made me feel more painfully that I was not made for the enjoyment of pleasure. "But my toils now drew near a close and, two months from this time, I reached the environs of Geneva. "It was evening when I arrived, and I retired to a hiding-place among the fields that surround it, to meditate in what manner I should apply to you. I was oppressed by fatigue and hunger, and far too unhappy to enjoy the gentle breezes of evening, or the prospect of the sun setting behind the stupendous mountains of Jura. "At this time a slight sleep relieved me from the pain of reflection, which was disturbed by the approach of a beautiful child, who came running into the recess I had chosen with all the sportiveness of infancy. Suddenly, as I gazed on him, an idea seized me, that this little creature was unprejudiced, and had lived too short a time to have imbibed a horror of deformity. If, therefore, I could seize him, and educate him as my companion and friend, I should not be so desolate in this peopled earth. "Urged by this impulse, I seized on the boy as he passed, and drew him towards me. As soon as he beheld my form, he placed his hands before his eyes, and uttered a shrill scream: I drew his hand forcibly from his face, and said, 'Child, what is the meaning of this? I do not intend to hurt you; listen to me.' "He struggled violently; 'Let me go,' he cried; 'monster! ugly wretch! you wish to eat me, and tear me to pieces--You are an ogre--Let me go, or I will tell my papa.' "'Boy, you will never see your father again; you must come with me.' "'Hideous monster! let me go; My papa is a Syndic--he is M. Frankenstein--he would punish you. You dare not keep me.' "'Frankenstein! you belong then to my enemy--to him towards whom I have sworn eternal revenge; you shall be my first victim.' "The child still struggled, and loaded me with epithets which carried despair to my heart: I grasped his throat to silence him, and in a moment he lay dead at my feet. "I gazed on my victim, and my heart swelled with exultation and hellish triumph: clapping my hands, I exclaimed, 'I, too, can create desolation; my enemy is not impregnable; this death will carry despair to him, and a thousand other miseries shall torment and destroy him.' "As I fixed my eyes on the child, I saw something glittering on his breast. I took it; it was a portrait of a most lovely woman. In spite of my malignity, it softened and attracted me. For a few moments I gazed with delight on her dark eyes, fringed by deep lashes, and her lovely lips; but presently my rage returned: I remembered that I was for ever deprived of the delights that such beautiful creatures could bestow; and that she whose resemblance I contemplated would, in regarding me, have changed that air of divine benignity to one expressive of disgust and affright. "Can you wonder that such thoughts transported me with rage? I only wonder that at that moment, instead of venting my sensations in exclamations and agony, I did not rush among mankind, and perish in the attempt to destroy them. "While I was overcome by these feelings, I left the spot where I had committed the murder, and was seeking a more secluded hiding-place, when I perceived a woman passing near me. She was young, not indeed so beautiful as her whose portrait I held, but of an agreeable aspect, and blooming in the loveliness of youth and health. Here, I thought, is one of those whose smiles are bestowed on all but me; she shall not escape: thanks to the lessons of Felix, and the sanguinary laws of man, I have learned how to work mischief. I approached her unperceived, and placed the portrait securely in one of the folds of her dress. "For some days I haunted the spot where these scenes had taken place; sometimes wishing to see you, sometimes resolved to quit the world and its miseries for ever. At length I wandered towards these mountains, and have ranged through their immense recesses, consumed by a burning passion which you alone can gratify. We may not part until you have promised to comply with my requisition. I am alone, and miserable; man will not associate with me; but one as deformed and horrible as myself would not deny herself to me. My companion must be of the same species, and have the same defects. This being you must create."

The creature curses his creator for giving him life. Only his great rage, and his consuming desire for revenge, keeps him from taking his own life: he longs to "spread havoc and destruction around , and then to and enjoy the ruin. He falls upon the ground in utter despair and, at that moment, declares war upon all mankind for its callousness and cruelty. He vows to exact revenge upon his creator the man who "sent forth into this insupportable misery. With the arrival of morning, the creature allows himself to hope that all is not lost: perhaps he can still endear himself to the elder De Lacey, and thereby make peace with his children. When he returns to the cottage, however, he finds it empty. He waits, tortured by anxiety, until Felix finally appears in the company of a strange man. From their conversation, he learns that the De Laceys have determined to leave the cottage out of fear that he will return. The creature cannot believe that his protectors, his only connection to humanity, have abandoned him. He spends the remains of the day in his hovel, by turns weeping and feverishly contemplating the revenge he will take upon mankind. By morning, he is overcome with fury, and burns down the cottage in order to give vent to his anger. The creature decides to travel to Geneva in order to revenge himself upon his creator. The journey is long and arduous, and the weather has grown bitterly cold. Though he primarily travels by night, in order to avoid discovery, he permits himself to travel during daylight on one of the first days of spring. The new warmth soothes him, and the sunlight revives some of his former gentleness. For a few precious moments, the creature "dares to be happy. At length, a young girl comes running through the forest, and he hides himself beneath a cypress tree. As he watches, she suddenly stumbles and falls into the rapidly moving water; the creature, without thinking, leaps in and rescues her from certain death. As he is attempting to revive her, a peasant snatches the girl away from him, and shoots the creature when he attempts to follow. The creature bitterly contemplates this "reward for benevolence," and is seized with a new, even greater hatred of humanity. Shortly thereafter, he arrives in Geneva. Once again, a child runs past his hiding-place in the deep woods. The creature is much taken with the beautiful child, and speculates that he is still too young to feel hatred for his deformity. He seizes the boy's arm as he runs past; the child screams in terror and struggles to get away. He calls the creature a "hideous monster," and says that his father, M. Frankenstein, will punish him. Upon hearing the name of Frankenstein, the creature, enraged, strangles him. He feels a "hellish triumph" at the boy's death, and reflects that his despised creator is not, after all, invulnerable. The creature takes the necklace, as he finds the picture of Caroline exquisitely beautiful. At the same time, the image fills him with redoubled fury, for no one will ever look upon him with the divine kindness he sees in Caroline's eyes. Seeking a hiding place, he enters a nearby barn and finds Justine sleeping within. Her beauty, too, both transports him to ecstasy and fills him with bitter despair, since he will never know the pleasures of love. Suddenly terrified that she will awake and denounce him as a murderer, he places the portrait of Caroline in Justine's dress: she, not he, will suffer punishment for the murder. In his madness, the creature thinks that it is the inaccessible beauty of people like Justine that caused him to kill William; it is thus only fair that she should atone for the crime. At the end of his tale, the creature commands Frankenstein to make him a companion "of the same species and of the same defects," so that he will no longer be so miserably alone.

THE International Organization of Boosters' Clubs has become a world-force for optimism, manly pleasantry, and good business. Chapters are to be found now in thirty countries. Nine hundred and twenty of the thousand chapters, however, are in the United States. None of these is more ardent than the Zenith Boosters' Club. The second March lunch of the Zenith Boosters was the most important of the year, as it was to be followed by the annual election of officers. There was agitation abroad. The lunch was held in the ballroom of the O'Hearn House. As each of the four hundred Boosters entered he took from a wall-board a huge celluloid button announcing his name, his nick name, and his business. There was a fine of ten cents for calling a Fellow Booster by anything but his nickname at a lunch, and as Babbitt jovially checked his hat the air was radiant with shouts of "Hello, Chet!" and "How're you, Shorty!" and "Top o' the mornin', Mac!" They sat at friendly tables for eight, choosing places by lot. Babbitt was with Albert Boos the merchant tailor, Hector Seybolt of the Little Sweetheart Condensed Milk Company, Emil Wengert the jeweler, Professor Pumphrey of the Riteway Business College, Dr. Walter Gorbutt, Roy Teegarten the photographer, and Ben Berkey the photo-engraver. One of the merits of the Boosters' Club was that only two persons from each department of business were permitted to join, so that you at once encountered the Ideals of other occupations, and realized the metaphysical oneness of all occupations--plumbing and portrait-painting, medicine and the manufacture of chewing-gum. Babbitt's table was particularly happy to-day, because Professor Pumphrey had just had a birthday, and was therefore open to teasing. "Let's pump Pump about how old he is!" said Emil Wengert. "No, let's paddle him with a dancing-pump!" said Ben Berkey. But it was Babbitt who had the applause, with "Don't talk about pumps to that guy! The only pump he knows is a bottle! Honest, they tell me he's starting a class in home-brewing at the ole college!" At each place was the Boosters' Club booklet, listing the members. Though the object of the club was good-fellowship, yet they never lost sight of the importance of doing a little more business. After each name was the member's occupation. There were scores of advertisements in the booklet, and on one page the admonition: "There's no rule that you have to trade with your Fellow Boosters, but get wise, boy--what's the use of letting all this good money get outside of our happy fambly?" And at each place, to-day, there was a present; a card printed in artistic red and black: SERVICE AND BOOSTERISM Service finds its finest opportunity and development only in its broadest and deepest application and the consideration of its perpetual action upon reaction. I believe the highest type of Service, like the most progressive tenets of ethics, senses unceasingly and is motived by active adherence and loyalty to that which is the essential principle of Boosterism--Good Citizenship in all its factors and aspects. DAD PETERSEN. Compliments of Dadbury Petersen Advertising Corp. "Ads, not Fads, at Dad's" The Boosters all read Mr. Peterson's aphorism and said they understood it perfectly. The meeting opened with the regular weekly "stunts." Retiring President Vergil Gunch was in the chair, his stiff hair like a hedge, his voice like a brazen gong of festival. Members who had brought guests introduced them publicly. "This tall red-headed piece of misinformation is the sporting editor of the Press," said Willis Ijams; and H. H. Hazen, the druggist, chanted, "Boys, when you're on a long motor tour and finally get to a romantic spot or scene and draw up and remark to the wife, 'This is certainly a romantic place,' it sends a glow right up and down your vertebrae. Well, my guest to-day is from such a place, Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in the beautiful Southland, with memories of good old General Robert E. Lee and of that brave soul, John Brown who, like every good Booster, goes marching on--" There were two especially distinguished guests: the leading man of the "Bird of Paradise" company, playing this week at the Dodsworth Theater, and the mayor of Zenith, the Hon. Lucas Prout. Vergil Gunch thundered, "When we manage to grab this celebrated Thespian off his lovely aggregation of beautiful actresses--and I got to admit I butted right into his dressing-room and told him how the Boosters appreciated the high-class artistic performance he's giving us--and don't forget that the treasurer of the Dodsworth is a Booster and will appreciate our patronage--and when on top of that we yank Hizzonor out of his multifarious duties at City Hall, then I feel we've done ourselves proud, and Mr. Prout will now say a few words about the problems and duties--" By rising vote the Boosters decided which was the handsomest and which the ugliest guest, and to each of them was given a bunch of carnations, donated, President Gunch noted, by Brother Booster H. G. Yeager, the Jennifer Avenue florist. Each week, in rotation, four Boosters were privileged to obtain the pleasures of generosity and of publicity by donating goods or services to four fellow-members, chosen by lot. There was laughter, this week, when it was announced that one of the contributors was Barnabas Joy, the undertaker. Everybody whispered, "I can think of a coupla good guys to be buried if his donation is a free funeral!" Through all these diversions the Boosters were lunching on chicken croquettes, peas, fried potatoes, coffee, apple pie, and American cheese. Gunch did not lump the speeches. Presently he called on the visiting secretary of the Zenith Rotary Club, a rival organization. The secretary had the distinction of possessing State Motor Car License Number 5. The Rotary secretary laughingly admitted that wherever he drove in the state so low a number created a sensation, and "though it was pretty nice to have the honor, yet traffic cops remembered it only too darn well, and sometimes he didn't know but what he'd almost as soon have just plain B56,876 or something like that. Only let any doggone Booster try to get Number 5 away from a live Rotarian next year, and watch the fur fly! And if they'd permit him, he'd wind up by calling for a cheer for the Boosters and Rotarians and the Kiwanis all together!" Babbitt sighed to Professor Pumphrey, "Be pretty nice to have as low a number as that! Everybody 'd say, 'He must be an important guy!' Wonder how he got it? I'll bet he wined and dined the superintendent of the Motor License Bureau to a fare-you-well!" Then Chum Frink addressed them: "Some of you may feel that it's out of place here to talk on a strictly highbrow and artistic subject, but I want to come out flatfooted and ask you boys to O.K. the proposition of a Symphony Orchestra for Zenith. Now, where a lot of you make your mistake is in assuming that if you don't like classical music and all that junk, you ought to oppose it. Now, I want to confess that, though I'm a literary guy by profession, I don't care a rap for all this long-haired music. I'd rather listen to a good jazz band any time than to some piece by Beethoven that hasn't any more tune to it than a bunch of fighting cats, and you couldn't whistle it to save your life! But that isn't the point. Culture has become as necessary an adornment and advertisement for a city to-day as pavements or bank-clearances. It's Culture, in theaters and art-galleries and so on, that brings thousands of visitors to New York every year and, to be frank, for all our splendid attainments we haven't yet got the Culture of a New York or Chicago or Boston--or at least we don't get the credit for it. The thing to do then, as a live bunch of go-getters, is to CAPITALIZE CULTURE; to go right out and grab it. "Pictures and books are fine for those that have the time to study 'em, but they don't shoot out on the road and holler 'This is what little old Zenith can put up in the way of Culture.' That's precisely what a Symphony Orchestra does do. Look at the credit Minneapolis and Cincinnati get. An orchestra with first-class musickers and a swell conductor--and I believe we ought to do the thing up brown and get one of the highest-paid conductors on the market, providing he ain't a Hun--it goes right into Beantown and New York and Washington; it plays at the best theaters to the most cultured and moneyed people; it gives such class-advertising as a town can get in no other way; and the guy who is so short-sighted as to crab this orchestra proposition is passing up the chance to impress the glorious name of Zenith on some big New York millionaire that might-that might establish a branch factory here! "I could also go into the fact that for our daughters who show an interest in highbrow music and may want to teach it, having an A1 local organization is of great benefit, but let's keep this on a practical basis, and I call on you good brothers to whoop it up for Culture and a World-beating Symphony Orchestra!" They applauded. To a rustle of excitement President Gunch proclaimed, "Gentlemen, we will now proceed to the annual election of officers." For each of the six offices, three candidates had been chosen by a committee. The second name among the candidates for vice-president was Babbitt's. He was surprised. He looked self-conscious. His heart pounded. He was still more agitated when the ballots were counted and Gunch said, "It's a pleasure to announce that Georgie Babbitt will be the next assistant gavel-wielder. I know of no man who stands more stanchly for common sense and enterprise than good old George. Come on, let's give him our best long yell!" As they adjourned, a hundred men crushed in to slap his back. He had never known a higher moment. He drove away in a blur of wonder. He lunged into his office, chuckling to Miss McGoun, "Well, I guess you better congratulate your boss! Been elected vice-president of the Boosters!" He was disappointed. She answered only, "Yes--Oh, Mrs. Babbitt's been trying to get you on the 'phone." But the new salesman, Fritz Weilinger, said, "By golly, chief, say, that's great, that's perfectly great! I'm tickled to death! Congratulations!" Babbitt called the house, and crowed to his wife, "Heard you were trying to get me, Myra. Say, you got to hand it to little Georgie, this time! Better talk careful! You are now addressing the vice-president of the Boosters' Club!" "Oh, Georgie--" "Pretty nice, huh? Willis Ijams is the new president, but when he's away, little ole Georgie takes the gavel and whoops 'em up and introduces the speakers--no matter if they're the governor himself--and--" "George! Listen!" "--It puts him in solid with big men like Doc Dilling and--" "George! Paul Riesling--" "Yes, sure, I'll 'phone Paul and let him know about it right away." "Georgie! LISTEN! Paul's in jail. He shot his wife, he shot Zilla, this noon. She may not live."

We're back at the Zenith Boosters' Club, where Babbitt enjoys an afternoon palling around with his buddies. They tease a fellow Booster about getting older, since it's the man's birthday. They deal with some of the afternoon's business, such as voting which man is the room is the handsomest and which is the ugliest. Then Chum Frink gets up and talks about why they should support a local symphony orchestra, even though classical music is too high-brow for many of them. Before the lunch is over, Babbitt is surprised to find out that he's been elected the new Vice President of the Boosters' Club. Everyone pats him on the back and shakes his hand. And he's feeling as good as a pig in... let's say mud. Babbitt's happiness quickly disappears, though, when he calls home to tell Myra. Before he can explain his good fortune, she informs him that his friend Paul has shot his wife, Zilla.

The sun was up so high when I waked that I judged it was after eight o'clock. I laid there in the grass and the cool shade thinking about things, and feeling rested and ruther comfortable and satisfied. I could see the sun out at one or two holes, but mostly it was big trees all about, and gloomy in there amongst them. There was freckled places on the ground where the light sifted down through the leaves, and the freckled places swapped about a little, showing there was a little breeze up there. A couple of squirrels set on a limb and jabbered at me very friendly. I was powerful lazy and comfortable--didn't want to get up and cook breakfast. Well, I was dozing off again when I thinks I hears a deep sound of "boom!" away up the river. I rouses up, and rests on my elbow and listens; pretty soon I hears it again. I hopped up, and went and looked out at a hole in the leaves, and I see a bunch of smoke laying on the water a long ways up--about abreast the ferry. And there was the ferryboat full of people floating along down. I knowed what was the matter now. "Boom!" I see the white smoke squirt out of the ferryboat's side. You see, they was firing cannon over the water, trying to make my carcass come to the top. I was pretty hungry, but it warn't going to do for me to start a fire, because they might see the smoke. So I set there and watched the cannon-smoke and listened to the boom. The river was a mile wide there, and it always looks pretty on a summer morning--so I was having a good enough time seeing them hunt for my remainders if I only had a bite to eat. Well, then I happened to think how they always put quicksilver in loaves of bread and float them off, because they always go right to the drownded carcass and stop there. So, says I, I'll keep a lookout, and if any of them's floating around after me I'll give them a show. I changed to the Illinois edge of the island to see what luck I could have, and I warn't disappointed. A big double loaf come along, and I most got it with a long stick, but my foot slipped and she floated out further. Of course I was where the current set in the closest to the shore--I knowed enough for that. But by and by along comes another one, and this time I won. I took out the plug and shook out the little dab of quicksilver, and set my teeth in. It was "baker's bread"--what the quality eat; none of your low-down corn-pone. I got a good place amongst the leaves, and set there on a log, munching the bread and watching the ferry-boat, and very well satisfied. And then something struck me. I says, now I reckon the widow or the parson or somebody prayed that this bread would find me, and here it has gone and done it. So there ain't no doubt but there is something in that thing--that is, there's something in it when a body like the widow or the parson prays, but it don't work for me, and I reckon it don't work for only just the right kind. I lit a pipe and had a good long smoke, and went on watching. The ferryboat was floating with the current, and I allowed I'd have a chance to see who was aboard when she come along, because she would come in close, where the bread did. When she'd got pretty well along down towards me, I put out my pipe and went to where I fished out the bread, and laid down behind a log on the bank in a little open place. Where the log forked I could peep through. By and by she come along, and she drifted in so close that they could 'a' run out a plank and walked ashore. Most everybody was on the boat. Pap, and Judge Thatcher, and Bessie Thatcher, and Joe Harper, and Tom Sawyer, and his old Aunt Polly, and Sid and Mary, and plenty more. Everybody was talking about the murder, but the captain broke in and says: "Look sharp, now; the current sets in the closest here, and maybe he's washed ashore and got tangled amongst the brush at the water's edge. I hope so, anyway." I didn't hope so. They all crowded up and leaned over the rails, nearly in my face, and kept still, watching with all their might. I could see them first-rate, but they couldn't see me. Then the captain sung out: "Stand away!" and the cannon let off such a blast right before me that it made me deef with the noise and pretty near blind with the smoke, and I judged I was gone. If they'd 'a' had some bullets in, I reckon they'd 'a' got the corpse they was after. Well, I see I warn't hurt, thanks to goodness. The boat floated on and went out of sight around the shoulder of the island. I could hear the booming now and then, further and further off, and by and by, after an hour, I didn't hear it no more. The island was three mile long. I judged they had got to the foot, and was giving it up. But they didn't yet awhile. They turned around the foot of the island and started up the channel on the Missouri side, under steam, and booming once in a while as they went. I crossed over to that side and watched them. When they got abreast the head of the island they quit shooting and dropped over to the Missouri shore and went home to the town. I knowed I was all right now. Nobody else would come a-hunting after me. I got my traps out of the canoe and made me a nice camp in the thick woods. I made a kind of a tent out of my blankets to put my things under so the rain couldn't get at them. I catched a catfish and haggled him open with my saw, and towards sundown I started my camp-fire and had supper. Then I set out a line to catch some fish for breakfast. When it was dark I set by my camp-fire smoking, and feeling pretty well satisfied; but by and by it got sort of lonesome, and so I went and set on the bank and listened to the current swashing along, and counted the stars and drift-logs and rafts that come down, and then went to bed; there ain't no better way to put in time when you are lonesome; you can't stay so, you soon get over it. And so for three days and nights. No difference--just the same thing. But the next day I went exploring around down through the island. I was boss of it; it all belonged to me, so to say, and I wanted to know all about it; but mainly I wanted to put in the time. I found plenty strawberries, ripe and prime; and green summer grapes, and green razberries; and the green blackberries was just beginning to show. They would all come handy by and by, I judged. Well, I went fooling along in the deep woods till I judged I warn't far from the foot of the island. I had my gun along, but I hadn't shot nothing; it was for protection; thought I would kill some game nigh home. About this time I mighty near stepped on a good-sized snake, and it went sliding off through the grass and flowers, and I after it, trying to get a shot at it. I clipped along, and all of a sudden I bounded right on to the ashes of a camp-fire that was still smoking. My heart jumped up amongst my lungs. I never waited for to look further, but uncocked my gun and went sneaking back on my tiptoes as fast as ever I could. Every now and then I stopped a second amongst the thick leaves and listened, but my breath come so hard I couldn't hear nothing else. I slunk along another piece further, then listened again; and so on, and so on. If I see a stump, I took it for a man; if I trod on a stick and broke it, it made me feel like a person had cut one of my breaths in two and I only got half, and the short half, too. When I got to camp I warn't feeling very brash, there warn't much sand in my craw; but I says, this ain't no time to be fooling around. So I got all my traps into my canoe again so as to have them out of sight, and I put out the fire and scattered the ashes around to look like an old last-year's camp, and then clumb a tree. I reckon I was up in the tree two hours; but I didn't see nothing, I didn't hear nothing--I only _thought_ I heard and seen as much as a thousand things. Well, I couldn't stay up there forever; so at last I got down, but I kept in the thick woods and on the lookout all the time. All I could get to eat was berries and what was left over from breakfast. By the time it was night I was pretty hungry. So when it was good and dark I slid out from shore before moonrise and paddled over to the Illinois bank--about a quarter of a mile. I went out in the woods and cooked a supper, and I had about made up my mind I would stay there all night when I hear a _plunkety-plunk_, _plunkety-plunk_, and says to myself, horses coming; and next I hear people's voices. I got everything into the canoe as quick as I could, and then went creeping through the woods to see what I could find out. I hadn't got far when I hear a man say: "We better camp here if we can find a good place; the horses is about beat out. Let's look around." I didn't wait, but shoved out and paddled away easy. I tied up in the old place, and reckoned I would sleep in the canoe. I didn't sleep much. I couldn't, somehow, for thinking. And every time I waked up I thought somebody had me by the neck. So the sleep didn't do me no good. By and by I says to myself, I can't live this way; I'm a-going to find out who it is that's here on the island with me; I'll find it out or bust. Well, I felt better right off. So I took my paddle and slid out from shore just a step or two, and then let the canoe drop along down amongst the shadows. The moon was shining, and outside of the shadows it made it most as light as day. I poked along well on to an hour, everything still as rocks and sound asleep. Well, by this time I was most down to the foot of the island. A little ripply, cool breeze begun to blow, and that was as good as saying the night was about done. I give her a turn with the paddle and brung her nose to shore; then I got my gun and slipped out and into the edge of the woods. I sat down there on a log, and looked out through the leaves. I see the moon go off watch, and the darkness begin to blanket the river. But in a little while I see a pale streak over the treetops, and knowed the day was coming. So I took my gun and slipped off towards where I had run across that camp-fire, stopping every minute or two to listen. But I hadn't no luck somehow; I couldn't seem to find the place. But by and by, sure enough, I catched a glimpse of fire away through the trees. I went for it, cautious and slow. By and by I was close enough to have a look, and there laid a man on the ground. It most give me the fantods. He had a blanket around his head, and his head was nearly in the fire. I set there behind a clump of bushes in about six foot of him, and kept my eyes on him steady. It was getting gray daylight now. Pretty soon he gapped and stretched himself and hove off the blanket, and it was Miss Watson's Jim! I bet I was glad to see him. I says: "Hello, Jim!" and skipped out. He bounced up and stared at me wild. Then he drops down on his knees, and puts his hands together and says: "Doan' hurt me--don't! I hain't ever done no harm to a ghos'. I alwuz liked dead people, en done all I could for 'em. You go en git in de river ag'in, whah you b'longs, en doan' do nuffn to Ole Jim, 'at 'uz alwuz yo' fren'." Well, I warn't long making him understand I warn't dead. I was ever so glad to see Jim. I warn't lonesome now. I told him I warn't afraid of _him_ telling the people where I was. I talked along, but he only set there and looked at me; never said nothing. Then I says: "It's good daylight. Le's get breakfast. Make up your camp-fire good." "What's de use er makin' up de camp-fire to cook strawbries en sich truck? But you got a gun, hain't you? Den we kin git sumfn better den strawbries." "Strawberries and such truck," I says. "Is that what you live on?" "I couldn' git nuffn else," he says. "Why, how long you been on the island, Jim?" "I come heah de night arter you's killed." "What, all that time?" "Yes-indeedy." "And ain't you had nothing but that kind of rubbage to eat?" "No, sah--nuffn else." "Well, you must be most starved, ain't you?" "I reck'n I could eat a hoss. I think I could. How long you ben on de islan'?" "Since the night I got killed." "No! W'y, what has you lived on? But you got a gun. Oh, yes, you got a gun. Dat's good. Now you kill sumfn en I'll make up de fire." So we went over to where the canoe was, and while he built a fire in a grassy open place amongst the trees, I fetched meal and bacon and coffee, and coffee-pot and frying-pan, and sugar and tin cups, and the nigger was set back considerable, because he reckoned it was all done with witchcraft. I catched a good big catfish, too, and Jim cleaned him with his knife, and fried him. When breakfast was ready we lolled on the grass and eat it smoking hot. Jim laid it in with all his might, for he was most about starved. Then when we had got pretty well stuffed, we laid off and lazied. By and by Jim says: "But looky here, Huck, who wuz it dat 'uz killed in dat shanty ef it warn't you?" Then I told him the whole thing, and he said it was smart. He said Tom Sawyer couldn't get up no better plan than what I had. Then I says: "How do you come to be here, Jim, and how'd you get here?" He looked pretty uneasy, and didn't say nothing for a minute. Then he says: "Maybe I better not tell." "Why, Jim?" "Well, dey's reasons. But you wouldn' tell on me ef I 'uz to tell you, would you, Huck?" "Blamed if I would, Jim." "Well, I b'lieve you, Huck. I--I _run off_." "Jim!" "But mind, you said you wouldn' tell--you know you said you wouldn' tell, Huck." "Well, I did. I said I wouldn't, and I'll stick to it. Honest _injun_, I will. People would call me a low-down Abolitionist and despise me for keeping mum--but that don't make no difference. I ain't a-going to tell, and I ain't a-going back there, anyways. So, now, le's know all about it." "Well, you see, it 'uz dis way. Ole missus--dat's Miss Watson--she pecks on me all de time, en treats me pooty rough, but she awluz said she wouldn' sell me down to Orleans. But I noticed dey wuz a nigger trader roun' de place considable lately, en I begin to git oneasy. Well, one night I creeps to de do' pooty late, en de do' warn't quite shet, en I hear old missus tell de widder she gwyne to sell me down to Orleans, but she didn' want to, but she could git eight hund'd dollars for me, en it 'uz sich a big stack o' money she couldn' resis'. De widder she try to git her to say she wouldn't do it, but I never waited to hear de res'. I lit out mighty quick, I tell you. "I tuck out en shin down de hill, en 'spec to steal a skift 'long de sho' som'ers 'bove de town, but dey wuz people a-stirring yit, so I hid in de ole tumbledown cooper shop on de bank to wait for everybody to go 'way. Well, I wuz dah all night. Dey wuz somebody roun' all de time. 'Long 'bout six in de mawnin' skifts begin to go by, en 'bout eight er nine every skift dat went 'long wuz talkin' 'bout how yo' pap come over to de town en say you's killed. Dese las' skifts wuz full o' ladies en genlmen a-goin' over for to see de place. Sometimes dey'd pull up at de sho' en take a res' b'fo' dey started acrost, so by de talk I got to know all 'bout de killin'. I 'uz powerful sorry you's killed, Huck, but I ain't no mo' now. "I laid dah under de shavin's all day. I 'uz hungry, but I warn't afeard; bekase I knowed ole missus en de widder wuz goin' to start to de camp-meet'n' right arter breakfas' en be gone all day, en dey knows I goes off wid de cattle 'bout daylight, so dey wouldn' 'spec to see me roun' de place, en so dey wouldn' miss me tell arter dark in de evenin'. De yuther servants wouldn' miss me, kase dey'd shin out en take holiday soon as de ole folks 'uz out'n de way. "Well, when it come dark I tuck out up de river road, en went 'bout two mile er more to whah dey warn't no houses. I'd made up my mine 'bout what I's a-gwyne to do. You see, ef I kep' on tryin' to git away afoot, de dogs 'ud track me; ef I stole a skift to cross over, dey'd miss dat skift, you see, en dey'd know 'bout whah I'd lan' on de yuther side, en whah to pick up my track. So I says, a raff is what I's arter; it doan' _make_ no track. "I see a light a-comin' roun' de p'int bymeby, so I wade' in en shove' a log ahead o' me en swum more'n half-way acrost de river, en got in 'mongst de drift-wood, en kep' my head down low, en kinder swum agin de current tell de raff come along. Den I swum to de stern uv it en tuck a-holt. It clouded up en 'uz pooty dark for a little while. So I clumb up en laid down on de planks. De men 'uz all 'way yonder in de middle, whah de lantern wuz. De river wuz a-risin', en dey wuz a good current; so I reck'n'd 'at by fo' in de mawnin' I'd be twenty-five mile down de river, en den I'd slip in jis b'fo' daylight en swim asho', en take to de woods on de Illinois side. "But I didn' have no luck. When we 'uz mos' down to de head er de islan' a man begin to come aft wid de lantern. I see it warn't no use fer to wait, so I slid overboard en struck out fer de islan'. Well, I had a notion I could lan' mos' anywhers, but I couldn't--bank too bluff. I uz mos' to de foot er de islan' b'fo' I foun' a good place. I went into de woods en jedged I wouldn' fool wid raffs no mo', long as dey move de lantern roun' so. I had my pipe en a plug er dog-leg en some matches in my cap, en dey warn't wet, so I 'uz all right." "And so you ain't had no meat nor bread to eat all this time? Why didn't you get mud-turkles?" "How you gwyne to git 'm? You can't slip up on um en grab um; en how's a body gwyne to hit um wid a rock? How could a body do it in de night? En I warn't gwyne to show mysef on de bank in de daytime." "Well, that's so. You've had to keep in the woods all the time, of course. Did you hear 'em shooting the cannon?" "Oh, yes. I knowed dey was arter you. I see um go by heah--watched um thoo de bushes." Some young birds come along, flying a yard or two at a time and lighting. Jim said it was a sign it was going to rain. He said it was a sign when young chickens flew that way, and so he reckoned it was the same way when young birds done it. I was going to catch some of them, but Jim wouldn't let me. He said it was death. He said his father laid mighty sick once, and some of them catched a bird, and his old granny said his father would die, and he did. And Jim said you mustn't count the things you are going to cook for dinner, because that would bring bad luck. The same if you shook the tablecloth after sundown. And he said if a man owned a beehive and that man died, the bees must be told about it before sun-up next morning, or else the bees would all weaken down and quit work and die. Jim said bees wouldn't sting idiots; but I didn't believe that, because I had tried them lots of times myself, and they wouldn't sting me. I had heard about some of these things before, but not all of them. Jim knowed all kinds of signs. He said he knowed most everything. I said it looked to me like all the signs was about bad luck, and so I asked him if there warn't any good-luck signs. He says: "Mighty few--an' _dey_ ain't no use to a body. What you want to know when good luck's a-comin' for? Want to keep it off?" And he said: "Ef you's got hairy arms en a hairy breas', it's a sign dat you's a-gwyne to be rich. Well, dey's some use in a sign like dat, 'kase it's so fur ahead. You see, maybe you's got to be po' a long time fust, en so you might git discourage' en kill yo'sef 'f you didn' know by de sign dat you gwyne to be rich bymeby." "Have you got hairy arms and a hairy breast, Jim?" "What's de use to ax dat question? Don't you see I has?" "Well, are you rich?" "No, but I ben rich wunst, and gwyne to be rich ag'in. Wunst I had foteen dollars, but I tuck to specalat'n', en got busted out." "What did you speculate in, Jim?" "Well, fust I tackled stock." "What kind of stock?" "Why, live stock--cattle, you know. I put ten dollars in a cow. But I ain' gwyne to resk no mo' money in stock. De cow up 'n' died on my han's." "So you lost the ten dollars." "No, I didn't lose it all. I on'y los' 'bout nine of it. I sole de hide en taller for a dollar en ten cents." "You had five dollars and ten cents left. Did you speculate any more?" "Yes. You know that one-laigged nigger dat b'longs to old Misto Bradish? Well, he sot up a bank, en say anybody dat put in a dollar would git fo' dollars mo' at de en' er de year. Well, all de niggers went in, but dey didn't have much. I wuz de on'y one dat had much. So I stuck out for mo' dan fo' dollars, en I said 'f I didn' git it I'd start a bank mysef. Well, o' course dat nigger want' to keep me out er de business, bekase he says dey warn't business 'nough for two banks, so he say I could put in my five dollars en he pay me thirty-five at de en' er de year. "So I done it. Den I reck'n'd I'd inves' de thirty-five dollars right off en keep things a-movin'. Dey wuz a nigger name' Bob, dat had ketched a wood-flat, en his marster didn' know it; en I bought it off'n him en told him to take de thirty-five dollars when de en' er de year come; but somebody stole de wood-flat dat night, en nex' day de one-laigged nigger say de bank's busted. So dey didn' none uv us git no money." "What did you do with the ten cents, Jim?" "Well, I 'uz gwyne to spen' it, but I had a dream, en de dream tole me to give it to a nigger name' Balum--Balum's Ass dey call him for short; he's one er dem chuckleheads, you know. But he's lucky, dey say, en I see I warn't lucky. De dream say let Balum inves' de ten cents en he'd make a raise for me. Well, Balum he tuck de money, en when he wuz in church he hear de preacher say dat whoever give to de po' len' to de Lord, en boun' to git his money back a hund'd times. So Balum he tuck en give de ten cents to de po', en laid low to see what wuz gwyne to come of it." "Well, what did come of it, Jim?" "Nuffn never come of it. I couldn' manage to k'leck dat money no way; en Balum he couldn'. I ain' gwyne to len' no mo' money 'dout I see de security. Boun' to git yo' money back a hund'd times, de preacher says! Ef I could git de ten _cents_ back, I'd call it squah, en be glad er de chanst." "Well, it's all right anyway, Jim, long as you're going to be rich again some time or other." "Yes; en I's rich now, come to look at it. I owns mysef, en I's wuth eight hund'd dollars. I wisht I had de money, I wouldn' want no mo'."

Huck wakes up on Jackson's Island to hear a ferryboat firing a cannon. He knows that this will bring a drowned body to the surface and realizes that they must be searching for him. Huck also remembers that another way to find a body is with a loaf of bread filled with quicksilver. He scouts the shoreline and finds a large loaf, then wonders if prayer really works. Someone, after all, had prayed that the bread find his body, and that prayer had worked. Confident that he is now safe, Huck explores the island until he stumbles upon fresh campfire ashes. Huck climbs a tree for safety but curiosity sends him back to the site, and he discovers Miss Watson's slave, Jim. After convincing Jim that he is not a ghost, Huck learns that Jim has run away because Miss Watson was going to sell him down the river to New Orleans. During the evening, Jim impresses Huck with his knowledge of superstition.

The Aunts and Uncles Are Coming It was Easter week, and Mrs. Tulliver's cheesecakes were more exquisitely light than usual. "A puff o' wind 'ud make 'em blow about like feathers," Kezia the housemaid said, feeling proud to live under a mistress who could make such pastry; so that no season or circumstances could have been more propitious for a family party, even if it had not been advisable to consult sister Glegg and sister Pullet about Tom's going to school. "I'd as lief not invite sister Deane this time," said Mrs. Tulliver, "for she's as jealous and having as can be, and's allays trying to make the worst o' my poor children to their aunts and uncles." "Yes, yes," said Mr. Tulliver, "ask her to come. I never hardly get a bit o' talk with Deane now; we haven't had him this six months. What's it matter what she says? My children need be beholding to nobody." "That's what you allays say, Mr. Tulliver; but I'm sure there's nobody o' your side, neither aunt nor uncle, to leave 'em so much as a five-pound note for a leggicy. And there's sister Glegg, and sister Pullet too, saving money unknown, for they put by all their own interest and butter-money too; their husbands buy 'em everything." Mrs. Tulliver was a mild woman, but even a sheep will face about a little when she has lambs. "Tchuh!" said Mr. Tulliver. "It takes a big loaf when there's many to breakfast. What signifies your sisters' bits o' money when they've got half-a-dozen nevvies and nieces to divide it among? And your sister Deane won't get 'em to leave all to one, I reckon, and make the country cry shame on 'em when they are dead?" "I don't know what she won't get 'em to do," said Mrs. Tulliver, "for my children are so awk'ard wi' their aunts and uncles. Maggie's ten times naughtier when they come than she is other days, and Tom doesn't like 'em, bless him!--though it's more nat'ral in a boy than a gell. And there's Lucy Dean's such a good child,--you may set her on a stool, and there she'll sit for an hour together, and never offer to get off. I can't help loving the child as if she was my own; and I'm sure she's more like _my_ child than sister Deane's, for she'd allays a very poor color for one of our family, sister Deane had." "Well, well, if you're fond o' the child, ask her father and mother to bring her with 'em. And won't you ask their aunt and uncle Moss too, and some o' _their_ children?" "Oh, dear, Mr. Tulliver, why, there'd be eight people besides the children, and I must put two more leaves i' the table, besides reaching down more o' the dinner-service; and you know as well as I do as _my_ sisters and _your_ sister don't suit well together." "Well, well, do as you like, Bessy," said Mr. Tulliver, taking up his hat and walking out to the mill. Few wives were more submissive than Mrs. Tulliver on all points unconnected with her family relations; but she had been a Miss Dodson, and the Dodsons were a very respectable family indeed,--as much looked up to as any in their own parish, or the next to it. The Miss Dodsons had always been thought to hold up their heads very high, and no one was surprised the two eldest had married so well,--not at an early age, for that was not the practice of the Dodson family. There were particular ways of doing everything in that family: particular ways of bleaching the linen, of making the cowslip wine, curing the hams, and keeping the bottled gooseberries; so that no daughter of that house could be indifferent to the privilege of having been born a Dodson, rather than a Gibson or a Watson. Funerals were always conducted with peculiar propriety in the Dodson family: the hat-bands were never of a blue shade, the gloves never split at the thumb, everybody was a mourner who ought to be, and there were always scarfs for the bearers. When one of the family was in trouble or sickness, all the rest went to visit the unfortunate member, usually at the same time, and did not shrink from uttering the most disagreeable truths that correct family feeling dictated; if the illness or trouble was the sufferer's own fault, it was not in the practice of the Dodson family to shrink from saying so. In short, there was in this family a peculiar tradition as to what was the right thing in household management and social demeanor, and the only bitter circumstance attending this superiority was a painful inability to approve the condiments or the conduct of families ungoverned by the Dodson tradition. A female Dodson, when in "strange houses," always ate dry bread with her tea, and declined any sort of preserves, having no confidence in the butter, and thinking that the preserves had probably begun to ferment from want of due sugar and boiling. There were some Dodsons less like the family than others, that was admitted; but in so far as they were "kin," they were of necessity better than those who were "no kin." And it is remarkable that while no individual Dodson was satisfied with any other individual Dodson, each was satisfied, not only with him or her self, but with the Dodsons collectively. The feeblest member of a family--the one who has the least character--is often the merest epitome of the family habits and traditions; and Mrs. Tulliver was a thorough Dodson, though a mild one, as small-beer, so long as it is anything, is only describable as very weak ale: and though she had groaned a little in her youth under the yoke of her elder sisters, and still shed occasional tears at their sisterly reproaches, it was not in Mrs. Tulliver to be an innovator on the family ideas. She was thankful to have been a Dodson, and to have one child who took after her own family, at least in his features and complexion, in liking salt and in eating beans, which a Tulliver never did. In other respects the true Dodson was partly latent in Tom, and he was as far from appreciating his "kin" on the mother's side as Maggie herself, generally absconding for the day with a large supply of the most portable food, when he received timely warning that his aunts and uncles were coming,--a moral symptom from which his aunt Glegg deduced the gloomiest views of his future. It was rather hard on Maggie that Tom always absconded without letting her into the secret, but the weaker sex are acknowledged to be serious _impedimenta_ in cases of flight. On Wednesday, the day before the aunts and uncles were coming, there were such various and suggestive scents, as of plumcakes in the oven and jellies in the hot state, mingled with the aroma of gravy, that it was impossible to feel altogether gloomy: there was hope in the air. Tom and Maggie made several inroads into the kitchen, and, like other marauders, were induced to keep aloof for a time only by being allowed to carry away a sufficient load of booty. "Tom," said Maggie, as they sat on the boughs of the elder-tree, eating their jam-puffs, "shall you run away to-morrow?" "No," said Tom, slowly, when he had finished his puff, and was eying the third, which was to be divided between them,--"no, I sha'n't." "Why, Tom? Because Lucy's coming?" "No," said Tom, opening his pocket-knife and holding it over the puff, with his head on one side in a dubitative manner. (It was a difficult problem to divide that very irregular polygon into two equal parts.) "What do _I_ care about Lucy? She's only a girl,--_she_ can't play at bandy." "Is it the tipsy-cake, then?" said Maggie, exerting her hypothetic powers, while she leaned forward toward Tom with her eyes fixed on the hovering knife. "No, you silly, that'll be good the day after. It's the pudden. I know what the pudden's to be,--apricot roll-up--O my buttons!" With this interjection, the knife descended on the puff, and it was in two, but the result was not satisfactory to Tom, for he still eyed the halves doubtfully. At last he said,-- "Shut your eyes, Maggie." "What for?" "You never mind what for. Shut 'em when I tell you." Maggie obeyed. "Now, which'll you have, Maggie,--right hand or left?" "I'll have that with the jam run out," said Maggie, keeping her eyes shut to please Tom. "Why, you don't like that, you silly. You may have it if it comes to you fair, but I sha'n't give it you without. Right or left,--you choose, now. Ha-a-a!" said Tom, in a tone of exasperation, as Maggie peeped. "You keep your eyes shut, now, else you sha'n't have any." Maggie's power of sacrifice did not extend so far; indeed, I fear she cared less that Tom should enjoy the utmost possible amount of puff, than that he should be pleased with her for giving him the best bit. So she shut her eyes quite close, till Tom told her to "say which," and then she said, "Left hand." "You've got it," said Tom, in rather a bitter tone. "What! the bit with the jam run out?" "No; here, take it," said Tom, firmly, handing, decidedly the best piece to Maggie. "Oh, please, Tom, have it; I don't mind--I like the other; please take this." "No, I sha'n't," said Tom, almost crossly, beginning on his own inferior piece. Maggie, thinking it was no use to contend further, began too, and ate up her half puff with considerable relish as well as rapidity. But Tom had finished first, and had to look on while Maggie ate her last morsel or two, feeling in himself a capacity for more. Maggie didn't know Tom was looking at her; she was seesawing on the elder-bough, lost to almost everything but a vague sense of jam and idleness. "Oh, you greedy thing!" said Tom, when she had swallowed the last morsel. He was conscious of having acted very fairly, and thought she ought to have considered this, and made up to him for it. He would have refused a bit of hers beforehand, but one is naturally at a different point of view before and after one's own share of puff is swallowed. Maggie turned quite pale. "Oh, Tom, why didn't you ask me?" "I wasn't going to ask you for a bit, you greedy. You might have thought of it without, when you knew I gave you the best bit." "But I wanted you to have it; you know I did," said Maggie, in an injured tone. "Yes, but I wasn't going to do what wasn't fair, like Spouncer. He always takes the best bit, if you don't punch him for it; and if you choose the best with your eyes shut, he changes his hands. But if I go halves, I'll go 'em fair; only I wouldn't be a greedy." With this cutting innuendo, Tom jumped down from his bough, and threw a stone with a "hoigh!" as a friendly attention to Yap, who had also been looking on while the eatables vanished, with an agitation of his ears and feelings which could hardly have been without bitterness. Yet the excellent dog accepted Tom's attention with as much alacrity as if he had been treated quite generously. But Maggie, gifted with that superior power of misery which distinguishes the human being, and places him at a proud distance from the most melancholy chimpanzee, sat still on her bough, and gave herself up to the keen sense of unmerited reproach. She would have given the world not to have eaten all her puff, and to have saved some of it for Tom. Not but that the puff was very nice, for Maggie's palate was not at all obtuse, but she would have gone without it many times over, sooner than Tom should call her greedy and be cross with her. And he had said he wouldn't have it, and she ate it without thinking; how could she help it? The tears flowed so plentifully that Maggie saw nothing around her for the next ten minutes; but by that time resentment began to give way to the desire of reconciliation, and she jumped from her bough to look for Tom. He was no longer in the paddock behind the rickyard; where was he likely to be gone, and Yap with him? Maggie ran to the high bank against the great holly-tree, where she could see far away toward the Floss. There was Tom; but her heart sank again as she saw how far off he was on his way to the great river, and that he had another companion besides Yap,--naughty Bob Jakin, whose official, if not natural, function of frightening the birds was just now at a standstill. Maggie felt sure that Bob was wicked, without very distinctly knowing why; unless it was because Bob's mother was a dreadfully large fat woman, who lived at a queer round house down the river; and once, when Maggie and Tom had wandered thither, there rushed out a brindled dog that wouldn't stop barking; and when Bob's mother came out after it, and screamed above the barking to tell them not to be frightened, Maggie thought she was scolding them fiercely, and her heart beat with terror. Maggie thought it very likely that the round house had snakes on the floor, and bats in the bedroom; for she had seen Bob take off his cap to show Tom a little snake that was inside it, and another time he had a handful of young bats: altogether, he was an irregular character, perhaps even slightly diabolical, judging from his intimacy with snakes and bats; and to crown all, when Tom had Bob for a companion, he didn't mind about Maggie, and would never let her go with him. It must be owned that Tom was fond of Bob's company. How could it be otherwise? Bob knew, directly he saw a bird's egg, whether it was a swallow's, or a tomtit's, or a yellow-hammer's; he found out all the wasps' nests, and could set all sort of traps; he could climb the trees like a squirrel, and had quite a magical power of detecting hedgehogs and stoats; and he had courage to do things that were rather naughty, such as making gaps in the hedgerows, throwing stones after the sheep, and killing a cat that was wandering _incognito_. Such qualities in an inferior, who could always be treated with authority in spite of his superior knowingness, had necessarily a fatal fascination for Tom; and every holiday-time Maggie was sure to have days of grief because he had gone off with Bob. Well! there was no hope for it; he was gone now, and Maggie could think of no comfort but to sit down by the hollow, or wander by the hedgerow, and fancy it was all different, refashioning her little world into just what she should like it to be. Maggie's was a troublous life, and this was the form in which she took her opium. Meanwhile Tom, forgetting all about Maggie and the sting of reproach which he had left in her heart, was hurrying along with Bob, whom he had met accidentally, to the scene of a great rat-catching in a neighboring barn. Bob knew all about this particular affair, and spoke of the sport with an enthusiasm which no one who is not either divested of all manly feeling, or pitiably ignorant of rat-catching, can fail to imagine. For a person suspected of preternatural wickedness, Bob was really not so very villanous-looking; there was even something agreeable in his snub-nosed face, with its close-curled border of red hair. But then his trousers were always rolled up at the knee, for the convenience of wading on the slightest notice; and his virtue, supposing it to exist, was undeniably "virtue in rags," which, on the authority even of bilious philosophers, who think all well-dressed merit overpaid, is notoriously likely to remain unrecognized (perhaps because it is seen so seldom). "I know the chap as owns the ferrets," said Bob, in a hoarse treble voice, as he shuffled along, keeping his blue eyes fixed on the river, like an amphibious animal who foresaw occasion for darting in. "He lives up the Kennel Yard at Sut Ogg's, he does. He's the biggest rot-catcher anywhere, he is. I'd sooner, be a rot-catcher nor anything, I would. The moles is nothing to the rots. But Lors! you mun ha' ferrets. Dogs is no good. Why, there's that dog, now!" Bob continued, pointing with an air of disgust toward Yap, "he's no more good wi' a rot nor nothin'. I see it myself, I did, at the rot-catchin' i' your feyther's barn." Yap, feeling the withering influence of this scorn, tucked his tail in and shrank close to Tom's leg, who felt a little hurt for him, but had not the superhuman courage to seem behindhand with Bob in contempt for a dog who made so poor a figure. "No, no," he said, "Yap's no good at sport. I'll have regular good dogs for rats and everything, when I've done school." "Hev ferrets, Measter Tom," said Bob, eagerly,--"them white ferrets wi' pink eyes; Lors, you might catch your own rots, an' you might put a rot in a cage wi' a ferret, an' see 'em fight, you might. That's what I'd do, I know, an' it 'ud be better fun a'most nor seein' two chaps fight,--if it wasn't them chaps as sold cakes an' oranges at the Fair, as the things flew out o' their baskets, an' some o' the cakes was smashed--But they tasted just as good," added Bob, by way of note or addendum, after a moment's pause. "But, I say, Bob," said Tom, in a tone of deliberation, "ferrets are nasty biting things,--they'll bite a fellow without being set on." "Lors! why that's the beauty on 'em. If a chap lays hold o' your ferret, he won't be long before he hollows out a good un, _he_ won't." At this moment a striking incident made the boys pause suddenly in their walk. It was the plunging of some small body in the water from among the neighboring bulrushes; if it was not a water-rat, Bob intimated that he was ready to undergo the most unpleasant consequences. "Hoigh! Yap,--hoigh! there he is," said Tom, clapping his hands, as the little black snout made its arrowy course to the opposite bank. "Seize him, lad! seize him!" Yap agitated his ears and wrinkled his brows, but declined to plunge, trying whether barking would not answer the purpose just as well. "Ugh! you coward!" said Tom, and kicked him over, feeling humiliated as a sportsman to possess so poor-spirited an animal. Bob abstained from remark and passed on, choosing, however, to walk in the shallow edge of the overflowing river by way of change. "He's none so full now, the Floss isn't," said Bob, as he kicked the water up before him, with an agreeable sense of being insolent to it. "Why, last 'ear, the meadows was all one sheet o' water, they was." "Ay, but," said Tom, whose mind was prone to see an opposition between statements that were really accordant,--"but there was a big flood once, when the Round Pool was made. _I_ know there was, 'cause father says so. And the sheep and cows all drowned, and the boats went all over the fields ever such a way." "_I_ don't care about a flood comin'," said Bob; "I don't mind the water, no more nor the land. I'd swim, _I_ would." "Ah, but if you got nothing to eat for ever so long?" said Tom, his imagination becoming quite active under the stimulus of that dread. "When I'm a man, I shall make a boat with a wooden house on the top of it, like Noah's ark, and keep plenty to eat in it,--rabbits and things,--all ready. And then if the flood came, you know, Bob, I shouldn't mind. And I'd take you in, if I saw you swimming," he added, in the tone of a benevolent patron. "I aren't frighted," said Bob, to whom hunger did not appear so appalling. "But I'd get in an' knock the rabbits on th' head when you wanted to eat 'em." "Ah, and I should have halfpence, and we'd play at heads-and-tails," said Tom, not contemplating the possibility that this recreation might have fewer charms for his mature age. "I'd divide fair to begin with, and then we'd see who'd win." "I've got a halfpenny o' my own," said Bob, proudly, coming out of the water and tossing his halfpenny in the air. "Yeads or tails?" "Tails," said Tom, instantly fired with the desire to win. "It's yeads," said Bob, hastily, snatching up the halfpenny as it fell. "It wasn't," said Tom, loudly and peremptorily. "You give me the halfpenny; I've won it fair." "I sha'n't," said Bob, holding it tight in his pocket. "Then I'll make you; see if I don't," said Tom. "Yes, I can." "You can't make me do nothing, you can't," said Bob. "No, you can't." "I'm master." "I don't care for you." "But I'll make you care, you cheat," said Tom, collaring Bob and shaking him. "You get out wi' you," said Bob, giving Tom a kick. Tom's blood was thoroughly up: he went at Bob with a lunge and threw him down, but Bob seized hold and kept it like a cat, and pulled Tom down after him. They struggled fiercely on the ground for a moment or two, till Tom, pinning Bob down by the shoulders, thought he had the mastery. "_You_, say you'll give me the halfpenny now," he said, with difficulty, while he exerted himself to keep the command of Bob's arms. But at this moment Yap, who had been running on before, returned barking to the scene of action, and saw a favorable opportunity for biting Bob's bare leg not only with inpunity but with honor. The pain from Yap's teeth, instead of surprising Bob into a relaxation of his hold, gave it a fiercer tenacity, and with a new exertion of his force he pushed Tom backward and got uppermost. But now Yap, who could get no sufficient purchase before, set his teeth in a new place, so that Bob, harassed in this way, let go his hold of Tom, and, almost throttling Yap, flung him into the river. By this time Tom was up again, and before Bob had quite recovered his balance after the act of swinging Yap, Tom fell upon him, threw him down, and got his knees firmly on Bob's chest. "You give me the halfpenny now," said Tom. "Take it," said Bob, sulkily. "No, I sha'n't take it; you give it me." Bob took the halfpenny out of his pocket, and threw it away from him on the ground. Tom loosed his hold, and left Bob to rise. "There the halfpenny lies," he said. "I don't want your halfpenny; I wouldn't have kept it. But you wanted to cheat; I hate a cheat. I sha'n't go along with you any more," he added, turning round homeward, not without casting a regret toward the rat-catching and other pleasures which he must relinquish along with Bob's society. "You may let it alone, then," Bob called out after him. "I shall cheat if I like; there's no fun i' playing else; and I know where there's a goldfinch's nest, but I'll take care _you_ don't. An' you're a nasty fightin' turkey-cock, you are----" Tom walked on without looking around, and Yap followed his example, the cold bath having moderated his passions. "Go along wi' you, then, wi' your drowned dog; I wouldn't own such a dog--_I_ wouldn't," said Bob, getting louder, in a last effort to sustain his defiance. But Tom was not to be provoked into turning round, and Bob's voice began to falter a little as he said,-- "An' I'n gi'en you everything, an' showed you everything, an' niver wanted nothin' from you. An' there's your horn-handed knife, then as you gi'en me." Here Bob flung the knife as far as he could after Tom's retreating footsteps. But it produced no effect, except the sense in Bob's mind that there was a terrible void in his lot, now that knife was gone. He stood still till Tom had passed through the gate and disappeared behind the hedge. The knife would do not good on the ground there; it wouldn't vex Tom; and pride or resentment was a feeble passion in Bob's mind compared with the love of a pocket-knife. His very fingers sent entreating thrills that he would go and clutch that familiar rough buck's-horn handle, which they had so often grasped for mere affection, as it lay idle in his pocket. And there were two blades, and they had just been sharpened! What is life without a pocket-knife to him who has once tasted a higher existence? No; to throw the handle after the hatchet is a comprehensible act of desperation, but to throw one's pocket-knife after an implacable friend is clearly in every sense a hyperbole, or throwing beyond the mark. So Bob shuffled back to the spot where the beloved knife lay in the dirt, and felt quite a new pleasure in clutching it again after the temporary separation, in opening one blade after the other, and feeling their edge with his well-hardened thumb. Poor Bob! he was not sensitive on the point of honor, not a chivalrous character. That fine moral aroma would not have been thought much of by the public opinion of Kennel Yard, which was the very focus or heart of Bob's world, even if it could have made itself perceptible there; yet, for all that, he was not utterly a sneak and a thief as our friend Tom had hastily decided. But Tom, you perceive, was rather a Rhadamanthine personage, having more than the usual share of boy's justice in him,--the justice that desires to hurt culprits as much as they deserve to be hurt, and is troubled with no doubts concerning the exact amount of their deserts. Maggie saw a cloud on his brow when he came home, which checked her joy at his coming so much sooner than she had expected, and she dared hardly speak to him as he stood silently throwing the small gravel-stones into the mill-dam. It is not pleasant to give up a rat-catching when you have set your mind on it. But if Tom had told his strongest feeling at that moment, he would have said, "I'd do just the same again." That was his usual mode of viewing his past actions; whereas Maggie was always wishing she had done something different.

The aunts and uncles are to be invited to discuss Tom's education, and Mr. and Mrs. Tulliver are working out the details. Mr. Tulliver is not concerned about their opinions, and he cares less than does his wife about the money her relatives might leave to Maggie and Tom. Mrs. Tulliver laments that her children are so awkward with their aunts and uncles and wishes that they were more like their cousin Lucy. But she holds naughtiness to be more excusable in a boy than in Maggie. Tom and Maggie meanwhile show their independence by escaping with a stock of the pastry being prepared for their visitors. Tom cuts the last cream puff exactly in half and gives Maggie the choice of halves. She tries to take the one Tom wouldn't want, but he makes her choose with her eyes closed. He finishes his piece first and becomes angry when she fails to offer him part of hers. He leaves her and goes off to join Bob Jakin along the river. Bob is a poor boy who is knowledgeable in matters of rat-catching, tree-climbing, and such matters. He is bound for a rat-catching at a nearby barn. As they go along Bob idly tosses a halfpenny in the air and challenges Tom to call it. Tom correctly calls tails, but Bob covers the coin and keeps it. Tom, with help from his dog Yap, wrestles Bob into giving up the coin. Tom then lets it lie and refuses to go any farther with Bob, saying that he hates a cheat. Bob retaliates by throwing down the knife that Tom once gave him; but when Tom lets it lie, Bob picks it up again.

IT was no longer light enough to go to bed without a candle, even in Mrs. Poyser's early household, and Hetty carried one with her as she went up at last to her bedroom soon after Adam was gone, and bolted the door behind her. Now she would read her letter. It must--it must have comfort in it. How was Adam to know the truth? It was always likely he should say what he did say. She set down the candle and took out the letter. It had a faint scent of roses, which made her feel as if Arthur were close to her. She put it to her lips, and a rush of remembered sensations for a moment or two swept away all fear. But her heart began to flutter strangely, and her hands to tremble as she broke the seal. She read slowly; it was not easy for her to read a gentleman's handwriting, though Arthur had taken pains to write plainly. "DEAREST HETTY--I have spoken truly when I have said that I loved you, and I shall never forget our love. I shall be your true friend as long as life lasts, and I hope to prove this to you in many ways. If I say anything to pain you in this letter, do not believe it is for want of love and tenderness towards you, for there is nothing I would not do for you, if I knew it to be really for your happiness. I cannot bear to think of my little Hetty shedding tears when I am not there to kiss them away; and if I followed only my own inclinations, I should be with her at this moment instead of writing. It is very hard for me to part from her--harder still for me to write words which may seem unkind, though they spring from the truest kindness. "Dear, dear Hetty, sweet as our love has been to me, sweet as it would be to me for you to love me always, I feel that it would have been better for us both if we had never had that happiness, and that it is my duty to ask you to love me and care for me as little as you can. The fault has all been mine, for though I have been unable to resist the longing to be near you, I have felt all the while that your affection for me might cause you grief. I ought to have resisted my feelings. I should have done so, if I had been a better fellow than I am; but now, since the past cannot be altered, I am bound to save you from any evil that I have power to prevent. And I feel it would be a great evil for you if your affections continued so fixed on me that you could think of no other man who might be able to make you happier by his love than I ever can, and if you continued to look towards something in the future which cannot possibly happen. For, dear Hetty, if I were to do what you one day spoke of, and make you my wife, I should do what you yourself would come to feel was for your misery instead of your welfare. I know you can never be happy except by marrying a man in your own station; and if I were to marry you now, I should only be adding to any wrong I have done, besides offending against my duty in the other relations of life. You know nothing, dear Hetty, of the world in which I must always live, and you would soon begin to dislike me, because there would be so little in which we should be alike. "And since I cannot marry you, we must part--we must try not to feel like lovers any more. I am miserable while I say this, but nothing else can be. Be angry with me, my sweet one, I deserve it; but do not believe that I shall not always care for you--always be grateful to you--always remember my Hetty; and if any trouble should come that we do not now foresee, trust in me to do everything that lies in my power. "I have told you where you are to direct a letter to, if you want to write, but I put it down below lest you should have forgotten. Do not write unless there is something I can really do for you; for, dear Hetty, we must try to think of each other as little as we can. Forgive me, and try to forget everything about me, except that I shall be, as long as I live, your affectionate friend, "ARTHUR DONNITHORNE." Slowly Hetty had read this letter; and when she looked up from it there was the reflection of a blanched face in the old dim glass--a white marble face with rounded childish forms, but with something sadder than a child's pain in it. Hetty did not see the face--she saw nothing--she only felt that she was cold and sick and trembling. The letter shook and rustled in her hand. She laid it down. It was a horrible sensation--this cold and trembling. It swept away the very ideas that produced it, and Hetty got up to reach a warm cloak from her clothes-press, wrapped it round her, and sat as if she were thinking of nothing but getting warm. Presently she took up the letter with a firmer hand, and began to read it through again. The tears came this time--great rushing tears that blinded her and blotched the paper. She felt nothing but that Arthur was cruel--cruel to write so, cruel not to marry her. Reasons why he could not marry her had no existence for her mind; how could she believe in any misery that could come to her from the fulfilment of all she had been longing for and dreaming of? She had not the ideas that could make up the notion of that misery. As she threw down the letter again, she caught sight of her face in the glass; it was reddened now, and wet with tears; it was almost like a companion that she might complain to--that would pity her. She leaned forward on her elbows, and looked into those dark overflooding eyes and at the quivering mouth, and saw how the tears came thicker and thicker, and how the mouth became convulsed with sobs. The shattering of all her little dream-world, the crushing blow on her new-born passion, afflicted her pleasure-craving nature with an overpowering pain that annihilated all impulse to resistance, and suspended her anger. She sat sobbing till the candle went out, and then, wearied, aching, stupefied with crying, threw herself on the bed without undressing and went to sleep. There was a feeble dawn in the room when Hetty awoke, a little after four o'clock, with a sense of dull misery, the cause of which broke upon her gradually as she began to discern the objects round her in the dim light. And then came the frightening thought that she had to conceal her misery as well as to bear it, in this dreary daylight that was coming. She could lie no longer. She got up and went towards the table: there lay the letter. She opened her treasure-drawer: there lay the ear-rings and the locket--the signs of all her short happiness--the signs of the lifelong dreariness that was to follow it. Looking at the little trinkets which she had once eyed and fingered so fondly as the earnest of her future paradise of finery, she lived back in the moments when they had been given to her with such tender caresses, such strangely pretty words, such glowing looks, which filled her with a bewildering delicious surprise--they were so much sweeter than she had thought anything could be. And the Arthur who had spoken to her and looked at her in this way, who was present with her now--whose arm she felt round her, his cheek against hers, his very breath upon her--was the cruel, cruel Arthur who had written that letter, that letter which she snatched and crushed and then opened again, that she might read it once more. The half-benumbed mental condition which was the effect of the last night's violent crying made it necessary to her to look again and see if her wretched thoughts were actually true--if the letter was really so cruel. She had to hold it close to the window, else she could not have read it by the faint light. Yes! It was worse--it was more cruel. She crushed it up again in anger. She hated the writer of that letter--hated him for the very reason that she hung upon him with all her love--all the girlish passion and vanity that made up her love. She had no tears this morning. She had wept them all away last night, and now she felt that dry-eyed morning misery, which is worse than the first shock because it has the future in it as well as the present. Every morning to come, as far as her imagination could stretch, she would have to get up and feel that the day would have no joy for her. For there is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and to have recovered hope. As Hetty began languidly to take off the clothes she had worn all the night, that she might wash herself and brush her hair, she had a sickening sense that her life would go on in this way. She should always be doing things she had no pleasure in, getting up to the old tasks of work, seeing people she cared nothing about, going to church, and to Treddleston, and to tea with Mrs. Best, and carrying no happy thought with her. For her short poisonous delights had spoiled for ever all the little joys that had once made the sweetness of her life--the new frock ready for Treddleston Fair, the party at Mr. Britton's at Broxton wake, the beaux that she would say "No" to for a long while, and the prospect of the wedding that was to come at last when she would have a silk gown and a great many clothes all at once. These things were all flat and dreary to her now; everything would be a weariness, and she would carry about for ever a hopeless thirst and longing. She paused in the midst of her languid undressing and leaned against the dark old clothes-press. Her neck and arms were bare, her hair hung down in delicate rings--and they were just as beautiful as they were that night two months ago, when she walked up and down this bed-chamber glowing with vanity and hope. She was not thinking of her neck and arms now; even her own beauty was indifferent to her. Her eyes wandered sadly over the dull old chamber, and then looked out vacantly towards the growing dawn. Did a remembrance of Dinah come across her mind? Of her foreboding words, which had made her angry? Of Dinah's affectionate entreaty to think of her as a friend in trouble? No, the impression had been too slight to recur. Any affection or comfort Dinah could have given her would have been as indifferent to Hetty this morning as everything else was except her bruised passion. She was only thinking she could never stay here and go on with the old life--she could better bear something quite new than sinking back into the old everyday round. She would like to run away that very morning, and never see any of the old faces again. But Hetty's was not a nature to face difficulties--to dare to loose her hold on the familiar and rush blindly on some unknown condition. Hers was a luxurious and vain nature--not a passionate one--and if she were ever to take any violent measure, she must be urged to it by the desperation of terror. There was not much room for her thoughts to travel in the narrow circle of her imagination, and she soon fixed on the one thing she would do to get away from her old life: she would ask her uncle to let her go to be a lady's maid. Miss Lydia's maid would help her to get a situation, if she knew Hetty had her uncle's leave. When she had thought of this, she fastened up her hair and began to wash: it seemed more possible to her to go downstairs and try to behave as usual. She would ask her uncle this very day. On Hetty's blooming health it would take a great deal of such mental suffering as hers to leave any deep impress; and when she was dressed as neatly as usual in her working-dress, with her hair tucked up under her little cap, an indifferent observer would have been more struck with the young roundness of her cheek and neck and the darkness of her eyes and eyelashes than with any signs of sadness about her. But when she took up the crushed letter and put it in her drawer, that she might lock it out of sight, hard smarting tears, having no relief in them as the great drops had that fell last night, forced their way into her eyes. She wiped them away quickly: she must not cry in the day-time. Nobody should find out how miserable she was, nobody should know she was disappointed about anything; and the thought that the eyes of her aunt and uncle would be upon her gave her the self-command which often accompanies a great dread. For Hetty looked out from her secret misery towards the possibility of their ever knowing what had happened, as the sick and weary prisoner might think of the possible pillory. They would think her conduct shameful, and shame was torture. That was poor little Hetty's conscience. So she locked up her drawer and went away to her early work. In the evening, when Mr. Poyser was smoking his pipe, and his good-nature was therefore at its superlative moment, Hetty seized the opportunity of her aunt's absence to say, "Uncle, I wish you'd let me go for a lady's maid." Mr. Poyser took the pipe from his mouth and looked at Hetty in mild surprise for some moments. She was sewing, and went on with her work industriously. "Why, what's put that into your head, my wench?" he said at last, after he had given one conservative puff. "I should like it--I should like it better than farm-work." "Nay, nay; you fancy so because you donna know it, my wench. It wouldn't be half so good for your health, nor for your luck i' life. I'd like you to stay wi' us till you've got a good husband: you're my own niece, and I wouldn't have you go to service, though it was a gentleman's house, as long as I've got a home for you." Mr. Poyser paused, and puffed away at his pipe. "I like the needlework," said Hetty, "and I should get good wages." "Has your aunt been a bit sharp wi' you?" said Mr. Poyser, not noticing Hetty's further argument. "You mustna mind that, my wench--she does it for your good. She wishes you well; an' there isn't many aunts as are no kin to you 'ud ha' done by you as she has." "No, it isn't my aunt," said Hetty, "but I should like the work better." "It was all very well for you to learn the work a bit--an' I gev my consent to that fast enough, sin' Mrs. Pomfret was willing to teach you. For if anything was t' happen, it's well to know how to turn your hand to different sorts o' things. But I niver meant you to go to service, my wench; my family's ate their own bread and cheese as fur back as anybody knows, hanna they, Father? You wouldna like your grand-child to take wage?" "Na-a-y," said old Martin, with an elongation of the word, meant to make it bitter as well as negative, while he leaned forward and looked down on the floor. "But the wench takes arter her mother. I'd hard work t' hould HER in, an' she married i' spite o' me--a feller wi' on'y two head o' stock when there should ha' been ten on's farm--she might well die o' th' inflammation afore she war thirty." It was seldom the old man made so long a speech, but his son's question had fallen like a bit of dry fuel on the embers of a long unextinguished resentment, which had always made the grandfather more indifferent to Hetty than to his son's children. Her mother's fortune had been spent by that good-for-nought Sorrel, and Hetty had Sorrel's blood in her veins. "Poor thing, poor thing!" said Martin the younger, who was sorry to have provoked this retrospective harshness. "She'd but bad luck. But Hetty's got as good a chance o' getting a solid, sober husband as any gell i' this country." After throwing out this pregnant hint, Mr. Poyser recurred to his pipe and his silence, looking at Hetty to see if she did not give some sign of having renounced her ill-advised wish. But instead of that, Hetty, in spite of herself, began to cry, half out of ill temper at the denial, half out of the day's repressed sadness. "Hegh, hegh!" said Mr. Poyser, meaning to check her playfully, "don't let's have any crying. Crying's for them as ha' got no home, not for them as want to get rid o' one. What dost think?" he continued to his wife, who now came back into the house-place, knitting with fierce rapidity, as if that movement were a necessary function, like the twittering of a crab's antennae. "Think? Why, I think we shall have the fowl stole before we are much older, wi' that gell forgetting to lock the pens up o' nights. What's the matter now, Hetty? What are you crying at?" "Why, she's been wanting to go for a lady's maid," said Mr. Poyser. "I tell her we can do better for her nor that." "I thought she'd got some maggot in her head, she's gone about wi' her mouth buttoned up so all day. It's all wi' going so among them servants at the Chase, as we war fools for letting her. She thinks it 'ud be a finer life than being wi' them as are akin to her and ha' brought her up sin' she war no bigger nor Marty. She thinks there's nothing belongs to being a lady's maid but wearing finer clothes nor she was born to, I'll be bound. It's what rag she can get to stick on her as she's thinking on from morning till night, as I often ask her if she wouldn't like to be the mawkin i' the field, for then she'd be made o' rags inside and out. I'll never gi' my consent to her going for a lady's maid, while she's got good friends to take care on her till she's married to somebody better nor one o' them valets, as is neither a common man nor a gentleman, an' must live on the fat o' the land, an's like enough to stick his hands under his coat-tails and expect his wife to work for him." "Aye, aye," said Mr. Poyser, "we must have a better husband for her nor that, and there's better at hand. Come, my wench, give over crying and get to bed. I'll do better for you nor letting you go for a lady's maid. Let's hear no more on't." When Hetty was gone upstairs he said, "I canna make it out as she should want to go away, for I thought she'd got a mind t' Adam Bede. She's looked like it o' late." "Eh, there's no knowing what she's got a liking to, for things take no more hold on her than if she was a dried pea. I believe that gell, Molly--as is aggravatin' enough, for the matter o' that--but I believe she'd care more about leaving us and the children, for all she's been here but a year come Michaelmas, nor Hetty would. But she's got this notion o' being a lady's maid wi' going among them servants--we might ha' known what it 'ud lead to when we let her go to learn the fine work. But I'll put a stop to it pretty quick." "Thee'dst be sorry to part wi' her, if it wasn't for her good," said Mr. Poyser. "She's useful to thee i' the work." "Sorry? Yes, I'm fonder on her nor she deserves--a little hard-hearted hussy, wanting to leave us i' that way. I can't ha' had her about me these seven year, I reckon, and done for her, and taught her everything wi'out caring about her. An' here I'm having linen spun, an' thinking all the while it'll make sheeting and table-clothing for her when she's married, an' she'll live i' the parish wi' us, and never go out of our sights--like a fool as I am for thinking aught about her, as is no better nor a cherry wi' a hard stone inside it." "Nay, nay, thee mustna make much of a trifle," said Mr. Poyser, soothingly. "She's fond on us, I'll be bound; but she's young, an' gets things in her head as she can't rightly give account on. Them young fillies 'ull run away often wi'-ou knowing why." Her uncle's answers, however, had had another effect on Hetty besides that of disappointing her and making her cry. She knew quite well whom he had in his mind in his allusions to marriage, and to a sober, solid husband; and when she was in her bedroom again, the possibility of her marrying Adam presented itself to her in a new light. In a mind where no strong sympathies are at work, where there is no supreme sense of right to which the agitated nature can cling and steady itself to quiet endurance, one of the first results of sorrow is a desperate vague clutching after any deed that will change the actual condition. Poor Hetty's vision of consequences, at no time more than a narrow fantastic calculation of her own probable pleasures and pains, was now quite shut out by reckless irritation under present suffering, and she was ready for one of those convulsive, motiveless actions by which wretched men and women leap from a temporary sorrow into a lifelong misery. Why should she not marry Adam? She did not care what she did, so that it made some change in her life. She felt confident that he would still want to marry her, and any further thought about Adam's happiness in the matter had never yet visited her. "Strange!" perhaps you will say, "this rush of impulse to-wards a course that might have seemed the most repugnant to her present state of mind, and in only the second night of her sadness!" Yes, the actions of a little trivial soul like Hetty's, struggling amidst the serious sad destinies of a human being, are strange. So are the motions of a little vessel without ballast tossed about on a stormy sea. How pretty it looked with its parti-coloured sail in the sunlight, moored in the quiet bay! "Let that man bear the loss who loosed it from its moorings." But that will not save the vessel--the pretty thing that might have been a lasting joy.

In Hetty's Bed-Chamber Hetty waits until bedtime to read Arthur's letter. He says that it is hard on him, but he must say goodbye to her. They cannot be married because they live in different worlds, so they must part for good. If however, any trouble comes, he will do everything to help her. She can write to the address he encloses. Hetty is taken by surprise, and is devastated. She cries herself to sleep, and the next day she only thinks how she can get away from Hall Farm. She asks her uncle if she can go for a lady's maid. He says no; he wants to see her well married. Mrs. Poyser thinks the idea of being a lady's maid came from learning lace-mending and decides to put a stop to it. Hetty begins to think about marrying Adam as an alternative plan; what difference doe it make as long as she can get away?

Till now that she was threatened with its loss, Emma had never known how much of her happiness depended on being _first_ with Mr. Knightley, first in interest and affection.--Satisfied that it was so, and feeling it her due, she had enjoyed it without reflection; and only in the dread of being supplanted, found how inexpressibly important it had been.--Long, very long, she felt she had been first; for, having no female connexions of his own, there had been only Isabella whose claims could be compared with hers, and she had always known exactly how far he loved and esteemed Isabella. She had herself been first with him for many years past. She had not deserved it; she had often been negligent or perverse, slighting his advice, or even wilfully opposing him, insensible of half his merits, and quarrelling with him because he would not acknowledge her false and insolent estimate of her own--but still, from family attachment and habit, and thorough excellence of mind, he had loved her, and watched over her from a girl, with an endeavour to improve her, and an anxiety for her doing right, which no other creature had at all shared. In spite of all her faults, she knew she was dear to him; might she not say, very dear?--When the suggestions of hope, however, which must follow here, presented themselves, she could not presume to indulge them. Harriet Smith might think herself not unworthy of being peculiarly, exclusively, passionately loved by Mr. Knightley. _She_ could not. She could not flatter herself with any idea of blindness in his attachment to _her_. She had received a very recent proof of its impartiality.--How shocked had he been by her behaviour to Miss Bates! How directly, how strongly had he expressed himself to her on the subject!--Not too strongly for the offence--but far, far too strongly to issue from any feeling softer than upright justice and clear-sighted goodwill.--She had no hope, nothing to deserve the name of hope, that he could have that sort of affection for herself which was now in question; but there was a hope (at times a slight one, at times much stronger,) that Harriet might have deceived herself, and be overrating his regard for _her_.--Wish it she must, for his sake--be the consequence nothing to herself, but his remaining single all his life. Could she be secure of that, indeed, of his never marrying at all, she believed she should be perfectly satisfied.--Let him but continue the same Mr. Knightley to her and her father, the same Mr. Knightley to all the world; let Donwell and Hartfield lose none of their precious intercourse of friendship and confidence, and her peace would be fully secured.--Marriage, in fact, would not do for her. It would be incompatible with what she owed to her father, and with what she felt for him. Nothing should separate her from her father. She would not marry, even if she were asked by Mr. Knightley. It must be her ardent wish that Harriet might be disappointed; and she hoped, that when able to see them together again, she might at least be able to ascertain what the chances for it were.--She should see them henceforward with the closest observance; and wretchedly as she had hitherto misunderstood even those she was watching, she did not know how to admit that she could be blinded here.--He was expected back every day. The power of observation would be soon given--frightfully soon it appeared when her thoughts were in one course. In the meanwhile, she resolved against seeing Harriet.--It would do neither of them good, it would do the subject no good, to be talking of it farther.--She was resolved not to be convinced, as long as she could doubt, and yet had no authority for opposing Harriet's confidence. To talk would be only to irritate.--She wrote to her, therefore, kindly, but decisively, to beg that she would not, at present, come to Hartfield; acknowledging it to be her conviction, that all farther confidential discussion of _one_ topic had better be avoided; and hoping, that if a few days were allowed to pass before they met again, except in the company of others--she objected only to a tete-a-tete--they might be able to act as if they had forgotten the conversation of yesterday.--Harriet submitted, and approved, and was grateful. This point was just arranged, when a visitor arrived to tear Emma's thoughts a little from the one subject which had engrossed them, sleeping or waking, the last twenty-four hours--Mrs. Weston, who had been calling on her daughter-in-law elect, and took Hartfield in her way home, almost as much in duty to Emma as in pleasure to herself, to relate all the particulars of so interesting an interview. Mr. Weston had accompanied her to Mrs. Bates's, and gone through his share of this essential attention most handsomely; but she having then induced Miss Fairfax to join her in an airing, was now returned with much more to say, and much more to say with satisfaction, than a quarter of an hour spent in Mrs. Bates's parlour, with all the encumbrance of awkward feelings, could have afforded. A little curiosity Emma had; and she made the most of it while her friend related. Mrs. Weston had set off to pay the visit in a good deal of agitation herself; and in the first place had wished not to go at all at present, to be allowed merely to write to Miss Fairfax instead, and to defer this ceremonious call till a little time had passed, and Mr. Churchill could be reconciled to the engagement's becoming known; as, considering every thing, she thought such a visit could not be paid without leading to reports:--but Mr. Weston had thought differently; he was extremely anxious to shew his approbation to Miss Fairfax and her family, and did not conceive that any suspicion could be excited by it; or if it were, that it would be of any consequence; for "such things," he observed, "always got about." Emma smiled, and felt that Mr. Weston had very good reason for saying so. They had gone, in short--and very great had been the evident distress and confusion of the lady. She had hardly been able to speak a word, and every look and action had shewn how deeply she was suffering from consciousness. The quiet, heart-felt satisfaction of the old lady, and the rapturous delight of her daughter--who proved even too joyous to talk as usual, had been a gratifying, yet almost an affecting, scene. They were both so truly respectable in their happiness, so disinterested in every sensation; thought so much of Jane; so much of every body, and so little of themselves, that every kindly feeling was at work for them. Miss Fairfax's recent illness had offered a fair plea for Mrs. Weston to invite her to an airing; she had drawn back and declined at first, but, on being pressed had yielded; and, in the course of their drive, Mrs. Weston had, by gentle encouragement, overcome so much of her embarrassment, as to bring her to converse on the important subject. Apologies for her seemingly ungracious silence in their first reception, and the warmest expressions of the gratitude she was always feeling towards herself and Mr. Weston, must necessarily open the cause; but when these effusions were put by, they had talked a good deal of the present and of the future state of the engagement. Mrs. Weston was convinced that such conversation must be the greatest relief to her companion, pent up within her own mind as every thing had so long been, and was very much pleased with all that she had said on the subject. "On the misery of what she had suffered, during the concealment of so many months," continued Mrs. Weston, "she was energetic. This was one of her expressions. 'I will not say, that since I entered into the engagement I have not had some happy moments; but I can say, that I have never known the blessing of one tranquil hour:'--and the quivering lip, Emma, which uttered it, was an attestation that I felt at my heart." "Poor girl!" said Emma. "She thinks herself wrong, then, for having consented to a private engagement?" "Wrong! No one, I believe, can blame her more than she is disposed to blame herself. 'The consequence,' said she, 'has been a state of perpetual suffering to me; and so it ought. But after all the punishment that misconduct can bring, it is still not less misconduct. Pain is no expiation. I never can be blameless. I have been acting contrary to all my sense of right; and the fortunate turn that every thing has taken, and the kindness I am now receiving, is what my conscience tells me ought not to be.' 'Do not imagine, madam,' she continued, 'that I was taught wrong. Do not let any reflection fall on the principles or the care of the friends who brought me up. The error has been all my own; and I do assure you that, with all the excuse that present circumstances may appear to give, I shall yet dread making the story known to Colonel Campbell.'" "Poor girl!" said Emma again. "She loves him then excessively, I suppose. It must have been from attachment only, that she could be led to form the engagement. Her affection must have overpowered her judgment." "Yes, I have no doubt of her being extremely attached to him." "I am afraid," returned Emma, sighing, "that I must often have contributed to make her unhappy." "On your side, my love, it was very innocently done. But she probably had something of that in her thoughts, when alluding to the misunderstandings which he had given us hints of before. One natural consequence of the evil she had involved herself in," she said, "was that of making her _unreasonable_. The consciousness of having done amiss, had exposed her to a thousand inquietudes, and made her captious and irritable to a degree that must have been--that had been--hard for him to bear. 'I did not make the allowances,' said she, 'which I ought to have done, for his temper and spirits--his delightful spirits, and that gaiety, that playfulness of disposition, which, under any other circumstances, would, I am sure, have been as constantly bewitching to me, as they were at first.' She then began to speak of you, and of the great kindness you had shewn her during her illness; and with a blush which shewed me how it was all connected, desired me, whenever I had an opportunity, to thank you--I could not thank you too much--for every wish and every endeavour to do her good. She was sensible that you had never received any proper acknowledgment from herself." "If I did not know her to be happy now," said Emma, seriously, "which, in spite of every little drawback from her scrupulous conscience, she must be, I could not bear these thanks;--for, oh! Mrs. Weston, if there were an account drawn up of the evil and the good I have done Miss Fairfax!--Well (checking herself, and trying to be more lively), this is all to be forgotten. You are very kind to bring me these interesting particulars. They shew her to the greatest advantage. I am sure she is very good--I hope she will be very happy. It is fit that the fortune should be on his side, for I think the merit will be all on hers." Such a conclusion could not pass unanswered by Mrs. Weston. She thought well of Frank in almost every respect; and, what was more, she loved him very much, and her defence was, therefore, earnest. She talked with a great deal of reason, and at least equal affection--but she had too much to urge for Emma's attention; it was soon gone to Brunswick Square or to Donwell; she forgot to attempt to listen; and when Mrs. Weston ended with, "We have not yet had the letter we are so anxious for, you know, but I hope it will soon come," she was obliged to pause before she answered, and at last obliged to answer at random, before she could at all recollect what letter it was which they were so anxious for. "Are you well, my Emma?" was Mrs. Weston's parting question. "Oh! perfectly. I am always well, you know. Be sure to give me intelligence of the letter as soon as possible." Mrs. Weston's communications furnished Emma with more food for unpleasant reflection, by increasing her esteem and compassion, and her sense of past injustice towards Miss Fairfax. She bitterly regretted not having sought a closer acquaintance with her, and blushed for the envious feelings which had certainly been, in some measure, the cause. Had she followed Mr. Knightley's known wishes, in paying that attention to Miss Fairfax, which was every way her due; had she tried to know her better; had she done her part towards intimacy; had she endeavoured to find a friend there instead of in Harriet Smith; she must, in all probability, have been spared from every pain which pressed on her now.--Birth, abilities, and education, had been equally marking one as an associate for her, to be received with gratitude; and the other--what was she?--Supposing even that they had never become intimate friends; that she had never been admitted into Miss Fairfax's confidence on this important matter--which was most probable--still, in knowing her as she ought, and as she might, she must have been preserved from the abominable suspicions of an improper attachment to Mr. Dixon, which she had not only so foolishly fashioned and harboured herself, but had so unpardonably imparted; an idea which she greatly feared had been made a subject of material distress to the delicacy of Jane's feelings, by the levity or carelessness of Frank Churchill's. Of all the sources of evil surrounding the former, since her coming to Highbury, she was persuaded that she must herself have been the worst. She must have been a perpetual enemy. They never could have been all three together, without her having stabbed Jane Fairfax's peace in a thousand instances; and on Box Hill, perhaps, it had been the agony of a mind that would bear no more. The evening of this day was very long, and melancholy, at Hartfield. The weather added what it could of gloom. A cold stormy rain set in, and nothing of July appeared but in the trees and shrubs, which the wind was despoiling, and the length of the day, which only made such cruel sights the longer visible. The weather affected Mr. Woodhouse, and he could only be kept tolerably comfortable by almost ceaseless attention on his daughter's side, and by exertions which had never cost her half so much before. It reminded her of their first forlorn tete-a-tete, on the evening of Mrs. Weston's wedding-day; but Mr. Knightley had walked in then, soon after tea, and dissipated every melancholy fancy. Alas! such delightful proofs of Hartfield's attraction, as those sort of visits conveyed, might shortly be over. The picture which she had then drawn of the privations of the approaching winter, had proved erroneous; no friends had deserted them, no pleasures had been lost.--But her present forebodings she feared would experience no similar contradiction. The prospect before her now, was threatening to a degree that could not be entirely dispelled--that might not be even partially brightened. If all took place that might take place among the circle of her friends, Hartfield must be comparatively deserted; and she left to cheer her father with the spirits only of ruined happiness. The child to be born at Randalls must be a tie there even dearer than herself; and Mrs. Weston's heart and time would be occupied by it. They should lose her; and, probably, in great measure, her husband also.--Frank Churchill would return among them no more; and Miss Fairfax, it was reasonable to suppose, would soon cease to belong to Highbury. They would be married, and settled either at or near Enscombe. All that were good would be withdrawn; and if to these losses, the loss of Donwell were to be added, what would remain of cheerful or of rational society within their reach? Mr. Knightley to be no longer coming there for his evening comfort!--No longer walking in at all hours, as if ever willing to change his own home for their's!--How was it to be endured? And if he were to be lost to them for Harriet's sake; if he were to be thought of hereafter, as finding in Harriet's society all that he wanted; if Harriet were to be the chosen, the first, the dearest, the friend, the wife to whom he looked for all the best blessings of existence; what could be increasing Emma's wretchedness but the reflection never far distant from her mind, that it had been all her own work? When it came to such a pitch as this, she was not able to refrain from a start, or a heavy sigh, or even from walking about the room for a few seconds--and the only source whence any thing like consolation or composure could be drawn, was in the resolution of her own better conduct, and the hope that, however inferior in spirit and gaiety might be the following and every future winter of her life to the past, it would yet find her more rational, more acquainted with herself, and leave her less to regret when it were gone.

Emma gives up hope that Mr. Knightley is in love with her. Even if he were, she would still not be able to marry him because of her father's need for constant attention. Mrs. Weston tells Emma that Jane Fairfax regrets being involved in a suspicious private engagement and wishes that she had handled the situation with greater decorum. Emma feels disheartened and alone, since the pregnant Mrs. Weston will soon be preoccupied with her child and Frank Churchill will no longer visit frequently.

"For there can live no hatred in thine eye, Therefore in that I cannot know thy change: In many's looks the false heart's history Is writ in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange: But Heaven in thy creation did decree That in thy face sweet love should ever dwell: Whate'er thy thoughts or thy heart's workings be Thy looks should nothing thence but sweetness tell." --SHAKESPEARE: Sonnets. At the time when Mr. Vincy uttered that presentiment about Rosamond, she herself had never had the idea that she should be driven to make the sort of appeal which he foresaw. She had not yet had any anxiety about ways and means, although her domestic life had been expensive as well as eventful. Her baby had been born prematurely, and all the embroidered robes and caps had to be laid by in darkness. This misfortune was attributed entirely to her having persisted in going out on horseback one day when her husband had desired her not to do so; but it must not be supposed that she had shown temper on the occasion, or rudely told him that she would do as she liked. What led her particularly to desire horse-exercise was a visit from Captain Lydgate, the baronet's third son, who, I am sorry to say, was detested by our Tertius of that name as a vapid fop "parting his hair from brow to nape in a despicable fashion" (not followed by Tertius himself), and showing an ignorant security that he knew the proper thing to say on every topic. Lydgate inwardly cursed his own folly that he had drawn down this visit by consenting to go to his uncle's on the wedding-tour, and he made himself rather disagreeable to Rosamond by saying so in private. For to Rosamond this visit was a source of unprecedented but gracefully concealed exultation. She was so intensely conscious of having a cousin who was a baronet's son staying in the house, that she imagined the knowledge of what was implied by his presence to be diffused through all other minds; and when she introduced Captain Lydgate to her guests, she had a placid sense that his rank penetrated them as if it had been an odor. The satisfaction was enough for the time to melt away some disappointment in the conditions of marriage with a medical man even of good birth: it seemed now that her marriage was visibly as well as ideally floating her above the Middlemarch level, and the future looked bright with letters and visits to and from Quallingham, and vague advancement in consequence for Tertius. Especially as, probably at the Captain's suggestion, his married sister, Mrs. Mengan, had come with her maid, and stayed two nights on her way from town. Hence it was clearly worth while for Rosamond to take pains with her music and the careful selection of her lace. As to Captain Lydgate himself, his low brow, his aquiline nose bent on one side, and his rather heavy utterance, might have been disadvantageous in any young gentleman who had not a military bearing and mustache to give him what is doted on by some flower-like blond heads as "style." He had, moreover, that sort of high-breeding which consists in being free from the petty solicitudes of middle-class gentility, and he was a great critic of feminine charms. Rosamond delighted in his admiration now even more than she had done at Quallingham, and he found it easy to spend several hours of the day in flirting with her. The visit altogether was one of the pleasantest larks he had ever had, not the less so perhaps because he suspected that his queer cousin Tertius wished him away: though Lydgate, who would rather (hyperbolically speaking) have died than have failed in polite hospitality, suppressed his dislike, and only pretended generally not to hear what the gallant officer said, consigning the task of answering him to Rosamond. For he was not at all a jealous husband, and preferred leaving a feather-headed young gentleman alone with his wife to bearing him company. "I wish you would talk more to the Captain at dinner, Tertius," said Rosamond, one evening when the important guest was gone to Loamford to see some brother officers stationed there. "You really look so absent sometimes--you seem to be seeing through his head into something behind it, instead of looking at him." "My dear Rosy, you don't expect me to talk much to such a conceited ass as that, I hope," said Lydgate, brusquely. "If he got his head broken, I might look at it with interest, not before." "I cannot conceive why you should speak of your cousin so contemptuously," said Rosamond, her fingers moving at her work while she spoke with a mild gravity which had a touch of disdain in it. "Ask Ladislaw if he doesn't think your Captain the greatest bore he ever met with. Ladislaw has almost forsaken the house since he came." Rosamond thought she knew perfectly well why Mr. Ladislaw disliked the Captain: he was jealous, and she liked his being jealous. "It is impossible to say what will suit eccentric persons," she answered, "but in my opinion Captain Lydgate is a thorough gentleman, and I think you ought not, out of respect to Sir Godwin, to treat him with neglect." "No, dear; but we have had dinners for him. And he comes in and goes out as he likes. He doesn't want me." "Still, when he is in the room, you might show him more attention. He may not be a phoenix of cleverness in your sense; his profession is different; but it would be all the better for you to talk a little on his subjects. _I_ think his conversation is quite agreeable. And he is anything but an unprincipled man." "The fact is, you would wish me to be a little more like him, Rosy," said Lydgate, in a sort of resigned murmur, with a smile which was not exactly tender, and certainly not merry. Rosamond was silent and did not smile again; but the lovely curves of her face looked good-tempered enough without smiling. Those words of Lydgate's were like a sad milestone marking how far he had travelled from his old dreamland, in which Rosamond Vincy appeared to be that perfect piece of womanhood who would reverence her husband's mind after the fashion of an accomplished mermaid, using her comb and looking-glass and singing her song for the relaxation of his adored wisdom alone. He had begun to distinguish between that imagined adoration and the attraction towards a man's talent because it gives him prestige, and is like an order in his button-hole or an Honorable before his name. It might have been supposed that Rosamond had travelled too, since she had found the pointless conversation of Mr. Ned Plymdale perfectly wearisome; but to most mortals there is a stupidity which is unendurable and a stupidity which is altogether acceptable--else, indeed, what would become of social bonds? Captain Lydgate's stupidity was delicately scented, carried itself with "style," talked with a good accent, and was closely related to Sir Godwin. Rosamond found it quite agreeable and caught many of its phrases. Therefore since Rosamond, as we know, was fond of horseback, there were plenty of reasons why she should be tempted to resume her riding when Captain Lydgate, who had ordered his man with two horses to follow him and put up at the "Green Dragon," begged her to go out on the gray which he warranted to be gentle and trained to carry a lady--indeed, he had bought it for his sister, and was taking it to Quallingham. Rosamond went out the first time without telling her husband, and came back before his return; but the ride had been so thorough a success, and she declared herself so much the better in consequence, that he was informed of it with full reliance on his consent that she should go riding again. On the contrary Lydgate was more than hurt--he was utterly confounded that she had risked herself on a strange horse without referring the matter to his wish. After the first almost thundering exclamations of astonishment, which sufficiently warned Rosamond of what was coming, he was silent for some moments. "However, you have come back safely," he said, at last, in a decisive tone. "You will not go again, Rosy; that is understood. If it were the quietest, most familiar horse in the world, there would always be the chance of accident. And you know very well that I wished you to give up riding the roan on that account." "But there is the chance of accident indoors, Tertius." "My darling, don't talk nonsense," said Lydgate, in an imploring tone; "surely I am the person to judge for you. I think it is enough that I say you are not to go again." Rosamond was arranging her hair before dinner, and the reflection of her head in the glass showed no change in its loveliness except a little turning aside of the long neck. Lydgate had been moving about with his hands in his pockets, and now paused near her, as if he awaited some assurance. "I wish you would fasten up my plaits, dear," said Rosamond, letting her arms fall with a little sigh, so as to make a husband ashamed of standing there like a brute. Lydgate had often fastened the plaits before, being among the deftest of men with his large finely formed fingers. He swept up the soft festoons of plaits and fastened in the tall comb (to such uses do men come!); and what could he do then but kiss the exquisite nape which was shown in all its delicate curves? But when we do what we have done before, it is often with a difference. Lydgate was still angry, and had not forgotten his point. "I shall tell the Captain that he ought to have known better than offer you his horse," he said, as he moved away. "I beg you will not do anything of the kind, Tertius," said Rosamond, looking at him with something more marked than usual in her speech. "It will be treating me as if I were a child. Promise that you will leave the subject to me." There did seem to be some truth in her objection. Lydgate said, "Very well," with a surly obedience, and thus the discussion ended with his promising Rosamond, and not with her promising him. In fact, she had been determined not to promise. Rosamond had that victorious obstinacy which never wastes its energy in impetuous resistance. What she liked to do was to her the right thing, and all her cleverness was directed to getting the means of doing it. She meant to go out riding again on the gray, and she did go on the next opportunity of her husband's absence, not intending that he should know until it was late enough not to signify to her. The temptation was certainly great: she was very fond of the exercise, and the gratification of riding on a fine horse, with Captain Lydgate, Sir Godwin's son, on another fine horse by her side, and of being met in this position by any one but her husband, was something as good as her dreams before marriage: moreover she was riveting the connection with the family at Quallingham, which must be a wise thing to do. But the gentle gray, unprepared for the crash of a tree that was being felled on the edge of Halsell wood, took fright, and caused a worse fright to Rosamond, leading finally to the loss of her baby. Lydgate could not show his anger towards her, but he was rather bearish to the Captain, whose visit naturally soon came to an end. In all future conversations on the subject, Rosamond was mildly certain that the ride had made no difference, and that if she had stayed at home the same symptoms would have come on and would have ended in the same way, because she had felt something like them before. Lydgate could only say, "Poor, poor darling!"--but he secretly wondered over the terrible tenacity of this mild creature. There was gathering within him an amazed sense of his powerlessness over Rosamond. His superior knowledge and mental force, instead of being, as he had imagined, a shrine to consult on all occasions, was simply set aside on every practical question. He had regarded Rosamond's cleverness as precisely of the receptive kind which became a woman. He was now beginning to find out what that cleverness was--what was the shape into which it had run as into a close network aloof and independent. No one quicker than Rosamond to see causes and effects which lay within the track of her own tastes and interests: she had seen clearly Lydgate's preeminence in Middlemarch society, and could go on imaginatively tracing still more agreeable social effects when his talent should have advanced him; but for her, his professional and scientific ambition had no other relation to these desirable effects than if they had been the fortunate discovery of an ill-smelling oil. And that oil apart, with which she had nothing to do, of course she believed in her own opinion more than she did in his. Lydgate was astounded to find in numberless trifling matters, as well as in this last serious case of the riding, that affection did not make her compliant. He had no doubt that the affection was there, and had no presentiment that he had done anything to repel it. For his own part he said to himself that he loved her as tenderly as ever, and could make up his mind to her negations; but--well! Lydgate was much worried, and conscious of new elements in his life as noxious to him as an inlet of mud to a creature that has been used to breathe and bathe and dart after its illuminated prey in the clearest of waters. Rosamond was soon looking lovelier than ever at her worktable, enjoying drives in her father's phaeton and thinking it likely that she might be invited to Quallingham. She knew that she was a much more exquisite ornament to the drawing-room there than any daughter of the family, and in reflecting that the gentlemen were aware of that, did not perhaps sufficiently consider whether the ladies would be eager to see themselves surpassed. Lydgate, relieved from anxiety about her, relapsed into what she inwardly called his moodiness--a name which to her covered his thoughtful preoccupation with other subjects than herself, as well as that uneasy look of the brow and distaste for all ordinary things as if they were mixed with bitter herbs, which really made a sort of weather-glass to his vexation and foreboding. These latter states of mind had one cause amongst others, which he had generously but mistakenly avoided mentioning to Rosamond, lest it should affect her health and spirits. Between him and her indeed there was that total missing of each other's mental track, which is too evidently possible even between persons who are continually thinking of each other. To Lydgate it seemed that he had been spending month after month in sacrificing more than half of his best intent and best power to his tenderness for Rosamond; bearing her little claims and interruptions without impatience, and, above all, bearing without betrayal of bitterness to look through less and less of interfering illusion at the blank unreflecting surface her mind presented to his ardor for the more impersonal ends of his profession and his scientific study, an ardor which he had fancied that the ideal wife must somehow worship as sublime, though not in the least knowing why. But his endurance was mingled with a self-discontent which, if we know how to be candid, we shall confess to make more than half our bitterness under grievances, wife or husband included. It always remains true that if we had been greater, circumstance would have been less strong against us. Lydgate was aware that his concessions to Rosamond were often little more than the lapse of slackening resolution, the creeping paralysis apt to seize an enthusiasm which is out of adjustment to a constant portion of our lives. And on Lydgate's enthusiasm there was constantly pressing not a simple weight of sorrow, but the biting presence of a petty degrading care, such as casts the blight of irony over all higher effort. This was the care which he had hitherto abstained from mentioning to Rosamond; and he believed, with some wonder, that it had never entered her mind, though certainly no difficulty could be less mysterious. It was an inference with a conspicuous handle to it, and had been easily drawn by indifferent observers, that Lydgate was in debt; and he could not succeed in keeping out of his mind for long together that he was every day getting deeper into that swamp, which tempts men towards it with such a pretty covering of flowers and verdure. It is wonderful how soon a man gets up to his chin there--in a condition in which, in spite of himself, he is forced to think chiefly of release, though he had a scheme of the universe in his soul. Eighteen months ago Lydgate was poor, but had never known the eager want of small sums, and felt rather a burning contempt for any one who descended a step in order to gain them. He was now experiencing something worse than a simple deficit: he was assailed by the vulgar hateful trials of a man who has bought and used a great many things which might have been done without, and which he is unable to pay for, though the demand for payment has become pressing. How this came about may be easily seen without much arithmetic or knowledge of prices. When a man in setting up a house and preparing for marriage finds that his furniture and other initial expenses come to between four and five hundred pounds more than he has capital to pay for; when at the end of a year it appears that his household expenses, horses and et caeteras, amount to nearly a thousand, while the proceeds of the practice reckoned from the old books to be worth eight hundred per annum have sunk like a summer pond and make hardly five hundred, chiefly in unpaid entries, the plain inference is that, whether he minds it or not, he is in debt. Those were less expensive times than our own, and provincial life was comparatively modest; but the ease with which a medical man who had lately bought a practice, who thought that he was obliged to keep two horses, whose table was supplied without stint, and who paid an insurance on his life and a high rent for house and garden, might find his expenses doubling his receipts, can be conceived by any one who does not think these details beneath his consideration. Rosamond, accustomed from her childhood to an extravagant household, thought that good housekeeping consisted simply in ordering the best of everything--nothing else "answered;" and Lydgate supposed that "if things were done at all, they must be done properly"--he did not see how they were to live otherwise. If each head of household expenditure had been mentioned to him beforehand, he would have probably observed that "it could hardly come to much," and if any one had suggested a saving on a particular article--for example, the substitution of cheap fish for dear--it would have appeared to him simply a penny-wise, mean notion. Rosamond, even without such an occasion as Captain Lydgate's visit, was fond of giving invitations, and Lydgate, though he often thought the guests tiresome, did not interfere. This sociability seemed a necessary part of professional prudence, and the entertainment must be suitable. It is true Lydgate was constantly visiting the homes of the poor and adjusting his prescriptions of diet to their small means; but, dear me! has it not by this time ceased to be remarkable--is it not rather that we expect in men, that they should have numerous strands of experience lying side by side and never compare them with each other? Expenditure--like ugliness and errors--becomes a totally new thing when we attach our own personality to it, and measure it by that wide difference which is manifest (in our own sensations) between ourselves and others. Lydgate believed himself to be careless about his dress, and he despised a man who calculated the effects of his costume; it seemed to him only a matter of course that he had abundance of fresh garments--such things were naturally ordered in sheaves. It must be remembered that he had never hitherto felt the check of importunate debt, and he walked by habit, not by self-criticism. But the check had come. Its novelty made it the more irritating. He was amazed, disgusted that conditions so foreign to all his purposes, so hatefully disconnected with the objects he cared to occupy himself with, should have lain in ambush and clutched him when he was unaware. And there was not only the actual debt; there was the certainty that in his present position he must go on deepening it. Two furnishing tradesmen at Brassing, whose bills had been incurred before his marriage, and whom uncalculated current expenses had ever since prevented him from paying, had repeatedly sent him unpleasant letters which had forced themselves on his attention. This could hardly have been more galling to any disposition than to Lydgate's, with his intense pride--his dislike of asking a favor or being under an obligation to any one. He had scorned even to form conjectures about Mr. Vincy's intentions on money matters, and nothing but extremity could have induced him to apply to his father-in-law, even if he had not been made aware in various indirect ways since his marriage that Mr. Vincy's own affairs were not flourishing, and that the expectation of help from him would be resented. Some men easily trust in the readiness of friends; it had never in the former part of his life occurred to Lydgate that he should need to do so: he had never thought what borrowing would be to him; but now that the idea had entered his mind, he felt that he would rather incur any other hardship. In the mean time he had no money or prospects of money; and his practice was not getting more lucrative. No wonder that Lydgate had been unable to suppress all signs of inward trouble during the last few months, and now that Rosamond was regaining brilliant health, he meditated taking her entirely into confidence on his difficulties. New conversance with tradesmen's bills had forced his reasoning into a new channel of comparison: he had begun to consider from a new point of view what was necessary and unnecessary in goods ordered, and to see that there must be some change of habits. How could such a change be made without Rosamond's concurrence? The immediate occasion of opening the disagreeable fact to her was forced upon him. Having no money, and having privately sought advice as to what security could possibly be given by a man in his position, Lydgate had offered the one good security in his power to the less peremptory creditor, who was a silversmith and jeweller, and who consented to take on himself the upholsterer's credit also, accepting interest for a given term. The security necessary was a bill of sale on the furniture of his house, which might make a creditor easy for a reasonable time about a debt amounting to less than four hundred pounds; and the silversmith, Mr. Dover, was willing to reduce it by taking back a portion of the plate and any other article which was as good as new. "Any other article" was a phrase delicately implying jewellery, and more particularly some purple amethysts costing thirty pounds, which Lydgate had bought as a bridal present. Opinions may be divided as to his wisdom in making this present: some may think that it was a graceful attention to be expected from a man like Lydgate, and that the fault of any troublesome consequences lay in the pinched narrowness of provincial life at that time, which offered no conveniences for professional people whose fortune was not proportioned to their tastes; also, in Lydgate's ridiculous fastidiousness about asking his friends for money. However, it had seemed a question of no moment to him on that fine morning when he went to give a final order for plate: in the presence of other jewels enormously expensive, and as an addition to orders of which the amount had not been exactly calculated, thirty pounds for ornaments so exquisitely suited to Rosamond's neck and arms could hardly appear excessive when there was no ready cash for it to exceed. But at this crisis Lydgate's imagination could not help dwelling on the possibility of letting the amethysts take their place again among Mr. Dover's stock, though he shrank from the idea of proposing this to Rosamond. Having been roused to discern consequences which he had never been in the habit of tracing, he was preparing to act on this discernment with some of the rigor (by no means all) that he would have applied in pursuing experiment. He was nerving himself to this rigor as he rode from Brassing, and meditated on the representations he must make to Rosamond. It was evening when he got home. He was intensely miserable, this strong man of nine-and-twenty and of many gifts. He was not saying angrily within himself that he had made a profound mistake; but the mistake was at work in him like a recognized chronic disease, mingling its uneasy importunities with every prospect, and enfeebling every thought. As he went along the passage to the drawing-room, he heard the piano and singing. Of course, Ladislaw was there. It was some weeks since Will had parted from Dorothea, yet he was still at the old post in Middlemarch. Lydgate had no objection in general to Ladislaw's coming, but just now he was annoyed that he could not find his hearth free. When he opened the door the two singers went on towards the key-note, raising their eyes and looking at him indeed, but not regarding his entrance as an interruption. To a man galled with his harness as poor Lydgate was, it is not soothing to see two people warbling at him, as he comes in with the sense that the painful day has still pains in store. His face, already paler than usual, took on a scowl as he walked across the room and flung himself into a chair. The singers feeling themselves excused by the fact that they had only three bars to sing, now turned round. "How are you, Lydgate?" said Will, coming forward to shake hands. Lydgate took his hand, but did not think it necessary to speak. "Have you dined, Tertius? I expected you much earlier," said Rosamond, who had already seen that her husband was in a "horrible humor." She seated herself in her usual place as she spoke. "I have dined. I should like some tea, please," said Lydgate, curtly, still scowling and looking markedly at his legs stretched out before him. Will was too quick to need more. "I shall be off," he said, reaching his hat. "Tea is coming," said Rosamond; "pray don't go." "Yes, Lydgate is bored," said Will, who had more comprehension of Lydgate than Rosamond had, and was not offended by his manner, easily imagining outdoor causes of annoyance. "There is the more need for you to stay," said Rosamond, playfully, and in her lightest accent; "he will not speak to me all the evening." "Yes, Rosamond, I shall," said Lydgate, in his strong baritone. "I have some serious business to speak to you about." No introduction of the business could have been less like that which Lydgate had intended; but her indifferent manner had been too provoking. "There! you see," said Will. "I'm going to the meeting about the Mechanics' Institute. Good-by;" and he went quickly out of the room. Rosamond did not look at her husband, but presently rose and took her place before the tea-tray. She was thinking that she had never seen him so disagreeable. Lydgate turned his dark eyes on her and watched her as she delicately handled the tea-service with her taper fingers, and looked at the objects immediately before her with no curve in her face disturbed, and yet with an ineffable protest in her air against all people with unpleasant manners. For the moment he lost the sense of his wound in a sudden speculation about this new form of feminine impassibility revealing itself in the sylph-like frame which he had once interpreted as the sign of a ready intelligent sensitiveness. His mind glancing back to Laure while he looked at Rosamond, he said inwardly, "Would _she_ kill me because I wearied her?" and then, "It is the way with all women." But this power of generalizing which gives men so much the superiority in mistake over the dumb animals, was immediately thwarted by Lydgate's memory of wondering impressions from the behavior of another woman--from Dorothea's looks and tones of emotion about her husband when Lydgate began to attend him--from her passionate cry to be taught what would best comfort that man for whose sake it seemed as if she must quell every impulse in her except the yearnings of faithfulness and compassion. These revived impressions succeeded each other quickly and dreamily in Lydgate's mind while the tea was being brewed. He had shut his eyes in the last instant of reverie while he heard Dorothea saying, "Advise me--think what I can do--he has been all his life laboring and looking forward. He minds about nothing else--and I mind about nothing else." That voice of deep-souled womanhood had remained within him as the enkindling conceptions of dead and sceptred genius had remained within him (is there not a genius for feeling nobly which also reigns over human spirits and their conclusions?); the tones were a music from which he was falling away--he had really fallen into a momentary doze, when Rosamond said in her silvery neutral way, "Here is your tea, Tertius," setting it on the small table by his side, and then moved back to her place without looking at him. Lydgate was too hasty in attributing insensibility to her; after her own fashion, she was sensitive enough, and took lasting impressions. Her impression now was one of offence and repulsion. But then, Rosamond had no scowls and had never raised her voice: she was quite sure that no one could justly find fault with her. Perhaps Lydgate and she had never felt so far off each other before; but there were strong reasons for not deferring his revelation, even if he had not already begun it by that abrupt announcement; indeed some of the angry desire to rouse her into more sensibility on his account which had prompted him to speak prematurely, still mingled with his pain in the prospect of her pain. But he waited till the tray was gone, the candles were lit, and the evening quiet might be counted on: the interval had left time for repelled tenderness to return into the old course. He spoke kindly. "Dear Rosy, lay down your work and come to sit by me," he said, gently, pushing away the table, and stretching out his arm to draw a chair near his own. Rosamond obeyed. As she came towards him in her drapery of transparent faintly tinted muslin, her slim yet round figure never looked more graceful; as she sat down by him and laid one hand on the elbow of his chair, at last looking at him and meeting his eyes, her delicate neck and cheek and purely cut lips never had more of that untarnished beauty which touches as in spring-time and infancy and all sweet freshness. It touched Lydgate now, and mingled the early moments of his love for her with all the other memories which were stirred in this crisis of deep trouble. He laid his ample hand softly on hers, saying-- "Dear!" with the lingering utterance which affection gives to the word. Rosamond too was still under the power of that same past, and her husband was still in part the Lydgate whose approval had stirred delight. She put his hair lightly away from his forehead, then laid her other hand on his, and was conscious of forgiving him. "I am obliged to tell you what will hurt you, Rosy. But there are things which husband and wife must think of together. I dare say it has occurred to you already that I am short of money." Lydgate paused; but Rosamond turned her neck and looked at a vase on the mantel-piece. "I was not able to pay for all the things we had to get before we were married, and there have been expenses since which I have been obliged to meet. The consequence is, there is a large debt at Brassing--three hundred and eighty pounds--which has been pressing on me a good while, and in fact we are getting deeper every day, for people don't pay me the faster because others want the money. I took pains to keep it from you while you were not well; but now we must think together about it, and you must help me." "What can--I--do, Tertius?" said Rosamond, turning her eyes on him again. That little speech of four words, like so many others in all languages, is capable by varied vocal inflections of expressing all states of mind from helpless dimness to exhaustive argumentative perception, from the completest self-devoting fellowship to the most neutral aloofness. Rosamond's thin utterance threw into the words "What can--I--do!" as much neutrality as they could hold. They fell like a mortal chill on Lydgate's roused tenderness. He did not storm in indignation--he felt too sad a sinking of the heart. And when he spoke again it was more in the tone of a man who forces himself to fulfil a task. "It is necessary for you to know, because I have to give security for a time, and a man must come to make an inventory of the furniture." Rosamond colored deeply. "Have you not asked papa for money?" she said, as soon as she could speak. "No." "Then I must ask him!" she said, releasing her hands from Lydgate's, and rising to stand at two yards' distance from him. "No, Rosy," said Lydgate, decisively. "It is too late to do that. The inventory will be begun to-morrow. Remember it is a mere security: it will make no difference: it is a temporary affair. I insist upon it that your father shall not know, unless I choose to tell him," added Lydgate, with a more peremptory emphasis. This certainly was unkind, but Rosamond had thrown him back on evil expectation as to what she would do in the way of quiet steady disobedience. The unkindness seemed unpardonable to her: she was not given to weeping and disliked it, but now her chin and lips began to tremble and the tears welled up. Perhaps it was not possible for Lydgate, under the double stress of outward material difficulty and of his own proud resistance to humiliating consequences, to imagine fully what this sudden trial was to a young creature who had known nothing but indulgence, and whose dreams had all been of new indulgence, more exactly to her taste. But he did wish to spare her as much as he could, and her tears cut him to the heart. He could not speak again immediately; but Rosamond did not go on sobbing: she tried to conquer her agitation and wiped away her tears, continuing to look before her at the mantel-piece. "Try not to grieve, darling," said Lydgate, turning his eyes up towards her. That she had chosen to move away from him in this moment of her trouble made everything harder to say, but he must absolutely go on. "We must brace ourselves to do what is necessary. It is I who have been in fault: I ought to have seen that I could not afford to live in this way. But many things have told against me in my practice, and it really just now has ebbed to a low point. I may recover it, but in the mean time we must pull up--we must change our way of living. We shall weather it. When I have given this security I shall have time to look about me; and you are so clever that if you turn your mind to managing you will school me into carefulness. I have been a thoughtless rascal about squaring prices--but come, dear, sit down and forgive me." Lydgate was bowing his neck under the yoke like a creature who had talons, but who had Reason too, which often reduces us to meekness. When he had spoken the last words in an imploring tone, Rosamond returned to the chair by his side. His self-blame gave her some hope that he would attend to her opinion, and she said-- "Why can you not put off having the inventory made? You can send the men away to-morrow when they come." "I shall not send them away," said Lydgate, the peremptoriness rising again. Was it of any use to explain? "If we left Middlemarch? there would of course be a sale, and that would do as well." "But we are not going to leave Middlemarch." "I am sure, Tertius, it would be much better to do so. Why can we not go to London? Or near Durham, where your family is known?" "We can go nowhere without money, Rosamond." "Your friends would not wish you to be without money. And surely these odious tradesmen might be made to understand that, and to wait, if you would make proper representations to them." "This is idle Rosamond," said Lydgate, angrily. "You must learn to take my judgment on questions you don't understand. I have made necessary arrangements, and they must be carried out. As to friends, I have no expectations whatever from them, and shall not ask them for anything." Rosamond sat perfectly still. The thought in her mind was that if she had known how Lydgate would behave, she would never have married him. "We have no time to waste now on unnecessary words, dear," said Lydgate, trying to be gentle again. "There are some details that I want to consider with you. Dover says he will take a good deal of the plate back again, and any of the jewellery we like. He really behaves very well." "Are we to go without spoons and forks then?" said Rosamond, whose very lips seemed to get thinner with the thinness of her utterance. She was determined to make no further resistance or suggestions. "Oh no, dear!" said Lydgate. "But look here," he continued, drawing a paper from his pocket and opening it; "here is Dover's account. See, I have marked a number of articles, which if we returned them would reduce the amount by thirty pounds and more. I have not marked any of the jewellery." Lydgate had really felt this point of the jewellery very bitter to himself; but he had overcome the feeling by severe argument. He could not propose to Rosamond that she should return any particular present of his, but he had told himself that he was bound to put Dover's offer before her, and her inward prompting might make the affair easy. "It is useless for me to look, Tertius," said Rosamond, calmly; "you will return what you please." She would not turn her eyes on the paper, and Lydgate, flushing up to the roots of his hair, drew it back and let it fall on his knee. Meanwhile Rosamond quietly went out of the room, leaving Lydgate helpless and wondering. Was she not coming back? It seemed that she had no more identified herself with him than if they had been creatures of different species and opposing interests. He tossed his head and thrust his hands deep into his pockets with a sort of vengeance. There was still science--there were still good objects to work for. He must give a tug still--all the stronger because other satisfactions were going. But the door opened and Rosamond re-entered. She carried the leather box containing the amethysts, and a tiny ornamental basket which contained other boxes, and laying them on the chair where she had been sitting, she said, with perfect propriety in her air-- "This is all the jewellery you ever gave me. You can return what you like of it, and of the plate also. You will not, of course, expect me to stay at home to-morrow. I shall go to papa's." To many women the look Lydgate cast at her would have been more terrible than one of anger: it had in it a despairing acceptance of the distance she was placing between them. "And when shall you come back again?" he said, with a bitter edge on his accent. "Oh, in the evening. Of course I shall not mention the subject to mamma." Rosamond was convinced that no woman could behave more irreproachably than she was behaving; and she went to sit down at her work-table. Lydgate sat meditating a minute or two, and the result was that he said, with some of the old emotion in his tone-- "Now we have been united, Rosy, you should not leave me to myself in the first trouble that has come." "Certainly not," said Rosamond; "I shall do everything it becomes me to do." "It is not right that the thing should be left to servants, or that I should have to speak to them about it. And I shall be obliged to go out--I don't know how early. I understand your shrinking from the humiliation of these money affairs. But, my dear Rosamond, as a question of pride, which I feel just as much as you can, it is surely better to manage the thing ourselves, and let the servants see as little of it as possible; and since you are my wife, there is no hindering your share in my disgraces--if there were disgraces." Rosamond did not answer immediately, but at last she said, "Very well, I will stay at home." "I shall not touch these jewels, Rosy. Take them away again. But I will write out a list of plate that we may return, and that can be packed up and sent at once." "The servants will know _that_," said Rosamond, with the slightest touch of sarcasm. "Well, we must meet some disagreeables as necessities. Where is the ink, I wonder?" said Lydgate, rising, and throwing the account on the larger table where he meant to write. Rosamond went to reach the inkstand, and after setting it on the table was going to turn away, when Lydgate, who was standing close by, put his arm round her and drew her towards him, saying-- "Come, darling, let us make the best of things. It will only be for a time, I hope, that we shall have to be stingy and particular. Kiss me." His native warm-heartedness took a great deal of quenching, and it is a part of manliness for a husband to feel keenly the fact that an inexperienced girl has got into trouble by marrying him. She received his kiss and returned it faintly, and in this way an appearance of accord was recovered for the time. But Lydgate could not help looking forward with dread to the inevitable future discussions about expenditure and the necessity for a complete change in their way of living.

Rosamond has had a miscarriage, and Lydgate's medical opinion is that it's because she went horseback riding while he was out, when he told her she shouldn't. She went because Lydgate's cousin, Captain Lydgate , was visiting them, Lydgate didn't much like his cousin, because the cousin is a dumb lug. But Rosamond is proud of the fact that her husband's relatives are aristocratic, and wanted to show him off by going horseback riding with him while Lydgate was at work. So she went in spite of her husband's warnings, but the horse got startled when a tree fell down, she fell, and eventually had her miscarriage. Lydgate could hardly be angry with her in that condition, so nothing is said on the subject between them. Lydgate has other things to concern him - they owe money all over town for the fancy furniture in their new house and the expensive food for the dinner parties they've given. He'd always thought that worrying about money was a vulgar thing to do, but now that he doesn't have enough to pay the bills he can understand it. He's decided to tell Rosamond all about it, and he's afraid of how she'll react. When he gets home and finds Will Ladislaw there, singing with Rosamond, he's not so happy. Will has already said goodbye to Dorothea, but hasn't left town yet. He's not remotely jealous of Will, but he had business to talk over with Rosamond. Will's no dummy, and can tell that Lydgate wants to be alone with Rosamond, so he takes off. Rosamond thinks Lydgate's being terribly unpleasant and rude. He tells her that they have to have all of their furniture and things inventoried for security against the debt they owe. She wants him to ask her father for money, but he refuses, and tells her not to go, either. She thinks he's behaving very badly, and wishes she had never married him. She's unswervingly polite about it, though, and aside from a few tears, hardly complains. But she's so cold and distant with him that it breaks his heart. She says that when the inventory people come the next day, she'll go to her parents' house. He urges her to stay at home to deal with it so that they won't have to tell the servants. She agrees, but acts like a martyr about it.

Oliver soon recovering from the fainting-fit into which Mr. Brownlow's abrupt exclamation had thrown him, the subject of the picture was carefully avoided, both by the old gentleman and Mrs. Bedwin, in the conversation that ensued: which indeed bore no reference to Oliver's history or prospects, but was confined to such topics as might amuse without exciting him. He was still too weak to get up to breakfast; but, when he came down into the housekeeper's room next day, his first act was to cast an eager glance at the wall, in the hope of again looking on the face of the beautiful lady. His expectations were disappointed, however, for the picture had been removed. 'Ah!' said the housekeeper, watching the direction of Oliver's eyes. 'It is gone, you see.' 'I see it is ma'am,' replied Oliver. 'Why have they taken it away?' 'It has been taken down, child, because Mr. Brownlow said, that as it seemed to worry you, perhaps it might prevent your getting well, you know,' rejoined the old lady. 'Oh, no, indeed. It didn't worry me, ma'am,' said Oliver. 'I liked to see it. I quite loved it.' 'Well, well!' said the old lady, good-humouredly; 'you get well as fast as ever you can, dear, and it shall be hung up again. There! I promise you that! Now, let us talk about something else.' This was all the information Oliver could obtain about the picture at that time. As the old lady had been so kind to him in his illness, he endeavoured to think no more of the subject just then; so he listened attentively to a great many stories she told him, about an amiable and handsome daughter of hers, who was married to an amiable and handsome man, and lived in the country; and about a son, who was clerk to a merchant in the West Indies; and who was, also, such a good young man, and wrote such dutiful letters home four times a-year, that it brought the tears into her eyes to talk about them. When the old lady had expatiated, a long time, on the excellences of her children, and the merits of her kind good husband besides, who had been dead and gone, poor dear soul! just six-and-twenty years, it was time to have tea. After tea she began to teach Oliver cribbage: which he learnt as quickly as she could teach: and at which game they played, with great interest and gravity, until it was time for the invalid to have some warm wine and water, with a slice of dry toast, and then to go cosily to bed. They were happy days, those of Oliver's recovery. Everything was so quiet, and neat, and orderly; everybody so kind and gentle; that after the noise and turbulence in the midst of which he had always lived, it seemed like Heaven itself. He was no sooner strong enough to put his clothes on, properly, than Mr. Brownlow caused a complete new suit, and a new cap, and a new pair of shoes, to be provided for him. As Oliver was told that he might do what he liked with the old clothes, he gave them to a servant who had been very kind to him, and asked her to sell them to a Jew, and keep the money for herself. This she very readily did; and, as Oliver looked out of the parlour window, and saw the Jew roll them up in his bag and walk away, he felt quite delighted to think that they were safely gone, and that there was now no possible danger of his ever being able to wear them again. They were sad rags, to tell the truth; and Oliver had never had a new suit before. One evening, about a week after the affair of the picture, as he was sitting talking to Mrs. Bedwin, there came a message down from Mr. Brownlow, that if Oliver Twist felt pretty well, he should like to see him in his study, and talk to him a little while. 'Bless us, and save us! Wash your hands, and let me part your hair nicely for you, child,' said Mrs. Bedwin. 'Dear heart alive! If we had known he would have asked for you, we would have put you a clean collar on, and made you as smart as sixpence!' Oliver did as the old lady bade him; and, although she lamented grievously, meanwhile, that there was not even time to crimp the little frill that bordered his shirt-collar; he looked so delicate and handsome, despite that important personal advantage, that she went so far as to say: looking at him with great complacency from head to foot, that she really didn't think it would have been possible, on the longest notice, to have made much difference in him for the better. Thus encouraged, Oliver tapped at the study door. On Mr. Brownlow calling to him to come in, he found himself in a little back room, quite full of books, with a window, looking into some pleasant little gardens. There was a table drawn up before the window, at which Mr. Brownlow was seated reading. When he saw Oliver, he pushed the book away from him, and told him to come near the table, and sit down. Oliver complied; marvelling where the people could be found to read such a great number of books as seemed to be written to make the world wiser. Which is still a marvel to more experienced people than Oliver Twist, every day of their lives. 'There are a good many books, are there not, my boy?' said Mr. Brownlow, observing the curiosity with which Oliver surveyed the shelves that reached from the floor to the ceiling. 'A great number, sir,' replied Oliver. 'I never saw so many.' 'You shall read them, if you behave well,' said the old gentleman kindly; 'and you will like that, better than looking at the outsides,--that is, some cases; because there are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.' 'I suppose they are those heavy ones, sir,' said Oliver, pointing to some large quartos, with a good deal of gilding about the binding. 'Not always those,' said the old gentleman, patting Oliver on the head, and smiling as he did so; 'there are other equally heavy ones, though of a much smaller size. How should you like to grow up a clever man, and write books, eh?' 'I think I would rather read them, sir,' replied Oliver. 'What! wouldn't you like to be a book-writer?' said the old gentleman. Oliver considered a little while; and at last said, he should think it would be a much better thing to be a book-seller; upon which the old gentleman laughed heartily, and declared he had said a very good thing. Which Oliver felt glad to have done, though he by no means knew what it was. 'Well, well,' said the old gentleman, composing his features. 'Don't be afraid! We won't make an author of you, while there's an honest trade to be learnt, or brick-making to turn to.' 'Thank you, sir,' said Oliver. At the earnest manner of his reply, the old gentleman laughed again; and said something about a curious instinct, which Oliver, not understanding, paid no very great attention to. 'Now,' said Mr. Brownlow, speaking if possible in a kinder, but at the same time in a much more serious manner, than Oliver had ever known him assume yet, 'I want you to pay great attention, my boy, to what I am going to say. I shall talk to you without any reserve; because I am sure you are well able to understand me, as many older persons would be.' 'Oh, don't tell you are going to send me away, sir, pray!' exclaimed Oliver, alarmed at the serious tone of the old gentleman's commencement! 'Don't turn me out of doors to wander in the streets again. Let me stay here, and be a servant. Don't send me back to the wretched place I came from. Have mercy upon a poor boy, sir!' 'My dear child,' said the old gentleman, moved by the warmth of Oliver's sudden appeal; 'you need not be afraid of my deserting you, unless you give me cause.' 'I never, never will, sir,' interposed Oliver. 'I hope not,' rejoined the old gentleman. 'I do not think you ever will. I have been deceived, before, in the objects whom I have endeavoured to benefit; but I feel strongly disposed to trust you, nevertheless; and I am more interested in your behalf than I can well account for, even to myself. The persons on whom I have bestowed my dearest love, lie deep in their graves; but, although the happiness and delight of my life lie buried there too, I have not made a coffin of my heart, and sealed it up, forever, on my best affections. Deep affliction has but strengthened and refined them.' As the old gentleman said this in a low voice: more to himself than to his companion: and as he remained silent for a short time afterwards: Oliver sat quite still. 'Well, well!' said the old gentleman at length, in a more cheerful tone, 'I only say this, because you have a young heart; and knowing that I have suffered great pain and sorrow, you will be more careful, perhaps, not to wound me again. You say you are an orphan, without a friend in the world; all the inquiries I have been able to make, confirm the statement. Let me hear your story; where you come from; who brought you up; and how you got into the company in which I found you. Speak the truth, and you shall not be friendless while I live.' Oliver's sobs checked his utterance for some minutes; when he was on the point of beginning to relate how he had been brought up at the farm, and carried to the workhouse by Mr. Bumble, a peculiarly impatient little double-knock was heard at the street-door: and the servant, running upstairs, announced Mr. Grimwig. 'Is he coming up?' inquired Mr. Brownlow. 'Yes, sir,' replied the servant. 'He asked if there were any muffins in the house; and, when I told him yes, he said he had come to tea.' Mr. Brownlow smiled; and, turning to Oliver, said that Mr. Grimwig was an old friend of his, and he must not mind his being a little rough in his manners; for he was a worthy creature at bottom, as he had reason to know. 'Shall I go downstairs, sir?' inquired Oliver. 'No,' replied Mr. Brownlow, 'I would rather you remained here.' At this moment, there walked into the room: supporting himself by a thick stick: a stout old gentleman, rather lame in one leg, who was dressed in a blue coat, striped waistcoat, nankeen breeches and gaiters, and a broad-brimmed white hat, with the sides turned up with green. A very small-plaited shirt frill stuck out from his waistcoat; and a very long steel watch-chain, with nothing but a key at the end, dangled loosely below it. The ends of his white neckerchief were twisted into a ball about the size of an orange; the variety of shapes into which his countenance was twisted, defy description. He had a manner of screwing his head on one side when he spoke; and of looking out of the corners of his eyes at the same time: which irresistibly reminded the beholder of a parrot. In this attitude, he fixed himself, the moment he made his appearance; and, holding out a small piece of orange-peel at arm's length, exclaimed, in a growling, discontented voice. 'Look here! do you see this! Isn't it a most wonderful and extraordinary thing that I can't call at a man's house but I find a piece of this poor surgeon's friend on the staircase? I've been lamed with orange-peel once, and I know orange-peel will be my death, or I'll be content to eat my own head, sir!' This was the handsome offer with which Mr. Grimwig backed and confirmed nearly every assertion he made; and it was the more singular in his case, because, even admitting for the sake of argument, the possibility of scientific improvements being brought to that pass which will enable a gentleman to eat his own head in the event of his being so disposed, Mr. Grimwig's head was such a particularly large one, that the most sanguine man alive could hardly entertain a hope of being able to get through it at a sitting--to put entirely out of the question, a very thick coating of powder. 'I'll eat my head, sir,' repeated Mr. Grimwig, striking his stick upon the ground. 'Hallo! what's that!' looking at Oliver, and retreating a pace or two. 'This is young Oliver Twist, whom we were speaking about,' said Mr. Brownlow. Oliver bowed. 'You don't mean to say that's the boy who had the fever, I hope?' said Mr. Grimwig, recoiling a little more. 'Wait a minute! Don't speak! Stop--' continued Mr. Grimwig, abruptly, losing all dread of the fever in his triumph at the discovery; 'that's the boy who had the orange! If that's not the boy, sir, who had the orange, and threw this bit of peel upon the staircase, I'll eat my head, and his too.' 'No, no, he has not had one,' said Mr. Brownlow, laughing. 'Come! Put down your hat; and speak to my young friend.' 'I feel strongly on this subject, sir,' said the irritable old gentleman, drawing off his gloves. 'There's always more or less orange-peel on the pavement in our street; and I _know_ it's put there by the surgeon's boy at the corner. A young woman stumbled over a bit last night, and fell against my garden-railings; directly she got up I saw her look towards his infernal red lamp with the pantomime-light. "Don't go to him," I called out of the window, "he's an assassin! A man-trap!" So he is. If he is not--' Here the irascible old gentleman gave a great knock on the ground with his stick; which was always understood, by his friends, to imply the customary offer, whenever it was not expressed in words. Then, still keeping his stick in his hand, he sat down; and, opening a double eye-glass, which he wore attached to a broad black riband, took a view of Oliver: who, seeing that he was the object of inspection, coloured, and bowed again. 'That's the boy, is it?' said Mr. Grimwig, at length. 'That's the boy,' replied Mr. Brownlow. 'How are you, boy?' said Mr. Grimwig. 'A great deal better, thank you, sir,' replied Oliver. Mr. Brownlow, seeming to apprehend that his singular friend was about to say something disagreeable, asked Oliver to step downstairs and tell Mrs. Bedwin they were ready for tea; which, as he did not half like the visitor's manner, he was very happy to do. 'He is a nice-looking boy, is he not?' inquired Mr. Brownlow. 'I don't know,' replied Mr. Grimwig, pettishly. 'Don't know?' 'No. I don't know. I never see any difference in boys. I only knew two sort of boys. Mealy boys, and beef-faced boys.' 'And which is Oliver?' 'Mealy. I know a friend who has a beef-faced boy; a fine boy, they call him; with a round head, and red cheeks, and glaring eyes; a horrid boy; with a body and limbs that appear to be swelling out of the seams of his blue clothes; with the voice of a pilot, and the appetite of a wolf. I know him! The wretch!' 'Come,' said Mr. Brownlow, 'these are not the characteristics of young Oliver Twist; so he needn't excite your wrath.' 'They are not,' replied Mr. Grimwig. 'He may have worse.' Here, Mr. Brownlow coughed impatiently; which appeared to afford Mr. Grimwig the most exquisite delight. 'He may have worse, I say,' repeated Mr. Grimwig. 'Where does he come from! Who is he? What is he? He has had a fever. What of that? Fevers are not peculiar to good people; are they? Bad people have fevers sometimes; haven't they, eh? I knew a man who was hung in Jamaica for murdering his master. He had had a fever six times; he wasn't recommended to mercy on that account. Pooh! nonsense!' Now, the fact was, that in the inmost recesses of his own heart, Mr. Grimwig was strongly disposed to admit that Oliver's appearance and manner were unusually prepossessing; but he had a strong appetite for contradiction, sharpened on this occasion by the finding of the orange-peel; and, inwardly determining that no man should dictate to him whether a boy was well-looking or not, he had resolved, from the first, to oppose his friend. When Mr. Brownlow admitted that on no one point of inquiry could he yet return a satisfactory answer; and that he had postponed any investigation into Oliver's previous history until he thought the boy was strong enough to hear it; Mr. Grimwig chuckled maliciously. And he demanded, with a sneer, whether the housekeeper was in the habit of counting the plate at night; because if she didn't find a table-spoon or two missing some sunshiny morning, why, he would be content to--and so forth. All this, Mr. Brownlow, although himself somewhat of an impetuous gentleman: knowing his friend's peculiarities, bore with great good humour; as Mr. Grimwig, at tea, was graciously pleased to express his entire approval of the muffins, matters went on very smoothly; and Oliver, who made one of the party, began to feel more at his ease than he had yet done in the fierce old gentleman's presence. 'And when are you going to hear a full, true, and particular account of the life and adventures of Oliver Twist?' asked Grimwig of Mr. Brownlow, at the conclusion of the meal; looking sideways at Oliver, as he resumed his subject. 'To-morrow morning,' replied Mr. Brownlow. 'I would rather he was alone with me at the time. Come up to me to-morrow morning at ten o'clock, my dear.' 'Yes, sir,' replied Oliver. He answered with some hesitation, because he was confused by Mr. Grimwig's looking so hard at him. 'I'll tell you what,' whispered that gentleman to Mr. Brownlow; 'he won't come up to you to-morrow morning. I saw him hesitate. He is deceiving you, my good friend.' 'I'll swear he is not,' replied Mr. Brownlow, warmly. 'If he is not,' said Mr. Grimwig, 'I'll--' and down went the stick. 'I'll answer for that boy's truth with my life!' said Mr. Brownlow, knocking the table. 'And I for his falsehood with my head!' rejoined Mr. Grimwig, knocking the table also. 'We shall see,' said Mr. Brownlow, checking his rising anger. 'We will,' replied Mr. Grimwig, with a provoking smile; 'we will.' As fate would have it, Mrs. Bedwin chanced to bring in, at this moment, a small parcel of books, which Mr. Brownlow had that morning purchased of the identical bookstall-keeper, who has already figured in this history; having laid them on the table, she prepared to leave the room. 'Stop the boy, Mrs. Bedwin!' said Mr. Brownlow; 'there is something to go back.' 'He has gone, sir,' replied Mrs. Bedwin. 'Call after him,' said Mr. Brownlow; 'it's particular. He is a poor man, and they are not paid for. There are some books to be taken back, too.' The street-door was opened. Oliver ran one way; and the girl ran another; and Mrs. Bedwin stood on the step and screamed for the boy; but there was no boy in sight. Oliver and the girl returned, in a breathless state, to report that there were no tidings of him. 'Dear me, I am very sorry for that,' exclaimed Mr. Brownlow; 'I particularly wished those books to be returned to-night.' 'Send Oliver with them,' said Mr. Grimwig, with an ironical smile; 'he will be sure to deliver them safely, you know.' 'Yes; do let me take them, if you please, sir,' said Oliver. 'I'll run all the way, sir.' The old gentleman was just going to say that Oliver should not go out on any account; when a most malicious cough from Mr. Grimwig determined him that he should; and that, by his prompt discharge of the commission, he should prove to him the injustice of his suspicions: on this head at least: at once. 'You _shall_ go, my dear,' said the old gentleman. 'The books are on a chair by my table. Fetch them down.' Oliver, delighted to be of use, brought down the books under his arm in a great bustle; and waited, cap in hand, to hear what message he was to take. 'You are to say,' said Mr. Brownlow, glancing steadily at Grimwig; 'you are to say that you have brought those books back; and that you have come to pay the four pound ten I owe him. This is a five-pound note, so you will have to bring me back, ten shillings change.' 'I won't be ten minutes, sir,' said Oliver, eagerly. Having buttoned up the bank-note in his jacket pocket, and placed the books carefully under his arm, he made a respectful bow, and left the room. Mrs. Bedwin followed him to the street-door, giving him many directions about the nearest way, and the name of the bookseller, and the name of the street: all of which Oliver said he clearly understood. Having superadded many injunctions to be sure and not take cold, the old lady at length permitted him to depart. 'Bless his sweet face!' said the old lady, looking after him. 'I can't bear, somehow, to let him go out of my sight.' At this moment, Oliver looked gaily round, and nodded before he turned the corner. The old lady smilingly returned his salutation, and, closing the door, went back to her own room. 'Let me see; he'll be back in twenty minutes, at the longest,' said Mr. Brownlow, pulling out his watch, and placing it on the table. 'It will be dark by that time.' 'Oh! you really expect him to come back, do you?' inquired Mr. Grimwig. 'Don't you?' asked Mr. Brownlow, smiling. The spirit of contradiction was strong in Mr. Grimwig's breast, at the moment; and it was rendered stronger by his friend's confident smile. 'No,' he said, smiting the table with his fist, 'I do not. The boy has a new suit of clothes on his back, a set of valuable books under his arm, and a five-pound note in his pocket. He'll join his old friends the thieves, and laugh at you. If ever that boy returns to this house, sir, I'll eat my head.' With these words he drew his chair closer to the table; and there the two friends sat, in silent expectation, with the watch between them. It is worthy of remark, as illustrating the importance we attach to our own judgments, and the pride with which we put forth our most rash and hasty conclusions, that, although Mr. Grimwig was not by any means a bad-hearted man, and though he would have been unfeignedly sorry to see his respected friend duped and deceived, he really did most earnestly and strongly hope at that moment, that Oliver Twist might not come back. It grew so dark, that the figures on the dial-plate were scarcely discernible; but there the two old gentlemen continued to sit, in silence, with the watch between them.

When Oliver next enters the housekeeper's room, he notices that the portrait of the lady whom he resembles is gone. Mrs. Bedwin says that Brownlow removed it because it seemed to worry Oliver. One day, Brownlow sends for Oliver to meet him in his study. Assuming that Brownlow means to send him away, Oliver begs to remain as a servant. Brownlow assures Oliver that he wishes to be Oliver's friend. He asks Oliver to tell him his history. Before Oliver can begin, Brownlow's friend, Mr. Grimwig, arrives to visit. Grimwig, a crotchety old man, hints that Oliver might be a boy of bad habits. Brownlow bears his friend's eccentricity with good humor. Mrs. Bedwin brings in a parcel of books delivered by the bookstall keeper's boy. Brownlow wishes to send his payment and some returns back with the boy, but he has already gone. Grimwig suggests that Brownlow send Oliver but hints that Oliver might steal the payment and the books. Wishing to prove Grimwig wrong, Brownlow sends Oliver on the errand. It grows dark and Oliver does not return

Scena Tertia. Alarum, excursions, enter the King, the Prince, Lord Iohn of Lancaster, and Earle of Westmerland. King. I prethee Harry withdraw thy selfe, thou bleedest too much: Lord Iohn of Lancaster, go you with him P.Ioh. Not I, My Lord, vnlesse I did bleed too Prin. I beseech your Maiesty make vp, Least your retirement do amaze your friends King. I will do so: My Lord of Westmerland leade him to his Tent West. Come my Lord, Ile leade you to your Tent Prin. Lead me my Lord? I do not need your helpe; And heauen forbid a shallow scratch should driue The Prince of Wales from such a field as this, Where stain'd Nobility lyes troden on, And Rebels Armes triumph in massacres Ioh. We breath too long: Come cosin Westmerland, Our duty this way lies, for heauens sake come Prin. By heauen thou hast deceiu'd me Lancaster, I did not thinke thee Lord of such a spirit: Before, I lou'd thee as a Brother, Iohn; But now, I do respect thee as my Soule King. I saw him hold Lord Percy at the point, With lustier maintenance then I did looke for Of such an vngrowne Warriour Prin. O this Boy, lends mettall to vs all. Enter. Enter Dowglas. Dow. Another King? They grow like Hydra's heads: I am the Dowglas, fatall to all those That weare those colours on them. What art thou That counterfeit'st the person of a King? King. The King himselfe: who Dowglas grieues at hart So many of his shadowes thou hast met, And not the very King. I haue two Boyes Seeke Percy and thy selfe about the Field: But seeing thou fall'st on me so luckily, I will assay thee: so defend thy selfe Dow. I feare thou art another counterfeit: And yet infaith thou bear'st thee like a King: But mine I am sure thou art, whoere thou be, And thus I win thee. They fight, the K[ing]. being in danger, Enter Prince. Prin. Hold vp thy head vile Scot, or thou art like Neuer to hold it vp againe: the Spirits Of valiant Sherly, Stafford, Blunt, are in my Armes; it is the Prince of Wales that threatens thee, Who neuer promiseth, but he meanes to pay. They Fight, Dowglas flyeth. Cheerely My Lord: how fare's your Grace? Sir Nicolas Gawsey hath for succour sent, And so hath Clifton: Ile to Clifton straight King. Stay, and breath awhile. Thou hast redeem'd thy lost opinion, And shew'd thou mak'st some tender of my life In this faire rescue thou hast brought to mee Prin. O heauen, they did me too much iniury, That euer said I hearkned to your death. If it were so, I might haue let alone The insulting hand of Dowglas ouer you, Which would haue bene as speedy in your end, As all the poysonous Potions in the world, And sau'd the Treacherous labour of your Sonne K. Make vp to Clifton, Ile to Sir Nicholas Gausey. Exit Enter Hotspur. Hot. If I mistake not, thou art Harry Monmouth Prin. Thou speak'st as if I would deny my name Hot. My name is Harrie Percie Prin. Why then I see a very valiant rebel of that name. I am the Prince of Wales, and thinke not Percy, To share with me in glory any more: Two Starres keepe not their motion in one Sphere, Nor can one England brooke a double reigne, Of Harry Percy, and the Prince of Wales Hot. Nor shall it Harry, for the houre is come To end the one of vs; and would to heauen, Thy name in Armes, were now as great as mine Prin. Ile make it greater, ere I part from thee, And all the budding Honors on thy Crest, Ile crop, to make a Garland for my head Hot. I can no longer brooke thy Vanities. Fight. Enter Falstaffe. Fal. Well said Hal, to it Hal. Nay you shall finde no Boyes play heere, I can tell you. Enter Dowglas, he fights with Falstaffe, who fals down as if he were dead. The Prince killeth Percie. Hot. Oh Harry, thou hast rob'd me of my youth: I better brooke the losse of brittle life, Then those proud Titles thou hast wonne of me, They wound my thoghts worse, then the sword my flesh: But thought's the slaue of Life, and Life, Times foole; And Time, that takes suruey of all the world, Must haue a stop. O, I could Prophesie, But that the Earth, and the cold hand of death, Lyes on my Tongue: No Percy, thou art dust And food for- Prin. For Wormes, braue Percy. Farewell great heart: Ill-weau'd Ambition, how much art thou shrunke? When that this bodie did containe a spirit, A Kingdome for it was too small a bound: But now two paces of the vilest Earth Is roome enough. This Earth that beares the dead, Beares not aliue so stout a Gentleman. If thou wer't sensible of curtesie, I should not make so great a shew of Zeale. But let my fauours hide thy mangled face, And euen in thy behalfe, Ile thanke my selfe For doing these fayre Rites of Tendernesse. Adieu, and take thy praise with thee to heauen, Thy ignomy sleepe with thee in the graue, But not remembred in thy Epitaph. What? Old Acquaintance? Could not all this flesh Keepe in a little life? Poore Iacke, farewell: I could haue better spar'd a better man. O, I should haue a heauy misse of thee, If I were much in loue with Vanity. Death hath not strucke so fat a Deere to day, Though many dearer in this bloody Fray: Imbowell'd will I see thee by and by, Till then, in blood, by Noble Percie lye. Enter. Falstaffe riseth vp. Falst. Imbowell'd? If thou imbowell mee to day, Ile giue you leaue to powder me, and eat me too to morow. 'Twas time to counterfet, or that hotte Termagant Scot, had paid me scot and lot too. Counterfeit? I am no counterfeit; to dye, is to be a counterfeit, for hee is but the counterfeit of a man, who hath not the life of a man: But to counterfeit dying, when a man thereby liueth, is to be no counterfeit, but the true and perfect image of life indeede. The better part of Valour, is Discretion; in the which better part, I haue saued my life. I am affraide of this Gun-powder Percy though he be dead. How if hee should counterfeit too, and rise? I am afraid hee would proue the better counterfeit: therefore Ile make him sure: yea, and Ile sweare I kill'd him. Why may not hee rise as well as I: Nothing confutes me but eyes, and no-bodie sees me. Therefore sirra, with a new wound in your thigh come you along me. Takes Hotspurre on his backe. Enter Prince and Iohn of Lancaster. Prin. Come Brother Iohn, full brauely hast thou flesht thy Maiden sword Iohn. But soft, who haue we heere? Did you not tell me this Fat man was dead? Prin. I did, I saw him dead, Breathlesse, and bleeding on the ground: Art thou aliue? Or is it fantasie that playes vpon our eye-sight? I prethee speake, we will not trust our eyes Without our eares. Thou art not what thou seem'st Fal. No, that's certaine: I am not a double man: but if I be not Iacke Falstaffe, then am I a Iacke: There is Percy, if your Father will do me any Honor, so: if not, let him kill the next Percie himselfe. I looke to be either Earle or Duke, I can assure you Prin. Why, Percy I kill'd my selfe, and saw thee dead Fal. Did'st thou? Lord, Lord, how the world is giuen to Lying? I graunt you I was downe, and out of breath, and so was he, but we rose both at an instant, and fought a long houre by Shrewsburie clocke. If I may bee beleeued, so: if not, let them that should reward Valour, beare the sinne vpon their owne heads. Ile take't on my death I gaue him this wound in the Thigh: if the man were aliue, and would deny it, I would make him eate a peece of my sword Iohn. This is the strangest Tale that e're I heard Prin. This is the strangest Fellow, Brother Iohn. Come bring your luggage Nobly on your backe: For my part, if a lye may do thee grace, Ile gil'd it with the happiest tearmes I haue. A Retreat is sounded. The Trumpets sound Retreat, the day is ours: Come Brother, let's to the highest of the field, To see what Friends are liuing, who are dead. Exeunt. Fal. Ile follow as they say, for Reward. Hee that rewards me, heauen reward him. If I do grow great again, Ile grow lesse? For Ile purge, and leaue Sacke, and liue cleanly, as a Nobleman should do. Exit

The battle has begun. Sir Walter Blunt, disguised as the King, encounters Douglas. Douglas assumes he is the King and tells him that he has earlier killed the Lord of Stafford, who was disguised as the King. They fight, and Douglas kills Blunt. Hotspur enters, and Douglas tells him the battle is over, for he has killed the King. But Hotspur informs him that the dead man was not the King, but Blunt. He tells Douglas that there are many men on the battlefield dressed as the King. After they exit, Falstaff enters alone, cowering from the battle. Almost all of his hundred and fifty men have been killed, partly because Falstaff led them into harm's way, so he could draw the dead soldiers' pay. The Prince enters and chides Falstaff for standing idly around. He asks to borrow Falstaff's sword. Falstaff claims that he needs a breather, having fought valiantly. He even claims to have killed Hotspur. Hal knows that Hotspur is still alive, and again asks for Falstaff's sword. Falstaff prefers to keep possession of his sword, but tells Hal he can take his pistol. Falstaff's pistol turns out to be a bottle of sack, and the Prince throws the bottle at him in disgust. The Prince exits, leaving Falstaff alone. He says he would like to kill Hotspur, if he can, but he also realizes there is a good possibility that Hotspur will kill him instead. He plans to save his life if he can, but realizes the situation is not entirely in his control.

IT was about three o'clock when Adam entered the farmyard and roused Alick and the dogs from their Sunday dozing. Alick said everybody was gone to church "but th' young missis"--so he called Dinah--but this did not disappoint Adam, although the "everybody" was so liberal as to include Nancy the dairymaid, whose works of necessity were not unfrequently incompatible with church-going. There was perfect stillness about the house. The doors were all closed, and the very stones and tubs seemed quieter than usual. Adam heard the water gently dripping from the pump--that was the only sound--and he knocked at the house door rather softly, as was suitable in that stillness. The door opened, and Dinah stood before him, colouring deeply with the great surprise of seeing Adam at this hour, when she knew it was his regular practice to be at church. Yesterday he would have said to her without any difficulty, "I came to see you, Dinah: I knew the rest were not at home." But to-day something prevented him from saying that, and he put out his hand to her in silence. Neither of them spoke, and yet both wished they could speak, as Adam entered, and they sat down. Dinah took the chair she had just left; it was at the corner of the table near the window, and there was a book lying on the table, but it was not open. She had been sitting perfectly still, looking at the small bit of clear fire in the bright grate. Adam sat down opposite her, in Mr. Poyser's three-cornered chair. "Your mother is not ill again, I hope, Adam?" Dinah said, recovering herself. "Seth said she was well this morning." "No, she's very hearty to-day," said Adam, happy in the signs of Dinah's feeling at the sight of him, but shy. "There's nobody at home, you see," Dinah said; "but you'll wait. You've been hindered from going to church to-day, doubtless." "Yes," Adam said, and then paused, before he added, "I was thinking about you: that was the reason." This confession was very awkward and sudden, Adam felt, for he thought Dinah must understand all he meant. But the frankness of the words caused her immediately to interpret them into a renewal of his brotherly regrets that she was going away, and she answered calmly, "Do not be careful and troubled for me, Adam. I have all things and abound at Snowfield. And my mind is at rest, for I am not seeking my own will in going." "But if things were different, Dinah," said Adam, hesitatingly. "If you knew things that perhaps you don't know now...." Dinah looked at him inquiringly, but instead of going on, he reached a chair and brought it near the corner of the table where she was sitting. She wondered, and was afraid--and the next moment her thoughts flew to the past: was it something about those distant unhappy ones that she didn't know? Adam looked at her. It was so sweet to look at her eyes, which had now a self-forgetful questioning in them--for a moment he forgot that he wanted to say anything, or that it was necessary to tell her what he meant. "Dinah," he said suddenly, taking both her hands between his, "I love you with my whole heart and soul. I love you next to God who made me." Dinah's lips became pale, like her cheeks, and she trembled violently under the shock of painful joy. Her hands were cold as death between Adam's. She could not draw them away, because he held them fast. "Don't tell me you can't love me, Dinah. Don't tell me we must part and pass our lives away from one another." The tears were trembling in Dinah's eyes, and they fell before she could answer. But she spoke in a quiet low voice. "Yes, dear Adam, we must submit to another Will. We must part." "Not if you love me, Dinah--not if you love me," Adam said passionately. "Tell me--tell me if you can love me better than a brother?" Dinah was too entirely reliant on the Supreme guidance to attempt to achieve any end by a deceptive concealment. She was recovering now from the first shock of emotion, and she looked at Adam with simple sincere eyes as she said, "Yes, Adam, my heart is drawn strongly towards you; and of my own will, if I had no clear showing to the contrary, I could find my happiness in being near you and ministering to you continually. I fear I should forget to rejoice and weep with others; nay, I fear I should forget the Divine presence, and seek no love but yours." Adam did not speak immediately. They sat looking at each other in delicious silence--for the first sense of mutual love excludes other feelings; it will have the soul all to itself. "Then, Dinah," Adam said at last, "how can there be anything contrary to what's right in our belonging to one another and spending our lives together? Who put this great love into our hearts? Can anything be holier than that? For we can help one another in everything as is good. I'd never think o' putting myself between you and God, and saying you oughtn't to do this and you oughtn't to do that. You'd follow your conscience as much as you do now." "Yes, Adam," Dinah said, "I know marriage is a holy state for those who are truly called to it, and have no other drawing; but from my childhood upwards I have been led towards another path; all my peace and my joy have come from having no life of my own, no wants, no wishes for myself, and living only in God and those of his creatures whose sorrows and joys he has given me to know. Those have been very blessed years to me, and I feel that if I was to listen to any voice that would draw me aside from that path, I should be turning my back on the light that has shone upon me, and darkness and doubt would take hold of me. We could not bless each other, Adam, if there were doubts in my soul, and if I yearned, when it was too late, after that better part which had once been given me and I had put away from me." "But if a new feeling has come into your mind, Dinah, and if you love me so as to be willing to be nearer to me than to other people, isn't that a sign that it's right for you to change your life? Doesn't the love make it right when nothing else would?" "Adam, my mind is full of questionings about that; for now, since you tell me of your strong love towards me, what was clear to me has become dark again. I felt before that my heart was too strongly drawn towards you, and that your heart was not as mine; and the thought of you had taken hold of me, so that my soul had lost its freedom, and was becoming enslaved to an earthly affection, which made me anxious and careful about what should befall myself. For in all other affection I had been content with any small return, or with none; but my heart was beginning to hunger after an equal love from you. And I had no doubt that I must wrestle against that as a great temptation, and the command was clear that I must go away." "But now, dear, dear Dinah, now you know I love you better than you love me...it's all different now. You won't think o' going. You'll stay, and be my dear wife, and I shall thank God for giving me my life as I never thanked him before." "Adam, it's hard to me to turn a deaf ear...you know it's hard; but a great fear is upon me. It seems to me as if you were stretching out your arms to me, and beckoning me to come and take my ease and live for my own delight, and Jesus, the Man of Sorrows, was standing looking towards me, and pointing to the sinful, and suffering, and afflicted. I have seen that again and again when I have been sitting in stillness and darkness, and a great terror has come upon me lest I should become hard, and a lover of self, and no more bear willingly the Redeemer's cross." Dinah had closed her eyes, and a faint shudder went through her. "Adam," she went on, "you wouldn't desire that we should seek a good through any unfaithfulness to the light that is in us; you wouldn't believe that could be a good. We are of one mind in that." "Yes, Dinah," said Adam sadly, "I'll never be the man t' urge you against your conscience. But I can't give up the hope that you may come to see different. I don't believe your loving me could shut up your heart--it's only adding to what you've been before, not taking away from it. For it seems to me it's the same with love and happiness as with sorrow--the more we know of it the better we can feel what other people's lives are or might be, and so we shall only be more tender to 'em, and wishful to help 'em. The more knowledge a man has, the better he'll do's work; and feeling's a sort o' knowledge." Dinah was silent; her eyes were fixed in contemplation of something visible only to herself. Adam went on presently with his pleading, "And you can do almost as much as you do now. I won't ask you to go to church with me of a Sunday. You shall go where you like among the people, and teach 'em; for though I like church best, I don't put my soul above yours, as if my words was better for you to follow than your own conscience. And you can help the sick just as much, and you'll have more means o' making 'em a bit comfortable; and you'll be among all your own friends as love you, and can help 'em and be a blessing to 'em till their dying day. Surely, Dinah, you'd be as near to God as if you was living lonely and away from me." Dinah made no answer for some time. Adam was still holding her hands and looking at her with almost trembling anxiety, when she turned her grave loving eyes on his and said, in rather a sad voice, "Adam there is truth in what you say, and there's many of the brethren and sisters who have greater strength than I have, and find their hearts enlarged by the cares of husband and kindred. But I have not faith that it would be so with me, for since my affections have been set above measure on you, I have had less peace and joy in God. I have felt as it were a division in my heart. And think how it is with me, Adam. That life I have led is like a land I have trodden in blessedness since my childhood; and if I long for a moment to follow the voice which calls me to another land that I know not, I cannot but fear that my soul might hereafter yearn for that early blessedness which I had forsaken; and where doubt enters there is not perfect love. I must wait for clearer guidance. I must go from you, and we must submit ourselves entirely to the Divine Will. We are sometimes required to lay our natural lawful affections on the altar." Adam dared not plead again, for Dinah's was not the voice of caprice or insincerity. But it was very hard for him; his eyes got dim as he looked at her. "But you may come to feel satisfied...to feel that you may come to me again, and we may never part, Dinah?" "We must submit ourselves, Adam. With time, our duty will be made clear. It may be when I have entered on my former life, I shall find all these new thoughts and wishes vanish, and become as things that were not. Then I shall know that my calling is not towards marriage. But we must wait." "Dinah," said Adam mournfully, "you can't love me so well as I love you, else you'd have no doubts. But it's natural you shouldn't, for I'm not so good as you. I can't doubt it's right for me to love the best thing God's ever given me to know." "Nay, Adam. It seems to me that my love for you is not weak, for my heart waits on your words and looks, almost as a little child waits on the help and tenderness of the strong on whom it depends. If the thought of you took slight hold of me, I should not fear that it would be an idol in the temple. But you will strengthen me--you will not hinder me in seeking to obey to the uttermost." "Let us go out into the sunshine, Dinah, and walk together. I'll speak no word to disturb you." They went out and walked towards the fields, where they would meet the family coming from church. Adam said, "Take my arm, Dinah," and she took it. That was the only change in their manner to each other since they were last walking together. But no sadness in the prospect of her going away--in the uncertainty of the issue--could rob the sweetness from Adam's sense that Dinah loved him. He thought he would stay at the Hall Farm all that evening. He would be near her as long as he could. "Hey-day! There's Adam along wi' Dinah," said Mr. Poyser, as he opened the far gate into the Home Close. "I couldna think how he happened away from church. Why," added good Martin, after a moment's pause, "what dost think has just jumped into my head?" "Summat as hadna far to jump, for it's just under our nose. You mean as Adam's fond o' Dinah." "Aye! hast ever had any notion of it before?" "To be sure I have," said Mrs. Poyser, who always declined, if possible, to be taken by surprise. "I'm not one o' those as can see the cat i' the dairy an' wonder what she's come after." "Thee never saidst a word to me about it." "Well, I aren't like a bird-clapper, forced to make a rattle when the wind blows on me. I can keep my own counsel when there's no good i' speaking." "But Dinah 'll ha' none o' him. Dost think she will?" "Nay," said Mrs. Poyser, not sufficiently on her guard against a possible surprise, "she'll never marry anybody, if he isn't a Methodist and a cripple." "It 'ud ha' been a pretty thing though for 'em t' marry," said Martin, turning his head on one side, as if in pleased contemplation of his new idea. "Thee'dst ha' liked it too, wouldstna?" "Ah! I should. I should ha' been sure of her then, as she wouldn't go away from me to Snowfield, welly thirty mile off, and me not got a creatur to look to, only neighbours, as are no kin to me, an' most of 'em women as I'd be ashamed to show my face, if my dairy things war like their'n. There may well be streaky butter i' the market. An' I should be glad to see the poor thing settled like a Christian woman, with a house of her own over her head; and we'd stock her well wi' linen and feathers, for I love her next to my own children. An' she makes one feel safer when she's i' the house, for she's like the driven snow: anybody might sin for two as had her at their elbow." "Dinah," said Tommy, running forward to meet her, "mother says you'll never marry anybody but a Methodist cripple. What a silly you must be!" a comment which Tommy followed up by seizing Dinah with both arms, and dancing along by her side with incommodious fondness. "Why, Adam, we missed you i' the singing to-day," said Mr. Poyser. "How was it?" "I wanted to see Dinah--she's going away so soon," said Adam. "Ah, lad! Can you persuade her to stop somehow? Find her a good husband somewhere i' the parish. If you'll do that, we'll forgive you for missing church. But, anyway, she isna going before the harvest supper o' Wednesday, and you must come then. There's Bartle Massey comin', an' happen Craig. You'll be sure an' come, now, at seven? The missis wunna have it a bit later." "Aye," said Adam, "I'll come if I can. But I can't often say what I'll do beforehand, for the work often holds me longer than I expect. You'll stay till the end o' the week, Dinah?" "Yes, yes!" said Mr. Poyser. "We'll have no nay." "She's no call to be in a hurry," observed Mrs. Poyser. "Scarceness o' victual 'ull keep: there's no need to be hasty wi' the cooking. An' scarceness is what there's the biggest stock of i' that country." Dinah smiled, but gave no promise to stay, and they talked of other things through the rest of the walk, lingering in the sunshine to look at the great flock of geese grazing, at the new corn-ricks, and at the surprising abundance of fruit on the old pear-tree; Nancy and Molly having already hastened home, side by side, each holding, carefully wrapped in her pocket-handkerchief, a prayer-book, in which she could read little beyond the large letters and the Amens. Surely all other leisure is hurry compared with a sunny walk through the fields from "afternoon church"--as such walks used to be in those old leisurely times, when the boat, gliding sleepily along the canal, was the newest locomotive wonder; when Sunday books had most of them old brown-leather covers, and opened with remarkable precision always in one place. Leisure is gone--gone where the spinning-wheels are gone, and the pack-horses, and the slow waggons, and the pedlars, who brought bargains to the door on sunny afternoons. Ingenious philosophers tell you, perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to create leisure for mankind. Do not believe them: it only creates a vacuum for eager thought to rush in. Even idleness is eager now--eager for amusement; prone to excursion-trains, art museums, periodical literature, and exciting novels; prone even to scientific theorizing and cursory peeps through microscopes. Old Leisure was quite a different personage. He only read one newspaper, innocent of leaders, and was free from that periodicity of sensations which we call post-time. He was a contemplative, rather stout gentleman, of excellent digestion; of quiet perceptions, undiseased by hypothesis; happy in his inability to know the causes of things, preferring the things themselves. He lived chiefly in the country, among pleasant seats and homesteads, and was fond of sauntering by the fruit-tree wall and scenting the apricots when they were warmed by the morning sunshine, or of sheltering himself under the orchard boughs at noon, when the summer pears were falling. He knew nothing of weekday services, and thought none the worse of the Sunday sermon if it allowed him to sleep from the text to the blessing; liking the afternoon service best, because the prayers were the shortest, and not ashamed to say so; for he had an easy, jolly conscience, broad-backed like himself, and able to carry a great deal of beer or port-wine, not being made squeamish by doubts and qualms and lofty aspirations. Life was not a task to him, but a sinecure. He fingered the guineas in his pocket, and ate his dinners, and slept the sleep of the irresponsible, for had he not kept up his character by going to church on the Sunday afternoons? Fine old Leisure! Do not be severe upon him, and judge him by our modern standard. He never went to Exeter Hall, or heard a popular preacher, or read Tracts for the Times or Sartor Resartus.

Adam has arrived at the Hall Farm at "about three o'clock" . And everybody has gone to church, except for Dinah. He finds her inside. And they have one of those super-quiet, super-polite, super-awkward moments before Adam finally blurts out what he wants to. Adam loves Dinah with his "whole heart and soul. I love you next to the God who made me" . Wow. We knew he was a passionate guy, but still, wow. Dinah also loves Adam. Finally, it's all out in the open. But she also fears that she would "forget the Divine Presence, and seek no love but yours" if she marries Adam . She doesn't want to stop the whole traveling, preaching, charity bit, either. Adam persists. Loving him would only be "adding to what you've seen before, not taking away from it" . He'd even let her travel around. And the Methodism? No problem. Dinah still won't give in; so, instead of pressing the case, Adam decides to take her for an innocent walk. The Poysers are returning from church now, and the Mr. and Mrs. talk a little about the whole "Adam and Dinah" possibility. While standing at a respectful distance, of course. But why leave them to themselves? Mr. Poyser wants Dinah to find "a good husband i' the parish," and tells Adam as much . Hint hint, wink wink. Eliot, though, seems to think we've had enough machination for now. Chapter 52 concludes with a long passage in praise of the lazy Sunday afternoons they used to have "in those old leisurely times" . You could sit back, relax, and mull over a book like Adam Bede. Oh, wait: you still totally can.

Who hath desired the Sea--the immense and contemptuous surges? The shudder, the stumble, the swerve ere the star-stabbing bowsprit merges-- The orderly clouds of the Trades and the ridged roaring sapphire thereunder-- Unheralded cliff-lurking flaws and the head-sails' low-volleying thunder? His Sea in no wonder the same--his Sea and the same in each wonder-- His Sea that his being fulfils? So and no otherwise--so and no otherwise hill-men desire their hills! The Sea and the Hills. 'Who goes to the hills goes to his mother.' They had crossed the Siwaliks and the half-tropical Doon, left Mussoorie behind them, and headed north along the narrow hill-roads. Day after day they struck deeper into the huddled mountains, and day after day Kim watched the lama return to a man's strength. Among the terraces of the Doon he had leaned on the boy's shoulder, ready to profit by wayside halts. Under the great ramp to Mussoorie he drew himself together as an old hunter faces a well-remembered bank, and where he should have sunk exhausted swung his long draperies about him, drew a deep double-lungful of the diamond air, and walked as only a hillman can. Kim, plains-bred and plains-fed, sweated and panted astonished. 'This is my country,' said the lama. 'Beside Such-zen, this is flatter than a rice-field'; and with steady, driving strokes from the loins he strode upwards. But it was on the steep downhill marches, three thousand feet in three hours, that he went utterly away from Kim, whose back ached with holding back, and whose big toe was nigh cut off by his grass sandal-string. Through the speckled shadow of the great deodar-forests; through oak feathered and plumed with ferns; birch, ilex, rhododendron, and pine, out on to the bare hillsides' slippery sunburnt grass, and back into the woodlands' coolth again, till oak gave way to bamboo and palm of the valley, the lama swung untiring. Glancing back in the twilight at the huge ridges behind him and the faint, thin line of the road whereby they had come, he would lay out, with a hillman's generous breadth of vision, fresh marches for the morrow; or, halting in the neck of some uplifted pass that gave on Spiti and Kulu, would stretch out his hands yearningly towards the high snows of the horizon. In the dawns they flared windy-red above stark blue, as Kedarnath and Badrinath--kings of that wilderness--took the first sunlight. All day long they lay like molten silver under the sun, and at evening put on their jewels again. At first they breathed temperately upon the travellers, winds good to meet when one crawled over some gigantic hog's-back; but in a few days, at a height of nine or ten thousand feet, those breezes bit; and Kim kindly allowed a village of hillmen to acquire merit by giving him a rough blanket-coat. The lama was mildly surprised that anyone should object to the knife-edged breezes which had cut the years off his shoulders. 'These are but the lower hills, chela. There is no cold till we come to the true Hills.' 'Air and water are good, and the people are devout enough, but the food is very bad,' Kim growled; 'and we walk as though we were mad--or English. It freezes at night, too.' 'A little, maybe; but only enough to make old bones rejoice in the sun. We must not always delight in soft beds and rich food.' 'We might at least keep to the road.' Kim had all a plainsman's affection for the well-trodden track, not six feet wide, that snaked among the mountains; but the lama, being Tibetan, could not refrain from short cuts over spurs and the rims of gravel-strewn slopes. As he explained to his limping disciple, a man bred among mountains can prophesy the course of a mountain-road, and though low-lying clouds might be a hindrance to a short-cutting stranger, they made no earthly difference to a thoughtful man. Thus, after long hours of what would be reckoned very fair mountaineering in civilized countries, they would pant over a saddle-back, sidle past a few landslips, and drop through forest at an angle of forty-five onto the road again. Along their track lay the villages of the hillfolk--mud and earth huts, timbers now and then rudely carved with an axe--clinging like swallows' nests against the steeps, huddled on tiny flats half-way down a three-thousand-foot glissade; jammed into a corner between cliffs that funnelled and focused every wandering blast; or, for the sake of summer pasture, cowering down on a neck that in winter would be ten feet deep in snow. And the people--the sallow, greasy, duffle-clad people, with short bare legs and faces almost Esquimaux--would flock out and adore. The Plains--kindly and gentle--had treated the lama as a holy man among holy men. But the Hills worshipped him as one in the confidence of all their devils. Theirs was an almost obliterated Buddhism, overlaid with a nature-worship fantastic as their own landscapes, elaborate as the terracing of their tiny fields; but they recognized the big hat, the clicking rosary, and the rare Chinese texts for great authority; and they respected the man beneath the hat. 'We saw thee come down over the black Breasts of Eua,' said a Betah who gave them cheese, sour milk, and stone-hard bread one evening. 'We do not use that often--except when calving cows stray in summer. There is a sudden wind among those stones that casts men down on the stillest day. But what should such folk care for the Devil of Eua!' Then did Kim, aching in every fibre, dizzy with looking down, footsore with cramping desperate toes into inadequate crannies, take joy in the day's march--such joy as a boy of St Xavier's who had won the quarter-mile on the flat might take in the praises of his friends. The hills sweated the ghi and sugar suet off his bones; the dry air, taken sobbingly at the head of cruel passes, firmed and built out his upper ribs; and the tilted levels put new hard muscles into calf and thigh. They meditated often on the Wheel of Life--the more so since, as the lama said, they were freed from its visible temptations. Except the grey eagle and an occasional far-seen bear grubbing and rooting on the hillside; a vision of a furious painted leopard met at dawn in a still valley devouring a goat; and now and again a bright-coloured bird, they were alone with the winds and the grass singing under the wind. The women of the smoky huts over whose roofs the two walked as they descended the mountains, were unlovely and unclean, wives of many husbands, and afflicted with goitre. The men were woodcutters when they were not farmers--meek, and of an incredible simplicity. But that suitable discourse might not fail, Fate sent them, overtaking and overtaken upon the road, the courteous Dacca physician, who paid for his food in ointments good for goitre and counsels that restore peace between men and women. He seemed to know these hills as well as he knew the hill dialects, and gave the lama the lie of the land towards Ladakh and Tibet. He said they could return to the Plains at any moment. Meantime, for such as loved mountains, yonder road might amuse. This was not all revealed in a breath, but at evening encounters on the stone threshing-floors, when, patients disposed of, the doctor would smoke and the lama snuff, while Kim watched the wee cows grazing on the housetops, or threw his soul after his eyes across the deep blue gulfs between range and range. And there were talks apart in the dark woods, when the doctor would seek herbs, and Kim, as budding physician, must accompany him. 'You see, Mister O'Hara, I do not know what the deuce-an' all I shall do when I find our sporting friends; but if you will kindly keep within sight of my umbrella, which is fine fixed point for cadastral survey, I shall feel much better.' Kim looked out across the jungle of peaks. 'This is not my country, hakim. Easier, I think, to find one louse in a bear-skin.' 'Oah, thatt is my strong points. There is no hurry for Hurree. They were at Leh not so long ago. They said they had come down from the Karakorum with their heads and horns and all. I am onlee afraid they will have sent back all their letters and compromising things from Leh into Russian territoree. Of course they will walk away as far to the East as possible--just to show that they were never among the Western States. You do not know the Hills?' He scratched with a twig on the earth. 'Look! They should have come in by Srinagar or Abbottabad. Thatt is their short road--down the river by Bunji and Astor. But they have made mischief in the West. So'--he drew a furrow from left to right--'they march and they march away East to Leh (ah! it is cold there), and down the Indus to Hanle (I know that road), and then down, you see, to Bushahr and Chini valley. That is ascertained by process of elimination, and also by asking questions from people that I cure so well. Our friends have been a long time playing about and producing impressions. So they are well known from far off. You will see me catch them somewhere in Chini valley. Please keep your eye on the umbrella.' It nodded like a wind-blown harebell down the valleys and round the mountain sides, and in due time the lama and Kim, who steered by compass, would overhaul it, vending ointments and powders at eventide. 'We came by such and such a way!' The lama would throw a careless finger backward at the ridges, and the umbrella would expend itself in compliments. They crossed a snowy pass in cold moonlight, when the lama, mildly chaffing Kim, went through up to his knees, like a Bactrian camel--the snow-bred, shag-haired sort that came into the Kashmir Serai. They dipped across beds of light snow and snow-powdered shale, where they took refuge from a gale in a camp of Tibetans hurrying down tiny sheep, each laden with a bag of borax. They came out upon grassy shoulders still snow-speckled, and through forest, to grass anew. For all their marchings, Kedarnath and Badrinath were not impressed; and it was only after days of travel that Kim, uplifted upon some insignificant ten-thousand-foot hummock, could see that a shoulder-knot or horn of the two great lords had--ever so slightly--changed outline. At last they entered a world within a world--a valley of leagues where the high hills were fashioned of a mere rubble and refuse from off the knees of the mountains. Here one day's march carried them no farther, it seemed, than a dreamer's clogged pace bears him in a nightmare. They skirted a shoulder painfully for hours, and, behold, it was but an outlying boss in an outlying buttress of the main pile! A rounded meadow revealed itself, when they had reached it, for a vast tableland running far into the valley. Three days later, it was a dim fold in the earth to southward. 'Surely the Gods live here!' said Kim, beaten down by the silence and the appalling sweep and dispersal of the cloud-shadows after rain. 'This is no place for men!' 'Long and long ago,' said the lama, as to himself, 'it was asked of the Lord whether the world were everlasting. On this the Excellent One returned no answer ... When I was in Ceylon, a wise Seeker confirmed that from the gospel which is written in Pali. Certainly, since we know the way to Freedom, the question were unprofitable, but--look, and know illusion, chela! These--are the true Hills! They are like my hills by Suchzen. Never were such hills!' Above them, still enormously above them, earth towered away towards the snow-line, where from east to west across hundreds of miles, ruled as with a ruler, the last of the bold birches stopped. Above that, in scarps and blocks upheaved, the rocks strove to fight their heads above the white smother. Above these again, changeless since the world's beginning, but changing to every mood of sun and cloud, lay out the eternal snow. They could see blots and blurs on its face where storm and wandering wullie-wa got up to dance. Below them, as they stood, the forest slid away in a sheet of blue-green for mile upon mile; below the forest was a village in its sprinkle of terraced fields and steep grazing-grounds. Below the village they knew, though a thunderstorm worried and growled there for the moment, a pitch of twelve or fifteen hundred feet gave to the moist valley where the streams gather that are the mothers of young Sutluj. As usual, the lama had led Kim by cow-track and by-road, far from the main route along which Hurree Babu, that 'fearful man', had bucketed three days before through a storm to which nine Englishmen out of ten would have given full right of way. Hurree was no game-shot--the snick of a trigger made him change colour--but, as he himself would have said, he was 'fairly effeecient stalker', and he had raked the huge valley with a pair of cheap binoculars to some purpose. Moreover, the white of worn canvas tents against green carries far. Hurree Babu had seen all he wanted to see when he sat on the threshing-floor of Ziglaur, twenty miles away as the eagle flies, and forty by road--that is to say, two small dots which one day were just below the snow-line, and the next had moved downward perhaps six inches on the hillside. Once cleaned out and set to the work, his fat bare legs could cover a surprising amount of ground, and this was the reason why, while Kim and the lama lay in a leaky hut at Ziglaur till the storm should be over-past, an oily, wet, but always smiling Bengali, talking the best of English with the vilest of phrases, was ingratiating himself with two sodden and rather rheumatic foreigners. He had arrived, revolving many wild schemes, on the heels of a thunderstorm which had split a pine over against their camp, and so convinced a dozen or two forcibly impressed baggage-coolies the day was inauspicious for farther travel that with one accord they had thrown down their loads and jibbed. They were subjects of a Hill Rajah who farmed out their services, as is the custom, for his private gain; and, to add to their personal distresses, the strange Sahibs had already threatened them with rifles. The most of them knew rifles and Sahibs of old: they were trackers and shikarris of the Northern valleys, keen after bear and wild goat; but they had never been thus treated in their lives. So the forest took them to her bosom, and, for all oaths and clamour, refused to restore. There was no need to feign madness or--the Babu had thought of another means of securing a welcome. He wrung out his wet clothes, slipped on his patent-leather shoes, opened the blue-and-white umbrella, and with mincing gait and a heart beating against his tonsils appeared as 'agent for His Royal Highness, the Rajah of Rampur, gentlemen. What can I do for you, please?' The gentlemen were delighted. One was visibly French, the other Russian, but they spoke English not much inferior to the Babu's. They begged his kind offices. Their native servants had gone sick at Leh. They had hurried on because they were anxious to bring the spoils of the chase to Simla ere the skins grew moth-eaten. They bore a general letter of introduction (the Babu salaamed to it orientally) to all Government officials. No, they had not met any other shooting-parties en route. They did for themselves. They had plenty of supplies. They only wished to push on as soon as might be. At this he waylaid a cowering hillman among the trees, and after three minutes' talk and a little silver (one cannot be economical upon State service, though Hurree's heart bled at the waste) the eleven coolies and the three hangers-on reappeared. At least the Babu would be a witness to their oppression. 'My royal master, he will be much annoyed, but these people are onlee common people and grossly ignorant. If your honours will kindly overlook unfortunate affair, I shall be much pleased. In a little while rain will stop and we can then proceed. You have been shooting, eh? That is fine performance!' He skipped nimbly from one kilta to the next, making pretence to adjust each conical basket. The Englishman is not, as a rule, familiar with the Asiatic, but he would not strike across the wrist a kindly Babu who had accidentally upset a kilta with a red oilskin top. On the other hand, he would not press drink upon a Babu were he never so friendly, nor would he invite him to meat. The strangers did all these things, and asked many questions--about women mostly--to which Hurree returned gay and unstudied answers. They gave him a glass of whitish fluid like to gin, and then more; and in a little time his gravity departed from him. He became thickly treasonous, and spoke in terms of sweeping indecency of a Government which had forced upon him a white man's education and neglected to supply him with a white man's salary. He babbled tales of oppression and wrong till the tears ran down his cheeks for the miseries of his land. Then he staggered off, singing love-songs of Lower Bengal, and collapsed upon a wet tree-trunk. Never was so unfortunate a product of English rule in India more unhappily thrust upon aliens. 'They are all just of that pattern,' said one sportsman to the other in French. 'When we get into India proper thou wilt see. I should like to visit his Rajah. One might speak the good word there. It is possible that he has heard of us and wishes to signify his good-will.' 'We have not time. We must get into Simla as soon as may be,' his companion replied. 'For my own part, I wish our reports had been sent back from Hilas, or even Leh.' 'The English post is better and safer. Remember we are given all facilities--and Name of God!--they give them to us too! Is it unbelievable stupidity?' 'It is pride--pride that deserves and will receive punishment.' 'Yes! To fight a fellow-Continental in our game is something. There is a risk attached, but these people--bah! It is too easy.' 'Pride--all pride, my friend.' 'Now what the deuce is good of Chandernagore being so close to Calcutta and all,' said Hurree, snoring open-mouthed on the sodden moss, 'if I cannot understand their French? They talk so particularly fast! It would have been much better to cut their beastly throats.' When he presented himself again he was racked with a headache--penitent, and volubly afraid that in his drunkenness he might have been indiscreet. He loved the British Government--it was the source of all prosperity and honour, and his master at Rampur held the very same opinion. Upon this the men began to deride him and to quote past words, till step by step, with deprecating smirks, oily grins, and leers of infinite cunning, the poor Babu was beaten out of his defences and forced to speak--truth. When Lurgan was told the tale later, he mourned aloud that he could not have been in the place of the stubborn, inattentive coolies, who with grass mats over their heads and the raindrops puddling in their footprints, waited on the weather. All the Sahibs of their acquaintance--rough-clad men joyously returning year after year to their chosen gullies--had servants and cooks and orderlies, very often hillmen. These Sahibs travelled without any retinue. Therefore they were poor Sahibs, and ignorant; for no Sahib in his senses would follow a Bengali's advice. But the Bengali, appearing from somewhere, had given them money, and could make shift with their dialect. Used to comprehensive ill-treatment from their own colour, they suspected a trap somewhere, and stood by to run if occasion offered. Then through the new-washed air, steaming with delicious earth-smells, the Babu led the way down the slopes--walking ahead of the coolies in pride; walking behind the foreigners in humility. His thoughts were many and various. The least of them would have interested his companions beyond words. But he was an agreeable guide, ever keen to point out the beauties of his royal master's domain. He peopled the hills with anything thev had a mind to slay--thar, ibex, or markhor, and bear by Elisha's allowance. He discoursed of botany and ethnology with unimpeachable inaccuracy, and his store of local legends--he had been a trusted agent of the State for fifteen years, remember--was inexhaustible. 'Decidedly this fellow is an original,' said the taller of the two foreigners. 'He is like the nightmare of a Viennese courier.' 'He represents in little India in transition--the monstrous hybridism of East and West,' the Russian replied. 'It is we who can deal with Orientals.' 'He has lost his own country and has not acquired any other. But he has a most complete hatred of his conquerors. Listen. He confided to me last night,' said the other. Under the striped umbrella Hurree Babu was straining ear and brain to follow the quick-poured French, and keeping both eyes on a kilta full of maps and documents--an extra-large one with a double red oil-skin cover. He did not wish to steal anything. He only desired to know what to steal, and, incidentally, how to get away when he had stolen it. He thanked all the Gods of Hindustan, and Herbert Spencer, that there remained some valuables to steal. On the second day the road rose steeply to a grass spur above the forest; and it was here, about sunset, that they came across an aged lama--but they called him a bonze--sitting cross-legged above a mysterious chart held down by stones, which he was explaining to a young man, evidently a neophyte, of singular, though unwashen, beauty. The striped umbrella had been sighted half a march away, and Kim had suggested a halt till it came up to them. 'Ha!' said Hurree Babu, resourceful as Puss-in-Boots. 'That is eminent local holy man. Probably subject of my royal master.' 'What is he doing? It is very curious.' 'He is expounding holy picture--all hand-worked.' The two men stood bareheaded in the wash of the afternoon sunlight low across the gold-coloured grass. The sullen coolies, glad of the check, halted and slid down their loads. 'Look!' said the Frenchman. 'It is like a picture for the birth of a religion--the first teacher and the first disciple. Is he a Buddhist?' 'Of some debased kind,' the other answered. 'There are no true Buddhists among the Hills. But look at the folds of the drapery. Look at his eyes--how insolent! Why does this make one feel that we are so young a people?' The speaker struck passionately at a tall weed. 'We have nowhere left our mark yet. Nowhere! That, do you understand, is what disquiets me.' He scowled at the placid face, and the monumental calm of the pose. 'Have patience. We shall make your mark together--we and you young people. Meantime, draw his picture.' The Babu advanced loftily; his back out of all keeping with his deferential speech, or his wink towards Kim. 'Holy One, these be Sahibs. My medicines cured one of a flux, and I go into Simla to oversee his recovery. They wish to see thy picture--' 'To heal the sick is always good. This is the Wheel of Life,' said the lama, 'the same I showed thee in the hut at Ziglaur when the rain fell.' 'And to hear thee expound it.' The lama's eyes lighted at the prospect of new listeners. 'To expound the Most Excellent Way is good. Have they any knowledge of Hindi, such as had the Keeper of Images?' 'A little, maybe.' Hereat, simply as a child engrossed with a new game, the lama threw back his head and began the full-throated invocation of the Doctor of Divinity ere he opens the full doctrine. The strangers leaned on their alpenstocks and listened. Kim, squatting humbly, watched the red sunlight on their faces, and the blend and parting of their long shadows. They wore un-English leggings and curious girt-in belts that reminded him hazily of the pictures in a book in St Xavier's library "The Adventures of a Young Naturalist in Mexico" was its name. Yes, they looked very like the wonderful M. Sumichrast of that tale, and very unlike the 'highly unscrupulous folk' of Hurree Babu's imagining. The coolies, earth-coloured and mute, crouched reverently some twenty or thirty yards away, and the Babu, the slack of his thin gear snapping like a marking-flag in the chill breeze, stood by with an air of happy proprietorship. 'These are the men,' Hurree whispered, as the ritual went on and the two whites followed the grass-blade sweeping from Hell to Heaven and back again. 'All their books are in the large kilta with the reddish top--books and reports and maps--and I have seen a King's letter that either Hilas or Bunar has written. They guard it most carefully. They have sent nothing back from Hilas or Leh. That is sure.' 'Who is with them?' 'Only the beegar-coolies. They have no servants. They are so close they cook their own food.' 'But what am I to do?' 'Wait and see. Only if any chance comes to me thou wilt know where to seek for the papers.' 'This were better in Mahbub Ali's hands than a Bengali's,' said Kim scornfully. 'There are more ways of getting to a sweetheart than butting down a wall.' 'See here the Hell appointed for avarice and greed. Flanked upon the one side by Desire and on the other by Weariness.' The lama warmed to his work, and one of the strangers sketched him in the quick-fading light. 'That is enough,' the man said at last brusquely. 'I cannot understand him, but I want that picture. He is a better artist than I. Ask him if he will sell it.' 'He says "No, sar,"' the Babu replied. The lama, of course, would no more have parted with his chart to a casual wayfarer than an archbishop would pawn the holy vessels of his cathedral. All Tibet is full of cheap reproductions of the Wheel; but the lama was an artist, as well as a wealthy Abbot in his own place. 'Perhaps in three days, or four, or ten, if I perceive that the Sahib is a Seeker and of good understanding, I may myself draw him another. But this was used for the initiation of a novice. Tell him so, hakim.' 'He wishes it now--for money.' The lama shook his head slowly and began to fold up the Wheel. The Russian, on his side, saw no more than an unclean old man haggling over a dirty piece of paper. He drew out a handful of rupees, and snatched half-jestingly at the chart, which tore in the lama's grip. A low murmur of horror went up from the coolies--some of whom were Spiti men and, by their lights, good Buddhists. The lama rose at the insult; his hand went to the heavy iron pencase that is the priest's weapon, and the Babu danced in agony. 'Now you see--you see why I wanted witnesses. They are highly unscrupulous people. Oh, sar! sar! You must not hit holyman!' 'Chela! He has defiled the Written Word!' It was too late. Before Kim could ward him off, the Russian struck the old man full on the face. Next instant he was rolling over and over downhill with Kim at his throat. The blow had waked every unknown Irish devil in the boy's blood, and the sudden fall of his enemy did the rest. The lama dropped to his knees, half-stunned; the coolies under their loads fled up the hill as fast as plainsmen run aross the level. They had seen sacrilege unspeakable, and it behoved them to get away before the Gods and devils of the hills took vengeance. The Frenchman ran towards the lama, fumbling at his revolver with some notion of making him a hostage for his companion. A shower of cutting stones--hillmen are very straight shots--drove him away, and a coolie from Ao-chung snatched the lama into the stampede. All came about as swiftly as the sudden mountain-darkness. 'They have taken the baggage and all the guns,' yelled the Frenchman, firing blindly into the twilight. 'All right, sar! All right! Don't shoot. I go to rescue,' and Hurree, pounding down the slope, cast himself bodily upon the delighted and astonished Kim, who was banging his breathless foe's head against a boulder. 'Go back to the coolies,' whispered the Babu in his ear. 'They have the baggage. The papers are in the kilta with the red top, but look through all. Take their papers, and specially the murasla [King's letter]. Go! The other man comes!' Kim tore uphill. A revolver-bullet rang on a rock by his side, and he cowered partridge-wise. 'If you shoot,' shouted Hurree, 'they will descend and annihilate us. I have rescued the gentleman, sar. This is particularly dangerous.' 'By Jove!' Kim was thinking hard in English. 'This is dam'-tight place, but I think it is self-defence.' He felt in his bosom for Mahbub's gift, and uncertainly--save for a few practice shots in the Bikanir desert, he had never used the little gun--pulled the trigger. 'What did I say, sar!' The Babu seemed to be in tears. 'Come down here and assist to resuscitate. We are all up a tree, I tell you.' The shots ceased. There was a sound of stumbling feet, and Kim hurried upward through the gloom, swearing like a cat--or a country-bred. 'Did they wound thee, chela?' called the lama above him. 'No. And thou?' He dived into a clump of stunted firs. 'Unhurt. Come away. We go with these folk to Shamlegh-under-the-Snow.' 'But not before we have done justice,' a voice cried. 'I have got the Sahibs' guns--all four. Let us go down.' 'He struck the Holy One--we saw it! Our cattle will be barren--our wives will cease to bear! The snows will slide upon us as we go home... Atop of all other oppression too!' The little fir-clump filled with clamouring coolies--panic-stricken, and in their terror capable of anything. The man from Ao-chung clicked the breech-bolt of his gun impatiently, and made as to go downhill. 'Wait a little, Holy One; they cannot go far. Wait till I return,' said he. 'It is this person who has suffered wrong,' said the lama, his hand over his brow. 'For that very reason,' was the reply. 'If this person overlooks it, your hands are clean. Moreover, ye acquire merit by obedience.' 'Wait, and we will all go to Shamlegh together,' the man insisted. For a moment, for just so long as it needs to stuff a cartridge into a breech-loader, the lama hesitated. Then he rose to his feet, and laid a finger on the man's shoulder. 'Hast thou heard? I say there shall be no killing--I who was Abbot of Such-zen. Is it any lust of thine to be re-born as a rat, or a snake under the eaves--a worm in the belly of the most mean beast? Is it thy wish to--' The man from Ao-chung fell to his knees, for the voice boomed like a Tibetan devil-gong. 'Ai! ai!' cried the Spiti men. 'Do not curse us--do not curse him. It was but his zeal, Holy One! ... Put down the rifle, fool!' 'Anger on anger! Evil on evil! There will be no killing. Let the priest-beaters go in bondage to their own acts. Just and sure is the Wheel, swerving not a hair! They will be born many times--in torment.' His head drooped, and he leaned heavily on Kim's shoulder. 'I have come near to great evil, chela,' he whispered in that dead hush under the pines. 'I was tempted to loose the bullet; and truly, in Tibet there would have been a heavy and a slow death for them ... He struck me across the face ... upon the flesh ...' He slid to the ground, breathing heavily, and Kim could hear the over-driven heart bump and check. 'Have they hurt him to the death?' said the Ao-chung man, while the others stood mute. Kim knelt over the body in deadly fear. 'Nay,' he cried passionately, 'this is only a weakness.' Then he remembered that he was a white man, with a white man's camp-fittings at his service. 'Open the kiltas! The Sahibs may have a medicine.' 'Oho! Then I know it,' said the Ao-chung man with a laugh. 'Not for five years was I Yankling Sahib's shikarri without knowing that medicine. I too have tasted it. Behold!' He drew from his breast a bottle of cheap whisky--such as is sold to explorers at Leh--and cleverly forced a little between the lama's teeth. 'So I did when Yankling Sahib twisted his foot beyond Astor. Aha! I have already looked into their baskets--but we will make fair division at Shamlegh. Give him a little more. It is good medicine. Feel! His heart goes better now. Lay his head down and rub a little on the chest. If he had waited quietly while I accounted for the Sahibs this would never have come. But perhaps the Sahibs may chase us here. Then it would not be wrong to shoot them with their own guns, heh?' 'One is paid, I think, already,' said Kim between his teeth. 'I kicked him in the groin as we went downhill. Would I had killed him!' 'It is well to be brave when one does not live in Rampur,' said one whose hut lay within a few miles of the Rajah's rickety palace. 'If we get a bad name among the Sahibs, none will employ us as shikarris any more.' 'Oh, but these are not Angrezi Sahibs--not merry-minded men like Fostum Sahib or Yankling Sahib. They are foreigners--they cannot speak Angrezi as do Sahibs.' Here the lama coughed and sat up, groping for the rosary. 'There shall be no killing,' he murmured. 'Just is the Wheel! Evil on evil--' 'Nay, Holy One. We are all here.' The Ao-chung man timidly patted his feet. 'Except by thy order, no one shall be slain. Rest awhile. We will make a little camp here, and later, as the moon rises, we go to Shamlegh-under-the-Snow.' 'After a blow,' said a Spiti man sententiously, 'it is best to sleep.' 'There is, as it were, a dizziness at the back of my neck, and a pinching in it. Let me lay my head on thy lap, chela. I am an old man, but not free from passion ... We must think of the Cause of Things.' 'Give him a blanket. We dare not light a fire lest the Sahibs see.' 'Better get away to Shamlegh. None will follow us to Shamlegh.' This was the nervous Rampur man. 'I have been Fostum Sahib's shikarri, and I am Yankling Sahib's shikarri. I should have been with Yankling Sahib now but for this cursed beegar [the corvee]. Let two men watch below with the guns lest the Sahibs do more foolishness. I shall not leave this Holy One.' They sat down a little apart from the lama, and, after listening awhile, passed round a water-pipe whose receiver was an old Day and Martin blacking-bottle. The glow of the red charcoal as it went from hand to hand lit up the narrow, blinking eyes, the high Chinese cheek-bones, and the bull-throats that melted away into the dark duffle folds round the shoulders. They looked like kobolds from some magic mine--gnomes of the hills in conclave. And while they talked, the voices of the snow-waters round them diminished one by one as the night-frost choked and clogged the runnels. 'How he stood up against us!' said a Spiti man admiring. 'I remember an old ibex, out Ladakh-way, that Dupont Sahib missed on a shoulder-shot, seven seasons back, standing up just like him. Dupont Sahib was a good shikarri.' 'Not as good as Yankling Sahib.' The Ao-chung man took a pull at the whisky-bottle and passed it over. 'Now hear me--unless any other man thinks he knows more.' The challenge was not taken up. 'We go to Shamlegh when the moon rises. There we will fairly divide the baggage between us. I am content with this new little rifle and all its cartridges.' 'Are the bears only bad on thy holding? said a mate, sucking at the pipe. 'No; but musk-pods are worth six rupees apiece now, and thy women can have the canvas of the tents and some of the cooking-gear. We will do all that at Shamlegh before dawn. Then we all go our ways, remembering that we have never seen or taken service with these Sahibs, who may, indeed, say that we have stolen their baggage.' 'That is well for thee, but what will our Rajah say?' 'Who is to tell him? Those Sahibs, who cannot speak our talk, or the Babu, who for his own ends gave us money? Will he lead an army against us? What evidence will remain? That we do not need we shall throw on Shamlegh-midden, where no man has yet set foot.' 'Who is at Shamlegh this summer?' The place was only a grazing centre of three or four huts.' 'The Woman of Shamlegh. She has no love for Sahibs, as we know. The others can be pleased with little presents; and here is enough for us all.' He patted the fat sides of the nearest basket. 'But--but--' 'I have said they are not true Sahibs. All their skins and heads were bought in the bazar at Leh. I know the marks. I showed them to ye last march.' 'True. They were all bought skins and heads. Some had even the moth in them.' That was a shrewd argument, and the Ao-chung man knew his fellows. 'If the worst comes to the worst, I shall tell Yankling Sahib, who is a man of a merry mind, and he will laugh. We are not doing any wrong to any Sahibs whom we know. They are priest-beaters. They frightened us. We fled! Who knows where we dropped the baggage? Do ye think Yankling Sahib will permit down-country police to wander all over the hills, disturbing his game? It is a far cry from Simla to Chini, and farther from Shamlegh to Shamlegh-midden.' 'So be it, but I carry the big kilta. The basket with the red top that the Sahibs pack themselves every morning.' 'Thus it is proved,' said the Shamlegh man adroitly, 'that they are Sahibs of no account. Who ever heard of Fostum Sahib, or Yankling Sahib, or even the little Peel Sahib that sits up of nights to shoot serow--I say, who, ever heard of these Sahibs coming into the hills without a down-country cook, and a bearer, and--and all manner of well-paid, high-handed and oppressive folk in their tail? How can they make trouble? What of the kilta?' 'Nothing, but that it is full of the Written Word--books and papers in which they wrote, and strange instruments, as of worship.' 'Shamlegh-midden will take them all.' 'True! But how if we insult the Sahibs' Gods thereby! I do not like to handle the Written Word in that fashion. And their brass idols are beyond my comprehension. It is no plunder for simple hill-folk.' 'The old man still sleeps. Hst! We will ask his chela.' The Ao-chung man refreshed himself, and swelled with pride of leadership. 'We have here,' he whispered, 'a kilta whose nature we do not know.' 'But I do,' said Kim cautiously. The lama drew breath in natural, easy sleep, and Kim had been thinking of Hurree's last words. As a player of the Great Game, he was disposed just then to reverence the Babu. 'It is a kilta with a red top full of very wonderful things, not to be handled by fools.' 'I said it; I said it,' cried the bearer of that burden. 'Thinkest thou it will betray us?' 'Not if it be given to me. I can draw out its magic. Otherwise it will do great harm.' 'A priest always takes his share.' Whisky was demoralizing the Ao-chung man. 'It is no matter to me.' Kim answered, with the craft of his mother-country. 'Share it among you, and see what comes!' 'Not I. I was only jesting. Give the order. There is more than enough for us all. We go our way from Shamlegh in the dawn.' They arranged and re-arranged their artless little plans for another hour, while Kim shivered with cold and pride. The humour of the situation tickled the Irish and the Oriental in his soul. Here were the emissaries of the dread Power of the North, very possibly as great in their own land as Mahbub or Colonel Creighton, suddenly smitten helpless. One of them, he privately knew, would be lame for a time. They had made promises to Kings. Tonight they lay out somewhere below him, chartless, foodless, tentless, gunless--except for Hurree Babu, guideless. And this collapse of their Great Game (Kim wondered to whom they would report it), this panicky bolt into the night, had come about through no craft of Hurree's or contrivance of Kim's, but simply, beautifully, and inevitably as the capture of Mahbub's fakir-friends by the zealous young policeman at Umballa. 'They are there--with nothing; and, by Jove, it is cold! I am here with all their things. Oh, they will be angry! I am sorry for Hurree Babu.' Kim might have saved his pity, for though at that moment the Bengali suffered acutely in the flesh, his soul was puffed and lofty. A mile down the hill, on the edge of the pine-forest, two half-frozen men--one powerfully sick at intervals--were varying mutual recriminations with the most poignant abuse of the Babu, who seemed distraught with terror. They demanded a plan of action. He explained that they were very lucky to be alive; that their coolies, if not then stalking them, had passed beyond recall; that the Rajah, his master, was ninety miles away, and, so far from lending them money and a retinue for the Simla journey, would surely cast them into prison if he heard that they had hit a priest. He enlarged on this sin and its consequences till they bade him change the subject. Their one hope, said he, was unostentatious flight from village to village till they reached civilization; and, for the hundredth time dissolved in tears, he demanded of the high stars why the Sahibs 'had beaten holy man'. Ten steps would have taken Hurree into the creaking gloom utterly beyond their reach--to the shelter and food of the nearest village, where glib-tongued doctors were scarce. But he preferred to endure cold, belly-pinch, bad words, and occasional blows in the company of his honoured employers. Crouched against a tree-trunk, he sniffed dolefully. 'And have you thought,' said the uninjured man hotly, 'what sort of spectacle we shall present wandering through these hills among these aborigines?' Hurree Babu had thought of little else for some hours, but the remark was not to his address. 'We cannot wander! I can hardly walk,' groaned Kim's victim. 'Perhaps the holy man will be merciful in loving-kindness, sar, otherwise--' 'I promise myself a peculiar pleasure in emptying my revolver into that young bonze when next we meet,' was the unchristian answer. 'Revolvers! Vengeance! Bonzes!' Hurree crouched lower. The war was breaking out afresh. 'Have you no consideration for our loss? The baggage! The baggage!' He could hear the speaker literally dancing on the grass. 'Everything we bore! Everything we have secured! Our gains! Eight months' work! Do you know what that means? "Decidedly it is we who can deal with Orientals!" Oh, you have done well.' They fell to it in several tongues, and Hurree smiled. Kim was with the kiltas, and in the kiltas lay eight months of good diplomacy. There was no means of communicating with the boy, but he could be trusted. For the rest, Hurree could so stage-manage the journey through the hills that Hilas, Bunar, and four hundred miles of hill-roads should tell the tale for a generation. Men who cannot control their own coolies are little respected in the Hills, and the hillman has a very keen sense of humour. 'If I had done it myself,' thought Hurree, 'it would not have been better; and, by Jove, now I think of it, of course I arranged it myself. How quick I have been! Just when I ran downhill I thought it! Thee outrage was accidental, but onlee me could have worked it--ah--for all it was dam'-well worth. Consider the moral effect upon these ignorant peoples! No treaties--no papers--no written documents at all--and me to interpret for them. How I shall laugh with the Colonel! I wish I had their papers also: but you cannot occupy two places in space simultaneously. Thatt is axiomatic.'

As they start climbing the foothills of the Himalayas, the lama could not be happier; he feels like he is on his own turf at last. Kim, meanwhile, is hungry, cold, and tired--definitely off his game. Still, as Kim keeps climbing and keeps breathing all this fresh mountain air, he gets stronger. The Babu follows them on the road--he seems to know this whole area very well. Finally they reach a valley in the middle of high mountains, damp with streams that flow into the river Sutluj. As Kim and the lama spend the night in the valley, the Babu races on ahead to meet the two Europeans . They want someone local to help get them to Simla, and the Babu offers to guide them. The Babu also puts on a convincing display of hating the English, which the two European guys buy completely. As the Babu leads these two foreigners and their coolies , he finds Kim and the lama on the road. He secretly signals Kim that these two guys are The Guys, the ones they've been looking for. The Babu also invites the two men to look at the lama's drawing of the Great Wheel of existence. The lama starts explaining about the Buddhist model of human existence--the Russian quickly says that he can't understand the lama, but he wants to buy his drawing. The lama refuses, and the Russian reaches out as though he is going to grab the drawing. The Russian hits the lama right in the face, and Kim leaps at him. All the bearers run off into the hills ASAP--they know that it's super bad luck to hit a holy man, and they don't want to be around when the gods start throwing lightning bolts. The Babu jumps on Kim as though he is defending the Russian guy, but really, he's warning Kim to run after the bearers and get their papers. A shot hits a rock near Kim as he runs, so Kim pulls out the gun he got from Mahbub Ali and shoots back. He and the lama find cover behind some trees. The bearers all want to shoot the two Europeans in revenge for the act of sacrilege they have just seen . The lama orders the bearers not to kill anybody, but confesses to Kim that he was tempted to shoot the men and he feels deeply shaken by his moral weakness. He sinks to the ground, partly thanks to his injury, but also because of his disappointment in himself. The bearers decide to divide up the European men's loot. Kim steps in and says that they shouldn't take the bag full of books and instruments--it's got magic tools that only Kim can handle safely. Meanwhile, the Babu accompanies the two Europeans. He keeps telling them they have no choice now but to sneak from village to village until they can get to a city. Their luggage is long gone, and they will be in so much trouble if they contact the Kings--after all, hitting a holy man is the worst thing you can do around here. The Babu's strong words convince the Europeans, who immediately fall to fighting with each other. And the whole threat of the Russian spies falls apart.

THE FREE BREAKFAST SERVICE BLACKFRIARS SHELTER On a Sunday in June I attended the Free Breakfast service at the Blackfriars Shelter. The lease of this building was acquired by the Salvation Army from a Temperance Company. Behind it lay contractors' stables, which were also bought; after which the premises were rebuilt and altered to suit the purposes to which they are now put, the stabling being for the most part converted into sleeping-rooms. The Officer who accompanied me, Lieut.-Colonel Jolliffe, explained that this Blackfriars Shelter is, as it were, the dredger for and the feeder of all the Salvation Army's Social Institutions for men in London. Indeed, it may be likened to a dragnet set to catch male unfortunates in this part of the Metropolis. Here, as in the other Army Shelters, are great numbers of bunks that are hired out at 3d. a night, and the usual food-kitchens and appliances. I visited one or two of these, well-ventilated places that in cold weather are warmed by means of hot-water pipes to a heat of about 70 deg., as the clothing on the bunks is light. I observed that although the rooms had only been vacated for a few hours, they were perfectly inoffensive, and even sweet; a result that is obtained by a very strict attention to cleanliness and ample ventilation. The floors of these places are constantly scrubbed, and the bunks undergo a process of disinfection about once a week. As a consequence, in all the Army Shelters the vermin which sometimes trouble common lodging-houses are almost unknown. I may add that the closest supervision is exercised in these places when they are occupied. Night watchmen are always on duty, and an Officer sleeps in a little apartment attached to each dormitory. The result is that there are practically no troubles of any kind. Sometimes, however, a poor wanderer is found dead in the morning, in which case the body is quietly conveyed away to await inquest. I asked what happened when men who could not produce the necessary coppers to pay for their lodging, applied for admission. The answer was that the matter was left to the discretion of the Officer in charge. In fact, in cases of absolute and piteous want, men are admitted free, although, naturally enough, the Army does not advertise that this happens. If it did, its hospitality would be considerably overtaxed. Leaving the dormitories, I entered the great hall, in which were gathered nearly 600 men seated upon benches, every one of which was filled. The faces and general aspect of these men were eloquent of want and sorrow. Some of them appeared to be intent upon the religious service that was going on, attendance at this service being the condition on which the free breakfast is given to all who need food and have passed the previous night in the street. Others were gazing about them vacantly, and others, sufferers from the effects of drink, debauchery, or fatigue, seemed to be half comatose or asleep. This congregation, the strangest that I have ever seen, comprised men of all classes. Some might once have belonged to the learned professions, while others had fallen so low that they looked scarcely human. Every grade of rag-clad misery was represented here, and every stage of life from the lad of sixteen up to the aged man whose allotted span was almost at an end. Rank upon rank of them, there they sat in their infinite variety, linked only by the common bond of utter wretchedness, the most melancholy sight, I think, that ever my eyes beheld. All of them, however, were fairly clean, for this matter had been seen to by the Officers who attend upon them. The Salvation Army does not only wash the feet of its guests, but the whole body. Also, it dries and purifies their tattered garments. When I entered the hall, an Officer on the platform was engaged in offering up an extempore prayer. 'We pray that the Holy Spirit may be poured out upon these men. We pray, O God, that Thou wilt help them to take fresh courage, to find fresh hope, and that they may rise once again to fight the battle of life. We pray that Thou mayst bring to Thy feet, this morning, such as shall be saved eternally.' Then another Officer, styled the Chaplain, addressed the audience. He told them that there was a way out of their troubles, and that hundreds who had sat in that hall as they did, now blessed the day which brought them there. He said: 'You came here this morning, you scarcely knew how or why. You did not know the hand of God was leading you, and that He will bless you if you will listen to His Voice. You think you cannot escape from this wretched life; you think of the past with all its failures. But do not trouble about the years that are gone. Seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all other things shall be added unto you. Then there will be no more wandering about without a friend, for I say to you that God lives, and this morning you will hear from others, who once were in a similar condition to yourself, what He has done for them.' Next a man with a fine tenor voice, who, it seems, is nicknamed 'the Yorkshire Canary,' sang the hymn beginning, 'God moves in a mysterious way.' After this in plain, forcible language he told his own story. He said that he was well brought up by a good father and mother, and lost everything through his own sin. His voice was in a sense his ruin, since he used to sing in public-houses and saloons and there learnt to drink. At length he found himself upon the streets in London, and tramped thence to Yorkshire to throw himself upon the mercy of his parents. When he was quite close to his home, however, his courage failed him, and he tramped back to London, where he was picked up by the Salvation Army. This man, a most respectable-looking person, is now a clerk in a well-known business house. In his own words, 'I knelt down and gave my heart to God, and am to-day in a good situation.' Next a Salvation Army soldier spoke. Four years before he had attended the Sunday morning meeting in this hall and 'found the friendship of God. He has helped me to regain the manhood I had lost and to do my duty. For two years now I have helped to support an invalid sister instead of being a burden to every one I knew, as once I was.' After the singing of the hymn, 'Rock of Ages,' another man addressed the meeting. He had been a drunkard, a homeless wanderer, who slept night after night on the Embankment till fortune brought him to this service and to the Penitent-Form. Since that time, two and a half years before, no drink had passed his lips, and once again, as he declared, he had become 'a self-respecting, respectable citizen.' Then a dwarf whom I had seen at work in the Spa Road Elevator, and who once was taken about the country to be exhibited as a side show at fairs and there fell a victim to drink, gave his testimony. Another verse, 'Could my tears for ever flow,' and after it, in rapid succession, spoke a man who had been a schoolmaster and fallen through drink and gambling; a man who, or whose brother, I am not sure which, had been a Wesleyan preacher, and who is now employed in a Life Assurance Company; a man who had been a prisoner; a man who had been a confirmed drunkard, and others. Always it was the same earnest, simple tale of drink and degradation, passed now for ever; of the Penitent-Form; of the building up of a new self, and of position regained. More singing and an eloquent prayer which seemed to move the audience very much, some of them to tears; an address from a woman Salvation Army Officer, who pleaded with the people in the name of their mothers, and a brief but excellent sermon from Commissioner Sturgess, based upon the parable of the Marriage of the King's Son as recorded in the 22nd chapter of St. Matthew, and of the guests who were collected from the highways and byways to attend the feast whence the rich and worldly had excused themselves. Then the great and final invocation to Heaven to move the hearts of these men, and the invitation to them to present themselves at the Penitent-Form. Lastly a mighty, thundering hymn, 'Jesu, Lover of my soul,' and the ending of the long drama. It was a wonderful thing to see the spiritually-faced man on the platform pleading with his sordid audience, and to watch them stirring beneath his words. To see, also, a uniformed woman flitting to and fro among that audience, whispering, exhorting, invoking--a temptress to Salvation, then to note the response and its manner that were stranger still. Some poor wretch would seem to awaken, only to relapse into a state of sullen, almost defiant torpor. A little while and the leaven begins to work in him. He flushes, mutters something, half rises from his seat, sits down again, rises once more and with a peculiar, unwilling gait staggers to the Penitent-Form, and in an abandonment of grief and repentance throws himself upon his knees and there begins to sob. A watching Officer comes to him, kneels at his side and, I suppose, confesses him. The tremendous hymn bursts out like a paean of triumph-- Just as I am, without one plea, it begins, the rest I forget or did not catch. Now the ice is broken. Another comes and another, and another, till there is no more room at the Penitent-Bench. They swarm on to the platform which is cleared for them, and there kneel down, and I observed the naked feet of some of them showing through the worn-out boots. So it goes on. At length the great audience rises and begins to depart, filing one by one through a certain doorway. As they pass, Officers who have appeared from somewhere wait for them with outstretched arms. The most of them brush past shaking their heads and muttering. Here and there one pauses, is lost--or rather won. The Salvation Army has him in its net and he joins the crowd upon the platform. Still the hymn swells and falls till all have departed save those who remain for good--about 10 per cent of that sad company. [Illustration: SEEKING THE HOMELESS AT MIDNIGHT.] It is done and the catcher feels that he has witnessed the very uttermost of tragedies, human and spiritual. * * * * * Mere common 'revivalism'! the critic will say, and it may be so. Still such revivalism, if that is the term for it, must be judged by its fruits. I am informed that of those who kneel here experience shows that but a small percentage relapse. The most of them become what in the Salvation Army cant--if one chooses so to name it--is known as 'saved.' This means that from drunkards and wastrels stained with every sort of human fault, or even crime, they are turned into God-fearing and respectable men who henceforward, instead of being a pest to society and a terror to all those who have the misfortune to be connected with them, become props of society and a comfort and a support to their relatives and friends. Thus is the mesh of mercy spread, and such is its harvest. The age of miracles is past, we are told; but I confess that while watching this strange sight I wondered more than once that if this were so, what that age of miracles had been like. Of one thing I was sure, that it must have been to such as these that He who is acknowledged even by sceptics to have been the very Master of mankind, would have chosen to preach, had this been the age of His appearance, He who came to call sinners to repentance. Probably, too, it was to such as these that He did preach, for folk of this character are common to the generations. Doubtless, Judea had its knaves and drunkards, as we know it had its victims of sickness and misfortune. The devils that were cast out in Jerusalem did not die; they reappear in London and elsewhere to-day, and, it would seem, can still be cast out. I confess another thing, also; namely, that I found all this drama curiously exciting. Most of us who have passed middle age and led a full and varied life will be familiar with the great human emotions. Yet I discovered here a new emotion, one quite foreign to a somewhat extended experience, one that I cannot even attempt to define. The contagion of revivalism! again it will be said. This may be so, or it may not. But at least, so far as this branch of the Salvation Army work is concerned, those engaged in it may fairly claim that the tree should be judged by its fruits. Without doubt, in the main these fruits are good and wholesome. I have only to add to my description of this remarkable service, that the number netted, namely, about 10 per cent of those present, was, I am told, just normal, neither more nor less than the average. Some of these doubtless will relapse; but if only _one_ of them remains really reformed, surely the Salvation Army has vindicated its arguments and all is proved to be well worth while. But to that one very many ciphers must be added as the clear and proved result of the forty years or so of its activity. Whatever may be doubtful, this is true beyond all controversy, for it numbers its converts by the thousand. * * * * * The congregation which I saw on this particular occasion seemed to me to consist for the most part of elderly men; in fact, some of them were very old, and the average age of those who attended the Penitent-Form I estimated at about thirty-five years. This, however, varies. I am informed that at times they are mostly young persons. It must be remembered--and the statement throws a lurid light upon the conditions prevailing in London, as in other of our great cities--that the population which week by week attends these Sunday morning services is of an ever-shifting character. Doubtless, there are some _habitues_ and others who reappear from time to time. But the most of the audience is new. Every Saturday night the highways and the hedges, or rather the streets and the railway arches yield a new crop of homeless and quite destitute wanderers. These are gathered into the Blackfriars Shelter, and go their bitter road again after the rest, the breakfast, and the service. But as we have seen here a substantial proportion, about 10 per cent, remain behind. These are all interviewed separately and fed, and on the following morning as many of them as vacancies can be found for in the Paper Works Elevator or elsewhere are sent thither. I saw plenty of these men, and with them others who had been rescued previously; so many, indeed, that it is impossible to set out their separate cases. Looking through my notes made at the time, I find among them a schoolmaster, an Australian who fought in South Africa, a publican who had lost L2,000 in speculation and been twelve months on the streets, a sailor and two soldiers who between them had seen much service abroad, and a University man who had tried to commit suicide from London Bridge. Also there was a person who was recently described in the newspapers as the 'dirtiest man in London.' He was found sitting on the steps of a large building in Queen Victoria Street, partly paralysed from exposure. So filthy and verminous was he, that it was necessary to scrape his body, which mere washing would not touch. When he was picked up, a crowd of several hundred people followed him down the street, attracted by his dreadful appearance. His pockets were full of filth, amongst which were found 5s. in coppers. He had then been a month in the Shelter, where he peels or peeled potatoes, etc., and looked quite bright and clean. Most of these people had been brought down by the accursed drink, which is the bane of our nation, and some few by sheer misfortune. Neither at the service, nor afterwards, did I see a single Jew, for the fallen of that race seem to be looked after by their fellow religionists. Moreover, the Jews do not drink to excess. Foreigners, also, are comparatively scarce at Blackfriars and in the other Shelters.

Rivers is introduced to Prior, a new patient in the hospital who refuses to speak. Prior writes on a pad, in block letters only, saying that he does not remember what happened to him and that there is nothing physically wrong with him. He is hostile to Rivers. Sassoon says goodbye to Graves and leaves the hospital for a short walk through the town. Despite what Rivers has said about Sassoon hating safety, Sassoon is happy to go to bed each night in white sheets knowing that he will wake the next morning. Rivers goes home and prepares his nightly bath. He constantly thinks about the hospital and the welfare of his patients. He resents the luxury Sassoon has to object to the war. Though Rivers wants nothing more than for the war to end so that he may return to his research in Cambridge, he understands that it should not be left to another generation to fight German militarism. Rivers goes to sleep. Later he wakes from a nightmare and record what happened in his dream. He dreamt that he was recording the hypersensitivity to pain on the arm of his friend Henry Head. To his surprise, Head suddenly turned the scalpel on him and jabbed it into Rivers's own arm. Rivers realizes what the content of his dream was about. Years ago, he had been working with Head on research to study nerve regeneration after accidental injury. Head offered himself as the subject of study, and Rivers assisted him in severing the radial nerve, suturing it back together, and recording the growth over a five-year period. The essence of his dream is his strong feeling of dislike of inflicting pain. Rivers concludes that the dream must refer to his aversion against inflicting any pain on his patients. By encouraging his patients to talk about their traumatic experiences, Rivers forces them to relive their pain. Furthermore, as this method is experimental, he does not even know if this is helping them. Rivers realizes that by encouraging his patients to express their feelings, he weakens the basis of manliness upon which both he and they have been raised

<CHAPTER> 4--Cheerfulness Again Asserts Itself at Blooms-End, and Clym Finds His Vocation Anybody who had passed through Blooms-End about eleven o'clock on the morning fixed for the wedding would have found that, while Yeobright's house was comparatively quiet, sounds denoting great activity came from the dwelling of his nearest neighbour, Timothy Fairway. It was chiefly a noise of feet, briskly crunching hither and thither over the sanded floor within. One man only was visible outside, and he seemed to be later at an appointment than he had intended to be, for he hastened up to the door, lifted the latch, and walked in without ceremony. The scene within was not quite the customary one. Standing about the room was the little knot of men who formed the chief part of the Egdon coterie, there being present Fairway himself, Grandfer Cantle, Humphrey, Christian, and one or two turf-cutters. It was a warm day, and the men were as a matter of course in their shirtsleeves, except Christian, who had always a nervous fear of parting with a scrap of his clothing when in anybody's house but his own. Across the stout oak table in the middle of the room was thrown a mass of striped linen, which Grandfer Cantle held down on one side, and Humphrey on the other, while Fairway rubbed its surface with a yellow lump, his face being damp and creased with the effort of the labour. "Waxing a bed-tick, souls?" said the newcomer. "Yes, Sam," said Grandfer Cantle, as a man too busy to waste words. "Shall I stretch this corner a shade tighter, Timothy?" Fairway replied, and the waxing went on with unabated vigour. "'Tis going to be a good bed, by the look o't," continued Sam, after an interval of silence. "Who may it be for?" "'Tis a present for the new folks that's going to set up housekeeping," said Christian, who stood helpless and overcome by the majesty of the proceedings. "Ah, to be sure; and a valuable one, 'a b'lieve." "Beds be dear to fokes that don't keep geese, bain't they, Mister Fairway?" said Christian, as to an omniscient being. "Yes," said the furze-dealer, standing up, giving his forehead a thorough mopping, and handing the beeswax to Humphrey, who succeeded at the rubbing forthwith. "Not that this couple be in want of one, but 'twas well to show 'em a bit of friendliness at this great racketing vagary of their lives. I set up both my own daughters in one when they was married, and there have been feathers enough for another in the house the last twelve months. Now then, neighbours, I think we have laid on enough wax. Grandfer Cantle, you turn the tick the right way outwards, and then I'll begin to shake in the feathers." When the bed was in proper trim Fairway and Christian brought forward vast paper bags, stuffed to the full, but light as balloons, and began to turn the contents of each into the receptacle just prepared. As bag after bag was emptied, airy tufts of down and feathers floated about the room in increasing quantity till, through a mishap of Christian's, who shook the contents of one bag outside the tick, the atmosphere of the room became dense with gigantic flakes, which descended upon the workers like a windless snowstorm. "I never saw such a clumsy chap as you, Christian," said Grandfer Cantle severely. "You might have been the son of a man that's never been outside Blooms-End in his life for all the wit you have. Really all the soldiering and smartness in the world in the father seems to count for nothing in forming the nater of the son. As far as that chief Christian is concerned I might as well have stayed at home and seed nothing, like all the rest of ye here. Though, as far as myself is concerned, a dashing spirit has counted for sommat, to be sure!" "Don't ye let me down so, Father; I feel no bigger than a ninepin after it. I've made but a bruckle hit, I'm afeard." "Come, come. Never pitch yerself in such a low key as that, Christian; you should try more," said Fairway. "Yes, you should try more," echoed the Grandfer with insistence, as if he had been the first to make the suggestion. "In common conscience every man ought either to marry or go for a soldier. 'Tis a scandal to the nation to do neither one nor t'other. I did both, thank God! Neither to raise men nor to lay 'em low--that shows a poor do-nothing spirit indeed." "I never had the nerve to stand fire," faltered Christian. "But as to marrying, I own I've asked here and there, though without much fruit from it. Yes, there's some house or other that might have had a man for a master--such as he is--that's now ruled by a woman alone. Still it might have been awkward if I had found her; for, d'ye see, neighbours, there'd have been nobody left at home to keep down Father's spirits to the decent pitch that becomes a old man." "And you've your work cut out to do that, my son," said Grandfer Cantle smartly. "I wish that the dread of infirmities was not so strong in me!--I'd start the very first thing tomorrow to see the world over again! But seventy-one, though nothing at home, is a high figure for a rover.... Ay, seventy-one, last Candlemasday. Gad, I'd sooner have it in guineas than in years!" And the old man sighed. "Don't you be mournful, Grandfer," said Fairway. "Empt some more feathers into the bed-tick, and keep up yer heart. Though rather lean in the stalks you be a green-leaved old man still. There's time enough left to ye yet to fill whole chronicles." "Begad, I'll go to 'em, Timothy--to the married pair!" said Granfer Cantle in an encouraged voice, and starting round briskly. "I'll go to 'em tonight and sing a wedding song, hey? 'Tis like me to do so, you know; and they'd see it as such. My 'Down in Cupid's Gardens' was well liked in four; still, I've got others as good, and even better. What do you say to my She cal'-led to' her love' From the lat'-tice a-bove, 'O come in' from the fog-gy fog'-gy dew'.' 'Twould please 'em well at such a time! Really, now I come to think of it, I haven't turned my tongue in my head to the shape of a real good song since Old Midsummer night, when we had the 'Barley Mow' at the Woman; and 'tis a pity to neglect your strong point where there's few that have the compass for such things!" "So 'tis, so 'tis," said Fairway. "Now gie the bed a shake down. We've put in seventy pounds of best feathers, and I think that's as many as the tick will fairly hold. A bit and a drap wouldn't be amiss now, I reckon. Christian, maul down the victuals from corner-cupboard if canst reach, man, and I'll draw a drap o' sommat to wet it with." They sat down to a lunch in the midst of their work, feathers around, above, and below them; the original owners of which occasionally came to the open door and cackled begrudgingly at sight of such a quantity of their old clothes. "Upon my soul I shall be chokt," said Fairway when, having extracted a feather from his mouth, he found several others floating on the mug as it was handed round. "I've swallered several; and one had a tolerable quill," said Sam placidly from the corner. "Hullo--what's that--wheels I hear coming?" Grandfer Cantle exclaimed, jumping up and hastening to the door. "Why, 'tis they back again--I didn't expect 'em yet this half-hour. To be sure, how quick marrying can be done when you are in the mind for't!" "O yes, it can soon be DONE," said Fairway, as if something should be added to make the statement complete. He arose and followed the Grandfer, and the rest also went to the door. In a moment an open fly was driven past, in which sat Venn and Mrs. Venn, Yeobright, and a grand relative of Venn's who had come from Budmouth for the occasion. The fly had been hired at the nearest town, regardless of distance and cost, there being nothing on Egdon Heath, in Venn's opinion, dignified enough for such an event when such a woman as Thomasin was the bride; and the church was too remote for a walking bridal-party. As the fly passed the group which had run out from the homestead they shouted "Hurrah!" and waved their hands; feathers and down floating from their hair, their sleeves, and the folds of their garments at every motion, and Grandfer Cantle's seals dancing merrily in the sunlight as he twirled himself about. The driver of the fly turned a supercilious gaze upon them; he even treated the wedded pair themselves with something like condescension; for in what other state than heathen could people, rich or poor, exist who were doomed to abide in such a world's end as Egdon? Thomasin showed no such superiority to the group at the door, fluttering her hand as quickly as a bird's wing towards them, and asking Diggory, with tears in her eyes, if they ought not to alight and speak to these kind neighbours. Venn, however, suggested that, as they were all coming to the house in the evening, this was hardly necessary. After this excitement the saluting party returned to their occupation, and the stuffing and sewing were soon afterwards finished, when Fairway harnessed a horse, wrapped up the cumbrous present, and drove off with it in the cart to Venn's house at Stickleford. Yeobright, having filled the office at the wedding service which naturally fell to his hands, and afterwards returned to the house with the husband and wife, was indisposed to take part in the feasting and dancing that wound up the evening. Thomasin was disappointed. "I wish I could be there without dashing your spirits," he said. "But I might be too much like the skull at the banquet." "No, no." "Well, dear, apart from that, if you would excuse me, I should be glad. I know it seems unkind; but, dear Thomasin, I fear I should not be happy in the company--there, that's the truth of it. I shall always be coming to see you at your new home, you know, so that my absence now will not matter." "Then I give in. Do whatever will be most comfortable to yourself." Clym retired to his lodging at the housetop much relieved, and occupied himself during the afternoon in noting down the heads of a sermon, with which he intended to initiate all that really seemed practicable of the scheme that had originally brought him hither, and that he had so long kept in view under various modifications, and through evil and good report. He had tested and weighed his convictions again and again, and saw no reason to alter them, though he had considerably lessened his plan. His eyesight, by long humouring in his native air, had grown stronger, but not sufficiently strong to warrant his attempting his extensive educational project. Yet he did not repine--there was still more than enough of an unambitious sort to tax all his energies and occupy all his hours. Evening drew on, and sounds of life and movement in the lower part of the domicile became more pronounced, the gate in the palings clicking incessantly. The party was to be an early one, and all the guests were assembled long before it was dark. Yeobright went down the back staircase and into the heath by another path than that in front, intending to walk in the open air till the party was over, when he would return to wish Thomasin and her husband good-bye as they departed. His steps were insensibly bent towards Mistover by the path that he had followed on that terrible morning when he learnt the strange news from Susan's boy. He did not turn aside to the cottage, but pushed on to an eminence, whence he could see over the whole quarter that had once been Eustacia's home. While he stood observing the darkening scene somebody came up. Clym, seeing him but dimly, would have let him pass silently, had not the pedestrian, who was Charley, recognized the young man and spoken to him. "Charley, I have not seen you for a length of time," said Yeobright. "Do you often walk this way?" "No," the lad replied. "I don't often come outside the bank." "You were not at the Maypole." "No," said Charley, in the same listless tone. "I don't care for that sort of thing now." "You rather liked Miss Eustacia, didn't you?" Yeobright gently asked. Eustacia had frequently told him of Charley's romantic attachment. "Yes, very much. Ah, I wish--" "Yes?" "I wish, Mr. Yeobright, you could give me something to keep that once belonged to her--if you don't mind." "I shall be very happy to. It will give me very great pleasure, Charley. Let me think what I have of hers that you would like. But come with me to the house, and I'll see." They walked towards Blooms-End together. When they reached the front it was dark, and the shutters were closed, so that nothing of the interior could be seen. "Come round this way," said Clym. "My entrance is at the back for the present." The two went round and ascended the crooked stair in darkness till Clym's sitting-room on the upper floor was reached, where he lit a candle, Charley entering gently behind. Yeobright searched his desk, and taking out a sheet of tissue-paper unfolded from it two or three undulating locks of raven hair, which fell over the paper like black streams. From these he selected one, wrapped it up, and gave it to the lad, whose eyes had filled with tears. He kissed the packet, put it in his pocket, and said in a voice of emotion, "O, Mr. Clym, how good you are to me!" "I will go a little way with you," said Clym. And amid the noise of merriment from below they descended. Their path to the front led them close to a little side window, whence the rays of candles streamed across the shrubs. The window, being screened from general observation by the bushes, had been left unblinded, so that a person in this private nook could see all that was going on within the room which contained the wedding guests, except in so far as vision was hindered by the green antiquity of the panes. "Charley, what are they doing?" said Clym. "My sight is weaker again tonight, and the glass of this window is not good." Charley wiped his own eyes, which were rather blurred with moisture, and stepped closer to the casement. "Mr. Venn is asking Christian Cantle to sing," he replied, "and Christian is moving about in his chair as if he were much frightened at the question, and his father has struck up a stave instead of him." "Yes, I can hear the old man's voice," said Clym. "So there's to be no dancing, I suppose. And is Thomasin in the room? I see something moving in front of the candles that resembles her shape, I think." "Yes. She do seem happy. She is red in the face, and laughing at something Fairway has said to her. O my!" "What noise was that?" said Clym. "Mr. Venn is so tall that he knocked his head against the beam in gieing a skip as he passed under. Mrs. Venn has run up quite frightened and now she's put her hand to his head to feel if there's a lump. And now they be all laughing again as if nothing had happened." "Do any of them seem to care about my not being there?" Clym asked. "No, not a bit in the world. Now they are all holding up their glasses and drinking somebody's health." "I wonder if it is mine?" "No, 'tis Mr. and Mrs. Venn's, because he is making a hearty sort of speech. There--now Mrs. Venn has got up, and is going away to put on her things, I think." "Well, they haven't concerned themselves about me, and it is quite right they should not. It is all as it should be, and Thomasin at least is happy. We will not stay any longer now, as they will soon be coming out to go home." He accompanied the lad into the heath on his way home, and, returning alone to the house a quarter of an hour later, found Venn and Thomasin ready to start, all the guests having departed in his absence. The wedded pair took their seats in the four-wheeled dogcart which Venn's head milker and handy man had driven from Stickleford to fetch them in; little Eustacia and the nurse were packed securely upon the open flap behind; and the milker, on an ancient overstepping pony, whose shoes clashed like cymbals at every tread, rode in the rear, in the manner of a body-servant of the last century. "Now we leave you in absolute possession of your own house again," said Thomasin as she bent down to wish her cousin good night. "It will be rather lonely for you, Clym, after the hubbub we have been making." "O, that's no inconvenience," said Clym, smiling rather sadly. And then the party drove off and vanished in the night shades, and Yeobright entered the house. The ticking of the clock was the only sound that greeted him, for not a soul remained; Christian, who acted as cook, valet, and gardener to Clym, sleeping at his father's house. Yeobright sat down in one of the vacant chairs, and remained in thought a long time. His mother's old chair was opposite; it had been sat in that evening by those who had scarcely remembered that it ever was hers. But to Clym she was almost a presence there, now as always. Whatever she was in other people's memories, in his she was the sublime saint whose radiance even his tenderness for Eustacia could not obscure. But his heart was heavy, that Mother had NOT crowned him in the day of his espousals and in the day of the gladness of his heart. And events had borne out the accuracy of her judgment, and proved the devotedness of her care. He should have heeded her for Eustacia's sake even more than for his own. "It was all my fault," he whispered. "O, my mother, my mother! would to God that I could live my life again, and endure for you what you endured for me!" On the Sunday after this wedding an unusual sight was to be seen on Rainbarrow. From a distance there simply appeared to be a motionless figure standing on the top of the tumulus, just as Eustacia had stood on that lonely summit some two years and a half before. But now it was fine warm weather, with only a summer breeze blowing, and early afternoon instead of dull twilight. Those who ascended to the immediate neighbourhood of the Barrow perceived that the erect form in the centre, piercing the sky, was not really alone. Round him upon the slopes of the Barrow a number of heathmen and women were reclining or sitting at their ease. They listened to the words of the man in their midst, who was preaching, while they abstractedly pulled heather, stripped ferns, or tossed pebbles down the slope. This was the first of a series of moral lectures or Sermons on the Mount, which were to be delivered from the same place every Sunday afternoon as long as the fine weather lasted. The commanding elevation of Rainbarrow had been chosen for two reasons: first, that it occupied a central position among the remote cottages around; secondly, that the preacher thereon could be seen from all adjacent points as soon as he arrived at his post, the view of him being thus a convenient signal to those stragglers who wished to draw near. The speaker was bareheaded, and the breeze at each waft gently lifted and lowered his hair, somewhat too thin for a man of his years, these still numbering less than thirty-three. He wore a shade over his eyes, and his face was pensive and lined; but, though these bodily features were marked with decay there was no defect in the tones of his voice, which were rich, musical, and stirring. He stated that his discourses to people were to be sometimes secular, and sometimes religious, but never dogmatic; and that his texts would be taken from all kinds of books. This afternoon the words were as follows:-- "'And the king rose up to meet her, and bowed himself unto her, and sat down on his throne, and caused a seat to be set for the king's mother; and she sat on his right hand. Then she said, I desire one small petition of thee; I pray thee say me not nay. And the king said unto her, Ask, on, my mother: for I will not say thee nay.'" Yeobright had, in fact, found his vocation in the career of an itinerant open-air preacher and lecturer on morally unimpeachable subjects; and from this day he laboured incessantly in that office, speaking not only in simple language on Rainbarrow and in the hamlets round, but in a more cultivated strain elsewhere--from the steps and porticoes of town halls, from market-crosses, from conduits, on esplanades and on wharves, from the parapets of bridges, in barns and outhouses, and all other such places in the neighbouring Wessex towns and villages. He left alone creeds and systems of philosophy, finding enough and more than enough to occupy his tongue in the opinions and actions common to all good men. Some believed him, and some believed not; some said that his words were commonplace, others complained of his want of theological doctrine; while others again remarked that it was well enough for a man to take to preaching who could not see to do anything else. But everywhere he was kindly received, for the story of his life had become generally known. </CHAPTER>

It's the day of Thomasin and Diggory's wedding and all the locals are gathered for the occasion. The locals all cheer when they see Diggory and Thomasin and everyone heads off for the wedding feast. Clym opts to not attend since he's still too depressed. Clym walks to Captain Vye's house and spies Charley, who is also still depressed. Charley walks home with Clym, and Clym gives Charley a lock of Eustacia's hair to keep. The two watch the wedding reception party going on outside. Thomasin comes back in as the party winds down to tell Clym good-bye since she's heading off to Diggory's house now. We go forward in time - Clym does work as an itinerant preacher and spends the rest of his life mourning his mother and his wife. People always treat him kindly throughout his life since they feel so sorry for him.

The Circumlocution Office was (as everybody knows without being told) the most important Department under Government. No public business of any kind could possibly be done at any time without the acquiescence of the Circumlocution Office. Its finger was in the largest public pie, and in the smallest public tart. It was equally impossible to do the plainest right and to undo the plainest wrong without the express authority of the Circumlocution Office. If another Gunpowder Plot had been discovered half an hour before the lighting of the match, nobody would have been justified in saving the parliament until there had been half a score of boards, half a bushel of minutes, several sacks of official memoranda, and a family-vault full of ungrammatical correspondence, on the part of the Circumlocution Office. This glorious establishment had been early in the field, when the one sublime principle involving the difficult art of governing a country, was first distinctly revealed to statesmen. It had been foremost to study that bright revelation and to carry its shining influence through the whole of the official proceedings. Whatever was required to be done, the Circumlocution Office was beforehand with all the public departments in the art of perceiving--HOW NOT TO DO IT. Through this delicate perception, through the tact with which it invariably seized it, and through the genius with which it always acted on it, the Circumlocution Office had risen to overtop all the public departments; and the public condition had risen to be--what it was. It is true that How not to do it was the great study and object of all public departments and professional politicians all round the Circumlocution Office. It is true that every new premier and every new government, coming in because they had upheld a certain thing as necessary to be done, were no sooner come in than they applied their utmost faculties to discovering How not to do it. It is true that from the moment when a general election was over, every returned man who had been raving on hustings because it hadn't been done, and who had been asking the friends of the honourable gentleman in the opposite interest on pain of impeachment to tell him why it hadn't been done, and who had been asserting that it must be done, and who had been pledging himself that it should be done, began to devise, How it was not to be done. It is true that the debates of both Houses of Parliament the whole session through, uniformly tended to the protracted deliberation, How not to do it. It is true that the royal speech at the opening of such session virtually said, My lords and gentlemen, you have a considerable stroke of work to do, and you will please to retire to your respective chambers, and discuss, How not to do it. It is true that the royal speech, at the close of such session, virtually said, My lords and gentlemen, you have through several laborious months been considering with great loyalty and patriotism, How not to do it, and you have found out; and with the blessing of Providence upon the harvest (natural, not political), I now dismiss you. All this is true, but the Circumlocution Office went beyond it. Because the Circumlocution Office went on mechanically, every day, keeping this wonderful, all-sufficient wheel of statesmanship, How not to do it, in motion. Because the Circumlocution Office was down upon any ill-advised public servant who was going to do it, or who appeared to be by any surprising accident in remote danger of doing it, with a minute, and a memorandum, and a letter of instructions that extinguished him. It was this spirit of national efficiency in the Circumlocution Office that had gradually led to its having something to do with everything. Mechanicians, natural philosophers, soldiers, sailors, petitioners, memorialists, people with grievances, people who wanted to prevent grievances, people who wanted to redress grievances, jobbing people, jobbed people, people who couldn't get rewarded for merit, and people who couldn't get punished for demerit, were all indiscriminately tucked up under the foolscap paper of the Circumlocution Office. Numbers of people were lost in the Circumlocution Office. Unfortunates with wrongs, or with projects for the general welfare (and they had better have had wrongs at first, than have taken that bitter English recipe for certainly getting them), who in slow lapse of time and agony had passed safely through other public departments; who, according to rule, had been bullied in this, over-reached by that, and evaded by the other; got referred at last to the Circumlocution Office, and never reappeared in the light of day. Boards sat upon them, secretaries minuted upon them, commissioners gabbled about them, clerks registered, entered, checked, and ticked them off, and they melted away. In short, all the business of the country went through the Circumlocution Office, except the business that never came out of it; and _its_ name was Legion. Sometimes, angry spirits attacked the Circumlocution Office. Sometimes, parliamentary questions were asked about it, and even parliamentary motions made or threatened about it by demagogues so low and ignorant as to hold that the real recipe of government was, How to do it. Then would the noble lord, or right honourable gentleman, in whose department it was to defend the Circumlocution Office, put an orange in his pocket, and make a regular field-day of the occasion. Then would he come down to that house with a slap upon the table, and meet the honourable gentleman foot to foot. Then would he be there to tell that honourable gentleman that the Circumlocution Office not only was blameless in this matter, but was commendable in this matter, was extollable to the skies in this matter. Then would he be there to tell that honourable gentleman that, although the Circumlocution Office was invariably right and wholly right, it never was so right as in this matter. Then would he be there to tell that honourable gentleman that it would have been more to his honour, more to his credit, more to his good taste, more to his good sense, more to half the dictionary of commonplaces, if he had left the Circumlocution Office alone, and never approached this matter. Then would he keep one eye upon a coach or crammer from the Circumlocution Office sitting below the bar, and smash the honourable gentleman with the Circumlocution Office account of this matter. And although one of two things always happened; namely, either that the Circumlocution Office had nothing to say and said it, or that it had something to say of which the noble lord, or right honourable gentleman, blundered one half and forgot the other; the Circumlocution Office was always voted immaculate by an accommodating majority. Such a nursery of statesmen had the Department become in virtue of a long career of this nature, that several solemn lords had attained the reputation of being quite unearthly prodigies of business, solely from having practised, How not to do it, as the head of the Circumlocution Office. As to the minor priests and acolytes of that temple, the result of all this was that they stood divided into two classes, and, down to the junior messenger, either believed in the Circumlocution Office as a heaven-born institution that had an absolute right to do whatever it liked; or took refuge in total infidelity, and considered it a flagrant nuisance. The Barnacle family had for some time helped to administer the Circumlocution Office. The Tite Barnacle Branch, indeed, considered themselves in a general way as having vested rights in that direction, and took it ill if any other family had much to say to it. The Barnacles were a very high family, and a very large family. They were dispersed all over the public offices, and held all sorts of public places. Either the nation was under a load of obligation to the Barnacles, or the Barnacles were under a load of obligation to the nation. It was not quite unanimously settled which; the Barnacles having their opinion, the nation theirs. The Mr Tite Barnacle who at the period now in question usually coached or crammed the statesman at the head of the Circumlocution Office, when that noble or right honourable individual sat a little uneasily in his saddle by reason of some vagabond making a tilt at him in a newspaper, was more flush of blood than money. As a Barnacle he had his place, which was a snug thing enough; and as a Barnacle he had of course put in his son Barnacle Junior in the office. But he had intermarried with a branch of the Stiltstalkings, who were also better endowed in a sanguineous point of view than with real or personal property, and of this marriage there had been issue, Barnacle junior and three young ladies. What with the patrician requirements of Barnacle junior, the three young ladies, Mrs Tite Barnacle nee Stiltstalking, and himself, Mr Tite Barnacle found the intervals between quarter day and quarter day rather longer than he could have desired; a circumstance which he always attributed to the country's parsimony. For Mr Tite Barnacle, Mr Arthur Clennam made his fifth inquiry one day at the Circumlocution Office; having on previous occasions awaited that gentleman successively in a hall, a glass case, a waiting room, and a fire-proof passage where the Department seemed to keep its wind. On this occasion Mr Barnacle was not engaged, as he had been before, with the noble prodigy at the head of the Department; but was absent. Barnacle Junior, however, was announced as a lesser star, yet visible above the office horizon. With Barnacle junior, he signified his desire to confer; and found that young gentleman singeing the calves of his legs at the parental fire, and supporting his spine against the mantel-shelf. It was a comfortable room, handsomely furnished in the higher official manner; an presenting stately suggestions of the absent Barnacle, in the thick carpet, the leather-covered desk to sit at, the leather-covered desk to stand at, the formidable easy-chair and hearth-rug, the interposed screen, the torn-up papers, the dispatch-boxes with little labels sticking out of them, like medicine bottles or dead game, the pervading smell of leather and mahogany, and a general bamboozling air of How not to do it. The present Barnacle, holding Mr Clennam's card in his hand, had a youthful aspect, and the fluffiest little whisker, perhaps, that ever was seen. Such a downy tip was on his callow chin, that he seemed half fledged like a young bird; and a compassionate observer might have urged that, if he had not singed the calves of his legs, he would have died of cold. He had a superior eye-glass dangling round his neck, but unfortunately had such flat orbits to his eyes and such limp little eyelids that it wouldn't stick in when he put it up, but kept tumbling out against his waistcoat buttons with a click that discomposed him very much. 'Oh, I say. Look here! My father's not in the way, and won't be in the way to-day,' said Barnacle Junior. 'Is this anything that I can do?' (Click! Eye-glass down. Barnacle Junior quite frightened and feeling all round himself, but not able to find it.) 'You are very good,' said Arthur Clennam. 'I wish however to see Mr Barnacle.' 'But I say. Look here! You haven't got any appointment, you know,' said Barnacle Junior. (By this time he had found the eye-glass, and put it up again.) 'No,' said Arthur Clennam. 'That is what I wish to have.' 'But I say. Look here! Is this public business?' asked Barnacle junior. (Click! Eye-glass down again. Barnacle Junior in that state of search after it that Mr Clennam felt it useless to reply at present.) 'Is it,' said Barnacle junior, taking heed of his visitor's brown face, 'anything about--Tonnage--or that sort of thing?' (Pausing for a reply, he opened his right eye with his hand, and stuck his glass in it, in that inflammatory manner that his eye began watering dreadfully.) 'No,' said Arthur, 'it is nothing about tonnage.' 'Then look here. Is it private business?' 'I really am not sure. It relates to a Mr Dorrit.' 'Look here, I tell you what! You had better call at our house, if you are going that way. Twenty-four, Mews Street, Grosvenor Square. My father's got a slight touch of the gout, and is kept at home by it.' (The misguided young Barnacle evidently going blind on his eye-glass side, but ashamed to make any further alteration in his painful arrangements.) 'Thank you. I will call there now. Good morning.' Young Barnacle seemed discomfited at this, as not having at all expected him to go. 'You are quite sure,' said Barnacle junior, calling after him when he got to the door, unwilling wholly to relinquish the bright business idea he had conceived; 'that it's nothing about Tonnage?' 'Quite sure.' With such assurance, and rather wondering what might have taken place if it _had_ been anything about tonnage, Mr Clennam withdrew to pursue his inquiries. Mews Street, Grosvenor Square, was not absolutely Grosvenor Square itself, but it was very near it. It was a hideous little street of dead wall, stables, and dunghills, with lofts over coach-houses inhabited by coachmen's families, who had a passion for drying clothes and decorating their window-sills with miniature turnpike-gates. The principal chimney-sweep of that fashionable quarter lived at the blind end of Mews Street; and the same corner contained an establishment much frequented about early morning and twilight for the purchase of wine-bottles and kitchen-stuff. Punch's shows used to lean against the dead wall in Mews Street, while their proprietors were dining elsewhere; and the dogs of the neighbourhood made appointments to meet in the same locality. Yet there were two or three small airless houses at the entrance end of Mews Street, which went at enormous rents on account of their being abject hangers-on to a fashionable situation; and whenever one of these fearful little coops was to be let (which seldom happened, for they were in great request), the house agent advertised it as a gentlemanly residence in the most aristocratic part of town, inhabited solely by the elite of the beau monde. If a gentlemanly residence coming strictly within this narrow margin had not been essential to the blood of the Barnacles, this particular branch would have had a pretty wide selection among, let us say, ten thousand houses, offering fifty times the accommodation for a third of the money. As it was, Mr Barnacle, finding his gentlemanly residence extremely inconvenient and extremely dear, always laid it, as a public servant, at the door of the country, and adduced it as another instance of the country's parsimony. Arthur Clennam came to a squeezed house, with a ramshackle bowed front, little dingy windows, and a little dark area like a damp waistcoat-pocket, which he found to be number twenty-four, Mews Street, Grosvenor Square. To the sense of smell the house was like a sort of bottle filled with a strong distillation of Mews; and when the footman opened the door, he seemed to take the stopper out. The footman was to the Grosvenor Square footmen, what the house was to the Grosvenor Square houses. Admirable in his way, his way was a back and a bye way. His gorgeousness was not unmixed with dirt; and both in complexion and consistency he had suffered from the closeness of his pantry. A sallow flabbiness was upon him when he took the stopper out, and presented the bottle to Mr Clennam's nose. 'Be so good as to give that card to Mr Tite Barnacle, and to say that I have just now seen the younger Mr Barnacle, who recommended me to call here.' The footman (who had as many large buttons with the Barnacle crest upon them on the flaps of his pockets, as if he were the family strong box, and carried the plate and jewels about with him buttoned up) pondered over the card a little; then said, 'Walk in.' It required some judgment to do it without butting the inner hall-door open, and in the consequent mental confusion and physical darkness slipping down the kitchen stairs. The visitor, however, brought himself up safely on the door-mat. Still the footman said 'Walk in,' so the visitor followed him. At the inner hall-door, another bottle seemed to be presented and another stopper taken out. This second vial appeared to be filled with concentrated provisions and extract of Sink from the pantry. After a skirmish in the narrow passage, occasioned by the footman's opening the door of the dismal dining-room with confidence, finding some one there with consternation, and backing on the visitor with disorder, the visitor was shut up, pending his announcement, in a close back parlour. There he had an opportunity of refreshing himself with both the bottles at once, looking out at a low blinding wall three feet off, and speculating on the number of Barnacle families within the bills of mortality who lived in such hutches of their own free flunkey choice. Mr Barnacle would see him. Would he walk up-stairs? He would, and he did; and in the drawing-room, with his leg on a rest, he found Mr Barnacle himself, the express image and presentment of How not to do it. Mr Barnacle dated from a better time, when the country was not so parsimonious and the Circumlocution Office was not so badgered. He wound and wound folds of white cravat round his neck, as he wound and wound folds of tape and paper round the neck of the country. His wristbands and collar were oppressive; his voice and manner were oppressive. He had a large watch-chain and bunch of seals, a coat buttoned up to inconvenience, a waistcoat buttoned up to inconvenience, an unwrinkled pair of trousers, a stiff pair of boots. He was altogether splendid, massive, overpowering, and impracticable. He seemed to have been sitting for his portrait to Sir Thomas Lawrence all the days of his life. 'Mr Clennam?' said Mr Barnacle. 'Be seated.' Mr Clennam became seated. 'You have called on me, I believe,' said Mr Barnacle, 'at the Circumlocution--' giving it the air of a word of about five-and-twenty syllables--'Office.' 'I have taken that liberty.' Mr Barnacle solemnly bent his head as who should say, 'I do not deny that it is a liberty; proceed to take another liberty, and let me know your business.' 'Allow me to observe that I have been for some years in China, am quite a stranger at home, and have no personal motive or interest in the inquiry I am about to make.' Mr Barnacle tapped his fingers on the table, and, as if he were now sitting for his portrait to a new and strange artist, appeared to say to his visitor, 'If you will be good enough to take me with my present lofty expression, I shall feel obliged.' 'I have found a debtor in the Marshalsea Prison of the name of Dorrit, who has been there many years. I wish to investigate his confused affairs so far as to ascertain whether it may not be possible, after this lapse of time, to ameliorate his unhappy condition. The name of Mr Tite Barnacle has been mentioned to me as representing some highly influential interest among his creditors. Am I correctly informed?' It being one of the principles of the Circumlocution Office never, on any account whatever, to give a straightforward answer, Mr Barnacle said, 'Possibly.' 'On behalf of the Crown, may I ask, or as private individual?' 'The Circumlocution Department, sir,' Mr Barnacle replied, 'may have possibly recommended--possibly--I cannot say--that some public claim against the insolvent estate of a firm or copartnership to which this person may have belonged, should be enforced. The question may have been, in the course of official business, referred to the Circumlocution Department for its consideration. The Department may have either originated, or confirmed, a Minute making that recommendation.' 'I assume this to be the case, then.' 'The Circumlocution Department,' said Mr Barnacle, 'is not responsible for any gentleman's assumptions.' 'May I inquire how I can obtain official information as to the real state of the case?' 'It is competent,' said Mr Barnacle, 'to any member of the--Public,' mentioning that obscure body with reluctance, as his natural enemy, 'to memorialise the Circumlocution Department. Such formalities as are required to be observed in so doing, may be known on application to the proper branch of that Department.' 'Which is the proper branch?' 'I must refer you,' returned Mr Barnacle, ringing the bell, 'to the Department itself for a formal answer to that inquiry.' 'Excuse my mentioning--' 'The Department is accessible to the--Public,' Mr Barnacle was always checked a little by that word of impertinent signification, 'if the--Public approaches it according to the official forms; if the--Public does not approach it according to the official forms, the--Public has itself to blame.' Mr Barnacle made him a severe bow, as a wounded man of family, a wounded man of place, and a wounded man of a gentlemanly residence, all rolled into one; and he made Mr Barnacle a bow, and was shut out into Mews Street by the flabby footman. Having got to this pass, he resolved as an exercise in perseverance, to betake himself again to the Circumlocution Office, and try what satisfaction he could get there. So he went back to the Circumlocution Office, and once more sent up his card to Barnacle junior by a messenger who took it very ill indeed that he should come back again, and who was eating mashed potatoes and gravy behind a partition by the hall fire. He was readmitted to the presence of Barnacle junior, and found that young gentleman singeing his knees now, and gaping his weary way on to four o'clock. 'I say. Look here. You stick to us in a devil of a manner,' Said Barnacle junior, looking over his shoulder. 'I want to know--' 'Look here. Upon my soul you mustn't come into the place saying you want to know, you know,' remonstrated Barnacle junior, turning about and putting up the eye-glass. 'I want to know,' said Arthur Clennam, who had made up his mind to persistence in one short form of words, 'the precise nature of the claim of the Crown against a prisoner for debt, named Dorrit.' 'I say. Look here. You really are going it at a great pace, you know. Egad, you haven't got an appointment,' said Barnacle junior, as if the thing were growing serious. 'I want to know,' said Arthur, and repeated his case. Barnacle junior stared at him until his eye-glass fell out, and then put it in again and stared at him until it fell out again. 'You have no right to come this sort of move,' he then observed with the greatest weakness. 'Look here. What do you mean? You told me you didn't know whether it was public business or not.' 'I have now ascertained that it is public business,' returned the suitor, 'and I want to know'--and again repeated his monotonous inquiry. Its effect upon young Barnacle was to make him repeat in a defenceless way, 'Look here! Upon my SOUL you mustn't come into the place saying you want to know, you know!' The effect of that upon Arthur Clennam was to make him repeat his inquiry in exactly the same words and tone as before. The effect of that upon young Barnacle was to make him a wonderful spectacle of failure and helplessness. 'Well, I tell you what. Look here. You had better try the Secretarial Department,' he said at last, sidling to the bell and ringing it. 'Jenkinson,' to the mashed potatoes messenger, 'Mr Wobbler!' Arthur Clennam, who now felt that he had devoted himself to the storming of the Circumlocution Office, and must go through with it, accompanied the messenger to another floor of the building, where that functionary pointed out Mr Wobbler's room. He entered that apartment, and found two gentlemen sitting face to face at a large and easy desk, one of whom was polishing a gun-barrel on his pocket-handkerchief, while the other was spreading marmalade on bread with a paper-knife. 'Mr Wobbler?' inquired the suitor. Both gentlemen glanced at him, and seemed surprised at his assurance. 'So he went,' said the gentleman with the gun-barrel, who was an extremely deliberate speaker, 'down to his cousin's place, and took the Dog with him by rail. Inestimable Dog. Flew at the porter fellow when he was put into the dog-box, and flew at the guard when he was taken out. He got half-a-dozen fellows into a Barn, and a good supply of Rats, and timed the Dog. Finding the Dog able to do it immensely, made the match, and heavily backed the Dog. When the match came off, some devil of a fellow was bought over, Sir, Dog was made drunk, Dog's master was cleaned out.' 'Mr Wobbler?' inquired the suitor. The gentleman who was spreading the marmalade returned, without looking up from that occupation, 'What did he call the Dog?' 'Called him Lovely,' said the other gentleman. 'Said the Dog was the perfect picture of the old aunt from whom he had expectations. Found him particularly like her when hocussed.' 'Mr Wobbler?' said the suitor. Both gentlemen laughed for some time. The gentleman with the gun-barrel, considering it, on inspection, in a satisfactory state, referred it to the other; receiving confirmation of his views, he fitted it into its place in the case before him, and took out the stock and polished that, softly whistling. 'Mr Wobbler?' said the suitor. 'What's the matter?' then said Mr Wobbler, with his mouth full. 'I want to know--' and Arthur Clennam again mechanically set forth what he wanted to know. 'Can't inform you,' observed Mr Wobbler, apparently to his lunch. 'Never heard of it. Nothing at all to do with it. Better try Mr Clive, second door on the left in the next passage.' 'Perhaps he will give me the same answer.' 'Very likely. Don't know anything about it,' said Mr Wobbler. The suitor turned away and had left the room, when the gentleman with the gun called out 'Mister! Hallo!' He looked in again. 'Shut the door after you. You're letting in a devil of a draught here!' A few steps brought him to the second door on the left in the next passage. In that room he found three gentlemen; number one doing nothing particular, number two doing nothing particular, number three doing nothing particular. They seemed, however, to be more directly concerned than the others had been in the effective execution of the great principle of the office, as there was an awful inner apartment with a double door, in which the Circumlocution Sages appeared to be assembled in council, and out of which there was an imposing coming of papers, and into which there was an imposing going of papers, almost constantly; wherein another gentleman, number four, was the active instrument. 'I want to know,' said Arthur Clennam,--and again stated his case in the same barrel-organ way. As number one referred him to number two, and as number two referred him to number three, he had occasion to state it three times before they all referred him to number four, to whom he stated it again. Number four was a vivacious, well-looking, well-dressed, agreeable young fellow--he was a Barnacle, but on the more sprightly side of the family--and he said in an easy way, 'Oh! you had better not bother yourself about it, I think.' 'Not bother myself about it?' 'No! I recommend you not to bother yourself about it.' This was such a new point of view that Arthur Clennam found himself at a loss how to receive it. 'You can if you like. I can give you plenty of forms to fill up. Lots of 'em here. You can have a dozen if you like. But you'll never go on with it,' said number four. 'Would it be such hopeless work? Excuse me; I am a stranger in England.' '_I_ don't say it would be hopeless,' returned number four, with a frank smile. 'I don't express an opinion about that; I only express an opinion about you. _I_ don't think you'd go on with it. However, of course, you can do as you like. I suppose there was a failure in the performance of a contract, or something of that kind, was there?' 'I really don't know.' 'Well! That you can find out. Then you'll find out what Department the contract was in, and then you'll find out all about it there.' 'I beg your pardon. How shall I find out?' 'Why, you'll--you'll ask till they tell you. Then you'll memorialise that Department (according to regular forms which you'll find out) for leave to memorialise this Department. If you get it (which you may after a time), that memorial must be entered in that Department, sent to be registered in this Department, sent back to be signed by that Department, sent back to be countersigned by this Department, and then it will begin to be regularly before that Department. You'll find out when the business passes through each of these stages by asking at both Departments till they tell you.' 'But surely this is not the way to do the business,' Arthur Clennam could not help saying. This airy young Barnacle was quite entertained by his simplicity in supposing for a moment that it was. This light in hand young Barnacle knew perfectly that it was not. This touch and go young Barnacle had 'got up' the Department in a private secretaryship, that he might be ready for any little bit of fat that came to hand; and he fully understood the Department to be a politico-diplomatic hocus pocus piece of machinery for the assistance of the nobs in keeping off the snobs. This dashing young Barnacle, in a word, was likely to become a statesman, and to make a figure. 'When the business is regularly before that Department, whatever it is,' pursued this bright young Barnacle, 'then you can watch it from time to time through that Department. When it comes regularly before this Department, then you must watch it from time to time through this Department. We shall have to refer it right and left; and when we refer it anywhere, then you'll have to look it up. When it comes back to us at any time, then you had better look _us_ up. When it sticks anywhere, you'll have to try to give it a jog. When you write to another Department about it, and then to this Department about it, and don't hear anything satisfactory about it, why then you had better--keep on writing.' Arthur Clennam looked very doubtful indeed. 'But I am obliged to you at any rate,' said he, 'for your politeness.' 'Not at all,' replied this engaging young Barnacle. 'Try the thing, and see how you like it. It will be in your power to give it up at any time, if you don't like it. You had better take a lot of forms away with you. Give him a lot of forms!' With which instruction to number two, this sparkling young Barnacle took a fresh handful of papers from numbers one and three, and carried them into the sanctuary to offer to the presiding Idol of the Circumlocution Office. Arthur Clennam put his forms in his pocket gloomily enough, and went his way down the long stone passage and the long stone staircase. He had come to the swing doors leading into the street, and was waiting, not over patiently, for two people who were between him and them to pass out and let him follow, when the voice of one of them struck familiarly on his ear. He looked at the speaker and recognised Mr Meagles. Mr Meagles was very red in the face--redder than travel could have made him--and collaring a short man who was with him, said, 'come out, you rascal, come Out!' It was such an unexpected hearing, and it was also such an unexpected sight to see Mr Meagles burst the swing doors open, and emerge into the street with the short man, who was of an unoffending appearance, that Clennam stood still for the moment exchanging looks of surprise with the porter. He followed, however, quickly; and saw Mr Meagles going down the street with his enemy at his side. He soon came up with his old travelling companion, and touched him on the back. The choleric face which Mr Meagles turned upon him smoothed when he saw who it was, and he put out his friendly hand. 'How are you?' said Mr Meagles. 'How d'ye _do?_ I have only just come over from abroad. I am glad to see you.' 'And I am rejoiced to see you.' 'Thank'ee. Thank'ee!' 'Mrs Meagles and your daughter--?' 'Are as well as possible,' said Mr Meagles. 'I only wish you had come upon me in a more prepossessing condition as to coolness.' Though it was anything but a hot day, Mr Meagles was in a heated state that attracted the attention of the passersby; more particularly as he leaned his back against a railing, took off his hat and cravat, and heartily rubbed his steaming head and face, and his reddened ears and neck, without the least regard for public opinion. 'Whew!' said Mr Meagles, dressing again. 'That's comfortable. Now I am cooler.' 'You have been ruffled, Mr Meagles. What is the matter?' 'Wait a bit, and I'll tell you. Have you leisure for a turn in the Park?' 'As much as you please.' 'Come along then. Ah! you may well look at him.' He happened to have turned his eyes towards the offender whom Mr Meagles had so angrily collared. 'He's something to look at, that fellow is.' He was not much to look at, either in point of size or in point of dress; being merely a short, square, practical looking man, whose hair had turned grey, and in whose face and forehead there were deep lines of cogitation, which looked as though they were carved in hard wood. He was dressed in decent black, a little rusty, and had the appearance of a sagacious master in some handicraft. He had a spectacle-case in his hand, which he turned over and over while he was thus in question, with a certain free use of the thumb that is never seen but in a hand accustomed to tools. 'You keep with us,' said Mr Meagles, in a threatening kind of Way, 'and I'll introduce you presently. Now then!' Clennam wondered within himself, as they took the nearest way to the Park, what this unknown (who complied in the gentlest manner) could have been doing. His appearance did not at all justify the suspicion that he had been detected in designs on Mr Meagles's pocket-handkerchief; nor had he any appearance of being quarrelsome or violent. He was a quiet, plain, steady man; made no attempt to escape; and seemed a little depressed, but neither ashamed nor repentant. If he were a criminal offender, he must surely be an incorrigible hypocrite; and if he were no offender, why should Mr Meagles have collared him in the Circumlocution Office? He perceived that the man was not a difficulty in his own mind alone, but in Mr Meagles's too; for such conversation as they had together on the short way to the Park was by no means well sustained, and Mr Meagles's eye always wandered back to the man, even when he spoke of something very different. At length they being among the trees, Mr Meagles stopped short, and said: 'Mr Clennam, will you do me the favour to look at this man? His name is Doyce, Daniel Doyce. You wouldn't suppose this man to be a notorious rascal; would you?' 'I certainly should not.' It was really a disconcerting question, with the man there. 'No. You would not. I know you would not. You wouldn't suppose him to be a public offender; would you?' 'No.' 'No. But he is. He is a public offender. What has he been guilty of? Murder, manslaughter, arson, forgery, swindling, house-breaking, highway robbery, larceny, conspiracy, fraud? Which should you say, now?' 'I should say,' returned Arthur Clennam, observing a faint smile in Daniel Doyce's face, 'not one of them.' 'You are right,' said Mr Meagles. 'But he has been ingenious, and he has been trying to turn his ingenuity to his country's service. That makes him a public offender directly, sir.' Arthur looked at the man himself, who only shook his head. 'This Doyce,' said Mr Meagles, 'is a smith and engineer. He is not in a large way, but he is well known as a very ingenious man. A dozen years ago, he perfects an invention (involving a very curious secret process) of great importance to his country and his fellow-creatures. I won't say how much money it cost him, or how many years of his life he had been about it, but he brought it to perfection a dozen years ago. Wasn't it a dozen?' said Mr Meagles, addressing Doyce. 'He is the most exasperating man in the world; he never complains!' 'Yes. Rather better than twelve years ago.' 'Rather better?' said Mr Meagles, 'you mean rather worse. Well, Mr Clennam, he addresses himself to the Government. The moment he addresses himself to the Government, he becomes a public offender! Sir,' said Mr Meagles, in danger of making himself excessively hot again, 'he ceases to be an innocent citizen, and becomes a culprit. He is treated from that instant as a man who has done some infernal action. He is a man to be shirked, put off, brow-beaten, sneered at, handed over by this highly-connected young or old gentleman, to that highly-connected young or old gentleman, and dodged back again; he is a man with no rights in his own time, or his own property; a mere outlaw, whom it is justifiable to get rid of anyhow; a man to be worn out by all possible means.' It was not so difficult to believe, after the morning's experience, as Mr Meagles supposed. 'Don't stand there, Doyce, turning your spectacle-case over and over,' cried Mr Meagles, 'but tell Mr Clennam what you confessed to me.' 'I undoubtedly was made to feel,' said the inventor, 'as if I had committed an offence. In dancing attendance at the various offices, I was always treated, more or less, as if it was a very bad offence. I have frequently found it necessary to reflect, for my own self-support, that I really had not done anything to bring myself into the Newgate Calendar, but only wanted to effect a great saving and a great improvement.' 'There!' said Mr Meagles. 'Judge whether I exaggerate. Now you'll be able to believe me when I tell you the rest of the case.' With this prelude, Mr Meagles went through the narrative; the established narrative, which has become tiresome; the matter-of-course narrative which we all know by heart. How, after interminable attendance and correspondence, after infinite impertinences, ignorances, and insults, my lords made a Minute, number three thousand four hundred and seventy-two, allowing the culprit to make certain trials of his invention at his own expense. How the trials were made in the presence of a board of six, of whom two ancient members were too blind to see it, two other ancient members were too deaf to hear it, one other ancient member was too lame to get near it, and the final ancient member was too pig-headed to look at it. How there were more years; more impertinences, ignorances, and insults. How my lords then made a Minute, number five thousand one hundred and three, whereby they resigned the business to the Circumlocution Office. How the Circumlocution Office, in course of time, took up the business as if it were a bran new thing of yesterday, which had never been heard of before; muddled the business, addled the business, tossed the business in a wet blanket. How the impertinences, ignorances, and insults went through the multiplication table. How there was a reference of the invention to three Barnacles and a Stiltstalking, who knew nothing about it; into whose heads nothing could be hammered about it; who got bored about it, and reported physical impossibilities about it. How the Circumlocution Office, in a Minute, number eight thousand seven hundred and forty, 'saw no reason to reverse the decision at which my lords had arrived.' How the Circumlocution Office, being reminded that my lords had arrived at no decision, shelved the business. How there had been a final interview with the head of the Circumlocution Office that very morning, and how the Brazen Head had spoken, and had been, upon the whole, and under all the circumstances, and looking at it from the various points of view, of opinion that one of two courses was to be pursued in respect of the business: that was to say, either to leave it alone for evermore, or to begin it all over again. 'Upon which,' said Mr Meagles, 'as a practical man, I then and there, in that presence, took Doyce by the collar, and told him it was plain to me that he was an infamous rascal and treasonable disturber of the government peace, and took him away. I brought him out of the office door by the collar, that the very porter might know I was a practical man who appreciated the official estimate of such characters; and here we are!' If that airy young Barnacle had been there, he would have frankly told them perhaps that the Circumlocution Office had achieved its function. That what the Barnacles had to do, was to stick on to the national ship as long as they could. That to trim the ship, lighten the ship, clean the ship, would be to knock them off; that they could but be knocked off once; and that if the ship went down with them yet sticking to it, that was the ship's look out, and not theirs. 'There!' said Mr Meagles, 'now you know all about Doyce. Except, which I own does not improve my state of mind, that even now you don't hear him complain.' 'You must have great patience,' said Arthur Clennam, looking at him with some wonder, 'great forbearance.' 'No,' he returned, 'I don't know that I have more than another man.' 'By the Lord, you have more than I have, though!' cried Mr Meagles. Doyce smiled, as he said to Clennam, 'You see, my experience of these things does not begin with myself. It has been in my way to know a little about them from time to time. Mine is not a particular case. I am not worse used than a hundred others who have put themselves in the same position--than all the others, I was going to say.' 'I don't know that I should find that a consolation, if it were my case; but I am very glad that you do.' 'Understand me! I don't say,' he replied in his steady, planning way, and looking into the distance before him as if his grey eye were measuring it, 'that it's recompense for a man's toil and hope; but it's a certain sort of relief to know that I might have counted on this.' He spoke in that quiet deliberate manner, and in that undertone, which is often observable in mechanics who consider and adjust with great nicety. It belonged to him like his suppleness of thumb, or his peculiar way of tilting up his hat at the back every now and then, as if he were contemplating some half-finished work of his hand and thinking about it. 'Disappointed?' he went on, as he walked between them under the trees. 'Yes. No doubt I am disappointed. Hurt? Yes. No doubt I am hurt. That's only natural. But what I mean when I say that people who put themselves in the same position are mostly used in the same way--' 'In England,' said Mr Meagles. 'Oh! of course I mean in England. When they take their inventions into foreign countries, that's quite different. And that's the reason why so many go there.' Mr Meagles very hot indeed again. 'What I mean is, that however this comes to be the regular way of our government, it is its regular way. Have you ever heard of any projector or inventor who failed to find it all but inaccessible, and whom it did not discourage and ill-treat?' 'I cannot say that I ever have.' 'Have you ever known it to be beforehand in the adoption of any useful thing? Ever known it to set an example of any useful kind?' 'I am a good deal older than my friend here,' said Mr Meagles, 'and I'll answer that. Never.' 'But we all three have known, I expect,' said the inventor, 'a pretty many cases of its fixed determination to be miles upon miles, and years upon years, behind the rest of us; and of its being found out persisting in the use of things long superseded, even after the better things were well known and generally taken up?' They all agreed upon that. 'Well then,' said Doyce, with a sigh, 'as I know what such a metal will do at such a temperature, and such a body under such a pressure, so I may know (if I will only consider), how these great lords and gentlemen will certainly deal with such a matter as mine. I have no right to be surprised, with a head upon my shoulders, and memory in it, that I fall into the ranks with all who came before me. I ought to have let it alone. I have had warning enough, I am sure.' With that he put up his spectacle-case, and said to Arthur, 'If I don't complain, Mr Clennam, I can feel gratitude; and I assure you that I feel it towards our mutual friend. Many's the day, and many's the way in which he has backed me.' 'Stuff and nonsense,' said Mr Meagles. Arthur could not but glance at Daniel Doyce in the ensuing silence. Though it was evidently in the grain of his character, and of his respect for his own case, that he should abstain from idle murmuring, it was evident that he had grown the older, the sterner, and the poorer, for his long endeavour. He could not but think what a blessed thing it would have been for this man, if he had taken a lesson from the gentlemen who were so kind as to take a nation's affairs in charge, and had learnt How not to do it. Mr Meagles was hot and despondent for about five minutes, and then began to cool and clear up. 'Come, come!' said he. 'We shall not make this the better by being grim. Where do you think of going, Dan?' 'I shall go back to the factory,' said Dan. 'Why then, we'll all go back to the factory, or walk in that direction,' returned Mr Meagles cheerfully. 'Mr Clennam won't be deterred by its being in Bleeding Heart Yard.' 'Bleeding Heart Yard?' said Clennam. 'I want to go there.' 'So much the better,' cried Mr Meagles. 'Come along!' As they went along, certainly one of the party, and probably more than one, thought that Bleeding Heart Yard was no inappropriate destination for a man who had been in official correspondence with my lords and the Barnacles--and perhaps had a misgiving also that Britannia herself might come to look for lodgings in Bleeding Heart Yard some ugly day or other, if she over-did the Circumlocution Office.

Dickens is not a fan of career bureaucrats. Hang on a sec, Shmoop, not a fan of who now? Well, in all democracies there are two kinds of jobs in the government. There are the elected guys - you know, "vote for me, I'm awesome" - who run on a party ticket and in theory can be voted out of office. And then there are those who run the various departments and agencies under the elected guys - these are the career bureaucrats. They don't lose their jobs when another party comes to power but are instead permanent office workers . The beginning of this chapter is a vicious satire on a made-up government department called the Circumlocution Office. First off, the name: "circum" from the Latin for "around" and "locution" from the Latin for "talking." As in, these guys just talk circles around the business they are supposed to be doing. Instead of doing anything, the Circumlocution Office workers make sure to do nothing. Not only that, but the place is one giant pile of nepotism, since all the people who work there are from the Barnacle family and just keep on hiring more Barnacles for every available position. This is also a joke. Way, way long ago, Plato compared ruling a country to sailing a huge ship, "the ship of state." This has since become a pretty famous metaphor. Barnacles, meanwhile, are those small shellfish parasites that stick to the bottom and sides of ships and need to be cleaned off. So the Barnacle family is not really all that helpful, Dickens is saying. Anyway. Arthur goes to talk to Tite Barnacle, Circumlocution Office man, about Dorrit's debts. He's not there, but his son is. The son tells Arthur to go find Tite at home. Arthur goes to Tite Barnacle's house, meets with him, and gets not a single straight answer. Instead, Tite Barnacle goes out of his way to avoid answering every question, sending him instead back to the Office to another department. Arthur goes back to the Circumlocution Office and it's a totally surreal labyrinth of nonsense, as people send him back and forth from one bureaucrat to another. Finally he comes across a Barnacle who levels with him, telling him that he can fill out all the forms in the world and talk to everybody in the Office, but he will never get a real answer to anything. Arthur gives up, walks out, and runs into Meagles. Meagles is yelling at Daniel Doyce, calling him a criminal. Arthur can tell immediately that Doyce is no such thing. Finally Meagles calms down and Doyce tells his story. Doyce is a factory owner who twelve years ago invented some awesome thing. If the country adopted his awesome thing instead of the crappy old-fashioned thing they're using now, there would be much saving of money and time, and much rejoicing of people. All Doyce needs is a patent and the approval of the government for everyone to start using his invention, and for that he needs to go through - you guessed it - the Circumlocution Office. He's been trying for twelve years with no luck. Doyce says he's not alone - it's this way for all inventors in England, and that's why so many of them take their inventions to other countries. He may do the same. Take that, England!

It was the height of the reign of terror. McMurdo, who had already been appointed Inner Deacon, with every prospect of some day succeeding McGinty as Bodymaster, was now so necessary to the councils of his comrades that nothing was done without his help and advice. The more popular he became, however, with the Freemen, the blacker were the scowls which greeted him as he passed along the streets of Vermissa. In spite of their terror the citizens were taking heart to band themselves together against their oppressors. Rumours had reached the lodge of secret gatherings in the Herald office and of distribution of firearms among the law-abiding people. But McGinty and his men were undisturbed by such reports. They were numerous, resolute, and well armed. Their opponents were scattered and powerless. It would all end, as it had done in the past, in aimless talk and possibly in impotent arrests. So said McGinty, McMurdo, and all the bolder spirits. It was a Saturday evening in May. Saturday was always the lodge night, and McMurdo was leaving his house to attend it when Morris, the weaker brother of the order, came to see him. His brow was creased with care, and his kindly face was drawn and haggard. "Can I speak with you freely, Mr. McMurdo?" "Sure." "I can't forget that I spoke my heart to you once, and that you kept it to yourself, even though the Boss himself came to ask you about it." "What else could I do if you trusted me? It wasn't that I agreed with what you said." "I know that well. But you are the one that I can speak to and be safe. I've a secret here," he put his hand to his breast, "and it is just burning the life out of me. I wish it had come to any one of you but me. If I tell it, it will mean murder, for sure. If I don't, it may bring the end of us all. God help me, but I am near out of my wits over it!" McMurdo looked at the man earnestly. He was trembling in every limb. He poured some whisky into a glass and handed it to him. "That's the physic for the likes of you," said he. "Now let me hear of it." Morris drank, and his white face took a tinge of colour. "I can tell it to you all in one sentence," said he. "There's a detective on our trail." McMurdo stared at him in astonishment. "Why, man, you're crazy," he said. "Isn't the place full of police and detectives and what harm did they ever do us?" "No, no, it's no man of the district. As you say, we know them, and it is little that they can do. But you've heard of Pinkerton's?" "I've read of some folk of that name." "Well, you can take it from me you've no show when they are on your trail. It's not a take-it-or-miss-it government concern. It's a dead earnest business proposition that's out for results and keeps out till by hook or crook it gets them. If a Pinkerton man is deep in this business, we are all destroyed." "We must kill him." "Ah, it's the first thought that came to you! So it will be up at the lodge. Didn't I say to you that it would end in murder?" "Sure, what is murder? Isn't it common enough in these parts?" "It is, indeed; but it's not for me to point out the man that is to be murdered. I'd never rest easy again. And yet it's our own necks that may be at stake. In God's name what shall I do?" He rocked to and fro in his agony of indecision. But his words had moved McMurdo deeply. It was easy to see that he shared the other's opinion as to the danger, and the need for meeting it. He gripped Morris's shoulder and shook him in his earnestness. "See here, man," he cried, and he almost screeched the words in his excitement, "you won't gain anything by sitting keening like an old wife at a wake. Let's have the facts. Who is the fellow? Where is he? How did you hear of him? Why did you come to me?" "I came to you; for you are the one man that would advise me. I told you that I had a store in the East before I came here. I left good friends behind me, and one of them is in the telegraph service. Here's a letter that I had from him yesterday. It's this part from the top of the page. You can read it yourself." This was what McMurdo read: How are the Scowrers getting on in your parts? We read plenty of them in the papers. Between you and me I expect to hear news from you before long. Five big corporations and the two railroads have taken the thing up in dead earnest. They mean it, and you can bet they'll get there! They are right deep down into it. Pinkerton has taken hold under their orders, and his best man, Birdy Edwards, is operating. The thing has got to be stopped right now. "Now read the postscript." Of course, what I give you is what I learned in business; so it goes no further. It's a queer cipher that you handle by the yard every day and can get no meaning from. McMurdo sat in silence for some time, with the letter in his listless hands. The mist had lifted for a moment, and there was the abyss before him. "Does anyone else know of this?" he asked. "I have told no one else." "But this man--your friend--has he any other person that he would be likely to write to?" "Well, I dare say he knows one or two more." "Of the lodge?" "It's likely enough." "I was asking because it is likely that he may have given some description of this fellow Birdy Edwards--then we could get on his trail." "Well, it's possible. But I should not think he knew him. He is just telling me the news that came to him by way of business. How would he know this Pinkerton man?" McMurdo gave a violent start. "By Gar!" he cried, "I've got him. What a fool I was not to know it. Lord! but we're in luck! We will fix him before he can do any harm. See here, Morris, will you leave this thing in my hands?" "Sure, if you will only take it off mine." "I'll do that. You can stand right back and let me run it. Even your name need not be mentioned. I'll take it all on myself, as if it were to me that this letter has come. Will that content you?" "It's just what I would ask." "Then leave it at that and keep your head shut. Now I'll get down to the lodge, and we'll soon make old man Pinkerton sorry for himself." "You wouldn't kill this man?" "The less you know, Friend Morris, the easier your conscience will be, and the better you will sleep. Ask no questions, and let these things settle themselves. I have hold of it now." Morris shook his head sadly as he left. "I feel that his blood is on my hands," he groaned. "Self-protection is no murder, anyhow," said McMurdo, smiling grimly. "It's him or us. I guess this man would destroy us all if we left him long in the valley. Why, Brother Morris, we'll have to elect you Bodymaster yet; for you've surely saved the lodge." And yet it was clear from his actions that he thought more seriously of this new intrusion than his words would show. It may have been his guilty conscience, it may have been the reputation of the Pinkerton organization, it may have been the knowledge that great, rich corporations had set themselves the task of clearing out the Scowrers; but, whatever his reason, his actions were those of a man who is preparing for the worst. Every paper which would incriminate him was destroyed before he left the house. After that he gave a long sigh of satisfaction; for it seemed to him that he was safe. And yet the danger must still have pressed somewhat upon him; for on his way to the lodge he stopped at old man Shafter's. The house was forbidden him; but when he tapped at the window Ettie came out to him. The dancing Irish deviltry had gone from her lover's eyes. She read his danger in his earnest face. "Something has happened!" she cried. "Oh, Jack, you are in danger!" "Sure, it is not very bad, my sweetheart. And yet it may be wise that we make a move before it is worse." "Make a move?" "I promised you once that I would go some day. I think the time is coming. I had news to-night, bad news, and I see trouble coming." "The police?" "Well, a Pinkerton. But, sure, you wouldn't know what that is, acushla, nor what it may mean to the likes of me. I'm too deep in this thing, and I may have to get out of it quick. You said you would come with me if I went." "Oh, Jack, it would be the saving of you!" "I'm an honest man in some things, Ettie. I wouldn't hurt a hair of your bonny head for all that the world can give, nor ever pull you down one inch from the golden throne above the clouds where I always see you. Would you trust me?" She put her hand in his without a word. "Well, then, listen to what I say, and do as I order you, for indeed it's the only way for us. Things are going to happen in this valley. I feel it in my bones. There may be many of us that will have to look out for ourselves. I'm one, anyhow. If I go, by day or night, it's you that must come with me!" "I'd come after you, Jack." "No, no, you shall come WITH me. If this valley is closed to me and I can never come back, how can I leave you behind, and me perhaps in hiding from the police with never a chance of a message? It's with me you must come. I know a good woman in the place I come from, and it's there I'd leave you till we can get married. Will you come?" "Yes, Jack, I will come." "God bless you for your trust in me! It's a fiend out of hell that I should be if I abused it. Now, mark you, Ettie, it will be just a word to you, and when it reaches you, you will drop everything and come right down to the waiting room at the depot and stay there till I come for you." "Day or night, I'll come at the word, Jack." Somewhat eased in mind, now that his own preparations for escape had been begun, McMurdo went on to the lodge. It had already assembled, and only by complicated signs and countersigns could he pass through the outer guard and inner guard who close-tiled it. A buzz of pleasure and welcome greeted him as he entered. The long room was crowded, and through the haze of tobacco smoke he saw the tangled black mane of the Bodymaster, the cruel, unfriendly features of Baldwin, the vulture face of Harraway, the secretary, and a dozen more who were among the leaders of the lodge. He rejoiced that they should all be there to take counsel over his news. "Indeed, it's glad we are to see you, Brother!" cried the chairman. "There's business here that wants a Solomon in judgment to set it right." "It's Lander and Egan," explained his neighbour as he took his seat. "They both claim the head money given by the lodge for the shooting of old man Crabbe over at Stylestown, and who's to say which fired the bullet?" McMurdo rose in his place and raised his hand. The expression of his face froze the attention of the audience. There was a dead hush of expectation. "Eminent Bodymaster," he said, in a solemn voice, "I claim urgency!" "Brother McMurdo claims urgency," said McGinty. "It's a claim that by the rules of this lodge takes precedence. Now Brother, we attend you." McMurdo took the letter from his pocket. "Eminent Bodymaster and Brethren," he said, "I am the bearer of ill news this day; but it is better that it should be known and discussed, than that a blow should fall upon us without warning which would destroy us all. I have information that the most powerful and richest organizations in this state have bound themselves together for our destruction, and that at this very moment there is a Pinkerton detective, one Birdy Edwards, at work in the valley collecting the evidence which may put a rope round the necks of many of us, and send every man in this room into a felon's cell. That is the situation for the discussion of which I have made a claim of urgency." There was a dead silence in the room. It was broken by the chairman. "What is your evidence for this, Brother McMurdo?" he asked. "It is in this letter which has come into my hands," said McMurdo. He read the passage aloud. "It is a matter of honour with me that I can give no further particulars about the letter, nor put it into your hands; but I assure you that there is nothing else in it which can affect the interests of the lodge. I put the case before you as it has reached me." "Let me say, Mr. Chairman," said one of the older brethren, "that I have heard of Birdy Edwards, and that he has the name of being the best man in the Pinkerton service." "Does anyone know him by sight?" asked McGinty. "Yes," said McMurdo, "I do." There was a murmur of astonishment through the hall. "I believe we hold him in the hollow of our hands," he continued with an exulting smile upon his face. "If we act quickly and wisely, we can cut this thing short. If I have your confidence and your help, it is little that we have to fear." "What have we to fear, anyhow? What can he know of our affairs?" "You might say so if all were as stanch as you, Councillor. But this man has all the millions of the capitalists at his back. Do you think there is no weaker brother among all our lodges that could not be bought? He will get at our secrets--maybe has got them already. There's only one sure cure." "That he never leaves the valley," said Baldwin. McMurdo nodded. "Good for you, Brother Baldwin," he said. "You and I have had our differences, but you have said the true word to-night." "Where is he, then? Where shall we know him?" "Eminent Bodymaster," said McMurdo, earnestly, "I would put it to you that this is too vital a thing for us to discuss in open lodge. God forbid that I should throw a doubt on anyone here; but if so much as a word of gossip got to the ears of this man, there would be an end of any chance of our getting him. I would ask the lodge to choose a trusty committee, Mr. Chairman--yourself, if I might suggest it, and Brother Baldwin here, and five more. Then I can talk freely of what I know and of what I advise should be done." The proposition was at once adopted, and the committee chosen. Besides the chairman and Baldwin there were the vulture-faced secretary, Harraway, Tiger Cormac, the brutal young assassin, Carter, the treasurer, and the brothers Willaby, fearless and desperate men who would stick at nothing. The usual revelry of the lodge was short and subdued: for there was a cloud upon the men's spirits, and many there for the first time began to see the cloud of avenging Law drifting up in that serene sky under which they had dwelt so long. The horrors they had dealt out to others had been so much a part of their settled lives that the thought of retribution had become a remote one, and so seemed the more startling now that it came so closely upon them. They broke up early and left their leaders to their council. "Now, McMurdo!" said McGinty when they were alone. The seven men sat frozen in their seats. "I said just now that I knew Birdy Edwards," McMurdo explained. "I need not tell you that he is not here under that name. He's a brave man, but not a crazy one. He passes under the name of Steve Wilson, and he is lodging at Hobson's Patch." "How do you know this?" "Because I fell into talk with him. I thought little of it at the time, nor would have given it a second thought but for this letter; but now I'm sure it's the man. I met him on the cars when I went down the line on Wednesday--a hard case if ever there was one. He said he was a reporter. I believed it for the moment. Wanted to know all he could about the Scowrers and what he called 'the outrages' for a New York paper. Asked me every kind of question so as to get something. You bet I was giving nothing away. 'I'd pay for it and pay well,' said he, 'if I could get some stuff that would suit my editor.' I said what I thought would please him best, and he handed me a twenty-dollar bill for my information. 'There's ten times that for you,' said he, 'if you can find me all that I want.'" "What did you tell him, then?" "Any stuff I could make up." "How do you know he wasn't a newspaper man?" "I'll tell you. He got out at Hobson's Patch, and so did I. I chanced into the telegraph bureau, and he was leaving it. "'See here,' said the operator after he'd gone out, 'I guess we should charge double rates for this.'--'I guess you should,' said I. He had filled the form with stuff that might have been Chinese, for all we could make of it. 'He fires a sheet of this off every day,' said the clerk. 'Yes,' said I; 'it's special news for his paper, and he's scared that the others should tap it.' That was what the operator thought and what I thought at the time; but I think differently now." "By Gar! I believe you are right," said McGinty. "But what do you allow that we should do about it?" "Why not go right down now and fix him?" someone suggested. "Ay, the sooner the better." "I'd start this next minute if I knew where we could find him," said McMurdo. "He's in Hobson's Patch; but I don't know the house. I've got a plan, though, if you'll only take my advice." "Well, what is it?" "I'll go to the Patch to-morrow morning. I'll find him through the operator. He can locate him, I guess. Well, then I'll tell him that I'm a Freeman myself. I'll offer him all the secrets of the lodge for a price. You bet he'll tumble to it. I'll tell him the papers are at my house, and that it's as much as my life would be worth to let him come while folk were about. He'll see that that's horse sense. Let him come at ten o'clock at night, and he shall see everything. That will fetch him sure." "Well?" "You can plan the rest for yourselves. Widow MacNamara's is a lonely house. She's as true as steel and as deaf as a post. There's only Scanlan and me in the house. If I get his promise--and I'll let you know if I do--I'd have the whole seven of you come to me by nine o'clock. We'll get him in. If ever he gets out alive--well, he can talk of Birdy Edwards's luck for the rest of his days!" "There's going to be a vacancy at Pinkerton's or I'm mistaken. Leave it at that, McMurdo. At nine to-morrow we'll be with you. You once get the door shut behind him, and you can leave the rest with us."

It is the height of the Scowrers' reign of terror, and even the citizens are trying to arm themselves and push back against it. McMurdo continues to rise in the organization. One Saturday night before the lodge meeting, Morris comes to see McMurdo. He is visibly afraid and anxious and says he has a secret that is burning inside him. He finally bursts out that a detective is on the union's trail. Astonished, McMurdo says there are always people trying to get them. Morris replies that it is one of the infamous Pinkerton detectives and is thus very serious. McMurdo earnestly grabs Morris and says he must tell him everything. Morris explains he had a friend back East who sent a telegram asking how the Scowrers were doing, and noting that he heard the Pinkertons and their best detective, Birdy Edwards, were on the case. McMurdo feels as if an abyss is before him. He asks if Morris would know what this Edwards looked like and Morris says no; even his friend would not know this. McMurdo suddenly bursts out that he knows who it is, and vows to take of it. To Morris's relief he says he will leave Morris's name out of whatever happens next. Before the meeting McMurdo tells Ettie he is finally ready to go, and to wait for his word soon. That night the meeting commences. McMurdo stands up and declares he has a matter of urgency. This quiets everyone down; the rules state everyone must heed this business before anything else. McMurdo explains that he has a letter telling him of Edwards and the Pinkertons, and that he knows exactly who the man is. A ripple of astonishment and fear sweeps the hall. McGinty says the man must not be allowed to leave the valley. McMurdo agrees and asks leave to form a committee to discuss the plan. That night the lodge's revelry is subdued; for the first time the men see the arm of the law reaching closer to them. McGinty, McMurdo, Baldwin, and the other men selected for the committee meet to discuss the plan. McMurdo identifies the man as Steve Wilson, lodging at Hobson's Patch; Wilson was pretending to be a reporter. McMurdo then says his plan is to go to Wilson with his "secrets" of the Lodge for a price. This could happen at the trusty Widow MacNamara's house. The seven men will meet there by nine; Edwards will show up, and they will take care of him

'He locked his fingers together and tore them apart. Nothing could be more true: he had indeed jumped into an everlasting deep hole. He had tumbled from a height he could never scale again. By that time the boat had gone driving forward past the bows. It was too dark just then for them to see each other, and, moreover, they were blinded and half drowned with rain. He told me it was like being swept by a flood through a cavern. They turned their backs to the squall; the skipper, it seems, got an oar over the stern to keep the boat before it, and for two or three minutes the end of the world had come through a deluge in a pitchy blackness. The sea hissed "like twenty thousand kettles." That's his simile, not mine. I fancy there was not much wind after the first gust; and he himself had admitted at the inquiry that the sea never got up that night to any extent. He crouched down in the bows and stole a furtive glance back. He saw just one yellow gleam of the mast-head light high up and blurred like a last star ready to dissolve. "It terrified me to see it still there," he said. That's what he said. What terrified him was the thought that the drowning was not over yet. No doubt he wanted to be done with that abomination as quickly as possible. Nobody in the boat made a sound. In the dark she seemed to fly, but of course she could not have had much way. Then the shower swept ahead, and the great, distracting, hissing noise followed the rain into distance and died out. There was nothing to be heard then but the slight wash about the boat's sides. Somebody's teeth were chattering violently. A hand touched his back. A faint voice said, "You there?" Another cried out shakily, "She's gone!" and they all stood up together to look astern. They saw no lights. All was black. A thin cold drizzle was driving into their faces. The boat lurched slightly. The teeth chattered faster, stopped, and began again twice before the man could master his shiver sufficiently to say, "Ju-ju-st in ti-ti-me. . . . Brrrr." He recognised the voice of the chief engineer saying surlily, "I saw her go down. I happened to turn my head." The wind had dropped almost completely. 'They watched in the dark with their heads half turned to windward as if expecting to hear cries. At first he was thankful the night had covered up the scene before his eyes, and then to know of it and yet to have seen and heard nothing appeared somehow the culminating point of an awful misfortune. "Strange, isn't it?" he murmured, interrupting himself in his disjointed narrative. 'It did not seem so strange to me. He must have had an unconscious conviction that the reality could not be half as bad, not half as anguishing, appalling, and vengeful as the created terror of his imagination. I believe that, in this first moment, his heart was wrung with all the suffering, that his soul knew the accumulated savour of all the fear, all the horror, all the despair of eight hundred human beings pounced upon in the night by a sudden and violent death, else why should he have said, "It seemed to me that I must jump out of that accursed boat and swim back to see--half a mile--more--any distance--to the very spot . . ."? Why this impulse? Do you see the significance? Why back to the very spot? Why not drown alongside--if he meant drowning? Why back to the very spot, to see--as if his imagination had to be soothed by the assurance that all was over before death could bring relief? I defy any one of you to offer another explanation. It was one of those bizarre and exciting glimpses through the fog. It was an extraordinary disclosure. He let it out as the most natural thing one could say. He fought down that impulse and then he became conscious of the silence. He mentioned this to me. A silence of the sea, of the sky, merged into one indefinite immensity still as death around these saved, palpitating lives. "You might have heard a pin drop in the boat," he said with a queer contraction of his lips, like a man trying to master his sensibilities while relating some extremely moving fact. A silence! God alone, who had willed him as he was, knows what he made of it in his heart. "I didn't think any spot on earth could be so still," he said. "You couldn't distinguish the sea from the sky; there was nothing to see and nothing to hear. Not a glimmer, not a shape, not a sound. You could have believed that every bit of dry land had gone to the bottom; that every man on earth but I and these beggars in the boat had got drowned." He leaned over the table with his knuckles propped amongst coffee-cups, liqueur-glasses, cigar-ends. "I seemed to believe it. Everything was gone and--all was over . . ." he fetched a deep sigh . . . "with me."' Marlow sat up abruptly and flung away his cheroot with force. It made a darting red trail like a toy rocket fired through the drapery of creepers. Nobody stirred. 'Hey, what do you think of it?' he cried with sudden animation. 'Wasn't he true to himself, wasn't he? His saved life was over for want of ground under his feet, for want of sights for his eyes, for want of voices in his ears. Annihilation--hey! And all the time it was only a clouded sky, a sea that did not break, the air that did not stir. Only a night; only a silence. 'It lasted for a while, and then they were suddenly and unanimously moved to make a noise over their escape. "I knew from the first she would go." "Not a minute too soon." "A narrow squeak, b'gosh!" He said nothing, but the breeze that had dropped came back, a gentle draught freshened steadily, and the sea joined its murmuring voice to this talkative reaction succeeding the dumb moments of awe. She was gone! She was gone! Not a doubt of it. Nobody could have helped. They repeated the same words over and over again as though they couldn't stop themselves. Never doubted she would go. The lights were gone. No mistake. The lights were gone. Couldn't expect anything else. She had to go. . . . He noticed that they talked as though they had left behind them nothing but an empty ship. They concluded she would not have been long when she once started. It seemed to cause them some sort of satisfaction. They assured each other that she couldn't have been long about it--"Just shot down like a flat-iron." The chief engineer declared that the mast-head light at the moment of sinking seemed to drop "like a lighted match you throw down." At this the second laughed hysterically. "I am g-g-glad, I am gla-a-a-d." His teeth went on "like an electric rattle," said Jim, "and all at once he began to cry. He wept and blubbered like a child, catching his breath and sobbing 'Oh dear! oh dear! oh dear!' He would be quiet for a while and start suddenly, 'Oh, my poor arm! oh, my poor a-a-a-arm!' I felt I could knock him down. Some of them sat in the stern-sheets. I could just make out their shapes. Voices came to me, mumble, mumble, grunt, grunt. All this seemed very hard to bear. I was cold too. And I could do nothing. I thought that if I moved I would have to go over the side and . . ." 'His hand groped stealthily, came in contact with a liqueur-glass, and was withdrawn suddenly as if it had touched a red-hot coal. I pushed the bottle slightly. "Won't you have some more?" I asked. He looked at me angrily. "Don't you think I can tell you what there is to tell without screwing myself up?" he asked. The squad of globe-trotters had gone to bed. We were alone but for a vague white form erect in the shadow, that, being looked at, cringed forward, hesitated, backed away silently. It was getting late, but I did not hurry my guest. 'In the midst of his forlorn state he heard his companions begin to abuse some one. "What kept you from jumping, you lunatic?" said a scolding voice. The chief engineer left the stern-sheets, and could be heard clambering forward as if with hostile intentions against "the greatest idiot that ever was." The skipper shouted with rasping effort offensive epithets from where he sat at the oar. He lifted his head at that uproar, and heard the name "George," while a hand in the dark struck him on the breast. "What have you got to say for yourself, you fool?" queried somebody, with a sort of virtuous fury. "They were after me," he said. "They were abusing me--abusing me . . . by the name of George." 'He paused to stare, tried to smile, turned his eyes away and went on. "That little second puts his head right under my nose, 'Why, it's that blasted mate!' 'What!' howls the skipper from the other end of the boat. 'No!' shrieks the chief. And he too stooped to look at my face." 'The wind had left the boat suddenly. The rain began to fall again, and the soft, uninterrupted, a little mysterious sound with which the sea receives a shower arose on all sides in the night. "They were too taken aback to say anything more at first," he narrated steadily, "and what could I have to say to them?" He faltered for a moment, and made an effort to go on. "They called me horrible names." His voice, sinking to a whisper, now and then would leap up suddenly, hardened by the passion of scorn, as though he had been talking of secret abominations. "Never mind what they called me," he said grimly. "I could hear hate in their voices. A good thing too. They could not forgive me for being in that boat. They hated it. It made them mad. . . ." He laughed short. . . . "But it kept me from--Look! I was sitting with my arms crossed, on the gunwale! . . ." He perched himself smartly on the edge of the table and crossed his arms. . . . "Like this--see? One little tilt backwards and I would have been gone--after the others. One little tilt--the least bit--the least bit." He frowned, and tapping his forehead with the tip of his middle finger, "It was there all the time," he said impressively. "All the time--that notion. And the rain--cold, thick, cold as melted snow--colder--on my thin cotton clothes--I'll never be so cold again in my life, I know. And the sky was black too--all black. Not a star, not a light anywhere. Nothing outside that confounded boat and those two yapping before me like a couple of mean mongrels at a tree'd thief. Yap! yap! 'What you doing here? You're a fine sort! Too much of a bloomin' gentleman to put your hand to it. Come out of your trance, did you? To sneak in? Did you?' Yap! yap! 'You ain't fit to live!' Yap! yap! Two of them together trying to out-bark each other. The other would bay from the stern through the rain--couldn't see him--couldn't make it out--some of his filthy jargon. Yap! yap! Bow-ow-ow-ow-ow! Yap! yap! It was sweet to hear them; it kept me alive, I tell you. It saved my life. At it they went, as if trying to drive me overboard with the noise! . . . 'I wonder you had pluck enough to jump. You ain't wanted here. If I had known who it was, I would have tipped you over--you skunk! What have you done with the other? Where did you get the pluck to jump--you coward? What's to prevent us three from firing you overboard?' . . . They were out of breath; the shower passed away upon the sea. Then nothing. There was nothing round the boat, not even a sound. Wanted to see me overboard, did they? Upon my soul! I think they would have had their wish if they had only kept quiet. Fire me overboard! Would they? 'Try,' I said. 'I would for twopence.' 'Too good for you,' they screeched together. It was so dark that it was only when one or the other of them moved that I was quite sure of seeing him. By heavens! I only wish they had tried." 'I couldn't help exclaiming, "What an extraordinary affair!" '"Not bad--eh?" he said, as if in some sort astounded. "They pretended to think I had done away with that donkey-man for some reason or other. Why should I? And how the devil was I to know? Didn't I get somehow into that boat? into that boat--I . . ." The muscles round his lips contracted into an unconscious grimace that tore through the mask of his usual expression--something violent, short-lived and illuminating like a twist of lightning that admits the eye for an instant into the secret convolutions of a cloud. "I did. I was plainly there with them--wasn't I? Isn't it awful a man should be driven to do a thing like that--and be responsible? What did I know about their George they were howling after? I remembered I had seen him curled up on the deck. 'Murdering coward!' the chief kept on calling me. He didn't seem able to remember any other two words. I didn't care, only his noise began to worry me. 'Shut up,' I said. At that he collected himself for a confounded screech. 'You killed him! You killed him!' 'No,' I shouted, 'but I will kill you directly.' I jumped up, and he fell backwards over a thwart with an awful loud thump. I don't know why. Too dark. Tried to step back I suppose. I stood still facing aft, and the wretched little second began to whine, 'You ain't going to hit a chap with a broken arm--and you call yourself a gentleman, too.' I heard a heavy tramp--one--two--and wheezy grunting. The other beast was coming at me, clattering his oar over the stern. I saw him moving, big, big--as you see a man in a mist, in a dream. 'Come on,' I cried. I would have tumbled him over like a bale of shakings. He stopped, muttered to himself, and went back. Perhaps he had heard the wind. I didn't. It was the last heavy gust we had. He went back to his oar. I was sorry. I would have tried to--to . . ." 'He opened and closed his curved fingers, and his hands had an eager and cruel flutter. "Steady, steady," I murmured. '"Eh? What? I am not excited," he remonstrated, awfully hurt, and with a convulsive jerk of his elbow knocked over the cognac bottle. I started forward, scraping my chair. He bounced off the table as if a mine had been exploded behind his back, and half turned before he alighted, crouching on his feet to show me a startled pair of eyes and a face white about the nostrils. A look of intense annoyance succeeded. "Awfully sorry. How clumsy of me!" he mumbled, very vexed, while the pungent odour of spilt alcohol enveloped us suddenly with an atmosphere of a low drinking-bout in the cool, pure darkness of the night. The lights had been put out in the dining-hall; our candle glimmered solitary in the long gallery, and the columns had turned black from pediment to capital. On the vivid stars the high corner of the Harbour Office stood out distinct across the Esplanade, as though the sombre pile had glided nearer to see and hear. 'He assumed an air of indifference. '"I dare say I am less calm now than I was then. I was ready for anything. These were trifles. . . ." '"You had a lively time of it in that boat," I remarked '"I was ready," he repeated. "After the ship's lights had gone, anything might have happened in that boat--anything in the world--and the world no wiser. I felt this, and I was pleased. It was just dark enough too. We were like men walled up quick in a roomy grave. No concern with anything on earth. Nobody to pass an opinion. Nothing mattered." For the third time during this conversation he laughed harshly, but there was no one about to suspect him of being only drunk. "No fear, no law, no sounds, no eyes--not even our own, till--till sunrise at least." 'I was struck by the suggestive truth of his words. There is something peculiar in a small boat upon the wide sea. Over the lives borne from under the shadow of death there seems to fall the shadow of madness. When your ship fails you, your whole world seems to fail you; the world that made you, restrained you, took care of you. It is as if the souls of men floating on an abyss and in touch with immensity had been set free for any excess of heroism, absurdity, or abomination. Of course, as with belief, thought, love, hate, conviction, or even the visual aspect of material things, there are as many shipwrecks as there are men, and in this one there was something abject which made the isolation more complete--there was a villainy of circumstances that cut these men off more completely from the rest of mankind, whose ideal of conduct had never undergone the trial of a fiendish and appalling joke. They were exasperated with him for being a half-hearted shirker: he focussed on them his hatred of the whole thing; he would have liked to take a signal revenge for the abhorrent opportunity they had put in his way. Trust a boat on the high seas to bring out the Irrational that lurks at the bottom of every thought, sentiment, sensation, emotion. It was part of the burlesque meanness pervading that particular disaster at sea that they did not come to blows. It was all threats, all a terribly effective feint, a sham from beginning to end, planned by the tremendous disdain of the Dark Powers whose real terrors, always on the verge of triumph, are perpetually foiled by the steadfastness of men. I asked, after waiting for a while, "Well, what happened?" A futile question. I knew too much already to hope for the grace of a single uplifting touch, for the favour of hinted madness, of shadowed horror. "Nothing," he said. "I meant business, but they meant noise only. Nothing happened." 'And the rising sun found him just as he had jumped up first in the bows of the boat. What a persistence of readiness! He had been holding the tiller in his hand, too, all the night. They had dropped the rudder overboard while attempting to ship it, and I suppose the tiller got kicked forward somehow while they were rushing up and down that boat trying to do all sorts of things at once so as to get clear of the side. It was a long heavy piece of hard wood, and apparently he had been clutching it for six hours or so. If you don't call that being ready! Can you imagine him, silent and on his feet half the night, his face to the gusts of rain, staring at sombre forms watchful of vague movements, straining his ears to catch rare low murmurs in the stern-sheets! Firmness of courage or effort of fear? What do you think? And the endurance is undeniable too. Six hours more or less on the defensive; six hours of alert immobility while the boat drove slowly or floated arrested, according to the caprice of the wind; while the sea, calmed, slept at last; while the clouds passed above his head; while the sky from an immensity lustreless and black, diminished to a sombre and lustrous vault, scintillated with a greater brilliance, faded to the east, paled at the zenith; while the dark shapes blotting the low stars astern got outlines, relief became shoulders, heads, faces, features,--confronted him with dreary stares, had dishevelled hair, torn clothes, blinked red eyelids at the white dawn. "They looked as though they had been knocking about drunk in gutters for a week," he described graphically; and then he muttered something about the sunrise being of a kind that foretells a calm day. You know that sailor habit of referring to the weather in every connection. And on my side his few mumbled words were enough to make me see the lower limb of the sun clearing the line of the horizon, the tremble of a vast ripple running over all the visible expanse of the sea, as if the waters had shuddered, giving birth to the globe of light, while the last puff of the breeze would stir the air in a sigh of relief. '"They sat in the stern shoulder to shoulder, with the skipper in the middle, like three dirty owls, and stared at me," I heard him say with an intention of hate that distilled a corrosive virtue into the commonplace words like a drop of powerful poison falling into a glass of water; but my thoughts dwelt upon that sunrise. I could imagine under the pellucid emptiness of the sky these four men imprisoned in the solitude of the sea, the lonely sun, regardless of the speck of life, ascending the clear curve of the heaven as if to gaze ardently from a greater height at his own splendour reflected in the still ocean. "They called out to me from aft," said Jim, "as though we had been chums together. I heard them. They were begging me to be sensible and drop that 'blooming piece of wood.' Why _would_ I carry on so? They hadn't done me any harm--had they? There had been no harm. . . . No harm!" 'His face crimsoned as though he could not get rid of the air in his lungs. '"No harm!" he burst out. "I leave it to you. You can understand. Can't you? You see it--don't you? No harm! Good God! What more could they have done? Oh yes, I know very well--I jumped. Certainly. I jumped! I told you I jumped; but I tell you they were too much for any man. It was their doing as plainly as if they had reached up with a boat-hook and pulled me over. Can't you see it? You must see it. Come. Speak--straight out." 'His uneasy eyes fastened upon mine, questioned, begged, challenged, entreated. For the life of me I couldn't help murmuring, "You've been tried." "More than is fair," he caught up swiftly. "I wasn't given half a chance--with a gang like that. And now they were friendly--oh, so damnably friendly! Chums, shipmates. All in the same boat. Make the best of it. They hadn't meant anything. They didn't care a hang for George. George had gone back to his berth for something at the last moment and got caught. The man was a manifest fool. Very sad, of course. . . . Their eyes looked at me; their lips moved; they wagged their heads at the other end of the boat--three of them; they beckoned--to me. Why not? Hadn't I jumped? I said nothing. There are no words for the sort of things I wanted to say. If I had opened my lips just then I would have simply howled like an animal. I was asking myself when I would wake up. They urged me aloud to come aft and hear quietly what the skipper had to say. We were sure to be picked up before the evening--right in the track of all the Canal traffic; there was smoke to the north-west now. '"It gave me an awful shock to see this faint, faint blur, this low trail of brown mist through which you could see the boundary of sea and sky. I called out to them that I could hear very well where I was. The skipper started swearing, as hoarse as a crow. He wasn't going to talk at the top of his voice for _my_ accommodation. 'Are you afraid they will hear you on shore?' I asked. He glared as if he would have liked to claw me to pieces. The chief engineer advised him to humour me. He said I wasn't right in my head yet. The other rose astern, like a thick pillar of flesh--and talked--talked. . . ." 'Jim remained thoughtful. "Well?" I said. "What did I care what story they agreed to make up?" he cried recklessly. "They could tell what they jolly well liked. It was their business. I knew the story. Nothing they could make people believe could alter it for me. I let him talk, argue--talk, argue. He went on and on and on. Suddenly I felt my legs give way under me. I was sick, tired--tired to death. I let fall the tiller, turned my back on them, and sat down on the foremost thwart. I had enough. They called to me to know if I understood--wasn't it true, every word of it? It was true, by God! after their fashion. I did not turn my head. I heard them palavering together. 'The silly ass won't say anything.' 'Oh, he understands well enough.' 'Let him be; he will be all right.' 'What can he do?' What could I do? Weren't we all in the same boat? I tried to be deaf. The smoke had disappeared to the northward. It was a dead calm. They had a drink from the water-breaker, and I drank too. Afterwards they made a great business of spreading the boat-sail over the gunwales. Would I keep a look-out? They crept under, out of my sight, thank God! I felt weary, weary, done up, as if I hadn't had one hour's sleep since the day I was born. I couldn't see the water for the glitter of the sunshine. From time to time one of them would creep out, stand up to take a look all round, and get under again. I could hear spells of snoring below the sail. Some of them could sleep. One of them at least. I couldn't! All was light, light, and the boat seemed to be falling through it. Now and then I would feel quite surprised to find myself sitting on a thwart. . . ." 'He began to walk with measured steps to and fro before my chair, one hand in his trousers-pocket, his head bent thoughtfully, and his right arm at long intervals raised for a gesture that seemed to put out of his way an invisible intruder. '"I suppose you think I was going mad," he began in a changed tone. "And well you may, if you remember I had lost my cap. The sun crept all the way from east to west over my bare head, but that day I could not come to any harm, I suppose. The sun could not make me mad. . . ." His right arm put aside the idea of madness. . . . "Neither could it kill me. . . ." Again his arm repulsed a shadow. . . . "_That_ rested with me." '"Did it?" I said, inexpressibly amazed at this new turn, and I looked at him with the same sort of feeling I might be fairly conceived to experience had he, after spinning round on his heel, presented an altogether new face. '"I didn't get brain fever, I did not drop dead either," he went on. "I didn't bother myself at all about the sun over my head. I was thinking as coolly as any man that ever sat thinking in the shade. That greasy beast of a skipper poked his big cropped head from under the canvas and screwed his fishy eyes up at me. 'Donnerwetter! you will die,' he growled, and drew in like a turtle. I had seen him. I had heard him. He didn't interrupt me. I was thinking just then that I wouldn't." 'He tried to sound my thought with an attentive glance dropped on me in passing. "Do you mean to say you had been deliberating with yourself whether you would die?" I asked in as impenetrable a tone as I could command. He nodded without stopping. "Yes, it had come to that as I sat there alone," he said. He passed on a few steps to the imaginary end of his beat, and when he flung round to come back both his hands were thrust deep into his pockets. He stopped short in front of my chair and looked down. "Don't you believe it?" he inquired with tense curiosity. I was moved to make a solemn declaration of my readiness to believe implicitly anything he thought fit to tell me.'

Lost in their own thoughts and fears, nobody in the lifeboat makes a sound or acknowledges Jim's presence. The skipper silently takes an oar and tries to steer the boat through the black night, but the sea is too rough and they are left to drift with the storm. Suddenly the engineer speaks out, declaring that he has seen the ship go down. Jim feels that he should jump from the lifeboat, swim to the sinking Patna, and rescue the eight hundred pilgrims. As dawn begins to lighten the sky, Jim sees a light on the Patna and realizes the ship has not sunk. He feels miserable. The others also see Jim for the first time. In the darkness of the night, they have thought that George had jumped into the boat; when they realize that Jim has joined them, they are outraged, for he is not one of them. They stare at him, making Jim feel like an intruder. They threaten to kill him, for he has been a witness to their cowardice. They believe that he will testify against them. In order to protect himself, Jim grabs a tiller and threatens the others with it. Jim is not glad to be alive; he is ashamed that he has jumped from the Patna. He even has thoughts of leaving the lifeboat and sits on its edge, as if tempting fate. The others in the lifeboat start talking normally, trying to rationalize their desertion. They also tell Jim that he is "one of them." Jim is enraged at their talk; he knows he can never be one of them. Unlike him, they planned their desertion; they chose to jump off the Patna. At times he has the urge to kill all of them and blames them for calling him into the lifeboat. He says, "It was their doing as plainly as if they had reached up with a boathook and pulled him over." Finally, the light from the Patna can no longer be seen. Jim and the other crew members believe that the ship has finally sunk. Jim is greatly relieved.

"Love seeketh not itself to please, Nor for itself hath any care But for another gives its ease And builds a heaven in hell's despair. . . . . . . . Love seeketh only self to please, To bind another to its delight, Joys in another's loss of ease, And builds a hell in heaven's despite." --W. BLAKE: Songs of Experience Fred Vincy wanted to arrive at Stone Court when Mary could not expect him, and when his uncle was not down-stairs in that case she might be sitting alone in the wainscoted parlor. He left his horse in the yard to avoid making a noise on the gravel in front, and entered the parlor without other notice than the noise of the door-handle. Mary was in her usual corner, laughing over Mrs. Piozzi's recollections of Johnson, and looked up with the fun still in her face. It gradually faded as she saw Fred approach her without speaking, and stand before her with his elbow on the mantel-piece, looking ill. She too was silent, only raising her eyes to him inquiringly. "Mary," he began, "I am a good-for-nothing blackguard." "I should think one of those epithets would do at a time," said Mary, trying to smile, but feeling alarmed. "I know you will never think well of me any more. You will think me a liar. You will think me dishonest. You will think I didn't care for you, or your father and mother. You always do make the worst of me, I know." "I cannot deny that I shall think all that of you, Fred, if you give me good reasons. But please to tell me at once what you have done. I would rather know the painful truth than imagine it." "I owed money--a hundred and sixty pounds. I asked your father to put his name to a bill. I thought it would not signify to him. I made sure of paying the money myself, and I have tried as hard as I could. And now, I have been so unlucky--a horse has turned out badly--I can only pay fifty pounds. And I can't ask my father for the money: he would not give me a farthing. And my uncle gave me a hundred a little while ago. So what can I do? And now your father has no ready money to spare, and your mother will have to pay away her ninety-two pounds that she has saved, and she says your savings must go too. You see what a--" "Oh, poor mother, poor father!" said Mary, her eyes filling with tears, and a little sob rising which she tried to repress. She looked straight before her and took no notice of Fred, all the consequences at home becoming present to her. He too remained silent for some moments, feeling more miserable than ever. "I wouldn't have hurt you for the world, Mary," he said at last. "You can never forgive me." "What does it matter whether I forgive you?" said Mary, passionately. "Would that make it any better for my mother to lose the money she has been earning by lessons for four years, that she might send Alfred to Mr. Hanmer's? Should you think all that pleasant enough if I forgave you?" "Say what you like, Mary. I deserve it all." "I don't want to say anything," said Mary, more quietly, "and my anger is of no use." She dried her eyes, threw aside her book, rose and fetched her sewing. Fred followed her with his eyes, hoping that they would meet hers, and in that way find access for his imploring penitence. But no! Mary could easily avoid looking upward. "I do care about your mother's money going," he said, when she was seated again and sewing quickly. "I wanted to ask you, Mary--don't you think that Mr. Featherstone--if you were to tell him--tell him, I mean, about apprenticing Alfred--would advance the money?" "My family is not fond of begging, Fred. We would rather work for our money. Besides, you say that Mr. Featherstone has lately given you a hundred pounds. He rarely makes presents; he has never made presents to us. I am sure my father will not ask him for anything; and even if I chose to beg of him, it would be of no use." "I am so miserable, Mary--if you knew how miserable I am, you would be sorry for me." "There are other things to be more sorry for than that. But selfish people always think their own discomfort of more importance than anything else in the world. I see enough of that every day." "It is hardly fair to call me selfish. If you knew what things other young men do, you would think me a good way off the worst." "I know that people who spend a great deal of money on themselves without knowing how they shall pay, must be selfish. They are always thinking of what they can get for themselves, and not of what other people may lose." "Any man may be unfortunate, Mary, and find himself unable to pay when he meant it. There is not a better man in the world than your father, and yet he got into trouble." "How dare you make any comparison between my father and you, Fred?" said Mary, in a deep tone of indignation. "He never got into trouble by thinking of his own idle pleasures, but because he was always thinking of the work he was doing for other people. And he has fared hard, and worked hard to make good everybody's loss." "And you think that I shall never try to make good anything, Mary. It is not generous to believe the worst of a man. When you have got any power over him, I think you might try and use it to make him better; but that is what you never do. However, I'm going," Fred ended, languidly. "I shall never speak to you about anything again. I'm very sorry for all the trouble I've caused--that's all." Mary had dropped her work out of her hand and looked up. There is often something maternal even in a girlish love, and Mary's hard experience had wrought her nature to an impressibility very different from that hard slight thing which we call girlishness. At Fred's last words she felt an instantaneous pang, something like what a mother feels at the imagined sobs or cries of her naughty truant child, which may lose itself and get harm. And when, looking up, her eyes met his dull despairing glance, her pity for him surmounted her anger and all her other anxieties. "Oh, Fred, how ill you look! Sit down a moment. Don't go yet. Let me tell uncle that you are here. He has been wondering that he has not seen you for a whole week." Mary spoke hurriedly, saying the words that came first without knowing very well what they were, but saying them in a half-soothing half-beseeching tone, and rising as if to go away to Mr. Featherstone. Of course Fred felt as if the clouds had parted and a gleam had come: he moved and stood in her way. "Say one word, Mary, and I will do anything. Say you will not think the worst of me--will not give me up altogether." "As if it were any pleasure to me to think ill of you," said Mary, in a mournful tone. "As if it were not very painful to me to see you an idle frivolous creature. How can you bear to be so contemptible, when others are working and striving, and there are so many things to be done--how can you bear to be fit for nothing in the world that is useful? And with so much good in your disposition, Fred,--you might be worth a great deal." "I will try to be anything you like, Mary, if you will say that you love me." "I should be ashamed to say that I loved a man who must always be hanging on others, and reckoning on what they would do for him. What will you be when you are forty? Like Mr. Bowyer, I suppose--just as idle, living in Mrs. Beck's front parlor--fat and shabby, hoping somebody will invite you to dinner--spending your morning in learning a comic song--oh no! learning a tune on the flute." Mary's lips had begun to curl with a smile as soon as she had asked that question about Fred's future (young souls are mobile), and before she ended, her face had its full illumination of fun. To him it was like the cessation of an ache that Mary could laugh at him, and with a passive sort of smile he tried to reach her hand; but she slipped away quickly towards the door and said, "I shall tell uncle. You _must_ see him for a moment or two." Fred secretly felt that his future was guaranteed against the fulfilment of Mary's sarcastic prophecies, apart from that "anything" which he was ready to do if she would define it. He never dared in Mary's presence to approach the subject of his expectations from Mr. Featherstone, and she always ignored them, as if everything depended on himself. But if ever he actually came into the property, she must recognize the change in his position. All this passed through his mind somewhat languidly, before he went up to see his uncle. He stayed but a little while, excusing himself on the ground that he had a cold; and Mary did not reappear before he left the house. But as he rode home, he began to be more conscious of being ill, than of being melancholy. When Caleb Garth arrived at Stone Court soon after dusk, Mary was not surprised, although he seldom had leisure for paying her a visit, and was not at all fond of having to talk with Mr. Featherstone. The old man, on the other hand, felt himself ill at ease with a brother-in-law whom he could not annoy, who did not mind about being considered poor, had nothing to ask of him, and understood all kinds of farming and mining business better than he did. But Mary had felt sure that her parents would want to see her, and if her father had not come, she would have obtained leave to go home for an hour or two the next day. After discussing prices during tea with Mr. Featherstone Caleb rose to bid him good-by, and said, "I want to speak to you, Mary." She took a candle into another large parlor, where there was no fire, and setting down the feeble light on the dark mahogany table, turned round to her father, and putting her arms round his neck kissed him with childish kisses which he delighted in,--the expression of his large brows softening as the expression of a great beautiful dog softens when it is caressed. Mary was his favorite child, and whatever Susan might say, and right as she was on all other subjects, Caleb thought it natural that Fred or any one else should think Mary more lovable than other girls. "I've got something to tell you, my dear," said Caleb in his hesitating way. "No very good news; but then it might be worse." "About money, father? I think I know what it is." "Ay? how can that be? You see, I've been a bit of a fool again, and put my name to a bill, and now it comes to paying; and your mother has got to part with her savings, that's the worst of it, and even they won't quite make things even. We wanted a hundred and ten pounds: your mother has ninety-two, and I have none to spare in the bank; and she thinks that you have some savings." "Oh yes; I have more than four-and-twenty pounds. I thought you would come, father, so I put it in my bag. See! beautiful white notes and gold." Mary took out the folded money from her reticule and put it into her father's hand. "Well, but how--we only want eighteen--here, put the rest back, child,--but how did you know about it?" said Caleb, who, in his unconquerable indifference to money, was beginning to be chiefly concerned about the relation the affair might have to Mary's affections. "Fred told me this morning." "Ah! Did he come on purpose?" "Yes, I think so. He was a good deal distressed." "I'm afraid Fred is not to be trusted, Mary," said the father, with hesitating tenderness. "He means better than he acts, perhaps. But I should think it a pity for any body's happiness to be wrapped up in him, and so would your mother." "And so should I, father," said Mary, not looking up, but putting the back of her father's hand against her cheek. "I don't want to pry, my dear. But I was afraid there might be something between you and Fred, and I wanted to caution you. You see, Mary"--here Caleb's voice became more tender; he had been pushing his hat about on the table and looking at it, but finally he turned his eyes on his daughter--"a woman, let her be as good as she may, has got to put up with the life her husband makes for her. Your mother has had to put up with a good deal because of me." Mary turned the back of her father's hand to her lips and smiled at him. "Well, well, nobody's perfect, but"--here Mr. Garth shook his head to help out the inadequacy of words--"what I am thinking of is--what it must be for a wife when she's never sure of her husband, when he hasn't got a principle in him to make him more afraid of doing the wrong thing by others than of getting his own toes pinched. That's the long and the short of it, Mary. Young folks may get fond of each other before they know what life is, and they may think it all holiday if they can only get together; but it soon turns into working day, my dear. However, you have more sense than most, and you haven't been kept in cotton-wool: there may be no occasion for me to say this, but a father trembles for his daughter, and you are all by yourself here." "Don't fear for me, father," said Mary, gravely meeting her father's eyes; "Fred has always been very good to me; he is kind-hearted and affectionate, and not false, I think, with all his self-indulgence. But I will never engage myself to one who has no manly independence, and who goes on loitering away his time on the chance that others will provide for him. You and my mother have taught me too much pride for that." "That's right--that's right. Then I am easy," said Mr. Garth, taking up his hat. "But it's hard to run away with your earnings, eh child." "Father!" said Mary, in her deepest tone of remonstrance. "Take pocketfuls of love besides to them all at home," was her last word before he closed the outer door on himself. "I suppose your father wanted your earnings," said old Mr. Featherstone, with his usual power of unpleasant surmise, when Mary returned to him. "He makes but a tight fit, I reckon. You're of age now; you ought to be saving for yourself." "I consider my father and mother the best part of myself, sir," said Mary, coldly. Mr. Featherstone grunted: he could not deny that an ordinary sort of girl like her might be expected to be useful, so he thought of another rejoinder, disagreeable enough to be always apropos. "If Fred Vincy comes to-morrow, now, don't you keep him chattering: let him come up to me."

Fred goes to Stone Court to tell Mary the news; he is not as repentant as he should be, and wants comforting words from Mary about his irresponsibility. He still doesn't see the entire magnitude of what he did; he tries to rationalize things with his good intentions, and by claiming that he is not so bad, compared to what other people do. Mary is upset, and says that she cannot trust him, and that he should be more sorry for what he did. Caleb comes later, to ask for whatever she has saved up; Mary gives it gladly. Caleb Garth is worried that his daughter has some feelings for

Opposite the Volterra gate of Monteriano, outside the city, is a very respectable white-washed mud wall, with a coping of red crinkled tiles to keep it from dissolution. It would suggest a gentleman's garden if there was not in its middle a large hole, which grows larger with every rain-storm. Through the hole is visible, firstly, the iron gate that is intended to close it; secondly, a square piece of ground which, though not quite, mud, is at the same time not exactly grass; and finally, another wall, stone this time, which has a wooden door in the middle and two wooden-shuttered windows each side, and apparently forms the facade of a one-storey house. This house is bigger than it looks, for it slides for two storeys down the hill behind, and the wooden door, which is always locked, really leads into the attic. The knowing person prefers to follow the precipitous mule-track round the turn of the mud wall till he can take the edifice in the rear. Then--being now on a level with the cellars--he lifts up his head and shouts. If his voice sounds like something light--a letter, for example, or some vegetables, or a bunch of flowers--a basket is let out of the first-floor windows by a string, into which he puts his burdens and departs. But if he sounds like something heavy, such as a log of wood, or a piece of meat, or a visitor, he is interrogated, and then bidden or forbidden to ascend. The ground floor and the upper floor of that battered house are alike deserted, and the inmates keep the central portion, just as in a dying body all life retires to the heart. There is a door at the top of the first flight of stairs, and if the visitor is admitted he will find a welcome which is not necessarily cold. There are several rooms, some dark and mostly stuffy--a reception-room adorned with horsehair chairs, wool-work stools, and a stove that is never lit--German bad taste without German domesticity broods over that room; also a living-room, which insensibly glides into a bedroom when the refining influence of hospitality is absent, and real bedrooms; and last, but not least, the loggia, where you can live day and night if you feel inclined, drinking vermouth and smoking cigarettes, with leagues of olive-trees and vineyards and blue-green hills to watch you. It was in this house that the brief and inevitable tragedy of Lilia's married life took place. She made Gino buy it for her, because it was there she had first seen him sitting on the mud wall that faced the Volterra gate. She remembered how the evening sun had struck his hair, and how he had smiled down at her, and being both sentimental and unrefined, was determined to have the man and the place together. Things in Italy are cheap for an Italian, and, though he would have preferred a house in the piazza, or better still a house at Siena, or, bliss above bliss, a house at Leghorn, he did as she asked, thinking that perhaps she showed her good taste in preferring so retired an abode. The house was far too big for them, and there was a general concourse of his relatives to fill it up. His father wished to make it a patriarchal concern, where all the family should have their rooms and meet together for meals, and was perfectly willing to give up the new practice at Poggibonsi and preside. Gino was quite willing too, for he was an affectionate youth who liked a large home-circle, and he told it as a pleasant bit of news to Lilia, who did not attempt to conceal her horror. At once he was horrified too; saw that the idea was monstrous; abused himself to her for having suggested it; rushed off to tell his father that it was impossible. His father complained that prosperity was already corrupting him and making him unsympathetic and hard; his mother cried; his sisters accused him of blocking their social advance. He was apologetic, and even cringing, until they turned on Lilia. Then he turned on them, saying that they could not understand, much less associate with, the English lady who was his wife; that there should be one master in that house--himself. Lilia praised and petted him on his return, calling him brave and a hero and other endearing epithets. But he was rather blue when his clan left Monteriano in much dignity--a dignity which was not at all impaired by the acceptance of a cheque. They took the cheque not to Poggibonsi, after all, but to Empoli--a lively, dusty town some twenty miles off. There they settled down in comfort, and the sisters said they had been driven to it by Gino. The cheque was, of course, Lilia's, who was extremely generous, and was quite willing to know anybody so long as she had not to live with them, relations-in-law being on her nerves. She liked nothing better than finding out some obscure and distant connection--there were several of them--and acting the lady bountiful, leaving behind her bewilderment, and too often discontent. Gino wondered how it was that all his people, who had formerly seemed so pleasant, had suddenly become plaintive and disagreeable. He put it down to his lady wife's magnificence, in comparison with which all seemed common. Her money flew apace, in spite of the cheap living. She was even richer than he expected; and he remembered with shame how he had once regretted his inability to accept the thousand lire that Philip Herriton offered him in exchange for her. It would have been a shortsighted bargain. Lilia enjoyed settling into the house, with nothing to do except give orders to smiling workpeople, and a devoted husband as interpreter. She wrote a jaunty account of her happiness to Mrs. Herriton, and Harriet answered the letter, saying (1) that all future communications should be addressed to the solicitors; (2) would Lilia return an inlaid box which Harriet had lent her--but not given--to keep handkerchiefs and collars in? "Look what I am giving up to live with you!" she said to Gino, never omitting to lay stress on her condescension. He took her to mean the inlaid box, and said that she need not give it up at all. "Silly fellow, no! I mean the life. Those Herritons are very well connected. They lead Sawston society. But what do I care, so long as I have my silly fellow!" She always treated him as a boy, which he was, and as a fool, which he was not, thinking herself so immeasurably superior to him that she neglected opportunity after opportunity of establishing her rule. He was good-looking and indolent; therefore he must be stupid. He was poor; therefore he would never dare to criticize his benefactress. He was passionately in love with her; therefore she could do exactly as she liked. "It mayn't be heaven below," she thought, "but it's better than Charles." And all the time the boy was watching her, and growing up. She was reminded of Charles by a disagreeable letter from the solicitors, bidding her disgorge a large sum of money for Irma, in accordance with her late husband's will. It was just like Charles's suspicious nature to have provided against a second marriage. Gino was equally indignant, and between them they composed a stinging reply, which had no effect. He then said that Irma had better come out and live with them. "The air is good, so is the food; she will be happy here, and we shall not have to part with the money." But Lilia had not the courage even to suggest this to the Herritons, and an unexpected terror seized her at the thought of Irma or any English child being educated at Monteriano. Gino became terribly depressed over the solicitors' letter, more depressed than she thought necessary. There was no more to do in the house, and he spent whole days in the loggia leaning over the parapet or sitting astride it disconsolately. "Oh, you idle boy!" she cried, pinching his muscles. "Go and play pallone." "I am a married man," he answered, without raising his head. "I do not play games any more." "Go and see your friends then." "I have no friends now." "Silly, silly, silly! You can't stop indoors all day!" "I want to see no one but you." He spat on to an olive-tree. "Now, Gino, don't be silly. Go and see your friends, and bring them to see me. We both of us like society." He looked puzzled, but allowed himself to be persuaded, went out, found that he was not as friendless as he supposed, and returned after several hours in altered spirits. Lilia congratulated herself on her good management. "I'm ready, too, for people now," she said. "I mean to wake you all up, just as I woke up Sawston. Let's have plenty of men--and make them bring their womenkind. I mean to have real English tea-parties." "There is my aunt and her husband; but I thought you did not want to receive my relatives." "I never said such a--" "But you would be right," he said earnestly. "They are not for you. Many of them are in trade, and even we are little more; you should have gentlefolk and nobility for your friends." "Poor fellow," thought Lilia. "It is sad for him to discover that his people are vulgar." She began to tell him that she loved him just for his silly self, and he flushed and began tugging at his moustache. "But besides your relatives I must have other people here. Your friends have wives and sisters, haven't they?" "Oh, yes; but of course I scarcely know them." "Not know your friends' people?" "Why, no. If they are poor and have to work for their living I may see them--but not otherwise. Except--" He stopped. The chief exception was a young lady, to whom he had once been introduced for matrimonial purposes. But the dowry had proved inadequate, and the acquaintance terminated. "How funny! But I mean to change all that. Bring your friends to see me, and I will make them bring their people." He looked at her rather hopelessly. "Well, who are the principal people here? Who leads society?" The governor of the prison, he supposed, and the officers who assisted him. "Well, are they married?" "Yes." "There we are. Do you know them?" "Yes--in a way." "I see," she exclaimed angrily. "They look down on you, do they, poor boy? Wait!" He assented. "Wait! I'll soon stop that. Now, who else is there?" "The marchese, sometimes, and the canons of the Collegiate Church." "Married?" "The canons--" he began with twinkling eyes. "Oh, I forgot your horrid celibacy. In England they would be the centre of everything. But why shouldn't I know them? Would it make it easier if I called all round? Isn't that your foreign way?" He did not think it would make it easier. "But I must know some one! Who were the men you were talking to this afternoon?" Low-class men. He could scarcely recollect their names. "But, Gino dear, if they're low class, why did you talk to them? Don't you care about your position?" All Gino cared about at present was idleness and pocket-money, and his way of expressing it was to exclaim, "Ouf-pouf! How hot it is in here. No air; I sweat all over. I expire. I must cool myself, or I shall never get to sleep." In his funny abrupt way he ran out on to the loggia, where he lay full length on the parapet, and began to smoke and spit under the silence of the stars. Lilia gathered somehow from this conversation that Continental society was not the go-as-you-please thing she had expected. Indeed she could not see where Continental society was. Italy is such a delightful place to live in if you happen to be a man. There one may enjoy that exquisite luxury of Socialism--that true Socialism which is based not on equality of income or character, but on the equality of manners. In the democracy of the caffe or the street the great question of our life has been solved, and the brotherhood of man is a reality. But is accomplished at the expense of the sisterhood of women. Why should you not make friends with your neighbour at the theatre or in the train, when you know and he knows that feminine criticism and feminine insight and feminine prejudice will never come between you? Though you become as David and Jonathan, you need never enter his home, nor he yours. All your lives you will meet under the open air, the only roof-tree of the South, under which he will spit and swear, and you will drop your h's, and nobody will think the worse of either. Meanwhile the women--they have, of course, their house and their church, with its admirable and frequent services, to which they are escorted by the maid. Otherwise they do not go out much, for it is not genteel to walk, and you are too poor to keep a carriage. Occasionally you will take them to the caffe or theatre, and immediately all your wonted acquaintance there desert you, except those few who are expecting and expected to marry into your family. It is all very sad. But one consolation emerges--life is very pleasant in Italy if you are a man. Hitherto Gino had not interfered with Lilia. She was so much older than he was, and so much richer, that he regarded her as a superior being who answered to other laws. He was not wholly surprised, for strange rumours were always blowing over the Alps of lands where men and women had the same amusements and interests, and he had often met that privileged maniac, the lady tourist, on her solitary walks. Lilia took solitary walks too, and only that week a tramp had grabbed at her watch--an episode which is supposed to be indigenous in Italy, though really less frequent there than in Bond Street. Now that he knew her better, he was inevitably losing his awe: no one could live with her and keep it, especially when she had been so silly as to lose a gold watch and chain. As he lay thoughtful along the parapet, he realized for the first time the responsibilities of monied life. He must save her from dangers, physical and social, for after all she was a woman. "And I," he reflected, "though I am young, am at all events a man, and know what is right." He found her still in the living-room, combing her hair, for she had something of the slattern in her nature, and there was no need to keep up appearances. "You must not go out alone," he said gently. "It is not safe. If you want to walk, Perfetta shall accompany you." Perfetta was a widowed cousin, too humble for social aspirations, who was living with them as factotum. "Very well," smiled Lilia, "very well"--as if she were addressing a solicitous kitten. But for all that she never took a solitary walk again, with one exception, till the day of her death. Days passed, and no one called except poor relatives. She began to feel dull. Didn't he know the Sindaco or the bank manager? Even the landlady of the Stella d'Italia would be better than no one. She, when she went into the town, was pleasantly received; but people naturally found a difficulty in getting on with a lady who could not learn their language. And the tea-party, under Gino's adroit management, receded ever and ever before her. He had a good deal of anxiety over her welfare, for she did not settle down in the house at all. But he was comforted by a welcome and unexpected visitor. As he was going one afternoon for the letters--they were delivered at the door, but it took longer to get them at the office--some one humorously threw a cloak over his head, and when he disengaged himself he saw his very dear friend Spiridione Tesi of the custom-house at Chiasso, whom he had not met for two years. What joy! what salutations! so that all the passersby smiled with approval on the amiable scene. Spiridione's brother was now station-master at Bologna, and thus he himself could spend his holiday travelling over Italy at the public expense. Hearing of Gino's marriage, he had come to see him on his way to Siena, where lived his own uncle, lately monied too. "They all do it," he exclaimed, "myself excepted." He was not quite twenty-three. "But tell me more. She is English. That is good, very good. An English wife is very good indeed. And she is rich?" "Immensely rich." "Blonde or dark?" "Blonde." "Is it possible!" "It pleases me very much," said Gino simply. "If you remember, I always desired a blonde." Three or four men had collected, and were listening. "We all desire one," said Spiridione. "But you, Gino, deserve your good fortune, for you are a good son, a brave man, and a true friend, and from the very first moment I saw you I wished you well." "No compliments, I beg," said Gino, standing with his hands crossed on his chest and a smile of pleasure on his face. Spiridione addressed the other men, none of whom he had ever seen before. "Is it not true? Does not he deserve this wealthy blonde?" "He does deserve her," said all the men. It is a marvellous land, where you love it or hate it. There were no letters, and of course they sat down at the Caffe Garibaldi, by the Collegiate Church--quite a good caffe that for so small a city. There were marble-topped tables, and pillars terra-cotta below and gold above, and on the ceiling was a fresco of the battle of Solferino. One could not have desired a prettier room. They had vermouth and little cakes with sugar on the top, which they chose gravely at the counter, pinching them first to be sure they were fresh. And though vermouth is barely alcoholic, Spiridione drenched his with soda-water to be sure that it should not get into his head. They were in high spirits, and elaborate compliments alternated curiously with gentle horseplay. But soon they put up their legs on a pair of chairs and began to smoke. "Tell me," said Spiridione--"I forgot to ask--is she young?" "Thirty-three." "Ah, well, we cannot have everything." "But you would be surprised. Had she told me twenty-eight, I should not have disbelieved her." "Is she SIMPATICA?" (Nothing will translate that word.) Gino dabbed at the sugar and said after a silence, "Sufficiently so." "It is a most important thing." "She is rich, she is generous, she is affable, she addresses her inferiors without haughtiness." There was another silence. "It is not sufficient," said the other. "One does not define it thus." He lowered his voice to a whisper. "Last month a German was smuggling cigars. The custom-house was dark. Yet I refused because I did not like him. The gifts of such men do not bring happiness. NON ERA SIMPATICO. He paid for every one, and the fine for deception besides." "Do you gain much beyond your pay?" asked Gino, diverted for an instant. "I do not accept small sums now. It is not worth the risk. But the German was another matter. But listen, my Gino, for I am older than you and more full of experience. The person who understands us at first sight, who never irritates us, who never bores, to whom we can pour forth every thought and wish, not only in speech but in silence--that is what I mean by SIMPATICO." "There are such men, I know," said Gino. "And I have heard it said of children. But where will you find such a woman?" "That is true. Here you are wiser than I. SONO POCO SIMPATICHE LE DONNE. And the time we waste over them is much." He sighed dolefully, as if he found the nobility of his sex a burden. "One I have seen who may be so. She spoke very little, but she was a young lady--different to most. She, too, was English, the companion of my wife here. But Fra Filippo, the brother-in-law, took her back with him. I saw them start. He was very angry." Then he spoke of his exciting and secret marriage, and they made fun of the unfortunate Philip, who had travelled over Europe to stop it. "I regret though," said Gino, when they had finished laughing, "that I toppled him on to the bed. A great tall man! And when I am really amused I am often impolite." "You will never see him again," said Spiridione, who carried plenty of philosophy about him. "And by now the scene will have passed from his mind." "It sometimes happens that such things are recollected longest. I shall never see him again, of course; but it is no benefit to me that he should wish me ill. And even if he has forgotten, I am still sorry that I toppled him on to the bed." So their talk continued, at one moment full of childishness and tender wisdom, the next moment scandalously gross. The shadows of the terra-cotta pillars lengthened, and tourists, flying through the Palazzo Pubblico opposite, could observe how the Italians wasted time. The sight of tourists reminded Gino of something he might say. "I want to consult you since you are so kind as to take an interest in my affairs. My wife wishes to take solitary walks." Spiridione was shocked. "But I have forbidden her." "Naturally." "She does not yet understand. She asked me to accompany her sometimes--to walk without object! You know, she would like me to be with her all day." "I see. I see." He knitted his brows and tried to think how he could help his friend. "She needs employment. Is she a Catholic?" "No." "That is a pity. She must be persuaded. It will be a great solace to her when she is alone." "I am a Catholic, but of course I never go to church." "Of course not. Still, you might take her at first. That is what my brother has done with his wife at Bologna and he has joined the Free Thinkers. He took her once or twice himself, and now she has acquired the habit and continues to go without him." "Most excellent advice, and I thank you for it. But she wishes to give tea-parties--men and women together whom she has never seen." "Oh, the English! they are always thinking of tea. They carry it by the kilogramme in their trunks, and they are so clumsy that they always pack it at the top. But it is absurd!" "What am I to do about it?" "Do nothing. Or ask me!" "Come!" cried Gino, springing up. "She will be quite pleased." The dashing young fellow coloured crimson. "Of course I was only joking." "I know. But she wants me to take my friends. Come now! Waiter!" "If I do come," cried the other, "and take tea with you, this bill must be my affair." "Certainly not; you are in my country!" A long argument ensued, in which the waiter took part, suggesting various solutions. At last Gino triumphed. The bill came to eightpence-halfpenny, and a halfpenny for the waiter brought it up to ninepence. Then there was a shower of gratitude on one side and of deprecation on the other, and when courtesies were at their height they suddenly linked arms and swung down the street, tickling each other with lemonade straws as they went. Lilia was delighted to see them, and became more animated than Gino had known her for a long time. The tea tasted of chopped hay, and they asked to be allowed to drink it out of a wine-glass, and refused milk; but, as she repeatedly observed, this was something like. Spiridione's manners were very agreeable. He kissed her hand on introduction, and as his profession had taught him a little English, conversation did not flag. "Do you like music?" she asked. "Passionately," he replied. "I have not studied scientific music, but the music of the heart, yes." So she played on the humming piano very badly, and he sang, not so badly. Gino got out a guitar and sang too, sitting out on the loggia. It was a most agreeable visit. Gino said he would just walk his friend back to his lodgings. As they went he said, without the least trace of malice or satire in his voice, "I think you are quite right. I shall not bring people to the house any more. I do not see why an English wife should be treated differently. This is Italy." "You are very wise," exclaimed the other; "very wise indeed. The more precious a possession the more carefully it should be guarded." They had reached the lodging, but went on as far as the Caffe Garibaldi, where they spent a long and most delightful evening.

Newlyweds Lilia and Gino are settling into the new home they just bought in Monteriano--a pretty stone house surrounded by olive trees and vineyards. We totally wouldn't mind being invited as houseguests. Initially, Lilia seems to be the one wearing the pants in the household. She doesn't want Gino's family to move in with them , and Gino complies. When Lilia writes home to Mrs. Herriton, a reply from Harriet states that from now on Lilia can only contact the family through lawyers. Harriet also requests Lilia to return the inlaid box that had been lent, not given, to her. Gino grows increasingly bored and idle since he no longer has to work for a living . Meanwhile, Lilia gets it into her head that she wants to host a tea party and invite the important members of society in Monteriano. But Gino's friends are mostly all lower-class workingmen. Gino also tells her that in Italy, women aren't allowed to take walks alone without someone accompanying her. Lilia starts realizing that for a woman, life in Italy is way different than in England. One day, Gino runs into Spiridione Tesi, an old friend who had heard of Gino's marriage and traveled from Chiasso to visit him. They spend a delightful afternoon drinking vermouth, reminiscing on old times, and talking about Gino's new wife. Gino invites Spiridione home to meet Lilia, and the evening passes merrily with good food and plenty of music.

The village lay under two feet of snow, with drifts at the windy corners. In a sky of iron the points of the Dipper hung like icicles and Orion flashed his cold fires. The moon had set, but the night was so transparent that the white house-fronts between the elms looked gray against the snow, clumps of bushes made black stains on it, and the basement windows of the church sent shafts of yellow light far across the endless undulations. Young Ethan Frome walked at a quick pace along the deserted street, past the bank and Michael Eady's new brick store and Lawyer Varnum's house with the two black Norway spruces at the gate. Opposite the Varnum gate, where the road fell away toward the Corbury valley, the church reared its slim white steeple and narrow peristyle. As the young man walked toward it the upper windows drew a black arcade along the side wall of the building, but from the lower openings, on the side where the ground sloped steeply down to the Corbury road, the light shot its long bars, illuminating many fresh furrows in the track leading to the basement door, and showing, under an adjoining shed, a line of sleighs with heavily blanketed horses. The night was perfectly still, and the air so dry and pure that it gave little sensation of cold. The effect produced on Frome was rather of a complete absence of atmosphere, as though nothing less tenuous than ether intervened between the white earth under his feet and the metallic dome overhead. "It's like being in an exhausted receiver," he thought. Four or five years earlier he had taken a year's course at a technological college at Worcester, and dabbled in the laboratory with a friendly professor of physics; and the images supplied by that experience still cropped up, at unexpected moments, through the totally different associations of thought in which he had since been living. His father's death, and the misfortunes following it, had put a premature end to Ethan's studies; but though they had not gone far enough to be of much practical use they had fed his fancy and made him aware of huge cloudy meanings behind the daily face of things. As he strode along through the snow the sense of such meanings glowed in his brain and mingled with the bodily flush produced by his sharp tramp. At the end of the village he paused before the darkened front of the church. He stood there a moment, breathing quickly, and looking up and down the street, in which not another figure moved. The pitch of the Corbury road, below lawyer Varnum's spruces, was the favourite coasting-ground of Starkfield, and on clear evenings the church corner rang till late with the shouts of the coasters; but to-night not a sled darkened the whiteness of the long declivity. The hush of midnight lay on the village, and all its waking life was gathered behind the church windows, from which strains of dance-music flowed with the broad bands of yellow light. The young man, skirting the side of the building, went down the slope toward the basement door. To keep out of range of the revealing rays from within he made a circuit through the untrodden snow and gradually approached the farther angle of the basement wall. Thence, still hugging the shadow, he edged his way cautiously forward to the nearest window, holding back his straight spare body and craning his neck till he got a glimpse of the room. Seen thus, from the pure and frosty darkness in which he stood, it seemed to be seething in a mist of heat. The metal reflectors of the gas-jets sent crude waves of light against the whitewashed walls, and the iron flanks of the stove at the end of the hall looked as though they were heaving with volcanic fires. The floor was thronged with girls and young men. Down the side wall facing the window stood a row of kitchen chairs from which the older women had just risen. By this time the music had stopped, and the musicians--a fiddler, and the young lady who played the harmonium on Sundays--were hastily refreshing themselves at one corner of the supper-table which aligned its devastated pie-dishes and ice-cream saucers on the platform at the end of the hall. The guests were preparing to leave, and the tide had already set toward the passage where coats and wraps were hung, when a young man with a sprightly foot and a shock of black hair shot into the middle of the floor and clapped his hands. The signal took instant effect. The musicians hurried to their instruments, the dancers--some already half-muffled for departure--fell into line down each side of the room, the older spectators slipped back to their chairs, and the lively young man, after diving about here and there in the throng, drew forth a girl who had already wound a cherry-coloured "fascinator" about her head, and, leading her up to the end of the floor, whirled her down its length to the bounding tune of a Virginia reel. Frome's heart was beating fast. He had been straining for a glimpse of the dark head under the cherry-coloured scarf and it vexed him that another eye should have been quicker than his. The leader of the reel, who looked as if he had Irish blood in his veins, danced well, and his partner caught his fire. As she passed down the line, her light figure swinging from hand to hand in circles of increasing swiftness, the scarf flew off her head and stood out behind her shoulders, and Frome, at each turn, caught sight of her laughing panting lips, the cloud of dark hair about her forehead, and the dark eyes which seemed the only fixed points in a maze of flying lines. The dancers were going faster and faster, and the musicians, to keep up with them, belaboured their instruments like jockeys lashing their mounts on the home-stretch; yet it seemed to the young man at the window that the reel would never end. Now and then he turned his eyes from the girl's face to that of her partner, which, in the exhilaration of the dance, had taken on a look of almost impudent ownership. Denis Eady was the son of Michael Eady, the ambitious Irish grocer, whose suppleness and effrontery had given Starkfield its first notion of "smart" business methods, and whose new brick store testified to the success of the attempt. His son seemed likely to follow in his steps, and was meanwhile applying the same arts to the conquest of the Starkfield maidenhood. Hitherto Ethan Frome had been content to think him a mean fellow; but now he positively invited a horse-whipping. It was strange that the girl did not seem aware of it: that she could lift her rapt face to her dancer's, and drop her hands into his, without appearing to feel the offence of his look and touch. Frome was in the habit of walking into Starkfield to fetch home his wife's cousin, Mattie Silver, on the rare evenings when some chance of amusement drew her to the village. It was his wife who had suggested, when the girl came to live with them, that such opportunities should be put in her way. Mattie Silver came from Stamford, and when she entered the Fromes' household to act as her cousin Zeena's aid it was thought best, as she came without pay, not to let her feel too sharp a contrast between the life she had left and the isolation of a Starkfield farm. But for this--as Frome sardonically reflected--it would hardly have occurred to Zeena to take any thought for the girl's amusement. When his wife first proposed that they should give Mattie an occasional evening out he had inwardly demurred at having to do the extra two miles to the village and back after his hard day on the farm; but not long afterward he had reached the point of wishing that Starkfield might give all its nights to revelry. Mattie Silver had lived under his roof for a year, and from early morning till they met at supper he had frequent chances of seeing her; but no moments in her company were comparable to those when, her arm in his, and her light step flying to keep time with his long stride, they walked back through the night to the farm. He had taken to the girl from the first day, when he had driven over to the Flats to meet her, and she had smiled and waved to him from the train, crying out, "You must be Ethan!" as she jumped down with her bundles, while he reflected, looking over her slight person: "She don't look much on housework, but she ain't a fretter, anyhow." But it was not only that the coming to his house of a bit of hopeful young life was like the lighting of a fire on a cold hearth. The girl was more than the bright serviceable creature he had thought her. She had an eye to see and an ear to hear: he could show her things and tell her things, and taste the bliss of feeling that all he imparted left long reverberations and echoes he could wake at will. It was during their night walks back to the farm that he felt most intensely the sweetness of this communion. He had always been more sensitive than the people about him to the appeal of natural beauty. His unfinished studies had given form to this sensibility and even in his unhappiest moments field and sky spoke to him with a deep and powerful persuasion. But hitherto the emotion had remained in him as a silent ache, veiling with sadness the beauty that evoked it. He did not even know whether any one else in the world felt as he did, or whether he was the sole victim of this mournful privilege. Then he learned that one other spirit had trembled with the same touch of wonder: that at his side, living under his roof and eating his bread, was a creature to whom he could say: "That's Orion down yonder; the big fellow to the right is Aldebaran, and the bunch of little ones--like bees swarming--they're the Pleiades..." or whom he could hold entranced before a ledge of granite thrusting up through the fern while he unrolled the huge panorama of the ice age, and the long dim stretches of succeeding time. The fact that admiration for his learning mingled with Mattie's wonder at what he taught was not the least part of his pleasure. And there were other sensations, less definable but more exquisite, which drew them together with a shock of silent joy: the cold red of sunset behind winter hills, the flight of cloud-flocks over slopes of golden stubble, or the intensely blue shadows of hemlocks on sunlit snow. When she said to him once: "It looks just as if it was painted!" it seemed to Ethan that the art of definition could go no farther, and that words had at last been found to utter his secret soul.... As he stood in the darkness outside the church these memories came back with the poignancy of vanished things. Watching Mattie whirl down the floor from hand to hand he wondered how he could ever have thought that his dull talk interested her. To him, who was never gay but in her presence, her gaiety seemed plain proof of indifference. The face she lifted to her dancers was the same which, when she saw him, always looked like a window that has caught the sunset. He even noticed two or three gestures which, in his fatuity, he had thought she kept for him: a way of throwing her head back when she was amused, as if to taste her laugh before she let it out, and a trick of sinking her lids slowly when anything charmed or moved her. The sight made him unhappy, and his unhappiness roused his latent fears. His wife had never shown any jealousy of Mattie, but of late she had grumbled increasingly over the house-work and found oblique ways of attracting attention to the girl's inefficiency. Zeena had always been what Starkfield called "sickly," and Frome had to admit that, if she were as ailing as she believed, she needed the help of a stronger arm than the one which lay so lightly in his during the night walks to the farm. Mattie had no natural turn for housekeeping, and her training had done nothing to remedy the defect. She was quick to learn, but forgetful and dreamy, and not disposed to take the matter seriously. Ethan had an idea that if she were to marry a man she was fond of the dormant instinct would wake, and her pies and biscuits become the pride of the county; but domesticity in the abstract did not interest her. At first she was so awkward that he could not help laughing at her; but she laughed with him and that made them better friends. He did his best to supplement her unskilled efforts, getting up earlier than usual to light the kitchen fire, carrying in the wood overnight, and neglecting the mill for the farm that he might help her about the house during the day. He even crept down on Saturday nights to scrub the kitchen floor after the women had gone to bed; and Zeena, one day, had surprised him at the churn and had turned away silently, with one of her queer looks. Of late there had been other signs of her disfavour, as intangible but more disquieting. One cold winter morning, as he dressed in the dark, his candle flickering in the draught of the ill-fitting window, he had heard her speak from the bed behind him. "The doctor don't want I should be left without anybody to do for me," she said in her flat whine. He had supposed her to be asleep, and the sound of her voice had startled him, though she was given to abrupt explosions of speech after long intervals of secretive silence. He turned and looked at her where she lay indistinctly outlined under the dark calico quilt, her high-boned face taking a grayish tinge from the whiteness of the pillow. "Nobody to do for you?" he repeated. "If you say you can't afford a hired girl when Mattie goes." Frome turned away again, and taking up his razor stooped to catch the reflection of his stretched cheek in the blotched looking-glass above the wash-stand. "Why on earth should Mattie go?" "Well, when she gets married, I mean," his wife's drawl came from behind him. "Oh, she'd never leave us as long as you needed her," he returned, scraping hard at his chin. "I wouldn't ever have it said that I stood in the way of a poor girl like Mattie marrying a smart fellow like Denis Eady," Zeena answered in a tone of plaintive self-effacement. Ethan, glaring at his face in the glass, threw his head back to draw the razor from ear to chin. His hand was steady, but the attitude was an excuse for not making an immediate reply. "And the doctor don't want I should be left without anybody," Zeena continued. "He wanted I should speak to you about a girl he's heard about, that might come--" Ethan laid down the razor and straightened himself with a laugh. "Denis Eady! If that's all, I guess there's no such hurry to look round for a girl." "Well, I'd like to talk to you about it," said Zeena obstinately. He was getting into his clothes in fumbling haste. "All right. But I haven't got the time now; I'm late as it is," he returned, holding his old silver turnip-watch to the candle. Zeena, apparently accepting this as final, lay watching him in silence while he pulled his suspenders over his shoulders and jerked his arms into his coat; but as he went toward the door she said, suddenly and incisively: "I guess you're always late, now you shave every morning." That thrust had frightened him more than any vague insinuations about Denis Eady. It was a fact that since Mattie Silver's coming he had taken to shaving every day; but his wife always seemed to be asleep when he left her side in the winter darkness, and he had stupidly assumed that she would not notice any change in his appearance. Once or twice in the past he had been faintly disquieted by Zenobia's way of letting things happen without seeming to remark them, and then, weeks afterward, in a casual phrase, revealing that she had all along taken her notes and drawn her inferences. Of late, however, there had been no room in his thoughts for such vague apprehensions. Zeena herself, from an oppressive reality, had faded into an insubstantial shade. All his life was lived in the sight and sound of Mattie Silver, and he could no longer conceive of its being otherwise. But now, as he stood outside the church, and saw Mattie spinning down the floor with Denis Eady, a throng of disregarded hints and menaces wove their cloud about his brain....

At midnight, through an accumulated snowfall of some two feet, a young Ethan Frome walks the quiet streets of Starkfield. Near the edge of the village, he stops in front of the community church, where a dance is being held. He makes his way around the church's perimeter and settles in front of a basement window, craning his neck to get a view of the festivities. The dance is concluding, and the assembled group is preparing to leave. But when the young, handsome, and energetic Denis Eady jumps back onto the dance floor and claps his hands, the musicians take up their instruments and the dance hall again fills with life. Ethan focuses his attention on Mattie Silver, a girl wearing a cherry-colored scarf and dancing with Eady. She is cousin to Ethan's wife, Zeena, and has been living with the Fromes as a housekeeper for over a year. Ethan, who has come to walk Mattie home from the dance, has become quite attached to her in the course of the year, finding a kinship with her in their mutual appreciation of nature. As he watches her whirling effortlessly among the pulsating crowd, he wonders why he had ever dreamed that the feelings of attraction might be mutual. It seems to him that her free and easy movement between partners indicates her indifference toward him. Ethan recalls a recent conversation with Zeena, in which she suggested that Mattie might marry Denis Eady and that they would need to hire a new girl to help--"the doctor don't want I should be left without anybody," she insists. This memory disquiets him, and as he waits for Mattie, he begins to brood.

The twelve years, continued Mrs. Dean, following that dismal period were the happiest of my life: my greatest troubles in their passage rose from our little lady's trifling illnesses, which she had to experience in common with all children, rich and poor. For the rest, after the first six months, she grew like a larch, and could walk and talk too, in her own way, before the heath blossomed a second time over Mrs. Linton's dust. She was the most winning thing that ever brought sunshine into a desolate house: a real beauty in face, with the Earnshaws' handsome dark eyes, but the Lintons' fair skin and small features, and yellow curling hair. Her spirit was high, though not rough, and qualified by a heart sensitive and lively to excess in its affections. That capacity for intense attachments reminded me of her mother: still she did not resemble her: for she could be soft and mild as a dove, and she had a gentle voice and pensive expression: her anger was never furious; her love never fierce: it was deep and tender. However, it must be acknowledged, she had faults to foil her gifts. A propensity to be saucy was one; and a perverse will, that indulged children invariably acquire, whether they be good tempered or cross. If a servant chanced to vex her, it was always--'I shall tell papa!' And if he reproved her, even by a look, you would have thought it a heart-breaking business: I don't believe he ever did speak a harsh word to her. He took her education entirely on himself, and made it an amusement. Fortunately, curiosity and a quick intellect made her an apt scholar: she learned rapidly and eagerly, and did honour to his teaching. Till she reached the age of thirteen she had not once been beyond the range of the park by herself. Mr. Linton would take her with him a mile or so outside, on rare occasions; but he trusted her to no one else. Gimmerton was an unsubstantial name in her ears; the chapel, the only building she had approached or entered, except her own home. Wuthering Heights and Mr. Heathcliff did not exist for her: she was a perfect recluse; and, apparently, perfectly contented. Sometimes, indeed, while surveying the country from her nursery window, she would observe-- 'Ellen, how long will it be before I can walk to the top of those hills? I wonder what lies on the other side--is it the sea?' 'No, Miss Cathy,' I would answer; 'it is hills again, just like these.' 'And what are those golden rocks like when you stand under them?' she once asked. The abrupt descent of Penistone Crags particularly attracted her notice; especially when the setting sun shone on it and the topmost heights, and the whole extent of landscape besides lay in shadow. I explained that they were bare masses of stone, with hardly enough earth in their clefts to nourish a stunted tree. 'And why are they bright so long after it is evening here?' she pursued. 'Because they are a great deal higher up than we are,' replied I; 'you could not climb them, they are too high and steep. In winter the frost is always there before it comes to us; and deep into summer I have found snow under that black hollow on the north-east side!' 'Oh, you have been on them!' she cried gleefully. 'Then I can go, too, when I am a woman. Has papa been, Ellen?' 'Papa would tell you, Miss,' I answered, hastily, 'that they are not worth the trouble of visiting. The moors, where you ramble with him, are much nicer; and Thrushcross Park is the finest place in the world.' 'But I know the park, and I don't know those,' she murmured to herself. 'And I should delight to look round me from the brow of that tallest point: my little pony Minny shall take me some time.' One of the maids mentioning the Fairy Cave, quite turned her head with a desire to fulfil this project: she teased Mr. Linton about it; and he promised she should have the journey when she got older. But Miss Catherine measured her age by months, and, 'Now, am I old enough to go to Penistone Crags?' was the constant question in her mouth. The road thither wound close by Wuthering Heights. Edgar had not the heart to pass it; so she received as constantly the answer, 'Not yet, love: not yet.' I said Mrs. Heathcliff lived above a dozen years after quitting her husband. Her family were of a delicate constitution: she and Edgar both lacked the ruddy health that you will generally meet in these parts. What her last illness was, I am not certain: I conjecture, they died of the same thing, a kind of fever, slow at its commencement, but incurable, and rapidly consuming life towards the close. She wrote to inform her brother of the probable conclusion of a four-months' indisposition under which she had suffered, and entreated him to come to her, if possible; for she had much to settle, and she wished to bid him adieu, and deliver Linton safely into his hands. Her hope was that Linton might be left with him, as he had been with her: his father, she would fain convince herself, had no desire to assume the burden of his maintenance or education. My master hesitated not a moment in complying with her request: reluctant as he was to leave home at ordinary calls, he flew to answer this; commanding Catherine to my peculiar vigilance, in his absence, with reiterated orders that she must not wander out of the park, even under my escort he did not calculate on her going unaccompanied. He was away three weeks. The first day or two my charge sat in a corner of the library, too sad for either reading or playing: in that quiet state she caused me little trouble; but it was succeeded by an interval of impatient, fretful weariness; and being too busy, and too old then, to run up and down amusing her, I hit on a method by which she might entertain herself. I used to send her on her travels round the grounds--now on foot, and now on a pony; indulging her with a patient audience of all her real and imaginary adventures when she returned. The summer shone in full prime; and she took such a taste for this solitary rambling that she often contrived to remain out from breakfast till tea; and then the evenings were spent in recounting her fanciful tales. I did not fear her breaking bounds; because the gates were generally locked, and I thought she would scarcely venture forth alone, if they had stood wide open. Unluckily, my confidence proved misplaced. Catherine came to me, one morning, at eight o'clock, and said she was that day an Arabian merchant, going to cross the Desert with his caravan; and I must give her plenty of provision for herself and beasts: a horse, and three camels, personated by a large hound and a couple of pointers. I got together good store of dainties, and slung them in a basket on one side of the saddle; and she sprang up as gay as a fairy, sheltered by her wide-brimmed hat and gauze veil from the July sun, and trotted off with a merry laugh, mocking my cautious counsel to avoid galloping, and come back early. The naughty thing never made her appearance at tea. One traveller, the hound, being an old dog and fond of its ease, returned; but neither Cathy, nor the pony, nor the two pointers were visible in any direction: I despatched emissaries down this path, and that path, and at last went wandering in search of her myself. There was a labourer working at a fence round a plantation, on the borders of the grounds. I inquired of him if he had seen our young lady. 'I saw her at morn,' he replied: 'she would have me to cut her a hazel switch, and then she leapt her Galloway over the hedge yonder, where it is lowest, and galloped out of sight.' You may guess how I felt at hearing this news. It struck me directly she must have started for Penistone Crags. 'What will become of her?' I ejaculated, pushing through a gap which the man was repairing, and making straight to the high-road. I walked as if for a wager, mile after mile, till a turn brought me in view of the Heights; but no Catherine could I detect, far or near. The Crags lie about a mile and a half beyond Mr. Heathcliff's place, and that is four from the Grange, so I began to fear night would fall ere I could reach them. 'And what if she should have slipped in clambering among them,' I reflected, 'and been killed, or broken some of her bones?' My suspense was truly painful; and, at first, it gave me delightful relief to observe, in hurrying by the farmhouse, Charlie, the fiercest of the pointers, lying under a window, with swelled head and bleeding ear. I opened the wicket and ran to the door, knocking vehemently for admittance. A woman whom I knew, and who formerly lived at Gimmerton, answered: she had been servant there since the death of Mr. Earnshaw. 'Ah,' said she, 'you are come a-seeking your little mistress! Don't be frightened. She's here safe: but I'm glad it isn't the master.' 'He is not at home then, is he?' I panted, quite breathless with quick walking and alarm. 'No, no,' she replied: 'both he and Joseph are off, and I think they won't return this hour or more. Step in and rest you a bit.' I entered, and beheld my stray lamb seated on the hearth, rocking herself in a little chair that had been her mother's when a child. Her hat was hung against the wall, and she seemed perfectly at home, laughing and chattering, in the best spirits imaginable, to Hareton--now a great, strong lad of eighteen--who stared at her with considerable curiosity and astonishment: comprehending precious little of the fluent succession of remarks and questions which her tongue never ceased pouring forth. 'Very well, Miss!' I exclaimed, concealing my joy under an angry countenance. 'This is your last ride, till papa comes back. I'll not trust you over the threshold again, you naughty, naughty girl!' 'Aha, Ellen!' she cried, gaily, jumping up and running to my side. 'I shall have a pretty story to tell to-night; and so you've found me out. Have you ever been here in your life before?' 'Put that hat on, and home at once,' said I. 'I'm dreadfully grieved at you, Miss Cathy: you've done extremely wrong! It's no use pouting and crying: that won't repay the trouble I've had, scouring the country after you. To think how Mr. Linton charged me to keep you in; and you stealing off so! It shows you are a cunning little fox, and nobody will put faith in you any more.' 'What have I done?' sobbed she, instantly checked. 'Papa charged me nothing: he'll not scold me, Ellen--he's never cross, like you!' 'Come, come!' I repeated. 'I'll tie the riband. Now, let us have no petulance. Oh, for shame! You thirteen years old, and such a baby!' This exclamation was caused by her pushing the hat from her head, and retreating to the chimney out of my reach. 'Nay,' said the servant, 'don't be hard on the bonny lass, Mrs. Dean. We made her stop: she'd fain have ridden forwards, afeard you should be uneasy. Hareton offered to go with her, and I thought he should: it's a wild road over the hills.' Hareton, during the discussion, stood with his hands in his pockets, too awkward to speak; though he looked as if he did not relish my intrusion. 'How long am I to wait?' I continued, disregarding the woman's interference. 'It will be dark in ten minutes. Where is the pony, Miss Cathy? And where is Phoenix? I shall leave you, unless you be quick; so please yourself.' 'The pony is in the yard,' she replied, 'and Phoenix is shut in there. He's bitten--and so is Charlie. I was going to tell you all about it; but you are in a bad temper, and don't deserve to hear.' I picked up her hat, and approached to reinstate it; but perceiving that the people of the house took her part, she commenced capering round the room; and on my giving chase, ran like a mouse over and under and behind the furniture, rendering it ridiculous for me to pursue. Hareton and the woman laughed, and she joined them, and waxed more impertinent still; till I cried, in great irritation,--'Well, Miss Cathy, if you were aware whose house this is you'd be glad enough to get out.' 'It's _your_ father's, isn't it?' said she, turning to Hareton. 'Nay,' he replied, looking down, and blushing bashfully. He could not stand a steady gaze from her eyes, though they were just his own. 'Whose then--your master's?' she asked. He coloured deeper, with a different feeling, muttered an oath, and turned away. 'Who is his master?' continued the tiresome girl, appealing to me. 'He talked about "our house," and "our folk." I thought he had been the owner's son. And he never said Miss: he should have done, shouldn't he, if he's a servant?' Hareton grew black as a thunder-cloud at this childish speech. I silently shook my questioner, and at last succeeded in equipping her for departure. 'Now, get my horse,' she said, addressing her unknown kinsman as she would one of the stable-boys at the Grange. 'And you may come with me. I want to see where the goblin-hunter rises in the marsh, and to hear about the _fairishes_, as you call them: but make haste! What's the matter? Get my horse, I say.' 'I'll see thee damned before I be _thy_ servant!' growled the lad. 'You'll see me _what_!' asked Catherine in surprise. 'Damned--thou saucy witch!' he replied. 'There, Miss Cathy! you see you have got into pretty company,' I interposed. 'Nice words to be used to a young lady! Pray don't begin to dispute with him. Come, let us seek for Minny ourselves, and begone.' 'But, Ellen,' cried she, staring fixed in astonishment, 'how dare he speak so to me? Mustn't he be made to do as I ask him? You wicked creature, I shall tell papa what you said.--Now, then!' Hareton did not appear to feel this threat; so the tears sprang into her eyes with indignation. 'You bring the pony,' she exclaimed, turning to the woman, 'and let my dog free this moment!' 'Softly, Miss,' answered she addressed; 'you'll lose nothing by being civil. Though Mr. Hareton, there, be not the master's son, he's your cousin: and I was never hired to serve you.' '_He_ my cousin!' cried Cathy, with a scornful laugh. 'Yes, indeed,' responded her reprover. 'Oh, Ellen! don't let them say such things,' she pursued in great trouble. 'Papa is gone to fetch my cousin from London: my cousin is a gentleman's son. That my--' she stopped, and wept outright; upset at the bare notion of relationship with such a clown. 'Hush, hush!' I whispered; 'people can have many cousins and of all sorts, Miss Cathy, without being any the worse for it; only they needn't keep their company, if they be disagreeable and bad.' 'He's not--he's not my cousin, Ellen!' she went on, gathering fresh grief from reflection, and flinging herself into my arms for refuge from the idea. I was much vexed at her and the servant for their mutual revelations; having no doubt of Linton's approaching arrival, communicated by the former, being reported to Mr. Heathcliff; and feeling as confident that Catherine's first thought on her father's return would be to seek an explanation of the latter's assertion concerning her rude-bred kindred. Hareton, recovering from his disgust at being taken for a servant, seemed moved by her distress; and, having fetched the pony round to the door, he took, to propitiate her, a fine crooked-legged terrier whelp from the kennel, and putting it into her hand, bid her whist! for he meant nought. Pausing in her lamentations, she surveyed him with a glance of awe and horror, then burst forth anew. I could scarcely refrain from smiling at this antipathy to the poor fellow; who was a well-made, athletic youth, good-looking in features, and stout and healthy, but attired in garments befitting his daily occupations of working on the farm and lounging among the moors after rabbits and game. Still, I thought I could detect in his physiognomy a mind owning better qualities than his father ever possessed. Good things lost amid a wilderness of weeds, to be sure, whose rankness far over-topped their neglected growth; yet, notwithstanding, evidence of a wealthy soil, that might yield luxuriant crops under other and favourable circumstances. Mr. Heathcliff, I believe, had not treated him physically ill; thanks to his fearless nature, which offered no temptation to that course of oppression: he had none of the timid susceptibility that would have given zest to ill-treatment, in Heathcliff's judgment. He appeared to have bent his malevolence on making him a brute: he was never taught to read or write; never rebuked for any bad habit which did not annoy his keeper; never led a single step towards virtue, or guarded by a single precept against vice. And from what I heard, Joseph contributed much to his deterioration, by a narrow-minded partiality which prompted him to flatter and pet him, as a boy, because he was the head of the old family. And as he had been in the habit of accusing Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, when children, of putting the master past his patience, and compelling him to seek solace in drink by what he termed their 'offald ways,' so at present he laid the whole burden of Hareton's faults on the shoulders of the usurper of his property. If the lad swore, he wouldn't correct him: nor however culpably he behaved. It gave Joseph satisfaction, apparently, to watch him go the worst lengths: he allowed that the lad was ruined: that his soul was abandoned to perdition; but then he reflected that Heathcliff must answer for it. Hareton's blood would be required at his hands; and there lay immense consolation in that thought. Joseph had instilled into him a pride of name, and of his lineage; he would, had he dared, have fostered hate between him and the present owner of the Heights: but his dread of that owner amounted to superstition; and he confined his feelings regarding him to muttered innuendoes and private comminations. I don't pretend to be intimately acquainted with the mode of living customary in those days at Wuthering Heights: I only speak from hearsay; for I saw little. The villagers affirmed Mr. Heathcliff was _near_, and a cruel hard landlord to his tenants; but the house, inside, had regained its ancient aspect of comfort under female management, and the scenes of riot common in Hindley's time were not now enacted within its walls. The master was too gloomy to seek companionship with any people, good or bad; and he is yet. This, however, is not making progress with my story. Miss Cathy rejected the peace-offering of the terrier, and demanded her own dogs, Charlie and Phoenix. They came limping and hanging their heads; and we set out for home, sadly out of sorts, every one of us. I could not wring from my little lady how she had spent the day; except that, as I supposed, the goal of her pilgrimage was Penistone Crags; and she arrived without adventure to the gate of the farm-house, when Hareton happened to issue forth, attended by some canine followers, who attacked her train. They had a smart battle, before their owners could separate them: that formed an introduction. Catherine told Hareton who she was, and where she was going; and asked him to show her the way: finally, beguiling him to accompany her. He opened the mysteries of the Fairy Cave, and twenty other queer places. But, being in disgrace, I was not favoured with a description of the interesting objects she saw. I could gather, however, that her guide had been a favourite till she hurt his feelings by addressing him as a servant; and Heathcliff's housekeeper hurt hers by calling him her cousin. Then the language he had held to her rankled in her heart; she who was always 'love,' and 'darling,' and 'queen,' and 'angel,' with everybody at the Grange, to be insulted so shockingly by a stranger! She did not comprehend it; and hard work I had to obtain a promise that she would not lay the grievance before her father. I explained how he objected to the whole household at the Heights, and how sorry he would be to find she had been there; but I insisted most on the fact, that if she revealed my negligence of his orders, he would perhaps be so angry that I should have to leave; and Cathy couldn't bear that prospect: she pledged her word, and kept it for my sake. After all, she was a sweet little girl.

Young Catherine grows up at Thrushcross Grange, and by the time she is thirteen she is a beautiful, intelligent girl, but often strong-willed and temperamental. Her father, mindful of the tormented history of the neighboring manor, does not allow young Catherine off the grounds of Thrushcross Grange, and she grows up without any knowledge of Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff, or Hareton. She longs to visit the fairy caves at Penistone Crags, but Edgar refuses her request. He receives word one day, however, that Isabella is dying, and he hurries to London to take charge of young Linton. While he is gone, Catherine is left in Nelly's care, and she is able to escape the confines of the Grange. She travels toward Penistone Crags but stops at Wuthering Heights, where she meets Hareton and takes an instant liking to him. She and Hareton spend a delightful day playing near the crags. Nelly arrives in pursuit of her charge, and tries to hurry her back to Thrushcross Grange. But Catherine refuses to go. Nelly tells Catherine that Hareton is not the son of the master of Wuthering Heights--a fact that makes the girl contemptuous of him--but she also reveals that he is Catherine's cousin. Catherine tries to deny this possibility, saying that her cousin is in London, that her father has gone to retrieve him there. Nelly, however, explains that a person can have more than one cousin. At last, Nelly prevails upon her to leave, and Catherine agrees not to mention the incident to her father, who might well terminate Nelly's employment in rage if he knew she had let Catherine learn of Wuthering Heights

CANTO THE FIFTEENTH. Ah!--What should follow slips from my reflection; Whatever follows ne'ertheless may be As _a propos_ of hope or retrospection, As though the lurking thought had follow'd free. All present life is but an interjection, An 'Oh!' or 'Ah!' of joy or misery, Or a 'Ha! ha!' or 'Bah!'--a yawn, or 'Pooh!' Of which perhaps the latter is most true. But, more or less, the whole 's a syncope Or a singultus--emblems of emotion, The grand antithesis to great ennui, Wherewith we break our bubbles on the ocean,-- That watery outline of eternity, Or miniature at least, as is my notion, Which ministers unto the soul's delight, In seeing matters which are out of sight. But all are better than the sigh supprest, Corroding in the cavern of the heart, Making the countenance a masque of rest, And turning human nature to an art. Few men dare show their thoughts of worst or best; Dissimulation always sets apart A corner for herself; and therefore fiction Is that which passes with least contradiction. Ah! who can tell? Or rather, who can not Remember, without telling, passion's errors? The drainer of oblivion, even the sot, Hath got blue devils for his morning mirrors: What though on Lethe's stream he seem to float, He cannot sink his tremors or his terrors; The ruby glass that shakes within his hand Leaves a sad sediment of Time's worst sand. And as for love--O love!--We will proceed. The Lady Adeline Amundeville, A pretty name as one would wish to read, Must perch harmonious on my tuneful quill. There 's music in the sighing of a reed; There 's music in the gushing of a rill; There 's music in all things, if men had ears: Their earth is but an echo of the spheres. The Lady Adeline, right honourable; And honour'd, ran a risk of growing less so; For few of the soft sex are very stable In their resolves--alas! that I should say so! They differ as wine differs from its label, When once decanted;--I presume to guess so, But will not swear: yet both upon occasion, Till old, may undergo adulteration. But Adeline was of the purest vintage, The unmingled essence of the grape; and yet Bright as a new Napoleon from its mintage, Or glorious as a diamond richly set; A page where Time should hesitate to print age, And for which Nature might forego her debt-- Sole creditor whose process doth involve in 't The luck of finding every body solvent. O Death! thou dunnest of all duns! thou daily Knockest at doors, at first with modest tap, Like a meek tradesman when, approaching palely, Some splendid debtor he would take by sap: But oft denied, as patience 'gins to fail, he Advances with exasperated rap, And (if let in) insists, in terms unhandsome, On ready money, or 'a draft on Ransom.' Whate'er thou takest, spare a while poor Beauty! She is so rare, and thou hast so much prey. What though she now and then may slip from duty, The more 's the reason why you ought to stay. Gaunt Gourmand! with whole nations for your booty, You should be civil in a modest way: Suppress, then, some slight feminine diseases, And take as many heroes as Heaven pleases. Fair Adeline, the more ingenuous Where she was interested (as was said), Because she was not apt, like some of us, To like too readily, or too high bred To show it (points we need not now discuss)-- Would give up artlessly both heart and head Unto such feelings as seem'd innocent, For objects worthy of the sentiment. Some parts of Juan's history, which Rumour, That live gazette, had scatter'd to disfigure, She had heard; but women hear with more good humour Such aberrations than we men of rigour: Besides, his conduct, since in England, grew more Strict, and his mind assumed a manlier vigour; Because he had, like Alcibiades, The art of living in all climes with ease. His manner was perhaps the more seductive, Because he ne'er seem'd anxious to seduce; Nothing affected, studied, or constructive Of coxcombry or conquest: no abuse Of his attractions marr'd the fair perspective, To indicate a Cupidon broke loose, And seem to say, 'Resist us if you can'- Which makes a dandy while it spoils a man. They are wrong--that 's not the way to set about it; As, if they told the truth, could well be shown. But, right or wrong, Don Juan was without it; In fact, his manner was his own alone; Sincere he was--at least you could not doubt it, In listening merely to his voice's tone. The devil hath not in all his quiver's choice An arrow for the heart like a sweet voice. By nature soft, his whole address held off Suspicion: though not timid, his regard Was such as rather seem'd to keep aloof, To shield himself than put you on your guard: Perhaps 't was hardly quite assured enough, But modesty 's at times its own reward, Like virtue; and the absence of pretension Will go much farther than there 's need to mention. Serene, accomplish'd, cheerful but not loud; Insinuating without insinuation; Observant of the foibles of the crowd, Yet ne'er betraying this in conversation; Proud with the proud, yet courteously proud, So as to make them feel he knew his station And theirs:--without a struggle for priority, He neither brook'd nor claim'd superiority. That is, with men: with women he was what They pleased to make or take him for; and their Imagination 's quite enough for that: So that the outline 's tolerably fair, They fill the canvas up--and 'verbum sat.' If once their phantasies be brought to bear Upon an object, whether sad or playful, They can transfigure brighter than a Raphael. Adeline, no deep judge of character, Was apt to add a colouring from her own: 'T is thus the good will amiably err, And eke the wise, as has been often shown. Experience is the chief philosopher, But saddest when his science is well known: And persecuted sages teach the schools Their folly in forgetting there are fools. Was it not so, great Locke? and greater Bacon? Great Socrates? And thou, Diviner still, Whose lot it is by man to be mistaken, And thy pure creed made sanction of all ill? Redeeming worlds to be by bigots shaken, How was thy toil rewarded? We might fill Volumes with similar sad illustrations, But leave them to the conscience of the nations. I perch upon an humbler promontory, Amidst life's infinite variety: With no great care for what is nicknamed glory, But speculating as I cast mine eye On what may suit or may not suit my story, And never straining hard to versify, I rattle on exactly as I 'd talk With any body in a ride or walk. I don't know that there may be much ability Shown in this sort of desultory rhyme; But there 's a conversational facility, Which may round off an hour upon a time. Of this I 'm sure at least, there 's no servility In mine irregularity of chime, Which rings what 's uppermost of new or hoary, Just as I feel the 'Improvvisatore.' 'Omnia vult belle Matho dicere--dic aliquando Et bene, dic neutrum, dic aliquando male.' The first is rather more than mortal can do; The second may be sadly done or gaily; The third is still more difficult to stand to; The fourth we hear, and see, and say too, daily. The whole together is what I could wish To serve in this conundrum of a dish. A modest hope--but modesty 's my forte, And pride my feeble:--let us ramble on. I meant to make this poem very short, But now I can't tell where it may not run. No doubt, if I had wish' to pay my court To critics, or to hail the setting sun Of tyranny of all kinds, my concision Were more;--but I was born for opposition. But then 't is mostly on the weaker side; So that I verily believe if they Who now are basking in their full-blown pride Were shaken down, and 'dogs had had their day,' Though at the first I might perchance deride Their tumble, I should turn the other way, And wax an ultra-royalist in loyalty, Because I hate even democratic royalty. I think I should have made a decent spouse, If I had never proved the soft condition; I think I should have made monastic vows, But for my own peculiar superstition: 'Gainst rhyme I never should have knock'd my brows, Nor broken my own head, nor that of Priscian, Nor worn the motley mantle of a poet, If some one had not told me to forego it. But 'laissez aller'--knights and dames I sing, Such as the times may furnish. 'T is a flight Which seems at first to need no lofty wing, Plumed by Longinus or the Stagyrite: The difficultly lies in colouring (Keeping the due proportions still in sight) With nature manners which are artificial, And rend'ring general that which is especial. The difference is, that in the days of old Men made the manners; manners now make men-- Pinn'd like a flock, and fleeced too in their fold, At least nine, and a ninth beside of ten. Now this at all events must render cold Your writers, who must either draw again Days better drawn before, or else assume The present, with their common-place costume. We 'll do our best to make the best on 't:--March! March, my Muse! If you cannot fly, yet flutter; And when you may not be sublime, be arch, Or starch, as are the edicts statesmen utter. We surely may find something worth research: Columbus found a new world in a cutter, Or brigantine, or pink, of no great tonnage, While yet America was in her non-age. When Adeline, in all her growing sense Of Juan's merits and his situation, Felt on the whole an interest intense,-- Partly perhaps because a fresh sensation, Or that he had an air of innocence, Which is for innocence a sad temptation,-- As women hate half measures, on the whole, She 'gan to ponder how to save his soul. She had a good opinion of advice, Like all who give and eke receive it gratis, For which small thanks are still the market price, Even where the article at highest rate is: She thought upon the subject twice or thrice, And morally decided, the best state is For morals, marriage; and this question carried, She seriously advised him to get married. Juan replied, with all becoming deference, He had a predilection for that tie; But that, at present, with immediate reference To his own circumstances, there might lie Some difficulties, as in his own preference, Or that of her to whom he might apply: That still he 'd wed with such or such a lady, If that they were not married all already. Next to the making matches for herself, And daughters, brothers, sisters, kith or kin, Arranging them like books on the same shelf, There 's nothing women love to dabble in More (like a stock-holder in growing pelf) Than match-making in general: 't is no sin Certes, but a preventative, and therefore That is, no doubt, the only reason wherefore. But never yet (except of course a miss Unwed, or mistress never to be wed, Or wed already, who object to this) Was there chaste dame who had not in her head Some drama of the marriage unities, Observed as strictly both at board and bed As those of Aristotle, though sometimes They turn out melodrames or pantomimes. They generally have some only son, Some heir to a large property, some friend Of an old family, some gay Sir john, Or grave Lord George, with whom perhaps might end A line, and leave posterity undone, Unless a marriage was applied to mend The prospect and their morals: and besides, They have at hand a blooming glut of brides. From these they will be careful to select, For this an heiress, and for that a beauty; For one a songstress who hath no defect, For t' other one who promises much duty; For this a lady no one can reject, Whose sole accomplishments were quite a booty; A second for her excellent connections; A third, because there can be no objections. When Rapp the Harmonist embargo'd marriage In his harmonious settlement (which flourishes Strangely enough as yet without miscarriage, Because it breeds no more mouths than it nourishes, Without those sad expenses which disparage What Nature naturally most encourages)-- Why call'd he 'Harmony' a state sans wedlock? Now here I 've got the preacher at a dead lock. Because he either meant to sneer at harmony Or marriage, by divorcing them thus oddly. But whether reverend Rapp learn'd this in Germany Or no, 't is said his sect is rich and godly, Pious and pure, beyond what I can term any Of ours, although they propagate more broadly. My objection 's to his title, not his ritual, Although I wonder how it grew habitual. But Rapp is the reverse of zealous matrons, Who favour, malgre Malthus, generation-- Professors of that genial art, and patrons Of all the modest part of propagation; Which after all at such a desperate rate runs, That half its produce tends to emigration, That sad result of passions and potatoes-- Two weeds which pose our economic Catos. Had Adeline read Malthus? I can't tell; I wish she had: his book 's the eleventh commandment, Which says, 'Thou shalt not marry,' unless well: This he (as far as I can understand) meant. 'T is not my purpose on his views to dwell Nor canvass what so 'eminent a hand' meant; But certes it conducts to lives ascetic, Or turning marriage into arithmetic. But Adeline, who probably presumed That Juan had enough of maintenance, Or separate maintenance, in case 't was doom'd-- As on the whole it is an even chance That bridegrooms, after they are fairly groom'd, May retrograde a little in the dance Of marriage (which might form a painter's fame, Like Holbein's 'Dance of Death'--but 't is the same);-- But Adeline determined Juan's wedding In her own mind, and that 's enough for woman: But then, with whom? There was the sage Miss Reading, Miss Raw, Miss Flaw, Miss Showman, and Miss Knowman. And the two fair co-heiresses Giltbedding. She deem'd his merits something more than common: All these were unobjectionable matches, And might go on, if well wound up, like watches. There was Miss Millpond, smooth as summer's sea, That usual paragon, an only daughter, Who seem'd the cream of equanimity Till skimm'd--and then there was some milk and water, With a slight shade of blue too, it might be, Beneath the surface; but what did it matter? Love 's riotous, but marriage should have quiet, And being consumptive, live on a milk diet. And then there was the Miss Audacia Shoestring, A dashing demoiselle of good estate, Whose heart was fix'd upon a star or blue string; But whether English dukes grew rare of late, Or that she had not harp'd upon the true string, By which such sirens can attract our great, She took up with some foreign younger brother, A Russ or Turk--the one 's as good as t' other. And then there was--but why should I go on, Unless the ladies should go off?--there was Indeed a certain fair and fairy one, Of the best class, and better than her class,-- Aurora Raby, a young star who shone O'er life, too sweet an image for such glass, A lovely being, scarcely form'd or moulded, A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded; Rich, noble, but an orphan; left an only Child to the care of guardians good and kind; But still her aspect had an air so lonely! Blood is not water; and where shall we find Feelings of youth like those which overthrown lie By death, when we are left, alas! behind, To feel, in friendless palaces, a home Is wanting, and our best ties in the tomb? Early in years, and yet more infantine In figure, she had something of sublime In eyes which sadly shone, as seraphs' shine. All youth--but with an aspect beyond time; Radiant and grave--as pitying man's decline; Mournful--but mournful of another's crime, She look'd as if she sat by Eden's door. And grieved for those who could return no more. She was a Catholic, too, sincere, austere, As far as her own gentle heart allow'd, And deem'd that fallen worship far more dear Perhaps because 't was fallen: her sires were proud Of deeds and days when they had fill'd the ear Of nations, and had never bent or bow'd To novel power; and as she was the last, She held their old faith and old feelings fast. She gazed upon a world she scarcely knew, As seeking not to know it; silent, lone, As grows a flower, thus quietly she grew, And kept her heart serene within its zone. There was awe in the homage which she drew; Her spirit seem'd as seated on a throne Apart from the surrounding world, and strong In its own strength--most strange in one so young! Now it so happen'd, in the catalogue Of Adeline, Aurora was omitted, Although her birth and wealth had given her vogue Beyond the charmers we have already cited; Her beauty also seem'd to form no clog Against her being mention'd as well fitted, By many virtues, to be worth the trouble Of single gentlemen who would be double. And this omission, like that of the bust Of Brutus at the pageant of Tiberius, Made Juan wonder, as no doubt he must. This he express'd half smiling and half serious; When Adeline replied with some disgust, And with an air, to say the least, imperious, She marvell'd 'what he saw in such a baby As that prim, silent, cold Aurora Raby?' Juan rejoin'd--'She was a Catholic, And therefore fittest, as of his persuasion; Since he was sure his mother would fall sick, And the Pope thunder excommunication, If-' But here Adeline, who seem'd to pique Herself extremely on the inoculation Of others with her own opinions, stated-- As usual--the same reason which she late did. And wherefore not? A reasonable reason, If good, is none the worse for repetition; If bad, the best way 's certainly to tease on, And amplify: you lose much by concision, Whereas insisting in or out of season Convinces all men, even a politician; Or--what is just the same--it wearies out. So the end 's gain'd, what signifies the route? Why Adeline had this slight prejudice-- For prejudice it was--against a creature As pure as sanctity itself from vice, With all the added charm of form and feature, For me appears a question far too nice, Since Adeline was liberal by nature; But nature 's nature, and has more caprices Than I have time, or will, to take to pieces. Perhaps she did not like the quiet way With which Aurora on those baubles look'd, Which charm most people in their earlier day: For there are few things by mankind less brook'd, And womankind too, if we so may say, Than finding thus their genius stand rebuked, Like 'Anthony's by Caesar,' by the few Who look upon them as they ought to do. It was not envy--Adeline had none; Her place was far beyond it, and her mind. It was not scorn--which could not light on one Whose greatest fault was leaving few to find. It was not jealousy, I think: but shun Following the 'ignes fatui' of mankind. It was not--but 't is easier far, alas! To say what it was not than what it was. Little Aurora deem'd she was the theme Of such discussion. She was there a guest; A beauteous ripple of the brilliant stream Of rank and youth, though purer than the rest, Which flow'd on for a moment in the beam Time sheds a moment o'er each sparkling crest. Had she known this, she would have calmly smiled-- She had so much, or little, of the child. The dashing and proud air of Adeline Imposed not upon her: she saw her blaze Much as she would have seen a glow-worm shine, Then turn'd unto the stars for loftier rays. Juan was something she could not divine, Being no sibyl in the new world's ways; Yet she was nothing dazzled by the meteor, Because she did not pin her faith on feature. His fame too,--for he had that kind of fame Which sometimes plays the deuce with womankind, A heterogeneous mass of glorious blame, Half virtues and whole vices being combined; Faults which attract because they are not tame; Follies trick'd out so brightly that they blind:-- These seals upon her wax made no impression, Such was her coldness or her self-possession. Juan knew nought of such a character-- High, yet resembling not his lost Haidee; Yet each was radiant in her proper sphere: The island girl, bred up by the lone sea, More warm, as lovely, and not less sincere, Was Nature's all: Aurora could not be, Nor would be thus:--the difference in them Was such as lies between a flower and gem. Having wound up with this sublime comparison, Methinks we may proceed upon our narrative, And, as my friend Scott says, 'I sound my warison;' Scott, the superlative of my comparative-- Scott, who can paint your Christian knight or Saracen, Serf, lord, man, with such skill as none would share it, if There had not been one Shakspeare and Voltaire, Of one or both of whom he seems the heir. I say, in my slight way I may proceed To play upon the surface of humanity. I write the world, nor care if the world read, At least for this I cannot spare its vanity. My Muse hath bred, and still perhaps may breed More foes by this same scroll: when I began it, I Thought that it might turn out so--now I know it, But still I am, or was, a pretty poet. The conference or congress (for it ended As congresses of late do) of the Lady Adeline and Don Juan rather blended Some acids with the sweets--for she was heady; But, ere the matter could be marr'd or mended, The silvery bell rang, not for 'dinner ready, But for that hour, call'd half-hour, given to dress, Though ladies' robes seem scant enough for less. Great things were now to be achieved at table, With massy plate for armour, knives and forks For weapons; but what Muse since Homer 's able (His feasts are not the worst part of his works) To draw up in array a single day-bill Of modern dinners? where more mystery lurks, In soups or sauces, or a sole ragout, There was a goodly 'soupe a la bonne femme,' Though God knows whence it came from; there was, too, A turbot for relief of those who cram, Relieved with 'dindon a la Parigeux;' How shall I get this gourmand stanza through?- 'Soupe a la Beauveau,' whose relief was dory, Relieved itself by pork, for greater glory. But I must crowd all into one grand mess Or mass; for should I stretch into detail, My Muse would run much more into excess, Than when some squeamish people deem her frail. But though a 'bonne vivante,' I must confess Her stomach 's not her peccant part; this tale However doth require some slight refection, Just to relieve her spirits from dejection. Fowls 'a la Conde,' slices eke of salmon, With 'sauces Genevoises,' and haunch of venison; Wines too, which might again have slain young Ammon-- A man like whom I hope we shan't see many soon; They also set a glazed Westphalian ham on, Whereon Apicius would bestow his benison; And then there was champagne with foaming whirls, As white as Cleopatra's melted pearls. Then there was God knows what 'a l'Allemande,' 'A l'Espagnole,' 'timballe,' and 'salpicon'- With things I can't withstand or understand, Though swallow'd with much zest upon the whole; And 'entremets' to piddle with at hand, Gently to lull down the subsiding soul; While great Lucullus' Robe triumphal muffles (There 's fame) young partridge fillets, deck'd with truffles. What are the fillets on the victor's brow To these? They are rags or dust. Where is the arch Which nodded to the nation's spoils below? Where the triumphal chariots' haughty march? Gone to where victories must like dinners go. Farther I shall not follow the research: But oh! ye modern heroes with your cartridges, When will your names lend lustre e'en to partridges? Those truffles too are no bad accessaries, Follow'd by 'petits puits d'amour'--a dish Of which perhaps the cookery rather varies, So every one may dress it to his wish, According to the best of dictionaries, Which encyclopedize both flesh and fish; But even sans 'confitures,' it no less true is, There 's pretty picking in those 'petits puits.' The mind is lost in mighty contemplation Of intellect expanded on two courses; And indigestion's grand multiplication Requires arithmetic beyond my forces. Who would suppose, from Adam's simple ration, That cookery could have call'd forth such resources, As form a science and a nomenclature From out the commonest demands of nature? The glasses jingled, and the palates tingled; The diners of celebrity dined well; The ladies with more moderation mingled In the feast, pecking less than I can tell; Also the younger men too: for a springald Can't, like ripe age, in gormandize excel, But thinks less of good eating than the whisper (When seated next him) of some pretty lisper. Alas! I must leave undescribed the gibier, The salmi, the consomme, the puree, All which I use to make my rhymes run glibber Than could roast beef in our rough John Bull way: I must not introduce even a spare rib here, 'Bubble and squeak' would spoil my liquid lay: But I have dined, and must forego, Alas! The chaste description even of a 'becasse;' And fruits, and ice, and all that art refines From nature for the service of the gout-- Taste or the gout,--pronounce it as inclines Your stomach! Ere you dine, the French will do; But after, there are sometimes certain signs Which prove plain English truer of the two. Hast ever had the gout? I have not had it-- But I may have, and you too, reader, dread it. The simple olives, best allies of wine, Must I pass over in my bill of fare? I must, although a favourite 'plat' of mine In Spain, and Lucca, Athens, every where: On them and bread 't was oft my luck to dine, The grass my table-cloth, in open-air, On Sunium or Hymettus, like Diogenes, Of whom half my philosophy the progeny is. Amidst this tumult of fish, flesh, and 'fowl, And vegetables, all in masquerade, The guests were placed according to their roll, But various as the various meats display'd: Don Juan sat next 'an l'Espagnole'- No damsel, but a dish, as hath been said; But so far like a lady, that 't was drest Superbly, and contain'd a world of zest. By some odd chance too, he was placed between Aurora and the Lady Adeline-- A situation difficult, I ween, For man therein, with eyes and heart, to dine. Also the conference which we have seen Was not such as to encourage him to shine; For Adeline, addressing few words to him, With two transcendent eyes seem'd to look through him. I sometimes almost think that eyes have ears: This much is sure, that, out of earshot, things Are somehow echoed to the pretty dears, Of which I can't tell whence their knowledge springs. Like that same mystic music of the spheres, Which no one bears, so loudly though it rings, 'T is wonderful how oft the sex have heard Long dialogues--which pass'd without a word! Aurora sat with that indifference Which piques a preux chevalier--as it ought: Of all offences that 's the worst offence, Which seems to hint you are not worth a thought. Now Juan, though no coxcomb in pretence, Was not exactly pleased to be so caught; Like a good ship entangled among ice, And after so much excellent advice. To his gay nothings, nothing was replied, Or something which was nothing, as urbanity Required. Aurora scarcely look'd aside, Nor even smiled enough for any vanity. The devil was in the girl! Could it be pride? Or modesty, or absence, or inanity? Heaven knows? But Adeline's malicious eyes Sparkled with her successful prophecies, And look'd as much as if to say, 'I said it;' A kind of triumph I 'll not recommend, Because it sometimes, as I have seen or read it, Both in the case of lover and of friend, Will pique a gentleman, for his own credit, To bring what was a jest to a serious end: For all men prophesy what is or was, And hate those who won't let them come to pass. Juan was drawn thus into some attentions, Slight but select, and just enough to express, To females of perspicuous comprehensions, That he would rather make them more than less. Aurora at the last (so history mentions, Though probably much less a fact than guess) So far relax'd her thoughts from their sweet prison, As once or twice to smile, if not to listen. From answering she began to question; this With her was rare: and Adeline, who as yet Thought her predictions went not much amiss, Began to dread she'd thaw to a coquette-- So very difficult, they say, it is To keep extremes from meeting, when once set In motion; but she here too much refined-- Aurora's spirit was not of that kind. But Juan had a sort of winning way, A proud humility, if such there be, Which show'd such deference to what females say, As if each charming word were a decree. His tact, too, temper'd him from grave to gay, And taught him when to be reserved or free: He had the art of drawing people out, Without their seeing what he was about. Aurora, who in her indifference Confounded him in common with the crowd Of flatterers, though she deem'd he had more sense Than whispering foplings, or than witlings loud-- Commenced (from such slight things will great commence) To feel that flattery which attracts the proud Rather by deference than compliment, And wins even by a delicate dissent. And then he had good looks;--that point was carried Nem. con. amongst the women, which I grieve To say leads oft to crim. con. with the married-- A case which to the juries we may leave, Since with digressions we too long have tarried. Now though we know of old that looks deceive, And always have done, somehow these good looks Make more impression than the best of books. Aurora, who look'd more on books than faces, Was very young, although so very sage, Admiring more Minerva than the Graces, Especially upon a printed page. But Virtue's self, with all her tightest laces, Has not the natural stays of strict old age; And Socrates, that model of all duty, Own'd to a penchant, though discreet, for beauty. And girls of sixteen are thus far Socratic, But innocently so, as Socrates; And really, if the sage sublime and Attic At seventy years had phantasies like these, Which Plato in his dialogues dramatic Has shown, I know not why they should displease In virgins--always in a modest way, Observe; for that with me 's a 'sine qua.' Also observe, that, like the great Lord Coke (See Littleton), whene'er I have express'd Opinions two, which at first sight may look Twin opposites, the second is the best. Perhaps I have a third, too, in a nook, Or none at all--which seems a sorry jest: But if a writer should be quite consistent, How could he possibly show things existent? If people contradict themselves, can Help contradicting them, and every body, Even my veracious self?--But that 's a lie: I never did so, never will--how should I? He who doubts all things nothing can deny: Truth's fountains may be clear--her streams are muddy, And cut through such canals of contradiction, That she must often navigate o'er fiction. Apologue, fable, poesy, and parable, Are false, but may he render'd also true, By those who sow them in a land that 's arable. 'T is wonderful what fable will not do! 'T is said it makes reality more bearable: But what 's reality? Who has its clue? Philosophy? No: she too much rejects. Religion? Yes; but which of all her sects? Some millions must be wrong, that 's pretty dear; Perhaps it may turn out that all were right. God help us! Since we have need on our career To keep our holy beacons always bright, 'T is time that some new prophet should appear, Or old indulge man with a second sight. Opinions wear out in some thousand years, Without a small refreshment from the spheres. But here again, why will I thus entangle Myself with metaphysics? None can hate So much as I do any kind of wrangle; And yet, such is my folly, or my fate, I always knock my head against some angle About the present, past, or future state. Yet I wish well to Trojan and to Tyrian, For I was bred a moderate Presbyterian. But though I am a temperate theologian, And also meek as a metaphysician, Impartial between Tyrian and Trojan, As Eldon on a lunatic commission-- In politics my duty is to show John Bull something of the lower world's condition. It makes my blood boil like the springs of Hecla, To see men let these scoundrel sovereigns break law. But politics, and policy, and piety, Are topics which I sometimes introduce, Not only for the sake of their variety, But as subservient to a moral use; Because my business is to dress society, And stuff with sage that very verdant goose. And now, that we may furnish with some matter all Tastes, we are going to try the supernatural. And now I will give up all argument; And positively henceforth no temptation Shall 'fool me to the top up of my bent:'- Yes, I' ll begin a thorough reformation. Indeed, I never knew what people meant By deeming that my Muse's conversation Was dangerous;--I think she is as harmless As some who labour more and yet may charm less. Grim reader! did you ever see a ghost? No; but you have heard--I understand--be dumb! And don't regret the time you may have lost, For you have got that pleasure still to come: And do not think I mean to sneer at most Of these things, or by ridicule benumb That source of the sublime and the mysterious:-- For certain reasons my belief is serious. Serious? You laugh;--you may: that will I not; My smiles must be sincere or not at all. I say I do believe a haunted spot Exists--and where? That shall I not recall, Because I 'd rather it should be forgot, 'Shadows the soul of Richard' may appal. In short, upon that subject I 've some qualms very Like those of the philosopher of Malmsbury. The night (I sing by night--sometimes an owl, And now and then a nightingale) is dim, And the loud shriek of sage Minerva's fowl Rattles around me her discordant hymn: Old portraits from old walls upon me scowl-- I wish to heaven they would not look so grim; The dying embers dwindle in the grate-- I think too that I have sate up too late: And therefore, though 't is by no means my way To rhyme at noon--when I have other things To think of, if I ever think--I say I feel some chilly midnight shudderings, And prudently postpone, until mid-day, Treating a topic which, alas! but brings Shadows;--but you must be in my condition Before you learn to call this superstition.

After five stanzas on the author's poor opinion of life, Byron provides some more characterization of Don Juan, or at least reinforces what he had already provided. Juan's manner is natural; he makes no attempt to make an impression. There is nothing studied or artificial in his conduct. He is without pretense and his demeanor suggests sincerity. There is gentleness about him that attracts and that wards off suspicion. There is even a certain aloofness about him. He is serene, accomplished, cheerful, quiet, observant, and self-confident. Such are the personality and character of Don Juan at the age of twenty-one. He is obviously a source of danger to the prudent Lady Adeline, who wouldn't spare a look for an ogling, handsome dandy or a sophisticated seducer. The appearance of virtue in a Don Juan is her chief enemy; she is "no deep judge of character," and she is apt to transfer what is good in her own character to a man she feels attracted to. 'Tis thus the Good will amiably err,And eke the Wise, as has been often shown. After his characterization of Don Juan, Byron stops to deliver some apology for what he is doing. He confesses he has no high aim or art: And never straining hard to versify, I rattle on exactly as I'd talkWith anybody in a ride or walk." He claims at least . . . a conversational facility,Which may round off an hour upon a time. But he has his pride and independence; he will not court the critics and so writes as he does. If he wanted to please them he would be more comic. But he was born for opposition he cannot help being on the side of the underdog, and he would not have written poetry at all if someone had not told him not to write verse. He also has a difficult task, namely, to give a natural picture of manners that are artificial. Having explained his poetic manner and task, Byron returns to Adeline, but he soon feels that he must generalize upon the particular. Adeline decides that, if Juan's soul is to be saved, he must marry. That calls for several ironic comments on matchmaking and the ironies of the married state. Adeline suggests several good matches, including Miss Millpond, "smooth as summer's sea," an obvious, sarcastic reference to the Miss Milbanke who become Lady Byron. One good prospect whom Adeline does not mention, a fact which puzzles Don Juan, is the sixteen-year-old Aurora Raby. She is a Catholic, an orphan, wealthy, noble, pious, and virtuous. Byron contrasts her with Haidee, the product of nature rather than of society: . . . the difference in themWas such as lies between a flower and gem. She is a perfect creature in a generally corrupt society. She has become what she is in spite of that society. The marriage conference between Adeline and Juan terminates indecisively, brought to an end by the sound of the dinner bell. The dinner menu is described in some detail. Juan is placed, "by some odd chance," between Aurora and Lady Adeline. Aurora, for some reason that Byron pretends not to know, pays little attention to Juan's gay conversation. Her aloofness causes Juan to exert himself all the more, and he finally succeeds in arousing her interest. Juan "had the art of drawing people out," and, "then he had good looks" . The canto concludes with the author's promise that a ghost will be introduced in the following canto.

SCENE III. Rome. The Forum Enter seven or eight citizens FIRST CITIZEN. Once, if he do require our voices, we ought not to deny him. SECOND CITIZEN. We may, sir, if we will. THIRD CITIZEN. We have power in ourselves to do it, but it is a power that we have no power to do; for if he show us his wounds and tell us his deeds, we are to put our tongues into those wounds and speak for them; so, if he tell us his noble deeds, we must also tell him our noble acceptance of them. Ingratitude is monstrous, and for the multitude to be ingrateful were to make a monster of the multitude; of the which we being members should bring ourselves to be monstrous members. FIRST CITIZEN. And to make us no better thought of, a little help will serve; for once we stood up about the corn, he himself stuck not to call us the many-headed multitude. THIRD CITIZEN. We have been call'd so of many; not that our heads are some brown, some black, some auburn, some bald, but that our wits are so diversely colour'd; and truly I think if all our wits were to issue out of one skull, they would fly east, west, north, south, and their consent of one direct way should be at once to all the points o' th' compass. SECOND CITIZEN. Think you so? Which way do you judge my wit would fly? THIRD CITIZEN. Nay, your wit will not so soon out as another man's will- 'tis strongly wedg'd up in a block-head; but if it were at liberty 'twould sure southward. SECOND CITIZEN. Why that way? THIRD CITIZEN. To lose itself in a fog; where being three parts melted away with rotten dews, the fourth would return for conscience' sake, to help to get thee a wife. SECOND CITIZEN. You are never without your tricks; you may, you may. THIRD CITIZEN. Are you all resolv'd to give your voices? But that's no matter, the greater part carries it. I say, if he would incline to the people, there was never a worthier man. Enter CORIOLANUS, in a gown of humility, with MENENIUS Here he comes, and in the gown of humility. Mark his behaviour. We are not to stay all together, but to come by him where he stands, by ones, by twos, and by threes. He's to make his requests by particulars, wherein every one of us has a single honour, in giving him our own voices with our own tongues; therefore follow me, and I'll direct you how you shall go by him. ALL. Content, content. Exeunt citizens MENENIUS. O sir, you are not right; have you not known The worthiest men have done't? CORIOLANUS. What must I say? 'I pray, sir'- Plague upon't! I cannot bring My tongue to such a pace. 'Look, sir, my wounds I got them in my country's service, when Some certain of your brethren roar'd and ran From th' noise of our own drums.' MENENIUS. O me, the gods! You must not speak of that. You must desire them To think upon you. CORIOLANUS. Think upon me? Hang 'em! I would they would forget me, like the virtues Which our divines lose by 'em. MENENIUS. You'll mar all. I'll leave you. Pray you speak to 'em, I pray you, In wholesome manner. Exit Re-enter three of the citizens CORIOLANUS. Bid them wash their faces And keep their teeth clean. So, here comes a brace. You know the cause, sir, of my standing here. THIRD CITIZEN. We do, sir; tell us what hath brought you to't. CORIOLANUS. Mine own desert. SECOND CITIZEN. Your own desert? CORIOLANUS. Ay, not mine own desire. THIRD CITIZEN. How, not your own desire? CORIOLANUS. No, sir, 'twas never my desire yet to trouble the poor with begging. THIRD CITIZEN. You must think, if we give you anything, we hope to gain by you. CORIOLANUS. Well then, I pray, your price o' th' consulship? FIRST CITIZEN. The price is to ask it kindly. CORIOLANUS. Kindly, sir, I pray let me ha't. I have wounds to show you, which shall be yours in private. Your good voice, sir; what say you? SECOND CITIZEN. You shall ha' it, worthy sir. CORIOLANUS. A match, sir. There's in all two worthy voices begg'd. I have your alms. Adieu. THIRD CITIZEN. But this is something odd. SECOND CITIZEN. An 'twere to give again- but 'tis no matter. Exeunt the three citizens Re-enter two other citizens CORIOLANUS. Pray you now, if it may stand with the tune of your voices that I may be consul, I have here the customary gown. FOURTH CITIZEN. You have deserved nobly of your country, and you have not deserved nobly. CORIOLANUS. Your enigma? FOURTH CITIZEN. You have been a scourge to her enemies; you have been a rod to her friends. You have not indeed loved the common people. CORIOLANUS. You should account me the more virtuous, that I have not been common in my love. I will, sir, flatter my sworn brother, the people, to earn a dearer estimation of them; 'tis a condition they account gentle; and since the wisdom of their choice is rather to have my hat than my heart, I will practise the insinuating nod and be off to them most counterfeitly. That is, sir, I will counterfeit the bewitchment of some popular man and give it bountiful to the desirers. Therefore, beseech you I may be consul. FIFTH CITIZEN. We hope to find you our friend; and therefore give you our voices heartily. FOURTH CITIZEN. You have received many wounds for your country. CORIOLANUS. I will not seal your knowledge with showing them. I will make much of your voices, and so trouble you no farther. BOTH CITIZENS. The gods give you joy, sir, heartily! Exeunt citizens CORIOLANUS. Most sweet voices! Better it is to die, better to starve, Than crave the hire which first we do deserve. Why in this wolvish toge should I stand here To beg of Hob and Dick that do appear Their needless vouches? Custom calls me to't. What custom wills, in all things should we do't, The dust on antique time would lie unswept, And mountainous error be too highly heap'd For truth to o'erpeer. Rather than fool it so, Let the high office and the honour go To one that would do thus. I am half through: The one part suffered, the other will I do. Re-enter three citizens more Here come more voices. Your voices. For your voices I have fought; Watch'd for your voices; for your voices bear Of wounds two dozen odd; battles thrice six I have seen and heard of; for your voices have Done many things, some less, some more. Your voices? Indeed, I would be consul. SIXTH CITIZEN. He has done nobly, and cannot go without any honest man's voice. SEVENTH CITIZEN. Therefore let him be consul. The gods give him joy, and make him good friend to the people! ALL. Amen, amen. God save thee, noble consul! Exeunt citizens CORIOLANUS. Worthy voices! Re-enter MENENIUS with BRUTUS and SICINIUS MENENIUS. You have stood your limitation, and the tribunes Endue you with the people's voice. Remains That, in th' official marks invested, you Anon do meet the Senate. CORIOLANUS. Is this done? SICINIUS. The custom of request you have discharg'd. The people do admit you, and are summon'd To meet anon, upon your approbation. CORIOLANUS. Where? At the Senate House? SICINIUS. There, Coriolanus. CORIOLANUS. May I change these garments? SICINIUS. You may, sir. CORIOLANUS. That I'll straight do, and, knowing myself again, Repair to th' Senate House. MENENIUS. I'll keep you company. Will you along? BRUTUS. We stay here for the people. SICINIUS. Fare you well. Exeunt CORIOLANUS and MENENIUS He has it now; and by his looks methinks 'Tis warm at's heart. BRUTUS. With a proud heart he wore His humble weeds. Will you dismiss the people? Re-enter citizens SICINIUS. How now, my masters! Have you chose this man? FIRST CITIZEN. He has our voices, sir. BRUTUS. We pray the gods he may deserve your loves. SECOND CITIZEN. Amen, sir. To my poor unworthy notice, He mock'd us when he begg'd our voices. THIRD CITIZEN. Certainly; He flouted us downright. FIRST CITIZEN. No, 'tis his kind of speech- he did not mock us. SECOND CITIZEN. Not one amongst us, save yourself, but says He us'd us scornfully. He should have show'd us His marks of merit, wounds receiv'd for's country. SICINIUS. Why, so he did, I am sure. ALL. No, no; no man saw 'em. THIRD CITIZEN. He said he had wounds which he could show in private, And with his hat, thus waving it in scorn, 'I would be consul,' says he; 'aged custom But by your voices will not so permit me; Your voices therefore.' When we granted that, Here was 'I thank you for your voices. Thank you, Your most sweet voices. Now you have left your voices, I have no further with you.' Was not this mockery? SICINIUS. Why either were you ignorant to see't, Or, seeing it, of such childish friendliness To yield your voices? BRUTUS. Could you not have told him- As you were lesson'd- when he had no power But was a petty servant to the state, He was your enemy; ever spake against Your liberties and the charters that you bear I' th' body of the weal; and now, arriving A place of potency and sway o' th' state, If he should still malignantly remain Fast foe to th' plebeii, your voices might Be curses to yourselves? You should have said That as his worthy deeds did claim no less Than what he stood for, so his gracious nature Would think upon you for your voices, and Translate his malice towards you into love, Standing your friendly lord. SICINIUS. Thus to have said, As you were fore-advis'd, had touch'd his spirit And tried his inclination; from him pluck'd Either his gracious promise, which you might, As cause had call'd you up, have held him to; Or else it would have gall'd his surly nature, Which easily endures not article Tying him to aught. So, putting him to rage, You should have ta'en th' advantage of his choler And pass'd him unelected. BRUTUS. Did you perceive He did solicit you in free contempt When he did need your loves; and do you think That his contempt shall not be bruising to you When he hath power to crush? Why, had your bodies No heart among you? Or had you tongues to cry Against the rectorship of judgment? SICINIUS. Have you Ere now denied the asker, and now again, Of him that did not ask but mock, bestow Your su'd-for tongues? THIRD CITIZEN. He's not confirm'd: we may deny him yet. SECOND CITIZENS. And will deny him; I'll have five hundred voices of that sound. FIRST CITIZEN. I twice five hundred, and their friends to piece 'em. BRUTUS. Get you hence instantly, and tell those friends They have chose a consul that will from them take Their liberties, make them of no more voice Than dogs, that are as often beat for barking As therefore kept to do so. SICINIUS. Let them assemble; And, on a safer judgment, all revoke Your ignorant election. Enforce his pride And his old hate unto you; besides, forget not With what contempt he wore the humble weed; How in his suit he scorn'd you; but your loves, Thinking upon his services, took from you Th' apprehension of his present portance, Which, most gibingly, ungravely, he did fashion After the inveterate hate he bears you. BRUTUS. Lay A fault on us, your tribunes, that we labour'd, No impediment between, but that you must Cast your election on him. SICINIUS. Say you chose him More after our commandment than as guided By your own true affections; and that your minds, Pre-occupied with what you rather must do Than what you should, made you against the grain To voice him consul. Lay the fault on us. BRUTUS. Ay, spare us not. Say we read lectures to you, How youngly he began to serve his country, How long continued; and what stock he springs of- The noble house o' th' Marcians; from whence came That Ancus Marcius, Numa's daughter's son, Who, after great Hostilius, here was king; Of the same house Publius and Quintus were, That our best water brought by conduits hither; And Censorinus, nobly named so, Twice being by the people chosen censor, Was his great ancestor. SICINIUS. One thus descended, That hath beside well in his person wrought To be set high in place, we did commend To your remembrances; but you have found, Scaling his present bearing with his past, That he's your fixed enemy, and revoke Your sudden approbation. BRUTUS. Say you ne'er had done't- Harp on that still- but by our putting on; And presently, when you have drawn your number, Repair to th' Capitol. CITIZENS. We will so; almost all Repent in their election. Exeunt plebeians BRUTUS. Let them go on; This mutiny were better put in hazard Than stay, past doubt, for greater. If, as his nature is, he fall in rage With their refusal, both observe and answer The vantage of his anger. SICINIUS. To th' Capitol, come. We will be there before the stream o' th' people; And this shall seem, as partly 'tis, their own, Which we have goaded onward. Exeunt ACT III. SCENE I. Rome. A street Cornets. Enter CORIOLANUS, MENENIUS, all the GENTRY, COMINIUS, TITUS LARTIUS, and other SENATORS CORIOLANUS. Tullus Aufidius, then, had made new head? LARTIUS. He had, my lord; and that it was which caus'd Our swifter composition. CORIOLANUS. So then the Volsces stand but as at first, Ready, when time shall prompt them, to make road Upon's again. COMINIUS. They are worn, Lord Consul, so That we shall hardly in our ages see Their banners wave again. CORIOLANUS. Saw you Aufidius? LARTIUS. On safeguard he came to me, and did curse Against the Volsces, for they had so vilely Yielded the town. He is retir'd to Antium. CORIOLANUS. Spoke he of me? LARTIUS. He did, my lord. CORIOLANUS. How? What? LARTIUS. How often he had met you, sword to sword; That of all things upon the earth he hated Your person most; that he would pawn his fortunes To hopeless restitution, so he might Be call'd your vanquisher. CORIOLANUS. At Antium lives he? LARTIUS. At Antium. CORIOLANUS. I wish I had a cause to seek him there, To oppose his hatred fully. Welcome home. Enter SICINIUS and BRUTUS Behold, these are the tribunes of the people, The tongues o' th' common mouth. I do despise them, For they do prank them in authority, Against all noble sufferance. SICINIUS. Pass no further. CORIOLANUS. Ha! What is that? BRUTUS. It will be dangerous to go on- no further. CORIOLANUS. What makes this change? MENENIUS. The matter? COMINIUS. Hath he not pass'd the noble and the common? BRUTUS. Cominius, no. CORIOLANUS. Have I had children's voices? FIRST SENATOR. Tribunes, give way: he shall to th' market-place. BRUTUS. The people are incens'd against him. SICINIUS. Stop, Or all will fall in broil. CORIOLANUS. Are these your herd? Must these have voices, that can yield them now And straight disclaim their tongues? What are your offices? You being their mouths, why rule you not their teeth? Have you not set them on? MENENIUS. Be calm, be calm. CORIOLANUS. It is a purpos'd thing, and grows by plot, To curb the will of the nobility; Suffer't, and live with such as cannot rule Nor ever will be rul'd. BRUTUS. Call't not a plot. The people cry you mock'd them; and of late, When corn was given them gratis, you repin'd; Scandal'd the suppliants for the people, call'd them Time-pleasers, flatterers, foes to nobleness. CORIOLANUS. Why, this was known before. BRUTUS. Not to them all. CORIOLANUS. Have you inform'd them sithence? BRUTUS. How? I inform them! COMINIUS. You are like to do such business. BRUTUS. Not unlike Each way to better yours. CORIOLANUS. Why then should I be consul? By yond clouds, Let me deserve so ill as you, and make me Your fellow tribune. SICINIUS. You show too much of that For which the people stir; if you will pass To where you are bound, you must enquire your way, Which you are out of, with a gentler spirit, Or never be so noble as a consul, Nor yoke with him for tribune. MENENIUS. Let's be calm. COMINIUS. The people are abus'd; set on. This palt'ring Becomes not Rome; nor has Coriolanus Deserved this so dishonour'd rub, laid falsely I' th' plain way of his merit. CORIOLANUS. Tell me of corn! This was my speech, and I will speak't again- MENENIUS. Not now, not now. FIRST SENATOR. Not in this heat, sir, now. CORIOLANUS. Now, as I live, I will. My nobler friends, I crave their pardons. For the mutable, rank-scented many, let them Regard me as I do not flatter, and Therein behold themselves. I say again, In soothing them we nourish 'gainst our Senate The cockle of rebellion, insolence, sedition, Which we ourselves have plough'd for, sow'd, and scatter'd, By mingling them with us, the honour'd number, Who lack not virtue, no, nor power, but that Which they have given to beggars. MENENIUS. Well, no more. FIRST SENATOR. No more words, we beseech you. CORIOLANUS. How? no more! As for my country I have shed my blood, Not fearing outward force, so shall my lungs Coin words till their decay against those measles Which we disdain should tetter us, yet sought The very way to catch them. BRUTUS. You speak o' th' people As if you were a god, to punish; not A man of their infirmity. SICINIUS. 'Twere well We let the people know't. MENENIUS. What, what? his choler? CORIOLANUS. Choler! Were I as patient as the midnight sleep, By Jove, 'twould be my mind! SICINIUS. It is a mind That shall remain a poison where it is, Not poison any further. CORIOLANUS. Shall remain! Hear you this Triton of the minnows? Mark you His absolute 'shall'? COMINIUS. 'Twas from the canon. CORIOLANUS. 'Shall'! O good but most unwise patricians! Why, You grave but reckless senators, have you thus Given Hydra leave to choose an officer That with his peremptory 'shall,' being but The horn and noise o' th' monster's, wants not spirit To say he'll turn your current in a ditch, And make your channel his? If he have power, Then vail your ignorance; if none, awake Your dangerous lenity. If you are learn'd, Be not as common fools; if you are not, Let them have cushions by you. You are plebeians, If they be senators; and they are no less, When, both your voices blended, the great'st taste Most palates theirs. They choose their magistrate; And such a one as he, who puts his 'shall,' His popular 'shall,' against a graver bench Than ever frown'd in Greece. By Jove himself, It makes the consuls base; and my soul aches To know, when two authorities are up, Neither supreme, how soon confusion May enter 'twixt the gap of both and take The one by th' other. COMINIUS. Well, on to th' market-place. CORIOLANUS. Whoever gave that counsel to give forth The corn o' th' storehouse gratis, as 'twas us'd Sometime in Greece- MENENIUS. Well, well, no more of that. CORIOLANUS. Though there the people had more absolute pow'r- I say they nourish'd disobedience, fed The ruin of the state. BRUTUS. Why shall the people give One that speaks thus their voice? CORIOLANUS. I'll give my reasons, More worthier than their voices. They know the corn Was not our recompense, resting well assur'd They ne'er did service for't; being press'd to th' war Even when the navel of the state was touch'd, They would not thread the gates. This kind of service Did not deserve corn gratis. Being i' th' war, Their mutinies and revolts, wherein they show'd Most valour, spoke not for them. Th' accusation Which they have often made against the Senate, All cause unborn, could never be the motive Of our so frank donation. Well, what then? How shall this bosom multiplied digest The Senate's courtesy? Let deeds express What's like to be their words: 'We did request it; We are the greater poll, and in true fear They gave us our demands.' Thus we debase The nature of our seats, and make the rabble Call our cares fears; which will in time Break ope the locks o' th' Senate and bring in The crows to peck the eagles. MENENIUS. Come, enough. BRUTUS. Enough, with over measure. CORIOLANUS. No, take more. What may be sworn by, both divine and human, Seal what I end withal! This double worship, Where one part does disdain with cause, the other Insult without all reason; where gentry, title, wisdom, Cannot conclude but by the yea and no Of general ignorance- it must omit Real necessities, and give way the while To unstable slightness. Purpose so barr'd, it follows Nothing is done to purpose. Therefore, beseech you- You that will be less fearful than discreet; That love the fundamental part of state More than you doubt the change on't; that prefer A noble life before a long, and wish To jump a body with a dangerous physic That's sure of death without it- at once pluck out The multitudinous tongue; let them not lick The sweet which is their poison. Your dishonour Mangles true judgment, and bereaves the state Of that integrity which should become't, Not having the power to do the good it would, For th' ill which doth control't. BRUTUS. Has said enough. SICINIUS. Has spoken like a traitor and shall answer As traitors do. CORIOLANUS. Thou wretch, despite o'erwhelm thee! What should the people do with these bald tribunes, On whom depending, their obedience fails To the greater bench? In a rebellion, When what's not meet, but what must be, was law, Then were they chosen; in a better hour Let what is meet be said it must be meet, And throw their power i' th' dust. BRUTUS. Manifest treason! SICINIUS. This a consul? No. BRUTUS. The aediles, ho! Enter an AEDILE Let him be apprehended. SICINIUS. Go call the people, [Exit AEDILE] in whose name myself Attach thee as a traitorous innovator, A foe to th' public weal. Obey, I charge thee, And follow to thine answer. CORIOLANUS. Hence, old goat! PATRICIANS. We'll surety him. COMINIUS. Ag'd sir, hands off. CORIOLANUS. Hence, rotten thing! or I shall shake thy bones Out of thy garments. SICINIUS. Help, ye citizens! Enter a rabble of plebeians, with the AEDILES MENENIUS. On both sides more respect. SICINIUS. Here's he that would take from you all your power. BRUTUS. Seize him, aediles. PLEBEIANS. Down with him! down with him! SECOND SENATOR. Weapons, weapons, weapons! [They all bustle about CORIOLANUS] ALL. Tribunes! patricians! citizens! What, ho! Sicinius! Brutus! Coriolanus! Citizens! PATRICIANS. Peace, peace, peace; stay, hold, peace! MENENIUS. What is about to be? I am out of breath; Confusion's near; I cannot speak. You tribunes To th' people- Coriolanus, patience! Speak, good Sicinius. SICINIUS. Hear me, people; peace! PLEBEIANS. Let's hear our tribune. Peace! Speak, speak, speak. SICINIUS. You are at point to lose your liberties. Marcius would have all from you; Marcius, Whom late you have nam'd for consul. MENENIUS. Fie, fie, fie! This is the way to kindle, not to quench. FIRST SENATOR. To unbuild the city, and to lay all flat. SICINIUS. What is the city but the people? PLEBEIANS. True, The people are the city. BRUTUS. By the consent of all we were establish'd The people's magistrates. PLEBEIANS. You so remain. MENENIUS. And so are like to do. COMINIUS. That is the way to lay the city flat, To bring the roof to the foundation, And bury all which yet distinctly ranges In heaps and piles of ruin. SICINIUS. This deserves death. BRUTUS. Or let us stand to our authority Or let us lose it. We do here pronounce, Upon the part o' th' people, in whose power We were elected theirs: Marcius is worthy Of present death. SICINIUS. Therefore lay hold of him; Bear him to th' rock Tarpeian, and from thence Into destruction cast him. BRUTUS. AEdiles, seize him. PLEBEIANS. Yield, Marcius, yield. MENENIUS. Hear me one word; beseech you, Tribunes, Hear me but a word. AEDILES. Peace, peace! MENENIUS. Be that you seem, truly your country's friend, And temp'rately proceed to what you would Thus violently redress. BRUTUS. Sir, those cold ways, That seem like prudent helps, are very poisonous Where the disease is violent. Lay hands upon him And bear him to the rock. [CORIOLANUS draws his sword] CORIOLANUS. No: I'll die here. There's some among you have beheld me fighting; Come, try upon yourselves what you have seen me. MENENIUS. Down with that sword! Tribunes, withdraw awhile. BRUTUS. Lay hands upon him. MENENIUS. Help Marcius, help, You that be noble; help him, young and old. PLEBEIANS. Down with him, down with him! [In this mutiny the TRIBUNES, the AEDILES, and the people are beat in] MENENIUS. Go, get you to your house; be gone, away. All will be nought else. SECOND SENATOR. Get you gone. CORIOLANUS. Stand fast; We have as many friends as enemies. MENENIUS. Shall it be put to that? FIRST SENATOR. The gods forbid! I prithee, noble friend, home to thy house; Leave us to cure this cause. MENENIUS. For 'tis a sore upon us You cannot tent yourself; be gone, beseech you. COMINIUS. Come, sir, along with us. CORIOLANUS. I would they were barbarians, as they are, Though in Rome litter'd; not Romans, as they are not, Though calved i' th' porch o' th' Capitol. MENENIUS. Be gone. Put not your worthy rage into your tongue; One time will owe another. CORIOLANUS. On fair ground I could beat forty of them. MENENIUS. I could myself Take up a brace o' th' best of them; yea, the two tribunes. COMINIUS. But now 'tis odds beyond arithmetic, And manhood is call'd foolery when it stands Against a falling fabric. Will you hence, Before the tag return? whose rage doth rend Like interrupted waters, and o'erbear What they are us'd to bear. MENENIUS. Pray you be gone. I'll try whether my old wit be in request With those that have but little; this must be patch'd With cloth of any colour. COMINIUS. Nay, come away. Exeunt CORIOLANUS and COMINIUS, with others PATRICIANS. This man has marr'd his fortune. MENENIUS. His nature is too noble for the world: He would not flatter Neptune for his trident, Or Jove for's power to thunder. His heart's his mouth; What his breast forges, that his tongue must vent; And, being angry, does forget that ever He heard the name of death. [A noise within] Here's goodly work! PATRICIANS. I would they were a-bed. MENENIUS. I would they were in Tiber. What the vengeance, could he not speak 'em fair? Re-enter BRUTUS and SICINIUS, the rabble again SICINIUS. Where is this viper That would depopulate the city and Be every man himself? MENENIUS. You worthy Tribunes- SICINIUS. He shall be thrown down the Tarpeian rock With rigorous hands; he hath resisted law, And therefore law shall scorn him further trial Than the severity of the public power, Which he so sets at nought. FIRST CITIZEN. He shall well know The noble tribunes are the people's mouths, And we their hands. PLEBEIANS. He shall, sure on't. MENENIUS. Sir, sir- SICINIUS. Peace! MENENIUS. Do not cry havoc, where you should but hunt With modest warrant. SICINIUS. Sir, how comes't that you Have holp to make this rescue? MENENIUS. Hear me speak. As I do know the consul's worthiness, So can I name his faults. SICINIUS. Consul! What consul? MENENIUS. The consul Coriolanus. BRUTUS. He consul! PLEBEIANS. No, no, no, no, no. MENENIUS. If, by the tribunes' leave, and yours, good people, I may be heard, I would crave a word or two; The which shall turn you to no further harm Than so much loss of time. SICINIUS. Speak briefly, then, For we are peremptory to dispatch This viperous traitor; to eject him hence Were but one danger, and to keep him here Our certain death; therefore it is decreed He dies to-night. MENENIUS. Now the good gods forbid That our renowned Rome, whose gratitude Towards her deserved children is enroll'd In Jove's own book, like an unnatural dam Should now eat up her own! SICINIUS. He's a disease that must be cut away. MENENIUS. O, he's a limb that has but a disease- Mortal, to cut it off: to cure it, easy. What has he done to Rome that's worthy death? Killing our enemies, the blood he hath lost- Which I dare vouch is more than that he hath By many an ounce- he dropt it for his country; And what is left, to lose it by his country Were to us all that do't and suffer it A brand to th' end o' th' world. SICINIUS. This is clean kam. BRUTUS. Merely awry. When he did love his country, It honour'd him. SICINIUS. The service of the foot, Being once gangren'd, is not then respected For what before it was. BRUTUS. We'll hear no more. Pursue him to his house and pluck him thence, Lest his infection, being of catching nature, Spread further. MENENIUS. One word more, one word This tiger-footed rage, when it shall find The harm of unscann'd swiftness, will, too late, Tie leaden pounds to's heels. Proceed by process, Lest parties- as he is belov'd- break out, And sack great Rome with Romans. BRUTUS. If it were so- SICINIUS. What do ye talk? Have we not had a taste of his obedience- Our aediles smote, ourselves resisted? Come! MENENIUS. Consider this: he has been bred i' th' wars Since 'a could draw a sword, and is ill school'd In bolted language; meal and bran together He throws without distinction. Give me leave, I'll go to him and undertake to bring him Where he shall answer by a lawful form, In peace, to his utmost peril. FIRST SENATOR. Noble Tribunes, It is the humane way; the other course Will prove too bloody, and the end of it Unknown to the beginning. SICINIUS. Noble Menenius, Be you then as the people's officer. Masters, lay down your weapons. BRUTUS. Go not home. SICINIUS. Meet on the market-place. We'll attend you there; Where, if you bring not Marcius, we'll proceed In our first way. MENENIUS. I'll bring him to you. [To the SENATORS] Let me desire your company; he must come, Or what is worst will follow. FIRST SENATOR. Pray you let's to him. Exeunt

In the marketplace, a collection of citizens discusses Coriolanus's candidacy, saying that if he uses the scars of battle in his appeal to them, they will probably make him consul. Then, Coriolanus himself comes in, accompanied by Menenius, who offers encouragement and then leaves his friend alone with the crowds, which come to him in small groups. Coriolanus struggles and cannot conceal his customary arrogance, but by calling attention to his military service, he manages to convince a large body of the citizens to vote for him. Brutus and Sicinius reluctantly acknowledge that he has passed the test, and Menenius leads him back to the Capitol to be invested with the robes of office. When Coriolanus has gone, the plebeians remark on his arrogance, and the two tribunes demand to know why they voted for such an arrogant patrician. The plebeians decide to retract their approval and deny Coriolanus the consulship; elated, Brutus and Sicinius tell the crowds to gather their friends and go to the Capitol. Covering their own backs, the two tribunes advise the crowds to say that they only voted for Coriolanus because the tribunes told them to and that now they have come to their senses and want to have the vote rendered invalid. Meanwhile, on the Capitol, Titus Lartius tells Coriolanus that Tullus Aufidius has raised a new army. Coriolanus worries that the Volsces will attack Rome despite the newly signed peace treaty, but Lartius assures him that they have been broken and will not fight again. At that moment, the two tribunes arrive and tell the assembled Senators that the people of Rome will not accept Coriolanus as consul. Furious, Coriolanus accuses Brutus and Sicinius of rallying the plebeians against him and then begins to denigrate the common people, warning his fellow patricians that allowing the rabble to hold power, to have tribunes, will ultimately lead to the downfall of the Senate. Menenius urges him to return to the market and beg the people's pardon, but Coriolanus refuses and continues to denounce the plebeians--and the patricians, for having ever agreed to allow them a share in Rome's governance. Brutus and Sicinius accuse him of treason and call in a crowd of plebeians to seize him. He raves at them, and the two tribunes declare that he must be executed; in response, Coriolanus draws his sword, and the Senators come to his aid. Coriolanus and the Senators drive away the mob of plebeians, along with the two tribunes, and Coriolanus flees to a Senator's house. The mob returns in renewed strength, but Menenius convinces the people to allow him to reason with Coriolanus and to bring the great soldier to the market place for a public airing of all the grievances.

CHAPTER X THE house was haunted, long before evening. Shadows slipped down the walls and waited behind every chair. Did that door move? No. She wouldn't go to the Jolly Seventeen. She hadn't energy enough to caper before them, to smile blandly at Juanita's rudeness. Not today. But she did want a party. Now! If some one would come in this afternoon, some one who liked her--Vida or Mrs. Sam Clark or old Mrs. Champ Perry or gentle Mrs. Dr. Westlake. Or Guy Pollock! She'd telephone---- No. That wouldn't be it. They must come of themselves. Perhaps they would. Why not? She'd have tea ready, anyway. If they came--splendid. If not--what did she care? She wasn't going to yield to the village and let down; she was going to keep up a belief in the rite of tea, to which she had always looked forward as the symbol of a leisurely fine existence. And it would be just as much fun, even if it was so babyish, to have tea by herself and pretend that she was entertaining clever men. It would! She turned the shining thought into action. She bustled to the kitchen, stoked the wood-range, sang Schumann while she boiled the kettle, warmed up raisin cookies on a newspaper spread on the rack in the oven. She scampered up-stairs to bring down her filmiest tea-cloth. She arranged a silver tray. She proudly carried it into the living-room and set it on the long cherrywood table, pushing aside a hoop of embroidery, a volume of Conrad from the library, copies of the Saturday Evening Post, the Literary Digest, and Kennicott's National Geographic Magazine. She moved the tray back and forth and regarded the effect. She shook her head. She busily unfolded the sewing-table set it in the bay-window, patted the tea-cloth to smoothness, moved the tray. "Some time I'll have a mahogany tea-table," she said happily. She had brought in two cups, two plates. For herself, a straight chair, but for the guest the big wing-chair, which she pantingly tugged to the table. She had finished all the preparations she could think of. She sat and waited. She listened for the door-bell, the telephone. Her eagerness was stilled. Her hands drooped. Surely Vida Sherwin would hear the summons. She glanced through the bay-window. Snow was sifting over the ridge of the Howland house like sprays of water from a hose. The wide yards across the street were gray with moving eddies. The black trees shivered. The roadway was gashed with ruts of ice. She looked at the extra cup and plate. She looked at the wing-chair. It was so empty. The tea was cold in the pot. With wearily dipping fingertip she tested it. Yes. Quite cold. She couldn't wait any longer. The cup across from her was icily clean, glisteningly empty. Simply absurd to wait. She poured her own cup of tea. She sat and stared at it. What was it she was going to do now? Oh yes; how idiotic; take a lump of sugar. She didn't want the beastly tea. She was springing up. She was on the couch, sobbing. II She was thinking more sharply than she had for weeks. She reverted to her resolution to change the town--awaken it, prod it, "reform" it. What if they were wolves instead of lambs? They'd eat her all the sooner if she was meek to them. Fight or be eaten. It was easier to change the town completely than to conciliate it! She could not take their point of view; it was a negative thing; an intellectual squalor; a swamp of prejudices and fears. She would have to make them take hers. She was not a Vincent de Paul, to govern and mold a people. What of that? The tiniest change in their distrust of beauty would be the beginning of the end; a seed to sprout and some day with thickening roots to crack their wall of mediocrity. If she could not, as she desired, do a great thing nobly and with laughter, yet she need not be content with village nothingness. She would plant one seed in the blank wall. Was she just? Was it merely a blank wall, this town which to three thousand and more people was the center of the universe? Hadn't she, returning from Lac-qui-Meurt, felt the heartiness of their greetings? No. The ten thousand Gopher Prairies had no monopoly of greetings and friendly hands. Sam Clark was no more loyal than girl librarians she knew in St. Paul, the people she had met in Chicago. And those others had so much that Gopher Prairie complacently lacked--the world of gaiety and adventure, of music and the integrity of bronze, of remembered mists from tropic isles and Paris nights and the walls of Bagdad, of industrial justice and a God who spake not in doggerel hymns. One seed. Which seed it was did not matter. All knowledge and freedom were one. But she had delayed so long in finding that seed. Could she do something with this Thanatopsis Club? Or should she make her house so charming that it would be an influence? She'd make Kennicott like poetry. That was it, for a beginning! She conceived so clear a picture of their bending over large fair pages by the fire (in a non-existent fireplace) that the spectral presences slipped away. Doors no longer moved; curtains were not creeping shadows but lovely dark masses in the dusk; and when Bea came home Carol was singing at the piano which she had not touched for many days. Their supper was the feast of two girls. Carol was in the dining-room, in a frock of black satin edged with gold, and Bea, in blue gingham and an apron, dined in the kitchen; but the door was open between, and Carol was inquiring, "Did you see any ducks in Dahl's window?" and Bea chanting, "No, ma'am. Say, ve have a svell time, dis afternoon. Tina she have coffee and knackebrod, and her fella vos dere, and ve yoost laughed and laughed, and her fella say he vos president and he going to make me queen of Finland, and Ay stick a fedder in may hair and say Ay bane going to go to var--oh, ve vos so foolish and ve LAUGH so!" When Carol sat at the piano again she did not think of her husband but of the book-drugged hermit, Guy Pollock. She wished that Pollock would come calling. "If a girl really kissed him, he'd creep out of his den and be human. If Will were as literate as Guy, or Guy were as executive as Will, I think I could endure even Gopher Prairie. It's so hard to mother Will. I could be maternal with Guy. Is that what I want, something to mother, a man or a baby or a town? I WILL have a baby. Some day. But to have him isolated here all his receptive years---- "And so to bed. "Have I found my real level in Bea and kitchen-gossip? "Oh, I do miss you, Will. But it will be pleasant to turn over in bed as often as I want to, without worrying about waking you up. "Am I really this settled thing called a 'married woman'? I feel so unmarried tonight. So free. To think that there was once a Mrs. Kennicott who let herself worry over a town called Gopher Prairie when there was a whole world outside it! "Of course Will is going to like poetry." III A black February day. Clouds hewn of ponderous timber weighing down on the earth; an irresolute dropping of snow specks upon the trampled wastes. Gloom but no veiling of angularity. The lines of roofs and sidewalks sharp and inescapable. The second day of Kennicott's absence. She fled from the creepy house for a walk. It was thirty below zero; too cold to exhilarate her. In the spaces between houses the wind caught her. It stung, it gnawed at nose and ears and aching cheeks, and she hastened from shelter to shelter, catching her breath in the lee of a barn, grateful for the protection of a billboard covered with ragged posters showing layer under layer of paste-smeared green and streaky red. The grove of oaks at the end of the street suggested Indians, hunting, snow-shoes, and she struggled past the earth-banked cottages to the open country, to a farm and a low hill corrugated with hard snow. In her loose nutria coat, seal toque, virginal cheeks unmarked by lines of village jealousies, she was as out of place on this dreary hillside as a scarlet tanager on an ice-floe. She looked down on Gopher Prairie. The snow, stretching without break from streets to devouring prairie beyond, wiped out the town's pretense of being a shelter. The houses were black specks on a white sheet. Her heart shivered with that still loneliness as her body shivered with the wind. She ran back into the huddle of streets, all the while protesting that she wanted a city's yellow glare of shop-windows and restaurants, or the primitive forest with hooded furs and a rifle, or a barnyard warm and steamy, noisy with hens and cattle, certainly not these dun houses, these yards choked with winter ash-piles, these roads of dirty snow and clotted frozen mud. The zest of winter was gone. Three months more, till May, the cold might drag on, with the snow ever filthier, the weakened body less resistent. She wondered why the good citizens insisted on adding the chill of prejudice, why they did not make the houses of their spirits more warm and frivolous, like the wise chatterers of Stockholm and Moscow. She circled the outskirts of the town and viewed the slum of "Swede Hollow." Wherever as many as three houses are gathered there will be a slum of at least one house. In Gopher Prairie, the Sam Clarks boasted, "you don't get any of this poverty that you find in cities--always plenty of work--no need of charity--man got to be blame shiftless if he don't get ahead." But now that the summer mask of leaves and grass was gone, Carol discovered misery and dead hope. In a shack of thin boards covered with tar-paper she saw the washerwoman, Mrs. Steinhof, working in gray steam. Outside, her six-year-old boy chopped wood. He had a torn jacket, muffler of a blue like skimmed milk. His hands were covered with red mittens through which protruded his chapped raw knuckles. He halted to blow on them, to cry disinterestedly. A family of recently arrived Finns were camped in an abandoned stable. A man of eighty was picking up lumps of coal along the railroad. She did not know what to do about it. She felt that these independent citizens, who had been taught that they belonged to a democracy, would resent her trying to play Lady Bountiful. She lost her loneliness in the activity of the village industries--the railroad-yards with a freight-train switching, the wheat-elevator, oil-tanks, a slaughter-house with blood-marks on the snow, the creamery with the sleds of farmers and piles of milk-cans, an unexplained stone hut labeled "Danger--Powder Stored Here." The jolly tombstone-yard, where a utilitarian sculptor in a red calfskin overcoat whistled as he hammered the shiniest of granite headstones. Jackson Elder's small planing-mill, with the smell of fresh pine shavings and the burr of circular saws. Most important, the Gopher Prairie Flour and Milling Company, Lyman Cass president. Its windows were blanketed with flour-dust, but it was the most stirring spot in town. Workmen were wheeling barrels of flour into a box-car; a farmer sitting on sacks of wheat in a bobsled argued with the wheat-buyer; machinery within the mill boomed and whined, water gurgled in the ice-freed mill-race. The clatter was a relief to Carol after months of smug houses. She wished that she could work in the mill; that she did not belong to the caste of professional-man's-wife. She started for home, through the small slum. Before a tar-paper shack, at a gateless gate, a man in rough brown dogskin coat and black plush cap with lappets was watching her. His square face was confident, his foxy mustache was picaresque. He stood erect, his hands in his side-pockets, his pipe puffing slowly. He was forty-five or -six, perhaps. "How do, Mrs. Kennicott," he drawled. She recalled him--the town handyman, who had repaired their furnace at the beginning of winter. "Oh, how do you do," she fluttered. "My name 's Bjornstam. 'The Red Swede' they call me. Remember? Always thought I'd kind of like to say howdy to you again." "Ye--yes----I've been exploring the outskirts of town." "Yump. Fine mess. No sewage, no street cleaning, and the Lutheran minister and the priest represent the arts and sciences. Well, thunder, we submerged tenth down here in Swede Hollow are no worse off than you folks. Thank God, we don't have to go and purr at Juanity Haydock at the Jolly Old Seventeen." The Carol who regarded herself as completely adaptable was uncomfortable at being chosen as comrade by a pipe-reeking odd-job man. Probably he was one of her husband's patients. But she must keep her dignity. "Yes, even the Jolly Seventeen isn't always so exciting. It's very cold again today, isn't it. Well----" Bjornstam was not respectfully valedictory. He showed no signs of pulling a forelock. His eyebrows moved as though they had a life of their own. With a subgrin he went on: "Maybe I hadn't ought to talk about Mrs. Haydock and her Solemcholy Seventeen in that fresh way. I suppose I'd be tickled to death if I was invited to sit in with that gang. I'm what they call a pariah, I guess. I'm the town badman, Mrs. Kennicott: town atheist, and I suppose I must be an anarchist, too. Everybody who doesn't love the bankers and the Grand Old Republican Party is an anarchist." Carol had unconsciously slipped from her attitude of departure into an attitude of listening, her face full toward him, her muff lowered. She fumbled: "Yes, I suppose so." Her own grudges came in a flood. "I don't see why you shouldn't criticize the Jolly Seventeen if you want to. They aren't sacred." "Oh yes, they are! The dollar-sign has chased the crucifix clean off the map. But then, I've got no kick. I do what I please, and I suppose I ought to let them do the same." "What do you mean by saying you're a pariah?" "I'm poor, and yet I don't decently envy the rich. I'm an old bach. I make enough money for a stake, and then I sit around by myself, and shake hands with myself, and have a smoke, and read history, and I don't contribute to the wealth of Brother Elder or Daddy Cass." "You----I fancy you read a good deal." "Yep. In a hit-or-a-miss way. I'll tell you: I'm a lone wolf. I trade horses, and saw wood, and work in lumber-camps--I'm a first-rate swamper. Always wished I could go to college. Though I s'pose I'd find it pretty slow, and they'd probably kick me out." "You really are a curious person, Mr.----" "Bjornstam. Miles Bjornstam. Half Yank and half Swede. Usually known as 'that damn lazy big-mouthed calamity-howler that ain't satisfied with the way we run things.' No, I ain't curious--whatever you mean by that! I'm just a bookworm. Probably too much reading for the amount of digestion I've got. Probably half-baked. I'm going to get in 'half-baked' first, and beat you to it, because it's dead sure to be handed to a radical that wears jeans!" They grinned together. She demanded: "You say that the Jolly Seventeen is stupid. What makes you think so?" "Oh, trust us borers into the foundation to know about your leisure class. Fact, Mrs. Kennicott, I'll say that far as I can make out, the only people in this man's town that do have any brains--I don't mean ledger-keeping brains or duck-hunting brains or baby-spanking brains, but real imaginative brains--are you and me and Guy Pollock and the foreman at the flour-mill. He's a socialist, the foreman. (Don't tell Lym Cass that! Lym would fire a socialist quicker than he would a horse-thief!)" "Indeed no, I sha'n't tell him." "This foreman and I have some great set-to's. He's a regular old-line party-member. Too dogmatic. Expects to reform everything from deforestration to nosebleed by saying phrases like 'surplus value.' Like reading the prayer-book. But same time, he's a Plato J. Aristotle compared with people like Ezry Stowbody or Professor Mott or Julius Flickerbaugh." "It's interesting to hear about him." He dug his toe into a drift, like a schoolboy. "Rats. You mean I talk too much. Well, I do, when I get hold of somebody like you. You probably want to run along and keep your nose from freezing." "Yes, I must go, I suppose. But tell me: Why did you leave Miss Sherwin, of the high school, out of your list of the town intelligentsia?" "I guess maybe she does belong in it. From all I can hear she's in everything and behind everything that looks like a reform--lot more than most folks realize. She lets Mrs. Reverend Warren, the president of this-here Thanatopsis Club, think she's running the works, but Miss Sherwin is the secret boss, and nags all the easy-going dames into doing something. But way I figure it out----You see, I'm not interested in these dinky reforms. Miss Sherwin's trying to repair the holes in this barnacle-covered ship of a town by keeping busy bailing out the water. And Pollock tries to repair it by reading poetry to the crew! Me, I want to yank it up on the ways, and fire the poor bum of a shoemaker that built it so it sails crooked, and have it rebuilt right, from the keel up." "Yes--that--that would be better. But I must run home. My poor nose is nearly frozen." "Say, you better come in and get warm, and see what an old bach's shack is like." She looked doubtfully at him, at the low shanty, the yard that was littered with cord-wood, moldy planks, a hoopless wash-tub. She was disquieted, but Bjornstam did not give her the opportunity to be delicate. He flung out his hand in a welcoming gesture which assumed that she was her own counselor, that she was not a Respectable Married Woman but fully a human being. With a shaky, "Well, just a moment, to warm my nose," she glanced down the street to make sure that she was not spied on, and bolted toward the shanty. She remained for one hour, and never had she known a more considerate host than the Red Swede. He had but one room: bare pine floor, small work-bench, wall bunk with amazingly neat bed, frying-pan and ash-stippled coffee-pot on the shelf behind the pot-bellied cannon-ball stove, backwoods chairs--one constructed from half a barrel, one from a tilted plank--and a row of books incredibly assorted; Byron and Tennyson and Stevenson, a manual of gas-engines, a book by Thorstein Veblen, and a spotty treatise on "The Care, Feeding, Diseases, and Breeding of Poultry and Cattle." There was but one picture--a magazine color-plate of a steep-roofed village in the Harz Mountains which suggested kobolds and maidens with golden hair. Bjornstam did not fuss over her. He suggested, "Might throw open your coat and put your feet up on the box in front of the stove." He tossed his dogskin coat into the bunk, lowered himself into the barrel chair, and droned on: "Yeh, I'm probably a yahoo, but by gum I do keep my independence by doing odd jobs, and that's more 'n these polite cusses like the clerks in the banks do. When I'm rude to some slob, it may be partly because I don't know better (and God knows I'm not no authority on trick forks and what pants you wear with a Prince Albert), but mostly it's because I mean something. I'm about the only man in Johnson County that remembers the joker in the Declaration of Independence about Americans being supposed to have the right to 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' "I meet old Ezra Stowbody on the street. He looks at me like he wants me to remember he's a highmuckamuck and worth two hundred thousand dollars, and he says, 'Uh, Bjornquist----' "'Bjornstam's my name, Ezra,' I says. HE knows my name, all rightee. "'Well, whatever your name is,' he says, 'I understand you have a gasoline saw. I want you to come around and saw up four cords of maple for me,' he says. "'So you like my looks, eh?' I says, kind of innocent. "'What difference does that make? Want you to saw that wood before Saturday,' he says, real sharp. Common workman going and getting fresh with a fifth of a million dollars all walking around in a hand-me-down fur coat! "'Here's the difference it makes,' I says, just to devil him. 'How do you know I like YOUR looks?' Maybe he didn't look sore! 'Nope,' I says, thinking it all over, 'I don't like your application for a loan. Take it to another bank, only there ain't any,' I says, and I walks off on him. "Sure. Probably I was surly--and foolish. But I figured there had to be ONE man in town independent enough to sass the banker!" He hitched out of his chair, made coffee, gave Carol a cup, and talked on, half defiant and half apologetic, half wistful for friendliness and half amused by her surprise at the discovery that there was a proletarian philosophy. At the door, she hinted: "Mr. Bjornstam, if you were I, would you worry when people thought you were affected?" "Huh? Kick 'em in the face! Say, if I were a sea-gull, and all over silver, think I'd care what a pack of dirty seals thought about my flying?" It was not the wind at her back, it was the thrust of Bjornstam's scorn which carried her through town. She faced Juanita Haydock, cocked her head at Maud Dyer's brief nod, and came home to Bea radiant. She telephoned Vida Sherwin to "run over this evening." She lustily played Tschaikowsky--the virile chords an echo of the red laughing philosopher of the tar-paper shack. (When she hinted to Vida, "Isn't there a man here who amuses himself by being irreverent to the village gods--Bjornstam, some such a name?" the reform-leader said "Bjornstam? Oh yes. Fixes things. He's awfully impertinent.") IV Kennicott had returned at midnight. At breakfast he said four several times that he had missed her every moment. On her way to market Sam Clark hailed her, "The top o' the mornin' to yez! Going to stop and pass the time of day mit Sam'l? Warmer, eh? What'd the doc's thermometer say it was? Say, you folks better come round and visit with us, one of these evenings. Don't be so dog-gone proud, staying by yourselves." Champ Perry the pioneer, wheat-buyer at the elevator, stopped her in the post-office, held her hand in his withered paws, peered at her with faded eyes, and chuckled, "You are so fresh and blooming, my dear. Mother was saying t'other day that a sight of you was better 'n a dose of medicine." In the Bon Ton Store she found Guy Pollock tentatively buying a modest gray scarf. "We haven't seen you for so long," she said. "Wouldn't you like to come in and play cribbage, some evening?" As though he meant it, Pollock begged, "May I, really?" While she was purchasing two yards of malines the vocal Raymie Wutherspoon tiptoed up to her, his long sallow face bobbing, and he besought, "You've just got to come back to my department and see a pair of patent leather slippers I set aside for you." In a manner of more than sacerdotal reverence he unlaced her boots, tucked her skirt about her ankles, slid on the slippers. She took them. "You're a good salesman," she said. "I'm not a salesman at all! I just like elegant things. All this is so inartistic." He indicated with a forlornly waving hand the shelves of shoe-boxes, the seat of thin wood perforated in rosettes, the display of shoe-trees and tin boxes of blacking, the lithograph of a smirking young woman with cherry cheeks who proclaimed in the exalted poetry of advertising, "My tootsies never got hep to what pedal perfection was till I got a pair of clever classy Cleopatra Shoes." "But sometimes," Raymie sighed, "there is a pair of dainty little shoes like these, and I set them aside for some one who will appreciate. When I saw these I said right away, 'Wouldn't it be nice if they fitted Mrs. Kennicott,' and I meant to speak to you first chance I had. I haven't forgotten our jolly talks at Mrs. Gurrey's!" That evening Guy Pollock came in and, though Kennicott instantly impressed him into a cribbage game, Carol was happy again. V She did not, in recovering something of her buoyancy, forget her determination to begin the liberalizing of Gopher Prairie by the easy and agreeable propaganda of teaching Kennicott to enjoy reading poetry in the lamplight. The campaign was delayed. Twice he suggested that they call on neighbors; once he was in the country. The fourth evening he yawned pleasantly, stretched, and inquired, "Well, what'll we do tonight? Shall we go to the movies?" "I know exactly what we're going to do. Now don't ask questions! Come and sit down by the table. There, are you comfy? Lean back and forget you're a practical man, and listen to me." It may be that she had been influenced by the managerial Vida Sherwin; certainly she sounded as though she was selling culture. But she dropped it when she sat on the couch, her chin in her hands, a volume of Yeats on her knees, and read aloud. Instantly she was released from the homely comfort of a prairie town. She was in the world of lonely things--the flutter of twilight linnets, the aching call of gulls along a shore to which the netted foam crept out of darkness, the island of Aengus and the elder gods and the eternal glories that never were, tall kings and women girdled with crusted gold, the woful incessant chanting and the---- "Heh-cha-cha!" coughed Dr. Kennicott. She stopped. She remembered that he was the sort of person who chewed tobacco. She glared, while he uneasily petitioned, "That's great stuff. Study it in college? I like poetry fine--James Whitcomb Riley and some of Longfellow--this 'Hiawatha.' Gosh, I wish I could appreciate that highbrow art stuff. But I guess I'm too old a dog to learn new tricks." With pity for his bewilderment, and a certain desire to giggle, she consoled him, "Then let's try some Tennyson. You've read him?" "Tennyson? You bet. Read him in school. There's that: And let there be no (what is it?) of farewell When I put out to sea, But let the---- Well, I don't remember all of it but----Oh, sure! And there's that 'I met a little country boy who----' I don't remember exactly how it goes, but the chorus ends up, 'We are seven.'" "Yes. Well----Shall we try 'The Idylls of the King?' They're so full of color." "Go to it. Shoot." But he hastened to shelter himself behind a cigar. She was not transported to Camelot. She read with an eye cocked on him, and when she saw how much he was suffering she ran to him, kissed his forehead, cried, "You poor forced tube-rose that wants to be a decent turnip!" "Look here now, that ain't----" "Anyway, I sha'n't torture you any longer." She could not quite give up. She read Kipling, with a great deal of emphasis: There's a REGIMENT a-COMING down the GRAND Trunk ROAD. He tapped his foot to the rhythm; he looked normal and reassured. But when he complimented her, "That was fine. I don't know but what you can elocute just as good as Ella Stowbody," she banged the book and suggested that they were not too late for the nine o'clock show at the movies. That was her last effort to harvest the April wind, to teach divine unhappiness by a correspondence course, to buy the lilies of Avalon and the sunsets of Cockaigne in tin cans at Ole Jenson's Grocery. But the fact is that at the motion-pictures she discovered herself laughing as heartily as Kennicott at the humor of an actor who stuffed spaghetti down a woman's evening frock. For a second she loathed her laughter; mourned for the day when on her hill by the Mississippi she had walked the battlements with queens. But the celebrated cinema jester's conceit of dropping toads into a soup-plate flung her into unwilling tittering, and the afterglow faded, the dead queens fled through darkness. VI She went to the Jolly Seventeen's afternoon bridge. She had learned the elements of the game from the Sam Clarks. She played quietly and reasonably badly. She had no opinions on anything more polemic than woolen union-suits, a topic on which Mrs. Howland discoursed for five minutes. She smiled frequently, and was the complete canary-bird in her manner of thanking the hostess, Mrs. Dave Dyer. Her only anxious period was during the conference on husbands. The young matrons discussed the intimacies of domesticity with a frankness and a minuteness which dismayed Carol. Juanita Haydock communicated Harry's method of shaving, and his interest in deer-shooting. Mrs. Gougerling reported fully, and with some irritation, her husband's inappreciation of liver and bacon. Maud Dyer chronicled Dave's digestive disorders; quoted a recent bedtime controversy with him in regard to Christian Science, socks and the sewing of buttons upon vests; announced that she "simply wasn't going to stand his always pawing girls when he went and got crazy-jealous if a man just danced with her"; and rather more than sketched Dave's varieties of kisses. So meekly did Carol give attention, so obviously was she at last desirous of being one of them, that they looked on her fondly, and encouraged her to give such details of her honeymoon as might be of interest. She was embarrassed rather than resentful. She deliberately misunderstood. She talked of Kennicott's overshoes and medical ideals till they were thoroughly bored. They regarded her as agreeable but green. Till the end she labored to satisfy the inquisition. She bubbled at Juanita, the president of the club, that she wanted to entertain them. "Only," she said, "I don't know that I can give you any refreshments as nice as Mrs. Dyer's salad, or that simply delicious angel's-food we had at your house, dear." "Fine! We need a hostess for the seventeenth of March. Wouldn't it be awfully original if you made it a St. Patrick's Day bridge! I'll be tickled to death to help you with it. I'm glad you've learned to play bridge. At first I didn't hardly know if you were going to like Gopher Prairie. Isn't it dandy that you've settled down to being homey with us! Maybe we aren't as highbrow as the Cities, but we do have the daisiest times and--oh, we go swimming in summer, and dances and--oh, lots of good times. If folks will just take us as we are, I think we're a pretty good bunch!" "I'm sure of it. Thank you so much for the idea about having a St. Patrick's Day bridge." "Oh, that's nothing. I always think the Jolly Seventeen are so good at original ideas. If you knew these other towns Wakamin and Joralemon and all, you'd find out and realize that G. P. is the liveliest, smartest town in the state. Did you know that Percy Bresnahan, the famous auto manufacturer, came from here and----Yes, I think that a St. Patrick's Day party would be awfully cunning and original, and yet not too queer or freaky or anything."

Though Carol opts to stay at home to avoid the scrutiny of the ladies of the Jolly Seventeen, she longs to have a party. She hopes that Vida or Guy Pollock or Mrs. Westlake would visit her. She gets tea ready, warms up raisin cookies, sets the table and waits for someone to call on her. After a long wait she breaks down and has a good cry. Her despair gives way to clear thinking. She realizes that she can not accept the outlook of the town as hers and change herself accordingly. She decides to keep up the fight to change the intellectual squalor and the prejudice around her. She feels convinced that she has to introduce at least one idea that would appeal to the people, which would eventually change their attitude. After a lot of hard thinking, she decides to make Kennicott appreciate poetry. The vision of Kennicott reading poetry along with her cheers her up and she starts singing. Her dinner and Beas chatter cheers her further and she starts dreaming of Kennicott reading poetry and Guy Pollock calling on her. On the second day of Kennicotts absence Carol finds it unbearable to stay at home and goes for a walk. The houses look defenseless against the snow covered vast prairies. The streets look bleak with dirty snow. On the outskirts of the town she sees the poverty of the people and feels sympathetic. But she knows not how to help them. The activities in the industries cheer her up. She even wishes that she could work there but knows that her social position would not permit it. On her way back home through a slum she meets Bjornstam. She recollects that he is the town handyman. He declares that even though they have no sewage system or any street cleaning in the slum he is happy to be there because he need not attend Juanitas party. He informs Carol that he is considered to be a pariah and an anarchist. He however apologizes for talking about the Jolly Seventeen without any reverence. Carol asserts that he is free to criticize them if he wants to. He tells her that their dollar power is greater than the power of the crucifix. He explains that he is considered a pariah because he does not envy the rich. He also tells her that he earns enough money. He trades horses, saws wood, works in lumber camps and is also a good swamper. But he regrets that he could not fulfil his desire to go to college. Carol wishes to know why he considers the Jolly Seventeen to be stupid. Bjornstram answers that it is because in the whole town only himself, Carol, Guy Pollock and the foreman at the flourmill had really imaginative brains. Carol wants to know why he left Vida out of the list of intelligent people. Bjornstram admits that Vida did have brains and that she was the reason behind all the reforms in the town but he dismisses them as too small to bring any real change. He invites her to have a cup of coffee. She finds his shack neat and tidy. She inspects his collection of books - poetry, a manual of gas-engines, a treatise on poultry and cattle and similar ones. He makes her feel at home without fussing around her and talks about his opinion of the people of Gopher Prairie and about how he despised ignorance. Carol understands his proletarian philosophy and senses his need for friends. She asks him if he would worry if people thought that he was affected. He asserts that he would not care for them. She ret urns home with a new vigor and even invites Vida over. She learns that Vida considers Bjornstam to be impertinent.

SEVERAL days passed over the Seven Gables, heavily and drearily enough. In fact (not to attribute the whole gloom of sky and earth to the one inauspicious circumstance of Phoebe's departure), an easterly storm had set in, and indefatigably apply itself to the task of making the black roof and walls of the old house look more cheerless than ever before. Yet was the outside not half so cheerless as the interior. Poor Clifford was cut off, at once, from all his scanty resources of enjoyment. Phoebe was not there; nor did the sunshine fall upon the floor. The garden, with its muddy walks, and the chill, dripping foliage of its summer-house, was an image to be shuddered at. Nothing flourished in the cold, moist, pitiless atmosphere, drifting with the brackish scud of sea-breezes, except the moss along the joints of the shingle-roof, and the great bunch of weeds, that had lately been suffering from drought, in the angle between the two front gables. As for Hepzibah, she seemed not merely possessed with the east wind, but to be, in her very person, only another phase of this gray and sullen spell of weather; the East-Wind itself, grim and disconsolate, in a rusty black silk gown, and with a turban of cloud-wreaths on its head. The custom of the shop fell off, because a story got abroad that she soured her small beer and other damageable commodities, by scowling on them. It is, perhaps, true that the public had something reasonably to complain of in her deportment; but towards Clifford she was neither ill-tempered nor unkind, nor felt less warmth of heart than always, had it been possible to make it reach him. The inutility of her best efforts, however, palsied the poor old gentlewoman. She could do little else than sit silently in a corner of the room, when the wet pear-tree branches, sweeping across the small windows, created a noonday dusk, which Hepzibah unconsciously darkened with her woe-begone aspect. It was no fault of Hepzibah's. Everything--even the old chairs and tables, that had known what weather was for three or four such lifetimes as her own--looked as damp and chill as if the present were their worst experience. The picture of the Puritan Colonel shivered on the wall. The house itself shivered, from every attic of its seven gables down to the great kitchen fireplace, which served all the better as an emblem of the mansion's heart, because, though built for warmth, it was now so comfortless and empty. Hepzibah attempted to enliven matters by a fire in the parlor. But the storm demon kept watch above, and, whenever a flame was kindled, drove the smoke back again, choking the chimney's sooty throat with its own breath. Nevertheless, during four days of this miserable storm, Clifford wrapt himself in an old cloak, and occupied his customary chair. On the morning of the fifth, when summoned to breakfast, he responded only by a broken-hearted murmur, expressive of a determination not to leave his bed. His sister made no attempt to change his purpose. In fact, entirely as she loved him, Hepzibah could hardly have borne any longer the wretched duty--so impracticable by her few and rigid faculties--of seeking pastime for a still sensitive, but ruined mind, critical and fastidious, without force or volition. It was at least something short of positive despair, that to-day she might sit shivering alone, and not suffer continually a new grief, and unreasonable pang of remorse, at every fitful sigh of her fellow sufferer. But Clifford, it seemed, though he did not make his appearance below stairs, had, after all, bestirred himself in quest of amusement. In the course of the forenoon, Hepzibah heard a note of music, which (there being no other tuneful contrivance in the House of the Seven Gables) she knew must proceed from Alice Pyncheon's harpsichord. She was aware that Clifford, in his youth, had possessed a cultivated taste for music, and a considerable degree of skill in its practice. It was difficult, however, to conceive of his retaining an accomplishment to which daily exercise is so essential, in the measure indicated by the sweet, airy, and delicate, though most melancholy strain, that now stole upon her ear. Nor was it less marvellous that the long-silent instrument should be capable of so much melody. Hepzibah involuntarily thought of the ghostly harmonies, prelusive of death in the family, which were attributed to the legendary Alice. But it was, perhaps, proof of the agency of other than spiritual fingers, that, after a few touches, the chords seemed to snap asunder with their own vibrations, and the music ceased. But a harsher sound succeeded to the mysterious notes; nor was the easterly day fated to pass without an event sufficient in itself to poison, for Hepzibah and Clifford, the balmiest air that ever brought the humming-birds along with it. The final echoes of Alice Pyncheon's performance (or Clifford's, if his we must consider it) were driven away by no less vulgar a dissonance than the ringing of the shop-bell. A foot was heard scraping itself on the threshold, and thence somewhat ponderously stepping on the floor. Hepzibah delayed a moment, while muffling herself in a faded shawl, which had been her defensive armor in a forty years' warfare against the east wind. A characteristic sound, however,--neither a cough nor a hem, but a kind of rumbling and reverberating spasm in somebody's capacious depth of chest;--impelled her to hurry forward, with that aspect of fierce faint-heartedness so common to women in cases of perilous emergency. Few of her sex, on such occasions, have ever looked so terrible as our poor scowling Hepzibah. But the visitor quietly closed the shop-door behind him, stood up his umbrella against the counter, and turned a visage of composed benignity, to meet the alarm and anger which his appearance had excited. Hepzibah's presentiment had not deceived her. It was no other than Judge Pyncheon, who, after in vain trying the front door, had now effected his entrance into the shop. "How do you do, Cousin Hepzibah?--and how does this most inclement weather affect our poor Clifford?" began the Judge; and wonderful it seemed, indeed, that the easterly storm was not put to shame, or, at any rate, a little mollified, by the genial benevolence of his smile. "I could not rest without calling to ask, once more, whether I can in any manner promote his comfort, or your own." "You can do nothing," said Hepzibah, controlling her agitation as well as she could. "I devote myself to Clifford. He has every comfort which his situation admits of." "But allow me to suggest, dear cousin," rejoined the Judge, "you err,--in all affection and kindness, no doubt, and with the very best intentions,--but you do err, nevertheless, in keeping your brother so secluded. Why insulate him thus from all sympathy and kindness? Clifford, alas! has had too much of solitude. Now let him try society,--the society, that is to say, of kindred and old friends. Let me, for instance, but see Clifford, and I will answer for the good effect of the interview." "You cannot see him," answered Hepzibah. "Clifford has kept his bed since yesterday." "What! How! Is he ill?" exclaimed Judge Pyncheon, starting with what seemed to be angry alarm; for the very frown of the old Puritan darkened through the room as he spoke. "Nay, then, I must and will see him! What if he should die?" "He is in no danger of death," said Hepzibah,--and added, with bitterness that she could repress no longer, "none; unless he shall be persecuted to death, now, by the same man who long ago attempted it!" "Cousin Hepzibah," said the Judge, with an impressive earnestness of manner, which grew even to tearful pathos as he proceeded, "is it possible that you do not perceive how unjust, how unkind, how unchristian, is this constant, this long-continued bitterness against me, for a part which I was constrained by duty and conscience, by the force of law, and at my own peril, to act? What did I do, in detriment to Clifford, which it was possible to leave undone? How could you, his sister,--if, for your never-ending sorrow, as it has been for mine, you had known what I did,--have, shown greater tenderness? And do you think, cousin, that it has cost me no pang?--that it has left no anguish in my bosom, from that day to this, amidst all the prosperity with which Heaven has blessed me?--or that I do not now rejoice, when it is deemed consistent with the dues of public justice and the welfare of society that this dear kinsman, this early friend, this nature so delicately and beautifully constituted,--so unfortunate, let us pronounce him, and forbear to say, so guilty,--that our own Clifford, in fine, should be given back to life, and its possibilities of enjoyment? Ah, you little know me, Cousin Hepzibah! You little know this heart! It now throbs at the thought of meeting him! There lives not the human being (except yourself,--and you not more than I) who has shed so many tears for Clifford's calamity. You behold some of them now. There is none who would so delight to promote his happiness! Try me, Hepzibah!--try me, Cousin!--try the man whom you have treated as your enemy and Clifford's!--try Jaffrey Pyncheon, and you shall find him true, to the heart's core!" "In the name of Heaven," cried Hepzibah, provoked only to intenser indignation by this outgush of the inestimable tenderness of a stern nature,--"in God's name, whom you insult, and whose power I could almost question, since he hears you utter so many false words without palsying your tongue,--give over, I beseech you, this loathsome pretence of affection for your victim! You hate him! Say so, like a man! You cherish, at this moment, some black purpose against him in your heart! Speak it out, at once!--or, if you hope so to promote it better, hide it till you can triumph in its success! But never speak again of your love for my poor brother. I cannot bear it! It will drive me beyond a woman's decency! It will drive me mad! Forbear! Not another word! It will make me spurn you!" For once, Hepzibah's wrath had given her courage. She had spoken. But, after all, was this unconquerable distrust of Judge Pyncheon's integrity, and this utter denial, apparently, of his claim to stand in the ring of human sympathies,--were they founded in any just perception of his character, or merely the offspring of a woman's unreasonable prejudice, deduced from nothing? The Judge, beyond all question, was a man of eminent respectability. The church acknowledged it; the state acknowledged it. It was denied by nobody. In all the very extensive sphere of those who knew him, whether in his public or private capacities, there was not an individual--except Hepzibah, and some lawless mystic, like the daguerreotypist, and, possibly, a few political opponents--who would have dreamed of seriously disputing his claim to a high and honorable place in the world's regard. Nor (we must do him the further justice to say) did Judge Pyncheon himself, probably, entertain many or very frequent doubts, that his enviable reputation accorded with his deserts. His conscience, therefore, usually considered the surest witness to a man's integrity,--his conscience, unless it might be for the little space of five minutes in the twenty-four hours, or, now and then, some black day in the whole year's circle,--his conscience bore an accordant testimony with the world's laudatory voice. And yet, strong as this evidence may seem to be, we should hesitate to peril our own conscience on the assertion, that the Judge and the consenting world were right, and that poor Hepzibah with her solitary prejudice was wrong. Hidden from mankind,--forgotten by himself, or buried so deeply under a sculptured and ornamented pile of ostentatious deeds that his daily life could take no note of it,--there may have lurked some evil and unsightly thing. Nay, we could almost venture to say, further, that a daily guilt might have been acted by him, continually renewed, and reddening forth afresh, like the miraculous blood-stain of a murder, without his necessarily and at every moment being aware of it. Men of strong minds, great force of character, and a hard texture of the sensibilities, are very capable of falling into mistakes of this kind. They are ordinarily men to whom forms are of paramount importance. Their field of action lies among the external phenomena of life. They possess vast ability in grasping, and arranging, and appropriating to themselves, the big, heavy, solid unrealities, such as gold, landed estate, offices of trust and emolument, and public honors. With these materials, and with deeds of goodly aspect, done in the public eye, an individual of this class builds up, as it were, a tall and stately edifice, which, in the view of other people, and ultimately in his own view, is no other than the man's character, or the man himself. Behold, therefore, a palace! Its splendid halls and suites of spacious apartments are floored with a mosaic-work of costly marbles; its windows, the whole height of each room, admit the sunshine through the most transparent of plate-glass; its high cornices are gilded, and its ceilings gorgeously painted; and a lofty dome--through which, from the central pavement, you may gaze up to the sky, as with no obstructing medium between--surmounts the whole. With what fairer and nobler emblem could any man desire to shadow forth his character? Ah! but in some low and obscure nook,--some narrow closet on the ground-floor, shut, locked and bolted, and the key flung away,--or beneath the marble pavement, in a stagnant water-puddle, with the richest pattern of mosaic-work above,--may lie a corpse, half decayed, and still decaying, and diffusing its death-scent all through the palace! The inhabitant will not be conscious of it, for it has long been his daily breath! Neither will the visitors, for they smell only the rich odors which the master sedulously scatters through the palace, and the incense which they bring, and delight to burn before him! Now and then, perchance, comes in a seer, before whose sadly gifted eye the whole structure melts into thin air, leaving only the hidden nook, the bolted closet, with the cobwebs festooned over its forgotten door, or the deadly hole under the pavement, and the decaying corpse within. Here, then, we are to seek the true emblem of the man's character, and of the deed that gives whatever reality it possesses to his life. And, beneath the show of a marble palace, that pool of stagnant water, foul with many impurities, and, perhaps, tinged with blood,--that secret abomination, above which, possibly, he may say his prayers, without remembering it,--is this man's miserable soul! To apply this train of remark somewhat more closely to Judge Pyncheon. We might say (without in the least imputing crime to a personage of his eminent respectability) that there was enough of splendid rubbish in his life to cover up and paralyze a more active and subtile conscience than the Judge was ever troubled with. The purity of his judicial character, while on the bench; the faithfulness of his public service in subsequent capacities; his devotedness to his party, and the rigid consistency with which he had adhered to its principles, or, at all events, kept pace with its organized movements; his remarkable zeal as president of a Bible society; his unimpeachable integrity as treasurer of a widow's and orphan's fund; his benefits to horticulture, by producing two much esteemed varieties of the pear and to agriculture, through the agency of the famous Pyncheon bull; the cleanliness of his moral deportment, for a great many years past; the severity with which he had frowned upon, and finally cast off, an expensive and dissipated son, delaying forgiveness until within the final quarter of an hour of the young man's life; his prayers at morning and eventide, and graces at meal-time; his efforts in furtherance of the temperance cause; his confining himself, since the last attack of the gout, to five diurnal glasses of old sherry wine; the snowy whiteness of his linen, the polish of his boots, the handsomeness of his gold-headed cane, the square and roomy fashion of his coat, and the fineness of its material, and, in general, the studied propriety of his dress and equipment; the scrupulousness with which he paid public notice, in the street, by a bow, a lifting of the hat, a nod, or a motion of the hand, to all and sundry of his acquaintances, rich or poor; the smile of broad benevolence wherewith he made it a point to gladden the whole world,--what room could possibly be found for darker traits in a portrait made up of lineaments like these? This proper face was what he beheld in the looking-glass. This admirably arranged life was what he was conscious of in the progress of every day. Then might not he claim to be its result and sum, and say to himself and the community, "Behold Judge Pyncheon there"? And allowing that, many, many years ago, in his early and reckless youth, he had committed some one wrong act,--or that, even now, the inevitable force of circumstances should occasionally make him do one questionable deed among a thousand praiseworthy, or, at least, blameless ones,--would you characterize the Judge by that one necessary deed, and that half-forgotten act, and let it overshadow the fair aspect of a lifetime? What is there so ponderous in evil, that a thumb's bigness of it should outweigh the mass of things not evil which were heaped into the other scale! This scale and balance system is a favorite one with people of Judge Pyncheon's brotherhood. A hard, cold man, thus unfortunately situated, seldom or never looking inward, and resolutely taking his idea of himself from what purports to be his image as reflected in the mirror of public opinion, can scarcely arrive at true self-knowledge, except through loss of property and reputation. Sickness will not always help him do it; not always the death-hour! But our affair now is with Judge Pyncheon as he stood confronting the fierce outbreak of Hepzibah's wrath. Without premeditation, to her own surprise, and indeed terror, she had given vent, for once, to the inveteracy of her resentment, cherished against this kinsman for thirty years. Thus far the Judge's countenance had expressed mild forbearance,--grave and almost gentle deprecation of his cousin's unbecoming violence,--free and Christian-like forgiveness of the wrong inflicted by her words. But when those words were irrevocably spoken, his look assumed sternness, the sense of power, and immitigable resolve; and this with so natural and imperceptible a change, that it seemed as if the iron man had stood there from the first, and the meek man not at all. The effect was as when the light, vapory clouds, with their soft coloring, suddenly vanish from the stony brow of a precipitous mountain, and leave there the frown which you at once feel to be eternal. Hepzibah almost adopted the insane belief that it was her old Puritan ancestor, and not the modern Judge, on whom she had just been wreaking the bitterness of her heart. Never did a man show stronger proof of the lineage attributed to him than Judge Pyncheon, at this crisis, by his unmistakable resemblance to the picture in the inner room. "Cousin Hepzibah," said he very calmly, "it is time to have done with this." "With all my heart!" answered she. "Then, why do you persecute us any longer? Leave poor Clifford and me in peace. Neither of us desires anything better!" "It is my purpose to see Clifford before I leave this house," continued the Judge. "Do not act like a madwoman, Hepzibah! I am his only friend, and an all-powerful one. Has it never occurred to you,--are you so blind as not to have seen,--that, without not merely my consent, but my efforts, my representations, the exertion of my whole influence, political, official, personal, Clifford would never have been what you call free? Did you think his release a triumph over me? Not so, my good cousin; not so, by any means! The furthest possible from that! No; but it was the accomplishment of a purpose long entertained on my part. I set him free!" "You!" answered Hepzibah. "I never will believe it! He owed his dungeon to you; his freedom to God's providence!" "I set him free!" reaffirmed Judge Pyncheon, with the calmest composure. "And I came hither now to decide whether he shall retain his freedom. It will depend upon himself. For this purpose, I must see him." "Never!--it would drive him mad!" exclaimed Hepzibah, but with an irresoluteness sufficiently perceptible to the keen eye of the Judge; for, without the slightest faith in his good intentions, she knew not whether there was most to dread in yielding or resistance. "And why should you wish to see this wretched, broken man, who retains hardly a fraction of his intellect, and will hide even that from an eye which has no love in it?" "He shall see love enough in mine, if that be all!" said the Judge, with well-grounded confidence in the benignity of his aspect. "But, Cousin Hepzibah, you confess a great deal, and very much to the purpose. Now, listen, and I will frankly explain my reasons for insisting on this interview. At the death, thirty years since, of our uncle Jaffrey, it was found,--I know not whether the circumstance ever attracted much of your attention, among the sadder interests that clustered round that event,--but it was found that his visible estate, of every kind, fell far short of any estimate ever made of it. He was supposed to be immensely rich. Nobody doubted that he stood among the weightiest men of his day. It was one of his eccentricities, however,--and not altogether a folly, neither,--to conceal the amount of his property by making distant and foreign investments, perhaps under other names than his own, and by various means, familiar enough to capitalists, but unnecessary here to be specified. By Uncle Jaffrey's last will and testament, as you are aware, his entire property was bequeathed to me, with the single exception of a life interest to yourself in this old family mansion, and the strip of patrimonial estate remaining attached to it." "And do you seek to deprive us of that?" asked Hepzibah, unable to restrain her bitter contempt. "Is this your price for ceasing to persecute poor Clifford?" "Certainly not, my dear cousin!" answered the Judge, smiling benevolently. "On the contrary, as you must do me the justice to own, I have constantly expressed my readiness to double or treble your resources, whenever you should make up your mind to accept any kindness of that nature at the hands of your kinsman. No, no! But here lies the gist of the matter. Of my uncle's unquestionably great estate, as I have said, not the half--no, not one third, as I am fully convinced--was apparent after his death. Now, I have the best possible reasons for believing that your brother Clifford can give me a clew to the recovery of the remainder." "Clifford!--Clifford know of any hidden wealth? Clifford have it in his power to make you rich?" cried the old gentlewoman, affected with a sense of something like ridicule at the idea. "Impossible! You deceive yourself! It is really a thing to laugh at!" "It is as certain as that I stand here!" said Judge Pyncheon, striking his gold-headed cane on the floor, and at the same time stamping his foot, as if to express his conviction the more forcibly by the whole emphasis of his substantial person. "Clifford told me so himself!" "No, no!" exclaimed Hepzibah incredulously. "You are dreaming, Cousin Jaffrey." "I do not belong to the dreaming class of men," said the Judge quietly. "Some months before my uncle's death, Clifford boasted to me of the possession of the secret of incalculable wealth. His purpose was to taunt me, and excite my curiosity. I know it well. But, from a pretty distinct recollection of the particulars of our conversation, I am thoroughly convinced that there was truth in what he said. Clifford, at this moment, if he chooses,--and choose he must!--can inform me where to find the schedule, the documents, the evidences, in whatever shape they exist, of the vast amount of Uncle Jaffrey's missing property. He has the secret. His boast was no idle word. It had a directness, an emphasis, a particularity, that showed a backbone of solid meaning within the mystery of his expression." "But what could have been Clifford's object," asked Hepzibah, "in concealing it so long?" "It was one of the bad impulses of our fallen nature," replied the Judge, turning up his eyes. "He looked upon me as his enemy. He considered me as the cause of his overwhelming disgrace, his imminent peril of death, his irretrievable ruin. There was no great probability, therefore, of his volunteering information, out of his dungeon, that should elevate me still higher on the ladder of prosperity. But the moment has now come when he must give up his secret." "And what if he should refuse?" inquired Hepzibah. "Or,--as I steadfastly believe,--what if he has no knowledge of this wealth?" "My dear cousin," said Judge Pyncheon, with a quietude which he had the power of making more formidable than any violence, "since your brother's return, I have taken the precaution (a highly proper one in the near kinsman and natural guardian of an individual so situated) to have his deportment and habits constantly and carefully overlooked. Your neighbors have been eye-witnesses to whatever has passed in the garden. The butcher, the baker, the fish-monger, some of the customers of your shop, and many a prying old woman, have told me several of the secrets of your interior. A still larger circle--I myself, among the rest--can testify to his extravagances at the arched window. Thousands beheld him, a week or two ago, on the point of flinging himself thence into the street. From all this testimony, I am led to apprehend--reluctantly, and with deep grief--that Clifford's misfortunes have so affected his intellect, never very strong, that he cannot safely remain at large. The alternative, you must be aware,--and its adoption will depend entirely on the decision which I am now about to make,--the alternative is his confinement, probably for the remainder of his life, in a public asylum for persons in his unfortunate state of mind." "You cannot mean it!" shrieked Hepzibah. "Should my cousin Clifford," continued Judge Pyncheon, wholly undisturbed, "from mere malice, and hatred of one whose interests ought naturally to be dear to him,--a mode of passion that, as often as any other, indicates mental disease,--should he refuse me the information so important to myself, and which he assuredly possesses, I shall consider it the one needed jot of evidence to satisfy my mind of his insanity. And, once sure of the course pointed out by conscience, you know me too well, Cousin Hepzibah, to entertain a doubt that I shall pursue it." "O Jaffrey,--Cousin Jaffrey," cried Hepzibah mournfully, not passionately, "it is you that are diseased in mind, not Clifford! You have forgotten that a woman was your mother!--that you have had sisters, brothers, children of your own!--or that there ever was affection between man and man, or pity from one man to another, in this miserable world! Else, how could you have dreamed of this? You are not young, Cousin Jaffrey!--no, nor middle-aged,--but already an old man! The hair is white upon your head! How many years have you to live? Are you not rich enough for that little time? Shall you be hungry,--shall you lack clothes, or a roof to shelter you,--between this point and the grave? No! but, with the half of what you now possess, you could revel in costly food and wines, and build a house twice as splendid as you now inhabit, and make a far greater show to the world,--and yet leave riches to your only son, to make him bless the hour of your death! Then, why should you do this cruel, cruel thing?--so mad a thing, that I know not whether to call it wicked! Alas, Cousin Jaffrey, this hard and grasping spirit has run in our blood these two hundred years. You are but doing over again, in another shape, what your ancestor before you did, and sending down to your posterity the curse inherited from him!" "Talk sense, Hepzibah, for Heaven's sake!" exclaimed the Judge, with the impatience natural to a reasonable man, on hearing anything so utterly absurd as the above, in a discussion about matters of business. "I have told you my determination. I am not apt to change. Clifford must give up his secret, or take the consequences. And let him decide quickly; for I have several affairs to attend to this morning, and an important dinner engagement with some political friends." "Clifford has no secret!" answered Hepzibah. "And God will not let you do the thing you meditate!" "We shall see," said the unmoved Judge. "Meanwhile, choose whether you will summon Clifford, and allow this business to be amicably settled by an interview between two kinsmen, or drive me to harsher measures, which I should be most happy to feel myself justified in avoiding. The responsibility is altogether on your part." "You are stronger than I," said Hepzibah, after a brief consideration; "and you have no pity in your strength! Clifford is not now insane; but the interview which you insist upon may go far to make him so. Nevertheless, knowing you as I do, I believe it to be my best course to allow you to judge for yourself as to the improbability of his possessing any valuable secret. I will call Clifford. Be merciful in your dealings with him!--be far more merciful than your heart bids you be!--for God is looking at you, Jaffrey Pyncheon!" The Judge followed his cousin from the shop, where the foregoing conversation had passed, into the parlor, and flung himself heavily into the great ancestral chair. Many a former Pyncheon had found repose in its capacious arms: rosy children, after their sports; young men, dreamy with love; grown men, weary with cares; old men, burdened with winters,--they had mused, and slumbered, and departed to a yet profounder sleep. It had been a long tradition, though a doubtful one, that this was the very chair, seated in which the earliest of the Judge's New England forefathers--he whose picture still hung upon the wall--had given a dead man's silent and stern reception to the throng of distinguished guests. From that hour of evil omen until the present, it may be,--though we know not the secret of his heart,--but it may be that no wearier and sadder man had ever sunk into the chair than this same Judge Pyncheon, whom we have just beheld so immitigably hard and resolute. Surely, it must have been at no slight cost that he had thus fortified his soul with iron. Such calmness is a mightier effort than the violence of weaker men. And there was yet a heavy task for him to do. Was it a little matter--a trifle to be prepared for in a single moment, and to be rested from in another moment,--that he must now, after thirty years, encounter a kinsman risen from a living tomb, and wrench a secret from him, or else consign him to a living tomb again? "Did you speak?" asked Hepzibah, looking in from the threshold of the parlor; for she imagined that the Judge had uttered some sound which she was anxious to interpret as a relenting impulse. "I thought you called me back." "No, no" gruffly answered Judge Pyncheon with a harsh frown, while his brow grew almost a black purple, in the shadow of the room. "Why should I call you back? Time flies! Bid Clifford come to me!" The Judge had taken his watch from his vest pocket and now held it in his hand, measuring the interval which was to ensue before the appearance of Clifford.

The Scowl and Smile: Without Phoebe, Clifford is cut off from whatever enjoyment he once had. An easterly storm sets in, preventing him from taking walks in the garden. Hepzibah seems to be possessed by the east wind, grim and disconsolate. The shop loses customers because of a story that she soured her small beer by scowling at it. Both Hepzibah and Clifford hear musical notes from Alice's harpsichord succeeded by a harsher sound, the ringing of the shop bell. Judge Pyncheon visits and offers assistance, which Hepzibah refuses. She tells the Judge that Clifford is bedridden with a minor illness. Jaffrey wonders why Hepzibah protects Clifford from him, for he only wishes to promote his happiness. Hepzibah claims that Jaffrey hates Clifford. Jaffrey's claim that he bears no ill will toward Clifford seems founded, for he is a man of respectable character, but Hepzibah's prejudice may be founded despite his reputation. Men of his character possess vast ability in grasping and appropriating. Hepzibah seems to adopt the belief that it was her Puritan ancestor and not the modern judge on whom she had been wreaking bitterness. Judge Pyncheon demands to see Clifford before he leaves this house. Hepzibah claims that it would drive Clifford mad. Judge Pyncheon claims that Clifford could reveal the location of the deed to the lost land. He says that Clifford once boasted that he possessed the secret of incalculable wealth. Judge Pyncheon says that Clifford has concealed this because he considers him the enemy. Judge Pyncheon warns Hepzibah that he has taken the precaution to have Clifford looked after, and people have noticed his odd behavior. The Judge threatens Hepzibah with the possibility of having Clifford committed. Hepzibah accuses the Judge of committing the same crime as Colonel Pyncheon.

IT was about three o'clock when Adam entered the farmyard and roused Alick and the dogs from their Sunday dozing. Alick said everybody was gone to church "but th' young missis"--so he called Dinah--but this did not disappoint Adam, although the "everybody" was so liberal as to include Nancy the dairymaid, whose works of necessity were not unfrequently incompatible with church-going. There was perfect stillness about the house. The doors were all closed, and the very stones and tubs seemed quieter than usual. Adam heard the water gently dripping from the pump--that was the only sound--and he knocked at the house door rather softly, as was suitable in that stillness. The door opened, and Dinah stood before him, colouring deeply with the great surprise of seeing Adam at this hour, when she knew it was his regular practice to be at church. Yesterday he would have said to her without any difficulty, "I came to see you, Dinah: I knew the rest were not at home." But to-day something prevented him from saying that, and he put out his hand to her in silence. Neither of them spoke, and yet both wished they could speak, as Adam entered, and they sat down. Dinah took the chair she had just left; it was at the corner of the table near the window, and there was a book lying on the table, but it was not open. She had been sitting perfectly still, looking at the small bit of clear fire in the bright grate. Adam sat down opposite her, in Mr. Poyser's three-cornered chair. "Your mother is not ill again, I hope, Adam?" Dinah said, recovering herself. "Seth said she was well this morning." "No, she's very hearty to-day," said Adam, happy in the signs of Dinah's feeling at the sight of him, but shy. "There's nobody at home, you see," Dinah said; "but you'll wait. You've been hindered from going to church to-day, doubtless." "Yes," Adam said, and then paused, before he added, "I was thinking about you: that was the reason." This confession was very awkward and sudden, Adam felt, for he thought Dinah must understand all he meant. But the frankness of the words caused her immediately to interpret them into a renewal of his brotherly regrets that she was going away, and she answered calmly, "Do not be careful and troubled for me, Adam. I have all things and abound at Snowfield. And my mind is at rest, for I am not seeking my own will in going." "But if things were different, Dinah," said Adam, hesitatingly. "If you knew things that perhaps you don't know now...." Dinah looked at him inquiringly, but instead of going on, he reached a chair and brought it near the corner of the table where she was sitting. She wondered, and was afraid--and the next moment her thoughts flew to the past: was it something about those distant unhappy ones that she didn't know? Adam looked at her. It was so sweet to look at her eyes, which had now a self-forgetful questioning in them--for a moment he forgot that he wanted to say anything, or that it was necessary to tell her what he meant. "Dinah," he said suddenly, taking both her hands between his, "I love you with my whole heart and soul. I love you next to God who made me." Dinah's lips became pale, like her cheeks, and she trembled violently under the shock of painful joy. Her hands were cold as death between Adam's. She could not draw them away, because he held them fast. "Don't tell me you can't love me, Dinah. Don't tell me we must part and pass our lives away from one another." The tears were trembling in Dinah's eyes, and they fell before she could answer. But she spoke in a quiet low voice. "Yes, dear Adam, we must submit to another Will. We must part." "Not if you love me, Dinah--not if you love me," Adam said passionately. "Tell me--tell me if you can love me better than a brother?" Dinah was too entirely reliant on the Supreme guidance to attempt to achieve any end by a deceptive concealment. She was recovering now from the first shock of emotion, and she looked at Adam with simple sincere eyes as she said, "Yes, Adam, my heart is drawn strongly towards you; and of my own will, if I had no clear showing to the contrary, I could find my happiness in being near you and ministering to you continually. I fear I should forget to rejoice and weep with others; nay, I fear I should forget the Divine presence, and seek no love but yours." Adam did not speak immediately. They sat looking at each other in delicious silence--for the first sense of mutual love excludes other feelings; it will have the soul all to itself. "Then, Dinah," Adam said at last, "how can there be anything contrary to what's right in our belonging to one another and spending our lives together? Who put this great love into our hearts? Can anything be holier than that? For we can help one another in everything as is good. I'd never think o' putting myself between you and God, and saying you oughtn't to do this and you oughtn't to do that. You'd follow your conscience as much as you do now." "Yes, Adam," Dinah said, "I know marriage is a holy state for those who are truly called to it, and have no other drawing; but from my childhood upwards I have been led towards another path; all my peace and my joy have come from having no life of my own, no wants, no wishes for myself, and living only in God and those of his creatures whose sorrows and joys he has given me to know. Those have been very blessed years to me, and I feel that if I was to listen to any voice that would draw me aside from that path, I should be turning my back on the light that has shone upon me, and darkness and doubt would take hold of me. We could not bless each other, Adam, if there were doubts in my soul, and if I yearned, when it was too late, after that better part which had once been given me and I had put away from me." "But if a new feeling has come into your mind, Dinah, and if you love me so as to be willing to be nearer to me than to other people, isn't that a sign that it's right for you to change your life? Doesn't the love make it right when nothing else would?" "Adam, my mind is full of questionings about that; for now, since you tell me of your strong love towards me, what was clear to me has become dark again. I felt before that my heart was too strongly drawn towards you, and that your heart was not as mine; and the thought of you had taken hold of me, so that my soul had lost its freedom, and was becoming enslaved to an earthly affection, which made me anxious and careful about what should befall myself. For in all other affection I had been content with any small return, or with none; but my heart was beginning to hunger after an equal love from you. And I had no doubt that I must wrestle against that as a great temptation, and the command was clear that I must go away." "But now, dear, dear Dinah, now you know I love you better than you love me...it's all different now. You won't think o' going. You'll stay, and be my dear wife, and I shall thank God for giving me my life as I never thanked him before." "Adam, it's hard to me to turn a deaf ear...you know it's hard; but a great fear is upon me. It seems to me as if you were stretching out your arms to me, and beckoning me to come and take my ease and live for my own delight, and Jesus, the Man of Sorrows, was standing looking towards me, and pointing to the sinful, and suffering, and afflicted. I have seen that again and again when I have been sitting in stillness and darkness, and a great terror has come upon me lest I should become hard, and a lover of self, and no more bear willingly the Redeemer's cross." Dinah had closed her eyes, and a faint shudder went through her. "Adam," she went on, "you wouldn't desire that we should seek a good through any unfaithfulness to the light that is in us; you wouldn't believe that could be a good. We are of one mind in that." "Yes, Dinah," said Adam sadly, "I'll never be the man t' urge you against your conscience. But I can't give up the hope that you may come to see different. I don't believe your loving me could shut up your heart--it's only adding to what you've been before, not taking away from it. For it seems to me it's the same with love and happiness as with sorrow--the more we know of it the better we can feel what other people's lives are or might be, and so we shall only be more tender to 'em, and wishful to help 'em. The more knowledge a man has, the better he'll do's work; and feeling's a sort o' knowledge." Dinah was silent; her eyes were fixed in contemplation of something visible only to herself. Adam went on presently with his pleading, "And you can do almost as much as you do now. I won't ask you to go to church with me of a Sunday. You shall go where you like among the people, and teach 'em; for though I like church best, I don't put my soul above yours, as if my words was better for you to follow than your own conscience. And you can help the sick just as much, and you'll have more means o' making 'em a bit comfortable; and you'll be among all your own friends as love you, and can help 'em and be a blessing to 'em till their dying day. Surely, Dinah, you'd be as near to God as if you was living lonely and away from me." Dinah made no answer for some time. Adam was still holding her hands and looking at her with almost trembling anxiety, when she turned her grave loving eyes on his and said, in rather a sad voice, "Adam there is truth in what you say, and there's many of the brethren and sisters who have greater strength than I have, and find their hearts enlarged by the cares of husband and kindred. But I have not faith that it would be so with me, for since my affections have been set above measure on you, I have had less peace and joy in God. I have felt as it were a division in my heart. And think how it is with me, Adam. That life I have led is like a land I have trodden in blessedness since my childhood; and if I long for a moment to follow the voice which calls me to another land that I know not, I cannot but fear that my soul might hereafter yearn for that early blessedness which I had forsaken; and where doubt enters there is not perfect love. I must wait for clearer guidance. I must go from you, and we must submit ourselves entirely to the Divine Will. We are sometimes required to lay our natural lawful affections on the altar." Adam dared not plead again, for Dinah's was not the voice of caprice or insincerity. But it was very hard for him; his eyes got dim as he looked at her. "But you may come to feel satisfied...to feel that you may come to me again, and we may never part, Dinah?" "We must submit ourselves, Adam. With time, our duty will be made clear. It may be when I have entered on my former life, I shall find all these new thoughts and wishes vanish, and become as things that were not. Then I shall know that my calling is not towards marriage. But we must wait." "Dinah," said Adam mournfully, "you can't love me so well as I love you, else you'd have no doubts. But it's natural you shouldn't, for I'm not so good as you. I can't doubt it's right for me to love the best thing God's ever given me to know." "Nay, Adam. It seems to me that my love for you is not weak, for my heart waits on your words and looks, almost as a little child waits on the help and tenderness of the strong on whom it depends. If the thought of you took slight hold of me, I should not fear that it would be an idol in the temple. But you will strengthen me--you will not hinder me in seeking to obey to the uttermost." "Let us go out into the sunshine, Dinah, and walk together. I'll speak no word to disturb you." They went out and walked towards the fields, where they would meet the family coming from church. Adam said, "Take my arm, Dinah," and she took it. That was the only change in their manner to each other since they were last walking together. But no sadness in the prospect of her going away--in the uncertainty of the issue--could rob the sweetness from Adam's sense that Dinah loved him. He thought he would stay at the Hall Farm all that evening. He would be near her as long as he could. "Hey-day! There's Adam along wi' Dinah," said Mr. Poyser, as he opened the far gate into the Home Close. "I couldna think how he happened away from church. Why," added good Martin, after a moment's pause, "what dost think has just jumped into my head?" "Summat as hadna far to jump, for it's just under our nose. You mean as Adam's fond o' Dinah." "Aye! hast ever had any notion of it before?" "To be sure I have," said Mrs. Poyser, who always declined, if possible, to be taken by surprise. "I'm not one o' those as can see the cat i' the dairy an' wonder what she's come after." "Thee never saidst a word to me about it." "Well, I aren't like a bird-clapper, forced to make a rattle when the wind blows on me. I can keep my own counsel when there's no good i' speaking." "But Dinah 'll ha' none o' him. Dost think she will?" "Nay," said Mrs. Poyser, not sufficiently on her guard against a possible surprise, "she'll never marry anybody, if he isn't a Methodist and a cripple." "It 'ud ha' been a pretty thing though for 'em t' marry," said Martin, turning his head on one side, as if in pleased contemplation of his new idea. "Thee'dst ha' liked it too, wouldstna?" "Ah! I should. I should ha' been sure of her then, as she wouldn't go away from me to Snowfield, welly thirty mile off, and me not got a creatur to look to, only neighbours, as are no kin to me, an' most of 'em women as I'd be ashamed to show my face, if my dairy things war like their'n. There may well be streaky butter i' the market. An' I should be glad to see the poor thing settled like a Christian woman, with a house of her own over her head; and we'd stock her well wi' linen and feathers, for I love her next to my own children. An' she makes one feel safer when she's i' the house, for she's like the driven snow: anybody might sin for two as had her at their elbow." "Dinah," said Tommy, running forward to meet her, "mother says you'll never marry anybody but a Methodist cripple. What a silly you must be!" a comment which Tommy followed up by seizing Dinah with both arms, and dancing along by her side with incommodious fondness. "Why, Adam, we missed you i' the singing to-day," said Mr. Poyser. "How was it?" "I wanted to see Dinah--she's going away so soon," said Adam. "Ah, lad! Can you persuade her to stop somehow? Find her a good husband somewhere i' the parish. If you'll do that, we'll forgive you for missing church. But, anyway, she isna going before the harvest supper o' Wednesday, and you must come then. There's Bartle Massey comin', an' happen Craig. You'll be sure an' come, now, at seven? The missis wunna have it a bit later." "Aye," said Adam, "I'll come if I can. But I can't often say what I'll do beforehand, for the work often holds me longer than I expect. You'll stay till the end o' the week, Dinah?" "Yes, yes!" said Mr. Poyser. "We'll have no nay." "She's no call to be in a hurry," observed Mrs. Poyser. "Scarceness o' victual 'ull keep: there's no need to be hasty wi' the cooking. An' scarceness is what there's the biggest stock of i' that country." Dinah smiled, but gave no promise to stay, and they talked of other things through the rest of the walk, lingering in the sunshine to look at the great flock of geese grazing, at the new corn-ricks, and at the surprising abundance of fruit on the old pear-tree; Nancy and Molly having already hastened home, side by side, each holding, carefully wrapped in her pocket-handkerchief, a prayer-book, in which she could read little beyond the large letters and the Amens. Surely all other leisure is hurry compared with a sunny walk through the fields from "afternoon church"--as such walks used to be in those old leisurely times, when the boat, gliding sleepily along the canal, was the newest locomotive wonder; when Sunday books had most of them old brown-leather covers, and opened with remarkable precision always in one place. Leisure is gone--gone where the spinning-wheels are gone, and the pack-horses, and the slow waggons, and the pedlars, who brought bargains to the door on sunny afternoons. Ingenious philosophers tell you, perhaps, that the great work of the steam-engine is to create leisure for mankind. Do not believe them: it only creates a vacuum for eager thought to rush in. Even idleness is eager now--eager for amusement; prone to excursion-trains, art museums, periodical literature, and exciting novels; prone even to scientific theorizing and cursory peeps through microscopes. Old Leisure was quite a different personage. He only read one newspaper, innocent of leaders, and was free from that periodicity of sensations which we call post-time. He was a contemplative, rather stout gentleman, of excellent digestion; of quiet perceptions, undiseased by hypothesis; happy in his inability to know the causes of things, preferring the things themselves. He lived chiefly in the country, among pleasant seats and homesteads, and was fond of sauntering by the fruit-tree wall and scenting the apricots when they were warmed by the morning sunshine, or of sheltering himself under the orchard boughs at noon, when the summer pears were falling. He knew nothing of weekday services, and thought none the worse of the Sunday sermon if it allowed him to sleep from the text to the blessing; liking the afternoon service best, because the prayers were the shortest, and not ashamed to say so; for he had an easy, jolly conscience, broad-backed like himself, and able to carry a great deal of beer or port-wine, not being made squeamish by doubts and qualms and lofty aspirations. Life was not a task to him, but a sinecure. He fingered the guineas in his pocket, and ate his dinners, and slept the sleep of the irresponsible, for had he not kept up his character by going to church on the Sunday afternoons? Fine old Leisure! Do not be severe upon him, and judge him by our modern standard. He never went to Exeter Hall, or heard a popular preacher, or read Tracts for the Times or Sartor Resartus.

Dinah blushes in surprise at seeing him. She says that she hopes that Adam's mother is well. He says that he loves her with his heart and soul. She turns white with a painful joy, but then he says that they must part anyway. He asks her if she feels for him as if he is more than a brother. She says that she does but that she is afraid that this feeling might draw her away from ministering to others. Adam asks her what could be more holy than their mutual feelings, adding that he will not stand in the way of her good work. Dinah says that she must go away for the time being, so that her duty might become clearer to her. They go out to take a walk together, arm in arm. The Poysers see them together on their way back from church--and guess the truth. After overhearing his parents' conversation, Timmy runs up to Dinah and says that his mother told him that she will never marry anyone unless he is a Methodist and a cripple. Mr. Poyser says that he could forgive Adam for missing church if he could convince Dinah to stay. He says that they both must come to the Harvest supper on Wednesday

The sudden termination of Colonel Brandon's visit at the park, with his steadiness in concealing its cause, filled the mind, and raised the wonder of Mrs. Jennings for two or three days; she was a great wonderer, as every one must be who takes a very lively interest in all the comings and goings of all their acquaintance. She wondered, with little intermission what could be the reason of it; was sure there must be some bad news, and thought over every kind of distress that could have befallen him, with a fixed determination that he should not escape them all. "Something very melancholy must be the matter, I am sure," said she. "I could see it in his face. Poor man! I am afraid his circumstances may be bad. The estate at Delaford was never reckoned more than two thousand a year, and his brother left everything sadly involved. I do think he must have been sent for about money matters, for what else can it be? I wonder whether it is so. I would give anything to know the truth of it. Perhaps it is about Miss Williams and, by the bye, I dare say it is, because he looked so conscious when I mentioned her. May be she is ill in town; nothing in the world more likely, for I have a notion she is always rather sickly. I would lay any wager it is about Miss Williams. It is not so very likely he should be distressed in his circumstances NOW, for he is a very prudent man, and to be sure must have cleared the estate by this time. I wonder what it can be! May be his sister is worse at Avignon, and has sent for him over. His setting off in such a hurry seems very like it. Well, I wish him out of all his trouble with all my heart, and a good wife into the bargain." So wondered, so talked Mrs. Jennings. Her opinion varying with every fresh conjecture, and all seeming equally probable as they arose. Elinor, though she felt really interested in the welfare of Colonel Brandon, could not bestow all the wonder on his going so suddenly away, which Mrs. Jennings was desirous of her feeling; for besides that the circumstance did not in her opinion justify such lasting amazement or variety of speculation, her wonder was otherwise disposed of. It was engrossed by the extraordinary silence of her sister and Willoughby on the subject, which they must know to be peculiarly interesting to them all. As this silence continued, every day made it appear more strange and more incompatible with the disposition of both. Why they should not openly acknowledge to her mother and herself, what their constant behaviour to each other declared to have taken place, Elinor could not imagine. She could easily conceive that marriage might not be immediately in their power; for though Willoughby was independent, there was no reason to believe him rich. His estate had been rated by Sir John at about six or seven hundred a year; but he lived at an expense to which that income could hardly be equal, and he had himself often complained of his poverty. But for this strange kind of secrecy maintained by them relative to their engagement, which in fact concealed nothing at all, she could not account; and it was so wholly contradictory to their general opinions and practice, that a doubt sometimes entered her mind of their being really engaged, and this doubt was enough to prevent her making any inquiry of Marianne. Nothing could be more expressive of attachment to them all, than Willoughby's behaviour. To Marianne it had all the distinguishing tenderness which a lover's heart could give, and to the rest of the family it was the affectionate attention of a son and a brother. The cottage seemed to be considered and loved by him as his home; many more of his hours were spent there than at Allenham; and if no general engagement collected them at the park, the exercise which called him out in the morning was almost certain of ending there, where the rest of the day was spent by himself at the side of Marianne, and by his favourite pointer at her feet. One evening in particular, about a week after Colonel Brandon left the country, his heart seemed more than usually open to every feeling of attachment to the objects around him; and on Mrs. Dashwood's happening to mention her design of improving the cottage in the spring, he warmly opposed every alteration of a place which affection had established as perfect with him. "What!" he exclaimed--"Improve this dear cottage! No. THAT I will never consent to. Not a stone must be added to its walls, not an inch to its size, if my feelings are regarded." "Do not be alarmed," said Miss Dashwood, "nothing of the kind will be done; for my mother will never have money enough to attempt it." "I am heartily glad of it," he cried. "May she always be poor, if she can employ her riches no better." "Thank you, Willoughby. But you may be assured that I would not sacrifice one sentiment of local attachment of yours, or of any one whom I loved, for all the improvements in the world. Depend upon it that whatever unemployed sum may remain, when I make up my accounts in the spring, I would even rather lay it uselessly by than dispose of it in a manner so painful to you. But are you really so attached to this place as to see no defect in it?" "I am," said he. "To me it is faultless. Nay, more, I consider it as the only form of building in which happiness is attainable, and were I rich enough I would instantly pull Combe down, and build it up again in the exact plan of this cottage." "With dark narrow stairs and a kitchen that smokes, I suppose," said Elinor. "Yes," cried he in the same eager tone, "with all and every thing belonging to it;--in no one convenience or INconvenience about it, should the least variation be perceptible. Then, and then only, under such a roof, I might perhaps be as happy at Combe as I have been at Barton." "I flatter myself," replied Elinor, "that even under the disadvantage of better rooms and a broader staircase, you will hereafter find your own house as faultless as you now do this." "There certainly are circumstances," said Willoughby, "which might greatly endear it to me; but this place will always have one claim of my affection, which no other can possibly share." Mrs. Dashwood looked with pleasure at Marianne, whose fine eyes were fixed so expressively on Willoughby, as plainly denoted how well she understood him. "How often did I wish," added he, "when I was at Allenham this time twelvemonth, that Barton cottage were inhabited! I never passed within view of it without admiring its situation, and grieving that no one should live in it. How little did I then think that the very first news I should hear from Mrs. Smith, when I next came into the country, would be that Barton cottage was taken: and I felt an immediate satisfaction and interest in the event, which nothing but a kind of prescience of what happiness I should experience from it, can account for. Must it not have been so, Marianne?" speaking to her in a lowered voice. Then continuing his former tone, he said, "And yet this house you would spoil, Mrs. Dashwood? You would rob it of its simplicity by imaginary improvement! and this dear parlour in which our acquaintance first began, and in which so many happy hours have been since spent by us together, you would degrade to the condition of a common entrance, and every body would be eager to pass through the room which has hitherto contained within itself more real accommodation and comfort than any other apartment of the handsomest dimensions in the world could possibly afford." Mrs. Dashwood again assured him that no alteration of the kind should be attempted. "You are a good woman," he warmly replied. "Your promise makes me easy. Extend it a little farther, and it will make me happy. Tell me that not only your house will remain the same, but that I shall ever find you and yours as unchanged as your dwelling; and that you will always consider me with the kindness which has made everything belonging to you so dear to me." The promise was readily given, and Willoughby's behaviour during the whole of the evening declared at once his affection and happiness. "Shall we see you tomorrow to dinner?" said Mrs. Dashwood, when he was leaving them. "I do not ask you to come in the morning, for we must walk to the park, to call on Lady Middleton." He engaged to be with them by four o'clock.

Mrs. Jennings continues to be irritatingly curious about Colonel Brandon's sudden disappearance to London. She keeps talking and talking about what could have happened to him - she thinks it's money matters relating to his estate at Delaford. Meanwhile, Elinor is positive that Willoughby and Marianne are engaged, but hasn't heard anything about it from either of them. She wonders if it could have to do with the fact that Willoughby's not rich - he has some money, but not enough to support his lifestyle. Everything about their relationship makes it seem as though Willoughby cares for Marianne - particularly his loving behavior to her and to all of them. He loves Barton Cottage as though it's his own home. One evening about a week later, he shows his devotion to their home by vehemently opposing Mrs. Dashwood's plans to revamp the cottage in the spring. Willoughby fervently asserts that the cottage is practically perfect in every way - he even says that if he could rebuild his own house, he would copy Barton Cottage exactly, in the hopes that he could be as happy there as he is in the Dashwood home. Mrs. Dashwood reassures him that she'll make no changes, and he makes the family promise that they won't change, either. Willoughby promises to come to dinner at the cottage the next evening.

Objections to the Proposed Constitution From Extent of Territory Answered From the New York Packet. Friday, November 30, 1787. MADISON To the People of the State of New York: WE HAVE seen the necessity of the Union, as our bulwark against foreign danger, as the conservator of peace among ourselves, as the guardian of our commerce and other common interests, as the only substitute for those military establishments which have subverted the liberties of the Old World, and as the proper antidote for the diseases of faction, which have proved fatal to other popular governments, and of which alarming symptoms have been betrayed by our own. All that remains, within this branch of our inquiries, is to take notice of an objection that may be drawn from the great extent of country which the Union embraces. A few observations on this subject will be the more proper, as it is perceived that the adversaries of the new Constitution are availing themselves of the prevailing prejudice with regard to the practicable sphere of republican administration, in order to supply, by imaginary difficulties, the want of those solid objections which they endeavor in vain to find. The error which limits republican government to a narrow district has been unfolded and refuted in preceding papers. I remark here only that it seems to owe its rise and prevalence chiefly to the confounding of a republic with a democracy, applying to the former reasonings drawn from the nature of the latter. The true distinction between these forms was also adverted to on a former occasion. It is, that in a democracy, the people meet and exercise the government in person; in a republic, they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents. A democracy, consequently, will be confined to a small spot. A republic may be extended over a large region. To this accidental source of the error may be added the artifice of some celebrated authors, whose writings have had a great share in forming the modern standard of political opinions. Being subjects either of an absolute or limited monarchy, they have endeavored to heighten the advantages, or palliate the evils of those forms, by placing in comparison the vices and defects of the republican, and by citing as specimens of the latter the turbulent democracies of ancient Greece and modern Italy. Under the confusion of names, it has been an easy task to transfer to a republic observations applicable to a democracy only; and among others, the observation that it can never be established but among a small number of people, living within a small compass of territory. Such a fallacy may have been the less perceived, as most of the popular governments of antiquity were of the democratic species; and even in modern Europe, to which we owe the great principle of representation, no example is seen of a government wholly popular, and founded, at the same time, wholly on that principle. If Europe has the merit of discovering this great mechanical power in government, by the simple agency of which the will of the largest political body may be concentred, and its force directed to any object which the public good requires, America can claim the merit of making the discovery the basis of unmixed and extensive republics. It is only to be lamented that any of her citizens should wish to deprive her of the additional merit of displaying its full efficacy in the establishment of the comprehensive system now under her consideration. As the natural limit of a democracy is that distance from the central point which will just permit the most remote citizens to assemble as often as their public functions demand, and will include no greater number than can join in those functions; so the natural limit of a republic is that distance from the centre which will barely allow the representatives to meet as often as may be necessary for the administration of public affairs. Can it be said that the limits of the United States exceed this distance? It will not be said by those who recollect that the Atlantic coast is the longest side of the Union, that during the term of thirteen years, the representatives of the States have been almost continually assembled, and that the members from the most distant States are not chargeable with greater intermissions of attendance than those from the States in the neighborhood of Congress. That we may form a juster estimate with regard to this interesting subject, let us resort to the actual dimensions of the Union. The limits, as fixed by the treaty of peace, are: on the east the Atlantic, on the south the latitude of thirty-one degrees, on the west the Mississippi, and on the north an irregular line running in some instances beyond the forty-fifth degree, in others falling as low as the forty-second. The southern shore of Lake Erie lies below that latitude. Computing the distance between the thirty-first and forty-fifth degrees, it amounts to nine hundred and seventy-three common miles; computing it from thirty-one to forty-two degrees, to seven hundred and sixty-four miles and a half. Taking the mean for the distance, the amount will be eight hundred and sixty-eight miles and three-fourths. The mean distance from the Atlantic to the Mississippi does not probably exceed seven hundred and fifty miles. On a comparison of this extent with that of several countries in Europe, the practicability of rendering our system commensurate to it appears to be demonstrable. It is not a great deal larger than Germany, where a diet representing the whole empire is continually assembled; or than Poland before the late dismemberment, where another national diet was the depositary of the supreme power. Passing by France and Spain, we find that in Great Britain, inferior as it may be in size, the representatives of the northern extremity of the island have as far to travel to the national council as will be required of those of the most remote parts of the Union. Favorable as this view of the subject may be, some observations remain which will place it in a light still more satisfactory. In the first place it is to be remembered that the general government is not to be charged with the whole power of making and administering laws. Its jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any. The subordinate governments, which can extend their care to all those other subjects which can be separately provided for, will retain their due authority and activity. Were it proposed by the plan of the convention to abolish the governments of the particular States, its adversaries would have some ground for their objection; though it would not be difficult to show that if they were abolished the general government would be compelled, by the principle of self-preservation, to reinstate them in their proper jurisdiction. A second observation to be made is that the immediate object of the federal Constitution is to secure the union of the thirteen primitive States, which we know to be practicable; and to add to them such other States as may arise in their own bosoms, or in their neighborhoods, which we cannot doubt to be equally practicable. The arrangements that may be necessary for those angles and fractions of our territory which lie on our northwestern frontier, must be left to those whom further discoveries and experience will render more equal to the task. Let it be remarked, in the third place, that the intercourse throughout the Union will be facilitated by new improvements. Roads will everywhere be shortened, and kept in better order; accommodations for travelers will be multiplied and meliorated; an interior navigation on our eastern side will be opened throughout, or nearly throughout, the whole extent of the thirteen States. The communication between the Western and Atlantic districts, and between different parts of each, will be rendered more and more easy by those numerous canals with which the beneficence of nature has intersected our country, and which art finds it so little difficult to connect and complete. A fourth and still more important consideration is, that as almost every State will, on one side or other, be a frontier, and will thus find, in regard to its safety, an inducement to make some sacrifices for the sake of the general protection; so the States which lie at the greatest distance from the heart of the Union, and which, of course, may partake least of the ordinary circulation of its benefits, will be at the same time immediately contiguous to foreign nations, and will consequently stand, on particular occasions, in greatest need of its strength and resources. It may be inconvenient for Georgia, or the States forming our western or northeastern borders, to send their representatives to the seat of government; but they would find it more so to struggle alone against an invading enemy, or even to support alone the whole expense of those precautions which may be dictated by the neighborhood of continual danger. If they should derive less benefit, therefore, from the Union in some respects than the less distant States, they will derive greater benefit from it in other respects, and thus the proper equilibrium will be maintained throughout. I submit to you, my fellow-citizens, these considerations, in full confidence that the good sense which has so often marked your decisions will allow them their due weight and effect; and that you will never suffer difficulties, however formidable in appearance, or however fashionable the error on which they may be founded, to drive you into the gloomy and perilous scene into which the advocates for disunion would conduct you. Hearken not to the unnatural voice which tells you that the people of America, knit together as they are by so many cords of affection, can no longer live together as members of the same family; can no longer continue the mutual guardians of their mutual happiness; can no longer be fellow citizens of one great, respectable, and flourishing empire. Hearken not to the voice which petulantly tells you that the form of government recommended for your adoption is a novelty in the political world; that it has never yet had a place in the theories of the wildest projectors; that it rashly attempts what it is impossible to accomplish. No, my countrymen, shut your ears against this unhallowed language. Shut your hearts against the poison which it conveys; the kindred blood which flows in the veins of American citizens, the mingled blood which they have shed in defense of their sacred rights, consecrate their Union, and excite horror at the idea of their becoming aliens, rivals, enemies. And if novelties are to be shunned, believe me, the most alarming of all novelties, the most wild of all projects, the most rash of all attempts, is that of rendering us in pieces, in order to preserve our liberties and promote our happiness. But why is the experiment of an extended republic to be rejected, merely because it may comprise what is new? Is it not the glory of the people of America, that, whilst they have paid a decent regard to the opinions of former times and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the lessons of their own experience? To this manly spirit, posterity will be indebted for the possession, and the world for the example, of the numerous innovations displayed on the American theatre, in favor of private rights and public happiness. Had no important step been taken by the leaders of the Revolution for which a precedent could not be discovered, no government established of which an exact model did not present itself, the people of the United States might, at this moment have been numbered among the melancholy victims of misguided councils, must at best have been laboring under the weight of some of those forms which have crushed the liberties of the rest of mankind. Happily for America, happily, we trust, for the whole human race, they pursued a new and more noble course. They accomplished a revolution which has no parallel in the annals of human society. They reared the fabrics of governments which have no model on the face of the globe. They formed the design of a great Confederacy, which it is incumbent on their successors to improve and perpetuate. If their works betray imperfections, we wonder at the fewness of them. If they erred most in the structure of the Union, this was the work most difficult to be executed; this is the work which has been new modelled by the act of your convention, and it is that act on which you are now to deliberate and to decide. PUBLIUS

In this paper, Madison seeks to counter the arguments made by opponents of the Constitution that America is too large a country to be governed as a united republic. He argues that these critics, in arguing that a republic must be confined to a small territory, have confused a republic with a democracy. The difference, according to Madison, is that in a democracy the people meet and exercise the government in person, whereas in a republic the people govern the country through their elected representatives. Because a republic has representatives, it can extend over a large region. Madison calculates in some detail the size of the United States and argues that it is not too large to be governed by a republic, especially when compared to Great Britain and other European countries. Madison argues further that the general government will only be authorized to deal with issues of concern to the entire republic. State governments will be left to deal with local concerns, thus making the administration of a country as vast as the US more manageable. Furthermore, as America becomes more developed with roads, canals and other infrastructure, it will be easier for the states to communicate and thus easier for the national government to administer the country. Finally, although representatives from those states farthest from the capitol will have longer to travel, they will also be in greater need of the benefits of union due to the dangers inherent in being a frontier. Madison concludes this paper by exhorting Americans not to destroy their unity. He dismisses those who say no country has ever succeeded in what Americans are trying to accomplish, and encourages Americans to boldly accomplish what has not been accomplished before.

Scena Septima. Enter Cornwall, Regan, Gonerill, Bastard, and Seruants. Corn. Poste speedily to my Lord your husband, shew him this Letter, the Army of France is landed: seeke out the Traitor Glouster Reg. Hang him instantly Gon. Plucke out his eyes Corn. Leaue him to my displeasure. Edmond, keepe you our Sister company: the reuenges wee are bound to take vppon your Traitorous Father, are not fit for your beholding. Aduice the Duke where you are going, to a most festinate preparation: we are bound to the like. Our Postes shall be swift, and intelligent betwixt vs. Farewell deere Sister, farewell my Lord of Glouster. Enter Steward. How now? Where's the King? Stew. My Lord of Glouster hath conuey'd him hence Some fiue or six and thirty of his Knights Hot Questrists after him, met him at gate, Who, with some other of the Lords, dependants, Are gone with him toward Douer; where they boast To haue well armed Friends Corn. Get horses for your Mistris Gon. Farewell sweet Lord, and Sister. Exit Corn. Edmund farewell: go seek the Traitor Gloster, Pinnion him like a Theefe, bring him before vs: Though well we may not passe vpon his life Without the forme of Iustice: yet our power Shall do a curt'sie to our wrath, which men May blame, but not comptroll. Enter Gloucester, and Seruants. Who's there? the Traitor? Reg. Ingratefull Fox, 'tis he Corn. Binde fast his corky armes Glou. What meanes your Graces? Good my Friends consider you are my Ghests: Do me no foule play, Friends Corn. Binde him I say Reg. Hard, hard: O filthy Traitor Glou. Vnmercifull Lady, as you are, I'me none Corn. To this Chaire binde him, Villaine, thou shalt finde Glou. By the kinde Gods, 'tis most ignobly done To plucke me by the Beard Reg. So white, and such a Traitor? Glou. Naughty Ladie, These haires which thou dost rauish from my chin Will quicken and accuse thee. I am your Host, With Robbers hands, my hospitable fauours You should not ruffle thus. What will you do? Corn. Come Sir. What Letters had you late from France? Reg. Be simple answer'd, for we know the truth Corn. And what confederacie haue you with the Traitors, late footed in the Kingdome? Reg. To whose hands You haue sent the Lunaticke King: Speake Glou. I haue a Letter guessingly set downe Which came from one that's of a newtrall heart, And not from one oppos'd Corn. Cunning Reg. And false Corn. Where hast thou sent the King? Glou. To Douer Reg. Wherefore to Douer? Was't thou not charg'd at perill Corn. Wherefore to Douer? Let him answer that Glou. I am tyed to'th' Stake, And I must stand the Course Reg. Wherefore to Douer? Glou. Because I would not see thy cruell Nailes Plucke out his poore old eyes: nor thy fierce Sister, In his Annointed flesh, sticke boarish phangs. The Sea, with such a storme as his bare head, In Hell-blacke-night indur'd, would haue buoy'd vp And quench'd the Stelled fires: Yet poore old heart, he holpe the Heauens to raine. If Wolues had at thy Gate howl'd that sterne time, Thou should'st haue said, good Porter turne the Key: All Cruels else subscribe: but I shall see The winged Vengeance ouertake such Children Corn. See't shalt thou neuer. Fellowes hold y Chaire, Vpon these eyes of thine, Ile set my foote Glou. He that will thinke to liue, till he be old, Giue me some helpe. - O cruell! O you Gods Reg. One side will mocke another: Th' other too Corn. If you see vengeance Seru. Hold your hand, my Lord: I haue seru'd you euer since I was a Childe: But better seruice haue I neuer done you, Then now to bid you hold Reg. How now, you dogge? Ser. If you did weare a beard vpon your chin, I'ld shake it on this quarrell. What do you meane? Corn. My Villaine? Seru. Nay then come on, and take the chance of anger Reg. Giue me thy Sword. A pezant stand vp thus? Killes him. Ser. Oh I am slaine: my Lord, you haue one eye left To see some mischefe on him. Oh Corn. Lest it see more, preuent it; Out vilde gelly: Where is thy luster now? Glou. All darke and comfortlesse? Where's my Sonne Edmund? Edmund, enkindle all the sparkes of Nature To quit this horrid acte Reg. Out treacherous Villaine, Thou call'st on him, that hates thee. It was he That made the ouerture of thy Treasons to vs: Who is too good to pitty thee Glou. O my Follies! then Edgar was abus'd, Kinde Gods, forgiue me that, and prosper him Reg. Go thrust him out at gates, and let him smell His way to Douer. Exit with Glouster. How is't my Lord? How looke you? Corn. I haue receiu'd a hurt: Follow me Lady; Turne out that eyelesse Villaine: throw this Slaue Vpon the Dunghill: Regan, I bleed apace, Vntimely comes this hurt. Giue me your arme. Exeunt.

The information Cornwall received from Edmund concerning the invasion by the French army is passed on to Goneril with the assumption that the Duke of Albany will command the English forces. Cornwall then orders that the traitor Gloucester is to be captured and Regan urges that he be hanged, but the crueler Goneril suggests that eyes be plucked out. Cornwall advises Edmund that he should not be present when his father is caught and punished. Oswald, Goneril's steward, reports that the Earl of Gloucester arranged for Lear to be transported to Dover. Gloucester is captured and brought before Cornwall. Regan humiliates the old man by plucking his beard and when questioned, Gloucester freely admits that he had arranged Lear's transport to Dover in order to save him from the cruelty of his daughters. Cornwall removes one of Gloucester's eyes and crushes it on the floor with his foot. One of Cornwall's own servants pleads with his master to stop this cruelty and comes to Gloucester's defense. The servant draws his sword and wounds Cornwall, but he is slain by Regan. Cornwall then removes Gloucester's other eye, and in his anguish, the old man cries out for Edmund. The cruel Regan informs Gloucester that it was Edmund who has betrayed him. Realizing his folly, Gloucester prays for forgiveness and hopes that his true son Edgar will be spared. Gloucester is banished from the castle. Cornwall leaves, bleeding profusely from the wound he received from his servant. Some of the servants who have witnessed this scene are horrified and they follow after Gloucester in order to assist him. Poor Tom takes over the care of his father, but does not reveal his identity.

Scene V [Enter] CARDINAL and FERDINAND with a letter FERDINAND. I have this night digg'd up a mandrake.[67] CARDINAL. Say you? FERDINAND. And I am grown mad with 't. CARDINAL. What 's the prodigy[?] FERDINAND. Read there,--a sister damn'd: she 's loose i' the hilts;[68] Grown a notorious strumpet. CARDINAL. Speak lower. FERDINAND. Lower! Rogues do not whisper 't now, but seek to publish 't (As servants do the bounty of their lords) Aloud; and with a covetous searching eye, To mark who note them. O, confusion seize her! She hath had most cunning bawds to serve her turn, And more secure conveyances for lust Than towns of garrison for service. CARDINAL. Is 't possible? Can this be certain? FERDINAND. Rhubarb, O, for rhubarb To purge this choler! Here 's the cursed day To prompt my memory; and here 't shall stick Till of her bleeding heart I make a sponge To wipe it out. CARDINAL. Why do you make yourself So wild a tempest? FERDINAND. Would I could be one, That I might toss her palace 'bout her ears, Root up her goodly forests, blast her meads, And lay her general territory as waste As she hath done her honours. CARDINAL. Shall our blood, The royal blood of Arragon and Castile, Be thus attainted? FERDINAND. Apply desperate physic: We must not now use balsamum, but fire, The smarting cupping-glass, for that 's the mean To purge infected blood, such blood as hers. There is a kind of pity in mine eye,-- I 'll give it to my handkercher; and now 'tis here, I 'll bequeath this to her bastard. CARDINAL. What to do? FERDINAND. Why, to make soft lint for his mother's wounds, When I have hew'd her to pieces. CARDINAL. Curs'd creature! Unequal nature, to place women's hearts So far upon the left side![69] FERDINAND. Foolish men, That e'er will trust their honour in a bark Made of so slight weak bulrush as is woman, Apt every minute to sink it! CARDINAL. Thus ignorance, when it hath purchas'd honour, It cannot wield it. FERDINAND. Methinks I see her laughing,-- Excellent hyena! Talk to me somewhat quickly, Or my imagination will carry me To see her in the shameful act of sin. CARDINAL. With whom? FERDINAND. Happily with some strong-thigh'd bargeman, Or one o' th' wood-yard that can quoit the sledge[70] Or toss the bar, or else some lovely squire That carries coals up to her privy lodgings. CARDINAL. You fly beyond your reason. FERDINAND. Go to, mistress! 'Tis not your whore's milk that shall quench my wild-fire, But your whore's blood. CARDINAL. How idly shows this rage, which carries you, As men convey'd by witches through the air, On violent whirlwinds! This intemperate noise Fitly resembles deaf men's shrill discourse, Who talk aloud, thinking all other men To have their imperfection. FERDINAND. Have not you My palsy? CARDINAL. Yes, [but] I can be angry Without this rupture. There is not in nature A thing that makes man so deform'd, so beastly, As doth intemperate anger. Chide yourself. You have divers men who never yet express'd Their strong desire of rest but by unrest, By vexing of themselves. Come, put yourself In tune. FERDINAND. So I will only study to seem The thing I am not. I could kill her now, In you, or in myself; for I do think It is some sin in us heaven doth revenge By her. CARDINAL. Are you stark mad? FERDINAND. I would have their bodies Burnt in a coal-pit with the ventage stopp'd, That their curs'd smoke might not ascend to heaven; Or dip the sheets they lie in in pitch or sulphur, Wrap them in 't, and then light them like a match; Or else to-boil[71] their bastard to a cullis, And give 't his lecherous father to renew The sin of his back. CARDINAL. I 'll leave you. FERDINAND. Nay, I have done. I am confident, had I been damn'd in hell, And should have heard of this, it would have put me Into a cold sweat. In, in; I 'll go sleep. Till I know who [loves] my sister, I 'll not stir: That known, I 'll find scorpions to string my whips, And fix her in a general eclipse. Exeunt.

In a different location in the Roman palace, Ferdinand, carrying a letter, tells the Cardinal the news of the Duchess--he knows only that she is pregnant, not that she is married. He confesses that the knowledge has made him crazy. The two men rue her wantonness and the infidelity of women in general, but the Cardinal keeps his cool, while chiding Ferdinand for his extreme emotional reactions. Ferdinand threatens everyone--the Duchess, the unknown father, the child, even himself and the Cardinal--and then retires, saying he won't take any action until he figures out who the father is.

ACT V. Enter FERNEZE, [179] KNIGHTS, MARTIN DEL BOSCO, and OFFICERS. FERNEZE. Now, gentlemen, betake you to your arms, And see that Malta be well fortified; And it behoves you to be resolute; For Calymath, having hover'd here so long, Will win the town, or die before the walls. FIRST KNIGHT. And die he shall; for we will never yield. Enter BELLAMIRA and PILIA-BORZA. BELLAMIRA. O, bring us to the governor! FERNEZE. Away with her! she is a courtezan. BELLAMIRA. Whate'er I am, yet, governor, hear me speak: I bring thee news by whom thy son was slain: Mathias did it not; it was the Jew. PILIA-BORZA. Who, besides the slaughter of these gentlemen, Poison'd his own daughter and the nuns, Strangled a friar, and I know not what Mischief beside. FERNEZE. Had we but proof of this---- BELLAMIRA. Strong proof, my lord: his man's now at my lodging, That was his agent; he'll confess it all. FERNEZE. Go fetch him [180] straight [Exeunt OFFICERS]. I always fear'd that Jew. Re-enter OFFICERS with BARABAS and ITHAMORE. BARABAS. I'll go alone; dogs, do not hale me thus. ITHAMORE. Nor me neither; I cannot out-run you, constable.--O, my belly! BARABAS. One dram of powder more had made all sure: What a damn'd slave was I! [Aside.] FERNEZE. Make fires, heat irons, let the rack be fetch'd. FIRST KNIGHT. Nay, stay, my lord; 't may be he will confess. BARABAS. Confess! what mean you, lords? who should confess? FERNEZE. Thou and thy Turk; 'twas that slew my son. ITHAMORE. Guilty, my lord, I confess. Your son and Mathias were both contracted unto Abigail: [he] forged a counterfeit challenge. BARABAS. Who carried that challenge? ITHAMORE. I carried it, I confess; but who writ it? marry, even he that strangled Barnardine, poisoned the nuns and his own daughter. FERNEZE. Away with him! his sight is death to me. BARABAS. For what, you men of Malta? hear me speak. She is a courtezan, and he a thief, And he my bondman: let me have law; For none of this can prejudice my life. FERNEZE. Once more, away with him!--You shall have law. BARABAS. Devils, do your worst!--I['ll] live in spite of you.-- [Aside.] As these have spoke, so be it to their souls!-- I hope the poison'd flowers will work anon. [Aside.] [Exeunt OFFICERS with BARABAS and ITHAMORE; BELLAMIRA, and PILIA-BORZA.] Enter KATHARINE. KATHARINE. Was my Mathias murder'd by the Jew? Ferneze, 'twas thy son that murder'd him. FERNEZE. Be patient, gentle madam: it was he; He forg'd the daring challenge made them fight. KATHARINE. Where is the Jew? where is that murderer? FERNEZE. In prison, till the law has pass'd on him. Re-enter FIRST OFFICER. FIRST OFFICER. My lord, the courtezan and her man are dead; So is the Turk and Barabas the Jew. FERNEZE. Dead! FIRST OFFICER. Dead, my lord, and here they bring his body. MARTIN DEL BOSCO. This sudden death of his is very strange. Re-enter OFFICERS, carrying BARABAS as dead. FERNEZE. Wonder not at it, sir; the heavens are just; Their deaths were like their lives; then think not of 'em.-- Since they are dead, let them be buried: For the Jew's body, throw that o'er the walls, To be a prey for vultures and wild beasts.-- So, now away and fortify the town. Exeunt all, leaving BARABAS on the floor. [181] BARABAS. [rising] What, all alone! well fare, sleepy drink! I'll be reveng'd on this accursed town; For by my means Calymath shall enter in: I'll help to slay their children and their wives, To fire the churches, pull their houses down, Take my goods too, and seize upon my lands. I hope to see the governor a slave, And, rowing in a galley, whipt to death. Enter CALYMATH, BASSOES, [182] and TURKS. CALYMATH. Whom have we there? a spy? BARABAS. Yes, my good lord, one that can spy a place Where you may enter, and surprize the town: My name is Barabas; I am a Jew. CALYMATH. Art thou that Jew whose goods we heard were sold For tribute-money? BARABAS. The very same, my lord: And since that time they have hir'd a slave, my man, To accuse me of a thousand villanies: I was imprisoned, but scap [']d their hands. CALYMATH. Didst break prison? BARABAS. No, no: I drank of poppy and cold mandrake juice; And being asleep, belike they thought me dead, And threw me o'er the walls: so, or how else, The Jew is here, and rests at your command. CALYMATH. 'Twas bravely done: but tell me, Barabas, Canst thou, as thou report'st, make Malta ours? BARABAS. Fear not, my lord; for here, against the trench, [183] The rock is hollow, and of purpose digg'd, To make a passage for the running streams And common channels [184] of the city. Now, whilst you give assault unto the walls, I'll lead five hundred soldiers through the vault, And rise with them i' the middle of the town, Open the gates for you to enter in; And by this means the city is your own. CALYMATH. If this be true, I'll make thee governor. BARABAS. And, if it be not true, then let me die. CALYMATH. Thou'st doom'd thyself.--Assault it presently. [Exeunt.] Alarums within. Enter CALYMATH, [185] BASSOES, TURKS, and BARABAS; with FERNEZE and KNIGHTS prisoners. CALYMATH. Now vail [186] your pride, you captive Christians, And kneel for mercy to your conquering foe: Now where's the hope you had of haughty Spain? Ferneze, speak; had it not been much better To kept [187] thy promise than be thus surpris'd? FERNEZE. What should I say? we are captives, and must yield. CALYMATH. Ay, villains, you must yield, and under Turkish yokes Shall groaning bear the burden of our ire:-- And, Barabas, as erst we promis'd thee, For thy desert we make thee governor; Use them at thy discretion. BARABAS. Thanks, my lord. FERNEZE. O fatal day, to fall into the hands Of such a traitor and unhallow'd Jew! What greater misery could heaven inflict? CALYMATH. 'Tis our command:--and, Barabas, we give, To guard thy person, these our Janizaries: Entreat [188] them well, as we have used thee.-- And now, brave bassoes, [189] come; we'll walk about The ruin'd town, and see the wreck we made.-- Farewell, brave Jew, farewell, great Barabas! BARABAS. May all good fortune follow Calymath! [Exeunt CALYMATH and BASSOES.] And now, as entrance to our safety, To prison with the governor and these Captains, his consorts and confederates. FERNEZE. O villain! heaven will be reveng'd on thee. BARABAS. Away! no more; let him not trouble me. [Exeunt TURKS with FERNEZE and KNIGHTS.] Thus hast thou gotten, [190] by thy policy, No simple place, no small authority: I now am governor of Malta; true,-- But Malta hates me, and, in hating me, My life's in danger; and what boots it thee, Poor Barabas, to be the governor, Whenas [191] thy life shall be at their command? No, Barabas, this must be look'd into; And, since by wrong thou gott'st authority, Maintain it bravely by firm policy; At least, unprofitably lose it not; For he that liveth in authority, And neither gets him friends nor fills his bags, Lives like the ass that Aesop speaketh of, That labours with a load of bread and wine, And leaves it off to snap on thistle-tops: But Barabas will be more circumspect. Begin betimes; Occasion's bald behind: Slip not thine opportunity, for fear too late Thou seek'st for much, but canst not compass it.-- Within here! [192] Enter FERNEZE, with a GUARD. FERNEZE. My lord? BARABAS. Ay, LORD; thus slaves will learn. Now, governor,--stand by there, wait within,-- [Exeunt GUARD.] This is the reason that I sent for thee: Thou seest thy life and Malta's happiness Are at my arbitrement; and Barabas At his discretion may dispose of both: Now tell me, governor, and plainly too, What think'st thou shall become of it and thee? FERNEZE. This, Barabas; since things are in thy power, I see no reason but of Malta's wreck, Nor hope of thee but extreme cruelty: Nor fear I death, nor will I flatter thee. BARABAS. Governor, good words; be not so furious 'Tis not thy life which can avail me aught; Yet you do live, and live for me you shall: And as for Malta's ruin, think you not 'Twere slender policy for Barabas To dispossess himself of such a place? For sith, [193] as once you said, within this isle, In Malta here, that I have got my goods, And in this city still have had success, And now at length am grown your governor, Yourselves shall see it shall not be forgot; For, as a friend not known but in distress, I'll rear up Malta, now remediless. FERNEZE. Will Barabas recover Malta's loss? Will Barabas be good to Christians? BARABAS. What wilt thou give me, governor, to procure A dissolution of the slavish bands Wherein the Turk hath yok'd your land and you? What will you give me if I render you The life of Calymath, surprise his men, And in an out-house of the city shut His soldiers, till I have consum'd 'em all with fire? What will you give him that procureth this? FERNEZE. Do but bring this to pass which thou pretendest, Deal truly with us as thou intimatest, And I will send amongst the citizens, And by my letters privately procure Great sums of money for thy recompense: Nay, more, do this, and live thou governor still. BARABAS. Nay, do thou this, Ferneze, and be free: Governor, I enlarge thee; live with me; Go walk about the city, see thy friends: Tush, send not letters to 'em; go thyself, And let me see what money thou canst make: Here is my hand that I'll set Malta free; And thus we cast [194] it: to a solemn feast I will invite young Selim Calymath, Where be thou present, only to perform One stratagem that I'll impart to thee, Wherein no danger shall betide thy life, And I will warrant Malta free for ever. FERNEZE. Here is my hand; believe me, Barabas, I will be there, and do as thou desirest. When is the time? BARABAS. Governor, presently; For Calymath, when he hath view'd the town, Will take his leave, and sail toward Ottoman. FERNEZE. Then will I, Barabas, about this coin, And bring it with me to thee in the evening. BARABAS. Do so; but fail not: now farewell, Ferneze:-- [Exit FERNEZE.] And thus far roundly goes the business: Thus, loving neither, will I live with both, Making a profit of my policy; And he from whom my most advantage comes, Shall be my friend. This is the life we Jews are us'd to lead; And reason too, for Christians do the like. Well, now about effecting this device; First, to surprise great Selim's soldiers, And then to make provision for the feast, That at one instant all things may be done: My policy detests prevention. To what event my secret purpose drives, I know; and they shall witness with their lives. [Exeunt.] Enter CALYMATH and BASSOES. [195] CALYMATH. Thus have we view'd the city, seen the sack, And caus'd the ruins to be new-repair'd, Which with our bombards' shot and basilisk[s] [196] We rent in sunder at our entry: And, now I see the situation, And how secure this conquer'd island stands, Environ'd with the Mediterranean sea, Strong-countermin'd with other petty isles, And, toward Calabria, [197] back'd by Sicily (Where Syracusian Dionysius reign'd), Two lofty turrets that command the town, I wonder how it could be conquer'd thus. Enter a MESSENGER. MESSENGER. From Barabas, Malta's governor, I bring A message unto mighty Calymath: Hearing his sovereign was bound for sea, To sail to Turkey, to great Ottoman, He humbly would entreat your majesty To come and see his homely citadel, And banquet with him ere thou leav'st the isle. CALYMATH. To banquet with him in his citadel! I fear me, messenger, to feast my train Within a town of war so lately pillag'd, Will be too costly and too troublesome: Yet would I gladly visit Barabas, For well has Barabas deserv'd of us. MESSENGER. Selim, for that, thus saith the governor,-- That he hath in [his] store a pearl so big, So precious, and withal so orient, As, be it valu'd but indifferently, The price thereof will serve to entertain Selim and all his soldiers for a month; Therefore he humbly would entreat your highness Not to depart till he has feasted you. CALYMATH. I cannot feast my men in Malta-walls, Except he place his tables in the streets. MESSENGER. Know, Selim, that there is a monastery Which standeth as an out-house to the town; There will he banquet them; but thee at home, With all thy bassoes and brave followers. CALYMATH. Well, tell the governor we grant his suit; We'll in this summer-evening feast with him. MESSENGER. I shall, my lord. [Exit.] CALYMATH. And now, bold bassoes, let us to our tents, And meditate how we may grace us best, To solemnize our governor's great feast. [Exeunt.] Enter FERNEZE, [198] KNIGHTS, and MARTIN DEL BOSCO. FERNEZE. In this, my countrymen, be rul'd by me: Have special care that no man sally forth Till you shall hear a culverin discharg'd By him that bears the linstock, [199] kindled thus; Then issue out and come to rescue me, For happily I shall be in distress, Or you released of this servitude. FIRST KNIGHT. Rather than thus to live as Turkish thralls, What will we not adventure? FERNEZE. On, then; be gone. KNIGHTS. Farewell, grave governor. [Exeunt, on one side, KNIGHTS and MARTIN DEL BOSCO; on the other, FERNEZE.] Enter, above, [200] BARABAS, with a hammer, very busy; and CARPENTERS. BARABAS. How stand the cords? how hang these hinges? fast? Are all the cranes and pulleys sure? FIRST CARPENTER. [201] All fast. BARABAS. Leave nothing loose, all levell'd to my mind. Why, now I see that you have art, indeed: There, carpenters, divide that gold amongst you; [Giving money.] Go, swill in bowls of sack and muscadine; Down to the cellar, taste of all my wines. FIRST CARPENTER. We shall, my lord, and thank you. [Exeunt CARPENTERS.] BARABAS. And, if you like them, drink your fill and die; For, so I live, perish may all the world! Now, Selim Calymath, return me word That thou wilt come, and I am satisfied. Enter MESSENGER. Now, sirrah; what, will he come? MESSENGER. He will; and has commanded all his men To come ashore, and march through Malta-streets, That thou mayst feast them in thy citadel. BARABAS. Then now are all things as my wish would have 'em; There wanteth nothing but the governor's pelf; And see, he brings it. Enter FERNEZE. Now, governor, the sum? FERNEZE. With free consent, a hundred thousand pounds. BARABAS. Pounds say'st thou, governor? well, since it is no more, I'll satisfy myself with that; nay, keep it still, For, if I keep not promise, trust not me: And, governor, now partake my policy. First, for his army, they are sent before, Enter'd the monastery, and underneath In several places are field-pieces pitch'd, Bombards, whole barrels full of gunpowder, That on the sudden shall dissever it, And batter all the stones about their ears, Whence none can possibly escape alive: Now, as for Calymath and his consorts, Here have I made a dainty gallery, The floor whereof, this cable being cut, Doth fall asunder, so that it doth sink Into a deep pit past recovery. Here, hold that knife; and, when thou seest he comes, [Throws down a knife.] And with his bassoes shall be blithely set, A warning-piece shall be shot off [202] from the tower, To give thee knowledge when to cut the cord, And fire the house. Say, will not this be brave? FERNEZE. O, excellent! here, hold thee, Barabas; I trust thy word; take what I promis'd thee. BARABAS. No, governor; I'll satisfy thee first; Thou shalt not live in doubt of any thing. Stand close, for here they come. [FERNEZE retires.] Why, is not this A kingly kind of trade, to purchase towns By treachery, and sell 'em by deceit? Now tell me, worldlings, underneath the sun [203] If greater falsehood ever has been done? Enter CALYMATH and BASSOES. CALYMATH. Come, my companion-bassoes: see, I pray, How busy Barabas is there above To entertain us in his gallery: Let us salute him.--Save thee, Barabas! BARABAS. Welcome, great Calymath! FERNEZE. How the slave jeers at him! [Aside.] BARABAS. Will't please thee, mighty Selim Calymath, To ascend our homely stairs? CALYMATH. Ay, Barabas.-- Come, bassoes, ascend. [204] FERNEZE. [coming forward] Stay, Calymath; For I will shew thee greater courtesy Than Barabas would have afforded thee. KNIGHT. [within] Sound a charge there! [A charge sounded within: FERNEZE cuts the cord; the floor of the gallery gives way, and BARABAS falls into a caldron placed in a pit. Enter KNIGHTS and MARTIN DEL BOSCO. [205] CALYMATH. How now! what means this? BARABAS. Help, help me, Christians, help! FERNEZE. See, Calymath! this was devis'd for thee. CALYMATH. Treason, treason! bassoes, fly! FERNEZE. No, Selim, do not fly: See his end first, and fly then if thou canst. BARABAS. O, help me, Selim! help me, Christians! Governor, why stand you all so pitiless? FERNEZE. Should I in pity of thy plaints or thee, Accursed Barabas, base Jew, relent? No, thus I'll see thy treachery repaid, But wish thou hadst behav'd thee otherwise. BARABAS. You will not help me, then? FERNEZE. No, villain, no. BARABAS. And, villains, know you cannot help me now.-- Then, Barabas, breathe forth thy latest fate, And in the fury of thy torments strive To end thy life with resolution.-- Know, governor, 'twas I that slew thy son,-- I fram'd the challenge that did make them meet: Know, Calymath, I aim'd thy overthrow: And, had I but escap'd this stratagem, I would have brought confusion on you all, Damn'd Christian [206] dogs, and Turkish infidels! But now begins the extremity of heat To pinch me with intolerable pangs: Die, life! fly, soul! tongue, curse thy fill, and die! [Dies.] CALYMATH. Tell me, you Christians, what doth this portend? FERNEZE. This train [207] he laid to have entrapp'd thy life; Now, Selim, note the unhallow'd deeds of Jews; Thus he determin'd to have handled thee, But I have rather chose to save thy life. CALYMATH. Was this the banquet he prepar'd for us? Let's hence, lest further mischief be pretended. [208] FERNEZE. Nay, Selim, stay; for, since we have thee here, We will not let thee part so suddenly: Besides, if we should let thee go, all's one, For with thy galleys couldst thou not get hence, Without fresh men to rig and furnish them. CALYMATH. Tush, governor, take thou no care for that; My men are all aboard, And do attend my coming there by this. FERNEZE. Why, heard'st thou not the trumpet sound a charge? CALYMATH. Yes, what of that? FERNEZE. Why, then the house was fir'd, Blown up, and all thy soldiers massacred. CALYMATH. O, monstrous treason! FERNEZE. A Jew's courtesy; For he that did by treason work our fall, By treason hath deliver'd thee to us: Know, therefore, till thy father hath made good The ruins done to Malta and to us, Thou canst not part; for Malta shall be freed, Or Selim ne'er return to Ottoman. CALYMATH. Nay, rather, Christians, let me go to Turkey, In person there to mediate [209] your peace: To keep me here will naught advantage you. FERNEZE. Content thee, Calymath, here thou must stay, And live in Malta prisoner; for come all [210] the world To rescue thee, so will we guard us now, As sooner shall they drink the ocean dry, Than conquer Malta, or endanger us. So, march away; and let due praise be given Neither to Fate nor Fortune, but to Heaven. [Exeunt.] Footnotes: [Footnote 1: Heywood dedicates the First Part of THE IRON AGE (printed 1632) "To my Worthy and much Respected Friend, Mr. Thomas Hammon, of Grayes Inne, Esquire."] [Footnote 2: Tho. Heywood: The well-known dramatist.] [Footnote 3: censures: i.e. judgments.] [Footnote 4: bin: i.e. been.] [Footnote 5: best of poets: "Marlo." Marg. note in old ed.] [Footnote 6: best of actors: "Allin." Marg. note in old. ed.--Any account of the celebrated actor, Edward Alleyn, the founder of Dulwich College, would be superfluous here.] [Footnote 7: In HERO AND LEANDER, &c.: The meaning is--The one (Marlowe) gained a lasting memory by being the author of HERO AND LEANDER; while the other (Alleyn) wan the attribute of peerless by playing the parts of Tamburlaine, the Jew of Malta, &c.--The passage happens to be mispointed in the old ed. thus, "In Hero and Leander, one did gaine A lasting memorie: in Tamberlaine, This Jew, with others many: th' other wan," &c. and hence Mr. Collier, in his HIST. OF ENG. DRAM. POET. iii. 114, understood the words, "in Tamburlaine, This Jew, with others many," as applying to Marlowe: he afterwards, however, in his MEMOIRS OF ALLEYN, p. 9, suspected that the punctuation of the old ed. might be wrong,--which it doubtless is.] [Footnote 8: him: "Perkins." Marg. note in old ed.--"This was Richard Perkins, one of the performers belonging to the Cock-pit theatre in Drury-Lane. His name is printed among those who acted in HANNIBAL AND SCIPIO by Nabbes, THE WEDDING by Shirley, and THE FAIR MAID OF THE WEST by Heywood. After the play-houses were shut up on account of the confusion arising from the civil wars, Perkins and Sumner, who belonged to the same house, lived together at Clerkenwell, where they died and were buried. They both died some years before the Restoration. See THE DIALOGUE ON PLAYS AND PLAYERS [Dodsley's OLD PLAYS, 1. clii., last ed.]." REED (apud Dodsley's O. P.). Perkins acted a prominent part in Webster's WHITE DEVIL, when it was first brought on the stage, --perhaps Brachiano (for Burbadge, who was celebrated in Brachiano, does not appear to have played it originally): in a notice to the reader at the end of that tragedy Webster says; "In particular I must remember the well-approved industry of my friend Master Perkins, and confess the worth of his action did crown both the beginning and end." About 1622-3 Perkins belonged to the Red Bull theatre: about 1637 he joined the company at Salisbury Court: see Webster's WORKS, note, p. 51, ed. Dyce, 1857.] [Footnote 9: prize was play'd: This expression (so frequent in our early writers) is properly applied to fencing: see Steevens's note on Shakespeare's MERRY WIVES OF WINDSOR, act. i. sc. 1.] [Footnote 10: no wagers laid: "Wagers as to the comparative merits of rival actors in particular parts were not unfrequent of old," &c. Collier (apud Dodsley's O. P.). See my ed. of Peele's WORKS, i. x. ed. 1829; and Collier's MEMOIRS OF ALLEYN, p. 11.] [Footnote 11: the Guise: "i.e. the Duke of Guise, who had been the principal contriver and actor in the horrid massacre of St. Bartholomew's day, 1572. He met with his deserved fate, being assassinated, by order of the French king, in 1588." REED (apud Dodsley's O. P.). And see our author's MASSACRE AT PARIS.] [Footnote 12: empery: Old ed. "Empire."] [Footnote 13: the Draco's: "i.e. the severe lawgiver of Athens; 'whose statutes,' said Demades, 'were not written with ink, but blood.'" STEEVENS (apud Dodsley's O. P.).--Old ed. "the Drancus."] [Footnote 14: had: Qy. "had BUT"?] [Footnote 15: a lecture here: Qy. "a lecture TO YOU here"?] [Footnote 16: Act I.: The Scenes of this play are not marked in the old ed.; nor in the present edition,--because occasionally (where the audience were to SUPPOSE a change of place, it was impossible to mark them.] [Footnote 17: Samnites: Old ed. "Samintes."] [Footnote 18: silverlings: When Steevens (apud Dodsley's O. P.) called this "a diminutive, to express the Jew's contempt of a metal inferior in value to gold," he did not know that the word occurs in Scripture: "a thousand vines at a thousand SILVERLINGS." ISAIAH, vii. 23.--Old ed. "siluerbings."] [Footnote 19: Tell: i.e. count.] [Footnote 20: seld-seen: i.e. seldom-seen.] [Footnote 21: Into what corner peers my halcyon's bill?: "It was anciently believed that this bird (the king-fisher), if hung up, would vary with the wind, and by that means shew from what quarter it blew." STEEVENS (apud Dodsley's O. P.),--who refers to the note on the following passage of Shakespeare's KING LEAR, act ii. sc. 2; "Renege, affirm, and turn their HALCYON BEAKS With every gale and vary of their masters," &c.] [Footnote 22: custom them: "i.e. enter the goods they contain at the Custom-house." STEEVENS (apud Dodsley's O. P.).] [Footnote 23: But: Old ed. "By."] [Footnote 24: fraught: i.e. freight.] [Footnote 25: scambled: i.e. scrambled. (Coles gives in his DICT. "To SCAMBLE, certatim arripere"; and afterwards renders "To scramble" by the very same Latin words.)] [Footnote 26: Enter three JEWS: A change of scene is supposed here, --to a street or to the Exchange.] [Footnote 27: Fond: i.e. Foolish.] [Footnote 28: Aside: Mr. Collier (apud Dodsley's O. P.), mistaking the purport of this stage-direction (which, of course, applies only to the words "UNTO MYSELF"), proposed an alteration of the text.] [Footnote 29: BARABAS. Farewell, Zaareth, &c.: Old ed. "Iew. DOE SO; Farewell Zaareth," &c. But "Doe so" is evidently a stage- direction which has crept into the text, and which was intended to signify that the Jews DO "take their leaves" of Barabas: --here the old ed. has no "EXEUNT."] [Footnote 30: Turk has: So the Editor of 1826.--Old ed. "Turkes haue": but see what follows.] [Footnote 31: Ego mihimet sum semper proximus: The words of Terence are "Proximus sum egomet mihi." ANDRIA, iv. 1. 12.] [Footnote 32: Exit: The scene is now supposed to be changed to the interior of the Council-house.] [Footnote 33: bassoes: i.e. bashaws.] [Footnote 34: governor: Old ed. "Gouernours" here, and several times after in this scene.] [Footnote 35: CALYMATH. Stand all aside, &c.: "The Governor and the Maltese knights here consult apart, while Calymath gives these directions." COLLIER (apud Dodsley's O. P.).] [Footnote 36: happily: i.e. haply.] [Footnote 37: Officer: Old ed. "Reader."] [Footnote 38: denies: i.e. refuses.] [Footnote 39: convertite: "i.e. convert, as in Shakespeare's KING JOHN, act v. sc. 1." STEEVENS (apud Dodsley's O. P.).] [Footnote 40: Then we'll take, &c.: In the old ed. this line forms a portion of the preceding speech.] [Footnote 41: ecstasy: Equivalent here to--violent emotion. "The word was anciently used to signify some degree of alienation of mind." COLLIER (apud Dodsley's O. P.).] [Footnote 42: Exeunt three Jews: On their departure, the scene is supposed to be changed to a street near the house of Barabas.] [Footnote 43: reduce: If the right reading, is equivalent to--repair. But qy. "redress"?] [Footnote 44: fond: "i.e. foolish." REED (apud Dodsley's O. P.).] [Footnote 45: portagues: Portuguese gold coins, so called.] [Footnote 46: sect: "i.e. sex. SECT and SEX were, in our ancient dramatic writers, used synonymously." REED (apud Dodsley's O. P.).] [Footnote 47: Enter FRIAR JACOMO, &c.: Old ed. "Enter three Fryars and two Nuns:" but assuredly only TWO Friars figure in this play.] [Footnote 48: Abb.: In the old ed. the prefix to this speech is "1 Nun," and to the next speech but one "Nun." That both speeches belong to the Abbess is quite evident.] [Footnote 49: Sometimes: Equivalent here (as frequently in our early writers) to--Sometime.] [Footnote 50: forgive me--: Old ed. "GIUE me--"] [Footnote 51: thus: After this word the old ed. has "�",--to signify, perhaps, the motion which Barabas was to make here with his hand.] [Footnote 52: forget not: Qy. "forget IT not"] [Footnote 53: Enter BARABAS, with a light: The scene is now before the house of Barabas, which has been turned into a nunnery.] [Footnote 54: Thus, like the sad-presaging raven, that tolls The sick man's passport in her hollow beak Mr. Collier (HIST. OF ENG. DRAM. POET. iii. 136) remarks that these lines are cited (with some variation, and from memory, as the present play was not printed till 1633) in an epigram on T. Deloney, in Guilpin's SKIALETHEIA OR THE SHADOWE OF TRUTH, 1598,-- "LIKE TO THE FATALL OMINOUS RAVEN, WHICH TOLLS THE SICK MAN'S DIRGE WITHIN HIS HOLLOW BEAKE, So every paper-clothed post in Poules To thee, Deloney, mourningly doth speake," &c.] [Footnote 55: of: i.e. on.] [Footnote 56: wake: Old ed. "walke."] [Footnote 57: Bueno para todos mi ganado no era: Old ed. "Birn para todos, my ganada no er."] [Footnote 58: But stay: what star shines yonder in the east, &c. Shakespeare, it would seem, recollected this passage, when he wrote,-- "But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!" ROMEO AND JULIET, act ii. sc. 2.] [Footnote 59: Hermoso placer de los dineros: Old ed. "Hormoso Piarer, de les Denirch."] [Footnote 60: Enter Ferneze, &c.: The scene is the interior of the Council-house.] [Footnote 61: entreat: i.e. treat.] [Footnote 62: vail'd not: "i.e. did not strike or lower our flags." STEEVENS (apud Dodsley's O. P.).] [Footnote 63: Turkish: Old ed. "Spanish."] [Footnote 64: luff'd and tack'd: Old ed. "LEFT, and TOOKE."] [Footnote 65: stated: i.e. estated, established, stationed.] [Footnote 66: Enter OFFICERS, &c.: The scene being the market-place.] [Footnote 67: Poor villains, such as were: Old ed. "SUCH AS poore villaines were", &c.] [Footnote 68: into: i.e. unto: see note �, p. 15. [note |, p. 15, The First Part of Tamburlaine the Great: "| into: Used here (as the word was formerly often used) for UNTO."] [Footnote 69: city: The preceding editors have not questioned this word, which I believe to be a misprint.] [Footnote 70: foil'd]=filed, i.e. defiled.] [Footnote 71: I'll have a saying to that nunnery: Compare Barnaby Barnes's DIVILS CHARTER, 1607; "Before I do this seruice, lie there, peece; For I must HAUE A SAYING to those bottels. HE DRINKETH. True stingo; stingo, by mine honour.* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * I must HAUE A SAYING to you, sir, I must, though you be prouided for his Holines owne mouth; I will be bould to be the Popes taster by his leaue." Sig. K 3.] [Footnote 72: plates: "i.e. pieces of silver money." STEEVENS (apud Dodsley's O. P.).--Old ed. "plats."] [Footnote 73: Slave: To the speeches of this Slave the old ed. prefixes "Itha." and "Ith.", confounding him with Ithamore.] [Footnote 74: Lady Vanity: So Jonson in his FOX, act ii. sc. 3., "Get you a cittern, LADY VANITY, And be a dealer with the virtuous man," &c.; and in his DEVIL IS AN ASS, act i. sc. 1.,-- "SATAN. What Vice? PUG. Why, any: Fraud, Or Covetousness, or LADY VANITY, Or old Iniquity."] [Footnote 75: Katharine: Old ed. "MATER."--The name of Mathias's mother was, as we afterwards learn, Katharine.] [Footnote 76: stay: i.e. forbear, break off our conversation.] [Footnote 77: was: Qy. "was BUT"?] [Footnote 78: O, brave, master: The modern editors strike out the comma after "BRAVE", understanding that word as an epithet to "MASTER": but compare what Ithamore says to Barabas in act iv.: "That's BRAVE, MASTER," p. 165, first col.] [Footnote 79: your nose: An allusion to the large artificial nose, with which Barabas was represented on the stage. See the passage cited from W. Rowley's SEARCH FOR MONEY, 1609, in the ACCOUNT OF MARLOWE AND HIS WRITINGS.] [Footnote 80: Ure: i.e. use, practice.] [Footnote 81: a-good: "i.e. in good earnest. Tout de bon." REED (apud Dodsley's O. P.).] [Footnote 82: Enter LODOWICK: A change of scene supposed here,--to the outside of Barabas's house.] [Footnote 83: vow love to him: Old ed. "vow TO LOUE him": but compare, in Barabas's next speech but one, "And she VOWS LOVE TO HIM," &c.] [Footnote 84: made sure: i.e. affianced.] [Footnote 85: Ludovico: Old ed. "Lodowicke."--In act iii. we have, "I fear she knows--'tis so--of my device In Don Mathias' and LODOVICO'S deaths." p. 162, sec. col.] [Footnote 86: happily: i.e. haply.] [Footnote 87: unsoil'd: "Perhaps we ought to read 'unfoil'd', consistently with what Barabas said of her before under the figure of a jewel-- 'The diamond that I talk of NE'ER WAS FOIL'D'." COLLIER (apud Dodsley's O. P.). But see that passage, p. 155, sec. col., and note ||. [i.e. note 70.]] [Footnote 88: cross: i.e. piece of money (many coins being marked with a cross on one side).] [Footnote 89: thou: Old ed. "thee."] [Footnote 90: resolv'd: "i.e. satisfied." GILCHRIST (apud Dodsley's O. P.).] [Footnote 91: Enter BELLAMIRA: She appears, we may suppose, in a veranda or open portico of her house (that the scene is not the interior of the house, is proved by what follows).] [Footnote 92: Enter MATHIAS. MATHIAS. This is the place, &c.: The scene is some pert of the town, as Barabas appears "ABOVE,"--in the balcony of a house. (He stood, of course, on what was termed the upper-stage.) Old ed. thus; "Enter MATHIAS. Math. This is the place, now Abigail shall see Whether Mathias holds her deare or no. Enter Lodow. reading. Math. What, dares the villain write in such base terms? Lod. I did it, and reuenge it if thou dar'st."] [Footnote 93: Lodovico: Old ed. "Lodowicke."--See note *, p. 158. (i.e. note 85.)] [Footnote 94: tall: i.e. bold, brave.] [Footnote 95: What sight is this!: i.e. What A sight is this! Our early writers often omit the article in such exclamations: compare Shakespeare's JULIUS CAESAR, act i. sc. 3, where Casca says, "Cassius, WHAT NIGHT IS THIS!" (after which words the modern editors improperly retain the interrogation-point of the first folio).] [Footnote 96: Lodovico: Old ed. "Lodowicke."] [Footnote 97: These arms of mine shall be thy sepulchre: So in Shakespeare's THIRD PART OF KING HENRY VI., act ii. sc. 5, the Father says to the dead Son whom he has killed in battle, "THESE ARMS OF MINE shall be thy winding-sheet; My heart, sweet boy, SHALL BE THY SEPULCHRE,"-- lines, let me add, not to be found in THE TRUE TRAGEDIE OF RICHARD DUKE OF YORKE, on which Shakespeare formed that play.] [Footnote 98: Katharine: Old ed. "Katherina."] [Footnote 99: Enter ITHAMORE: The scene a room in the house of Barabas.] [Footnote 100: held in hand: i.e. kept in expectation, having their hopes flattered.] [Footnote 101: bottle-nosed: See note �, p. 157. [i.e. note 79.]] [Footnote 102: Jaques: Old ed. "Iaynes."] [Footnote 103: sire: Old ed. "sinne" (which, modernised to "sin", the editors retain, among many other equally obvious errors of the old copy).] [Footnote 104: As: Old ed. "And."] [Footnote 105: Enter BARABAS: The scene is still within the house of Barabas; but some time is supposed to have elapsed since the preceding conference between Abigail and Friar Jacomo.] [Footnote 106: pretendeth: Equivalent to PORTENDETH; as in our author's FIRST BOOK OF LUCAN, "And which (ay me) ever PRETENDETH ill," &c.] [Footnote 107: self: Old ed. "life" (the compositor's eye having caught "life" in the preceding line).] [Footnote 108: 'less: Old ed. "least."] [Footnote 109: Well said: See note *, p. 69.] (note *, p. 69, The Second Part of Tamburlaine the Great: "* Well said: Equivalent to--Well done! as appears from innumerable passages of our early writers: see, for instances, my ed. of Beaumont and Fletcher's WORKS, vol. i. 328, vol. ii. 445, vol. viii. 254.")] [Footnote 110: the proverb says, &c.: A proverb as old as Chaucer's time: see the SQUIERES TALE, v. 10916, ed. Tyrwhitt.] [Footnote 111: batten: i.e. fatten.] [Footnote 112: pot: Old ed. "plot."] [Footnote 113: thou shalt have broth by the eye: "Perhaps he means--thou shalt SEE how the broth that is designed for thee is made, that no mischievous ingredients enter its composition. The passage is, however, obscure." STEEVENS (apud Dodsley's O. P.).--"BY THE EYE" seems to be equivalent to--in abundance. Compare THE CREED of Piers Ploughman: "Grey grete-heded quenes With gold BY THE EIGHEN." v. 167, ed. Wright (who has no note on the expression): and Beaumont and Fletcher's KNIGHT OF THE BURNING PESTLE, act ii. sc. 2; "here's money and gold BY TH' EYE, my boy." In Fletcher's BEGGARS' BUSH, act iii. sc. 1, we find, "Come, English beer, hostess, English beer BY THE BELLY!"] [Footnote 114: In few: i.e. in a few words, in short.] [Footnote 115: hebon: i.e. ebony, which was formerly supposed to be a deadly poison.] [Footnote 116: Enter FERNEZE, &c.: The scene is the interior of the Council-house.] [Footnote 117: basso: Old ed. "Bashaws" (the printer having added an S by mistake), and in the preceding stage-direction, and in the fifth speech of this scene, "Bashaw": but in an earlier scene (see p. 148, first col.) we have "bassoes" (and see our author's TAMBURLAINE, PASSIM). (From p. 148, this play: "Enter FERNEZE governor of Malta, KNIGHTS, and OFFICERS; met by CALYMATH, and BASSOES of the TURK.")] [Footnote 118: the resistless banks: i.e. the banks not able to resist.] [Footnote 119: basilisks: See note ||, p. 25. (note ||, p. 25, The First Part of Tamburlaine the Great:) "basilisks: Pieces of ordnance so called. They were of immense size; see Douce's ILLUST. OF SHAKESPEARE, i. 425."] [Footnote 120: Enter FRIAR JACOMO, &c.: Scene, the interior of the Nunnery.] [Footnote 121: convers'd with me: She alludes to her conversation with Jacomo, p. 162, sec. col. (p. 162, second column, this play: "ABIGAIL. Welcome, grave friar.--Ithamore, be gone. Exit ITHAMORE. Know, holy sir, I am bold to solicit thee. FRIAR JACOMO. Wherein?")] [Footnote 122: envied: i.e. hated.] [Footnote 123: practice: i.e. artful contrivance, stratagem.] [Footnote 124: crucified a child: A crime with which the Jews were often charged. "Tovey, in his ANGLIA JUDAICA, has given the several instances which are upon record of these charges against the Jews; which he observes they were never accused of, but at such times as the king was manifestly in great want of money." REED (apud Dodsley's O. P.).] [Footnote 125: Enter BARABAS, &c.: Scene a street.] [Footnote 126: to: Which the Editor of 1826 deliberately altered to "like," means--compared to, in comparison of.] [Footnote 127: Cazzo: Old ed. "catho."--See Florio's WORLDE OF WORDES (Ital. and Engl. Dict.) ed. 1598, in v.--"A petty oath, a cant exclamation, generally expressive, among the Italian populace, who have it constantly in their mouth, of defiance or contempt." Gifford's note on Jonson's WORKS, ii. 48.] [Footnote 128: nose: See note �, p. 157. [i.e. note 79.]] [Footnote 129: inmate: Old ed. "inmates."] [Footnote 130: the burden of my sins Lie heavy, &c.: One of the modern editors altered "LIE" to "Lies": but examples of similar phraseology,--of a nominative singular followed by a plural verb when a plural genitive intervenes,--are common in our early writers; see notes on Beaumont and Fletcher's WORKS, vol. v. 7, 94, vol. ix. 185, ed. Dyce.] [Footnote 131: sollars: "i.e. lofts, garrets." STEEVENS (apud Dodsley's O. P.).] [Footnote 132: untold: i.e. uncounted.--Old ed. "vnsold."] [Footnote 133: BARABAS. This is mere frailty: brethren, be content.-- Friar Barnardine, go you with Ithamore: You know my mind; let me alone with him.] FRIAR JACOMO. Why does he go to thy house? let him be gone Old ed. thus; "BAR. This is meere frailty, brethren, be content. Fryar Barnardine goe you with Ithimore. ITH. You know my mind, let me alone with him; Why does he goe to thy house, let him begone."] [Footnote 134: the Turk: "Meaning Ithamore." COLLIER (apud Dodsley's O. P.). Compare the last line but one of Barabas's next speech.] [Footnote 135: covent: i.e. convent.] [Footnote 136: Therefore 'tis not requisite he should live: Lest the reader should suspect that the author wrote, "Therefore 'tis requisite he should not live," I may observe that we have had before (p. 152, first col.) a similar form of expression,-- "It is not necessary I be seen."] [Footnote 137: fair: See note |||, p. 15. ('15' sic.) (note |||, p. 13, The First Part of Tamburlaine the Great:) "In fair, &c.: Here "FAIR" is to be considered as a dissyllable: compare, in the Fourth act of our author's JEW OF MALTA, "I'll feast you, lodge you, give you FAIR words, And, after that," &c."] [Footnote 138: shall be done: Here a change of scene is supposed, to the interior of Barabas's house.] [Footnote 139: Friar, awake: Here, most probably, Barabas drew a curtain, and discovered the sleeping Friar.] [Footnote 140: have: Old ed. "saue."] [Footnote 141: What time o' night is't now, sweet Ithamore? ITHAMORE. Towards one: Might be adduced, among other passages, to shew that the modern editors are right when they print in Shakespeare's KING JOHN. act iii. sc. 3, "If the midnight bell Did, with his iron tongue and brazen mouth, Sound ONE into the drowsy ear of NIGHT," &c.] [Footnote 142: Enter FRIAR JACOMO: The scene is now before Barabas's house,--the audience having had to SUPPOSE that the body of Barnardine, which Ithamore had set upright, was standing outside the door.] [Footnote 143: proceed: Seems to be used here as equivalent to--succeed.] [Footnote 144: on's: i.e. of his.] [Footnote 145: Enter BELLAMIRA, &c.: The scene, as in p. 160, a veranda or open portico of Bellamira's house. (p. 160, this play:) " Enter BELLAMIRA. (91) BELLAMIRA. Since this town was besieg'd," etc.] [Footnote 146: tall: Which our early dramatists generally use in the sense of--bold, brave (see note �, p. 161), [i.e. note 94: is here perhaps equivalent to--handsome. ("Tall or SEMELY." PROMPT. PARV. ed. 1499.)] [Footnote 147: neck-verse: i.e. the verse (generally the beginning of the 51st Psalm, MISERERE MEI, &c.) read by a criminal to entitle him to benefit of clergy.] [Footnote 148: of: i.e. on.] [Footnote 149: exercise: i.e. sermon, preaching.] [Footnote 150: with a muschatoes: i.e. with a pair of mustachios. The modern editors print "with MUSTACHIOS," and "with a MUSTACHIOS": but compare,-- "My Tuskes more stiffe than are a Cats MUSCHATOES." S. Rowley's NOBLE SPANISH SOLDIER, 1634, Sig. C. "His crow-black MUCHATOES." THE BLACK BOOK,--Middleton's WORKS, v. 516, ed. Dyce.] [Footnote 151: Turk of tenpence: An expression not unfrequently used by our early writers. So Taylor in some verses on Coriat; "That if he had A TURKE OF TENPENCE bin," &c. WORKES, p. 82, ed. 1630. And see note on Middleton's WORKS, iii. 489, ed. Dyce.] [Footnote 152: you know: Qy. "you know, SIR,"?] [Footnote 153: I'll make him, &c.: Old ed. thus: "I'le make him send me half he has, & glad he scapes so too. PEN AND INKE: I'll write vnto him, we'le haue mony strait." There can be no doubt that the words "Pen and inke" were a direction to the property-man to have those articles on the stage.] [Footnote 154: cunning: i.e. skilfully prepared.--Old ed. "running." (The MAIDS are supposed to hear their mistress' orders WITHIN.)] [Footnote 155: Shalt live with me, and be my love: A line, slightly varied, of Marlowe's well-known song. In the preceding line, the absurdity of "by Dis ABOVE" is, of course, intentional.] [Footnote 156: beard: Old ed. "sterd."] [Footnote 157: give me a ream of paper: we'll have a kingdom of gold for't: A quibble. REALM was frequently written ream; and frequently (as the following passages shew), even when the former spelling was given, the L was not sounded; "Vpon the siluer bosome of the STREAME First gan faire Themis shake her amber locks, Whom all the Nimphs that waight on Neptunes REALME Attended from the hollowe of the rocks." Lodge's SCILLAES METAMORPHOSIS, &c. 1589, Sig. A 2. "How he may surest stablish his new conquerd REALME, How of his glorie fardest to deriue the STREAME." A HERINGS TAYLE, &c. 1598, Sig. D 3. "Learchus slew his brother for the crowne; So did Cambyses fearing much the DREAME; Antiochus, of infamous renowne, His brother slew, to rule alone the REALME." MIROUR FOR MAGISTRATES, p. 78, ed. 1610.] [Footnote 158: runs division: "A musical term [of very common occurrence]." STEEVENS (apud Dodsley's O. P.).] [Footnote 159: Enter BARABAS: The scene certainly seems to be now the interior of Barabas's house, notwithstanding what he presently says to Pilia-Borza (p. 171, sec. col.), "Pray, when, sir, shall I see you at my house?"] [Footnote 160: tatter'd: Old ed. "totter'd": but in a passage of our author's EDWARD THE SECOND the two earliest 4tos have "TATTER'D robes":--and yet Reed in a note on that passage (apud Dodsley's OLD PLAYS, where the reading of the third 4to, "tottered robes", is followed) boldly declares that "in every writer of this period the word was spelt TOTTERED"! The truth is, it was spelt sometimes one way, sometimes the other.] [Footnote 161: catzery: i.e. cheating, roguery. It is formed from CATSO (CAZZO, see note *, p. 166 i.e. note 127), which our early writers used, not only as an exclamation, but as an opprobrious term.] [Footnote 162: cross-biting: i.e. swindling (a cant term).--Something has dropt out here.] [Footnote 163: tale: i.e. reckoning.] [Footnote 164: what he writes for you: i.e. the hundred crowns to be given to the bearer: see p. 170, sec. col. p. 170, second column, this play: "ITHAMORE. [writing: SIRRAH JEW, AS YOU LOVE YOUR LIFE, SEND ME FIVE HUNDRED CROWNS, AND GIVE THE BEARER A HUNDRED. --Tell him I must have't."] [Footnote 165: I should part: Qy. "I E'ER should part"?] [Footnote 166: rid: i.e. despatch, destroy.] [Footnote 167: Enter BELLAMIRA, &c.: They are supposed to be sitting in a veranda or open portico of Bellamira's house: see note *, p. 168. [i.e. note 145.] [Footnote 168: Of: i.e. on.] [Footnote 169: BELLAMIRA.: Old ed. "Pil."] [Footnote 170: Rivo Castiliano: The origin of this Bacchanalian exclamation has not been discovered. RIVO generally is used alone; but, among passages parallel to that of our text, is the following one (which has been often cited),-- "And RYUO will he cry and CASTILE too." LOOKE ABOUT YOU, 1600, Sig. L. 4. A writer in THE WESTMINSTER REVIEW, vol. xliii. 53, thinks that it "is a misprint for RICO-CASTELLANO, meaning a Spaniard belonging to the class of RICOS HOMBRES, and the phrase therefore is-- 'Hey, NOBLE CASTILIAN, a man's a man!' 'I can pledge like a man and drink like a man, MY WORTHY TROJAN;' as some of our farce-writers would say." But the frequent occurrence of RIVO in various authors proves that it is NOT a misprint.] [Footnote 171: he: Old ed. "you".] [Footnote 172: and he and I, snicle hand too fast, strangled a friar] There is surely some corruption here. Steevens (apud Dodsley's O. P.) proposes to read "hand TO FIST". Gilchrist (ibid.) observes, "a snicle is a north-country word for a noose, and when a person is hanged, they say he is snicled." See too, in V. SNICKLE, Forby's VOC. OF EAST ANGLIA, and the CRAVEN DIALECT.--The Rev. J. Mitford proposes the following (very violent) alteration of this passage; "Itha. I carried the broth that poisoned the nuns; and he and I-- Pilia. Two hands snickle-fast-- Itha. Strangled a friar."] [Footnote 173: incony: i.e. fine, pretty, delicate.--Old ed. "incoomy."] [Footnote 174: they stink like a hollyhock: "This flower, however, has no offensive smell. STEEVENS (apud Dodsley's O. P.). Its odour resembles that of the poppy.] [Footnote 175: mushrooms: For this word (as, indeed, for most words) our early writers had no fixed spelling. Here the old ed. has "Mushrumbs": and in our author's EDWARD THE SECOND, the 4tos have "mushrump."] [Footnote 176: under the elder when he hanged himself: That Judas hanged himself on an elder-tree, was a popular legend. Nay, the very tree was exhibited to the curious in Sir John Mandeville's days: "And faste by, is zit the Tree of Eldre, that Judas henge him self upon, for despeyt that he hadde, whan he solde and betrayed oure Lorde." VOIAGE AND TRAVAILE, &c. p. 112. ed. 1725. But, according to Pulci, Judas had recourse to a carob-tree: "Era di sopra a la fonte UN CARRUBBIO, L'ARBOR, SI DICE, OVE S'IMPICCO GIUDA," &c. MORGANTE MAG. C. xxv. st. 77.] [Footnote 177: nasty: Old ed. "masty."] [Footnote 178: me: Old ed. "we".] [Footnote 179: Enter Ferneze, &c.: Scene, the interior of the Council- house.] [Footnote 180: him: Qy. "'em"?] [Footnote 181: Exeunt all, leaving Barabas on the floor: Here the audience were to suppose that Barabas had been thrown over the walls, and that the stage now represented the outside of the city.] [Footnote 182: Bassoes: Here old ed. "Bashawes." See note Sec., p. 164. [Footnote i.e. note 117.]] [Footnote 183: trench: A doubtful reading.--Old ed. "Truce."--"Query 'sluice'? 'TRUCE' seems unintelligible." COLLIER (apud Dodsley's O. P.).--The Rev. J. Mitford proposes "turret" or "tower."] [Footnote 184: channels: i.e. kennels.] [Footnote 185: Enter CALYMATH, &c.: Scene, an open place in the city.] [Footnote 186: vail: i.e. lower, stoop.] [Footnote 187: To kept: i.e. To have kept.] [Footnote 188: Entreat: i.e. Treat.] [Footnote 189: Bassoes: Here old ed. "Bashawes." See note Sec., p. 164. [Footnote i.e. note 117.]] [Footnote 190: Thus hast thou gotten, &c.: A change of scene is supposed here--to the Citadel, the residence of Barabas as governor.] [Footnote 191: Whenas: i.e. When. [Footnote 192: Within here: The usual exclamation is "Within THERE!" but compare THE HOGGE HATH LOST HIS PEARLE (by R. Tailor), 1614; "What, ho! within HERE!" Sig. E 2.] [Footnote 193: sith: i.e. since.] [Footnote 194: cast: i.e. plot, contrive.] [Footnote 195: Bassoes: Here and afterwards old ed. "Bashawes." See note Sec., p. 164. [i.e. note 117.]--Scene, outside the walls of the city.] [Footnote 196: basilisk[s: See note �, p. 25. [note ||, p. 25, The First Part of Tamburlaine the Great: "|| basilisks: Pieces of ordnance so called. They were of immense size; see Douce's ILLUST. OF SHAKESPEARE, i. 425."] [Footnote 197: And, toward Calabria, &c.: So the Editor of 1826.--Old ed. thus: "And toward Calabria back'd by Sicily, Two lofty Turrets that command the Towne. WHEN Siracusian Dionisius reign'd; I wonder how it could be conquer'd thus?"] [Footnote 198: Enter FERNEZE, &c.: Scene, a street.] [Footnote 199: linstock: "i.e. the long match with which cannon are fired." STEEVENS (apud Dodsley's O. P.).] [Footnote 200: Enter, above, &c.: Scene, a hall in the Citadel, with a gallery.] [Footnote 201: FIRST CARPENTER.: Old ed. here "Serv."; but it gives "CARP." as the prefix to the second speech after this.] [Footnote 202: off: An interpolation perhaps.] [Footnote 203: sun: Old ed. "summe."] [Footnote 204: ascend: Old ed. "attend."] [Footnote 205: A charge sounded within: FERNEZE cuts the cord; the floor of the gallery gives way, and BARABAS falls into a caldron placed in a pit. Enter KNIGHTS and MARTIN DEL BOSCO Old ed. has merely "A charge, the cable cut, A Caldron discouered."] [Footnote 206: Christian: Old ed. "Christians."] [Footnote 207: train: i.e. stratagem.] [Footnote 208: pretended: i.e. intended.] [Footnote 209: mediate: Old ed. "meditate."] [Footnote 210: all: Old ed. "call."]

Ferneze enters, instructing his soldiers to fortify the town in the face of an impending Turkish assault. Bellamira and Pilia-Borza appear and reveal Barabas's crimes to the governor. Ferneze orders that the protagonist be brought to him, along with Ithamore, who will provide proof of Barabas's crimes. When the two men arrive, Barabas tries to deny the charges, but Ithamore admits to everything. The merchant pleads with Ferneze to "let me have law," to which the governor replies, "you shall have law." Barabas leaves, mumbling that he hopes the poisoned flowers will work soon. Katherine arrives, and Ferneze tells her the truth about Mathias's death. She is vitriolic about Barabas, but the governor assures her that he is in jail waiting to receive justice. An officer tells Ferneze that both of the prisoners, along with the pimp and the prostitute, are dead. The governor orders that Barabas's body be thrown over the city walls to "be a prey for vultures and wild beasts. " Once this has happened, Barabas gets up and explains that he feigned death by taking a sleeping draught. He vows to help Calymath and be revenged on the Christians in Malta. Barabas finds Calymath and explains that he knows a secret passage whereby 500 troops can enter the city and open its gates. Calymath promises to make Barabas governor if he is telling the truth. The merchant states "let me die" if Calymath finds he has lied. A victorious Calymath enters with his Maltese captives. He assures Ferneze that the prisoners will "under Turkish yokes groaning bear the burden of our ire," before he tells Barabas that he has been made governor. Ferneze despairs at this appointment and at Barabas's treachery, crying, "What greater misery could Heaven inflict?" Calymath leaves, promising the new governor that he will be guarded by his "Janizaries." Barabas sends the captives to prison and wonders about his security. He concludes that many people hate him and that his life would be under threat as governor of Malta. Barabas concludes that he will only maintain his position "bravely by firm policy." Barabas calls back Ferneze. Barabas asks him what he thinks will come of the state, and Ferneze replies that he sees "no reason but of Malta's wrack." The protagonist assures Ferneze that he will help free Malta and her captured soldiers. Amazed, Ferneze assures Barabas that he will give him an enormous sum of money if the Jew will "eal truly with us as thou intimatest. " The protagonist explains that he will invite Calymath to a feast at which Ferneze will only have to perform "one strategem" in order to rid Malta of the Turks. The Ferneze offers Barabas his hand and states that he will deliver his money in the evening. Ferneze departs, and Barabas assures himself that he will make "a profit of my policy." Barabas leaves to plan the details of his deadly feast.

I mentioned to Mr. Spenlow in the morning, that I wanted leave of absence for a short time; and as I was not in the receipt of any salary, and consequently was not obnoxious to the implacable Jorkins, there was no difficulty about it. I took that opportunity, with my voice sticking in my throat, and my sight failing as I uttered the words, to express my hope that Miss Spenlow was quite well; to which Mr. Spenlow replied, with no more emotion than if he had been speaking of an ordinary human being, that he was much obliged to me, and she was very well. We articled clerks, as germs of the patrician order of proctors, were treated with so much consideration, that I was almost my own master at all times. As I did not care, however, to get to Highgate before one or two o'clock in the day, and as we had another little excommunication case in court that morning, which was called The office of the judge promoted by Tipkins against Bullock for his soul's correction, I passed an hour or two in attendance on it with Mr. Spenlow very agreeably. It arose out of a scuffle between two churchwardens, one of whom was alleged to have pushed the other against a pump; the handle of which pump projecting into a school-house, which school-house was under a gable of the church-roof, made the push an ecclesiastical offence. It was an amusing case; and sent me up to Highgate, on the box of the stage-coach, thinking about the Commons, and what Mr. Spenlow had said about touching the Commons and bringing down the country. Mrs. Steerforth was pleased to see me, and so was Rosa Dartle. I was agreeably surprised to find that Littimer was not there, and that we were attended by a modest little parlour-maid, with blue ribbons in her cap, whose eye it was much more pleasant, and much less disconcerting, to catch by accident, than the eye of that respectable man. But what I particularly observed, before I had been half-an-hour in the house, was the close and attentive watch Miss Dartle kept upon me; and the lurking manner in which she seemed to compare my face with Steerforth's, and Steerforth's with mine, and to lie in wait for something to come out between the two. So surely as I looked towards her, did I see that eager visage, with its gaunt black eyes and searching brow, intent on mine; or passing suddenly from mine to Steerforth's; or comprehending both of us at once. In this lynx-like scrutiny she was so far from faltering when she saw I observed it, that at such a time she only fixed her piercing look upon me with a more intent expression still. Blameless as I was, and knew that I was, in reference to any wrong she could possibly suspect me of, I shrunk before her strange eyes, quite unable to endure their hungry lustre. All day, she seemed to pervade the whole house. If I talked to Steerforth in his room, I heard her dress rustle in the little gallery outside. When he and I engaged in some of our old exercises on the lawn behind the house, I saw her face pass from window to window, like a wandering light, until it fixed itself in one, and watched us. When we all four went out walking in the afternoon, she closed her thin hand on my arm like a spring, to keep me back, while Steerforth and his mother went on out of hearing: and then spoke to me. 'You have been a long time,' she said, 'without coming here. Is your profession really so engaging and interesting as to absorb your whole attention? I ask because I always want to be informed, when I am ignorant. Is it really, though?' I replied that I liked it well enough, but that I certainly could not claim so much for it. 'Oh! I am glad to know that, because I always like to be put right when I am wrong,' said Rosa Dartle. 'You mean it is a little dry, perhaps?' 'Well,' I replied; 'perhaps it was a little dry.' 'Oh! and that's a reason why you want relief and change--excitement and all that?' said she. 'Ah! very true! But isn't it a little--Eh?--for him; I don't mean you?' A quick glance of her eye towards the spot where Steerforth was walking, with his mother leaning on his arm, showed me whom she meant; but beyond that, I was quite lost. And I looked so, I have no doubt. 'Don't it--I don't say that it does, mind I want to know--don't it rather engross him? Don't it make him, perhaps, a little more remiss than usual in his visits to his blindly-doting--eh?' With another quick glance at them, and such a glance at me as seemed to look into my innermost thoughts. 'Miss Dartle,' I returned, 'pray do not think--' 'I don't!' she said. 'Oh dear me, don't suppose that I think anything! I am not suspicious. I only ask a question. I don't state any opinion. I want to found an opinion on what you tell me. Then, it's not so? Well! I am very glad to know it.' 'It certainly is not the fact,' said I, perplexed, 'that I am accountable for Steerforth's having been away from home longer than usual--if he has been: which I really don't know at this moment, unless I understand it from you. I have not seen him this long while, until last night.' 'No?' 'Indeed, Miss Dartle, no!' As she looked full at me, I saw her face grow sharper and paler, and the marks of the old wound lengthen out until it cut through the disfigured lip, and deep into the nether lip, and slanted down the face. There was something positively awful to me in this, and in the brightness of her eyes, as she said, looking fixedly at me: 'What is he doing?' I repeated the words, more to myself than her, being so amazed. 'What is he doing?' she said, with an eagerness that seemed enough to consume her like a fire. 'In what is that man assisting him, who never looks at me without an inscrutable falsehood in his eyes? If you are honourable and faithful, I don't ask you to betray your friend. I ask you only to tell me, is it anger, is it hatred, is it pride, is it restlessness, is it some wild fancy, is it love, what is it, that is leading him?' 'Miss Dartle,' I returned, 'how shall I tell you, so that you will believe me, that I know of nothing in Steerforth different from what there was when I first came here? I can think of nothing. I firmly believe there is nothing. I hardly understand even what you mean.' As she still stood looking fixedly at me, a twitching or throbbing, from which I could not dissociate the idea of pain, came into that cruel mark; and lifted up the corner of her lip as if with scorn, or with a pity that despised its object. She put her hand upon it hurriedly--a hand so thin and delicate, that when I had seen her hold it up before the fire to shade her face, I had compared it in my thoughts to fine porcelain--and saying, in a quick, fierce, passionate way, 'I swear you to secrecy about this!' said not a word more. Mrs. Steerforth was particularly happy in her son's society, and Steerforth was, on this occasion, particularly attentive and respectful to her. It was very interesting to me to see them together, not only on account of their mutual affection, but because of the strong personal resemblance between them, and the manner in which what was haughty or impetuous in him was softened by age and sex, in her, to a gracious dignity. I thought, more than once, that it was well no serious cause of division had ever come between them; or two such natures--I ought rather to express it, two such shades of the same nature--might have been harder to reconcile than the two extremest opposites in creation. The idea did not originate in my own discernment, I am bound to confess, but in a speech of Rosa Dartle's. She said at dinner: 'Oh, but do tell me, though, somebody, because I have been thinking about it all day, and I want to know.' 'You want to know what, Rosa?' returned Mrs. Steerforth. 'Pray, pray, Rosa, do not be mysterious.' 'Mysterious!' she cried. 'Oh! really? Do you consider me so?' 'Do I constantly entreat you,' said Mrs. Steerforth, 'to speak plainly, in your own natural manner?' 'Oh! then this is not my natural manner?' she rejoined. 'Now you must really bear with me, because I ask for information. We never know ourselves.' 'It has become a second nature,' said Mrs. Steerforth, without any displeasure; 'but I remember,--and so must you, I think,--when your manner was different, Rosa; when it was not so guarded, and was more trustful.' 'I am sure you are right,' she returned; 'and so it is that bad habits grow upon one! Really? Less guarded and more trustful? How can I, imperceptibly, have changed, I wonder! Well, that's very odd! I must study to regain my former self.' 'I wish you would,' said Mrs. Steerforth, with a smile. 'Oh! I really will, you know!' she answered. 'I will learn frankness from--let me see--from James.' 'You cannot learn frankness, Rosa,' said Mrs. Steerforth quickly--for there was always some effect of sarcasm in what Rosa Dartle said, though it was said, as this was, in the most unconscious manner in the world--'in a better school.' 'That I am sure of,' she answered, with uncommon fervour. 'If I am sure of anything, of course, you know, I am sure of that.' Mrs. Steerforth appeared to me to regret having been a little nettled; for she presently said, in a kind tone: 'Well, my dear Rosa, we have not heard what it is that you want to be satisfied about?' 'That I want to be satisfied about?' she replied, with provoking coldness. 'Oh! It was only whether people, who are like each other in their moral constitution--is that the phrase?' 'It's as good a phrase as another,' said Steerforth. 'Thank you:--whether people, who are like each other in their moral constitution, are in greater danger than people not so circumstanced, supposing any serious cause of variance to arise between them, of being divided angrily and deeply?' 'I should say yes,' said Steerforth. 'Should you?' she retorted. 'Dear me! Supposing then, for instance--any unlikely thing will do for a supposition--that you and your mother were to have a serious quarrel.' 'My dear Rosa,' interposed Mrs. Steerforth, laughing good-naturedly, 'suggest some other supposition! James and I know our duty to each other better, I pray Heaven!' 'Oh!' said Miss Dartle, nodding her head thoughtfully. 'To be sure. That would prevent it? Why, of course it would. Exactly. Now, I am glad I have been so foolish as to put the case, for it is so very good to know that your duty to each other would prevent it! Thank you very much.' One other little circumstance connected with Miss Dartle I must not omit; for I had reason to remember it thereafter, when all the irremediable past was rendered plain. During the whole of this day, but especially from this period of it, Steerforth exerted himself with his utmost skill, and that was with his utmost ease, to charm this singular creature into a pleasant and pleased companion. That he should succeed, was no matter of surprise to me. That she should struggle against the fascinating influence of his delightful art--delightful nature I thought it then--did not surprise me either; for I knew that she was sometimes jaundiced and perverse. I saw her features and her manner slowly change; I saw her look at him with growing admiration; I saw her try, more and more faintly, but always angrily, as if she condemned a weakness in herself, to resist the captivating power that he possessed; and finally, I saw her sharp glance soften, and her smile become quite gentle, and I ceased to be afraid of her as I had really been all day, and we all sat about the fire, talking and laughing together, with as little reserve as if we had been children. Whether it was because we had sat there so long, or because Steerforth was resolved not to lose the advantage he had gained, I do not know; but we did not remain in the dining-room more than five minutes after her departure. 'She is playing her harp,' said Steerforth, softly, at the drawing-room door, 'and nobody but my mother has heard her do that, I believe, these three years.' He said it with a curious smile, which was gone directly; and we went into the room and found her alone. 'Don't get up,' said Steerforth (which she had already done)' my dear Rosa, don't! Be kind for once, and sing us an Irish song.' 'What do you care for an Irish song?' she returned. 'Much!' said Steerforth. 'Much more than for any other. Here is Daisy, too, loves music from his soul. Sing us an Irish song, Rosa! and let me sit and listen as I used to do.' He did not touch her, or the chair from which she had risen, but sat himself near the harp. She stood beside it for some little while, in a curious way, going through the motion of playing it with her right hand, but not sounding it. At length she sat down, and drew it to her with one sudden action, and played and sang. I don't know what it was, in her touch or voice, that made that song the most unearthly I have ever heard in my life, or can imagine. There was something fearful in the reality of it. It was as if it had never been written, or set to music, but sprung out of passion within her; which found imperfect utterance in the low sounds of her voice, and crouched again when all was still. I was dumb when she leaned beside the harp again, playing it, but not sounding it, with her right hand. A minute more, and this had roused me from my trance:--Steerforth had left his seat, and gone to her, and had put his arm laughingly about her, and had said, 'Come, Rosa, for the future we will love each other very much!' And she had struck him, and had thrown him off with the fury of a wild cat, and had burst out of the room. 'What is the matter with Rosa?' said Mrs. Steerforth, coming in. 'She has been an angel, mother,' returned Steerforth, 'for a little while; and has run into the opposite extreme, since, by way of compensation.' 'You should be careful not to irritate her, James. Her temper has been soured, remember, and ought not to be tried.' Rosa did not come back; and no other mention was made of her, until I went with Steerforth into his room to say Good night. Then he laughed about her, and asked me if I had ever seen such a fierce little piece of incomprehensibility. I expressed as much of my astonishment as was then capable of expression, and asked if he could guess what it was that she had taken so much amiss, so suddenly. 'Oh, Heaven knows,' said Steerforth. 'Anything you like--or nothing! I told you she took everything, herself included, to a grindstone, and sharpened it. She is an edge-tool, and requires great care in dealing with. She is always dangerous. Good night!' 'Good night!' said I, 'my dear Steerforth! I shall be gone before you wake in the morning. Good night!' He was unwilling to let me go; and stood, holding me out, with a hand on each of my shoulders, as he had done in my own room. 'Daisy,' he said, with a smile--'for though that's not the name your godfathers and godmothers gave you, it's the name I like best to call you by--and I wish, I wish, I wish, you could give it to me!' 'Why so I can, if I choose,' said I. 'Daisy, if anything should ever separate us, you must think of me at my best, old boy. Come! Let us make that bargain. Think of me at my best, if circumstances should ever part us!' 'You have no best to me, Steerforth,' said I, 'and no worst. You are always equally loved, and cherished in my heart.' So much compunction for having ever wronged him, even by a shapeless thought, did I feel within me, that the confession of having done so was rising to my lips. But for the reluctance I had to betray the confidence of Agnes, but for my uncertainty how to approach the subject with no risk of doing so, it would have reached them before he said, 'God bless you, Daisy, and good night!' In my doubt, it did NOT reach them; and we shook hands, and we parted. I was up with the dull dawn, and, having dressed as quietly as I could, looked into his room. He was fast asleep; lying, easily, with his head upon his arm, as I had often seen him lie at school. The time came in its season, and that was very soon, when I almost wondered that nothing troubled his repose, as I looked at him. But he slept--let me think of him so again--as I had often seen him sleep at school; and thus, in this silent hour, I left him. --Never more, oh God forgive you, Steerforth! to touch that passive hand in love and friendship. Never, never more!

David asks Mr. Spenlow for some time off, which he gives - why not, since David's not getting a salary? Mrs. Steerforth and Miss Dartle both welcome David to their home in Highgate. David notices that Miss Dartle seems to be watching him and Steerforth very closely, as though comparing their faces. Every time David starts to talk to Steerforth, he notices that Miss Dartle is nearby. Finally, Steerforth, his mother, Miss Dartle, and David all go for a walk. Miss Dartle grabs David's arm and pulls him back a bit. She asks about David's job, which David agrees is a bit boring sometimes. Miss Dartle seems to be hinting at something that David doesn't get at all. She asks David if Steerforth has been away from home so much because he has been spending time with David. Of course, David says that he hasn't seen much of Steerforth at all. Miss Dartle asks David what on earth Steerforth is doing, then? David replies that he knows nothing at all. Miss Dartle makes him promise not to tell anyone they've had this conversation. David observes that Mrs. Steerforth seems particularly happy with her son; David thinks that the two seem very much alike, really. At dinner, Miss Dartle wants to ask a question. Mrs. Steerforth pleads with her not to take too much time about it, but to be direct, as she used to be. Miss Dartle wonders that she could every have been different than she is now - what can have caused the change? Perhaps she should study Steerforth's manner to learn how to be more frank, Miss Dartle suggests. Mrs. Steerforth agrees. Miss Dartle then asks if two people who are very like one another get into an argument, if it's all the harder for them to make up afterwards? Like, let's just say that Steerforth and Mrs. Steerforth got into an argument. What would happen? The Steerforths dismiss the possibility. David also notices that Steerforth is going out of his way to charm Miss Dartle. Miss Dartle resists as much as she can, but eventually, even she starts to soften. Steerforth asks Miss Dartle to sing an Irish song, just as she used to. The song is perfect and odd and unearthly. Steerforth puts his arm around Miss Dartle and tells her that they should love each other forever. Miss Dartle hits Steerforth and runs out of the room. Mrs. Steerforth comes in and asks what's happened to Miss Dartle. Steerforth explains that she was being an angel, so she had to become a devil to make up for it. Mrs. Steerforth warns him not to try Miss Dartle's temper too much. Later that night, when David says good night to Steerforth, Steerforth laughs over Miss Dartle's fierceness. He tells David that Miss Dartle is always dangerous. Steerforth gets a bit sentimental, and tells David that, if anything should happen between them, David should always think of Steerforth at his best. David says that he loves Steerforth in all of his moods. David almost confesses Agnes's suspicions about Steerforth's character, but he can't figure out how. Instead, the next morning, David leaves for Yarmouth before the household wakes up.

More Old Soldiers Than One Mr. George has not far to ride with folded arms upon the box, for their destination is Lincoln's Inn Fields. When the driver stops his horses, Mr. George alights, and looking in at the window, says, "What, Mr. Tulkinghorn's your man, is he?" "Yes, my dear friend. Do you know him, Mr. George?" "Why, I have heard of him--seen him too, I think. But I don't know him, and he don't know me." There ensues the carrying of Mr. Smallweed upstairs, which is done to perfection with the trooper's help. He is borne into Mr. Tulkinghorn's great room and deposited on the Turkey rug before the fire. Mr. Tulkinghorn is not within at the present moment but will be back directly. The occupant of the pew in the hall, having said thus much, stirs the fire and leaves the triumvirate to warm themselves. Mr. George is mightily curious in respect of the room. He looks up at the painted ceiling, looks round at the old law-books, contemplates the portraits of the great clients, reads aloud the names on the boxes. "'Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet,'" Mr. George reads thoughtfully. "Ha! 'Manor of Chesney Wold.' Humph!" Mr. George stands looking at these boxes a long while--as if they were pictures--and comes back to the fire repeating, "Sir Leicester Dedlock, Baronet, and Manor of Chesney Wold, hey?" "Worth a mint of money, Mr. George!" whispers Grandfather Smallweed, rubbing his legs. "Powerfully rich!" "Who do you mean? This old gentleman, or the Baronet?" "This gentleman, this gentleman." "So I have heard; and knows a thing or two, I'll hold a wager. Not bad quarters, either," says Mr. George, looking round again. "See the strong-box yonder!" This reply is cut short by Mr. Tulkinghorn's arrival. There is no change in him, of course. Rustily drest, with his spectacles in his hand, and their very case worn threadbare. In manner, close and dry. In voice, husky and low. In face, watchful behind a blind; habitually not uncensorious and contemptuous perhaps. The peerage may have warmer worshippers and faithfuller believers than Mr. Tulkinghorn, after all, if everything were known. "Good morning, Mr. Smallweed, good morning!" he says as he comes in. "You have brought the sergeant, I see. Sit down, sergeant." As Mr. Tulkinghorn takes off his gloves and puts them in his hat, he looks with half-closed eyes across the room to where the trooper stands and says within himself perchance, "You'll do, my friend!" "Sit down, sergeant," he repeats as he comes to his table, which is set on one side of the fire, and takes his easy-chair. "Cold and raw this morning, cold and raw!" Mr. Tulkinghorn warms before the bars, alternately, the palms and knuckles of his hands and looks (from behind that blind which is always down) at the trio sitting in a little semicircle before him. "Now, I can feel what I am about" (as perhaps he can in two senses), "Mr. Smallweed." The old gentleman is newly shaken up by Judy to bear his part in the conversation. "You have brought our good friend the sergeant, I see." "Yes, sir," returns Mr. Smallweed, very servile to the lawyer's wealth and influence. "And what does the sergeant say about this business?" "Mr. George," says Grandfather Smallweed with a tremulous wave of his shrivelled hand, "this is the gentleman, sir." Mr. George salutes the gentleman but otherwise sits bolt upright and profoundly silent--very forward in his chair, as if the full complement of regulation appendages for a field-day hung about him. Mr. Tulkinghorn proceeds, "Well, George--I believe your name is George?" "It is so, Sir." "What do you say, George?" "I ask your pardon, sir," returns the trooper, "but I should wish to know what YOU say?" "Do you mean in point of reward?" "I mean in point of everything, sir." This is so very trying to Mr. Smallweed's temper that he suddenly breaks out with "You're a brimstone beast!" and as suddenly asks pardon of Mr. Tulkinghorn, excusing himself for this slip of the tongue by saying to Judy, "I was thinking of your grandmother, my dear." "I supposed, sergeant," Mr. Tulkinghorn resumes as he leans on one side of his chair and crosses his legs, "that Mr. Smallweed might have sufficiently explained the matter. It lies in the smallest compass, however. You served under Captain Hawdon at one time, and were his attendant in illness, and rendered him many little services, and were rather in his confidence, I am told. That is so, is it not?" "Yes, sir, that is so," says Mr. George with military brevity. "Therefore you may happen to have in your possession something--anything, no matter what; accounts, instructions, orders, a letter, anything--in Captain Hawdon's writing. I wish to compare his writing with some that I have. If you can give me the opportunity, you shall be rewarded for your trouble. Three, four, five, guineas, you would consider handsome, I dare say." "Noble, my dear friend!" cries Grandfather Smallweed, screwing up his eyes. "If not, say how much more, in your conscience as a soldier, you can demand. There is no need for you to part with the writing, against your inclination--though I should prefer to have it." Mr. George sits squared in exactly the same attitude, looks at the painted ceiling, and says never a word. The irascible Mr. Smallweed scratches the air. "The question is," says Mr. Tulkinghorn in his methodical, subdued, uninterested way, "first, whether you have any of Captain Hawdon's writing?" "First, whether I have any of Captain Hawdon's writing, sir," repeats Mr. George. "Secondly, what will satisfy you for the trouble of producing it?" "Secondly, what will satisfy me for the trouble of producing it, sir," repeats Mr. George. "Thirdly, you can judge for yourself whether it is at all like that," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, suddenly handing him some sheets of written paper tied together. "Whether it is at all like that, sir. Just so," repeats Mr. George. All three repetitions Mr. George pronounces in a mechanical manner, looking straight at Mr. Tulkinghorn; nor does he so much as glance at the affidavit in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, that has been given to him for his inspection (though he still holds it in his hand), but continues to look at the lawyer with an air of troubled meditation. "Well?" says Mr. Tulkinghorn. "What do you say?" "Well, sir," replies Mr. George, rising erect and looking immense, "I would rather, if you'll excuse me, have nothing to do with this." Mr. Tulkinghorn, outwardly quite undisturbed, demands, "Why not?" "Why, sir," returns the trooper. "Except on military compulsion, I am not a man of business. Among civilians I am what they call in Scotland a ne'er-do-weel. I have no head for papers, sir. I can stand any fire better than a fire of cross questions. I mentioned to Mr. Smallweed, only an hour or so ago, that when I come into things of this kind I feel as if I was being smothered. And that is my sensation," says Mr. George, looking round upon the company, "at the present moment." With that, he takes three strides forward to replace the papers on the lawyer's table and three strides backward to resume his former station, where he stands perfectly upright, now looking at the ground and now at the painted ceiling, with his hands behind him as if to prevent himself from accepting any other document whatever. Under this provocation, Mr. Smallweed's favourite adjective of disparagement is so close to his tongue that he begins the words "my dear friend" with the monosyllable "brim," thus converting the possessive pronoun into brimmy and appearing to have an impediment in his speech. Once past this difficulty, however, he exhorts his dear friend in the tenderest manner not to be rash, but to do what so eminent a gentleman requires, and to do it with a good grace, confident that it must be unobjectionable as well as profitable. Mr. Tulkinghorn merely utters an occasional sentence, as, "You are the best judge of your own interest, sergeant." "Take care you do no harm by this." "Please yourself, please yourself." "If you know what you mean, that's quite enough." These he utters with an appearance of perfect indifference as he looks over the papers on his table and prepares to write a letter. Mr. George looks distrustfully from the painted ceiling to the ground, from the ground to Mr. Smallweed, from Mr. Smallweed to Mr. Tulkinghorn, and from Mr. Tulkinghorn to the painted ceiling again, often in his perplexity changing the leg on which he rests. "I do assure you, sir," says Mr. George, "not to say it offensively, that between you and Mr. Smallweed here, I really am being smothered fifty times over. I really am, sir. I am not a match for you gentlemen. Will you allow me to ask why you want to see the captain's hand, in the case that I could find any specimen of it?" Mr. Tulkinghorn quietly shakes his head. "No. If you were a man of business, sergeant, you would not need to be informed that there are confidential reasons, very harmless in themselves, for many such wants in the profession to which I belong. But if you are afraid of doing any injury to Captain Hawdon, you may set your mind at rest about that." "Aye! He is dead, sir." "IS he?" Mr. Tulkinghorn quietly sits down to write. "Well, sir," says the trooper, looking into his hat after another disconcerted pause, "I am sorry not to have given you more satisfaction. If it would be any satisfaction to any one that I should be confirmed in my judgment that I would rather have nothing to do with this by a friend of mine who has a better head for business than I have, and who is an old soldier, I am willing to consult with him. I--I really am so completely smothered myself at present," says Mr. George, passing his hand hopelessly across his brow, "that I don't know but what it might be a satisfaction to me." Mr. Smallweed, hearing that this authority is an old soldier, so strongly inculcates the expediency of the trooper's taking counsel with him, and particularly informing him of its being a question of five guineas or more, that Mr. George engages to go and see him. Mr. Tulkinghorn says nothing either way. "I'll consult my friend, then, by your leave, sir," says the trooper, "and I'll take the liberty of looking in again with the final answer in the course of the day. Mr. Smallweed, if you wish to be carried downstairs--" "In a moment, my dear friend, in a moment. Will you first let me speak half a word with this gentleman in private?" "Certainly, sir. Don't hurry yourself on my account." The trooper retires to a distant part of the room and resumes his curious inspection of the boxes, strong and otherwise. "If I wasn't as weak as a brimstone baby, sir," whispers Grandfather Smallweed, drawing the lawyer down to his level by the lapel of his coat and flashing some half-quenched green fire out of his angry eyes, "I'd tear the writing away from him. He's got it buttoned in his breast. I saw him put it there. Judy saw him put it there. Speak up, you crabbed image for the sign of a walking-stick shop, and say you saw him put it there!" This vehement conjuration the old gentleman accompanies with such a thrust at his granddaughter that it is too much for his strength, and he slips away out of his chair, drawing Mr. Tulkinghorn with him, until he is arrested by Judy, and well shaken. "Violence will not do for me, my friend," Mr. Tulkinghorn then remarks coolly. "No, no, I know, I know, sir. But it's chafing and galling--it's--it's worse than your smattering chattering magpie of a grandmother," to the imperturbable Judy, who only looks at the fire, "to know he has got what's wanted and won't give it up. He, not to give it up! HE! A vagabond! But never mind, sir, never mind. At the most, he has only his own way for a little while. I have him periodically in a vice. I'll twist him, sir. I'll screw him, sir. If he won't do it with a good grace, I'll make him do it with a bad one, sir! Now, my dear Mr. George," says Grandfather Smallweed, winking at the lawyer hideously as he releases him, "I am ready for your kind assistance, my excellent friend!" Mr. Tulkinghorn, with some shadowy sign of amusement manifesting itself through his self-possession, stands on the hearth-rug with his back to the fire, watching the disappearance of Mr. Smallweed and acknowledging the trooper's parting salute with one slight nod. It is more difficult to get rid of the old gentleman, Mr. George finds, than to bear a hand in carrying him downstairs, for when he is replaced in his conveyance, he is so loquacious on the subject of the guineas and retains such an affectionate hold of his button--having, in truth, a secret longing to rip his coat open and rob him--that some degree of force is necessary on the trooper's part to effect a separation. It is accomplished at last, and he proceeds alone in quest of his adviser. By the cloisterly Temple, and by Whitefriars (there, not without a glance at Hanging-Sword Alley, which would seem to be something in his way), and by Blackfriars Bridge, and Blackfriars Road, Mr. George sedately marches to a street of little shops lying somewhere in that ganglion of roads from Kent and Surrey, and of streets from the bridges of London, centring in the far-famed elephant who has lost his castle formed of a thousand four-horse coaches to a stronger iron monster than he, ready to chop him into mince-meat any day he dares. To one of the little shops in this street, which is a musician's shop, having a few fiddles in the window, and some Pan's pipes and a tambourine, and a triangle, and certain elongated scraps of music, Mr. George directs his massive tread. And halting at a few paces from it, as he sees a soldierly looking woman, with her outer skirts tucked up, come forth with a small wooden tub, and in that tub commence a-whisking and a-splashing on the margin of the pavement, Mr. George says to himself, "She's as usual, washing greens. I never saw her, except upon a baggage-waggon, when she wasn't washing greens!" The subject of this reflection is at all events so occupied in washing greens at present that she remains unsuspicious of Mr. George's approach until, lifting up herself and her tub together when she has poured the water off into the gutter, she finds him standing near her. Her reception of him is not flattering. "George, I never see you but I wish you was a hundred mile away!" The trooper, without remarking on this welcome, follows into the musical-instrument shop, where the lady places her tub of greens upon the counter, and having shaken hands with him, rests her arms upon it. "I never," she says, "George, consider Matthew Bagnet safe a minute when you're near him. You are that restless and that roving--" "Yes! I know I am, Mrs. Bagnet. I know I am." "You know you are!" says Mrs. Bagnet. "What's the use of that? WHY are you?" "The nature of the animal, I suppose," returns the trooper good-humouredly. "Ah!" cries Mrs. Bagnet, something shrilly. "But what satisfaction will the nature of the animal be to me when the animal shall have tempted my Mat away from the musical business to New Zealand or Australey?" Mrs. Bagnet is not at all an ill-looking woman. Rather large-boned, a little coarse in the grain, and freckled by the sun and wind which have tanned her hair upon the forehead, but healthy, wholesome, and bright-eyed. A strong, busy, active, honest-faced woman of from forty-five to fifty. Clean, hardy, and so economically dressed (though substantially) that the only article of ornament of which she stands possessed appear's to be her wedding-ring, around which her finger has grown to be so large since it was put on that it will never come off again until it shall mingle with Mrs. Bagnet's dust. "Mrs. Bagnet," says the trooper, "I am on my parole with you. Mat will get no harm from me. You may trust me so far." "Well, I think I may. But the very looks of you are unsettling," Mrs. Bagnet rejoins. "Ah, George, George! If you had only settled down and married Joe Pouch's widow when he died in North America, SHE'D have combed your hair for you." "It was a chance for me, certainly," returns the trooper half laughingly, half seriously, "but I shall never settle down into a respectable man now. Joe Pouch's widow might have done me good--there was something in her, and something of her--but I couldn't make up my mind to it. If I had had the luck to meet with such a wife as Mat found!" Mrs. Bagnet, who seems in a virtuous way to be under little reserve with a good sort of fellow, but to be another good sort of fellow herself for that matter, receives this compliment by flicking Mr. George in the face with a head of greens and taking her tub into the little room behind the shop. "Why, Quebec, my poppet," says George, following, on invitation, into that department. "And little Malta, too! Come and kiss your Bluffy!" These young ladies--not supposed to have been actually christened by the names applied to them, though always so called in the family from the places of their birth in barracks--are respectively employed on three-legged stools, the younger (some five or six years old) in learning her letters out of a penny primer, the elder (eight or nine perhaps) in teaching her and sewing with great assiduity. Both hail Mr. George with acclamations as an old friend and after some kissing and romping plant their stools beside him. "And how's young Woolwich?" says Mr. George. "Ah! There now!" cries Mrs. Bagnet, turning about from her saucepans (for she is cooking dinner) with a bright flush on her face. "Would you believe it? Got an engagement at the theayter, with his father, to play the fife in a military piece." "Well done, my godson!" cries Mr. George, slapping his thigh. "I believe you!" says Mrs. Bagnet. "He's a Briton. That's what Woolwich is. A Briton!" "And Mat blows away at his bassoon, and you're respectable civilians one and all," says Mr. George. "Family people. Children growing up. Mat's old mother in Scotland, and your old father somewhere else, corresponded with, and helped a little, and--well, well! To be sure, I don't know why I shouldn't be wished a hundred mile away, for I have not much to do with all this!" Mr. George is becoming thoughtful, sitting before the fire in the whitewashed room, which has a sanded floor and a barrack smell and contains nothing superfluous and has not a visible speck of dirt or dust in it, from the faces of Quebec and Malta to the bright tin pots and pannikins upon the dresser shelves--Mr. George is becoming thoughtful, sitting here while Mrs. Bagnet is busy, when Mr. Bagnet and young Woolwich opportunely come home. Mr. Bagnet is an ex-artilleryman, tall and upright, with shaggy eyebrows and whiskers like the fibres of a coco-nut, not a hair upon his head, and a torrid complexion. His voice, short, deep, and resonant, is not at all unlike the tones of the instrument to which he is devoted. Indeed there may be generally observed in him an unbending, unyielding, brass-bound air, as if he were himself the bassoon of the human orchestra. Young Woolwich is the type and model of a young drummer. Both father and son salute the trooper heartily. He saying, in due season, that he has come to advise with Mr. Bagnet, Mr. Bagnet hospitably declares that he will hear of no business until after dinner and that his friend shall not partake of his counsel without first partaking of boiled pork and greens. The trooper yielding to this invitation, he and Mr. Bagnet, not to embarrass the domestic preparations, go forth to take a turn up and down the little street, which they promenade with measured tread and folded arms, as if it were a rampart. "George," says Mr. Bagnet. "You know me. It's my old girl that advises. She has the head. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained. Wait till the greens is off her mind. Then we'll consult. Whatever the old girl says, do--do it!" "I intend to, Mat," replies the other. "I would sooner take her opinion than that of a college." "College," returns Mr. Bagnet in short sentences, bassoon-like. "What college could you leave--in another quarter of the world--with nothing but a grey cloak and an umbrella--to make its way home to Europe? The old girl would do it to-morrow. Did it once!" "You are right," says Mr. George. "What college," pursues Bagnet, "could you set up in life--with two penn'orth of white lime--a penn'orth of fuller's earth--a ha'porth of sand--and the rest of the change out of sixpence in money? That's what the old girl started on. In the present business." "I am rejoiced to hear it's thriving, Mat." "The old girl," says Mr. Bagnet, acquiescing, "saves. Has a stocking somewhere. With money in it. I never saw it. But I know she's got it. Wait till the greens is off her mind. Then she'll set you up." "She is a treasure!" exclaims Mr. George. "She's more. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained. It was the old girl that brought out my musical abilities. I should have been in the artillery now but for the old girl. Six years I hammered at the fiddle. Ten at the flute. The old girl said it wouldn't do; intention good, but want of flexibility; try the bassoon. The old girl borrowed a bassoon from the bandmaster of the Rifle Regiment. I practised in the trenches. Got on, got another, get a living by it!" George remarks that she looks as fresh as a rose and as sound as an apple. "The old girl," says Mr. Bagnet in reply, "is a thoroughly fine woman. Consequently she is like a thoroughly fine day. Gets finer as she gets on. I never saw the old girl's equal. But I never own to it before her. Discipline must be maintained!" Proceeding to converse on indifferent matters, they walk up and down the little street, keeping step and time, until summoned by Quebec and Malta to do justice to the pork and greens, over which Mrs. Bagnet, like a military chaplain, says a short grace. In the distribution of these comestibles, as in every other household duty, Mrs. Bagnet developes an exact system, sitting with every dish before her, allotting to every portion of pork its own portion of pot-liquor, greens, potatoes, and even mustard, and serving it out complete. Having likewise served out the beer from a can and thus supplied the mess with all things necessary, Mrs. Bagnet proceeds to satisfy her own hunger, which is in a healthy state. The kit of the mess, if the table furniture may be so denominated, is chiefly composed of utensils of horn and tin that have done duty in several parts of the world. Young Woolwich's knife, in particular, which is of the oyster kind, with the additional feature of a strong shutting-up movement which frequently balks the appetite of that young musician, is mentioned as having gone in various hands the complete round of foreign service. The dinner done, Mrs. Bagnet, assisted by the younger branches (who polish their own cups and platters, knives and forks), makes all the dinner garniture shine as brightly as before and puts it all away, first sweeping the hearth, to the end that Mr. Bagnet and the visitor may not be retarded in the smoking of their pipes. These household cares involve much pattening and counter-pattening in the backyard and considerable use of a pail, which is finally so happy as to assist in the ablutions of Mrs. Bagnet herself. That old girl reappearing by and by, quite fresh, and sitting down to her needlework, then and only then--the greens being only then to be considered as entirely off her mind--Mr. Bagnet requests the trooper to state his case. This Mr. George does with great discretion, appearing to address himself to Mr. Bagnet, but having an eye solely on the old girl all the time, as Bagnet has himself. She, equally discreet, busies herself with her needlework. The case fully stated, Mr. Bagnet resorts to his standard artifice for the maintenance of discipline. "That's the whole of it, is it, George?" says he. "That's the whole of it." "You act according to my opinion?" "I shall be guided," replies George, "entirely by it." "Old girl," says Mr. Bagnet, "give him my opinion. You know it. Tell him what it is." It is that he cannot have too little to do with people who are too deep for him and cannot be too careful of interference with matters he does not understand--that the plain rule is to do nothing in the dark, to be a party to nothing underhanded or mysterious, and never to put his foot where he cannot see the ground. This, in effect, is Mr. Bagnet's opinion, as delivered through the old girl, and it so relieves Mr. George's mind by confirming his own opinion and banishing his doubts that he composes himself to smoke another pipe on that exceptional occasion and to have a talk over old times with the whole Bagnet family, according to their various ranges of experience. Through these means it comes to pass that Mr. George does not again rise to his full height in that parlour until the time is drawing on when the bassoon and fife are expected by a British public at the theatre; and as it takes time even then for Mr. George, in his domestic character of Bluffy, to take leave of Quebec and Malta and insinuate a sponsorial shilling into the pocket of his godson with felicitations on his success in life, it is dark when Mr. George again turns his face towards Lincoln's Inn Fields. "A family home," he ruminates as he marches along, "however small it is, makes a man like me look lonely. But it's well I never made that evolution of matrimony. I shouldn't have been fit for it. I am such a vagabond still, even at my present time of life, that I couldn't hold to the gallery a month together if it was a regular pursuit or if I didn't camp there, gipsy fashion. Come! I disgrace nobody and cumber nobody; that's something. I have not done that for many a long year!" So he whistles it off and marches on. Arrived in Lincoln's Inn Fields and mounting Mr. Tulkinghorn's stair, he finds the outer door closed and the chambers shut, but the trooper not knowing much about outer doors, and the staircase being dark besides, he is yet fumbling and groping about, hoping to discover a bell-handle or to open the door for himself, when Mr. Tulkinghorn comes up the stairs (quietly, of course) and angrily asks, "Who is that? What are you doing there?" "I ask your pardon, sir. It's George. The sergeant." "And couldn't George, the sergeant, see that my door was locked?" "Why, no, sir, I couldn't. At any rate, I didn't," says the trooper, rather nettled. "Have you changed your mind? Or are you in the same mind?" Mr. Tulkinghorn demands. But he knows well enough at a glance. "In the same mind, sir." "I thought so. That's sufficient. You can go. So you are the man," says Mr. Tulkinghorn, opening his door with the key, "in whose hiding-place Mr. Gridley was found?" "Yes, I AM the man," says the trooper, stopping two or three stairs down. "What then, sir?" "What then? I don't like your associates. You should not have seen the inside of my door this morning if I had thought of your being that man. Gridley? A threatening, murderous, dangerous fellow." With these words, spoken in an unusually high tone for him, the lawyer goes into his rooms and shuts the door with a thundering noise. Mr. George takes his dismissal in great dudgeon, the greater because a clerk coming up the stairs has heard the last words of all and evidently applies them to him. "A pretty character to bear," the trooper growls with a hasty oath as he strides downstairs. "A threatening, murderous, dangerous fellow!" And looking up, he sees the clerk looking down at him and marking him as he passes a lamp. This so intensifies his dudgeon that for five minutes he is in an ill humour. But he whistles that off like the rest of it and marches home to the shooting gallery.

Tulkinghorn presents some papers to Mr. George and asks him to compare the handwriting with that of Captain Hawdon . George refuses to cooperate and does not even admit that he possesses any of Hawdon's writing. He says that he has no head for business and that he wants to seek advice from a friend before he has anything more to do with the matter. He then goes to seek counsel of a former military comrade, Matthew Bagnet, owner of a musician's shop. Matthew, in turn, consults his wife, a personable and sensible woman; her advice is that George should avoid all involvement with people who are "too deep" for him. George then goes back to Tulkinghorn and refuses to give the lawyer any assistance. Angry, Tulkinghorn says that he wants nothing to do with the man who harbored Gridley, a "threatening, murderous, dangerous fellow." A clerk, passing by, hears this phrase and mistakenly supposes it applies to George himself.

We, Equality 7-2521, have discovered a new power of nature. And we have discovered it alone, and we [-alone-] are to know it. It is said. Now let us be lashed for it, if we must. The Council of Scholars has said that we all know the things which exist and therefore {+all+} the things which are not known by all do not exist. But we think that the Council of Scholars is blind. The secrets of this earth are not for all men to see, but only for those who will seek them. We know, for we have found a secret unknown to all our brothers. We know not what this power is nor whence [-is-] {+it+} comes. But we know its nature, we have watched it and worked with it. We saw it first two years ago. One night, we were cutting open the body of a dead frog when we [-saw-] {+say+} its leg jerking. It was dead, yet it moved. Some power unknown to men was making it move. We could not understand it. Then, after many tests, we found the answer. The frog had been hanging on a wire of copper; and it had been the metal of our knife which had sent [-the-] {+a+} strange power to the copper through the brine of the frog's body. We put a piece of copper and a piece of zinc into a jar of brine, we touched a wire to them, and there, under our fingers, was a miracle which had never occurred before, a new miracle and a new power. This discovery haunted us. We followed it in preference to all our studies. We worked with it, we tested [-it-] in more ways than we can describe, and each step was [-as-] another miracle unveiling before us. We came to know that we had found the greatest power on earth. For it defies all the laws known to men. It makes the needle move and turn on the compass which we stole from the Home of the Scholars; but we had been taught, when still a child, that the loadstone points to the north and [-that-] this is a law which nothing can change; yet our new power defies all laws. We found that it causes lightning, and never have men known what causes lightning. In thunderstorms, we raised a tall rod of iron by the side of our hole, and we watched it from below. We have seen the [-lightning-] {+lightening+} strike it again and again. And now we know that metal draws the power of the sky, and that metal can be made to give it forth. We have built strange things with this discovery of ours. We used for it the copper wires which we found here under the ground. We have walked the length of our tunnel, with a candle lighting the way. We could go no farther [-that-] {+than+} half a mile, for earth and rock had fallen at both ends. But we gathered all the things we found and we brought them to our work place. We found strange boxes with bars of metal inside, with many cords and strands and coils of metal. We found wires that led to strange little globes of glass on the walls; they contained threads of metal thinner than a spider's web. These things help us in our work. We do not understand them, but we think that the men of the Unmentionable Times had known our power of the sky, and these things had some relation to it. We do not know, but we shall learn. We cannot stop now, even though it frightens us that we are alone in our knowledge. No single one can possess greater wisdom [-that-] {+than+} the many Scholars who are elected by all men for their wisdom. Yet we can. We do. We have fought against saying it, but now it is said. We do not care. We forget all men, all laws and all things save our metals and our wires. So much is still to be learned! So long a road lies before us, and what care we if we must travel it alone!

While dissecting a frog hanging on a copper wire, Equality 7-2521 discovers the power of electricity, which he explores in his tunnel underground. In his journal, he recounts his experiments: he makes a magnet move using electricity and creates a lighting rod outside the tunnel. He explores his tunnel to look for technology, and he discovers unidentified boxes with wires and switches and lightbulbs, although he does not yet know how to use them. He worries that he is the only person in the world with this knowledge because he has been taught that the Council of Scholars knows everything and that all men share all collective knowledge. Along these lines of thinking, anything known by only one person cannot be true by virtue of the fact that not everyone knows it. At first Equality 7-2521 says that he has discovered a new power that was previously unknown to any man. This power frightens him even though he believes it is a very important and potent force. Later, Equality 7-2521 concludes that electricity is the power of the sky, and that men in the Unmentionable Times had harnessed the power of the sky. He becomes an avid scientist, exploring the power of electricity, and in his quest he realizes how much he does not know and how much of his previous learning had been mistaken. Equality 7-2521 announces in his journal that he knows more than the Council of Scholars, something which his society believes is impossible

The King and Queen of Hearts were seated on their throne when they arrived, with a great crowd assembled about them--all sorts of little birds and beasts, as well as the whole pack of cards: the Knave was standing before them, in chains, with a soldier on each side to guard him; and near the King was the White Rabbit, with a trumpet in one hand, and a scroll of parchment in the other. In the very middle of the court was a table, with a large dish of tarts upon it: they looked so good, that it made Alice quite hungry to look at them--'I wish they'd get the trial done,' she thought, 'and hand round the refreshments!' But there seemed to be no chance of this, so she began looking at everything about her, to pass away the time. Alice had never been in a court of justice before, but she had read about them in books, and she was quite pleased to find that she knew the name of nearly everything there. 'That's the judge,' she said to herself, 'because of his great wig.' The judge, by the way, was the King; and as he wore his crown over the wig, (look at the frontispiece if you want to see how he did it,) he did not look at all comfortable, and it was certainly not becoming. 'And that's the jury-box,' thought Alice, 'and those twelve creatures,' (she was obliged to say 'creatures,' you see, because some of them were animals, and some were birds,) 'I suppose they are the jurors.' She said this last word two or three times over to herself, being rather proud of it: for she thought, and rightly too, that very few little girls of her age knew the meaning of it at all. However, 'jury-men' would have done just as well. The twelve jurors were all writing very busily on slates. 'What are they doing?' Alice whispered to the Gryphon. 'They can't have anything to put down yet, before the trial's begun.' 'They're putting down their names,' the Gryphon whispered in reply, 'for fear they should forget them before the end of the trial.' 'Stupid things!' Alice began in a loud, indignant voice, but she stopped hastily, for the White Rabbit cried out, 'Silence in the court!' and the King put on his spectacles and looked anxiously round, to make out who was talking. Alice could see, as well as if she were looking over their shoulders, that all the jurors were writing down 'stupid things!' on their slates, and she could even make out that one of them didn't know how to spell 'stupid,' and that he had to ask his neighbour to tell him. 'A nice muddle their slates'll be in before the trial's over!' thought Alice. One of the jurors had a pencil that squeaked. This of course, Alice could not stand, and she went round the court and got behind him, and very soon found an opportunity of taking it away. She did it so quickly that the poor little juror (it was Bill, the Lizard) could not make out at all what had become of it; so, after hunting all about for it, he was obliged to write with one finger for the rest of the day; and this was of very little use, as it left no mark on the slate. 'Herald, read the accusation!' said the King. On this the White Rabbit blew three blasts on the trumpet, and then unrolled the parchment scroll, and read as follows:-- 'The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts, All on a summer day: The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts, And took them quite away!' 'Consider your verdict,' the King said to the jury. 'Not yet, not yet!' the Rabbit hastily interrupted. 'There's a great deal to come before that!' 'Call the first witness,' said the King; and the White Rabbit blew three blasts on the trumpet, and called out, 'First witness!' The first witness was the Hatter. He came in with a teacup in one hand and a piece of bread-and-butter in the other. 'I beg pardon, your Majesty,' he began, 'for bringing these in: but I hadn't quite finished my tea when I was sent for.' 'You ought to have finished,' said the King. 'When did you begin?' The Hatter looked at the March Hare, who had followed him into the court, arm-in-arm with the Dormouse. 'Fourteenth of March, I think it was,' he said. 'Fifteenth,' said the March Hare. 'Sixteenth,' added the Dormouse. 'Write that down,' the King said to the jury, and the jury eagerly wrote down all three dates on their slates, and then added them up, and reduced the answer to shillings and pence. 'Take off your hat,' the King said to the Hatter. 'It isn't mine,' said the Hatter. 'Stolen!' the King exclaimed, turning to the jury, who instantly made a memorandum of the fact. 'I keep them to sell,' the Hatter added as an explanation; 'I've none of my own. I'm a hatter.' Here the Queen put on her spectacles, and began staring at the Hatter, who turned pale and fidgeted. 'Give your evidence,' said the King; 'and don't be nervous, or I'll have you executed on the spot.' This did not seem to encourage the witness at all: he kept shifting from one foot to the other, looking uneasily at the Queen, and in his confusion he bit a large piece out of his teacup instead of the bread-and-butter. Just at this moment Alice felt a very curious sensation, which puzzled her a good deal until she made out what it was: she was beginning to grow larger again, and she thought at first she would get up and leave the court; but on second thoughts she decided to remain where she was as long as there was room for her. 'I wish you wouldn't squeeze so.' said the Dormouse, who was sitting next to her. 'I can hardly breathe.' 'I can't help it,' said Alice very meekly: 'I'm growing.' 'You've no right to grow here,' said the Dormouse. 'Don't talk nonsense,' said Alice more boldly: 'you know you're growing too.' 'Yes, but I grow at a reasonable pace,' said the Dormouse: 'not in that ridiculous fashion.' And he got up very sulkily and crossed over to the other side of the court. All this time the Queen had never left off staring at the Hatter, and, just as the Dormouse crossed the court, she said to one of the officers of the court, 'Bring me the list of the singers in the last concert!' on which the wretched Hatter trembled so, that he shook both his shoes off. 'Give your evidence,' the King repeated angrily, 'or I'll have you executed, whether you're nervous or not.' 'I'm a poor man, your Majesty,' the Hatter began, in a trembling voice, '--and I hadn't begun my tea--not above a week or so--and what with the bread-and-butter getting so thin--and the twinkling of the tea--' 'The twinkling of the what?' said the King. 'It began with the tea,' the Hatter replied. 'Of course twinkling begins with a T!' said the King sharply. 'Do you take me for a dunce? Go on!' 'I'm a poor man,' the Hatter went on, 'and most things twinkled after that--only the March Hare said--' 'I didn't!' the March Hare interrupted in a great hurry. 'You did!' said the Hatter. 'I deny it!' said the March Hare. 'He denies it,' said the King: 'leave out that part.' 'Well, at any rate, the Dormouse said--' the Hatter went on, looking anxiously round to see if he would deny it too: but the Dormouse denied nothing, being fast asleep. 'After that,' continued the Hatter, 'I cut some more bread-and-butter--' 'But what did the Dormouse say?' one of the jury asked. 'That I can't remember,' said the Hatter. 'You MUST remember,' remarked the King, 'or I'll have you executed.' The miserable Hatter dropped his teacup and bread-and-butter, and went down on one knee. 'I'm a poor man, your Majesty,' he began. 'You're a very poor speaker,' said the King. Here one of the guinea-pigs cheered, and was immediately suppressed by the officers of the court. (As that is rather a hard word, I will just explain to you how it was done. They had a large canvas bag, which tied up at the mouth with strings: into this they slipped the guinea-pig, head first, and then sat upon it.) 'I'm glad I've seen that done,' thought Alice. 'I've so often read in the newspapers, at the end of trials, "There was some attempts at applause, which was immediately suppressed by the officers of the court," and I never understood what it meant till now.' 'If that's all you know about it, you may stand down,' continued the King. 'I can't go no lower,' said the Hatter: 'I'm on the floor, as it is.' 'Then you may SIT down,' the King replied. Here the other guinea-pig cheered, and was suppressed. 'Come, that finished the guinea-pigs!' thought Alice. 'Now we shall get on better.' 'I'd rather finish my tea,' said the Hatter, with an anxious look at the Queen, who was reading the list of singers. 'You may go,' said the King, and the Hatter hurriedly left the court, without even waiting to put his shoes on. '--and just take his head off outside,' the Queen added to one of the officers: but the Hatter was out of sight before the officer could get to the door. 'Call the next witness!' said the King. The next witness was the Duchess's cook. She carried the pepper-box in her hand, and Alice guessed who it was, even before she got into the court, by the way the people near the door began sneezing all at once. 'Give your evidence,' said the King. 'Shan't,' said the cook. The King looked anxiously at the White Rabbit, who said in a low voice, 'Your Majesty must cross-examine THIS witness.' 'Well, if I must, I must,' the King said, with a melancholy air, and, after folding his arms and frowning at the cook till his eyes were nearly out of sight, he said in a deep voice, 'What are tarts made of?' 'Pepper, mostly,' said the cook. 'Treacle,' said a sleepy voice behind her. 'Collar that Dormouse,' the Queen shrieked out. 'Behead that Dormouse! Turn that Dormouse out of court! Suppress him! Pinch him! Off with his whiskers!' For some minutes the whole court was in confusion, getting the Dormouse turned out, and, by the time they had settled down again, the cook had disappeared. 'Never mind!' said the King, with an air of great relief. 'Call the next witness.' And he added in an undertone to the Queen, 'Really, my dear, YOU must cross-examine the next witness. It quite makes my forehead ache!' Alice watched the White Rabbit as he fumbled over the list, feeling very curious to see what the next witness would be like, '--for they haven't got much evidence YET,' she said to herself. Imagine her surprise, when the White Rabbit read out, at the top of his shrill little voice, the name 'Alice!'

Alice arrives in the courtroom and finds the King and Queen of Hearts on their thrones, surrounded by a large crowd of animals and the whole deck of cards. The Knave lies chained before them. Alice surveys the room and takes great pleasure in identifying the various features of a court of law that she has read about. Alice notices that all of the jurors are writing down their own names, which the Gryphon explains that they all must do lest they forget their names before the trial's end. Alice calls the jurors "stupid things," and the jurors immediately write this down. She snatches a squeaking pencil out of the hand of the juror Bill, last seen as the servant of the White Rabbit, and he promptly begins writing with his finger. The White Rabbit, serving the court as a herald, reads the accusation that the Knave of Hearts has stolen the Queen's tarts. The Mad Hatter comes forth as the first witness, bearing a teacup and a piece of bread and butter. The King bids the Hatter remove his hat, but the Hatter refuses, explaining that he does not own the hats, he merely sells them. As Alice watches, she finds that she has started to grow again. The Dormouse becomes upset by Alice's growth and storms off to the other side of the court to avoid being crushed by Alice. The Hatter delivers a bungled testimony, nervously suggesting that the March Hare said something. Before he can relate what the March Hare said, the Hare denies that he said something. The Hatter tries to explain that the Dormouse said something, but the Dormouse doesn't reply because he has fallen fast asleep. A juror asks the Hatter what it was the Dormouse said, but the Hatter cannot remember. The King insults the Hatter's stupidity, which prompts a guinea pig to start cheering. The guinea pig is immediately "suppressed" by being tied up in a bag and sat on. Once the guinea pig has been suppressed, the King commands the Hatter to stand down. The Hatter replies that he can stand no lower, so the King bids him sit down. Another guinea pig begins cheering and is similarly suppressed. Finally, the King permits the Hatter to leave, and he sneaks off before the Queen has time to order one of the officers to chop off his head. The King calls the Cook as the next witness. The King asks her what the tarts are made of, and the Cook replies "Pepper." The Dormouse sleepily calls out the word "treacle," and the courtroom flies into chaos. Amidst the frenzy, the Cook disappears. The King demands that the next witness be called, and the White Rabbit calls Alice to the stand.

"Stern lawgiver! yet thou dost wear The Godhead's most benignant grace; Nor know we anything so fair As is the smile upon thy face; Flowers laugh before thee on their beds, And fragrance in thy footing treads; Thou dost preserve the Stars from wrong; And the most ancient Heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong. --WORDSWORTH: Ode to Duty. When Dorothea had seen Mr. Farebrother in the morning, she had promised to go and dine at the parsonage on her return from Freshitt. There was a frequent interchange of visits between her and the Farebrother family, which enabled her to say that she was not at all lonely at the Manor, and to resist for the present the severe prescription of a lady companion. When she reached home and remembered her engagement, she was glad of it; and finding that she had still an hour before she could dress for dinner, she walked straight to the schoolhouse and entered into a conversation with the master and mistress about the new bell, giving eager attention to their small details and repetitions, and getting up a dramatic sense that her life was very busy. She paused on her way back to talk to old Master Bunney who was putting in some garden-seeds, and discoursed wisely with that rural sage about the crops that would make the most return on a perch of ground, and the result of sixty years' experience as to soils--namely, that if your soil was pretty mellow it would do, but if there came wet, wet, wet to make it all of a mummy, why then-- Finding that the social spirit had beguiled her into being rather late, she dressed hastily and went over to the parsonage rather earlier than was necessary. That house was never dull, Mr. Farebrother, like another White of Selborne, having continually something new to tell of his inarticulate guests and proteges, whom he was teaching the boys not to torment; and he had just set up a pair of beautiful goats to be pets of the village in general, and to walk at large as sacred animals. The evening went by cheerfully till after tea, Dorothea talking more than usual and dilating with Mr. Farebrother on the possible histories of creatures that converse compendiously with their antennae, and for aught we know may hold reformed parliaments; when suddenly some inarticulate little sounds were heard which called everybody's attention. "Henrietta Noble," said Mrs. Farebrother, seeing her small sister moving about the furniture-legs distressfully, "what is the matter?" "I have lost my tortoise-shell lozenge-box. I fear the kitten has rolled it away," said the tiny old lady, involuntarily continuing her beaver-like notes. "Is it a great treasure, aunt?" said Mr. Farebrother, putting up his glasses and looking at the carpet. "Mr. Ladislaw gave it me," said Miss Noble. "A German box--very pretty, but if it falls it always spins away as far as it can." "Oh, if it is Ladislaw's present," said Mr. Farebrother, in a deep tone of comprehension, getting up and hunting. The box was found at last under a chiffonier, and Miss Noble grasped it with delight, saying, "it was under a fender the last time." "That is an affair of the heart with my aunt," said Mr. Farebrother, smiling at Dorothea, as he reseated himself. "If Henrietta Noble forms an attachment to any one, Mrs. Casaubon," said his mother, emphatically,--"she is like a dog--she would take their shoes for a pillow and sleep the better." "Mr. Ladislaw's shoes, I would," said Henrietta Noble. Dorothea made an attempt at smiling in return. She was surprised and annoyed to find that her heart was palpitating violently, and that it was quite useless to try after a recovery of her former animation. Alarmed at herself--fearing some further betrayal of a change so marked in its occasion, she rose and said in a low voice with undisguised anxiety, "I must go; I have overtired myself." Mr. Farebrother, quick in perception, rose and said, "It is true; you must have half-exhausted yourself in talking about Lydgate. That sort of work tells upon one after the excitement is over." He gave her his arm back to the Manor, but Dorothea did not attempt to speak, even when he said good-night. The limit of resistance was reached, and she had sunk back helpless within the clutch of inescapable anguish. Dismissing Tantripp with a few faint words, she locked her door, and turning away from it towards the vacant room she pressed her hands hard on the top of her head, and moaned out-- "Oh, I did love him!" Then came the hour in which the waves of suffering shook her too thoroughly to leave any power of thought. She could only cry in loud whispers, between her sobs, after her lost belief which she had planted and kept alive from a very little seed since the days in Rome--after her lost joy of clinging with silent love and faith to one who, misprized by others, was worthy in her thought--after her lost woman's pride of reigning in his memory--after her sweet dim perspective of hope, that along some pathway they should meet with unchanged recognition and take up the backward years as a yesterday. In that hour she repeated what the merciful eyes of solitude have looked on for ages in the spiritual struggles of man--she besought hardness and coldness and aching weariness to bring her relief from the mysterious incorporeal might of her anguish: she lay on the bare floor and let the night grow cold around her; while her grand woman's frame was shaken by sobs as if she had been a despairing child. There were two images--two living forms that tore her heart in two, as if it had been the heart of a mother who seems to see her child divided by the sword, and presses one bleeding half to her breast while her gaze goes forth in agony towards the half which is carried away by the lying woman that has never known the mother's pang. Here, with the nearness of an answering smile, here within the vibrating bond of mutual speech, was the bright creature whom she had trusted--who had come to her like the spirit of morning visiting the dim vault where she sat as the bride of a worn-out life; and now, with a full consciousness which had never awakened before, she stretched out her arms towards him and cried with bitter cries that their nearness was a parting vision: she discovered her passion to herself in the unshrinking utterance of despair. And there, aloof, yet persistently with her, moving wherever she moved, was the Will Ladislaw who was a changed belief exhausted of hope, a detected illusion--no, a living man towards whom there could not yet struggle any wail of regretful pity, from the midst of scorn and indignation and jealous offended pride. The fire of Dorothea's anger was not easily spent, and it flamed out in fitful returns of spurning reproach. Why had he come obtruding his life into hers, hers that might have been whole enough without him? Why had he brought his cheap regard and his lip-born words to her who had nothing paltry to give in exchange? He knew that he was deluding her--wished, in the very moment of farewell, to make her believe that he gave her the whole price of her heart, and knew that he had spent it half before. Why had he not stayed among the crowd of whom she asked nothing--but only prayed that they might be less contemptible? But she lost energy at last even for her loud-whispered cries and moans: she subsided into helpless sobs, and on the cold floor she sobbed herself to sleep. In the chill hours of the morning twilight, when all was dim around her, she awoke--not with any amazed wondering where she was or what had happened, but with the clearest consciousness that she was looking into the eyes of sorrow. She rose, and wrapped warm things around her, and seated herself in a great chair where she had often watched before. She was vigorous enough to have borne that hard night without feeling ill in body, beyond some aching and fatigue; but she had waked to a new condition: she felt as if her soul had been liberated from its terrible conflict; she was no longer wrestling with her grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts. For now the thoughts came thickly. It was not in Dorothea's nature, for longer than the duration of a paroxysm, to sit in the narrow cell of her calamity, in the besotted misery of a consciousness that only sees another's lot as an accident of its own. She began now to live through that yesterday morning deliberately again, forcing herself to dwell on every detail and its possible meaning. Was she alone in that scene? Was it her event only? She forced herself to think of it as bound up with another woman's life--a woman towards whom she had set out with a longing to carry some clearness and comfort into her beclouded youth. In her first outleap of jealous indignation and disgust, when quitting the hateful room, she had flung away all the mercy with which she had undertaken that visit. She had enveloped both Will and Rosamond in her burning scorn, and it seemed to her as if Rosamond were burned out of her sight forever. But that base prompting which makes a women more cruel to a rival than to a faithless lover, could have no strength of recurrence in Dorothea when the dominant spirit of justice within her had once overcome the tumult and had once shown her the truer measure of things. All the active thought with which she had before been representing to herself the trials of Lydgate's lot, and this young marriage union which, like her own, seemed to have its hidden as well as evident troubles--all this vivid sympathetic experience returned to her now as a power: it asserted itself as acquired knowledge asserts itself and will not let us see as we saw in the day of our ignorance. She said to her own irremediable grief, that it should make her more helpful, instead of driving her back from effort. And what sort of crisis might not this be in three lives whose contact with hers laid an obligation on her as if they had been suppliants bearing the sacred branch? The objects of her rescue were not to be sought out by her fancy: they were chosen for her. She yearned towards the perfect Right, that it might make a throne within her, and rule her errant will. "What should I do--how should I act now, this very day, if I could clutch my own pain, and compel it to silence, and think of those three?" It had taken long for her to come to that question, and there was light piercing into the room. She opened her curtains, and looked out towards the bit of road that lay in view, with fields beyond outside the entrance-gates. On the road there was a man with a bundle on his back and a woman carrying her baby; in the field she could see figures moving--perhaps the shepherd with his dog. Far off in the bending sky was the pearly light; and she felt the largeness of the world and the manifold wakings of men to labor and endurance. She was a part of that involuntary, palpitating life, and could neither look out on it from her luxurious shelter as a mere spectator, nor hide her eyes in selfish complaining. What she would resolve to do that day did not yet seem quite clear, but something that she could achieve stirred her as with an approaching murmur which would soon gather distinctness. She took off the clothes which seemed to have some of the weariness of a hard watching in them, and began to make her toilet. Presently she rang for Tantripp, who came in her dressing-gown. "Why, madam, you've never been in bed this blessed night," burst out Tantripp, looking first at the bed and then at Dorothea's face, which in spite of bathing had the pale cheeks and pink eyelids of a mater dolorosa. "You'll kill yourself, you _will_. Anybody might think now you had a right to give yourself a little comfort." "Don't be alarmed, Tantripp," said Dorothea, smiling. "I have slept; I am not ill. I shall be glad of a cup of coffee as soon as possible. And I want you to bring me my new dress; and most likely I shall want my new bonnet to-day." "They've lain there a month and more ready for you, madam, and most thankful I shall be to see you with a couple o' pounds' worth less of crape," said Tantripp, stooping to light the fire. "There's a reason in mourning, as I've always said; and three folds at the bottom of your skirt and a plain quilling in your bonnet--and if ever anybody looked like an angel, it's you in a net quilling--is what's consistent for a second year. At least, that's _my_ thinking," ended Tantripp, looking anxiously at the fire; "and if anybody was to marry me flattering himself I should wear those hijeous weepers two years for him, he'd be deceived by his own vanity, that's all." "The fire will do, my good Tan," said Dorothea, speaking as she used to do in the old Lausanne days, only with a very low voice; "get me the coffee." She folded herself in the large chair, and leaned her head against it in fatigued quiescence, while Tantripp went away wondering at this strange contrariness in her young mistress--that just the morning when she had more of a widow's face than ever, she should have asked for her lighter mourning which she had waived before. Tantripp would never have found the clew to this mystery. Dorothea wished to acknowledge that she had not the less an active life before her because she had buried a private joy; and the tradition that fresh garments belonged to all initiation, haunting her mind, made her grasp after even that slight outward help towards calm resolve. For the resolve was not easy. Nevertheless at eleven o'clock she was walking towards Middlemarch, having made up her mind that she would make as quietly and unnoticeably as possible her second attempt to see and save Rosamond.

Dorothea goes to see Mr. Farebrother the next day at the parsonage. She tells him all about Lydgate, and after dinner spends some time chatting with Miss Noble and Mrs. Farebrother. The subject of Will Ladislaw comes up. Miss Noble has always adored Will, who was kinder to her than anyone. Dorothea abruptly moves to leave, and when she gets home, she collapses in tears. She realizes how much she loved Will, and now her ideal vision of him has been shattered by the belief that he's having an illicit affair with Rosamond. But Dorothea is generous enough to realize that she's not the only person who is being hurt by that affair. She resolves to go to Middlemarch again, to "see and save Rosamond."

Nothing is more painful to the human mind, than, after the feelings have been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of inaction and certainty which follows, and deprives the soul both of hope and fear. Justine died; she rested; and I was alive. The blood flowed freely in my veins, but a weight of despair and remorse pressed on my heart, which nothing could remove. Sleep fled from my eyes; I wandered like an evil spirit, for I had committed deeds of mischief beyond description horrible, and more, much more, (I persuaded myself) was yet behind. Yet my heart overflowed with kindness, and the love of virtue. I had begun life with benevolent intentions, and thirsted for the moment when I should put them in practice, and make myself useful to my fellow-beings. Now all was blasted: instead of that serenity of conscience, which allowed me to look back upon the past with self-satisfaction, and from thence to gather promise of new hopes, I was seized by remorse and the sense of guilt, which hurried me away to a hell of intense tortures, such as no language can describe. This state of mind preyed upon my health, which had entirely recovered from the first shock it had sustained. I shunned the face of man; all sound of joy or complacency was torture to me; solitude was my only consolation--deep, dark, death-like solitude. My father observed with pain the alteration perceptible in my disposition and habits, and endeavoured to reason with me on the folly of giving way to immoderate grief. "Do you think, Victor," said he, "that I do not suffer also? No one could love a child more than I loved your brother;" (tears came into his eyes as he spoke); "but is it not a duty to the survivors, that we should refrain from augmenting their unhappiness by an appearance of immoderate grief? It is also a duty owed to yourself; for excessive sorrow prevents improvement or enjoyment, or even the discharge of daily usefulness, without which no man is fit for society." This advice, although good, was totally inapplicable to my case; I should have been the first to hide my grief, and console my friends, if remorse had not mingled its bitterness with my other sensations. Now I could only answer my father with a look of despair, and endeavour to hide myself from his view. About this time we retired to our house at Belrive. This change was particularly agreeable to me. The shutting of the gates regularly at ten o'clock, and the impossibility of remaining on the lake after that hour, had rendered our residence within the walls of Geneva very irksome to me. I was now free. Often, after the rest of the family had retired for the night, I took the boat, and passed many hours upon the water. Sometimes, with my sails set, I was carried by the wind; and sometimes, after rowing into the middle of the lake, I left the boat to pursue its own course, and gave way to my own miserable reflections. I was often tempted, when all was at peace around me, and I the only unquiet thing that wandered restless in a scene so beautiful and heavenly, if I except some bat, or the frogs, whose harsh and interrupted croaking was heard only when I approached the shore--often, I say, I was tempted to plunge into the silent lake, that the waters might close over me and my calamities for ever. But I was restrained, when I thought of the heroic and suffering Elizabeth, whom I tenderly loved, and whose existence was bound up in mine. I thought also of my father, and surviving brother: should I by my base desertion leave them exposed and unprotected to the malice of the fiend whom I had let loose among them? At these moments I wept bitterly, and wished that peace would revisit my mind only that I might afford them consolation and happiness. But that could not be. Remorse extinguished every hope. I had been the author of unalterable evils; and I lived in daily fear, lest the monster whom I had created should perpetrate some new wickedness. I had an obscure feeling that all was not over, and that he would still commit some signal crime, which by its enormity should almost efface the recollection of the past. There was always scope for fear, so long as any thing I loved remained behind. My abhorrence of this fiend cannot be conceived. When I thought of him, I gnashed my teeth, my eyes became inflamed, and I ardently wished to extinguish that life which I had so thoughtlessly bestowed. When I reflected on his crimes and malice, my hatred and revenge burst all bounds of moderation. I would have made a pilgrimage to the highest peak of the Andes, could I, when there, have precipitated him to their base. I wished to see him again, that I might wreak the utmost extent of anger on his head, and avenge the deaths of William and Justine. Our house was the house of mourning. My father's health was deeply shaken by the horror of the recent events. Elizabeth was sad and desponding; she no longer took delight in her ordinary occupations; all pleasure seemed to her sacrilege toward the dead; eternal woe and tears she then thought was the just tribute she should pay to innocence so blasted and destroyed. She was no longer that happy creature, who in earlier youth wandered with me on the banks of the lake, and talked with ecstacy of our future prospects. She had become grave, and often conversed of the inconstancy of fortune, and the instability of human life. "When I reflect, my dear cousin," said she, "on the miserable death of Justine Moritz, I no longer see the world and its works as they before appeared to me. Before, I looked upon the accounts of vice and injustice, that I read in books or heard from others, as tales of ancient days, or imaginary evils; at least they were remote, and more familiar to reason than to the imagination; but now misery has come home, and men appear to me as monsters thirsting for each other's blood. Yet I am certainly unjust. Every body believed that poor girl to be guilty; and if she could have committed the crime for which she suffered, assuredly she would have been the most depraved of human creatures. For the sake of a few jewels, to have murdered the son of her benefactor and friend, a child whom she had nursed from its birth, and appeared to love as if it had been her own! I could not consent to the death of any human being; but certainly I should have thought such a creature unfit to remain in the society of men. Yet she was innocent. I know, I feel she was innocent; you are of the same opinion, and that confirms me. Alas! Victor, when falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness? I feel as if I were walking on the edge of a precipice, towards which thousands are crowding, and endeavouring to plunge me into the abyss. William and Justine were assassinated, and the murderer escapes; he walks about the world free, and perhaps respected. But even if I were condemned to suffer on the scaffold for the same crimes, I would not change places with such a wretch." I listened to this discourse with the extremest agony. I, not in deed, but in effect, was the true murderer. Elizabeth read my anguish in my countenance, and kindly taking my hand said, "My dearest cousin, you must calm yourself. These events have affected me, God knows how deeply; but I am not so wretched as you are. There is an expression of despair, and sometimes of revenge, in your countenance, that makes me tremble. Be calm, my dear Victor; I would sacrifice my life to your peace. We surely shall be happy: quiet in our native country, and not mingling in the world, what can disturb our tranquillity?" She shed tears as she said this, distrusting the very solace that she gave; but at the same time she smiled, that she might chase away the fiend that lurked in my heart. My father, who saw in the unhappiness that was painted in my face only an exaggeration of that sorrow which I might naturally feel, thought that an amusement suited to my taste would be the best means of restoring to me my wonted serenity. It was from this cause that he had removed to the country; and, induced by the same motive, he now proposed that we should all make an excursion to the valley of Chamounix. I had been there before, but Elizabeth and Ernest never had; and both had often expressed an earnest desire to see the scenery of this place, which had been described to them as so wonderful and sublime. Accordingly we departed from Geneva on this tour about the middle of the month of August, nearly two months after the death of Justine. The weather was uncommonly fine; and if mine had been a sorrow to be chased away by any fleeting circumstance, this excursion would certainly have had the effect intended by my father. As it was, I was somewhat interested in the scene; it sometimes lulled, although it could not extinguish my grief. During the first day we travelled in a carriage. In the morning we had seen the mountains at a distance, towards which we gradually advanced. We perceived that the valley through which we wound, and which was formed by the river Arve, whose course we followed, closed in upon us by degrees; and when the sun had set, we beheld immense mountains and precipices overhanging us on every side, and heard the sound of the river raging among rocks, and the dashing of water-falls around. The next day we pursued our journey upon mules; and as we ascended still higher, the valley assumed a more magnificent and astonishing character. Ruined castles hanging on the precipices of piny mountains; the impetuous Arve, and cottages every here and there peeping forth from among the trees, formed a scene of singular beauty. But it was augmented and rendered sublime by the mighty Alps, whose white and shining pyramids and domes towered above all, as belonging to another earth, the habitations of another race of beings. We passed the bridge of Pelissier, where the ravine, which the river forms, opened before us, and we began to ascend the mountain that overhangs it. Soon after we entered the valley of Chamounix. This valley is more wonderful and sublime, but not so beautiful and picturesque as that of Servox, through which we had just passed. The high and snowy mountains were its immediate boundaries; but we saw no more ruined castles and fertile fields. Immense glaciers approached the road; we heard the rumbling thunder of the falling avalanche, and marked the smoke of its passage. Mont Blanc, the supreme and magnificent Mont Blanc, raised itself from the surrounding _aiguilles_, and its tremendous _dome_ overlooked the valley. During this journey, I sometimes joined Elizabeth, and exerted myself to point out to her the various beauties of the scene. I often suffered my mule to lag behind, and indulged in the misery of reflection. At other times I spurred on the animal before my companions, that I might forget them, the world, and, more than all, myself. When at a distance, I alighted, and threw myself on the grass, weighed down by horror and despair. At eight in the evening I arrived at Chamounix. My father and Elizabeth were very much fatigued; Ernest, who accompanied us, was delighted, and in high spirits: the only circumstance that detracted from his pleasure was the south wind, and the rain it seemed to promise for the next day. We retired early to our apartments, but not to sleep; at least I did not. I remained many hours at the window, watching the pallid lightning that played above Mont Blanc, and listening to the rushing of the Arve, which ran below my window.

Victor is tormented by the false calm that descends upon the Frankenstein household following the death of Justine. He is wracked with guilt; though he intended to further the cause of human happiness, he has ended in committing "deeds of mischief beyond description horrible. Victor's health suffers as a result of his massive sense of guilt and the bleak depression that accompanies it. His father, observing his misery, becomes ill as well. The Frankenstein family, "blasted" as a result of their recent misfortunes, retires to their summer home at Belrive. There, Victor passes most of his hours in solitude; the fact that he must keep his role in William's death a secret makes the company of his family agonizing to him. He finds himself in extreme disharmony with the landscape of Belrive, which impresses him with its beauty and serenity. He often contemplates suicide, but is deterred by thoughts of Elizabeth's grief; he also fears the untold havoc his creature could wreak in his absence. Victor's hatred of the creature reaches pathological proportions, and takes on the character of an obsession; he thinks of nothing but his eventual revenge. Elizabeth, too, is much changed by the tragedy; she has lost faith in the essential goodness of both humanity and the world as a whole. Now, men appear to her "as monsters thirsting after each other's blood. She does, however, persist in her fervent belief in Justine's innocence; she feels great pity for the man who must carry the guilt for William's murder on his conscience. Victor despairs when he hears her say this, as he feels that he is the man who must bear that guilt. He seeks escape from his misery by traveling through the Alpine valley of Chamonix, in which he had often vacationed as a boy. Victor is awestruck by the overwhelming grandeur of the landscape, and views it as proof of the existence of an omnipotent god. The hard physical exercise exhausts him, and he is able to take refuge in sleep for the first time since the execution of Justine.

Approach the chamber, look upon his bed. His is the passing of no peaceful ghost, Which, as the lark arises to the sky, 'Mid morning's sweetest breeze and softest dew, Is wing'd to heaven by good men's sighs and tears!-- Anselm parts otherwise. --Old Play During the interval of quiet which followed the first success of the besiegers, while the one party was preparing to pursue their advantage, and the other to strengthen their means of defence, the Templar and De Bracy held brief council together in the hall of the castle. "Where is Front-de-Boeuf?" said the latter, who had superintended the defence of the fortress on the other side; "men say he hath been slain." "He lives," said the Templar, coolly, "lives as yet; but had he worn the bull's head of which he bears the name, and ten plates of iron to fence it withal, he must have gone down before yonder fatal axe. Yet a few hours, and Front-de-Boeuf is with his fathers--a powerful limb lopped off Prince John's enterprise." "And a brave addition to the kingdom of Satan," said De Bracy; "this comes of reviling saints and angels, and ordering images of holy things and holy men to be flung down on the heads of these rascaille yeomen." "Go to--thou art a fool," said the Templar; "thy superstition is upon a level with Front-de-Boeuf's want of faith; neither of you can render a reason for your belief or unbelief." "Benedicite, Sir Templar," replied De Bracy, "pray you to keep better rule with your tongue when I am the theme of it. By the Mother of Heaven, I am a better Christian man than thou and thy fellowship; for the 'bruit' goeth shrewdly out, that the most holy Order of the Temple of Zion nurseth not a few heretics within its bosom, and that Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert is of the number." "Care not thou for such reports," said the Templar; "but let us think of making good the castle.--How fought these villain yeomen on thy side?" "Like fiends incarnate," said De Bracy. "They swarmed close up to the walls, headed, as I think, by the knave who won the prize at the archery, for I knew his horn and baldric. And this is old Fitzurse's boasted policy, encouraging these malapert knaves to rebel against us! Had I not been armed in proof, the villain had marked me down seven times with as little remorse as if I had been a buck in season. He told every rivet on my armour with a cloth-yard shaft, that rapped against my ribs with as little compunction as if my bones had been of iron--But that I wore a shirt of Spanish mail under my plate-coat, I had been fairly sped." "But you maintained your post?" said the Templar. "We lost the outwork on our part." "That is a shrewd loss," said De Bracy; "the knaves will find cover there to assault the castle more closely, and may, if not well watched, gain some unguarded corner of a tower, or some forgotten window, and so break in upon us. Our numbers are too few for the defence of every point, and the men complain that they can nowhere show themselves, but they are the mark for as many arrows as a parish-butt on a holyday even. Front-de-Boeuf is dying too, so we shall receive no more aid from his bull's head and brutal strength. How think you, Sir Brian, were we not better make a virtue of necessity, and compound with the rogues by delivering up our prisoners?" "How?" exclaimed the Templar; "deliver up our prisoners, and stand an object alike of ridicule and execration, as the doughty warriors who dared by a night-attack to possess themselves of the persons of a party of defenceless travellers, yet could not make good a strong castle against a vagabond troop of outlaws, led by swineherds, jesters, and the very refuse of mankind?--Shame on thy counsel, Maurice de Bracy!--The ruins of this castle shall bury both my body and my shame, ere I consent to such base and dishonourable composition." "Let us to the walls, then," said De Bracy, carelessly; "that man never breathed, be he Turk or Templar, who held life at lighter rate than I do. But I trust there is no dishonour in wishing I had here some two scores of my gallant troop of Free Companions?--Oh, my brave lances! if ye knew but how hard your captain were this day bested, how soon should I see my banner at the head of your clump of spears! And how short while would these rabble villains stand to endure your encounter!" "Wish for whom thou wilt," said the Templar, "but let us make what defence we can with the soldiers who remain--They are chiefly Front-de-Boeuf's followers, hated by the English for a thousand acts of insolence and oppression." "The better," said De Bracy; "the rugged slaves will defend themselves to the last drop of their blood, ere they encounter the revenge of the peasants without. Let us up and be doing, then, Brian de Bois-Guilbert; and, live or die, thou shalt see Maurice de Bracy bear himself this day as a gentleman of blood and lineage." "To the walls!" answered the Templar; and they both ascended the battlements to do all that skill could dictate, and manhood accomplish, in defence of the place. They readily agreed that the point of greatest danger was that opposite to the outwork of which the assailants had possessed themselves. The castle, indeed, was divided from that barbican by the moat, and it was impossible that the besiegers could assail the postern-door, with which the outwork corresponded, without surmounting that obstacle; but it was the opinion both of the Templar and De Bracy, that the besiegers, if governed by the same policy their leader had already displayed, would endeavour, by a formidable assault, to draw the chief part of the defenders' observation to this point, and take measures to avail themselves of every negligence which might take place in the defence elsewhere. To guard against such an evil, their numbers only permitted the knights to place sentinels from space to space along the walls in communication with each other, who might give the alarm whenever danger was threatened. Meanwhile, they agreed that De Bracy should command the defence at the postern, and the Templar should keep with him a score of men or thereabouts as a body of reserve, ready to hasten to any other point which might be suddenly threatened. The loss of the barbican had also this unfortunate effect, that, notwithstanding the superior height of the castle walls, the besieged could not see from them, with the same precision as before, the operations of the enemy; for some straggling underwood approached so near the sallyport of the outwork, that the assailants might introduce into it whatever force they thought proper, not only under cover, but even without the knowledge of the defenders. Utterly uncertain, therefore, upon what point the storm was to burst, De Bracy and his companion were under the necessity of providing against every possible contingency, and their followers, however brave, experienced the anxious dejection of mind incident to men enclosed by enemies, who possessed the power of choosing their time and mode of attack. Meanwhile, the lord of the beleaguered and endangered castle lay upon a bed of bodily pain and mental agony. He had not the usual resource of bigots in that superstitious period, most of whom were wont to atone for the crimes they were guilty of by liberality to the church, stupefying by this means their terrors by the idea of atonement and forgiveness; and although the refuge which success thus purchased, was no more like to the peace of mind which follows on sincere repentance, than the turbid stupefaction procured by opium resembles healthy and natural slumbers, it was still a state of mind preferable to the agonies of awakened remorse. But among the vices of Front-de-Boeuf, a hard and griping man, avarice was predominant; and he preferred setting church and churchmen at defiance, to purchasing from them pardon and absolution at the price of treasure and of manors. Nor did the Templar, an infidel of another stamp, justly characterise his associate, when he said Front-de-Boeuf could assign no cause for his unbelief and contempt for the established faith; for the Baron would have alleged that the Church sold her wares too dear, that the spiritual freedom which she put up to sale was only to be bought like that of the chief captain of Jerusalem, "with a great sum," and Front-de-Boeuf preferred denying the virtue of the medicine, to paying the expense of the physician. But the moment had now arrived when earth and all his treasures were gliding from before his eyes, and when the savage Baron's heart, though hard as a nether millstone, became appalled as he gazed forward into the waste darkness of futurity. The fever of his body aided the impatience and agony of his mind, and his death-bed exhibited a mixture of the newly awakened feelings of horror, combating with the fixed and inveterate obstinacy of his disposition;--a fearful state of mind, only to be equalled in those tremendous regions, where there are complaints without hope, remorse without repentance, a dreadful sense of present agony, and a presentiment that it cannot cease or be diminished! "Where be these dog-priests now," growled the Baron, "who set such price on their ghostly mummery?--where be all those unshod Carmelites, for whom old Front-de-Boeuf founded the convent of St Anne, robbing his heir of many a fair rood of meadow, and many a fat field and close--where be the greedy hounds now?--Swilling, I warrant me, at the ale, or playing their juggling tricks at the bedside of some miserly churl.--Me, the heir of their founder--me, whom their foundation binds them to pray for--me--ungrateful villains as they are!--they suffer to die like the houseless dog on yonder common, unshriven and unhouseled!--Tell the Templar to come hither--he is a priest, and may do something--But no!--as well confess myself to the devil as to Brian de Bois-Guilbert, who recks neither of heaven nor of hell.--I have heard old men talk of prayer--prayer by their own voice--Such need not to court or to bribe the false priest--But I--I dare not!" "Lives Reginald Front-de-Boeuf," said a broken and shrill voice close by his bedside, "to say there is that which he dares not!" The evil conscience and the shaken nerves of Front-de-Boeuf heard, in this strange interruption to his soliloquy, the voice of one of those demons, who, as the superstition of the times believed, beset the beds of dying men to distract their thoughts, and turn them from the meditations which concerned their eternal welfare. He shuddered and drew himself together; but, instantly summoning up his wonted resolution, he exclaimed, "Who is there?--what art thou, that darest to echo my words in a tone like that of the night-raven?--Come before my couch that I may see thee." "I am thine evil angel, Reginald Front-de-Boeuf," replied the voice. "Let me behold thee then in thy bodily shape, if thou be'st indeed a fiend," replied the dying knight; "think not that I will blench from thee.--By the eternal dungeon, could I but grapple with these horrors that hover round me, as I have done with mortal dangers, heaven or hell should never say that I shrunk from the conflict!" "Think on thy sins, Reginald Front-de-Boeuf," said the almost unearthly voice, "on rebellion, on rapine, on murder!--Who stirred up the licentious John to war against his grey-headed father--against his generous brother?" "Be thou fiend, priest, or devil," replied Front-de-Boeuf, "thou liest in thy throat!--Not I stirred John to rebellion--not I alone--there were fifty knights and barons, the flower of the midland counties--better men never laid lance in rest--And must I answer for the fault done by fifty?--False fiend, I defy thee! Depart, and haunt my couch no more--let me die in peace if thou be mortal--if thou be a demon, thy time is not yet come." "In peace thou shalt NOT die," repeated the voice; "even in death shalt thou think on thy murders--on the groans which this castle has echoed--on the blood that is engrained in its floors!" "Thou canst not shake me by thy petty malice," answered Front-de-Boeuf, with a ghastly and constrained laugh. "The infidel Jew--it was merit with heaven to deal with him as I did, else wherefore are men canonized who dip their hands in the blood of Saracens?--The Saxon porkers, whom I have slain, they were the foes of my country, and of my lineage, and of my liege lord.--Ho! ho! thou seest there is no crevice in my coat of plate--Art thou fled?--art thou silenced?" "No, foul parricide!" replied the voice; "think of thy father!--think of his death!--think of his banquet-room flooded with his gore, and that poured forth by the hand of a son!" "Ha!" answered the Baron, after a long pause, "an thou knowest that, thou art indeed the author of evil, and as omniscient as the monks call thee!--That secret I deemed locked in my own breast, and in that of one besides--the temptress, the partaker of my guilt.--Go, leave me, fiend! and seek the Saxon witch Ulrica, who alone could tell thee what she and I alone witnessed.--Go, I say, to her, who washed the wounds, and straighted the corpse, and gave to the slain man the outward show of one parted in time and in the course of nature--Go to her, she was my temptress, the foul provoker, the more foul rewarder, of the deed--let her, as well as I, taste of the tortures which anticipate hell!" "She already tastes them," said Ulrica, stepping before the couch of Front-de-Boeuf; "she hath long drunken of this cup, and its bitterness is now sweetened to see that thou dost partake it.--Grind not thy teeth, Front-de-Boeuf--roll not thine eyes--clench not thine hand, nor shake it at me with that gesture of menace!--The hand which, like that of thy renowned ancestor who gained thy name, could have broken with one stroke the skull of a mountain-bull, is now unnerved and powerless as mine own!" "Vile murderous hag!" replied Front-de-Boeuf; "detestable screech-owl! it is then thou who art come to exult over the ruins thou hast assisted to lay low?" "Ay, Reginald Front-de-Boeuf," answered she, "it is Ulrica!--it is the daughter of the murdered Torquil Wolfganger!--it is the sister of his slaughtered sons!--it is she who demands of thee, and of thy father's house, father and kindred, name and fame--all that she has lost by the name of Front-de-Boeuf!--Think of my wrongs, Front-de-Boeuf, and answer me if I speak not truth. Thou hast been my evil angel, and I will be thine--I will dog thee till the very instant of dissolution!" "Detestable fury!" exclaimed Front-de-Boeuf, "that moment shalt thou never witness--Ho! Giles, Clement, and Eustace! Saint Maur, and Stephen! seize this damned witch, and hurl her from the battlements headlong--she has betrayed us to the Saxon!--Ho! Saint Maur! Clement! false-hearted, knaves, where tarry ye?" "Call on them again, valiant Baron," said the hag, with a smile of grisly mockery; "summon thy vassals around thee, doom them that loiter to the scourge and the dungeon--But know, mighty chief," she continued, suddenly changing her tone, "thou shalt have neither answer, nor aid, nor obedience at their hands.--Listen to these horrid sounds," for the din of the recommenced assault and defence now rung fearfully loud from the battlements of the castle; "in that war-cry is the downfall of thy house--The blood-cemented fabric of Front-de-Boeuf's power totters to the foundation, and before the foes he most despised!--The Saxon, Reginald!--the scorned Saxon assails thy walls!--Why liest thou here, like a worn-out hind, when the Saxon storms thy place of strength?" "Gods and fiends!" exclaimed the wounded knight; "O, for one moment's strength, to drag myself to the 'melee', and perish as becomes my name!" "Think not of it, valiant warrior!" replied she; "thou shalt die no soldier's death, but perish like the fox in his den, when the peasants have set fire to the cover around it." "Hateful hag! thou liest!" exclaimed Front-de-Boeuf; "my followers bear them bravely--my walls are strong and high--my comrades in arms fear not a whole host of Saxons, were they headed by Hengist and Horsa!--The war-cry of the Templar and of the Free Companions rises high over the conflict! And by mine honour, when we kindle the blazing beacon, for joy of our defence, it shall consume thee, body and bones; and I shall live to hear thou art gone from earthly fires to those of that hell, which never sent forth an incarnate fiend more utterly diabolical!" "Hold thy belief," replied Ulrica, "till the proof reach thee--But, no!" she said, interrupting herself, "thou shalt know, even now, the doom, which all thy power, strength, and courage, is unable to avoid, though it is prepared for thee by this feeble band. Markest thou the smouldering and suffocating vapour which already eddies in sable folds through the chamber?--Didst thou think it was but the darkening of thy bursting eyes--the difficulty of thy cumbered breathing?--No! Front-de-Boeuf, there is another cause--Rememberest thou the magazine of fuel that is stored beneath these apartments?" "Woman!" he exclaimed with fury, "thou hast not set fire to it?--By heaven, thou hast, and the castle is in flames!" "They are fast rising at least," said Ulrica, with frightful composure; "and a signal shall soon wave to warn the besiegers to press hard upon those who would extinguish them.--Farewell, Front-de-Boeuf!--May Mista, Skogula, and Zernebock, gods of the ancient Saxons--fiends, as the priests now call them--supply the place of comforters at your dying bed, which Ulrica now relinquishes!--But know, if it will give thee comfort to know it, that Ulrica is bound to the same dark coast with thyself, the companion of thy punishment as the companion of thy guilt.--And now, parricide, farewell for ever!--May each stone of this vaulted roof find a tongue to echo that title into thine ear!" So saying, she left the apartment; and Front-de-Boeuf could hear the crash of the ponderous key, as she locked and double-locked the door behind her, thus cutting off the most slender chance of escape. In the extremity of agony he shouted upon his servants and allies--"Stephen and Saint Maur!--Clement and Giles!--I burn here unaided!--To the rescue--to the rescue, brave Bois-Guilbert, valiant De Bracy!--It is Front-de-Boeuf who calls!--It is your master, ye traitor squires!--Your ally--your brother in arms, ye perjured and faithless knights!--all the curses due to traitors upon your recreant heads, do you abandon me to perish thus miserably!--They hear me not--they cannot hear me--my voice is lost in the din of battle.--The smoke rolls thicker and thicker--the fire has caught upon the floor below--O, for one drought of the air of heaven, were it to be purchased by instant annihilation!" And in the mad frenzy of despair, the wretch now shouted with the shouts of the fighters, now muttered curses on himself, on mankind, and on Heaven itself.--"The red fire flashes through the thick smoke!" he exclaimed; "the demon marches against me under the banner of his own element--Foul spirit, avoid!--I go not with thee without my comrades--all, all are thine, that garrison these walls--Thinkest thou Front-de-Boeuf will be singled out to go alone?--No--the infidel Templar--the licentious De Bracy--Ulrica, the foul murdering strumpet--the men who aided my enterprises--the dog Saxons and accursed Jews, who are my prisoners--all, all shall attend me--a goodly fellowship as ever took the downward road--Ha, ha, ha!" and he laughed in his frenzy till the vaulted roof rang again. "Who laughed there?" exclaimed Front-de-Boeuf, in altered mood, for the noise of the conflict did not prevent the echoes of his own mad laughter from returning upon his ear--"who laughed there?--Ulrica, was it thou?--Speak, witch, and I forgive thee--for, only thou or the fiend of hell himself could have laughed at such a moment. Avaunt--avaunt!---" But it were impious to trace any farther the picture of the blasphemer and parricide's deathbed.

Front-de-Boeuf is mortally wounded, and De Bracy and De Bois-Guilbert discuss how to defend the castle. They know their position is dire, and De Bracy suggests surrendering the prisoners, but De Bois-Guilbert will not hear of it. They decide to defend the castle as best they can. Front-de-Boeuf is tormented on his deathbed by Ulrica, who tells him to remember all his sins. She also taunts him, saying that the Saxons will take over his castle. Then she tells him that she has set fire to it. She leaves him to die in the flames

There was a table set out under a tree in front of the house, and the March Hare and the Hatter were having tea at it; a Dormouse was sitting between them, fast asleep. The table was a large one, but the three were all crowded together at one corner of it. "No room! No room!" they cried out when they saw Alice coming. "There's _plenty_ of room!" said Alice indignantly, and she sat down in a large arm-chair at one end of the table. The Hatter opened his eyes very wide on hearing this, but all he said was "Why is a raven like a writing-desk?" "I'm glad they've begun asking riddles--I believe I can guess that," she added aloud. "Do you mean that you think you can find out the answer to it?" said the March Hare. "Exactly so," said Alice. "Then you should say what you mean," the March Hare went on. "I do," Alice hastily replied; "at least--at least I mean what I say--that's the same thing, you know." "You might just as well say," added the Dormouse, which seemed to be talking in its sleep, "that 'I breathe when I sleep' is the same thing as 'I sleep when I breathe!'" "It _is_ the same thing with you," said the Hatter, and he poured a little hot tea upon its nose. The Dormouse shook its head impatiently and said, without opening its eyes, "Of course, of course; just what I was going to remark myself." [Illustration] "Have you guessed the riddle yet?" the Hatter said, turning to Alice again. "No, I give it up," Alice replied. "What's the answer?" "I haven't the slightest idea," said the Hatter. "Nor I," said the March Hare. Alice gave a weary sigh. "I think you might do something better with the time," she said, "than wasting it in asking riddles that have no answers." "Take some more tea," the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly. "I've had nothing yet," Alice replied in an offended tone, "so I can't take more." "You mean you can't take _less_," said the Hatter; "it's very easy to take _more_ than nothing." At this, Alice got up and walked off. The Dormouse fell asleep instantly and neither of the others took the least notice of her going, though she looked back once or twice; the last time she saw them, they were trying to put the Dormouse into the tea-pot. [Illustration: The Trial of the Knave of Hearts.] "At any rate, I'll never go _there_ again!" said Alice, as she picked her way through the wood. "It's the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all my life!" Just as she said this, she noticed that one of the trees had a door leading right into it. "That's very curious!" she thought. "I think I may as well go in at once." And in she went. Once more she found herself in the long hall and close to the little glass table. Taking the little golden key, she unlocked the door that led into the garden. Then she set to work nibbling at the mushroom (she had kept a piece of it in her pocket) till she was about a foot high; then she walked down the little passage; and _then_--she found herself at last in the beautiful garden, among the bright flower-beds and the cool fountains.

In front of the house is a tree, under which is set a table for a tea party. March Hare and the Mad Hatter are having tea. Between them is seated the Dormouse who is fast asleep and the other two are using the dormouse as a cushion for resting their elbows on it and they talk over its head. On seeing Alice, both of them exclaim that there is no place for her. However, Alice is adamant and takes a chair saying that there is a lot of place at the table. After a round of not very pleasant talks Alice and the others compel the dormouse to tell them a story. The chapter is replete with events that display the beauty that lies in the use of language. Linguistic acrobatics begin with the Hatter pointing out that it is not possible to say that, the statements, "I see what I eat" and "I eat what I see" could mean the same. Therefore, by the same logic one cannot say that the statements "I say what I mean" and "I mean what I say" is true. Alice is further puzzled when she notices that the Dormouses watch can say the day of the month but does not say the time. This brings them to a discussion on the concept of time. While Alice perceives time as being a concept , Hatter speaks of him as if Time were a living being. Alice realizes that time has come to stop at the Hatters house and therefore it is always six oclock . It is time now for the Dormouse to tell his story. The dormouse wakes up to tell then the story of three little sisters who lived in a treacle well and were learning to draw all that started with a "M". He is hardly able to go on with the story beyond a certain point since Alice consistently stops him with questions of various sorts. This irritates the dormouse who refuses to go on with the story. She is asked by the others to keep quiet and unable to take this rude behavior she leaves the place. The last thing that she happens to see, is the sight of March Hare and the Mad Hatter trying to put the Dormouse into the teapot. Just as she tells herself that she would never set foot at the house again, she spots a door in one of the tree trunks. She goes through the door and finds herself in the long hall that she was hurled into when she at first followed the White Rabbit through the rabbit hole. She picks up the golden key and then nibbling at the mushroom she manages to reach the size that would take her through the door leading to the garden. Once she is on the other side of the door, she finds herself among bright flower-beds and cool fountains.

She put the letter into her pocket and offered her visitor a smile of welcome, exhibiting no trace of discomposure and half surprised at her coolness. "They told me you were out here," said Lord Warburton; "and as there was no one in the drawing-room and it's really you that I wish to see, I came out with no more ado." Isabel had got up; she felt a wish, for the moment, that he should not sit down beside her. "I was just going indoors." "Please don't do that; it's much jollier here; I've ridden over from Lockleigh; it's a lovely day." His smile was peculiarly friendly and pleasing, and his whole person seemed to emit that radiance of good-feeling and good fare which had formed the charm of the girl's first impression of him. It surrounded him like a zone of fine June weather. "We'll walk about a little then," said Isabel, who could not divest herself of the sense of an intention on the part of her visitor and who wished both to elude the intention and to satisfy her curiosity about it. It had flashed upon her vision once before, and it had given her on that occasion, as we know, a certain alarm. This alarm was composed of several elements, not all of which were disagreeable; she had indeed spent some days in analysing them and had succeeded in separating the pleasant part of the idea of Lord Warburton's "making up" to her from the painful. It may appear to some readers that the young lady was both precipitate and unduly fastidious; but the latter of these facts, if the charge be true, may serve to exonerate her from the discredit of the former. She was not eager to convince herself that a territorial magnate, as she had heard Lord Warburton called, was smitten with her charms; the fact of a declaration from such a source carrying with it really more questions than it would answer. She had received a strong impression of his being a "personage," and she had occupied herself in examining the image so conveyed. At the risk of adding to the evidence of her self-sufficiency it must be said that there had been moments when this possibility of admiration by a personage represented to her an aggression almost to the degree of an affront, quite to the degree of an inconvenience. She had never yet known a personage; there had been no personages, in this sense, in her life; there were probably none such at all in her native land. When she had thought of individual eminence she had thought of it on the basis of character and wit--of what one might like in a gentleman's mind and in his talk. She herself was a character--she couldn't help being aware of that; and hitherto her visions of a completed consciousness had concerned themselves largely with moral images--things as to which the question would be whether they pleased her sublime soul. Lord Warburton loomed up before her, largely and brightly, as a collection of attributes and powers which were not to be measured by this simple rule, but which demanded a different sort of appreciation--an appreciation that the girl, with her habit of judging quickly and freely, felt she lacked patience to bestow. He appeared to demand of her something that no one else, as it were, had presumed to do. What she felt was that a territorial, a political, a social magnate had conceived the design of drawing her into the system in which he rather invidiously lived and moved. A certain instinct, not imperious, but persuasive, told her to resist--murmured to her that virtually she had a system and an orbit of her own. It told her other things besides--things which both contradicted and confirmed each other; that a girl might do much worse than trust herself to such a man and that it would be very interesting to see something of his system from his own point of view; that on the other hand, however, there was evidently a great deal of it which she should regard only as a complication of every hour, and that even in the whole there was something stiff and stupid which would make it a burden. Furthermore there was a young man lately come from America who had no system at all, but who had a character of which it was useless for her to try to persuade herself that the impression on her mind had been light. The letter she carried in her pocket all sufficiently reminded her of the contrary. Smile not, however, I venture to repeat, at this simple young woman from Albany who debated whether she should accept an English peer before he had offered himself and who was disposed to believe that on the whole she could do better. She was a person of great good faith, and if there was a great deal of folly in her wisdom those who judge her severely may have the satisfaction of finding that, later, she became consistently wise only at the cost of an amount of folly which will constitute almost a direct appeal to charity. Lord Warburton seemed quite ready to walk, to sit or to do anything that Isabel should propose, and he gave her this assurance with his usual air of being particularly pleased to exercise a social virtue. But he was, nevertheless, not in command of his emotions, and as he strolled beside her for a moment, in silence, looking at her without letting her know it, there was something embarrassed in his glance and his misdirected laughter. Yes, assuredly--as we have touched on the point, we may return to it for a moment again--the English are the most romantic people in the world and Lord Warburton was about to give an example of it. He was about to take a step which would astonish all his friends and displease a great many of them, and which had superficially nothing to recommend it. The young lady who trod the turf beside him had come from a queer country across the sea which he knew a good deal about; her antecedents, her associations were very vague to his mind except in so far as they were generic, and in this sense they showed as distinct and unimportant. Miss Archer had neither a fortune nor the sort of beauty that justifies a man to the multitude, and he calculated that he had spent about twenty-six hours in her company. He had summed up all this--the perversity of the impulse, which had declined to avail itself of the most liberal opportunities to subside, and the judgement of mankind, as exemplified particularly in the more quickly-judging half of it: he had looked these things well in the face and then had dismissed them from his thoughts. He cared no more for them than for the rosebud in his buttonhole. It is the good fortune of a man who for the greater part of a lifetime has abstained without effort from making himself disagreeable to his friends, that when the need comes for such a course it is not discredited by irritating associations. "I hope you had a pleasant ride," said Isabel, who observed her companion's hesitancy. "It would have been pleasant if for nothing else than that it brought me here." "Are you so fond of Gardencourt?" the girl asked, more and more sure that he meant to make some appeal to her; wishing not to challenge him if he hesitated, and yet to keep all the quietness of her reason if he proceeded. It suddenly came upon her that her situation was one which a few weeks ago she would have deemed deeply romantic: the park of an old English country-house, with the foreground embellished by a "great" (as she supposed) nobleman in the act of making love to a young lady who, on careful inspection, should be found to present remarkable analogies with herself. But if she was now the heroine of the situation she succeeded scarcely the less in looking at it from the outside. "I care nothing for Gardencourt," said her companion. "I care only for you." "You've known me too short a time to have a right to say that, and I can't believe you're serious." These words of Isabel's were not perfectly sincere, for she had no doubt whatever that he himself was. They were simply a tribute to the fact, of which she was perfectly aware, that those he had just uttered would have excited surprise on the part of a vulgar world. And, moreover, if anything beside the sense she had already acquired that Lord Warburton was not a loose thinker had been needed to convince her, the tone in which he replied would quite have served the purpose. "One's right in such a matter is not measured by the time, Miss Archer; it's measured by the feeling itself. If I were to wait three months it would make no difference; I shall not be more sure of what I mean than I am to-day. Of course I've seen you very little, but my impression dates from the very first hour we met. I lost no time, I fell in love with you then. It was at first sight, as the novels say; I know now that's not a fancy-phrase, and I shall think better of novels for evermore. Those two days I spent here settled it; I don't know whether you suspected I was doing so, but I paid-mentally speaking I mean--the greatest possible attention to you. Nothing you said, nothing you did, was lost upon me. When you came to Lockleigh the other day--or rather when you went away--I was perfectly sure. Nevertheless I made up my mind to think it over and to question myself narrowly. I've done so; all these days I've done nothing else. I don't make mistakes about such things; I'm a very judicious animal. I don't go off easily, but when I'm touched, it's for life. It's for life, Miss Archer, it's for life," Lord Warburton repeated in the kindest, tenderest, pleasantest voice Isabel had ever heard, and looking at her with eyes charged with the light of a passion that had sifted itself clear of the baser parts of emotion--the heat, the violence, the unreason--and that burned as steadily as a lamp in a windless place. By tacit consent, as he talked, they had walked more and more slowly, and at last they stopped and he took her hand. "Ah, Lord Warburton, how little you know me!" Isabel said very gently. Gently too she drew her hand away. "Don't taunt me with that; that I don't know you better makes me unhappy enough already; it's all my loss. But that's what I want, and it seems to me I'm taking the best way. If you'll be my wife, then I shall know you, and when I tell you all the good I think of you you'll not be able to say it's from ignorance." "If you know me little I know you even less," said Isabel. "You mean that, unlike yourself, I may not improve on acquaintance? Ah, of course that's very possible. But think, to speak to you as I do, how determined I must be to try and give satisfaction! You do like me rather, don't you?" "I like you very much, Lord Warburton," she answered; and at this moment she liked him immensely. "I thank you for saying that; it shows you don't regard me as a stranger. I really believe I've filled all the other relations of life very creditably, and I don't see why I shouldn't fill this one--in which I offer myself to you--seeing that I care so much more about it. Ask the people who know me well; I've friends who'll speak for me." "I don't need the recommendation of your friends," said Isabel. "Ah now, that's delightful of you. You believe in me yourself." "Completely," Isabel declared. She quite glowed there, inwardly, with the pleasure of feeling she did. The light in her companion's eyes turned into a smile, and he gave a long exhalation of joy. "If you're mistaken, Miss Archer, let me lose all I possess!" She wondered whether he meant this for a reminder that he was rich, and, on the instant, felt sure that he didn't. He was thinking that, as he would have said himself; and indeed he might safely leave it to the memory of any interlocutor, especially of one to whom he was offering his hand. Isabel had prayed that she might not be agitated, and her mind was tranquil enough, even while she listened and asked herself what it was best she should say, to indulge in this incidental criticism. What she should say, had she asked herself? Her foremost wish was to say something if possible not less kind than what he had said to her. His words had carried perfect conviction with them; she felt she did, all so mysteriously, matter to him. "I thank you more than I can say for your offer," she returned at last. "It does me great honour." "Ah, don't say that!" he broke out. "I was afraid you'd say something like that. I don't see what you've to do with that sort of thing. I don't see why you should thank me--it's I who ought to thank you for listening to me: a man you know so little coming down on you with such a thumper! Of course it's a great question; I must tell you that I'd rather ask it than have it to answer myself. But the way you've listened--or at least your having listened at all--gives me some hope." "Don't hope too much," Isabel said. "Oh Miss Archer!" her companion murmured, smiling again, in his seriousness, as if such a warning might perhaps be taken but as the play of high spirits, the exuberance of elation. "Should you be greatly surprised if I were to beg you not to hope at all?" Isabel asked. "Surprised? I don't know what you mean by surprise. It wouldn't be that; it would be a feeling very much worse." Isabel walked on again; she was silent for some minutes. "I'm very sure that, highly as I already think of you, my opinion of you, if I should know you well, would only rise. But I'm by no means sure that you wouldn't be disappointed. And I say that not in the least out of conventional modesty; it's perfectly sincere." "I'm willing to risk it, Miss Archer," her companion replied. "It's a great question, as you say. It's a very difficult question." "I don't expect you of course to answer it outright. Think it over as long as may be necessary. If I can gain by waiting I'll gladly wait a long time. Only remember that in the end my dearest happiness depends on your answer." "I should be very sorry to keep you in suspense," said Isabel. "Oh, don't mind. I'd much rather have a good answer six months hence than a bad one to-day." "But it's very probable that even six months hence I shouldn't be able to give you one that you'd think good." "Why not, since you really like me?" "Ah, you must never doubt that," said Isabel. "Well then, I don't see what more you ask!" "It's not what I ask; it's what I can give. I don't think I should suit you; I really don't think I should." "You needn't worry about that. That's my affair. You needn't be a better royalist than the king." "It's not only that," said Isabel; "but I'm not sure I wish to marry any one." "Very likely you don't. I've no doubt a great many women begin that way," said his lordship, who, be it averred, did not in the least believe in the axiom he thus beguiled his anxiety by uttering. "But they're frequently persuaded." "Ah, that's because they want to be!" And Isabel lightly laughed. Her suitor's countenance fell, and he looked at her for a while in silence. "I'm afraid it's my being an Englishman that makes you hesitate," he said presently. "I know your uncle thinks you ought to marry in your own country." Isabel listened to this assertion with some interest; it had never occurred to her that Mr. Touchett was likely to discuss her matrimonial prospects with Lord Warburton. "Has he told you that?" "I remember his making the remark. He spoke perhaps of Americans generally." "He appears himself to have found it very pleasant to live in England." Isabel spoke in a manner that might have seemed a little perverse, but which expressed both her constant perception of her uncle's outward felicity and her general disposition to elude any obligation to take a restricted view. It gave her companion hope, and he immediately cried with warmth: "Ah, my dear Miss Archer, old England's a very good sort of country, you know! And it will be still better when we've furbished it up a little." "Oh, don't furbish it, Lord Warburton--, leave it alone. I like it this way." "Well then, if you like it, I'm more and more unable to see your objection to what I propose." "I'm afraid I can't make you understand." "You ought at least to try. I've a fair intelligence. Are you afraid--afraid of the climate? We can easily live elsewhere, you know. You can pick out your climate, the whole world over." These words were uttered with a breadth of candour that was like the embrace of strong arms--that was like the fragrance straight in her face, and by his clean, breathing lips, of she knew not what strange gardens, what charged airs. She would have given her little finger at that moment to feel strongly and simply the impulse to answer: "Lord Warburton, it's impossible for me to do better in this wonderful world, I think, than commit myself, very gratefully, to your loyalty." But though she was lost in admiration of her opportunity she managed to move back into the deepest shade of it, even as some wild, caught creature in a vast cage. The "splendid" security so offered her was not the greatest she could conceive. What she finally bethought herself of saying was something very different--something that deferred the need of really facing her crisis. "Don't think me unkind if I ask you to say no more about this to-day." "Certainly, certainly!" her companion cried. "I wouldn't bore you for the world." "You've given me a great deal to think about, and I promise you to do it justice." "That's all I ask of you, of course--and that you'll remember how absolutely my happiness is in your hands." Isabel listened with extreme respect to this admonition, but she said after a minute: "I must tell you that what I shall think about is some way of letting you know that what you ask is impossible--letting you know it without making you miserable." "There's no way to do that, Miss Archer. I won't say that if you refuse me you'll kill me; I shall not die of it. But I shall do worse; I shall live to no purpose." "You'll live to marry a better woman than I." "Don't say that, please," said Lord Warburton very gravely. "That's fair to neither of us." "To marry a worse one then." "If there are better women than you I prefer the bad ones. That's all I can say," he went on with the same earnestness. "There's no accounting for tastes." His gravity made her feel equally grave, and she showed it by again requesting him to drop the subject for the present. "I'll speak to you myself--very soon. Perhaps I shall write to you." "At your convenience, yes," he replied. "Whatever time you take, it must seem to me long, and I suppose I must make the best of that." "I shall not keep you in suspense; I only want to collect my mind a little." He gave a melancholy sigh and stood looking at her a moment, with his hands behind him, giving short nervous shakes to his hunting-crop. "Do you know I'm very much afraid of it--of that remarkable mind of yours?" Our heroine's biographer can scarcely tell why, but the question made her start and brought a conscious blush to her cheek. She returned his look a moment, and then with a note in her voice that might almost have appealed to his compassion, "So am I, my lord!" she oddly exclaimed. His compassion was not stirred, however; all he possessed of the faculty of pity was needed at home. "Ah! be merciful, be merciful," he murmured. "I think you had better go," said Isabel. "I'll write to you." "Very good; but whatever you write I'll come and see you, you know." And then he stood reflecting, his eyes fixed on the observant countenance of Bunchie, who had the air of having understood all that had been said and of pretending to carry off the indiscretion by a simulated fit of curiosity as to the roots of an ancient oak. "There's one thing more," he went on. "You know, if you don't like Lockleigh--if you think it's damp or anything of that sort--you need never go within fifty miles of it. It's not damp, by the way; I've had the house thoroughly examined; it's perfectly safe and right. But if you shouldn't fancy it you needn't dream of living in it. There's no difficulty whatever about that; there are plenty of houses. I thought I'd just mention it; some people don't like a moat, you know. Good-bye." "I adore a moat," said Isabel. "Good-bye." He held out his hand, and she gave him hers a moment--a moment long enough for him to bend his handsome bared head and kiss it. Then, still agitating, in his mastered emotion, his implement of the chase, he walked rapidly away. He was evidently much upset. Isabel herself was upset, but she had not been affected as she would have imagined. What she felt was not a great responsibility, a great difficulty of choice; it appeared to her there had been no choice in the question. She couldn't marry Lord Warburton; the idea failed to support any enlightened prejudice in favour of the free exploration of life that she had hitherto entertained or was now capable of entertaining. She must write this to him, she must convince him, and that duty was comparatively simple. But what disturbed her, in the sense that it struck her with wonderment, was this very fact that it cost her so little to refuse a magnificent "chance." With whatever qualifications one would, Lord Warburton had offered her a great opportunity; the situation might have discomforts, might contain oppressive, might contain narrowing elements, might prove really but a stupefying anodyne; but she did her sex no injustice in believing that nineteen women out of twenty would have accommodated themselves to it without a pang. Why then upon her also should it not irresistibly impose itself? Who was she, what was she, that she should hold herself superior? What view of life, what design upon fate, what conception of happiness, had she that pretended to be larger than these large these fabulous occasions? If she wouldn't do such a thing as that then she must do great things, she must do something greater. Poor Isabel found ground to remind herself from time to time that she must not be too proud, and nothing could be more sincere than her prayer to be delivered from such a danger: the isolation and loneliness of pride had for her mind the horror of a desert place. If it had been pride that interfered with her accepting Lord Warburton such a betise was singularly misplaced; and she was so conscious of liking him that she ventured to assure herself it was the very softness, and the fine intelligence, of sympathy. She liked him too much to marry him, that was the truth; something assured her there was a fallacy somewhere in the glowing logic of the proposition--as he saw it--even though she mightn't put her very finest finger-point on it; and to inflict upon a man who offered so much a wife with a tendency to criticise would be a peculiarly discreditable act. She had promised him she would consider his question, and when, after he had left her, she wandered back to the bench where he had found her and lost herself in meditation, it might have seemed that she was keeping her vow. But this was not the case; she was wondering if she were not a cold, hard, priggish person, and, on her at last getting up and going rather quickly back to the house, felt, as she had said to her friend, really frightened at herself.

Isabel puts the letter in her pocket and offers her hand in greeting to Lord Warburton. It is clear he has come just to see her and she is sure it has to do with a romantic intent. She had always thought of men only in relation to their moral nature, never in relation to their standing in the world. Lord Warburton is a "personage" of such a nature that she has never encountered in her life before. She is aware that in thinking of rejecting him, she is giving up a great chance in life. As they walk in the garden, it occurs to her that a few weeks ago, she would have thought this situation "deeply romantic." Lord Warburton tells her he has fallen in love with her and wants her to marry him. She tells him he hasnt known her for very long. He protests that he knows her well enough. She asks him to give her some time to think about it. While he is talking, she is moved by his sincerity and sweetness of emotion. She tells him she likes him and that she likes his home. He tells her he wouldnt want to marry anyone but her. She says she doesnt know that she wants to marry anyone at all. She says she doesnt think she would suit him. At one point, she feels as if he is offering her a very large and guilded cage. He tells her he is afraid of "that remarkable mind of . " She surprises him by saying she too is afraid of it. Finally he leaves, but not before telling her that if she doesnt like Lockleigh, they can live anywhere in the world. After he is gone, she realizes she has no intention of marrying him, but only wants some time to think of how to convince him that the marriage wouldnt be a good thing so he wont suffer too much. She wonders if she is cold-hearted to refuse him so lightly, especially to refuse such a "magnificent chance." She decides that she must do "great things, she must do something greater" if she is to refuse him. She also thinks she likes him too much to marry him. She goes back to the house, feeling frightened of herself.

The offence had been committed within the district, and indeed in the immediate neighborhood of, a very notorious metropolitan police office. The crowd had only the satisfaction of accompanying Oliver through two or three streets, and down a place called Mutton Hill, when he was led beneath a low archway, and up a dirty court, into this dispensary of summary justice, by the back way. It was a small paved yard into which they turned; and here they encountered a stout man with a bunch of whiskers on his face, and a bunch of keys in his hand. 'What's the matter now?' said the man carelessly. 'A young fogle-hunter,' replied the man who had Oliver in charge. 'Are you the party that's been robbed, sir?' inquired the man with the keys. 'Yes, I am,' replied the old gentleman; 'but I am not sure that this boy actually took the handkerchief. I--I would rather not press the case.' 'Must go before the magistrate now, sir,' replied the man. 'His worship will be disengaged in half a minute. Now, young gallows!' This was an invitation for Oliver to enter through a door which he unlocked as he spoke, and which led into a stone cell. Here he was searched; and nothing being found upon him, locked up. This cell was in shape and size something like an area cellar, only not so light. It was most intolerably dirty; for it was Monday morning; and it had been tenanted by six drunken people, who had been locked up, elsewhere, since Saturday night. But this is little. In our station-houses, men and women are every night confined on the most trivial charges--the word is worth noting--in dungeons, compared with which, those in Newgate, occupied by the most atrocious felons, tried, found guilty, and under sentence of death, are palaces. Let any one who doubts this, compare the two. The old gentleman looked almost as rueful as Oliver when the key grated in the lock. He turned with a sigh to the book, which had been the innocent cause of all this disturbance. 'There is something in that boy's face,' said the old gentleman to himself as he walked slowly away, tapping his chin with the cover of the book, in a thoughtful manner; 'something that touches and interests me. _Can_ he be innocent? He looked like--Bye the bye,' exclaimed the old gentleman, halting very abruptly, and staring up into the sky, 'Bless my soul!--where have I seen something like that look before?' After musing for some minutes, the old gentleman walked, with the same meditative face, into a back anteroom opening from the yard; and there, retiring into a corner, called up before his mind's eye a vast amphitheatre of faces over which a dusky curtain had hung for many years. 'No,' said the old gentleman, shaking his head; 'it must be imagination.' He wandered over them again. He had called them into view, and it was not easy to replace the shroud that had so long concealed them. There were the faces of friends, and foes, and of many that had been almost strangers peering intrusively from the crowd; there were the faces of young and blooming girls that were now old women; there were faces that the grave had changed and closed upon, but which the mind, superior to its power, still dressed in their old freshness and beauty, calling back the lustre of the eyes, the brightness of the smile, the beaming of the soul through its mask of clay, and whispering of beauty beyond the tomb, changed but to be heightened, and taken from earth only to be set up as a light, to shed a soft and gentle glow upon the path to Heaven. But the old gentleman could recall no one countenance of which Oliver's features bore a trace. So, he heaved a sigh over the recollections he awakened; and being, happily for himself, an absent old gentleman, buried them again in the pages of the musty book. He was roused by a touch on the shoulder, and a request from the man with the keys to follow him into the office. He closed his book hastily; and was at once ushered into the imposing presence of the renowned Mr. Fang. The office was a front parlour, with a panelled wall. Mr. Fang sat behind a bar, at the upper end; and on one side the door was a sort of wooden pen in which poor little Oliver was already deposited; trembling very much at the awfulness of the scene. Mr. Fang was a lean, long-backed, stiff-necked, middle-sized man, with no great quantity of hair, and what he had, growing on the back and sides of his head. His face was stern, and much flushed. If he were really not in the habit of drinking rather more than was exactly good for him, he might have brought action against his countenance for libel, and have recovered heavy damages. The old gentleman bowed respectfully; and advancing to the magistrate's desk, said, suiting the action to the word, 'That is my name and address, sir.' He then withdrew a pace or two; and, with another polite and gentlemanly inclination of the head, waited to be questioned. Now, it so happened that Mr. Fang was at that moment perusing a leading article in a newspaper of the morning, adverting to some recent decision of his, and commending him, for the three hundred and fiftieth time, to the special and particular notice of the Secretary of State for the Home Department. He was out of temper; and he looked up with an angry scowl. 'Who are you?' said Mr. Fang. The old gentleman pointed, with some surprise, to his card. 'Officer!' said Mr. Fang, tossing the card contemptuously away with the newspaper. 'Who is this fellow?' 'My name, sir,' said the old gentleman, speaking _like_ a gentleman, 'my name, sir, is Brownlow. Permit me to inquire the name of the magistrate who offers a gratuitous and unprovoked insult to a respectable person, under the protection of the bench.' Saying this, Mr. Brownlow looked around the office as if in search of some person who would afford him the required information. 'Officer!' said Mr. Fang, throwing the paper on one side, 'what's this fellow charged with?' 'He's not charged at all, your worship,' replied the officer. 'He appears against this boy, your worship.' His worship knew this perfectly well; but it was a good annoyance, and a safe one. 'Appears against the boy, does he?' said Mr. Fang, surveying Mr. Brownlow contemptuously from head to foot. 'Swear him!' 'Before I am sworn, I must beg to say one word,' said Mr. Brownlow; 'and that is, that I really never, without actual experience, could have believed--' 'Hold your tongue, sir!' said Mr. Fang, peremptorily. 'I will not, sir!' replied the old gentleman. 'Hold your tongue this instant, or I'll have you turned out of the office!' said Mr. Fang. 'You're an insolent impertinent fellow. How dare you bully a magistrate!' 'What!' exclaimed the old gentleman, reddening. 'Swear this person!' said Fang to the clerk. 'I'll not hear another word. Swear him.' Mr. Brownlow's indignation was greatly roused; but reflecting perhaps, that he might only injure the boy by giving vent to it, he suppressed his feelings and submitted to be sworn at once. 'Now,' said Fang, 'what's the charge against this boy? What have you got to say, sir?' 'I was standing at a bookstall--' Mr. Brownlow began. 'Hold your tongue, sir,' said Mr. Fang. 'Policeman! Where's the policeman? Here, swear this policeman. Now, policeman, what is this?' The policeman, with becoming humility, related how he had taken the charge; how he had searched Oliver, and found nothing on his person; and how that was all he knew about it. 'Are there any witnesses?' inquired Mr. Fang. 'None, your worship,' replied the policeman. Mr. Fang sat silent for some minutes, and then, turning round to the prosecutor, said in a towering passion. 'Do you mean to state what your complaint against this boy is, man, or do you not? You have been sworn. Now, if you stand there, refusing to give evidence, I'll punish you for disrespect to the bench; I will, by--' By what, or by whom, nobody knows, for the clerk and jailor coughed very loud, just at the right moment; and the former dropped a heavy book upon the floor, thus preventing the word from being heard--accidently, of course. With many interruptions, and repeated insults, Mr. Brownlow contrived to state his case; observing that, in the surprise of the moment, he had run after the boy because he had saw him running away; and expressing his hope that, if the magistrate should believe him, although not actually the thief, to be connected with the thieves, he would deal as leniently with him as justice would allow. 'He has been hurt already,' said the old gentleman in conclusion. 'And I fear,' he added, with great energy, looking towards the bar, 'I really fear that he is ill.' 'Oh! yes, I dare say!' said Mr. Fang, with a sneer. 'Come, none of your tricks here, you young vagabond; they won't do. What's your name?' Oliver tried to reply but his tongue failed him. He was deadly pale; and the whole place seemed turning round and round. 'What's your name, you hardened scoundrel?' demanded Mr. Fang. 'Officer, what's his name?' This was addressed to a bluff old fellow, in a striped waistcoat, who was standing by the bar. He bent over Oliver, and repeated the inquiry; but finding him really incapable of understanding the question; and knowing that his not replying would only infuriate the magistrate the more, and add to the severity of his sentence; he hazarded a guess. 'He says his name's Tom White, your worship,' said the kind-hearted thief-taker. 'Oh, he won't speak out, won't he?' said Fang. 'Very well, very well. Where does he live?' 'Where he can, your worship,' replied the officer; again pretending to receive Oliver's answer. 'Has he any parents?' inquired Mr. Fang. 'He says they died in his infancy, your worship,' replied the officer: hazarding the usual reply. At this point of the inquiry, Oliver raised his head; and, looking round with imploring eyes, murmured a feeble prayer for a draught of water. 'Stuff and nonsense!' said Mr. Fang: 'don't try to make a fool of me.' 'I think he really is ill, your worship,' remonstrated the officer. 'I know better,' said Mr. Fang. 'Take care of him, officer,' said the old gentleman, raising his hands instinctively; 'he'll fall down.' 'Stand away, officer,' cried Fang; 'let him, if he likes.' Oliver availed himself of the kind permission, and fell to the floor in a fainting fit. The men in the office looked at each other, but no one dared to stir. 'I knew he was shamming,' said Fang, as if this were incontestable proof of the fact. 'Let him lie there; he'll soon be tired of that.' 'How do you propose to deal with the case, sir?' inquired the clerk in a low voice. 'Summarily,' replied Mr. Fang. 'He stands committed for three months--hard labour of course. Clear the office.' The door was opened for this purpose, and a couple of men were preparing to carry the insensible boy to his cell; when an elderly man of decent but poor appearance, clad in an old suit of black, rushed hastily into the office, and advanced towards the bench. 'Stop, stop! don't take him away! For Heaven's sake stop a moment!' cried the new comer, breathless with haste. Although the presiding Genii in such an office as this, exercise a summary and arbitrary power over the liberties, the good name, the character, almost the lives, of Her Majesty's subjects, expecially of the poorer class; and although, within such walls, enough fantastic tricks are daily played to make the angels blind with weeping; they are closed to the public, save through the medium of the daily press.[Footnote: Or were virtually, then.] Mr. Fang was consequently not a little indignant to see an unbidden guest enter in such irreverent disorder. 'What is this? Who is this? Turn this man out. Clear the office!' cried Mr. Fang. 'I _will_ speak,' cried the man; 'I will not be turned out. I saw it all. I keep the book-stall. I demand to be sworn. I will not be put down. Mr. Fang, you must hear me. You must not refuse, sir.' The man was right. His manner was determined; and the matter was growing rather too serious to be hushed up. 'Swear the man,' growled Mr. Fang, with a very ill grace. 'Now, man, what have you got to say?' 'This,' said the man: 'I saw three boys: two others and the prisoner here: loitering on the opposite side of the way, when this gentleman was reading. The robbery was committed by another boy. I saw it done; and I saw that this boy was perfectly amazed and stupified by it.' Having by this time recovered a little breath, the worthy book-stall keeper proceeded to relate, in a more coherent manner the exact circumstances of the robbery. 'Why didn't you come here before?' said Fang, after a pause. 'I hadn't a soul to mind the shop,' replied the man. 'Everybody who could have helped me, had joined in the pursuit. I could get nobody till five minutes ago; and I've run here all the way.' 'The prosecutor was reading, was he?' inquired Fang, after another pause. 'Yes,' replied the man. 'The very book he has in his hand.' 'Oh, that book, eh?' said Fang. 'Is it paid for?' 'No, it is not,' replied the man, with a smile. 'Dear me, I forgot all about it!' exclaimed the absent old gentleman, innocently. 'A nice person to prefer a charge against a poor boy!' said Fang, with a comical effort to look humane. 'I consider, sir, that you have obtained possession of that book, under very suspicious and disreputable circumstances; and you may think yourself very fortunate that the owner of the property declines to prosecute. Let this be a lesson to you, my man, or the law will overtake you yet. The boy is discharged. Clear the office!' 'D--n me!' cried the old gentleman, bursting out with the rage he had kept down so long, 'd--n me! I'll--' 'Clear the office!' said the magistrate. 'Officers, do you hear? Clear the office!' The mandate was obeyed; and the indignant Mr. Brownlow was conveyed out, with the book in one hand, and the bamboo cane in the other: in a perfect phrenzy of rage and defiance. He reached the yard; and his passion vanished in a moment. Little Oliver Twist lay on his back on the pavement, with his shirt unbuttoned, and his temples bathed with water; his face a deadly white; and a cold tremble convulsing his whole frame. 'Poor boy, poor boy!' said Mr. Brownlow, bending over him. 'Call a coach, somebody, pray. Directly!' A coach was obtained, and Oliver having been carefully laid on the seat, the old gentleman got in and sat himself on the other. 'May I accompany you?' said the book-stall keeper, looking in. 'Bless me, yes, my dear sir,' said Mr. Brownlow quickly. 'I forgot you. Dear, dear! I have this unhappy book still! Jump in. Poor fellow! There's no time to lose.' The book-stall keeper got into the coach; and away they drove.

The officer locks Oliver in a jail cell to await his appearance before Mr. Fang, the district magistrate. Mr. Brownlow, the gentleman, protests that he does not want to press charges. He thinks he recognizes something in Oliver's face, but cannot put his finger on it. Oliver faints in the courtroom, and Mr. Fang sentences him to three months of hard labor. The owner of the bookstall rushes in and tells Mr. Fang that two other boys committed the crime. Oliver is cleared of all charges. Pitying the sickly young Oliver, Brownlow takes him into a coach and drives away

Under certain circumstances there are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea. There are circumstances in which, whether you partake of the tea or not--some people of course never do,--the situation is in itself delightful. Those that I have in mind in beginning to unfold this simple history offered an admirable setting to an innocent pastime. The implements of the little feast had been disposed upon the lawn of an old English country-house, in what I should call the perfect middle of a splendid summer afternoon. Part of the afternoon had waned, but much of it was left, and what was left was of the finest and rarest quality. Real dusk would not arrive for many hours; but the flood of summer light had begun to ebb, the air had grown mellow, the shadows were long upon the smooth, dense turf. They lengthened slowly, however, and the scene expressed that sense of leisure still to come which is perhaps the chief source of one's enjoyment of such a scene at such an hour. From five o'clock to eight is on certain occasions a little eternity; but on such an occasion as this the interval could be only an eternity of pleasure. The persons concerned in it were taking their pleasure quietly, and they were not of the sex which is supposed to furnish the regular votaries of the ceremony I have mentioned. The shadows on the perfect lawn were straight and angular; they were the shadows of an old man sitting in a deep wicker-chair near the low table on which the tea had been served, and of two younger men strolling to and fro, in desultory talk, in front of him. The old man had his cup in his hand; it was an unusually large cup, of a different pattern from the rest of the set and painted in brilliant colours. He disposed of its contents with much circumspection, holding it for a long time close to his chin, with his face turned to the house. His companions had either finished their tea or were indifferent to their privilege; they smoked cigarettes as they continued to stroll. One of them, from time to time, as he passed, looked with a certain attention at the elder man, who, unconscious of observation, rested his eyes upon the rich red front of his dwelling. The house that rose beyond the lawn was a structure to repay such consideration and was the most characteristic object in the peculiarly English picture I have attempted to sketch. It stood upon a low hill, above the river--the river being the Thames at some forty miles from London. A long gabled front of red brick, with the complexion of which time and the weather had played all sorts of pictorial tricks, only, however, to improve and refine it, presented to the lawn its patches of ivy, its clustered chimneys, its windows smothered in creepers. The house had a name and a history; the old gentleman taking his tea would have been delighted to tell you these things: how it had been built under Edward the Sixth, had offered a night's hospitality to the great Elizabeth (whose august person had extended itself upon a huge, magnificent and terribly angular bed which still formed the principal honour of the sleeping apartments), had been a good deal bruised and defaced in Cromwell's wars, and then, under the Restoration, repaired and much enlarged; and how, finally, after having been remodelled and disfigured in the eighteenth century, it had passed into the careful keeping of a shrewd American banker, who had bought it originally because (owing to circumstances too complicated to set forth) it was offered at a great bargain: bought it with much grumbling at its ugliness, its antiquity, its incommodity, and who now, at the end of twenty years, had become conscious of a real aesthetic passion for it, so that he knew all its points and would tell you just where to stand to see them in combination and just the hour when the shadows of its various protuberances which fell so softly upon the warm, weary brickwork--were of the right measure. Besides this, as I have said, he could have counted off most of the successive owners and occupants, several of whom were known to general fame; doing so, however, with an undemonstrative conviction that the latest phase of its destiny was not the least honourable. The front of the house overlooking that portion of the lawn with which we are concerned was not the entrance-front; this was in quite another quarter. Privacy here reigned supreme, and the wide carpet of turf that covered the level hill-top seemed but the extension of a luxurious interior. The great still oaks and beeches flung down a shade as dense as that of velvet curtains; and the place was furnished, like a room, with cushioned seats, with rich-coloured rugs, with the books and papers that lay upon the grass. The river was at some distance; where the ground began to slope the lawn, properly speaking, ceased. But it was none the less a charming walk down to the water. The old gentleman at the tea-table, who had come from America thirty years before, had brought with him, at the top of his baggage, his American physiognomy; and he had not only brought it with him, but he had kept it in the best order, so that, if necessary, he might have taken it back to his own country with perfect confidence. At present, obviously, nevertheless, he was not likely to displace himself; his journeys were over and he was taking the rest that precedes the great rest. He had a narrow, clean-shaven face, with features evenly distributed and an expression of placid acuteness. It was evidently a face in which the range of representation was not large, so that the air of contented shrewdness was all the more of a merit. It seemed to tell that he had been successful in life, yet it seemed to tell also that his success had not been exclusive and invidious, but had had much of the inoffensiveness of failure. He had certainly had a great experience of men, but there was an almost rustic simplicity in the faint smile that played upon his lean, spacious cheek and lighted up his humorous eye as he at last slowly and carefully deposited his big tea-cup upon the table. He was neatly dressed, in well-brushed black; but a shawl was folded upon his knees, and his feet were encased in thick, embroidered slippers. A beautiful collie dog lay upon the grass near his chair, watching the master's face almost as tenderly as the master took in the still more magisterial physiognomy of the house; and a little bristling, bustling terrier bestowed a desultory attendance upon the other gentlemen. One of these was a remarkably well-made man of five-and-thirty, with a face as English as that of the old gentleman I have just sketched was something else; a noticeably handsome face, fresh-coloured, fair and frank, with firm, straight features, a lively grey eye and the rich adornment of a chestnut beard. This person had a certain fortunate, brilliant exceptional look--the air of a happy temperament fertilised by a high civilisation--which would have made almost any observer envy him at a venture. He was booted and spurred, as if he had dismounted from a long ride; he wore a white hat, which looked too large for him; he held his two hands behind him, and in one of them--a large, white, well-shaped fist--was crumpled a pair of soiled dog-skin gloves. His companion, measuring the length of the lawn beside him, was a person of quite a different pattern, who, although he might have excited grave curiosity, would not, like the other, have provoked you to wish yourself, almost blindly, in his place. Tall, lean, loosely and feebly put together, he had an ugly, sickly, witty, charming face, furnished, but by no means decorated, with a straggling moustache and whisker. He looked clever and ill--a combination by no means felicitous; and he wore a brown velvet jacket. He carried his hands in his pockets, and there was something in the way he did it that showed the habit was inveterate. His gait had a shambling, wandering quality; he was not very firm on his legs. As I have said, whenever he passed the old man in the chair he rested his eyes upon him; and at this moment, with their faces brought into relation, you would easily have seen they were father and son. The father caught his son's eye at last and gave him a mild, responsive smile. "I'm getting on very well," he said. "Have you drunk your tea?" asked the son. "Yes, and enjoyed it." "Shall I give you some more?" The old man considered, placidly. "Well, I guess I'll wait and see." He had, in speaking, the American tone. "Are you cold?" the son enquired. The father slowly rubbed his legs. "Well, I don't know. I can't tell till I feel." "Perhaps some one might feel for you," said the younger man, laughing. "Oh, I hope some one will always feel for me! Don't you feel for me, Lord Warburton?" "Oh yes, immensely," said the gentleman addressed as Lord Warburton, promptly. "I'm bound to say you look wonderfully comfortable." "Well, I suppose I am, in most respects." And the old man looked down at his green shawl and smoothed it over his knees. "The fact is I've been comfortable so many years that I suppose I've got so used to it I don't know it." "Yes, that's the bore of comfort," said Lord Warburton. "We only know when we're uncomfortable." "It strikes me we're rather particular," his companion remarked. "Oh yes, there's no doubt we're particular," Lord Warburton murmured. And then the three men remained silent a while; the two younger ones standing looking down at the other, who presently asked for more tea. "I should think you would be very unhappy with that shawl," Lord Warburton resumed while his companion filled the old man's cup again. "Oh no, he must have the shawl!" cried the gentleman in the velvet coat. "Don't put such ideas as that into his head." "It belongs to my wife," said the old man simply. "Oh, if it's for sentimental reasons--" And Lord Warburton made a gesture of apology. "I suppose I must give it to her when she comes," the old man went on. "You'll please to do nothing of the kind. You'll keep it to cover your poor old legs." "Well, you mustn't abuse my legs," said the old man. "I guess they are as good as yours." "Oh, you're perfectly free to abuse mine," his son replied, giving him his tea. "Well, we're two lame ducks; I don't think there's much difference." "I'm much obliged to you for calling me a duck. How's your tea?" "Well, it's rather hot." "That's intended to be a merit." "Ah, there's a great deal of merit," murmured the old man, kindly. "He's a very good nurse, Lord Warburton." "Isn't he a bit clumsy?" asked his lordship. "Oh no, he's not clumsy--considering that he's an invalid himself. He's a very good nurse--for a sick-nurse. I call him my sick-nurse because he's sick himself." "Oh, come, daddy!" the ugly young man exclaimed. "Well, you are; I wish you weren't. But I suppose you can't help it." "I might try: that's an idea," said the young man. "Were you ever sick, Lord Warburton?" his father asked. Lord Warburton considered a moment. "Yes, sir, once, in the Persian Gulf." "He's making light of you, daddy," said the other young man. "That's a sort of joke." "Well, there seem to be so many sorts now," daddy replied, serenely. "You don't look as if you had been sick, anyway, Lord Warburton." "He's sick of life; he was just telling me so; going on fearfully about it," said Lord Warburton's friend. "Is that true, sir?" asked the old man gravely. "If it is, your son gave me no consolation. He's a wretched fellow to talk to--a regular cynic. He doesn't seem to believe in anything." "That's another sort of joke," said the person accused of cynicism. "It's because his health is so poor," his father explained to Lord Warburton. "It affects his mind and colours his way of looking at things; he seems to feel as if he had never had a chance. But it's almost entirely theoretical, you know; it doesn't seem to affect his spirits. I've hardly ever seen him when he wasn't cheerful--about as he is at present. He often cheers me up." The young man so described looked at Lord Warburton and laughed. "Is it a glowing eulogy or an accusation of levity? Should you like me to carry out my theories, daddy?" "By Jove, we should see some queer things!" cried Lord Warburton. "I hope you haven't taken up that sort of tone," said the old man. "Warburton's tone is worse than mine; he pretends to be bored. I'm not in the least bored; I find life only too interesting." "Ah, too interesting; you shouldn't allow it to be that, you know!" "I'm never bored when I come here," said Lord Warburton. "One gets such uncommonly good talk." "Is that another sort of joke?" asked the old man. "You've no excuse for being bored anywhere. When I was your age I had never heard of such a thing." "You must have developed very late." "No, I developed very quick; that was just the reason. When I was twenty years old I was very highly developed indeed. I was working tooth and nail. You wouldn't be bored if you had something to do; but all you young men are too idle. You think too much of your pleasure. You're too fastidious, and too indolent, and too rich." "Oh, I say," cried Lord Warburton, "you're hardly the person to accuse a fellow-creature of being too rich!" "Do you mean because I'm a banker?" asked the old man. "Because of that, if you like; and because you have--haven't you?--such unlimited means." "He isn't very rich," the other young man mercifully pleaded. "He has given away an immense deal of money." "Well, I suppose it was his own," said Lord Warburton; "and in that case could there be a better proof of wealth? Let not a public benefactor talk of one's being too fond of pleasure." "Daddy's very fond of pleasure--of other people's." The old man shook his head. "I don't pretend to have contributed anything to the amusement of my contemporaries." "My dear father, you're too modest!" "That's a kind of joke, sir," said Lord Warburton. "You young men have too many jokes. When there are no jokes you've nothing left." "Fortunately there are always more jokes," the ugly young man remarked. "I don't believe it--I believe things are getting more serious. You young men will find that out." "The increasing seriousness of things, then that's the great opportunity of jokes." "They'll have to be grim jokes," said the old man. "I'm convinced there will be great changes, and not all for the better." "I quite agree with you, sir," Lord Warburton declared. "I'm very sure there will be great changes, and that all sorts of queer things will happen. That's why I find so much difficulty in applying your advice; you know you told me the other day that I ought to 'take hold' of something. One hesitates to take hold of a thing that may the next moment be knocked sky-high." "You ought to take hold of a pretty woman," said his companion. "He's trying hard to fall in love," he added, by way of explanation, to his father. "The pretty women themselves may be sent flying!" Lord Warburton exclaimed. "No, no, they'll be firm," the old man rejoined; "they'll not be affected by the social and political changes I just referred to." "You mean they won't be abolished? Very well, then, I'll lay hands on one as soon as possible and tie her round my neck as a life-preserver." "The ladies will save us," said the old man; "that is the best of them will--for I make a difference between them. Make up to a good one and marry her, and your life will become much more interesting." A momentary silence marked perhaps on the part of his auditors a sense of the magnanimity of this speech, for it was a secret neither for his son nor for his visitor that his own experiment in matrimony had not been a happy one. As he said, however, he made a difference; and these words may have been intended as a confession of personal error; though of course it was not in place for either of his companions to remark that apparently the lady of his choice had not been one of the best. "If I marry an interesting woman I shall be interested: is that what you say?" Lord Warburton asked. "I'm not at all keen about marrying--your son misrepresented me; but there's no knowing what an interesting woman might do with me." "I should like to see your idea of an interesting woman," said his friend. "My dear fellow, you can't see ideas--especially such highly ethereal ones as mine. If I could only see it myself--that would be a great step in advance." "Well, you may fall in love with whomsoever you please; but you mustn't fall in love with my niece," said the old man. His son broke into a laugh. "He'll think you mean that as a provocation! My dear father, you've lived with the English for thirty years, and you've picked up a good many of the things they say. But you've never learned the things they don't say!" "I say what I please," the old man returned with all his serenity. "I haven't the honour of knowing your niece," Lord Warburton said. "I think it's the first time I've heard of her." "She's a niece of my wife's; Mrs. Touchett brings her to England." Then young Mr. Touchett explained. "My mother, you know, has been spending the winter in America, and we're expecting her back. She writes that she has discovered a niece and that she has invited her to come out with her." "I see,--very kind of her," said Lord Warburton. Is the young lady interesting?" "We hardly know more about her than you; my mother has not gone into details. She chiefly communicates with us by means of telegrams, and her telegrams are rather inscrutable. They say women don't know how to write them, but my mother has thoroughly mastered the art of condensation. 'Tired America, hot weather awful, return England with niece, first steamer decent cabin.' That's the sort of message we get from her--that was the last that came. But there had been another before, which I think contained the first mention of the niece. 'Changed hotel, very bad, impudent clerk, address here. Taken sister's girl, died last year, go to Europe, two sisters, quite independent.' Over that my father and I have scarcely stopped puzzling; it seems to admit of so many interpretations." "There's one thing very clear in it," said the old man; "she has given the hotel-clerk a dressing." "I'm not sure even of that, since he has driven her from the field. We thought at first that the sister mentioned might be the sister of the clerk; but the subsequent mention of a niece seems to prove that the allusion is to one of my aunts. Then there was a question as to whose the two other sisters were; they are probably two of my late aunt's daughters. But who's 'quite independent,' and in what sense is the term used?--that point's not yet settled. Does the expression apply more particularly to the young lady my mother has adopted, or does it characterise her sisters equally?--and is it used in a moral or in a financial sense? Does it mean that they've been left well off, or that they wish to be under no obligations? or does it simply mean that they're fond of their own way?" "Whatever else it means, it's pretty sure to mean that," Mr. Touchett remarked. "You'll see for yourself," said Lord Warburton. "When does Mrs. Touchett arrive?" "We're quite in the dark; as soon as she can find a decent cabin. She may be waiting for it yet; on the other hand she may already have disembarked in England." "In that case she would probably have telegraphed to you." "She never telegraphs when you would expect it--only when you don't," said the old man. "She likes to drop on me suddenly; she thinks she'll find me doing something wrong. She has never done so yet, but she's not discouraged." "It's her share in the family trait, the independence she speaks of." Her son's appreciation of the matter was more favourable. "Whatever the high spirit of those young ladies may be, her own is a match for it. She likes to do everything for herself and has no belief in any one's power to help her. She thinks me of no more use than a postage-stamp without gum, and she would never forgive me if I should presume to go to Liverpool to meet her." "Will you at least let me know when your cousin arrives?" Lord Warburton asked. "Only on the condition I've mentioned--that you don't fall in love with her!" Mr. Touchett replied. "That strikes me as hard, don't you think me good enough?" "I think you too good--because I shouldn't like her to marry you. She hasn't come here to look for a husband, I hope; so many young ladies are doing that, as if there were no good ones at home. Then she's probably engaged; American girls are usually engaged, I believe. Moreover I'm not sure, after all, that you'd be a remarkable husband." "Very likely she's engaged; I've known a good many American girls, and they always were; but I could never see that it made any difference, upon my word! As for my being a good husband," Mr. Touchett's visitor pursued, "I'm not sure of that either. One can but try!" "Try as much as you please, but don't try on my niece," smiled the old man, whose opposition to the idea was broadly humorous. "Ah, well," said Lord Warburton with a humour broader still, "perhaps, after all, she's not worth trying on!" While this exchange of pleasantries took place between the two Ralph Touchett wandered away a little, with his usual slouching gait, his hands in his pockets and his little rowdyish terrier at his heels. His face was turned toward the house, but his eyes were bent musingly on the lawn; so that he had been an object of observation to a person who had just made her appearance in the ample doorway for some moments before he perceived her. His attention was called to her by the conduct of his dog, who had suddenly darted forward with a little volley of shrill barks, in which the note of welcome, however, was more sensible than that of defiance. The person in question was a young lady, who seemed immediately to interpret the greeting of the small beast. He advanced with great rapidity and stood at her feet, looking up and barking hard; whereupon, without hesitation, she stooped and caught him in her hands, holding him face to face while he continued his quick chatter. His master now had had time to follow and to see that Bunchie's new friend was a tall girl in a black dress, who at first sight looked pretty. She was bareheaded, as if she were staying in the house--a fact which conveyed perplexity to the son of its master, conscious of that immunity from visitors which had for some time been rendered necessary by the latter's ill-health. Meantime the two other gentlemen had also taken note of the new-comer. "Dear me, who's that strange woman?" Mr. Touchett had asked. "Perhaps it's Mrs. Touchett's niece--the independent young lady," Lord Warburton suggested. "I think she must be, from the way she handles the dog." The collie, too, had now allowed his attention to be diverted, and he trotted toward the young lady in the doorway, slowly setting his tail in motion as he went. "But where's my wife then?" murmured the old man. "I suppose the young lady has left her somewhere: that's a part of the independence." The girl spoke to Ralph, smiling, while she still held up the terrier. "Is this your little dog, sir?" "He was mine a moment ago; but you've suddenly acquired a remarkable air of property in him." "Couldn't we share him?" asked the girl. "He's such a perfect little darling." Ralph looked at her a moment; she was unexpectedly pretty. "You may have him altogether," he then replied. The young lady seemed to have a great deal of confidence, both in herself and in others; but this abrupt generosity made her blush. "I ought to tell you that I'm probably your cousin," she brought out, putting down the dog. "And here's another!" she added quickly, as the collie came up. "Probably?" the young man exclaimed, laughing. "I supposed it was quite settled! Have you arrived with my mother?" "Yes, half an hour ago." "And has she deposited you and departed again?" "No, she went straight to her room, and she told me that, if I should see you, I was to say to you that you must come to her there at a quarter to seven." The young man looked at his watch. "Thank you very much; I shall be punctual." And then he looked at his cousin. "You're very welcome here. I'm delighted to see you." She was looking at everything, with an eye that denoted clear perception--at her companion, at the two dogs, at the two gentlemen under the trees, at the beautiful scene that surrounded her. "I've never seen anything so lovely as this place. I've been all over the house; it's too enchanting." "I'm sorry you should have been here so long without our knowing it." "Your mother told me that in England people arrived very quietly; so I thought it was all right. Is one of those gentlemen your father?" "Yes, the elder one--the one sitting down," said Ralph. The girl gave a laugh. "I don't suppose it's the other. Who's the other?" "He's a friend of ours--Lord Warburton." "Oh, I hoped there would be a lord; it's just like a novel!" And then, "Oh you adorable creature!" she suddenly cried, stooping down and picking up the small dog again. She remained standing where they had met, making no offer to advance or to speak to Mr. Touchett, and while she lingered so near the threshold, slim and charming, her interlocutor wondered if she expected the old man to come and pay her his respects. American girls were used to a great deal of deference, and it had been intimated that this one had a high spirit. Indeed Ralph could see that in her face. "Won't you come and make acquaintance with my father?" he nevertheless ventured to ask. "He's old and infirm--he doesn't leave his chair." "Ah, poor man, I'm very sorry!" the girl exclaimed, immediately moving forward. "I got the impression from your mother that he was rather intensely active." Ralph Touchett was silent a moment. "She hasn't seen him for a year." "Well, he has a lovely place to sit. Come along, little hound." "It's a dear old place," said the young man, looking sidewise at his neighbour. "What's his name?" she asked, her attention having again reverted to the terrier. "My father's name?" "Yes," said the young lady with amusement; "but don't tell him I asked you." They had come by this time to where old Mr. Touchett was sitting, and he slowly got up from his chair to introduce himself. "My mother has arrived," said Ralph, "and this is Miss Archer." The old man placed his two hands on her shoulders, looked at her a moment with extreme benevolence and then gallantly kissed her. "It's a great pleasure to me to see you here; but I wish you had given us a chance to receive you." "Oh, we were received," said the girl. "There were about a dozen servants in the hall. And there was an old woman curtseying at the gate." "We can do better than that--if we have notice!" And the old man stood there smiling, rubbing his hands and slowly shaking his head at her. "But Mrs. Touchett doesn't like receptions." "She went straight to her room." "Yes--and locked herself in. She always does that. Well, I suppose I shall see her next week." And Mrs. Touchett's husband slowly resumed his former posture. "Before that," said Miss Archer. "She's coming down to dinner--at eight o'clock. Don't you forget a quarter to seven," she added, turning with a smile to Ralph. "What's to happen at a quarter to seven?" "I'm to see my mother," said Ralph. "Ah, happy boy!" the old man commented. "You must sit down--you must have some tea," he observed to his wife's niece. "They gave me some tea in my room the moment I got there," this young lady answered. "I'm sorry you're out of health," she added, resting her eyes upon her venerable host. "Oh, I'm an old man, my dear; it's time for me to be old. But I shall be the better for having you here." She had been looking all round her again--at the lawn, the great trees, the reedy, silvery Thames, the beautiful old house; and while engaged in this survey she had made room in it for her companions; a comprehensiveness of observation easily conceivable on the part of a young woman who was evidently both intelligent and excited. She had seated herself and had put away the little dog; her white hands, in her lap, were folded upon her black dress; her head was erect, her eye lighted, her flexible figure turned itself easily this way and that, in sympathy with the alertness with which she evidently caught impressions. Her impressions were numerous, and they were all reflected in a clear, still smile. "I've never seen anything so beautiful as this." "It's looking very well," said Mr. Touchett. "I know the way it strikes you. I've been through all that. But you're very beautiful yourself," he added with a politeness by no means crudely jocular and with the happy consciousness that his advanced age gave him the privilege of saying such things--even to young persons who might possibly take alarm at them. What degree of alarm this young person took need not be exactly measured; she instantly rose, however, with a blush which was not a refutation. "Oh yes, of course I'm lovely!" she returned with a quick laugh. "How old is your house? Is it Elizabethan?" "It's early Tudor," said Ralph Touchett. She turned toward him, watching his face. "Early Tudor? How very delightful! And I suppose there are a great many others." "There are many much better ones." "Don't say that, my son!" the old man protested. "There's nothing better than this." "I've got a very good one; I think in some respects it's rather better," said Lord Warburton, who as yet had not spoken, but who had kept an attentive eye upon Miss Archer. He slightly inclined himself, smiling; he had an excellent manner with women. The girl appreciated it in an instant; she had not forgotten that this was Lord Warburton. "I should like very much to show it to you," he added. "Don't believe him," cried the old man; "don't look at it! It's a wretched old barrack--not to be compared with this." "I don't know--I can't judge," said the girl, smiling at Lord Warburton. In this discussion Ralph Touchett took no interest whatever; he stood with his hands in his pockets, looking greatly as if he should like to renew his conversation with his new-found cousin. "Are you very fond of dogs?" he enquired by way of beginning. He seemed to recognise that it was an awkward beginning for a clever man. "Very fond of them indeed." "You must keep the terrier, you know," he went on, still awkwardly. "I'll keep him while I'm here, with pleasure." "That will be for a long time, I hope." "You're very kind. I hardly know. My aunt must settle that." "I'll settle it with her--at a quarter to seven." And Ralph looked at his watch again. "I'm glad to be here at all," said the girl. "I don't believe you allow things to be settled for you." "Oh yes; if they're settled as I like them." "I shall settle this as I like it," said Ralph. "It's most unaccountable that we should never have known you." "I was there--you had only to come and see me." "There? Where do you mean?" "In the United States: in New York and Albany and other American places." "I've been there--all over, but I never saw you. I can't make it out." Miss Archer just hesitated. "It was because there had been some disagreement between your mother and my father, after my mother's death, which took place when I was a child. In consequence of it we never expected to see you." "Ah, but I don't embrace all my mother's quarrels--heaven forbid!" the young man cried. "You've lately lost your father?" he went on more gravely. "Yes; more than a year ago. After that my aunt was very kind to me; she came to see me and proposed that I should come with her to Europe." "I see," said Ralph. "She has adopted you." "Adopted me?" The girl stared, and her blush came back to her, together with a momentary look of pain which gave her interlocutor some alarm. He had underestimated the effect of his words. Lord Warburton, who appeared constantly desirous of a nearer view of Miss Archer, strolled toward the two cousins at the moment, and as he did so she rested her wider eyes on him. "Oh no; she has not adopted me. I'm not a candidate for adoption." "I beg a thousand pardons," Ralph murmured. "I meant--I meant--" He hardly knew what he meant. "You meant she has taken me up. Yes; she likes to take people up. She has been very kind to me; but," she added with a certain visible eagerness of desire to be explicit, "I'm very fond of my liberty." "Are you talking about Mrs. Touchett?" the old man called out from his chair. "Come here, my dear, and tell me about her. I'm always thankful for information." The girl hesitated again, smiling. "She's really very benevolent," she answered; after which she went over to her uncle, whose mirth was excited by her words. Lord Warburton was left standing with Ralph Touchett, to whom in a moment he said: "You wished a while ago to see my idea of an interesting woman. There it is!" 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."

It is teatime at Gardencourt, an old English country manor built during the reign of Edward VI and now owned by an old American banker. The old man now sits on the lawn holding a large teacup; his sickly son and a young Englishman stroll nearby, stopping occasionally to make sure that he is comfortable. The old man tells them lightly that he has always been comfortable. The young Englishman, Lord Warburton, drolly replies that comfort is boring. The old man's son, Ralph, counters by saying that Lord Warburton only pretends to be bored by everything. Lord Warburton replies that the old man's son always seems cynical, but that he is really a fairly cheerful person. The old man says that Warburton would find life more interesting if he found himself an interesting woman to marry; the young men politely keep quiet about the fact that the old man's own marriage is unhappy. Lord Warburton wonders what sort of woman he might find "interesting." The old man says that his wife, Mrs. Touchett, will soon be returning from her visit to America and that she plans to bring their niece with her for a stay in England. He jokingly tells Warburton not to fall in love with his niece. Mr. Touchett and Ralph joke about the telegram they received from Mrs. Touchett informing them of her intention to bring this niece back to England with her. The telegram is nearly incomprehensible , but it mentions that the girl is "quite independent." Mr. Touchett says that American girls today are all engaged but that they continue to behave however they like regardless. He jokes again that Warburton must not fall in love with his niece. Ralph strolls away from his father and Lord Warburton. He hears his dog barking near the door of the house and sees that a young woman has just emerged; she picks up the eager little dog, and Ralph notices that she is beautiful. He approaches her, and she introduces herself as his cousin Isabel, saying that she has just arrived with his mother. She compliments the house, and when Ralph points out his father and Lord Warburton on the lawn, she happily declares that having a real lord about the place makes it seem just like a novel. Ralph introduces this strange young girl to his father, who kisses her and asks where his wife has gone. Isabel says that Mrs. Touchett has retired to her room; Mr. Touchett observes wryly that they will not see her for a week. But Isabel predicts that she will make an appearance at dinner. Looking about her, Isabel says that the old manor is the most beautiful thing that she has ever seen. Lord Warburton offers to show her his own Tudor manor, and he and Mr. Touchett joke with one another about who has the better house. Ralph asks Isabel if she likes dogs and offers to give her his own dog. She agrees to keep it while she is at the house. Ralph asks how long she will stay, and she says that Mrs. Touchett will have to decide that, as they are to travel to Florence after leaving England. Ralph notes that Isabel does not seem like the kind of woman who lets people decide things for her. Isabel agrees that she is very independent. He asks why they have never met, and she says that after her mother died, her father had a quarrel with Mrs. Touchett. Mr. Touchett asks Isabel how his wife is--she has been traveling in America for a long time. Isabel begins to tell him, and Warburton says quietly to Ralph that he has found his idea of a very interesting woman, and it is Isabel. Mrs. Touchett has been traveling in America for a year, and has only stopped in England on her way home to Florence--she has been separated from Mr. Touchett since the first year of their marriage, though she spends one month with him each year. When Mrs. Touchett went to visit Isabel, she found her reading in the library of her grandmother's house, which she had been given unrestricted access to as a young girl and which formed the basis of her education. Mrs. Touchett invited Isabel to come to Florence, and Isabel agreed, though she warned her aunt that she was not always obedient.

Sir William staid only a week at Hunsford; but his visit was long enough to convince him of his daughter's being most comfortably settled, and of her possessing such a husband and such a neighbour as were not often met with. While Sir William was with them, Mr. Collins devoted his mornings to driving him out in his gig, and shewing him the country; but when he went away, the whole family returned to their usual employments, and Elizabeth was thankful to find that they did not see more of her cousin by the alteration, for the chief of the time between breakfast and dinner was now passed by him either at work in the garden, or in reading and writing, and looking out of window in his own book room, which fronted the road. The room in which the ladies sat was backwards. Elizabeth at first had rather wondered that Charlotte should not prefer the dining-parlour for common use; it was a better sized room, and had a pleasanter aspect; but she soon saw that her friend had an excellent reason for what she did, for Mr. Collins would undoubtedly have been much less in his own apartment, had they sat in one equally lively; and she gave Charlotte credit for the arrangement. From the drawing-room they could distinguish nothing in the lane, and were indebted to Mr. Collins for the knowledge of what carriages went along, and how often especially Miss De Bourgh drove by in her phaeton, which he never failed coming to inform them of, though it happened almost every day. She not unfrequently stopped at the Parsonage, and had a few minutes' conversation with Charlotte, but was scarcely ever prevailed on to get out. Very few days passed in which Mr. Collins did not walk to Rosings, and not many in which his wife did not think it necessary to go likewise; and till Elizabeth recollected that there might be other family livings to be disposed of, she could not understand the sacrifice of so many hours. Now and then, they were honoured with a call from her Ladyship, and nothing escaped her observation that was passing in the room during these visits. She examined into their employments, looked at their work, and advised them to do it differently; found fault with the arrangement of the furniture, or detected the housemaid in negligence; and if she accepted any refreshment, seemed to do it only for the sake of finding out that Mrs. Collins's joints of meat were too large for her family. Elizabeth soon perceived that though this great lady was not in the commission of the peace for the county, she was a most active magistrate in her own parish, the minutest concerns of which were carried to her by Mr. Collins; and whenever any of the cottagers were disposed to be quarrelsome, discontented or too poor, she sallied forth into the village to settle their differences, silence their complaints, and scold them into harmony and plenty. The entertainment of dining at Rosings was repeated about twice a week; and, allowing for the loss of Sir William, and there being only one card table in the evening, every such entertainment was the counterpart of the first. Their other engagements were few; as the style of living of the neighbourhood in general, was beyond the Collinses' reach. This however was no evil to Elizabeth, and upon the whole she spent her time comfortably enough; there were half hours of pleasant conversation with Charlotte, and the weather was so fine for the time of year, that she had often great enjoyment out of doors. Her favourite walk, and where she frequently went while the others were calling on Lady Catherine, was along the open grove which edged that side of the park, where there was a nice sheltered path, which no one seemed to value but herself, and where she felt beyond the reach of Lady Catherine's curiosity. In this quiet way, the first fortnight of her visit soon passed away. Easter was approaching, and the week preceding it, was to bring an addition to the family at Rosings, which in so small a circle must be important. Elizabeth had heard soon after her arrival, that Mr. Darcy was expected there in the course of a few weeks, and though there were not many of her acquaintance whom she did not prefer, his coming would furnish one comparatively new to look at in their Rosings parties, and she might be amused in seeing how hopeless Miss Bingley's designs on him were, by his behaviour to his cousin, for whom he was evidently destined by Lady Catherine; who talked of his coming with the greatest satisfaction, spoke of him in terms of the highest admiration, and seemed almost angry to find that he had already been frequently seen by Miss Lucas and herself. His arrival was soon known at the Parsonage, for Mr. Collins was walking the whole morning within view of the lodges opening into Hunsford Lane, in order to have the earliest assurance of it; and after making his bow as the carriage turned into the Park, hurried home with the great intelligence. On the following morning he hastened to Rosings to pay his respects. There were two nephews of Lady Catherine to require them, for Mr. Darcy had brought with him a Colonel Fitzwilliam, the younger son of his uncle, Lord ---- and to the great surprise of all the party, when Mr. Collins returned the gentlemen accompanied him. Charlotte had seen them from her husband's room, crossing the road, and immediately running into the other, told the girls what an honour they might expect, adding, "I may thank you, Eliza, for this piece of civility. Mr. Darcy would never have come so soon to wait upon me." Elizabeth had scarcely time to disclaim all right to the compliment, before their approach was announced by the door-bell, and shortly afterwards the three gentlemen entered the room. Colonel Fitzwilliam, who led the way, was about thirty, not handsome, but in person and address most truly the gentleman. Mr. Darcy looked just as he had been used to look in Hertfordshire, paid his compliments, with his usual reserve, to Mrs. Collins; and whatever might be his feelings towards her friend, met her with every appearance of composure. Elizabeth merely curtseyed to him, without saying a word. Colonel Fitzwilliam entered into conversation directly with the readiness and ease of a well-bred man, and talked very pleasantly; but his cousin, after having addressed a slight observation on the house and garden to Mrs. Collins, sat for some time without speaking to any body. At length, however, his civility was so far awakened as to enquire of Elizabeth after the health of her family. She answered him in the usual way, and after a moment's pause, added, "My eldest sister has been in town these three months. Have you never happened to see her there?" She was perfectly sensible that he never had; but she wished to see whether he would betray any consciousness of what had passed between the Bingleys and Jane; and she thought he looked a little confused as he answered that he had never been so fortunate as to meet Miss Bennet. The subject was pursued no farther, and the gentlemen soon afterwards went away.

Sir William returns home when he sees that his daughter is comfortably settled with her husband. Now and then Lady Catherine comes to visit and advise Charlotte on how to do things differently at her house. The party dines at Rosings about twice a week, and a few weeks later Darcy comes to visit. He brings with him his cousin, Colonel Fitzwilliam. Darcy soon comes to visit at the Collins', and Elizabeth asks him how it happened that her sister Jane could be in London for three months and he never happened to see her there. He looks confused at the question and says that he had not had the fortune to meet her there, and pursues the subject no more

TROY'S ROMANTICISM When Troy's wife had left the house at the previous midnight his first act was to cover the dead from sight. This done he ascended the stairs, and throwing himself down upon the bed dressed as he was, he waited miserably for the morning. Fate had dealt grimly with him through the last four-and-twenty hours. His day had been spent in a way which varied very materially from his intentions regarding it. There is always an inertia to be overcome in striking out a new line of conduct--not more in ourselves, it seems, than in circumscribing events, which appear as if leagued together to allow no novelties in the way of amelioration. Twenty pounds having been secured from Bathsheba, he had managed to add to the sum every farthing he could muster on his own account, which had been seven pounds ten. With this money, twenty-seven pounds ten in all, he had hastily driven from the gate that morning to keep his appointment with Fanny Robin. On reaching Casterbridge he left the horse and trap at an inn, and at five minutes before ten came back to the bridge at the lower end of the town, and sat himself upon the parapet. The clocks struck the hour, and no Fanny appeared. In fact, at that moment she was being robed in her grave-clothes by two attendants at the Union poorhouse--the first and last tiring-women the gentle creature had ever been honoured with. The quarter went, the half hour. A rush of recollection came upon Troy as he waited: this was the second time she had broken a serious engagement with him. In anger he vowed it should be the last, and at eleven o'clock, when he had lingered and watched the stone of the bridge till he knew every lichen upon their face and heard the chink of the ripples underneath till they oppressed him, he jumped from his seat, went to the inn for his gig, and in a bitter mood of indifference concerning the past, and recklessness about the future, drove on to Budmouth races. He reached the race-course at two o'clock, and remained either there or in the town till nine. But Fanny's image, as it had appeared to him in the sombre shadows of that Saturday evening, returned to his mind, backed up by Bathsheba's reproaches. He vowed he would not bet, and he kept his vow, for on leaving the town at nine o'clock in the evening he had diminished his cash only to the extent of a few shillings. He trotted slowly homeward, and it was now that he was struck for the first time with a thought that Fanny had been really prevented by illness from keeping her promise. This time she could have made no mistake. He regretted that he had not remained in Casterbridge and made inquiries. Reaching home he quietly unharnessed the horse and came indoors, as we have seen, to the fearful shock that awaited him. As soon as it grew light enough to distinguish objects, Troy arose from the coverlet of the bed, and in a mood of absolute indifference to Bathsheba's whereabouts, and almost oblivious of her existence, he stalked downstairs and left the house by the back door. His walk was towards the churchyard, entering which he searched around till he found a newly dug unoccupied grave--the grave dug the day before for Fanny. The position of this having been marked, he hastened on to Casterbridge, only pausing and musing for a while at the hill whereon he had last seen Fanny alive. Reaching the town, Troy descended into a side street and entered a pair of gates surmounted by a board bearing the words, "Lester, stone and marble mason." Within were lying about stones of all sizes and designs, inscribed as being sacred to the memory of unnamed persons who had not yet died. Troy was so unlike himself now in look, word, and deed, that the want of likeness was perceptible even to his own consciousness. His method of engaging himself in this business of purchasing a tomb was that of an absolutely unpractised man. He could not bring himself to consider, calculate, or economize. He waywardly wished for something, and he set about obtaining it like a child in a nursery. "I want a good tomb," he said to the man who stood in a little office within the yard. "I want as good a one as you can give me for twenty-seven pounds." It was all the money he possessed. "That sum to include everything?" "Everything. Cutting the name, carriage to Weatherbury, and erection. And I want it now, at once." "We could not get anything special worked this week." "I must have it now." "If you would like one of these in stock it could be got ready immediately." "Very well," said Troy, impatiently. "Let's see what you have." "The best I have in stock is this one," said the stone-cutter, going into a shed. "Here's a marble headstone beautifully crocketed, with medallions beneath of typical subjects; here's the footstone after the same pattern, and here's the coping to enclose the grave. The polishing alone of the set cost me eleven pounds--the slabs are the best of their kind, and I can warrant them to resist rain and frost for a hundred years without flying." "And how much?" "Well, I could add the name, and put it up at Weatherbury for the sum you mention." "Get it done to-day, and I'll pay the money now." The man agreed, and wondered at such a mood in a visitor who wore not a shred of mourning. Troy then wrote the words which were to form the inscription, settled the account and went away. In the afternoon he came back again, and found that the lettering was almost done. He waited in the yard till the tomb was packed, and saw it placed in the cart and starting on its way to Weatherbury, giving directions to the two men who were to accompany it to inquire of the sexton for the grave of the person named in the inscription. It was quite dark when Troy came out of Casterbridge. He carried rather a heavy basket upon his arm, with which he strode moodily along the road, resting occasionally at bridges and gates, whereon he deposited his burden for a time. Midway on his journey he met, returning in the darkness, the men and the waggon which had conveyed the tomb. He merely inquired if the work was done, and, on being assured that it was, passed on again. Troy entered Weatherbury churchyard about ten o'clock and went immediately to the corner where he had marked the vacant grave early in the morning. It was on the obscure side of the tower, screened to a great extent from the view of passers along the road--a spot which until lately had been abandoned to heaps of stones and bushes of alder, but now it was cleared and made orderly for interments, by reason of the rapid filling of the ground elsewhere. Here now stood the tomb as the men had stated, snow-white and shapely in the gloom, consisting of head and foot-stone, and enclosing border of marble-work uniting them. In the midst was mould, suitable for plants. Troy deposited his basket beside the tomb, and vanished for a few minutes. When he returned he carried a spade and a lantern, the light of which he directed for a few moments upon the marble, whilst he read the inscription. He hung his lantern on the lowest bough of the yew-tree, and took from his basket flower-roots of several varieties. There were bundles of snow-drop, hyacinth and crocus bulbs, violets and double daisies, which were to bloom in early spring, and of carnations, pinks, picotees, lilies of the valley, forget-me-not, summer's farewell, meadow-saffron and others, for the later seasons of the year. Troy laid these out upon the grass, and with an impassive face set to work to plant them. The snowdrops were arranged in a line on the outside of the coping, the remainder within the enclosure of the grave. The crocuses and hyacinths were to grow in rows; some of the summer flowers he placed over her head and feet, the lilies and forget-me-nots over her heart. The remainder were dispersed in the spaces between these. Troy, in his prostration at this time, had no perception that in the futility of these romantic doings, dictated by a remorseful reaction from previous indifference, there was any element of absurdity. Deriving his idiosyncrasies from both sides of the Channel, he showed at such junctures as the present the inelasticity of the Englishman, together with that blindness to the line where sentiment verges on mawkishness, characteristic of the French. It was a cloudy, muggy, and very dark night, and the rays from Troy's lantern spread into the two old yews with a strange illuminating power, flickering, as it seemed, up to the black ceiling of cloud above. He felt a large drop of rain upon the back of his hand, and presently one came and entered one of the holes of the lantern, whereupon the candle sputtered and went out. Troy was weary and it being now not far from midnight, and the rain threatening to increase, he resolved to leave the finishing touches of his labour until the day should break. He groped along the wall and over the graves in the dark till he found himself round at the north side. Here he entered the porch, and, reclining upon the bench within, fell asleep.

"When Troy's wife had left the house at the previous midnight his first act was to cover the dead from sight." He then went upstairs to wait for morning. "Fate had dealt grimly with him through the last four-and-twenty hours." He had taken the twenty pounds from Bathsheba and another seven pounds ten that he was able to muster and had gone to meet Fanny. To his chagrin, she again failed to appear. He waited until the stroke of eleven -- "in fact, at that moment she was being robed in her grave-clothes by two attendants at the Union poorhouse." Having watched the bridge and parapet until his patience ran out, Troy called for his gig and went to the racetrack, but he kept his vow not to wager. Leaving town at nine, he regretted not having inquired about Fanny. His return home was a shock. In the morning he arose, indifferent to Bathsheba's whereabouts. He walked to the vacant grave, then hastened to Casterbridge, where he sought out the stonemason. He asked for the best stone they had for twenty-seven pounds. He paid for it and gave directions for the inscription. In the afternoon he returned and saw the stone placed in the cart that would take it to Weatherbury. Toward dusk he traveled homeward, carrying a heavy basket. In the course of his journey he met the mason's men returning from the graveyard. They assured him that the stone had been set. At ten, Troy entered the cemetery and found the grave near the rear tower of the Weatherbury church where the land had recently been cleared of rubble to make room for new charity graves. Troy fetched a spade and lantern and read the inscription on the stone. Then he opened the basket and took out several bulbs. He had chosen a variety so that there would be blossoms from early spring until late fall. "Troy, in his prostration at this time, had no perception that in the futility of these romantic doings, dictated by a remorseful reaction from previous indifference, there was any element of absurdity." Just as he was finishing the planting, he felt rain and his lantern candle sputtered out. He groped his way to the north porch of the church and there fell asleep.

Several days had passed since her futile journey, and Tess was afield. The dry winter wind still blew, but a screen of thatched hurdles erected in the eye of the blast kept its force away from her. On the sheltered side was a turnip-slicing machine, whose bright blue hue of new paint seemed almost vocal in the otherwise subdued scene. Opposite its front was a long mound or "grave", in which the roots had been preserved since early winter. Tess was standing at the uncovered end, chopping off with a bill-hook the fibres and earth from each root, and throwing it after the operation into the slicer. A man was turning the handle of the machine, and from its trough came the newly-cut swedes, the fresh smell of whose yellow chips was accompanied by the sounds of the snuffling wind, the smart swish of the slicing-blades, and the choppings of the hook in Tess's leather-gloved hand. The wide acreage of blank agricultural brownness, apparent where the swedes had been pulled, was beginning to be striped in wales of darker brown, gradually broadening to ribands. Along the edge of each of these something crept upon ten legs, moving without haste and without rest up and down the whole length of the field; it was two horses and a man, the plough going between them, turning up the cleared ground for a spring sowing. For hours nothing relieved the joyless monotony of things. Then, far beyond the ploughing-teams, a black speck was seen. It had come from the corner of a fence, where there was a gap, and its tendency was up the incline, towards the swede-cutters. From the proportions of a mere point it advanced to the shape of a ninepin, and was soon perceived to be a man in black, arriving from the direction of Flintcomb-Ash. The man at the slicer, having nothing else to do with his eyes, continually observed the comer, but Tess, who was occupied, did not perceive him till her companion directed her attention to his approach. It was not her hard taskmaster, Farmer Groby; it was one in a semi-clerical costume, who now represented what had once been the free-and-easy Alec d'Urberville. Not being hot at his preaching there was less enthusiasm about him now, and the presence of the grinder seemed to embarrass him. A pale distress was already on Tess's face, and she pulled her curtained hood further over it. D'Urberville came up and said quietly-- "I want to speak to you, Tess." "You have refused my last request, not to come near me!" said she. "Yes, but I have a good reason." "Well, tell it." "It is more serious than you may think." He glanced round to see if he were overheard. They were at some distance from the man who turned the slicer, and the movement of the machine, too, sufficiently prevented Alec's words reaching other ears. D'Urberville placed himself so as to screen Tess from the labourer, turning his back to the latter. "It is this," he continued, with capricious compunction. "In thinking of your soul and mine when we last met, I neglected to inquire as to your worldly condition. You were well dressed, and I did not think of it. But I see now that it is hard--harder than it used to be when I--knew you--harder than you deserve. Perhaps a good deal of it is owning to me!" She did not answer, and he watched her inquiringly, as, with bent head, her face completely screened by the hood, she resumed her trimming of the swedes. By going on with her work she felt better able to keep him outside her emotions. "Tess," he added, with a sigh of discontent,--"yours was the very worst case I ever was concerned in! I had no idea of what had resulted till you told me. Scamp that I was to foul that innocent life! The whole blame was mine--the whole unconventional business of our time at Trantridge. You, too, the real blood of which I am but the base imitation, what a blind young thing you were as to possibilities! I say in all earnestness that it is a shame for parents to bring up their girls in such dangerous ignorance of the gins and nets that the wicked may set for them, whether their motive be a good one or the result of simple indifference." Tess still did no more than listen, throwing down one globular root and taking up another with automatic regularity, the pensive contour of the mere fieldwoman alone marking her. "But it is not that I came to say," d'Urberville went on. "My circumstances are these. I have lost my mother since you were at Trantridge, and the place is my own. But I intend to sell it, and devote myself to missionary work in Africa. A devil of a poor hand I shall make at the trade, no doubt. However, what I want to ask you is, will you put it in my power to do my duty--to make the only reparation I can make for the trick played you: that is, will you be my wife, and go with me? ... I have already obtained this precious document. It was my old mother's dying wish." He drew a piece of parchment from his pocket, with a slight fumbling of embarrassment. "What is it?" said she. "A marriage licence." "O no, sir--no!" she said quickly, starting back. "You will not? Why is that?" And as he asked the question a disappointment which was not entirely the disappointment of thwarted duty crossed d'Urberville's face. It was unmistakably a symptom that something of his old passion for her had been revived; duty and desire ran hand-in-hand. "Surely," he began again, in more impetuous tones, and then looked round at the labourer who turned the slicer. Tess, too, felt that the argument could not be ended there. Informing the man that a gentleman had come to see her, with whom she wished to walk a little way, she moved off with d'Urberville across the zebra-striped field. When they reached the first newly-ploughed section he held out his hand to help her over it; but she stepped forward on the summits of the earth-rolls as if she did not see him. "You will not marry me, Tess, and make me a self-respecting man?" he repeated, as soon as they were over the furrows. "I cannot." "But why?" "You know I have no affection for you." "But you would get to feel that in time, perhaps--as soon as you really could forgive me?" "Never!" "Why so positive?" "I love somebody else." The words seemed to astonish him. "You do?" he cried. "Somebody else? But has not a sense of what is morally right and proper any weight with you?" "No, no, no--don't say that!" "Anyhow, then, your love for this other man may be only a passing feeling which you will overcome--" "No--no." "Yes, yes! Why not?" "I cannot tell you." "You must in honour!" "Well then ... I have married him." "Ah!" he exclaimed; and he stopped dead and gazed at her. "I did not wish to tell--I did not mean to!" she pleaded. "It is a secret here, or at any rate but dimly known. So will you, PLEASE will you, keep from questioning me? You must remember that we are now strangers." "Strangers--are we? Strangers!" For a moment a flash of his old irony marked his face; but he determinedly chastened it down. "Is that man your husband?" he asked mechanically, denoting by a sign the labourer who turned the machine. "That man!" she said proudly. "I should think not!" "Who, then?" "Do not ask what I do not wish to tell!" she begged, and flashed her appeal to him from her upturned face and lash-shadowed eyes. D'Urberville was disturbed. "But I only asked for your sake!" he retorted hotly. "Angels of heaven!--God forgive me for such an expression--I came here, I swear, as I thought for your good. Tess--don't look at me so--I cannot stand your looks! There never were such eyes, surely, before Christianity or since! There--I won't lose my head; I dare not. I own that the sight of you had waked up my love for you, which, I believed, was extinguished with all such feelings. But I thought that our marriage might be a sanctification for us both. 'The unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband,' I said to myself. But my plan is dashed from me; and I must bear the disappointment!" He moodily reflected with his eyes on the ground. "Married. Married! ... Well, that being so," he added, quite calmly, tearing the licence slowly into halves and putting them in his pocket; "that being prevented, I should like to do some good to you and your husband, whoever he may be. There are many questions that I am tempted to ask, but I will not do so, of course, in opposition to your wishes. Though, if I could know your husband, I might more easily benefit him and you. Is he on this farm?" "No," she murmured. "He is far away." "Far away? From YOU? What sort of husband can he be?" "O, do not speak against him! It was through you! He found out--" "Ah, is it so! ... That's sad, Tess!" "Yes." "But to stay away from you--to leave you to work like this!" "He does not leave me to work!" she cried, springing to the defence of the absent one with all her fervour. "He don't know it! It is by my own arrangement." "Then, does he write?" "I--I cannot tell you. There are things which are private to ourselves." "Of course that means that he does not. You are a deserted wife, my fair Tess--" In an impulse he turned suddenly to take her hand; the buff-glove was on it, and he seized only the rough leather fingers which did not express the life or shape of those within. "You must not--you must not!" she cried fearfully, slipping her hand from the glove as from a pocket, and leaving it in his grasp. "O, will you go away--for the sake of me and my husband--go, in the name of your own Christianity!" "Yes, yes; I will," he said abruptly, and thrusting the glove back to her he turned to leave. Facing round, however, he said, "Tess, as God is my judge, I meant no humbug in taking your hand!" A pattering of hoofs on the soil of the field, which they had not noticed in their preoccupation, ceased close behind them; and a voice reached her ear: "What the devil are you doing away from your work at this time o' day?" Farmer Groby had espied the two figures from the distance, and had inquisitively ridden across, to learn what was their business in his field. "Don't speak like that to her!" said d'Urberville, his face blackening with something that was not Christianity. "Indeed, Mister! And what mid Methodist pa'sons have to do with she?" "Who is the fellow?" asked d'Urberville, turning to Tess. She went close up to him. "Go--I do beg you!" she said. "What! And leave you to that tyrant? I can see in his face what a churl he is." "He won't hurt me. HE'S not in love with me. I can leave at Lady-Day." "Well, I have no right but to obey, I suppose. But--well, goodbye!" Her defender, whom she dreaded more than her assailant, having reluctantly disappeared, the farmer continued his reprimand, which Tess took with the greatest coolness, that sort of attack being independent of sex. To have as a master this man of stone, who would have cuffed her if he had dared, was almost a relief after her former experiences. She silently walked back towards the summit of the field that was the scene of her labour, so absorbed in the interview which had just taken place that she was hardly aware that the nose of Groby's horse almost touched her shoulders. "If so be you make an agreement to work for me till Lady-Day, I'll see that you carry it out," he growled. "'Od rot the women--now 'tis one thing, and then 'tis another. But I'll put up with it no longer!" Knowing very well that he did not harass the other women of the farm as he harassed her out of spite for the flooring he had once received, she did for one moment picture what might have been the result if she had been free to accept the offer just made her of being the monied Alec's wife. It would have lifted her completely out of subjection, not only to her present oppressive employer, but to a whole world who seemed to despise her. "But no, no!" she said breathlessly; "I could not have married him now! He is so unpleasant to me." That very night she began an appealing letter to Clare, concealing from him her hardships, and assuring him of her undying affection. Any one who had been in a position to read between the lines would have seen that at the back of her great love was some monstrous fear--almost a desperation--as to some secret contingencies which were not disclosed. But again she did not finish her effusion; he had asked Izz to go with him, and perhaps he did not care for her at all. She put the letter in her box, and wondered if it would ever reach Angel's hands. After this her daily tasks were gone through heavily enough, and brought on the day which was of great import to agriculturists--the day of the Candlemas Fair. It was at this fair that new engagements were entered into for the twelve months following the ensuing Lady-Day, and those of the farming population who thought of changing their places duly attended at the county-town where the fair was held. Nearly all the labourers on Flintcomb-Ash farm intended flight, and early in the morning there was a general exodus in the direction of the town, which lay at a distance of from ten to a dozen miles over hilly country. Though Tess also meant to leave at the quarter-day, she was one of the few who did not go to the fair, having a vaguely-shaped hope that something would happen to render another outdoor engagement unnecessary. It was a peaceful February day, of wonderful softness for the time, and one would almost have thought that winter was over. She had hardly finished her dinner when d'Urberville's figure darkened the window of the cottage wherein she was a lodger, which she had all to herself to-day. Tess jumped up, but her visitor had knocked at the door, and she could hardly in reason run away. D'Urberville's knock, his walk up to the door, had some indescribable quality of difference from his air when she last saw him. They seemed to be acts of which the doer was ashamed. She thought that she would not open the door; but, as there was no sense in that either, she arose, and having lifted the latch stepped back quickly. He came in, saw her, and flung himself down into a chair before speaking. "Tess--I couldn't help it!" he began desperately, as he wiped his heated face, which had also a superimposed flush of excitement. "I felt that I must call at least to ask how you are. I assure you I had not been thinking of you at all till I saw you that Sunday; now I cannot get rid of your image, try how I may! It is hard that a good woman should do harm to a bad man; yet so it is. If you would only pray for me, Tess!" The suppressed discontent of his manner was almost pitiable, and yet Tess did not pity him. "How can I pray for you," she said, "when I am forbidden to believe that the great Power who moves the world would alter His plans on my account?" "You really think that?" "Yes. I have been cured of the presumption of thinking otherwise." "Cured? By whom?" "By my husband, if I must tell." "Ah--your husband--your husband! How strange it seems! I remember you hinted something of the sort the other day. What do you really believe in these matters, Tess?" he asked. "You seem to have no religion--perhaps owing to me." "But I have. Though I don't believe in anything supernatural." D'Urberville looked at her with misgiving. "Then do you think that the line I take is all wrong?" "A good deal of it." "H'm--and yet I've felt so sure about it," he said uneasily. "I believe in the SPIRIT of the Sermon on the Mount, and so did my dear husband... But I don't believe--" Here she gave her negations. "The fact is," said d'Urberville drily, "whatever your dear husband believed you accept, and whatever he rejected you reject, without the least inquiry or reasoning on your own part. That's just like you women. Your mind is enslaved to his." "Ah, because he knew everything!" said she, with a triumphant simplicity of faith in Angel Clare that the most perfect man could hardly have deserved, much less her husband. "Yes, but you should not take negative opinions wholesale from another person like that. A pretty fellow he must be to teach you such scepticism!" "He never forced my judgement! He would never argue on the subject with me! But I looked at it in this way; what he believed, after inquiring deep into doctrines, was much more likely to be right than what I might believe, who hadn't looked into doctrines at all." "What used he to say? He must have said something?" She reflected; and with her acute memory for the letter of Angel Clare's remarks, even when she did not comprehend their spirit, she recalled a merciless polemical syllogism that she had heard him use when, as it occasionally happened, he indulged in a species of thinking aloud with her at his side. In delivering it she gave also Clare's accent and manner with reverential faithfulness. "Say that again," asked d'Urberville, who had listened with the greatest attention. She repeated the argument, and d'Urberville thoughtfully murmured the words after her. "Anything else?" he presently asked. "He said at another time something like this"; and she gave another, which might possibly have been paralleled in many a work of the pedigree ranging from the _Dictionnaire Philosophique_ to Huxley's _Essays_. "Ah--ha! How do you remember them?" "I wanted to believe what he believed, though he didn't wish me to; and I managed to coax him to tell me a few of his thoughts. I can't say I quite understand that one; but I know it is right." "H'm. Fancy your being able to teach me what you don't know yourself!" He fell into thought. "And so I threw in my spiritual lot with his," she resumed. "I didn't wish it to be different. What's good enough for him is good enough for me." "Does he know that you are as big an infidel as he?" "No--I never told him--if I am an infidel." "Well--you are better off to-day that I am, Tess, after all! You don't believe that you ought to preach my doctrine, and, therefore, do no despite to your conscience in abstaining. I do believe I ought to preach it, but, like the devils, I believe and tremble, for I suddenly leave off preaching it, and give way to my passion for you." "How?" "Why," he said aridly; "I have come all the way here to see you to-day! But I started from home to go to Casterbridge Fair, where I have undertaken to preach the Word from a waggon at half-past two this afternoon, and where all the brethren are expecting me this minute. Here's the announcement." He drew from his breast-pocket a poster whereon was printed the day, hour, and place of meeting, at which he, d'Urberville, would preach the Gospel as aforesaid. "But how can you get there?" said Tess, looking at the clock. "I cannot get there! I have come here." "What, you have really arranged to preach, and--" "I have arranged to preach, and I shall not be there--by reason of my burning desire to see a woman whom I once despised!--No, by my word and truth, I never despised you; if I had I should not love you now! Why I did not despise you was on account of your being unsmirched in spite of all; you withdrew yourself from me so quickly and resolutely when you saw the situation; you did not remain at my pleasure; so there was one petticoat in the world for whom I had no contempt, and you are she. But you may well despise me now! I thought I worshipped on the mountains, but I find I still serve in the groves! Ha! ha!" "O Alec d'Urberville! what does this mean? What have I done!" "Done?" he said, with a soulless sneer in the word. "Nothing intentionally. But you have been the means--the innocent means--of my backsliding, as they call it. I ask myself, am I, indeed, one of those 'servants of corruption' who, 'after they have escaped the pollutions of the world, are again entangled therein and overcome'-- whose latter end is worse than their beginning?" He laid his hand on her shoulder. "Tess, my girl, I was on the way to, at least, social salvation till I saw you again!" he said freakishly shaking her, as if she were a child. "And why then have you tempted me? I was firm as a man could be till I saw those eyes and that mouth again--surely there never was such a maddening mouth since Eve's!" His voice sank, and a hot archness shot from his own black eyes. "You temptress, Tess; you dear damned witch of Babylon--I could not resist you as soon as I met you again!" "I couldn't help your seeing me again!" said Tess, recoiling. "I know it--I repeat that I do not blame you. But the fact remains. When I saw you ill-used on the farm that day I was nearly mad to think that I had no legal right to protect you--that I could not have it; whilst he who has it seems to neglect you utterly!" "Don't speak against him--he is absent!" she cried in much excitement. "Treat him honourably--he has never wronged you! O leave his wife before any scandal spreads that may do harm to his honest name!" "I will--I will," he said, like a man awakening from a luring dream. "I have broken my engagement to preach to those poor drunken boobies at the fair--it is the first time I have played such a practical joke. A month ago I should have been horrified at such a possibility. I'll go away--to swear--and--ah, can I! to keep away." Then, suddenly: "One clasp, Tessy--one! Only for old friendship--" "I am without defence. Alec! A good man's honour is in my keeping-- think--be ashamed!" "Pooh! Well, yes--yes!" He clenched his lips, mortified with himself for his weakness. His eyes were equally barren of worldly and religious faith. The corpses of those old fitful passions which had lain inanimate amid the lines of his face ever since his reformation seemed to wake and come together as in a resurrection. He went out indeterminately. Though d'Urberville had declared that this breach of his engagement to-day was the simple backsliding of a believer, Tess's words, as echoed from Angel Clare, had made a deep impression upon him, and continued to do so after he had left her. He moved on in silence, as if his energies were benumbed by the hitherto undreamt-of possibility that his position was untenable. Reason had had nothing to do with his whimsical conversion, which was perhaps the mere freak of a careless man in search of a new sensation, and temporarily impressed by his mother's death. The drops of logic Tess had let fall into the sea of his enthusiasm served to chill its effervescence to stagnation. He said to himself, as he pondered again and again over the crystallized phrases that she had handed on to him, "That clever fellow little thought that, by telling her those things, he might be paving my way back to her!"

Several days later, Tess is working in the field at her turnip chopping when Alec shows up. She's irritated that he's there at all--she told him before that she never wanted to see him again. He says that he's there to ask how she's doing, money-wise. She was dressed nicely when he met her on the road, so he didn't think to ask her. But now that he sees that she's working in the field, he's afraid she's strapped for cash, and that it might be his fault. Tess doesn't want to get drawn into this conversation emotionally, so she keeps working. Then Alec tells her what he really came for: he offers to marry her, because he thinks that would make things right. She refuses--she says she loves somebody else. He doesn't think that's a good enough reason, until Tess admits that she married that other man, and that he's far away--because he found out about Alec. Alec feels bad, and tries to take Tess's hand. She pulls back, and tells him to go away. Just then the farmer approaches, and gives her a hard time for slacking off. Alec tries to defend her, but Tess would rather get scolded by the farmer than defended by Alec. So the farmer continues to yell at her as Alec walks off. The farmer has it in for Tess because he's still embarrassed about the time Angel punched him in the face, but at least his dislike for her has nothing to do with sex. She wonders what she would have done if she were free to marry Alec, and then mentally slaps herself for even asking the question. She's always hated him, after all. That night she writes another letter to Angel, assuring him of her affection, but not telling him about her troubles. Anyone with half a brain would be able to read between the lines, though. She mails the letter that night. Candlemas rolls around, and most of the laborers go to a fair in the town. Tess remains behind, and Alec shows up again. He asks about her religion--he's curious about why she doesn't believe in instantaneous conversions. She says that she believes what her husband believed, even though he had tried to help her form her own opinions. Whatever he said of his own thoughts, she adopted into her own religion. Angel might be far from perfect, but she is so devoted to him that she practically memorized everything he ever said about his opinions on religion and the supernatural. Alec asks her to repeat some of what Angel had said, and she happily repeats it, word-for-word, even though she doesn't fully understand all of it herself. Alec listens with rapt attention. When she's finished her recital, he tells her that he was supposed to give a sermon in town that afternoon, but that he came to see her, instead. Seeing her again revived his old love for her, even though he thought he'd stamped all that passion stuff out when he converted. Tess becomes alarmed--after all, she didn't seek him out. Alec gets agitated and talks about how her husband deserted her, but Tess cuts him off, defends Angel, and asks Alec to leave. Alec wants a goodbye smooch, but Tess tells him off, and he's humiliated by his weakness. Alec has relapsed back to his old wicked ways. Being around Tess is just too much for him. As he walks away, he thinks about how ironic it is that Angel's teachings, repeated by Tess, should have had a part in bringing Alec back to her.

To obviate the danger of this threat being fulfilled, Mr. Linton commissioned me to take the boy home early, on Catherine's pony; and, said he--'As we shall now have no influence over his destiny, good or bad, you must say nothing of where he is gone to my daughter: she cannot associate with him hereafter, and it is better for her to remain in ignorance of his proximity; lest she should be restless, and anxious to visit the Heights. Merely tell her his father sent for him suddenly, and he has been obliged to leave us.' Linton was very reluctant to be roused from his bed at five o'clock, and astonished to be informed that he must prepare for further travelling; but I softened off the matter by stating that he was going to spend some time with his father, Mr. Heathcliff, who wished to see him so much, he did not like to defer the pleasure till he should recover from his late journey. 'My father!' he cried, in strange perplexity. 'Mamma never told me I had a father. Where does he live? I'd rather stay with uncle.' 'He lives a little distance from the Grange,' I replied; 'just beyond those hills: not so far, but you may walk over here when you get hearty. And you should be glad to go home, and to see him. You must try to love him, as you did your mother, and then he will love you.' 'But why have I not heard of him before?' asked Linton. 'Why didn't mamma and he live together, as other people do?' 'He had business to keep him in the north,' I answered, 'and your mother's health required her to reside in the south.' 'And why didn't mamma speak to me about him?' persevered the child. 'She often talked of uncle, and I learnt to love him long ago. How am I to love papa? I don't know him.' 'Oh, all children love their parents,' I said. 'Your mother, perhaps, thought you would want to be with him if she mentioned him often to you. Let us make haste. An early ride on such a beautiful morning is much preferable to an hour's more sleep.' 'Is _she_ to go with us,' he demanded, 'the little girl I saw yesterday?' 'Not now,' replied I. 'Is uncle?' he continued. 'No, I shall be your companion there,' I said. Linton sank back on his pillow and fell into a brown study. 'I won't go without uncle,' he cried at length: 'I can't tell where you mean to take me.' I attempted to persuade him of the naughtiness of showing reluctance to meet his father; still he obstinately resisted any progress towards dressing, and I had to call for my master's assistance in coaxing him out of bed. The poor thing was finally got off, with several delusive assurances that his absence should be short: that Mr. Edgar and Cathy would visit him, and other promises, equally ill-founded, which I invented and reiterated at intervals throughout the way. The pure heather-scented air, the bright sunshine, and the gentle canter of Minny, relieved his despondency after a while. He began to put questions concerning his new home, and its inhabitants, with greater interest and liveliness. 'Is Wuthering Heights as pleasant a place as Thrushcross Grange?' he inquired, turning to take a last glance into the valley, whence a light mist mounted and formed a fleecy cloud on the skirts of the blue. 'It is not so buried in trees,' I replied, 'and it is not quite so large, but you can see the country beautifully all round; and the air is healthier for you--fresher and drier. You will, perhaps, think the building old and dark at first; though it is a respectable house: the next best in the neighbourhood. And you will have such nice rambles on the moors. Hareton Earnshaw--that is, Miss Cathy's other cousin, and so yours in a manner--will show you all the sweetest spots; and you can bring a book in fine weather, and make a green hollow your study; and, now and then, your uncle may join you in a walk: he does, frequently, walk out on the hills.' 'And what is my father like?' he asked. 'Is he as young and handsome as uncle?' 'He's as young,' said I; 'but he has black hair and eyes, and looks sterner; and he is taller and bigger altogether. He'll not seem to you so gentle and kind at first, perhaps, because it is not his way: still, mind you, be frank and cordial with him; and naturally he'll be fonder of you than any uncle, for you are his own.' 'Black hair and eyes!' mused Linton. 'I can't fancy him. Then I am not like him, am I?' 'Not much,' I answered: not a morsel, I thought, surveying with regret the white complexion and slim frame of my companion, and his large languid eyes--his mother's eyes, save that, unless a morbid touchiness kindled them a moment, they had not a vestige of her sparkling spirit. 'How strange that he should never come to see mamma and me!' he murmured. 'Has he ever seen me? If he has, I must have been a baby. I remember not a single thing about him!' 'Why, Master Linton,' said I, 'three hundred miles is a great distance; and ten years seem very different in length to a grown-up person compared with what they do to you. It is probable Mr. Heathcliff proposed going from summer to summer, but never found a convenient opportunity; and now it is too late. Don't trouble him with questions on the subject: it will disturb him, for no good.' The boy was fully occupied with his own cogitations for the remainder of the ride, till we halted before the farmhouse garden-gate. I watched to catch his impressions in his countenance. He surveyed the carved front and low-browed lattices, the straggling gooseberry-bushes and crooked firs, with solemn intentness, and then shook his head: his private feelings entirely disapproved of the exterior of his new abode. But he had sense to postpone complaining: there might be compensation within. Before he dismounted, I went and opened the door. It was half-past six; the family had just finished breakfast: the servant was clearing and wiping down the table. Joseph stood by his master's chair telling some tale concerning a lame horse; and Hareton was preparing for the hayfield. 'Hallo, Nelly!' said Mr. Heathcliff, when he saw me. 'I feared I should have to come down and fetch my property myself. You've brought it, have you? Let us see what we can make of it.' He got up and strode to the door: Hareton and Joseph followed in gaping curiosity. Poor Linton ran a frightened eye over the faces of the three. 'Sure-ly,' said Joseph after a grave inspection, 'he's swopped wi' ye, Maister, an' yon's his lass!' Heathcliff, having stared his son into an ague of confusion, uttered a scornful laugh. 'God! what a beauty! what a lovely, charming thing!' he exclaimed. 'Hav'n't they reared it on snails and sour milk, Nelly? Oh, damn my soul! but that's worse than I expected--and the devil knows I was not sanguine!' I bid the trembling and bewildered child get down, and enter. He did not thoroughly comprehend the meaning of his father's speech, or whether it were intended for him: indeed, he was not yet certain that the grim, sneering stranger was his father. But he clung to me with growing trepidation; and on Mr. Heathcliff's taking a seat and bidding him 'come hither' he hid his face on my shoulder and wept. 'Tut, tut!' said Heathcliff, stretching out a hand and dragging him roughly between his knees, and then holding up his head by the chin. 'None of that nonsense! We're not going to hurt thee, Linton--isn't that thy name? Thou art thy mother's child, entirely! Where is my share in thee, puling chicken?' He took off the boy's cap and pushed back his thick flaxen curls, felt his slender arms and his small fingers; during which examination Linton ceased crying, and lifted his great blue eyes to inspect the inspector. 'Do you know me?' asked Heathcliff, having satisfied himself that the limbs were all equally frail and feeble. 'No,' said Linton, with a gaze of vacant fear. 'You've heard of me, I daresay?' 'No,' he replied again. 'No! What a shame of your mother, never to waken your filial regard for me! You are my son, then, I'll tell you; and your mother was a wicked slut to leave you in ignorance of the sort of father you possessed. Now, don't wince, and colour up! Though it is something to see you have not white blood. Be a good lad; and I'll do for you. Nelly, if you be tired you may sit down; if not, get home again. I guess you'll report what you hear and see to the cipher at the Grange; and this thing won't be settled while you linger about it.' 'Well,' replied I, 'I hope you'll be kind to the boy, Mr. Heathcliff, or you'll not keep him long; and he's all you have akin in the wide world, that you will ever know--remember.' 'I'll be very kind to him, you needn't fear,' he said, laughing. 'Only nobody else must be kind to him: I'm jealous of monopolising his affection. And, to begin my kindness, Joseph, bring the lad some breakfast. Hareton, you infernal calf, begone to your work. Yes, Nell,' he added, when they had departed, 'my son is prospective owner of your place, and I should not wish him to die till I was certain of being his successor. Besides, he's _mine_, and I want the triumph of seeing _my_ descendant fairly lord of their estates; my child hiring their children to till their fathers' lands for wages. That is the sole consideration which can make me endure the whelp: I despise him for himself, and hate him for the memories he revives! But that consideration is sufficient: he's as safe with me, and shall be tended as carefully as your master tends his own. I have a room up-stairs, furnished for him in handsome style; I've engaged a tutor, also, to come three times a week, from twenty miles' distance, to teach him what he pleases to learn. I've ordered Hareton to obey him: and in fact I've arranged everything with a view to preserve the superior and the gentleman in him, above his associates. I do regret, however, that he so little deserves the trouble: if I wished any blessing in the world, it was to find him a worthy object of pride; and I'm bitterly disappointed with the whey-faced, whining wretch!' While he was speaking, Joseph returned bearing a basin of milk-porridge, and placed it before Linton: who stirred round the homely mess with a look of aversion, and affirmed he could not eat it. I saw the old man-servant shared largely in his master's scorn of the child; though he was compelled to retain the sentiment in his heart, because Heathcliff plainly meant his underlings to hold him in honour. 'Cannot ate it?' repeated he, peering in Linton's face, and subduing his voice to a whisper, for fear of being overheard. 'But Maister Hareton nivir ate naught else, when he wer a little 'un; and what wer gooid enough for him's gooid enough for ye, I's rayther think!' 'I _sha'n't_ eat it!' answered Linton, snappishly. 'Take it away.' Joseph snatched up the food indignantly, and brought it to us. 'Is there aught ails th' victuals?' he asked, thrusting the tray under Heathcliff's nose. 'What should ail them?' he said. 'Wah!' answered Joseph, 'yon dainty chap says he cannut ate 'em. But I guess it's raight! His mother wer just soa--we wer a'most too mucky to sow t' corn for makking her breead.' 'Don't mention his mother to me,' said the master, angrily. 'Get him something that he can eat, that's all. What is his usual food, Nelly?' I suggested boiled milk or tea; and the housekeeper received instructions to prepare some. Come, I reflected, his father's selfishness may contribute to his comfort. He perceives his delicate constitution, and the necessity of treating him tolerably. I'll console Mr. Edgar by acquainting him with the turn Heathcliff's humour has taken. Having no excuse for lingering longer, I slipped out, while Linton was engaged in timidly rebuffing the advances of a friendly sheep-dog. But he was too much on the alert to be cheated: as I closed the door, I heard a cry, and a frantic repetition of the words-- 'Don't leave me! I'll not stay here! I'll not stay here!' Then the latch was raised and fell: they did not suffer him to come forth. I mounted Minny, and urged her to a trot; and so my brief guardianship ended.

Early the next morning, Edgar plans to send Linton to Wuthering Heights, accompanied by Nelly. Before his departure, the boy is anxious and extremely reluctant to leave his uncle. Finally, Nelly succeeds in coaxing Linton, and they set out on their way to the house of Linton's father. Heathcliff welcomes his son with a scornful laugh. Linton does not resemble him, and to make matters worse, his looks remind Heathcliff of Isabella. Left alone with Nelly, Heathcliff tells her that his son is the prospective owner of Thrushcross Grange. Therefore, Heathcliff does not want Linton to die until it is certain that he will be Edgar's successor. Heathcliff has prepared a room especially for his son and has employed a tutor "to teach him what he pleases to learn. " Nelly is content that at least Heathcliff's selfish plans of vengeance will make him treat Linton well.

Mr. Dick and I soon became the best of friends, and very often, when his day's work was done, went out together to fly the great kite. Every day of his life he had a long sitting at the Memorial, which never made the least progress, however hard he laboured, for King Charles the First always strayed into it, sooner or later, and then it was thrown aside, and another one begun. The patience and hope with which he bore these perpetual disappointments, the mild perception he had that there was something wrong about King Charles the First, the feeble efforts he made to keep him out, and the certainty with which he came in, and tumbled the Memorial out of all shape, made a deep impression on me. What Mr. Dick supposed would come of the Memorial, if it were completed; where he thought it was to go, or what he thought it was to do; he knew no more than anybody else, I believe. Nor was it at all necessary that he should trouble himself with such questions, for if anything were certain under the sun, it was certain that the Memorial never would be finished. It was quite an affecting sight, I used to think, to see him with the kite when it was up a great height in the air. What he had told me, in his room, about his belief in its disseminating the statements pasted on it, which were nothing but old leaves of abortive Memorials, might have been a fancy with him sometimes; but not when he was out, looking up at the kite in the sky, and feeling it pull and tug at his hand. He never looked so serene as he did then. I used to fancy, as I sat by him of an evening, on a green slope, and saw him watch the kite high in the quiet air, that it lifted his mind out of its confusion, and bore it (such was my boyish thought) into the skies. As he wound the string in and it came lower and lower down out of the beautiful light, until it fluttered to the ground, and lay there like a dead thing, he seemed to wake gradually out of a dream; and I remember to have seen him take it up, and look about him in a lost way, as if they had both come down together, so that I pitied him with all my heart. While I advanced in friendship and intimacy with Mr. Dick, I did not go backward in the favour of his staunch friend, my aunt. She took so kindly to me, that, in the course of a few weeks, she shortened my adopted name of Trotwood into Trot; and even encouraged me to hope, that if I went on as I had begun, I might take equal rank in her affections with my sister Betsey Trotwood. 'Trot,' said my aunt one evening, when the backgammon-board was placed as usual for herself and Mr. Dick, 'we must not forget your education.' This was my only subject of anxiety, and I felt quite delighted by her referring to it. 'Should you like to go to school at Canterbury?' said my aunt. I replied that I should like it very much, as it was so near her. 'Good,' said my aunt. 'Should you like to go tomorrow?' Being already no stranger to the general rapidity of my aunt's evolutions, I was not surprised by the suddenness of the proposal, and said: 'Yes.' 'Good,' said my aunt again. 'Janet, hire the grey pony and chaise tomorrow morning at ten o'clock, and pack up Master Trotwood's clothes tonight.' I was greatly elated by these orders; but my heart smote me for my selfishness, when I witnessed their effect on Mr. Dick, who was so low-spirited at the prospect of our separation, and played so ill in consequence, that my aunt, after giving him several admonitory raps on the knuckles with her dice-box, shut up the board, and declined to play with him any more. But, on hearing from my aunt that I should sometimes come over on a Saturday, and that he could sometimes come and see me on a Wednesday, he revived; and vowed to make another kite for those occasions, of proportions greatly surpassing the present one. In the morning he was downhearted again, and would have sustained himself by giving me all the money he had in his possession, gold and silver too, if my aunt had not interposed, and limited the gift to five shillings, which, at his earnest petition, were afterwards increased to ten. We parted at the garden-gate in a most affectionate manner, and Mr. Dick did not go into the house until my aunt had driven me out of sight of it. My aunt, who was perfectly indifferent to public opinion, drove the grey pony through Dover in a masterly manner; sitting high and stiff like a state coachman, keeping a steady eye upon him wherever he went, and making a point of not letting him have his own way in any respect. When we came into the country road, she permitted him to relax a little, however; and looking at me down in a valley of cushion by her side, asked me whether I was happy? 'Very happy indeed, thank you, aunt,' I said. She was much gratified; and both her hands being occupied, patted me on the head with her whip. 'Is it a large school, aunt?' I asked. 'Why, I don't know,' said my aunt. 'We are going to Mr. Wickfield's first.' 'Does he keep a school?' I asked. 'No, Trot,' said my aunt. 'He keeps an office.' I asked for no more information about Mr. Wickfield, as she offered none, and we conversed on other subjects until we came to Canterbury, where, as it was market-day, my aunt had a great opportunity of insinuating the grey pony among carts, baskets, vegetables, and huckster's goods. The hair-breadth turns and twists we made, drew down upon us a variety of speeches from the people standing about, which were not always complimentary; but my aunt drove on with perfect indifference, and I dare say would have taken her own way with as much coolness through an enemy's country. At length we stopped before a very old house bulging out over the road; a house with long low lattice-windows bulging out still farther, and beams with carved heads on the ends bulging out too, so that I fancied the whole house was leaning forward, trying to see who was passing on the narrow pavement below. It was quite spotless in its cleanliness. The old-fashioned brass knocker on the low arched door, ornamented with carved garlands of fruit and flowers, twinkled like a star; the two stone steps descending to the door were as white as if they had been covered with fair linen; and all the angles and corners, and carvings and mouldings, and quaint little panes of glass, and quainter little windows, though as old as the hills, were as pure as any snow that ever fell upon the hills. When the pony-chaise stopped at the door, and my eyes were intent upon the house, I saw a cadaverous face appear at a small window on the ground floor (in a little round tower that formed one side of the house), and quickly disappear. The low arched door then opened, and the face came out. It was quite as cadaverous as it had looked in the window, though in the grain of it there was that tinge of red which is sometimes to be observed in the skins of red-haired people. It belonged to a red-haired person--a youth of fifteen, as I take it now, but looking much older--whose hair was cropped as close as the closest stubble; who had hardly any eyebrows, and no eyelashes, and eyes of a red-brown, so unsheltered and unshaded, that I remember wondering how he went to sleep. He was high-shouldered and bony; dressed in decent black, with a white wisp of a neckcloth; buttoned up to the throat; and had a long, lank, skeleton hand, which particularly attracted my attention, as he stood at the pony's head, rubbing his chin with it, and looking up at us in the chaise. 'Is Mr. Wickfield at home, Uriah Heep?' said my aunt. 'Mr. Wickfield's at home, ma'am,' said Uriah Heep, 'if you'll please to walk in there'--pointing with his long hand to the room he meant. We got out; and leaving him to hold the pony, went into a long low parlour looking towards the street, from the window of which I caught a glimpse, as I went in, of Uriah Heep breathing into the pony's nostrils, and immediately covering them with his hand, as if he were putting some spell upon him. Opposite to the tall old chimney-piece were two portraits: one of a gentleman with grey hair (though not by any means an old man) and black eyebrows, who was looking over some papers tied together with red tape; the other, of a lady, with a very placid and sweet expression of face, who was looking at me. I believe I was turning about in search of Uriah's picture, when, a door at the farther end of the room opening, a gentleman entered, at sight of whom I turned to the first-mentioned portrait again, to make quite sure that it had not come out of its frame. But it was stationary; and as the gentleman advanced into the light, I saw that he was some years older than when he had had his picture painted. 'Miss Betsey Trotwood,' said the gentleman, 'pray walk in. I was engaged for a moment, but you'll excuse my being busy. You know my motive. I have but one in life.' Miss Betsey thanked him, and we went into his room, which was furnished as an office, with books, papers, tin boxes, and so forth. It looked into a garden, and had an iron safe let into the wall; so immediately over the mantelshelf, that I wondered, as I sat down, how the sweeps got round it when they swept the chimney. 'Well, Miss Trotwood,' said Mr. Wickfield; for I soon found that it was he, and that he was a lawyer, and steward of the estates of a rich gentleman of the county; 'what wind blows you here? Not an ill wind, I hope?' 'No,' replied my aunt. 'I have not come for any law.' 'That's right, ma'am,' said Mr. Wickfield. 'You had better come for anything else.' His hair was quite white now, though his eyebrows were still black. He had a very agreeable face, and, I thought, was handsome. There was a certain richness in his complexion, which I had been long accustomed, under Peggotty's tuition, to connect with port wine; and I fancied it was in his voice too, and referred his growing corpulency to the same cause. He was very cleanly dressed, in a blue coat, striped waistcoat, and nankeen trousers; and his fine frilled shirt and cambric neckcloth looked unusually soft and white, reminding my strolling fancy (I call to mind) of the plumage on the breast of a swan. 'This is my nephew,' said my aunt. 'Wasn't aware you had one, Miss Trotwood,' said Mr. Wickfield. 'My grand-nephew, that is to say,' observed my aunt. 'Wasn't aware you had a grand-nephew, I give you my word,' said Mr. Wickfield. 'I have adopted him,' said my aunt, with a wave of her hand, importing that his knowledge and his ignorance were all one to her, 'and I have brought him here, to put to a school where he may be thoroughly well taught, and well treated. Now tell me where that school is, and what it is, and all about it.' 'Before I can advise you properly,' said Mr. Wickfield--'the old question, you know. What's your motive in this?' 'Deuce take the man!' exclaimed my aunt. 'Always fishing for motives, when they're on the surface! Why, to make the child happy and useful.' 'It must be a mixed motive, I think,' said Mr. Wickfield, shaking his head and smiling incredulously. 'A mixed fiddlestick,' returned my aunt. 'You claim to have one plain motive in all you do yourself. You don't suppose, I hope, that you are the only plain dealer in the world?' 'Ay, but I have only one motive in life, Miss Trotwood,' he rejoined, smiling. 'Other people have dozens, scores, hundreds. I have only one. There's the difference. However, that's beside the question. The best school? Whatever the motive, you want the best?' My aunt nodded assent. 'At the best we have,' said Mr. Wickfield, considering, 'your nephew couldn't board just now.' 'But he could board somewhere else, I suppose?' suggested my aunt. Mr. Wickfield thought I could. After a little discussion, he proposed to take my aunt to the school, that she might see it and judge for herself; also, to take her, with the same object, to two or three houses where he thought I could be boarded. My aunt embracing the proposal, we were all three going out together, when he stopped and said: 'Our little friend here might have some motive, perhaps, for objecting to the arrangements. I think we had better leave him behind?' My aunt seemed disposed to contest the point; but to facilitate matters I said I would gladly remain behind, if they pleased; and returned into Mr. Wickfield's office, where I sat down again, in the chair I had first occupied, to await their return. It so happened that this chair was opposite a narrow passage, which ended in the little circular room where I had seen Uriah Heep's pale face looking out of the window. Uriah, having taken the pony to a neighbouring stable, was at work at a desk in this room, which had a brass frame on the top to hang paper upon, and on which the writing he was making a copy of was then hanging. Though his face was towards me, I thought, for some time, the writing being between us, that he could not see me; but looking that way more attentively, it made me uncomfortable to observe that, every now and then, his sleepless eyes would come below the writing, like two red suns, and stealthily stare at me for I dare say a whole minute at a time, during which his pen went, or pretended to go, as cleverly as ever. I made several attempts to get out of their way--such as standing on a chair to look at a map on the other side of the room, and poring over the columns of a Kentish newspaper--but they always attracted me back again; and whenever I looked towards those two red suns, I was sure to find them, either just rising or just setting. At length, much to my relief, my aunt and Mr. Wickfield came back, after a pretty long absence. They were not so successful as I could have wished; for though the advantages of the school were undeniable, my aunt had not approved of any of the boarding-houses proposed for me. 'It's very unfortunate,' said my aunt. 'I don't know what to do, Trot.' 'It does happen unfortunately,' said Mr. Wickfield. 'But I'll tell you what you can do, Miss Trotwood.' 'What's that?' inquired my aunt. 'Leave your nephew here, for the present. He's a quiet fellow. He won't disturb me at all. It's a capital house for study. As quiet as a monastery, and almost as roomy. Leave him here.' My aunt evidently liked the offer, though she was delicate of accepting it. So did I. 'Come, Miss Trotwood,' said Mr. Wickfield. 'This is the way out of the difficulty. It's only a temporary arrangement, you know. If it don't act well, or don't quite accord with our mutual convenience, he can easily go to the right-about. There will be time to find some better place for him in the meanwhile. You had better determine to leave him here for the present!' 'I am very much obliged to you,' said my aunt; 'and so is he, I see; but--' 'Come! I know what you mean,' cried Mr. Wickfield. 'You shall not be oppressed by the receipt of favours, Miss Trotwood. You may pay for him, if you like. We won't be hard about terms, but you shall pay if you will.' 'On that understanding,' said my aunt, 'though it doesn't lessen the real obligation, I shall be very glad to leave him.' 'Then come and see my little housekeeper,' said Mr. Wickfield. We accordingly went up a wonderful old staircase; with a balustrade so broad that we might have gone up that, almost as easily; and into a shady old drawing-room, lighted by some three or four of the quaint windows I had looked up at from the street: which had old oak seats in them, that seemed to have come of the same trees as the shining oak floor, and the great beams in the ceiling. It was a prettily furnished room, with a piano and some lively furniture in red and green, and some flowers. It seemed to be all old nooks and corners; and in every nook and corner there was some queer little table, or cupboard, or bookcase, or seat, or something or other, that made me think there was not such another good corner in the room; until I looked at the next one, and found it equal to it, if not better. On everything there was the same air of retirement and cleanliness that marked the house outside. Mr. Wickfield tapped at a door in a corner of the panelled wall, and a girl of about my own age came quickly out and kissed him. On her face, I saw immediately the placid and sweet expression of the lady whose picture had looked at me downstairs. It seemed to my imagination as if the portrait had grown womanly, and the original remained a child. Although her face was quite bright and happy, there was a tranquillity about it, and about her--a quiet, good, calm spirit--that I never have forgotten; that I shall never forget. This was his little housekeeper, his daughter Agnes, Mr. Wickfield said. When I heard how he said it, and saw how he held her hand, I guessed what the one motive of his life was. She had a little basket-trifle hanging at her side, with keys in it; and she looked as staid and as discreet a housekeeper as the old house could have. She listened to her father as he told her about me, with a pleasant face; and when he had concluded, proposed to my aunt that we should go upstairs and see my room. We all went together, she before us: and a glorious old room it was, with more oak beams, and diamond panes; and the broad balustrade going all the way up to it. I cannot call to mind where or when, in my childhood, I had seen a stained glass window in a church. Nor do I recollect its subject. But I know that when I saw her turn round, in the grave light of the old staircase, and wait for us, above, I thought of that window; and I associated something of its tranquil brightness with Agnes Wickfield ever afterwards. My aunt was as happy as I was, in the arrangement made for me; and we went down to the drawing-room again, well pleased and gratified. As she would not hear of staying to dinner, lest she should by any chance fail to arrive at home with the grey pony before dark; and as I apprehend Mr. Wickfield knew her too well to argue any point with her; some lunch was provided for her there, and Agnes went back to her governess, and Mr. Wickfield to his office. So we were left to take leave of one another without any restraint. She told me that everything would be arranged for me by Mr. Wickfield, and that I should want for nothing, and gave me the kindest words and the best advice. 'Trot,' said my aunt in conclusion, 'be a credit to yourself, to me, and Mr. Dick, and Heaven be with you!' I was greatly overcome, and could only thank her, again and again, and send my love to Mr. Dick. 'Never,' said my aunt, 'be mean in anything; never be false; never be cruel. Avoid those three vices, Trot, and I can always be hopeful of you.' I promised, as well as I could, that I would not abuse her kindness or forget her admonition. 'The pony's at the door,' said my aunt, 'and I am off! Stay here.' With these words she embraced me hastily, and went out of the room, shutting the door after her. At first I was startled by so abrupt a departure, and almost feared I had displeased her; but when I looked into the street, and saw how dejectedly she got into the chaise, and drove away without looking up, I understood her better and did not do her that injustice. By five o'clock, which was Mr. Wickfield's dinner-hour, I had mustered up my spirits again, and was ready for my knife and fork. The cloth was only laid for us two; but Agnes was waiting in the drawing-room before dinner, went down with her father, and sat opposite to him at table. I doubted whether he could have dined without her. We did not stay there, after dinner, but came upstairs into the drawing-room again: in one snug corner of which, Agnes set glasses for her father, and a decanter of port wine. I thought he would have missed its usual flavour, if it had been put there for him by any other hands. There he sat, taking his wine, and taking a good deal of it, for two hours; while Agnes played on the piano, worked, and talked to him and me. He was, for the most part, gay and cheerful with us; but sometimes his eyes rested on her, and he fell into a brooding state, and was silent. She always observed this quickly, I thought, and always roused him with a question or caress. Then he came out of his meditation, and drank more wine. Agnes made the tea, and presided over it; and the time passed away after it, as after dinner, until she went to bed; when her father took her in his arms and kissed her, and, she being gone, ordered candles in his office. Then I went to bed too. But in the course of the evening I had rambled down to the door, and a little way along the street, that I might have another peep at the old houses, and the grey Cathedral; and might think of my coming through that old city on my journey, and of my passing the very house I lived in, without knowing it. As I came back, I saw Uriah Heep shutting up the office; and feeling friendly towards everybody, went in and spoke to him, and at parting, gave him my hand. But oh, what a clammy hand his was! as ghostly to the touch as to the sight! I rubbed mine afterwards, to warm it, AND TO RUB HIS OFF. It was such an uncomfortable hand, that, when I went to my room, it was still cold and wet upon my memory. Leaning out of the window, and seeing one of the faces on the beam-ends looking at me sideways, I fancied it was Uriah Heep got up there somehow, and shut him out in a hurry.

I make another beginning. David settles into his new life. He and Mr. Dick become friends and fly Mr. Dick's kite together. Betsey gives David a new name, Trotwood Copperfield, or "Trot" for short. She decides that David should go to school in Canterbury, a proposal that he welcomes. Betsey and David travel to the house of Mr. Wickfield in Canterbury. Mr. Wickfield is a friend of Betsey's and a lawyer. At the house, David meets Mr. Wickfield's employee, Uriah Heep, a sinister young man with red hair and red eyes. Mr. Wickfield and Betsey visit the school and decide that it is suitable for David, though Betsey does not approve of the boarding houses that are available. It is agreed that Mr. Wickfield will accommodate David in his house until something better turns up. Mr. Wickfield introduces David to his charming and devoted daughter, Agnes, whom he describes as the "one motive" of his life. David, Mr. Wickfield, and Agnes dine together. After dinner, David comes across Uriah, and shakes his hand. He is so revolted by Uriah's clammy touch that he wants to rub it off

Actus Quartus. Scene 1. Enter Prince, Bastard, Leonato, Frier, Claudio, Benedicke, Hero, and Beatrice. Leonato. Come Frier Francis, be briefe, onely to the plaine forme of marriage, and you shal recount their particular duties afterwards Fran. You come hither, my Lord, to marry this Lady Clau. No Leo. To be married to her: Frier, you come to marrie her Frier. Lady, you come hither to be married to this Count Hero. I doe Frier. If either of you know any inward impediment why you should not be conioyned, I charge you on your soules to vtter it Claud. Know you anie, Hero? Hero. None my Lord Frier. Know you anie, Count? Leon. I dare make his answer, None Clau. O what men dare do! what men may do! what men daily do! Bene. How now! interiections? why then, some be of laughing, as ha, ha, he Clau. Stand thee by Frier, father, by your leaue, Will you with free and vnconstrained soule Giue me this maid your daughter? Leon. As freely sonne as God did giue her me Cla. And what haue I to giue you back, whose worth May counterpoise this rich and precious gift? Prin. Nothing, vnlesse you render her againe Clau. Sweet Prince, you learn me noble thankfulnes: There Leonato, take her backe againe, Giue not this rotten Orenge to your friend, Shee's but the signe and semblance of her honour: Behold how like a maid she blushes heere! O what authoritie and shew of truth Can cunning sinne couer it selfe withall! Comes not that bloud, as modest euidence, To witnesse simple Vertue? would you not sweare All you that see her, that she were a maide, By these exterior shewes? But she is none: She knowes the heat of a luxurious bed: Her blush is guiltinesse, not modestie Leonato. What doe you meane, my Lord? Clau. Not to be married, Not to knit my soule to an approued wanton Leon. Deere my Lord, if you in your owne proofe, Haue vanquisht the resistance of her youth, And made defeat of her virginitie Clau. I know what you would say: if I haue knowne (her, You will say, she did imbrace me as a husband, And so extenuate the forehand sinne: No Leonato, I neuer tempted her with word too large, But as a brother to his sister, shewed Bashfull sinceritie and comely loue Hero. And seem'd I euer otherwise to you? Clau. Out on thee seeming, I will write against it, You seeme to me as Diane in her Orbe, As chaste as is the budde ere it be blowne: But you are more intemperate in your blood, Than Venus, or those pampred animalls, That rage in sauage sensualitie Hero. Is my Lord well, that he doth speake so wide? Leon. Sweete Prince, why speake not you? Prin. What should I speake? I stand dishonour'd that haue gone about, To linke my deare friend to a common stale Leon. Are these things spoken, or doe I but dreame? Bast. Sir, they are spoken, and these things are true Bene. This lookes not like a nuptiall Hero. True, O God! Clau. Leonato, stand I here? Is this the Prince? is this the Princes brother? Is this face Heroes? are our eies our owne? Leon. All this is so, but what of this my Lord? Clau. Let me but moue one question to your daughter, And by that fatherly and kindly power, That you haue in her, bid her answer truly Leo. I charge thee doe, as thou art my childe Hero. O God defend me how am I beset, What kinde of catechizing call you this? Clau. To make you answer truly to your name Hero. Is it not Hero? who can blot that name With any iust reproach? Claud. Marry that can Hero, Hero it selfe can blot out Heroes vertue. What man was he, talkt with you yesternight, Out at your window betwixt twelue and one? Now if you are a maid, answer to this Hero. I talkt with no man at that howre my Lord Prince. Why then you are no maiden. Leonato, I am sorry you must heare: vpon mine honor, My selfe, my brother, and this grieued Count Did see her, heare her, at that howre last night, Talke with a ruffian at her chamber window, Who hath indeed most like a liberall villaine, Confest the vile encounters they haue had A thousand times in secret Iohn. Fie, fie, they are not to be named my Lord, Not to be spoken of, There is not chastitie enough in language, Without offence to vtter them: thus pretty Lady I am sorry for thy much misgouernment Claud. O Hero! what a Hero hadst thou beene If halfe thy outward graces had beene placed About thy thoughts and counsailes of thy heart? But fare thee well, most foule, most faire, farewell Thou pure impiety, and impious puritie, For thee Ile locke vp all the gates of Loue, And on my eie-lids shall Coniecture hang, To turne all beauty into thoughts of harme, And neuer shall it more be gracious Leon. Hath no mans dagger here a point for me? Beat. Why how now cosin, wherfore sink you down? Bast. Come, let vs go: these things come thus to light, Smother her spirits vp Bene. How doth the Lady? Beat. Dead I thinke, helpe vncle, Hero, why Hero, Vncle, Signor Benedicke, Frier Leonato. O Fate! take not away thy heauy hand, Death is the fairest couer for her shame That may be wisht for Beatr. How now cosin Hero? Fri. Haue comfort Ladie Leon. Dost thou looke vp? Frier. Yea, wherefore should she not? Leon. Wherfore? Why doth not euery earthly thing Cry shame vpon her? Could she heere denie The storie that is printed in her blood? Do not liue Hero, do not ope thine eyes: For did I thinke thou wouldst not quickly die, Thought I thy spirits were stronger then thy shames, My selfe would on the reward of reproaches Strike at thy life. Grieu'd I, I had but one? Chid I, for that at frugal Natures frame? O one too much by thee: why had I one? Why euer was't thou louelie in my eies? Why had I not with charitable hand Tooke vp a beggars issue at my gates, Who smeered thus, and mir'd with infamie, I might haue said, no part of it is mine: This shame deriues it selfe from vnknowne loines, But mine, and mine I lou'd, and mine I prais'd, And mine that I was proud on mine so much, That I my selfe, was to my selfe not mine: Valewing of her, why she, O she is falne Into a pit of Inke, that the wide sea Hath drops too few to wash her cleane againe, And salt too little, which may season giue To her foule tainted flesh Ben. Sir, sir, be patient: for my part, I am so attired in wonder, I know not what to say Bea. O on my soule my cosin is belied Ben. Ladie, were you her bedfellow last night? Bea. No, truly: not although vntill last night, I haue this tweluemonth bin her bedfellow Leon. Confirm'd, confirm'd, O that is stronger made Which was before barr'd vp with ribs of iron. Would the Princes lie, and Claudio lie, Who lou'd her so, that speaking of her foulnesse, Wash'd it with teares? Hence from her, let her die Fri. Heare me a little, for I haue onely bene silent so long, and giuen way vnto this course of fortune, by noting of the Ladie, I haue markt. A thousand blushing apparitions, To start into her face, a thousand innocent shames, In Angel whitenesse beare away those blushes, And in her eie there hath appear'd a fire To burne the errors that these Princes hold Against her maiden truth. Call me a foole, Trust not my reading, nor my obseruations, Which with experimental seale doth warrant The tenure of my booke: trust not my age, My reuerence, calling, nor diuinitie, If this sweet Ladie lye not guiltlesse heere, Vnder some biting error Leo. Friar, it cannot be: Thou seest that all the Grace that she hath left, Is, that she wil not adde to her damnation, A sinne of periury, she not denies it: Why seek'st thou then to couer with excuse, That which appeares in proper nakednesse? Fri. Ladie, what man is he you are accus'd of? Hero. They know that do accuse me, I know none: If I know more of any man aliue Then that which maiden modestie doth warrant, Let all my sinnes lacke mercy. O my Father, Proue you that any man with me conuerst, At houres vnmeete, or that I yesternight Maintain'd the change of words with any creature, Refuse me, hate me, torture me to death Fri. There is some strange misprision in the Princes Ben. Two of them haue the verie bent of honor, And if their wisedomes be misled in this: The practise of it liues in Iohn the bastard, Whose spirits toile in frame of villanies Leo. I know not: if they speake but truth of her, These hands shall teare her: If they wrong her honour, The proudest of them shall wel heare of it. Time hath not yet so dried this bloud of mine, Nor age so eate vp my inuention, Nor Fortune made such hauocke of my meanes, Nor my bad life reft me so much of friends, But they shall finde, awak'd in such a kinde, Both strength of limbe, and policie of minde, Ability in meanes, and choise of friends, To quit me of them throughly Fri. Pause awhile: And let my counsell sway you in this case, Your daughter heere the Princesse (left for dead) Let her awhile be secretly kept in, And publish it, that she is dead indeed: Maintaine a mourning ostentation, And on your Families old monument, Hang mournfull Epitaphes, and do all rites, That appertaine vnto a buriall Leon. What shall become of this? What wil this do? Fri. Marry this wel carried, shall on her behalfe, Change slander to remorse, that is some good, But not for that dreame I on this strange course, But on this trauaile looke for greater birth: She dying, as it must be so maintain'd, Vpon the instant that she was accus'd, Shal be lamented, pittied, and excus'd Of euery hearer: for it so fals out, That what we haue, we prize not to the worth, Whiles we enioy it; but being lack'd and lost, Why then we racke the value, then we finde The vertue that possession would not shew vs Whiles it was ours, so will it fare with Claudio: When he shal heare she dyed vpon his words, Th' Idea of her life shal sweetly creepe Into his study of imagination. And euery louely Organ of her life, Shall come apparel'd in more precious habite: More mouing delicate, and ful of life, Into the eye and prospect of his soule Then when she liu'd indeed: then shal he mourne, If euer Loue had interest in his Liuer, And wish he had not so accused her: No, though he thought his accusation true: Let this be so, and doubt not but successe Wil fashion the euent in better shape, Then I can lay it downe in likelihood. But if all ayme but this be leuelld false, The supposition of the Ladies death, Will quench the wonder of her infamie. And if it sort not well, you may conceale her As best befits her wounded reputation, In some reclusiue and religious life, Out of all eyes, tongues, mindes and iniuries Bene. Signior Leonato, let the Frier aduise you, And though you know my inwardnesse and loue Is very much vnto the Prince and Claudio. Yet, by mine honor, I will deale in this, As secretly and iustlie, as your soule Should with your bodie Leon. Being that I flow in greefe, The smallest twine may lead me Frier. 'Tis well consented, presently away, For to strange sores, strangely they straine the cure, Come Lady, die to liue, this wedding day Perhaps is but prolong'd, haue patience & endure. Enter. Bene. Lady Beatrice, haue you wept all this while? Beat. Yea, and I will weepe a while longer Bene. I will not desire that Beat. You haue no reason, I doe it freely Bene. Surelie I do beleeue your fair cosin is wrong'd Beat. Ah, how much might the man deserue of mee that would right her! Bene. Is there any way to shew such friendship? Beat. A verie euen way, but no such friend Bene. May a man doe it? Beat. It is a mans office, but not yours Bene. I doe loue nothing in the world so well as you, is not that strange? Beat. As strange as the thing I know not, it were as possible for me to say, I loued nothing so well as you, but beleeue me not, and yet I lie not, I confesse nothing, nor I deny nothing, I am sorry for my cousin Bene. By my sword Beatrice thou lou'st me Beat. Doe not sweare by it and eat it Bene. I will sweare by it that you loue mee, and I will make him eat it that sayes I loue not you Beat. Will you not eat your word? Bene. With no sawce that can be deuised to it, I protest I loue thee Beat. Why then God forgiue me Bene. What offence sweet Beatrice? Beat. You haue stayed me in a happy howre, I was about to protest I loued you Bene. And doe it with all thy heart Beat. I loue you with so much of my heart, that none is left to protest Bened. Come, bid me doe any thing for thee Beat. Kill Claudio Bene. Ha, not for the wide world Beat. You kill me to denie, farewell Bene. Tarrie sweet Beatrice Beat. I am gone, though I am heere, there is no loue in you, nay I pray you let me goe Bene. Beatrice Beat. Infaith I will goe Bene. Wee'll be friends first Beat. You dare easier be friends with mee, than fight with mine enemy Bene. Is Claudio thine enemie? Beat. Is a not approued in the height a villaine, that hath slandered, scorned, dishonoured my kinswoman? O that I were a man! what, beare her in hand vntill they come to take hands, and then with publike accusation vncouered slander, vnmittigated rancour? O God that I were a man! I would eat his heart in the market-place Bene. Heare me Beatrice Beat. Talke with a man out at a window, a proper saying Bene. Nay but Beatrice Beat. Sweet Hero, she is wrong'd, shee is slandered, she is vndone Bene. Beat? Beat. Princes and Counties! surelie a Princely testimonie, a goodly Count, Comfect, a sweet Gallant surelie, O that I were a man for his sake! or that I had any friend would be a man for my sake! But manhood is melted into cursies, valour into complement, and men are onelie turned into tongue, and trim ones too: he is now as valiant as Hercules, that only tells a lie, and sweares it: I cannot be a man with wishing, therfore I will die a woman with grieuing Bene. Tarry good Beatrice, by this hand I loue thee Beat. Vse it for my loue some other way then swearing by it Bened. Thinke you in your soule the Count Claudio hath wrong'd Hero? Beat. Yea, as sure as I haue a thought, or a soule Bene. Enough, I am engagde, I will challenge him, I will kisse your hand, and so leaue you: by this hand Claudio shall render me a deere account: as you heare of me, so thinke of me: goe comfort your coosin, I must say she is dead, and so farewell. Scene 2. Enter the Constables, Borachio, and the Towne Clerke in gownes. Keeper. Is our whole dissembly appeard? Cowley. O a stoole and a cushion for the Sexton Sexton. Which be the malefactors? Andrew. Marry that am I, and my partner Cowley. Nay that's certaine, wee haue the exhibition to examine Sexton. But which are the offenders that are to be examined, let them come before master Constable Kemp. Yea marry, let them come before mee, what is your name, friend? Bor. Borachio Kem. Pray write downe Borachio. Yours sirra Con. I am a Gentleman sir, and my name is Conrade Kee. Write downe Master gentleman Conrade: maisters, doe you serue God: maisters, it is proued alreadie that you are little better than false knaues, and it will goe neere to be thought so shortly, how answer you for your selues? Con. Marry sir, we say we are none Kemp. A maruellous witty fellow I assure you, but I will goe about with him: come you hither sirra, a word in your eare sir, I say to you, it is thought you are false knaues Bor. Sir, I say to you, we are none Kemp. Well, stand aside, 'fore God they are both in a tale: haue you writ downe that they are none? Sext. Master Constable, you goe not the way to examine, you must call forth the watch that are their accusers Kemp. Yea marry, that's the eftest way, let the watch come forth: masters, I charge you in the Princes name, accuse these men Watch 1. This man said sir, that Don Iohn the Princes brother was a villaine Kemp. Write down, Prince Iohn a villaine: why this is flat periurie, to call a Princes brother villaine Bora. Master Constable Kemp. Pray thee fellow peace, I do not like thy looke I promise thee Sexton. What heard you him say else? Watch 2. Mary that he had receiued a thousand Dukates of Don Iohn, for accusing the Lady Hero wrongfully Kemp. Flat Burglarie as euer was committed Const. Yea by th' masse that it is Sexton. What else fellow? Watch 1. And that Count Claudio did meane vpon his words, to disgrace Hero before the whole assembly, and not marry her Kemp. O villaine! thou wilt be condemn'd into euerlasting redemption for this Sexton. What else? Watch. This is all Sexton. And this is more masters then you can deny, Prince Iohn is this morning secretly stolne away: Hero was in this manner accus'd, in this very manner refus'd, and vpon the griefe of this sodainely died: Master Constable, let these men be bound, and brought to Leonato, I will goe before, and shew him their examination Const. Come, let them be opinion'd Sex. Let them be in the hands of Coxcombe Kem. Gods my life, where's the Sexton? let him write downe the Princes Officer Coxcombe: come, binde them thou naughty varlet Couley. Away, you are an asse, you are an asse Kemp. Dost thou not suspect my place? dost thou not suspect my yeeres? O that hee were heere to write mee downe an asse! but masters, remember that I am an asse: though it be not written down, yet forget not y I am an asse: No thou villaine, y art full of piety as shall be prou'd vpon thee by good witnesse, I am a wise fellow, and which is more, an officer, and which is more, a houshoulder, and which is more, as pretty a peece of flesh as any in Messina, and one that knowes the Law, goe to, & a rich fellow enough, goe to, and a fellow that hath had losses, and one that hath two gownes, and euery thing handsome about him: bring him away: O that I had been writ downe an asse! Enter.

In Gaultree Forest in Yorkshire, the leaders of the rebel army--the Archbishop of York, Mowbray, and Hastings--have arrived with their army. The Archbishop tells his allies he has received a letter from Northumberland in which he says he will not be coming to their aid. A soldier, returning to the camp from a scouting mission, reports that King Henry IV's approaching army is now barely a mile away. The army is being led by Prince John, the king's younger son; the king, who is sick, is still at Westminster. The scout is immediately followed by the Earl of Westmoreland, an ally of King Henry who has been sent as a messenger. Westmoreland accuses the Archbishop of improperly using his religious authority to support rebellion; the Archbishop replies that he did not want to, but he felt he had no choice, since King Henry was leading the country into ruin and the rebels could not get their complaints addressed. Westmoreland tells the rebels that Prince John has been given full authority to act in the king's name and is willing to grant their demands if they seem reasonable. The Archbishop gives Westmoreland a list of the rebels' demands, and Westmoreland leaves to show it to Prince John. While the rebels wait for Westmoreland to return, Mowbray voices his fear that, even if they do make peace, the royal family will only be waiting for an opportunity to have them killed. However, Hastings and the Archbishop are sure that his fears are groundless. Westmoreland returns and brings the rebels back with him to the royal camp to speak with Prince John. The prince says that he has looked over the demands and that they seem reasonable; he will grant all the rebels' requests. If they agree, he says, they should discharge their army and let the soldiers go home. Very pleased, the rebel leaders send messengers to tell their soldiers that they can go home. They and Prince John drink together and make small talk about the upcoming peace. However, as soon as word comes from the rebels' messengers that their army has been scattered, Prince John gives an order to arrest Hastings, Mowbray, and the Archbishop as traitors. When they ask how he can be so dishonorable, Prince John answers that he is not breaking his word: he promised to address their complaints, and he will. However, he never promised not to kill the rebels themselves. He then gives orders for the rebels to be taken away and executed. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the forest, one of the departing rebels--Sir John Coleville of the Dale--runs into Falstaff, who has finally made it to the field of battle. Recognizing Falstaff, Coleville surrenders to him. Prince John enters the scene and Falstaff presents his captive to him. Westmoreland appears to tell the Prince that the army is withdrawing; Prince John sends Coleville off with the other rebels to execution, and he announces he will return to the court in London because he hears his father is very sick. Falstaff heads off to Gloucestershire in order to beg some money from Justice Shallow.

_3 May. Bistritz._--Left Munich at 8:35 P. M., on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46, but train was an hour late. Buda-Pesth seems a wonderful place, from the glimpse which I got of it from the train and the little I could walk through the streets. I feared to go very far from the station, as we had arrived late and would start as near the correct time as possible. The impression I had was that we were leaving the West and entering the East; the most western of splendid bridges over the Danube, which is here of noble width and depth, took us among the traditions of Turkish rule. We left in pretty good time, and came after nightfall to Klausenburgh. Here I stopped for the night at the Hotel Royale. I had for dinner, or rather supper, a chicken done up some way with red pepper, which was very good but thirsty. (_Mem._, get recipe for Mina.) I asked the waiter, and he said it was called "paprika hendl," and that, as it was a national dish, I should be able to get it anywhere along the Carpathians. I found my smattering of German very useful here; indeed, I don't know how I should be able to get on without it. Having had some time at my disposal when in London, I had visited the British Museum, and made search among the books and maps in the library regarding Transylvania; it had struck me that some foreknowledge of the country could hardly fail to have some importance in dealing with a nobleman of that country. I find that the district he named is in the extreme east of the country, just on the borders of three states, Transylvania, Moldavia and Bukovina, in the midst of the Carpathian mountains; one of the wildest and least known portions of Europe. I was not able to light on any map or work giving the exact locality of the Castle Dracula, as there are no maps of this country as yet to compare with our own Ordnance Survey maps; but I found that Bistritz, the post town named by Count Dracula, is a fairly well-known place. I shall enter here some of my notes, as they may refresh my memory when I talk over my travels with Mina. In the population of Transylvania there are four distinct nationalities: Saxons in the South, and mixed with them the Wallachs, who are the descendants of the Dacians; Magyars in the West, and Szekelys in the East and North. I am going among the latter, who claim to be descended from Attila and the Huns. This may be so, for when the Magyars conquered the country in the eleventh century they found the Huns settled in it. I read that every known superstition in the world is gathered into the horseshoe of the Carpathians, as if it were the centre of some sort of imaginative whirlpool; if so my stay may be very interesting. (_Mem._, I must ask the Count all about them.) I did not sleep well, though my bed was comfortable enough, for I had all sorts of queer dreams. There was a dog howling all night under my window, which may have had something to do with it; or it may have been the paprika, for I had to drink up all the water in my carafe, and was still thirsty. Towards morning I slept and was wakened by the continuous knocking at my door, so I guess I must have been sleeping soundly then. I had for breakfast more paprika, and a sort of porridge of maize flour which they said was "mamaliga," and egg-plant stuffed with forcemeat, a very excellent dish, which they call "impletata." (_Mem._, get recipe for this also.) I had to hurry breakfast, for the train started a little before eight, or rather it ought to have done so, for after rushing to the station at 7:30 I had to sit in the carriage for more than an hour before we began to move. It seems to me that the further east you go the more unpunctual are the trains. What ought they to be in China? All day long we seemed to dawdle through a country which was full of beauty of every kind. Sometimes we saw little towns or castles on the top of steep hills such as we see in old missals; sometimes we ran by rivers and streams which seemed from the wide stony margin on each side of them to be subject to great floods. It takes a lot of water, and running strong, to sweep the outside edge of a river clear. At every station there were groups of people, sometimes crowds, and in all sorts of attire. Some of them were just like the peasants at home or those I saw coming through France and Germany, with short jackets and round hats and home-made trousers; but others were very picturesque. The women looked pretty, except when you got near them, but they were very clumsy about the waist. They had all full white sleeves of some kind or other, and most of them had big belts with a lot of strips of something fluttering from them like the dresses in a ballet, but of course there were petticoats under them. The strangest figures we saw were the Slovaks, who were more barbarian than the rest, with their big cow-boy hats, great baggy dirty-white trousers, white linen shirts, and enormous heavy leather belts, nearly a foot wide, all studded over with brass nails. They wore high boots, with their trousers tucked into them, and had long black hair and heavy black moustaches. They are very picturesque, but do not look prepossessing. On the stage they would be set down at once as some old Oriental band of brigands. They are, however, I am told, very harmless and rather wanting in natural self-assertion. It was on the dark side of twilight when we got to Bistritz, which is a very interesting old place. Being practically on the frontier--for the Borgo Pass leads from it into Bukovina--it has had a very stormy existence, and it certainly shows marks of it. Fifty years ago a series of great fires took place, which made terrible havoc on five separate occasions. At the very beginning of the seventeenth century it underwent a siege of three weeks and lost 13,000 people, the casualties of war proper being assisted by famine and disease. Count Dracula had directed me to go to the Golden Krone Hotel, which I found, to my great delight, to be thoroughly old-fashioned, for of course I wanted to see all I could of the ways of the country. I was evidently expected, for when I got near the door I faced a cheery-looking elderly woman in the usual peasant dress--white undergarment with long double apron, front, and back, of coloured stuff fitting almost too tight for modesty. When I came close she bowed and said, "The Herr Englishman?" "Yes," I said, "Jonathan Harker." She smiled, and gave some message to an elderly man in white shirt-sleeves, who had followed her to the door. He went, but immediately returned with a letter:-- "My Friend.--Welcome to the Carpathians. I am anxiously expecting you. Sleep well to-night. At three to-morrow the diligence will start for Bukovina; a place on it is kept for you. At the Borgo Pass my carriage will await you and will bring you to me. I trust that your journey from London has been a happy one, and that you will enjoy your stay in my beautiful land. "Your friend, "DRACULA." _4 May._--I found that my landlord had got a letter from the Count, directing him to secure the best place on the coach for me; but on making inquiries as to details he seemed somewhat reticent, and pretended that he could not understand my German. This could not be true, because up to then he had understood it perfectly; at least, he answered my questions exactly as if he did. He and his wife, the old lady who had received me, looked at each other in a frightened sort of way. He mumbled out that the money had been sent in a letter, and that was all he knew. When I asked him if he knew Count Dracula, and could tell me anything of his castle, both he and his wife crossed themselves, and, saying that they knew nothing at all, simply refused to speak further. It was so near the time of starting that I had no time to ask any one else, for it was all very mysterious and not by any means comforting. Just before I was leaving, the old lady came up to my room and said in a very hysterical way: "Must you go? Oh! young Herr, must you go?" She was in such an excited state that she seemed to have lost her grip of what German she knew, and mixed it all up with some other language which I did not know at all. I was just able to follow her by asking many questions. When I told her that I must go at once, and that I was engaged on important business, she asked again: "Do you know what day it is?" I answered that it was the fourth of May. She shook her head as she said again: "Oh, yes! I know that! I know that, but do you know what day it is?" On my saying that I did not understand, she went on: "It is the eve of St. George's Day. Do you not know that to-night, when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will have full sway? Do you know where you are going, and what you are going to?" She was in such evident distress that I tried to comfort her, but without effect. Finally she went down on her knees and implored me not to go; at least to wait a day or two before starting. It was all very ridiculous but I did not feel comfortable. However, there was business to be done, and I could allow nothing to interfere with it. I therefore tried to raise her up, and said, as gravely as I could, that I thanked her, but my duty was imperative, and that I must go. She then rose and dried her eyes, and taking a crucifix from her neck offered it to me. I did not know what to do, for, as an English Churchman, I have been taught to regard such things as in some measure idolatrous, and yet it seemed so ungracious to refuse an old lady meaning so well and in such a state of mind. She saw, I suppose, the doubt in my face, for she put the rosary round my neck, and said, "For your mother's sake," and went out of the room. I am writing up this part of the diary whilst I am waiting for the coach, which is, of course, late; and the crucifix is still round my neck. Whether it is the old lady's fear, or the many ghostly traditions of this place, or the crucifix itself, I do not know, but I am not feeling nearly as easy in my mind as usual. If this book should ever reach Mina before I do, let it bring my good-bye. Here comes the coach! * * * * * _5 May. The Castle._--The grey of the morning has passed, and the sun is high over the distant horizon, which seems jagged, whether with trees or hills I know not, for it is so far off that big things and little are mixed. I am not sleepy, and, as I am not to be called till I awake, naturally I write till sleep comes. There are many odd things to put down, and, lest who reads them may fancy that I dined too well before I left Bistritz, let me put down my dinner exactly. I dined on what they called "robber steak"--bits of bacon, onion, and beef, seasoned with red pepper, and strung on sticks and roasted over the fire, in the simple style of the London cat's meat! The wine was Golden Mediasch, which produces a queer sting on the tongue, which is, however, not disagreeable. I had only a couple of glasses of this, and nothing else. When I got on the coach the driver had not taken his seat, and I saw him talking with the landlady. They were evidently talking of me, for every now and then they looked at me, and some of the people who were sitting on the bench outside the door--which they call by a name meaning "word-bearer"--came and listened, and then looked at me, most of them pityingly. I could hear a lot of words often repeated, queer words, for there were many nationalities in the crowd; so I quietly got my polyglot dictionary from my bag and looked them out. I must say they were not cheering to me, for amongst them were "Ordog"--Satan, "pokol"--hell, "stregoica"--witch, "vrolok" and "vlkoslak"--both of which mean the same thing, one being Slovak and the other Servian for something that is either were-wolf or vampire. (_Mem._, I must ask the Count about these superstitions) When we started, the crowd round the inn door, which had by this time swelled to a considerable size, all made the sign of the cross and pointed two fingers towards me. With some difficulty I got a fellow-passenger to tell me what they meant; he would not answer at first, but on learning that I was English, he explained that it was a charm or guard against the evil eye. This was not very pleasant for me, just starting for an unknown place to meet an unknown man; but every one seemed so kind-hearted, and so sorrowful, and so sympathetic that I could not but be touched. I shall never forget the last glimpse which I had of the inn-yard and its crowd of picturesque figures, all crossing themselves, as they stood round the wide archway, with its background of rich foliage of oleander and orange trees in green tubs clustered in the centre of the yard. Then our driver, whose wide linen drawers covered the whole front of the box-seat--"gotza" they call them--cracked his big whip over his four small horses, which ran abreast, and we set off on our journey. I soon lost sight and recollection of ghostly fears in the beauty of the scene as we drove along, although had I known the language, or rather languages, which my fellow-passengers were speaking, I might not have been able to throw them off so easily. Before us lay a green sloping land full of forests and woods, with here and there steep hills, crowned with clumps of trees or with farmhouses, the blank gable end to the road. There was everywhere a bewildering mass of fruit blossom--apple, plum, pear, cherry; and as we drove by I could see the green grass under the trees spangled with the fallen petals. In and out amongst these green hills of what they call here the "Mittel Land" ran the road, losing itself as it swept round the grassy curve, or was shut out by the straggling ends of pine woods, which here and there ran down the hillsides like tongues of flame. The road was rugged, but still we seemed to fly over it with a feverish haste. I could not understand then what the haste meant, but the driver was evidently bent on losing no time in reaching Borgo Prund. I was told that this road is in summertime excellent, but that it had not yet been put in order after the winter snows. In this respect it is different from the general run of roads in the Carpathians, for it is an old tradition that they are not to be kept in too good order. Of old the Hospadars would not repair them, lest the Turk should think that they were preparing to bring in foreign troops, and so hasten the war which was always really at loading point. Beyond the green swelling hills of the Mittel Land rose mighty slopes of forest up to the lofty steeps of the Carpathians themselves. Right and left of us they towered, with the afternoon sun falling full upon them and bringing out all the glorious colours of this beautiful range, deep blue and purple in the shadows of the peaks, green and brown where grass and rock mingled, and an endless perspective of jagged rock and pointed crags, till these were themselves lost in the distance, where the snowy peaks rose grandly. Here and there seemed mighty rifts in the mountains, through which, as the sun began to sink, we saw now and again the white gleam of falling water. One of my companions touched my arm as we swept round the base of a hill and opened up the lofty, snow-covered peak of a mountain, which seemed, as we wound on our serpentine way, to be right before us:-- "Look! Isten szek!"--"God's seat!"--and he crossed himself reverently. As we wound on our endless way, and the sun sank lower and lower behind us, the shadows of the evening began to creep round us. This was emphasised by the fact that the snowy mountain-top still held the sunset, and seemed to glow out with a delicate cool pink. Here and there we passed Cszeks and Slovaks, all in picturesque attire, but I noticed that goitre was painfully prevalent. By the roadside were many crosses, and as we swept by, my companions all crossed themselves. Here and there was a peasant man or woman kneeling before a shrine, who did not even turn round as we approached, but seemed in the self-surrender of devotion to have neither eyes nor ears for the outer world. There were many things new to me: for instance, hay-ricks in the trees, and here and there very beautiful masses of weeping birch, their white stems shining like silver through the delicate green of the leaves. Now and again we passed a leiter-wagon--the ordinary peasant's cart--with its long, snake-like vertebra, calculated to suit the inequalities of the road. On this were sure to be seated quite a group of home-coming peasants, the Cszeks with their white, and the Slovaks with their coloured, sheepskins, the latter carrying lance-fashion their long staves, with axe at end. As the evening fell it began to get very cold, and the growing twilight seemed to merge into one dark mistiness the gloom of the trees, oak, beech, and pine, though in the valleys which ran deep between the spurs of the hills, as we ascended through the Pass, the dark firs stood out here and there against the background of late-lying snow. Sometimes, as the road was cut through the pine woods that seemed in the darkness to be closing down upon us, great masses of greyness, which here and there bestrewed the trees, produced a peculiarly weird and solemn effect, which carried on the thoughts and grim fancies engendered earlier in the evening, when the falling sunset threw into strange relief the ghost-like clouds which amongst the Carpathians seem to wind ceaselessly through the valleys. Sometimes the hills were so steep that, despite our driver's haste, the horses could only go slowly. I wished to get down and walk up them, as we do at home, but the driver would not hear of it. "No, no," he said; "you must not walk here; the dogs are too fierce"; and then he added, with what he evidently meant for grim pleasantry--for he looked round to catch the approving smile of the rest--"and you may have enough of such matters before you go to sleep." The only stop he would make was a moment's pause to light his lamps. When it grew dark there seemed to be some excitement amongst the passengers, and they kept speaking to him, one after the other, as though urging him to further speed. He lashed the horses unmercifully with his long whip, and with wild cries of encouragement urged them on to further exertions. Then through the darkness I could see a sort of patch of grey light ahead of us, as though there were a cleft in the hills. The excitement of the passengers grew greater; the crazy coach rocked on its great leather springs, and swayed like a boat tossed on a stormy sea. I had to hold on. The road grew more level, and we appeared to fly along. Then the mountains seemed to come nearer to us on each side and to frown down upon us; we were entering on the Borgo Pass. One by one several of the passengers offered me gifts, which they pressed upon me with an earnestness which would take no denial; these were certainly of an odd and varied kind, but each was given in simple good faith, with a kindly word, and a blessing, and that strange mixture of fear-meaning movements which I had seen outside the hotel at Bistritz--the sign of the cross and the guard against the evil eye. Then, as we flew along, the driver leaned forward, and on each side the passengers, craning over the edge of the coach, peered eagerly into the darkness. It was evident that something very exciting was either happening or expected, but though I asked each passenger, no one would give me the slightest explanation. This state of excitement kept on for some little time; and at last we saw before us the Pass opening out on the eastern side. There were dark, rolling clouds overhead, and in the air the heavy, oppressive sense of thunder. It seemed as though the mountain range had separated two atmospheres, and that now we had got into the thunderous one. I was now myself looking out for the conveyance which was to take me to the Count. Each moment I expected to see the glare of lamps through the blackness; but all was dark. The only light was the flickering rays of our own lamps, in which the steam from our hard-driven horses rose in a white cloud. We could see now the sandy road lying white before us, but there was on it no sign of a vehicle. The passengers drew back with a sigh of gladness, which seemed to mock my own disappointment. I was already thinking what I had best do, when the driver, looking at his watch, said to the others something which I could hardly hear, it was spoken so quietly and in so low a tone; I thought it was "An hour less than the time." Then turning to me, he said in German worse than my own:-- "There is no carriage here. The Herr is not expected after all. He will now come on to Bukovina, and return to-morrow or the next day; better the next day." Whilst he was speaking the horses began to neigh and snort and plunge wildly, so that the driver had to hold them up. Then, amongst a chorus of screams from the peasants and a universal crossing of themselves, a caleche, with four horses, drove up behind us, overtook us, and drew up beside the coach. I could see from the flash of our lamps, as the rays fell on them, that the horses were coal-black and splendid animals. They were driven by a tall man, with a long brown beard and a great black hat, which seemed to hide his face from us. I could only see the gleam of a pair of very bright eyes, which seemed red in the lamplight, as he turned to us. He said to the driver:-- "You are early to-night, my friend." The man stammered in reply:-- "The English Herr was in a hurry," to which the stranger replied:-- "That is why, I suppose, you wished him to go on to Bukovina. You cannot deceive me, my friend; I know too much, and my horses are swift." As he spoke he smiled, and the lamplight fell on a hard-looking mouth, with very red lips and sharp-looking teeth, as white as ivory. One of my companions whispered to another the line from Burger's "Lenore":-- "Denn die Todten reiten schnell"-- ("For the dead travel fast.") The strange driver evidently heard the words, for he looked up with a gleaming smile. The passenger turned his face away, at the same time putting out his two fingers and crossing himself. "Give me the Herr's luggage," said the driver; and with exceeding alacrity my bags were handed out and put in the caleche. Then I descended from the side of the coach, as the caleche was close alongside, the driver helping me with a hand which caught my arm in a grip of steel; his strength must have been prodigious. Without a word he shook his reins, the horses turned, and we swept into the darkness of the Pass. As I looked back I saw the steam from the horses of the coach by the light of the lamps, and projected against it the figures of my late companions crossing themselves. Then the driver cracked his whip and called to his horses, and off they swept on their way to Bukovina. As they sank into the darkness I felt a strange chill, and a lonely feeling came over me; but a cloak was thrown over my shoulders, and a rug across my knees, and the driver said in excellent German:-- "The night is chill, mein Herr, and my master the Count bade me take all care of you. There is a flask of slivovitz (the plum brandy of the country) underneath the seat, if you should require it." I did not take any, but it was a comfort to know it was there all the same. I felt a little strangely, and not a little frightened. I think had there been any alternative I should have taken it, instead of prosecuting that unknown night journey. The carriage went at a hard pace straight along, then we made a complete turn and went along another straight road. It seemed to me that we were simply going over and over the same ground again; and so I took note of some salient point, and found that this was so. I would have liked to have asked the driver what this all meant, but I really feared to do so, for I thought that, placed as I was, any protest would have had no effect in case there had been an intention to delay. By-and-by, however, as I was curious to know how time was passing, I struck a match, and by its flame looked at my watch; it was within a few minutes of midnight. This gave me a sort of shock, for I suppose the general superstition about midnight was increased by my recent experiences. I waited with a sick feeling of suspense. Then a dog began to howl somewhere in a farmhouse far down the road--a long, agonised wailing, as if from fear. The sound was taken up by another dog, and then another and another, till, borne on the wind which now sighed softly through the Pass, a wild howling began, which seemed to come from all over the country, as far as the imagination could grasp it through the gloom of the night. At the first howl the horses began to strain and rear, but the driver spoke to them soothingly, and they quieted down, but shivered and sweated as though after a runaway from sudden fright. Then, far off in the distance, from the mountains on each side of us began a louder and a sharper howling--that of wolves--which affected both the horses and myself in the same way--for I was minded to jump from the caleche and run, whilst they reared again and plunged madly, so that the driver had to use all his great strength to keep them from bolting. In a few minutes, however, my own ears got accustomed to the sound, and the horses so far became quiet that the driver was able to descend and to stand before them. He petted and soothed them, and whispered something in their ears, as I have heard of horse-tamers doing, and with extraordinary effect, for under his caresses they became quite manageable again, though they still trembled. The driver again took his seat, and shaking his reins, started off at a great pace. This time, after going to the far side of the Pass, he suddenly turned down a narrow roadway which ran sharply to the right. Soon we were hemmed in with trees, which in places arched right over the roadway till we passed as through a tunnel; and again great frowning rocks guarded us boldly on either side. Though we were in shelter, we could hear the rising wind, for it moaned and whistled through the rocks, and the branches of the trees crashed together as we swept along. It grew colder and colder still, and fine, powdery snow began to fall, so that soon we and all around us were covered with a white blanket. The keen wind still carried the howling of the dogs, though this grew fainter as we went on our way. The baying of the wolves sounded nearer and nearer, as though they were closing round on us from every side. I grew dreadfully afraid, and the horses shared my fear. The driver, however, was not in the least disturbed; he kept turning his head to left and right, but I could not see anything through the darkness. Suddenly, away on our left, I saw a faint flickering blue flame. The driver saw it at the same moment; he at once checked the horses, and, jumping to the ground, disappeared into the darkness. I did not know what to do, the less as the howling of the wolves grew closer; but while I wondered the driver suddenly appeared again, and without a word took his seat, and we resumed our journey. I think I must have fallen asleep and kept dreaming of the incident, for it seemed to be repeated endlessly, and now looking back, it is like a sort of awful nightmare. Once the flame appeared so near the road, that even in the darkness around us I could watch the driver's motions. He went rapidly to where the blue flame arose--it must have been very faint, for it did not seem to illumine the place around it at all--and gathering a few stones, formed them into some device. Once there appeared a strange optical effect: when he stood between me and the flame he did not obstruct it, for I could see its ghostly flicker all the same. This startled me, but as the effect was only momentary, I took it that my eyes deceived me straining through the darkness. Then for a time there were no blue flames, and we sped onwards through the gloom, with the howling of the wolves around us, as though they were following in a moving circle. At last there came a time when the driver went further afield than he had yet gone, and during his absence, the horses began to tremble worse than ever and to snort and scream with fright. I could not see any cause for it, for the howling of the wolves had ceased altogether; but just then the moon, sailing through the black clouds, appeared behind the jagged crest of a beetling, pine-clad rock, and by its light I saw around us a ring of wolves, with white teeth and lolling red tongues, with long, sinewy limbs and shaggy hair. They were a hundred times more terrible in the grim silence which held them than even when they howled. For myself, I felt a sort of paralysis of fear. It is only when a man feels himself face to face with such horrors that he can understand their true import. All at once the wolves began to howl as though the moonlight had had some peculiar effect on them. The horses jumped about and reared, and looked helplessly round with eyes that rolled in a way painful to see; but the living ring of terror encompassed them on every side; and they had perforce to remain within it. I called to the coachman to come, for it seemed to me that our only chance was to try to break out through the ring and to aid his approach. I shouted and beat the side of the caleche, hoping by the noise to scare the wolves from that side, so as to give him a chance of reaching the trap. How he came there, I know not, but I heard his voice raised in a tone of imperious command, and looking towards the sound, saw him stand in the roadway. As he swept his long arms, as though brushing aside some impalpable obstacle, the wolves fell back and back further still. Just then a heavy cloud passed across the face of the moon, so that we were again in darkness. When I could see again the driver was climbing into the caleche, and the wolves had disappeared. This was all so strange and uncanny that a dreadful fear came upon me, and I was afraid to speak or move. The time seemed interminable as we swept on our way, now in almost complete darkness, for the rolling clouds obscured the moon. We kept on ascending, with occasional periods of quick descent, but in the main always ascending. Suddenly, I became conscious of the fact that the driver was in the act of pulling up the horses in the courtyard of a vast ruined castle, from whose tall black windows came no ray of light, and whose broken battlements showed a jagged line against the moonlit sky.

Chapter I is taken from the May 3rd and May 4th entries in Jonathan Harker's journal. Harker is on a business trip in Eastern Europe, making his way across one of the most isolated regions of Europe. He is going to meet with a noble of Transylvania, Count Dracula. The heading to his journal entry tells us that Jonathan is writing in Bistritz, in what is now Romania. Two days ago, he was in Munich. One day ago, he was in Vienna. As he has moved farther east, the country has become wilder and less modern. Jonathan Harker records his observations of the people and the countryside, their costume and customs. He has been instructed to stay at an old fashioned hotel in Bistritz before setting out for the final leg of the journey to Dracula's castle. At Bistritz, a letter from Dracula is waiting for him. Jonathan is to rest before setting out the next day for the Borgo Pass, where the Count's coach will be waiting for him. The landlord and his wife are visibly distressed by Jonathan's intentions to go to Dracula's castle. Although they cannot understand each other's languages and must communicate in German, the innkeeper passively tries to stop Jonathan by pretending not to understand his requests for a carriage to the Borgo Pass. The landlord's wife more aggressively tries to dissuade Jonathan, warning him that tomorrow is St. George's Day, and at midnight on St. George's Eve evil is at its strongest. When he insists that he must go, she gives him a crucifixJonathan accepts the gift, even though, as an English Protestant, he considers crucifixes idolatrous. Before Jonathan leaves, he notices that a number of the peasants are watching him with apprehension. Although he cannot understand much of their language, he can make out the words for devil, Satan, werewolf, and vampire. The peasants make motions at him to protect him from the evil eye. On the carriage ride, his fellow passengers, on learning where he is going, treat him with the same kind of concerned sympathy, giving him gifts and protecting him with charms. The ride is in wild and beautiful country. The carriage driver arrives at the Borgo Pass an hour early, and in bad German he then tries to convince Jonathan that Dracula's coachman might not come tonight, and Jonathan should come with the rest of them to Bukovina. At that moment, a fearsome-looking coachman arrives on a vehicle pulled by coal-black horses. One of the passengers whispers, "for He rebukes the carriage driver, and brings Jonathan onto the coach. The final part of the trip is terrifying. The moon is bright but is occasionally obscured by clouds, and strange blue fires and wolves appear along the way. On several occasions, the driver leaves the coach, at which point the wolves come closer and closer to the vehicle. Whenever the driver returns, the wolves fleethe final time this phenomenon occurs, it seems that the wolves flee on the driver's command. The chapter ends with Dracula's castle coming into view, its crumbling battlements cutting a jagged line against the night sky.

Leonard--he would figure at length in a newspaper report, but that evening he did not count for much. The foot of the tree was in shadow, since the moon was still hidden behind the house. But above, to right, to left, down the long meadow the moonlight was streaming. Leonard seemed not a man, but a cause. Perhaps it was Helen's way of falling in love--a curious way to Margaret, whose agony and whose contempt of Henry were yet imprinted with his image. Helen forgot people. They were husks that had enclosed her emotion. She could pity, or sacrifice herself, or have instincts, but had she ever loved in the noblest way, where man and woman, having lost themselves in sex, desire to lose sex itself in comradeship? Margaret wondered, but said no word of blame. This was Helen's evening. Troubles enough lay ahead of her--the loss of friends and of social advantages, the agony, the supreme agony, of motherhood, which is not even yet a matter of common knowledge. For the present let the moon shine brightly and the breezes of the spring blow gently, dying away from the gale of the day, and let the earth, that brings increase, bring peace. Not even to herself dare she blame Helen. She could not assess her trespass by any moral code; it was everything or nothing. Morality can tell us that murder is worse than stealing, and group most sins in an order all must approve, but it cannot group Helen. The surer its pronouncements on this point, the surer may we be that morality is not speaking. Christ was evasive when they questioned Him. It is those that cannot connect who hasten to cast the first stone. This was Helen's evening--won at what cost, and not to be marred by the sorrows of others. Of her own tragedy Margaret never uttered a word. "One isolates," said Helen slowly. "I isolated Mr. Wilcox from the other forces that were pulling Leonard downhill. Consequently, I was full of pity, and almost of revenge. For weeks I had blamed Mr. Wilcox only, and so, when your letters came--" "I need never have written them," sighed Margaret. "They never shielded Henry. How hopeless it is to tidy away the past, even for others!" "I did not know that it was your own idea to dismiss the Basts." "Looking back, that was wrong of me." "Looking back, darling, I know that it was right. It is right to save the man whom one loves. I am less enthusiastic about justice now. But we both thought you wrote at his dictation. It seemed the last touch of his callousness. Being very much wrought up by this time--and Mrs. Bast was upstairs. I had not seen her, and had talked for a long time to Leonard--I had snubbed him for no reason, and that should have warned me I was in danger. So when the notes came I wanted us to go to you for an explanation. He said that he guessed the explanation--he knew of it, and you mustn't know. I pressed him to tell me. He said no one must know; it was something to do with his wife. Right up to the end we were Mr. Bast and Miss Schlegel. I was going to tell him that he must be frank with me when I saw his eyes, and guessed that Mr. Wilcox had ruined him in two ways, not one. I drew him to me. I made him tell me. I felt very lonely myself. He is not to blame. He would have gone on worshipping me. I want never to see him again, though it sounds appalling. I wanted to give him money and feel finished. Oh, Meg, the little that is known about these things!" She laid her face against the tree. "The little, too, that is known about growth! Both times it was loneliness, and the night, and panic afterwards. Did Leonard grow out of Paul?" Margaret did not speak for a moment. So tired was she that her attention had actually wandered to the teeth--the teeth that had been thrust into the tree's bark to medicate it. From where she sat she could see them gleam. She had been trying to count them. "Leonard is a better growth than madness," she said. "I was afraid that you would react against Paul until you went over the verge." "I did react until I found poor Leonard. I am steady now. I shan't ever like your Henry, dearest Meg, or even speak kindly about him, but all that blinding hate is over. I shall never rave against Wilcoxes any more. I understand how you married him, and you will now be very happy." Margaret did not reply. "Yes," repeated Helen, her voice growing more tender, "I do at last understand." "Except Mrs. Wilcox, dearest, no one understands our little movements." "Because in death--I agree." "Not quite. I feel that you and I and Henry are only fragments of that woman's mind. She knows everything. She is everything. She is the house, and the tree that leans over it. People have their own deaths as well as their own lives, and even if there is nothing beyond death, we shall differ in our nothingness. I cannot believe that knowledge such as hers will perish with knowledge such as mine. She knew about realities. She knew when people were in love, though she was not in the room. I don't doubt that she knew when Henry deceived her." "Good-night, Mrs. Wilcox," called a voice. "Oh, good-night, Miss Avery." "Why should Miss Avery work for us?" Helen murmured. "Why, indeed?" Miss Avery crossed the lawn and merged into the hedge that divided it from the farm. An old gap, which Mr. Wilcox had filled up, had reappeared, and her track through the dew followed the path that he had turfed over, when he improved the garden and made it possible for games. "This is not quite our house yet," said Helen. "When Miss Avery called, I felt we are only a couple of tourists." "We shall be that everywhere, and for ever." "But affectionate tourists." "But tourists who pretend each hotel is their home." "I can't pretend very long," said Helen. "Sitting under this tree one forgets, but I know that to-morrow I shall see the moon rise out of Germany. Not all your goodness can alter the facts of the case. Unless you will come with me." Margaret thought for a moment. In the past year she had grown so fond of England that to leave it was a real grief. Yet what detained her? No doubt Henry would pardon her outburst, and go on blustering and muddling into a ripe old age. But what was the good? She had just as soon vanish from his mind. "Are you serious in asking me, Helen? Should I get on with your Monica?" "You would not, but I am serious in asking you." "Still, no more plans now. And no more reminiscences." They were silent for a little. It was Helen's evening. The present flowed by them like a stream. The tree rustled. It had made music before they were born, and would continue after their deaths, but its song was of the moment. The moment had passed. The tree rustled again. Their senses were sharpened, and they seemed to apprehend life. Life passed. The tree rustled again. "Sleep now," said Margaret. The peace of the country was entering into her. It has no commerce with memory, and little with hope. Least of all is it concerned with the hopes of the next five minutes. It is the peace of the present, which passes understanding. Its murmur came "now," and "now" once more as they trod the gravel, and "now," as the moonlight fell upon their father's sword. They passed upstairs, kissed, and amidst the endless iterations fell asleep. The house had enshadowed the tree at first, but as the moon rose higher the two disentangled, and were clear fur a few moments at midnight. Margaret awoke and looked into the garden. How incomprehensible that Leonard Bast should have won her this night of peace! Was he also part of Mrs. Wilcox's mind?

Helen finally opens up to Margaret about Leonard, but Margaret is confused by how Helen fell in love - with an idea, rather than with a man. The night is all about Helen coming clean and evaluating everything; she realizes that she'd blamed Mr. Wilcox for everything when she should have. Helen also feels guilty about the way in which her relationship with Leonard fell out - after the fact, she never wanted to see him again. Helen's clearly grown a lot; she says she now understands Margaret's marriage to Henry, and even if she never likes him, she'll always understand. Margaret says that only Mrs. Wilcox can and ever understood everyone - there was something magical about her that allowed her to see through everything. The sisters greet Miss Avery, and note that they are still like tourists at Howards End; they wonder if they will always be only tourists everywhere. Helen invites Margaret to join her in Germany - her sister is tempted, but doesn't know if she can bear to leave England. The two of them enjoy a moment of peace under the wych elm tree, and everything seems quiet and still. They embrace and say good night. Margaret wonders once again if everyone, even Leonard Bast, is a part of Mrs. Wilcox's mind.

My first quarter at Lowood seemed an age; and not the golden age either; it comprised an irksome struggle with difficulties in habituating myself to new rules and unwonted tasks. The fear of failure in these points harassed me worse than the physical hardships of my lot; though these were no trifles. During January, February, and part of March, the deep snows, and, after their melting, the almost impassable roads, prevented our stirring beyond the garden walls, except to go to church; but within these limits we had to pass an hour every day in the open air. Our clothing was insufficient to protect us from the severe cold: we had no boots, the snow got into our shoes and melted there: our ungloved hands became numbed and covered with chilblains, as were our feet: I remember well the distracting irritation I endured from this cause every evening, when my feet inflamed; and the torture of thrusting the swelled, raw, and stiff toes into my shoes in the morning. Then the scanty supply of food was distressing: with the keen appetites of growing children, we had scarcely sufficient to keep alive a delicate invalid. From this deficiency of nourishment resulted an abuse, which pressed hardly on the younger pupils: whenever the famished great girls had an opportunity, they would coax or menace the little ones out of their portion. Many a time I have shared between two claimants the precious morsel of brown bread distributed at tea-time; and after relinquishing to a third half the contents of my mug of coffee, I have swallowed the remainder with an accompaniment of secret tears, forced from me by the exigency of hunger. Sundays were dreary days in that wintry season. We had to walk two miles to Brocklebridge Church, where our patron officiated. We set out cold, we arrived at church colder: during the morning service we became almost paralysed. It was too far to return to dinner, and an allowance of cold meat and bread, in the same penurious proportion observed in our ordinary meals, was served round between the services. At the close of the afternoon service we returned by an exposed and hilly road, where the bitter winter wind, blowing over a range of snowy summits to the north, almost flayed the skin from our faces. I can remember Miss Temple walking lightly and rapidly along our drooping line, her plaid cloak, which the frosty wind fluttered, gathered close about her, and encouraging us, by precept and example, to keep up our spirits, and march forward, as she said, "like stalwart soldiers." The other teachers, poor things, were generally themselves too much dejected to attempt the task of cheering others. How we longed for the light and heat of a blazing fire when we got back! But, to the little ones at least, this was denied: each hearth in the schoolroom was immediately surrounded by a double row of great girls, and behind them the younger children crouched in groups, wrapping their starved arms in their pinafores. A little solace came at tea-time, in the shape of a double ration of bread--a whole, instead of a half, slice--with the delicious addition of a thin scrape of butter: it was the hebdomadal treat to which we all looked forward from Sabbath to Sabbath. I generally contrived to reserve a moiety of this bounteous repast for myself; but the remainder I was invariably obliged to part with. The Sunday evening was spent in repeating, by heart, the Church Catechism, and the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters of St. Matthew; and in listening to a long sermon, read by Miss Miller, whose irrepressible yawns attested her weariness. A frequent interlude of these performances was the enactment of the part of Eutychus by some half-dozen of little girls, who, overpowered with sleep, would fall down, if not out of the third loft, yet off the fourth form, and be taken up half dead. The remedy was, to thrust them forward into the centre of the schoolroom, and oblige them to stand there till the sermon was finished. Sometimes their feet failed them, and they sank together in a heap; they were then propped up with the monitors' high stools. I have not yet alluded to the visits of Mr. Brocklehurst; and indeed that gentleman was from home during the greater part of the first month after my arrival; perhaps prolonging his stay with his friend the archdeacon: his absence was a relief to me. I need not say that I had my own reasons for dreading his coming: but come he did at last. One afternoon (I had then been three weeks at Lowood), as I was sitting with a slate in my hand, puzzling over a sum in long division, my eyes, raised in abstraction to the window, caught sight of a figure just passing: I recognised almost instinctively that gaunt outline; and when, two minutes after, all the school, teachers included, rose _en masse_, it was not necessary for me to look up in order to ascertain whose entrance they thus greeted. A long stride measured the schoolroom, and presently beside Miss Temple, who herself had risen, stood the same black column which had frowned on me so ominously from the hearthrug of Gateshead. I now glanced sideways at this piece of architecture. Yes, I was right: it was Mr. Brocklehurst, buttoned up in a surtout, and looking longer, narrower, and more rigid than ever. I had my own reasons for being dismayed at this apparition; too well I remembered the perfidious hints given by Mrs. Reed about my disposition, &c.; the promise pledged by Mr. Brocklehurst to apprise Miss Temple and the teachers of my vicious nature. All along I had been dreading the fulfilment of this promise,--I had been looking out daily for the "Coming Man," whose information respecting my past life and conversation was to brand me as a bad child for ever: now there he was. He stood at Miss Temple's side; he was speaking low in her ear: I did not doubt he was making disclosures of my villainy; and I watched her eye with painful anxiety, expecting every moment to see its dark orb turn on me a glance of repugnance and contempt. I listened too; and as I happened to be seated quite at the top of the room, I caught most of what he said: its import relieved me from immediate apprehension. "I suppose, Miss Temple, the thread I bought at Lowton will do; it struck me that it would be just of the quality for the calico chemises, and I sorted the needles to match. You may tell Miss Smith that I forgot to make a memorandum of the darning needles, but she shall have some papers sent in next week; and she is not, on any account, to give out more than one at a time to each pupil: if they have more, they are apt to be careless and lose them. And, O ma'am! I wish the woollen stockings were better looked to!--when I was here last, I went into the kitchen-garden and examined the clothes drying on the line; there was a quantity of black hose in a very bad state of repair: from the size of the holes in them I was sure they had not been well mended from time to time." He paused. "Your directions shall be attended to, sir," said Miss Temple. "And, ma'am," he continued, "the laundress tells me some of the girls have two clean tuckers in the week: it is too much; the rules limit them to one." "I think I can explain that circumstance, sir. Agnes and Catherine Johnstone were invited to take tea with some friends at Lowton last Thursday, and I gave them leave to put on clean tuckers for the occasion." Mr. Brocklehurst nodded. "Well, for once it may pass; but please not to let the circumstance occur too often. And there is another thing which surprised me; I find, in settling accounts with the housekeeper, that a lunch, consisting of bread and cheese, has twice been served out to the girls during the past fortnight. How is this? I looked over the regulations, and I find no such meal as lunch mentioned. Who introduced this innovation? and by what authority?" "I must be responsible for the circumstance, sir," replied Miss Temple: "the breakfast was so ill prepared that the pupils could not possibly eat it; and I dared not allow them to remain fasting till dinner-time." "Madam, allow me an instant. You are aware that my plan in bringing up these girls is, not to accustom them to habits of luxury and indulgence, but to render them hardy, patient, self-denying. Should any little accidental disappointment of the appetite occur, such as the spoiling of a meal, the under or the over dressing of a dish, the incident ought not to be neutralised by replacing with something more delicate the comfort lost, thus pampering the body and obviating the aim of this institution; it ought to be improved to the spiritual edification of the pupils, by encouraging them to evince fortitude under temporary privation. A brief address on those occasions would not be mistimed, wherein a judicious instructor would take the opportunity of referring to the sufferings of the primitive Christians; to the torments of martyrs; to the exhortations of our blessed Lord Himself, calling upon His disciples to take up their cross and follow Him; to His warnings that man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God; to His divine consolations, "If ye suffer hunger or thirst for My sake, happy are ye." Oh, madam, when you put bread and cheese, instead of burnt porridge, into these children's mouths, you may indeed feed their vile bodies, but you little think how you starve their immortal souls!" Mr. Brocklehurst again paused--perhaps overcome by his feelings. Miss Temple had looked down when he first began to speak to her; but she now gazed straight before her, and her face, naturally pale as marble, appeared to be assuming also the coldness and fixity of that material; especially her mouth, closed as if it would have required a sculptor's chisel to open it, and her brow settled gradually into petrified severity. Meantime, Mr. Brocklehurst, standing on the hearth with his hands behind his back, majestically surveyed the whole school. Suddenly his eye gave a blink, as if it had met something that either dazzled or shocked its pupil; turning, he said in more rapid accents than he had hitherto used-- "Miss Temple, Miss Temple, what--_what_ is that girl with curled hair? Red hair, ma'am, curled--curled all over?" And extending his cane he pointed to the awful object, his hand shaking as he did so. "It is Julia Severn," replied Miss Temple, very quietly. "Julia Severn, ma'am! And why has she, or any other, curled hair? Why, in defiance of every precept and principle of this house, does she conform to the world so openly--here in an evangelical, charitable establishment--as to wear her hair one mass of curls?" "Julia's hair curls naturally," returned Miss Temple, still more quietly. "Naturally! Yes, but we are not to conform to nature; I wish these girls to be the children of Grace: and why that abundance? I have again and again intimated that I desire the hair to be arranged closely, modestly, plainly. Miss Temple, that girl's hair must be cut off entirely; I will send a barber to-morrow: and I see others who have far too much of the excrescence--that tall girl, tell her to turn round. Tell all the first form to rise up and direct their faces to the wall." Miss Temple passed her handkerchief over her lips, as if to smooth away the involuntary smile that curled them; she gave the order, however, and when the first class could take in what was required of them, they obeyed. Leaning a little back on my bench, I could see the looks and grimaces with which they commented on this manoeuvre: it was a pity Mr. Brocklehurst could not see them too; he would perhaps have felt that, whatever he might do with the outside of the cup and platter, the inside was further beyond his interference than he imagined. He scrutinised the reverse of these living medals some five minutes, then pronounced sentence. These words fell like the knell of doom-- "All those top-knots must be cut off." Miss Temple seemed to remonstrate. "Madam," he pursued, "I have a Master to serve whose kingdom is not of this world: my mission is to mortify in these girls the lusts of the flesh; to teach them to clothe themselves with shame-facedness and sobriety, not with braided hair and costly apparel; and each of the young persons before us has a string of hair twisted in plaits which vanity itself might have woven; these, I repeat, must be cut off; think of the time wasted, of--" Mr. Brocklehurst was here interrupted: three other visitors, ladies, now entered the room. They ought to have come a little sooner to have heard his lecture on dress, for they were splendidly attired in velvet, silk, and furs. The two younger of the trio (fine girls of sixteen and seventeen) had grey beaver hats, then in fashion, shaded with ostrich plumes, and from under the brim of this graceful head-dress fell a profusion of light tresses, elaborately curled; the elder lady was enveloped in a costly velvet shawl, trimmed with ermine, and she wore a false front of French curls. These ladies were deferentially received by Miss Temple, as Mrs. and the Misses Brocklehurst, and conducted to seats of honour at the top of the room. It seems they had come in the carriage with their reverend relative, and had been conducting a rummaging scrutiny of the room upstairs, while he transacted business with the housekeeper, questioned the laundress, and lectured the superintendent. They now proceeded to address divers remarks and reproofs to Miss Smith, who was charged with the care of the linen and the inspection of the dormitories: but I had no time to listen to what they said; other matters called off and enchanted my attention. Hitherto, while gathering up the discourse of Mr. Brocklehurst and Miss Temple, I had not, at the same time, neglected precautions to secure my personal safety; which I thought would be effected, if I could only elude observation. To this end, I had sat well back on the form, and while seeming to be busy with my sum, had held my slate in such a manner as to conceal my face: I might have escaped notice, had not my treacherous slate somehow happened to slip from my hand, and falling with an obtrusive crash, directly drawn every eye upon me; I knew it was all over now, and, as I stooped to pick up the two fragments of slate, I rallied my forces for the worst. It came. "A careless girl!" said Mr. Brocklehurst, and immediately after--"It is the new pupil, I perceive." And before I could draw breath, "I must not forget I have a word to say respecting her." Then aloud: how loud it seemed to me! "Let the child who broke her slate come forward!" Of my own accord I could not have stirred; I was paralysed: but the two great girls who sit on each side of me, set me on my legs and pushed me towards the dread judge, and then Miss Temple gently assisted me to his very feet, and I caught her whispered counsel-- "Don't be afraid, Jane, I saw it was an accident; you shall not be punished." The kind whisper went to my heart like a dagger. "Another minute, and she will despise me for a hypocrite," thought I; and an impulse of fury against Reed, Brocklehurst, and Co. bounded in my pulses at the conviction. I was no Helen Burns. "Fetch that stool," said Mr. Brocklehurst, pointing to a very high one from which a monitor had just risen: it was brought. "Place the child upon it." And I was placed there, by whom I don't know: I was in no condition to note particulars; I was only aware that they had hoisted me up to the height of Mr. Brocklehurst's nose, that he was within a yard of me, and that a spread of shot orange and purple silk pelisses and a cloud of silvery plumage extended and waved below me. Mr. Brocklehurst hemmed. "Ladies," said he, turning to his family, "Miss Temple, teachers, and children, you all see this girl?" Of course they did; for I felt their eyes directed like burning-glasses against my scorched skin. "You see she is yet young; you observe she possesses the ordinary form of childhood; God has graciously given her the shape that He has given to all of us; no signal deformity points her out as a marked character. Who would think that the Evil One had already found a servant and agent in her? Yet such, I grieve to say, is the case." A pause--in which I began to steady the palsy of my nerves, and to feel that the Rubicon was passed; and that the trial, no longer to be shirked, must be firmly sustained. "My dear children," pursued the black marble clergyman, with pathos, "this is a sad, a melancholy occasion; for it becomes my duty to warn you, that this girl, who might be one of God's own lambs, is a little castaway: not a member of the true flock, but evidently an interloper and an alien. You must be on your guard against her; you must shun her example; if necessary, avoid her company, exclude her from your sports, and shut her out from your converse. Teachers, you must watch her: keep your eyes on her movements, weigh well her words, scrutinise her actions, punish her body to save her soul: if, indeed, such salvation be possible, for (my tongue falters while I tell it) this girl, this child, the native of a Christian land, worse than many a little heathen who says its prayers to Brahma and kneels before Juggernaut--this girl is--a liar!" Now came a pause of ten minutes, during which I, by this time in perfect possession of my wits, observed all the female Brocklehursts produce their pocket-handkerchiefs and apply them to their optics, while the elderly lady swayed herself to and fro, and the two younger ones whispered, "How shocking!" Mr. Brocklehurst resumed. "This I learned from her benefactress; from the pious and charitable lady who adopted her in her orphan state, reared her as her own daughter, and whose kindness, whose generosity the unhappy girl repaid by an ingratitude so bad, so dreadful, that at last her excellent patroness was obliged to separate her from her own young ones, fearful lest her vicious example should contaminate their purity: she has sent her here to be healed, even as the Jews of old sent their diseased to the troubled pool of Bethesda; and, teachers, superintendent, I beg of you not to allow the waters to stagnate round her." With this sublime conclusion, Mr. Brocklehurst adjusted the top button of his surtout, muttered something to his family, who rose, bowed to Miss Temple, and then all the great people sailed in state from the room. Turning at the door, my judge said-- "Let her stand half-an-hour longer on that stool, and let no one speak to her during the remainder of the day." There was I, then, mounted aloft; I, who had said I could not bear the shame of standing on my natural feet in the middle of the room, was now exposed to general view on a pedestal of infamy. What my sensations were no language can describe; but just as they all rose, stifling my breath and constricting my throat, a girl came up and passed me: in passing, she lifted her eyes. What a strange light inspired them! What an extraordinary sensation that ray sent through me! How the new feeling bore me up! It was as if a martyr, a hero, had passed a slave or victim, and imparted strength in the transit. I mastered the rising hysteria, lifted up my head, and took a firm stand on the stool. Helen Burns asked some slight question about her work of Miss Smith, was chidden for the triviality of the inquiry, returned to her place, and smiled at me as she again went by. What a smile! I remember it now, and I know that it was the effluence of fine intellect, of true courage; it lit up her marked lineaments, her thin face, her sunken grey eye, like a reflection from the aspect of an angel. Yet at that moment Helen Burns wore on her arm "the untidy badge;" scarcely an hour ago I had heard her condemned by Miss Scatcherd to a dinner of bread and water on the morrow because she had blotted an exercise in copying it out. Such is the imperfect nature of man! such spots are there on the disc of the clearest planet; and eyes like Miss Scatcherd's can only see those minute defects, and are blind to the full brightness of the orb.

Jane passes a difficult first quarter at Lowood, with both the snowy weather and strict environment contributing to her misery. After a long absence from the school, Mr. Brocklehurst visits Miss Temple's classroom and instructs her not to indulge the girls in the slightest way; their privations will remind them of the Christian ethic. He spots a girl with curly hair and deems it unacceptable for an evangelical environment, as are all the top-knots on the girls' heads. Jane, nervous that Mr. Brocklehurst will convey Mrs. Reed's warnings about her behavior to Miss Temple, accidentally drops her slate. Mr. Brocklehurst chastises her in front of the class and three visiting fashionable ladies and tells everyone that she is a wicked liar. He orders Jane to stand on a stool in front of the class to repent for her wickedness and forbids any of the other students from talking to her. Jane's only solace during the day is when Helen disobeys Mr. Brocklehurst's orders and secretly smiles at her.

Stop Him! Darkness rests upon Tom-All-Alone's. Dilating and dilating since the sun went down last night, it has gradually swelled until it fills every void in the place. For a time there were some dungeon lights burning, as the lamp of life hums in Tom-all-Alone's, heavily, heavily, in the nauseous air, and winking--as that lamp, too, winks in Tom-all-Alone's--at many horrible things. But they are blotted out. The moon has eyed Tom with a dull cold stare, as admitting some puny emulation of herself in his desert region unfit for life and blasted by volcanic fires; but she has passed on and is gone. The blackest nightmare in the infernal stables grazes on Tom-all-Alone's, and Tom is fast asleep. Much mighty speech-making there has been, both in and out of Parliament, concerning Tom, and much wrathful disputation how Tom shall be got right. Whether he shall be put into the main road by constables, or by beadles, or by bell-ringing, or by force of figures, or by correct principles of taste, or by high church, or by low church, or by no church; whether he shall be set to splitting trusses of polemical straws with the crooked knife of his mind or whether he shall be put to stone-breaking instead. In the midst of which dust and noise there is but one thing perfectly clear, to wit, that Tom only may and can, or shall and will, be reclaimed according to somebody's theory but nobody's practice. And in the hopeful meantime, Tom goes to perdition head foremost in his old determined spirit. But he has his revenge. Even the winds are his messengers, and they serve him in these hours of darkness. There is not a drop of Tom's corrupted blood but propagates infection and contagion somewhere. It shall pollute, this very night, the choice stream (in which chemists on analysis would find the genuine nobility) of a Norman house, and his Grace shall not be able to say nay to the infamous alliance. There is not an atom of Tom's slime, not a cubic inch of any pestilential gas in which he lives, not one obscenity or degradation about him, not an ignorance, not a wickedness, not a brutality of his committing, but shall work its retribution through every order of society up to the proudest of the proud and to the highest of the high. Verily, what with tainting, plundering, and spoiling, Tom has his revenge. It is a moot point whether Tom-all-Alone's be uglier by day or by night, but on the argument that the more that is seen of it the more shocking it must be, and that no part of it left to the imagination is at all likely to be made so bad as the reality, day carries it. The day begins to break now; and in truth it might be better for the national glory even that the sun should sometimes set upon the British dominions than that it should ever rise upon so vile a wonder as Tom. A brown sunburnt gentleman, who appears in some inaptitude for sleep to be wandering abroad rather than counting the hours on a restless pillow, strolls hitherward at this quiet time. Attracted by curiosity, he often pauses and looks about him, up and down the miserable by-ways. Nor is he merely curious, for in his bright dark eye there is compassionate interest; and as he looks here and there, he seems to understand such wretchedness and to have studied it before. On the banks of the stagnant channel of mud which is the main street of Tom-all-Alone's, nothing is to be seen but the crazy houses, shut up and silent. No waking creature save himself appears except in one direction, where he sees the solitary figure of a woman sitting on a door-step. He walks that way. Approaching, he observes that she has journeyed a long distance and is footsore and travel-stained. She sits on the door-step in the manner of one who is waiting, with her elbow on her knee and her head upon her hand. Beside her is a canvas bag, or bundle, she has carried. She is dozing probably, for she gives no heed to his steps as he comes toward her. The broken footway is so narrow that when Allan Woodcourt comes to where the woman sits, he has to turn into the road to pass her. Looking down at her face, his eye meets hers, and he stops. "What is the matter?" "Nothing, sir." "Can't you make them hear? Do you want to be let in?" "I'm waiting till they get up at another house--a lodging-house--not here," the woman patiently returns. "I'm waiting here because there will be sun here presently to warm me." "I am afraid you are tired. I am sorry to see you sitting in the street." "Thank you, sir. It don't matter." A habit in him of speaking to the poor and of avoiding patronage or condescension or childishness (which is the favourite device, many people deeming it quite a subtlety to talk to them like little spelling books) has put him on good terms with the woman easily. "Let me look at your forehead," he says, bending down. "I am a doctor. Don't be afraid. I wouldn't hurt you for the world." He knows that by touching her with his skilful and accustomed hand he can soothe her yet more readily. She makes a slight objection, saying, "It's nothing"; but he has scarcely laid his fingers on the wounded place when she lifts it up to the light. "Aye! A bad bruise, and the skin sadly broken. This must be very sore." "It do ache a little, sir," returns the woman with a started tear upon her cheek. "Let me try to make it more comfortable. My handkerchief won't hurt you." "Oh, dear no, sir, I'm sure of that!" He cleanses the injured place and dries it, and having carefully examined it and gently pressed it with the palm of his hand, takes a small case from his pocket, dresses it, and binds it up. While he is thus employed, he says, after laughing at his establishing a surgery in the street, "And so your husband is a brickmaker?" "How do you know that, sir?" asks the woman, astonished. "Why, I suppose so from the colour of the clay upon your bag and on your dress. And I know brickmakers go about working at piecework in different places. And I am sorry to say I have known them cruel to their wives too." The woman hastily lifts up her eyes as if she would deny that her injury is referable to such a cause. But feeling the hand upon her forehead, and seeing his busy and composed face, she quietly drops them again. "Where is he now?" asks the surgeon. "He got into trouble last night, sir; but he'll look for me at the lodging-house." "He will get into worse trouble if he often misuses his large and heavy hand as he has misused it here. But you forgive him, brutal as he is, and I say no more of him, except that I wish he deserved it. You have no young child?" The woman shakes her head. "One as I calls mine, sir, but it's Liz's." "Your own is dead. I see! Poor little thing!" By this time he has finished and is putting up his case. "I suppose you have some settled home. Is it far from here?" he asks, good-humouredly making light of what he has done as she gets up and curtsys. "It's a good two or three and twenty mile from here, sir. At Saint Albans. You know Saint Albans, sir? I thought you gave a start like, as if you did." "Yes, I know something of it. And now I will ask you a question in return. Have you money for your lodging?" "Yes, sir," she says, "really and truly." And she shows it. He tells her, in acknowledgment of her many subdued thanks, that she is very welcome, gives her good day, and walks away. Tom-all-Alone's is still asleep, and nothing is astir. Yes, something is! As he retraces his way to the point from which he descried the woman at a distance sitting on the step, he sees a ragged figure coming very cautiously along, crouching close to the soiled walls--which the wretchedest figure might as well avoid--and furtively thrusting a hand before it. It is the figure of a youth whose face is hollow and whose eyes have an emaciated glare. He is so intent on getting along unseen that even the apparition of a stranger in whole garments does not tempt him to look back. He shades his face with his ragged elbow as he passes on the other side of the way, and goes shrinking and creeping on with his anxious hand before him and his shapeless clothes hanging in shreds. Clothes made for what purpose, or of what material, it would be impossible to say. They look, in colour and in substance, like a bundle of rank leaves of swampy growth that rotted long ago. Allan Woodcourt pauses to look after him and note all this, with a shadowy belief that he has seen the boy before. He cannot recall how or where, but there is some association in his mind with such a form. He imagines that he must have seen it in some hospital or refuge, still, cannot make out why it comes with any special force on his remembrance. He is gradually emerging from Tom-all-Alone's in the morning light, thinking about it, when he hears running feet behind him, and looking round, sees the boy scouring towards him at great speed, followed by the woman. "Stop him, stop him!" cries the woman, almost breathless. "Stop him, sir!" He darts across the road into the boy's path, but the boy is quicker than he, makes a curve, ducks, dives under his hands, comes up half-a-dozen yards beyond him, and scours away again. Still the woman follows, crying, "Stop him, sir, pray stop him!" Allan, not knowing but that he has just robbed her of her money, follows in chase and runs so hard that he runs the boy down a dozen times, but each time he repeats the curve, the duck, the dive, and scours away again. To strike at him on any of these occasions would be to fell and disable him, but the pursuer cannot resolve to do that, and so the grimly ridiculous pursuit continues. At last the fugitive, hard-pressed, takes to a narrow passage and a court which has no thoroughfare. Here, against a hoarding of decaying timber, he is brought to bay and tumbles down, lying gasping at his pursuer, who stands and gasps at him until the woman comes up. "Oh, you, Jo!" cries the woman. "What? I have found you at last!" "Jo," repeats Allan, looking at him with attention, "Jo! Stay. To be sure! I recollect this lad some time ago being brought before the coroner." "Yes, I see you once afore at the inkwhich," whimpers Jo. "What of that? Can't you never let such an unfortnet as me alone? An't I unfortnet enough for you yet? How unfortnet do you want me fur to be? I've been a-chivied and a-chivied, fust by one on you and nixt by another on you, till I'm worritted to skins and bones. The inkwhich warn't MY fault. I done nothink. He wos wery good to me, he wos; he wos the only one I knowed to speak to, as ever come across my crossing. It ain't wery likely I should want him to be inkwhiched. I only wish I wos, myself. I don't know why I don't go and make a hole in the water, I'm sure I don't." He says it with such a pitiable air, and his grimy tears appear so real, and he lies in the corner up against the hoarding so like a growth of fungus or any unwholesome excrescence produced there in neglect and impurity, that Allan Woodcourt is softened towards him. He says to the woman, "Miserable creature, what has he done?" To which she only replies, shaking her head at the prostrate figure more amazedly than angrily, "Oh, you Jo, you Jo. I have found you at last!" "What has he done?" says Allan. "Has he robbed you?" "No, sir, no. Robbed me? He did nothing but what was kind-hearted by me, and that's the wonder of it." Allan looks from Jo to the woman, and from the woman to Jo, waiting for one of them to unravel the riddle. "But he was along with me, sir," says the woman. "Oh, you Jo! He was along with me, sir, down at Saint Albans, ill, and a young lady, Lord bless her for a good friend to me, took pity on him when I durstn't, and took him home--" Allan shrinks back from him with a sudden horror. "Yes, sir, yes. Took him home, and made him comfortable, and like a thankless monster he ran away in the night and never has been seen or heard of since till I set eyes on him just now. And that young lady that was such a pretty dear caught his illness, lost her beautiful looks, and wouldn't hardly be known for the same young lady now if it wasn't for her angel temper, and her pretty shape, and her sweet voice. Do you know it? You ungrateful wretch, do you know that this is all along of you and of her goodness to you?" demands the woman, beginning to rage at him as she recalls it and breaking into passionate tears. The boy, in rough sort stunned by what he hears, falls to smearing his dirty forehead with his dirty palm, and to staring at the ground, and to shaking from head to foot until the crazy hoarding against which he leans rattles. Allan restrains the woman, merely by a quiet gesture, but effectually. "Richard told me--" He falters. "I mean, I have heard of this--don't mind me for a moment, I will speak presently." He turns away and stands for a while looking out at the covered passage. When he comes back, he has recovered his composure, except that he contends against an avoidance of the boy, which is so very remarkable that it absorbs the woman's attention. "You hear what she says. But get up, get up!" Jo, shaking and chattering, slowly rises and stands, after the manner of his tribe in a difficulty, sideways against the hoarding, resting one of his high shoulders against it and covertly rubbing his right hand over his left and his left foot over his right. "You hear what she says, and I know it's true. Have you been here ever since?" "Wishermaydie if I seen Tom-all-Alone's till this blessed morning," replies Jo hoarsely. "Why have you come here now?" Jo looks all round the confined court, looks at his questioner no higher than the knees, and finally answers, "I don't know how to do nothink, and I can't get nothink to do. I'm wery poor and ill, and I thought I'd come back here when there warn't nobody about, and lay down and hide somewheres as I knows on till arter dark, and then go and beg a trifle of Mr. Snagsby. He wos allus willin fur to give me somethink he wos, though Mrs. Snagsby she was allus a-chivying on me--like everybody everywheres." "Where have you come from?" Jo looks all round the court again, looks at his questioner's knees again, and concludes by laying his profile against the hoarding in a sort of resignation. "Did you hear me ask you where you have come from?" "Tramp then," says Jo. "Now tell me," proceeds Allan, making a strong effort to overcome his repugnance, going very near to him, and leaning over him with an expression of confidence, "tell me how it came about that you left that house when the good young lady had been so unfortunate as to pity you and take you home." Jo suddenly comes out of his resignation and excitedly declares, addressing the woman, that he never known about the young lady, that he never heern about it, that he never went fur to hurt her, that he would sooner have hurt his own self, that he'd sooner have had his unfortnet ed chopped off than ever gone a-nigh her, and that she wos wery good to him, she wos. Conducting himself throughout as if in his poor fashion he really meant it, and winding up with some very miserable sobs. Allan Woodcourt sees that this is not a sham. He constrains himself to touch him. "Come, Jo. Tell me." "No. I dustn't," says Jo, relapsing into the profile state. "I dustn't, or I would." "But I must know," returns the other, "all the same. Come, Jo." After two or three such adjurations, Jo lifts up his head again, looks round the court again, and says in a low voice, "Well, I'll tell you something. I was took away. There!" "Took away? In the night?" "Ah!" Very apprehensive of being overheard, Jo looks about him and even glances up some ten feet at the top of the hoarding and through the cracks in it lest the object of his distrust should be looking over or hidden on the other side. "Who took you away?" "I dustn't name him," says Jo. "I dustn't do it, sir. "But I want, in the young lady's name, to know. You may trust me. No one else shall hear." "Ah, but I don't know," replies Jo, shaking his head fearfully, "as he DON'T hear." "Why, he is not in this place." "Oh, ain't he though?" says Jo. "He's in all manner of places, all at wanst." Allan looks at him in perplexity, but discovers some real meaning and good faith at the bottom of this bewildering reply. He patiently awaits an explicit answer; and Jo, more baffled by his patience than by anything else, at last desperately whispers a name in his ear. "Aye!" says Allan. "Why, what had you been doing?" "Nothink, sir. Never done nothink to get myself into no trouble, 'sept in not moving on and the inkwhich. But I'm a-moving on now. I'm a-moving on to the berryin ground--that's the move as I'm up to." "No, no, we will try to prevent that. But what did he do with you?" "Put me in a horsepittle," replied Jo, whispering, "till I was discharged, then giv me a little money--four half-bulls, wot you may call half-crowns--and ses 'Hook it! Nobody wants you here,' he ses. 'You hook it. You go and tramp,' he ses. 'You move on,' he ses. 'Don't let me ever see you nowheres within forty mile of London, or you'll repent it.' So I shall, if ever he doos see me, and he'll see me if I'm above ground," concludes Jo, nervously repeating all his former precautions and investigations. Allan considers a little, then remarks, turning to the woman but keeping an encouraging eye on Jo, "He is not so ungrateful as you supposed. He had a reason for going away, though it was an insufficient one." "Thankee, sir, thankee!" exclaims Jo. "There now! See how hard you wos upon me. But ony you tell the young lady wot the genlmn ses, and it's all right. For YOU wos wery good to me too, and I knows it." "Now, Jo," says Allan, keeping his eye upon him, "come with me and I will find you a better place than this to lie down and hide in. If I take one side of the way and you the other to avoid observation, you will not run away, I know very well, if you make me a promise." "I won't, not unless I wos to see HIM a-coming, sir." "Very well. I take your word. Half the town is getting up by this time, and the whole town will be broad awake in another hour. Come along. Good day again, my good woman." "Good day again, sir, and I thank you kindly many times again." She has been sitting on her bag, deeply attentive, and now rises and takes it up. Jo, repeating, "Ony you tell the young lady as I never went fur to hurt her and wot the genlmn ses!" nods and shambles and shivers, and smears and blinks, and half laughs and half cries, a farewell to her, and takes his creeping way along after Allan Woodcourt, close to the houses on the opposite side of the street. In this order, the two come up out of Tom-all-Alone's into the broad rays of the sunlight and the purer air.

Walking in Tom-all-Alone's toward dawn, Allan Woodcourt sees a woman with a badly bruised forehead. She allows him to treat it. Continuing his walk, he catches a glimpse of a shabbily dressed boy , whom he vaguely remembers. A few moments later, he sees the boy being chased by Jenny. Thinking that Jo may have robbed her, Allan chases and finally catches the boy. Jenny, however, only wanted to talk to him. Earlier, she had bought medicine for him and nursed him when he was ill with the sickness that eventually infected Esther. Walking in Tom-all-Alone's toward dawn, Allan Woodcourt sees a woman with a badly bruised forehead. She allows him to treat it. Continuing his walk, he catches a glimpse of a shabbily dressed boy , whom he vaguely remembers. A few moments later, he sees the boy being chased by Jenny. Thinking that Jo may have robbed her, Allan chases and finally catches the boy. Jenny, however, only wanted to talk to him. Earlier, she had bought medicine for him and nursed him when he was ill with the sickness that eventually infected Esther. Jo tells his story. He ran away from the young Lady who had taken charge of him during his fever and was then found by a man , who took him to a "horsepittle." The doctor tells Jo to come with him, and the two leave Tom-all-Alone's and emerge into "purer air."

The Wimpole Street laboratory. Midnight. Nobody in the room. The clock on the mantelpiece strikes twelve. The fire is not alight: it is a summer night. Presently Higgins and Pickering are heard on the stairs. HIGGINS [calling down to Pickering] I say, Pick: lock up, will you. I shan't be going out again. PICKERING. Right. Can Mrs. Pearce go to bed? We don't want anything more, do we? HIGGINS. Lord, no! Eliza opens the door and is seen on the lighted landing in opera cloak, brilliant evening dress, and diamonds, with fan, flowers, and all accessories. She comes to the hearth, and switches on the electric lights there. She is tired: her pallor contrasts strongly with her dark eyes and hair; and her expression is almost tragic. She takes off her cloak; puts her fan and flowers on the piano; and sits down on the bench, brooding and silent. Higgins, in evening dress, with overcoat and hat, comes in, carrying a smoking jacket which he has picked up downstairs. He takes off the hat and overcoat; throws them carelessly on the newspaper stand; disposes of his coat in the same way; puts on the smoking jacket; and throws himself wearily into the easy-chair at the hearth. Pickering, similarly attired, comes in. He also takes off his hat and overcoat, and is about to throw them on Higgins's when he hesitates. PICKERING. I say: Mrs. Pearce will row if we leave these things lying about in the drawing-room. HIGGINS. Oh, chuck them over the bannisters into the hall. She'll find them there in the morning and put them away all right. She'll think we were drunk. PICKERING. We are, slightly. Are there any letters? HIGGINS. I didn't look. [Pickering takes the overcoats and hats and goes down stairs. Higgins begins half singing half yawning an air from La Fanciulla del Golden West. Suddenly he stops and exclaims] I wonder where the devil my slippers are! Eliza looks at him darkly; then leaves the room. Higgins yawns again, and resumes his song. Pickering returns, with the contents of the letter-box in his hand. PICKERING. Only circulars, and this coroneted billet-doux for you. [He throws the circulars into the fender, and posts himself on the hearthrug, with his back to the grate]. HIGGINS [glancing at the billet-doux] Money-lender. [He throws the letter after the circulars]. Eliza returns with a pair of large down-at-heel slippers. She places them on the carpet before Higgins, and sits as before without a word. HIGGINS [yawning again] Oh Lord! What an evening! What a crew! What a silly tomfoollery! [He raises his shoe to unlace it, and catches sight of the slippers. He stops unlacing and looks at them as if they had appeared there of their own accord]. Oh! they're there, are they? PICKERING [stretching himself] Well, I feel a bit tired. It's been a long day. The garden party, a dinner party, and the opera! Rather too much of a good thing. But you've won your bet, Higgins. Eliza did the trick, and something to spare, eh? HIGGINS [fervently] Thank God it's over! Eliza flinches violently; but they take no notice of her; and she recovers herself and sits stonily as before. PICKERING. Were you nervous at the garden party? I was. Eliza didn't seem a bit nervous. HIGGINS. Oh, she wasn't nervous. I knew she'd be all right. No, it's the strain of putting the job through all these months that has told on me. It was interesting enough at first, while we were at the phonetics; but after that I got deadly sick of it. If I hadn't backed myself to do it I should have chucked the whole thing up two months ago. It was a silly notion: the whole thing has been a bore. PICKERING. Oh come! the garden party was frightfully exciting. My heart began beating like anything. HIGGINS. Yes, for the first three minutes. But when I saw we were going to win hands down, I felt like a bear in a cage, hanging about doing nothing. The dinner was worse: sitting gorging there for over an hour, with nobody but a damned fool of a fashionable woman to talk to! I tell you, Pickering, never again for me. No more artificial duchesses. The whole thing has been simple purgatory. PICKERING. You've never been broken in properly to the social routine. [Strolling over to the piano] I rather enjoy dipping into it occasionally myself: it makes me feel young again. Anyhow, it was a great success: an immense success. I was quite frightened once or twice because Eliza was doing it so well. You see, lots of the real people can't do it at all: they're such fools that they think style comes by nature to people in their position; and so they never learn. There's always something professional about doing a thing superlatively well. HIGGINS. Yes: that's what drives me mad: the silly people don't know their own silly business. [Rising] However, it's over and done with; and now I can go to bed at last without dreading tomorrow. Eliza's beauty becomes murderous. PICKERING. I think I shall turn in too. Still, it's been a great occasion: a triumph for you. Good-night. [He goes]. HIGGINS [following him] Good-night. [Over his shoulder, at the door] Put out the lights, Eliza; and tell Mrs. Pearce not to make coffee for me in the morning: I'll take tea. [He goes out]. Eliza tries to control herself and feel indifferent as she rises and walks across to the hearth to switch off the lights. By the time she gets there she is on the point of screaming. She sits down in Higgins's chair and holds on hard to the arms. Finally she gives way and flings herself furiously on the floor raging. HIGGINS [in despairing wrath outside] What the devil have I done with my slippers? [He appears at the door]. LIZA [snatching up the slippers, and hurling them at him one after the other with all her force] There are your slippers. And there. Take your slippers; and may you never have a day's luck with them! HIGGINS [astounded] What on earth--! [He comes to her]. What's the matter? Get up. [He pulls her up]. Anything wrong? LIZA [breathless] Nothing wrong--with YOU. I've won your bet for you, haven't I? That's enough for you. _I_ don't matter, I suppose. HIGGINS. YOU won my bet! You! Presumptuous insect! _I_ won it. What did you throw those slippers at me for? LIZA. Because I wanted to smash your face. I'd like to kill you, you selfish brute. Why didn't you leave me where you picked me out of--in the gutter? You thank God it's all over, and that now you can throw me back again there, do you? [She crisps her fingers, frantically]. HIGGINS [looking at her in cool wonder] The creature IS nervous, after all. LIZA [gives a suffocated scream of fury, and instinctively darts her nails at his face]!! HIGGINS [catching her wrists] Ah! would you? Claws in, you cat. How dare you show your temper to me? Sit down and be quiet. [He throws her roughly into the easy-chair]. LIZA [crushed by superior strength and weight] What's to become of me? What's to become of me? HIGGINS. How the devil do I know what's to become of you? What does it matter what becomes of you? LIZA. You don't care. I know you don't care. You wouldn't care if I was dead. I'm nothing to you--not so much as them slippers. HIGGINS [thundering] THOSE slippers. LIZA [with bitter submission] Those slippers. I didn't think it made any difference now. A pause. Eliza hopeless and crushed. Higgins a little uneasy. HIGGINS [in his loftiest manner] Why have you begun going on like this? May I ask whether you complain of your treatment here? LIZA. No. HIGGINS. Has anybody behaved badly to you? Colonel Pickering? Mrs. Pearce? Any of the servants? LIZA. No. HIGGINS. I presume you don't pretend that I have treated you badly. LIZA. No. HIGGINS. I am glad to hear it. [He moderates his tone]. Perhaps you're tired after the strain of the day. Will you have a glass of champagne? [He moves towards the door]. LIZA. No. [Recollecting her manners] Thank you. HIGGINS [good-humored again] This has been coming on you for some days. I suppose it was natural for you to be anxious about the garden party. But that's all over now. [He pats her kindly on the shoulder. She writhes]. There's nothing more to worry about. LIZA. No. Nothing more for you to worry about. [She suddenly rises and gets away from him by going to the piano bench, where she sits and hides her face]. Oh God! I wish I was dead. HIGGINS [staring after her in sincere surprise] Why? in heaven's name, why? [Reasonably, going to her] Listen to me, Eliza. All this irritation is purely subjective. LIZA. I don't understand. I'm too ignorant. HIGGINS. It's only imagination. Low spirits and nothing else. Nobody's hurting you. Nothing's wrong. You go to bed like a good girl and sleep it off. Have a little cry and say your prayers: that will make you comfortable. LIZA. I heard YOUR prayers. "Thank God it's all over!" HIGGINS [impatiently] Well, don't you thank God it's all over? Now you are free and can do what you like. LIZA [pulling herself together in desperation] What am I fit for? What have you left me fit for? Where am I to go? What am I to do? What's to become of me? HIGGINS [enlightened, but not at all impressed] Oh, that's what's worrying you, is it? [He thrusts his hands into his pockets, and walks about in his usual manner, rattling the contents of his pockets, as if condescending to a trivial subject out of pure kindness]. I shouldn't bother about it if I were you. I should imagine you won't have much difficulty in settling yourself, somewhere or other, though I hadn't quite realized that you were going away. [She looks quickly at him: he does not look at her, but examines the dessert stand on the piano and decides that he will eat an apple]. You might marry, you know. [He bites a large piece out of the apple, and munches it noisily]. You see, Eliza, all men are not confirmed old bachelors like me and the Colonel. Most men are the marrying sort (poor devils!); and you're not bad-looking; it's quite a pleasure to look at you sometimes--not now, of course, because you're crying and looking as ugly as the very devil; but when you're all right and quite yourself, you're what I should call attractive. That is, to the people in the marrying line, you understand. You go to bed and have a good nice rest; and then get up and look at yourself in the glass; and you won't feel so cheap. Eliza again looks at him, speechless, and does not stir. The look is quite lost on him: he eats his apple with a dreamy expression of happiness, as it is quite a good one. HIGGINS [a genial afterthought occurring to him] I daresay my mother could find some chap or other who would do very well-- LIZA. We were above that at the corner of Tottenham Court Road. HIGGINS [waking up] What do you mean? LIZA. I sold flowers. I didn't sell myself. Now you've made a lady of me I'm not fit to sell anything else. I wish you'd left me where you found me. HIGGINS [slinging the core of the apple decisively into the grate] Tosh, Eliza. Don't you insult human relations by dragging all this cant about buying and selling into it. You needn't marry the fellow if you don't like him. LIZA. What else am I to do? HIGGINS. Oh, lots of things. What about your old idea of a florist's shop? Pickering could set you up in one: he's lots of money. [Chuckling] He'll have to pay for all those togs you have been wearing today; and that, with the hire of the jewellery, will make a big hole in two hundred pounds. Why, six months ago you would have thought it the millennium to have a flower shop of your own. Come! you'll be all right. I must clear off to bed: I'm devilish sleepy. By the way, I came down for something: I forget what it was. LIZA. Your slippers. HIGGINS. Oh yes, of course. You shied them at me. [He picks them up, and is going out when she rises and speaks to him]. LIZA. Before you go, sir-- HIGGINS [dropping the slippers in his surprise at her calling him sir] Eh? LIZA. Do my clothes belong to me or to Colonel Pickering? HIGGINS [coming back into the room as if her question were the very climax of unreason] What the devil use would they be to Pickering? LIZA. He might want them for the next girl you pick up to experiment on. HIGGINS [shocked and hurt] Is THAT the way you feel towards us? LIZA. I don't want to hear anything more about that. All I want to know is whether anything belongs to me. My own clothes were burnt. HIGGINS. But what does it matter? Why need you start bothering about that in the middle of the night? LIZA. I want to know what I may take away with me. I don't want to be accused of stealing. HIGGINS [now deeply wounded] Stealing! You shouldn't have said that, Eliza. That shows a want of feeling. LIZA. I'm sorry. I'm only a common ignorant girl; and in my station I have to be careful. There can't be any feelings between the like of you and the like of me. Please will you tell me what belongs to me and what doesn't? HIGGINS [very sulky] You may take the whole damned houseful if you like. Except the jewels. They're hired. Will that satisfy you? [He turns on his heel and is about to go in extreme dudgeon]. LIZA [drinking in his emotion like nectar, and nagging him to provoke a further supply] Stop, please. [She takes off her jewels]. Will you take these to your room and keep them safe? I don't want to run the risk of their being missing. HIGGINS [furious] Hand them over. [She puts them into his hands]. If these belonged to me instead of to the jeweler, I'd ram them down your ungrateful throat. [He perfunctorily thrusts them into his pockets, unconsciously decorating himself with the protruding ends of the chains]. LIZA [taking a ring off] This ring isn't the jeweler's: it's the one you bought me in Brighton. I don't want it now. [Higgins dashes the ring violently into the fireplace, and turns on her so threateningly that she crouches over the piano with her hands over her face, and exclaims] Don't you hit me. HIGGINS. Hit you! You infamous creature, how dare you accuse me of such a thing? It is you who have hit me. You have wounded me to the heart. LIZA [thrilling with hidden joy] I'm glad. I've got a little of my own back, anyhow. HIGGINS [with dignity, in his finest professional style] You have caused me to lose my temper: a thing that has hardly ever happened to me before. I prefer to say nothing more tonight. I am going to bed. LIZA [pertly] You'd better leave a note for Mrs. Pearce about the coffee; for she won't be told by me. HIGGINS [formally] Damn Mrs. Pearce; and damn the coffee; and damn you; and damn my own folly in having lavished MY hard-earned knowledge and the treasure of my regard and intimacy on a heartless guttersnipe. [He goes out with impressive decorum, and spoils it by slamming the door savagely]. Eliza smiles for the first time; expresses her feelings by a wild pantomime in which an imitation of Higgins's exit is confused with her own triumph; and finally goes down on her knees on the hearthrug to look for the ring.

Act IV begins some time later and takes place in Higgins' laboratory-living room. The scene opens on the night after there has earlier been a great success where Eliza was presented as a duchess at an ambassador's garden party, as was stipulated in the original wager between Higgins and Pickering. Eliza has been a smashing success. Thus, when the scene opens, Higgins and Pickering are celebrating their triumph. Eliza enters; she is brilliantly dressed in impeccable taste but her "expression is almost tragic." Immediately, Higgins begins to look for his slippers, and he is so busy congratulating himself on his great success that he is unaware that Eliza has left the room and has returned with his slippers; to fetch Higgins' slippers is apparently another accepted aspect of her training. As Higgins and Pickering sit down and discuss the great triumph of the day, we hear that Eliza has been a tremendous success not only at the garden party, but also at the dinner party and at the opera later. Higgins then admits that after the first few minutes, it became obviously apparent that he was going to easily win his bet with Pickering, and, as a result, he was bored for the rest of the time. In contrast, Pickering rather enjoyed himself, especially the very professional manner in which Eliza carried the entire charade off. Pickering then retires for the evening, followed by Higgins, yelling to Eliza to put out the lights. Alone, Eliza gives vent to her pent-up fury as she flings herself furiously onto the floor, raging. At that moment, Higgins returns, looking for his slippers, which Eliza hurls at him with all her force. He is totally baffled by her display of anger. He is furthermore astounded by her calling him a "selfish brute" who is ready to throw her back into the gutter now that she has won his bet for him. Higgins is dumbfounded at her presumptuous claim; he refuses to acknowledge that she had anything to do with his winning the bet. The entire feat was accomplished by his coaching and his brilliance. When she physically attacks him, asking what is to become of her, Higgins restrains her and says, "What does it matter what becomes of you?" Higgins' brusqueness, however, subsides, and he relents enough to question her about her anxieties and to offer a glass of champagne to relieve the strain of the day. He assures her that she will feel better now that the garden party is over. Eliza's concerns, however, clearly and seriously involve the future. She asks: "What am I fit for? What have you left me fit for? Where am I to go? What am I to do? What's to become of me?" Even though both Mrs. Pearce and Mrs. Higgins have warned Higgins about this dilemma, he has obviously never given it a moment's thought. He can't imagine that she will have any difficulty in finding something to do -- or even in marrying someone. After all, not all men are "confirmed old bachelors" like Higgins and Pickering. Maybe Mrs. Higgins could find a young chap for her. Eliza then informs him that all that she has ever done is sell flowers; now, as a lady, she can't even sell flowers; all she can hope to do is sell herself. She wishes Higgins had left her where he found her. Higgins returns to Eliza's original desire to work in a flower shop, and he suggests that Pickering could perhaps set up Eliza in her own shop. Higgins thinks this solution settles everything, and once again, looking for his slippers, he prepares to retire. But Eliza has one more question. She wants to know what clothes belong to her, personally -- that is, what clothes may she keep and what clothes belong to the "experiment." After all, Higgins and Pickering might need some of the clothes for the next girl they pick up to experiment on. She reminds Higgins of her past: "I'm only a common ignorant girl; and in my station I have to be careful." Higgins tells her that she can take all the clothes, but she cannot have the jewelry; it was rented. She antagonizes him further by asking him to take the jewelry to his room so there will be no "risk of their being missing." She also returns a ring which he bought her, but he throws the ring so angrily into the fireplace that Eliza crouches over the piano, her hands over her face, crying, "Don't you hit me." Higgins now feels wounded, and when Eliza tells him that he had better leave a note for Mrs. Pearce because she won't do his errands any more, he leaves, slamming the door savagely and calling Eliza "a heartless guttersnipe." Alone, Eliza senses her triumph over the master; thus, she quickly kneels and digs the ring out of the ashes. She finds it, considers it for a moment, and then flings it down and goes upstairs in a rage.

Cyrano, Le Bret, the cadets, Christian de Neuvillette. A CADET (seated at a table, glass in hand): Cyrano! (Cyrano turns round): The story! CYRANO: In its time! (He goes up on Le Bret's arm. They talk in low voices.) THE CADET (rising and coming down): The story of the fray! 'Twill lesson well (He stops before the table where Christian is seated): This timid young apprentice! CHRISTIAN (raising his head): 'Prentice! Who? ANOTHER CADET: This sickly Northern greenhorn! CHRISTIAN: Sickly! FIRST CADET (mockingly): Hark! Monsieur de Neuvillette, this in your ear: There's somewhat here, one no more dares to name, Than to say 'rope' to one whose sire was hanged! CHRISTIAN: What may that be? ANOTHER CADET (in a terrible voice): See here! (He puts his finger three times, mysteriously, on his nose): Do you understand? CHRISTIAN: Oh! 'tis the. . . ANOTHER: Hush! oh, never breathe that word, Unless you'd reckon with him yonder! (He points to Cyrano, who is talking with Le Bret.) ANOTHER (who has meanwhile come up noiselessly to sit on the table--whispering behind him): Hark! He put two snuffling men to death, in rage, For the sole reason they spoke through their nose! ANOTHER (in a hollow voice, darting on all-fours from under the table, where he had crept): And if you would not perish in flower o' youth, --Oh, mention not the fatal cartilage! ANOTHER (clapping him on the shoulder): A word? A gesture! For the indiscreet His handkerchief may prove his winding-sheet! (Silence. All, with crossed arms, look at Christian. He rises and goes over to Carbon de Castel-Jaloux, who is talking to an officer, and feigns to see nothing.) CHRISTIAN: Captain! CARBON (turning and looking at him from head to foot): Sir! CHRISTIAN: Pray, what skills it best to do To Southerners who swagger?. . . CARBON: Give them proof That one may be a Northerner, yet brave! (He turns his back on him.) CHRISTIAN: I thank you. FIRST CADET (to Cyrano): Now the tale! ALL: The tale! CYRANO (coming toward them): The tale?. . . (All bring their stools up, and group round him, listening eagerly. Christian is astride a chair): Well! I went all alone to meet the band. The moon was shining, clock-like, full i' th' sky, When, suddenly, some careful clockwright passed A cloud of cotton-wool across the case That held this silver watch. And, presto! heigh! The night was inky black, and all the quays Were hidden in the murky dark. Gadsooks! One could see nothing further. . . CHRISTIAN: Than one's nose! (Silence. All slowly rise, looking in terror at Cyrano, who has stopped-- dumfounded. Pause.) CYRANO: Who on God's earth is that? A CADET (whispering): It is a man Who joined to-day. CYRANO (making a step toward Christian): To-day? CARBON (in a low voice): Yes. . .his name is The Baron de Neuvil. . . CYRANO (checking himself): Good! It is well. . . (He turns pale, flushes, makes as if to fall on Christian): I. . . (He controls himself): What said I?. . . (With a burst of rage): MORDIOUS!. . . (Then continues calmly): That it was dark. (Astonishment. The cadets reseat themselves, staring at him): On I went, thinking, 'For a knavish cause I may provoke some great man, some great prince, Who certainly could break'. . . CHRISTIAN: My nose!. . . (Every one starts up. Christian balances on his chair.) CYRANO (in a choked voice): . . .'My teeth! Who would break my teeth, and I, imprudent-like, Was poking. . .' CHRISTIAN: My nose!. . . CYRANO: 'My finger,. . .in the crack Between the tree and bark! He may prove strong And rap me. . .' CHRISTIAN: Over the nose. . . CYRANO (wiping his forehead): . . .'O' th' knuckles! Ay,' But I cried, 'Forward, Gascon! Duty calls! On, Cyrano!' And thus I ventured on. . . When, from the shadow, came. . . CHRISTIAN: A crack o' th' nose. CYRANO: I parry it--find myself. . . CHRISTIAN: Nose to nose. . . CYRANO (bounding on to him): Heaven and earth! (All the Gascons leap up to see, but when he is close to Christian he controls himself and continues): . . .With a hundred brawling sots, Who stank. . . CHRISTIAN: A noseful. . . CYRANO (white, but smiling): Onions, brandy-cups! I leapt out, head well down. . . CHRISTIAN: Nosing the wind! CYRANO: I charge!--gore two, impale one--run him through, One aims at me--Paf! and I parry. . . CHRISTIAN: Pif! CYRANO (bursting out): Great God! Out! all of you! (The cadets rush to the doors.) FIRST CADET: The tiger wakes! CYRANO: Every man, out! Leave me alone with him! SECOND CADET: We shall find him minced fine, minced into hash In a big pasty! RAGUENEAU: I am turning pale, And curl up, like a napkin, limp and white! CARBON: Let us be gone. ANOTHER: He will not leave a crumb! ANOTHER: I die of fright to think what will pass here! ANOTHER (shutting door right): Something too horrible! (All have gone out by different doors, some by the staircase. Cyrano and Christian are face to face, looking at each other for a moment.) Cyrano, Christian. CYRANO: Embrace me now! CHRISTIAN: Sir. . . CYRANO: You are brave. CHRISTIAN: Oh! but. . . CYRANO: Nay, I insist. CHRISTIAN: Pray tell me. . . CYRANO: Come, embrace! I am her brother. CHRISTIAN: Whose brother? CYRANO: Hers i' faith! Roxane's! CHRISTIAN (rushing up to him): O heavens! Her brother. . .? CYRANO: Cousin--brother!. . .the same thing! CHRISTIAN: And she has told you. . .? CYRANO: All! CHRISTIAN: She loves me? say! CYRANO: Maybe! CHRISTIAN (taking his hands): How glad I am to meet you, Sir! CYRANO: That may be called a sudden sentiment! CHRISTIAN: I ask your pardon. . . CYRANO (looking at him, with his hand on his shoulder): True, he's fair, the villain! CHRISTIAN: Ah, Sir! If you but knew my admiration!. . . CYRANO: But all those noses?. . . CHRISTIAN: Oh! I take them back! CYRANO: Roxane expects a letter. CHRISTIAN: Woe the day! CYRANO: How? CHRISTIAN: I am lost if I but ope my lips! CYRANO: Why so? CHRISTIAN: I am a fool--could die for shame! CYRANO: None is a fool who knows himself a fool. And you did not attack me like a fool. CHRISTIAN: Bah! One finds battle-cry to lead th' assault! I have a certain military wit, But, before women, can but hold my tongue. Their eyes! True, when I pass, their eyes are kind. . . CYRANO: And, when you stay, their hearts, methinks, are kinder? CHRISTIAN: No! for I am one of those men--tongue-tied, I know it--who can never tell their love. CYRANO: And I, meseems, had Nature been more kind, More careful, when she fashioned me,--had been One of those men who well could speak their love! CHRISTIAN: Oh, to express one's thoughts with facile grace!. . . CYRANO: . . .To be a musketeer, with handsome face! CHRISTIAN: Roxane is precieuse. I'm sure to prove A disappointment to her! CYRANO (looking at him): Had I but Such an interpreter to speak my soul! CHRISTIAN (with despair): Eloquence! Where to find it? CYRANO (abruptly): That I lend, If you lend me your handsome victor-charms; Blended, we make a hero of romance! CHRISTIAN: How so? CYRANO: Think you you can repeat what things I daily teach your tongue? CHRISTIAN: What do you mean? CYRANO: Roxane shall never have a disillusion! Say, wilt thou that we woo her, double-handed? Wilt thou that we two woo her, both together? Feel'st thou, passing from my leather doublet, Through thy laced doublet, all my soul inspiring? CHRISTIAN: But, Cyrano!. . . CYRANO: Will you, I say? CHRISTIAN: I fear! CYRANO: Since, by yourself, you fear to chill her heart, Will you--to kindle all her heart to flame-- Wed into one my phrases and your lips? CHRISTIAN: Your eyes flash! CYRANO: Will you? CHRISTIAN: Will it please you so? --Give you such pleasure? CYRANO (madly): It!. . . (Then calmly, business-like): It would amuse me! It is an enterprise to tempt a poet. Will you complete me, and let me complete you? You march victorious,--I go in your shadow; Let me be wit for you, be you my beauty! CHRISTIAN: The letter, that she waits for even now! I never can. . . CYRANO (taking out the letter he had written): See! Here it is--your letter! CHRISTIAN: What? CYRANO: Take it! Look, it wants but the address. CHRISTIAN: But I. . . CYRANO: Fear nothing. Send it. It will suit. CHRISTIAN: But have you. . .? CYRANO: Oh! We have our pockets full, We poets, of love-letters, writ to Chloes, Daphnes--creations of our noddle-heads. Our lady-loves,--phantasms of our brains, --Dream-fancies blown into soap-bubbles! Come! Take it, and change feigned love-words into true; I breathed my sighs and moans haphazard-wise; Call all these wandering love-birds home to nest. You'll see that I was in these lettered lines, --Eloquent all the more, the less sincere! --Take it, and make an end! CHRISTIAN: Were it not well To change some words? Written haphazard-wise, Will it fit Roxane? CYRANO: 'Twill fit like a glove! CHRISTIAN: But. . . CYRANO: Ah, credulity of love! Roxane Will think each word inspired by herself! CHRISTIAN: My friend! (He throws himself into Cyrano's arms. They remain thus.)

Christian enters and talks with the Guards, and the other cadets tell him that he must under no circumstances mention or imply the word "nose" in Cyrano's presence. The cadets ask Cyrano to tell them about the fights of the evening before. Averse as he was to telling reporters or poets about his exploits, he enjoys telling his friends. While Cyrano is talking, Christian continually interrupts him by interjecting the word "nose" into the story. Cyrano becomes more and more furious but, knowing that Christian is the man whom he has promised to protect, he cannot give vent to his anger. At last, he can stand it no longer. He sends everyone out and explains that he is Roxane's cousin. Christian confesses that he is afraid that he will lose Roxane because he cannot speak and write well -- he is only a simple soldier. Roxane is so refined that she will surely not love him. Cyrano says that together, with Christian's looks and Cyrano's genius, they make one perfect hero. Roxane will suffer no disappointment. He gives Christian the unsigned letter he had written, telling him to send it as his own -- he has but to sign it.

Mr. Bertram set off for--------, and Miss Crawford was prepared to find a great chasm in their society, and to miss him decidedly in the meetings which were now becoming almost daily between the families; and on their all dining together at the Park soon after his going, she retook her chosen place near the bottom of the table, fully expecting to feel a most melancholy difference in the change of masters. It would be a very flat business, she was sure. In comparison with his brother, Edmund would have nothing to say. The soup would be sent round in a most spiritless manner, wine drank without any smiles or agreeable trifling, and the venison cut up without supplying one pleasant anecdote of any former haunch, or a single entertaining story, about "my friend such a one." She must try to find amusement in what was passing at the upper end of the table, and in observing Mr. Rushworth, who was now making his appearance at Mansfield for the first time since the Crawfords' arrival. He had been visiting a friend in the neighbouring county, and that friend having recently had his grounds laid out by an improver, Mr. Rushworth was returned with his head full of the subject, and very eager to be improving his own place in the same way; and though not saying much to the purpose, could talk of nothing else. The subject had been already handled in the drawing-room; it was revived in the dining-parlour. Miss Bertram's attention and opinion was evidently his chief aim; and though her deportment showed rather conscious superiority than any solicitude to oblige him, the mention of Sotherton Court, and the ideas attached to it, gave her a feeling of complacency, which prevented her from being very ungracious. "I wish you could see Compton," said he; "it is the most complete thing! I never saw a place so altered in my life. I told Smith I did not know where I was. The approach _now_, is one of the finest things in the country: you see the house in the most surprising manner. I declare, when I got back to Sotherton yesterday, it looked like a prison--quite a dismal old prison." "Oh, for shame!" cried Mrs. Norris. "A prison indeed? Sotherton Court is the noblest old place in the world." "It wants improvement, ma'am, beyond anything. I never saw a place that wanted so much improvement in my life; and it is so forlorn that I do not know what can be done with it." "No wonder that Mr. Rushworth should think so at present," said Mrs. Grant to Mrs. Norris, with a smile; "but depend upon it, Sotherton will have _every_ improvement in time which his heart can desire." "I must try to do something with it," said Mr. Rushworth, "but I do not know what. I hope I shall have some good friend to help me." "Your best friend upon such an occasion," said Miss Bertram calmly, "would be Mr. Repton, I imagine." "That is what I was thinking of. As he has done so well by Smith, I think I had better have him at once. His terms are five guineas a day." "Well, and if they were _ten_," cried Mrs. Norris, "I am sure _you_ need not regard it. The expense need not be any impediment. If I were you, I should not think of the expense. I would have everything done in the best style, and made as nice as possible. Such a place as Sotherton Court deserves everything that taste and money can do. You have space to work upon there, and grounds that will well reward you. For my own part, if I had anything within the fiftieth part of the size of Sotherton, I should be always planting and improving, for naturally I am excessively fond of it. It would be too ridiculous for me to attempt anything where I am now, with my little half acre. It would be quite a burlesque. But if I had more room, I should take a prodigious delight in improving and planting. We did a vast deal in that way at the Parsonage: we made it quite a different place from what it was when we first had it. You young ones do not remember much about it, perhaps; but if dear Sir Thomas were here, he could tell you what improvements we made: and a great deal more would have been done, but for poor Mr. Norris's sad state of health. He could hardly ever get out, poor man, to enjoy anything, and _that_ disheartened me from doing several things that Sir Thomas and I used to talk of. If it had not been for _that_, we should have carried on the garden wall, and made the plantation to shut out the churchyard, just as Dr. Grant has done. We were always doing something as it was. It was only the spring twelvemonth before Mr. Norris's death that we put in the apricot against the stable wall, which is now grown such a noble tree, and getting to such perfection, sir," addressing herself then to Dr. Grant. "The tree thrives well, beyond a doubt, madam," replied Dr. Grant. "The soil is good; and I never pass it without regretting that the fruit should be so little worth the trouble of gathering." "Sir, it is a Moor Park, we bought it as a Moor Park, and it cost us--that is, it was a present from Sir Thomas, but I saw the bill--and I know it cost seven shillings, and was charged as a Moor Park." "You were imposed on, ma'am," replied Dr. Grant: "these potatoes have as much the flavour of a Moor Park apricot as the fruit from that tree. It is an insipid fruit at the best; but a good apricot is eatable, which none from my garden are." "The truth is, ma'am," said Mrs. Grant, pretending to whisper across the table to Mrs. Norris, "that Dr. Grant hardly knows what the natural taste of our apricot is: he is scarcely ever indulged with one, for it is so valuable a fruit; with a little assistance, and ours is such a remarkably large, fair sort, that what with early tarts and preserves, my cook contrives to get them all." Mrs. Norris, who had begun to redden, was appeased; and, for a little while, other subjects took place of the improvements of Sotherton. Dr. Grant and Mrs. Norris were seldom good friends; their acquaintance had begun in dilapidations, and their habits were totally dissimilar. After a short interruption Mr. Rushworth began again. "Smith's place is the admiration of all the country; and it was a mere nothing before Repton took it in hand. I think I shall have Repton." "Mr. Rushworth," said Lady Bertram, "if I were you, I would have a very pretty shrubbery. One likes to get out into a shrubbery in fine weather." Mr. Rushworth was eager to assure her ladyship of his acquiescence, and tried to make out something complimentary; but, between his submission to _her_ taste, and his having always intended the same himself, with the superadded objects of professing attention to the comfort of ladies in general, and of insinuating that there was one only whom he was anxious to please, he grew puzzled, and Edmund was glad to put an end to his speech by a proposal of wine. Mr. Rushworth, however, though not usually a great talker, had still more to say on the subject next his heart. "Smith has not much above a hundred acres altogether in his grounds, which is little enough, and makes it more surprising that the place can have been so improved. Now, at Sotherton we have a good seven hundred, without reckoning the water meadows; so that I think, if so much could be done at Compton, we need not despair. There have been two or three fine old trees cut down, that grew too near the house, and it opens the prospect amazingly, which makes me think that Repton, or anybody of that sort, would certainly have the avenue at Sotherton down: the avenue that leads from the west front to the top of the hill, you know," turning to Miss Bertram particularly as he spoke. But Miss Bertram thought it most becoming to reply-- "The avenue! Oh! I do not recollect it. I really know very little of Sotherton." Fanny, who was sitting on the other side of Edmund, exactly opposite Miss Crawford, and who had been attentively listening, now looked at him, and said in a low voice-- "Cut down an avenue! What a pity! Does it not make you think of Cowper? 'Ye fallen avenues, once more I mourn your fate unmerited.'" He smiled as he answered, "I am afraid the avenue stands a bad chance, Fanny." "I should like to see Sotherton before it is cut down, to see the place as it is now, in its old state; but I do not suppose I shall." "Have you never been there? No, you never can; and, unluckily, it is out of distance for a ride. I wish we could contrive it." "Oh! it does not signify. Whenever I do see it, you will tell me how it has been altered." "I collect," said Miss Crawford, "that Sotherton is an old place, and a place of some grandeur. In any particular style of building?" "The house was built in Elizabeth's time, and is a large, regular, brick building; heavy, but respectable looking, and has many good rooms. It is ill placed. It stands in one of the lowest spots of the park; in that respect, unfavourable for improvement. But the woods are fine, and there is a stream, which, I dare say, might be made a good deal of. Mr. Rushworth is quite right, I think, in meaning to give it a modern dress, and I have no doubt that it will be all done extremely well." Miss Crawford listened with submission, and said to herself, "He is a well-bred man; he makes the best of it." "I do not wish to influence Mr. Rushworth," he continued; "but, had I a place to new fashion, I should not put myself into the hands of an improver. I would rather have an inferior degree of beauty, of my own choice, and acquired progressively. I would rather abide by my own blunders than by his." "_You_ would know what you were about, of course; but that would not suit _me_. I have no eye or ingenuity for such matters, but as they are before me; and had I a place of my own in the country, I should be most thankful to any Mr. Repton who would undertake it, and give me as much beauty as he could for my money; and I should never look at it till it was complete." "It would be delightful to _me_ to see the progress of it all," said Fanny. "Ay, you have been brought up to it. It was no part of my education; and the only dose I ever had, being administered by not the first favourite in the world, has made me consider improvements _in_ _hand_ as the greatest of nuisances. Three years ago the Admiral, my honoured uncle, bought a cottage at Twickenham for us all to spend our summers in; and my aunt and I went down to it quite in raptures; but it being excessively pretty, it was soon found necessary to be improved, and for three months we were all dirt and confusion, without a gravel walk to step on, or a bench fit for use. I would have everything as complete as possible in the country, shrubberies and flower-gardens, and rustic seats innumerable: but it must all be done without my care. Henry is different; he loves to be doing." Edmund was sorry to hear Miss Crawford, whom he was much disposed to admire, speak so freely of her uncle. It did not suit his sense of propriety, and he was silenced, till induced by further smiles and liveliness to put the matter by for the present. "Mr. Bertram," said she, "I have tidings of my harp at last. I am assured that it is safe at Northampton; and there it has probably been these ten days, in spite of the solemn assurances we have so often received to the contrary." Edmund expressed his pleasure and surprise. "The truth is, that our inquiries were too direct; we sent a servant, we went ourselves: this will not do seventy miles from London; but this morning we heard of it in the right way. It was seen by some farmer, and he told the miller, and the miller told the butcher, and the butcher's son-in-law left word at the shop." "I am very glad that you have heard of it, by whatever means, and hope there will be no further delay." "I am to have it to-morrow; but how do you think it is to be conveyed? Not by a wagon or cart: oh no! nothing of that kind could be hired in the village. I might as well have asked for porters and a handbarrow." "You would find it difficult, I dare say, just now, in the middle of a very late hay harvest, to hire a horse and cart?" "I was astonished to find what a piece of work was made of it! To want a horse and cart in the country seemed impossible, so I told my maid to speak for one directly; and as I cannot look out of my dressing-closet without seeing one farmyard, nor walk in the shrubbery without passing another, I thought it would be only ask and have, and was rather grieved that I could not give the advantage to all. Guess my surprise, when I found that I had been asking the most unreasonable, most impossible thing in the world; had offended all the farmers, all the labourers, all the hay in the parish! As for Dr. Grant's bailiff, I believe I had better keep out of _his_ way; and my brother-in-law himself, who is all kindness in general, looked rather black upon me when he found what I had been at." "You could not be expected to have thought on the subject before; but when you _do_ think of it, you must see the importance of getting in the grass. The hire of a cart at any time might not be so easy as you suppose: our farmers are not in the habit of letting them out; but, in harvest, it must be quite out of their power to spare a horse." "I shall understand all your ways in time; but, coming down with the true London maxim, that everything is to be got with money, I was a little embarrassed at first by the sturdy independence of your country customs. However, I am to have my harp fetched to-morrow. Henry, who is good-nature itself, has offered to fetch it in his barouche. Will it not be honourably conveyed?" Edmund spoke of the harp as his favourite instrument, and hoped to be soon allowed to hear her. Fanny had never heard the harp at all, and wished for it very much. "I shall be most happy to play to you both," said Miss Crawford; "at least as long as you can like to listen: probably much longer, for I dearly love music myself, and where the natural taste is equal the player must always be best off, for she is gratified in more ways than one. Now, Mr. Bertram, if you write to your brother, I entreat you to tell him that my harp is come: he heard so much of my misery about it. And you may say, if you please, that I shall prepare my most plaintive airs against his return, in compassion to his feelings, as I know his horse will lose." "If I write, I will say whatever you wish me; but I do not, at present, foresee any occasion for writing." "No, I dare say, nor if he were to be gone a twelvemonth, would you ever write to him, nor he to you, if it could be helped. The occasion would never be foreseen. What strange creatures brothers are! You would not write to each other but upon the most urgent necessity in the world; and when obliged to take up the pen to say that such a horse is ill, or such a relation dead, it is done in the fewest possible words. You have but one style among you. I know it perfectly. Henry, who is in every other respect exactly what a brother should be, who loves me, consults me, confides in me, and will talk to me by the hour together, has never yet turned the page in a letter; and very often it is nothing more than--'Dear Mary, I am just arrived. Bath seems full, and everything as usual. Yours sincerely.' That is the true manly style; that is a complete brother's letter." "When they are at a distance from all their family," said Fanny, colouring for William's sake, "they can write long letters." "Miss Price has a brother at sea," said Edmund, "whose excellence as a correspondent makes her think you too severe upon us." "At sea, has she? In the king's service, of course?" Fanny would rather have had Edmund tell the story, but his determined silence obliged her to relate her brother's situation: her voice was animated in speaking of his profession, and the foreign stations he had been on; but she could not mention the number of years that he had been absent without tears in her eyes. Miss Crawford civilly wished him an early promotion. "Do you know anything of my cousin's captain?" said Edmund; "Captain Marshall? You have a large acquaintance in the navy, I conclude?" "Among admirals, large enough; but," with an air of grandeur, "we know very little of the inferior ranks. Post-captains may be very good sort of men, but they do not belong to _us_. Of various admirals I could tell you a great deal: of them and their flags, and the gradation of their pay, and their bickerings and jealousies. But, in general, I can assure you that they are all passed over, and all very ill used. Certainly, my home at my uncle's brought me acquainted with a circle of admirals. Of _Rears_ and _Vices_ I saw enough. Now do not be suspecting me of a pun, I entreat." Edmund again felt grave, and only replied, "It is a noble profession." "Yes, the profession is well enough under two circumstances: if it make the fortune, and there be discretion in spending it; but, in short, it is not a favourite profession of mine. It has never worn an amiable form to _me_." Edmund reverted to the harp, and was again very happy in the prospect of hearing her play. The subject of improving grounds, meanwhile, was still under consideration among the others; and Mrs. Grant could not help addressing her brother, though it was calling his attention from Miss Julia Bertram. "My dear Henry, have _you_ nothing to say? You have been an improver yourself, and from what I hear of Everingham, it may vie with any place in England. Its natural beauties, I am sure, are great. Everingham, as it _used_ to be, was perfect in my estimation: such a happy fall of ground, and such timber! What would I not give to see it again?" "Nothing could be so gratifying to me as to hear your opinion of it," was his answer; "but I fear there would be some disappointment: you would not find it equal to your present ideas. In extent, it is a mere nothing; you would be surprised at its insignificance; and, as for improvement, there was very little for me to do--too little: I should like to have been busy much longer." "You are fond of the sort of thing?" said Julia. "Excessively; but what with the natural advantages of the ground, which pointed out, even to a very young eye, what little remained to be done, and my own consequent resolutions, I had not been of age three months before Everingham was all that it is now. My plan was laid at Westminster, a little altered, perhaps, at Cambridge, and at one-and-twenty executed. I am inclined to envy Mr. Rushworth for having so much happiness yet before him. I have been a devourer of my own." "Those who see quickly, will resolve quickly, and act quickly," said Julia. "_You_ can never want employment. Instead of envying Mr. Rushworth, you should assist him with your opinion." Mrs. Grant, hearing the latter part of this speech, enforced it warmly, persuaded that no judgment could be equal to her brother's; and as Miss Bertram caught at the idea likewise, and gave it her full support, declaring that, in her opinion, it was infinitely better to consult with friends and disinterested advisers, than immediately to throw the business into the hands of a professional man, Mr. Rushworth was very ready to request the favour of Mr. Crawford's assistance; and Mr. Crawford, after properly depreciating his own abilities, was quite at his service in any way that could be useful. Mr. Rushworth then began to propose Mr. Crawford's doing him the honour of coming over to Sotherton, and taking a bed there; when Mrs. Norris, as if reading in her two nieces' minds their little approbation of a plan which was to take Mr. Crawford away, interposed with an amendment. "There can be no doubt of Mr. Crawford's willingness; but why should not more of us go? Why should not we make a little party? Here are many that would be interested in your improvements, my dear Mr. Rushworth, and that would like to hear Mr. Crawford's opinion on the spot, and that might be of some small use to you with _their_ opinions; and, for my own part, I have been long wishing to wait upon your good mother again; nothing but having no horses of my own could have made me so remiss; but now I could go and sit a few hours with Mrs. Rushworth, while the rest of you walked about and settled things, and then we could all return to a late dinner here, or dine at Sotherton, just as might be most agreeable to your mother, and have a pleasant drive home by moonlight. I dare say Mr. Crawford would take my two nieces and me in his barouche, and Edmund can go on horseback, you know, sister, and Fanny will stay at home with you." Lady Bertram made no objection; and every one concerned in the going was forward in expressing their ready concurrence, excepting Edmund, who heard it all and said nothing.

Tom goes off to gamble and get into trouble with friends. Later, Tom. Mary thought she'd be bummed since Edmund is not fun. At a dinner party Mary amuses herself by observing Mr. Rushworth and Maria. Mr. Rushworth is talking about hiring an "improver," or a landscape person to fix up the house for him. Home improvement was all the rage among the rich during this period and, if HGTV were around back then, the society folk would all be addicted. The group refers to a Mr. Repton, who is actually a famous real-life "improver" during this time period. Mrs. Norris rants for about ten minutes about how if she had the time/money/whatever she would be improving her house all the time. She also brags about all the improvements she made at the parsonage when she lived there but Dr. Grant essentially says, "Whatever, lady." Dr. Grant then insults the apricot tree that Mrs. Norris had planted back in the day, but Mrs. Grant steps in and appeases her. Crisis averted. They all switch to discussing the landscaping and redecorating that Mr. Rushworth can do at his house, Sotherton. Fanny quietly shares her opinion with Edmund. Fanny prefers to let nature do its thing rather than step in with a lot of landscaping. Henry shares that he's done lots of home improvement in his day. Mary says she doesn't care much about it, and shares that her uncle was always tearing up his home and his summer place to "improve" them, which was just annoying. Edmund is scandalized that Mary would share an unflattering story about her guardian in public. The group then discusses Mary's harp, which is due to arrive shortly via Pony Express, or however packages were shipped in the pre-FedEx days. Mary tried to hire a cart to go get the harp, but she's out in farm country during harvest time so there weren't any carts available. Mary is a city girl and is confused by this. Mary agrees to play for everyone when her harp arrives. Mary tells Edmund to include the news of her harp in his next letter to Tom and then makes fun of how brothers never bother to write each other like sisters do. She teases Henry for sending her some pretty second-rate letters. Fanny says that her brother William writes her awesome letters. Mary, Fanny, and Edmund then discuss careers in the navy. Mary makes a funny pun about how she's met plenty of Rears and Vices at her Admiral Uncle's house. Edmund disapproves of puns. Puns and navy aside, everyone is still talking about home improvement and Henry discusses the projects he's done and how he loves to be busy. Mr. Rushworth asks Henry to help him out with his house and Henry is cool with it. Everyone decides to take a road trip to check out Sotherton.

06 Liberty I was quite happy in my new place, and if there was one thing that I missed it must not be thought I was discontented; all who had to do with me were good and I had a light airy stable and the best of food. What more could I want? Why, liberty! For three years and a half of my life I had had all the liberty I could wish for; but now, week after week, month after month, and no doubt year after year, I must stand up in a stable night and day except when I am wanted, and then I must be just as steady and quiet as any old horse who has worked twenty years. Straps here and straps there, a bit in my mouth, and blinkers over my eyes. Now, I am not complaining, for I know it must be so. I only mean to say that for a young horse full of strength and spirits, who has been used to some large field or plain where he can fling up his head and toss up his tail and gallop away at full speed, then round and back again with a snort to his companions--I say it is hard never to have a bit more liberty to do as you like. Sometimes, when I have had less exercise than usual, I have felt so full of life and spring that when John has taken me out to exercise I really could not keep quiet; do what I would, it seemed as if I must jump, or dance, or prance, and many a good shake I know I must have given him, especially at the first; but he was always good and patient. "Steady, steady, my boy," he would say; "wait a bit, and we will have a good swing, and soon get the tickle out of your feet." Then as soon as we were out of the village, he would give me a few miles at a spanking trot, and then bring me back as fresh as before, only clear of the fidgets, as he called them. Spirited horses, when not enough exercised, are often called skittish, when it is only play; and some grooms will punish them, but our John did not; he knew it was only high spirits. Still, he had his own ways of making me understand by the tone of his voice or the touch of the rein. If he was very serious and quite determined, I always knew it by his voice, and that had more power with me than anything else, for I was very fond of him. I ought to say that sometimes we had our liberty for a few hours; this used to be on fine Sundays in the summer-time. The carriage never went out on Sundays, because the church was not far off. It was a great treat to us to be turned out into the home paddock or the old orchard; the grass was so cool and soft to our feet, the air so sweet, and the freedom to do as we liked was so pleasant--to gallop, to lie down, and roll over on our backs, or to nibble the sweet grass. Then it was a very good time for talking, as we stood together under the shade of the large chestnut tree.

Although Beauty just loves his life at Birtwick, he does say he misses one thing--his freedom. "For three years and a half of my life I had had all the liberty I could wish for; but now I must stand up in a stable night and day, except when I am wanted, and then I must be just as steady and quiet as any old horse who has worked twenty years" . Translation? Don't fence him in. He says he's not complaining, but... maybe just a little, Beauty? Beauty explains that young horses have a hard time keeping quiet if they're kept in a stall all day, but that John understands, and sometimes, on rare Sundays, Beauty still gets a few hours to roll in the grass.

As soon as his wife had driven off Ethan took his coat and cap from the peg. Mattie was washing up the dishes, humming one of the dance tunes of the night before. He said "So long, Matt," and she answered gaily "So long, Ethan"; and that was all. It was warm and bright in the kitchen. The sun slanted through the south window on the girl's moving figure, on the cat dozing in a chair, and on the geraniums brought in from the door-way, where Ethan had planted them in the summer to "make a garden" for Mattie. He would have liked to linger on, watching her tidy up and then settle down to her sewing; but he wanted still more to get the hauling done and be back at the farm before night. All the way down to the village he continued to think of his return to Mattie. The kitchen was a poor place, not "spruce" and shining as his mother had kept it in his boyhood; but it was surprising what a homelike look the mere fact of Zeena's absence gave it. And he pictured what it would be like that evening, when he and Mattie were there after supper. For the first time they would be alone together indoors, and they would sit there, one on each side of the stove, like a married couple, he in his stocking feet and smoking his pipe, she laughing and talking in that funny way she had, which was always as new to him as if he had never heard her before. The sweetness of the picture, and the relief of knowing that his fears of "trouble" with Zeena were unfounded, sent up his spirits with a rush, and he, who was usually so silent, whistled and sang aloud as he drove through the snowy fields. There was in him a slumbering spark of sociability which the long Starkfield winters had not yet extinguished. By nature grave and inarticulate, he admired recklessness and gaiety in others and was warmed to the marrow by friendly human intercourse. At Worcester, though he had the name of keeping to himself and not being much of a hand at a good time, he had secretly gloried in being clapped on the back and hailed as "Old Ethe" or "Old Stiff"; and the cessation of such familiarities had increased the chill of his return to Starkfield. There the silence had deepened about him year by year. Left alone, after his father's accident, to carry the burden of farm and mill, he had had no time for convivial loiterings in the village; and when his mother fell ill the loneliness of the house grew more oppressive than that of the fields. His mother had been a talker in her day, but after her "trouble" the sound of her voice was seldom heard, though she had not lost the power of speech. Sometimes, in the long winter evenings, when in desperation her son asked her why she didn't "say something," she would lift a finger and answer: "Because I'm listening"; and on stormy nights, when the loud wind was about the house, she would complain, if he spoke to her: "They're talking so out there that I can't hear you." It was only when she drew toward her last illness, and his cousin Zenobia Pierce came over from the next valley to help him nurse her, that human speech was heard again in the house. After the mortal silence of his long imprisonment Zeena's volubility was music in his ears. He felt that he might have "gone like his mother" if the sound of a new voice had not come to steady him. Zeena seemed to understand his case at a glance. She laughed at him for not knowing the simplest sick-bed duties and told him to "go right along out" and leave her to see to things. The mere fact of obeying her orders, of feeling free to go about his business again and talk with other men, restored his shaken balance and magnified his sense of what he owed her. Her efficiency shamed and dazzled him. She seemed to possess by instinct all the household wisdom that his long apprenticeship had not instilled in him. When the end came it was she who had to tell him to hitch up and go for the undertaker, and she thought it "funny" that he had not settled beforehand who was to have his mother's clothes and the sewing-machine. After the funeral, when he saw her preparing to go away, he was seized with an unreasoning dread of being left alone on the farm; and before he knew what he was doing he had asked her to stay there with him. He had often thought since that it would not have happened if his mother had died in spring instead of winter... When they married it was agreed that, as soon as he could straighten out the difficulties resulting from Mrs. Frome's long illness, they would sell the farm and saw-mill and try their luck in a large town. Ethan's love of nature did not take the form of a taste for agriculture. He had always wanted to be an engineer, and to live in towns, where there were lectures and big libraries and "fellows doing things." A slight engineering job in Florida, put in his way during his period of study at Worcester, increased his faith in his ability as well as his eagerness to see the world; and he felt sure that, with a "smart" wife like Zeena, it would not be long before he had made himself a place in it. Zeena's native village was slightly larger and nearer to the railway than Starkfield, and she had let her husband see from the first that life on an isolated farm was not what she had expected when she married. But purchasers were slow in coming, and while he waited for them Ethan learned the impossibility of transplanting her. She chose to look down on Starkfield, but she could not have lived in a place which looked down on her. Even Bettsbridge or Shadd's Falls would not have been sufficiently aware of her, and in the greater cities which attracted Ethan she would have suffered a complete loss of identity. And within a year of their marriage she developed the "sickliness" which had since made her notable even in a community rich in pathological instances. When she came to take care of his mother she had seemed to Ethan like the very genius of health, but he soon saw that her skill as a nurse had been acquired by the absorbed observation of her own symptoms. Then she too fell silent. Perhaps it was the inevitable effect of life on the farm, or perhaps, as she sometimes said, it was because Ethan "never listened." The charge was not wholly unfounded. When she spoke it was only to complain, and to complain of things not in his power to remedy; and to check a tendency to impatient retort he had first formed the habit of not answering her, and finally of thinking of other things while she talked. Of late, however, since he had reasons for observing her more closely, her silence had begun to trouble him. He recalled his mother's growing taciturnity, and wondered if Zeena were also turning "queer." Women did, he knew. Zeena, who had at her fingers' ends the pathological chart of the whole region, had cited many cases of the kind while she was nursing his mother; and he himself knew of certain lonely farm-houses in the neighbourhood where stricken creatures pined, and of others where sudden tragedy had come of their presence. At times, looking at Zeena's shut face, he felt the chill of such forebodings. At other times her silence seemed deliberately assumed to conceal far-reaching intentions, mysterious conclusions drawn from suspicions and resentments impossible to guess. That supposition was even more disturbing than the other; and it was the one which had come to him the night before, when he had seen her standing in the kitchen door. Now her departure for Bettsbridge had once more eased his mind, and all his thoughts were on the prospect of his evening with Mattie. Only one thing weighed on him, and that was his having told Zeena that he was to receive cash for the lumber. He foresaw so clearly the consequences of this imprudence that with considerable reluctance he decided to ask Andrew Hale for a small advance on his load. When Ethan drove into Hale's yard the builder was just getting out of his sleigh. "Hello, Ethe!" he said. "This comes handy." Andrew Hale was a ruddy man with a big gray moustache and a stubbly double-chin unconstrained by a collar; but his scrupulously clean shirt was always fastened by a small diamond stud. This display of opulence was misleading, for though he did a fairly good business it was known that his easygoing habits and the demands of his large family frequently kept him what Starkfield called "behind." He was an old friend of Ethan's family, and his house one of the few to which Zeena occasionally went, drawn there by the fact that Mrs. Hale, in her youth, had done more "doctoring" than any other woman in Starkfield, and was still a recognised authority on symptoms and treatment. Hale went up to the grays and patted their sweating flanks. "Well, sir," he said, "you keep them two as if they was pets." Ethan set about unloading the logs and when he had finished his job he pushed open the glazed door of the shed which the builder used as his office. Hale sat with his feet up on the stove, his back propped against a battered desk strewn with papers: the place, like the man, was warm, genial and untidy. "Sit right down and thaw out," he greeted Ethan. The latter did not know how to begin, but at length he managed to bring out his request for an advance of fifty dollars. The blood rushed to his thin skin under the sting of Hale's astonishment. It was the builder's custom to pay at the end of three months, and there was no precedent between the two men for a cash settlement. Ethan felt that if he had pleaded an urgent need Hale might have made shift to pay him; but pride, and an instinctive prudence, kept him from resorting to this argument. After his father's death it had taken time to get his head above water, and he did not want Andrew Hale, or any one else in Starkfield, to think he was going under again. Besides, he hated lying; if he wanted the money he wanted it, and it was nobody's business to ask why. He therefore made his demand with the awkwardness of a proud man who will not admit to himself that he is stooping; and he was not much surprised at Hale's refusal. The builder refused genially, as he did everything else: he treated the matter as something in the nature of a practical joke, and wanted to know if Ethan meditated buying a grand piano or adding a "cupolo" to his house; offering, in the latter case, to give his services free of cost. Ethan's arts were soon exhausted, and after an embarrassed pause he wished Hale good day and opened the door of the office. As he passed out the builder suddenly called after him: "See here--you ain't in a tight place, are you?" "Not a bit," Ethan's pride retorted before his reason had time to intervene. "Well, that's good! Because I am, a shade. Fact is, I was going to ask you to give me a little extra time on that payment. Business is pretty slack, to begin with, and then I'm fixing up a little house for Ned and Ruth when they're married. I'm glad to do it for 'em, but it costs." His look appealed to Ethan for sympathy. "The young people like things nice. You know how it is yourself: it's not so long ago since you fixed up your own place for Zeena." Ethan left the grays in Hale's stable and went about some other business in the village. As he walked away the builder's last phrase lingered in his ears, and he reflected grimly that his seven years with Zeena seemed to Starkfield "not so long." The afternoon was drawing to an end, and here and there a lighted pane spangled the cold gray dusk and made the snow look whiter. The bitter weather had driven every one indoors and Ethan had the long rural street to himself. Suddenly he heard the brisk play of sleigh-bells and a cutter passed him, drawn by a free-going horse. Ethan recognised Michael Eady's roan colt, and young Denis Eady, in a handsome new fur cap, leaned forward and waved a greeting. "Hello, Ethe!" he shouted and spun on. The cutter was going in the direction of the Frome farm, and Ethan's heart contracted as he listened to the dwindling bells. What more likely than that Denis Eady had heard of Zeena's departure for Bettsbridge, and was profiting by the opportunity to spend an hour with Mattie? Ethan was ashamed of the storm of jealousy in his breast. It seemed unworthy of the girl that his thoughts of her should be so violent. He walked on to the church corner and entered the shade of the Varnum spruces, where he had stood with her the night before. As he passed into their gloom he saw an indistinct outline just ahead of him. At his approach it melted for an instant into two separate shapes and then conjoined again, and he heard a kiss, and a half-laughing "Oh!" provoked by the discovery of his presence. Again the outline hastily disunited and the Varnum gate slammed on one half while the other hurried on ahead of him. Ethan smiled at the discomfiture he had caused. What did it matter to Ned Hale and Ruth Varnum if they were caught kissing each other? Everybody in Starkfield knew they were engaged. It pleased Ethan to have surprised a pair of lovers on the spot where he and Mattie had stood with such a thirst for each other in their hearts; but he felt a pang at the thought that these two need not hide their happiness. He fetched the grays from Hale's stable and started on his long climb back to the farm. The cold was less sharp than earlier in the day and a thick fleecy sky threatened snow for the morrow. Here and there a star pricked through, showing behind it a deep well of blue. In an hour or two the moon would push over the ridge behind the farm, burn a gold-edged rent in the clouds, and then be swallowed by them. A mournful peace hung on the fields, as though they felt the relaxing grasp of the cold and stretched themselves in their long winter sleep. Ethan's ears were alert for the jingle of sleigh-bells, but not a sound broke the silence of the lonely road. As he drew near the farm he saw, through the thin screen of larches at the gate, a light twinkling in the house above him. "She's up in her room," he said to himself, "fixing herself up for supper"; and he remembered Zeena's sarcastic stare when Mattie, on the evening of her arrival, had come down to supper with smoothed hair and a ribbon at her neck. He passed by the graves on the knoll and turned his head to glance at one of the older headstones, which had interested him deeply as a boy because it bore his name. SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF ETHAN FROME AND ENDURANCE HIS WIFE, WHO DWELLED TOGETHER IN PEACE FOR FIFTY YEARS. He used to think that fifty years sounded like a long time to live together; but now it seemed to him that they might pass in a flash. Then, with a sudden dart of irony, he wondered if, when their turn came, the same epitaph would be written over him and Zeena. He opened the barn-door and craned his head into the obscurity, half-fearing to discover Denis Eady's roan colt in the stall beside the sorrel. But the old horse was there alone, mumbling his crib with toothless jaws, and Ethan whistled cheerfully while he bedded down the grays and shook an extra measure of oats into their mangers. His was not a tuneful throat--but harsh melodies burst from it as he locked the barn and sprang up the hill to the house. He reached the kitchen-porch and turned the door-handle; but the door did not yield to his touch. Startled at finding it locked he rattled the handle violently; then he reflected that Mattie was alone and that it was natural she should barricade herself at nightfall. He stood in the darkness expecting to hear her step. It did not come, and after vainly straining his ears he called out in a voice that shook with joy: "Hello, Matt!" Silence answered; but in a minute or two he caught a sound on the stairs and saw a line of light about the door-frame, as he had seen it the night before. So strange was the precision with which the incidents of the previous evening were repeating themselves that he half expected, when he heard the key turn, to see his wife before him on the threshold; but the door opened, and Mattie faced him. She stood just as Zeena had stood, a lifted lamp in her hand, against the black background of the kitchen. She held the light at the same level, and it drew out with the same distinctness her slim young throat and the brown wrist no bigger than a child's. Then, striking upward, it threw a lustrous fleck on her lips, edged her eyes with velvet shade, and laid a milky whiteness above the black curve of her brows. She wore her usual dress of darkish stuff, and there was no bow at her neck; but through her hair she had run a streak of crimson ribbon. This tribute to the unusual transformed and glorified her. She seemed to Ethan taller, fuller, more womanly in shape and motion. She stood aside, smiling silently, while he entered, and then moved away from him with something soft and flowing in her gait. She set the lamp on the table, and he saw that it was carefully laid for supper, with fresh dough-nuts, stewed blueberries and his favourite pickles in a dish of gay red glass. A bright fire glowed in the stove and the cat lay stretched before it, watching the table with a drowsy eye. Ethan was suffocated with the sense of well-being. He went out into the passage to hang up his coat and pull off his wet boots. When he came back Mattie had set the teapot on the table and the cat was rubbing itself persuasively against her ankles. "Why, Puss! I nearly tripped over you," she cried, the laughter sparkling through her lashes. Again Ethan felt a sudden twinge of jealousy. Could it be his coming that gave her such a kindled face? "Well, Matt, any visitors?" he threw off, stooping down carelessly to examine the fastening of the stove. She nodded and laughed "Yes, one," and he felt a blackness settling on his brows. "Who was that?" he questioned, raising himself up to slant a glance at her beneath his scowl. Her eyes danced with malice. "Why, Jotham Powell. He came in after he got back, and asked for a drop of coffee before he went down home." The blackness lifted and light flooded Ethan's brain. "That all? Well, I hope you made out to let him have it." And after a pause he felt it right to add: "I suppose he got Zeena over to the Flats all right?" "Oh, yes; in plenty of time." The name threw a chill between them, and they stood a moment looking sideways at each other before Mattie said with a shy laugh. "I guess it's about time for supper." They drew their seats up to the table, and the cat, unbidden, jumped between them into Zeena's empty chair. "Oh, Puss!" said Mattie, and they laughed again. Ethan, a moment earlier, had felt himself on the brink of eloquence; but the mention of Zeena had paralysed him. Mattie seemed to feel the contagion of his embarrassment, and sat with downcast lids, sipping her tea, while he feigned an insatiable appetite for dough-nuts and sweet pickles. At last, after casting about for an effective opening, he took a long gulp of tea, cleared his throat, and said: "Looks as if there'd be more snow." She feigned great interest. "Is that so? Do you suppose it'll interfere with Zeena's getting back?" She flushed red as the question escaped her, and hastily set down the cup she was lifting. Ethan reached over for another helping of pickles. "You never can tell, this time of year, it drifts so bad on the Flats." The name had benumbed him again, and once more he felt as if Zeena were in the room between them. "Oh, Puss, you're too greedy!" Mattie cried. The cat, unnoticed, had crept up on muffled paws from Zeena's seat to the table, and was stealthily elongating its body in the direction of the milk-jug, which stood between Ethan and Mattie. The two leaned forward at the same moment and their hands met on the handle of the jug. Mattie's hand was underneath, and Ethan kept his clasped on it a moment longer than was necessary. The cat, profiting by this unusual demonstration, tried to effect an unnoticed retreat, and in doing so backed into the pickle-dish, which fell to the floor with a crash. Mattie, in an instant, had sprung from her chair and was down on her knees by the fragments. "Oh, Ethan, Ethan--it's all to pieces! What will Zeena say?" But this time his courage was up. "Well, she'll have to say it to the cat, any way!" he rejoined with a laugh, kneeling down at Mattie's side to scrape up the swimming pickles. She lifted stricken eyes to him. "Yes, but, you see, she never meant it should be used, not even when there was company; and I had to get up on the step-ladder to reach it down from the top shelf of the china-closet, where she keeps it with all her best things, and of course she'll want to know why I did it--" The case was so serious that it called forth all of Ethan's latent resolution. "She needn't know anything about it if you keep quiet. I'll get another just like it to-morrow. Where did it come from? I'll go to Shadd's Falls for it if I have to!" "Oh, you'll never get another even there! It was a wedding present--don't you remember? It came all the way from Philadelphia, from Zeena's aunt that married the minister. That's why she wouldn't ever use it. Oh, Ethan, Ethan, what in the world shall I do?" She began to cry, and he felt as if every one of her tears were pouring over him like burning lead. "Don't, Matt, don't--oh, don't!" he implored her. She struggled to her feet, and he rose and followed her helplessly while she spread out the pieces of glass on the kitchen dresser. It seemed to him as if the shattered fragments of their evening lay there. "Here, give them to me," he said in a voice of sudden authority. She drew aside, instinctively obeying his tone. "Oh, Ethan, what are you going to do?" Without replying he gathered the pieces of glass into his broad palm and walked out of the kitchen to the passage. There he lit a candle-end, opened the china-closet, and, reaching his long arm up to the highest shelf, laid the pieces together with such accuracy of touch that a close inspection convinced him of the impossibility of detecting from below that the dish was broken. If he glued it together the next morning months might elapse before his wife noticed what had happened, and meanwhile he might after all be able to match the dish at Shadd's Falls or Bettsbridge. Having satisfied himself that there was no risk of immediate discovery he went back to the kitchen with a lighter step, and found Mattie disconsolately removing the last scraps of pickle from the floor. "It's all right, Matt. Come back and finish supper," he commanded her. Completely reassured, she shone on him through tear-hung lashes, and his soul swelled with pride as he saw how his tone subdued her. She did not even ask what he had done. Except when he was steering a big log down the mountain to his mill he had never known such a thrilling sense of mastery.

After Zeena leaves, Mattie and Ethan cheerfully set off to do their afternoon work; Ethan must do some hauling, and Mattie has housework to complete. As he works, he thinks about home. He remembers how nicely his mother had kept the house before her death and how it has again revived under Mattie's care. He also dreams about the evening that he and Mattie will spend together; he sees them talking happily, like a married couple. The mental picture delights him, and he whistles at his work. Ethan is always warmed by human contact, but he has had little since his return from college, where they called him "Old Ethe," or "Old Stiff. " Once his mother grew sick, she seldom spoke to him, and the duties of the farm left him little time for outside social activities. When Zeena arrived to care for his mother, the sound of her voice steadied Ethan. Zeena took care of his mother and the house efficiently, and he felt he owed her something. When she prepared to leave, after his mother's funeral, he felt such a dread of being left alone that he asked her to stay. If only his mother had died in spring, not winter, things might be different. Early in the marriage, Ethan and Zeena had planned to pay off their debts, sell the farm, and try life in a large town, for Ethan did not particularly like farming. Unfortunately, their farm did not sell, and they were forced to stay in Starkfield. After a year of marriage, Zeena developed her sickliness. She also stopped talking, except to complain of her illnesses. He is again sorry that he told Zeena about the cash that Hale owes him; but he knows he probably won't be paid. Hale only dresses like a wealthy man; everyone knows he is often "behind." When he goes to see Hale, Ethan unloads the logs and meets the customer in his genial, untidy office. Hale is friendly, but astonished at Ethan's request for payment. Ethan is too shy and proud to plead urgent need. Hale treats the whole matter as a joke, and Ethan leaves the office after an embarrassed silence. When Hale follows him and questions him further about need, Ethan's pride causes him to deny any urgency. Hale then says that he was going to ask Ethan for an extension on payment anyway, since Ned Hale Jr. is about to marry and he would like to fix up a place for his son and his son's bride. Before he departs, Hale reminds Ethan that he and Zeena were married not too long ago, a thought that makes Ethan feel grim. Ethan walks around the deserted town, running errands in the cold weather. When Denis Eady passes him cheerily in his sleigh, Ethan wonders if the young man has heard that Zeena is gone and is heading out to see Mattie. As Ethan comes to the church corner where he and Mattie stood the night before, he catches Ruth Varnum and Ned Hale kissing. They gasp in embarrassment and run away. Ethan notes that at least they are engaged and can share their happiness in public. With his errands complete, Ethan eagerly heads for home. At his gate, he notices light up in Mattie's window and hopes she is fixing herself up for dinner. When she first arrived, she had often done this, but Zeena discouraged it by staring at her sarcastically. As Ethan passes by the family graveyard, he notices the stone over the grave of his namesake; it says "Ethan and Endurance Frome" and states they were married for fifty years. He wonders if he and Zeena will get such a gravestone. At the house, Ethan puts his horses up and is happy to see that Denis Eady's sleigh is not in his barn. Ethan sings as he walks to the door, which he finds locked. He shakes it violently and calls out to Mattie. A light appears, and the door is opened by the young, smiling Mattie. How different she appears at the door than Zeena on the previous night! She has a red ribbon in her hair, the fire burns brightly, and the table is set with wonderful food. It is Mattie's way of communicating that she cares for Ethan, and it works. Ethan suddenly feels a sense of well-being. Ethan asks Mattie if she has had any visitors. She laughs and says she has had one. Ethan scowls and inquires who. She smiles and says that Jotham has stopped to get a bit of coffee on his way back from taking Zeena to the Flats. The mention of Zeena's name puts a chill between them, and they sit down to dinner in silence. The cat creeps from Zeena's chair towards the milk jug on the table, and as they reach to shoo her away, the cat backs into the pickle dish, which shatters on the floor. Mattie is horrified, for the pickle dish is Zeena's special pride that is seldom used. At first Ethan tries to laugh it off, but he realizes the case is serious. He says he will go to town to buy another tomorrow, but Mattie reminds him that it was a wedding present, all the way from Philadelphia. Mattie begins to cry. It is as if their evening is shattered. But Ethan takes the pieces and puts them up in the china-closet. He will mend the dish tomorrow and try to locate a new one soon. This will buy them some time, and Zeena may not ever know. Ethan returns to Mattie and reassures her. He sees how his calm tone has subdued her, and he feels masterful.

Jo was very busy in the garret, for the October days began to grow chilly, and the afternoons were short. For two or three hours the sun lay warmly in the high window, showing Jo seated on the old sofa, writing busily, with her papers spread out upon a trunk before her, while Scrabble, the pet rat, promenaded the beams overhead, accompanied by his oldest son, a fine young fellow, who was evidently very proud of his whiskers. Quite absorbed in her work, Jo scribbled away till the last page was filled, when she signed her name with a flourish and threw down her pen, exclaiming... "There, I've done my best! If this won't suit I shall have to wait till I can do better." Lying back on the sofa, she read the manuscript carefully through, making dashes here and there, and putting in many exclamation points, which looked like little balloons. Then she tied it up with a smart red ribbon, and sat a minute looking at it with a sober, wistful expression, which plainly showed how earnest her work had been. Jo's desk up here was an old tin kitchen which hung against the wall. In it she kept her papers, and a few books, safely shut away from Scrabble, who, being likewise of a literary turn, was fond of making a circulating library of such books as were left in his way by eating the leaves. From this tin receptacle Jo produced another manuscript, and putting both in her pocket, crept quietly downstairs, leaving her friends to nibble on her pens and taste her ink. She put on her hat and jacket as noiselessly as possible, and going to the back entry window, got out upon the roof of a low porch, swung herself down to the grassy bank, and took a roundabout way to the road. Once there, she composed herself, hailed a passing omnibus, and rolled away to town, looking very merry and mysterious. If anyone had been watching her, he would have thought her movements decidedly peculiar, for on alighting, she went off at a great pace till she reached a certain number in a certain busy street. Having found the place with some difficulty, she went into the doorway, looked up the dirty stairs, and after standing stock still a minute, suddenly dived into the street and walked away as rapidly as she came. This maneuver she repeated several times, to the great amusement of a black-eyed young gentleman lounging in the window of a building opposite. On returning for the third time, Jo gave herself a shake, pulled her hat over her eyes, and walked up the stairs, looking as if she were going to have all her teeth out. There was a dentist's sign, among others, which adorned the entrance, and after staring a moment at the pair of artificial jaws which slowly opened and shut to draw attention to a fine set of teeth, the young gentleman put on his coat, took his hat, and went down to post himself in the opposite doorway, saying with a smile and a shiver, "It's like her to come alone, but if she has a bad time she'll need someone to help her home." In ten minutes Jo came running downstairs with a very red face and the general appearance of a person who had just passed through a trying ordeal of some sort. When she saw the young gentleman she looked anything but pleased, and passed him with a nod. But he followed, asking with an air of sympathy, "Did you have a bad time?" "Not very." "You got through quickly." "Yes, thank goodness!" "Why did you go alone?" "Didn't want anyone to know." "You're the oddest fellow I ever saw. How many did you have out?" Jo looked at her friend as if she did not understand him, then began to laugh as if mightily amused at something. "There are two which I want to have come out, but I must wait a week." "What are you laughing at? You are up to some mischief, Jo," said Laurie, looking mystified. "So are you. What were you doing, sir, up in that billiard saloon?" "Begging your pardon, ma'am, it wasn't a billiard saloon, but a gymnasium, and I was taking a lesson in fencing." "I'm glad of that." "Why?" "You can teach me, and then when we play _Hamlet_, you can be Laertes, and we'll make a fine thing of the fencing scene." Laurie burst out with a hearty boy's laugh, which made several passers-by smile in spite of themselves. "I'll teach you whether we play _Hamlet_ or not. It's grand fun and will straighten you up capitally. But I don't believe that was your only reason for saying 'I'm glad' in that decided way, was it now?" "No, I was glad that you were not in the saloon, because I hope you never go to such places. Do you?" "Not often." "I wish you wouldn't." "It's no harm, Jo. I have billiards at home, but it's no fun unless you have good players, so, as I'm fond of it, I come sometimes and have a game with Ned Moffat or some of the other fellows." "Oh, dear, I'm so sorry, for you'll get to liking it better and better, and will waste time and money, and grow like those dreadful boys. I did hope you'd stay respectable and be a satisfaction to your friends," said Jo, shaking her head. "Can't a fellow take a little innocent amusement now and then without losing his respectability?" asked Laurie, looking nettled. "That depends upon how and where he takes it. I don't like Ned and his set, and wish you'd keep out of it. Mother won't let us have him at our house, though he wants to come. And if you grow like him she won't be willing to have us frolic together as we do now." "Won't she?" asked Laurie anxiously. "No, she can't bear fashionable young men, and she'd shut us all up in bandboxes rather than have us associate with them." "Well, she needn't get out her bandboxes yet. I'm not a fashionable party and don't mean to be, but I do like harmless larks now and then, don't you?" "Yes, nobody minds them, so lark away, but don't get wild, will you? Or there will be an end of all our good times." "I'll be a double distilled saint." "I can't bear saints. Just be a simple, honest, respectable boy, and we'll never desert you. I don't know what I should do if you acted like Mr. King's son. He had plenty of money, but didn't know how to spend it, and got tipsy and gambled, and ran away, and forged his father's name, I believe, and was altogether horrid." "You think I'm likely to do the same? Much obliged." "No, I don't--oh, dear, no!--but I hear people talking about money being such a temptation, and I sometimes wish you were poor. I shouldn't worry then." "Do you worry about me, Jo?" "A little, when you look moody and discontented, as you sometimes do, for you've got such a strong will, if you once get started wrong, I'm afraid it would be hard to stop you." Laurie walked in silence a few minutes, and Jo watched him, wishing she had held her tongue, for his eyes looked angry, though his lips smiled as if at her warnings. "Are you going to deliver lectures all the way home?" he asked presently. "Of course not. Why?" "Because if you are, I'll take a bus. If you're not, I'd like to walk with you and tell you something very interesting." "I won't preach any more, and I'd like to hear the news immensely." "Very well, then, come on. It's a secret, and if I tell you, you must tell me yours." "I haven't got any," began Jo, but stopped suddenly, remembering that she had. "You know you have--you can't hide anything, so up and 'fess, or I won't tell," cried Laurie. "Is your secret a nice one?" "Oh, isn't it! All about people you know, and such fun! You ought to hear it, and I've been aching to tell it this long time. Come, you begin." "You'll not say anything about it at home, will you?" "Not a word." "And you won't tease me in private?" "I never tease." "Yes, you do. You get everything you want out of people. I don't know how you do it, but you are a born wheedler." "Thank you. Fire away." "Well, I've left two stories with a newspaperman, and he's to give his answer next week," whispered Jo, in her confidant's ear. "Hurrah for Miss March, the celebrated American authoress!" cried Laurie, throwing up his hat and catching it again, to the great delight of two ducks, four cats, five hens, and half a dozen Irish children, for they were out of the city now. "Hush! It won't come to anything, I dare say, but I couldn't rest till I had tried, and I said nothing about it because I didn't want anyone else to be disappointed." "It won't fail. Why, Jo, your stories are works of Shakespeare compared to half the rubbish that is published every day. Won't it be fun to see them in print, and shan't we feel proud of our authoress?" Jo's eyes sparkled, for it is always pleasant to be believed in, and a friend's praise is always sweeter than a dozen newspaper puffs. "Where's your secret? Play fair, Teddy, or I'll never believe you again," she said, trying to extinguish the brilliant hopes that blazed up at a word of encouragement. "I may get into a scrape for telling, but I didn't promise not to, so I will, for I never feel easy in my mind till I've told you any plummy bit of news I get. I know where Meg's glove is." "Is that all?" said Jo, looking disappointed, as Laurie nodded and twinkled with a face full of mysterious intelligence. "It's quite enough for the present, as you'll agree when I tell you where it is." "Tell, then." Laurie bent, and whispered three words in Jo's ear, which produced a comical change. She stood and stared at him for a minute, looking both surprised and displeased, then walked on, saying sharply, "How do you know?" "Saw it." "Where?" "Pocket." "All this time?" "Yes, isn't that romantic?" "No, it's horrid." "Don't you like it?" "Of course I don't. It's ridiculous, it won't be allowed. My patience! What would Meg say?" "You are not to tell anyone. Mind that." "I didn't promise." "That was understood, and I trusted you." "Well, I won't for the present, anyway, but I'm disgusted, and wish you hadn't told me." "I thought you'd be pleased." "At the idea of anybody coming to take Meg away? No, thank you." "You'll feel better about it when somebody comes to take you away." "I'd like to see anyone try it," cried Jo fiercely. "So should I!" and Laurie chuckled at the idea. "I don't think secrets agree with me, I feel rumpled up in my mind since you told me that," said Jo rather ungratefully. "Race down this hill with me, and you'll be all right," suggested Laurie. No one was in sight, the smooth road sloped invitingly before her, and finding the temptation irresistible, Jo darted away, soon leaving hat and comb behind her and scattering hairpins as she ran. Laurie reached the goal first and was quite satisfied with the success of his treatment, for his Atlanta came panting up with flying hair, bright eyes, ruddy cheeks, and no signs of dissatisfaction in her face. "I wish I was a horse, then I could run for miles in this splendid air, and not lose my breath. It was capital, but see what a guy it's made me. Go, pick up my things, like a cherub, as you are," said Jo, dropping down under a maple tree, which was carpeting the bank with crimson leaves. Laurie leisurely departed to recover the lost property, and Jo bundled up her braids, hoping no one would pass by till she was tidy again. But someone did pass, and who should it be but Meg, looking particularly ladylike in her state and festival suit, for she had been making calls. "What in the world are you doing here?" she asked, regarding her disheveled sister with well-bred surprise. "Getting leaves," meekly answered Jo, sorting the rosy handful she had just swept up. "And hairpins," added Laurie, throwing half a dozen into Jo's lap. "They grow on this road, Meg, so do combs and brown straw hats." "You have been running, Jo. How could you? When will you stop such romping ways?" said Meg reprovingly, as she settled her cuffs and smoothed her hair, with which the wind had taken liberties. "Never till I'm stiff and old and have to use a crutch. Don't try to make me grow up before my time, Meg. It's hard enough to have you change all of a sudden. Let me be a little girl as long as I can." As she spoke, Jo bent over the leaves to hide the trembling of her lips, for lately she had felt that Margaret was fast getting to be a woman, and Laurie's secret made her dread the separation which must surely come some time and now seemed very near. He saw the trouble in her face and drew Meg's attention from it by asking quickly, "Where have you been calling, all so fine?" "At the Gardiners', and Sallie has been telling me all about Belle Moffat's wedding. It was very splendid, and they have gone to spend the winter in Paris. Just think how delightful that must be!" "Do you envy her, Meg?" said Laurie. "I'm afraid I do." "I'm glad of it!" muttered Jo, tying on her hat with a jerk. "Why?" asked Meg, looking surprised. "Because if you care much about riches, you will never go and marry a poor man," said Jo, frowning at Laurie, who was mutely warning her to mind what she said. "I shall never '_go_ and marry' anyone," observed Meg, walking on with great dignity while the others followed, laughing, whispering, skipping stones, and 'behaving like children', as Meg said to herself, though she might have been tempted to join them if she had not had her best dress on. For a week or two, Jo behaved so queerly that her sisters were quite bewildered. She rushed to the door when the postman rang, was rude to Mr. Brooke whenever they met, would sit looking at Meg with a woe-begone face, occasionally jumping up to shake and then kiss her in a very mysterious manner. Laurie and she were always making signs to one another, and talking about 'Spread Eagles' till the girls declared they had both lost their wits. On the second Saturday after Jo got out of the window, Meg, as she sat sewing at her window, was scandalized by the sight of Laurie chasing Jo all over the garden and finally capturing her in Amy's bower. What went on there, Meg could not see, but shrieks of laughter were heard, followed by the murmur of voices and a great flapping of newspapers. "What shall we do with that girl? She never _will_ behave like a young lady," sighed Meg, as she watched the race with a disapproving face. "I hope she won't. She is so funny and dear as she is," said Beth, who had never betrayed that she was a little hurt at Jo's having secrets with anyone but her. "It's very trying, but we never can make her _commy la fo_," added Amy, who sat making some new frills for herself, with her curls tied up in a very becoming way, two agreeable things that made her feel unusually elegant and ladylike. In a few minutes Jo bounced in, laid herself on the sofa, and affected to read. "Have you anything interesting there?" asked Meg, with condescension. "Nothing but a story, won't amount to much, I guess," returned Jo, carefully keeping the name of the paper out of sight. "You'd better read it aloud. That will amuse us and keep you out of mischief," said Amy in her most grown-up tone. "What's the name?" asked Beth, wondering why Jo kept her face behind the sheet. "The Rival Painters." "That sounds well. Read it," said Meg. With a loud "Hem!" and a long breath, Jo began to read very fast. The girls listened with interest, for the tale was romantic, and somewhat pathetic, as most of the characters died in the end. "I like that about the splendid picture," was Amy's approving remark, as Jo paused. "I prefer the lovering part. Viola and Angelo are two of our favorite names, isn't that queer?" said Meg, wiping her eyes, for the lovering part was tragical. "Who wrote it?" asked Beth, who had caught a glimpse of Jo's face. The reader suddenly sat up, cast away the paper, displaying a flushed countenance, and with a funny mixture of solemnity and excitement replied in a loud voice, "Your sister." "You?" cried Meg, dropping her work. "It's very good," said Amy critically. "I knew it! I knew it! Oh, my Jo, I am so proud!" and Beth ran to hug her sister and exult over this splendid success. Dear me, how delighted they all were, to be sure! How Meg wouldn't believe it till she saw the words. "Miss Josephine March," actually printed in the paper. How graciously Amy criticized the artistic parts of the story, and offered hints for a sequel, which unfortunately couldn't be carried out, as the hero and heroine were dead. How Beth got excited, and skipped and sang with joy. How Hannah came in to exclaim, "Sakes alive, well I never!" in great astonishment at 'that Jo's doin's'. How proud Mrs. March was when she knew it. How Jo laughed, with tears in her eyes, as she declared she might as well be a peacock and done with it, and how the 'Spread Eagle' might be said to flap his wings triumphantly over the House of March, as the paper passed from hand to hand. "Tell us about it." "When did it come?" "How much did you get for it?" "What will Father say?" "Won't Laurie laugh?" cried the family, all in one breath as they clustered about Jo, for these foolish, affectionate people made a jubilee of every little household joy. "Stop jabbering, girls, and I'll tell you everything," said Jo, wondering if Miss Burney felt any grander over her Evelina than she did over her 'Rival Painters'. Having told how she disposed of her tales, Jo added, "And when I went to get my answer, the man said he liked them both, but didn't pay beginners, only let them print in his paper, and noticed the stories. It was good practice, he said, and when the beginners improved, anyone would pay. So I let him have the two stories, and today this was sent to me, and Laurie caught me with it and insisted on seeing it, so I let him. And he said it was good, and I shall write more, and he's going to get the next paid for, and I am so happy, for in time I may be able to support myself and help the girls." Jo's breath gave out here, and wrapping her head in the paper, she bedewed her little story with a few natural tears, for to be independent and earn the praise of those she loved were the dearest wishes of her heart, and this seemed to be the first step toward that happy end.

Secrets Jo finishes the manuscripts for two stories and brings them to a newspaperman in town without telling anyone. She is very anxious. She meets Laurie as she comes out of the news office. After he pleads with her to tell him what is going on, she confides her secret. Laurie then tells Jo his secret--that Mr. Brooke has kept Meg's glove and carries it with him wherever he goes. This secret disgusts Jo, because she hates the idea of someone loving Meg and taking her away. Laurie, in an attempt to cheer Jo, persuades her to race him down a hill. In a wild, messy state, they encounter Meg, who has just visited the Gardiners. Meg reprimands Jo, though she secretly feels tempted to join their romp. For about a week, Jo behaves strangely. Then, one day, she reads a story aloud from a paper and announces at the end that the story was hers. She has not gotten paid, but she says that she will for future stories. She feels wonderfully independent

Ragueneau, pastry-cooks, then Lise. Ragueneau is writing, with an inspired air, at a small table, and counting on his fingers. FIRST PASTRY-COOK (bringing in an elaborate fancy dish): Fruits in nougat! SECOND PASTRY-COOK (bringing another dish): Custard! THIRD PASTRY-COOK (bringing a roast, decorated with feathers): Peacock! FOURTH PASTRY-COOK (bringing a batch of cakes on a slab): Rissoles! FIFTH PASTRY-COOK (bringing a sort of pie-dish): Beef jelly! RAGUENEAU (ceasing to write, and raising his head): Aurora's silver rays begin to glint e'en now on the copper pans, and thou, O Ragueneau! must perforce stifle in thy breast the God of Song! Anon shall come the hour of the lute!--now 'tis the hour of the oven! (He rises. To a cook): You, make that sauce longer, 'tis too short! THE COOK: How much too short? RAGUENEAU: Three feet. (He passes on farther.) THE COOK: What means he? FIRST PASTRY-COOK (showing a dish to Ragueneau): The tart! SECOND PASTRY-COOK: The pie! RAGUENEAU (before the fire): My muse, retire, lest thy bright eyes be reddened by the fagot's blaze! (To a cook, showing him some loaves): You have put the cleft o' th' loaves in the wrong place; know you not that the coesura should be between the hemistiches? (To another, showing him an unfinished pasty): To this palace of paste you must add the roof. . . (To a young apprentice, who, seated on the ground, is spitting the fowls): And you, as you put on your lengthy spit the modest fowl and the superb turkey, my son, alternate them, as the old Malherbe loved well to alternate his long lines of verse with the short ones; thus shall your roasts, in strophes, turn before the flame! ANOTHER APPRENTICE (also coming up with a tray covered by a napkin): Master, I bethought me erewhile of your tastes, and made this, which will please you, I hope. (He uncovers the tray, and shows a large lyre made of pastry.) RAGUENEAU (enchanted): A lyre! THE APPRENTICE: 'Tis of brioche pastry. RAGUENEAU (touched): With conserved fruits. THE APPRENTICE: The strings, see, are of sugar. RAGUENEAU (giving him a coin): Go, drink my health! (Seeing Lise enter): Hush! My wife. Bustle, pass on, and hide that money! (To Lise, showing her the lyre, with a conscious look): Is it not beautiful? LISE: 'Tis passing silly! (She puts a pile of papers on the counter.) RAGUENEAU: Bags? Good. I thank you. (He looks at them): Heavens! my cherished leaves! The poems of my friends! Torn, dismembered, to make bags for holding biscuits and cakes!. . .Ah, 'tis the old tale again. . .Orpheus and the Bacchantes! LISE (dryly): And am I not free to turn at last to some use the sole thing that your wretched scribblers of halting lines leave behind them by way of payment? RAGUENEAU: Groveling ant!. . .Insult not the divine grasshoppers, the sweet singers! LISE: Before you were the sworn comrade of all that crew, my friend, you did not call your wife ant and Bacchante! RAGUENEAU: To turn fair verse to such a use! LISE: 'Faith, 'tis all it's good for. RAGUENEAU: Pray then, madam, to what use would you degrade prose? The same. Two children, who have just trotted into the shop. RAGUENEAU: What would you, little ones? FIRST CHILD: Three pies. RAGUENEAU (serving them): See, hot and well browned. SECOND CHILD: If it please you, Sir, will you wrap them up for us? RAGUENEAU (aside, distressed): Alas! one of my bags! (To the children): What? Must I wrap them up? (He takes a bag, and just as he is about to put in the pies, he reads): 'Ulysses thus, on leaving fair Penelope. . .' Not that one! (He puts it aside, and takes another, and as he is about to put in the pies, he reads): 'The gold-locked Phoebus. . .' Nay, nor that one!. . . (Same play.) LISE (impatiently): What are you dallying for? RAGUENEAU: Here! here! here (He chooses a third, resignedly): The sonnet to Phillis!. . .but 'tis hard to part with it! LISE: By good luck he has made up his mind at last! (Shrugging her shoulders): Nicodemus! (She mounts on a chair, and begins to range plates on a dresser.) RAGUENEAU (taking advantage of the moment she turns her back, calls back the children, who are already at the door): Hist! children!. . .render me back the sonnet to Phillis, and you shall have six pies instead of three. (The children give him back the bag, seize the cakes quickly, and go out.) RAGUENEAU (smoothing out the paper, begins to declaim): 'Phillis!. . .' On that sweet name a smear of butter! 'Phillis!. . .' (Cyrano enters hurriedly.)

Act II takes place in the pastry shop owned by Ragueneau, who was introduced in Act I. Ragueneau's wife, Lise, has more business sense and less love of poetry than her husband-she has made sacks out of the poems his friends have left in payment for food. Two children make a small purchase, and Lise wraps their pastries in the pages of poetry. When his wife is not looking, Ragueneau calls the children back and trades them three more pastries for the poems.

SCENE IV. Rome. PHILARIO'S house Enter POSTHUMUS and PHILARIO POSTHUMUS. Fear it not, sir; I would I were so sure To win the King as I am bold her honour Will remain hers. PHILARIO. What means do you make to him? POSTHUMUS. Not any; but abide the change of time, Quake in the present winter's state, and wish That warmer days would come. In these fear'd hopes I barely gratify your love; they failing, I must die much your debtor. PHILARIO. Your very goodness and your company O'erpays all I can do. By this your king Hath heard of great Augustus. Caius Lucius Will do's commission throughly; and I think He'll grant the tribute, send th' arrearages, Or look upon our Romans, whose remembrance Is yet fresh in their grief. POSTHUMUS. I do believe Statist though I am none, nor like to be, That this will prove a war; and you shall hear The legions now in Gallia sooner landed In our not-fearing Britain than have tidings Of any penny tribute paid. Our countrymen Are men more order'd than when Julius Caesar Smil'd at their lack of skill, but found their courage Worthy his frowning at. Their discipline, Now mingled with their courages, will make known To their approvers they are people such That mend upon the world. Enter IACHIMO PHILARIO. See! Iachimo! POSTHUMUS. The swiftest harts have posted you by land, And winds of all the comers kiss'd your sails, To make your vessel nimble. PHILARIO. Welcome, sir. POSTHUMUS. I hope the briefness of your answer made The speediness of your return. IACHIMO. Your lady Is one of the fairest that I have look'd upon. POSTHUMUS. And therewithal the best; or let her beauty Look through a casement to allure false hearts, And be false with them. IACHIMO. Here are letters for you. POSTHUMUS. Their tenour good, I trust. IACHIMO. 'Tis very like. PHILARIO. Was Caius Lucius in the Britain court When you were there? IACHIMO. He was expected then, But not approach'd. POSTHUMUS. All is well yet. Sparkles this stone as it was wont, or is't not Too dull for your good wearing? IACHIMO. If I have lost it, I should have lost the worth of it in gold. I'll make a journey twice as far t' enjoy A second night of such sweet shortness which Was mine in Britain; for the ring is won. POSTHUMUS. The stone's too hard to come by. IACHIMO. Not a whit, Your lady being so easy. POSTHUMUS. Make not, sir, Your loss your sport. I hope you know that we Must not continue friends. IACHIMO. Good sir, we must, If you keep covenant. Had I not brought The knowledge of your mistress home, I grant We were to question farther; but I now Profess myself the winner of her honour, Together with your ring; and not the wronger Of her or you, having proceeded but By both your wills. POSTHUMUS. If you can make't apparent That you have tasted her in bed, my hand And ring is yours. If not, the foul opinion You had of her pure honour gains or loses Your sword or mine, or masterless leaves both To who shall find them. IACHIMO. Sir, my circumstances, Being so near the truth as I will make them, Must first induce you to believe- whose strength I will confirm with oath; which I doubt not You'll give me leave to spare when you shall find You need it not. POSTHUMUS. Proceed. IACHIMO. First, her bedchamber, Where I confess I slept not, but profess Had that was well worth watching-it was hang'd With tapestry of silk and silver; the story, Proud Cleopatra when she met her Roman And Cydnus swell'd above the banks, or for The press of boats or pride. A piece of work So bravely done, so rich, that it did strive In workmanship and value; which I wonder'd Could be so rarely and exactly wrought, Since the true life on't was- POSTHUMUS. This is true; And this you might have heard of here, by me Or by some other. IACHIMO. More particulars Must justify my knowledge. POSTHUMUS. So they must, Or do your honour injury. IACHIMO. The chimney Is south the chamber, and the chimneypiece Chaste Dian bathing. Never saw I figures So likely to report themselves. The cutter Was as another nature, dumb; outwent her, Motion and breath left out. POSTHUMUS. This is a thing Which you might from relation likewise reap, Being, as it is, much spoke of. IACHIMO. The roof o' th' chamber With golden cherubins is fretted; her andirons- I had forgot them- were two winking Cupids Of silver, each on one foot standing, nicely Depending on their brands. POSTHUMUS. This is her honour! Let it be granted you have seen all this, and praise Be given to your remembrance; the description Of what is in her chamber nothing saves The wager you have laid. IACHIMO. Then, if you can, [Shows the bracelet] Be pale. I beg but leave to air this jewel. See! And now 'tis up again. It must be married To that your diamond; I'll keep them. POSTHUMUS. Jove! Once more let me behold it. Is it that Which I left with her? IACHIMO. Sir- I thank her- that. She stripp'd it from her arm; I see her yet; Her pretty action did outsell her gift, And yet enrich'd it too. She gave it me, and said She priz'd it once. POSTHUMUS. May be she pluck'd it off To send it me. IACHIMO. She writes so to you, doth she? POSTHUMUS. O, no, no, no! 'tis true. Here, take this too; [Gives the ring] It is a basilisk unto mine eye, Kills me to look on't. Let there be no honour Where there is beauty; truth where semblance; love Where there's another man. The vows of women Of no more bondage be to where they are made Than they are to their virtues, which is nothing. O, above measure false! PHILARIO. Have patience, sir, And take your ring again; 'tis not yet won. It may be probable she lost it, or Who knows if one her women, being corrupted Hath stol'n it from her? POSTHUMUS. Very true; And so I hope he came by't. Back my ring. Render to me some corporal sign about her, More evident than this; for this was stol'n. IACHIMO. By Jupiter, I had it from her arm! POSTHUMUS. Hark you, he swears; by Jupiter he swears. 'Tis true- nay, keep the ring, 'tis true. I am sure She would not lose it. Her attendants are All sworn and honourable- they induc'd to steal it! And by a stranger! No, he hath enjoy'd her. The cognizance of her incontinency Is this: she hath bought the name of whore thus dearly. There, take thy hire; and all the fiends of hell Divide themselves between you! PHILARIO. Sir, be patient; This is not strong enough to be believ'd Of one persuaded well of. POSTHUMUS. Never talk on't; She hath been colted by him. IACHIMO. If you seek For further satisfying, under her breast- Worthy the pressing- lies a mole, right proud Of that most delicate lodging. By my life, I kiss'd it; and it gave me present hunger To feed again, though full. You do remember This stain upon her? POSTHUMUS. Ay, and it doth confirm Another stain, as big as hell can hold, Were there no more but it. IACHIMO. Will you hear more? POSTHUMUS. Spare your arithmetic; never count the turns. Once, and a million! IACHIMO. I'll be sworn- POSTHUMUS. No swearing. If you will swear you have not done't, you lie; And I will kill thee if thou dost deny Thou'st made me cuckold. IACHIMO. I'll deny nothing. POSTHUMUS. O that I had her here to tear her limb-meal! I will go there and do't, i' th' court, before Her father. I'll do something- Exit PHILARIO. Quite besides The government of patience! You have won. Let's follow him and pervert the present wrath He hath against himself. IACHIMO. With all my heart. Exeunt

In Rome, Posthumus tells Philario he is sure of Imogen's honor, but has less confidence that he will win over the King. He is leaving it to time. In his exiled state, he regrets he cannot repay Philario for his generosity. But Philario says that Posthumus's goodness and company are payment enough. Besides, he is confident that Lucius, Augustus Caesar's ambassador, will by now have extracted the tribute arrears that he went to collect from Cymbeline. If Cymbeline does not pay up, he will face a Roman invasion. Posthumus believes that Cymbeline will not pay and that there will be war. He points out that the Britons are more skilled in war than they were in Julius Caesar's day, when the Roman invaders defeated them. Iachimo enters, commends Imogen's beauty to Posthumus, and gives him letters from her. Posthumus asks Iachimo whether his diamond still sparkles as brightly, or is dimmed by Imogen's betrayal. Iachimo replies that he has won the ring, for he enjoyed a night with the "easy" Imogen. Posthumus, reluctant to believe Iachimo, warns him not to joke about his losing the bet, and reminds him that they shall not remain friends. Iachimo answers that they will remain friends, since he has defeated Imogen's honor and not wronged her or Posthumus-both were willing participants. Posthumus asks for proof that he has "tasted her in bed" . Iachimo describes the furnishings of Imogen's bedroom, the carvings over the fireplace, and even the fire-irons, but Posthumus says he could have heard this from someone else. Finally, Iachimo shows Posthumus Imogen's bracelet that he stole from her as she slept. He says it matches the diamond, so both must be his. He claims that Imogen gave it to him, saying "she priz'd it once" . Posthumus suggests that maybe she took it off to send it to him, but Iachimo asks if she says that in her letter, which, of course, she does not. Posthumus now believes Iachimo. He takes off his ring, which he says has become a basilisk to his eye . He rails against the falseness of women underneath their outward beauty, and the worthlessness of their vows. Philario counsels him to be patient and take back his ring, as there is no proof that Imogen is unfaithful. It could be that she lost the bracelet, or that one of her ladies stole it. Posthumus agrees, and asks for his ring back from Iachimo. He now wants Iachimo to cite some distinguishing feature on Imogen's body as proof. Iachimo swears by Jupiter that he had it from her arm, which again convinces Posthumus that his wife is unfaithful. He is sure she would not lose it, and her ladies are honorable. Posthumus is once more convinced that she has been unfaithful, and gives the ring back to Iachimo. Philario warns him again that the evidence is not strong enough to convince. But Iachimo describes the mole under Imogen's breast, which he says he kissed. Posthumus says that this "stain" confirms another-on her character-"as big as hell can hold" . Posthumus erupts in fury and threatens to tear Imogen limb from limb in front of her father. Philario and Iachimo follow him out to prevent him from harming himself. Posthumus re-enters and delivers a soliloquy against women. He regrets that men need them at all, and says all men are bastards: even he does not know where his father was when he was conceived. His mother seemed chaste, but then so does his wife. He attributes all vices in men to the feminine aspect or "woman's part" : lying, deceiving, ambition, and so on. Even to vice, he says, they are not constant, but ever changing.

SCENE II HIPPOLYTUS, ARICIA, ISMENE HIPPOLYTUS Lady, ere I go My duty bids me tell you of your change Of fortune. My worst fears are realized; My sire is dead. Yes, his protracted absence Was caused as I foreboded. Death alone, Ending his toils, could keep him from the world Conceal'd so long. The gods at last have doom'd Alcides' friend, companion, and successor. I think your hatred, tender to his virtues, Can hear such terms of praise without resentment, Knowing them due. One hope have I that soothes My sorrow: I can free you from restraint. Lo, I revoke the laws whose rigour moved My pity; you are at your own disposal, Both heart and hand; here, in my heritage, In Troezen, where my grandsire Pittheus reign'd Of yore and I am now acknowledged King, I leave you free, free as myself,--and more. ARICIA Your kindness is too great, 'tis overwhelming. Such generosity, that pays disgrace With honour, lends more force than you can think To those harsh laws from which you would release me. HIPPOLYTUS Athens, uncertain how to fill the throne Of Theseus, speaks of you, anon of me, And then of Phaedra's son. ARICIA Of me, my lord? HIPPOLYTUS I know myself excluded by strict law: Greece turns to my reproach a foreign mother. But if my brother were my only rival, My rights prevail o'er his clearly enough To make me careless of the law's caprice. My forwardness is check'd by juster claims: To you I yield my place, or, rather, own That it is yours by right, and yours the sceptre, As handed down from Earth's great son, Erechtheus. Adoption placed it in the hands of Aegeus: Athens, by him protected and increased, Welcomed a king so generous as my sire, And left your hapless brothers in oblivion. Now she invites you back within her walls; Protracted strife has cost her groans enough, Her fields are glutted with your kinsmen's blood Fatt'ning the furrows out of which it sprung At first. I rule this Troezen; while the son Of Phaedra has in Crete a rich domain. Athens is yours. I will do all I can To join for you the votes divided now Between us. ARICIA Stunn'd at all I hear, my lord, I fear, I almost fear a dream deceives me. Am I indeed awake? Can I believe Such generosity? What god has put it Into your heart? Well is the fame deserved That you enjoy! That fame falls short of truth! Would you for me prove traitor to yourself? Was it not boon enough never to hate me, So long to have abstain'd from harbouring The enmity-- HIPPOLYTUS To hate you? I, to hate you? However darkly my fierce pride was painted, Do you suppose a monster gave me birth? What savage temper, what envenom'd hatred Would not be mollified at sight of you? Could I resist the soul-bewitching charm-- ARICIA Why, what is this, Sir? HIPPOLYTUS I have said too much Not to say more. Prudence in vain resists The violence of passion. I have broken Silence at last, and I must tell you now The secret that my heart can hold no longer. You see before you an unhappy instance Of hasty pride, a prince who claims compassion I, who, so long the enemy of Love, Mock'd at his fetters and despised his captives, Who, pitying poor mortals that were shipwreck'd, In seeming safety view'd the storms from land, Now find myself to the same fate exposed, Toss'd to and fro upon a sea of troubles! My boldness has been vanquish'd in a moment, And humbled is the pride wherein I boasted. For nearly six months past, ashamed, despairing, Bearing where'er I go the shaft that rends My heart, I struggle vainly to be free From you and from myself; I shun you, present; Absent, I find you near; I see your form In the dark forest depths; the shades of night, Nor less broad daylight, bring back to my view The charms that I avoid; all things conspire To make Hippolytus your slave. For fruit Of all my bootless sighs, I fail to find My former self. My bow and javelins Please me no more, my chariot is forgotten, With all the Sea God's lessons; and the woods Echo my groans instead of joyous shouts Urging my fiery steeds. Hearing this tale Of passion so uncouth, you blush perchance At your own handiwork. With what wild words I offer you my heart, strange captive held By silken jess! But dearer in your eyes Should be the offering, that this language comes Strange to my lips; reject not vows express'd So ill, which but for you had ne'er been form'd. SCENE III HIPPOLYTUS, ARICIA, THERAMENES, ISMENE THERAMENES Prince, the Queen comes. I herald her approach. 'Tis you she seeks. HIPPOLYTUS Me? THERAMENES What her thought may be I know not. But I speak on her behalf. She would converse with you ere you go hence. HIPPOLYTUS What shall I say to her? Can she expect-- ARICIA You cannot, noble Prince, refuse to hear her, Howe'er convinced she is your enemy, Some shade of pity to her tears is due. HIPPOLYTUS Shall we part thus? and will you let me go, Not knowing if my boldness has offended The goddess I adore? Whether this heart, Left in your hands-- ARICIA Go, Prince, pursue the schemes Your generous soul dictates, make Athens own My sceptre. All the gifts you offer me Will I accept, but this high throne of empire Is not the one most precious in my sight. SCENE IV HIPPOLYTUS, THERAMENES HIPPOLYTUS Friend, is all ready? But the Queen approaches. Go, see the vessel in fit trim to sail. Haste, bid the crew aboard, and hoist the signal: Then soon return, and so deliver me From interview most irksome.

Hippolytus enters and confirms Ismene's reports. Theseus is dead: Aricia is henceforth free to go where she pleases, to marry if she wills. But Hippolytus has more to add. Athens is uncertain whom to choose to succeed Theseus as its ruler: Phaedra's older son; Aricia; or himself. He himself is content to be king of Troezen; he feels that Aricia has the best right to Athens, and he is leaving immediately for Athens to declare his views and to unite their partisans to insure her victory. Aricia is overwhelmed. Such generosity, she says, makes her think she must be dreaming. Indeed, for her part, she has been grateful enough to Hippolytus in the past simply because he did not hate her like the rest of the court. Hippolytus exclaims that he could not resist her! Aricia is startled; Hippolytus hesitates, then plunges into a declaration of love. He has said more than he meant to; his common sense has been overwhelmed by the violence of his passion; but he loves her. He has long defied the power of love, but now love has had its revenge: For six months, he has been its slave. He is, he fears, a poor capture of which to boast, and he has expressed his love very awkwardly, but he has never spoken to anyone of love before and has had no practice at it. At this inconvenient moment, Theramenes arrives to tell Hippolytus that Phaedra is seeking an interview with him. Hippolytus is reluctant, but Aricia reminds him that he owes his father's widow this courtesy. Hippolytus consents, but protests that Aricia is departing without having given him an answer to his proposals. She replies, "Go, prince, and carry out your generous plans; make Athens my tributary: I accept all the gifts you seek to give me. But that great and glorious empire is not, in my eyes, the most cherished present you have offered me."

XX. A Plea When the newly-married pair came home, the first person who appeared, to offer his congratulations, was Sydney Carton. They had not been at home many hours, when he presented himself. He was not improved in habits, or in looks, or in manner; but there was a certain rugged air of fidelity about him, which was new to the observation of Charles Darnay. He watched his opportunity of taking Darnay aside into a window, and of speaking to him when no one overheard. "Mr. Darnay," said Carton, "I wish we might be friends." "We are already friends, I hope." "You are good enough to say so, as a fashion of speech; but, I don't mean any fashion of speech. Indeed, when I say I wish we might be friends, I scarcely mean quite that, either." Charles Darnay--as was natural--asked him, in all good-humour and good-fellowship, what he did mean? "Upon my life," said Carton, smiling, "I find that easier to comprehend in my own mind, than to convey to yours. However, let me try. You remember a certain famous occasion when I was more drunk than--than usual?" "I remember a certain famous occasion when you forced me to confess that you had been drinking." "I remember it too. The curse of those occasions is heavy upon me, for I always remember them. I hope it may be taken into account one day, when all days are at an end for me! Don't be alarmed; I am not going to preach." "I am not at all alarmed. Earnestness in you, is anything but alarming to me." "Ah!" said Carton, with a careless wave of his hand, as if he waved that away. "On the drunken occasion in question (one of a large number, as you know), I was insufferable about liking you, and not liking you. I wish you would forget it." "I forgot it long ago." "Fashion of speech again! But, Mr. Darnay, oblivion is not so easy to me, as you represent it to be to you. I have by no means forgotten it, and a light answer does not help me to forget it." "If it was a light answer," returned Darnay, "I beg your forgiveness for it. I had no other object than to turn a slight thing, which, to my surprise, seems to trouble you too much, aside. I declare to you, on the faith of a gentleman, that I have long dismissed it from my mind. Good Heaven, what was there to dismiss! Have I had nothing more important to remember, in the great service you rendered me that day?" "As to the great service," said Carton, "I am bound to avow to you, when you speak of it in that way, that it was mere professional claptrap, I don't know that I cared what became of you, when I rendered it.--Mind! I say when I rendered it; I am speaking of the past." "You make light of the obligation," returned Darnay, "but I will not quarrel with _your_ light answer." "Genuine truth, Mr. Darnay, trust me! I have gone aside from my purpose; I was speaking about our being friends. Now, you know me; you know I am incapable of all the higher and better flights of men. If you doubt it, ask Stryver, and he'll tell you so." "I prefer to form my own opinion, without the aid of his." "Well! At any rate you know me as a dissolute dog, who has never done any good, and never will." "I don't know that you 'never will.'" "But I do, and you must take my word for it. Well! If you could endure to have such a worthless fellow, and a fellow of such indifferent reputation, coming and going at odd times, I should ask that I might be permitted to come and go as a privileged person here; that I might be regarded as an useless (and I would add, if it were not for the resemblance I detected between you and me, an unornamental) piece of furniture, tolerated for its old service, and taken no notice of. I doubt if I should abuse the permission. It is a hundred to one if I should avail myself of it four times in a year. It would satisfy me, I dare say, to know that I had it." "Will you try?" "That is another way of saying that I am placed on the footing I have indicated. I thank you, Darnay. I may use that freedom with your name?" "I think so, Carton, by this time." They shook hands upon it, and Sydney turned away. Within a minute afterwards, he was, to all outward appearance, as unsubstantial as ever. When he was gone, and in the course of an evening passed with Miss Pross, the Doctor, and Mr. Lorry, Charles Darnay made some mention of this conversation in general terms, and spoke of Sydney Carton as a problem of carelessness and recklessness. He spoke of him, in short, not bitterly or meaning to bear hard upon him, but as anybody might who saw him as he showed himself. He had no idea that this could dwell in the thoughts of his fair young wife; but, when he afterwards joined her in their own rooms, he found her waiting for him with the old pretty lifting of the forehead strongly marked. "We are thoughtful to-night!" said Darnay, drawing his arm about her. "Yes, dearest Charles," with her hands on his breast, and the inquiring and attentive expression fixed upon him; "we are rather thoughtful to-night, for we have something on our mind to-night." "What is it, my Lucie?" "Will you promise not to press one question on me, if I beg you not to ask it?" "Will I promise? What will I not promise to my Love?" What, indeed, with his hand putting aside the golden hair from the cheek, and his other hand against the heart that beat for him! "I think, Charles, poor Mr. Carton deserves more consideration and respect than you expressed for him to-night." "Indeed, my own? Why so?" "That is what you are not to ask me. But I think--I know--he does." "If you know it, it is enough. What would you have me do, my Life?" "I would ask you, dearest, to be very generous with him always, and very lenient on his faults when he is not by. I would ask you to believe that he has a heart he very, very seldom reveals, and that there are deep wounds in it. My dear, I have seen it bleeding." "It is a painful reflection to me," said Charles Darnay, quite astounded, "that I should have done him any wrong. I never thought this of him." "My husband, it is so. I fear he is not to be reclaimed; there is scarcely a hope that anything in his character or fortunes is reparable now. But, I am sure that he is capable of good things, gentle things, even magnanimous things." She looked so beautiful in the purity of her faith in this lost man, that her husband could have looked at her as she was for hours. "And, O my dearest Love!" she urged, clinging nearer to him, laying her head upon his breast, and raising her eyes to his, "remember how strong we are in our happiness, and how weak he is in his misery!" The supplication touched him home. "I will always remember it, dear Heart! I will remember it as long as I live." He bent over the golden head, and put the rosy lips to his, and folded her in his arms. If one forlorn wanderer then pacing the dark streets, could have heard her innocent disclosure, and could have seen the drops of pity kissed away by her husband from the soft blue eyes so loving of that husband, he might have cried to the night--and the words would not have parted from his lips for the first time-- "God bless her for her sweet compassion!"

Carton drops in to see the newlyweds as soon as they get back from their honeymoon. His habits, manner, and looks have not changed. He tells Darnay that he wishes they were friends and apologizes for the remarks he had made after the trial when he was drunk. Darnay assures him that he has forgotten all about it, especially since Carton had saved his life. Carton then solicits permission to visit them occasionally. Darnay grants him his request. After Carton leaves, Darnay speaks unkindly of him to the others. Later on, while they are preparing for bed, Lucie tells Darnay to be more considerate towards Carton. She feels that Carton is a deeper person with a bigger heart than he shows himself to be.

A Duet in Paradise The well-furnished drawing-room, with the open grand piano, and the pleasant outlook down a sloping garden to a boat-house by the side of the Floss, is Mr. Deane's. The neat little lady in mourning, whose light-brown ringlets are falling over the colored embroidery with which her fingers are busy, is of course Lucy Deane; and the fine young man who is leaning down from his chair to snap the scissors in the extremely abbreviated face of the "King Charles" lying on the young lady's feet is no other than Mr. Stephen Guest, whose diamond ring, attar of roses, and air of _nonchalant_ leisure, at twelve o'clock in the day, are the graceful and odoriferous result of the largest oil-mill and the most extensive wharf in St. Ogg's. There is an apparent triviality in the action with the scissors, but your discernment perceives at once that there is a design in it which makes it eminently worthy of a large-headed, long-limbed young man; for you see that Lucy wants the scissors, and is compelled, reluctant as she may be, to shake her ringlets back, raise her soft hazel eyes, smile playfully down on the face that is so very nearly on a level with her knee, and holding out her little shell-pink palm, to say,-- "My scissors, please, if you can renounce the great pleasure of persecuting my poor Minny." The foolish scissors have slipped too far over the knuckles, it seems, and Hercules holds out his entrapped fingers hopelessly. "Confound the scissors! The oval lies the wrong way. Please draw them off for me." "Draw them off with your other hand," says Miss Lucy, roguishly. "Oh, but that's my left hand; I'm not left-handed." Lucy laughs, and the scissors are drawn off with gentle touches from tiny tips, which naturally dispose Mr. Stephen for a repetition _da capo_. Accordingly, he watches for the release of the scissors, that he may get them into his possession again. "No, no," said Lucy, sticking them in her band, "you shall not have my scissors again,--you have strained them already. Now don't set Minny growling again. Sit up and behave properly, and then I will tell you some news." "What is that?" said Stephen, throwing himself back and hanging his right arm over the corner of his chair. He might have been sitting for his portrait, which would have represented a rather striking young man of five-and-twenty, with a square forehead, short dark-brown hair, standing erect, with a slight wave at the end, like a thick crop of corn, and a half-ardent, half-sarcastic glance from under his well-marked horizontal eyebrows. "Is it very important news?" "Yes, very. Guess." "You are going to change Minny's diet, and give him three ratafias soaked in a dessert-spoonful of cream daily?" "Quite wrong." "Well, then, Dr. Kenn has been preaching against buckram, and you ladies have all been sending him a roundrobin, saying, 'This is a hard doctrine; who can bear it?'" "For shame!" said Lucy, adjusting her little mouth gravely. "It is rather dull of you not to guess my news, because it is about something I mentioned to you not very long ago." "But you have mentioned many things to me not long ago. Does your feminine tyranny require that when you say the thing you mean is one of several things, I should know it immediately by that mark?" "Yes, I know you think I am silly." "I think you are perfectly charming." "And my silliness is part of my charm?" "I didn't say _that_." "But I know you like women to be rather insipid. Philip Wakem betrayed you; he said so one day when you were not here." "Oh, I know Phil is fierce on that point; he makes it quite a personal matter. I think he must be love-sick for some unknown lady,--some exalted Beatrice whom he met abroad." "By the by," said Lucy, pausing in her work, "it has just occurred to me that I never found out whether my cousin Maggie will object to see Philip, as her brother does. Tom will not enter a room where Philip is, if he knows it; perhaps Maggie may be the same, and then we sha'n't be able to sing our glees, shall we?" "What! is your cousin coming to stay with you?" said Stephen, with a look of slight annoyance. "Yes; that was my news, which you have forgotten. She's going to leave her situation, where she has been nearly two years, poor thing,--ever since her father's death; and she will stay with me a month or two,--many months, I hope." "And am I bound to be pleased at that news?" "Oh no, not at all," said Lucy, with a little air of pique. "_I_ am pleased, but that, of course, is no reason why _you_ should be pleased. There is no girl in the world I love so well as my cousin Maggie." "And you will be inseparable I suppose, when she comes. There will be no possibility of a _tete-a-tete_ with you any more, unless you can find an admirer for her, who will pair off with her occasionally. What is the ground of dislike to Philip? He might have been a resource." "It is a family quarrel with Philip's father. There were very painful circumstances, I believe. I never quite understood them, or knew them all. My uncle Tulliver was unfortunate and lost all his property, and I think he considered Mr. Wakem was somehow the cause of it. Mr. Wakem bought Dorlcote Mill, my uncle's old place, where he always lived. You must remember my uncle Tulliver, don't you?" "No," said Stephen, with rather supercilious indifference. "I've always known the name, and I dare say I knew the man by sight, apart from his name. I know half the names and faces in the neighborhood in that detached, disjointed way." "He was a very hot-tempered man. I remember, when I was a little girl and used to go to see my cousins, he often frightened me by talking as if he were angry. Papa told me there was a dreadful quarrel, the very day before my uncle's death, between him and Mr. Wakem, but it was hushed up. That was when you were in London. Papa says my uncle was quite mistaken in many ways; his mind had become embittered. But Tom and Maggie must naturally feel it very painful to be reminded of these things. They have had so much, so very much trouble. Maggie was at school with me six years ago, when she was fetched away because of her father's misfortunes, and she has hardly had any pleasure since, I think. She has been in a dreary situation in a school since uncle's death, because she is determined to be independent, and not live with aunt Pullet; and I could hardly wish her to come to me then, because dear mamma was ill, and everything was so sad. That is why I want her to come to me now, and have a long, long holiday." "Very sweet and angelic of you," said Stephen, looking at her with an admiring smile; "and all the more so if she has the conversational qualities of her mother." "Poor aunty! You are cruel to ridicule her. She is very valuable to _me_, I know. She manages the house beautifully,--much better than any stranger would,--and she was a great comfort to me in mamma's illness." "Yes, but in point of companionship one would prefer that she should be represented by her brandy-cherries and cream-cakes. I think with a shudder that her daughter will always be present in person, and have no agreeable proxies of that kind,--a fat, blond girl, with round blue eyes, who will stare at us silently." "Oh yes!" exclaimed Lucy, laughing wickedly, and clapping her hands, "that is just my cousin Maggie. You must have seen her!" "No, indeed; I'm only guessing what Mrs. Tulliver's daughter must be; and then if she is to banish Philip, our only apology for a tenor, that will be an additional bore." "But I hope that may not be. I think I will ask you to call on Philip and tell him Maggie is coming to-morrow. He is quite aware of Tom's feeling, and always keeps out of his way; so he will understand, if you tell him, that I asked you to warn him not to come until I write to ask him." "I think you had better write a pretty note for me to take; Phil is so sensitive, you know, the least thing might frighten him off coming at all, and we had hard work to get him. I can never induce him to come to the park; he doesn't like my sisters, I think. It is only your faery touch that can lay his ruffled feathers." Stephen mastered the little hand that was straying toward the table, and touched it lightly with his lips. Little Lucy felt very proud and happy. She and Stephen were in that stage of courtship which makes the most exquisite moment of youth, the freshest blossom-time of passion,--when each is sure of the other's love, but no formal declaration has been made, and all is mutual divination, exalting the most trivial word, the lightest gesture, into thrills delicate and delicious as wafted jasmine scent. The explicitness of an engagement wears off this finest edge of susceptibility; it is jasmine gathered and presented in a large bouquet. "But it is really odd that you should have hit so exactly on Maggie's appearance and manners," said the cunning Lucy, moving to reach her desk, "because she might have been like her brother, you know; and Tom has not round eyes; and he is as far as possible from staring at people." "Oh, I suppose he is like the father; he seems to be as proud as Lucifer. Not a brilliant companion, though, I should think." "I like Tom. He gave me my Minny when I lost Lolo; and papa is very fond of him: he says Tom has excellent principles. It was through him that his father was able to pay all his debts before he died." "Oh, ah; I've heard about that. I heard your father and mine talking about it a little while ago, after dinner, in one of their interminable discussions about business. They think of doing something for young Tulliver; he saved them from a considerable loss by riding home in some marvellous way, like Turpin, to bring them news about the stoppage of a bank, or something of that sort. But I was rather drowsy at the time." Stephen rose from his seat, and sauntered to the piano, humming in falsetto, "Graceful Consort," as he turned over the volume of "The Creation," which stood open on the desk. "Come and sing this," he said, when he saw Lucy rising. "What, 'Graceful Consort'? I don't think it suits your voice." "Never mind; it exactly suits my feeling, which, Philip will have it, is the grand element of good singing. I notice men with indifferent voices are usually of that opinion." "Philip burst into one of his invectives against 'The Creation' the other day," said Lucy, seating herself at the piano. "He says it has a sort of sugared complacency and flattering make-believe in it, as if it were written for the birthday _fete_ of a German Grand-Duke." "Oh, pooh! He is the fallen Adam with a soured temper. We are Adam and Eve unfallen, in Paradise. Now, then,--the recitative, for the sake of the moral. You will sing the whole duty of woman,--'And from obedience grows my pride and happiness.'" "Oh no, I shall not respect an Adam who drags the _tempo_, as you will," said Lucy, beginning to play the duet. Surely the only courtship unshaken by doubts and fears must be that in which the lovers can sing together. The sense of mutual fitness that springs from the two deep notes fulfilling expectation just at the right moment between the notes of the silvery soprano, from the perfect accord of descending thirds and fifths, from the preconcerted loving chase of a fugue, is likely enough to supersede any immediate demand for less impassioned forms of agreement. The contralto will not care to catechise the bass; the tenor will foresee no embarrassing dearth of remark in evenings spent with the lovely soprano. In the provinces, too, where music was so scarce in that remote time, how could the musical people avoid falling in love with each other? Even political principle must have been in danger of relaxation under such circumstances; and the violin, faithful to rotten boroughs, must have been tempted to fraternize in a demoralizing way with a reforming violoncello. In that case, the linnet-throated soprano and the full-toned bass singing,-- "With thee delight is ever new, With thee is life incessant bliss," believed what they sang all the more _because_ they sang it. "Now for Raphael's great song," said Lucy, when they had finished the duet. "You do the 'heavy beasts' to perfection." "That sounds complimentary," said Stephen, looking at his watch. "By Jove, it's nearly half-past one! Well, I can just sing this." Stephen delivered with admirable ease the deep notes representing the tread of the heavy beasts; but when a singer has an audience of two, there is room for divided sentiments. Minny's mistress was charmed; but Minny, who had intrenched himself, trembling, in his basket as soon as the music began, found this thunder so little to his taste that he leaped out and scampered under the remotest _chiffonnier_, as the most eligible place in which a small dog could await the crack of doom. "Adieu, 'graceful consort,'" said Stephen, buttoning his coat across when he had done singing, and smiling down from his tall height, with the air of rather a patronizing lover, at the little lady on the music-stool. "My bliss is not incessant, for I must gallop home. I promised to be there at lunch." "You will not be able to call on Philip, then? It is of no consequence; I have said everything in my note." "You will be engaged with your cousin to-morrow, I suppose?" "Yes, we are going to have a little family-party. My cousin Tom will dine with us; and poor aunty will have her two children together for the first time. It will be very pretty; I think a great deal about it." "But I may come the next day?" "Oh yes! Come and be introduced to my cousin Maggie; though you can hardly be said not to have seen her, you have described her so well." "Good-bye, then." And there was that slight pressure of the hands, and momentary meeting of the eyes, which will often leave a little lady with a slight flush and smile on her face that do not subside immediately when the door is closed, and with an inclination to walk up and down the room rather than to seat herself quietly at her embroidery, or other rational and improving occupation. At least this was the effect on Lucy; and you will not, I hope, consider it an indication of vanity predominating over more tender impulses, that she just glanced in the chimney-glass as her walk brought her near it. The desire to know that one has not looked an absolute fright during a few hours of conversation may be construed as lying within the bounds of a laudable benevolent consideration for others. And Lucy had so much of this benevolence in her nature that I am inclined to think her small egoisms were impregnated with it, just as there are people not altogether unknown to you whose small benevolences have a predominant and somewhat rank odor of egoism. Even now, that she is walking up and down with a little triumphant flutter of her girlish heart at the sense that she is loved by the person of chief consequence in her small world, you may see in her hazel eyes an ever-present sunny benignity, in which the momentary harmless flashes of personal vanity are quite lost; and if she is happy in thinking of her lover, it is because the thought of him mingles readily with all the gentle affections and good-natured offices with which she fills her peaceful days. Even now, her mind, with that instantaneous alternation which makes two currents of feeling or imagination seem simultaneous, is glancing continually from Stephen to the preparations she has only half finished in Maggie's room. Cousin Maggie should be treated as well as the grandest lady-visitor,--nay, better, for she should have Lucy's best prints and drawings in her bedroom, and the very finest bouquet of spring flowers on her table. Maggie would enjoy all that, she was so found of pretty things! And there was poor aunt Tulliver, that no one made any account of, she was to be surprised with the present of a cap of superlative quality, and to have her health drunk in a gratifying manner, for which Lucy was going to lay a plot with her father this evening. Clearly, she had not time to indulge in long reveries about her own happy love-affairs. With this thought she walked toward the door, but paused there. "What's the matter, then, Minny?" she said, stooping in answer to some whimpering of that small quadruped, and lifting his glossy head against her pink cheek. "Did you think I was going without you? Come, then, let us go and see Sinbad." Sinbad was Lucy's chestnut horse, that she always fed with her own hand when he was turned out in the paddock. She was fond of feeding dependent creatures, and knew the private tastes of all the animals about the house, delighting in the little rippling sounds of her canaries when their beaks were busy with fresh seed, and in the small nibbling pleasures of certain animals which, lest she should appear too trivial, I will here call "the more familiar rodents." Was not Stephen Guest right in his decided opinion that this slim maiden of eighteen was quite the sort of wife a man would not be likely to repent of marrying,--a woman who was loving and thoughtful for other women, not giving them Judas-kisses with eyes askance on their welcome defects, but with real care and vision for their half-hidden pains and mortifications, with long ruminating enjoyment of little pleasures prepared for them? Perhaps the emphasis of his admiration did not fall precisely on this rarest quality in her; perhaps he approved his own choice of her chiefly because she did not strike him as a remarkable rarity. A man likes his wife to be pretty; well, Lucy was pretty, but not to a maddening extent. A man likes his wife to be accomplished, gentle, affectionate, and not stupid; and Lucy had all these qualifications. Stephen was not surprised to find himself in love with her, and was conscious of excellent judgment in preferring her to Miss Leyburn, the daughter of the county member, although Lucy was only the daughter of his father's subordinate partner; besides, he had had to defy and overcome a slight unwillingness and disappointment in his father and sisters,--a circumstance which gives a young man an agreeable consciousness of his own dignity. Stephen was aware that he had sense and independence enough to choose the wife who was likely to make him happy, unbiassed by any indirect considerations. He meant to choose Lucy; she was a little darling, and exactly the sort of woman he had always admired.

It's a brand new character! We meet Stephen Guest - rich, young, attractive, and currently flirting with Lucy Deane. The two banter for a while and discuss Lucy's dog, Minny. Stephen steals Lucy's scissors. Turns out they are both friends with Philip Wakem. It's a small world after all. Lucy tells Stephen some big news: her cousin is coming to stay with her. We learn that two years have elapsed since Mr. Tulliver died, and Maggie has been working elsewhere as a governess. Lucy gives Stephen the Reader's Digest version of the Tulliver's dispute with the Wakems. We also learn that Mrs. Deane has died and that Mrs. Tulliver now lives with Lucy and manages the house for her. Having seen Mrs. Tulliver, Stephen assumes that Maggie will look and act just like her. Lucy finds this hilarious and lets Stephen think the completely wrong thing about Maggie. She plans to introduce him to Maggie and shock him. The two then play and sing a duet together on the piano. Good times. They flirt some more and Stephen agrees to come by in a few days to meet Maggie. After Stephen leaves, Lucy paces around excitedly - she's falling for Stephen and she's excited that the Tullivers will soon be reunited. We learn that Stephen likes Lucy for rather superficial reasons and the idea that the two of them will get married isn't really surprising.

The Utility of the Union in Respect to Commercial Relations and a Navy For the Independent Journal. Saturday, November 24, 1787 HAMILTON To the People of the State of New York: THE importance of the Union, in a commercial light, is one of those points about which there is least room to entertain a difference of opinion, and which has, in fact, commanded the most general assent of men who have any acquaintance with the subject. This applies as well to our intercourse with foreign countries as with each other. There are appearances to authorize a supposition that the adventurous spirit, which distinguishes the commercial character of America, has already excited uneasy sensations in several of the maritime powers of Europe. They seem to be apprehensive of our too great interference in that carrying trade, which is the support of their navigation and the foundation of their naval strength. Those of them which have colonies in America look forward to what this country is capable of becoming, with painful solicitude. They foresee the dangers that may threaten their American dominions from the neighborhood of States, which have all the dispositions, and would possess all the means, requisite to the creation of a powerful marine. Impressions of this kind will naturally indicate the policy of fostering divisions among us, and of depriving us, as far as possible, of an ACTIVE COMMERCE in our own bottoms. This would answer the threefold purpose of preventing our interference in their navigation, of monopolizing the profits of our trade, and of clipping the wings by which we might soar to a dangerous greatness. Did not prudence forbid the detail, it would not be difficult to trace, by facts, the workings of this policy to the cabinets of ministers. If we continue united, we may counteract a policy so unfriendly to our prosperity in a variety of ways. By prohibitory regulations, extending, at the same time, throughout the States, we may oblige foreign countries to bid against each other, for the privileges of our markets. This assertion will not appear chimerical to those who are able to appreciate the importance of the markets of three millions of people--increasing in rapid progression, for the most part exclusively addicted to agriculture, and likely from local circumstances to remain so--to any manufacturing nation; and the immense difference there would be to the trade and navigation of such a nation, between a direct communication in its own ships, and an indirect conveyance of its products and returns, to and from America, in the ships of another country. Suppose, for instance, we had a government in America, capable of excluding Great Britain (with whom we have at present no treaty of commerce) from all our ports; what would be the probable operation of this step upon her politics? Would it not enable us to negotiate, with the fairest prospect of success, for commercial privileges of the most valuable and extensive kind, in the dominions of that kingdom? When these questions have been asked, upon other occasions, they have received a plausible, but not a solid or satisfactory answer. It has been said that prohibitions on our part would produce no change in the system of Britain, because she could prosecute her trade with us through the medium of the Dutch, who would be her immediate customers and paymasters for those articles which were wanted for the supply of our markets. But would not her navigation be materially injured by the loss of the important advantage of being her own carrier in that trade? Would not the principal part of its profits be intercepted by the Dutch, as a compensation for their agency and risk? Would not the mere circumstance of freight occasion a considerable deduction? Would not so circuitous an intercourse facilitate the competitions of other nations, by enhancing the price of British commodities in our markets, and by transferring to other hands the management of this interesting branch of the British commerce? A mature consideration of the objects suggested by these questions will justify a belief that the real disadvantages to Britain from such a state of things, conspiring with the pre-possessions of a great part of the nation in favor of the American trade, and with the importunities of the West India islands, would produce a relaxation in her present system, and would let us into the enjoyment of privileges in the markets of those islands elsewhere, from which our trade would derive the most substantial benefits. Such a point gained from the British government, and which could not be expected without an equivalent in exemptions and immunities in our markets, would be likely to have a correspondent effect on the conduct of other nations, who would not be inclined to see themselves altogether supplanted in our trade. A further resource for influencing the conduct of European nations toward us, in this respect, would arise from the establishment of a federal navy. There can be no doubt that the continuance of the Union under an efficient government would put it in our power, at a period not very distant, to create a navy which, if it could not vie with those of the great maritime powers, would at least be of respectable weight if thrown into the scale of either of two contending parties. This would be more peculiarly the case in relation to operations in the West Indies. A few ships of the line, sent opportunely to the reinforcement of either side, would often be sufficient to decide the fate of a campaign, on the event of which interests of the greatest magnitude were suspended. Our position is, in this respect, a most commanding one. And if to this consideration we add that of the usefulness of supplies from this country, in the prosecution of military operations in the West Indies, it will readily be perceived that a situation so favorable would enable us to bargain with great advantage for commercial privileges. A price would be set not only upon our friendship, but upon our neutrality. By a steady adherence to the Union we may hope, erelong, to become the arbiter of Europe in America, and to be able to incline the balance of European competitions in this part of the world as our interest may dictate. But in the reverse of this eligible situation, we shall discover that the rivalships of the parts would make them checks upon each other, and would frustrate all the tempting advantages which nature has kindly placed within our reach. In a state so insignificant our commerce would be a prey to the wanton intermeddlings of all nations at war with each other; who, having nothing to fear from us, would with little scruple or remorse, supply their wants by depredations on our property as often as it fell in their way. The rights of neutrality will only be respected when they are defended by an adequate power. A nation, despicable by its weakness, forfeits even the privilege of being neutral. Under a vigorous national government, the natural strength and resources of the country, directed to a common interest, would baffle all the combinations of European jealousy to restrain our growth. This situation would even take away the motive to such combinations, by inducing an impracticability of success. An active commerce, an extensive navigation, and a flourishing marine would then be the offspring of moral and physical necessity. We might defy the little arts of the little politicians to control or vary the irresistible and unchangeable course of nature. But in a state of disunion, these combinations might exist and might operate with success. It would be in the power of the maritime nations, availing themselves of our universal impotence, to prescribe the conditions of our political existence; and as they have a common interest in being our carriers, and still more in preventing our becoming theirs, they would in all probability combine to embarrass our navigation in such a manner as would in effect destroy it, and confine us to a PASSIVE COMMERCE. We should then be compelled to content ourselves with the first price of our commodities, and to see the profits of our trade snatched from us to enrich our enemies and persecutors. That unequaled spirit of enterprise, which signalizes the genius of the American merchants and navigators, and which is in itself an inexhaustible mine of national wealth, would be stifled and lost, and poverty and disgrace would overspread a country which, with wisdom, might make herself the admiration and envy of the world. There are rights of great moment to the trade of America which are rights of the Union--I allude to the fisheries, to the navigation of the Western lakes, and to that of the Mississippi. The dissolution of the Confederacy would give room for delicate questions concerning the future existence of these rights; which the interest of more powerful partners would hardly fail to solve to our disadvantage. The disposition of Spain with regard to the Mississippi needs no comment. France and Britain are concerned with us in the fisheries, and view them as of the utmost moment to their navigation. They, of course, would hardly remain long indifferent to that decided mastery, of which experience has shown us to be possessed in this valuable branch of traffic, and by which we are able to undersell those nations in their own markets. What more natural than that they should be disposed to exclude from the lists such dangerous competitors? This branch of trade ought not to be considered as a partial benefit. All the navigating States may, in different degrees, advantageously participate in it, and under circumstances of a greater extension of mercantile capital, would not be unlikely to do it. As a nursery of seamen, it now is, or when time shall have more nearly assimilated the principles of navigation in the several States, will become, a universal resource. To the establishment of a navy, it must be indispensable. To this great national object, a NAVY, union will contribute in various ways. Every institution will grow and flourish in proportion to the quantity and extent of the means concentred towards its formation and support. A navy of the United States, as it would embrace the resources of all, is an object far less remote than a navy of any single State or partial confederacy, which would only embrace the resources of a single part. It happens, indeed, that different portions of confederated America possess each some peculiar advantage for this essential establishment. The more southern States furnish in greater abundance certain kinds of naval stores--tar, pitch, and turpentine. Their wood for the construction of ships is also of a more solid and lasting texture. The difference in the duration of the ships of which the navy might be composed, if chiefly constructed of Southern wood, would be of signal importance, either in the view of naval strength or of national economy. Some of the Southern and of the Middle States yield a greater plenty of iron, and of better quality. Seamen must chiefly be drawn from the Northern hive. The necessity of naval protection to external or maritime commerce does not require a particular elucidation, no more than the conduciveness of that species of commerce to the prosperity of a navy. An unrestrained intercourse between the States themselves will advance the trade of each by an interchange of their respective productions, not only for the supply of reciprocal wants at home, but for exportation to foreign markets. The veins of commerce in every part will be replenished, and will acquire additional motion and vigor from a free circulation of the commodities of every part. Commercial enterprise will have much greater scope, from the diversity in the productions of different States. When the staple of one fails from a bad harvest or unproductive crop, it can call to its aid the staple of another. The variety, not less than the value, of products for exportation contributes to the activity of foreign commerce. It can be conducted upon much better terms with a large number of materials of a given value than with a small number of materials of the same value; arising from the competitions of trade and from the fluctuations of markets. Particular articles may be in great demand at certain periods, and unsalable at others; but if there be a variety of articles, it can scarcely happen that they should all be at one time in the latter predicament, and on this account the operations of the merchant would be less liable to any considerable obstruction or stagnation. The speculative trader will at once perceive the force of these observations, and will acknowledge that the aggregate balance of the commerce of the United States would bid fair to be much more favorable than that of the thirteen States without union or with partial unions. It may perhaps be replied to this, that whether the States are united or disunited, there would still be an intimate intercourse between them which would answer the same ends; this intercourse would be fettered, interrupted, and narrowed by a multiplicity of causes, which in the course of these papers have been amply detailed. A unity of commercial, as well as political, interests, can only result from a unity of government. There are other points of view in which this subject might be placed, of a striking and animating kind. But they would lead us too far into the regions of futurity, and would involve topics not proper for a newspaper discussion. I shall briefly observe, that our situation invites and our interests prompt us to aim at an ascendant in the system of American affairs. The world may politically, as well as geographically, be divided into four parts, each having a distinct set of interests. Unhappily for the other three, Europe, by her arms and by her negotiations, by force and by fraud, has, in different degrees, extended her dominion over them all. Africa, Asia, and America, have successively felt her domination. The superiority she has long maintained has tempted her to plume herself as the Mistress of the World, and to consider the rest of mankind as created for her benefit. Men admired as profound philosophers have, in direct terms, attributed to her inhabitants a physical superiority, and have gravely asserted that all animals, and with them the human species, degenerate in America--that even dogs cease to bark after having breathed awhile in our atmosphere.(1) Facts have too long supported these arrogant pretensions of the Europeans. It belongs to us to vindicate the honor of the human race, and to teach that assuming brother, moderation. Union will enable us to do it. Disunion will will add another victim to his triumphs. Let Americans disdain to be the instruments of European greatness! Let the thirteen States, bound together in a strict and indissoluble Union, concur in erecting one great American system, superior to the control of all transatlantic force or influence, and able to dictate the terms of the connection between the old and the new world! PUBLIUS "Recherches philosophiques sur les Americains."

In this paper, Alexander Hamilton continues the defense of union over disunion by outlining the benefits of the former for American commerce and naval power. He argues that in order for Americans to maintain an active commerce, by which he means the ability to control and shape the terms of its trade with foreign powers, America requires a union. He argues that only a union will be strong enough to secure favorable terms of trade with European powers. He contends further that a united America will be able to pool its diverse resources in building a powerful navy. This navy would then help deter European powers from threatening American commercial interests and stealing American resources. It would furthermore give America significant influence in shaping the international politics of the West Indies where the European powers have significant commercial interests. Hamilton warns that were America to find itself in a state of disunion, the individual states would be too weak to resist the predatory behavior of European powers who would be able to impose unfair terms of trade on the Americans. America would ultimately be reduced to what Hamilton calls a "passive commerce," which would enrich foreign powers at the expense of American merchants.

SCENE 3. A field near Windsor. [Enter CAIUS and RUGBY.] CAIUS. Jack Rugby! RUGBY. Sir? CAIUS. Vat is de clock, Jack? RUGBY. 'Tis past the hour, sir, that Sir Hugh promised to meet. CAIUS. By gar, he has save his soul, dat he is no come; he has pray his Pible vell dat he is no come: by gar, Jack Rugby, he is dead already, if he be come. RUGBY. He is wise, sir; he knew your worship would kill him if he came. CAIUS. By gar, de herring is no dead so as I vill kill him. Take your rapier, Jack; I vill tell you how I vill kill him. RUGBY. Alas, sir, I cannot fence! CAIUS. Villany, take your rapier. RUGBY. Forbear; here's company. [Enter HOST, SHALLOW, SLENDER, and PAGE.] HOST. Bless thee, bully doctor! SHALLOW. Save you, Master Doctor Caius! PAGE. Now, good Master Doctor! SLENDER. Give you good morrow, sir. CAIUS. Vat be all you, one, two, tree, four, come for? HOST. To see thee fight, to see thee foin, to see thee traverse; to see thee here, to see thee there; to see thee pass thy punto, thy stock, thy reverse, thy distance, thy montant. Is he dead, my Ethiopian? Is he dead, my Francisco? Ha, bully! What says my Aesculapius? my Galen? my heart of elder? Ha! is he dead, bully stale? Is he dead? CAIUS. By gar, he is de coward Jack priest of de world; he is not show his face. HOST. Thou art a Castalion King Urinal! Hector of Greece, my boy! CAIUS. I pray you, bear witness that me have stay six or seven, two, tree hours for him, and he is no come. SHALLOW. He is the wiser man, Master doctor: he is a curer of souls, and you a curer of bodies; if you should fight, you go against the hair of your professions. Is it not true, Master Page? PAGE. Master Shallow, you have yourself been a great fighter, though now a man of peace. SHALLOW. Bodykins, Master Page, though I now be old, and of the peace, if I see a sword out, my finger itches to make one. Though we are justices, and doctors, and churchmen, Master Page, we have some salt of our youth in us; we are the sons of women, Master Page. PAGE. 'Tis true, Master Shallow. SHALLOW. It will be found so, Master Page. Master Doctor Caius, I come to fetch you home. I am sworn of the peace; you have showed yourself a wise physician, and Sir Hugh hath shown himself a wise and patient churchman. You must go with me, Master Doctor. HOST. Pardon, guest-justice.--A word, Monsieur Mockwater. CAIUS. Mock-vater! Vat is dat? HOST. Mockwater, in our English tongue, is valour, bully. CAIUS. By gar, then I have as much mockvater as de Englishman.--Scurvy jack-dog priest! By gar, me vill cut his ears. HOST. He will clapper-claw thee tightly, bully. CAIUS. Clapper-de-claw! Vat is dat? HOST. That is, he will make thee amends. CAIUS. By gar, me do look he shall clapper-de-claw me; for, by gar, me vill have it. HOST. And I will provoke him to't, or let him wag. CAIUS. Me tank you for dat. HOST. And, moreover, bully--but first: Master guest, and Master Page, and eke Cavaliero Slender, go you through the town to Frogmore. [Aside to them.] PAGE. Sir Hugh is there, is he? HOST. He is there: see what humour he is in; and I will bring the doctor about by the fields. Will it do well? SHALLOW. We will do it. PAGE, SHALLOW, and SLENDER. Adieu, good Master Doctor. [Exeunt PAGE, SHALLOW, and SLENDER.] CAIUS. By gar, me vill kill de priest; for he speak for a jack-an-ape to Anne Page. HOST. Let him die. Sheathe thy impatience; throw cold water on thy choler; go about the fields with me through Frogmore; I will bring thee where Mistress Anne Page is, at a farm-house a-feasting; and thou shalt woo her. Cried I aim? Said I well? CAIUS. By gar, me tank you for dat: by gar, I love you; and I shall procure-a you de good guest, de earl, de knight, de lords, de gentlemen, my patients. HOST. For the which I will be thy adversary toward Anne Page: said I well? CAIUS. By gar, 'tis good; vell said. HOST. Let us wag, then. CAIUS. Come at my heels, Jack Rugby. [Exeunt.]

In a field near Windsor, Doctor Caius and his servant, John Rugby, have already waited beyond the appointed hour for Sir Hugh Evans. When Shallow arrives with several others, he muses that it is for the best that no duel has taken place, since it would "go against the hair of your profession"; that is, for a healer of bodies and a healer of souls to fight to the death would be wrong. Shallow, the Host of the Garter, Slender, Page, and Doctor Caius set off for the village of Frogmore, where Sir Hugh Evans is awaiting them.

I found them winding of Marcello's corpse. And there was such a solemn melody, 'Twixt doleful songs, tears, and sad elegies,-- Such as old grandames, watching by the dead, Are wont to outwear the night with. --Old Play The mode of entering the great tower of Coningsburgh Castle is very peculiar, and partakes of the rude simplicity of the early times in which it was erected. A flight of steps, so deep and narrow as to be almost precipitous, leads up to a low portal in the south side of the tower, by which the adventurous antiquary may still, or at least could a few years since, gain access to a small stair within the thickness of the main wall of the tower, which leads up to the third story of the building,--the two lower being dungeons or vaults, which neither receive air nor light, save by a square hole in the third story, with which they seem to have communicated by a ladder. The access to the upper apartments in the tower which consist in all of four stories, is given by stairs which are carried up through the external buttresses. By this difficult and complicated entrance, the good King Richard, followed by his faithful Ivanhoe, was ushered into the round apartment which occupies the whole of the third story from the ground. Wilfred, by the difficulties of the ascent, gained time to muffle his face in his mantle, as it had been held expedient that he should not present himself to his father until the King should give him the signal. There were assembled in this apartment, around a large oaken table, about a dozen of the most distinguished representatives of the Saxon families in the adjacent counties. They were all old, or, at least, elderly men; for the younger race, to the great displeasure of the seniors, had, like Ivanhoe, broken down many of the barriers which separated for half a century the Norman victors from the vanquished Saxons. The downcast and sorrowful looks of these venerable men, their silence and their mournful posture, formed a strong contrast to the levity of the revellers on the outside of the castle. Their grey locks and long full beards, together with their antique tunics and loose black mantles, suited well with the singular and rude apartment in which they were seated, and gave the appearance of a band of ancient worshippers of Woden, recalled to life to mourn over the decay of their national glory. Cedric, seated in equal rank among his countrymen, seemed yet, by common consent, to act as chief of the assembly. Upon the entrance of Richard (only known to him as the valorous Knight of the Fetterlock) he arose gravely, and gave him welcome by the ordinary salutation, "Waes hael", raising at the same time a goblet to his head. The King, no stranger to the customs of his English subjects, returned the greeting with the appropriate words, "Drinc hael", and partook of a cup which was handed to him by the sewer. The same courtesy was offered to Ivanhoe, who pledged his father in silence, supplying the usual speech by an inclination of his head, lest his voice should have been recognised. When this introductory ceremony was performed, Cedric arose, and, extending his hand to Richard, conducted him into a small and very rude chapel, which was excavated, as it were, out of one of the external buttresses. As there was no opening, saving a little narrow loop-hole, the place would have been nearly quite dark but for two flambeaux or torches, which showed, by a red and smoky light, the arched roof and naked walls, the rude altar of stone, and the crucifix of the same material. Before this altar was placed a bier, and on each side of this bier kneeled three priests, who told their beads, and muttered their prayers, with the greatest signs of external devotion. For this service a splendid "soul-scat" was paid to the convent of Saint Edmund's by the mother of the deceased; and, that it might be fully deserved, the whole brethren, saving the lame Sacristan, had transferred themselves to Coningsburgh, where, while six of their number were constantly on guard in the performance of divine rites by the bier of Athelstane, the others failed not to take their share of the refreshments and amusements which went on at the castle. In maintaining this pious watch and ward, the good monks were particularly careful not to interrupt their hymns for an instant, lest Zernebock, the ancient Saxon Apollyon, should lay his clutches on the departed Athelstane. Nor were they less careful to prevent any unhallowed layman from touching the pall, which, having been that used at the funeral of Saint Edmund, was liable to be desecrated, if handled by the profane. If, in truth, these attentions could be of any use to the deceased, he had some right to expect them at the hands of the brethren of Saint Edmund's, since, besides a hundred mancuses of gold paid down as the soul-ransom, the mother of Athelstane had announced her intention of endowing that foundation with the better part of the lands of the deceased, in order to maintain perpetual prayers for his soul, and that of her departed husband. Richard and Wilfred followed the Saxon Cedric into the apartment of death, where, as their guide pointed with solemn air to the untimely bier of Athelstane, they followed his example in devoutly crossing themselves, and muttering a brief prayer for the weal of the departed soul. This act of pious charity performed, Cedric again motioned them to follow him, gliding over the stone floor with a noiseless tread; and, after ascending a few steps, opened with great caution the door of a small oratory, which adjoined to the chapel. It was about eight feet square, hollowed, like the chapel itself, out of the thickness of the wall; and the loop-hole, which enlightened it, being to the west, and widening considerably as it sloped inward, a beam of the setting sun found its way into its dark recess, and showed a female of a dignified mien, and whose countenance retained the marked remains of majestic beauty. Her long mourning robes and her flowing wimple of black cypress, enhanced the whiteness of her skin, and the beauty of her light-coloured and flowing tresses, which time had neither thinned nor mingled with silver. Her countenance expressed the deepest sorrow that is consistent with resignation. On the stone table before her stood a crucifix of ivory, beside which was laid a missal, having its pages richly illuminated, and its boards adorned with clasps of gold, and bosses of the same precious metal. "Noble Edith," said Cedric, after having stood a moment silent, as if to give Richard and Wilfred time to look upon the lady of the mansion, "these are worthy strangers, come to take a part in thy sorrows. And this, in especial, is the valiant Knight who fought so bravely for the deliverance of him for whom we this day mourn." "His bravery has my thanks," returned the lady; "although it be the will of Heaven that it should be displayed in vain. I thank, too, his courtesy, and that of his companion, which hath brought them hither to behold the widow of Adeling, the mother of Athelstane, in her deep hour of sorrow and lamentation. To your care, kind kinsman, I intrust them, satisfied that they will want no hospitality which these sad walls can yet afford." The guests bowed deeply to the mourning parent, and withdrew from their hospitable guide. Another winding stair conducted them to an apartment of the same size with that which they had first entered, occupying indeed the story immediately above. From this room, ere yet the door was opened, proceeded a low and melancholy strain of vocal music. When they entered, they found themselves in the presence of about twenty matrons and maidens of distinguished Saxon lineage. Four maidens, Rowena leading the choir, raised a hymn for the soul of the deceased, of which we have only been able to decipher two or three stanzas:-- Dust unto dust, To this all must; The tenant hath resign'd The faded form To waste and worm-- Corruption claims her kind. Through paths unknown Thy soul hath flown, To seek the realms of woe, Where fiery pain Shall purge the stain Of actions done below. In that sad place, By Mary's grace, Brief may thy dwelling be Till prayers and alms, And holy psalms, Shall set the captive free. While this dirge was sung, in a low and melancholy tone, by the female choristers, the others were divided into two bands, of which one was engaged in bedecking, with such embroidery as their skill and taste could compass, a large silken pall, destined to cover the bier of Athelstane, while the others busied themselves in selecting, from baskets of flowers placed before them, garlands, which they intended for the same mournful purpose. The behaviour of the maidens was decorous, if not marked with deep affliction; but now and then a whisper or a smile called forth the rebuke of the severer matrons, and here and there might be seen a damsel more interested in endeavouring to find out how her mourning-robe became her, than in the dismal ceremony for which they were preparing. Neither was this propensity (if we must needs confess the truth) at all diminished by the appearance of two strange knights, which occasioned some looking up, peeping, and whispering. Rowena alone, too proud to be vain, paid her greeting to her deliverer with a graceful courtesy. Her demeanour was serious, but not dejected; and it may be doubted whether thoughts of Ivanhoe, and of the uncertainty of his fate, did not claim as great a share in her gravity as the death of her kinsman. To Cedric, however, who, as we have observed, was not remarkably clear-sighted on such occasions, the sorrow of his ward seemed so much deeper than any of the other maidens, that he deemed it proper to whisper the explanation--"She was the affianced bride of the noble Athelstane."--It may be doubted whether this communication went a far way to increase Wilfred's disposition to sympathize with the mourners of Coningsburgh. Having thus formally introduced the guests to the different chambers in which the obsequies of Athelstane were celebrated under different forms, Cedric conducted them into a small room, destined, as he informed them, for the exclusive accomodation of honourable guests, whose more slight connexion with the deceased might render them unwilling to join those who were immediately effected by the unhappy event. He assured them of every accommodation, and was about to withdraw when the Black Knight took his hand. "I crave to remind you, noble Thane," he said, "that when we last parted, you promised, for the service I had the fortune to render you, to grant me a boon." "It is granted ere named, noble Knight," said Cedric; "yet, at this sad moment---" "Of that also," said the King, "I have bethought me--but my time is brief--neither does it seem to me unfit, that, when closing the grave on the noble Athelstane, we should deposit therein certain prejudices and hasty opinions." "Sir Knight of the Fetterlock," said Cedric, colouring, and interrupting the King in his turn, "I trust your boon regards yourself and no other; for in that which concerns the honour of my house, it is scarce fitting that a stranger should mingle." "Nor do I wish to mingle," said the King, mildly, "unless in so far as you will admit me to have an interest. As yet you have known me but as the Black Knight of the Fetterlock--Know me now as Richard Plantagenet." "Richard of Anjou!" exclaimed Cedric, stepping backward with the utmost astonishment. "No, noble Cedric--Richard of England!--whose deepest interest--whose deepest wish, is to see her sons united with each other.--And, how now, worthy Thane! hast thou no knee for thy prince?" "To Norman blood," said Cedric, "it hath never bended." "Reserve thine homage then," said the Monarch, "until I shall prove my right to it by my equal protection of Normans and English." "Prince," answered Cedric, "I have ever done justice to thy bravery and thy worth--Nor am I ignorant of thy claim to the crown through thy descent from Matilda, niece to Edgar Atheling, and daughter to Malcolm of Scotland. But Matilda, though of the royal Saxon blood, was not the heir to the monarchy." "I will not dispute my title with thee, noble Thane," said Richard, calmly; "but I will bid thee look around thee, and see where thou wilt find another to be put into the scale against it." "And hast thou wandered hither, Prince, to tell me so?" said Cedric--"To upbraid me with the ruin of my race, ere the grave has closed o'er the last scion of Saxon royalty?"--His countenance darkened as he spoke.--"It was boldly--it was rashly done!" "Not so, by the holy rood!" replied the King; "it was done in the frank confidence which one brave man may repose in another, without a shadow of danger." "Thou sayest well, Sir King--for King I own thou art, and wilt be, despite of my feeble opposition.--I dare not take the only mode to prevent it, though thou hast placed the strong temptation within my reach!" "And now to my boon," said the King, "which I ask not with one jot the less confidence, that thou hast refused to acknowledge my lawful sovereignty. I require of thee, as a man of thy word, on pain of being held faithless, man-sworn, and 'nidering', [581] to forgive and receive to thy paternal affection the good knight, Wilfred of Ivanhoe. In this reconciliation thou wilt own I have an interest--the happiness of my friend, and the quelling of dissension among my faithful people." "And this is Wilfred!" said Cedric, pointing to his son. "My father!--my father!" said Ivanhoe, prostrating himself at Cedric's feet, "grant me thy forgiveness!" "Thou hast it, my son," said Cedric, raising him up. "The son of Hereward knows how to keep his word, even when it has been passed to a Norman. But let me see thee use the dress and costume of thy English ancestry--no short cloaks, no gay bonnets, no fantastic plumage in my decent household. He that would be the son of Cedric, must show himself of English ancestry.--Thou art about to speak," he added, sternly, "and I guess the topic. The Lady Rowena must complete two years' mourning, as for a betrothed husband--all our Saxon ancestors would disown us were we to treat of a new union for her ere the grave of him she should have wedded--him, so much the most worthy of her hand by birth and ancestry--is yet closed. The ghost of Athelstane himself would burst his bloody cerements and stand before us to forbid such dishonour to his memory." It seemed as if Cedric's words had raised a spectre; for, scarce had he uttered them ere the door flew open, and Athelstane, arrayed in the garments of the grave, stood before them, pale, haggard, and like something arisen from the dead! [59] The effect of this apparition on the persons present was utterly appalling. Cedric started back as far as the wall of the apartment would permit, and, leaning against it as one unable to support himself, gazed on the figure of his friend with eyes that seemed fixed, and a mouth which he appeared incapable of shutting. Ivanhoe crossed himself, repeating prayers in Saxon, Latin, or Norman-French, as they occurred to his memory, while Richard alternately said, "Benedicite", and swore, "Mort de ma vie!" In the meantime, a horrible noise was heard below stairs, some crying, "Secure the treacherous monks!"--others, "Down with them into the dungeon!"--others, "Pitch them from the highest battlements!" "In the name of God!" said Cedric, addressing what seemed the spectre of his departed friend, "if thou art mortal, speak!--if a departed spirit, say for what cause thou dost revisit us, or if I can do aught that can set thy spirit at repose.--Living or dead, noble Athelstane, speak to Cedric!" "I will," said the spectre, very composedly, "when I have collected breath, and when you give me time--Alive, saidst thou?--I am as much alive as he can be who has fed on bread and water for three days, which seem three ages--Yes, bread and water, Father Cedric! By Heaven, and all saints in it, better food hath not passed my weasand for three livelong days, and by God's providence it is that I am now here to tell it." "Why, noble Athelstane," said the Black Knight, "I myself saw you struck down by the fierce Templar towards the end of the storm at Torquilstone, and as I thought, and Wamba reported, your skull was cloven through the teeth." "You thought amiss, Sir Knight," said Athelstane, "and Wamba lied. My teeth are in good order, and that my supper shall presently find--No thanks to the Templar though, whose sword turned in his hand, so that the blade struck me flatlings, being averted by the handle of the good mace with which I warded the blow; had my steel-cap been on, I had not valued it a rush, and had dealt him such a counter-buff as would have spoilt his retreat. But as it was, down I went, stunned, indeed, but unwounded. Others, of both sides, were beaten down and slaughtered above me, so that I never recovered my senses until I found myself in a coffin--(an open one, by good luck)--placed before the altar of the church of Saint Edmund's. I sneezed repeatedly--groaned--awakened and would have arisen, when the Sacristan and Abbot, full of terror, came running at the noise, surprised, doubtless, and no way pleased to find the man alive, whose heirs they had proposed themselves to be. I asked for wine--they gave me some, but it must have been highly medicated, for I slept yet more deeply than before, and wakened not for many hours. I found my arms swathed down--my feet tied so fast that mine ankles ache at the very remembrance--the place was utterly dark--the oubliette, as I suppose, of their accursed convent, and from the close, stifled, damp smell, I conceive it is also used for a place of sepulture. I had strange thoughts of what had befallen me, when the door of my dungeon creaked, and two villain monks entered. They would have persuaded me I was in purgatory, but I knew too well the pursy short-breathed voice of the Father Abbot.--Saint Jeremy! how different from that tone with which he used to ask me for another slice of the haunch!--the dog has feasted with me from Christmas to Twelfth-night." "Have patience, noble Athelstane," said the King, "take breath--tell your story at leisure--beshrew me but such a tale is as well worth listening to as a romance." "Ay but, by the rood of Bromeholm, there was no romance in the matter!" said Athelstane.--"A barley loaf and a pitcher of water--that THEY gave me, the niggardly traitors, whom my father, and I myself, had enriched, when their best resources were the flitches of bacon and measures of corn, out of which they wheedled poor serfs and bondsmen, in exchange for their prayers--the nest of foul ungrateful vipers--barley bread and ditch water to such a patron as I had been! I will smoke them out of their nest, though I be excommunicated!" "But, in the name of Our Lady, noble Athelstane," said Cedric, grasping the hand of his friend, "how didst thou escape this imminent danger--did their hearts relent?" "Did their hearts relent!" echoed Athelstane.--"Do rocks melt with the sun? I should have been there still, had not some stir in the Convent, which I find was their procession hitherward to eat my funeral feast, when they well knew how and where I had been buried alive, summoned the swarm out of their hive. I heard them droning out their death-psalms, little judging they were sung in respect for my soul by those who were thus famishing my body. They went, however, and I waited long for food--no wonder--the gouty Sacristan was even too busy with his own provender to mind mine. At length down he came, with an unstable step and a strong flavour of wine and spices about his person. Good cheer had opened his heart, for he left me a nook of pasty and a flask of wine, instead of my former fare. I ate, drank, and was invigorated; when, to add to my good luck, the Sacristan, too totty to discharge his duty of turnkey fitly, locked the door beside the staple, so that it fell ajar. The light, the food, the wine, set my invention to work. The staple to which my chains were fixed, was more rusted than I or the villain Abbot had supposed. Even iron could not remain without consuming in the damps of that infernal dungeon." "Take breath, noble Athelstane," said Richard, "and partake of some refreshment, ere you proceed with a tale so dreadful." "Partake!" quoth Athelstane; "I have been partaking five times to-day--and yet a morsel of that savoury ham were not altogether foreign to the matter; and I pray you, fair sir, to do me reason in a cup of wine." The guests, though still agape with astonishment, pledged their resuscitated landlord, who thus proceeded in his story:--He had indeed now many more auditors than those to whom it was commenced, for Edith, having given certain necessary orders for arranging matters within the Castle, had followed the dead-alive up to the stranger's apartment attended by as many of the guests, male and female, as could squeeze into the small room, while others, crowding the staircase, caught up an erroneous edition of the story, and transmitted it still more inaccurately to those beneath, who again sent it forth to the vulgar without, in a fashion totally irreconcilable to the real fact. Athelstane, however, went on as follows, with the history of his escape:-- "Finding myself freed from the staple, I dragged myself up stairs as well as a man loaded with shackles, and emaciated with fasting, might; and after much groping about, I was at length directed, by the sound of a jolly roundelay, to the apartment where the worthy Sacristan, an it so please ye, was holding a devil's mass with a huge beetle-browed, broad-shouldered brother of the grey-frock and cowl, who looked much more like a thief than a clergyman. I burst in upon them, and the fashion of my grave-clothes, as well as the clanking of my chains, made me more resemble an inhabitant of the other world than of this. Both stood aghast; but when I knocked down the Sacristan with my fist, the other fellow, his pot-companion, fetched a blow at me with a huge quarter-staff." "This must be our Friar Tuck, for a count's ransom," said Richard, looking at Ivanhoe. "He may be the devil, an he will," said Athelstane. "Fortunately he missed the aim; and on my approaching to grapple with him, took to his heels and ran for it. I failed not to set my own heels at liberty by means of the fetter-key, which hung amongst others at the sexton's belt; and I had thoughts of beating out the knave's brains with the bunch of keys, but gratitude for the nook of pasty and the flask of wine which the rascal had imparted to my captivity, came over my heart; so, with a brace of hearty kicks, I left him on the floor, pouched some baked meat, and a leathern bottle of wine, with which the two venerable brethren had been regaling, went to the stable, and found in a private stall mine own best palfrey, which, doubtless, had been set apart for the holy Father Abbot's particular use. Hither I came with all the speed the beast could compass--man and mother's son flying before me wherever I came, taking me for a spectre, the more especially as, to prevent my being recognised, I drew the corpse-hood over my face. I had not gained admittance into my own castle, had I not been supposed to be the attendant of a juggler who is making the people in the castle-yard very merry, considering they are assembled to celebrate their lord's funeral--I say the sewer thought I was dressed to bear a part in the tregetour's mummery, and so I got admission, and did but disclose myself to my mother, and eat a hasty morsel, ere I came in quest of you, my noble friend." "And you have found me," said Cedric, "ready to resume our brave projects of honour and liberty. I tell thee, never will dawn a morrow so auspicious as the next, for the deliverance of the noble Saxon race." "Talk not to me of delivering any one," said Athelstane; "it is well I am delivered myself. I am more intent on punishing that villain Abbot. He shall hang on the top of this Castle of Coningsburgh, in his cope and stole; and if the stairs be too strait to admit his fat carcass, I will have him craned up from without." "But, my son," said Edith, "consider his sacred office." "Consider my three days' fast," replied Athelstane; "I will have their blood every one of them. Front-de-Boeuf was burnt alive for a less matter, for he kept a good table for his prisoners, only put too much garlic in his last dish of pottage. But these hypocritical, ungrateful slaves, so often the self-invited flatterers at my board, who gave me neither pottage nor garlic, more or less, they die, by the soul of Hengist!" "But the Pope, my noble friend,"--said Cedric-- "But the devil, my noble friend,"--answered Athelstane; "they die, and no more of them. Were they the best monks upon earth, the world would go on without them." "For shame, noble Athelstane," said Cedric; "forget such wretches in the career of glory which lies open before thee. Tell this Norman prince, Richard of Anjou, that, lion-hearted as he is, he shall not hold undisputed the throne of Alfred, while a male descendant of the Holy Confessor lives to dispute it." "How!" said Athelstane, "is this the noble King Richard?" "It is Richard Plantagenet himself," said Cedric; "yet I need not remind thee that, coming hither a guest of free-will, he may neither be injured nor detained prisoner--thou well knowest thy duty to him as his host." "Ay, by my faith!" said Athelstane; "and my duty as a subject besides, for I here tender him my allegiance, heart and hand." "My son," said Edith, "think on thy royal rights!" "Think on the freedom of England, degenerate Prince!" said Cedric. "Mother and friend," said Athelstane, "a truce to your upbraidings--bread and water and a dungeon are marvellous mortifiers of ambition, and I rise from the tomb a wiser man than I descended into it. One half of those vain follies were puffed into mine ear by that perfidious Abbot Wolfram, and you may now judge if he is a counsellor to be trusted. Since these plots were set in agitation, I have had nothing but hurried journeys, indigestions, blows and bruises, imprisonments and starvation; besides that they can only end in the murder of some thousands of quiet folk. I tell you, I will be king in my own domains, and nowhere else; and my first act of dominion shall be to hang the Abbot." "And my ward Rowena," said Cedric--"I trust you intend not to desert her?" "Father Cedric," said Athelstane, "be reasonable. The Lady Rowena cares not for me--she loves the little finger of my kinsman Wilfred's glove better than my whole person. There she stands to avouch it--Nay, blush not, kinswoman, there is no shame in loving a courtly knight better than a country franklin--and do not laugh neither, Rowena, for grave-clothes and a thin visage are, God knows, no matter of merriment--Nay, an thou wilt needs laugh, I will find thee a better jest--Give me thy hand, or rather lend it me, for I but ask it in the way of friendship.--Here, cousin Wilfred of Ivanhoe, in thy favour I renounce and abjure---Hey! by Saint Dunstan, our cousin Wilfred hath vanished!--Yet, unless my eyes are still dazzled with the fasting I have undergone, I saw him stand there but even now." All now looked around and enquired for Ivanhoe, but he had vanished. It was at length discovered that a Jew had been to seek him; and that, after very brief conference, he had called for Gurth and his armour, and had left the castle. "Fair cousin," said Athelstane to Rowena, "could I think that this sudden disappearance of Ivanhoe was occasioned by other than the weightiest reason, I would myself resume--" But he had no sooner let go her hand, on first observing that Ivanhoe had disappeared, than Rowena, who had found her situation extremely embarrassing, had taken the first opportunity to escape from the apartment. "Certainly," quoth Athelstane, "women are the least to be trusted of all animals, monks and abbots excepted. I am an infidel, if I expected not thanks from her, and perhaps a kiss to boot--These cursed grave-clothes have surely a spell on them, every one flies from me.--To you I turn, noble King Richard, with the vows of allegiance, which, as a liege-subject--" But King Richard was gone also, and no one knew whither. At length it was learned that he had hastened to the court-yard, summoned to his presence the Jew who had spoken with Ivanhoe, and after a moment's speech with him, had called vehemently to horse, thrown himself upon a steed, compelled the Jew to mount another, and set off at a rate, which, according to Wamba, rendered the old Jew's neck not worth a penny's purchase. "By my halidome!" said Athelstane, "it is certain that Zernebock hath possessed himself of my castle in my absence. I return in my grave-clothes, a pledge restored from the very sepulchre, and every one I speak to vanishes as soon as they hear my voice!--But it skills not talking of it. Come, my friends--such of you as are left, follow me to the banquet-hall, lest any more of us disappear--it is, I trust, as yet tolerably furnished, as becomes the obsequies of an ancient Saxon noble; and should we tarry any longer, who knows but the devil may fly off with the supper?"

We're back to Scott's "Old Play" for the epigraph of this chapter. The speaker of these lines describes a funeral ceremony. King Richard and Ivanhoe enter Coningsburgh Castle. At Athelstane's funeral there are about a dozen representatives of old Saxon families from the area. When King Richard enters the room, Cedric recognizes him as the Black Knight. Ivanhoe hides his identity from his father. Cedric guides the two men into a chapel, where there is a woman dressed in black. This is Edith, Athelstane's mother. Cedric introduces Edith to "these worthy strangers" . He especially draws her attention to the Black Knight, as a noble defender of the Saxons. Cedric guides his two guests to another room. There are about twenty Saxon women there. Rowena and three other girls are singing a hymn for Athelstane's soul. Cedric then leads the two men to a room where they can stay for the night. The Black Knight reminds Cedric that he owes him a favor. Then the Black Knight reveals that he is King Richard I. Cedric refuses to bow to a Norman. King Richard promises that he is equally king of the Normans and the Saxons. He is not the <em>rightful </em>King of England, Cedric answers. King Richard asks if there are any other options Cedric has in mind. Cedric is angry that King Richard is mocking him with Athelstane's death, since Athelstane was the last living Saxon royalty. Cedric recognizes that King Richard will stay king no matter what he says. King Richard calls in his favor. He wants Cedric to forgive his son. Cedric then recognizes that his second guest is none other than Ivanhoe. Ivanhoe throws himself at his father's feet. Cedric agrees to forgive his son. But he reminds Ivanhoe that Rowena has to stay in mourning for Athelstane for two years, according to Saxon custom. Just then, out of nowhere, appears... Athelstane! He's alive! He tells his story: Athelstane was not killed by Bois-Guilbert, but only knocked unconscious. He wakes up in an open coffin at the nearby Church of Saint Edmund's. Instead of letting him go, the monks of the church keep Athelstane a prisoner. Since Athelstane has no heir, the monks think <em>they </em>will be able to inherit his fortune. Of course, they can't inherit if Athelstane is still alive, hence the forced imprisonment. Athelstane sits for three days in the basement of the church, chained to the wall with only bread and water to drink. When the monks leave their church to go to Athelstane's funeral, a drunk friar comes down the stairs. He leaves behind some wine and meat for Athelstane, instead of the usual water and bread. Cheered by this better food, Athelstane starts pulling at his chains, and eventually he breaks free. Athelstane sneaks upstairs and finds two men drinking. One of them is the outlaw Friar, who tries to hit Athelstane. Athelstane knocks him out and steals a horse from the stables to make his escape. Now Athelstane wants to kill the monks of the Church of Saint Edmund for revenge. Cedric introduces Athelstane to King Richard. Athelstane immediately swears loyalty to the King. Athelstane's mother and Cedric are both angry that he won't try to get his rightful throne back. But Athelstane wants no part in plots for the kingdom. That's what got him imprisoned by the monks in the first place. All he wants is a comfortable life on his own lands. Athelstane tells Cedric that Rowena is in love with Ivanhoe. When they all look around, they see that Ivanhoe has disappeared. Apparently a Jewish man came by with a message for him. Ivanhoe put on his armor, took Gurth, and left the castle. Rowena is so embarrassed by Athelstane revealing her feelings for Ivanhoe that she leaves the room. King Richard, who finds out where Ivanhoe has gone, also takes off.

SCENE II. The same. Before the Princess's pavilion. [Enter the PRINCESS, KATHARINE, ROSALINE and MARIA.] PRINCESS. Sweet hearts, we shall be rich ere we depart, If fairings come thus plentifully in. A lady wall'd about with diamonds! Look you what I have from the loving king. ROSALINE. Madam, came nothing else along with that? PRINCESS. Nothing but this! Yes, as much love in rime As would be cramm'd up in a sheet of paper Writ o' both sides the leaf, margent and all, That he was fain to seal on Cupid's name. ROSALINE. That was the way to make his godhead wax; For he hath been five thousand years a boy. KATHARINE. Ay, and a shrewd unhappy gallows too. ROSALINE. You'll ne'er be friends with him: a' kill'd your sister. KATHARINE. He made her melancholy, sad, and heavy; And so she died: had she been light, like you, Of such a merry, nimble, stirring spirit, She might ha' been a grandam ere she died; And so may you, for a light heart lives long. ROSALINE. What's your dark meaning, mouse, of this light word? KATHARINE. A light condition in a beauty dark. ROSALINE. We need more light to find your meaning out. KATHARINE. You'll mar the light by taking it in snuff; Therefore I'll darkly end the argument. ROSALINE. Look what you do, you do it still i' the dark. KATHARINE. So do not you; for you are a light wench. ROSALINE. Indeed, I weigh not you; and therefore light. KATHARINE. You weigh me not? O! that's you care not for me. ROSALINE. Great reason; for 'past cure is still past care.' PRINCESS. Well bandied both; a set of wit well play'd. But, Rosaline, you have a favour too: Who sent it? and what is it? ROSALINE. I would you knew. An if my face were but as fair as yours, My favour were as great: be witness this. Nay, I have verses too, I thank Berowne; The numbers true, and, were the numbering too, I were the fairest goddess on the ground: I am compar'd to twenty thousand fairs. O! he hath drawn my picture in his letter. PRINCESS. Anything like? ROSALINE. Much in the letters; nothing in the praise. PRINCESS. Beauteous as ink; a good conclusion. KATHARINE. Fair as a text B in a copy-book. ROSALINE. 'Ware pencils! how! let me not die your debtor, My red dominical, my golden letter: O, that your face were not so full of O's! KATHARINE. A pox of that jest! and beshrew all shrows! PRINCESS. But, Katharine, what was sent to you from fair Dumaine? KATHARINE. Madam, this glove. PRINCESS. Did he not send you twain? KATHARINE. Yes, madam; and, moreover, Some thousand verses of a faithful lover; A huge translation of hypocrisy, Vilely compil'd, profound simplicity. MARIA. This, and these pearl, to me sent Longaville; The letter is too long by half a mile. PRINCESS. I think no less. Dost thou not wish in heart The chain were longer and the letter short? MARIA. Ay, or I would these hands might never part. PRINCESS. We are wise girls to mock our lovers so. ROSALINE. They are worse fools to purchase mocking so. That same Berowne I'll torture ere I go. O that I knew he were but in by th' week! How I would make him fawn, and beg, and seek, And wait the season, and observe the times, And spend his prodigal wits in bootless rimes, And shape his service wholly to my hests, And make him proud to make me proud that jests! So perttaunt-like would I o'ersway his state That he should be my fool, and I his fate. PRINCESS. None are so surely caught, when they are catch'd, As wit turn'd fool: folly, in wisdom hatch'd, Hath wisdom's warrant and the help of school And wit's own grace to grace a learned fool. ROSALINE. The blood of youth burns not with such excess As gravity's revolt to wantonness. MARIA. Folly in fools bears not so strong a note As fool'ry in the wise when wit doth dote; Since all the power thereof it doth apply To prove, by wit, worth in simplicity. [Enter BOYET.] PRINCESS. Here comes Boyet, and mirth is in his face. BOYET. O! I am stabb'd with laughter! Where's her Grace? PRINCESS. Thy news, Boyet? BOYET. Prepare, madam, prepare!-- Arm, wenches, arm! encounters mounted are Against your peace: Love doth approach disguis'd, Armed in arguments; you'll be surpris'd: Muster your wits; stand in your own defence; Or hide your heads like cowards, and fly hence. PRINCESS. Saint Denis to Saint Cupid! What are they That charge their breath against us? Say, scout, say. BOYET. Under the cool shade of a sycamore I thought to close mine eyes some half an hour; When, lo, to interrupt my purpos'd rest, Toward that shade I might behold addrest The king and his companions: warily I stole into a neighbour thicket by, And overheard what you shall overhear; That, by and by, disguis'd they will be here. Their herald is a pretty knavish page, That well by heart hath conn'd his embassage: Action and accent did they teach him there; 'Thus must thou speak' and 'thus thy body bear,' And ever and anon they made a doubt Presence majestical would put him out; 'For' quoth the King 'an angel shalt thou see; Yet fear not thou, but speak audaciously.' The boy replied 'An angel is not evil; I should have fear'd her had she been a devil.' With that all laugh'd, and clapp'd him on the shoulder, Making the bold wag by their praises bolder. One rubb'd his elbow, thus, and fleer'd, and swore A better speech was never spoke before. Another with his finger and his thumb Cried 'Via! we will do't, come what will come.' The third he caper'd, and cried 'All goes well.' The fourth turn'd on the toe, and down he fell. With that they all did tumble on the ground, With such a zealous laughter, so profound, That in this spleen ridiculous appears, To check their folly, passion's solemn tears. PRINCESS. But what, but what, come they to visit us? BOYET. They do, they do, and are apparell'd thus, Like Muscovites or Russians, as I guess. Their purpose is to parley, court, and dance; And every one his love-feat will advance Unto his several mistress; which they'll know By favours several which they did bestow. PRINCESS. And will they so? The gallants shall be task'd: For, ladies, we will every one be mask'd; And not a man of them shall have the grace, Despite of suit, to see a lady's face. Hold, Rosaline, this favour thou shalt wear, And then the king will court thee for his dear; Hold, take thou this, my sweet, and give me thine, So shall Berowne take me for Rosaline. And change you favours too; so shall your loves Woo contrary, deceiv'd by these removes. ROSALINE. Come on, then, wear the favours most in sight. KATHARINE. But, in this changing, what is your intent? PRINCESS. The effect of my intent is to cross theirs; They do it but in mocking merriment; And mock for mock is only my intent. Their several counsels they unbosom shall To loves mistook, and so be mock'd withal Upon the next occasion that we meet With visages display'd to talk and greet. ROSALINE. But shall we dance, if they desire us to't? PRINCESS. No, to the death, we will not move a foot, Nor to their penn'd speech render we no grace; But while 'tis spoke each turn away her face. BOYET. Why, that contempt will kill the speaker's heart, And quite divorce his memory from his part. PRINCESS. Therefore I do it; and I make no doubt The rest will ne'er come in, if he be out. There's no such sport as sport by sport o'erthrown, To make theirs ours, and ours none but our own: So shall we stay, mocking intended game, And they well mock'd, depart away with shame. [Trumpet sounds within.] BOYET. The trumpet sounds: be mask'd; the maskers come. [The LADIES mask.] [Enter BLACKAMOORS with music; MOTH, the KING, BEROWNE, LONGAVILLE, and DUMAINE in Russian habits, and masked.] MOTH. 'All hail, the richest heauties on the earth!' BOYET. Beauties no richer than rich taffeta. MOTH. 'A holy parcel of the fairest dames [The LADIES turn their backs to him.] That ever turn'd their--backs--to mortal views! BEROWNE. 'Their eyes,' villain, 'their eyes.' MOTH. 'That ever turn'd their eyes to mortal views! Out'-- BOYET. True; 'out,' indeed. MOTH. 'Out of your favours, heavenly spirits, vouchsafe Not to behold'-- BEROWNE. 'Once to behold,' rogue. MOTH. 'Once to behold with your sun-beamed eyes--with your sun-beamed eyes'-- BOYET. They will not answer to that epithet; You were best call it 'daughter-beamed eyes.' MOTH. They do not mark me, and that brings me out. BEROWNE. Is this your perfectness? be gone, you rogue. [Exit MOTH.] ROSALINE. What would these strangers? Know their minds, Boyet. If they do speak our language, 'tis our will That some plain man recount their purposes: Know what they would. BOYET. What would you with the princess? BEROWNE. Nothing but peace and gentle visitation. ROSALINE. What would they, say they? BOYET. Nothing but peace and gentle visitation. ROSALINE. Why, that they have; and bid them so be gone. BOYET. She says you have it, and you may be gone. KING. Say to her we have measur'd many miles To tread a measure with her on this grass. BOYET. They say that they have measur'd many a mile To tread a measure with you on this grass. ROSALINE. It is not so. Ask them how many inches Is in one mile? If they have measured many, The measure then of one is easily told. BOYET. If to come hither you have measur'd miles, And many miles, the Princess bids you tell How many inches doth fill up one mile. BEROWNE. Tell her we measure them by weary steps. BOYET. She hears herself. ROSALINE. How many weary steps Of many weary miles you have o'ergone Are number'd in the travel of one mile? BEROWNE. We number nothing that we spend for you; Our duty is so rich, so infinite, That we may do it still without accompt. Vouchsafe to show the sunshine of your face, That we, like savages, may worship it. ROSALINE. My face is but a moon, and clouded too. KING. Blessed are clouds, to do as such clouds do! Vouchsafe, bright moon, and these thy stars, to shine, Those clouds remov'd, upon our watery eyne. ROSALINE. O vain petitioner! beg a greater matter; Thou now requests'st but moonshine in the water. KING. Then in our measure do but vouchsafe one change. Thou bid'st me beg; this begging is not strange. ROSALINE. Play, music, then! Nay, you must do it soon. [Music plays.] Not yet! No dance! thus change I like the moon. KING. Will you not dance? How come you thus estranged? ROSALINE. You took the moon at full; but now she's chang'd. KING. Yet still she is the moon, and I the man. The music plays; vouchsafe some motion to it. ROSALINE. Our ears vouchsafe it. KING. But your legs should do it. ROSALINE. Since you are strangers, and come here by chance, We'll not be nice: take hands; we will not dance. KING. Why take we hands then? ROSALINE. Only to part friends. Curtsy, sweet hearts; and so the measure ends. KING. More measure of this measure: be not nice. ROSALINE. We can afford no more at such a price. KING. Price you yourselves? what buys your company? ROSALINE. Your absence only. KING. That can never be. ROSALINE. Then cannot we be bought: and so adieu; Twice to your visor, and half once to you! KING. If you deny to dance, let's hold more chat. ROSALINE. In private then. KING. I am best pleas'd with that. [They converse apart.] BEROWNE. White-handed mistress, one sweet word with thee. PRINCESS. Honey, and milk, and sugar; there is three. BEROWNE. Nay, then, two treys, an if you grow so nice, Metheglin, wort, and malmsey: well run, dice! There's half a dozen sweets. PRINCESS. Seventh sweet, adieu: Since you can cog, I'll play no more with you. BEROWNE. One word in secret. PRINCESS. Let it not be sweet. BEROWNE. Thou griev'st my gall. PRINCESS. Gall! bitter. BEROWNE. Therefore meet. [They converse apart.] DUMAINE. Will you vouchsafe with me to change a word? MARIA. Name it. DUMAINE. Fair lady,-- MARIA. Say you so? Fair lord, Take that for your fair lady. DUMAINE. Please it you, As much in private, and I'll bid adieu. [They converse apart.] KATHARINE. What, was your visord made without a tongue? LONGAVILLE. I know the reason, lady, why you ask. KATHARINE. O! for your reason! quickly, sir; I long. LONGAVILLE. You have a double tongue within your mask, And would afford my speechless visor half. KATHARINE. 'Veal' quoth the Dutchman. Is not 'veal' a calf? LONGAVILLE. A calf, fair lady! KATHARINE. No, a fair lord calf. LONGAVILLE. Let's part the word. KATHARINE. No, I'll not be your half. Take all and wean it; it may prove an ox. LONGAVILLE. Look how you butt yourself in these sharp mocks! Will you give horns, chaste lady? do not so. KATHARINE. Then die a calf, before your horns do grow. LONGAVILLE. One word in private with you ere I die. KATHARINE. Bleat softly, then; the butcher hears you cry. [They converse apart.] BOYET. The tongues of mocking wenches are as keen As is the razor's edge invisible, Cutting a smaller hair than may be seen, Above the sense of sense; so sensible Seemeth their conference; their conceits have wings, Fleeter than arrows, bullets, wind, thought, swifter things. ROSALINE. Not one word more, my maids; break off, break off. BEROWNE. By heaven, all dry-beaten with pure scoff! KING. Farewell, mad wenches; you have simple wits. PRINCESS. Twenty adieus, my frozen Muscovits. [Exeunt KING, LORDS, Music, and Attendants.] Are these the breed of wits so wondered at? BOYET. Tapers they are, with your sweet breaths puff'd out. ROSALINE. Well-liking wits they have; gross, gross; fat, fat. PRINCESS. O poverty in wit, kingly-poor flout! Will they not, think you, hang themselves to-night? Or ever, but in vizors, show their faces? This pert Berowne was out of countenance quite. ROSALINE. O! They were all in lamentable cases! The King was weeping-ripe for a good word. PRINCESS. Berowne did swear himself out of all suit. MARIA. Dumaine was at my service, and his sword: 'No point' quoth I; my servant straight was mute. KATHARINE. Lord Longaville said, I came o'er his heart; And trow you what he call'd me? PRINCESS. Qualm, perhaps. KATHARINE. Yes, in good faith. PRINCESS. Go, sickness as thou art! ROSALINE. Well, better wits have worn plain statute-caps. But will you hear? The king is my love sworn. PRINCESS. And quick Berowne hath plighted faith to me. KATHARINE. And Longaville was for my service born. MARIA. Dumaine is mine, as sure as bark on tree. BOYET. Madam, and pretty mistresses, give ear: Immediately they will again be here In their own shapes; for it can never be They will digest this harsh indignity. PRINCESS. Will they return? BOYET. They will, they will, God knows, And leap for joy, though they are lame with blows; Therefore, change favours; and, when they repair, Blow like sweet roses in this summer air. PRINCESS. How blow? how blow? Speak to be understood. BOYET. Fair ladies mask'd are roses in their bud: Dismask'd, their damask sweet commixture shown, Are angels vailing clouds, or roses blown. PRINCESS. Avaunt, perplexity! What shall we do If they return in their own shapes to woo? ROSALINE. Good madam, if by me you'll be advis'd, Let's mock them still, as well known as disguis'd. Let us complain to them what fools were here, Disguis'd like Muscovites, in shapeless gear; And wonder what they were, and to what end Their shallow shows and prologue vilely penn'd, And their rough carriage so ridiculous, Should be presented at our tent to us. BOYET. Ladies, withdraw: the gallants are at hand. PRINCESS. Whip to our tents, as roes run over land. [Exeunt PRINCESS, ROSALINE, KATHARINE, and MARIA.] [Re-enter the KING, BEROWNE, LONGAVILLE, and DUMAINE in their proper habits.] KING. Fair sir, God save you! Where's the princess? BOYET. Gone to her tent. Please it your Majesty Command me any service to her thither? KING. That she vouchsafe me audience for one word. BOYET. I will; and so will she, I know, my lord. [Exit.] BEROWNE. This fellow pecks up wit as pigeons pease, And utters it again when God doth please: He is wit's pedlar, and retails his wares At wakes, and wassails, meetings, markets, fairs; And we that sell by gross, the Lord doth know, Have not the grace to grace it with such show. This gallant pins the wenches on his sleeve; Had he been Adam, he had tempted Eve: He can carve too, and lisp: why this is he That kiss'd his hand away in courtesy; This is the ape of form, monsieur the nice, That, when he plays at tables, chides the dice In honourable terms; nay, he can sing A mean most meanly; and in ushering Mend him who can: the ladies call him sweet; The stairs, as he treads on them, kiss his feet. This is the flower that smiles on every one, To show his teeth as white as whales-bone; And consciences that will not die in debt Pay him the due of honey-tongued Boyet. KING. A blister on his sweet tongue, with my heart, That put Armado's page out of his part! [Re-enter the PRINCESS, ushered by BOYET; ROSALINE, MARIA, KATHARINE, and Attendants.] BEROWNE. See where it comes! Behaviour, what wert thou, Till this man show'd thee? and what art thou now? KING. All hail, sweet madam, and fair time of day! PRINCESS. 'Fair' in 'all hail' is foul, as I conceive. KING. Construe my speeches better, if you may. PRINCESS. Then wish me better: I will give you leave. KING. We came to visit you, and purpose now To lead you to our court; vouchsafe it then. PRINCESS. This field shall hold me, and so hold your vow: Nor God, nor I, delights in perjur'd men. KING. Rebuke me not for that which you provoke: The virtue of your eye must break my oath. PRINCESS. You nickname virtue: vice you should have spoke; For virtue's office never breaks men's troth. Now by my maiden honour, yet as pure As the unsullied lily, I protest, A world of torments though I should endure, I would not yield to be your house's guest; So much I hate a breaking cause to be Of heavenly oaths, vowed with integrity. KING. O! you have liv'd in desolation here, Unseen, unvisited, much to our shame. PRINCESS. Not so, my lord; it is not so, I swear; We have had pastimes here, and pleasant game. A mess of Russians left us but of late. KING. How, madam! Russians? PRINCESS. Ay, in truth, my lord; Trim gallants, full of courtship and of state. ROSALINE. Madam, speak true. It is not so, my lord: My lady, to the manner of the days, In courtesy gives undeserving praise. We four indeed confronted were with four In Russian habit: here they stay'd an hour, And talk'd apace; and in that hour, my lord, They did not bless us with one happy word. I dare not call them fools; but this I think, When they are thirsty, fools would fain have drink. BEROWNE. This jest is dry to me. Fair gentle sweet, Your wit makes wise things foolish:when we greet, With eyes best seeing, heaven's fiery eye, By light we lose light: your capacity Is of that nature that to your huge store Wise things seem foolish and rich things but poor. ROSALINE. This proves you wise and rich, for in my eye- BEROWNE. I am a fool, and full of poverty. ROSALINE. But that you take what doth to you belong, It were a fault to snatch words from my tongue. BEROWNE. O! am yours, and all that I possess. ROSALINE. All the fool mine? BEROWNE. I cannot give you less. ROSALINE. Which of the visors was it that you wore? BEROWNE. Where? when? what visor? why demand you this? ROSALINE. There, then, that visor; that superfluous case That hid the worse,and show'd the better face. KING. We are descried: they'll mock us now downright. DUMAINE. Let us confess, and turn it to a jest. PRINCESS. Amaz'd, my lord? Why looks your Highness sad? ROSALINE. Help! hold his brows! he'll swound. Why look you pale? Sea-sick, I think, coming from Muscovy. BEROWNE. Thus pour the stars down plagues for perjury. Can any face of brass hold longer out?-- Here stand I, lady; dart thy skill at me; Bruise me with scorn, confound me with a flout; Thrust thy sharp wit quite through my ignorance; Cut me to pieces with thy keen conceit; And I will wish thee never more to dance, Nor never more in Russian habit wait. O! never will I trust to speeches penn'd, Nor to the motion of a school-boy's tongue, Nor never come in visor to my friend, Nor woo in rime, like a blind harper's song. Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise, Three-pil'd hyperboles, spruce affectation, Figures pedantical; these summer-flies Have blown me full of maggot ostentation: I do forswear them; and I here protest, By this white glove,--how white the hand, God knows!-- Henceforth my wooing mind shall be express'd In russet yeas, and honest kersey noes; And, to begin, wench,--so God help me, la!-- My love to thee is sound, sans crack or flaw. ROSALINE. Sans 'sans,' I pray you. BEROWNE. Yet I have a trick Of the old rage: bear with me, I am sick; I'll leave it by degrees. Soft! let us see: Write 'Lord have mercy on us' on those three; They are infected; in their hearts it lies; They have the plague, and caught it of your eyes: These lords are visited; you are not free, For the Lord's tokens on you do I see. PRINCESS. No, they are free that gave these tokens to us. BEROWNE. Our states are forfeit; seek not to undo us. ROSALINE. It is not so. For how can this be true, That you stand forfeit, being those that sue? BEROWNE. Peace! for I will not have to do with you. ROSALINE. Nor shall not, if I do as I intend. BEROWNE. Speak for yourselves: my wit is at an end. KING. Teach us, sweet madam, for our rude transgression Some fair excuse. PRINCESS. The fairest is confession. Were not you here but even now, disguis'd? KING. Madam, I was. PRINCESS. And were you well advis'd? KING. I was, fair madam. PRINCESS. When you then were here, What did you whisper in your lady's ear? KING. That more than all the world I did respect her. PRINCESS. When she shall challenge this, you will reject her. KING. Upon mine honour, no. PRINCESS. Peace! peace! forbear; Your oath once broke, you force not to forswear. KING. Despise me when I break this oath of mine. PRINCESS. I will; and therefore keep it. Rosaline, What did the Russian whisper in your ear? ROSALINE. Madam, he swore that he did hold me dear As precious eyesight, and did value me Above this world; adding thereto, moreover, That he would wed me, or else die my lover. PRINCESS. God give thee joy of him! The noble lord Most honourably doth uphold his word. KING. What mean you, madam? by my life, my troth, I never swore this lady such an oath. ROSALINE. By heaven, you did; and, to confirm it plain, You gave me this: but take it, sir, again. KING. My faith and this the princess I did give; I knew her by this jewel on her sleeve. PRINCESS. Pardon me, sir, this jewel did she wear; And Lord Berowne, I thank him, is my dear. What, will you have me, or your pearl again? BEROWNE. Neither of either; I remit both twain. I see the trick on't: here was a consent, Knowing aforehand of our merriment, To dash it like a Christmas comedy. Some carry-tale, some please-man, some slight zany, Some mumble-news, some trencher-knight, some Dick, That smiles his cheek in years, and knows the trick To make my lady laugh when she's dispos'd, Told our intents before; which once disclos'd, The ladies did change favours, and then we, Following the signs, woo'd but the sign of she. Now, to our perjury to add more terror, We are again forsworn, in will and error. Much upon this it is: [To BOYET.] and might not you Forestall our sport, to make us thus untrue? Do not you know my lady's foot by the squire, And laugh upon the apple of her eye? And stand between her back, sir, and the fire, Holding a trencher, jesting merrily? You put our page out: go, you are allow'd; Die when you will, a smock shall be your shroud. You leer upon me, do you? There's an eye Wounds like a leaden sword. BOYET. Full merrily Hath this brave manage, this career, been run. BEROWNE. Lo! he is tilting straight! Peace! I have done. [Enter COSTARD Welcome, pure wit! thou part'st a fair fray. COSTARD. O Lord, sir, they would know Whether the three Worthies shall come in or no? BEROWNE. What, are there but three? COSTARD. No, sir; but it is vara fine, For every one pursents three. BEROWNE. And three times thrice is nine. COSTARD. Not so, sir; under correction, sir, I hope it is not so. You cannot beg us, sir, I can assure you, sir; we know what we know: I hope, sir, three times thrice, sir,-- BEROWNE. Is not nine. COSTARD. Under correction, sir, we know whereuntil it doth amount. BEROWNE. By Jove, I always took three threes for nine. COSTARD. O Lord, sir! it were pity you should get your living by reckoning, sir. BEROWNE. How much is it? COSTARD. O Lord, sir, the parties themselves, the actors, sir, will show whereuntil it doth amount: for mine own part, I am, as they say, but to parfect one man in one poor man, Pompion the Great, sir. BEROWNE. Art thou one of the Worthies? COSTARD. It pleased them to think me worthy of Pompion the Great; for mine own part, I know not the degree of the Worthy; but I am to stand for him. BEROWNE. Go, bid them prepare. COSTARD. We will turn it finely off, sir; we will take some care. [Exit COSTARD.] KING. Berowne, they will shame us; let them not approach. BEROWNE. We are shame-proof, my lord, and 'tis some policy To have one show worse than the king's and his company. KING. I say they shall not come. PRINCESS. Nay, my good lord, let me o'errule you now. That sport best pleases that doth least know how; Where zeal strives to content, and the contents Die in the zeal of those which it presents; Their form confounded makes most form in mirth, When great things labouring perish in their birth. BEROWNE. A right description of our sport, my lord. [Enter ARMADO.] ARMADO. Anointed, I implore so much expense of thy royal sweet breath as will utter a brace of words. [Converses apart with the KING, and delivers a paper to him.] PRINCESS. Doth this man serve God? BEROWNE. Why ask you? PRINCESS. He speaks not like a man of God his making. ARMADO. That is all one, my fair, sweet, honey monarch; for, I protest, the schoolmaster is exceeding fantastical; too-too vain, too-too vain: but we will put it, as they say, to fortuna de la guerra. I wish you the peace of mind, most royal couplement! [Exit.] KING. Here is like to be a good presence of Worthies. He presents Hector of Troy; the swain, Pompey the Great; the parish curate, Alexander; Armado's page, Hercules; the pedant, Judas Maccabaeus: And if these four Worthies in their first show thrive, These four will change habits and present the other five. BEROWNE. There is five in the first show. KING. You are deceived, 'tis not so. BEROWNE. The pedant, the braggart, the hedge-priest, the fool, and the boy:-- Abate throw at novum, and the whole world again Cannot pick out five such, take each one in his vein. KING. The ship is under sail, and here she comes amain. [Enter COSTARD, armed for POMPEY.] COSTARD. 'I Pompey am'-- BEROWNE. You lie, you are not he. COSTARD. 'I Pompey am'-- BOYET. With libbard's head on knee. BEROWNE. Well said, old mocker: I must needs be friends with thee. COSTARD. 'I Pompey am, Pompey surnam'd the Big'-- DUMAINE. 'The Great.' COSTARD. It is 'Great,' sir; 'Pompey surnam'd the Great, That oft in field, with targe and shield, did make my foe to sweat: And travelling along this coast, I here am come by chance, And lay my arms before the legs of this sweet lass of France. If your ladyship would say 'Thanks, Pompey,' I had done. PRINCESS. Great thanks, great Pompey. COSTARD. 'Tis not so much worth; but I hope I was perfect. I made a little fault in 'Great.' BEROWNE. My hat to a halfpenny, Pompey proves the best Worthy. [Enter SIR NATHANIEL armed, for ALEXANDER.] NATHANIEL. 'When in the world I liv'd, I was the world's commander; By east, west, north, and south, I spread my conquering might: My scutcheon plain declares that I am Alisander'-- BOYET. Your nose says, no, you are not; for it stands to right. BEROWNE. Your nose smells 'no' in this, most tender-smelling knight. PRINCESS. The conqueror is dismay'd. Proceed, good Alexander. NATHANIEL. 'When in the world I liv'd, I was the world's commander;'-- BOYET. Most true; 'tis right, you were so, Alisander. BEROWNE. Pompey the Great,-- COSTARD. Your servant, and Costard. BEROWNE. Take away the conqueror, take away Alisander. COSTARD. [To Sir Nathaniel.] O! sir, you have overthrown Alisander the conqueror! You will be scraped out of the painted cloth for this; your lion, that holds his poll-axe sitting on a close-stool, will be given to Ajax: he will be the ninth Worthy. A conqueror, and afeard to speak! Run away for shame, Alisander. [Nathaniel retires.] There, an't shall please you: a foolish mild man; an honest man, look you, and soon dashed! He is a marvellous good neighbour, faith, and a very good bowler; but for Alisander,--alas! you see how 'tis--a little o'erparted. But there are Worthies a-coming will speak their mind in some other sort. PRINCESS. Stand aside, good Pompey. [Enter HOLOFERNES armed, for JUDAS; and MOTH armed, for HERCULES.] HOLOFERNES. 'Great Hercules is presented by this imp, Whose club kill'd Cerberus, that three-headed canis; And when he was a babe, a child, a shrimp, Thus did he strangle serpents in his manus. Quoniam he seemeth in minority, Ergo I come with this apology.' Keep some state in thy exit, and vanish.--[MOTH retires.] 'Judas I am.'-- DUMAINE. A Judas! HOLOFERNES. Not Iscariot, sir. 'Judas I am, ycliped Maccabaeus.' DUMAINE. Judas Maccabaeus clipt is plain Judas. BEROWNE. A kissing traitor. How art thou prov'd Judas? HOLOFERNES. 'Judas I am.'-- DUMAINE. The more shame for you, Judas. HOLOFERNES. What mean you, sir? BOYET. To make Judas hang himself. HOLOFERNES. Begin, sir; you are my elder. BEROWNE. Well follow'd: Judas was hanged on an elder. HOLOFERNES. I will not be put out of countenance. BEROWNE. Because thou hast no face. HOLOFERNES. What is this? BOYET. A cittern-head. DUMAINE. The head of a bodkin. BEROWNE. A death's face in a ring. @@@ LONGAVILLE. The face of an old Roman coin, scarce seen. BOYET. The pommel of Caesar's falchion. DUMAINE. The carved-bone face on a flask. BEROWNE. Saint George's half-cheek in a brooch. DUMAINE. Ay, and in a brooch of lead. BEROWNE. Ay, and worn in the cap of a tooth-drawer. And now, forward; for we have put thee in countenance. HOLOFERNES. You have put me out of countenance. BEROWNE. False: we have given thee faces. HOLOFERNES. But you have outfaced them all. BEROWNE. An thou wert a lion we would do so. BOYET. Therefore, as he is an ass, let him go. And so adieu, sweet Jude! nay, why dost thou stay? DUMAINE. For the latter end of his name. BEROWNE. For the ass to the Jude? give it him:--Jud-as, away! HOLOFERNES. This is not generous, not gentle, not humble. BOYET. A light for Monsieur Judas! It grows dark, he may stumble. PRINCESS. Alas! poor Maccabaeus, how hath he been baited. [Enter ARMADO armed, for HECTOR.] BEROWNE. Hide thy head, Achilles: here comes Hector in arms. DUMAINE. Though my mocks come home by me, I will now be merry. KING. Hector was but a Troyan in respect of this. BOYET. But is this Hector? DUMAINE. I think Hector was not so clean-timber'd. LONGAVILLE. His leg is too big for Hector's. DUMAINE. More calf, certain. BOYET. No; he is best indued in the small. BEROWNE. This cannot be Hector. DUMAINE. He's a god or a painter; for he makes faces. ARMADO. 'The armipotent Mars, of lances the almighty, Gave Hector a gift,'-- DUMAINE. A gilt nutmeg. BEROWNE. A lemon. LONGAVILLE. Stuck with cloves. DUMAINE. No, cloven. ARMADO. Peace! 'The armipotent Mars, of lances the almighty, Gave Hector a gift, the heir of Ilion; A man so breath'd that certain he would fight ye, From morn till night, out of his pavilion. I am that flower,'-- DUMAINE. That mint. LONGAVILLE. That columbine. ARMADO. Sweet Lord Longaville, rein thy tongue. LONGAVILLE. I must rather give it the rein, for it runs against Hector. DUMAINE. Ay, and Hector's a greyhound. ARMADO. The sweet war-man is dead and rotten; sweet chucks, beat not the bones of the buried; when he breathed, he was a man. But I will forward with my device. [To the PRINCESS.] Sweet royalty, bestow on me the sense of hearing. PRINCESS. Speak, brave Hector; we are much delighted. ARMADO. I do adore thy sweet Grace's slipper. BOYET. [Aside to DUMAIN.] Loves her by the foot. DUMAINE. [Aside to BOYET.] He may not by the yard. ARMADO. 'This Hector far surmounted Hannibal,'-- COSTARD. The party is gone; fellow Hector, she is gone; she is two months on her way. ARMADO. What meanest thou? COSTARD. Faith, unless you play the honest Troyan, the poor wench is cast away: she's quick; the child brags in her belly already; 'tis yours. ARMADO. Dost thou infamonize me among potentates? Thou shalt die. COSTARD. Then shall Hector be whipped for Jaquenetta that is quick by him, and hanged for Pompey that is dead by him. DUMAINE. Most rare Pompey! BOYET. Renowned Pompey! BEROWNE. Greater than great, great, great, great Pompey! Pompey the Huge! DUMAINE. Hector trembles. BEROWNE. Pompey is moved. More Ates, more Ates! Stir them on! stir them on! DUMAINE. Hector will challenge him. BEROWNE. Ay, if a' have no more man's blood in his belly than will sup a flea. ARMADO. By the north pole, I do challenge thee. COSTARD. I will not fight with a pole, like a northern man: I'll slash; I'll do it by the sword. I bepray you, let me borrow my arms again. DUMAINE. Room for the incensed Worthies! COSTARD. I'll do it in my shirt. DUMAINE. Most resolute Pompey! MOTH. Master, let me take you a buttonhole lower. Do you not see Pompey is uncasing for the combat? What mean you? You will lose your reputation. ARMADO. Gentlemen and soldiers, pardon me; I will not combat in my shirt. DUMAINE. You may not deny it: Pompey hath made the challenge. ARMADO. Sweet bloods, I both may and will. BEROWNE. What reason have you for 't? ARMADO. The naked truth of it is: I have no shirt; I go woolward for penance. BOYET. True, and it was enjoined him in Rome for want of linen; since when, I'll be sworn, he wore none but a dish-clout of Jaquenetta's, and that a' wears next his heart for a favour. [Enter MONSIEUR MARCADE, a messenger.] MARCADE. God save you, madam! PRINCESS. Welcome, Marcade; But that thou interrupt'st our merriment. MARCADE. I am sorry, madam; for the news I bring Is heavy in my tongue. The king your father-- PRINCESS. Dead, for my life! MARCADE. Even so: my tale is told. BEROWNE. Worthies away! the scene begins to cloud. ARMADO. For mine own part, I breathe free breath. I have seen the day of wrong through the little hole of discretion, and I will right myself like a soldier. [Exeunt WORTHIES.] KING. How fares your Majesty? PRINCESS. Boyet, prepare: I will away to-night. KING. Madam, not so: I do beseech you stay. PRINCESS. Prepare, I say. I thank you, gracious lords, For all your fair endeavours; and entreat, Out of a new-sad soul, that you vouchsafe In your rich wisdom to excuse or hide The liberal opposition of our spirits, If over-boldly we have borne ourselves In the converse of breath; your gentleness Was guilty of it. Farewell, worthy lord! A heavy heart bears not a nimble tongue. Excuse me so, coming so short of thanks For my great suit so easily obtain'd. KING. The extreme parts of time extremely forms All causes to the purpose of his speed, And often at his very loose decides That which long process could not arbitrate: And though the mourning brow of progeny Forbid the smiling courtesy of love The holy suit which fain it would convince; Yet, since love's argument was first on foot, Let not the cloud of sorrow justle it From what it purpos'd; since, to wail friends lost Is not by much so wholesome-profitable As to rejoice at friends but newly found. PRINCESS. I understand you not: my griefs are double. BEROWNE. Honest plain words best pierce the ear of grief; And by these badges understand the king. For your fair sakes have we neglected time, Play'd foul play with our oaths. Your beauty, ladies, Hath much deform'd us, fashioning our humours Even to the opposed end of our intents; And what in us hath seem'd ridiculous,-- As love is full of unbefitting strains; All wanton as a child, skipping and vain; Form'd by the eye, and, therefore, like the eye, Full of strange shapes, of habits and of forms, Varying in subjects, as the eye doth roll To every varied object in his glance: Which parti-coated presence of loose love Put on by us, if, in your heavenly eyes, Have misbecom'd our oaths and gravities, Those heavenly eyes that look into these faults Suggested us to make. Therefore, ladies, Our love being yours, the error that love makes Is likewise yours: we to ourselves prove false, By being once false for ever to be true To those that make us both,--fair ladies, you: And even that falsehood, in itself a sin, Thus purifies itself and turns to grace. PRINCESS. We have receiv'd your letters, full of love; Your favours, the ambassadors of love; And, in our maiden council, rated them At courtship, pleasant jest, and courtesy, As bombast and as lining to the time; But more devout than this in our respects Have we not been; and therefore met your loves In their own fashion, like a merriment. DUMAINE. Our letters, madam, show'd much more than jest. LONGAVILLE. So did our looks. ROSALINE. We did not quote them so. KING. Now, at the latest minute of the hour, Grant us your loves. PRINCESS. A time, methinks, too short To make a world-without-end bargain in. No, no, my lord, your Grace is perjur'd much, Full of dear guiltiness; and therefore this: If for my love,--as there is no such cause,-- You will do aught, this shall you do for me: Your oath I will not trust; but go with speed To some forlorn and naked hermitage, Remote from all the pleasures of the world; There stay until the twelve celestial signs Have brought about the annual reckoning. If this austere insociable life Change not your offer made in heat of blood, If frosts and fasts, hard lodging and thin weeds, Nip not the gaudy blossoms of your love, But that it bear this trial, and last love, Then, at the expiration of the year, Come, challenge me, challenge me by these deserts; And, by this virgin palm now kissing thine, I will be thine; and, till that instant, shut My woeful self up in a mournful house, Raining the tears of lamentation For the remembrance of my father's death. If this thou do deny, let our hands part, Neither intitled in the other's heart. KING. If this, or more than this, I would deny, To flatter up these powers of mine with rest, The sudden hand of death close up mine eye! Hence ever then my heart is in thy breast. BEROWNE. And what to me, my love? and what to me? ROSALINE. You must he purged too, your sins are rack'd; You are attaint with faults and perjury; Therefore, if you my favour mean to get, A twelvemonth shall you spend, and never rest, But seek the weary beds of people sick. DUMAINE. But what to me, my love? but what to me? KATHARINE. A wife! A beard, fair health, and honesty; With three-fold love I wish you all these three. DUMAINE. O! shall I say I thank you, gentle wife? KATHARINE. No so, my lord; a twelvemonth and a day I'll mark no words that smooth-fac'd wooers say. Come when the King doth to my lady come; Then, if I have much love, I'll give you some. DUMAINE. I'll serve thee true and faithfully till then. KATHARINE. Yet swear not, lest ye be forsworn again. LONGAVILLE. What says Maria? MARIA. At the twelvemonth's end I'll change my black gown for a faithful friend. LONGAVILLE. I'll stay with patience; but the time is long. MARIA. The liker you; few taller are so young. BEROWNE. Studies my lady? mistress, look on me; Behold the window of my heart, mine eye, What humble suit attends thy answer there. Impose some service on me for thy love. ROSALINE. Oft have I heard of you, my Lord Berowne, Before I saw you; and the world's large tongue Proclaims you for a man replete with mocks; Full of comparisons and wounding flouts, Which you on all estates will execute That lie within the mercy of your wit: To weed this wormwood from your fruitful brain, And therewithal to win me, if you please,-- Without the which I am not to be won,-- You shall this twelvemonth term, from day to day, Visit the speechless sick, and still converse With groaning wretches; and your task shall be, With all the fierce endeavour of your wit To enforce the pained impotent to smile. BEROWNE. To move wild laughter in the throat of death? It cannot be; it is impossible: Mirth cannot move a soul in agony. ROSALINE. Why, that's the way to choke a gibing spirit, Whose influence is begot of that loose grace Which shallow laughing hearers give to fools. A jest's prosperity lies in the ear Of him that hears it, never in the tongue Of him that makes it: then, if sickly ears, Deaf'd with the clamours of their own dear groans, Will hear your idle scorns, continue then, And I will have you and that fault withal; But if they will not, throw away that spirit, And I shall find you empty of that fault, Right joyful of your reformation. BEROWNE. A twelvemonth! well, befall what will befall, I'll jest a twelvemonth in an hospital. PRINCESS. [To the King.] Ay, sweet my lord; and so I take my leave. KING. No, madam; we will bring you on your way. BEROWNE. Our wooing doth not end like an old play: Jack hath not Jill; these ladies' courtesy Might well have made our sport a comedy. KING. Come, sir, it wants a twelvemonth and a day, And then 'twill end. BEROWNE. That's too long for a play. [Enter ARMADO.] ARMADO. Sweet Majesty, vouchsafe me,-- PRINCESS. Was not that not Hector? DUMAINE. The worthy knight of Troy. ARMADO. I will kiss thy royal finger, and take leave. I am a votary: I have vowed to Jaquenetta to hold the plough for her sweet love three yeasr. But, most esteemed greatness, will you hear the dialogue that the two learned men have compiled in praise of the owl and the cuckoo? It should have followed in the end of our show. KING. Call them forth quickly; we will do so. ARMADO. Holla! approach. [Enter HOLOFERNES, NATHANIEL, MOTH, COSTARD, and others.] This side is Hiems, Winter; this Ver, the Spring; the one maintained by the owl, the other by the cuckoo. Ver, begin. SPRING I. When daisies pied and violets blue And lady-smocks all silver-white And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue Do paint the meadows with delight, The cuckoo then on every tree Mocks married men, for thus sings he, Cuckoo; Cuckoo, cuckoo: O, word of fear, Unpleasing to a married ear! II. When shepherds pipe on oaten straws, And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks, When turtles tread, and rooks and daws, And maidens bleach their summer smocks, The cuckoo then, on every tree, Mocks married men, for thus sings he: Cuckoo; Cuckoo, cuckoo: O, word of fear, Unpleasing to a married ear! WINTER III. When icicles hang by the wall, And Dick the shepherd blows his nail, And Tom bears logs into the hall, And milk comes frozen home in pail, When blood is nipp'd, and ways be foul, Then nightly sings the staring owl: Tu-who; Tu-whit, tu-who--a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. IV. When all aloud the wind doth blow, And coughing drowns the parson's saw, And birds sit brooding in the snow, And Marian's nose looks red and raw, When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl, Then nightly sings the staring owl: Tu-who; Tu-whit, to-who--a merry note, While greasy Joan doth keel the pot. ARMADO. The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo. You that way: we this way. [Exeunt.]

The Princess and her ladies gather and the Princess shows them a jewel and some poetry that Ferdinand sent her. She is happy, but the women begin to argue about the validity of his love. Rosaline then shows her own gifts that Berowne bestowed upon her. Katherine then too is asked to show the gifts that Dumaine sent to her. Finally Maria shows the pearls sent to her from Longaville. The women mock their gifts and laugh at the givers vowing not to make it easy for the men to win them. Boyet then enters with news saying that he over heard the King in his men planning to come to the women disguised as Russians to woo them. Because the women will be masked at the gathering, they know them by the gifts that they sent. The Princess decides to play with them however, and the four switch and wear another's gift so the men will court the wrong woman. Rosaline asks the purpose of doing this, and the Princess explains that the men are making a mockery of them, so they will in turn do the same. They vow not to dance or to speak to the man who tries to court them. The men come in their costumes and the women give them the cold shoulder, though each agree to have private conversation with them. The conversation comes to an end and the men exit. The women know that the men are going to return as themselves, so they devise a plan and exit when they see them returning. They come upon the Boyet who offers to retrieve the Princess for them. She comes, but when the King offers hospitality to her, she refuses saying that she would hate it if he broke his vows. The men decide to confess and the women, to their horror, describe their folly of choosing the wrong girl. Costard enters and tells them that they are ready to present the play. The men are worried that the actors will shame them with their altered performance, but they continue with it anyway. During the performance, Costard announces that Jaquenetta is pregnant and the baby is Armando's. A fight breaks out on stage, and while the audience watches a messenger enters for the Princess. The King of France has died and the Princess prepares to return immediately. Ferdinand again professes his love for her and asks her to stay but she refuses because of his so easily broken oath. However, she says that if he spends her year of morning waiting for her and following strict codes like the one he imposed on himself previously, then she will accept his marriage proposal. The other men ask the ladies for marriage, but they follow the Princess' example and tell the men to wait a year. Armando brings in some men, and they sing songs to end the play.

When Frank Shabata got home that night, he found Emil's mare in his stable. Such an impertinence amazed him. Like everybody else, Frank had had an exciting day. Since noon he had been drinking too much, and he was in a bad temper. He talked bitterly to himself while he put his own horse away, and as he went up the path and saw that the house was dark he felt an added sense of injury. He approached quietly and listened on the doorstep. Hearing nothing, he opened the kitchen door and went softly from one room to another. Then he went through the house again, upstairs and down, with no better result. He sat down on the bottom step of the box stairway and tried to get his wits together. In that unnatural quiet there was no sound but his own heavy breathing. Suddenly an owl began to hoot out in the fields. Frank lifted his head. An idea flashed into his mind, and his sense of injury and outrage grew. He went into his bedroom and took his murderous 405 Winchester from the closet. When Frank took up his gun and walked out of the house, he had not the faintest purpose of doing anything with it. He did not believe that he had any real grievance. But it gratified him to feel like a desperate man. He had got into the habit of seeing himself always in desperate straits. His unhappy temperament was like a cage; he could never get out of it; and he felt that other people, his wife in particular, must have put him there. It had never more than dimly occurred to Frank that he made his own unhappiness. Though he took up his gun with dark projects in his mind, he would have been paralyzed with fright had he known that there was the slightest probability of his ever carrying any of them out. Frank went slowly down to the orchard gate, stopped and stood for a moment lost in thought. He retraced his steps and looked through the barn and the hayloft. Then he went out to the road, where he took the foot-path along the outside of the orchard hedge. The hedge was twice as tall as Frank himself, and so dense that one could see through it only by peering closely between the leaves. He could see the empty path a long way in the moonlight. His mind traveled ahead to the stile, which he always thought of as haunted by Emil Bergson. But why had he left his horse? At the wheatfield corner, where the orchard hedge ended and the path led across the pasture to the Bergsons', Frank stopped. In the warm, breathless night air he heard a murmuring sound, perfectly inarticulate, as low as the sound of water coming from a spring, where there is no fall, and where there are no stones to fret it. Frank strained his ears. It ceased. He held his breath and began to tremble. Resting the butt of his gun on the ground, he parted the mulberry leaves softly with his fingers and peered through the hedge at the dark figures on the grass, in the shadow of the mulberry tree. It seemed to him that they must feel his eyes, that they must hear him breathing. But they did not. Frank, who had always wanted to see things blacker than they were, for once wanted to believe less than he saw. The woman lying in the shadow might so easily be one of the Bergsons' farm-girls.... Again the murmur, like water welling out of the ground. This time he heard it more distinctly, and his blood was quicker than his brain. He began to act, just as a man who falls into the fire begins to act. The gun sprang to his shoulder, he sighted mechanically and fired three times without stopping, stopped without knowing why. Either he shut his eyes or he had vertigo. He did not see anything while he was firing. He thought he heard a cry simultaneous with the second report, but he was not sure. He peered again through the hedge, at the two dark figures under the tree. They had fallen a little apart from each other, and were perfectly still--No, not quite; in a white patch of light, where the moon shone through the branches, a man's hand was plucking spasmodically at the grass. Suddenly the woman stirred and uttered a cry, then another, and another. She was living! She was dragging herself toward the hedge! Frank dropped his gun and ran back along the path, shaking, stumbling, gasping. He had never imagined such horror. The cries followed him. They grew fainter and thicker, as if she were choking. He dropped on his knees beside the hedge and crouched like a rabbit, listening; fainter, fainter; a sound like a whine; again--a moan--another--silence. Frank scrambled to his feet and ran on, groaning and praying. From habit he went toward the house, where he was used to being soothed when he had worked himself into a frenzy, but at the sight of the black, open door, he started back. He knew that he had murdered somebody, that a woman was bleeding and moaning in the orchard, but he had not realized before that it was his wife. The gate stared him in the face. He threw his hands over his head. Which way to turn? He lifted his tormented face and looked at the sky. "Holy Mother of God, not to suffer! She was a good girl--not to suffer!" Frank had been wont to see himself in dramatic situations; but now, when he stood by the windmill, in the bright space between the barn and the house, facing his own black doorway, he did not see himself at all. He stood like the hare when the dogs are approaching from all sides. And he ran like a hare, back and forth about that moonlit space, before he could make up his mind to go into the dark stable for a horse. The thought of going into a doorway was terrible to him. He caught Emil's horse by the bit and led it out. He could not have buckled a bridle on his own. After two or three attempts, he lifted himself into the saddle and started for Hanover. If he could catch the one o'clock train, he had money enough to get as far as Omaha. While he was thinking dully of this in some less sensitized part of his brain, his acuter faculties were going over and over the cries he had heard in the orchard. Terror was the only thing that kept him from going back to her, terror that she might still be she, that she might still be suffering. A woman, mutilated and bleeding in his orchard--it was because it was a woman that he was so afraid. It was inconceivable that he should have hurt a woman. He would rather be eaten by wild beasts than see her move on the ground as she had moved in the orchard. Why had she been so careless? She knew he was like a crazy man when he was angry. She had more than once taken that gun away from him and held it, when he was angry with other people. Once it had gone off while they were struggling over it. She was never afraid. But, when she knew him, why hadn't she been more careful? Didn't she have all summer before her to love Emil Bergson in, without taking such chances? Probably she had met the Smirka boy, too, down there in the orchard. He didn't care. She could have met all the men on the Divide there, and welcome, if only she hadn't brought this horror on him. There was a wrench in Frank's mind. He did not honestly believe that of her. He knew that he was doing her wrong. He stopped his horse to admit this to himself the more directly, to think it out the more clearly. He knew that he was to blame. For three years he had been trying to break her spirit. She had a way of making the best of things that seemed to him a sentimental affectation. He wanted his wife to resent that he was wasting his best years among these stupid and unappreciative people; but she had seemed to find the people quite good enough. If he ever got rich he meant to buy her pretty clothes and take her to California in a Pullman car, and treat her like a lady; but in the mean time he wanted her to feel that life was as ugly and as unjust as he felt it. He had tried to make her life ugly. He had refused to share any of the little pleasures she was so plucky about making for herself. She could be gay about the least thing in the world; but she must be gay! When she first came to him, her faith in him, her adoration--Frank struck the mare with his fist. Why had Marie made him do this thing; why had she brought this upon him? He was overwhelmed by sickening misfortune. All at once he heard her cries again--he had forgotten for a moment. "Maria," he sobbed aloud, "Maria!" When Frank was halfway to Hanover, the motion of his horse brought on a violent attack of nausea. After it had passed, he rode on again, but he could think of nothing except his physical weakness and his desire to be comforted by his wife. He wanted to get into his own bed. Had his wife been at home, he would have turned and gone back to her meekly enough.

Frank gets home that night and finds Emil's horse in the stable. He goes through the house, but finds no one. Becoming more and more angry, he gets his shotgun, a Winchester 405. As he leaves the house, the narrator notes, he has no intention of using his weapon at all. He doesn't really believe he has any reason to do so. He only wants to feel "like a desperate man" . Frank stops before going into the orchard, and then decides to go back to the road, where a dense hedge conceals the orchard. As he goes there, he wonders to himself why Emil would have left his horse in the stable. At the corner where the hedge ends and the wheat field begins, Frank stops again. He hears some noise, a murmuring noise, like "water coming from a spring" . He parts the leaves of the hedge and peers through. There, he sees Emil lying in the grass with a woman, whom, for a second, he thinks might be one of Alexandra's farm girls. But it's only a second. He hears a second murmuring, more distinct than the first, and he acts mechanically. He grabs his shotgun and fires three times without stopping. The two fall away from each other, and Emil lies completely still, except for spasms in his hand. But Marie is still alive, crying and trying to crawl toward the hedge. Frank drops his gun and runs, hearing the cries fade, as it sounds like Marie begins to choke. He drops to his knees, and hears a moan from behind the hedge. Groaning and praying himself, he runs into the house, where he's used to being comforted when he's angry or in a "frenzy" . That's when he realizes that he's killed someone, that a woman is bleeding to death in the orchard, and... that the woman is his wife. Frank often gets himself worked up by imagining himself in desperate situations. But this is the real deal. He runs about, unable to figure out what to do. Finally, he untethers Emil's horse, saddles it, and decides to ride to Hanover, where he hopes to catch the night train to Omaha. As he rides, he can't forget Marie's cries. He's terrified most of having to go back, that she might still be alive, mutilated and suffering. How could she let this happen? he thinks. He remembers the times when he got worked up into a frenzy and grabbed his shotgun, and she struggled to take it away from him. Once it fired in the process. Why did she have to take this chance with Emil? he thinks. He imagines her taking other men down into the orchard. But that would have been fine, he tells himself, as long as this had never happened. Frank stops his horse. She's not to blame, he thinks. He's the one who's been trying to break her, he wanted his wife to be as bitter as he is. He refused to share in any of the pleasures she made for herself. Why had she made him do this? he thinks furiously. Then he remembers her cries, and he sobs, "Maria!" Halfway to Hanover, Frank stops to vomit. All he wants is to be able to go back home, to his own bed, and be comforted by his wife.

"Come, Jo, it's time." "For what?" "You don't mean to say you have forgotten that you promised to make half a dozen calls with me today?" "I've done a good many rash and foolish things in my life, but I don't think I ever was mad enough to say I'd make six calls in one day, when a single one upsets me for a week." "Yes, you did, it was a bargain between us. I was to finish the crayon of Beth for you, and you were to go properly with me, and return our neighbors' visits." "If it was fair, that was in the bond, and I stand to the letter of my bond, Shylock. There is a pile of clouds in the east, it's not fair, and I don't go." "Now, that's shirking. It's a lovely day, no prospect of rain, and you pride yourself on keeping promises, so be honorable, come and do your duty, and then be at peace for another six months." At that minute Jo was particularly absorbed in dressmaking, for she was mantua-maker general to the family, and took especial credit to herself because she could use a needle as well as a pen. It was very provoking to be arrested in the act of a first trying-on, and ordered out to make calls in her best array on a warm July day. She hated calls of the formal sort, and never made any till Amy compelled her with a bargain, bribe, or promise. In the present instance there was no escape, and having clashed her scissors rebelliously, while protesting that she smelled thunder, she gave in, put away her work, and taking up her hat and gloves with an air of resignation, told Amy the victim was ready. "Jo March, you are perverse enough to provoke a saint! You don't intend to make calls in that state, I hope," cried Amy, surveying her with amazement. "Why not? I'm neat and cool and comfortable, quite proper for a dusty walk on a warm day. If people care more for my clothes than they do for me, I don't wish to see them. You can dress for both, and be as elegant as you please. It pays for you to be fine. It doesn't for me, and furbelows only worry me." "Oh, dear!" sighed Amy, "now she's in a contrary fit, and will drive me distracted before I can get her properly ready. I'm sure it's no pleasure to me to go today, but it's a debt we owe society, and there's no one to pay it but you and me. I'll do anything for you, Jo, if you'll only dress yourself nicely, and come and help me do the civil. You can talk so well, look so aristocratic in your best things, and behave so beautifully, if you try, that I'm proud of you. I'm afraid to go alone, do come and take care of me." "You're an artful little puss to flatter and wheedle your cross old sister in that way. The idea of my being aristocratic and well-bred, and your being afraid to go anywhere alone! I don't know which is the most absurd. Well, I'll go if I must, and do my best. You shall be commander of the expedition, and I'll obey blindly, will that satisfy you?" said Jo, with a sudden change from perversity to lamblike submission. "You're a perfect cherub! Now put on all your best things, and I'll tell you how to behave at each place, so that you will make a good impression. I want people to like you, and they would if you'd only try to be a little more agreeable. Do your hair the pretty way, and put the pink rose in your bonnet. It's becoming, and you look too sober in your plain suit. Take your light gloves and the embroidered handkerchief. We'll stop at Meg's, and borrow her white sunshade, and then you can have my dove-colored one." While Amy dressed, she issued her orders, and Jo obeyed them, not without entering her protest, however, for she sighed as she rustled into her new organdie, frowned darkly at herself as she tied her bonnet strings in an irreproachable bow, wrestled viciously with pins as she put on her collar, wrinkled up her features generally as she shook out the handkerchief, whose embroidery was as irritating to her nose as the present mission was to her feelings, and when she had squeezed her hands into tight gloves with three buttons and a tassel, as the last touch of elegance, she turned to Amy with an imbecile expression of countenance, saying meekly... "I'm perfectly miserable, but if you consider me presentable, I die happy." "You're highly satisfactory. Turn slowly round, and let me get a careful view." Jo revolved, and Amy gave a touch here and there, then fell back, with her head on one side, observing graciously, "Yes, you'll do. Your head is all I could ask, for that white bonnet with the rose is quite ravishing. Hold back your shoulders, and carry your hands easily, no matter if your gloves do pinch. There's one thing you can do well, Jo, that is, wear a shawl. I can't, but it's very nice to see you, and I'm so glad Aunt March gave you that lovely one. It's simple, but handsome, and those folds over the arm are really artistic. Is the point of my mantle in the middle, and have I looped my dress evenly? I like to show my boots, for my feet are pretty, though my nose isn't." "You are a thing of beauty and a joy forever," said Jo, looking through her hand with the air of a connoisseur at the blue feather against the golden hair. "Am I to drag my best dress through the dust, or loop it up, please, ma'am?" "Hold it up when you walk, but drop it in the house. The sweeping style suits you best, and you must learn to trail your skirts gracefully. You haven't half buttoned one cuff, do it at once. You'll never look finished if you are not careful about the little details, for they make up the pleasing whole." Jo sighed, and proceeded to burst the buttons off her glove, in doing up her cuff, but at last both were ready, and sailed away, looking as 'pretty as picters', Hannah said, as she hung out of the upper window to watch them. "Now, Jo dear, the Chesters consider themselves very elegant people, so I want you to put on your best deportment. Don't make any of your abrupt remarks, or do anything odd, will you? Just be calm, cool, and quiet, that's safe and ladylike, and you can easily do it for fifteen minutes," said Amy, as they approached the first place, having borrowed the white parasol and been inspected by Meg, with a baby on each arm. "Let me see. 'Calm, cool, and quiet', yes, I think I can promise that. I've played the part of a prim young lady on the stage, and I'll try it off. My powers are great, as you shall see, so be easy in your mind, my child." Amy looked relieved, but naughty Jo took her at her word, for during the first call she sat with every limb gracefully composed, every fold correctly draped, calm as a summer sea, cool as a snowbank, and as silent as the sphinx. In vain Mrs. Chester alluded to her 'charming novel', and the Misses Chester introduced parties, picnics, the opera, and the fashions. Each and all were answered by a smile, a bow, and a demure "Yes" or "No" with the chill on. In vain Amy telegraphed the word 'talk', tried to draw her out, and administered covert pokes with her foot. Jo sat as if blandly unconscious of it all, with deportment like Maud's face, 'icily regular, splendidly null'. "What a haughty, uninteresting creature that oldest Miss March is!" was the unfortunately audible remark of one of the ladies, as the door closed upon their guests. Jo laughed noiselessly all through the hall, but Amy looked disgusted at the failure of her instructions, and very naturally laid the blame upon Jo. "How could you mistake me so? I merely meant you to be properly dignified and composed, and you made yourself a perfect stock and stone. Try to be sociable at the Lambs'. Gossip as other girls do, and be interested in dress and flirtations and whatever nonsense comes up. They move in the best society, are valuable persons for us to know, and I wouldn't fail to make a good impression there for anything." "I'll be agreeable. I'll gossip and giggle, and have horrors and raptures over any trifle you like. I rather enjoy this, and now I'll imitate what is called 'a charming girl'. I can do it, for I have May Chester as a model, and I'll improve upon her. See if the Lambs don't say, 'What a lively, nice creature that Jo March is!" Amy felt anxious, as well she might, for when Jo turned freakish there was no knowing where she would stop. Amy's face was a study when she saw her sister skim into the next drawing room, kiss all the young ladies with effusion, beam graciously upon the young gentlemen, and join in the chat with a spirit which amazed the beholder. Amy was taken possession of by Mrs. Lamb, with whom she was a favorite, and forced to hear a long account of Lucretia's last attack, while three delightful young gentlemen hovered near, waiting for a pause when they might rush in and rescue her. So situated, she was powerless to check Jo, who seemed possessed by a spirit of mischief, and talked away as volubly as the lady. A knot of heads gathered about her, and Amy strained her ears to hear what was going on, for broken sentences filled her with curiosity, and frequent peals of laughter made her wild to share the fun. One may imagine her suffering on overhearing fragments of this sort of conversation. "She rides splendidly. Who taught her?" "No one. She used to practice mounting, holding the reins, and sitting straight on an old saddle in a tree. Now she rides anything, for she doesn't know what fear is, and the stableman lets her have horses cheap because she trains them to carry ladies so well. She has such a passion for it, I often tell her if everything else fails, she can be a horsebreaker, and get her living so." At this awful speech Amy contained herself with difficulty, for the impression was being given that she was rather a fast young lady, which was her especial aversion. But what could she do? For the old lady was in the middle of her story, and long before it was done, Jo was off again, making more droll revelations and committing still more fearful blunders. "Yes, Amy was in despair that day, for all the good beasts were gone, and of three left, one was lame, one blind, and the other so balky that you had to put dirt in his mouth before he would start. Nice animal for a pleasure party, wasn't it?" "Which did she choose?" asked one of the laughing gentlemen, who enjoyed the subject. "None of them. She heard of a young horse at the farm house over the river, and though a lady had never ridden him, she resolved to try, because he was handsome and spirited. Her struggles were really pathetic. There was no one to bring the horse to the saddle, so she took the saddle to the horse. My dear creature, she actually rowed it over the river, put it on her head, and marched up to the barn to the utter amazement of the old man!" "Did she ride the horse?" "Of course she did, and had a capital time. I expected to see her brought home in fragments, but she managed him perfectly, and was the life of the party." "Well, I call that plucky!" and young Mr. Lamb turned an approving glance upon Amy, wondering what his mother could be saying to make the girl look so red and uncomfortable. She was still redder and more uncomfortable a moment after, when a sudden turn in the conversation introduced the subject of dress. One of the young ladies asked Jo where she got the pretty drab hat she wore to the picnic and stupid Jo, instead of mentioning the place where it was bought two years ago, must needs answer with unnecessary frankness, "Oh, Amy painted it. You can't buy those soft shades, so we paint ours any color we like. It's a great comfort to have an artistic sister." "Isn't that an original idea?" cried Miss Lamb, who found Jo great fun. "That's nothing compared to some of her brilliant performances. There's nothing the child can't do. Why, she wanted a pair of blue boots for Sallie's party, so she just painted her soiled white ones the loveliest shade of sky blue you ever saw, and they looked exactly like satin," added Jo, with an air of pride in her sister's accomplishments that exasperated Amy till she felt that it would be a relief to throw her cardcase at her. "We read a story of yours the other day, and enjoyed it very much," observed the elder Miss Lamb, wishing to compliment the literary lady, who did not look the character just then, it must be confessed. Any mention of her 'works' always had a bad effect upon Jo, who either grew rigid and looked offended, or changed the subject with a brusque remark, as now. "Sorry you could find nothing better to read. I write that rubbish because it sells, and ordinary people like it. Are you going to New York this winter?" As Miss Lamb had 'enjoyed' the story, this speech was not exactly grateful or complimentary. The minute it was made Jo saw her mistake, but fearing to make the matter worse, suddenly remembered that it was for her to make the first move toward departure, and did so with an abruptness that left three people with half-finished sentences in their mouths. "Amy, we must go. Good-by, dear, do come and see us. We are pining for a visit. I don't dare to ask you, Mr. Lamb, but if you should come, I don't think I shall have the heart to send you away." Jo said this with such a droll imitation of May Chester's gushing style that Amy got out of the room as rapidly as possible, feeling a strong desire to laugh and cry at the same time. "Didn't I do well?" asked Jo, with a satisfied air as they walked away. "Nothing could have been worse," was Amy's crushing reply. "What possessed you to tell those stories about my saddle, and the hats and boots, and all the rest of it?" "Why, it's funny, and amuses people. They know we are poor, so it's no use pretending that we have grooms, buy three or four hats a season, and have things as easy and fine as they do." "You needn't go and tell them all our little shifts, and expose our poverty in that perfectly unnecessary way. You haven't a bit of proper pride, and never will learn when to hold your tongue and when to speak," said Amy despairingly. Poor Jo looked abashed, and silently chafed the end of her nose with the stiff handkerchief, as if performing a penance for her misdemeanors. "How shall I behave here?" she asked, as they approached the third mansion. "Just as you please. I wash my hands of you," was Amy's short answer. "Then I'll enjoy myself. The boys are at home, and we'll have a comfortable time. Goodness knows I need a little change, for elegance has a bad effect upon my constitution," returned Jo gruffly, being disturbed by her failure to suit. An enthusiastic welcome from three big boys and several pretty children speedily soothed her ruffled feelings, and leaving Amy to entertain the hostess and Mr. Tudor, who happened to be calling likewise, Jo devoted herself to the young folks and found the change refreshing. She listened to college stories with deep interest, caressed pointers and poodles without a murmur, agreed heartily that "Tom Brown was a brick," regardless of the improper form of praise, and when one lad proposed a visit to his turtle tank, she went with an alacrity which caused Mamma to smile upon her, as that motherly lady settled the cap which was left in a ruinous condition by filial hugs, bearlike but affectionate, and dearer to her than the most faultless coiffure from the hands of an inspired Frenchwoman. Leaving her sister to her own devices, Amy proceeded to enjoy herself to her heart's content. Mr. Tudor's uncle had married an English lady who was third cousin to a living lord, and Amy regarded the whole family with great respect, for in spite of her American birth and breeding, she possessed that reverence for titles which haunts the best of us--that unacknowledged loyalty to the early faith in kings which set the most democratic nation under the sun in ferment at the coming of a royal yellow-haired laddie, some years ago, and which still has something to do with the love the young country bears the old, like that of a big son for an imperious little mother, who held him while she could, and let him go with a farewell scolding when he rebelled. But even the satisfaction of talking with a distant connection of the British nobility did not render Amy forgetful of time, and when the proper number of minutes had passed, she reluctantly tore herself from this aristocratic society, and looked about for Jo, fervently hoping that her incorrigible sister would not be found in any position which should bring disgrace upon the name of March. It might have been worse, but Amy considered it bad. For Jo sat on the grass, with an encampment of boys about her, and a dirty-footed dog reposing on the skirt of her state and festival dress, as she related one of Laurie's pranks to her admiring audience. One small child was poking turtles with Amy's cherished parasol, a second was eating gingerbread over Jo's best bonnet, and a third playing ball with her gloves, but all were enjoying themselves, and when Jo collected her damaged property to go, her escort accompanied her, begging her to come again, "It was such fun to hear about Laurie's larks." "Capital boys, aren't they? I feel quite young and brisk again after that." said Jo, strolling along with her hands behind her, partly from habit, partly to conceal the bespattered parasol. "Why do you always avoid Mr. Tudor?" asked Amy, wisely refraining from any comment upon Jo's dilapidated appearance. "Don't like him, he puts on airs, snubs his sisters, worries his father, and doesn't speak respectfully of his mother. Laurie says he is fast, and I don't consider him a desirable acquaintance, so I let him alone." "You might treat him civilly, at least. You gave him a cool nod, and just now you bowed and smiled in the politest way to Tommy Chamberlain, whose father keeps a grocery store. If you had just reversed the nod and the bow, it would have been right," said Amy reprovingly. "No, it wouldn't," returned Jo, "I neither like, respect, nor admire Tudor, though his grandfather's uncle's nephew's niece was a third cousin to a lord. Tommy is poor and bashful and good and very clever. I think well of him, and like to show that I do, for he is a gentleman in spite of the brown paper parcels." "It's no use trying to argue with you," began Amy. "Not the least, my dear," interrupted Jo, "so let us look amiable, and drop a card here, as the Kings are evidently out, for which I'm deeply grateful." The family cardcase having done its duty the girls walked on, and Jo uttered another thanksgiving on reaching the fifth house, and being told that the young ladies were engaged. "Now let us go home, and never mind Aunt March today. We can run down there any time, and it's really a pity to trail through the dust in our best bibs and tuckers, when we are tired and cross." "Speak for yourself, if you please. Aunt March likes to have us pay her the compliment of coming in style, and making a formal call. It's a little thing to do, but it gives her pleasure, and I don't believe it will hurt your things half so much as letting dirty dogs and clumping boys spoil them. Stoop down, and let me take the crumbs off of your bonnet." "What a good girl you are, Amy!" said Jo, with a repentant glance from her own damaged costume to that of her sister, which was fresh and spotless still. "I wish it was as easy for me to do little things to please people as it is for you. I think of them, but it takes too much time to do them, so I wait for a chance to confer a great favor, and let the small ones slip, but they tell best in the end, I fancy." Amy smiled and was mollified at once, saying with a maternal air, "Women should learn to be agreeable, particularly poor ones, for they have no other way of repaying the kindnesses they receive. If you'd remember that, and practice it, you'd be better liked than I am, because there is more of you." "I'm a crotchety old thing, and always shall be, but I'm willing to own that you are right, only it's easier for me to risk my life for a person than to be pleasant to him when I don't feel like it. It's a great misfortune to have such strong likes and dislikes, isn't it?" "It's a greater not to be able to hide them. I don't mind saying that I don't approve of Tudor any more than you do, but I'm not called upon to tell him so. Neither are you, and there is no use in making yourself disagreeable because he is." "But I think girls ought to show when they disapprove of young men, and how can they do it except by their manners? Preaching does not do any good, as I know to my sorrow, since I've had Teddie to manage. But there are many little ways in which I can influence him without a word, and I say we ought to do it to others if we can." "Teddy is a remarkable boy, and can't be taken as a sample of other boys," said Amy, in a tone of solemn conviction, which would have convulsed the 'remarkable boy' if he had heard it. "If we were belles, or women of wealth and position, we might do something, perhaps, but for us to frown at one set of young gentlemen because we don't approve of them, and smile upon another set because we do, wouldn't have a particle of effect, and we should only be considered odd and puritanical." "So we are to countenance things and people which we detest, merely because we are not belles and millionaires, are we? That's a nice sort of morality." "I can't argue about it, I only know that it's the way of the world, and people who set themselves against it only get laughed at for their pains. I don't like reformers, and I hope you never try to be one." "I do like them, and I shall be one if I can, for in spite of the laughing the world would never get on without them. We can't agree about that, for you belong to the old set, and I to the new. You will get on the best, but I shall have the liveliest time of it. I should rather enjoy the brickbats and hooting, I think." "Well, compose yourself now, and don't worry Aunt with your new ideas." "I'll try not to, but I'm always possessed to burst out with some particularly blunt speech or revolutionary sentiment before her. It's my doom, and I can't help it." They found Aunt Carrol with the old lady, both absorbed in some very interesting subject, but they dropped it as the girls came in, with a conscious look which betrayed that they had been talking about their nieces. Jo was not in a good humor, and the perverse fit returned, but Amy, who had virtuously done her duty, kept her temper and pleased everybody, was in a most angelic frame of mind. This amiable spirit was felt at once, and both aunts 'my deared' her affectionately, looking what they afterward said emphatically, "That child improves every day." "Are you going to help about the fair, dear?" asked Mrs. Carrol, as Amy sat down beside her with the confiding air elderly people like so well in the young. "Yes, Aunt. Mrs. Chester asked me if I would, and I offered to tend a table, as I have nothing but my time to give." "I'm not," put in Jo decidedly. "I hate to be patronized, and the Chesters think it's a great favor to allow us to help with their highly connected fair. I wonder you consented, Amy, they only want you to work." "I am willing to work. It's for the freedmen as well as the Chesters, and I think it very kind of them to let me share the labor and the fun. Patronage does not trouble me when it is well meant." "Quite right and proper. I like your grateful spirit, my dear. It's a pleasure to help people who appreciate our efforts. Some do not, and that is trying," observed Aunt March, looking over her spectacles at Jo, who sat apart, rocking herself, with a somewhat morose expression. If Jo had only known what a great happiness was wavering in the balance for one of them, she would have turned dove-like in a minute, but unfortunately, we don't have windows in our breasts, and cannot see what goes on in the minds of our friends. Better for us that we cannot as a general thing, but now and then it would be such a comfort, such a saving of time and temper. By her next speech, Jo deprived herself of several years of pleasure, and received a timely lesson in the art of holding her tongue. "I don't like favors, they oppress and make me feel like a slave. I'd rather do everything for myself, and be perfectly independent." "Ahem!" coughed Aunt Carrol softly, with a look at Aunt March. "I told you so," said Aunt March, with a decided nod to Aunt Carrol. Mercifully unconscious of what she had done, Jo sat with her nose in the air, and a revolutionary aspect which was anything but inviting. "Do you speak French, dear?" asked Mrs. Carrol, laying a hand on Amy's. "Pretty well, thanks to Aunt March, who lets Esther talk to me as often as I like," replied Amy, with a grateful look, which caused the old lady to smile affably. "How are you about languages?" asked Mrs. Carrol of Jo. "Don't know a word. I'm very stupid about studying anything, can't bear French, it's such a slippery, silly sort of language," was the brusque reply. Another look passed between the ladies, and Aunt March said to Amy, "You are quite strong and well now, dear, I believe? Eyes don't trouble you any more, do they?" "Not at all, thank you, ma'am. I'm very well, and mean to do great things next winter, so that I may be ready for Rome, whenever that joyful time arrives." "Good girl! You deserve to go, and I'm sure you will some day," said Aunt March, with an approving pat on the head, as Amy picked up her ball for her. Crosspatch, draw the latch, Sit by the fire and spin, squalled Polly, bending down from his perch on the back of her chair to peep into Jo's face, with such a comical air of impertinent inquiry that it was impossible to help laughing. "Most observing bird," said the old lady. "Come and take a walk, my dear?" cried Polly, hopping toward the china closet, with a look suggestive of a lump of sugar. "Thank you, I will. Come Amy." and Jo brought the visit to an end, feeling more strongly than ever that calls did have a bad effect upon her constitution. She shook hands in a gentlemanly manner, but Amy kissed both the aunts, and the girls departed, leaving behind them the impression of shadow and sunshine, which impression caused Aunt March to say, as they vanished... "You'd better do it, Mary. I'll supply the money." and Aunt Carrol to reply decidedly, "I certainly will, if her father and mother consent."

Amy has conned Jo into going calling with her and made her put on her nicest clothes. Jo was less than enthusiastic but agreed to be on her best behavior. They first went to the Chester's and Jo acted the lady, but would not answer any questions except with yes and no. The Chester's thought she was dry and unresponsive and she told Amy she would do better at the next house. They went to the Lamb house, and while Amy was listening to Mrs. Lamb, Jo was entertaining the other guests with embarrassing stories of Amy and her riding talent. Amy gave up on Jo, and at the next house, they visited Jo sat outside with some young gentleman and some children. Again, Amy was disappointed with her behavior. The next two houses they went to, no one was available, so they decided lastly to visit their Aunt March. Their Aunt Carrol was there as well, and the two older women seemed to be choosing between the two girls for something. Finally, the older women decided that Amy should take a trip to Europe with Aunt Carrol, and Aunt March would pay for it. Neither of the girls knew Jo was in a bad mood for having to go calling, so the girls went home

MR. CUSS INTERVIEWS THE STRANGER I have told the circumstances of the stranger's arrival in Iping with a certain fulness of detail, in order that the curious impression he created may be understood by the reader. But excepting two odd incidents, the circumstances of his stay until the extraordinary day of the club festival may be passed over very cursorily. There were a number of skirmishes with Mrs. Hall on matters of domestic discipline, but in every case until late April, when the first signs of penury began, he over-rode her by the easy expedient of an extra payment. Hall did not like him, and whenever he dared he talked of the advisability of getting rid of him; but he showed his dislike chiefly by concealing it ostentatiously, and avoiding his visitor as much as possible. "Wait till the summer," said Mrs. Hall sagely, "when the artisks are beginning to come. Then we'll see. He may be a bit overbearing, but bills settled punctual is bills settled punctual, whatever you'd like to say." The stranger did not go to church, and indeed made no difference between Sunday and the irreligious days, even in costume. He worked, as Mrs. Hall thought, very fitfully. Some days he would come down early and be continuously busy. On others he would rise late, pace his room, fretting audibly for hours together, smoke, sleep in the armchair by the fire. Communication with the world beyond the village he had none. His temper continued very uncertain; for the most part his manner was that of a man suffering under almost unendurable provocation, and once or twice things were snapped, torn, crushed, or broken in spasmodic gusts of violence. He seemed under a chronic irritation of the greatest intensity. His habit of talking to himself in a low voice grew steadily upon him, but though Mrs. Hall listened conscientiously she could make neither head nor tail of what she heard. He rarely went abroad by daylight, but at twilight he would go out muffled up invisibly, whether the weather were cold or not, and he chose the loneliest paths and those most overshadowed by trees and banks. His goggling spectacles and ghastly bandaged face under the penthouse of his hat, came with a disagreeable suddenness out of the darkness upon one or two home-going labourers, and Teddy Henfrey, tumbling out of the "Scarlet Coat" one night, at half-past nine, was scared shamefully by the stranger's skull-like head (he was walking hat in hand) lit by the sudden light of the opened inn door. Such children as saw him at nightfall dreamt of bogies, and it seemed doubtful whether he disliked boys more than they disliked him, or the reverse; but there was certainly a vivid enough dislike on either side. It was inevitable that a person of so remarkable an appearance and bearing should form a frequent topic in such a village as Iping. Opinion was greatly divided about his occupation. Mrs. Hall was sensitive on the point. When questioned, she explained very carefully that he was an "experimental investigator," going gingerly over the syllables as one who dreads pitfalls. When asked what an experimental investigator was, she would say with a touch of superiority that most educated people knew such things as that, and would thus explain that he "discovered things." Her visitor had had an accident, she said, which temporarily discoloured his face and hands, and being of a sensitive disposition, he was averse to any public notice of the fact. Out of her hearing there was a view largely entertained that he was a criminal trying to escape from justice by wrapping himself up so as to conceal himself altogether from the eye of the police. This idea sprang from the brain of Mr. Teddy Henfrey. No crime of any magnitude dating from the middle or end of February was known to have occurred. Elaborated in the imagination of Mr. Gould, the probationary assistant in the National School, this theory took the form that the stranger was an Anarchist in disguise, preparing explosives, and he resolved to undertake such detective operations as his time permitted. These consisted for the most part in looking very hard at the stranger whenever they met, or in asking people who had never seen the stranger, leading questions about him. But he detected nothing. Another school of opinion followed Mr. Fearenside, and either accepted the piebald view or some modification of it; as, for instance, Silas Durgan, who was heard to assert that "if he chooses to show enself at fairs he'd make his fortune in no time," and being a bit of a theologian, compared the stranger to the man with the one talent. Yet another view explained the entire matter by regarding the stranger as a harmless lunatic. That had the advantage of accounting for everything straight away. Between these main groups there were waverers and compromisers. Sussex folk have few superstitions, and it was only after the events of early April that the thought of the supernatural was first whispered in the village. Even then it was only credited among the women folk. But whatever they thought of him, people in Iping, on the whole, agreed in disliking him. His irritability, though it might have been comprehensible to an urban brain-worker, was an amazing thing to these quiet Sussex villagers. The frantic gesticulations they surprised now and then, the headlong pace after nightfall that swept him upon them round quiet corners, the inhuman bludgeoning of all tentative advances of curiosity, the taste for twilight that led to the closing of doors, the pulling down of blinds, the extinction of candles and lamps--who could agree with such goings on? They drew aside as he passed down the village, and when he had gone by, young humourists would up with coat-collars and down with hat-brims, and go pacing nervously after him in imitation of his occult bearing. There was a song popular at that time called "The Bogey Man". Miss Statchell sang it at the schoolroom concert (in aid of the church lamps), and thereafter whenever one or two of the villagers were gathered together and the stranger appeared, a bar or so of this tune, more or less sharp or flat, was whistled in the midst of them. Also belated little children would call "Bogey Man!" after him, and make off tremulously elated. Cuss, the general practitioner, was devoured by curiosity. The bandages excited his professional interest, the report of the thousand and one bottles aroused his jealous regard. All through April and May he coveted an opportunity of talking to the stranger, and at last, towards Whitsuntide, he could stand it no longer, but hit upon the subscription-list for a village nurse as an excuse. He was surprised to find that Mr. Hall did not know his guest's name. "He give a name," said Mrs. Hall--an assertion which was quite unfounded--"but I didn't rightly hear it." She thought it seemed so silly not to know the man's name. Cuss rapped at the parlour door and entered. There was a fairly audible imprecation from within. "Pardon my intrusion," said Cuss, and then the door closed and cut Mrs. Hall off from the rest of the conversation. She could hear the murmur of voices for the next ten minutes, then a cry of surprise, a stirring of feet, a chair flung aside, a bark of laughter, quick steps to the door, and Cuss appeared, his face white, his eyes staring over his shoulder. He left the door open behind him, and without looking at her strode across the hall and went down the steps, and she heard his feet hurrying along the road. He carried his hat in his hand. She stood behind the door, looking at the open door of the parlour. Then she heard the stranger laughing quietly, and then his footsteps came across the room. She could not see his face where she stood. The parlour door slammed, and the place was silent again. Cuss went straight up the village to Bunting the vicar. "Am I mad?" Cuss began abruptly, as he entered the shabby little study. "Do I look like an insane person?" "What's happened?" said the vicar, putting the ammonite on the loose sheets of his forth-coming sermon. "That chap at the inn--" "Well?" "Give me something to drink," said Cuss, and he sat down. When his nerves had been steadied by a glass of cheap sherry--the only drink the good vicar had available--he told him of the interview he had just had. "Went in," he gasped, "and began to demand a subscription for that Nurse Fund. He'd stuck his hands in his pockets as I came in, and he sat down lumpily in his chair. Sniffed. I told him I'd heard he took an interest in scientific things. He said yes. Sniffed again. Kept on sniffing all the time; evidently recently caught an infernal cold. No wonder, wrapped up like that! I developed the nurse idea, and all the while kept my eyes open. Bottles--chemicals--everywhere. Balance, test-tubes in stands, and a smell of--evening primrose. Would he subscribe? Said he'd consider it. Asked him, point-blank, was he researching. Said he was. A long research? Got quite cross. 'A damnable long research,' said he, blowing the cork out, so to speak. 'Oh,' said I. And out came the grievance. The man was just on the boil, and my question boiled him over. He had been given a prescription, most valuable prescription--what for he wouldn't say. Was it medical? 'Damn you! What are you fishing after?' I apologised. Dignified sniff and cough. He resumed. He'd read it. Five ingredients. Put it down; turned his head. Draught of air from window lifted the paper. Swish, rustle. He was working in a room with an open fireplace, he said. Saw a flicker, and there was the prescription burning and lifting chimneyward. Rushed towards it just as it whisked up the chimney. So! Just at that point, to illustrate his story, out came his arm." "Well?" "No hand--just an empty sleeve. Lord! I thought, _that's_ a deformity! Got a cork arm, I suppose, and has taken it off. Then, I thought, there's something odd in that. What the devil keeps that sleeve up and open, if there's nothing in it? There was nothing in it, I tell you. Nothing down it, right down to the joint. I could see right down it to the elbow, and there was a glimmer of light shining through a tear of the cloth. 'Good God!' I said. Then he stopped. Stared at me with those black goggles of his, and then at his sleeve." "Well?" "That's all. He never said a word; just glared, and put his sleeve back in his pocket quickly. 'I was saying,' said he, 'that there was the prescription burning, wasn't I?' Interrogative cough. 'How the devil,' said I, 'can you move an empty sleeve like that?' 'Empty sleeve?' 'Yes,' said I, 'an empty sleeve.' "'It's an empty sleeve, is it? You saw it was an empty sleeve?' He stood up right away. I stood up too. He came towards me in three very slow steps, and stood quite close. Sniffed venomously. I didn't flinch, though I'm hanged if that bandaged knob of his, and those blinkers, aren't enough to unnerve any one, coming quietly up to you. "'You said it was an empty sleeve?' he said. 'Certainly,' I said. At staring and saying nothing a barefaced man, unspectacled, starts scratch. Then very quietly he pulled his sleeve out of his pocket again, and raised his arm towards me as though he would show it to me again. He did it very, very slowly. I looked at it. Seemed an age. 'Well?' said I, clearing my throat, 'there's nothing in it.' "Had to say something. I was beginning to feel frightened. I could see right down it. He extended it straight towards me, slowly, slowly--just like that--until the cuff was six inches from my face. Queer thing to see an empty sleeve come at you like that! And then--" "Well?" "Something--exactly like a finger and thumb it felt--nipped my nose." Bunting began to laugh. "There wasn't anything there!" said Cuss, his voice running up into a shriek at the "there." "It's all very well for you to laugh, but I tell you I was so startled, I hit his cuff hard, and turned around, and cut out of the room--I left him--" Cuss stopped. There was no mistaking the sincerity of his panic. He turned round in a helpless way and took a second glass of the excellent vicar's very inferior sherry. "When I hit his cuff," said Cuss, "I tell you, it felt exactly like hitting an arm. And there wasn't an arm! There wasn't the ghost of an arm!" Mr. Bunting thought it over. He looked suspiciously at Cuss. "It's a most remarkable story," he said. He looked very wise and grave indeed. "It's really," said Mr. Bunting with judicial emphasis, "a most remarkable story."

Once the protagonist and Mr. Norton return to campus, Norton asks for a physician and Dr. Bledsoe, the college's president. The protagonist seeks out Dr. Bledsoe who had been worried and was awaiting their arrival. Once Bledsoe learns that the protagonist has taken Norton to the slave quarters and beyond, he is upset but manages to mask his anger fairly well while in Mr. Norton's presence. Norton attempts to explain that it is not the boy's fault, but Bledsoe does not respond positively to these words. The boy is sent away to his dormitory room. Later in the day, Dr. Bledsoe sends for the protagonist in order to discuss the matter further. On his way to Dr. Bledsoe's office, the protagonist stops by Mr. Norton's to speak to him once again. There, the protagonist learns that Norton will be leaving that same night and that the protagonist needs to speak to Dr. Bledsoe immediately.

ACT II. SCENE I. Rome. A public place Enter MENENIUS, with the two Tribunes of the people, SICINIUS and BRUTUS MENENIUS. The augurer tells me we shall have news tonight. BRUTUS. Good or bad? MENENIUS. Not according to the prayer of the people, for they love not Marcius. SICINIUS. Nature teaches beasts to know their friends. MENENIUS. Pray you, who does the wolf love? SICINIUS. The lamb. MENENIUS. Ay, to devour him, as the hungry plebeians would the noble Marcius. BRUTUS. He's a lamb indeed, that baas like a bear. MENENIUS. He's a bear indeed, that lives like a lamb. You two are old men; tell me one thing that I shall ask you. BOTH TRIBUNES. Well, sir. MENENIUS. In what enormity is Marcius poor in that you two have not in abundance? BRUTUS. He's poor in no one fault, but stor'd with all. SICINIUS. Especially in pride. BRUTUS. And topping all others in boasting. MENENIUS. This is strange now. Do you two know how you are censured here in the city- I mean of us o' th' right-hand file? Do you? BOTH TRIBUNES. Why, how are we censur'd? MENENIUS. Because you talk of pride now- will you not be angry? BOTH TRIBUNES. Well, well, sir, well. MENENIUS. Why, 'tis no great matter; for a very little thief of occasion will rob you of a great deal of patience. Give your dispositions the reins, and be angry at your pleasures- at the least, if you take it as a pleasure to you in being so. You blame Marcius for being proud? BRUTUS. We do it not alone, sir. MENENIUS. I know you can do very little alone; for your helps are many, or else your actions would grow wondrous single: your abilities are too infant-like for doing much alone. You talk of pride. O that you could turn your eyes toward the napes of your necks, and make but an interior survey of your good selves! O that you could! BOTH TRIBUNES. What then, sir? MENENIUS. Why, then you should discover a brace of unmeriting, proud, violent, testy magistrates-alias fools- as any in Rome. SICINIUS. Menenius, you are known well enough too. MENENIUS. I am known to be a humorous patrician, and one that loves a cup of hot wine with not a drop of allaying Tiber in't; said to be something imperfect in favouring the first complaint, hasty and tinder-like upon too trivial motion; one that converses more with the buttock of the night than with the forehead of the morning. What I think I utter, and spend my malice in my breath. Meeting two such wealsmen as you are- I cannot call you Lycurguses- if the drink you give me touch my palate adversely, I make a crooked face at it. I cannot say your worships have deliver'd the matter well, when I find the ass in compound with the major part of your syllables; and though I must be content to bear with those that say you are reverend grave men, yet they lie deadly that tell you you have good faces. If you see this in the map of my microcosm, follows it that I am known well enough too? What harm can your bisson conspectuities glean out of this character, if I be known well enough too? BRUTUS. Come, sir, come, we know you well enough. MENENIUS. You know neither me, yourselves, nor any thing. You are ambitious for poor knaves' caps and legs; you wear out a good wholesome forenoon in hearing a cause between an orange-wife and a fosset-seller, and then rejourn the controversy of threepence to a second day of audience. When you are hearing a matter between party and party, if you chance to be pinch'd with the colic, you make faces like mummers, set up the bloody flag against all patience, and, in roaring for a chamber-pot, dismiss the controversy bleeding, the more entangled by your hearing. All the peace you make in their cause is calling both the parties knaves. You are a pair of strange ones. BRUTUS. Come, come, you are well understood to be a perfecter giber for the table than a necessary bencher in the Capitol. MENENIUS. Our very priests must become mockers, if they shall encounter such ridiculous subjects as you are. When you speak best unto the purpose, it is not worth the wagging of your beards; and your beards deserve not so honourable a grave as to stuff a botcher's cushion or to be entomb'd in an ass's pack-saddle. Yet you must be saying Marcius is proud; who, in a cheap estimation, is worth all your predecessors since Deucalion; though peradventure some of the best of 'em were hereditary hangmen. God-den to your worships. More of your conversation would infect my brain, being the herdsmen of the beastly plebeians. I will be bold to take my leave of you. [BRUTUS and SICINIUS go aside] Enter VOLUMNIA, VIRGILIA, and VALERIA How now, my as fair as noble ladies- and the moon, were she earthly, no nobler- whither do you follow your eyes so fast? VOLUMNIA. Honourable Menenius, my boy Marcius approaches; for the love of Juno, let's go. MENENIUS. Ha! Marcius coming home? VOLUMNIA. Ay, worthy Menenius, and with most prosperous approbation. MENENIUS. Take my cap, Jupiter, and I thank thee. Hoo! Marcius coming home! VOLUMNIA, VIRGILIA. Nay, 'tis true. VOLUMNIA. Look, here's a letter from him; the state hath another, his wife another; and I think there's one at home for you. MENENIUS. I will make my very house reel to-night. A letter for me? VIRGILIA. Yes, certain, there's a letter for you; I saw't. MENENIUS. A letter for me! It gives me an estate of seven years' health; in which time I will make a lip at the physician. The most sovereign prescription in Galen is but empiricutic and, to this preservative, of no better report than a horse-drench. Is he not wounded? He was wont to come home wounded. VIRGILIA. O, no, no, no. VOLUMNIA. O, he is wounded, I thank the gods for't. MENENIUS. So do I too, if it be not too much. Brings a victory in his pocket? The wounds become him. VOLUMNIA. On's brows, Menenius, he comes the third time home with the oaken garland. MENENIUS. Has he disciplin'd Aufidius soundly? VOLUMNIA. Titus Lartius writes they fought together, but Aufidius got off. MENENIUS. And 'twas time for him too, I'll warrant him that; an he had stay'd by him, I would not have been so fidius'd for all the chests in Corioli and the gold that's in them. Is the Senate possess'd of this? VOLUMNIA. Good ladies, let's go. Yes, yes, yes: the Senate has letters from the general, wherein he gives my son the whole name of the war; he hath in this action outdone his former deeds doubly. VALERIA. In troth, there's wondrous things spoke of him. MENENIUS. Wondrous! Ay, I warrant you, and not without his true purchasing. VIRGILIA. The gods grant them true! VOLUMNIA. True! pow, waw. MENENIUS. True! I'll be sworn they are true. Where is he wounded? [To the TRIBUNES] God save your good worships! Marcius is coming home; he has more cause to be proud. Where is he wounded? VOLUMNIA. I' th' shoulder and i' th' left arm; there will be large cicatrices to show the people when he shall stand for his place. He received in the repulse of Tarquin seven hurts i' th' body. MENENIUS. One i' th' neck and two i' th' thigh- there's nine that I know. VOLUMNIA. He had before this last expedition twenty-five wounds upon him. MENENIUS. Now it's twenty-seven; every gash was an enemy's grave. [A shout and flourish] Hark! the trumpets. VOLUMNIA. These are the ushers of Marcius. Before him he carries noise, and behind him he leaves tears; Death, that dark spirit, in's nervy arm doth lie, Which, being advanc'd, declines, and then men die. A sennet. Trumpets sound. Enter COMINIUS the GENERAL, and TITUS LARTIUS; between them, CORIOLANUS, crown'd with an oaken garland; with CAPTAINS and soldiers and a HERALD HERALD. Know, Rome, that all alone Marcius did fight Within Corioli gates, where he hath won, With fame, a name to Caius Marcius; these In honour follows Coriolanus. Welcome to Rome, renowned Coriolanus! [Flourish] ALL. Welcome to Rome, renowned Coriolanus! CORIOLANUS. No more of this, it does offend my heart. Pray now, no more. COMINIUS. Look, sir, your mother! CORIOLANUS. O, You have, I know, petition'd all the gods For my prosperity! [Kneels] VOLUMNIA. Nay, my good soldier, up; My gentle Marcius, worthy Caius, and By deed-achieving honour newly nam'd- What is it? Coriolanus must I call thee? But, O, thy wife! CORIOLANUS. My gracious silence, hail! Wouldst thou have laugh'd had I come coffin'd home, That weep'st to see me triumph? Ah, my dear, Such eyes the widows in Corioli wear, And mothers that lack sons. MENENIUS. Now the gods crown thee! CORIOLANUS. And live you yet? [To VALERIA] O my sweet lady, pardon. VOLUMNIA. I know not where to turn. O, welcome home! And welcome, General. And y'are welcome all. MENENIUS. A hundred thousand welcomes. I could weep And I could laugh; I am light and heavy. Welcome! A curse begin at very root on's heart That is not glad to see thee! You are three That Rome should dote on; yet, by the faith of men, We have some old crab trees here at home that will not Be grafted to your relish. Yet welcome, warriors. We call a nettle but a nettle, and The faults of fools but folly. COMINIUS. Ever right. CORIOLANUS. Menenius ever, ever. HERALD. Give way there, and go on. CORIOLANUS. [To his wife and mother] Your hand, and yours. Ere in our own house I do shade my head, The good patricians must be visited; From whom I have receiv'd not only greetings, But with them change of honours. VOLUMNIA. I have lived To see inherited my very wishes, And the buildings of my fancy; only There's one thing wanting, which I doubt not but Our Rome will cast upon thee. CORIOLANUS. Know, good mother, I had rather be their servant in my way Than sway with them in theirs. COMINIUS. On, to the Capitol. [Flourish. Cornets. Exeunt in state, as before] BRUTUS and SICINIUS come forward BRUTUS. All tongues speak of him and the bleared sights Are spectacled to see him. Your prattling nurse Into a rapture lets her baby cry While she chats him; the kitchen malkin pins Her richest lockram 'bout her reechy neck, Clamb'ring the walls to eye him; stalls, bulks, windows, Are smother'd up, leads fill'd and ridges hors'd With variable complexions, all agreeing In earnestness to see him. Seld-shown flamens Do press among the popular throngs and puff To win a vulgar station; our veil'd dames Commit the war of white and damask in Their nicely gawded cheeks to th' wanton spoil Of Phoebus' burning kisses. Such a pother, As if that whatsoever god who leads him Were slily crept into his human powers, And gave him graceful posture. SICINIUS. On the sudden I warrant him consul. BRUTUS. Then our office may During his power go sleep. SICINIUS. He cannot temp'rately transport his honours From where he should begin and end, but will Lose those he hath won. BRUTUS. In that there's comfort. SICINIUS. Doubt not The commoners, for whom we stand, but they Upon their ancient malice will forget With the least cause these his new honours; which That he will give them make our as little question As he is proud to do't. BRUTUS. I heard him swear, Were he to stand for consul, never would he Appear i' th' market-place, nor on him put The napless vesture of humility; Nor, showing, as the manner is, his wounds To th' people, beg their stinking breaths. SICINIUS. 'Tis right. BRUTUS. It was his word. O, he would miss it rather Than carry it but by the suit of the gentry to him And the desire of the nobles. SICINIUS. I wish no better Than have him hold that purpose, and to put it In execution. BRUTUS. 'Tis most like he will. SICINIUS. It shall be to him then as our good wills: A sure destruction. BRUTUS. So it must fall out To him or our authorities. For an end, We must suggest the people in what hatred He still hath held them; that to's power he would Have made them mules, silenc'd their pleaders, and Dispropertied their freedoms; holding them In human action and capacity Of no more soul nor fitness for the world Than camels in their war, who have their provand Only for bearing burdens, and sore blows For sinking under them. SICINIUS. This, as you say, suggested At some time when his soaring insolence Shall touch the people- which time shall not want, If he be put upon't, and that's as easy As to set dogs on sheep- will be his fire To kindle their dry stubble; and their blaze Shall darken him for ever. Enter A MESSENGER BRUTUS. What's the matter? MESSENGER. You are sent for to the Capitol. 'Tis thought That Marcius shall be consul. I have seen the dumb men throng to see him and The blind to hear him speak; matrons flung gloves, Ladies and maids their scarfs and handkerchers, Upon him as he pass'd; the nobles bended As to Jove's statue, and the commons made A shower and thunder with their caps and shouts. I never saw the like. BRUTUS. Let's to the Capitol, And carry with us ears and eyes for th' time, But hearts for the event. SICINIUS. Have with you. Exeunt

In Rome, Menenius discusses Caius Martius with the two tribunes, Brutus and Sicinius. The tribunes criticize Coriolanus for his pride. Menenius rebukes them, saying that they themselves are guilty of pride. Brutus replies that Menenius is better known as a witty conversationalist at the dinner table than a valued member of the Senate. Menenius insults the tribunes, calling them "the herdsmen of the beastly plebeians. Volumnia, Virgilia, and Valeria enter. Volumnia tells Menenius that Coriolanus has been victorious and is coming home, for which Menenius gives thanks to the Roman god Jupiter. Volumnia is proud because Coriolanus has been wounded and been honored with an oak garland by a thankful Rome. She points out that he can show these wounds to the people, to persuade them to proclaim him consul. Coriolanus arrives in triumph, crowned with an oak garland. The people cheer him, but he tries to silence them, embarrassed by their praises. He greets Volumnia, Virgilia, and Menenius. Brutus and Sicinius discuss Coriolanus privately. They fear that if he is made consul, his power will threaten theirs. They say that he has sworn never to put on the threadbare toga that symbolizes humility, nor show his wounds to the people. They are certain that his pride will destroy his chances of being consul, and agree that this is in their interest. A Messenger arrives and invites Brutus and Sicinius to the Capitol, the building where the state rulers gather. The people are hailing Coriolanus as consul, and it seems certain that he will be elected

XIII. The Fellow of No Delicacy If Sydney Carton ever shone anywhere, he certainly never shone in the house of Doctor Manette. He had been there often, during a whole year, and had always been the same moody and morose lounger there. When he cared to talk, he talked well; but, the cloud of caring for nothing, which overshadowed him with such a fatal darkness, was very rarely pierced by the light within him. And yet he did care something for the streets that environed that house, and for the senseless stones that made their pavements. Many a night he vaguely and unhappily wandered there, when wine had brought no transitory gladness to him; many a dreary daybreak revealed his solitary figure lingering there, and still lingering there when the first beams of the sun brought into strong relief, removed beauties of architecture in spires of churches and lofty buildings, as perhaps the quiet time brought some sense of better things, else forgotten and unattainable, into his mind. Of late, the neglected bed in the Temple Court had known him more scantily than ever; and often when he had thrown himself upon it no longer than a few minutes, he had got up again, and haunted that neighbourhood. On a day in August, when Mr. Stryver (after notifying to his jackal that "he had thought better of that marrying matter") had carried his delicacy into Devonshire, and when the sight and scent of flowers in the City streets had some waifs of goodness in them for the worst, of health for the sickliest, and of youth for the oldest, Sydney's feet still trod those stones. From being irresolute and purposeless, his feet became animated by an intention, and, in the working out of that intention, they took him to the Doctor's door. He was shown up-stairs, and found Lucie at her work, alone. She had never been quite at her ease with him, and received him with some little embarrassment as he seated himself near her table. But, looking up at his face in the interchange of the first few common-places, she observed a change in it. "I fear you are not well, Mr. Carton!" "No. But the life I lead, Miss Manette, is not conducive to health. What is to be expected of, or by, such profligates?" "Is it not--forgive me; I have begun the question on my lips--a pity to live no better life?" "God knows it is a shame!" "Then why not change it?" Looking gently at him again, she was surprised and saddened to see that there were tears in his eyes. There were tears in his voice too, as he answered: "It is too late for that. I shall never be better than I am. I shall sink lower, and be worse." He leaned an elbow on her table, and covered his eyes with his hand. The table trembled in the silence that followed. She had never seen him softened, and was much distressed. He knew her to be so, without looking at her, and said: "Pray forgive me, Miss Manette. I break down before the knowledge of what I want to say to you. Will you hear me?" "If it will do you any good, Mr. Carton, if it would make you happier, it would make me very glad!" "God bless you for your sweet compassion!" He unshaded his face after a little while, and spoke steadily. "Don't be afraid to hear me. Don't shrink from anything I say. I am like one who died young. All my life might have been." "No, Mr. Carton. I am sure that the best part of it might still be; I am sure that you might be much, much worthier of yourself." "Say of you, Miss Manette, and although I know better--although in the mystery of my own wretched heart I know better--I shall never forget it!" She was pale and trembling. He came to her relief with a fixed despair of himself which made the interview unlike any other that could have been holden. "If it had been possible, Miss Manette, that you could have returned the love of the man you see before yourself--flung away, wasted, drunken, poor creature of misuse as you know him to be--he would have been conscious this day and hour, in spite of his happiness, that he would bring you to misery, bring you to sorrow and repentance, blight you, disgrace you, pull you down with him. I know very well that you can have no tenderness for me; I ask for none; I am even thankful that it cannot be." "Without it, can I not save you, Mr. Carton? Can I not recall you--forgive me again!--to a better course? Can I in no way repay your confidence? I know this is a confidence," she modestly said, after a little hesitation, and in earnest tears, "I know you would say this to no one else. Can I turn it to no good account for yourself, Mr. Carton?" He shook his head. "To none. No, Miss Manette, to none. If you will hear me through a very little more, all you can ever do for me is done. I wish you to know that you have been the last dream of my soul. In my degradation I have not been so degraded but that the sight of you with your father, and of this home made such a home by you, has stirred old shadows that I thought had died out of me. Since I knew you, I have been troubled by a remorse that I thought would never reproach me again, and have heard whispers from old voices impelling me upward, that I thought were silent for ever. I have had unformed ideas of striving afresh, beginning anew, shaking off sloth and sensuality, and fighting out the abandoned fight. A dream, all a dream, that ends in nothing, and leaves the sleeper where he lay down, but I wish you to know that you inspired it." "Will nothing of it remain? O Mr. Carton, think again! Try again!" "No, Miss Manette; all through it, I have known myself to be quite undeserving. And yet I have had the weakness, and have still the weakness, to wish you to know with what a sudden mastery you kindled me, heap of ashes that I am, into fire--a fire, however, inseparable in its nature from myself, quickening nothing, lighting nothing, doing no service, idly burning away." "Since it is my misfortune, Mr. Carton, to have made you more unhappy than you were before you knew me--" "Don't say that, Miss Manette, for you would have reclaimed me, if anything could. You will not be the cause of my becoming worse." "Since the state of your mind that you describe, is, at all events, attributable to some influence of mine--this is what I mean, if I can make it plain--can I use no influence to serve you? Have I no power for good, with you, at all?" "The utmost good that I am capable of now, Miss Manette, I have come here to realise. Let me carry through the rest of my misdirected life, the remembrance that I opened my heart to you, last of all the world; and that there was something left in me at this time which you could deplore and pity." "Which I entreated you to believe, again and again, most fervently, with all my heart, was capable of better things, Mr. Carton!" "Entreat me to believe it no more, Miss Manette. I have proved myself, and I know better. I distress you; I draw fast to an end. Will you let me believe, when I recall this day, that the last confidence of my life was reposed in your pure and innocent breast, and that it lies there alone, and will be shared by no one?" "If that will be a consolation to you, yes." "Not even by the dearest one ever to be known to you?" "Mr. Carton," she answered, after an agitated pause, "the secret is yours, not mine; and I promise to respect it." "Thank you. And again, God bless you." He put her hand to his lips, and moved towards the door. "Be under no apprehension, Miss Manette, of my ever resuming this conversation by so much as a passing word. I will never refer to it again. If I were dead, that could not be surer than it is henceforth. In the hour of my death, I shall hold sacred the one good remembrance--and shall thank and bless you for it--that my last avowal of myself was made to you, and that my name, and faults, and miseries were gently carried in your heart. May it otherwise be light and happy!" He was so unlike what he had ever shown himself to be, and it was so sad to think how much he had thrown away, and how much he every day kept down and perverted, that Lucie Manette wept mournfully for him as he stood looking back at her. "Be comforted!" he said, "I am not worth such feeling, Miss Manette. An hour or two hence, and the low companions and low habits that I scorn but yield to, will render me less worth such tears as those, than any wretch who creeps along the streets. Be comforted! But, within myself, I shall always be, towards you, what I am now, though outwardly I shall be what you have heretofore seen me. The last supplication but one I make to you, is, that you will believe this of me." "I will, Mr. Carton." "My last supplication of all, is this; and with it, I will relieve you of a visitor with whom I well know you have nothing in unison, and between whom and you there is an impassable space. It is useless to say it, I know, but it rises out of my soul. For you, and for any dear to you, I would do anything. If my career were of that better kind that there was any opportunity or capacity of sacrifice in it, I would embrace any sacrifice for you and for those dear to you. Try to hold me in your mind, at some quiet times, as ardent and sincere in this one thing. The time will come, the time will not be long in coming, when new ties will be formed about you--ties that will bind you yet more tenderly and strongly to the home you so adorn--the dearest ties that will ever grace and gladden you. O Miss Manette, when the little picture of a happy father's face looks up in yours, when you see your own bright beauty springing up anew at your feet, think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you!" He said, "Farewell!" said a last "God bless you!" and left her. XIV. The Honest Tradesman To the eyes of Mr. Jeremiah Cruncher, sitting on his stool in Fleet-street with his grisly urchin beside him, a vast number and variety of objects in movement were every day presented. Who could sit upon anything in Fleet-street during the busy hours of the day, and not be dazed and deafened by two immense processions, one ever tending westward with the sun, the other ever tending eastward from the sun, both ever tending to the plains beyond the range of red and purple where the sun goes down! With his straw in his mouth, Mr. Cruncher sat watching the two streams, like the heathen rustic who has for several centuries been on duty watching one stream--saving that Jerry had no expectation of their ever running dry. Nor would it have been an expectation of a hopeful kind, since a small part of his income was derived from the pilotage of timid women (mostly of a full habit and past the middle term of life) from Tellson's side of the tides to the opposite shore. Brief as such companionship was in every separate instance, Mr. Cruncher never failed to become so interested in the lady as to express a strong desire to have the honour of drinking her very good health. And it was from the gifts bestowed upon him towards the execution of this benevolent purpose, that he recruited his finances, as just now observed. Time was, when a poet sat upon a stool in a public place, and mused in the sight of men. Mr. Cruncher, sitting on a stool in a public place, but not being a poet, mused as little as possible, and looked about him. It fell out that he was thus engaged in a season when crowds were few, and belated women few, and when his affairs in general were so unprosperous as to awaken a strong suspicion in his breast that Mrs. Cruncher must have been "flopping" in some pointed manner, when an unusual concourse pouring down Fleet-street westward, attracted his attention. Looking that way, Mr. Cruncher made out that some kind of funeral was coming along, and that there was popular objection to this funeral, which engendered uproar. "Young Jerry," said Mr. Cruncher, turning to his offspring, "it's a buryin'." "Hooroar, father!" cried Young Jerry. The young gentleman uttered this exultant sound with mysterious significance. The elder gentleman took the cry so ill, that he watched his opportunity, and smote the young gentleman on the ear. "What d'ye mean? What are you hooroaring at? What do you want to conwey to your own father, you young Rip? This boy is a getting too many for _me_!" said Mr. Cruncher, surveying him. "Him and his hooroars! Don't let me hear no more of you, or you shall feel some more of me. D'ye hear?" "I warn't doing no harm," Young Jerry protested, rubbing his cheek. "Drop it then," said Mr. Cruncher; "I won't have none of _your_ no harms. Get a top of that there seat, and look at the crowd." His son obeyed, and the crowd approached; they were bawling and hissing round a dingy hearse and dingy mourning coach, in which mourning coach there was only one mourner, dressed in the dingy trappings that were considered essential to the dignity of the position. The position appeared by no means to please him, however, with an increasing rabble surrounding the coach, deriding him, making grimaces at him, and incessantly groaning and calling out: "Yah! Spies! Tst! Yaha! Spies!" with many compliments too numerous and forcible to repeat. Funerals had at all times a remarkable attraction for Mr. Cruncher; he always pricked up his senses, and became excited, when a funeral passed Tellson's. Naturally, therefore, a funeral with this uncommon attendance excited him greatly, and he asked of the first man who ran against him: "What is it, brother? What's it about?" "_I_ don't know," said the man. "Spies! Yaha! Tst! Spies!" He asked another man. "Who is it?" "_I_ don't know," returned the man, clapping his hands to his mouth nevertheless, and vociferating in a surprising heat and with the greatest ardour, "Spies! Yaha! Tst, tst! Spi--ies!" At length, a person better informed on the merits of the case, tumbled against him, and from this person he learned that the funeral was the funeral of one Roger Cly. "Was he a spy?" asked Mr. Cruncher. "Old Bailey spy," returned his informant. "Yaha! Tst! Yah! Old Bailey Spi--i--ies!" "Why, to be sure!" exclaimed Jerry, recalling the Trial at which he had assisted. "I've seen him. Dead, is he?" "Dead as mutton," returned the other, "and can't be too dead. Have 'em out, there! Spies! Pull 'em out, there! Spies!" The idea was so acceptable in the prevalent absence of any idea, that the crowd caught it up with eagerness, and loudly repeating the suggestion to have 'em out, and to pull 'em out, mobbed the two vehicles so closely that they came to a stop. On the crowd's opening the coach doors, the one mourner scuffled out by himself and was in their hands for a moment; but he was so alert, and made such good use of his time, that in another moment he was scouring away up a bye-street, after shedding his cloak, hat, long hatband, white pocket-handkerchief, and other symbolical tears. These, the people tore to pieces and scattered far and wide with great enjoyment, while the tradesmen hurriedly shut up their shops; for a crowd in those times stopped at nothing, and was a monster much dreaded. They had already got the length of opening the hearse to take the coffin out, when some brighter genius proposed instead, its being escorted to its destination amidst general rejoicing. Practical suggestions being much needed, this suggestion, too, was received with acclamation, and the coach was immediately filled with eight inside and a dozen out, while as many people got on the roof of the hearse as could by any exercise of ingenuity stick upon it. Among the first of these volunteers was Jerry Cruncher himself, who modestly concealed his spiky head from the observation of Tellson's, in the further corner of the mourning coach. The officiating undertakers made some protest against these changes in the ceremonies; but, the river being alarmingly near, and several voices remarking on the efficacy of cold immersion in bringing refractory members of the profession to reason, the protest was faint and brief. The remodelled procession started, with a chimney-sweep driving the hearse--advised by the regular driver, who was perched beside him, under close inspection, for the purpose--and with a pieman, also attended by his cabinet minister, driving the mourning coach. A bear-leader, a popular street character of the time, was impressed as an additional ornament, before the cavalcade had gone far down the Strand; and his bear, who was black and very mangy, gave quite an Undertaking air to that part of the procession in which he walked. Thus, with beer-drinking, pipe-smoking, song-roaring, and infinite caricaturing of woe, the disorderly procession went its way, recruiting at every step, and all the shops shutting up before it. Its destination was the old church of Saint Pancras, far off in the fields. It got there in course of time; insisted on pouring into the burial-ground; finally, accomplished the interment of the deceased Roger Cly in its own way, and highly to its own satisfaction. The dead man disposed of, and the crowd being under the necessity of providing some other entertainment for itself, another brighter genius (or perhaps the same) conceived the humour of impeaching casual passers-by, as Old Bailey spies, and wreaking vengeance on them. Chase was given to some scores of inoffensive persons who had never been near the Old Bailey in their lives, in the realisation of this fancy, and they were roughly hustled and maltreated. The transition to the sport of window-breaking, and thence to the plundering of public-houses, was easy and natural. At last, after several hours, when sundry summer-houses had been pulled down, and some area-railings had been torn up, to arm the more belligerent spirits, a rumour got about that the Guards were coming. Before this rumour, the crowd gradually melted away, and perhaps the Guards came, and perhaps they never came, and this was the usual progress of a mob. Mr. Cruncher did not assist at the closing sports, but had remained behind in the churchyard, to confer and condole with the undertakers. The place had a soothing influence on him. He procured a pipe from a neighbouring public-house, and smoked it, looking in at the railings and maturely considering the spot. "Jerry," said Mr. Cruncher, apostrophising himself in his usual way, "you see that there Cly that day, and you see with your own eyes that he was a young 'un and a straight made 'un." Having smoked his pipe out, and ruminated a little longer, he turned himself about, that he might appear, before the hour of closing, on his station at Tellson's. Whether his meditations on mortality had touched his liver, or whether his general health had been previously at all amiss, or whether he desired to show a little attention to an eminent man, is not so much to the purpose, as that he made a short call upon his medical adviser--a distinguished surgeon--on his way back. Young Jerry relieved his father with dutiful interest, and reported No job in his absence. The bank closed, the ancient clerks came out, the usual watch was set, and Mr. Cruncher and his son went home to tea. "Now, I tell you where it is!" said Mr. Cruncher to his wife, on entering. "If, as a honest tradesman, my wenturs goes wrong to-night, I shall make sure that you've been praying again me, and I shall work you for it just the same as if I seen you do it." The dejected Mrs. Cruncher shook her head. "Why, you're at it afore my face!" said Mr. Cruncher, with signs of angry apprehension. "I am saying nothing." "Well, then; don't meditate nothing. You might as well flop as meditate. You may as well go again me one way as another. Drop it altogether." "Yes, Jerry." "Yes, Jerry," repeated Mr. Cruncher sitting down to tea. "Ah! It _is_ yes, Jerry. That's about it. You may say yes, Jerry." Mr. Cruncher had no particular meaning in these sulky corroborations, but made use of them, as people not unfrequently do, to express general ironical dissatisfaction. "You and your yes, Jerry," said Mr. Cruncher, taking a bite out of his bread-and-butter, and seeming to help it down with a large invisible oyster out of his saucer. "Ah! I think so. I believe you." "You are going out to-night?" asked his decent wife, when he took another bite. "Yes, I am." "May I go with you, father?" asked his son, briskly. "No, you mayn't. I'm a going--as your mother knows--a fishing. That's where I'm going to. Going a fishing." "Your fishing-rod gets rayther rusty; don't it, father?" "Never you mind." "Shall you bring any fish home, father?" "If I don't, you'll have short commons, to-morrow," returned that gentleman, shaking his head; "that's questions enough for you; I ain't a going out, till you've been long abed." He devoted himself during the remainder of the evening to keeping a most vigilant watch on Mrs. Cruncher, and sullenly holding her in conversation that she might be prevented from meditating any petitions to his disadvantage. With this view, he urged his son to hold her in conversation also, and led the unfortunate woman a hard life by dwelling on any causes of complaint he could bring against her, rather than he would leave her for a moment to her own reflections. The devoutest person could have rendered no greater homage to the efficacy of an honest prayer than he did in this distrust of his wife. It was as if a professed unbeliever in ghosts should be frightened by a ghost story. "And mind you!" said Mr. Cruncher. "No games to-morrow! If I, as a honest tradesman, succeed in providing a jinte of meat or two, none of your not touching of it, and sticking to bread. If I, as a honest tradesman, am able to provide a little beer, none of your declaring on water. When you go to Rome, do as Rome does. Rome will be a ugly customer to you, if you don't. _I_'m your Rome, you know." Then he began grumbling again: "With your flying into the face of your own wittles and drink! I don't know how scarce you mayn't make the wittles and drink here, by your flopping tricks and your unfeeling conduct. Look at your boy: he _is_ your'n, ain't he? He's as thin as a lath. Do you call yourself a mother, and not know that a mother's first duty is to blow her boy out?" This touched Young Jerry on a tender place; who adjured his mother to perform her first duty, and, whatever else she did or neglected, above all things to lay especial stress on the discharge of that maternal function so affectingly and delicately indicated by his other parent. Thus the evening wore away with the Cruncher family, until Young Jerry was ordered to bed, and his mother, laid under similar injunctions, obeyed them. Mr. Cruncher beguiled the earlier watches of the night with solitary pipes, and did not start upon his excursion until nearly one o'clock. Towards that small and ghostly hour, he rose up from his chair, took a key out of his pocket, opened a locked cupboard, and brought forth a sack, a crowbar of convenient size, a rope and chain, and other fishing tackle of that nature. Disposing these articles about him in skilful manner, he bestowed a parting defiance on Mrs. Cruncher, extinguished the light, and went out. Young Jerry, who had only made a feint of undressing when he went to bed, was not long after his father. Under cover of the darkness he followed out of the room, followed down the stairs, followed down the court, followed out into the streets. He was in no uneasiness concerning his getting into the house again, for it was full of lodgers, and the door stood ajar all night. Impelled by a laudable ambition to study the art and mystery of his father's honest calling, Young Jerry, keeping as close to house fronts, walls, and doorways, as his eyes were close to one another, held his honoured parent in view. The honoured parent steering Northward, had not gone far, when he was joined by another disciple of Izaak Walton, and the two trudged on together. Within half an hour from the first starting, they were beyond the winking lamps, and the more than winking watchmen, and were out upon a lonely road. Another fisherman was picked up here--and that so silently, that if Young Jerry had been superstitious, he might have supposed the second follower of the gentle craft to have, all of a sudden, split himself into two. The three went on, and Young Jerry went on, until the three stopped under a bank overhanging the road. Upon the top of the bank was a low brick wall, surmounted by an iron railing. In the shadow of bank and wall the three turned out of the road, and up a blind lane, of which the wall--there, risen to some eight or ten feet high--formed one side. Crouching down in a corner, peeping up the lane, the next object that Young Jerry saw, was the form of his honoured parent, pretty well defined against a watery and clouded moon, nimbly scaling an iron gate. He was soon over, and then the second fisherman got over, and then the third. They all dropped softly on the ground within the gate, and lay there a little--listening perhaps. Then, they moved away on their hands and knees. It was now Young Jerry's turn to approach the gate: which he did, holding his breath. Crouching down again in a corner there, and looking in, he made out the three fishermen creeping through some rank grass! and all the gravestones in the churchyard--it was a large churchyard that they were in--looking on like ghosts in white, while the church tower itself looked on like the ghost of a monstrous giant. They did not creep far, before they stopped and stood upright. And then they began to fish. They fished with a spade, at first. Presently the honoured parent appeared to be adjusting some instrument like a great corkscrew. Whatever tools they worked with, they worked hard, until the awful striking of the church clock so terrified Young Jerry, that he made off, with his hair as stiff as his father's. But, his long-cherished desire to know more about these matters, not only stopped him in his running away, but lured him back again. They were still fishing perseveringly, when he peeped in at the gate for the second time; but, now they seemed to have got a bite. There was a screwing and complaining sound down below, and their bent figures were strained, as if by a weight. By slow degrees the weight broke away the earth upon it, and came to the surface. Young Jerry very well knew what it would be; but, when he saw it, and saw his honoured parent about to wrench it open, he was so frightened, being new to the sight, that he made off again, and never stopped until he had run a mile or more. He would not have stopped then, for anything less necessary than breath, it being a spectral sort of race that he ran, and one highly desirable to get to the end of. He had a strong idea that the coffin he had seen was running after him; and, pictured as hopping on behind him, bolt upright, upon its narrow end, always on the point of overtaking him and hopping on at his side--perhaps taking his arm--it was a pursuer to shun. It was an inconsistent and ubiquitous fiend too, for, while it was making the whole night behind him dreadful, he darted out into the roadway to avoid dark alleys, fearful of its coming hopping out of them like a dropsical boy's kite without tail and wings. It hid in doorways too, rubbing its horrible shoulders against doors, and drawing them up to its ears, as if it were laughing. It got into shadows on the road, and lay cunningly on its back to trip him up. All this time it was incessantly hopping on behind and gaining on him, so that when the boy got to his own door he had reason for being half dead. And even then it would not leave him, but followed him upstairs with a bump on every stair, scrambled into bed with him, and bumped down, dead and heavy, on his breast when he fell asleep. From his oppressed slumber, Young Jerry in his closet was awakened after daybreak and before sunrise, by the presence of his father in the family room. Something had gone wrong with him; at least, so Young Jerry inferred, from the circumstance of his holding Mrs. Cruncher by the ears, and knocking the back of her head against the head-board of the bed. "I told you I would," said Mr. Cruncher, "and I did." "Jerry, Jerry, Jerry!" his wife implored. "You oppose yourself to the profit of the business," said Jerry, "and me and my partners suffer. You was to honour and obey; why the devil don't you?" "I try to be a good wife, Jerry," the poor woman protested, with tears. "Is it being a good wife to oppose your husband's business? Is it honouring your husband to dishonour his business? Is it obeying your husband to disobey him on the wital subject of his business?" "You hadn't taken to the dreadful business then, Jerry." "It's enough for you," retorted Mr. Cruncher, "to be the wife of a honest tradesman, and not to occupy your female mind with calculations when he took to his trade or when he didn't. A honouring and obeying wife would let his trade alone altogether. Call yourself a religious woman? If you're a religious woman, give me a irreligious one! You have no more nat'ral sense of duty than the bed of this here Thames river has of a pile, and similarly it must be knocked into you." The altercation was conducted in a low tone of voice, and terminated in the honest tradesman's kicking off his clay-soiled boots, and lying down at his length on the floor. After taking a timid peep at him lying on his back, with his rusty hands under his head for a pillow, his son lay down too, and fell asleep again. There was no fish for breakfast, and not much of anything else. Mr. Cruncher was out of spirits, and out of temper, and kept an iron pot-lid by him as a projectile for the correction of Mrs. Cruncher, in case he should observe any symptoms of her saying Grace. He was brushed and washed at the usual hour, and set off with his son to pursue his ostensible calling. Young Jerry, walking with the stool under his arm at his father's side along sunny and crowded Fleet-street, was a very different Young Jerry from him of the previous night, running home through darkness and solitude from his grim pursuer. His cunning was fresh with the day, and his qualms were gone with the night--in which particulars it is not improbable that he had compeers in Fleet-street and the City of London, that fine morning. "Father," said Young Jerry, as they walked along: taking care to keep at arm's length and to have the stool well between them: "what's a Resurrection-Man?" Mr. Cruncher came to a stop on the pavement before he answered, "How should I know?" "I thought you knowed everything, father," said the artless boy. "Hem! Well," returned Mr. Cruncher, going on again, and lifting off his hat to give his spikes free play, "he's a tradesman." "What's his goods, father?" asked the brisk Young Jerry. "His goods," said Mr. Cruncher, after turning it over in his mind, "is a branch of Scientific goods." "Persons' bodies, ain't it, father?" asked the lively boy. "I believe it is something of that sort," said Mr. Cruncher. "Oh, father, I should so like to be a Resurrection-Man when I'm quite growed up!" Mr. Cruncher was soothed, but shook his head in a dubious and moral way. "It depends upon how you dewelop your talents. Be careful to dewelop your talents, and never to say no more than you can help to nobody, and there's no telling at the present time what you may not come to be fit for." As Young Jerry, thus encouraged, went on a few yards in advance, to plant the stool in the shadow of the Bar, Mr. Cruncher added to himself: "Jerry, you honest tradesman, there's hopes wot that boy will yet be a blessing to you, and a recompense to you for his mother!"

Carton is consumed by his feelings for Lucie and although his position is hopeless he decides to confide in Lucie. She tries to encourage him to redeem his life, but Carton states that it is too late and that he will only descend lower. However, he wants her to know how deeply he loves her and that he will do all in his power to protect her and anyone she loves. Jerry Cruncher is in his usual position outside Tellson's Bank when a funeral passes by. It belongs to Roger Cly, one of the spies who testified against Darnay. The crowd is yelling 'spies' and they overwhelm the hearse and the one mourner flees the scene. The mob decide this is an excuse to have a party and they proceed down the street to the cemetery bearing the coffin ensuring that Roger Cly is given an unceremonious burial. The mob is not content with mocking the dead, but proceed to ransack some businesses until the police break the scene up. Later that night Cruncher leaves his house and his son, Young Jerry, decides to follow him. He discovers that his father is a body snatcher and will sell Cly's body to physicians for dissection. Young Jerry asks his father what he is doing and he responds by saying that he is 'Resurrection Man'.

XIII. ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER. In her late singular interview with Mr. Dimmesdale, Hester Prynne was shocked at the condition to which she found the clergyman reduced. His nerve seemed absolutely destroyed. His moral force was abased into more than childish weakness. It grovelled helpless on the ground, even while his intellectual faculties retained their pristine strength, or had perhaps acquired a morbid energy, which disease only could have given them. With her knowledge of a train of circumstances hidden from all others, she could readily infer that, besides the legitimate action of his own conscience, a terrible machinery had been brought to bear, and was still operating, on Mr. Dimmesdale's well-being and repose. Knowing what this poor, fallen man had once been, her whole soul was moved by the shuddering terror with which he had appealed to her,--the outcast woman,--for support against his instinctively discovered enemy. She decided, moreover, that he had a right to her utmost aid. Little accustomed, in her long seclusion from society, to measure her ideas of right and wrong by any standard external to herself, Hester saw--or seemed to see--that there lay a responsibility upon her, in reference to the clergyman, which she owed to no other, nor to the whole world besides. The links that united her to the rest of human kind--links of flowers, or silk, or gold, or whatever the material--had all been broken. Here was the iron link of mutual crime, which neither he nor she could break. Like all other ties, it brought along with it its obligations. Hester Prynne did not now occupy precisely the same position in which we beheld her during the earlier periods of her ignominy. Years had come and gone. Pearl was now seven years old. Her mother, with the scarlet letter on her breast, glittering in its fantastic embroidery, had long been a familiar object to the towns-people. As is apt to be the case when a person stands out in any prominence before the community, and, at the same time, interferes neither with public nor individual interests and convenience, a species of general regard had ultimately grown up in reference to Hester Prynne. It is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility. In this matter of Hester Prynne, there was neither irritation nor irksomeness. She never battled with the public, but submitted, uncomplainingly, to its worst usage; she made no claim upon it, in requital for what she suffered; she did not weigh upon its sympathies. Then, also, the blameless purity of her life during all these years in which she had been set apart to infamy, was reckoned largely in her favor. With nothing now to lose, in the sight of mankind, and with no hope, and seemingly no wish, of gaining anything, it could only be a genuine regard for virtue that had brought back the poor wanderer to its paths. [Illustration: Hester in the House of Mourning] It was perceived, too, that while Hester never put forward even the humblest title to share in the world's privileges,--further than to breathe the common air, and earn daily bread for little Pearl and herself by the faithful labor of her hands,--she was quick to acknowledge her sisterhood with the race of man, whenever benefits were to be conferred. None so ready as she to give of her little substance to every demand of poverty; even though the bitter-hearted pauper threw back a gibe in requital of the food brought regularly to his door, or the garments wrought for him by the fingers that could have embroidered a monarch's robe. None so self-devoted as Hester, when pestilence stalked through the town. In all seasons of calamity, indeed, whether general or of individuals, the outcast of society at once found her place. She came, not as a guest, but as a rightful inmate, into the household that was darkened by trouble; as if its gloomy twilight were a medium in which she was entitled to hold intercourse with her fellow-creatures. There glimmered the embroidered letter, with comfort in its unearthly ray. Elsewhere the token of sin, it was the taper of the sick-chamber. It had even thrown its gleam, in the sufferer's hard extremity, across the verge of time. It had shown him where to set his foot, while the light of earth was fast becoming dim, and ere the light of futurity could reach him. In such emergencies, Hester's nature showed itself warm and rich; a well-spring of human tenderness, unfailing to every real demand, and inexhaustible by the largest. Her breast, with its badge of shame, was but the softer pillow for the head that needed one. She was self-ordained a Sister of Mercy; or, we may rather say, the world's heavy hand had so ordained her, when neither the world nor she looked forward to this result. The letter was the symbol of her calling. Such helpfulness was found in her,--so much power to do, and power to sympathize,--that many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by its original signification. They said that it meant Able; so strong was Hester Prynne, with a woman's strength. It was only the darkened house that could contain her. When sunshine came again, she was not there. Her shadow had faded across the threshold. The helpful inmate had departed, without one backward glance to gather up the meed of gratitude, if any were in the hearts of those whom she had served so zealously. Meeting them in the street, she never raised her head to receive their greeting. If they were resolute to accost her, she laid her finger on the scarlet letter, and passed on. This might be pride, but was so like humility, that it produced all the softening influence of the latter quality on the public mind. The public is despotic in its temper; it is capable of denying common justice, when too strenuously demanded as a right; but quite as frequently it awards more than justice, when the appeal is made, as despots love to have it made, entirely to its generosity. Interpreting Hester Prynne's deportment as an appeal of this nature, society was inclined to show its former victim a more benign countenance than she cared to be favored with, or, perchance, than she deserved. The rulers, and the wise and learned men of the community, were longer in acknowledging the influence of Hester's good qualities than the people. The prejudices which they shared in common with the latter were fortified in themselves by an iron framework of reasoning, that made it a far tougher labor to expel them. Day by day, nevertheless, their sour and rigid wrinkles were relaxing into something which, in the due course of years, might grow to be an expression of almost benevolence. Thus it was with the men of rank, on whom their eminent position imposed the guardianship of the public morals. Individuals in private life, meanwhile, had quite forgiven Hester Prynne for her frailty; nay, more, they had begun to look upon the scarlet letter as the token, not of that one sin, for which she had borne so long and dreary a penance, but of her many good deeds since. "Do you see that woman with the embroidered badge?" they would say to strangers. "It is our Hester,--the town's own Hester, who is so kind to the poor, so helpful to the sick, so comfortable to the afflicted!" Then, it is true, the propensity of human nature to tell the very worst of itself, when embodied in the person of another, would constrain them to whisper the black scandal of bygone years. It was none the less a fact, however, that, in the eyes of the very men who spoke thus, the scarlet letter had the effect of the cross on a nun's bosom. It imparted to the wearer a kind of sacredness, which enabled her to walk securely amid all peril. Had she fallen among thieves, it would have kept her safe. It was reported, and believed by many, that an Indian had drawn his arrow against the badge, and that the missile struck it, but fell harmless to the ground. The effect of the symbol--or, rather, of the position in respect to society that was indicated by it--on the mind of Hester Prynne herself, was powerful and peculiar. All the light and graceful foliage of her character had been withered up by this red-hot brand, and had long ago fallen away, leaving a bare and harsh outline, which might have been repulsive, had she possessed friends or companions to be repelled by it. Even the attractiveness of her person had undergone a similar change. It might be partly owing to the studied austerity of her dress, and partly to the lack of demonstration in her manners. It was a sad transformation, too, that her rich and luxuriant hair had either been cut off, or was so completely hidden by a cap, that not a shining lock of it ever once gushed into the sunshine. It was due in part to all these causes, but still more to something else, that there seemed to be no longer anything in Hester's face for Love to dwell upon; nothing in Hester's form, though majestic and statue-like, that Passion would ever dream of clasping in its embrace; nothing in Hester's bosom, to make it ever again the pillow of Affection. Some attribute had departed from her, the permanence of which had been essential to keep her a woman. Such is frequently the fate, and such the stern development, of the feminine character and person, when the woman has encountered, and lived through, an experience of peculiar severity. If she be all tenderness, she will die. If she survive, the tenderness will either be crushed out of her, or--and the outward semblance is the same--crushed so deeply into her heart that it can never show itself more. The latter is perhaps the truest theory. She who has once been woman, and ceased to be so, might at any moment become a woman again if there were only the magic touch to effect the transfiguration. We shall see whether Hester Prynne were ever afterwards so touched, and so transfigured. Much of the marble coldness of Hester's impression was to be attributed to the circumstance, that her life had turned, in a great measure, from passion and feeling, to thought. Standing alone in the world,--alone, as to any dependence on society, and with little Pearl to be guided and protected,--alone, and hopeless of retrieving her position, even had she not scorned to consider it desirable,--she cast away the fragments of a broken chain. The world's law was no law for her mind. It was an age in which the human intellect, newly emancipated, had taken a more active and a wider range than for many centuries before. Men of the sword had overthrown nobles and kings. Men bolder than these had overthrown and rearranged--not actually, but within the sphere of theory, which was their most real abode--the whole system of ancient prejudice, wherewith was linked much of ancient principle. Hester Prynne imbibed this spirit. She assumed a freedom of speculation, then common enough on the other side of the Atlantic, but which our forefathers, had they known it, would have held to be a deadlier crime than that stigmatized by the scarlet letter. In her lonesome cottage, by the sea-shore, thoughts visited her, such as dared to enter no other dwelling in New England; shadowy guests, that would have been as perilous as demons to their entertainer, could they have been seen so much as knocking at her door. It is remarkable, that persons who speculate the most boldly often conform with the most perfect quietude to the external regulations of society. The thought suffices them, without investing itself in the flesh and blood of action. So it seemed to be with Hester. Yet, had little Pearl never come to her from the spiritual world, it might have been far otherwise. Then, she might have come down to us in history, hand in hand with Ann Hutchinson, as the foundress of a religious sect. She might, in one of her phases, have been a prophetess. She might, and not improbably would, have suffered death from the stern tribunals of the period, for attempting to undermine the foundations of the Puritan establishment. But, in the education of her child, the mother's enthusiasm of thought had something to wreak itself upon. Providence, in the person of this little girl, had assigned to Hester's charge the germ and blossom of womanhood, to be cherished and developed amid a host of difficulties. Everything was against her. The world was hostile. The child's own nature had something wrong in it, which continually betokened that she had been born amiss,--the effluence of her mother's lawless passion,--and often impelled Hester to ask, in bitterness of heart, whether it were for ill or good that the poor little creature had been born at all. Indeed, the same dark question often rose into her mind, with reference to the whole race of womanhood. Was existence worth accepting, even to the happiest among them? As concerned her own individual existence, she had long ago decided in the negative, and dismissed the point as settled. A tendency to speculation, though it may keep woman quiet, as it does man, yet makes her sad. She discerns, it may be, such a hopeless task before her. As a first step, the whole system of society is to be torn down, and built up anew. Then, the very nature of the opposite sex, or its long hereditary habit, which has become like nature, is to be essentially modified, before woman can be allowed to assume what seems a fair and suitable position. Finally, all other difficulties being obviated, woman cannot take advantage of these preliminary reforms, until she herself shall have undergone a still mightier change; in which, perhaps, the ethereal essence, wherein she has her truest life, will be found to have evaporated. A woman never overcomes these problems by any exercise of thought. They are not to be solved, or only in one way. If her heart chance to come uppermost, they vanish. Thus, Hester Prynne, whose heart had lost its regular and healthy throb, wandered without a clew in the dark labyrinth of mind; now turned aside by an insurmountable precipice; now starting back from a deep chasm. There was wild and ghastly scenery all around her, and a home and comfort nowhere. At times, a fearful doubt strove to possess her soul, whether it were not better to send Pearl at once to heaven, and go herself to such futurity as Eternal Justice should provide. The scarlet letter had not done its office. Now, however, her interview with the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, on the night of his vigil, had given her a new theme of reflection, and held up to her an object that appeared worthy of any exertion and sacrifice for its attainment. She had witnessed the intense misery beneath which the minister struggled, or, to speak more accurately, had ceased to struggle. She saw that he stood on the verge of lunacy, if he had not already stepped across it. It was impossible to doubt, that, whatever painful efficacy there might be in the secret sting of remorse, a deadlier venom had been infused into it by the hand that proffered relief. A secret enemy had been continually by his side, under the semblance of a friend and helper, and had availed himself of the opportunities thus afforded for tampering with the delicate springs of Mr. Dimmesdale's nature. Hester could not but ask herself, whether there had not originally been a defect of truth, courage, and loyalty, on her own part, in allowing the minister to be thrown into a position where so much evil was to be foreboded, and nothing auspicious to be hoped. Her only justification lay in the fact, that she had been able to discern no method of rescuing him from a blacker ruin than had overwhelmed herself, except by acquiescing in Roger Chillingworth's scheme of disguise. Under that impulse, she had made her choice, and had chosen, as it now appeared, the more wretched alternative of the two. She determined to redeem her error, so far as it might yet be possible. Strengthened by years of hard and solemn trial, she felt herself no longer so inadequate to cope with Roger Chillingworth as on that night, abased by sin, and half maddened by the ignominy that was still new, when they had talked together in the prison-chamber. She had climbed her way, since then, to a higher point. The old man, on the other hand, had brought himself nearer to her level, or perhaps below it, by the revenge which he had stooped for. In fine, Hester Prynne resolved to meet her former husband, and do what might be in her power for the rescue of the victim on whom he had so evidently set his gripe. The occasion was not long to seek. One afternoon, walking with Pearl in a retired part of the peninsula, she beheld the old physician, with a basket on one arm, and a staff in the other hand, stooping along the ground, in quest of roots and herbs to concoct his medicines withal. [Illustration] [Illustration]

Following her conversation with Dimmesdale on the scaffold, Hester is shocked by the changes in him. While he seems to have retained his intelligence, his nerve is gone. He is morally weak, and she can only conclude that "a terrible machinery had been brought to bear, and was still operating on Mr. Dimmesdale's well-being and repose." Hester decides she has an obligation to help this man. Four years have gone by, and Hester's position in the community has changed: She has been given credit for bearing her shame with courage, and her life has been one of purity since Pearl's birth. While Dimmesdale's sermons have become more humane and praised because of his suffering, Hester's position has risen because of her charity. Her scarlet A now stands for "Able." But this has come with a price: no friends, no passion, no love or affection. Through adversity, Hester has forged a new place for herself on the edge of Puritan society. In contrast, Dimmesdale's mental balance has suffered greatly. Now she must help the man who seems to be on "the verge of lunacy." In fact, she feels it has been an error on her part not to step forward before. So she resolves to speak with her husband.

"Brief, I pray you; for you see, 'tis a busy time with me." _Much Ado About Nothing._ The tribe, or rather half tribe, of Delawares, which has been so often mentioned, and whose present place of encampment was so nigh the temporary village of the Hurons, could assemble about an equal number of warriors with the latter people. Like their neighbors, they had followed Montcalm into the territories of the English crown, and were making heavy and serious inroads on the hunting-grounds of the Mohawks; though they had seen fit, with the mysterious reserve so common among the natives, to withhold their assistance at the moment when it was most required. The French had accounted for this unexpected defection on the part of their ally in various ways. It was the prevalent opinion, however, that they had been influenced by veneration for the ancient treaty, that had once made them dependent on the Six Nations for military protection, and now rendered them reluctant to encounter their former masters. As for the tribe itself, it had been content to announce to Montcalm, through his emissaries, with Indian brevity, that their hatchets were dull, and time was necessary to sharpen them. The politic captain of the Canadas had deemed it wiser to submit to entertain a passive friend, than by any acts of ill-judged severity to convert him into an open enemy. On that morning when Magua led his silent party from the settlement of the beavers into the forest, in the manner described, the sun rose upon the Delaware encampment as if it had suddenly burst upon a busy people, actively employed in all the customary avocations of high noon. The women ran from lodge to lodge, some engaged in preparing their morning's meal, a few earnestly bent on seeking the comforts necessary to their habits, but more pausing to exchange hasty and whispered sentences with their friends. The warriors were lounging in groups, musing more than they conversed; and when a few words were uttered, speaking like men who deeply weighed their opinions. The instruments of the chase were to be seen in abundance among the lodges; but none departed. Here and there a warrior was examining his arms, with an attention that is rarely bestowed on the implements, when no other enemy than the beasts of the forest is expected to be encountered. And, occasionally, the eyes of a whole group were turned simultaneously towards a large and silent lodge in the centre of the village, as if it contained the subject of their common thoughts. During the existence of this scene, a man suddenly appeared at the farthest extremity of a platform of rock which formed the level of the village. He was without arms, and his paint tended rather to soften than increase the natural sternness of his austere countenance. When in full view of the Delawares he stopped, and made a gesture of amity, by throwing his arm upward towards heaven, and then letting it fall impressively on his breast. The inhabitants of the village answered his salute by a low murmur of welcome, and encouraged him to advance by similar indications of friendship. Fortified by these assurances, the dark figure left the brow of the natural rocky terrace, where it had stood a moment, drawn in a strong outline against the blushing morning sky, and moved with dignity into the very centre of the huts. As he approached, nothing was audible but the rattling of the light silver ornaments that loaded his arms and neck, and the tinkling of the little bells that fringed his deer-skin moccasins. He made, as he advanced, many courteous signs of greeting to the men he passed, neglecting to notice the women, however, like one who deemed their favor, in the present enterprise, of no importance. When he had reached the group in which it was evident, by the haughtiness of their common mien, that the principal chiefs were collected, the stranger paused, and then the Delawares saw that the active and erect form that stood before them was that of the well-known Huron chief, Le Renard Subtil. His reception was grave, silent, and wary. The warriors in front stepped aside, opening the way to their most approved orator by the action; one who spoke all those languages that were cultivated among the northern aborigines. "The wise Huron is welcome," said the Delaware, in the language of the Maquas; "he is come to eat his 'succotash,'[25] with his brothers of the lakes." "He is come," repeated Magua, bending his head with the dignity of an Eastern prince. The chief extended his arm, and taking the other by the wrist, they once more exchanged friendly salutations. Then the Delaware invited his guest to enter his own lodge, and share his morning meal. The invitation was accepted; and the two warriors, attended by three or four of the old men, walked calmly away, leaving the rest of the tribe devoured by a desire to understand the reasons of so unusual a visit, and yet not betraying the least impatience by sign or word. During the short and frugal repast that followed, the conversation was extremely circumspect, and related entirely to the events of the hunt in which Magua had so lately been engaged. It would have been impossible for the most finished breeding to wear more of the appearance of considering the visit as a matter of course, than did his hosts, notwithstanding every individual present was perfectly aware that it must be connected with some secret object, and that probably of importance to themselves. When the appetites of the whole were appeased, the squaws removed the trenchers and gourd, and the two parties began to prepare themselves for a subtle trial of their wits. "Is the face of my great Canada father turned again towards his Huron children?" demanded the orator of the Delawares. "When was it ever otherwise?" returned Magua. "He calls my people 'most beloved.'" The Delaware gravely bowed his acquiescence to what he knew to be false, and continued,-- "The tomahawks of your young men have been very red." "It is so; but they are now bright and dull; for the Yengeese are dead, and the Delawares are our neighbors." The other acknowledged the pacific compliment by a gesture of the hand, and remained silent. Then Magua, as if recalled to such a recollection, by the allusion to the massacre, demanded,-- "Does my prisoner give trouble to my brothers?" "She is welcome." "The path between the Hurons and the Delawares is short, and it is open; let her be sent to my squaws, if she gives trouble to my brother." "She is welcome," returned the chief of the latter nation, still more emphatically. The baffled Magua continued silent several minutes, apparently indifferent, however, to the repulse he had received in this his open effort to gain possession of Cora. "Do my young men leave the Delawares room on the mountains for their hunts?" he at length continued. "The Lenape are rulers of their own hills," returned the other, a little haughtily. "It is well. Justice is the master of a redskin! Why should they brighten their tomahawks, and sharpen their knives against each other? Are not the pale-faces thicker than the swallows in the season of flowers?" "Good!" exclaimed two or three of his auditors at the same time. Magua waited a little, to permit his words to soften the feelings of the Delawares, before he added,-- "Have there not been strange moccasins in the woods? Have not my brothers scented the feet of white men?" "Let my Canada father come," returned the other evasively; "his children are ready to see him." "When the great chief comes, it is to smoke with the Indians in their wigwams. The Hurons say, too, he is welcome. But the Yengeese have long arms, and legs that never tire! My young men dreamed they had seen the trail of the Yengeese nigh the village of the Delawares?" "They will not find the Lenape asleep." "It is well. The warrior whose eye is open can see his enemy," said Magua, once more shifting his ground, when he found himself unable to penetrate the caution of his companion. "I have brought gifts to my brother. His nation would not go on the war-path because they did not think it well; but their friends have remembered where they lived." When he had thus announced his liberal intention, the crafty chief arose, and gravely spread his presents before the dazzled eyes of his hosts. They consisted principally of trinkets of little value, plundered from the slaughtered females of William Henry. In the division of the baubles the cunning Huron discovered no less art than in their selection. While he bestowed those of greater value on the two most distinguished warriors, one of whom was his host, he seasoned his offerings to their inferiors with such well-timed and apposite compliments, as left them no grounds of complaint. In short, the whole ceremony contained such a happy blending of the profitable with the flattering, that it was not difficult for the donor immediately to read the effect of a generosity so aptly mingled with praise, in the eyes of those he addressed. This well-judged and politic stroke on the part of Magua was not without instantaneous results. The Delawares lost their gravity in a much more cordial expression; and the host, in particular, after contemplating his own liberal share of the spoil for some moments with peculiar gratification, repeated with strong emphasis, the words,-- "My brother is a wise chief. He is welcome!" "The Hurons love their friends the Delawares," returned Magua. "Why should they not? they are colored by the same sun, and their just men will hunt in the same grounds after death. The redskins should be friends, and look with open eyes on the white men. Has not my brother scented spies in the woods?" The Delaware, whose name in English signified "Hard Heart," an appellation that the French had translated into "Le Coeur-dur," forgot the obduracy of purpose, which had probably obtained him so significant a title. His countenance grew very sensibly less stern, and now deigned to answer more directly. "There have been strange moccasins about my camp. They have been tracked into my lodges." "Did my brother beat out the dogs?" asked Magua, without adverting in any manner to the former equivocation of the chief. "It would not do. The stranger is always welcome to the children of the Lenape." "The stranger, but not the spy." "Would the Yengeese send their women as spies? Did not the Huron chief say he took women in the battle?" "He told no lie. The Yengeese have sent out their scouts. They have been in my wigwams, but they found there no one to say welcome. Then they fled to the Delawares--for, say they, the Delawares are our friends; their minds are turned from their Canada father!" This insinuation was a home thrust, and one that in a more advanced state of society, would have entitled Magua to the reputation of a skilful diplomatist. The recent defection of the tribe had, as they well knew themselves, subjected the Delawares to much reproach among their French allies; and they were now made to feel that their future actions were to be regarded with jealousy and distrust. There was no deep insight into causes and effects necessary to foresee that such a situation of things was likely to prove highly prejudicial to their future movements. Their distant villages, their hunting-grounds, and hundreds of their women and children, together with a material part of their physical force, were actually within the limits of the French territory. Accordingly, this alarming annunciation was received, as Magua intended, with manifest disapprobation, if not with alarm. "Let my father look in my face," said Le Coeur-dur; "he will see no change. It is true, my young men did not go out on the war-path; they had dreams for not doing so. But they love and venerate the great white chief." "Will he think so when he hears that his greatest enemy is fed in the camp of his children? When he is told a bloody Yengee smokes at your fire? That the pale-face who has slain so many of his friends goes in and out among the Delawares? Go! my great Canada father is not a fool!" "Where is the Yengee that the Delawares fear?" returned the other; "who has slain my young men? who is the mortal enemy of my Great Father!" "La Longue Carabine." The Delaware warriors started at the well-known name, betraying, by their amazement, that they now learnt, for the first time, one so famous among the Indian allies of France was within their power. "What does my brother mean?" demanded Le Coeur-dur, in a tone that, by its wonder, far exceeded the usual apathy of his race. "A Huron never lies!" returned Magua coldly, leaning his head against the side of the lodge, and drawing his slight robe across his tawny breast. "Let the Delawares count their prisoners; they will find one whose skin is neither red nor pale." A long and musing pause succeeded. The chief consulted apart with his companions, and messengers were despatched to collect certain others of the most distinguished men of the tribe. As warrior after warrior dropped in, they were each made acquainted, in turn, with the important intelligence that Magua had just communicated. The air of surprise, and the usual low, deep, guttural exclamation, were common to them all. The news spread from mouth to mouth, until the whole encampment became powerfully agitated. The women suspended their labors, to catch such syllables as unguardedly fell from the lips of the consulting warriors. The boys deserted their sports, and walking fearlessly among their fathers, looked up in curious admiration, as they heard the brief exclamations of wonder they so freely expressed at the temerity of their hated foe. In short, every occupation was abandoned for the time, and all other pursuits seemed discarded, in order that the tribe might freely indulge, after their own peculiar manner, in an open expression of feeling. When the excitement had a little abated, the old men disposed themselves seriously to consider that which it became the honor and safety of their tribe to perform, under circumstances of so much delicacy and embarrassment. During all these movements, and in the midst of the general commotion, Magua had not only maintained his seat, but the very attitude he had originally taken, against the side of the lodge, where he continued as immovable, and, apparently, as unconcerned, as if he had no interest in the result. Not a single indication of the future intentions of his hosts, however, escaped his vigilant eyes. With his consummate knowledge of the nature of the people with whom he had to deal, he anticipated every measure on which they decided; and it might almost be said, that, in many instances, he knew their intentions, even before they became known to themselves. The council of the Delawares was short. When it was ended, a general bustle announced that it was to be immediately succeeded by a solemn and formal assemblage of the nation. As such meetings were rare, and only called on occasions of the last importance, the subtle Huron, who still sat apart, a wily and dark observer of the proceedings, now knew that all his projects must be brought to their final issue. He therefore left the lodge, and walked silently forth to the place in front of the encampment whither the warriors were already beginning to collect. It might have been half an hour before each individual, including even the women and children, was in his place. The delay had been created by the grave preparations that were deemed necessary to so solemn and unusual a conference. But when the sun was seen climbing above the tops of that mountain against whose bosom the Delawares had constructed their encampment, most were seated; and as his bright rays darted from behind the outline of trees that fringed the eminence, they fell upon as grave, as attentive, and as deeply interested a multitude, as was probably ever before lighted by his morning beams. Its number somewhat exceeded a thousand souls. In a collection of such serious savages, there is never to be found any impatient aspirant after premature distinction, standing ready to move his auditors to some hasty, and, perhaps, injudicious discussion, in order that his own reputation may be the gainer. An act of so much precipitancy and presumption would seal the downfall of precocious intellect forever. It rested solely with the oldest and most experienced of the men to lay the subject of the conference before the people. Until such a one chose to make some movement, no deeds in arms, no natural gifts, nor any renown as an orator, would have justified the slightest interruption. On the present occasion, the aged warrior whose privilege it was to speak, was silent, seemingly oppressed with the magnitude of his subject. The delay had already continued long beyond the usual deliberative pause that always precedes a conference; but no sign of impatience or surprise escaped even the youngest boy. Occasionally, an eye was raised from the earth, where the looks of most were riveted, and strayed towards a particular lodge, that was, however, in no manner distinguished from those around it, except in the peculiar care that had been taken to protect it against the assaults of the weather. At length, one of those low murmurs that are so apt to disturb a multitude, was heard, and the whole nation arose to their feet by a common impulse. At that the door of the lodge in question opened, and three men, issuing from it, slowly approached the place of consultation. They were all aged, even beyond that period to which the oldest present had reached; but one in the centre, who leaned on his companions for support, had numbered an amount of years to which the human race is seldom permitted to attain. His frame, which had once been tall and erect, like the cedar, was now bending under the pressure of more than a century. The elastic, light step of an Indian was gone, and in its place he was compelled to toil his tardy way over the ground, inch by inch. His dark, wrinkled countenance was in singular and wild contrast with the long white locks which floated on his shoulders in such thickness as to announce that generations had probably passed away since they had last been shorn. The dress of this patriarch--for such, considering his vast age, in conjunction with his affinity and influence with his people, he might very properly be termed--was rich and imposing, though strictly after the simple fashions of the tribe. His robe was of the finest skins, which had been deprived of their fur, in order to admit of a hieroglyphical representation of various deeds in arms, done in former ages. His bosom was loaded with medals, some in massive silver, and one or two even in gold, the gifts of various Christian potentates during the long period of his life. He also wore armlets, and cinctures above the ankles, of the latter precious metal. His head, on the whole of which the hair had been permitted to grow, the pursuits of war having so long been abandoned, was encircled by a sort of plated diadem, which, in its turn, bore lesser and more glittering ornaments, that sparkled amid the glossy hues of three drooping ostrich feathers, dyed a deep black, in touching contrast to the color of his snow-white locks. His tomahawk was nearly hid in silver, and the handle of his knife shone like a horn of solid gold. So soon as the first hum of emotion and pleasure, which the sudden appearance of this venerated individual created, had a little subsided, the name of "Tamenund" was whispered from mouth to mouth. Magua had often heard the fame of this wise and just Delaware; a reputation that even proceeded so far as to bestow on him the rare gift of holding secret communion with the Great Spirit, and which has since transmitted his name, with some slight alteration, to the white usurpers of his ancient territory, as the imaginary tutelar saint of a vast empire. The Huron chief, therefore, stepped eagerly out a little from the throng, to a spot whence he might catch a nearer glimpse of the features of the man, whose decision was likely to produce so deep an influence on his own fortunes. The eyes of the old man were closed, as though the organs were wearied with having so long witnessed the selfish workings of the human passions. The color of his skin differed from that of most around him, being richer and darker, the latter hue having been produced by certain delicate and mazy lines of complicated and yet beautiful figures, which had been traced over most of his person by the operation of tattooing. Notwithstanding the position of the Huron, he passed the observant and silent Magua without notice, and leaning on his two venerable supporters proceeded to the high place of the multitude, where he seated himself in the centre of his nation, with the dignity of a monarch and the air of a father. Nothing could surpass the reverence and affection with which this unexpected visit from one who belonged rather to another world than to this, was received by his people. After a suitable and decent pause, the principal chiefs arose; and approaching the patriarch, they placed his hands reverently on their heads, seeming to entreat a blessing. The younger men were content with touching his robe, or even drawing nigh his person, in order to breathe in the atmosphere of one so aged, so just, and so valiant. None but the most distinguished among the youthful warriors even presumed so far as to perform the latter ceremony; the great mass of the multitude deeming it a sufficient happiness to look upon a form so deeply venerated, and so well beloved. When these acts of affection and respect were performed, the chiefs drew back again to their several places, and silence reigned in the whole encampment. After a short delay, a few of the young men, to whom instructions had been whispered by one of the aged attendants of Tamenund, arose, left the crowd, and entered the lodge which has already been noted as the object of so much attention throughout that morning. In a few minutes they reappeared, escorting the individuals who had caused all these solemn preparations towards the seat of judgment. The crowd opened in a lane; and when the party had re-entered, it closed in again, forming a large and dense belt of human bodies, arranged in an open circle.

Magua appears in the Delaware camp the next morning, looking unarmed and peaceful. He discusses the current situation with Hard Heart, the great Delaware orator. However, Magua does not learn any news about Cora, who first came to the camp as his prisoner. He seeks to please the chief of the tribe by giving him gifts. He shocks the assembled Indians by revealing that he suspects the white man La Longue Carabine hides among them. Magua reminds the people that La Longue Carabine is a notorious Indian-killer

Till Elizabeth entered the drawing-room at Netherfield and looked in vain for Mr. Wickham among the cluster of red coats there assembled, a doubt of his being present had never occurred to her. The certainty of meeting him had not been checked by any of those recollections that might not unreasonably have alarmed her. She had dressed with more than usual care, and prepared in the highest spirits for the conquest of all that remained unsubdued of his heart, trusting that it was not more than might be won in the course of the evening. But in an instant arose the dreadful suspicion of his being purposely omitted for Mr. Darcy's pleasure in the Bingleys' invitation to the officers; and though this was not exactly the case, the absolute fact of his absence was pronounced by his friend Mr. Denny, to whom Lydia eagerly applied, and who told them that Wickham had been obliged to go to town on business the day before, and was not yet returned; adding, with a significant smile, "I do not imagine his business would have called him away just now, if he had not wished to avoid a certain gentleman here." This part of his intelligence, though unheard by Lydia, was caught by Elizabeth, and as it assured her that Darcy was not less answerable for Wickham's absence than if her first surmise had been just, every feeling of displeasure against the former was so sharpened by immediate disappointment, that she could hardly reply with tolerable civility to the polite inquiries which he directly afterwards approached to make.--Attention, forbearance, patience with Darcy, was injury to Wickham. She was resolved against any sort of conversation with him, and turned away with a degree of ill humour, which she could not wholly surmount even in speaking to Mr. Bingley, whose blind partiality provoked her. But Elizabeth was not formed for ill-humour; and though every prospect of her own was destroyed for the evening, it could not dwell long on her spirits; and having told all her griefs to Charlotte Lucas, whom she had not seen for a week, she was soon able to make a voluntary transition to the oddities of her cousin, and to point him out to her particular notice. The two first dances, however, brought a return of distress; they were dances of mortification. Mr. Collins, awkward and solemn, apologising instead of attending, and often moving wrong without being aware of it, gave her all the shame and misery which a disagreeable partner for a couple of dances can give. The moment of her release from him was ecstacy. She danced next with an officer, and had the refreshment of talking of Wickham, and of hearing that he was universally liked. When those dances were over she returned to Charlotte Lucas, and was in conversation with her, when she found herself suddenly addressed by Mr. Darcy, who took her so much by surprise in his application for her hand, that, without knowing what she did, she accepted him. He walked away again immediately, and she was left to fret over her own want of presence of mind; Charlotte tried to console her. "I dare say you will find him very agreeable." "Heaven forbid!--_That_ would be the greatest misfortune of all!--To find a man agreeable whom one is determined to hate!--Do not wish me such an evil." When the dancing recommenced, however, and Darcy approached to claim her hand, Charlotte could not help cautioning her in a whisper not to be a simpleton and allow her fancy for Wickham to make her appear unpleasant in the eyes of a man of ten times his consequence. Elizabeth made no answer, and took her place in the set, amazed at the dignity to which she was arrived in being allowed to stand opposite to Mr. Darcy, and reading in her neighbours' looks their equal amazement in beholding it. They stood for some time without speaking a word; and she began to imagine that their silence was to last through the two dances, and at first was resolved not to break it; till suddenly fancying that it would be the greater punishment to her partner to oblige him to talk, she made some slight observation on the dance. He replied, and was again silent. After a pause of some minutes she addressed him a second time with "It is _your_ turn to say something now, Mr. Darcy.--_I_ talked about the dance, and _you_ ought to make some kind of remark on the size of the room, or the number of couples." He smiled, and assured her that whatever she wished him to say should be said. "Very well.--That reply will do for the present.--Perhaps by and bye I may observe that private balls are much pleasanter than public ones.--But _now_ we may be silent." "Do you talk by rule then, while you are dancing?" "Sometimes. One must speak a little, you know. It would look odd to be entirely silent for half an hour together, and yet for the advantage of _some_, conversation ought to be so arranged as that they may have the trouble of saying as little as possible." "Are you consulting your own feelings in the present case, or do you imagine that you are gratifying mine?" "Both," replied Elizabeth archly; "for I have always seen a great similarity in the turn of our minds.--We are each of an unsocial, taciturn disposition, unwilling to speak, unless we expect to say something that will amaze the whole room, and be handed down to posterity with all the eclat of a proverb." "This is no very striking resemblance of your own character, I am sure," said he. "How near it may be to _mine_, I cannot pretend to say.--_You_ think it a faithful portrait undoubtedly." "I must not decide on my own performance." He made no answer, and they were again silent till they had gone down the dance, when he asked her if she and her sisters did not very often walk to Meryton. She answered in the affirmative, and, unable to resist the temptation, added, "When you met us there the other day, we had just been forming a new acquaintance." The effect was immediate. A deeper shade of hauteur overspread his features, but he said not a word, and Elizabeth, though blaming herself for her own weakness, could not go on. At length Darcy spoke, and in a constrained manner said, "Mr. Wickham is blessed with such happy manners as may ensure his _making_ friends--whether he may be equally capable of _retaining_ them, is less certain." "He has been so unlucky as to lose _your_ friendship," replied Elizabeth with emphasis, "and in a manner which he is likely to suffer from all his life." Darcy made no answer, and seemed desirous of changing the subject. At that moment Sir William Lucas appeared close to them, meaning to pass through the set to the other side of the room; but on perceiving Mr. Darcy he stopt with a bow of superior courtesy to compliment him on his dancing and his partner. "I have been most highly gratified indeed, my dear Sir. Such very superior dancing is not often seen. It is evident that you belong to the first circles. Allow me to say, however, that your fair partner does not disgrace you, and that I must hope to have this pleasure often repeated, especially when a certain desirable event, my dear Miss Eliza, (glancing at her sister and Bingley,) shall take place. What congratulations will then flow in! I appeal to Mr. Darcy:--but let me not interrupt you, Sir.--You will not thank me for detaining you from the bewitching converse of that young lady, whose bright eyes are also upbraiding me." The latter part of this address was scarcely heard by Darcy; but Sir William's allusion to his friend seemed to strike him forcibly, and his eyes were directed with a very serious expression towards Bingley and Jane, who were dancing together. Recovering himself, however, shortly, he turned to his partner, and said, "Sir William's interruption has made me forget what we were talking of." "I do not think we were speaking at all. Sir William could not have interrupted any two people in the room who had less to say for themselves.--We have tried two or three subjects already without success, and what we are to talk of next I cannot imagine." "What think you of books?" said he, smiling. "Books--Oh! no.--I am sure we never read the same, or not with the same feelings." "I am sorry you think so; but if that be the case, there can at least be no want of subject.--We may compare our different opinions." "No--I cannot talk of books in a ball-room; my head is always full of something else." "The _present_ always occupies you in such scenes--does it?" said he, with a look of doubt. "Yes, always," she replied, without knowing what she said, for her thoughts had wandered far from the subject, as soon afterwards appeared by her suddenly exclaiming, "I remember hearing you once say, Mr. Darcy, that you hardly ever forgave, that your resentment once created was unappeasable. You are very cautious, I suppose, as to its _being created_." "I am," said he, with a firm voice. "And never allow yourself to be blinded by prejudice?" "I hope not." "It is particularly incumbent on those who never change their opinion, to be secure of judging properly at first." "May I ask to what these questions tend?" "Merely to the illustration of _your_ character," said she, endeavouring to shake off her gravity. "I am trying to make it out." "And what is your success?" She shook her head. "I do not get on at all. I hear such different accounts of you as puzzle me exceedingly." "I can readily believe," answered he gravely, "that report may vary greatly with respect to me; and I could wish, Miss Bennet, that you were not to sketch my character at the present moment, as there is reason to fear that the performance would reflect no credit on either." "But if I do not take your likeness now, I may never have another opportunity." "I would by no means suspend any pleasure of yours," he coldly replied. She said no more, and they went down the other dance and parted in silence; on each side dissatisfied, though not to an equal degree, for in Darcy's breast there was a tolerable powerful feeling towards her, which soon procured her pardon, and directed all his anger against another. They had not long separated when Miss Bingley came towards her, and with an expression of civil disdain thus accosted her, "So, Miss Eliza, I hear you are quite delighted with George Wickham!--Your sister has been talking to me about him, and asking me a thousand questions; and I find that the young man forgot to tell you, among his other communications, that he was the son of old Wickham, the late Mr. Darcy's steward. Let me recommend you, however, as a friend, not to give implicit confidence to all his assertions; for as to Mr. Darcy's using him ill, it is perfectly false; for, on the contrary, he has been always remarkably kind to him, though George Wickham has treated Mr. Darcy in a most infamous manner. I do not know the particulars, but I know very well that Mr. Darcy is not in the least to blame, that he cannot bear to hear George Wickham mentioned, and that though my brother thought he could not well avoid including him in his invitation to the officers, he was excessively glad to find that he had taken himself out of the way. His coming into the country at all, is a most insolent thing indeed, and I wonder how he could presume to do it. I pity you, Miss Eliza, for this discovery of your favourite's guilt; but really considering his descent, one could not expect much better." "His guilt and his descent appear by your account to be the same," said Elizabeth angrily; "for I have heard you accuse him of nothing worse than of being the son of Mr. Darcy's steward, and of _that_, I can assure you, he informed me himself." "I beg your pardon," replied Miss Bingley, turning away with a sneer. "Excuse my interference.--It was kindly meant." "Insolent girl!" said Elizabeth to herself.--"You are much mistaken if you expect to influence me by such a paltry attack as this. I see nothing in it but your own wilful ignorance and the malice of Mr. Darcy." She then sought her eldest sister, who had undertaken to make inquiries on the same subject of Bingley. Jane met her with a smile of such sweet complacency, a glow of such happy expression, as sufficiently marked how well she was satisfied with the occurrences of the evening.--Elizabeth instantly read her feelings, and at that moment solicitude for Wickham, resentment against his enemies, and every thing else gave way before the hope of Jane's being in the fairest way for happiness. "I want to know," said she, with a countenance no less smiling than her sister's, "what you have learnt about Mr. Wickham. But perhaps you have been too pleasantly engaged to think of any third person; in which case you may be sure of my pardon." "No," replied Jane, "I have not forgotten him; but I have nothing satisfactory to tell you. Mr. Bingley does not know the whole of his history, and is quite ignorant of the circumstances which have principally offended Mr. Darcy; but he will vouch for the good conduct, the probity and honour of his friend, and is perfectly convinced that Mr. Wickham has deserved much less attention from Mr. Darcy than he has received; and I am sorry to say that by his account as well as his sister's, Mr. Wickham is by no means a respectable young man. I am afraid he has been very imprudent, and has deserved to lose Mr. Darcy's regard." "Mr. Bingley does not know Mr. Wickham himself?" "No; he never saw him till the other morning at Meryton." "This account then is what he has received from Mr. Darcy. I am perfectly satisfied. But what does he say of the living?" "He does not exactly recollect the circumstances, though he has heard them from Mr. Darcy more than once, but he believes that it was left to him _conditionally_ only." "I have not a doubt of Mr. Bingley's sincerity," said Elizabeth warmly; "but you must excuse my not being convinced by assurances only. Mr. Bingley's defence of his friend was a very able one I dare say, but since he is unacquainted with several parts of the story, and has learnt the rest from that friend himself, I shall venture still to think of both gentlemen as I did before." She then changed the discourse to one more gratifying to each, and on which there could be no difference of sentiment. Elizabeth listened with delight to the happy, though modest hopes which Jane entertained of Bingley's regard, and said all in her power to heighten her confidence in it. On their being joined by Mr. Bingley himself, Elizabeth withdrew to Miss Lucas; to whose inquiry after the pleasantness of her last partner she had scarcely replied, before Mr. Collins came up to them and told her with great exultation that he had just been so fortunate as to make a most important discovery. "I have found out," said he, "by a singular accident, that there is now in the room a near relation of my patroness. I happened to overhear the gentleman himself mentioning to the young lady who does the honours of this house the names of his cousin Miss de Bourgh, and of her mother Lady Catherine. How wonderfully these sort of things occur! Who would have thought of my meeting with--perhaps--a nephew of Lady Catherine de Bourgh in this assembly!--I am most thankful that the discovery is made in time for me to pay my respects to him, which I am now going to do, and trust he will excuse my not having done it before. My total ignorance of the connection must plead my apology." "You are not going to introduce yourself to Mr. Darcy?" "Indeed I am. I shall intreat his pardon for not having done it earlier. I believe him to be Lady Catherine's _nephew_. It will be in my power to assure him that her ladyship was quite well yesterday se'night." Elizabeth tried hard to dissuade him from such a scheme; assuring him that Mr. Darcy would consider his addressing him without introduction as an impertinent freedom, rather than a compliment to his aunt; that it was not in the least necessary there should be any notice on either side, and that if it were, it must belong to Mr. Darcy, the superior in consequence, to begin the acquaintance.--Mr. Collins listened to her with the determined air of following his own inclination, and when she ceased speaking, replied thus, "My dear Miss Elizabeth, I have the highest opinion in the world of your excellent judgment in all matters within the scope of your understanding, but permit me to say that there must be a wide difference between the established forms of ceremony amongst the laity, and those which regulate the clergy; for give me leave to observe that I consider the clerical office as equal in point of dignity with the highest rank in the kingdom--provided that a proper humility of behaviour is at the same time maintained. You must therefore allow me to follow the dictates of my conscience on this occasion, which leads me to perform what I look on as a point of duty. Pardon me for neglecting to profit by your advice, which on every other subject shall be my constant guide, though in the case before us I consider myself more fitted by education and habitual study to decide on what is right than a young lady like yourself." And with a low bow he left her to attack Mr. Darcy, whose reception of his advances she eagerly watched, and whose astonishment at being so addressed was very evident. Her cousin prefaced his speech with a solemn bow, and though she could not hear a word of it, she felt as if hearing it all, and saw in the motion of his lips the words "apology," "Hunsford," and "Lady Catherine de Bourgh."--It vexed her to see him expose himself to such a man. Mr. Darcy was eyeing him with unrestrained wonder, and when at last Mr. Collins allowed him time to speak, replied with an air of distant civility. Mr. Collins, however, was not discouraged from speaking again, and Mr. Darcy's contempt seemed abundantly increasing with the length of his second speech, and at the end of it he only made him a slight bow, and moved another way. Mr. Collins then returned to Elizabeth. "I have no reason, I assure you," said he, "to be dissatisfied with my reception. Mr. Darcy seemed much pleased with the attention. He answered me with the utmost civility, and even paid me the compliment of saying, that he was so well convinced of Lady Catherine's discernment as to be certain she could never bestow a favour unworthily. It was really a very handsome thought. Upon the whole, I am much pleased with him." As Elizabeth had no longer any interest of her own to pursue, she turned her attention almost entirely on her sister and Mr. Bingley, and the train of agreeable reflections which her observations gave birth to, made her perhaps almost as happy as Jane. She saw her in idea settled in that very house in all the felicity which a marriage of true affection could bestow; and she felt capable under such circumstances, of endeavouring even to like Bingley's two sisters. Her mother's thoughts she plainly saw were bent the same way, and she determined not to venture near her, lest she might hear too much. When they sat down to supper, therefore, she considered it a most unlucky perverseness which placed them within one of each other; and deeply was she vexed to find that her mother was talking to that one person (Lady Lucas) freely, openly, and of nothing else but of her expectation that Jane would be soon married to Mr. Bingley.--It was an animating subject, and Mrs. Bennet seemed incapable of fatigue while enumerating the advantages of the match. His being such a charming young man, and so rich, and living but three miles from them, were the first points of self-gratulation; and then it was such a comfort to think how fond the two sisters were of Jane, and to be certain that they must desire the connection as much as she could do. It was, moreover, such a promising thing for her younger daughters, as Jane's marrying so greatly must throw them in the way of other rich men; and lastly, it was so pleasant at her time of life to be able to consign her single daughters to the care of their sister, that she might not be obliged to go into company more than she liked. It was necessary to make this circumstance a matter of pleasure, because on such occasions it is the etiquette; but no one was less likely than Mrs. Bennet to find comfort in staying at home at any period of her life. She concluded with many good wishes that Lady Lucas might soon be equally fortunate, though evidently and triumphantly believing there was no chance of it. In vain did Elizabeth endeavour to check the rapidity of her mother's words, or persuade her to describe her felicity in a less audible whisper; for to her inexpressible vexation, she could perceive that the chief of it was overheard by Mr. Darcy, who sat opposite to them. Her mother only scolded her for being nonsensical. "What is Mr. Darcy to me, pray, that I should be afraid of him? I am sure we owe him no such particular civility as to be obliged to say nothing _he_ may not like to hear." "For heaven's sake, madam, speak lower.--What advantage can it be to you to offend Mr. Darcy?--You will never recommend yourself to his friend by so doing." Nothing that she could say, however, had any influence. Her mother would talk of her views in the same intelligible tone. Elizabeth blushed and blushed again with shame and vexation. She could not help frequently glancing her eye at Mr. Darcy, though every glance convinced her of what she dreaded; for though he was not always looking at her mother, she was convinced that his attention was invariably fixed by her. The expression of his face changed gradually from indignant contempt to a composed and steady gravity. At length however Mrs. Bennet had no more to say; and Lady Lucas, who had been long yawning at the repetition of delights which she saw no likelihood of sharing, was left to the comforts of cold ham and chicken. Elizabeth now began to revive. But not long was the interval of tranquillity; for when supper was over, singing was talked of, and she had the mortification of seeing Mary, after very little entreaty, preparing to oblige the company. By many significant looks and silent entreaties, did she endeavour to prevent such a proof of complaisance,--but in vain; Mary would not understand them; such an opportunity of exhibiting was delightful to her, and she began her song. Elizabeth's eyes were fixed on her with most painful sensations; and she watched her progress through the several stanzas with an impatience which was very ill rewarded at their close; for Mary, on receiving amongst the thanks of the table, the hint of a hope that she might be prevailed on to favour them again, after the pause of half a minute began another. Mary's powers were by no means fitted for such a display; her voice was weak, and her manner affected.--Elizabeth was in agonies. She looked at Jane, to see how she bore it; but Jane was very composedly talking to Bingley. She looked at his two sisters, and saw them making signs of derision at each other, and at Darcy, who continued however impenetrably grave. She looked at her father to entreat his interference, lest Mary should be singing all night. He took the hint, and when Mary had finished her second song, said aloud, "That will do extremely well, child. You have delighted us long enough. Let the other young ladies have time to exhibit." Mary, though pretending not to hear, was somewhat disconcerted; and Elizabeth sorry for her, and sorry for her father's speech, was afraid her anxiety had done no good.--Others of the party were now applied to. "If I," said Mr. Collins, "were so fortunate as to be able to sing, I should have great pleasure, I am sure, in obliging the company with an air; for I consider music as a very innocent diversion, and perfectly compatible with the profession of a clergyman.--I do not mean however to assert that we can be justified in devoting too much of our time to music, for there are certainly other things to be attended to. The rector of a parish has much to do.--In the first place, he must make such an agreement for tythes as may be beneficial to himself and not offensive to his patron. He must write his own sermons; and the time that remains will not be too much for his parish duties, and the care and improvement of his dwelling, which he cannot be excused from making as comfortable as possible. And I do not think it of light importance that he should have attentive and conciliatory manners towards every body, especially towards those to whom he owes his preferment. I cannot acquit him of that duty; nor could I think well of the man who should omit an occasion of testifying his respect towards any body connected with the family." And with a bow to Mr. Darcy, he concluded his speech, which had been spoken so loud as to be heard by half the room.--Many stared.--Many smiled; but no one looked more amused than Mr. Bennet himself, while his wife seriously commended Mr. Collins for having spoken so sensibly, and observed in a half-whisper to Lady Lucas, that he was a remarkably clever, good kind of young man. To Elizabeth it appeared, that had her family made an agreement to expose themselves as much as they could during the evening, it would have been impossible for them to play their parts with more spirit, or finer success; and happy did she think it for Bingley and her sister that some of the exhibition had escaped his notice, and that his feelings were not of a sort to be much distressed by the folly which he must have witnessed. That his two sisters and Mr. Darcy, however, should have such an opportunity of ridiculing her relations was bad enough, and she could not determine whether the silent contempt of the gentleman, or the insolent smiles of the ladies, were more intolerable. The rest of the evening brought her little amusement. She was teazed by Mr. Collins, who continued most perseveringly by her side, and though he could not prevail with her to dance with him again, put it out of her power to dance with others. In vain did she entreat him to stand up with somebody else, and offer to introduce him to any young lady in the room. He assured her that as to dancing, he was perfectly indifferent to it; that his chief object was by delicate attentions to recommend himself to her, and that he should therefore make a point of remaining close to her the whole evening. There was no arguing upon such a project. She owed her greatest relief to her friend Miss Lucas, who often joined them, and good-naturedly engaged Mr. Collins's conversation to herself. She was at least free from the offence of Mr. Darcy's farther notice; though often standing within a very short distance of her, quite disengaged, he never came near enough to speak. She felt it to be the probable consequence of her allusions to Mr. Wickham, and rejoiced in it. The Longbourn party were the last of all the company to depart; and by a manoeuvre of Mrs. Bennet had to wait for their carriages a quarter of an hour after every body else was gone, which gave them time to see how heartily they were wished away by some of the family. Mrs. Hurst and her sister scarcely opened their mouths except to complain of fatigue, and were evidently impatient to have the house to themselves. They repulsed every attempt of Mrs. Bennet at conversation, and by so doing, threw a languor over the whole party, which was very little relieved by the long speeches of Mr. Collins, who was complimenting Mr. Bingley and his sisters on the elegance of their entertainment, and the hospitality and politeness which had marked their behaviour to their guests. Darcy said nothing at all. Mr. Bennet, in equal silence, was enjoying the scene. Mr. Bingley and Jane were standing together, a little detached from the rest, and talked only to each other. Elizabeth preserved as steady a silence as either Mrs. Hurst or Miss Bingley; and even Lydia was too much fatigued to utter more than the occasional exclamation of "Lord, how tired I am!" accompanied by a violent yawn. When at length they arose to take leave, Mrs. Bennet was most pressingly civil in her hope of seeing the whole family soon at Longbourn; and addressed herself particularly to Mr. Bingley, to assure him how happy he would make them, by eating a family dinner with them at any time, without the ceremony of a formal invitation. Bingley was all grateful pleasure, and he readily engaged for taking the earliest opportunity of waiting on her, after his return from London, whither he was obliged to go the next day for a short time. Mrs. Bennet was perfectly satisfied; and quitted the house under the delightful persuasion that, allowing for the necessary preparations of settlements, new carriages and wedding clothes, she should undoubtedly see her daughter settled at Netherfield, in the course of three or four months. Of having another daughter married to Mr. Collins, she thought with equal certainty, and with considerable, though not equal, pleasure. Elizabeth was the least dear to her of all her children; and though the man and the match were quite good enough for _her_, the worth of each was eclipsed by Mr. Bingley and Netherfield.

On the night of the ball, Elizabeth is despondent because Wickham is not present. Mr. Denny informs her that Wickham has been called to town. Elizabeth, however, suspects that he has chosen not to attend in order to avoid Darcy. She, therefore, decides to ignore Darcy. When she is compelled to dance with Darcy later in the evening, Elizabeth deliberately mentions Wickham. Darcy is disconcerted and speaks in a constrained manner. Elizabeth verbally attacks him, but Darcy remains quiet. Miss Bingley speaks disdainfully about Wickham and advises Elizabeth not to believe his false story about Darcy. She criticizes Wickham, stating he is the son of a dependent of Darcys house. Elizabeth is put off by Miss Bingley and seeks her elder sister. Jane informs her that she has spoken to Mr. Bingley about Wickham. Bingley is ignorant about the facts surrounding the inheritance left by Darcys father, but he vouches for Darcys stainless reputation. Mr. Collins sticks to Elizabeth throughout the evening and refuses to be introduced to any other lady, totally exasperating Elizabeth. He is ecstatic to learn that Darcy is Lady Catherines nephew. Elizabeth watches him speak gushingly to Darcy, who responds to him with an air of distant civility. During supper, Mrs. Bennet speaks profusely to Lady Lucas of her expectation that Mr. Bingley will soon marry Jane. Mr. Darcy overhears them, and Elizabeth tries vainly to check her mothers unrestrained confidences. After supper, Mary tries to entertain the party by singing. She has a faltering voice, and her manner is pretentious. Elizabeth, who is already embarrassed by her mothers indiscreet behavior, is further mortified by her sisters attempts at singing. Thankfully, Mr. Bennet catches Elizabeths agonizing glances and bids Mary to let the other ladies sing. Mr. Collins then gives a pompous and contrived speech, which adds to the disasters of the evening.

A task too strong for wizard spells This squire had brought about; 'T is easy dropping stones in wells, But who shall get them out?" "I wish to God we could hinder Dorothea from knowing this," said Sir James Chettam, with a little frown on his brow, and an expression of intense disgust about his mouth. He was standing on the hearth-rug in the library at Lowick Grange, and speaking to Mr. Brooke. It was the day after Mr. Casaubon had been buried, and Dorothea was not yet able to leave her room. "That would be difficult, you know, Chettam, as she is an executrix, and she likes to go into these things--property, land, that kind of thing. She has her notions, you know," said Mr. Brooke, sticking his eye-glasses on nervously, and exploring the edges of a folded paper which he held in his hand; "and she would like to act--depend upon it, as an executrix Dorothea would want to act. And she was twenty-one last December, you know. I can hinder nothing." Sir James looked at the carpet for a minute in silence, and then lifting his eyes suddenly fixed them on Mr. Brooke, saying, "I will tell you what we can do. Until Dorothea is well, all business must be kept from her, and as soon as she is able to be moved she must come to us. Being with Celia and the baby will be the best thing in the world for her, and will pass away the time. And meanwhile you must get rid of Ladislaw: you must send him out of the country." Here Sir James's look of disgust returned in all its intensity. Mr. Brooke put his hands behind him, walked to the window and straightened his back with a little shake before he replied. "That is easily said, Chettam, easily said, you know." "My dear sir," persisted Sir James, restraining his indignation within respectful forms, "it was you who brought him here, and you who keep him here--I mean by the occupation you give him." "Yes, but I can't dismiss him in an instant without assigning reasons, my dear Chettam. Ladislaw has been invaluable, most satisfactory. I consider that I have done this part of the country a service by bringing him--by bringing him, you know." Mr. Brooke ended with a nod, turning round to give it. "It's a pity this part of the country didn't do without him, that's all I have to say about it. At any rate, as Dorothea's brother-in-law, I feel warranted in objecting strongly to his being kept here by any action on the part of her friends. You admit, I hope, that I have a right to speak about what concerns the dignity of my wife's sister?" Sir James was getting warm. "Of course, my dear Chettam, of course. But you and I have different ideas--different--" "Not about this action of Casaubon's, I should hope," interrupted Sir James. "I say that he has most unfairly compromised Dorothea. I say that there never was a meaner, more ungentlemanly action than this--a codicil of this sort to a will which he made at the time of his marriage with the knowledge and reliance of her family--a positive insult to Dorothea!" "Well, you know, Casaubon was a little twisted about Ladislaw. Ladislaw has told me the reason--dislike of the bent he took, you know--Ladislaw didn't think much of Casaubon's notions, Thoth and Dagon--that sort of thing: and I fancy that Casaubon didn't like the independent position Ladislaw had taken up. I saw the letters between them, you know. Poor Casaubon was a little buried in books--he didn't know the world." "It's all very well for Ladislaw to put that color on it," said Sir James. "But I believe Casaubon was only jealous of him on Dorothea's account, and the world will suppose that she gave him some reason; and that is what makes it so abominable--coupling her name with this young fellow's." "My dear Chettam, it won't lead to anything, you know," said Mr. Brooke, seating himself and sticking on his eye-glass again. "It's all of a piece with Casaubon's oddity. This paper, now, 'Synoptical Tabulation' and so on, 'for the use of Mrs. Casaubon,' it was locked up in the desk with the will. I suppose he meant Dorothea to publish his researches, eh? and she'll do it, you know; she has gone into his studies uncommonly." "My dear sir," said Sir James, impatiently, "that is neither here nor there. The question is, whether you don't see with me the propriety of sending young Ladislaw away?" "Well, no, not the urgency of the thing. By-and-by, perhaps, it may come round. As to gossip, you know, sending him away won't hinder gossip. People say what they like to say, not what they have chapter and verse for," said Mr Brooke, becoming acute about the truths that lay on the side of his own wishes. "I might get rid of Ladislaw up to a certain point--take away the 'Pioneer' from him, and that sort of thing; but I couldn't send him out of the country if he didn't choose to go--didn't choose, you know." Mr. Brooke, persisting as quietly as if he were only discussing the nature of last year's weather, and nodding at the end with his usual amenity, was an exasperating form of obstinacy. "Good God!" said Sir James, with as much passion as he ever showed, "let us get him a post; let us spend money on him. If he could go in the suite of some Colonial Governor! Grampus might take him--and I could write to Fulke about it." "But Ladislaw won't be shipped off like a head of cattle, my dear fellow; Ladislaw has his ideas. It's my opinion that if he were to part from me to-morrow, you'd only hear the more of him in the country. With his talent for speaking and drawing up documents, there are few men who could come up to him as an agitator--an agitator, you know." "Agitator!" said Sir James, with bitter emphasis, feeling that the syllables of this word properly repeated were a sufficient exposure of its hatefulness. "But be reasonable, Chettam. Dorothea, now. As you say, she had better go to Celia as soon as possible. She can stay under your roof, and in the mean time things may come round quietly. Don't let us be firing off our guns in a hurry, you know. Standish will keep our counsel, and the news will be old before it's known. Twenty things may happen to carry off Ladislaw--without my doing anything, you know." "Then I am to conclude that you decline to do anything?" "Decline, Chettam?--no--I didn't say decline. But I really don't see what I could do. Ladislaw is a gentleman." "I am glad to hear it!" said Sir James, his irritation making him forget himself a little. "I am sure Casaubon was not." "Well, it would have been worse if he had made the codicil to hinder her from marrying again at all, you know." "I don't know that," said Sir James. "It would have been less indelicate." "One of poor Casaubon's freaks! That attack upset his brain a little. It all goes for nothing. She doesn't _want_ to marry Ladislaw." "But this codicil is framed so as to make everybody believe that she did. I don't believe anything of the sort about Dorothea," said Sir James--then frowningly, "but I suspect Ladislaw. I tell you frankly, I suspect Ladislaw." "I couldn't take any immediate action on that ground, Chettam. In fact, if it were possible to pack him off--send him to Norfolk Island--that sort of thing--it would look all the worse for Dorothea to those who knew about it. It would seem as if we distrusted her--distrusted her, you know." That Mr. Brooke had hit on an undeniable argument, did not tend to soothe Sir James. He put out his hand to reach his hat, implying that he did not mean to contend further, and said, still with some heat-- "Well, I can only say that I think Dorothea was sacrificed once, because her friends were too careless. I shall do what I can, as her brother, to protect her now." "You can't do better than get her to Freshitt as soon as possible, Chettam. I approve that plan altogether," said Mr. Brooke, well pleased that he had won the argument. It would have been highly inconvenient to him to part with Ladislaw at that time, when a dissolution might happen any day, and electors were to be convinced of the course by which the interests of the country would be best served. Mr. Brooke sincerely believed that this end could be secured by his own return to Parliament: he offered the forces of his mind honestly to the nation.

Sir James and Mr. Brooke are arguing about Casaubon's will. Apparently there's something in the will that Dorothea won't like, and they're trying to decide if there's any way of keeping it from her. But she's an executrix, so she's bound to find out. The part of the will in question has something to do with Will Ladislaw. Sir James asks Mr. Brooke to send Will away for the sake of Dorothea's "dignity," but Mr. Brooke refuses - he likes Will, and thinks he's been useful to the newspaper. At the end of the chapter, it's made clear: Casaubon added a codicil in his will that says that Dorothea will lose all her inheritance from Casaubon if she were to marry Will Ladislaw. And of course, Sir James and Mr. Brooke think that this is a slap in the face to Dorothea. Everyone will think that she wanted to marry Will, or that he wanted to marry her. In any case, people will think that there was a reason for Mr. Casaubon to be jealous. Brooke points out that if they sent Will away, people would think that her own friends didn't trust her. They finally agree that Dorothea should go to Fres***t as soon as possible to stay with Celia and Sir James.

Sophie came at seven to dress me: she was very long indeed in accomplishing her task; so long that Mr. Rochester, grown, I suppose, impatient of my delay, sent up to ask why I did not come. She was just fastening my veil (the plain square of blond after all) to my hair with a brooch; I hurried from under her hands as soon as I could. "Stop!" she cried in French. "Look at yourself in the mirror: you have not taken one peep." So I turned at the door: I saw a robed and veiled figure, so unlike my usual self that it seemed almost the image of a stranger. "Jane!" called a voice, and I hastened down. I was received at the foot of the stairs by Mr. Rochester. "Lingerer!" he said, "my brain is on fire with impatience, and you tarry so long!" He took me into the dining-room, surveyed me keenly all over, pronounced me "fair as a lily, and not only the pride of his life, but the desire of his eyes," and then telling me he would give me but ten minutes to eat some breakfast, he rang the bell. One of his lately hired servants, a footman, answered it. "Is John getting the carriage ready?" "Yes, sir." "Is the luggage brought down?" "They are bringing it down, sir." "Go you to the church: see if Mr. Wood (the clergyman) and the clerk are there: return and tell me." The church, as the reader knows, was but just beyond the gates; the footman soon returned. "Mr. Wood is in the vestry, sir, putting on his surplice." "And the carriage?" "The horses are harnessing." "We shall not want it to go to church; but it must be ready the moment we return: all the boxes and luggage arranged and strapped on, and the coachman in his seat." "Yes, sir." "Jane, are you ready?" I rose. There were no groomsmen, no bridesmaids, no relatives to wait for or marshal: none but Mr. Rochester and I. Mrs. Fairfax stood in the hall as we passed. I would fain have spoken to her, but my hand was held by a grasp of iron: I was hurried along by a stride I could hardly follow; and to look at Mr. Rochester's face was to feel that not a second of delay would be tolerated for any purpose. I wonder what other bridegroom ever looked as he did--so bent up to a purpose, so grimly resolute: or who, under such steadfast brows, ever revealed such flaming and flashing eyes. I know not whether the day was fair or foul; in descending the drive, I gazed neither on sky nor earth: my heart was with my eyes; and both seemed migrated into Mr. Rochester's frame. I wanted to see the invisible thing on which, as we went along, he appeared to fasten a glance fierce and fell. I wanted to feel the thoughts whose force he seemed breasting and resisting. At the churchyard wicket he stopped: he discovered I was quite out of breath. "Am I cruel in my love?" he said. "Delay an instant: lean on me, Jane." And now I can recall the picture of the grey old house of God rising calm before me, of a rook wheeling round the steeple, of a ruddy morning sky beyond. I remember something, too, of the green grave-mounds; and I have not forgotten, either, two figures of strangers straying amongst the low hillocks and reading the mementoes graven on the few mossy head-stones. I noticed them, because, as they saw us, they passed round to the back of the church; and I doubted not they were going to enter by the side-aisle door and witness the ceremony. By Mr. Rochester they were not observed; he was earnestly looking at my face from which the blood had, I daresay, momentarily fled: for I felt my forehead dewy, and my cheeks and lips cold. When I rallied, which I soon did, he walked gently with me up the path to the porch. We entered the quiet and humble temple; the priest waited in his white surplice at the lowly altar, the clerk beside him. All was still: two shadows only moved in a remote corner. My conjecture had been correct: the strangers had slipped in before us, and they now stood by the vault of the Rochesters, their backs towards us, viewing through the rails the old time-stained marble tomb, where a kneeling angel guarded the remains of Damer de Rochester, slain at Marston Moor in the time of the civil wars, and of Elizabeth, his wife. Our place was taken at the communion rails. Hearing a cautious step behind me, I glanced over my shoulder: one of the strangers--a gentleman, evidently--was advancing up the chancel. The service began. The explanation of the intent of matrimony was gone through; and then the clergyman came a step further forward, and, bending slightly towards Mr. Rochester, went on. "I require and charge you both (as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed), that if either of you know any impediment why ye may not lawfully be joined together in matrimony, ye do now confess it; for be ye well assured that so many as are coupled together otherwise than God's Word doth allow, are not joined together by God, neither is their matrimony lawful." He paused, as the custom is. When is the pause after that sentence ever broken by reply? Not, perhaps, once in a hundred years. And the clergyman, who had not lifted his eyes from his book, and had held his breath but for a moment, was proceeding: his hand was already stretched towards Mr. Rochester, as his lips unclosed to ask, "Wilt thou have this woman for thy wedded wife?"--when a distinct and near voice said-- "The marriage cannot go on: I declare the existence of an impediment." The clergyman looked up at the speaker and stood mute; the clerk did the same; Mr. Rochester moved slightly, as if an earthquake had rolled under his feet: taking a firmer footing, and not turning his head or eyes, he said, "Proceed." Profound silence fell when he had uttered that word, with deep but low intonation. Presently Mr. Wood said-- "I cannot proceed without some investigation into what has been asserted, and evidence of its truth or falsehood." "The ceremony is quite broken off," subjoined the voice behind us. "I am in a condition to prove my allegation: an insuperable impediment to this marriage exists." Mr. Rochester heard, but heeded not: he stood stubborn and rigid, making no movement but to possess himself of my hand. What a hot and strong grasp he had! and how like quarried marble was his pale, firm, massive front at this moment! How his eye shone, still watchful, and yet wild beneath! Mr. Wood seemed at a loss. "What is the nature of the impediment?" he asked. "Perhaps it may be got over--explained away?" "Hardly," was the answer. "I have called it insuperable, and I speak advisedly." The speaker came forward and leaned on the rails. He continued, uttering each word distinctly, calmly, steadily, but not loudly-- "It simply consists in the existence of a previous marriage. Mr. Rochester has a wife now living." My nerves vibrated to those low-spoken words as they had never vibrated to thunder--my blood felt their subtle violence as it had never felt frost or fire; but I was collected, and in no danger of swooning. I looked at Mr. Rochester: I made him look at me. His whole face was colourless rock: his eye was both spark and flint. He disavowed nothing: he seemed as if he would defy all things. Without speaking, without smiling, without seeming to recognise in me a human being, he only twined my waist with his arm and riveted me to his side. "Who are you?" he asked of the intruder. "My name is Briggs, a solicitor of --- Street, London." "And you would thrust on me a wife?" "I would remind you of your lady's existence, sir, which the law recognises, if you do not." "Favour me with an account of her--with her name, her parentage, her place of abode." "Certainly." Mr. Briggs calmly took a paper from his pocket, and read out in a sort of official, nasal voice:-- "'I affirm and can prove that on the 20th of October A.D. --- (a date of fifteen years back), Edward Fairfax Rochester, of Thornfield Hall, in the county of ---, and of Ferndean Manor, in ---shire, England, was married to my sister, Bertha Antoinetta Mason, daughter of Jonas Mason, merchant, and of Antoinetta his wife, a Creole, at --- church, Spanish Town, Jamaica. The record of the marriage will be found in the register of that church--a copy of it is now in my possession. Signed, Richard Mason.'" "That--if a genuine document--may prove I have been married, but it does not prove that the woman mentioned therein as my wife is still living." "She was living three months ago," returned the lawyer. "How do you know?" "I have a witness to the fact, whose testimony even you, sir, will scarcely controvert." "Produce him--or go to hell." "I will produce him first--he is on the spot. Mr. Mason, have the goodness to step forward." Mr. Rochester, on hearing the name, set his teeth; he experienced, too, a sort of strong convulsive quiver; near to him as I was, I felt the spasmodic movement of fury or despair run through his frame. The second stranger, who had hitherto lingered in the background, now drew near; a pale face looked over the solicitor's shoulder--yes, it was Mason himself. Mr. Rochester turned and glared at him. His eye, as I have often said, was a black eye: it had now a tawny, nay, a bloody light in its gloom; and his face flushed--olive cheek and hueless forehead received a glow as from spreading, ascending heart-fire: and he stirred, lifted his strong arm--he could have struck Mason, dashed him on the church-floor, shocked by ruthless blow the breath from his body--but Mason shrank away, and cried faintly, "Good God!" Contempt fell cool on Mr. Rochester--his passion died as if a blight had shrivelled it up: he only asked--"What have _you_ to say?" An inaudible reply escaped Mason's white lips. "The devil is in it if you cannot answer distinctly. I again demand, what have you to say?" "Sir--sir," interrupted the clergyman, "do not forget you are in a sacred place." Then addressing Mason, he inquired gently, "Are you aware, sir, whether or not this gentleman's wife is still living?" "Courage," urged the lawyer,--"speak out." "She is now living at Thornfield Hall," said Mason, in more articulate tones: "I saw her there last April. I am her brother." "At Thornfield Hall!" ejaculated the clergyman. "Impossible! I am an old resident in this neighbourhood, sir, and I never heard of a Mrs. Rochester at Thornfield Hall." I saw a grim smile contort Mr. Rochester's lips, and he muttered-- "No, by God! I took care that none should hear of it--or of her under that name." He mused--for ten minutes he held counsel with himself: he formed his resolve, and announced it-- "Enough! all shall bolt out at once, like the bullet from the barrel. Wood, close your book and take off your surplice; John Green (to the clerk), leave the church: there will be no wedding to-day." The man obeyed. Mr. Rochester continued, hardily and recklessly: "Bigamy is an ugly word!--I meant, however, to be a bigamist; but fate has out-manoeuvred me, or Providence has checked me,--perhaps the last. I am little better than a devil at this moment; and, as my pastor there would tell me, deserve no doubt the sternest judgments of God, even to the quenchless fire and deathless worm. Gentlemen, my plan is broken up:--what this lawyer and his client say is true: I have been married, and the woman to whom I was married lives! You say you never heard of a Mrs. Rochester at the house up yonder, Wood; but I daresay you have many a time inclined your ear to gossip about the mysterious lunatic kept there under watch and ward. Some have whispered to you that she is my bastard half-sister: some, my cast-off mistress. I now inform you that she is my wife, whom I married fifteen years ago,--Bertha Mason by name; sister of this resolute personage, who is now, with his quivering limbs and white cheeks, showing you what a stout heart men may bear. Cheer up, Dick!--never fear me!--I'd almost as soon strike a woman as you. Bertha Mason is mad; and she came of a mad family; idiots and maniacs through three generations! Her mother, the Creole, was both a madwoman and a drunkard!--as I found out after I had wed the daughter: for they were silent on family secrets before. Bertha, like a dutiful child, copied her parent in both points. I had a charming partner--pure, wise, modest: you can fancy I was a happy man. I went through rich scenes! Oh! my experience has been heavenly, if you only knew it! But I owe you no further explanation. Briggs, Wood, Mason, I invite you all to come up to the house and visit Mrs. Poole's patient, and _my wife_! You shall see what sort of a being I was cheated into espousing, and judge whether or not I had a right to break the compact, and seek sympathy with something at least human. This girl," he continued, looking at me, "knew no more than you, Wood, of the disgusting secret: she thought all was fair and legal and never dreamt she was going to be entrapped into a feigned union with a defrauded wretch, already bound to a bad, mad, and embruted partner! Come all of you--follow!" Still holding me fast, he left the church: the three gentlemen came after. At the front door of the hall we found the carriage. "Take it back to the coach-house, John," said Mr. Rochester coolly; "it will not be wanted to-day." At our entrance, Mrs. Fairfax, Adele, Sophie, Leah, advanced to meet and greet us. "To the right-about--every soul!" cried the master; "away with your congratulations! Who wants them? Not I!--they are fifteen years too late!" He passed on and ascended the stairs, still holding my hand, and still beckoning the gentlemen to follow him, which they did. We mounted the first staircase, passed up the gallery, proceeded to the third storey: the low, black door, opened by Mr. Rochester's master-key, admitted us to the tapestried room, with its great bed and its pictorial cabinet. "You know this place, Mason," said our guide; "she bit and stabbed you here." He lifted the hangings from the wall, uncovering the second door: this, too, he opened. In a room without a window, there burnt a fire guarded by a high and strong fender, and a lamp suspended from the ceiling by a chain. Grace Poole bent over the fire, apparently cooking something in a saucepan. In the deep shade, at the farther end of the room, a figure ran backwards and forwards. What it was, whether beast or human being, one could not, at first sight, tell: it grovelled, seemingly, on all fours; it snatched and growled like some strange wild animal: but it was covered with clothing, and a quantity of dark, grizzled hair, wild as a mane, hid its head and face. "Good-morrow, Mrs. Poole!" said Mr. Rochester. "How are you? and how is your charge to-day?" "We're tolerable, sir, I thank you," replied Grace, lifting the boiling mess carefully on to the hob: "rather snappish, but not 'rageous." A fierce cry seemed to give the lie to her favourable report: the clothed hyena rose up, and stood tall on its hind-feet. "Ah! sir, she sees you!" exclaimed Grace: "you'd better not stay." "Only a few moments, Grace: you must allow me a few moments." "Take care then, sir!--for God's sake, take care!" The maniac bellowed: she parted her shaggy locks from her visage, and gazed wildly at her visitors. I recognised well that purple face,--those bloated features. Mrs. Poole advanced. "Keep out of the way," said Mr. Rochester, thrusting her aside: "she has no knife now, I suppose, and I'm on my guard." "One never knows what she has, sir: she is so cunning: it is not in mortal discretion to fathom her craft." "We had better leave her," whispered Mason. "Go to the devil!" was his brother-in-law's recommendation. "'Ware!" cried Grace. The three gentlemen retreated simultaneously. Mr. Rochester flung me behind him: the lunatic sprang and grappled his throat viciously, and laid her teeth to his cheek: they struggled. She was a big woman, in stature almost equalling her husband, and corpulent besides: she showed virile force in the contest--more than once she almost throttled him, athletic as he was. He could have settled her with a well-planted blow; but he would not strike: he would only wrestle. At last he mastered her arms; Grace Poole gave him a cord, and he pinioned them behind her: with more rope, which was at hand, he bound her to a chair. The operation was performed amidst the fiercest yells and the most convulsive plunges. Mr. Rochester then turned to the spectators: he looked at them with a smile both acrid and desolate. "That is _my wife_," said he. "Such is the sole conjugal embrace I am ever to know--such are the endearments which are to solace my leisure hours! And _this_ is what I wished to have" (laying his hand on my shoulder): "this young girl, who stands so grave and quiet at the mouth of hell, looking collectedly at the gambols of a demon, I wanted her just as a change after that fierce ragout. Wood and Briggs, look at the difference! Compare these clear eyes with the red balls yonder--this face with that mask--this form with that bulk; then judge me, priest of the gospel and man of the law, and remember with what judgment ye judge ye shall be judged! Off with you now. I must shut up my prize." We all withdrew. Mr. Rochester stayed a moment behind us, to give some further order to Grace Poole. The solicitor addressed me as he descended the stair. "You, madam," said he, "are cleared from all blame: your uncle will be glad to hear it--if, indeed, he should be still living--when Mr. Mason returns to Madeira." "My uncle! What of him? Do you know him?" "Mr. Mason does. Mr. Eyre has been the Funchal correspondent of his house for some years. When your uncle received your letter intimating the contemplated union between yourself and Mr. Rochester, Mr. Mason, who was staying at Madeira to recruit his health, on his way back to Jamaica, happened to be with him. Mr. Eyre mentioned the intelligence; for he knew that my client here was acquainted with a gentleman of the name of Rochester. Mr. Mason, astonished and distressed as you may suppose, revealed the real state of matters. Your uncle, I am sorry to say, is now on a sick bed; from which, considering the nature of his disease--decline--and the stage it has reached, it is unlikely he will ever rise. He could not then hasten to England himself, to extricate you from the snare into which you had fallen, but he implored Mr. Mason to lose no time in taking steps to prevent the false marriage. He referred him to me for assistance. I used all despatch, and am thankful I was not too late: as you, doubtless, must be also. Were I not morally certain that your uncle will be dead ere you reach Madeira, I would advise you to accompany Mr. Mason back; but as it is, I think you had better remain in England till you can hear further, either from or of Mr. Eyre. Have we anything else to stay for?" he inquired of Mr. Mason. "No, no--let us be gone," was the anxious reply; and without waiting to take leave of Mr. Rochester, they made their exit at the hall door. The clergyman stayed to exchange a few sentences, either of admonition or reproof, with his haughty parishioner; this duty done, he too departed. I heard him go as I stood at the half-open door of my own room, to which I had now withdrawn. The house cleared, I shut myself in, fastened the bolt that none might intrude, and proceeded--not to weep, not to mourn, I was yet too calm for that, but--mechanically to take off the wedding dress, and replace it by the stuff gown I had worn yesterday, as I thought, for the last time. I then sat down: I felt weak and tired. I leaned my arms on a table, and my head dropped on them. And now I thought: till now I had only heard, seen, moved--followed up and down where I was led or dragged--watched event rush on event, disclosure open beyond disclosure: but _now_, _I thought_. The morning had been a quiet morning enough--all except the brief scene with the lunatic: the transaction in the church had not been noisy; there was no explosion of passion, no loud altercation, no dispute, no defiance or challenge, no tears, no sobs: a few words had been spoken, a calmly pronounced objection to the marriage made; some stern, short questions put by Mr. Rochester; answers, explanations given, evidence adduced; an open admission of the truth had been uttered by my master; then the living proof had been seen; the intruders were gone, and all was over. I was in my own room as usual--just myself, without obvious change: nothing had smitten me, or scathed me, or maimed me. And yet where was the Jane Eyre of yesterday?--where was her life?--where were her prospects? Jane Eyre, who had been an ardent, expectant woman--almost a bride, was a cold, solitary girl again: her life was pale; her prospects were desolate. A Christmas frost had come at midsummer; a white December storm had whirled over June; ice glazed the ripe apples, drifts crushed the blowing roses; on hayfield and cornfield lay a frozen shroud: lanes which last night blushed full of flowers, to-day were pathless with untrodden snow; and the woods, which twelve hours since waved leafy and flagrant as groves between the tropics, now spread, waste, wild, and white as pine-forests in wintry Norway. My hopes were all dead--struck with a subtle doom, such as, in one night, fell on all the first-born in the land of Egypt. I looked on my cherished wishes, yesterday so blooming and glowing; they lay stark, chill, livid corpses that could never revive. I looked at my love: that feeling which was my master's--which he had created; it shivered in my heart, like a suffering child in a cold cradle; sickness and anguish had seized it; it could not seek Mr. Rochester's arms--it could not derive warmth from his breast. Oh, never more could it turn to him; for faith was blighted--confidence destroyed! Mr. Rochester was not to me what he had been; for he was not what I had thought him. I would not ascribe vice to him; I would not say he had betrayed me; but the attribute of stainless truth was gone from his idea, and from his presence I must go: _that_ I perceived well. When--how--whither, I could not yet discern; but he himself, I doubted not, would hurry me from Thornfield. Real affection, it seemed, he could not have for me; it had been only fitful passion: that was balked; he would want me no more. I should fear even to cross his path now: my view must be hateful to him. Oh, how blind had been my eyes! How weak my conduct! My eyes were covered and closed: eddying darkness seemed to swim round me, and reflection came in as black and confused a flow. Self-abandoned, relaxed, and effortless, I seemed to have laid me down in the dried-up bed of a great river; I heard a flood loosened in remote mountains, and felt the torrent come: to rise I had no will, to flee I had no strength. I lay faint, longing to be dead. One idea only still throbbed life-like within me--a remembrance of God: it begot an unuttered prayer: these words went wandering up and down in my rayless mind, as something that should be whispered, but no energy was found to express them-- "Be not far from me, for trouble is near: there is none to help." It was near: and as I had lifted no petition to Heaven to avert it--as I had neither joined my hands, nor bent my knees, nor moved my lips--it came: in full heavy swing the torrent poured over me. The whole consciousness of my life lorn, my love lost, my hope quenched, my faith death-struck, swayed full and mighty above me in one sullen mass. That bitter hour cannot be described: in truth, "the waters came into my soul; I sank in deep mire: I felt no standing; I came into deep waters; the floods overflowed me."

On the wedding day, Sophie helps Jane into her bridal gown. Jane can hardly recognize herself in this unusual attire. Rochester shows impatience in all his actions. He orders that the carriage be kept ready to take him and Jane to London as soon as they return from the church. He then hurries Jane to the ceremony. The wedding ceremony begins, but it is soon interrupted by a startling announcement made by a Mr. Briggs, a London lawyer. He asserts that Mr. Rochester is already married, to a Bertha Antoinetta Mason, whom he wed fifteen years ago in Jamaica. Mr. Rochester tries to dismiss this accusation by claiming that his first wife is dead. But Mr. Mason, who has been hiding in the background, comes forward and confirms that Mr. Rochester is married to his sister. Finally, Mr. Rochester admits this truth, claiming that he was duped into marriage with an insane woman belonging to a family of "idiots and maniacs." To prove his point, he conducts all of them to Thornfield Hall. He intends to show his "maniac" wife, who lives on the third floor, to the assembled party. Grace Poole is present and in charge of the invalid. Bertha's savage behavior confirms Mr. Rochester's claim. The only thing that he wants his guests to do now is to compare the crazy woman with the rational and worthy Jane, "this young girl, who stands so grave and quiet at the mouth of hell, looking collectedly at the gambols of a demon." Jane recognizes Bertha as the woman who entered her room and tore the veil. Mr. Briggs tells Jane that he is her uncle, John Eyre's, business associate. This very uncle had informed Mr. Mason about her approaching marriage. Mason had then realized that Mr. Rochester was contemplating bigamy. Since John Eyre is seriously ill, he had asked his lawyer and Mason to come to England to stop the marriage. When left alone, Jane tries to consider the events of the day. She is inconsolable. She feels that Mr. Rochester has betrayed her and is so dejected that she cannot even pray.

It was no unfit messenger of death, who had disturbed the quiet of the matron's room. Her body was bent by age; her limbs trembled with palsy; her face, distorted into a mumbling leer, resembled more the grotesque shaping of some wild pencil, than the work of Nature's hand. Alas! How few of Nature's faces are left alone to gladden us with their beauty! The cares, and sorrows, and hungerings, of the world, change them as they change hearts; and it is only when those passions sleep, and have lost their hold for ever, that the troubled clouds pass off, and leave Heaven's surface clear. It is a common thing for the countenances of the dead, even in that fixed and rigid state, to subside into the long-forgotten expression of sleeping infancy, and settle into the very look of early life; so calm, so peaceful, do they grow again, that those who knew them in their happy childhood, kneel by the coffin's side in awe, and see the Angel even upon earth. The old crone tottered along the passages, and up the stairs, muttering some indistinct answers to the chidings of her companion; being at length compelled to pause for breath, she gave the light into her hand, and remained behind to follow as she might: while the more nimble superior made her way to the room where the sick woman lay. It was a bare garret-room, with a dim light burning at the farther end. There was another old woman watching by the bed; the parish apothecary's apprentice was standing by the fire, making a toothpick out of a quill. 'Cold night, Mrs. Corney,' said this young gentleman, as the matron entered. 'Very cold, indeed, sir,' replied the mistress, in her most civil tones, and dropping a curtsey as she spoke. 'You should get better coals out of your contractors,' said the apothecary's deputy, breaking a lump on the top of the fire with the rusty poker; 'these are not at all the sort of thing for a cold night.' 'They're the board's choosing, sir,' returned the matron. 'The least they could do, would be to keep us pretty warm: for our places are hard enough.' The conversation was here interrupted by a moan from the sick woman. 'Oh!' said the young mag, turning his face towards the bed, as if he had previously quite forgotten the patient, 'it's all U.P. there, Mrs. Corney.' 'It is, is it, sir?' asked the matron. 'If she lasts a couple of hours, I shall be surprised,' said the apothecary's apprentice, intent upon the toothpick's point. 'It's a break-up of the system altogether. Is she dozing, old lady?' The attendant stooped over the bed, to ascertain; and nodded in the affirmative. 'Then perhaps she'll go off in that way, if you don't make a row,' said the young man. 'Put the light on the floor. She won't see it there.' The attendant did as she was told: shaking her head meanwhile, to intimate that the woman would not die so easily; having done so, she resumed her seat by the side of the other nurse, who had by this time returned. The mistress, with an expression of impatience, wrapped herself in her shawl, and sat at the foot of the bed. The apothecary's apprentice, having completed the manufacture of the toothpick, planted himself in front of the fire and made good use of it for ten minutes or so: when apparently growing rather dull, he wished Mrs. Corney joy of her job, and took himself off on tiptoe. When they had sat in silence for some time, the two old women rose from the bed, and crouching over the fire, held out their withered hands to catch the heat. The flame threw a ghastly light on their shrivelled faces, and made their ugliness appear terrible, as, in this position, they began to converse in a low voice. 'Did she say any more, Anny dear, while I was gone?' inquired the messenger. 'Not a word,' replied the other. 'She plucked and tore at her arms for a little time; but I held her hands, and she soon dropped off. She hasn't much strength in her, so I easily kept her quiet. I ain't so weak for an old woman, although I am on parish allowance; no, no!' 'Did she drink the hot wine the doctor said she was to have?' demanded the first. 'I tried to get it down,' rejoined the other. 'But her teeth were tight set, and she clenched the mug so hard that it was as much as I could do to get it back again. So I drank it; and it did me good!' Looking cautiously round, to ascertain that they were not overheard, the two hags cowered nearer to the fire, and chuckled heartily. 'I mind the time,' said the first speaker, 'when she would have done the same, and made rare fun of it afterwards.' 'Ay, that she would,' rejoined the other; 'she had a merry heart. 'A many, many, beautiful corpses she laid out, as nice and neat as waxwork. My old eyes have seen them--ay, and those old hands touched them too; for I have helped her, scores of times.' Stretching forth her trembling fingers as she spoke, the old creature shook them exultingly before her face, and fumbling in her pocket, brought out an old time-discoloured tin snuff-box, from which she shook a few grains into the outstretched palm of her companion, and a few more into her own. While they were thus employed, the matron, who had been impatiently watching until the dying woman should awaken from her stupor, joined them by the fire, and sharply asked how long she was to wait? 'Not long, mistress,' replied the second woman, looking up into her face. 'We have none of us long to wait for Death. Patience, patience! He'll be here soon enough for us all.' 'Hold your tongue, you doting idiot!' said the matron sternly. 'You, Martha, tell me; has she been in this way before?' 'Often,' answered the first woman. 'But will never be again,' added the second one; 'that is, she'll never wake again but once--and mind, mistress, that won't be for long!' 'Long or short,' said the matron, snappishly, 'she won't find me here when she does wake; take care, both of you, how you worry me again for nothing. It's no part of my duty to see all the old women in the house die, and I won't--that's more. Mind that, you impudent old harridans. If you make a fool of me again, I'll soon cure you, I warrant you!' She was bouncing away, when a cry from the two women, who had turned towards the bed, caused her to look round. The patient had raised herself upright, and was stretching her arms towards them. 'Who's that?' she cried, in a hollow voice. 'Hush, hush!' said one of the women, stooping over her. 'Lie down, lie down!' 'I'll never lie down again alive!' said the woman, struggling. 'I _will_ tell her! Come here! Nearer! Let me whisper in your ear.' She clutched the matron by the arm, and forcing her into a chair by the bedside, was about to speak, when looking round, she caught sight of the two old women bending forward in the attitude of eager listeners. 'Turn them away,' said the woman, drowsily; 'make haste! make haste!' The two old crones, chiming in together, began pouring out many piteous lamentations that the poor dear was too far gone to know her best friends; and were uttering sundry protestations that they would never leave her, when the superior pushed them from the room, closed the door, and returned to the bedside. On being excluded, the old ladies changed their tone, and cried through the keyhole that old Sally was drunk; which, indeed, was not unlikely; since, in addition to a moderate dose of opium prescribed by the apothecary, she was labouring under the effects of a final taste of gin-and-water which had been privily administered, in the openness of their hearts, by the worthy old ladies themselves. 'Now listen to me,' said the dying woman aloud, as if making a great effort to revive one latent spark of energy. 'In this very room--in this very bed--I once nursed a pretty young creetur', that was brought into the house with her feet cut and bruised with walking, and all soiled with dust and blood. She gave birth to a boy, and died. Let me think--what was the year again!' 'Never mind the year,' said the impatient auditor; 'what about her?' 'Ay,' murmured the sick woman, relapsing into her former drowsy state, 'what about her?--what about--I know!' she cried, jumping fiercely up: her face flushed, and her eyes starting from her head--'I robbed her, so I did! She wasn't cold--I tell you she wasn't cold, when I stole it!' 'Stole what, for God's sake?' cried the matron, with a gesture as if she would call for help. '_It_!' replied the woman, laying her hand over the other's mouth. 'The only thing she had. She wanted clothes to keep her warm, and food to eat; but she had kept it safe, and had it in her bosom. It was gold, I tell you! Rich gold, that might have saved her life!' 'Gold!' echoed the matron, bending eagerly over the woman as she fell back. 'Go on, go on--yes--what of it? Who was the mother? When was it?' 'She charged me to keep it safe,' replied the woman with a groan, 'and trusted me as the only woman about her. I stole it in my heart when she first showed it me hanging round her neck; and the child's death, perhaps, is on me besides! They would have treated him better, if they had known it all!' 'Known what?' asked the other. 'Speak!' 'The boy grew so like his mother,' said the woman, rambling on, and not heeding the question, 'that I could never forget it when I saw his face. Poor girl! poor girl! She was so young, too! Such a gentle lamb! Wait; there's more to tell. I have not told you all, have I?' 'No, no,' replied the matron, inclining her head to catch the words, as they came more faintly from the dying woman. 'Be quick, or it may be too late!' 'The mother,' said the woman, making a more violent effort than before; 'the mother, when the pains of death first came upon her, whispered in my ear that if her baby was born alive, and thrived, the day might come when it would not feel so much disgraced to hear its poor young mother named. "And oh, kind Heaven!" she said, folding her thin hands together, "whether it be boy or girl, raise up some friends for it in this troubled world, and take pity upon a lonely desolate child, abandoned to its mercy!"' 'The boy's name?' demanded the matron. 'They _called_ him Oliver,' replied the woman, feebly. 'The gold I stole was--' 'Yes, yes--what?' cried the other. She was bending eagerly over the woman to hear her reply; but drew back, instinctively, as she once again rose, slowly and stiffly, into a sitting posture; then, clutching the coverlid with both hands, muttered some indistinct sounds in her throat, and fell lifeless on the bed. * * * * * 'Stone dead!' said one of the old women, hurrying in as soon as the door was opened. 'And nothing to tell, after all,' rejoined the matron, walking carelessly away. The two crones, to all appearance, too busily occupied in the preparations for their dreadful duties to make any reply, were left alone, hovering about the body.

Mrs. Corney enters Old Sally's room. The dying woman awakens and asks that her other bedside companions be sent away. She then confesses that she once robbed a woman in her care. The woman had been found pregnant on the road, and Sally had attended the childbirth. The woman had given Sally a gold locket, saying it might lead to people who would care for the child. The child's name was Oliver. Sally dies, and Mrs. Corney leaves. She tells the nurses who attended Sally that Sally had nothing to say after all

Nothing is more painful to the human mind, than, after the feelings have been worked up by a quick succession of events, the dead calmness of inaction and certainty which follows, and deprives the soul both of hope and fear. Justine died; she rested; and I was alive. The blood flowed freely in my veins, but a weight of despair and remorse pressed on my heart, which nothing could remove. Sleep fled from my eyes; I wandered like an evil spirit, for I had committed deeds of mischief beyond description horrible, and more, much more, (I persuaded myself) was yet behind. Yet my heart overflowed with kindness, and the love of virtue. I had begun life with benevolent intentions, and thirsted for the moment when I should put them in practice, and make myself useful to my fellow-beings. Now all was blasted: instead of that serenity of conscience, which allowed me to look back upon the past with self-satisfaction, and from thence to gather promise of new hopes, I was seized by remorse and the sense of guilt, which hurried me away to a hell of intense tortures, such as no language can describe. This state of mind preyed upon my health, which had entirely recovered from the first shock it had sustained. I shunned the face of man; all sound of joy or complacency was torture to me; solitude was my only consolation--deep, dark, death-like solitude. My father observed with pain the alteration perceptible in my disposition and habits, and endeavoured to reason with me on the folly of giving way to immoderate grief. "Do you think, Victor," said he, "that I do not suffer also? No one could love a child more than I loved your brother;" (tears came into his eyes as he spoke); "but is it not a duty to the survivors, that we should refrain from augmenting their unhappiness by an appearance of immoderate grief? It is also a duty owed to yourself; for excessive sorrow prevents improvement or enjoyment, or even the discharge of daily usefulness, without which no man is fit for society." This advice, although good, was totally inapplicable to my case; I should have been the first to hide my grief, and console my friends, if remorse had not mingled its bitterness with my other sensations. Now I could only answer my father with a look of despair, and endeavour to hide myself from his view. About this time we retired to our house at Belrive. This change was particularly agreeable to me. The shutting of the gates regularly at ten o'clock, and the impossibility of remaining on the lake after that hour, had rendered our residence within the walls of Geneva very irksome to me. I was now free. Often, after the rest of the family had retired for the night, I took the boat, and passed many hours upon the water. Sometimes, with my sails set, I was carried by the wind; and sometimes, after rowing into the middle of the lake, I left the boat to pursue its own course, and gave way to my own miserable reflections. I was often tempted, when all was at peace around me, and I the only unquiet thing that wandered restless in a scene so beautiful and heavenly, if I except some bat, or the frogs, whose harsh and interrupted croaking was heard only when I approached the shore--often, I say, I was tempted to plunge into the silent lake, that the waters might close over me and my calamities for ever. But I was restrained, when I thought of the heroic and suffering Elizabeth, whom I tenderly loved, and whose existence was bound up in mine. I thought also of my father, and surviving brother: should I by my base desertion leave them exposed and unprotected to the malice of the fiend whom I had let loose among them? At these moments I wept bitterly, and wished that peace would revisit my mind only that I might afford them consolation and happiness. But that could not be. Remorse extinguished every hope. I had been the author of unalterable evils; and I lived in daily fear, lest the monster whom I had created should perpetrate some new wickedness. I had an obscure feeling that all was not over, and that he would still commit some signal crime, which by its enormity should almost efface the recollection of the past. There was always scope for fear, so long as any thing I loved remained behind. My abhorrence of this fiend cannot be conceived. When I thought of him, I gnashed my teeth, my eyes became inflamed, and I ardently wished to extinguish that life which I had so thoughtlessly bestowed. When I reflected on his crimes and malice, my hatred and revenge burst all bounds of moderation. I would have made a pilgrimage to the highest peak of the Andes, could I, when there, have precipitated him to their base. I wished to see him again, that I might wreak the utmost extent of anger on his head, and avenge the deaths of William and Justine. Our house was the house of mourning. My father's health was deeply shaken by the horror of the recent events. Elizabeth was sad and desponding; she no longer took delight in her ordinary occupations; all pleasure seemed to her sacrilege toward the dead; eternal woe and tears she then thought was the just tribute she should pay to innocence so blasted and destroyed. She was no longer that happy creature, who in earlier youth wandered with me on the banks of the lake, and talked with ecstacy of our future prospects. She had become grave, and often conversed of the inconstancy of fortune, and the instability of human life. "When I reflect, my dear cousin," said she, "on the miserable death of Justine Moritz, I no longer see the world and its works as they before appeared to me. Before, I looked upon the accounts of vice and injustice, that I read in books or heard from others, as tales of ancient days, or imaginary evils; at least they were remote, and more familiar to reason than to the imagination; but now misery has come home, and men appear to me as monsters thirsting for each other's blood. Yet I am certainly unjust. Every body believed that poor girl to be guilty; and if she could have committed the crime for which she suffered, assuredly she would have been the most depraved of human creatures. For the sake of a few jewels, to have murdered the son of her benefactor and friend, a child whom she had nursed from its birth, and appeared to love as if it had been her own! I could not consent to the death of any human being; but certainly I should have thought such a creature unfit to remain in the society of men. Yet she was innocent. I know, I feel she was innocent; you are of the same opinion, and that confirms me. Alas! Victor, when falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness? I feel as if I were walking on the edge of a precipice, towards which thousands are crowding, and endeavouring to plunge me into the abyss. William and Justine were assassinated, and the murderer escapes; he walks about the world free, and perhaps respected. But even if I were condemned to suffer on the scaffold for the same crimes, I would not change places with such a wretch." I listened to this discourse with the extremest agony. I, not in deed, but in effect, was the true murderer. Elizabeth read my anguish in my countenance, and kindly taking my hand said, "My dearest cousin, you must calm yourself. These events have affected me, God knows how deeply; but I am not so wretched as you are. There is an expression of despair, and sometimes of revenge, in your countenance, that makes me tremble. Be calm, my dear Victor; I would sacrifice my life to your peace. We surely shall be happy: quiet in our native country, and not mingling in the world, what can disturb our tranquillity?" She shed tears as she said this, distrusting the very solace that she gave; but at the same time she smiled, that she might chase away the fiend that lurked in my heart. My father, who saw in the unhappiness that was painted in my face only an exaggeration of that sorrow which I might naturally feel, thought that an amusement suited to my taste would be the best means of restoring to me my wonted serenity. It was from this cause that he had removed to the country; and, induced by the same motive, he now proposed that we should all make an excursion to the valley of Chamounix. I had been there before, but Elizabeth and Ernest never had; and both had often expressed an earnest desire to see the scenery of this place, which had been described to them as so wonderful and sublime. Accordingly we departed from Geneva on this tour about the middle of the month of August, nearly two months after the death of Justine. The weather was uncommonly fine; and if mine had been a sorrow to be chased away by any fleeting circumstance, this excursion would certainly have had the effect intended by my father. As it was, I was somewhat interested in the scene; it sometimes lulled, although it could not extinguish my grief. During the first day we travelled in a carriage. In the morning we had seen the mountains at a distance, towards which we gradually advanced. We perceived that the valley through which we wound, and which was formed by the river Arve, whose course we followed, closed in upon us by degrees; and when the sun had set, we beheld immense mountains and precipices overhanging us on every side, and heard the sound of the river raging among rocks, and the dashing of water-falls around. The next day we pursued our journey upon mules; and as we ascended still higher, the valley assumed a more magnificent and astonishing character. Ruined castles hanging on the precipices of piny mountains; the impetuous Arve, and cottages every here and there peeping forth from among the trees, formed a scene of singular beauty. But it was augmented and rendered sublime by the mighty Alps, whose white and shining pyramids and domes towered above all, as belonging to another earth, the habitations of another race of beings. We passed the bridge of Pelissier, where the ravine, which the river forms, opened before us, and we began to ascend the mountain that overhangs it. Soon after we entered the valley of Chamounix. This valley is more wonderful and sublime, but not so beautiful and picturesque as that of Servox, through which we had just passed. The high and snowy mountains were its immediate boundaries; but we saw no more ruined castles and fertile fields. Immense glaciers approached the road; we heard the rumbling thunder of the falling avalanche, and marked the smoke of its passage. Mont Blanc, the supreme and magnificent Mont Blanc, raised itself from the surrounding _aiguilles_, and its tremendous _dome_ overlooked the valley. During this journey, I sometimes joined Elizabeth, and exerted myself to point out to her the various beauties of the scene. I often suffered my mule to lag behind, and indulged in the misery of reflection. At other times I spurred on the animal before my companions, that I might forget them, the world, and, more than all, myself. When at a distance, I alighted, and threw myself on the grass, weighed down by horror and despair. At eight in the evening I arrived at Chamounix. My father and Elizabeth were very much fatigued; Ernest, who accompanied us, was delighted, and in high spirits: the only circumstance that detracted from his pleasure was the south wind, and the rain it seemed to promise for the next day. We retired early to our apartments, but not to sleep; at least I did not. I remained many hours at the window, watching the pallid lightning that played above Mont Blanc, and listening to the rushing of the Arve, which ran below my window.

The recent events have taken their toll on the family members, and particularly on Victor, who admits that he had never fully recovered from the first shock. He chooses to be alone all the time. However, his father mistakes his wish for solitude as excessive sorrow at William's death. He urges him to come to terms with it. The family moves to Belrive for a change in atmosphere. The gates of the Geneva house are shut by ten o'clock every night, which makes it impossible for Victor to go out. He sometimes takes the boat out on the lake and sails for hours. At other times, he just lets the wind lead him. He even contemplates suicide, but the thought of further distressing his family discourages him. His desire to take revenge on the monster intensifies. The father, too, is shaken by events, and his health suffers. Elizabeth has changed tremendously. She is no longer the "happy creature" that Victor once knew. She keeps reiterating Justine's innocence, and she continually refers to the crimes perpetrated by the murderer. This makes Victor uneasy. He finds that since he cannot bear the anxiety any more, it would be a good idea to go for a visit to the alpine valleys. He particularly wants to visit the valley of Chamounix, which he used to frequent in his boyhood. It is August, nearly two months since the death of Justine. He travels deep into the Alpine ravine and soon enters the village of Chamounix. He gazes at Mont Blanc for a long while.

That was the way they did it! There was not half an hour's warning--the works were closed! It had happened that way before, said the men, and it would happen that way forever. They had made all the harvesting machines that the world needed, and now they had to wait till some wore out! It was nobody's fault--that was the way of it; and thousands of men and women were turned out in the dead of winter, to live upon their savings if they had any, and otherwise to die. So many tens of thousands already in the city, homeless and begging for work, and now several thousand more added to them! Jurgis walked home-with his pittance of pay in his pocket, heartbroken, overwhelmed. One more bandage had been torn from his eyes, one more pitfall was revealed to him! Of what help was kindness and decency on the part of employers--when they could not keep a job for him, when there were more harvesting machines made than the world was able to buy! What a hellish mockery it was, anyway, that a man should slave to make harvesting machines for the country, only to be turned out to starve for doing his duty too well! It took him two days to get over this heart-sickening disappointment. He did not drink anything, because Elzbieta got his money for safekeeping, and knew him too well to be in the least frightened by his angry demands. He stayed up in the garret however, and sulked--what was the use of a man's hunting a job when it was taken from him before he had time to learn the work? But then their money was going again, and little Antanas was hungry, and crying with the bitter cold of the garret. Also Madame Haupt, the midwife, was after him for some money. So he went out once more. For another ten days he roamed the streets and alleys of the huge city, sick and hungry, begging for any work. He tried in stores and offices, in restaurants and hotels, along the docks and in the railroad yards, in warehouses and mills and factories where they made products that went to every corner of the world. There were often one or two chances--but there were always a hundred men for every chance, and his turn would not come. At night he crept into sheds and cellars and doorways--until there came a spell of belated winter weather, with a raging gale, and the thermometer five degrees below zero at sundown and falling all night. Then Jurgis fought like a wild beast to get into the big Harrison Street police station, and slept down in a corridor, crowded with two other men upon a single step. He had to fight often in these days to fight for a place near the factory gates, and now and again with gangs on the street. He found, for instance, that the business of carrying satchels for railroad passengers was a pre-empted one--whenever he essayed it, eight or ten men and boys would fall upon him and force him to run for his life. They always had the policeman "squared," and so there was no use in expecting protection. That Jurgis did not starve to death was due solely to the pittance the children brought him. And even this was never certain. For one thing the cold was almost more than the children could bear; and then they, too, were in perpetual peril from rivals who plundered and beat them. The law was against them, too--little Vilimas, who was really eleven, but did not look to be eight, was stopped on the streets by a severe old lady in spectacles, who told him that he was too young to be working and that if he did not stop selling papers she would send a truant officer after him. Also one night a strange man caught little Kotrina by the arm and tried to persuade her into a dark cellar-way, an experience which filled her with such terror that she was hardly to be kept at work. At last, on a Sunday, as there was no use looking for work, Jurgis went home by stealing rides on the cars. He found that they had been waiting for him for three days--there was a chance of a job for him. It was quite a story. Little Juozapas, who was near crazy with hunger these days, had gone out on the street to beg for himself. Juozapas had only one leg, having been run over by a wagon when a little child, but he had got himself a broomstick, which he put under his arm for a crutch. He had fallen in with some other children and found the way to Mike Scully's dump, which lay three or four blocks away. To this place there came every day many hundreds of wagon-loads of garbage and trash from the lake front, where the rich people lived; and in the heaps the children raked for food--there were hunks of bread and potato peelings and apple cores and meat bones, all of it half frozen and quite unspoiled. Little Juozapas gorged himself, and came home with a newspaper full, which he was feeding to Antanas when his mother came in. Elzbieta was horrified, for she did not believe that the food out of the dumps was fit to eat. The next day, however, when no harm came of it and Juozapas began to cry with hunger, she gave in and said that he might go again. And that afternoon he came home with a story of how while he had been digging away with a stick, a lady upon the street had called him. A real fine lady, the little boy explained, a beautiful lady; and she wanted to know all about him, and whether he got the garbage for chickens, and why he walked with a broomstick, and why Ona had died, and how Jurgis had come to go to jail, and what was the matter with Marija, and everything. In the end she had asked where he lived, and said that she was coming to see him, and bring him a new crutch to walk with. She had on a hat with a bird upon it, Juozapas added, and a long fur snake around her neck. She really came, the very next morning, and climbed the ladder to the garret, and stood and stared about her, turning pale at the sight of the blood stains on the floor where Ona had died. She was a "settlement worker," she explained to Elzbieta--she lived around on Ashland Avenue. Elzbieta knew the place, over a feed store; somebody had wanted her to go there, but she had not cared to, for she thought that it must have something to do with religion, and the priest did not like her to have anything to do with strange religions. They were rich people who came to live there to find out about the poor people; but what good they expected it would do them to know, one could not imagine. So spoke Elzbieta, naively, and the young lady laughed and was rather at a loss for an answer--she stood and gazed about her, and thought of a cynical remark that had been made to her, that she was standing upon the brink of the pit of hell and throwing in snowballs to lower the temperature. Elzbieta was glad to have somebody to listen, and she told all their woes--what had happened to Ona, and the jail, and the loss of their home, and Marija's accident, and how Ona had died, and how Jurgis could get no work. As she listened the pretty young lady's eyes filled with tears, and in the midst of it she burst into weeping and hid her face on Elzbieta's shoulder, quite regardless of the fact that the woman had on a dirty old wrapper and that the garret was full of fleas. Poor Elzbieta was ashamed of herself for having told so woeful a tale, and the other had to beg and plead with her to get her to go on. The end of it was that the young lady sent them a basket of things to eat, and left a letter that Jurgis was to take to a gentleman who was superintendent in one of the mills of the great steelworks in South Chicago. "He will get Jurgis something to do," the young lady had said, and added, smiling through her tears--"If he doesn't, he will never marry me." The steel-works were fifteen miles away, and as usual it was so contrived that one had to pay two fares to get there. Far and wide the sky was flaring with the red glare that leaped from rows of towering chimneys--for it was pitch dark when Jurgis arrived. The vast works, a city in themselves, were surrounded by a stockade; and already a full hundred men were waiting at the gate where new hands were taken on. Soon after daybreak whistles began to blow, and then suddenly thousands of men appeared, streaming from saloons and boardinghouses across the way, leaping from trolley cars that passed--it seemed as if they rose out of the ground, in the dim gray light. A river of them poured in through the gate--and then gradually ebbed away again, until there were only a few late ones running, and the watchman pacing up and down, and the hungry strangers stamping and shivering. Jurgis presented his precious letter. The gatekeeper was surly, and put him through a catechism, but he insisted that he knew nothing, and as he had taken the precaution to seal his letter, there was nothing for the gatekeeper to do but send it to the person to whom it was addressed. A messenger came back to say that Jurgis should wait, and so he came inside of the gate, perhaps not sorry enough that there were others less fortunate watching him with greedy eyes. The great mills were getting under way--one could hear a vast stirring, a rolling and rumbling and hammering. Little by little the scene grew plain: towering, black buildings here and there, long rows of shops and sheds, little railways branching everywhere, bare gray cinders underfoot and oceans of billowing black smoke above. On one side of the grounds ran a railroad with a dozen tracks, and on the other side lay the lake, where steamers came to load. Jurgis had time enough to stare and speculate, for it was two hours before he was summoned. He went into the office building, where a company timekeeper interviewed him. The superintendent was busy, he said, but he (the timekeeper) would try to find Jurgis a job. He had never worked in a steel mill before? But he was ready for anything? Well, then, they would go and see. So they began a tour, among sights that made Jurgis stare amazed. He wondered if ever he could get used to working in a place like this, where the air shook with deafening thunder, and whistles shrieked warnings on all sides of him at once; where miniature steam engines came rushing upon him, and sizzling, quivering, white-hot masses of metal sped past him, and explosions of fire and flaming sparks dazzled him and scorched his face. The men in these mills were all black with soot, and hollow-eyed and gaunt; they worked with fierce intensity, rushing here and there, and never lifting their eyes from their tasks. Jurgis clung to his guide like a scared child to its nurse, and while the latter hailed one foreman after another to ask if they could use another unskilled man, he stared about him and marveled. He was taken to the Bessemer furnace, where they made billets of steel--a dome-like building, the size of a big theater. Jurgis stood where the balcony of the theater would have been, and opposite, by the stage, he saw three giant caldrons, big enough for all the devils of hell to brew their broth in, full of something white and blinding, bubbling and splashing, roaring as if volcanoes were blowing through it--one had to shout to be heard in the place. Liquid fire would leap from these caldrons and scatter like bombs below--and men were working there, seeming careless, so that Jurgis caught his breath with fright. Then a whistle would toot, and across the curtain of the theater would come a little engine with a carload of something to be dumped into one of the receptacles; and then another whistle would toot, down by the stage, and another train would back up--and suddenly, without an instant's warning, one of the giant kettles began to tilt and topple, flinging out a jet of hissing, roaring flame. Jurgis shrank back appalled, for he thought it was an accident; there fell a pillar of white flame, dazzling as the sun, swishing like a huge tree falling in the forest. A torrent of sparks swept all the way across the building, overwhelming everything, hiding it from sight; and then Jurgis looked through the fingers of his hands, and saw pouring out of the caldron a cascade of living, leaping fire, white with a whiteness not of earth, scorching the eyeballs. Incandescent rainbows shone above it, blue, red, and golden lights played about it; but the stream itself was white, ineffable. Out of regions of wonder it streamed, the very river of life; and the soul leaped up at the sight of it, fled back upon it, swift and resistless, back into far-off lands, where beauty and terror dwell. Then the great caldron tilted back again, empty, and Jurgis saw to his relief that no one was hurt, and turned and followed his guide out into the sunlight. They went through the blast furnaces, through rolling mills where bars of steel were tossed about and chopped like bits of cheese. All around and above giant machine arms were flying, giant wheels were turning, great hammers crashing; traveling cranes creaked and groaned overhead, reaching down iron hands and seizing iron prey--it was like standing in the center of the earth, where the machinery of time was revolving. By and by they came to the place where steel rails were made; and Jurgis heard a toot behind him, and jumped out of the way of a car with a white-hot ingot upon it, the size of a man's body. There was a sudden crash and the car came to a halt, and the ingot toppled out upon a moving platform, where steel fingers and arms seized hold of it, punching it and prodding it into place, and hurrying it into the grip of huge rollers. Then it came out upon the other side, and there were more crashings and clatterings, and over it was flopped, like a pancake on a gridiron, and seized again and rushed back at you through another squeezer. So amid deafening uproar it clattered to and fro, growing thinner and flatter and longer. The ingot seemed almost a living thing; it did not want to run this mad course, but it was in the grip of fate, it was tumbled on, screeching and clanking and shivering in protest. By and by it was long and thin, a great red snake escaped from purgatory; and then, as it slid through the rollers, you would have sworn that it was alive--it writhed and squirmed, and wriggles and shudders passed out through its tail, all but flinging it off by their violence. There was no rest for it until it was cold and black--and then it needed only to be cut and straightened to be ready for a railroad. It was at the end of this rail's progress that Jurgis got his chance. They had to be moved by men with crowbars, and the boss here could use another man. So he took off his coat and set to work on the spot. It took him two hours to get to this place every day and cost him a dollar and twenty cents a week. As this was out of the question, he wrapped his bedding in a bundle and took it with him, and one of his fellow workingmen introduced him to a Polish lodging-house, where he might have the privilege of sleeping upon the floor for ten cents a night. He got his meals at free-lunch counters, and every Saturday night he went home--bedding and all--and took the greater part of his money to the family. Elzbieta was sorry for this arrangement, for she feared that it would get him into the habit of living without them, and once a week was not very often for him to see his baby; but there was no other way of arranging it. There was no chance for a woman at the steelworks, and Marija was now ready for work again, and lured on from day to day by the hope of finding it at the yards. In a week Jurgis got over his sense of helplessness and bewilderment in the rail mill. He learned to find his way about and to take all the miracles and terrors for granted, to work without hearing the rumbling and crashing. From blind fear he went to the other extreme; he became reckless and indifferent, like all the rest of the men, who took but little thought of themselves in the ardor of their work. It was wonderful, when one came to think of it, that these men should have taken an interest in the work they did--they had no share in it--they were paid by the hour, and paid no more for being interested. Also they knew that if they were hurt they would be flung aside and forgotten--and still they would hurry to their task by dangerous short cuts, would use methods that were quicker and more effective in spite of the fact that they were also risky. His fourth day at his work Jurgis saw a man stumble while running in front of a car, and have his foot mashed off, and before he had been there three weeks he was witness of a yet more dreadful accident. There was a row of brick furnaces, shining white through every crack with the molten steel inside. Some of these were bulging dangerously, yet men worked before them, wearing blue glasses when they opened and shut the doors. One morning as Jurgis was passing, a furnace blew out, spraying two men with a shower of liquid fire. As they lay screaming and rolling upon the ground in agony, Jurgis rushed to help them, and as a result he lost a good part of the skin from the inside of one of his hands. The company doctor bandaged it up, but he got no other thanks from any one, and was laid up for eight working days without any pay. Most fortunately, at this juncture, Elzbieta got the long-awaited chance to go at five o'clock in the morning and help scrub the office floors of one of the packers. Jurgis came home and covered himself with blankets to keep warm, and divided his time between sleeping and playing with little Antanas. Juozapas was away raking in the dump a good part of the time, and Elzbieta and Marija were hunting for more work. Antanas was now over a year and a half old, and was a perfect talking machine. He learned so fast that every week when Jurgis came home it seemed to him as if he had a new child. He would sit down and listen and stare at him, and give vent to delighted exclamations--"Palauk! Muma! Tu mano szirdele!" The little fellow was now really the one delight that Jurgis had in the world--his one hope, his one victory. Thank God, Antanas was a boy! And he was as tough as a pine knot, and with the appetite of a wolf. Nothing had hurt him, and nothing could hurt him; he had come through all the suffering and deprivation unscathed--only shriller-voiced and more determined in his grip upon life. He was a terrible child to manage, was Antanas, but his father did not mind that--he would watch him and smile to himself with satisfaction. The more of a fighter he was the better--he would need to fight before he got through. Jurgis had got the habit of buying the Sunday paper whenever he had the money; a most wonderful paper could be had for only five cents, a whole armful, with all the news of the world set forth in big headlines, that Jurgis could spell out slowly, with the children to help him at the long words. There was battle and murder and sudden death--it was marvelous how they ever heard about so many entertaining and thrilling happenings; the stories must be all true, for surely no man could have made such things up, and besides, there were pictures of them all, as real as life. One of these papers was as good as a circus, and nearly as good as a spree--certainly a most wonderful treat for a workingman, who was tired out and stupefied, and had never had any education, and whose work was one dull, sordid grind, day after day, and year after year, with never a sight of a green field nor an hour's entertainment, nor anything but liquor to stimulate his imagination. Among other things, these papers had pages full of comical pictures, and these were the main joy in life to little Antanas. He treasured them up, and would drag them out and make his father tell him about them; there were all sorts of animals among them, and Antanas could tell the names of all of them, lying upon the floor for hours and pointing them out with his chubby little fingers. Whenever the story was plain enough for Jurgis to make out, Antanas would have it repeated to him, and then he would remember it, prattling funny little sentences and mixing it up with other stories in an irresistible fashion. Also his quaint pronunciation of words was such a delight--and the phrases he would pick up and remember, the most outlandish and impossible things! The first time that the little rascal burst out with "God damn," his father nearly rolled off the chair with glee; but in the end he was sorry for this, for Antanas was soon "God-damning" everything and everybody. And then, when he was able to use his hands, Jurgis took his bedding again and went back to his task of shifting rails. It was now April, and the snow had given place to cold rains, and the unpaved street in front of Aniele's house was turned into a canal. Jurgis would have to wade through it to get home, and if it was late he might easily get stuck to his waist in the mire. But he did not mind this much--it was a promise that summer was coming. Marija had now gotten a place as beef-trimmer in one of the smaller packing plants; and he told himself that he had learned his lesson now, and would meet with no more accidents--so that at last there was prospect of an end to their long agony. They could save money again, and when another winter came they would have a comfortable place; and the children would be off the streets and in school again, and they might set to work to nurse back into life their habits of decency and kindness. So once more Jurgis began to make plans and dream dreams. And then one Saturday night he jumped off the car and started home, with the sun shining low under the edge of a bank of clouds that had been pouring floods of water into the mud-soaked street. There was a rainbow in the sky, and another in his breast--for he had thirty-six hours' rest before him, and a chance to see his family. Then suddenly he came in sight of the house, and noticed that there was a crowd before the door. He ran up the steps and pushed his way in, and saw Aniele's kitchen crowded with excited women. It reminded him so vividly of the time when he had come home from jail and found Ona dying, that his heart almost stood still. "What's the matter?" he cried. A dead silence had fallen in the room, and he saw that every one was staring at him. "What's the matter?" he exclaimed again. And then, up in the garret, he heard sounds of wailing, in Marija's voice. He started for the ladder--and Aniele seized him by the arm. "No, no!" she exclaimed. "Don't go up there!" "What is it?" he shouted. And the old woman answered him weakly: "It's Antanas. He's dead. He was drowned out in the street!"

Jurgis is dismayed that he no longer has a job at the harvesting-machine plant. Other men tell him that the situation is no one's fault because "they had made all the harvesting-machines that the world needed, and now they had to wait till some wore out. Jurgis thinks that it is a "hellish mockery" that he should starve because he did his job too well. He goes home and, after two days, returns to the streets to beg for work. He begs for ten days while the family begins to run out of money again. One day, Little Juozapas goes to Mike Scully's garbage dump to scrounge for food. Because this is the dump where all the rich people send their trash, he finds a good deal of unspoiled food and returns home that night quite satiated. When he returns the next day, he meets a well-dressed woman who tells him to take her home with him. The woman tells Elzbieta that she is a "settlement-worker" and so Elzbieta begins to tell her the tale of their life in America. She tells the woman about all of their trials. The story is so sad that the woman begins to weep and makes Elzbieta continue until the whole story is told. When Elzbieta finishes the story, the woman gives her a letter and tells her to send Jurgis to the steel mills in South Chicago and that a man there will give him a job. The steel mills are fifteen miles away, so Jurgis must once again take two trains and pay two fares to get to work. When he arrives, he waits with hundreds of other men all looking for work. He gives his letter to one of the factory bosses and is then taken into the factory where a foreman begins to give him a tour of the mill. Jurgis is terrified of the place. There are loud noises and great cauldrons, "big enough for all the devils of hell to brew their broth in, full of something white and blinding, bubbling and splashing, roaring as if volcanoes were blowing through it. Jurgis watches an amazing process as steel is shaped and formed into rail ties. Jurgis obtains a job moving the steel rails with a crowbar. Instead of traveling the fifteen miles every day, Jurgis decides to sleep in a boarding house near the mill. After a week, he overcomes his fear of the place and begins to "take all the miracles and terrors" of the place for granted. There are still dangerous situations, however. One morning, as Jurgis passes by a furnace, the machine blows out spraying fire and melted steel over two men. Jurgis attempts to help them, but he only loses the skin on one of his hands by doing so. The doctor bandages him and he cannot work for eight days without pay. Nevertheless, in other ways, Jurgis's life is improving. His family begins to be able to pay off debts and start to save money once again. Jurgis's greatest joy is his son, Antanas, who is growing strong. The boy seems to learn how to talk more and more every time that Jurgis sees him. Every Sunday, Jurgis buys a five-cent paper, and Antanas takes great pleasure in the pages of cartoons and comics. Jurgis heals from his wound, picks up his bedding, and returns to the steel mill. One Saturday night, he takes the rail cars back to his home and enters the flat, where he sees a group of woman who become silent when he enters. This reminds him of the women that had gathered when Ona was dying. Jurgis demands to know what is going on. Aniele takes him by the arm and tells him that little Antanas is dead. He drowned in a flooded street

ACT III SCENE 1. A field near Frogmore. [Enter SIR HUGH EVANS and SIMPLE.] EVANS. I pray you now, good Master Slender's serving-man, and friend Simple by your name, which way have you looked for Master Caius, that calls himself doctor of physic? SIMPLE. Marry, sir, the pittie-ward, the park-ward, every way; old Windsor way, and every way but the town way. EVANS. I most fehemently desire you you will also look that way. SIMPLE. I will, Sir. [Exit.] EVANS. Pless my soul, how full of chollors I am, and trempling of mind! I shall be glad if he have deceived me. How melancholies I am! I will knog his urinals about his knave's costard when I have goot opportunities for the 'ork: pless my soul! [Sings] To shallow rivers, to whose falls Melodious birds sings madrigals; There will we make our peds of roses, And a thousand fragrant posies. To shallow-- Mercy on me! I have a great dispositions to cry. [Sings.] Melodious birds sing madrigals,-- Whenas I sat in Pabylon,-- And a thousand vagram posies. To shallow,-- [Re-enter SIMPLE.] SIMPLE. Yonder he is, coming this way, Sir Hugh. EVANS. He's welcome. [Sings] To shallow rivers, to whose falls-- Heaven prosper the right!--What weapons is he? SIMPLE. No weapons, sir. There comes my master, Master Shallow, and another gentleman, from Frogmore, over the stile, this way. EVANS. Pray you give me my gown; or else keep it in your arms. [Reads in a book.] [Enter PAGE, SHALLOW, and SLENDER.] SHALLOW. How now, Master Parson! Good morrow, good Sir Hugh. Keep a gamester from the dice, and a good student from his book, and it is wonderful. SLENDER. [Aside] Ah, sweet Anne Page! PAGE. 'Save you, good Sir Hugh! EVANS. Pless you from his mercy sake, all of you! SHALLOW. What, the sword and the word! Do you study them both, Master Parson? PAGE. And youthful still, in your doublet and hose, this raw rheumatic day! EVANS. There is reasons and causes for it. PAGE. We are come to you to do a good office, Master Parson. EVANS. Fery well; what is it? PAGE. Yonder is a most reverend gentleman, who, belike having received wrong by some person, is at most odds with his own gravity and patience that ever you saw. SHALLOW. I have lived fourscore years and upward; I never heard a man of his place, gravity, and learning, so wide of his own respect. EVANS. What is he? PAGE. I think you know him: Master Doctor Caius, the renowned French physician. EVANS. Got's will and His passion of my heart! I had as lief you would tell me of a mess of porridge. PAGE. Why? EVANS. He has no more knowledge in Hibbocrates and Galen,--and he is a knave besides; a cowardly knave as you would desires to be acquainted withal. PAGE. I warrant you, he's the man should fight with him. SLENDER. [Aside] O, sweet Anne Page! SHALLOW. It appears so, by his weapons. Keep them asunder; here comes Doctor Caius. [Enter HOST, CAIUS, and RUGBY.] PAGE. Nay, good Master Parson, keep in your weapon. SHALLOW. So do you, good Master Doctor. HOST. Disarm them, and let them question; let them keep their limbs whole and hack our English. CAIUS. I pray you, let-a me speak a word with your ear: verefore will you not meet-a me? EVANS. [Aside to CAIUS.] Pray you use your patience; in good time. CAIUS. By gar, you are de coward, de Jack dog, John ape. EVANS. [Aside to CAIUS.] Pray you, let us not be laughing-stogs to other men's humours; I desire you in friendship, and I will one way or other make you amends. [Aloud.] I will knog your urinals about your knave's cogscomb for missing your meetings and appointments. CAIUS. Diable!--Jack Rugby,--mine Host de Jarretiere,--have I not stay for him to kill him? Have I not, at de place I did appoint? EVANS. As I am a Christians soul, now, look you, this is the place appointed. I'll be judgment by mine host of the Garter. HOST. Peace, I say, Gallia and Gaullia; French and Welsh, soul-curer and body-curer! CAIUS. Ay, dat is very good; excellent! HOST. Peace, I say! Hear mine host of the Garter. Am I politic? am I subtle? am I a Machiavel? Shall I lose my doctor? No; he gives me the potions and the motions. Shall I lose my parson, my priest, my Sir Hugh? No; he gives me the proverbs and the no-verbs. Give me thy hand, terrestrial; so;--give me thy hand, celestial; so. Boys of art, I have deceived you both; I have directed you to wrong places; your hearts are mighty, your skins are whole, and let burnt sack be the issue. Come, lay their swords to pawn. Follow me, lads of peace; follow, follow, follow. SHALLOW. Trust me, a mad host!--Follow, gentlemen, follow. SLENDER. [Aside] O, sweet Anne Page! [Exeunt SHALLOW, SLENDER, PAGE, and HOST.] CAIUS. Ha, do I perceive dat? Have you make-a de sot of us, ha, ha? EVANS. This is well; he has made us his vlouting-stog. I desire you that we may be friends; and let us knog our prains together to be revenge on this same scall, scurvy, cogging companion, the host of the Garter. CAIUS. By gar, with all my heart. He promise to bring me where is Anne Page; by gar, he deceive me too. EVANS. Well, I will smite his noddles. Pray you follow. [Exeunt.] SCENE 2. A street in Windsor. [Enter MISTRESS PAGE and ROBIN.] MRS. PAGE. Nay, keep your way, little gallant: you were wont to be a follower, but now you are a leader. Whether had you rather lead mine eyes, or eye your master's heels? ROBIN. I had rather, forsooth, go before you like a man than follow him like a dwarf. MRS. PAGE. O! you are a flattering boy: now I see you'll be a courtier. [Enter FORD.] FORD. Well met, Mistress Page. Whither go you? MRS. PAGE. Truly, sir, to see your wife. Is she at home? FORD. Ay; and as idle as she may hang together, for want of company. I think, if your husbands were dead, you two would marry. MRS. PAGE. Be sure of that--two other husbands. FORD. Where had you this pretty weathercock? MRS. PAGE. I cannot tell what the dickens his name is my husband had him of. What do you call your knight's name, sirrah? ROBIN. Sir John Falstaff. FORD. Sir John Falstaff! MRS. PAGE. He, he; I can never hit on's name. There is such a league between my good man and he! Is your wife at home indeed? FORD. Indeed she is. MRS. PAGE. By your leave, sir: I am sick till I see her. [Exeunt MRS. PAGE and ROBIN.] FORD. Has Page any brains? Hath he any eyes? Hath he any thinking? Sure, they sleep; he hath no use of them. Why, this boy will carry a letter twenty mile as easy as a cannon will shoot point-blank twelve score. He pieces out his wife's inclination; he gives her folly motion and advantage; and now she's going to my wife, and Falstaff's boy with her. A man may hear this shower sing in the wind: and Falstaff's boy with her! Good plots! They are laid; and our revolted wives share damnation together. Well; I will take him, then torture my wife, pluck the borrowed veil of modesty from the so seeming Mistress Page, divulge Page himself for a secure and wilful Actaeon; and to these violent proceedings all my neighbours shall cry aim. [Clock strikes] The clock gives me my cue, and my assurance bids me search; there I shall find Falstaff. I shall be rather praised for this than mocked; for it is as positive as the earth is firm that Falstaff is there. I will go. [Enter PAGE, SHALLOW, SLENDER, HOST, SIR HUGH EVANS, CAIUS, and RUGBY.] SHALLOW, PAGE, &c. Well met, Master Ford. FORD. Trust me, a good knot; I have good cheer at home, and I pray you all go with me. SHALLOW. I must excuse myself, Master Ford. SLENDER. And so must I, sir; we have appointed to dine with Mistress Anne, and I would not break with her for more money than I'll speak of. SHALLOW. We have lingered about a match between Anne Page and my cousin Slender, and this day we shall have our answer. SLENDER. I hope I have your good will, father Page. PAGE. You have, Master Slender; I stand wholly for you. But my wife, Master doctor, is for you altogether. CAIUS. Ay, be-gar; and de maid is love-a me: my nursh-a Quickly tell me so mush. HOST. What say you to young Master Fenton? He capers, he dances, he has eyes of youth, he writes verses, he speaks holiday, he smells April and May; he will carry 't, he will carry 't; 'tis in his buttons; he will carry 't. PAGE. Not by my consent, I promise you. The gentleman is of no having: he kept company with the wild Prince and Pointz; he is of too high a region, he knows too much. No, he shall not knit a knot in his fortunes with the finger of my substance; if he take her, let him take her simply; the wealth I have waits on my consent, and my consent goes not that way. FORD. I beseech you, heartily, some of you go home with me to dinner: besides your cheer, you shall have sport; I will show you a monster. Master Doctor, you shall go; so shall you, Master Page; and you, Sir Hugh. SHALLOW. Well, fare you well; we shall have the freer wooing at Master Page's. [Exeunt SHALLOW and SLENDER.] CAIUS. Go home, John Rugby; I come anon. [Exit RUGBY.] HOST. Farewell, my hearts; I will to my honest knight Falstaff, and drink canary with him. [Exit HOST.] FORD. [Aside] I think I shall drink in pipe-wine first with him. I'll make him dance. Will you go, gentles? ALL. Have with you to see this monster. [Exeunt.] SCENE 3. A room in FORD'S house. [Enter MISTRESS FORD and MISTRESS PAGE.] MRS. FORD. What, John! what, Robert! MRS. PAGE. Quickly, quickly:--Is the buck-basket-- MRS. FORD. I warrant. What, Robin, I say! [Enter SERVANTS with a basket.] MRS. PAGE. Come, come, come. MRS. FORD. Here, set it down. MRS. PAGE. Give your men the charge; we must be brief. MRS. FORD. Marry, as I told you before, John and Robert, be ready here hard by in the brew-house; and when I suddenly call you, come forth, and, without any pause or staggering, take this basket on your shoulders: that done, trudge with it in all haste, and carry it among the whitsters in Datchet-Mead, and there empty it in the muddy ditch close by the Thames side. MRS. PAGE. You will do it? MRS. FORD. I have told them over and over; they lack no direction. Be gone, and come when you are called. [Exeunt SERVANTS.] MRS. PAGE. Here comes little Robin. [Enter ROBIN.] MRS. FORD. How now, my eyas-musket! what news with you? ROBIN. My Master Sir John is come in at your back-door, Mistress Ford, and requests your company. MRS. PAGE. You little Jack-a-Lent, have you been true to us? ROBIN. Ay, I'll be sworn. My master knows not of your being here, and hath threatened to put me into everlasting liberty, if I tell you of it; for he swears he'll turn me away. MRS. PAGE. Thou 'rt a good boy; this secrecy of thine shall be a tailor to thee, and shall make thee a new doublet and hose. I'll go hide me. MRS. FORD. Do so. Go tell thy master I am alone. [Exit ROBIN.] Mistress Page, remember you your cue. MRS. PAGE. I warrant thee; if I do not act it, hiss me. [Exit.] MRS. FORD. Go to, then; we'll use this unwholesome humidity, this gross watery pumpion; we'll teach him to know turtles from jays. [Enter FALSTAFF.] FALSTAFF. 'Have I caught thee, my heavenly jewel?' Why, now let me die, for I have lived long enough: this is the period of my ambition: O this blessed hour! MRS. FORD. O, sweet Sir John! FALSTAFF. Mistress Ford, I cannot cog, I cannot prate, Mistress Ford. Now shall I sin in my wish; I would thy husband were dead. I'll speak it before the best lord, I would make thee my lady. MRS. FORD. I your lady, Sir John! Alas, I should be a pitiful lady. FALSTAFF. Let the court of France show me such another. I see how thine eye would emulate the diamond; thou hast the right arched beauty of the brow that becomes the ship-tire, the tire-valiant, or any tire of Venetian admittance. MRS. FORD. A plain kerchief, Sir John; my brows become nothing else; nor that well neither. FALSTAFF. By the Lord, thou art a traitor to say so: thou wouldst make an absolute courtier; and the firm fixture of thy foot would give an excellent motion to thy gait in a semi-circled farthingale. I see what thou wert, if Fortune thy foe were not, Nature thy friend. Come, thou canst not hide it. MRS. FORD. Believe me, there's no such thing in me. FALSTAFF. What made me love thee? Let that persuade thee there's something extraordinary in thee. Come, I cannot cog and say thou art this and that, like a many of these lisping hawthorn-buds that come like women in men's apparel, and smell like Bucklersbury in simple-time; I cannot; but I love thee, none but thee; and thou deservest it. MRS. FORD. Do not betray me, sir; I fear you love Mistress Page. FALSTAFF. Thou mightst as well say I love to walk by the Counter-gate, which is as hateful to me as the reek of a lime-kiln. MRS. FORD. Well, heaven knows how I love you; and you shall one day find it. FALSTAFF. Keep in that mind; I'll deserve it. MRS. FORD. Nay, I must tell you, so you do; or else I could not be in that mind. ROBIN. [Within] Mistress Ford! Mistress Ford! here's Mistress Page at the door, sweating and blowing and looking wildly, and would needs speak with you presently. FALSTAFF. She shall not see me; I will ensconce me behind the arras. MRS. FORD. Pray you, do so; she's a very tattling woman. [FALSTAFF hides himself.] [Re-enter MISTRESS PAGE and ROBIN.] What's the matter? How now! MRS. PAGE. O Mistress Ford, what have you done? You're shamed, you are overthrown, you are undone for ever! MRS. FORD. What's the matter, good Mistress Page? MRS. PAGE. O well-a-day, Mistress Ford! having an honest man to your husband, to give him such cause of suspicion! MRS. FORD. What cause of suspicion? MRS. PAGE. What cause of suspicion? Out upon you! how am I mistook in you! MRS. FORD. Why, alas, what's the matter? MRS. PAGE. Your husband's coming hither, woman, with all the officers in Windsor, to search for a gentleman that he says is here now in the house, by your consent, to take an ill advantage of his absence: you are undone. MRS. FORD. [Aside.] Speak louder.-- 'Tis not so, I hope. MRS. PAGE. Pray heaven it be not so that you have such a man here! but 'tis most certain your husband's coming, with half Windsor at his heels, to search for such a one. I come before to tell you. If you know yourself clear, why, I am glad of it; but if you have a friend here, convey, convey him out. Be not amazed; call all your senses to you; defend your reputation, or bid farewell to your good life for ever. MRS. FORD. What shall I do?--There is a gentleman, my dear friend; and I fear not mine own shame as much as his peril: I had rather than a thousand pound he were out of the house. MRS. PAGE. For shame! never stand 'you had rather' and 'you had rather': your husband's here at hand; bethink you of some conveyance; in the house you cannot hide him. O, how have you deceived me! Look, here is a basket; if he be of any reasonable stature, he may creep in here; and throw foul linen upon him, as if it were going to bucking: or--it is whiting-time--send him by your two men to Datchet-Mead. MRS. FORD. He's too big to go in there. What shall I do? FALSTAFF. [Coming forward] Let me see 't, let me see 't. O, let me see 't! I'll in, I'll in; follow your friend's counsel; I'll in. MRS. PAGE. What, Sir John Falstaff! Are these your letters, knight? FALSTAFF. I love thee and none but thee; help me away: let me creep in here. I'll never-- [He gets into the basket; they cover him with foul linen.] MRS. PAGE. Help to cover your master, boy. Call your men, Mistress Ford. You dissembling knight! MRS. FORD. What, John! Robert! John! [Exit ROBIN.] [Re-enter SERVANTS.] Go, take up these clothes here, quickly; where's the cowl-staff? Look how you drumble! Carry them to the laundress in Datchet-Mead; quickly, come. [Enter FORD, PAGE, CAIUS, and SIR HUGH EVANS.] FORD. Pray you come near. If I suspect without cause, why then make sport at me, then let me be your jest; I deserve it. How now, whither bear you this? SERVANT. To the laundress, forsooth. MRS. FORD. Why, what have you to do whither they bear it? You were best meddle with buck-washing. FORD. Buck! I would I could wash myself of the buck! Buck, buck, buck! ay, buck; I warrant you, buck; and of the season too, it shall appear. [Exeunt SERVANTS with the basket.] Gentlemen, I have dreamed to-night; I'll tell you my dream. Here, here, here be my keys: ascend my chambers; search, seek, find out. I'll warrant we'll unkennel the fox. Let me stop this way first. [Locking the door.] So, now uncape. PAGE. Good Master Ford, be contented: you wrong yourself too much. FORD. True, Master Page. Up, gentlemen, you shall see sport anon; follow me, gentlemen. [Exit.] EVANS. This is fery fantastical humours and jealousies. CAIUS. By gar, 'tis no the fashion of France; it is not jealous in France. PAGE. Nay, follow him, gentlemen; see the issue of his search. [Exeunt EVANS, PAGE, and CAIUS.] MRS. PAGE. Is there not a double excellency in this? MRS. FORD. I know not which pleases me better, that my husband is deceived, or Sir John. MRS. PAGE. What a taking was he in when your husband asked who was in the basket! MRS. FORD. I am half afraid he will have need of washing; so throwing him into the water will do him a benefit. MRS. PAGE. Hang him, dishonest rascal! I would all of the same strain were in the same distress. MRS. FORD. I think my husband hath some special suspicion of Falstaff's being here, for I never saw him so gross in his jealousy till now. MRS. PAGE. I will lay a plot to try that, and we will yet have more tricks with Falstaff: his dissolute disease will scarce obey this medicine. MRS. FORD. Shall we send that foolish carrion, Mistress Quickly, to him, and excuse his throwing into the water, and give him another hope, to betray him to another punishment? MRS. PAGE. We will do it; let him be sent for to-morrow eight o'clock, to have amends. [Re-enter FORD, PAGE, CAIUS, and SIR HUGH EVANS.] FORD. I cannot find him: may be the knave bragged of that he could not compass. MRS. PAGE. [Aside to MRS. FORD.] Heard you that? MRS. FORD. [Aside to MRS. PAGE.] Ay, ay, peace.-- You use me well, Master Ford, do you? FORD. Ay, I do so. MRS. FORD. Heaven make you better than your thoughts! FORD. Amen! MRS. PAGE. You do yourself mighty wrong, Master Ford. FORD. Ay, ay; I must bear it. EVANS. If there be any pody in the house, and in the chambers, and in the coffers, and in the presses, heaven forgive my sins at the day of judgment! CAIUS. Be gar, nor I too; there is no bodies. PAGE. Fie, fie, Master Ford, are you not ashamed? What spirit, what devil suggests this imagination? I would not ha' your distemper in this kind for the wealth of Windsor Castle. FORD. 'Tis my fault, Master Page: I suffer for it. EVANS. You suffer for a pad conscience. Your wife is as honest a 'omans as I will desires among five thousand, and five hundred too. CAIUS. By gar, I see 'tis an honest woman. FORD. Well, I promised you a dinner. Come, come, walk in the Park: I pray you pardon me; I will hereafter make known to you why I have done this. Come, wife, come, Mistress Page; I pray you pardon me; pray heartily, pardon me. PAGE. Let's go in, gentlemen; but, trust me, we'll mock him. I do invite you to-morrow morning to my house to breakfast; after, we'll a-birding together; I have a fine hawk for the bush. Shall it be so? FORD. Any thing. EVANS. If there is one, I shall make two in the company. CAIUS. If there be one or two, I shall make-a the turd. FORD. Pray you go, Master Page. EVANS. I pray you now, remembrance to-morrow on the lousy knave, mine host. CAIUS. Dat is good; by gar, with all my heart. EVANS. A lousy knave! to have his gibes and his mockeries! [Exeunt.]

Evans wanders through the fields with Simple, looking for Caius but unable to find him, thanks to Simple's misdirection. He sends Simple off to find Caius and sits down to read his book of poems and be melancholy. Simple reappears and leads Evans towards Shallow, Slender, and Page. Shallow says that Caius is nearby, and Evans responds by insulting the doctor's knowledge. The Host enters with Caius, and Evans and Caius face off. Shallow and Page disarm the two men. Evans and Caius speak under their breath to each other of their suspicions that the others led them on to fight in order to make fun of them. They agree the Host has plotted against them. Then the Host speaks, claiming that he doesn't want to lose his doctor or his clergyman, so he urges them to make peace. The spectators exit, leaving Caius and Evans alone to plot revenge against the Host. Ford meets Mistress Page in the street, accompanied by Falstaff's boy-servant. She says that she is on her way to see Mistress Ford, and she departs. Ford comments that Page is a fool to think that his wife is honest, since she's now on her way to his wife's house with a messenger from Falstaff! Meanwhile, the clock strikes ten, and Ford prepares to trap Falstaff. Page, Shallow, Slender, the Host, Evans, and Caius enter. Ford invites them all to come to his house. The group has been discussing a match between Slender and Anne Page; Page tells Slender that he supports him, but his wife supports Caius. The Host asks about Fenton, of whom Page doesn't approve as a husband for Anne. Ford invites them again to dine at his house, and Caius, Evans, and Page join him. Mistresses Ford and Page prepare for Falstaff's arrival. They order two of Ford's servants to be ready with a large laundry basket, which they will carry to the Thames and throw in the water. Falstaff's boy-servant announces his arrival, and Mistress Page hides. Falstaff enters. He tells Mistress Ford that he wishes her husband were dead so he could marry her and make her a lady. She says that she would make a plain lady, but he compliments her. He says that he doesn't have the skill with words that young wooers do, but he declares his love. A servant announces Mistress Page at the door. Falstaff hides, and Mistress Page rushes in with news that her husband is coming with officers of Windsor to search for a gentleman Page believes is in his house, at Mistress Ford's invitation. Mistress Ford says that no gentleman is present. Mistress Page says she'd be in trouble if there were! So Mistress Ford admits that a man is in her house, and that she must find a way to hide him quickly. Mistress Page suggests they hide him in the laundry basket and have servants carry the basket out. Falstaff emerges and says he'll consent to be smuggled out. Mistress Page pretends to be surprised to see him, and she asks him if he wrote love letters to her recently. He whispers that he loves her, then climbs into the basket. Mistresses Ford and Page hide him by piling dirty clothes on top, and they order two servants to carry the basket away. They are poised to leave when Ford, Page, Caius, and Evans enter. Ford enters, intending to catch Falstaff. The servants depart with the basket. He and the other men look around the house but don't find anyone. Mistress Ford and Page find that they don't know whom they enjoy fooling more, Falstaff or Ford. The Mistresses agree that Ford seemed sure that Falstaff would be there, and his jealousy is especially horrible. They plan to play more tricks on Falstaff to draw out the root of Ford's jealous behavior. The men return from their searching. Mistress Page says that Ford wrongs Mistress Ford to distrust her. Evans and Caius agree that Mistress Ford seems to be honest. Page suggests that the men go hunting together the next day, and Caius and Evans reaffirm their plot against the Host.

"He had catched a great cold, had he had no other clothes to wear than the skin of a bear not yet killed."--FULLER. Young Ladislaw did not pay that visit to which Mr. Brooke had invited him, and only six days afterwards Mr. Casaubon mentioned that his young relative had started for the Continent, seeming by this cold vagueness to waive inquiry. Indeed, Will had declined to fix on any more precise destination than the entire area of Europe. Genius, he held, is necessarily intolerant of fetters: on the one hand it must have the utmost play for its spontaneity; on the other, it may confidently await those messages from the universe which summon it to its peculiar work, only placing itself in an attitude of receptivity towards all sublime chances. The attitudes of receptivity are various, and Will had sincerely tried many of them. He was not excessively fond of wine, but he had several times taken too much, simply as an experiment in that form of ecstasy; he had fasted till he was faint, and then supped on lobster; he had made himself ill with doses of opium. Nothing greatly original had resulted from these measures; and the effects of the opium had convinced him that there was an entire dissimilarity between his constitution and De Quincey's. The superadded circumstance which would evolve the genius had not yet come; the universe had not yet beckoned. Even Caesar's fortune at one time was, but a grand presentiment. We know what a masquerade all development is, and what effective shapes may be disguised in helpless embryos.--In fact, the world is full of hopeful analogies and handsome dubious eggs called possibilities. Will saw clearly enough the pitiable instances of long incubation producing no chick, and but for gratitude would have laughed at Casaubon, whose plodding application, rows of note-books, and small taper of learned theory exploring the tossed ruins of the world, seemed to enforce a moral entirely encouraging to Will's generous reliance on the intentions of the universe with regard to himself. He held that reliance to be a mark of genius; and certainly it is no mark to the contrary; genius consisting neither in self-conceit nor in humility, but in a power to make or do, not anything in general, but something in particular. Let him start for the Continent, then, without our pronouncing on his future. Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous. But at present this caution against a too hasty judgment interests me more in relation to Mr. Casaubon than to his young cousin. If to Dorothea Mr. Casaubon had been the mere occasion which had set alight the fine inflammable material of her youthful illusions, does it follow that he was fairly represented in the minds of those less impassioned personages who have hitherto delivered their judgments concerning him? I protest against any absolute conclusion, any prejudice derived from Mrs. Cadwallader's contempt for a neighboring clergyman's alleged greatness of soul, or Sir James Chettam's poor opinion of his rival's legs,--from Mr. Brooke's failure to elicit a companion's ideas, or from Celia's criticism of a middle-aged scholar's personal appearance. I am not sure that the greatest man of his age, if ever that solitary superlative existed, could escape these unfavorable reflections of himself in various small mirrors; and even Milton, looking for his portrait in a spoon, must submit to have the facial angle of a bumpkin. Moreover, if Mr. Casaubon, speaking for himself, has rather a chilling rhetoric, it is not therefore certain that there is no good work or fine feeling in him. Did not an immortal physicist and interpreter of hieroglyphs write detestable verses? Has the theory of the solar system been advanced by graceful manners and conversational tact? Suppose we turn from outside estimates of a man, to wonder, with keener interest, what is the report of his own consciousness about his doings or capacity: with what hindrances he is carrying on his daily labors; what fading of hopes, or what deeper fixity of self-delusion the years are marking off within him; and with what spirit he wrestles against universal pressure, which will one day be too heavy for him, and bring his heart to its final pause. Doubtless his lot is important in his own eyes; and the chief reason that we think he asks too large a place in our consideration must be our want of room for him, since we refer him to the Divine regard with perfect confidence; nay, it is even held sublime for our neighbor to expect the utmost there, however little he may have got from us. Mr. Casaubon, too, was the centre of his own world; if he was liable to think that others were providentially made for him, and especially to consider them in the light of their fitness for the author of a "Key to all Mythologies," this trait is not quite alien to us, and, like the other mendicant hopes of mortals, claims some of our pity. Certainly this affair of his marriage with Miss Brooke touched him more nearly than it did any one of the persons who have hitherto shown their disapproval of it, and in the present stage of things I feel more tenderly towards his experience of success than towards the disappointment of the amiable Sir James. For in truth, as the day fixed for his marriage came nearer, Mr. Casaubon did not find his spirits rising; nor did the contemplation of that matrimonial garden scene, where, as all experience showed, the path was to be bordered with flowers, prove persistently more enchanting to him than the accustomed vaults where he walked taper in hand. He did not confess to himself, still less could he have breathed to another, his surprise that though he had won a lovely and noble-hearted girl he had not won delight,--which he had also regarded as an object to be found by search. It is true that he knew all the classical passages implying the contrary; but knowing classical passages, we find, is a mode of motion, which explains why they leave so little extra force for their personal application. Poor Mr. Casaubon had imagined that his long studious bachelorhood had stored up for him a compound interest of enjoyment, and that large drafts on his affections would not fail to be honored; for we all of us, grave or light, get our thoughts entangled in metaphors, and act fatally on the strength of them. And now he was in danger of being saddened by the very conviction that his circumstances were unusually happy: there was nothing external by which he could account for a certain blankness of sensibility which came over him just when his expectant gladness should have been most lively, just when he exchanged the accustomed dulness of his Lowick library for his visits to the Grange. Here was a weary experience in which he was as utterly condemned to loneliness as in the despair which sometimes threatened him while toiling in the morass of authorship without seeming nearer to the goal. And his was that worst loneliness which would shrink from sympathy. He could not but wish that Dorothea should think him not less happy than the world would expect her successful suitor to be; and in relation to his authorship he leaned on her young trust and veneration, he liked to draw forth her fresh interest in listening, as a means of encouragement to himself: in talking to her he presented all his performance and intention with the reflected confidence of the pedagogue, and rid himself for the time of that chilling ideal audience which crowded his laborious uncreative hours with the vaporous pressure of Tartarean shades. For to Dorothea, after that toy-box history of the world adapted to young ladies which had made the chief part of her education, Mr. Casaubon's talk about his great book was full of new vistas; and this sense of revelation, this surprise of a nearer introduction to Stoics and Alexandrians, as people who had ideas not totally unlike her own, kept in abeyance for the time her usual eagerness for a binding theory which could bring her own life and doctrine into strict connection with that amazing past, and give the remotest sources of knowledge some bearing on her actions. That more complete teaching would come--Mr. Casaubon would tell her all that: she was looking forward to higher initiation in ideas, as she was looking forward to marriage, and blending her dim conceptions of both. It would be a great mistake to suppose that Dorothea would have cared about any share in Mr. Casaubon's learning as mere accomplishment; for though opinion in the neighborhood of Freshitt and Tipton had pronounced her clever, that epithet would not have described her to circles in whose more precise vocabulary cleverness implies mere aptitude for knowing and doing, apart from character. All her eagerness for acquirement lay within that full current of sympathetic motive in which her ideas and impulses were habitually swept along. She did not want to deck herself with knowledge--to wear it loose from the nerves and blood that fed her action; and if she had written a book she must have done it as Saint Theresa did, under the command of an authority that constrained her conscience. But something she yearned for by which her life might be filled with action at once rational and ardent; and since the time was gone by for guiding visions and spiritual directors, since prayer heightened yearning but not instruction, what lamp was there but knowledge? Surely learned men kept the only oil; and who more learned than Mr. Casaubon? Thus in these brief weeks Dorothea's joyous grateful expectation was unbroken, and however her lover might occasionally be conscious of flatness, he could never refer it to any slackening of her affectionate interest. The season was mild enough to encourage the project of extending the wedding journey as far as Rome, and Mr. Casaubon was anxious for this because he wished to inspect some manuscripts in the Vatican. "I still regret that your sister is not to accompany us," he said one morning, some time after it had been ascertained that Celia objected to go, and that Dorothea did not wish for her companionship. "You will have many lonely hours, Dorothea, for I shall be constrained to make the utmost use of my time during our stay in Rome, and I should feel more at liberty if you had a companion." The words "I should feel more at liberty" grated on Dorothea. For the first time in speaking to Mr. Casaubon she colored from annoyance. "You must have misunderstood me very much," she said, "if you think I should not enter into the value of your time--if you think that I should not willingly give up whatever interfered with your using it to the best purpose." "That is very amiable in you, my dear Dorothea," said Mr. Casaubon, not in the least noticing that she was hurt; "but if you had a lady as your companion, I could put you both under the care of a cicerone, and we could thus achieve two purposes in the same space of time." "I beg you will not refer to this again," said Dorothea, rather haughtily. But immediately she feared that she was wrong, and turning towards him she laid her hand on his, adding in a different tone, "Pray do not be anxious about me. I shall have so much to think of when I am alone. And Tantripp will be a sufficient companion, just to take care of me. I could not bear to have Celia: she would be miserable." It was time to dress. There was to be a dinner-party that day, the last of the parties which were held at the Grange as proper preliminaries to the wedding, and Dorothea was glad of a reason for moving away at once on the sound of the bell, as if she needed more than her usual amount of preparation. She was ashamed of being irritated from some cause she could not define even to herself; for though she had no intention to be untruthful, her reply had not touched the real hurt within her. Mr. Casaubon's words had been quite reasonable, yet they had brought a vague instantaneous sense of aloofness on his part. "Surely I am in a strangely selfish weak state of mind," she said to herself. "How can I have a husband who is so much above me without knowing that he needs me less than I need him?" Having convinced herself that Mr. Casaubon was altogether right, she recovered her equanimity, and was an agreeable image of serene dignity when she came into the drawing-room in her silver-gray dress--the simple lines of her dark-brown hair parted over her brow and coiled massively behind, in keeping with the entire absence from her manner and expression of all search after mere effect. Sometimes when Dorothea was in company, there seemed to be as complete an air of repose about her as if she had been a picture of Santa Barbara looking out from her tower into the clear air; but these intervals of quietude made the energy of her speech and emotion the more remarked when some outward appeal had touched her. She was naturally the subject of many observations this evening, for the dinner-party was large and rather more miscellaneous as to the male portion than any which had been held at the Grange since Mr. Brooke's nieces had resided with him, so that the talking was done in duos and trios more or less inharmonious. There was the newly elected mayor of Middlemarch, who happened to be a manufacturer; the philanthropic banker his brother-in-law, who predominated so much in the town that some called him a Methodist, others a hypocrite, according to the resources of their vocabulary; and there were various professional men. In fact, Mrs. Cadwallader said that Brooke was beginning to treat the Middlemarchers, and that she preferred the farmers at the tithe-dinner, who drank her health unpretentiously, and were not ashamed of their grandfathers' furniture. For in that part of the country, before reform had done its notable part in developing the political consciousness, there was a clearer distinction of ranks and a dimmer distinction of parties; so that Mr. Brooke's miscellaneous invitations seemed to belong to that general laxity which came from his inordinate travel and habit of taking too much in the form of ideas. Already, as Miss Brooke passed out of the dining-room, opportunity was found for some interjectional "asides." "A fine woman, Miss Brooke! an uncommonly fine woman, by God!" said Mr. Standish, the old lawyer, who had been so long concerned with the landed gentry that he had become landed himself, and used that oath in a deep-mouthed manner as a sort of armorial bearings, stamping the speech of a man who held a good position. Mr. Bulstrode, the banker, seemed to be addressed, but that gentleman disliked coarseness and profanity, and merely bowed. The remark was taken up by Mr. Chichely, a middle-aged bachelor and coursing celebrity, who had a complexion something like an Easter egg, a few hairs carefully arranged, and a carriage implying the consciousness of a distinguished appearance. "Yes, but not my style of woman: I like a woman who lays herself out a little more to please us. There should be a little filigree about a woman--something of the coquette. A man likes a sort of challenge. The more of a dead set she makes at you the better." "There's some truth in that," said Mr. Standish, disposed to be genial. "And, by God, it's usually the way with them. I suppose it answers some wise ends: Providence made them so, eh, Bulstrode?" "I should be disposed to refer coquetry to another source," said Mr. Bulstrode. "I should rather refer it to the devil." "Ay, to be sure, there should be a little devil in a woman," said Mr. Chichely, whose study of the fair sex seemed to have been detrimental to his theology. "And I like them blond, with a certain gait, and a swan neck. Between ourselves, the mayor's daughter is more to my taste than Miss Brooke or Miss Celia either. If I were a marrying man I should choose Miss Vincy before either of them." "Well, make up, make up," said Mr. Standish, jocosely; "you see the middle-aged fellows early the day." Mr. Chichely shook his head with much meaning: he was not going to incur the certainty of being accepted by the woman he would choose. The Miss Vincy who had the honor of being Mr. Chichely's ideal was of course not present; for Mr. Brooke, always objecting to go too far, would not have chosen that his nieces should meet the daughter of a Middlemarch manufacturer, unless it were on a public occasion. The feminine part of the company included none whom Lady Chettam or Mrs. Cadwallader could object to; for Mrs. Renfrew, the colonel's widow, was not only unexceptionable in point of breeding, but also interesting on the ground of her complaint, which puzzled the doctors, and seemed clearly a case wherein the fulness of professional knowledge might need the supplement of quackery. Lady Chettam, who attributed her own remarkable health to home-made bitters united with constant medical attendance, entered with much exercise of the imagination into Mrs. Renfrew's account of symptoms, and into the amazing futility in her case of all strengthening medicines. "Where can all the strength of those medicines go, my dear?" said the mild but stately dowager, turning to Mrs. Cadwallader reflectively, when Mrs. Renfrew's attention was called away. "It strengthens the disease," said the Rector's wife, much too well-born not to be an amateur in medicine. "Everything depends on the constitution: some people make fat, some blood, and some bile--that's my view of the matter; and whatever they take is a sort of grist to the mill." "Then she ought to take medicines that would reduce--reduce the disease, you know, if you are right, my dear. And I think what you say is reasonable." "Certainly it is reasonable. You have two sorts of potatoes, fed on the same soil. One of them grows more and more watery--" "Ah! like this poor Mrs. Renfrew--that is what I think. Dropsy! There is no swelling yet--it is inward. I should say she ought to take drying medicines, shouldn't you?--or a dry hot-air bath. Many things might be tried, of a drying nature." "Let her try a certain person's pamphlets," said Mrs. Cadwallader in an undertone, seeing the gentlemen enter. "He does not want drying." "Who, my dear?" said Lady Chettam, a charming woman, not so quick as to nullify the pleasure of explanation. "The bridegroom--Casaubon. He has certainly been drying up faster since the engagement: the flame of passion, I suppose." "I should think he is far from having a good constitution," said Lady Chettam, with a still deeper undertone. "And then his studies--so very dry, as you say." "Really, by the side of Sir James, he looks like a death's head skinned over for the occasion. Mark my words: in a year from this time that girl will hate him. She looks up to him as an oracle now, and by-and-by she will be at the other extreme. All flightiness!" "How very shocking! I fear she is headstrong. But tell me--you know all about him--is there anything very bad? What is the truth?" "The truth? he is as bad as the wrong physic--nasty to take, and sure to disagree." "There could not be anything worse than that," said Lady Chettam, with so vivid a conception of the physic that she seemed to have learned something exact about Mr. Casaubon's disadvantages. "However, James will hear nothing against Miss Brooke. He says she is the mirror of women still." "That is a generous make-believe of his. Depend upon it, he likes little Celia better, and she appreciates him. I hope you like my little Celia?" "Certainly; she is fonder of geraniums, and seems more docile, though not so fine a figure. But we were talking of physic. Tell me about this new young surgeon, Mr. Lydgate. I am told he is wonderfully clever: he certainly looks it--a fine brow indeed." "He is a gentleman. I heard him talking to Humphrey. He talks well." "Yes. Mr. Brooke says he is one of the Lydgates of Northumberland, really well connected. One does not expect it in a practitioner of that kind. For my own part, I like a medical man more on a footing with the servants; they are often all the cleverer. I assure you I found poor Hicks's judgment unfailing; I never knew him wrong. He was coarse and butcher-like, but he knew my constitution. It was a loss to me his going off so suddenly. Dear me, what a very animated conversation Miss Brooke seems to be having with this Mr. Lydgate!" "She is talking cottages and hospitals with him," said Mrs. Cadwallader, whose ears and power of interpretation were quick. "I believe he is a sort of philanthropist, so Brooke is sure to take him up." "James," said Lady Chettam when her son came near, "bring Mr. Lydgate and introduce him to me. I want to test him." The affable dowager declared herself delighted with this opportunity of making Mr. Lydgate's acquaintance, having heard of his success in treating fever on a new plan. Mr. Lydgate had the medical accomplishment of looking perfectly grave whatever nonsense was talked to him, and his dark steady eyes gave him impressiveness as a listener. He was as little as possible like the lamented Hicks, especially in a certain careless refinement about his toilet and utterance. Yet Lady Chettam gathered much confidence in him. He confirmed her view of her own constitution as being peculiar, by admitting that all constitutions might be called peculiar, and he did not deny that hers might be more peculiar than others. He did not approve of a too lowering system, including reckless cupping, nor, on the other hand, of incessant port wine and bark. He said "I think so" with an air of so much deference accompanying the insight of agreement, that she formed the most cordial opinion of his talents. "I am quite pleased with your protege," she said to Mr. Brooke before going away. "My protege?--dear me!--who is that?" said Mr. Brooke. "This young Lydgate, the new doctor. He seems to me to understand his profession admirably." "Oh, Lydgate! he is not my protege, you know; only I knew an uncle of his who sent me a letter about him. However, I think he is likely to be first-rate--has studied in Paris, knew Broussais; has ideas, you know--wants to raise the profession." "Lydgate has lots of ideas, quite new, about ventilation and diet, that sort of thing," resumed Mr. Brooke, after he had handed out Lady Chettam, and had returned to be civil to a group of Middlemarchers. "Hang it, do you think that is quite sound?--upsetting The old treatment, which has made Englishmen what they are?" said Mr. Standish. "Medical knowledge is at a low ebb among us," said Mr. Bulstrode, who spoke in a subdued tone, and had rather a sickly air. "I, for my part, hail the advent of Mr. Lydgate. I hope to find good reason for confiding the new hospital to his management." "That is all very fine," replied Mr. Standish, who was not fond of Mr. Bulstrode; "if you like him to try experiments on your hospital patients, and kill a few people for charity I have no objection. But I am not going to hand money out of my purse to have experiments tried on me. I like treatment that has been tested a little." "Well, you know, Standish, every dose you take is an experiment-an experiment, you know," said Mr. Brooke, nodding towards the lawyer. "Oh, if you talk in that sense!" said Mr. Standish, with as much disgust at such non-legal quibbling as a man can well betray towards a valuable client. "I should be glad of any treatment that would cure me without reducing me to a skeleton, like poor Grainger," said Mr. Vincy, the mayor, a florid man, who would have served for a study of flesh in striking contrast with the Franciscan tints of Mr. Bulstrode. "It's an uncommonly dangerous thing to be left without any padding against the shafts of disease, as somebody said,--and I think it a very good expression myself." Mr. Lydgate, of course, was out of hearing. He had quitted the party early, and would have thought it altogether tedious but for the novelty of certain introductions, especially the introduction to Miss Brooke, whose youthful bloom, with her approaching marriage to that faded scholar, and her interest in matters socially useful, gave her the piquancy of an unusual combination. "She is a good creature--that fine girl--but a little too earnest," he thought. "It is troublesome to talk to such women. They are always wanting reasons, yet they are too ignorant to understand the merits of any question, and usually fall back on their moral sense to settle things after their own taste." Evidently Miss Brooke was not Mr. Lydgate's style of woman any more than Mr. Chichely's. Considered, indeed, in relation to the latter, whose mind was matured, she was altogether a mistake, and calculated to shock his trust in final causes, including the adaptation of fine young women to purplefaced bachelors. But Lydgate was less ripe, and might possibly have experience before him which would modify his opinion as to the most excellent things in woman. Miss Brooke, however, was not again seen by either of these gentlemen under her maiden name. Not long after that dinner-party she had become Mrs. Casaubon, and was on her way to Rome.

Will departs for Europe. The author describes him as a believer in spontaneity and "receptivity towards all sublime chances." He is not an addict, yet he has experimented with alcohol, opium, and fasting, in the search for knowledge. Long having been resigned to loveliness, Casaubon now expects a joyful married life with his beautiful thoughtful and respectful wife-to-be. Yet, as the wedding draws closer, he is surprised to find he is not as delighted as he ought to be. He fights the feeling, but to all her affection and enthusiasm can help him. Their discussion of their "wedding journey" ends in anger and hurt. Casaubon is anxious that Celia should accompany Dorothea when they visit Rome. He feels he should feel more at liberty if she had a companion while he proceeded with his research at the Vatican. Dorothea is outraged not because her husband plans to abandon her on her honeymoon - but because he believes her capable of selfish interference in his work! He cannot understand her hurt, and the matter remains unresolved. Later, Dorothea repents and believes she has been petty. Soon after a large dinner party is held at Tipton Grange to celebrate the approaching marriage. Reflecting Mr. Brookes liberal views and associations the guest lest crosses the class boundaries of Middlemarch. The "Middlemarchers" or townsfolk are present, along with the landed gentry - the flashy mayor Vincy, his pious banker brother-in-law Bulstrode; an old lawyer, Standish; the new physician, Lydgate; and a couple of professional men. The ladies are all of the gentry, as Mr. Brooke would not care to introduce his nieces to the female relatives of manufacturers! Mrs. Cadwallader and Sir James Chettams mother discuss their illness. They talk favorably of the new doctor, Lydgate. Their approval is obviously linked with his being "well connected" "a sort of philanthropist," and tactful in conversation with them. Both Brooke and Bulstrode have expressed support to his new methods. Lydgate, unaware of being discussed, is talking to Dorothea. He is mildly interested by the contrast between her fresh beauty and "that faded scholar" Casaubon. Still, Lydgate dismisses her as "a good creature ... but a little too earnest. " The ladies leave the men to their drinks and the talk of the later becomes more relaxed. A lawyer and a hunting enthusiast discuss Miss. Brooke. Both think her to be an uncommonly fine woman," but not to their taste. They prefer women to be more "coquettish" and try to please them. Both express admiration for Miss Vincy, the mayors lovely daughter. She is the town beauty.

I came to myself in darkness, in great pain, bound hand and foot, and deafened by many unfamiliar noises. There sounded in my ears a roaring of water as of a huge mill-dam, the thrashing of heavy sprays, the thundering of the sails, and the shrill cries of seamen. The whole world now heaved giddily up, and now rushed giddily downward; and so sick and hurt was I in body, and my mind so much confounded, that it took me a long while, chasing my thoughts up and down, and ever stunned again by a fresh stab of pain, to realise that I must be lying somewhere bound in the belly of that unlucky ship, and that the wind must have strengthened to a gale. With the clear perception of my plight, there fell upon me a blackness of despair, a horror of remorse at my own folly, and a passion of anger at my uncle, that once more bereft me of my senses. When I returned again to life, the same uproar, the same confused and violent movements, shook and deafened me; and presently, to my other pains and distresses, there was added the sickness of an unused landsman on the sea. In that time of my adventurous youth, I suffered many hardships; but none that was so crushing to my mind and body, or lit by so few hopes, as these first hours aboard the brig. I heard a gun fire, and supposed the storm had proved too strong for us, and we were firing signals of distress. The thought of deliverance, even by death in the deep sea, was welcome to me. Yet it was no such matter; but (as I was afterwards told) a common habit of the captain's, which I here set down to show that even the worst man may have his kindlier side. We were then passing, it appeared, within some miles of Dysart, where the brig was built, and where old Mrs. Hoseason, the captain's mother, had come some years before to live; and whether outward or inward bound, the Covenant was never suffered to go by that place by day, without a gun fired and colours shown. I had no measure of time; day and night were alike in that ill-smelling cavern of the ship's bowels where I lay; and the misery of my situation drew out the hours to double. How long, therefore, I lay waiting to hear the ship split upon some rock, or to feel her reel head foremost into the depths of the sea, I have not the means of computation. But sleep at length stole from me the consciousness of sorrow. I was awakened by the light of a hand-lantern shining in my face. A small man of about thirty, with green eyes and a tangle of fair hair, stood looking down at me. "Well," said he, "how goes it?" I answered by a sob; and my visitor then felt my pulse and temples, and set himself to wash and dress the wound upon my scalp. "Ay," said he, "a sore dunt*. What, man? Cheer up! The world's no done; you've made a bad start of it but you'll make a better. Have you had any meat?" * Stroke. I said I could not look at it: and thereupon he gave me some brandy and water in a tin pannikin, and left me once more to myself. The next time he came to see me, I was lying betwixt sleep and waking, my eyes wide open in the darkness, the sickness quite departed, but succeeded by a horrid giddiness and swimming that was almost worse to bear. I ached, besides, in every limb, and the cords that bound me seemed to be of fire. The smell of the hole in which I lay seemed to have become a part of me; and during the long interval since his last visit I had suffered tortures of fear, now from the scurrying of the ship's rats, that sometimes pattered on my very face, and now from the dismal imaginings that haunt the bed of fever. The glimmer of the lantern, as a trap opened, shone in like the heaven's sunlight; and though it only showed me the strong, dark beams of the ship that was my prison, I could have cried aloud for gladness. The man with the green eyes was the first to descend the ladder, and I noticed that he came somewhat unsteadily. He was followed by the captain. Neither said a word; but the first set to and examined me, and dressed my wound as before, while Hoseason looked me in my face with an odd, black look. "Now, sir, you see for yourself," said the first: "a high fever, no appetite, no light, no meat: you see for yourself what that means." "I am no conjurer, Mr. Riach," said the captain. "Give me leave, sir," said Riach; "you've a good head upon your shoulders, and a good Scotch tongue to ask with; but I will leave you no manner of excuse; I want that boy taken out of this hole and put in the forecastle." "What ye may want, sir, is a matter of concern to nobody but yoursel'," returned the captain; "but I can tell ye that which is to be. Here he is; here he shall bide." "Admitting that you have been paid in a proportion," said the other, "I will crave leave humbly to say that I have not. Paid I am, and none too much, to be the second officer of this old tub, and you ken very well if I do my best to earn it. But I was paid for nothing more." "If ye could hold back your hand from the tin-pan, Mr. Riach, I would have no complaint to make of ye," returned the skipper; "and instead of asking riddles, I make bold to say that ye would keep your breath to cool your porridge. We'll be required on deck," he added, in a sharper note, and set one foot upon the ladder. But Mr. Riach caught him by the sleeve. "Admitting that you have been paid to do a murder----" he began. Hoseason turned upon him with a flash. "What's that?" he cried. "What kind of talk is that?" "It seems it is the talk that you can understand," said Mr. Riach, looking him steadily in the face. "Mr. Riach, I have sailed with ye three cruises," replied the captain. "In all that time, sir, ye should have learned to know me: I'm a stiff man, and a dour man; but for what ye say the now--fie, fie!--it comes from a bad heart and a black conscience. If ye say the lad will die----" "Ay, will he!" said Mr. Riach. "Well, sir, is not that enough?" said Hoseason. "Flit him where ye please!" Thereupon the captain ascended the ladder; and I, who had lain silent throughout this strange conversation, beheld Mr. Riach turn after him and bow as low as to his knees in what was plainly a spirit of derision. Even in my then state of sickness, I perceived two things: that the mate was touched with liquor, as the captain hinted, and that (drunk or sober) he was like to prove a valuable friend. Five minutes afterwards my bonds were cut, I was hoisted on a man's back, carried up to the forecastle, and laid in a bunk on some sea-blankets; where the first thing that I did was to lose my senses. It was a blessed thing indeed to open my eyes again upon the daylight, and to find myself in the society of men. The forecastle was a roomy place enough, set all about with berths, in which the men of the watch below were seated smoking, or lying down asleep. The day being calm and the wind fair, the scuttle was open, and not only the good daylight, but from time to time (as the ship rolled) a dusty beam of sunlight shone in, and dazzled and delighted me. I had no sooner moved, moreover, than one of the men brought me a drink of something healing which Mr. Riach had prepared, and bade me lie still and I should soon be well again. There were no bones broken, he explained: "A clour* on the head was naething. Man," said he, "it was me that gave it ye!" * Blow. Here I lay for the space of many days a close prisoner, and not only got my health again, but came to know my companions. They were a rough lot indeed, as sailors mostly are: being men rooted out of all the kindly parts of life, and condemned to toss together on the rough seas, with masters no less cruel. There were some among them that had sailed with the pirates and seen things it would be a shame even to speak of; some were men that had run from the king's ships, and went with a halter round their necks, of which they made no secret; and all, as the saying goes, were "at a word and a blow" with their best friends. Yet I had not been many days shut up with them before I began to be ashamed of my first judgment, when I had drawn away from them at the Ferry pier, as though they had been unclean beasts. No class of man is altogether bad, but each has its own faults and virtues; and these shipmates of mine were no exception to the rule. Rough they were, sure enough; and bad, I suppose; but they had many virtues. They were kind when it occurred to them, simple even beyond the simplicity of a country lad like me, and had some glimmerings of honesty. There was one man, of maybe forty, that would sit on my berthside for hours and tell me of his wife and child. He was a fisher that had lost his boat, and thus been driven to the deep-sea voyaging. Well, it is years ago now: but I have never forgotten him. His wife (who was "young by him," as he often told me) waited in vain to see her man return; he would never again make the fire for her in the morning, nor yet keep the bairn when she was sick. Indeed, many of these poor fellows (as the event proved) were upon their last cruise; the deep seas and cannibal fish received them; and it is a thankless business to speak ill of the dead. Among other good deeds that they did, they returned my money, which had been shared among them; and though it was about a third short, I was very glad to get it, and hoped great good from it in the land I was going to. The ship was bound for the Carolinas; and you must not suppose that I was going to that place merely as an exile. The trade was even then much depressed; since that, and with the rebellion of the colonies and the formation of the United States, it has, of course, come to an end; but in those days of my youth, white men were still sold into slavery on the plantations, and that was the destiny to which my wicked uncle had condemned me. The cabin-boy Ransome (from whom I had first heard of these atrocities) came in at times from the round-house, where he berthed and served, now nursing a bruised limb in silent agony, now raving against the cruelty of Mr. Shuan. It made my heart bleed; but the men had a great respect for the chief mate, who was, as they said, "the only seaman of the whole jing-bang, and none such a bad man when he was sober." Indeed, I found there was a strange peculiarity about our two mates: that Mr. Riach was sullen, unkind, and harsh when he was sober, and Mr. Shuan would not hurt a fly except when he was drinking. I asked about the captain; but I was told drink made no difference upon that man of iron. I did my best in the small time allowed me to make some thing like a man, or rather I should say something like a boy, of the poor creature, Ransome. But his mind was scarce truly human. He could remember nothing of the time before he came to sea; only that his father had made clocks, and had a starling in the parlour, which could whistle "The North Countrie;" all else had been blotted out in these years of hardship and cruelties. He had a strange notion of the dry land, picked up from sailor's stories: that it was a place where lads were put to some kind of slavery called a trade, and where apprentices were continually lashed and clapped into foul prisons. In a town, he thought every second person a decoy, and every third house a place in which seamen would be drugged and murdered. To be sure, I would tell him how kindly I had myself been used upon that dry land he was so much afraid of, and how well fed and carefully taught both by my friends and my parents: and if he had been recently hurt, he would weep bitterly and swear to run away; but if he was in his usual crackbrain humour, or (still more) if he had had a glass of spirits in the roundhouse, he would deride the notion. It was Mr. Riach (Heaven forgive him!) who gave the boy drink; and it was, doubtless, kindly meant; but besides that it was ruin to his health, it was the pitifullest thing in life to see this unhappy, unfriended creature staggering, and dancing, and talking he knew not what. Some of the men laughed, but not all; others would grow as black as thunder (thinking, perhaps, of their own childhood or their own children) and bid him stop that nonsense, and think what he was doing. As for me, I felt ashamed to look at him, and the poor child still comes about me in my dreams. All this time, you should know, the Covenant was meeting continual head-winds and tumbling up and down against head-seas, so that the scuttle was almost constantly shut, and the forecastle lighted only by a swinging lantern on a beam. There was constant labour for all hands; the sails had to be made and shortened every hour; the strain told on the men's temper; there was a growl of quarrelling all day long from berth to berth; and as I was never allowed to set my foot on deck, you can picture to yourselves how weary of my life I grew to be, and how impatient for a change. And a change I was to get, as you shall hear; but I must first tell of a conversation I had with Mr. Riach, which put a little heart in me to bear my troubles. Getting him in a favourable stage of drink (for indeed he never looked near me when he was sober), I pledged him to secrecy, and told him my whole story. He declared it was like a ballad; that he would do his best to help me; that I should have paper, pen, and ink, and write one line to Mr. Campbell and another to Mr. Rankeillor; and that if I had told the truth, ten to one he would be able (with their help) to pull me through and set me in my rights. "And in the meantime," says he, "keep your heart up. You're not the only one, I'll tell you that. There's many a man hoeing tobacco over-seas that should be mounting his horse at his own door at home; many and many! And life is all a variorum, at the best. Look at me: I'm a laird's son and more than half a doctor, and here I am, man-Jack to Hoseason!" I thought it would be civil to ask him for his story. He whistled loud. "Never had one," said he. "I like fun, that's all." And he skipped out of the forecastle.

David regains consciousness and finds himself tied up in the dark underbelly of the Covenant. He is furious with his uncle and with his own folly, and is suffering from seasickness. Mr. Riach, the second officer, arrives, gives David a drink of brandy, and brings Hoseason to look at him. Riach tells Hoseason that David is very ill and must be moved into the more comfortable forecastle of the ship, but Hoseason refuses. Riach says that while Hoseason has been paid to do a murder, he himself has not. Hoseason rebukes Riach but concedes that he may do as he pleases. Riach has David moved to the forecastle, where the other sailors sleep. David chats to the sailors, and finds that while they are rough, some are occasionally kind. They return two-thirds of David's money, which had been shared out among them, presumably by Hoseason. David learns from them that the ship is bound for the Carolinas. There, David is to be sold into white slavery on the plantations, on Ebenezer's orders. David learns that Riach is harsh when sober, and Shuan when drunk. He finds that Ransome can barely remember anything of his life before he came to sea, as everything has been blotted out by years of brutal treatment. He has strange conceptions of life on land, believing that trade is slavery and that apprentices are whipped and imprisoned. Riach gives him alcohol, so the boy is often drunk, and his health has suffered. Riach takes pity on David and promises to get him a pen and paper so that he can write to Mr. Campbell and Rankeillor and alert them to his situation. Riach adds that David is not the only person he knows who has been sold into white slavery

"Brief, I pray you; for you see, 'tis a busy time with me." _Much Ado About Nothing._ The tribe, or rather half tribe, of Delawares, which has been so often mentioned, and whose present place of encampment was so nigh the temporary village of the Hurons, could assemble about an equal number of warriors with the latter people. Like their neighbors, they had followed Montcalm into the territories of the English crown, and were making heavy and serious inroads on the hunting-grounds of the Mohawks; though they had seen fit, with the mysterious reserve so common among the natives, to withhold their assistance at the moment when it was most required. The French had accounted for this unexpected defection on the part of their ally in various ways. It was the prevalent opinion, however, that they had been influenced by veneration for the ancient treaty, that had once made them dependent on the Six Nations for military protection, and now rendered them reluctant to encounter their former masters. As for the tribe itself, it had been content to announce to Montcalm, through his emissaries, with Indian brevity, that their hatchets were dull, and time was necessary to sharpen them. The politic captain of the Canadas had deemed it wiser to submit to entertain a passive friend, than by any acts of ill-judged severity to convert him into an open enemy. On that morning when Magua led his silent party from the settlement of the beavers into the forest, in the manner described, the sun rose upon the Delaware encampment as if it had suddenly burst upon a busy people, actively employed in all the customary avocations of high noon. The women ran from lodge to lodge, some engaged in preparing their morning's meal, a few earnestly bent on seeking the comforts necessary to their habits, but more pausing to exchange hasty and whispered sentences with their friends. The warriors were lounging in groups, musing more than they conversed; and when a few words were uttered, speaking like men who deeply weighed their opinions. The instruments of the chase were to be seen in abundance among the lodges; but none departed. Here and there a warrior was examining his arms, with an attention that is rarely bestowed on the implements, when no other enemy than the beasts of the forest is expected to be encountered. And, occasionally, the eyes of a whole group were turned simultaneously towards a large and silent lodge in the centre of the village, as if it contained the subject of their common thoughts. During the existence of this scene, a man suddenly appeared at the farthest extremity of a platform of rock which formed the level of the village. He was without arms, and his paint tended rather to soften than increase the natural sternness of his austere countenance. When in full view of the Delawares he stopped, and made a gesture of amity, by throwing his arm upward towards heaven, and then letting it fall impressively on his breast. The inhabitants of the village answered his salute by a low murmur of welcome, and encouraged him to advance by similar indications of friendship. Fortified by these assurances, the dark figure left the brow of the natural rocky terrace, where it had stood a moment, drawn in a strong outline against the blushing morning sky, and moved with dignity into the very centre of the huts. As he approached, nothing was audible but the rattling of the light silver ornaments that loaded his arms and neck, and the tinkling of the little bells that fringed his deer-skin moccasins. He made, as he advanced, many courteous signs of greeting to the men he passed, neglecting to notice the women, however, like one who deemed their favor, in the present enterprise, of no importance. When he had reached the group in which it was evident, by the haughtiness of their common mien, that the principal chiefs were collected, the stranger paused, and then the Delawares saw that the active and erect form that stood before them was that of the well-known Huron chief, Le Renard Subtil. His reception was grave, silent, and wary. The warriors in front stepped aside, opening the way to their most approved orator by the action; one who spoke all those languages that were cultivated among the northern aborigines. "The wise Huron is welcome," said the Delaware, in the language of the Maquas; "he is come to eat his 'succotash,'[25] with his brothers of the lakes." "He is come," repeated Magua, bending his head with the dignity of an Eastern prince. The chief extended his arm, and taking the other by the wrist, they once more exchanged friendly salutations. Then the Delaware invited his guest to enter his own lodge, and share his morning meal. The invitation was accepted; and the two warriors, attended by three or four of the old men, walked calmly away, leaving the rest of the tribe devoured by a desire to understand the reasons of so unusual a visit, and yet not betraying the least impatience by sign or word. During the short and frugal repast that followed, the conversation was extremely circumspect, and related entirely to the events of the hunt in which Magua had so lately been engaged. It would have been impossible for the most finished breeding to wear more of the appearance of considering the visit as a matter of course, than did his hosts, notwithstanding every individual present was perfectly aware that it must be connected with some secret object, and that probably of importance to themselves. When the appetites of the whole were appeased, the squaws removed the trenchers and gourd, and the two parties began to prepare themselves for a subtle trial of their wits. "Is the face of my great Canada father turned again towards his Huron children?" demanded the orator of the Delawares. "When was it ever otherwise?" returned Magua. "He calls my people 'most beloved.'" The Delaware gravely bowed his acquiescence to what he knew to be false, and continued,-- "The tomahawks of your young men have been very red." "It is so; but they are now bright and dull; for the Yengeese are dead, and the Delawares are our neighbors." The other acknowledged the pacific compliment by a gesture of the hand, and remained silent. Then Magua, as if recalled to such a recollection, by the allusion to the massacre, demanded,-- "Does my prisoner give trouble to my brothers?" "She is welcome." "The path between the Hurons and the Delawares is short, and it is open; let her be sent to my squaws, if she gives trouble to my brother." "She is welcome," returned the chief of the latter nation, still more emphatically. The baffled Magua continued silent several minutes, apparently indifferent, however, to the repulse he had received in this his open effort to gain possession of Cora. "Do my young men leave the Delawares room on the mountains for their hunts?" he at length continued. "The Lenape are rulers of their own hills," returned the other, a little haughtily. "It is well. Justice is the master of a redskin! Why should they brighten their tomahawks, and sharpen their knives against each other? Are not the pale-faces thicker than the swallows in the season of flowers?" "Good!" exclaimed two or three of his auditors at the same time. Magua waited a little, to permit his words to soften the feelings of the Delawares, before he added,-- "Have there not been strange moccasins in the woods? Have not my brothers scented the feet of white men?" "Let my Canada father come," returned the other evasively; "his children are ready to see him." "When the great chief comes, it is to smoke with the Indians in their wigwams. The Hurons say, too, he is welcome. But the Yengeese have long arms, and legs that never tire! My young men dreamed they had seen the trail of the Yengeese nigh the village of the Delawares?" "They will not find the Lenape asleep." "It is well. The warrior whose eye is open can see his enemy," said Magua, once more shifting his ground, when he found himself unable to penetrate the caution of his companion. "I have brought gifts to my brother. His nation would not go on the war-path because they did not think it well; but their friends have remembered where they lived." When he had thus announced his liberal intention, the crafty chief arose, and gravely spread his presents before the dazzled eyes of his hosts. They consisted principally of trinkets of little value, plundered from the slaughtered females of William Henry. In the division of the baubles the cunning Huron discovered no less art than in their selection. While he bestowed those of greater value on the two most distinguished warriors, one of whom was his host, he seasoned his offerings to their inferiors with such well-timed and apposite compliments, as left them no grounds of complaint. In short, the whole ceremony contained such a happy blending of the profitable with the flattering, that it was not difficult for the donor immediately to read the effect of a generosity so aptly mingled with praise, in the eyes of those he addressed. This well-judged and politic stroke on the part of Magua was not without instantaneous results. The Delawares lost their gravity in a much more cordial expression; and the host, in particular, after contemplating his own liberal share of the spoil for some moments with peculiar gratification, repeated with strong emphasis, the words,-- "My brother is a wise chief. He is welcome!" "The Hurons love their friends the Delawares," returned Magua. "Why should they not? they are colored by the same sun, and their just men will hunt in the same grounds after death. The redskins should be friends, and look with open eyes on the white men. Has not my brother scented spies in the woods?" The Delaware, whose name in English signified "Hard Heart," an appellation that the French had translated into "Le Coeur-dur," forgot the obduracy of purpose, which had probably obtained him so significant a title. His countenance grew very sensibly less stern, and now deigned to answer more directly. "There have been strange moccasins about my camp. They have been tracked into my lodges." "Did my brother beat out the dogs?" asked Magua, without adverting in any manner to the former equivocation of the chief. "It would not do. The stranger is always welcome to the children of the Lenape." "The stranger, but not the spy." "Would the Yengeese send their women as spies? Did not the Huron chief say he took women in the battle?" "He told no lie. The Yengeese have sent out their scouts. They have been in my wigwams, but they found there no one to say welcome. Then they fled to the Delawares--for, say they, the Delawares are our friends; their minds are turned from their Canada father!" This insinuation was a home thrust, and one that in a more advanced state of society, would have entitled Magua to the reputation of a skilful diplomatist. The recent defection of the tribe had, as they well knew themselves, subjected the Delawares to much reproach among their French allies; and they were now made to feel that their future actions were to be regarded with jealousy and distrust. There was no deep insight into causes and effects necessary to foresee that such a situation of things was likely to prove highly prejudicial to their future movements. Their distant villages, their hunting-grounds, and hundreds of their women and children, together with a material part of their physical force, were actually within the limits of the French territory. Accordingly, this alarming annunciation was received, as Magua intended, with manifest disapprobation, if not with alarm. "Let my father look in my face," said Le Coeur-dur; "he will see no change. It is true, my young men did not go out on the war-path; they had dreams for not doing so. But they love and venerate the great white chief." "Will he think so when he hears that his greatest enemy is fed in the camp of his children? When he is told a bloody Yengee smokes at your fire? That the pale-face who has slain so many of his friends goes in and out among the Delawares? Go! my great Canada father is not a fool!" "Where is the Yengee that the Delawares fear?" returned the other; "who has slain my young men? who is the mortal enemy of my Great Father!" "La Longue Carabine." The Delaware warriors started at the well-known name, betraying, by their amazement, that they now learnt, for the first time, one so famous among the Indian allies of France was within their power. "What does my brother mean?" demanded Le Coeur-dur, in a tone that, by its wonder, far exceeded the usual apathy of his race. "A Huron never lies!" returned Magua coldly, leaning his head against the side of the lodge, and drawing his slight robe across his tawny breast. "Let the Delawares count their prisoners; they will find one whose skin is neither red nor pale." A long and musing pause succeeded. The chief consulted apart with his companions, and messengers were despatched to collect certain others of the most distinguished men of the tribe. As warrior after warrior dropped in, they were each made acquainted, in turn, with the important intelligence that Magua had just communicated. The air of surprise, and the usual low, deep, guttural exclamation, were common to them all. The news spread from mouth to mouth, until the whole encampment became powerfully agitated. The women suspended their labors, to catch such syllables as unguardedly fell from the lips of the consulting warriors. The boys deserted their sports, and walking fearlessly among their fathers, looked up in curious admiration, as they heard the brief exclamations of wonder they so freely expressed at the temerity of their hated foe. In short, every occupation was abandoned for the time, and all other pursuits seemed discarded, in order that the tribe might freely indulge, after their own peculiar manner, in an open expression of feeling. When the excitement had a little abated, the old men disposed themselves seriously to consider that which it became the honor and safety of their tribe to perform, under circumstances of so much delicacy and embarrassment. During all these movements, and in the midst of the general commotion, Magua had not only maintained his seat, but the very attitude he had originally taken, against the side of the lodge, where he continued as immovable, and, apparently, as unconcerned, as if he had no interest in the result. Not a single indication of the future intentions of his hosts, however, escaped his vigilant eyes. With his consummate knowledge of the nature of the people with whom he had to deal, he anticipated every measure on which they decided; and it might almost be said, that, in many instances, he knew their intentions, even before they became known to themselves. The council of the Delawares was short. When it was ended, a general bustle announced that it was to be immediately succeeded by a solemn and formal assemblage of the nation. As such meetings were rare, and only called on occasions of the last importance, the subtle Huron, who still sat apart, a wily and dark observer of the proceedings, now knew that all his projects must be brought to their final issue. He therefore left the lodge, and walked silently forth to the place in front of the encampment whither the warriors were already beginning to collect. It might have been half an hour before each individual, including even the women and children, was in his place. The delay had been created by the grave preparations that were deemed necessary to so solemn and unusual a conference. But when the sun was seen climbing above the tops of that mountain against whose bosom the Delawares had constructed their encampment, most were seated; and as his bright rays darted from behind the outline of trees that fringed the eminence, they fell upon as grave, as attentive, and as deeply interested a multitude, as was probably ever before lighted by his morning beams. Its number somewhat exceeded a thousand souls. In a collection of such serious savages, there is never to be found any impatient aspirant after premature distinction, standing ready to move his auditors to some hasty, and, perhaps, injudicious discussion, in order that his own reputation may be the gainer. An act of so much precipitancy and presumption would seal the downfall of precocious intellect forever. It rested solely with the oldest and most experienced of the men to lay the subject of the conference before the people. Until such a one chose to make some movement, no deeds in arms, no natural gifts, nor any renown as an orator, would have justified the slightest interruption. On the present occasion, the aged warrior whose privilege it was to speak, was silent, seemingly oppressed with the magnitude of his subject. The delay had already continued long beyond the usual deliberative pause that always precedes a conference; but no sign of impatience or surprise escaped even the youngest boy. Occasionally, an eye was raised from the earth, where the looks of most were riveted, and strayed towards a particular lodge, that was, however, in no manner distinguished from those around it, except in the peculiar care that had been taken to protect it against the assaults of the weather. At length, one of those low murmurs that are so apt to disturb a multitude, was heard, and the whole nation arose to their feet by a common impulse. At that the door of the lodge in question opened, and three men, issuing from it, slowly approached the place of consultation. They were all aged, even beyond that period to which the oldest present had reached; but one in the centre, who leaned on his companions for support, had numbered an amount of years to which the human race is seldom permitted to attain. His frame, which had once been tall and erect, like the cedar, was now bending under the pressure of more than a century. The elastic, light step of an Indian was gone, and in its place he was compelled to toil his tardy way over the ground, inch by inch. His dark, wrinkled countenance was in singular and wild contrast with the long white locks which floated on his shoulders in such thickness as to announce that generations had probably passed away since they had last been shorn. The dress of this patriarch--for such, considering his vast age, in conjunction with his affinity and influence with his people, he might very properly be termed--was rich and imposing, though strictly after the simple fashions of the tribe. His robe was of the finest skins, which had been deprived of their fur, in order to admit of a hieroglyphical representation of various deeds in arms, done in former ages. His bosom was loaded with medals, some in massive silver, and one or two even in gold, the gifts of various Christian potentates during the long period of his life. He also wore armlets, and cinctures above the ankles, of the latter precious metal. His head, on the whole of which the hair had been permitted to grow, the pursuits of war having so long been abandoned, was encircled by a sort of plated diadem, which, in its turn, bore lesser and more glittering ornaments, that sparkled amid the glossy hues of three drooping ostrich feathers, dyed a deep black, in touching contrast to the color of his snow-white locks. His tomahawk was nearly hid in silver, and the handle of his knife shone like a horn of solid gold. So soon as the first hum of emotion and pleasure, which the sudden appearance of this venerated individual created, had a little subsided, the name of "Tamenund" was whispered from mouth to mouth. Magua had often heard the fame of this wise and just Delaware; a reputation that even proceeded so far as to bestow on him the rare gift of holding secret communion with the Great Spirit, and which has since transmitted his name, with some slight alteration, to the white usurpers of his ancient territory, as the imaginary tutelar saint of a vast empire. The Huron chief, therefore, stepped eagerly out a little from the throng, to a spot whence he might catch a nearer glimpse of the features of the man, whose decision was likely to produce so deep an influence on his own fortunes. The eyes of the old man were closed, as though the organs were wearied with having so long witnessed the selfish workings of the human passions. The color of his skin differed from that of most around him, being richer and darker, the latter hue having been produced by certain delicate and mazy lines of complicated and yet beautiful figures, which had been traced over most of his person by the operation of tattooing. Notwithstanding the position of the Huron, he passed the observant and silent Magua without notice, and leaning on his two venerable supporters proceeded to the high place of the multitude, where he seated himself in the centre of his nation, with the dignity of a monarch and the air of a father. Nothing could surpass the reverence and affection with which this unexpected visit from one who belonged rather to another world than to this, was received by his people. After a suitable and decent pause, the principal chiefs arose; and approaching the patriarch, they placed his hands reverently on their heads, seeming to entreat a blessing. The younger men were content with touching his robe, or even drawing nigh his person, in order to breathe in the atmosphere of one so aged, so just, and so valiant. None but the most distinguished among the youthful warriors even presumed so far as to perform the latter ceremony; the great mass of the multitude deeming it a sufficient happiness to look upon a form so deeply venerated, and so well beloved. When these acts of affection and respect were performed, the chiefs drew back again to their several places, and silence reigned in the whole encampment. After a short delay, a few of the young men, to whom instructions had been whispered by one of the aged attendants of Tamenund, arose, left the crowd, and entered the lodge which has already been noted as the object of so much attention throughout that morning. In a few minutes they reappeared, escorting the individuals who had caused all these solemn preparations towards the seat of judgment. The crowd opened in a lane; and when the party had re-entered, it closed in again, forming a large and dense belt of human bodies, arranged in an open circle. "The assembly seated, rising o'er the rest, Achilles thus the king of men addressed." POPE'S _Iliad._ Cora stood foremost among the prisoners, entwining her arms in those of Alice, in the tenderness of sisterly love. Notwithstanding the fearful and menacing array of savages on every side of her, no apprehension on her own account could prevent the noble-minded maiden from keeping her eyes fastened on the pale and anxious features of the trembling Alice. Close at their side stood Heyward, with an interest in both, that, at such a moment of intense uncertainty, scarcely knew a preponderance in favor of her whom he most loved. Hawkeye had placed himself a little in the rear, with a deference to the superior rank of his companions, that no similarity in the state of their present fortunes could induce him to forget. Uncas was not there. When perfect silence was again restored, and after the usual long, impressive pause, one of the two aged chiefs who sat at the side of the patriarch arose, and demanded aloud, in very intelligible English,-- "Which of my prisoners is La Longue Carabine?" Neither Duncan nor the scout answered. The former, however, glanced his eyes around the dark and silent assembly, and recoiled a pace, when they fell on the malignant visage of Magua. He saw, at once, that this wily savage had some secret agency in their present arraignment before the nation, and determined to throw every possible impediment in the way of the execution of his sinister plans. He had witnessed one instance of the summary punishments of the Indians, and now dreaded that his companion was to be selected for a second. In this dilemma, with little or no time for reflection, he suddenly determined to cloak his invaluable friend, at any or every hazard to himself. Before he had time, however, to speak, the question was repeated in a louder voice, and with a clearer utterance. "Give us arms," the young man haughtily replied, "and place us in yonder woods. Our deeds shall speak for us!" "This is the warrior whose name has filled our ears!" returned the chief, regarding Heyward with that sort of curious interest which seems inseparable from man, when first beholding one of his fellows to whom merit or accident, virtue or crime, has given notoriety. "What has brought the white man into the camp of the Delawares?" "My necessities. I come for food, shelter and friends." "It cannot be. The woods are full of game. The head of a warrior needs no other shelter than a sky without clouds; and the Delawares are the enemies, and not the friends, of the Yengeese. Go! the mouth has spoken, while the heart said nothing." Duncan, a little at a loss in what manner to proceed, remained silent; but the scout, who had listened attentively to all that passed, now advanced steadily to the front. "That I did not answer to the call for La Longue Carabine, was not owing either to shame or fear," he said; "for neither one nor the other is the gift of an honest man. But I do not admit the right of the Mingos to bestow a name on one whose friends have been mindful of his gifts, in this particular; especially as their title is a lie, 'Killdeer' being a grooved barrel and no carabyne. I am the man, however, that got the name of Nathaniel from my kin; the compliment of Hawkeye from the Delawares, who live on their own river; and whom the Iroquois have presumed to style the 'Long Rifle,' without any warranty from him who is most concerned in the matter." The eyes of all present, which had hitherto been gravely scanning the person of Duncan, were now turned, on the instant, towards the upright iron frame of this new pretender to the distinguished appellation. It was in no degree remarkable that there should be found two who were willing to claim so great an honor, for impostors, though rare, were not unknown amongst the natives; but it was altogether material to the just and severe intentions of the Delawares, that there should be no mistake in the matter. Some of their old men consulted together in private, and then, as it would seem, they determined to interrogate their visitor on the subject. "My brother has said that a snake crept into my camp," said the chief to Magua; "which is he?" The Huron pointed to the scout. "Will a wise Delaware believe the barking of a wolf?" exclaimed Duncan, still more confirmed in the evil intentions of his ancient enemy: "a dog never lies, but when was a wolf known to speak the truth?" The eyes of Magua flashed fire; but, suddenly recollecting the necessity of maintaining his presence of mind, he turned away in silent disdain, well assured that the sagacity of the Indians would not fail to extract the real merits of the point in controversy. He was not deceived; for, after another short consultation, the wary Delaware turned to him again, and expressed the determination of the chiefs, though in the most considerate language. "My brother has been called a liar," he said, "and his friends are angry. They will show that he has spoken the truth. Give my prisoners guns, and let them prove which is the man." Magua affected to consider the expedient, which he well knew proceeded from distrust of himself, as a compliment, and made a gesture of acquiescence, well content that his veracity should be supported by so skilful a marksman as the scout. The weapons were instantly placed in the hands of the friendly opponents, and they were bid to fire over the heads of the seated multitude at an earthen vessel, which lay, by accident, on a stump some fifty yards from the place where they stood. Heyward smiled to himself at the idea of a competition with the scout, though he determined to persevere in the deception, until apprised of the real designs of Magua. Raising his rifle with the utmost care, and renewing his aim three several times, he fired. The bullet cut the wood within a few inches of the vessel; and a general exclamation of satisfaction announced that the shot was considered a proof of great skill in the use of the weapon. Even Hawkeye nodded his head, as if he would say, it was better than he had expected. But, instead of manifesting an intention to contend with the successful marksman, he stood leaning on his rifle for more than a minute, like a man who was completely buried in thought. From this reverie he was, however, awakened by one of the young Indians who had furnished the arms, and who now touched his shoulder, saying, in exceedingly broken English,-- "Can the pale-face beat it?" "Yes, Huron!" exclaimed the scout, raising the short rifle in his right hand, and shaking it at Magua, with as much apparent ease as if it were a reed; "yes, Huron, I could strike you now, and no power of earth could prevent the deed! The soaring hawk is not more certain of the dove than I am this moment of you, did I choose to send a bullet to your heart! Why should I not? Why!--because the gifts of my color forbid it, and I might draw down evil on tender and innocent heads. If you know such a being as God, thank Him, therefore, in your inward soul; for you have reason." The flushed countenance, angry eye, and swelling figure of the scout, produced a sensation of secret awe in all that heard him. The Delawares held their breath in expectation; but Magua himself, even while he distrusted the forbearance of his enemy, remained immovable and calm, where he stood wedged in by the crowd, as one who grew to the spot. "Beat it," replied the young Delaware at the elbow of the scout. "Beat what, fool!--what!" exclaimed Hawkeye, still flourishing the weapon angrily above his head, though his eye no longer sought the person of Magua. "If the white man is the warrior he pretends," said the aged chief, "let him strike nigher to the mark." The scout laughed aloud--a noise that produced the startling effect of an unnatural sound on Heyward; then dropping the piece heavily into his extended left hand, it was discharged, apparently by the shock, driving the fragments of the vessel into the air, and scattering them on every side. Almost at the same instant, the rattling sound of the rifle was heard, as he suffered it to fall, contemptuously, to the earth. The first impression of so strange a scene was engrossing admiration. Then a low, but increasing murmur, ran through the multitude, and finally swelled into sounds that denoted a lively opposition in the sentiments of the spectators. While some openly testified their satisfaction at so unexampled dexterity, by far the larger portion of the tribe were inclined to believe the success of the shot was the result of accident. Heyward was not slow to confirm an opinion that was so favorable to his own pretentions. "It was chance!" he exclaimed; "none can shoot without an aim!" "Chance!" echoed the excited woodsman, who was now stubbornly bent on maintaining his identity at every hazard, and on whom the secret hints of Heyward to acquiesce in the deception were entirely lost. "Does yonder lying Huron, too, think it chance? Give him another gun, and place us face to face, without cover or dodge, and let Providence, and our own eyes, decide the matter atween us! I do not make the offer to you, major; for our blood is of a color, and we serve the same master." "That the Huron is a liar, is very evident," returned Heyward, coolly; "you have yourself heard him assert you to be La Longue Carabine." It were impossible to say what violent assertion the stubborn Hawkeye would have next made, in his headlong wish to vindicate his identity, had not the aged Delaware once more interposed. "The hawk which comes from the clouds can return when he will," he said; "give them the guns." This time the scout seized the rifle with avidity; nor had Magua, though he watched the movement of the marksman with jealous eyes, any further cause for apprehension. "Now let it be proved, in the face of this tribe of Delawares, which is the better man," cried the scout, tapping the butt of his piece with that finger which had pulled so many fatal triggers. "You see the gourd hanging against yonder tree, major; if you are a marksman fit for the borders, let me see you break its shell!" Duncan noted the object, and prepared himself to renew the trial. The gourd was one of the usual little vessels used by the Indians, and it was suspended from a dead branch of a small pine, by a thong of deer-skin, at the full distance of a hundred yards. So strangely compounded is the feeling of self-love, that the young soldier, while he knew the utter worthlessness of the suffrages of his savage umpires, forgot the sudden motives of the contest in a wish to excel. It has been seen, already, that his skill was far from being contemptible, and he now resolved to put forth its nicest qualities. Had his life depended on the issue, the aim of Duncan could not have been more deliberate or guarded. He fired; and three or four young Indians, who sprang forward at the report, announced with a shout, that the ball was in the tree, a very little on one side of the proper object. The warriors uttered a common ejaculation of pleasure, and then turned their eyes inquiringly on the movements of his rival. "It may do for the Royal Americans!" said Hawkeye, laughing once more in his own silent, heartfelt manner; "but had my gun often turned so much from the true line, many a marten, whose skin is now in a lady's muff, would still be in the woods; ay, and many a bloody Mingo, who has departed to his final account, would be acting his deviltries at this very day, atween the provinces. I hope the squaw who owns the gourd has more of them in her wigwam, for this will never hold water again!" The scout had shook his priming, and cocked his piece, while speaking; and, as he ended, he threw back a foot, and slowly raised the muzzle from the earth: the motion was steady, uniform, and in one direction. When on a perfect level, it remained for a single moment, without tremor or variation, as though both man and rifle were carved in stone. During that stationary instant, it poured forth its contents, in a bright, glancing sheet of flame. Again the young Indians bounded forward; but their hurried search and disappointed looks announced that no traces of the bullet were to be seen. "Go!" said the old chief to the scout, in a tone of strong disgust; "thou art a wolf in the skin of a dog. I will talk to the 'Long Rifle' of the Yengeese." "Ah! had I that piece which furnished the name you use, I would obligate myself to cut the thong, and drop the gourd without breaking it!" returned Hawkeye, perfectly undisturbed by the other's manner, "Fools, if you would find the bullet of a sharpshooter of these woods, you must look in the object and not around it!" The Indian youths instantly comprehended his meaning--for this time he spoke in the Delaware tongue--and tearing the gourd from the tree, they held it on high with an exulting shout, displaying a hole in its bottom, which had been cut by the bullet, after passing through the usual orifice in the centre of its upper side. At this unexpected exhibition, a loud and vehement expression of pleasure burst from the mouth of every warrior present. It decided the question, and effectually established Hawkeye in the possession of his dangerous reputation. Those curious and admiring eyes which had been turned again on Heyward, were finally directed to the weather-beaten form of the scout, who immediately became the principal object of attention to the simple and unsophisticated beings by whom he was surrounded. When the sudden and noisy commotion had a little subsided, the aged chief resumed his examination. "Why did you wish to stop my ears?" he said, addressing Duncan; "are the Delawares fools, that they could not know the young panther from the cat?" "They will yet find the Huron a singing-bird," said Duncan, endeavoring to adopt the figurative language of the natives. "It is good. We will know who can shut the ears of men. Brother," added the chief, turning his eyes on Magua, "the Delawares listen." Thus singled, and directly called on to declare his object, the Huron arose; and advancing with great deliberation and dignity into the very centre of the circle, where he stood confronted to the prisoners, he placed himself in an attitude to speak. Before opening his mouth, however, he bent his eyes slowly along the whole living boundary of earnest faces as if to temper his expressions to the capacities of his audience. On Hawkeye he cast a glance of respectful enmity; on Duncan, a look of inextinguishable hatred; the shrinking figure of Alice he scarcely deigned to notice; but when his glance met the firm, commanding, and yet lovely form of Cora, his eye lingered a moment, with an expression that it might have been difficult to define. Then, filled with his own dark intentions, he spoke in the language of the Canadas, a tongue that he well knew was comprehended by most of his auditors. "The Spirit that made men colored them differently," commenced the subtle Huron. "Some are blacker than the sluggish bear. These He said would be slaves; and He ordered them to work forever, like the beaver. You may hear them groan, when the south wind blows, louder than the lowing buffaloes, along the shores of the great salt lake, where the big canoes come and go with them in droves. Some He made with faces paler than the ermine of the forests: and these He ordered to be traders; dogs to their women, and wolves to their slaves. He gave this people the nature of the pigeon: wings that never tire; young, more plentiful than the leaves on the trees, and appetites to devour the earth. He gave them tongues like the false call of the wild-cat; hearts like rabbits; the cunning of the hog (but none of the fox), and arms longer than the legs of the moose. With his tongue, he stops the ears of the Indians; his heart teaches him to pay warriors to fight his battles; his cunning tells him how to get together the goods of the earth; and his arms inclose the land from the shores of the salt-water to the islands of the great lake. His gluttony makes him sick. God gave him enough, and yet he wants all. Such are the pale-faces. "Some the Great Spirit made with skins brighter and redder than yonder sun," continued Magua, pointing impressively upwards to the lurid luminary, which was struggling through the misty atmosphere of the horizon; "and these did He fashion to His own mind. He gave them this island as He had made it, covered with trees, and filled with game. The wind made their clearings; the sun and rains ripened their fruits; and the snows came to tell them to be thankful. What need had they of roads to journey by! They saw through the hills. When the beavers worked, they lay in the shade, and looked on. The winds cooled them in summer; in winter, skins kept them warm. If they fought among themselves, it was to prove that they were men. They were brave; they were just; they were happy." Here the speaker paused, and again looked around him, to discover if his legend had touched the sympathies of his listeners. He met everywhere with eyes riveted on his own, heads erect, and nostrils expanded, as if each individual present felt himself able and willing, singly, to redress the wrongs of his race. "If the Great Spirit gave different tongues to his red children," he continued, in a low, still, melancholy voice, "it was that all animals might understand them. Some He placed among the snows, with their cousin the bear. Some he placed near the setting sun, on the road to the happy hunting-grounds. Some on the lands around the great fresh waters; but to his greatest, and most beloved, He gave the sands of the salt lake. Do my brothers know the name of this favored people?" "It was the Lenape!" exclaimed twenty eager voices, in a breath. "It was the Lenni Lenape," returned Magua, affecting to bend his head in reverence to their former greatness. "It was the tribes of the Lenape! The sun rose from water that was salt, and set in water that was sweet, and never hid himself from their eyes. But why should I, a Huron of the woods, tell a wise people their own traditions? Why remind them of their injuries; their ancient greatness; their deeds; their glory; their happiness,--their losses; their defeats; their misery? Is there not one among them who has seen it all, and who knows it to be true? I have done. My tongue is still, for my heart is of lead. I listen." As the voice of the speaker suddenly ceased, every face and all eyes turned, by a common movement, towards the venerable Tamenund. From the moment that he took his seat, until the present instant, the lips of the patriarch had not severed, and scarcely a sign of life had escaped him. He sat bent in feebleness, and apparently unconscious of the presence he was in, during the whole of that opening scene, in which the skill of the scout had been so clearly established. At the nicely graduated sound of Magua's voice, however, he betrayed some evidence of consciousness, and once or twice he even raised his head, as if to listen. But when the crafty Huron spoke of his nation by name, the eyelids of the old man raised themselves, and he looked out upon the multitude with that sort of dull unmeaning expression which might be supposed to belong to the countenance of a spectre. Then he made an effort to rise, and being upheld by his supporters, he gained his feet, in a posture commanding by its dignity, while he tottered with weakness. "Who calls upon the children of the Lenape!" he said, in a deep, guttural voice, that was rendered awfully audible by the breathless silence of the multitude: "who speaks of things gone! Does not the egg become a worm--the worm a fly, and perish? Why tell the Delawares of good that is past? Better thank the Manitou for that which remains." "It is a Wyandot," said Magua, stepping nigher to the rude platform on which the other stood; "a friend of Tamenund." "A friend!" repeated the sage, on whose brow a dark frown settled, imparting a portion of that severity which had rendered his eye so terrible in middle age. "Are the Mingos rulers of the earth? What brings a Huron here?" "Justice. His prisoners are with his brothers, and he comes for his own." Tamenund turned his head towards one of his supporters, and listened to the short explanation the man gave. Then facing the applicant, he regarded him a moment with deep attention; after which he said, in a low and reluctant voice,-- "Justice is the law of the great Manitou. My children, give the stranger food. Then, Huron, take thine own and depart." On the delivery of this solemn judgment, the patriarch seated himself, and closed his eyes again, as if better pleased with the images of his own ripened experience than with the visible objects of the world. Against such a decree there was no Delaware sufficiently hardy to murmur, much less oppose himself. The words were barely uttered when four or five of the younger warriors, stepping behind Heyward and the scout, passed thongs so dexterously and rapidly around their arms, as to hold them both in instant bondage. The former was too much engrossed with his precious and nearly insensible burden, to be aware of their intentions before they were executed; and the latter, who considered even the hostile tribes of the Delawares a superior race of beings, submitted without resistance. Perhaps, however, the manner of the scout would not have been so passive, had he fully comprehended the language in which the preceding dialogue had been conducted. Magua cast a look of triumph around the whole assembly before he proceeded to the execution of his purpose. Perceiving that the men were unable to offer any resistance, he turned his looks on her he valued most. Cora met his gaze with an eye so calm and firm, that his resolution wavered. Then recollecting his former artifice, he raised Alice from the arms of the warrior against whom she leaned, and beckoning Heyward to follow, he motioned for the encircling crowd to open. But Cora, instead of obeying the impulse he had expected, rushed to the feet of the patriarch, and raising her voice, exclaimed aloud,-- "Just and venerable Delaware, on thy wisdom and power we lean for mercy! Be deaf to yonder artful and remorseless monster, who poisons thy ears with falsehoods to feed his thirst for blood. Thou that hast lived long, and that hast seen the evil of the world, should know how to temper its calamities to the miserable." The eyes of the old man opened heavily, and he once more looked upwards at the multitude. As the piercing tones of the supplicant swelled on his ears, they moved slowly in the direction of her person, and finally settled there in a steady gaze. Cora had cast herself to her knees; and, with hands clenched in each other and pressed upon her bosom, she remained like a beauteous and breathing model of her sex, looking up in his faded, but majestic countenance, with a species of holy reverence. Gradually the expression of Tamenund's features changed, and losing their vacancy in admiration, they lighted with a portion of that intelligence which a century before had been wont to communicate his youthful fire to the extensive bands of the Delawares. Rising without assistance, and seemingly without an effort, he demanded, in a voice that startled its auditors by its firmness,-- "What art thou?" "A woman. One of a hated race, if thou wilt--a Yengee. But one who has never harmed thee, and who cannot harm thy people, if she would; who asks for succor." "Tell me, my children," continued the patriarch, hoarsely, motioning to those around him, though his eyes still dwelt upon the kneeling form of Cora, "where have the Delawares camped?" "In the mountains of the Iroquois, beyond the clear springs of the Horican." "Many parching summers are come and gone," continued the sage, "since I drank of the water of my own rivers. The children of Minquon[26] are the justest white men; but they were thirsty, and they took it to themselves. Do they follow us so far?" "We follow none; we covet nothing," answered Cora. "Captives against our wills, have we been brought among you; and we ask but permission to depart to our own in peace. Art thou not Tamenund--the father, the judge, I had almost said, the prophet--of this people?" "I am Tamenund of many days." "'Tis now some seven years that one of thy people was at the mercy of a white chief on the borders of this province. He claimed to be of the blood of the good and just Tamenund. 'Go,' said the white man, 'for thy parent's sake thou art free.' Dost thou remember the name of that English warrior?" "I remember, that when a laughing boy," returned the patriarch, with the peculiar recollection of vast age, "I stood upon the sands of the sea-shore, and saw a big canoe, with wings whiter than the swan's, and wider than many eagles, come from the rising sun." "Nay, nay; I speak not of a time so very distant, but of favor shown to thy kindred by one of mine, within the memory of thy youngest warrior." "Was it when the Yengeese and the Dutchmanne fought for the hunting-grounds of the Delawares? Then Tamenund was a chief, and first laid aside the bow for the lightning of the pale faces--" [Illustration: _Copyright by Charles Scribner's Sons_ THE SUPPLICANT _Cora had cast herself to her knees; and, with hands clenched in each other and pressed upon her bosom, she remained like a beauteous and breathing model of her sex_] "Nor yet then," interrupted Cora, "by many ages; I speak of a thing of yesterday. Surely, surely, you forget it not." "It was but yesterday," rejoined the aged man, with touching pathos, "that the children of the Lenape were masters of the world. The fishes of the salt lake, the birds, the beasts, and the Mengwe of the woods, owned them for sagamores." Cora bowed her head in disappointment, and, for a bitter moment, struggled with her chagrin. Then elevating her rich features and beaming eyes, she continued, in tones scarcely less penetrating than the unearthly voice of the patriarch himself,-- "Tell me, is Tamenund a father?" The old man looked down upon her from his elevated stand, with a benignant smile on his wasted countenance, and then casting his eyes slowly over the whole assemblage, he answered,-- "Of a nation." "For myself I ask nothing. Like thee and thine, venerable chief," she continued, pressing her hands convulsively on her heart, and suffering her head to droop until her burning cheeks were nearly concealed in the maze of dark glossy tresses that fell in disorder upon her shoulders, "the curse of my ancestors has fallen heavily on their child. But yonder is one who has never known the weight of Heaven's displeasure until now. She is the daughter of an old and failing man, whose days are near their close. She has many, very many, to love her, and delight in her; and she is too good, much too precious, to become the victim of that villain." "I know that the pale-faces are a proud and hungry race. I know that they claim not only to have the earth, but that the meanest of their color is better than the sachems of the redman. The dogs and crows of their tribes," continued the earnest old chieftain, without heeding the wounded spirit of his listener, whose head was nearly crushed to the earth in shame, as he proceeded, "would bark and caw before they would take a woman to their wigwams whose blood was not of the color of snow. But let them not boast before the face of the Manitou too loud. They entered the land at the rising, and may yet go off at the setting sun. I have often seen the locusts strip the leaves from the trees, but the season of blossoms has always come again." "It is so," said Cora, drawing a long breath, as if reviving from a trance, raising her face, and shaking back her shining veil, with a kindling eye, that contradicted the death-like paleness of her countenance; "but why--it is not permitted us to inquire. There is yet one of thine own people who has not been brought before thee; before thou lettest the Huron depart in triumph, hear him speak." Observing Tamenund to look about him doubtingly, one of his companions said,-- "It is a snake--a redskin in the pay of the Yengeese. We keep him for the torture." "Let him come," returned the sage. Then Tamenund once more sank into his seat, and a silence so deep prevailed, while the young men prepared to obey his simple mandate, that the leaves, which fluttered in the draught of the light morning air, were distinctly heard rustling in the surrounding forest.

It is morning in the village of the Delawares, who earlier withheld their assistance from their ally Montcalm. Though everything is peaceful, the warriors are apparently prepared to fight if necessary, for here and there they carefully examine their arms and eye a silent lodge in the center of the village. When Magua appears, unarmed and with a gesture of amity, on a near distant platform of rock, the principal chiefs meet him and he talks formally with their most approved orator Hard Heart. Unable to learn anything about his prisoner Cora and the "strange moccasins" of white men in the woods, he presents the chiefs with gifts. Sure of himself, he startles them by saying that the white man, who he believes is among them, is La Longue Carabine, the famous killer of Indians. Calling a council of more than a thousand Delawares, they wait for the emergence of three aged men from a particular lodge. The tattooed patriarch in the middle is the famed Tamenund, well over a hundred years old. He is shown every extreme of respect and reverence. After a suitable delay, a few young men go to the silent lodge and return with Cora, Alice, Heyward, and Hawkeye. Uncas is not present. To delay and protect the others, Heyward claims to be La Longue Carabine, yet so does Hawkeye. In a contest of proof, Heyward fires within inches of an earthen vessel at fifty yards distance, but the scout casually shatters it, and everyone believes it an accident. Hawkeye is convincing when he scores a bull's-eye on a gourd that the major barely misses. After an effective oration from Magua, the hands of the scout and the major are tied. Cora rushes to the feet of the patriarch, but Tamenund, prone to sink into the lethargy of age, answers her supplications with facts about the wrongs done his people. Cora tells him that there is one of his own people who is not present but should be heard. Doubtful, the aged chieftain says, "Let him come," and sinks into his seat. In the deep silence, the young men prepare to obey his order.

CHAPTER XVIII I SHE hurried to the first meeting of the play-reading committee. Her jungle romance had faded, but she retained a religious fervor, a surge of half-formed thought about the creation of beauty by suggestion. A Dunsany play would be too difficult for the Gopher Prairie association. She would let them compromise on Shaw--on "Androcles and the Lion," which had just been published. The committee was composed of Carol, Vida Sherwin, Guy Pollock, Raymie Wutherspoon, and Juanita Haydock. They were exalted by the picture of themselves as being simultaneously business-like and artistic. They were entertained by Vida in the parlor of Mrs. Elisha Gurrey's boarding-house, with its steel engraving of Grant at Appomattox, its basket of stereoscopic views, and its mysterious stains on the gritty carpet. Vida was an advocate of culture-buying and efficiency-systems. She hinted that they ought to have (as at the committee-meetings of the Thanatopsis) a "regular order of business," and "the reading of the minutes," but as there were no minutes to read, and as no one knew exactly what was the regular order of the business of being literary, they had to give up efficiency. Carol, as chairman, said politely, "Have you any ideas about what play we'd better give first?" She waited for them to look abashed and vacant, so that she might suggest "Androcles." Guy Pollock answered with disconcerting readiness, "I'll tell you: since we're going to try to do something artistic, and not simply fool around, I believe we ought to give something classic. How about 'The School for Scandal'?" "Why----Don't you think that has been done a good deal?" "Yes, perhaps it has." Carol was ready to say, "How about Bernard Shaw?" when he treacherously went on, "How would it be then to give a Greek drama--say 'Oedipus Tyrannus'?" "Why, I don't believe----" Vida Sherwin intruded, "I'm sure that would be too hard for us. Now I've brought something that I think would be awfully jolly." She held out, and Carol incredulously took, a thin gray pamphlet entitled "McGinerty's Mother-in-law." It was the sort of farce which is advertised in "school entertainment" catalogues as: Riproaring knock-out, 5 m. 3 f., time 2 hrs., interior set, popular with churches and all high-class occasions. Carol glanced from the scabrous object to Vida, and realized that she was not joking. "But this is--this is--why, it's just a----Why, Vida, I thought you appreciated--well--appreciated art." Vida snorted, "Oh. Art. Oh yes. I do like art. It's very nice. But after all, what does it matter what kind of play we give as long as we get the association started? The thing that matters is something that none of you have spoken of, that is: what are we going to do with the money, if we make any? I think it would be awfully nice if we presented the high school with a full set of Stoddard's travel-lectures!" Carol moaned, "Oh, but Vida dear, do forgive me but this farce----Now what I'd like us to give is something distinguished. Say Shaw's 'Androcles.' Have any of you read it?" "Yes. Good play," said Guy Pollock. Then Raymie Wutherspoon astoundingly spoke up: "So have I. I read through all the plays in the public library, so's to be ready for this meeting. And----But I don't believe you grasp the irreligious ideas in this 'Androcles,' Mrs. Kennicott. I guess the feminine mind is too innocent to understand all these immoral writers. I'm sure I don't want to criticize Bernard Shaw; I understand he is very popular with the highbrows in Minneapolis; but just the same----As far as I can make out, he's downright improper! The things he SAYS----Well, it would be a very risky thing for our young folks to see. It seems to me that a play that doesn't leave a nice taste in the mouth and that hasn't any message is nothing but--nothing but----Well, whatever it may be, it isn't art. So----Now I've found a play that is clean, and there's some awfully funny scenes in it, too. I laughed out loud, reading it. It's called 'His Mother's Heart,' and it's about a young man in college who gets in with a lot of free-thinkers and boozers and everything, but in the end his mother's influence----" Juanita Haydock broke in with a derisive, "Oh rats, Raymie! Can the mother's influence! I say let's give something with some class to it. I bet we could get the rights to 'The Girl from Kankakee,' and that's a real show. It ran for eleven months in New York!" "That would be lots of fun, if it wouldn't cost too much," reflected Vida. Carol's was the only vote cast against "The Girl from Kankakee." II She disliked "The Girl from Kankakee" even more than she had expected. It narrated the success of a farm-lassie in clearing her brother of a charge of forgery. She became secretary to a New York millionaire and social counselor to his wife; and after a well-conceived speech on the discomfort of having money, she married his son. There was also a humorous office-boy. Carol discerned that both Juanita Haydock and Ella Stowbody wanted the lead. She let Juanita have it. Juanita kissed her and in the exuberant manner of a new star presented to the executive committee her theory, "What we want in a play is humor and pep. There's where American playwrights put it all over these darn old European glooms." As selected by Carol and confirmed by the committee, the persons of the play were: John Grimm, a millionaire . . . . Guy Pollock His wife. . . . . . . . . Miss Vida Sherwin His son . . . . . . . . . Dr. Harvey Dillon His business rival. . . . . . . Raymond T. Wutherspoon Friend of Mrs. Grimm . . . . . . Miss Ella Stowbody The girl from Kankakee . . . . . Mrs. Harold C. Haydock Her brother. . . . . . . . Dr. Terence Gould Her mother . . . . . . . . Mrs. David Dyer Stenographer . . . . . . . . Miss Rita Simons Office-boy . . . . . . . . Miss Myrtle Cass Maid in the Grimms' home . . . . Mrs. W. P. Kennicott Direction of Mrs. Kennicott Among the minor lamentations was Maud Dyer's "Well of course I suppose I look old enough to be Juanita's mother, even if Juanita is eight months older than I am, but I don't know as I care to have everybody noticing it and----" Carol pleaded, "Oh, my DEAR! You two look exactly the same age. I chose you because you have such a darling complexion, and you know with powder and a white wig, anybody looks twice her age, and I want the mother to be sweet, no matter who else is." Ella Stowbody, the professional, perceiving that it was because of a conspiracy of jealousy that she had been given a small part, alternated between lofty amusement and Christian patience. Carol hinted that the play would be improved by cutting, but as every actor except Vida and Guy and herself wailed at the loss of a single line, she was defeated. She told herself that, after all, a great deal could be done with direction and settings. Sam Clark had boastfully written about the dramatic association to his schoolmate, Percy Bresnahan, president of the Velvet Motor Company of Boston. Bresnahan sent a check for a hundred dollars; Sam added twenty-five and brought the fund to Carol, fondly crying, "There! That'll give you a start for putting the thing across swell!" She rented the second floor of the city hall for two months. All through the spring the association thrilled to its own talent in that dismal room. They cleared out the bunting, ballot-boxes, handbills, legless chairs. They attacked the stage. It was a simple-minded stage. It was raised above the floor, and it did have a movable curtain, painted with the advertisement of a druggist dead these ten years, but otherwise it might not have been recognized as a stage. There were two dressing-rooms, one for men, one for women, on either side. The dressing-room doors were also the stage-entrances, opening from the house, and many a citizen of Gopher Prairie had for his first glimpse of romance the bare shoulders of the leading woman. There were three sets of scenery: a woodland, a Poor Interior, and a Rich Interior, the last also useful for railway stations, offices, and as a background for the Swedish Quartette from Chicago. There were three gradations of lighting: full on, half on, and entirely off. This was the only theater in Gopher Prairie. It was known as the "op'ra house." Once, strolling companies had used it for performances of "The Two Orphans," and "Nellie the Beautiful Cloak Model," and "Othello" with specialties between acts, but now the motion-pictures had ousted the gipsy drama. Carol intended to be furiously modern in constructing the office-set, the drawing-room for Mr. Grimm, and the Humble Home near Kankakee. It was the first time that any one in Gopher Prairie had been so revolutionary as to use enclosed scenes with continuous side-walls. The rooms in the op'ra house sets had separate wing-pieces for sides, which simplified dramaturgy, as the villain could always get out of the hero's way by walking out through the wall. The inhabitants of the Humble Home were supposed to be amiable and intelligent. Carol planned for them a simple set with warm color. She could see the beginning of the play: all dark save the high settles and the solid wooden table between them, which were to be illuminated by a ray from offstage. The high light was a polished copper pot filled with primroses. Less clearly she sketched the Grimm drawing-room as a series of cool high white arches. As to how she was to produce these effects she had no notion. She discovered that, despite the enthusiastic young writers, the drama was not half so native and close to the soil as motor cars and telephones. She discovered that simple arts require sophisticated training. She discovered that to produce one perfect stage-picture would be as difficult as to turn all of Gopher Prairie into a Georgian garden. She read all she could find regarding staging, she bought paint and light wood; she borrowed furniture and drapes unscrupulously; she made Kennicott turn carpenter. She collided with the problem of lighting. Against the protest of Kennicott and Vida she mortgaged the association by sending to Minneapolis for a baby spotlight, a strip light, a dimming device, and blue and amber bulbs; and with the gloating rapture of a born painter first turned loose among colors, she spent absorbed evenings in grouping, dimming-painting with lights. Only Kennicott, Guy, and Vida helped her. They speculated as to how flats could be lashed together to form a wall; they hung crocus-yellow curtains at the windows; they blacked the sheet-iron stove; they put on aprons and swept. The rest of the association dropped into the theater every evening, and were literary and superior. They had borrowed Carol's manuals of play-production and had become extremely stagey in vocabulary. Juanita Haydock, Rita Simons, and Raymie Wutherspoon sat on a sawhorse, watching Carol try to get the right position for a picture on the wall in the first scene. "I don't want to hand myself anything but I believe I'll give a swell performance in this first act," confided Juanita. "I wish Carol wasn't so bossy though. She doesn't understand clothes. I want to wear, oh, a dandy dress I have--all scarlet--and I said to her, 'When I enter wouldn't it knock their eyes out if I just stood there at the door in this straight scarlet thing?' But she wouldn't let me." Young Rita agreed, "She's so much taken up with her old details and carpentering and everything that she can't see the picture as a whole. Now I thought it would be lovely if we had an office-scene like the one in 'Little, But Oh My!' Because I SAW that, in Duluth. But she simply wouldn't listen at all." Juanita sighed, "I wanted to give one speech like Ethel Barrymore would, if she was in a play like this. (Harry and I heard her one time in Minneapolis--we had dandy seats, in the orchestra--I just know I could imitate her.) Carol didn't pay any attention to my suggestion. I don't want to criticize but I guess Ethel knows more about acting than Carol does!" "Say, do you think Carol has the right dope about using a strip light behind the fireplace in the second act? I told her I thought we ought to use a bunch," offered Raymie. "And I suggested it would be lovely if we used a cyclorama outside the window in the first act, and what do you think she said? 'Yes, and it would be lovely to have Eleanora Duse play the lead,' she said, 'and aside from the fact that it's evening in the first act, you're a great technician,' she said. I must say I think she was pretty sarcastic. I've been reading up, and I know I could build a cyclorama, if she didn't want to run everything." "Yes, and another thing, I think the entrance in the first act ought to be L. U. E., not L. 3 E.," from Juanita. "And why does she just use plain white tormenters?" "What's a tormenter?" blurted Rita Simons. The savants stared at her ignorance. III Carol did not resent their criticisms, she didn't very much resent their sudden knowledge, so long as they let her make pictures. It was at rehearsals that the quarrrels broke. No one understood that rehearsals were as real engagements as bridge-games or sociables at the Episcopal Church. They gaily came in half an hour late, or they vociferously came in ten minutes early, and they were so hurt that they whispered about resigning when Carol protested. They telephoned, "I don't think I'd better come out; afraid the dampness might start my toothache," or "Guess can't make it tonight; Dave wants me to sit in on a poker game." When, after a month of labor, as many as nine-elevenths of the cast were often present at a rehearsal; when most of them had learned their parts and some of them spoke like human beings, Carol had a new shock in the realization that Guy Pollock and herself were very bad actors, and that Raymie Wutherspoon was a surprisingly good one. For all her visions she could not control her voice, and she was bored by the fiftieth repetition of her few lines as maid. Guy pulled his soft mustache, looked self-conscious, and turned Mr. Grimm into a limp dummy. But Raymie, as the villain, had no repressions. The tilt of his head was full of character; his drawl was admirably vicious. There was an evening when Carol hoped she was going to make a play; a rehearsal during which Guy stopped looking abashed. From that evening the play declined. They were weary. "We know our parts well enough now; what's the use of getting sick of them?" they complained. They began to skylark; to play with the sacred lights; to giggle when Carol was trying to make the sentimental Myrtle Cass into a humorous office-boy; to act everything but "The Girl from Kankakee." After loafing through his proper part Dr. Terry Gould had great applause for his burlesque of "Hamlet." Even Raymie lost his simple faith, and tried to show that he could do a vaudeville shuffle. Carol turned on the company. "See here, I want this nonsense to stop. We've simply got to get down to work." Juanita Haydock led the mutiny: "Look here, Carol, don't be so bossy. After all, we're doing this play principally for the fun of it, and if we have fun out of a lot of monkey-shines, why then----" "Ye-es," feebly. "You said one time that folks in G. P. didn't get enough fun out of life. And now we are having a circus, you want us to stop!" Carol answered slowly: "I wonder if I can explain what I mean? It's the difference between looking at the comic page and looking at Manet. I want fun out of this, of course. Only----I don't think it would be less fun, but more, to produce as perfect a play as we can." She was curiously exalted; her voice was strained; she stared not at the company but at the grotesques scrawled on the backs of wing-pieces by forgotten stage-hands. "I wonder if you can understand the 'fun' of making a beautiful thing, the pride and satisfaction of it, and the holiness!" The company glanced doubtfully at one another. In Gopher Prairie it is not good form to be holy except at a church, between ten-thirty and twelve on Sunday. "But if we want to do it, we've got to work; we must have self-discipline." They were at once amused and embarrassed. They did not want to affront this mad woman. They backed off and tried to rehearse. Carol did not hear Juanita, in front, protesting to Maud Dyer, "If she calls it fun and holiness to sweat over her darned old play--well, I don't!" IV Carol attended the only professional play which came to Gopher Prairie that spring. It was a "tent show, presenting snappy new dramas under canvas." The hard-working actors doubled in brass, and took tickets; and between acts sang about the moon in June, and sold Dr. Wintergreen's Surefire Tonic for Ills of the Heart, Lungs, Kidneys, and Bowels. They presented "Sunbonnet Nell: A Dramatic Comedy of the Ozarks," with J. Witherbee Boothby wringing the soul by his resonant "Yuh ain't done right by mah little gal, Mr. City Man, but yer a-goin' to find that back in these-yere hills there's honest folks and good shots!" The audience, on planks beneath the patched tent, admired Mr. Boothby's beard and long rifle; stamped their feet in the dust at the spectacle of his heroism; shouted when the comedian aped the City Lady's use of a lorgnon by looking through a doughnut stuck on a fork; wept visibly over Mr. Boothby's Little Gal Nell, who was also Mr. Boothby's legal wife Pearl, and when the curtain went down, listened respectfully to Mr. Boothby's lecture on Dr. Wintergreen's Tonic as a cure for tape-worms, which he illustrated by horrible pallid objects curled in bottles of yellowing alcohol. Carol shook her head. "Juanita is right. I'm a fool. Holiness of the drama! Bernard Shaw! The only trouble with 'The Girl from Kankakee' is that it's too subtle for Gopher Prairie!" She sought faith in spacious banal phrases, taken from books: "the instinctive nobility of simple souls," "need only the opportunity, to appreciate fine things," and "sturdy exponents of democracy." But these optimisms did not sound so loud as the laughter of the audience at the funny-man's line, "Yes, by heckelum, I'm a smart fella." She wanted to give up the play, the dramatic association, the town. As she came out of the tent and walked with Kennicott down the dusty spring street, she peered at this straggling wooden village and felt that she could not possibly stay here through all of tomorrow. It was Miles Bjornstam who gave her strength--he and the fact that every seat for "The Girl from Kankakee" had been sold. Bjornstam was "keeping company" with Bea. Every night he was sitting on the back steps. Once when Carol appeared he grumbled, "Hope you're going to give this burg one good show. If you don't, reckon nobody ever will." V It was the great night; it was the night of the play. The two dressing-rooms were swirling with actors, panting, twitchy pale. Del Snafflin the barber, who was as much a professional as Ella, having once gone on in a mob scene at a stock-company performance in Minneapolis, was making them up, and showing his scorn for amateurs with, "Stand still! For the love o' Mike, how do you expect me to get your eyelids dark if you keep a-wigglin'?" The actors were beseeching, "Hey, Del, put some red in my nostrils--you put some in Rita's--gee, you didn't hardly do anything to my face." They were enormously theatric. They examined Del's makeup box, they sniffed the scent of grease-paint, every minute they ran out to peep through the hole in the curtain, they came back to inspect their wigs and costumes, they read on the whitewashed walls of the dressing-rooms the pencil inscriptions: "The Flora Flanders Comedy Company," and "This is a bum theater," and felt that they were companions of these vanished troupers. Carol, smart in maid's uniform, coaxed the temporary stage-hands to finish setting the first act, wailed at Kennicott, the electrician, "Now for heaven's sake remember the change in cue for the ambers in Act Two," slipped out to ask Dave Dyer, the ticket-taker, if he could get some more chairs, warned the frightened Myrtle Cass to be sure to upset the waste-basket when John Grimm called, "Here you, Reddy." Del Snafflin's orchestra of piano, violin, and cornet began to tune up and every one behind the magic line of the proscenic arch was frightened into paralysis. Carol wavered to the hole in the curtain. There were so many people out there, staring so hard---- In the second row she saw Miles Bjornstam, not with Bea but alone. He really wanted to see the play! It was a good omen. Who could tell? Perhaps this evening would convert Gopher Prairie to conscious beauty. She darted into the women's dressing-room, roused Maud Dyer from her fainting panic, pushed her to the wings, and ordered the curtain up. It rose doubtfully, it staggered and trembled, but it did get up without catching--this time. Then she realized that Kennicott had forgotten to turn off the houselights. Some one out front was giggling. She galloped round to the left wing, herself pulled the switch, looked so ferociously at Kennicott that he quaked, and fled back. Mrs. Dyer was creeping out on the half-darkened stage. The play was begun. And with that instant Carol realized that it was a bad play abominably acted. Encouraging them with lying smiles, she watched her work go to pieces. The settings seemed flimsy, the lighting commonplace. She watched Guy Pollock stammer and twist his mustache when he should have been a bullying magnate; Vida Sherwin, as Grimm's timid wife, chatter at the audience as though they were her class in high-school English; Juanita, in the leading role, defy Mr. Grimm as though she were repeating a list of things she had to buy at the grocery this morning; Ella Stowbody remark "I'd like a cup of tea" as though she were reciting "Curfew Shall Not Ring Tonight"; and Dr. Gould, making love to Rita Simons, squeak, "My--my--you--are--a--won'erful--girl." Myrtle Cass, as the office-boy, was so much pleased by the applause of her relatives, then so much agitated by the remarks of Cy Bogart, in the back row, in reference to her wearing trousers, that she could hardly be got off the stage. Only Raymie was so unsociable as to devote himself entirely to acting. That she was right in her opinion of the play Carol was certain when Miles Bjornstam went out after the first act, and did not come back. VI Between the second and third acts she called the company together, and supplicated, "I want to know something, before we have a chance to separate. Whether we're doing well or badly tonight, it is a beginning. But will we take it as merely a beginning? How many of you will pledge yourselves to start in with me, right away, tomorrow, and plan for another play, to be given in September?" They stared at her; they nodded at Juanita's protest: "I think one's enough for a while. It's going elegant tonight, but another play----Seems to me it'll be time enough to talk about that next fall. Carol! I hope you don't mean to hint and suggest we're not doing fine tonight? I'm sure the applause shows the audience think it's just dandy!" Then Carol knew how completely she had failed. As the audience seeped out she heard B. J. Gougerling the banker say to Howland the grocer, "Well, I think the folks did splendid; just as good as professionals. But I don't care much for these plays. What I like is a good movie, with auto accidents and hold-ups, and some git to it, and not all this talky-talk." Then Carol knew how certain she was to fail again. She wearily did not blame them, company nor audience. Herself she blamed for trying to carve intaglios in good wholesome jack-pine. "It's the worst defeat of all. I'm beaten. By Main Street. 'I must go on.' But I can't!" She was not vastly encouraged by the Gopher Prairie Dauntless: . . . would be impossible to distinguish among the actors when all gave such fine account of themselves in difficult roles of this well-known New York stage play. Guy Pollock as the old millionaire could not have been bettered for his fine impersonation of the gruff old millionaire; Mrs. Harry Haydock as the young lady from the West who so easily showed the New York four-flushers where they got off was a vision of loveliness and with fine stage presence. Miss Vida Sherwin the ever popular teacher in our high school pleased as Mrs. Grimm, Dr. Gould was well suited in the role of young lover--girls you better look out, remember the doc is a bachelor. The local Four Hundred also report that he is a great hand at shaking the light fantastic tootsies in the dance. As the stenographer Rita Simons was pretty as a picture, and Miss Ella Stowbody's long and intensive study of the drama and kindred arts in Eastern schools was seen in the fine finish of her part. . . . to no one is greater credit to be given than to Mrs. Will Kennicott on whose capable shoulders fell the burden of directing. "So kindly," Carol mused, "so well meant, so neighborly--and so confoundedly untrue. Is it really my failure, or theirs?" She sought to be sensible; she elaborately explained to herself that it was hysterical to condemn Gopher Prairie because it did not foam over the drama. Its justification was in its service as a market-town for farmers. How bravely and generously it did its work, forwarding the bread of the world, feeding and healing the farmers! Then, on the corner below her husband's office, she heard a farmer holding forth: "Sure. Course I was beaten. The shipper and the grocers here wouldn't pay us a decent price for our potatoes, even though folks in the cities were howling for 'em. So we says, well, we'll get a truck and ship 'em right down to Minneapolis. But the commission merchants there were in cahoots with the local shipper here; they said they wouldn't pay us a cent more than he would, not even if they was nearer to the market. Well, we found we could get higher prices in Chicago, but when we tried to get freight cars to ship there, the railroads wouldn't let us have 'em--even though they had cars standing empty right here in the yards. There you got it--good market, and these towns keeping us from it. Gus, that's the way these towns work all the time. They pay what they want to for our wheat, but we pay what they want us to for their clothes. Stowbody and Dawson foreclose every mortgage they can, and put in tenant farmers. The Dauntless lies to us about the Nonpartisan League, the lawyers sting us, the machinery-dealers hate to carry us over bad years, and then their daughters put on swell dresses and look at us as if we were a bunch of hoboes. Man, I'd like to burn this town!" Kennicott observed, "There's that old crank Wes Brannigan shooting off his mouth again. Gosh, but he loves to hear himself talk! They ought to run that fellow out of town!" VII She felt old and detached through high-school commencement week, which is the fete of youth in Gopher Prairie; through baccalaureate sermon, senior Parade, junior entertainment, commencement address by an Iowa clergyman who asserted that he believed in the virtue of virtuousness, and the procession of Decoration Day, when the few Civil War veterans followed Champ Perry, in his rusty forage-cap, along the spring-powdered road to the cemetery. She met Guy; she found that she had nothing to say to him. Her head ached in an aimless way. When Kennicott rejoiced, "We'll have a great time this summer; move down to the lake early and wear old clothes and act natural," she smiled, but her smile creaked. In the prairie heat she trudged along unchanging ways, talked about nothing to tepid people, and reflected that she might never escape from them. She was startled to find that she was using the word "escape." Then, for three years which passed like one curt paragraph, she ceased to find anything interesting save the Bjornstams and her baby.

Back in Gopher Prairie, Carol calls the first meeting of the dramatic club and asks for any suggestions for the play they should put on. She already has a high-minded play to recommend, but she's shocked to find out that every person is adamant about doing the play they want to do. When Carol finally recommends her choice, it gets shot down almost immediately. The group ends up choosing a lame play called "The Girl from Kankakee." Carol thinks it might be okay but then hates it from the moment she first sees the script. It doesn't take long for Carol to get on everyone's nerves with her constant nitpicking and perfectionism. Everyone talks and laughs about her behind her back, and pretty soon people stop showing up for every rehearsal. Carol attends the only professional play that comes to Gopher Prairie that year, but she's disappointed to see how amateurish it is. In the meantime, Miles Bjornstam starts courting Carol's maid, Bea Sorenson. He tells Carol he hopes that she'll put on a good show, because if she doesn't, no one ever will. The play ends up being a total disaster on its opening night. Carol can see how awful it is, but everyone in the audience and the cast thinks it's great. This puts Carol in a terrible dilemma. Should she tell them how horrible it is, or should she let them go on thinking it's great? Three years go by in a flash for Carol, as she settles back into a mindless and ambitionless life in Gopher Prairie. The only thing that interests her is the baby that Bea Sorenson ends up having with Miles Bjornstam after they're married.

I NOTICED one afternoon that grandmother had been crying. Her feet seemed to drag as she moved about the house, and I got up from the table where I was studying and went to her, asking if she did n't feel well, and if I could n't help her with her work. "No, thank you, Jim. I'm troubled, but I guess I'm well enough. Getting a little rusty in the bones, maybe," she added bitterly. I stood hesitating. "What are you fretting about, grandmother? Has grandfather lost any money?" "No, it ain't money. I wish it was. But I've heard things. You must 'a' known it would come back to me sometime." She dropped into a chair, and covering her face with her apron, began to cry. "Jim," she said, "I was never one that claimed old folks could bring up their grandchildren. But it came about so; there was n't any other way for you, it seemed like." I put my arms around her. I could n't bear to see her cry. "What is it, grandmother? Is it the Firemen's dances?" She nodded. "I'm sorry I sneaked off like that. But there's nothing wrong about the dances, and I have n't done anything wrong. I like all those country girls, and I like to dance with them. That's all there is to it." "But it ain't right to deceive us, son, and it brings blame on us. People say you are growing up to be a bad boy, and that ain't just to us." "I don't care what they say about me, but if it hurts you, that settles it. I won't go to the Firemen's Hall again." I kept my promise, of course, but I found the spring months dull enough. I sat at home with the old people in the evenings now, reading Latin that was not in our High-School course. I had made up my mind to do a lot of college requirement work in the summer, and to enter the freshman class at the University without conditions in the fall. I wanted to get away as soon as possible. Disapprobation hurt me, I found,--even that of people whom I did not admire. As the spring came on, I grew more and more lonely, and fell back on the telegrapher and the cigar-maker and his canaries for companionship. I remember I took a melancholy pleasure in hanging a May-basket for Nina Harling that spring. I bought the flowers from an old German woman who always had more window plants than any one else, and spent an afternoon trimming a little work-basket. When dusk came on, and the new moon hung in the sky, I went quietly to the Harlings' front door with my offering, rang the bell, and then ran away as was the custom. Through the willow hedge I could hear Nina's cries of delight, and I felt comforted. On those warm, soft spring evenings I often lingered downtown to walk home with Frances, and talked to her about my plans and about the reading I was doing. One evening she said she thought Mrs. Harling was not seriously offended with me. "Mama is as broad-minded as mothers ever are, I guess. But you know she was hurt about Antonia, and she can't understand why you like to be with Tiny and Lena better than with the girls of your own set." "Can you?" I asked bluntly. Frances laughed. "Yes, I think I can. You knew them in the country, and you like to take sides. In some ways you're older than boys of your age. It will be all right with mama after you pass your college examinations and she sees you're in earnest." "If you were a boy," I persisted, "you would n't belong to the Owl Club, either. You'd be just like me." She shook her head. "I would and I would n't. I expect I know the country girls better than you do. You always put a kind of glamour over them. The trouble with you, Jim, is that you're romantic. Mama's going to your Commencement. She asked me the other day if I knew what your oration is to be about. She wants you to do well." I thought my oration very good. It stated with fervor a great many things I had lately discovered. Mrs. Harling came to the Opera House to hear the Commencement exercises, and I looked at her most of the time while I made my speech. Her keen, intelligent eyes never left my face. Afterward she came back to the dressing-room where we stood, with our diplomas in our hands, walked up to me, and said heartily: "You surprised me, Jim. I did n't believe you could do as well as that. You did n't get that speech out of books." Among my graduation presents there was a silk umbrella from Mrs. Harling, with my name on the handle. I walked home from the Opera House alone. As I passed the Methodist Church, I saw three white figures ahead of me, pacing up and down under the arching maple trees, where the moonlight filtered through the lush June foliage. They hurried toward me; they were waiting for me--Lena and Tony and Anna Hansen. "Oh, Jim, it was splendid!" Tony was breathing hard, as she always did when her feelings outran her language. "There ain't a lawyer in Black Hawk could make a speech like that. I just stopped your grandpa and said so to him. He won't tell you, but he told us he was awful surprised himself, did n't he, girls?" Lena sidled up to me and said teasingly: "What made you so solemn? I thought you were scared. I was sure you'd forget." Anna spoke wistfully. "It must make you happy, Jim, to have fine thoughts like that in your mind all the time, and to have words to put them in. I always wanted to go to school, you know." "Oh, I just sat there and wished my papa could hear you! Jim,"--Antonia took hold of my coat lapels,--"there was something in your speech that made me think so about my papa!" "I thought about your papa when I wrote my speech, Tony," I said. "I dedicated it to him." She threw her arms around me, and her dear face was all wet with tears. I stood watching their white dresses glimmer smaller and smaller down the sidewalk as they went away. I have had no other success that pulled at my heartstrings like that one.

One afternoon Jim finds his grandmother crying. Finally she admits that she knows that he's been sneaking out to the Firemen's dances. Jim tries to tell her that there's nothing wrong with those dances and that he likes spending time with the country girls. But she argues that it isn't right for Jim to deceive his grandparents. People in town are saying that he is a bad boy. Jim doesn't care what people say, but he agrees to stop going to the dances to make his grandparents happy. Now it's Spring and Jim is more bored than ever. He stays at home at night and studies Latin. He's trying to get a lot of college work done over the summer so that he's ahead once he goes to college. Jim gets lonely and hangs out with the cigar-maker and the telegrapher. He hangs a May basket for Nina Harling, which makes him happy. Many nights he walks Frances Harling home and talks to her about his plans for the future. She tells him that her mother Mrs. Harling isn't too angry with Jim. She just doesn't understand why he likes girls like Tiny and Lena. But Frances says that she understands it. She thinks he is more mature than other boys his age. She assures him that her mother will like him after he passes his college exams. Jim claims that if Frances were a boy she would act like him. Frances thinks that Jim sees the hired girls with rose-colored glasses. She calls him a Romantic and asks what his speech is going to be about at graduation. Jim thinks that his oration is good. We don't get to hear any of it, but he assures us of this fact. Mrs. Harling is there listening to it and he looks at her while he delivers the speech. After graduation, Mrs. Harling tells Jim that the speech was great. Later, Jim gets a graduation present from her: a silk umbrella with his name on the handle. After the ceremony, while he is walking home, Jim runs into Lena and Tony and another hired girl named Anna Hansen. Tony congratulates Jim on the speech. Lena wants to know why Jim was so solemn as he gave his speech. Anna also thinks that he did a good job. She says that she always wanted to go to school. Antonia wishes that her father could have been there to hear it. Jim tells her that he dedicated the speech to her father. They share a moment while she cries. Narrator-Jim reflects that he never experienced as touching a moment as that one.

The hot weather of July had crept upon them unawares, and the atmosphere of the flat vale hung heavy as an opiate over the dairy-folk, the cows, and the trees. Hot steaming rains fell frequently, making the grass where the cows fed yet more rank, and hindering the late hay-making in the other meads. It was Sunday morning; the milking was done; the outdoor milkers had gone home. Tess and the other three were dressing themselves rapidly, the whole bevy having agreed to go together to Mellstock Church, which lay some three or four miles distant from the dairy-house. She had now been two months at Talbothays, and this was her first excursion. All the preceding afternoon and night heavy thunderstorms had hissed down upon the meads, and washed some of the hay into the river; but this morning the sun shone out all the more brilliantly for the deluge, and the air was balmy and clear. The crooked lane leading from their own parish to Mellstock ran along the lowest levels in a portion of its length, and when the girls reached the most depressed spot they found that the result of the rain had been to flood the lane over-shoe to a distance of some fifty yards. This would have been no serious hindrance on a week-day; they would have clicked through it in their high pattens and boots quite unconcerned; but on this day of vanity, this Sun's-day, when flesh went forth to coquet with flesh while hypocritically affecting business with spiritual things; on this occasion for wearing their white stockings and thin shoes, and their pink, white, and lilac gowns, on which every mud spot would be visible, the pool was an awkward impediment. They could hear the church-bell calling--as yet nearly a mile off. "Who would have expected such a rise in the river in summer-time!" said Marian, from the top of the roadside bank on which they had climbed, and were maintaining a precarious footing in the hope of creeping along its slope till they were past the pool. "We can't get there anyhow, without walking right through it, or else going round the Turnpike way; and that would make us so very late!" said Retty, pausing hopelessly. "And I do colour up so hot, walking into church late, and all the people staring round," said Marian, "that I hardly cool down again till we get into the That-it-may-please-Thees." While they stood clinging to the bank they heard a splashing round the bend of the road, and presently appeared Angel Clare, advancing along the lane towards them through the water. Four hearts gave a big throb simultaneously. His aspect was probably as un-Sabbatarian a one as a dogmatic parson's son often presented; his attire being his dairy clothes, long wading boots, a cabbage-leaf inside his hat to keep his head cool, with a thistle-spud to finish him off. "He's not going to church," said Marian. "No--I wish he was!" murmured Tess. Angel, in fact, rightly or wrongly (to adopt the safe phrase of evasive controversialists), preferred sermons in stones to sermons in churches and chapels on fine summer days. This morning, moreover, he had gone out to see if the damage to the hay by the flood was considerable or not. On his walk he observed the girls from a long distance, though they had been so occupied with their difficulties of passage as not to notice him. He knew that the water had risen at that spot, and that it would quite check their progress. So he had hastened on, with a dim idea of how he could help them--one of them in particular. The rosy-cheeked, bright-eyed quartet looked so charming in their light summer attire, clinging to the roadside bank like pigeons on a roof-slope, that he stopped a moment to regard them before coming close. Their gauzy skirts had brushed up from the grass innumerable flies and butterflies which, unable to escape, remained caged in the transparent tissue as in an aviary. Angel's eye at last fell upon Tess, the hindmost of the four; she, being full of suppressed laughter at their dilemma, could not help meeting his glance radiantly. He came beneath them in the water, which did not rise over his long boots; and stood looking at the entrapped flies and butterflies. "Are you trying to get to church?" he said to Marian, who was in front, including the next two in his remark, but avoiding Tess. "Yes, sir; and 'tis getting late; and my colour do come up so--" "I'll carry you through the pool--every Jill of you." The whole four flushed as if one heart beat through them. "I think you can't, sir," said Marian. "It is the only way for you to get past. Stand still. Nonsense--you are not too heavy! I'd carry you all four together. Now, Marian, attend," he continued, "and put your arms round my shoulders, so. Now! Hold on. That's well done." Marian had lowered herself upon his arm and shoulder as directed, and Angel strode off with her, his slim figure, as viewed from behind, looking like the mere stem to the great nosegay suggested by hers. They disappeared round the curve of the road, and only his sousing footsteps and the top ribbon of Marian's bonnet told where they were. In a few minutes he reappeared. Izz Huett was the next in order upon the bank. "Here he comes," she murmured, and they could hear that her lips were dry with emotion. "And I have to put my arms round his neck and look into his face as Marian did." "There's nothing in that," said Tess quickly. "There's a time for everything," continued Izz, unheeding. "A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; the first is now going to be mine." "Fie--it is Scripture, Izz!" "Yes," said Izz, "I've always a' ear at church for pretty verses." Angel Clare, to whom three-quarters of this performance was a commonplace act of kindness, now approached Izz. She quietly and dreamily lowered herself into his arms, and Angel methodically marched off with her. When he was heard returning for the third time Retty's throbbing heart could be almost seen to shake her. He went up to the red-haired girl, and while he was seizing her he glanced at Tess. His lips could not have pronounced more plainly, "It will soon be you and I." Her comprehension appeared in her face; she could not help it. There was an understanding between them. Poor little Retty, though by far the lightest weight, was the most troublesome of Clare's burdens. Marian had been like a sack of meal, a dead weight of plumpness under which he has literally staggered. Izz had ridden sensibly and calmly. Retty was a bunch of hysterics. However, he got through with the disquieted creature, deposited her, and returned. Tess could see over the hedge the distant three in a group, standing as he had placed them on the next rising ground. It was now her turn. She was embarrassed to discover that excitement at the proximity of Mr Clare's breath and eyes, which she had contemned in her companions, was intensified in herself; and as if fearful of betraying her secret, she paltered with him at the last moment. "I may be able to clim' along the bank perhaps--I can clim' better than they. You must be so tired, Mr Clare!" "No, no, Tess," said he quickly. And almost before she was aware, she was seated in his arms and resting against his shoulder. "Three Leahs to get one Rachel," he whispered. "They are better women than I," she replied, magnanimously sticking to her resolve. "Not to me," said Angel. He saw her grow warm at this; and they went some steps in silence. "I hope I am not too heavy?" she said timidly. "O no. You should lift Marian! Such a lump. You are like an undulating billow warmed by the sun. And all this fluff of muslin about you is the froth." "It is very pretty--if I seem like that to you." "Do you know that I have undergone three-quarters of this labour entirely for the sake of the fourth quarter?" "No." "I did not expect such an event to-day." "Nor I... The water came up so sudden." That the rise in the water was what she understood him to refer to, the state of breathing belied. Clare stood still and inclinced his face towards hers. "O Tessy!" he exclaimed. The girl's cheeks burned to the breeze, and she could not look into his eyes for her emotion. It reminded Angel that he was somewhat unfairly taking advantage of an accidental position; and he went no further with it. No definite words of love had crossed their lips as yet, and suspension at this point was desirable now. However, he walked slowly, to make the remainder of the distance as long as possible; but at last they came to the bend, and the rest of their progress was in full view of the other three. The dry land was reached, and he set her down. Her friends were looking with round thoughtful eyes at her and him, and she could see that they had been talking of her. He hastily bade them farewell, and splashed back along the stretch of submerged road. The four moved on together as before, till Marian broke the silence by saying-- "No--in all truth; we have no chance against her!" She looked joylessly at Tess. "What do you mean?" asked the latter. "He likes 'ee best--the very best! We could see it as he brought 'ee. He would have kissed 'ee, if you had encouraged him to do it, ever so little." "No, no," said she. The gaiety with which they had set out had somehow vanished; and yet there was no enmity or malice between them. They were generous young souls; they had been reared in the lonely country nooks where fatalism is a strong sentiment, and they did not blame her. Such supplanting was to be. Tess's heart ached. There was no concealing from herself the fact that she loved Angel Clare, perhaps all the more passionately from knowing that the others had also lost their hearts to him. There is contagion in this sentiment, especially among women. And yet that same hungry nature had fought against this, but too feebly, and the natural result had followed. "I will never stand in your way, nor in the way of either of you!" she declared to Retty that night in the bedroom (her tears running down). "I can't help this, my dear! I don't think marrying is in his mind at all; but if he were ever to ask me I should refuse him, as I should refuse any man." "Oh! would you? Why?" said wondering Retty. "It cannot be! But I will be plain. Putting myself quite on one side, I don't think he will choose either of you." "I have never expected it--thought of it!" moaned Retty. "But O! I wish I was dead!" The poor child, torn by a feeling which she hardly understood, turned to the other two girls who came upstairs just then. "We be friends with her again," she said to them. "She thinks no more of his choosing her than we do." So the reserve went off, and they were confiding and warm. "I don't seem to care what I do now," said Marian, whose mood was turned to its lowest bass. "I was going to marry a dairyman at Stickleford, who's asked me twice; but--my soul--I would put an end to myself rather'n be his wife now! Why don't ye speak, Izz?" "To confess, then," murmured Izz, "I made sure to-day that he was going to kiss me as he held me; and I lay still against his breast, hoping and hoping, and never moved at all. But he did not. I don't like biding here at Talbothays any longer! I shall go hwome." The air of the sleeping-chamber seemed to palpitate with the hopeless passion of the girls. They writhed feverishly under the oppressiveness of an emotion thrust on them by cruel Nature's law--an emotion which they had neither expected nor desired. The incident of the day had fanned the flame that was burning the inside of their hearts out, and the torture was almost more than they could endure. The differences which distinguished them as individuals were abstracted by this passion, and each was but portion of one organism called sex. There was so much frankness and so little jealousy because there was no hope. Each one was a girl of fair common sense, and she did not delude herself with any vain conceits, or deny her love, or give herself airs, in the idea of outshining the others. The full recognition of the futility of their infatuation, from a social point of view; its purposeless beginning; its self-bounded outlook; its lack of everything to justify its existence in the eye of civilization (while lacking nothing in the eye of Nature); the one fact that it did exist, ecstasizing them to a killing joy--all this imparted to them a resignation, a dignity, which a practical and sordid expectation of winning him as a husband would have destroyed. They tossed and turned on their little beds, and the cheese-wring dripped monotonously downstairs. "B' you awake, Tess?" whispered one, half-an-hour later. It was Izz Huett's voice. Tess replied in the affirmative, whereupon also Retty and Marian suddenly flung the bedclothes off them, and sighed-- "So be we!" "I wonder what she is like--the lady they say his family have looked out for him!" "I wonder," said Izz. "Some lady looked out for him?" gasped Tess, starting. "I have never heard o' that!" "O yes--'tis whispered; a young lady of his own rank, chosen by his family; a Doctor of Divinity's daughter near his father's parish of Emminster; he don't much care for her, they say. But he is sure to marry her." They had heard so very little of this; yet it was enough to build up wretched dolorous dreams upon, there in the shade of the night. They pictured all the details of his being won round to consent, of the wedding preparations, of the bride's happiness, of her dress and veil, of her blissful home with him, when oblivion would have fallen upon themselves as far as he and their love were concerned. Thus they talked, and ached, and wept till sleep charmed their sorrow away. After this disclosure Tess nourished no further foolish thought that there lurked any grave and deliberate import in Clare's attentions to her. It was a passing summer love of her face, for love's own temporary sake--nothing more. And the thorny crown of this sad conception was that she whom he really did prefer in a cursory way to the rest, she who knew herself to be more impassioned in nature, cleverer, more beautiful than they, was in the eyes of propriety far less worthy of him than the homelier ones whom he ignored. Amid the oozing fatness and warm ferments of the Froom Vale, at a season when the rush of juices could almost be heard below the hiss of fertilization, it was impossible that the most fanciful love should not grow passionate. The ready bosoms existing there were impregnated by their surroundings. July passed over their heads, and the Thermidorean weather which came in its wake seemed an effort on the part of Nature to match the state of hearts at Talbothays Dairy. The air of the place, so fresh in the spring and early summer, was stagnant and enervating now. Its heavy scents weighed upon them, and at mid-day the landscape seemed lying in a swoon. Ethiopic scorchings browned the upper slopes of the pastures, but there was still bright green herbage here where the watercourses purled. And as Clare was oppressed by the outward heats, so was he burdened inwardly by waxing fervour of passion for the soft and silent Tess. The rains having passed, the uplands were dry. The wheels of the dairyman's spring-cart, as he sped home from market, licked up the pulverized surface of the highway, and were followed by white ribands of dust, as if they had set a thin powder-train on fire. The cows jumped wildly over the five-barred barton-gate, maddened by the gad-fly; Dairyman Crick kept his shirt-sleeves permanently rolled up from Monday to Saturday; open windows had no effect in ventilation without open doors, and in the dairy-garden the blackbirds and thrushes crept about under the currant-bushes, rather in the manner of quadrupeds than of winged creatures. The flies in the kitchen were lazy, teasing, and familiar, crawling about in the unwonted places, on the floors, into drawers, and over the backs of the milkmaids' hands. Conversations were concerning sunstroke; while butter-making, and still more butter-keeping, was a despair. They milked entirely in the meads for coolness and convenience, without driving in the cows. During the day the animals obsequiously followed the shadow of the smallest tree as it moved round the stem with the diurnal roll; and when the milkers came they could hardly stand still for the flies. On one of these afternoons four or five unmilked cows chanced to stand apart from the general herd, behind the corner of a hedge, among them being Dumpling and Old Pretty, who loved Tess's hands above those of any other maid. When she rose from her stool under a finished cow, Angel Clare, who had been observing her for some time, asked her if she would take the aforesaid creatures next. She silently assented, and with her stool at arm's length, and the pail against her knee, went round to where they stood. Soon the sound of Old Pretty's milk fizzing into the pail came through the hedge, and then Angel felt inclined to go round the corner also, to finish off a hard-yielding milcher who had strayed there, he being now as capable of this as the dairyman himself. All the men, and some of the women, when milking, dug their foreheads into the cows and gazed into the pail. But a few--mainly the younger ones--rested their heads sideways. This was Tess Durbeyfield's habit, her temple pressing the milcher's flank, her eyes fixed on the far end of the meadow with the quiet of one lost in meditation. She was milking Old Pretty thus, and the sun chancing to be on the milking-side, it shone flat upon her pink-gowned form and her white curtain-bonnet, and upon her profile, rendering it keen as a cameo cut from the dun background of the cow. She did not know that Clare had followed her round, and that he sat under his cow watching her. The stillness of her head and features was remarkable: she might have been in a trance, her eyes open, yet unseeing. Nothing in the picture moved but Old Pretty's tail and Tess's pink hands, the latter so gently as to be a rhythmic pulsation only, as if they were obeying a reflex stimulus, like a beating heart. How very lovable her face was to him. Yet there was nothing ethereal about it; all was real vitality, real warmth, real incarnation. And it was in her mouth that this culminated. Eyes almost as deep and speaking he had seen before, and cheeks perhaps as fair; brows as arched, a chin and throat almost as shapely; her mouth he had seen nothing to equal on the face of the earth. To a young man with the least fire in him that little upward lift in the middle of her red top lip was distracting, infatuating, maddening. He had never before seen a woman's lips and teeth which forced upon his mind with such persistent iteration the old Elizabethan simile of roses filled with snow. Perfect, he, as a lover, might have called them off-hand. But no--they were not perfect. And it was the touch of the imperfect upon the would-be perfect that gave the sweetness, because it was that which gave the humanity. Clare had studied the curves of those lips so many times that he could reproduce them mentally with ease: and now, as they again confronted him, clothed with colour and life, they sent an _aura_ over his flesh, a breeze through his nerves, which well nigh produced a qualm; and actually produced, by some mysterious physiological process, a prosaic sneeze. She then became conscious that he was observing her; but she would not show it by any change of position, though the curious dream-like fixity disappeared, and a close eye might easily have discerned that the rosiness of her face deepened, and then faded till only a tinge of it was left. The influence that had passed into Clare like an excitation from the sky did not die down. Resolutions, reticences, prudences, fears, fell back like a defeated battalion. He jumped up from his seat, and, leaving his pail to be kicked over if the milcher had such a mind, went quickly towards the desire of his eyes, and, kneeling down beside her, clasped her in his arms. Tess was taken completely by surprise, and she yielded to his embrace with unreflecting inevitableness. Having seen that it was really her lover who had advanced, and no one else, her lips parted, and she sank upon him in her momentary joy, with something very like an ecstatic cry. He had been on the point of kissing that too tempting mouth, but he checked himself, for tender conscience' sake. "Forgive me, Tess dear!" he whispered. "I ought to have asked. I--did not know what I was doing. I do not mean it as a liberty. I am devoted to you, Tessy, dearest, in all sincerity!" Old Pretty by this time had looked round, puzzled; and seeing two people crouching under her where, by immemorial custom, there should have been only one, lifted her hind leg crossly. "She is angry--she doesn't know what we mean--she'll kick over the milk!" exclaimed Tess, gently striving to free herself, her eyes concerned with the quadruped's actions, her heart more deeply concerned with herself and Clare. She slipped up from her seat, and they stood together, his arm still encircling her. Tess's eyes, fixed on distance, began to fill. "Why do you cry, my darling?" he said. "O--I don't know!" she murmured. As she saw and felt more clearly the position she was in she became agitated and tried to withdraw. "Well, I have betrayed my feeling, Tess, at last," said he, with a curious sigh of desperation, signifying unconsciously that his heart had outrun his judgement. "That I--love you dearly and truly I need not say. But I--it shall go no further now--it distresses you--I am as surprised as you are. You will not think I have presumed upon your defencelessness--been too quick and unreflecting, will you?" "N'--I can't tell." He had allowed her to free herself; and in a minute or two the milking of each was resumed. Nobody had beheld the gravitation of the two into one; and when the dairyman came round by that screened nook a few minutes later, there was not a sign to reveal that the markedly sundered pair were more to each other than mere acquaintance. Yet in the interval since Crick's last view of them something had occurred which changed the pivot of the universe for their two natures; something which, had he known its quality, the dairyman would have despised, as a practical man; yet which was based upon a more stubborn and resistless tendency than a whole heap of so-called practicalities. A veil had been whisked aside; the tract of each one's outlook was to have a new horizon thenceforward--for a short time or for a long. END OF PHASE THE THIRD Phase the Fourth: The Consequence

Tess has been on the farm for two months before she goes on her first outing. Tess and her co-workers dress in their best clothes and set out for Mellstock Church. On the way, they find the route is flooded due to heavy rains the day before. Angel, who is out in the field, sees their difficulty and comes to their rescue. He carries each of them across the water. When Tess's turn comes, Angel's ardent admiration for her is revealed again. He tells her he has carried "three Leahs to get one Rachel," a clear Biblical reference to her beauty. He also takes as long as possible in carrying Tess across. Seeing his obvious attraction to her, the other maids conclude that they do not stand a chance with Angel against Tess. Pained by all this, Tess tells them that if Angel ever proposes to her, she will refuse him. Later Tess is relieved to hear from the other milkmaids that Angel's parents have chosen a girl for him to marry. However, Angel surprises her by his confession of his sincere love for her.

Considering the difficulties which men have had to hold to a newly acquired state, some might wonder how, seeing that Alexander the Great became the master of Asia in a few years, and died whilst it was scarcely settled (whence it might appear reasonable that the whole empire would have rebelled), nevertheless his successors maintained themselves, and had to meet no other difficulty than that which arose among themselves from their own ambitions. I answer that the principalities of which one has record are found to be governed in two different ways; either by a prince, with a body of servants, who assist him to govern the kingdom as ministers by his favour and permission; or by a prince and barons, who hold that dignity by antiquity of blood and not by the grace of the prince. Such barons have states and their own subjects, who recognize them as lords and hold them in natural affection. Those states that are governed by a prince and his servants hold their prince in more consideration, because in all the country there is no one who is recognized as superior to him, and if they yield obedience to another they do it as to a minister and official, and they do not bear him any particular affection. The examples of these two governments in our time are the Turk and the King of France. The entire monarchy of the Turk is governed by one lord, the others are his servants; and, dividing his kingdom into sanjaks, he sends there different administrators, and shifts and changes them as he chooses. But the King of France is placed in the midst of an ancient body of lords, acknowledged by their own subjects, and beloved by them; they have their own prerogatives, nor can the king take these away except at his peril. Therefore, he who considers both of these states will recognize great difficulties in seizing the state of the Turk, but, once it is conquered, great ease in holding it. The causes of the difficulties in seizing the kingdom of the Turk are that the usurper cannot be called in by the princes of the kingdom, nor can he hope to be assisted in his designs by the revolt of those whom the lord has around him. This arises from the reasons given above; for his ministers, being all slaves and bondmen, can only be corrupted with great difficulty, and one can expect little advantage from them when they have been corrupted, as they cannot carry the people with them, for the reasons assigned. Hence, he who attacks the Turk must bear in mind that he will find him united, and he will have to rely more on his own strength than on the revolt of others; but, if once the Turk has been conquered, and routed in the field in such a way that he cannot replace his armies, there is nothing to fear but the family of this prince, and, this being exterminated, there remains no one to fear, the others having no credit with the people; and as the conqueror did not rely on them before his victory, so he ought not to fear them after it. The contrary happens in kingdoms governed like that of France, because one can easily enter there by gaining over some baron of the kingdom, for one always finds malcontents and such as desire a change. Such men, for the reasons given, can open the way into the state and render the victory easy; but if you wish to hold it afterwards, you meet with infinite difficulties, both from those who have assisted you and from those you have crushed. Nor is it enough for you to have exterminated the family of the prince, because the lords that remain make themselves the heads of fresh movements against you, and as you are unable either to satisfy or exterminate them, that state is lost whenever time brings the opportunity. Now if you will consider what was the nature of the government of Darius, you will find it similar to the kingdom of the Turk, and therefore it was only necessary for Alexander, first to overthrow him in the field, and then to take the country from him. After which victory, Darius being killed, the state remained secure to Alexander, for the above reasons. And if his successors had been united they would have enjoyed it securely and at their ease, for there were no tumults raised in the kingdom except those they provoked themselves. But it is impossible to hold with such tranquillity states constituted like that of France. Hence arose those frequent rebellions against the Romans in Spain, France, and Greece, owing to the many principalities there were in these states, of which, as long as the memory of them endured, the Romans always held an insecure possession; but with the power and long continuance of the empire the memory of them passed away, and the Romans then became secure possessors. And when fighting afterwards amongst themselves, each one was able to attach to himself his own parts of the country, according to the authority he had assumed there; and the family of the former lord being exterminated, none other than the Romans were acknowledged. When these things are remembered no one will marvel at the ease with which Alexander held the Empire of Asia, or at the difficulties which others have had to keep an acquisition, such as Pyrrhus and many more; this is not occasioned by the little or abundance of ability in the conqueror, but by the want of uniformity in the subject state.

Now you're thinking: didn't Alexander the Great get land quickly and hold on to it even after his death? And weren't you just saying how difficult it is to hold on to new lands, Machiavelli? Well, there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for that. There are two ways to govern a monarchy: by a king and non-elected barons or by a king and his appointed ministers. In the second one, the king is more powerful since he's the only person who has real power. Turkey is one example of this kind of government. Because the king has all the power, a country like Turkey is pretty hard to conquer. There are no barons to help you by turning against the king. But on the plus side, once you do take over, ruling is a piece of cake because there are no barons to try to challenge you. On the other hand, we have places like France, where there's a king and barons that go back a long time. It's super easy to get into one of these places, since a baron somewhere is probably pissed at the king and wants him gone. The problem is, those same barons can turn against you after the old king is gone, so it's hard to hold on to these sorts of kingdoms. Back to Alexander. Why was it easy to keep his lands? You guessed it: they were like Turkey and had no barons to complicate things.

'All the events of that night have a great importance, since they brought about a situation which remained unchanged till Jim's return. Jim had been away in the interior for more than a week, and it was Dain Waris who had directed the first repulse. That brave and intelligent youth ("who knew how to fight after the manner of white men") wished to settle the business off-hand, but his people were too much for him. He had not Jim's racial prestige and the reputation of invincible, supernatural power. He was not the visible, tangible incarnation of unfailing truth and of unfailing victory. Beloved, trusted, and admired as he was, he was still one of _them_, while Jim was one of us. Moreover, the white man, a tower of strength in himself, was invulnerable, while Dain Waris could be killed. Those unexpressed thoughts guided the opinions of the chief men of the town, who elected to assemble in Jim's fort for deliberation upon the emergency, as if expecting to find wisdom and courage in the dwelling of the absent white man. The shooting of Brown's ruffians was so far good, or lucky, that there had been half-a-dozen casualties amongst the defenders. The wounded were lying on the verandah tended by their women-folk. The women and children from the lower part of the town had been sent into the fort at the first alarm. There Jewel was in command, very efficient and high-spirited, obeyed by Jim's "own people," who, quitting in a body their little settlement under the stockade, had gone in to form the garrison. The refugees crowded round her; and through the whole affair, to the very disastrous last, she showed an extraordinary martial ardour. It was to her that Dain Waris had gone at once at the first intelligence of danger, for you must know that Jim was the only one in Patusan who possessed a store of gunpowder. Stein, with whom he had kept up intimate relations by letters, had obtained from the Dutch Government a special authorisation to export five hundred kegs of it to Patusan. The powder-magazine was a small hut of rough logs covered entirely with earth, and in Jim's absence the girl had the key. In the council, held at eleven o'clock in the evening in Jim's dining-room, she backed up Waris's advice for immediate and vigorous action. I am told that she stood up by the side of Jim's empty chair at the head of the long table and made a warlike impassioned speech, which for the moment extorted murmurs of approbation from the assembled headmen. Old Doramin, who had not showed himself outside his own gate for more than a year, had been brought across with great difficulty. He was, of course, the chief man there. The temper of the council was very unforgiving, and the old man's word would have been decisive; but it is my opinion that, well aware of his son's fiery courage, he dared not pronounce the word. More dilatory counsels prevailed. A certain Haji Saman pointed out at great length that "these tyrannical and ferocious men had delivered themselves to a certain death in any case. They would stand fast on their hill and starve, or they would try to regain their boat and be shot from ambushes across the creek, or they would break and fly into the forest and perish singly there." He argued that by the use of proper stratagems these evil-minded strangers could be destroyed without the risk of a battle, and his words had a great weight, especially with the Patusan men proper. What unsettled the minds of the townsfolk was the failure of the Rajah's boats to act at the decisive moment. It was the diplomatic Kassim who represented the Rajah at the council. He spoke very little, listened smilingly, very friendly and impenetrable. During the sitting messengers kept arriving every few minutes almost, with reports of the invaders' proceedings. Wild and exaggerated rumours were flying: there was a large ship at the mouth of the river with big guns and many more men--some white, others with black skins and of bloodthirsty appearance. They were coming with many more boats to exterminate every living thing. A sense of near, incomprehensible danger affected the common people. At one moment there was a panic in the courtyard amongst the women; shrieking; a rush; children crying--Haji Sunan went out to quiet them. Then a fort sentry fired at something moving on the river, and nearly killed a villager bringing in his women-folk in a canoe together with the best of his domestic utensils and a dozen fowls. This caused more confusion. Meantime the palaver inside Jim's house went on in the presence of the girl. Doramin sat fierce-faced, heavy, looking at the speakers in turn, and breathing slow like a bull. He didn't speak till the last, after Kassim had declared that the Rajah's boats would be called in because the men were required to defend his master's stockade. Dain Waris in his father's presence would offer no opinion, though the girl entreated him in Jim's name to speak out. She offered him Jim's own men in her anxiety to have these intruders driven out at once. He only shook his head, after a glance or two at Doramin. Finally, when the council broke up it had been decided that the houses nearest the creek should be strongly occupied to obtain the command of the enemy's boat. The boat itself was not to be interfered with openly, so that the robbers on the hill should be tempted to embark, when a well-directed fire would kill most of them, no doubt. To cut off the escape of those who might survive, and to prevent more of them coming up, Dain Waris was ordered by Doramin to take an armed party of Bugis down the river to a certain spot ten miles below Patusan, and there form a camp on the shore and blockade the stream with the canoes. I don't believe for a moment that Doramin feared the arrival of fresh forces. My opinion is that his conduct was guided solely by his wish to keep his son out of harm's way. To prevent a rush being made into the town the construction of a stockade was to be commenced at daylight at the end of the street on the left bank. The old nakhoda declared his intention to command there himself. A distribution of powder, bullets, and percussion-caps was made immediately under the girl's supervision. Several messengers were to be dispatched in different directions after Jim, whose exact whereabouts were unknown. These men started at dawn, but before that time Kassim had managed to open communications with the besieged Brown. 'That accomplished diplomatist and confidant of the Rajah, on leaving the fort to go back to his master, took into his boat Cornelius, whom he found slinking mutely amongst the people in the courtyard. Kassim had a little plan of his own and wanted him for an interpreter. Thus it came about that towards morning Brown, reflecting upon the desperate nature of his position, heard from the marshy overgrown hollow an amicable, quavering, strained voice crying--in English--for permission to come up, under a promise of personal safety and on a very important errand. He was overjoyed. If he was spoken to he was no longer a hunted wild beast. These friendly sounds took off at once the awful stress of vigilant watchfulness as of so many blind men not knowing whence the deathblow might come. He pretended a great reluctance. The voice declared itself "a white man--a poor, ruined, old man who had been living here for years." A mist, wet and chilly, lay on the slopes of the hill, and after some more shouting from one to the other, Brown called out, "Come on, then, but alone, mind!" As a matter of fact--he told me, writhing with rage at the recollection of his helplessness--it made no difference. They couldn't see more than a few yards before them, and no treachery could make their position worse. By-and-by Cornelius, in his week-day attire of a ragged dirty shirt and pants, barefooted, with a broken-rimmed pith hat on his head, was made out vaguely, sidling up to the defences, hesitating, stopping to listen in a peering posture. "Come along! You are safe," yelled Brown, while his men stared. All their hopes of life became suddenly centered in that dilapidated, mean newcomer, who in profound silence clambered clumsily over a felled tree-trunk, and shivering, with his sour, mistrustful face, looked about at the knot of bearded, anxious, sleepless desperadoes. 'Half an hour's confidential talk with Cornelius opened Brown's eyes as to the home affairs of Patusan. He was on the alert at once. There were possibilities, immense possibilities; but before he would talk over Cornelius's proposals he demanded that some food should be sent up as a guarantee of good faith. Cornelius went off, creeping sluggishly down the hill on the side of the Rajah's palace, and after some delay a few of Tunku Allang's men came up, bringing a scanty supply of rice, chillies, and dried fish. This was immeasurably better than nothing. Later on Cornelius returned accompanying Kassim, who stepped out with an air of perfect good-humoured trustfulness, in sandals, and muffled up from neck to ankles in dark-blue sheeting. He shook hands with Brown discreetly, and the three drew aside for a conference. Brown's men, recovering their confidence, were slapping each other on the back, and cast knowing glances at their captain while they busied themselves with preparations for cooking. 'Kassim disliked Doramin and his Bugis very much, but he hated the new order of things still more. It had occurred to him that these whites, together with the Rajah's followers, could attack and defeat the Bugis before Jim's return. Then, he reasoned, general defection of the townsfolk was sure to follow, and the reign of the white man who protected poor people would be over. Afterwards the new allies could be dealt with. They would have no friends. The fellow was perfectly able to perceive the difference of character, and had seen enough of white men to know that these newcomers were outcasts, men without country. Brown preserved a stern and inscrutable demeanour. When he first heard Cornelius's voice demanding admittance, it brought merely the hope of a loophole for escape. In less than an hour other thoughts were seething in his head. Urged by an extreme necessity, he had come there to steal food, a few tons of rubber or gum may be, perhaps a handful of dollars, and had found himself enmeshed by deadly dangers. Now in consequence of these overtures from Kassim he began to think of stealing the whole country. Some confounded fellow had apparently accomplished something of the kind--single-handed at that. Couldn't have done it very well though. Perhaps they could work together--squeeze everything dry and then go out quietly. In the course of his negotiations with Kassim he became aware that he was supposed to have a big ship with plenty of men outside. Kassim begged him earnestly to have this big ship with his many guns and men brought up the river without delay for the Rajah's service. Brown professed himself willing, and on this basis the negotiation was carried on with mutual distrust. Three times in the course of the morning the courteous and active Kassim went down to consult the Rajah and came up busily with his long stride. Brown, while bargaining, had a sort of grim enjoyment in thinking of his wretched schooner, with nothing but a heap of dirt in her hold, that stood for an armed ship, and a Chinaman and a lame ex-beachcomber of Levuka on board, who represented all his many men. In the afternoon he obtained further doles of food, a promise of some money, and a supply of mats for his men to make shelters for themselves. They lay down and snored, protected from the burning sunshine; but Brown, sitting fully exposed on one of the felled trees, feasted his eyes upon the view of the town and the river. There was much loot there. Cornelius, who had made himself at home in the camp, talked at his elbow, pointing out the localities, imparting advice, giving his own version of Jim's character, and commenting in his own fashion upon the events of the last three years. Brown, who, apparently indifferent and gazing away, listened with attention to every word, could not make out clearly what sort of man this Jim could be. "What's his name? Jim! Jim! That's not enough for a man's name." "They call him," said Cornelius scornfully, "Tuan Jim here. As you may say Lord Jim." "What is he? Where does he come from?" inquired Brown. "What sort of man is he? Is he an Englishman?" "Yes, yes, he's an Englishman. I am an Englishman too. From Malacca. He is a fool. All you have to do is to kill him and then you are king here. Everything belongs to him," explained Cornelius. "It strikes me he may be made to share with somebody before very long," commented Brown half aloud. "No, no. The proper way is to kill him the first chance you get, and then you can do what you like," Cornelius would insist earnestly. "I have lived for many years here, and I am giving you a friend's advice." 'In such converse and in gloating over the view of Patusan, which he had determined in his mind should become his prey, Brown whiled away most of the afternoon, his men, meantime, resting. On that day Dain Waris's fleet of canoes stole one by one under the shore farthest from the creek, and went down to close the river against his retreat. Of this Brown was not aware, and Kassim, who came up the knoll an hour before sunset, took good care not to enlighten him. He wanted the white man's ship to come up the river, and this news, he feared, would be discouraging. He was very pressing with Brown to send the "order," offering at the same time a trusty messenger, who for greater secrecy (as he explained) would make his way by land to the mouth of the river and deliver the "order" on board. After some reflection Brown judged it expedient to tear a page out of his pocket-book, on which he simply wrote, "We are getting on. Big job. Detain the man." The stolid youth selected by Kassim for that service performed it faithfully, and was rewarded by being suddenly tipped, head first, into the schooner's empty hold by the ex-beachcomber and the Chinaman, who thereupon hastened to put on the hatches. What became of him afterwards Brown did not say.' 'Brown's object was to gain time by fooling with Kassim's diplomacy. For doing a real stroke of business he could not help thinking the white man was the person to work with. He could not imagine such a chap (who must be confoundedly clever after all to get hold of the natives like that) refusing a help that would do away with the necessity for slow, cautious, risky cheating, that imposed itself as the only possible line of conduct for a single-handed man. He, Brown, would offer him the power. No man could hesitate. Everything was in coming to a clear understanding. Of course they would share. The idea of there being a fort--all ready to his hand--a real fort, with artillery (he knew this from Cornelius), excited him. Let him only once get in and . . . He would impose modest conditions. Not too low, though. The man was no fool, it seemed. They would work like brothers till . . . till the time came for a quarrel and a shot that would settle all accounts. With grim impatience of plunder he wished himself to be talking with the man now. The land already seemed to be his to tear to pieces, squeeze, and throw away. Meantime Kassim had to be fooled for the sake of food first--and for a second string. But the principal thing was to get something to eat from day to day. Besides, he was not averse to begin fighting on that Rajah's account, and teach a lesson to those people who had received him with shots. The lust of battle was upon him. 'I am sorry that I can't give you this part of the story, which of course I have mainly from Brown, in Brown's own words. There was in the broken, violent speech of that man, unveiling before me his thoughts with the very hand of Death upon his throat, an undisguised ruthlessness of purpose, a strange vengeful attitude towards his own past, and a blind belief in the righteousness of his will against all mankind, something of that feeling which could induce the leader of a horde of wandering cut-throats to call himself proudly the Scourge of God. No doubt the natural senseless ferocity which is the basis of such a character was exasperated by failure, ill-luck, and the recent privations, as well as by the desperate position in which he found himself; but what was most remarkable of all was this, that while he planned treacherous alliances, had already settled in his own mind the fate of the white man, and intrigued in an overbearing, offhand manner with Kassim, one could perceive that what he had really desired, almost in spite of himself, was to play havoc with that jungle town which had defied him, to see it strewn over with corpses and enveloped in flames. Listening to his pitiless, panting voice, I could imagine how he must have looked at it from the hillock, peopling it with images of murder and rapine. The part nearest to the creek wore an abandoned aspect, though as a matter of fact every house concealed a few armed men on the alert. Suddenly beyond the stretch of waste ground, interspersed with small patches of low dense bush, excavations, heaps of rubbish, with trodden paths between, a man, solitary and looking very small, strolled out into the deserted opening of the street between the shut-up, dark, lifeless buildings at the end. Perhaps one of the inhabitants, who had fled to the other bank of the river, coming back for some object of domestic use. Evidently he supposed himself quite safe at that distance from the hill on the other side of the creek. A light stockade, set up hastily, was just round the turn of the street, full of his friends. He moved leisurely. Brown saw him, and instantly called to his side the Yankee deserter, who acted as a sort of second in command. This lanky, loose-jointed fellow came forward, wooden-faced, trailing his rifle lazily. When he understood what was wanted from him a homicidal and conceited smile uncovered his teeth, making two deep folds down his sallow, leathery cheeks. He prided himself on being a dead shot. He dropped on one knee, and taking aim from a steady rest through the unlopped branches of a felled tree, fired, and at once stood up to look. The man, far away, turned his head to the report, made another step forward, seemed to hesitate, and abruptly got down on his hands and knees. In the silence that fell upon the sharp crack of the rifle, the dead shot, keeping his eyes fixed upon the quarry, guessed that "this there coon's health would never be a source of anxiety to his friends any more." The man's limbs were seen to move rapidly under his body in an endeavour to run on all-fours. In that empty space arose a multitudinous shout of dismay and surprise. The man sank flat, face down, and moved no more. "That showed them what we could do," said Brown to me. "Struck the fear of sudden death into them. That was what we wanted. They were two hundred to one, and this gave them something to think over for the night. Not one of them had an idea of such a long shot before. That beggar belonging to the Rajah scooted down-hill with his eyes hanging out of his head." 'As he was telling me this he tried with a shaking hand to wipe the thin foam on his blue lips. "Two hundred to one. Two hundred to one . . . strike terror, . . . terror, terror, I tell you. . . ." His own eyes were starting out of their sockets. He fell back, clawing the air with skinny fingers, sat up again, bowed and hairy, glared at me sideways like some man-beast of folk-lore, with open mouth in his miserable and awful agony before he got his speech back after that fit. There are sights one never forgets. 'Furthermore, to draw the enemy's fire and locate such parties as might have been hiding in the bushes along the creek, Brown ordered the Solomon Islander to go down to the boat and bring an oar, as you send a spaniel after a stick into the water. This failed, and the fellow came back without a single shot having been fired at him from anywhere. "There's nobody," opined some of the men. It is "onnatural," remarked the Yankee. Kassim had gone, by that time, very much impressed, pleased too, and also uneasy. Pursuing his tortuous policy, he had dispatched a message to Dain Waris warning him to look out for the white men's ship, which, he had had information, was about to come up the river. He minimised its strength and exhorted him to oppose its passage. This double-dealing answered his purpose, which was to keep the Bugis forces divided and to weaken them by fighting. On the other hand, he had in the course of that day sent word to the assembled Bugis chiefs in town, assuring them that he was trying to induce the invaders to retire; his messages to the fort asked earnestly for powder for the Rajah's men. It was a long time since Tunku Allang had had ammunition for the score or so of old muskets rusting in their arm-racks in the audience-hall. The open intercourse between the hill and the palace unsettled all the minds. It was already time for men to take sides, it began to be said. There would soon be much bloodshed, and thereafter great trouble for many people. The social fabric of orderly, peaceful life, when every man was sure of to-morrow, the edifice raised by Jim's hands, seemed on that evening ready to collapse into a ruin reeking with blood. The poorer folk were already taking to the bush or flying up the river. A good many of the upper class judged it necessary to go and pay their court to the Rajah. The Rajah's youths jostled them rudely. Old Tunku Allang, almost out of his mind with fear and indecision, either kept a sullen silence or abused them violently for daring to come with empty hands: they departed very much frightened; only old Doramin kept his countrymen together and pursued his tactics inflexibly. Enthroned in a big chair behind the improvised stockade, he issued his orders in a deep veiled rumble, unmoved, like a deaf man, in the flying rumours. 'Dusk fell, hiding first the body of the dead man, which had been left lying with arms outstretched as if nailed to the ground, and then the revolving sphere of the night rolled smoothly over Patusan and came to a rest, showering the glitter of countless worlds upon the earth. Again, in the exposed part of the town big fires blazed along the only street, revealing from distance to distance upon their glares the falling straight lines of roofs, the fragments of wattled walls jumbled in confusion, here and there a whole hut elevated in the glow upon the vertical black stripes of a group of high piles and all this line of dwellings, revealed in patches by the swaying flames, seemed to flicker tortuously away up-river into the gloom at the heart of the land. A great silence, in which the looms of successive fires played without noise, extended into the darkness at the foot of the hill; but the other bank of the river, all dark save for a solitary bonfire at the river-front before the fort, sent out into the air an increasing tremor that might have been the stamping of a multitude of feet, the hum of many voices, or the fall of an immensely distant waterfall. It was then, Brown confessed to me, while, turning his back on his men, he sat looking at it all, that notwithstanding his disdain, his ruthless faith in himself, a feeling came over him that at last he had run his head against a stone wall. Had his boat been afloat at the time, he believed he would have tried to steal away, taking his chances of a long chase down the river and of starvation at sea. It is very doubtful whether he would have succeeded in getting away. However, he didn't try this. For another moment he had a passing thought of trying to rush the town, but he perceived very well that in the end he would find himself in the lighted street, where they would be shot down like dogs from the houses. They were two hundred to one--he thought, while his men, huddling round two heaps of smouldering embers, munched the last of the bananas and roasted the few yams they owed to Kassim's diplomacy. Cornelius sat amongst them dozing sulkily. 'Then one of the whites remembered that some tobacco had been left in the boat, and, encouraged by the impunity of the Solomon Islander, said he would go to fetch it. At this all the others shook off their despondency. Brown applied to, said, "Go, and be d--d to you," scornfully. He didn't think there was any danger in going to the creek in the dark. The man threw a leg over the tree-trunk and disappeared. A moment later he was heard clambering into the boat and then clambering out. "I've got it," he cried. A flash and a report at the very foot of the hill followed. "I am hit," yelled the man. "Look out, look out--I am hit," and instantly all the rifles went off. The hill squirted fire and noise into the night like a little volcano, and when Brown and the Yankee with curses and cuffs stopped the panic-stricken firing, a profound, weary groan floated up from the creek, succeeded by a plaint whose heartrending sadness was like some poison turning the blood cold in the veins. Then a strong voice pronounced several distinct incomprehensible words somewhere beyond the creek. "Let no one fire," shouted Brown. "What does it mean?" . . . "Do you hear on the hill? Do you hear? Do you hear?" repeated the voice three times. Cornelius translated, and then prompted the answer. "Speak," cried Brown, "we hear." Then the voice, declaiming in the sonorous inflated tone of a herald, and shifting continually on the edge of the vague waste-land, proclaimed that between the men of the Bugis nation living in Patusan and the white men on the hill and those with them, there would be no faith, no compassion, no speech, no peace. A bush rustled; a haphazard volley rang out. "Dam' foolishness," muttered the Yankee, vexedly grounding the butt. Cornelius translated. The wounded man below the hill, after crying out twice, "Take me up! take me up!" went on complaining in moans. While he had kept on the blackened earth of the slope, and afterwards crouching in the boat, he had been safe enough. It seems that in his joy at finding the tobacco he forgot himself and jumped out on her off-side, as it were. The white boat, lying high and dry, showed him up; the creek was no more than seven yards wide in that place, and there happened to be a man crouching in the bush on the other bank. 'He was a Bugis of Tondano only lately come to Patusan, and a relation of the man shot in the afternoon. That famous long shot had indeed appalled the beholders. The man in utter security had been struck down, in full view of his friends, dropping with a joke on his lips, and they seemed to see in the act an atrocity which had stirred a bitter rage. That relation of his, Si-Lapa by name, was then with Doramin in the stockade only a few feet away. You who know these chaps must admit that the fellow showed an unusual pluck by volunteering to carry the message, alone, in the dark. Creeping across the open ground, he had deviated to the left and found himself opposite the boat. He was startled when Brown's man shouted. He came to a sitting position with his gun to his shoulder, and when the other jumped out, exposing himself, he pulled the trigger and lodged three jagged slugs point-blank into the poor wretch's stomach. Then, lying flat on his face, he gave himself up for dead, while a thin hail of lead chopped and swished the bushes close on his right hand; afterwards he delivered his speech shouting, bent double, dodging all the time in cover. With the last word he leaped sideways, lay close for a while, and afterwards got back to the houses unharmed, having achieved on that night such a renown as his children will not willingly allow to die. 'And on the hill the forlorn band let the two little heaps of embers go out under their bowed heads. They sat dejected on the ground with compressed lips and downcast eyes, listening to their comrade below. He was a strong man and died hard, with moans now loud, now sinking to a strange confidential note of pain. Sometimes he shrieked, and again, after a period of silence, he could be heard muttering deliriously a long and unintelligible complaint. Never for a moment did he cease. '"What's the good?" Brown had said unmoved once, seeing the Yankee, who had been swearing under his breath, prepare to go down. "That's so," assented the deserter, reluctantly desisting. "There's no encouragement for wounded men here. Only his noise is calculated to make all the others think too much of the hereafter, cap'n." "Water!" cried the wounded man in an extraordinarily clear vigorous voice, and then went off moaning feebly. "Ay, water. Water will do it," muttered the other to himself, resignedly. "Plenty by-and-by. The tide is flowing." 'At last the tide flowed, silencing the plaint and the cries of pain, and the dawn was near when Brown, sitting with his chin in the palm of his hand before Patusan, as one might stare at the unscalable side of a mountain, heard the brief ringing bark of a brass 6-pounder far away in town somewhere. "What's this?" he asked of Cornelius, who hung about him. Cornelius listened. A muffled roaring shout rolled down-river over the town; a big drum began to throb, and others responded, pulsating and droning. Tiny scattered lights began to twinkle in the dark half of the town, while the part lighted by the loom of fires hummed with a deep and prolonged murmur. "He has come," said Cornelius. "What? Already? Are you sure?" Brown asked. "Yes! yes! Sure. Listen to the noise." "What are they making that row about?" pursued Brown. "For joy," snorted Cornelius; "he is a very great man, but all the same, he knows no more than a child, and so they make a great noise to please him, because they know no better." "Look here," said Brown, "how is one to get at him?" "He shall come to talk to you," Cornelius declared. "What do you mean? Come down here strolling as it were?" Cornelius nodded vigorously in the dark. "Yes. He will come straight here and talk to you. He is just like a fool. You shall see what a fool he is." Brown was incredulous. "You shall see; you shall see," repeated Cornelius. "He is not afraid--not afraid of anything. He will come and order you to leave his people alone. Everybody must leave his people alone. He is like a little child. He will come to you straight." Alas! he knew Jim well--that "mean little skunk," as Brown called him to me. "Yes, certainly," he pursued with ardour, "and then, captain, you tell that tall man with a gun to shoot him. Just you kill him, and you will frighten everybody so much that you can do anything you like with them afterwards--get what you like--go away when you like. Ha! ha! ha! Fine . . ." He almost danced with impatience and eagerness; and Brown, looking over his shoulder at him, could see, shown up by the pitiless dawn, his men drenched with dew, sitting amongst the cold ashes and the litter of the camp, haggard, cowed, and in rags.' 'To the very last moment, till the full day came upon them with a spring, the fires on the west bank blazed bright and clear; and then Brown saw in a knot of coloured figures motionless between the advanced houses a man in European clothes, in a helmet, all white. "That's him; look! look!" Cornelius said excitedly. All Brown's men had sprung up and crowded at his back with lustreless eyes. The group of vivid colours and dark faces with the white figure in their midst were observing the knoll. Brown could see naked arms being raised to shade the eyes and other brown arms pointing. What should he do? He looked around, and the forests that faced him on all sides walled the cock-pit of an unequal contest. He looked once more at his men. A contempt, a weariness, the desire of life, the wish to try for one more chance--for some other grave--struggled in his breast. From the outline the figure presented it seemed to him that the white man there, backed up by all the power of the land, was examining his position through binoculars. Brown jumped up on the log, throwing his arms up, the palms outwards. The coloured group closed round the white man, and fell back twice before he got clear of them, walking slowly alone. Brown remained standing on the log till Jim, appearing and disappearing between the patches of thorny scrub, had nearly reached the creek; then Brown jumped off and went down to meet him on his side. 'They met, I should think, not very far from the place, perhaps on the very spot, where Jim took the second desperate leap of his life--the leap that landed him into the life of Patusan, into the trust, the love, the confidence of the people. They faced each other across the creek, and with steady eyes tried to understand each other before they opened their lips. Their antagonism must have been expressed in their glances; I know that Brown hated Jim at first sight. Whatever hopes he might have had vanished at once. This was not the man he had expected to see. He hated him for this--and in a checked flannel shirt with sleeves cut off at the elbows, grey bearded, with a sunken, sun-blackened face--he cursed in his heart the other's youth and assurance, his clear eyes and his untroubled bearing. That fellow had got in a long way before him! He did not look like a man who would be willing to give anything for assistance. He had all the advantages on his side--possession, security, power; he was on the side of an overwhelming force! He was not hungry and desperate, and he did not seem in the least afraid. And there was something in the very neatness of Jim's clothes, from the white helmet to the canvas leggings and the pipeclayed shoes, which in Brown's sombre irritated eyes seemed to belong to things he had in the very shaping of his life condemned and flouted. '"Who are you?" asked Jim at last, speaking in his usual voice. "My name's Brown," answered the other loudly; "Captain Brown. What's yours?" and Jim after a little pause went on quietly, as If he had not heard: "What made you come here?" "You want to know," said Brown bitterly. "It's easy to tell. Hunger. And what made you?" '"The fellow started at this," said Brown, relating to me the opening of this strange conversation between those two men, separated only by the muddy bed of a creek, but standing on the opposite poles of that conception of life which includes all mankind--"The fellow started at this and got very red in the face. Too big to be questioned, I suppose. I told him that if he looked upon me as a dead man with whom you may take liberties, he himself was not a whit better off really. I had a fellow up there who had a bead drawn on him all the time, and only waited for a sign from me. There was nothing to be shocked at in this. He had come down of his own free will. 'Let us agree,' said I, 'that we are both dead men, and let us talk on that basis, as equals. We are all equal before death,' I said. I admitted I was there like a rat in a trap, but we had been driven to it, and even a trapped rat can give a bite. He caught me up in a moment. 'Not if you don't go near the trap till the rat is dead.' I told him that sort of game was good enough for these native friends of his, but I would have thought him too white to serve even a rat so. Yes, I had wanted to talk with him. Not to beg for my life, though. My fellows were--well--what they were--men like himself, anyhow. All we wanted from him was to come on in the devil's name and have it out. 'God d--n it,' said I, while he stood there as still as a wooden post, 'you don't want to come out here every day with your glasses to count how many of us are left on our feet. Come. Either bring your infernal crowd along or let us go out and starve in the open sea, by God! You have been white once, for all your tall talk of this being your own people and you being one with them. Are you? And what the devil do you get for it; what is it you've found here that is so d--d precious? Hey? You don't want us to come down here perhaps--do you? You are two hundred to one. You don't want us to come down into the open. Ah! I promise you we shall give you some sport before you've done. You talk about me making a cowardly set upon unoffending people. What's that to me that they are unoffending, when I am starving for next to no offence? But I am not a coward. Don't you be one. Bring them along or, by all the fiends, we shall yet manage to send half your unoffending town to heaven with us in smoke!'" 'He was terrible--relating this to me--this tortured skeleton of a man drawn up together with his face over his knees, upon a miserable bed in that wretched hovel, and lifting his head to look at me with malignant triumph. '"That's what I told him--I knew what to say," he began again, feebly at first, but working himself up with incredible speed into a fiery utterance of his scorn. "We aren't going into the forest to wander like a string of living skeletons dropping one after another for ants to go to work upon us before we are fairly dead. Oh no! . . . 'You don't deserve a better fate,' he said. 'And what do you deserve,' I shouted at him, 'you that I find skulking here with your mouth full of your responsibility, of innocent lives, of your infernal duty? What do you know more of me than I know of you? I came here for food. D'ye hear?--food to fill our bellies. And what did _you_ come for? What did you ask for when you came here? We don't ask you for anything but to give us a fight or a clear road to go back whence we came. . . .' 'I would fight with you now,' says he, pulling at his little moustache. 'And I would let you shoot me, and welcome,' I said. 'This is as good a jumping-off place for me as another. I am sick of my infernal luck. But it would be too easy. There are my men in the same boat--and, by God, I am not the sort to jump out of trouble and leave them in a d--d lurch,' I said. He stood thinking for a while and then wanted to know what I had done ('out there' he says, tossing his head down-stream) to be hazed about so. 'Have we met to tell each other the story of our lives?' I asked him. 'Suppose you begin. No? Well, I am sure I don't want to hear. Keep it to yourself. I know it is no better than mine. I've lived--and so did you, though you talk as if you were one of those people that should have wings so as to go about without touching the dirty earth. Well--it is dirty. I haven't got any wings. I am here because I was afraid once in my life. Want to know what of? Of a prison. That scares me, and you may know it--if it's any good to you. I won't ask you what scared you into this infernal hole, where you seem to have found pretty pickings. That's your luck and this is mine--the privilege to beg for the favour of being shot quickly, or else kicked out to go free and starve in my own way.' . . ." 'His debilitated body shook with an exultation so vehement, so assured, and so malicious that it seemed to have driven off the death waiting for him in that hut. The corpse of his mad self-love uprose from rags and destitution as from the dark horrors of a tomb. It is impossible to say how much he lied to Jim then, how much he lied to me now--and to himself always. Vanity plays lurid tricks with our memory, and the truth of every passion wants some pretence to make it live. Standing at the gate of the other world in the guise of a beggar, he had slapped this world's face, he had spat on it, he had thrown upon it an immensity of scorn and revolt at the bottom of his misdeeds. He had overcome them all--men, women, savages, traders, ruffians, missionaries--and Jim--"that beefy-faced beggar." I did not begrudge him this triumph in articulo mortis, this almost posthumous illusion of having trampled all the earth under his feet. While he was boasting to me, in his sordid and repulsive agony, I couldn't help thinking of the chuckling talk relating to the time of his greatest splendour when, during a year or more, Gentleman Brown's ship was to be seen, for many days on end, hovering off an islet befringed with green upon azure, with the dark dot of the mission-house on a white beach; while Gentleman Brown, ashore, was casting his spells over a romantic girl for whom Melanesia had been too much, and giving hopes of a remarkable conversion to her husband. The poor man, some time or other, had been heard to express the intention of winning "Captain Brown to a better way of life." . . . "Bag Gentleman Brown for Glory"--as a leery-eyed loafer expressed it once--"just to let them see up above what a Western Pacific trading skipper looks like." And this was the man, too, who had run off with a dying woman, and had shed tears over her body. "Carried on like a big baby," his then mate was never tired of telling, "and where the fun came in may I be kicked to death by diseased Kanakas if _I_ know. Why, gents! she was too far gone when he brought her aboard to know him; she just lay there on her back in his bunk staring at the beam with awful shining eyes--and then she died. Dam' bad sort of fever, I guess. . . ." I remembered all these stories while, wiping his matted lump of a beard with a livid hand, he was telling me from his noisome couch how he got round, got in, got home, on that confounded, immaculate, don't-you-touch-me sort of fellow. He admitted that he couldn't be scared, but there was a way, "as broad as a turnpike, to get in and shake his twopenny soul around and inside out and upside down--by God!"''I don't think he could do more than perhaps look upon that straight path. He seemed to have been puzzled by what he saw, for he interrupted himself in his narrative more than once to exclaim, "He nearly slipped from me there. I could not make him out. Who was he?" And after glaring at me wildly he would go on, jubilating and sneering. To me the conversation of these two across the creek appears now as the deadliest kind of duel on which Fate looked on with her cold-eyed knowledge of the end. No, he didn't turn Jim's soul inside out, but I am much mistaken if the spirit so utterly out of his reach had not been made to taste to the full the bitterness of that contest. These were the emissaries with whom the world he had renounced was pursuing him in his retreat--white men from "out there" where he did not think himself good enough to live. This was all that came to him--a menace, a shock, a danger to his work. I suppose it is this sad, half-resentful, half-resigned feeling, piercing through the few words Jim said now and then, that puzzled Brown so much in the reading of his character. Some great men owe most of their greatness to the ability of detecting in those they destine for their tools the exact quality of strength that matters for their work; and Brown, as though he had been really great, had a satanic gift of finding out the best and the weakest spot in his victims. He admitted to me that Jim wasn't of the sort that can be got over by truckling, and accordingly he took care to show himself as a man confronting without dismay ill-luck, censure, and disaster. The smuggling of a few guns was no great crime, he pointed out. As to coming to Patusan, who had the right to say he hadn't come to beg? The infernal people here let loose at him from both banks without staying to ask questions. He made the point brazenly, for, in truth, Dain Waris's energetic action had prevented the greatest calamities; because Brown told me distinctly that, perceiving the size of the place, he had resolved instantly in his mind that as soon as he had gained a footing he would set fire right and left, and begin by shooting down everything living in sight, in order to cow and terrify the population. The disproportion of forces was so great that this was the only way giving him the slightest chance of attaining his ends--he argued in a fit of coughing. But he didn't tell Jim this. As to the hardships and starvation they had gone through, these had been very real; it was enough to look at his band. He made, at the sound of a shrill whistle, all his men appear standing in a row on the logs in full view, so that Jim could see them. For the killing of the man, it had been done--well, it had--but was not this war, bloody war--in a corner? and the fellow had been killed cleanly, shot through the chest, not like that poor devil of his lying now in the creek. They had to listen to him dying for six hours, with his entrails torn with slugs. At any rate this was a life for a life. . . . And all this was said with the weariness, with the recklessness of a man spurred on and on by ill-luck till he cares not where he runs. When he asked Jim, with a sort of brusque despairing frankness, whether he himself--straight now--didn't understand that when "it came to saving one's life in the dark, one didn't care who else went--three, thirty, three hundred people"--it was as if a demon had been whispering advice in his ear. "I made him wince," boasted Brown to me. "He very soon left off coming the righteous over me. He just stood there with nothing to say, and looking as black as thunder--not at me--on the ground." He asked Jim whether he had nothing fishy in his life to remember that he was so damnedly hard upon a man trying to get out of a deadly hole by the first means that came to hand--and so on, and so on. And there ran through the rough talk a vein of subtle reference to their common blood, an assumption of common experience; a sickening suggestion of common guilt, of secret knowledge that was like a bond of their minds and of their hearts. 'At last Brown threw himself down full length and watched Jim out of the corners of his eyes. Jim on his side of the creek stood thinking and switching his leg. The houses in view were silent, as if a pestilence had swept them clean of every breath of life; but many invisible eyes were turned, from within, upon the two men with the creek between them, a stranded white boat, and the body of the third man half sunk in the mud. On the river canoes were moving again, for Patusan was recovering its belief in the stability of earthly institutions since the return of the white lord. The right bank, the platforms of the houses, the rafts moored along the shores, even the roofs of bathing-huts, were covered with people that, far away out of earshot and almost out of sight, were straining their eyes towards the knoll beyond the Rajah's stockade. Within the wide irregular ring of forests, broken in two places by the sheen of the river, there was a silence. "Will you promise to leave the coast?" Jim asked. Brown lifted and let fall his hand, giving everything up as it were--accepting the inevitable. "And surrender your arms?" Jim went on. Brown sat up and glared across. "Surrender our arms! Not till you come to take them out of our stiff hands. You think I am gone crazy with funk? Oh no! That and the rags I stand in is all I have got in the world, besides a few more breechloaders on board; and I expect to sell the lot in Madagascar, if I ever get so far--begging my way from ship to ship." 'Jim said nothing to this. At last, throwing away the switch he held in his hand, he said, as if speaking to himself, "I don't know whether I have the power." . . . "You don't know! And you wanted me just now to give up my arms! That's good, too," cried Brown; "Suppose they say one thing to you, and do the other thing to me." He calmed down markedly. "I dare say you have the power, or what's the meaning of all this talk?" he continued. "What did you come down here for? To pass the time of day?" '"Very well," said Jim, lifting his head suddenly after a long silence. "You shall have a clear road or else a clear fight." He turned on his heel and walked away. 'Brown got up at once, but he did not go up the hill till he had seen Jim disappear between the first houses. He never set his eyes on him again. On his way back he met Cornelius slouching down with his head between his shoulders. He stopped before Brown. "Why didn't you kill him?" he demanded in a sour, discontented voice. "Because I could do better than that," Brown said with an amused smile. "Never! never!" protested Cornelius with energy. "Couldn't. I have lived here for many years." Brown looked up at him curiously. There were many sides to the life of that place in arms against him; things he would never find out. Cornelius slunk past dejectedly in the direction of the river. He was now leaving his new friends; he accepted the disappointing course of events with a sulky obstinacy which seemed to draw more together his little yellow old face; and as he went down he glanced askant here and there, never giving up his fixed idea. 'Henceforth events move fast without a check, flowing from the very hearts of men like a stream from a dark source, and we see Jim amongst them, mostly through Tamb' Itam's eyes. The girl's eyes had watched him too, but her life is too much entwined with his: there is her passion, her wonder, her anger, and, above all, her fear and her unforgiving love. Of the faithful servant, uncomprehending as the rest of them, it is the fidelity alone that comes into play; a fidelity and a belief in his lord so strong that even amazement is subdued to a sort of saddened acceptance of a mysterious failure. He has eyes only for one figure, and through all the mazes of bewilderment he preserves his air of guardianship, of obedience, of care. 'His master came back from his talk with the white men, walking slowly towards the stockade in the street. Everybody was rejoiced to see him return, for while he was away every man had been afraid not only of him being killed, but also of what would come after. Jim went into one of the houses, where old Doramin had retired, and remained alone for a long time with the head of the Bugis settlers. No doubt he discussed the course to follow with him then, but no man was present at the conversation. Only Tamb' Itam, keeping as close to the door as he could, heard his master say, "Yes. I shall let all the people know that such is my wish; but I spoke to you, O Doramin, before all the others, and alone; for you know my heart as well as I know yours and its greatest desire. And you know well also that I have no thought but for the people's good." Then his master, lifting the sheeting in the doorway, went out, and he, Tamb' Itam, had a glimpse of old Doramin within, sitting in the chair with his hands on his knees, and looking between his feet. Afterwards he followed his master to the fort, where all the principal Bugis and Patusan inhabitants had been summoned for a talk. Tamb' Itam himself hoped there would be some fighting. "What was it but the taking of another hill?" he exclaimed regretfully. However, in the town many hoped that the rapacious strangers would be induced, by the sight of so many brave men making ready to fight, to go away. It would be a good thing if they went away. Since Jim's arrival had been made known before daylight by the gun fired from the fort and the beating of the big drum there, the fear that had hung over Patusan had broken and subsided like a wave on a rock, leaving the seething foam of excitement, curiosity, and endless speculation. Half of the population had been ousted out of their homes for purposes of defence, and were living in the street on the left side of the river, crowding round the fort, and in momentary expectation of seeing their abandoned dwellings on the threatened bank burst into flames. The general anxiety was to see the matter settled quickly. Food, through Jewel's care, had been served out to the refugees. Nobody knew what their white man would do. Some remarked that it was worse than in Sherif Ali's war. Then many people did not care; now everybody had something to lose. The movements of canoes passing to and fro between the two parts of the town were watched with interest. A couple of Bugis war-boats lay anchored in the middle of the stream to protect the river, and a thread of smoke stood at the bow of each; the men in them were cooking their midday rice when Jim, after his interviews with Brown and Doramin, crossed the river and entered by the water-gate of his fort. The people inside crowded round him, so that he could hardly make his way to the house. They had not seen him before, because on his arrival during the night he had only exchanged a few words with the girl, who had come down to the landing-stage for the purpose, and had then gone on at once to join the chiefs and the fighting men on the other bank. People shouted greetings after him. One old woman raised a laugh by pushing her way to the front madly and enjoining him in a scolding voice to see to it that her two sons, who were with Doramin, did not come to harm at the hands of the robbers. Several of the bystanders tried to pull her away, but she struggled and cried, "Let me go. What is this, O Muslims? This laughter is unseemly. Are they not cruel, bloodthirsty robbers bent on killing?" "Let her be," said Jim, and as a silence fell suddenly, he said slowly, "Everybody shall be safe." He entered the house before the great sigh, and the loud murmurs of satisfaction, had died out. 'There's no doubt his mind was made up that Brown should have his way clear back to the sea. His fate, revolted, was forcing his hand. He had for the first time to affirm his will in the face of outspoken opposition. "There was much talk, and at first my master was silent," Tamb' Itam said. "Darkness came, and then I lit the candles on the long table. The chiefs sat on each side, and the lady remained by my master's right hand." 'When he began to speak, the unaccustomed difficulty seemed only to fix his resolve more immovably. The white men were now waiting for his answer on the hill. Their chief had spoken to him in the language of his own people, making clear many things difficult to explain in any other speech. They were erring men whom suffering had made blind to right and wrong. It is true that lives had been lost already, but why lose more? He declared to his hearers, the assembled heads of the people, that their welfare was his welfare, their losses his losses, their mourning his mourning. He looked round at the grave listening faces and told them to remember that they had fought and worked side by side. They knew his courage . . . Here a murmur interrupted him . . . And that he had never deceived them. For many years they had dwelt together. He loved the land and the people living in it with a very great love. He was ready to answer with his life for any harm that should come to them if the white men with beards were allowed to retire. They were evil-doers, but their destiny had been evil, too. Had he ever advised them ill? Had his words ever brought suffering to the people? he asked. He believed that it would be best to let these whites and their followers go with their lives. It would be a small gift. "I whom you have tried and found always true ask you to let them go." He turned to Doramin. The old nakhoda made no movement. "Then," said Jim, "call in Dain Waris, your son, my friend, for in this business I shall not lead."'

Dain Waris leads the initial attack against Gentleman Brown and his men. Unfortunately, he is not able to rally his people effectively enough to rout the pirate, and Jim, who could provide the inspiration and leadership needed, is away in the countryside. A council of war is held, at which everyone's personal motives get in the way of agreement; Doramin wishes to protect his son, and Rajah Allang, who is pretending to cooperate, is secretly working to form an alliance with Brown to bring Jim down. The Rajah's representative contacts Cornelius and arranges for him to serve as a go-between with Brown. Cornelius is a little too persuasive as to the friendliness of the Rajah, the charms of Patusan, and the ease with which he claims Jim can be defeated. Brown decides to stay and fight, not just for supplies and a chance to escape, but to try to seize the territory for himself. Meanwhile, Dain Waris has sent canoes downstream to seal Brown's avenue of escape and reinforcement. Brown dallies with Cornelius and the Rajah, buying time and always intending to double-cross them. One of Brown's men shoots a villager from a great distance. The pirate hopes that this will evoke fear among the people of Patusan, and that they will overestimate his strength. As night falls, one of Brown's men sneaks down to their beached boat to get some tobacco that has been left there. He is not cautious enough, however, and he is shot by a relative of the villager who was killed earlier in the day. Brown and his men have to listen to the dying moans of their comrade for several hours; it is not until the tide comes in, drowning him and carrying him off, that his screams cease. Cornelius and Brown talk again. Drums begin to beat in the village, and fires are lit. Cornelius tells Brown that this is a sign that Jim has returned, and that Jim will surely come to talk to him face to face. He recommends that Brown have one of his men shoot Jim from a position of cover. This action, he says, will give Brown the psychological edge and enable him to defeat the Bugis. The next morning, Jim indeed approaches Brown's stronghold. He and Brown speak warily. Jim asks him what has brought him to Patusan; Brown replies simply, "Hunger," and redirects the question toward Jim. Jim is startled. Brown asks him to remember that they are both white men, and then requests that his men either be ambushed directly or allowed to leave, rather than left to starve and suffer like "rat in a trap." He admits to Jim that his greatest fear is of prison, and that this fear is what has motivated him his entire life, even at this very moment. Marlow, listening to the story at Brown's deathbed, wonders how much of Brown's account is the truth. Jim, bothered by something, says little to Brown, but promises him "a clear road or else a clear fight" and leaves. Cornelius rages at Brown for not shooting Jim when he had the chance. Jim goes directly to Doramin to recommend that Brown be allowed to escape unharmed. Doramin is reluctant. Jim appeals to the people, reminding them that he has never led them wrong. Doramin still hesitates, and Jim declares that, if they are to fight, he will not lead. Dain Waris will have to command.

A Struggle When our time came for returning to Bleak House again, we were punctual to the day and were received with an overpowering welcome. I was perfectly restored to health and strength, and finding my housekeeping keys laid ready for me in my room, rang myself in as if I had been a new year, with a merry little peal. "Once more, duty, duty, Esther," said I; "and if you are not overjoyed to do it, more than cheerfully and contentedly, through anything and everything, you ought to be. That's all I have to say to you, my dear!" The first few mornings were mornings of so much bustle and business, devoted to such settlements of accounts, such repeated journeys to and fro between the growlery and all other parts of the house, so many rearrangements of drawers and presses, and such a general new beginning altogether, that I had not a moment's leisure. But when these arrangements were completed and everything was in order, I paid a visit of a few hours to London, which something in the letter I had destroyed at Chesney Wold had induced me to decide upon in my own mind. I made Caddy Jellyby--her maiden name was so natural to me that I always called her by it--the pretext for this visit and wrote her a note previously asking the favour of her company on a little business expedition. Leaving home very early in the morning, I got to London by stage-coach in such good time that I got to Newman Street with the day before me. Caddy, who had not seen me since her wedding-day, was so glad and so affectionate that I was half inclined to fear I should make her husband jealous. But he was, in his way, just as bad--I mean as good; and in short it was the old story, and nobody would leave me any possibility of doing anything meritorious. The elder Mr. Turveydrop was in bed, I found, and Caddy was milling his chocolate, which a melancholy little boy who was an apprentice--it seemed such a curious thing to be apprenticed to the trade of dancing--was waiting to carry upstairs. Her father-in-law was extremely kind and considerate, Caddy told me, and they lived most happily together. (When she spoke of their living together, she meant that the old gentleman had all the good things and all the good lodging, while she and her husband had what they could get, and were poked into two corner rooms over the Mews.) "And how is your mama, Caddy?" said I. "Why, I hear of her, Esther," replied Caddy, "through Pa, but I see very little of her. We are good friends, I am glad to say, but Ma thinks there is something absurd in my having married a dancing-master, and she is rather afraid of its extending to her." It struck me that if Mrs. Jellyby had discharged her own natural duties and obligations before she swept the horizon with a telescope in search of others, she would have taken the best precautions against becoming absurd, but I need scarcely observe that I kept this to myself. "And your papa, Caddy?" "He comes here every evening," returned Caddy, "and is so fond of sitting in the corner there that it's a treat to see him." Looking at the corner, I plainly perceived the mark of Mr. Jellyby's head against the wall. It was consolatory to know that he had found such a resting-place for it. "And you, Caddy," said I, "you are always busy, I'll be bound?" "Well, my dear," returned Caddy, "I am indeed, for to tell you a grand secret, I am qualifying myself to give lessons. Prince's health is not strong, and I want to be able to assist him. What with schools, and classes here, and private pupils, AND the apprentices, he really has too much to do, poor fellow!" The notion of the apprentices was still so odd to me that I asked Caddy if there were many of them. "Four," said Caddy. "One in-door, and three out. They are very good children; only when they get together they WILL play--children-like--instead of attending to their work. So the little boy you saw just now waltzes by himself in the empty kitchen, and we distribute the others over the house as well as we can." "That is only for their steps, of course?" said I. "Only for their steps," said Caddy. "In that way they practise, so many hours at a time, whatever steps they happen to be upon. They dance in the academy, and at this time of year we do figures at five every morning." "Why, what a laborious life!" I exclaimed. "I assure you, my dear," returned Caddy, smiling, "when the out-door apprentices ring us up in the morning (the bell rings into our room, not to disturb old Mr. Turveydrop), and when I put up the window and see them standing on the door-step with their little pumps under their arms, I am actually reminded of the Sweeps." All this presented the art to me in a singular light, to be sure. Caddy enjoyed the effect of her communication and cheerfully recounted the particulars of her own studies. "You see, my dear, to save expense I ought to know something of the piano, and I ought to know something of the kit too, and consequently I have to practise those two instruments as well as the details of our profession. If Ma had been like anybody else, I might have had some little musical knowledge to begin upon. However, I hadn't any; and that part of the work is, at first, a little discouraging, I must allow. But I have a very good ear, and I am used to drudgery--I have to thank Ma for that, at all events--and where there's a will there's a way, you know, Esther, the world over." Saying these words, Caddy laughingly sat down at a little jingling square piano and really rattled off a quadrille with great spirit. Then she good-humouredly and blushingly got up again, and while she still laughed herself, said, "Don't laugh at me, please; that's a dear girl!" I would sooner have cried, but I did neither. I encouraged her and praised her with all my heart. For I conscientiously believed, dancing-master's wife though she was, and dancing-mistress though in her limited ambition she aspired to be, she had struck out a natural, wholesome, loving course of industry and perseverance that was quite as good as a mission. "My dear," said Caddy, delighted, "you can't think how you cheer me. I shall owe you, you don't know how much. What changes, Esther, even in my small world! You recollect that first night, when I was so unpolite and inky? Who would have thought, then, of my ever teaching people to dance, of all other possibilities and impossibilities!" Her husband, who had left us while we had this chat, now coming back, preparatory to exercising the apprentices in the ball-room, Caddy informed me she was quite at my disposal. But it was not my time yet, I was glad to tell her, for I should have been vexed to take her away then. Therefore we three adjourned to the apprentices together, and I made one in the dance. The apprentices were the queerest little people. Besides the melancholy boy, who, I hoped, had not been made so by waltzing alone in the empty kitchen, there were two other boys and one dirty little limp girl in a gauzy dress. Such a precocious little girl, with such a dowdy bonnet on (that, too, of a gauzy texture), who brought her sandalled shoes in an old threadbare velvet reticule. Such mean little boys, when they were not dancing, with string, and marbles, and cramp-bones in their pockets, and the most untidy legs and feet--and heels particularly. I asked Caddy what had made their parents choose this profession for them. Caddy said she didn't know; perhaps they were designed for teachers, perhaps for the stage. They were all people in humble circumstances, and the melancholy boy's mother kept a ginger-beer shop. We danced for an hour with great gravity, the melancholy child doing wonders with his lower extremities, in which there appeared to be some sense of enjoyment though it never rose above his waist. Caddy, while she was observant of her husband and was evidently founded upon him, had acquired a grace and self-possession of her own, which, united to her pretty face and figure, was uncommonly agreeable. She already relieved him of much of the instruction of these young people, and he seldom interfered except to walk his part in the figure if he had anything to do in it. He always played the tune. The affectation of the gauzy child, and her condescension to the boys, was a sight. And thus we danced an hour by the clock. When the practice was concluded, Caddy's husband made himself ready to go out of town to a school, and Caddy ran away to get ready to go out with me. I sat in the ball-room in the interval, contemplating the apprentices. The two out-door boys went upon the staircase to put on their half-boots and pull the in-door boy's hair, as I judged from the nature of his objections. Returning with their jackets buttoned and their pumps stuck in them, they then produced packets of cold bread and meat and bivouacked under a painted lyre on the wall. The little gauzy child, having whisked her sandals into the reticule and put on a trodden-down pair of shoes, shook her head into the dowdy bonnet at one shake, and answering my inquiry whether she liked dancing by replying, "Not with boys," tied it across her chin, and went home contemptuous. "Old Mr. Turveydrop is so sorry," said Caddy, "that he has not finished dressing yet and cannot have the pleasure of seeing you before you go. You are such a favourite of his, Esther." I expressed myself much obliged to him, but did not think it necessary to add that I readily dispensed with this attention. "It takes him a long time to dress," said Caddy, "because he is very much looked up to in such things, you know, and has a reputation to support. You can't think how kind he is to Pa. He talks to Pa of an evening about the Prince Regent, and I never saw Pa so interested." There was something in the picture of Mr. Turveydrop bestowing his deportment on Mr. Jellyby that quite took my fancy. I asked Caddy if he brought her papa out much. "No," said Caddy, "I don't know that he does that, but he talks to Pa, and Pa greatly admires him, and listens, and likes it. Of course I am aware that Pa has hardly any claims to deportment, but they get on together delightfully. You can't think what good companions they make. I never saw Pa take snuff before in my life, but he takes one pinch out of Mr. Turveydrop's box regularly and keeps putting it to his nose and taking it away again all the evening." That old Mr. Turveydrop should ever, in the chances and changes of life, have come to the rescue of Mr. Jellyby from Borrioboola-Gha appeared to me to be one of the pleasantest of oddities. "As to Peepy," said Caddy with a little hesitation, "whom I was most afraid of--next to having any family of my own, Esther--as an inconvenience to Mr. Turveydrop, the kindness of the old gentleman to that child is beyond everything. He asks to see him, my dear! He lets him take the newspaper up to him in bed; he gives him the crusts of his toast to eat; he sends him on little errands about the house; he tells him to come to me for sixpences. In short," said Caddy cheerily, "and not to prose, I am a very fortunate girl and ought to be very grateful. Where are we going, Esther?" "To the Old Street Road," said I, "where I have a few words to say to the solicitor's clerk who was sent to meet me at the coach-office on the very day when I came to London and first saw you, my dear. Now I think of it, the gentleman who brought us to your house." "Then, indeed, I seem to be naturally the person to go with you," returned Caddy. To the Old Street Road we went and there inquired at Mrs. Guppy's residence for Mrs. Guppy. Mrs. Guppy, occupying the parlours and having indeed been visibly in danger of cracking herself like a nut in the front-parlour door by peeping out before she was asked for, immediately presented herself and requested us to walk in. She was an old lady in a large cap, with rather a red nose and rather an unsteady eye, but smiling all over. Her close little sitting-room was prepared for a visit, and there was a portrait of her son in it which, I had almost written here, was more like than life: it insisted upon him with such obstinacy, and was so determined not to let him off. Not only was the portrait there, but we found the original there too. He was dressed in a great many colours and was discovered at a table reading law-papers with his forefinger to his forehead. "Miss Summerson," said Mr. Guppy, rising, "this is indeed an oasis. Mother, will you be so good as to put a chair for the other lady and get out of the gangway." Mrs. Guppy, whose incessant smiling gave her quite a waggish appearance, did as her son requested and then sat down in a corner, holding her pocket handkerchief to her chest, like a fomentation, with both hands. I presented Caddy, and Mr. Guppy said that any friend of mine was more than welcome. I then proceeded to the object of my visit. "I took the liberty of sending you a note, sir," said I. Mr. Guppy acknowledged the receipt by taking it out of his breast-pocket, putting it to his lips, and returning it to his pocket with a bow. Mr. Guppy's mother was so diverted that she rolled her head as she smiled and made a silent appeal to Caddy with her elbow. "Could I speak to you alone for a moment?" said I. Anything like the jocoseness of Mr. Guppy's mother just now, I think I never saw. She made no sound of laughter, but she rolled her head, and shook it, and put her handkerchief to her mouth, and appealed to Caddy with her elbow, and her hand, and her shoulder, and was so unspeakably entertained altogether that it was with some difficulty she could marshal Caddy through the little folding-door into her bedroom adjoining. "Miss Summerson," said Mr. Guppy, "you will excuse the waywardness of a parent ever mindful of a son's appiness. My mother, though highly exasperating to the feelings, is actuated by maternal dictates." I could hardly have believed that anybody could in a moment have turned so red or changed so much as Mr. Guppy did when I now put up my veil. "I asked the favour of seeing you for a few moments here," said I, "in preference to calling at Mr. Kenge's because, remembering what you said on an occasion when you spoke to me in confidence, I feared I might otherwise cause you some embarrassment, Mr. Guppy." I caused him embarrassment enough as it was, I am sure. I never saw such faltering, such confusion, such amazement and apprehension. "Miss Summerson," stammered Mr. Guppy, "I--I--beg your pardon, but in our profession--we--we--find it necessary to be explicit. You have referred to an occasion, miss, when I--when I did myself the honour of making a declaration which--" Something seemed to rise in his throat that he could not possibly swallow. He put his hand there, coughed, made faces, tried again to swallow it, coughed again, made faces again, looked all round the room, and fluttered his papers. "A kind of giddy sensation has come upon me, miss," he explained, "which rather knocks me over. I--er--a little subject to this sort of thing--er--by George!" I gave him a little time to recover. He consumed it in putting his hand to his forehead and taking it away again, and in backing his chair into the corner behind him. "My intention was to remark, miss," said Mr. Guppy, "dear me--something bronchial, I think--hem!--to remark that you was so good on that occasion as to repel and repudiate that declaration. You--you wouldn't perhaps object to admit that? Though no witnesses are present, it might be a satisfaction to--to your mind--if you was to put in that admission." "There can be no doubt," said I, "that I declined your proposal without any reservation or qualification whatever, Mr. Guppy." "Thank you, miss," he returned, measuring the table with his troubled hands. "So far that's satisfactory, and it does you credit. Er--this is certainly bronchial!--must be in the tubes--er--you wouldn't perhaps be offended if I was to mention--not that it's necessary, for your own good sense or any person's sense must show 'em that--if I was to mention that such declaration on my part was final, and there terminated?" "I quite understand that," said I. "Perhaps--er--it may not be worth the form, but it might be a satisfaction to your mind--perhaps you wouldn't object to admit that, miss?" said Mr. Guppy. "I admit it most fully and freely," said I. "Thank you," returned Mr. Guppy. "Very honourable, I am sure. I regret that my arrangements in life, combined with circumstances over which I have no control, will put it out of my power ever to fall back upon that offer or to renew it in any shape or form whatever, but it will ever be a retrospect entwined--er--with friendship's bowers." Mr. Guppy's bronchitis came to his relief and stopped his measurement of the table. "I may now perhaps mention what I wished to say to you?" I began. "I shall be honoured, I am sure," said Mr. Guppy. "I am so persuaded that your own good sense and right feeling, miss, will--will keep you as square as possible--that I can have nothing but pleasure, I am sure, in hearing any observations you may wish to offer." "You were so good as to imply, on that occasion--" "Excuse me, miss," said Mr. Guppy, "but we had better not travel out of the record into implication. I cannot admit that I implied anything." "You said on that occasion," I recommenced, "that you might possibly have the means of advancing my interests and promoting my fortunes by making discoveries of which I should be the subject. I presume that you founded that belief upon your general knowledge of my being an orphan girl, indebted for everything to the benevolence of Mr. Jarndyce. Now, the beginning and the end of what I have come to beg of you is, Mr. Guppy, that you will have the kindness to relinquish all idea of so serving me. I have thought of this sometimes, and I have thought of it most lately--since I have been ill. At length I have decided, in case you should at any time recall that purpose and act upon it in any way, to come to you and assure you that you are altogether mistaken. You could make no discovery in reference to me that would do me the least service or give me the least pleasure. I am acquainted with my personal history, and I have it in my power to assure you that you never can advance my welfare by such means. You may, perhaps, have abandoned this project a long time. If so, excuse my giving you unnecessary trouble. If not, I entreat you, on the assurance I have given you, henceforth to lay it aside. I beg you to do this, for my peace." "I am bound to confess," said Mr. Guppy, "that you express yourself, miss, with that good sense and right feeling for which I gave you credit. Nothing can be more satisfactory than such right feeling, and if I mistook any intentions on your part just now, I am prepared to tender a full apology. I should wish to be understood, miss, as hereby offering that apology--limiting it, as your own good sense and right feeling will point out the necessity of, to the present proceedings." I must say for Mr. Guppy that the snuffling manner he had had upon him improved very much. He seemed truly glad to be able to do something I asked, and he looked ashamed. "If you will allow me to finish what I have to say at once so that I may have no occasion to resume," I went on, seeing him about to speak, "you will do me a kindness, sir. I come to you as privately as possible because you announced this impression of yours to me in a confidence which I have really wished to respect--and which I always have respected, as you remember. I have mentioned my illness. There really is no reason why I should hesitate to say that I know very well that any little delicacy I might have had in making a request to you is quite removed. Therefore I make the entreaty I have now preferred, and I hope you will have sufficient consideration for me to accede to it." I must do Mr. Guppy the further justice of saying that he had looked more and more ashamed and that he looked most ashamed and very earnest when he now replied with a burning face, "Upon my word and honour, upon my life, upon my soul, Miss Summerson, as I am a living man, I'll act according to your wish! I'll never go another step in opposition to it. I'll take my oath to it if it will be any satisfaction to you. In what I promise at this present time touching the matters now in question," continued Mr. Guppy rapidly, as if he were repeating a familiar form of words, "I speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so--" "I am quite satisfied," said I, rising at this point, "and I thank you very much. Caddy, my dear, I am ready!" Mr. Guppy's mother returned with Caddy (now making me the recipient of her silent laughter and her nudges), and we took our leave. Mr. Guppy saw us to the door with the air of one who was either imperfectly awake or walking in his sleep; and we left him there, staring. But in a minute he came after us down the street without any hat, and with his long hair all blown about, and stopped us, saying fervently, "Miss Summerson, upon my honour and soul, you may depend upon me!" "I do," said I, "quite confidently." "I beg your pardon, miss," said Mr. Guppy, going with one leg and staying with the other, "but this lady being present--your own witness--it might be a satisfaction to your mind (which I should wish to set at rest) if you was to repeat those admissions." "Well, Caddy," said I, turning to her, "perhaps you will not be surprised when I tell you, my dear, that there never has been any engagement--" "No proposal or promise of marriage whatsoever," suggested Mr. Guppy. "No proposal or promise of marriage whatsoever," said I, "between this gentleman--" "William Guppy, of Penton Place, Pentonville, in the county of Middlesex," he murmured. "Between this gentleman, Mr. William Guppy, of Penton Place, Pentonville, in the county of Middlesex, and myself." "Thank you, miss," said Mr. Guppy. "Very full--er--excuse me--lady's name, Christian and surname both?" I gave them. "Married woman, I believe?" said Mr. Guppy. "Married woman. Thank you. Formerly Caroline Jellyby, spinster, then of Thavies Inn, within the city of London, but extra-parochial; now of Newman Street, Oxford Street. Much obliged." He ran home and came running back again. "Touching that matter, you know, I really and truly am very sorry that my arrangements in life, combined with circumstances over which I have no control, should prevent a renewal of what was wholly terminated some time back," said Mr. Guppy to me forlornly and despondently, "but it couldn't be. Now COULD it, you know! I only put it to you." I replied it certainly could not. The subject did not admit of a doubt. He thanked me and ran to his mother's again--and back again. "It's very honourable of you, miss, I am sure," said Mr. Guppy. "If an altar could be erected in the bowers of friendship--but, upon my soul, you may rely upon me in every respect save and except the tender passion only!" The struggle in Mr. Guppy's breast and the numerous oscillations it occasioned him between his mother's door and us were sufficiently conspicuous in the windy street (particularly as his hair wanted cutting) to make us hurry away. I did so with a lightened heart; but when we last looked back, Mr. Guppy was still oscillating in the same troubled state of mind.

Soon after she returns to Bleak House, Esther decides to go to London to see Mr. Guppy. First, she visits Caddy and Prince Turveydrop. Taken aback by Esther's scarred face, Guppy emphatically retracts his former marriage proposal to Esther. Esther obtains from him a promise to "relinquish all idea of . . . serving me." She no longer needs Guppy's assistance in helping her learn her real identity, and Guppy's presence could possibly endanger her attempt to be secret about what she has learned from Lady Dedlock. Soon after she returns to Bleak House, Esther decides to go to London to see Mr. Guppy. First, she visits Caddy and Prince Turveydrop. Taken aback by Esther's scarred face, Guppy emphatically retracts his former marriage proposal to Esther. Esther obtains from him a promise to "relinquish all idea of . . . serving me." She no longer needs Guppy's assistance in helping her learn her real identity, and Guppy's presence could possibly endanger her attempt to be secret about what she has learned from Lady Dedlock.

EVIDENTLY that gate is never opened, for the long grass and the great hemlocks grow close against it, and if it were opened, it is so rusty that the force necessary to turn it on its hinges would be likely to pull down the square stone-built pillars, to the detriment of the two stone lionesses which grin with a doubtful carnivorous affability above a coat of arms surmounting each of the pillars. It would be easy enough, by the aid of the nicks in the stone pillars, to climb over the brick wall with its smooth stone coping; but by putting our eyes close to the rusty bars of the gate, we can see the house well enough, and all but the very corners of the grassy enclosure. It is a very fine old place, of red brick, softened by a pale powdery lichen, which has dispersed itself with happy irregularity, so as to bring the red brick into terms of friendly companionship with the limestone ornaments surrounding the three gables, the windows, and the door-place. But the windows are patched with wooden panes, and the door, I think, is like the gate--it is never opened. How it would groan and grate against the stone floor if it were! For it is a solid, heavy, handsome door, and must once have been in the habit of shutting with a sonorous bang behind a liveried lackey, who had just seen his master and mistress off the grounds in a carriage and pair. But at present one might fancy the house in the early stage of a chancery suit, and that the fruit from that grand double row of walnut-trees on the right hand of the enclosure would fall and rot among the grass, if it were not that we heard the booming bark of dogs echoing from great buildings at the back. And now the half-weaned calves that have been sheltering themselves in a gorse-built hovel against the left-hand wall come out and set up a silly answer to that terrible bark, doubtless supposing that it has reference to buckets of milk. Yes, the house must be inhabited, and we will see by whom; for imagination is a licensed trespasser: it has no fear of dogs, but may climb over walls and peep in at windows with impunity. Put your face to one of the glass panes in the right-hand window: what do you see? A large open fireplace, with rusty dogs in it, and a bare boarded floor; at the far end, fleeces of wool stacked up; in the middle of the floor, some empty corn-bags. That is the furniture of the dining-room. And what through the left-hand window? Several clothes-horses, a pillion, a spinning-wheel, and an old box wide open and stuffed full of coloured rags. At the edge of this box there lies a great wooden doll, which, so far as mutilation is concerned, bears a strong resemblance to the finest Greek sculpture, and especially in the total loss of its nose. Near it there is a little chair, and the butt end of a boy's leather long-lashed whip. The history of the house is plain now. It was once the residence of a country squire, whose family, probably dwindling down to mere spinsterhood, got merged in the more territorial name of Donnithorne. It was once the Hall; it is now the Hall Farm. Like the life in some coast town that was once a watering-place, and is now a port, where the genteel streets are silent and grass-grown, and the docks and warehouses busy and resonant, the life at the Hall has changed its focus, and no longer radiates from the parlour, but from the kitchen and the farmyard. Plenty of life there, though this is the drowsiest time of the year, just before hay-harvest; and it is the drowsiest time of the day too, for it is close upon three by the sun, and it is half-past three by Mrs. Poyser's handsome eight-day clock. But there is always a stronger sense of life when the sun is brilliant after rain; and now he is pouring down his beams, and making sparkles among the wet straw, and lighting up every patch of vivid green moss on the red tiles of the cow-shed, and turning even the muddy water that is hurrying along the channel to the drain into a mirror for the yellow-billed ducks, who are seizing the opportunity of getting a drink with as much body in it as possible. There is quite a concert of noises; the great bull-dog, chained against the stables, is thrown into furious exasperation by the unwary approach of a cock too near the mouth of his kennel, and sends forth a thundering bark, which is answered by two fox-hounds shut up in the opposite cow-house; the old top-knotted hens, scratching with their chicks among the straw, set up a sympathetic croaking as the discomfited cock joins them; a sow with her brood, all very muddy as to the legs, and curled as to the tail, throws in some deep staccato notes; our friends the calves are bleating from the home croft; and, under all, a fine ear discerns the continuous hum of human voices. For the great barn-doors are thrown wide open, and men are busy there mending the harness, under the superintendence of Mr. Goby, the "whittaw," otherwise saddler, who entertains them with the latest Treddleston gossip. It is certainly rather an unfortunate day that Alick, the shepherd, has chosen for having the whittaws, since the morning turned out so wet; and Mrs. Poyser has spoken her mind pretty strongly as to the dirt which the extra number of men's shoes brought into the house at dinnertime. Indeed, she has not yet recovered her equanimity on the subject, though it is now nearly three hours since dinner, and the house-floor is perfectly clean again; as clean as everything else in that wonderful house-place, where the only chance of collecting a few grains of dust would be to climb on the salt-coffer, and put your finger on the high mantel-shelf on which the glittering brass candlesticks are enjoying their summer sinecure; for at this time of year, of course, every one goes to bed while it is yet light, or at least light enough to discern the outline of objects after you have bruised your shins against them. Surely nowhere else could an oak clock-case and an oak table have got to such a polish by the hand: genuine "elbow polish," as Mrs. Poyser called it, for she thanked God she never had any of your varnished rubbish in her house. Hetty Sorrel often took the opportunity, when her aunt's back was turned, of looking at the pleasing reflection of herself in those polished surfaces, for the oak table was usually turned up like a screen, and was more for ornament than for use; and she could see herself sometimes in the great round pewter dishes that were ranged on the shelves above the long deal dinner-table, or in the hobs of the grate, which always shone like jasper. Everything was looking at its brightest at this moment, for the sun shone right on the pewter dishes, and from their reflecting surfaces pleasant jets of light were thrown on mellow oak and bright brass--and on a still pleasanter object than these, for some of the rays fell on Dinah's finely moulded cheek, and lit up her pale red hair to auburn, as she bent over the heavy household linen which she was mending for her aunt. No scene could have been more peaceful, if Mrs. Poyser, who was ironing a few things that still remained from the Monday's wash, had not been making a frequent clinking with her iron and moving to and fro whenever she wanted it to cool; carrying the keen glance of her blue-grey eye from the kitchen to the dairy, where Hetty was making up the butter, and from the dairy to the back kitchen, where Nancy was taking the pies out of the oven. Do not suppose, however, that Mrs. Poyser was elderly or shrewish in her appearance; she was a good-looking woman, not more than eight-and-thirty, of fair complexion and sandy hair, well-shapen, light-footed. The most conspicuous article in her attire was an ample checkered linen apron, which almost covered her skirt; and nothing could be plainer or less noticeable than her cap and gown, for there was no weakness of which she was less tolerant than feminine vanity, and the preference of ornament to utility. The family likeness between her and her niece Dinah Morris, with the contrast between her keenness and Dinah's seraphic gentleness of expression, might have served a painter as an excellent suggestion for a Martha and Mary. Their eyes were just of the same colour, but a striking test of the difference in their operation was seen in the demeanour of Trip, the black-and-tan terrier, whenever that much-suspected dog unwarily exposed himself to the freezing arctic ray of Mrs. Poyser's glance. Her tongue was not less keen than her eye, and, whenever a damsel came within earshot, seemed to take up an unfinished lecture, as a barrel-organ takes up a tune, precisely at the point where it had left off. The fact that it was churning day was another reason why it was inconvenient to have the whittaws, and why, consequently, Mrs. Poyser should scold Molly the housemaid with unusual severity. To all appearance Molly had got through her after-dinner work in an exemplary manner, had "cleaned herself" with great dispatch, and now came to ask, submissively, if she should sit down to her spinning till milking time. But this blameless conduct, according to Mrs. Poyser, shrouded a secret indulgence of unbecoming wishes, which she now dragged forth and held up to Molly's view with cutting eloquence. "Spinning, indeed! It isn't spinning as you'd be at, I'll be bound, and let you have your own way. I never knew your equals for gallowsness. To think of a gell o' your age wanting to go and sit with half-a-dozen men! I'd ha' been ashamed to let the words pass over my lips if I'd been you. And you, as have been here ever since last Michaelmas, and I hired you at Treddles'on stattits, without a bit o' character--as I say, you might be grateful to be hired in that way to a respectable place; and you knew no more o' what belongs to work when you come here than the mawkin i' the field. As poor a two-fisted thing as ever I saw, you know you was. Who taught you to scrub a floor, I should like to know? Why, you'd leave the dirt in heaps i' the corners--anybody 'ud think you'd never been brought up among Christians. And as for spinning, why, you've wasted as much as your wage i' the flax you've spoiled learning to spin. And you've a right to feel that, and not to go about as gaping and as thoughtless as if you was beholding to nobody. Comb the wool for the whittaws, indeed! That's what you'd like to be doing, is it? That's the way with you--that's the road you'd all like to go, headlongs to ruin. You're never easy till you've got some sweetheart as is as big a fool as yourself: you think you'll be finely off when you're married, I daresay, and have got a three-legged stool to sit on, and never a blanket to cover you, and a bit o' oat-cake for your dinner, as three children are a-snatching at." "I'm sure I donna want t' go wi' the whittaws," said Molly, whimpering, and quite overcome by this Dantean picture of her future, "on'y we allays used to comb the wool for 'n at Mester Ottley's; an' so I just axed ye. I donna want to set eyes on the whittaws again; I wish I may never stir if I do." "Mr. Ottley's, indeed! It's fine talking o' what you did at Mr. Ottley's. Your missis there might like her floors dirted wi' whittaws for what I know. There's no knowing what people WONNA like--such ways as I've heard of! I never had a gell come into my house as seemed to know what cleaning was; I think people live like pigs, for my part. And as to that Betty as was dairymaid at Trent's before she come to me, she'd ha' left the cheeses without turning from week's end to week's end, and the dairy thralls, I might ha' wrote my name on 'em, when I come downstairs after my illness, as the doctor said it was inflammation--it was a mercy I got well of it. And to think o' your knowing no better, Molly, and been here a-going i' nine months, and not for want o' talking to, neither--and what are you stanning there for, like a jack as is run down, instead o' getting your wheel out? You're a rare un for sitting down to your work a little while after it's time to put by." "Munny, my iron's twite told; pease put it down to warm." The small chirruping voice that uttered this request came from a little sunny-haired girl between three and four, who, seated on a high chair at the end of the ironing table, was arduously clutching the handle of a miniature iron with her tiny fat fist, and ironing rags with an assiduity that required her to put her little red tongue out as far as anatomy would allow. "Cold, is it, my darling? Bless your sweet face!" said Mrs. Poyser, who was remarkable for the facility with which she could relapse from her official objurgatory to one of fondness or of friendly converse. "Never mind! Mother's done her ironing now. She's going to put the ironing things away." "Munny, I tould 'ike to do into de barn to Tommy, to see de whittawd." "No, no, no; Totty 'ud get her feet wet," said Mrs. Poyser, carrying away her iron. "Run into the dairy and see cousin Hetty make the butter." "I tould 'ike a bit o' pum-take," rejoined Totty, who seemed to be provided with several relays of requests; at the same time, taking the opportunity of her momentary leisure to put her fingers into a bowl of starch, and drag it down so as to empty the contents with tolerable completeness on to the ironing sheet. "Did ever anybody see the like?" screamed Mrs. Poyser, running towards the table when her eye had fallen on the blue stream. "The child's allays i' mischief if your back's turned a minute. What shall I do to you, you naughty, naughty gell?" Totty, however, had descended from her chair with great swiftness, and was already in retreat towards the dairy with a sort of waddling run, and an amount of fat on the nape of her neck which made her look like the metamorphosis of a white suckling pig. The starch having been wiped up by Molly's help, and the ironing apparatus put by, Mrs. Poyser took up her knitting which always lay ready at hand, and was the work she liked best, because she could carry it on automatically as she walked to and fro. But now she came and sat down opposite Dinah, whom she looked at in a meditative way, as she knitted her grey worsted stocking. "You look th' image o' your Aunt Judith, Dinah, when you sit a-sewing. I could almost fancy it was thirty years back, and I was a little gell at home, looking at Judith as she sat at her work, after she'd done the house up; only it was a little cottage, Father's was, and not a big rambling house as gets dirty i' one corner as fast as you clean it in another--but for all that, I could fancy you was your Aunt Judith, only her hair was a deal darker than yours, and she was stouter and broader i' the shoulders. Judith and me allays hung together, though she had such queer ways, but your mother and her never could agree. Ah, your mother little thought as she'd have a daughter just cut out after the very pattern o' Judith, and leave her an orphan, too, for Judith to take care on, and bring up with a spoon when SHE was in the graveyard at Stoniton. I allays said that o' Judith, as she'd bear a pound weight any day to save anybody else carrying a ounce. And she was just the same from the first o' my remembering her; it made no difference in her, as I could see, when she took to the Methodists, only she talked a bit different and wore a different sort o' cap; but she'd never in her life spent a penny on herself more than keeping herself decent." "She was a blessed woman," said Dinah; "God had given her a loving, self-forgetting nature, and He perfected it by grace. And she was very fond of you too, Aunt Rachel. I often heard her talk of you in the same sort of way. When she had that bad illness, and I was only eleven years old, she used to say, 'You'll have a friend on earth in your Aunt Rachel, if I'm taken from you, for she has a kind heart,' and I'm sure I've found it so." "I don't know how, child; anybody 'ud be cunning to do anything for you, I think; you're like the birds o' th' air, and live nobody knows how. I'd ha' been glad to behave to you like a mother's sister, if you'd come and live i' this country where there's some shelter and victual for man and beast, and folks don't live on the naked hills, like poultry a-scratching on a gravel bank. And then you might get married to some decent man, and there'd be plenty ready to have you, if you'd only leave off that preaching, as is ten times worse than anything your Aunt Judith ever did. And even if you'd marry Seth Bede, as is a poor wool-gathering Methodist and's never like to have a penny beforehand, I know your uncle 'ud help you with a pig, and very like a cow, for he's allays been good-natur'd to my kin, for all they're poor, and made 'em welcome to the house; and 'ud do for you, I'll be bound, as much as ever he'd do for Hetty, though she's his own niece. And there's linen in the house as I could well spare you, for I've got lots o' sheeting and table-clothing, and towelling, as isn't made up. There's a piece o' sheeting I could give you as that squinting Kitty spun--she was a rare girl to spin, for all she squinted, and the children couldn't abide her; and, you know, the spinning's going on constant, and there's new linen wove twice as fast as the old wears out. But where's the use o' talking, if ye wonna be persuaded, and settle down like any other woman in her senses, i'stead o' wearing yourself out with walking and preaching, and giving away every penny you get, so as you've nothing saved against sickness; and all the things you've got i' the world, I verily believe, 'ud go into a bundle no bigger nor a double cheese. And all because you've got notions i' your head about religion more nor what's i' the Catechism and the Prayer-book." "But not more than what's in the Bible, Aunt," said Dinah. "Yes, and the Bible too, for that matter," Mrs. Poyser rejoined, rather sharply; "else why shouldn't them as know best what's in the Bible--the parsons and people as have got nothing to do but learn it--do the same as you do? But, for the matter o' that, if everybody was to do like you, the world must come to a standstill; for if everybody tried to do without house and home, and with poor eating and drinking, and was allays talking as we must despise the things o' the world as you say, I should like to know where the pick o' the stock, and the corn, and the best new-milk cheeses 'ud have to go. Everybody 'ud be wanting bread made o' tail ends and everybody 'ud be running after everybody else to preach to 'em, istead o' bringing up their families, and laying by against a bad harvest. It stands to sense as that can't be the right religion." "Nay, dear aunt, you never heard me say that all people are called to forsake their work and their families. It's quite right the land should be ploughed and sowed, and the precious corn stored, and the things of this life cared for, and right that people should rejoice in their families, and provide for them, so that this is done in the fear of the Lord, and that they are not unmindful of the soul's wants while they are caring for the body. We can all be servants of God wherever our lot is cast, but He gives us different sorts of work, according as He fits us for it and calls us to it. I can no more help spending my life in trying to do what I can for the souls of others, than you could help running if you heard little Totty crying at the other end of the house; the voice would go to your heart, you would think the dear child was in trouble or in danger, and you couldn't rest without running to help her and comfort her." "Ah," said Mrs. Poyser, rising and walking towards the door, "I know it 'ud be just the same if I was to talk to you for hours. You'd make me the same answer, at th' end. I might as well talk to the running brook and tell it to stan' still." The causeway outside the kitchen door was dry enough now for Mrs. Poyser to stand there quite pleasantly and see what was going on in the yard, the grey worsted stocking making a steady progress in her hands all the while. But she had not been standing there more than five minutes before she came in again, and said to Dinah, in rather a flurried, awe-stricken tone, "If there isn't Captain Donnithorne and Mr. Irwine a-coming into the yard! I'll lay my life they're come to speak about your preaching on the Green, Dinah; it's you must answer 'em, for I'm dumb. I've said enough a'ready about your bringing such disgrace upo' your uncle's family. I wouldn't ha' minded if you'd been Mr. Poyser's own niece--folks must put up wi' their own kin, as they put up wi' their own noses--it's their own flesh and blood. But to think of a niece o' mine being cause o' my husband's being turned out of his farm, and me brought him no fortin but my savin's----" "Nay, dear Aunt Rachel," said Dinah gently, "you've no cause for such fears. I've strong assurance that no evil will happen to you and my uncle and the children from anything I've done. I didn't preach without direction." "Direction! I know very well what you mean by direction," said Mrs. Poyser, knitting in a rapid and agitated manner. "When there's a bigger maggot than usual in your head you call it 'direction'; and then nothing can stir you--you look like the statty o' the outside o' Treddles'on church, a-starin' and a-smilin' whether it's fair weather or foul. I hanna common patience with you." By this time the two gentlemen had reached the palings and had got down from their horses: it was plain they meant to come in. Mrs. Poyser advanced to the door to meet them, curtsying low and trembling between anger with Dinah and anxiety to conduct herself with perfect propriety on the occasion. For in those days the keenest of bucolic minds felt a whispering awe at the sight of the gentry, such as of old men felt when they stood on tiptoe to watch the gods passing by in tall human shape. "Well, Mrs. Poyser, how are you after this stormy morning?" said Mr. Irwine, with his stately cordiality. "Our feet are quite dry; we shall not soil your beautiful floor." "Oh, sir, don't mention it," said Mrs. Poyser. "Will you and the captain please to walk into the parlour?" "No, indeed, thank you, Mrs. Poyser," said the captain, looking eagerly round the kitchen, as if his eye were seeking something it could not find. "I delight in your kitchen. I think it is the most charming room I know. I should like every farmer's wife to come and look at it for a pattern." "Oh, you're pleased to say so, sir. Pray take a seat," said Mrs. Poyser, relieved a little by this compliment and the captain's evident good-humour, but still glancing anxiously at Mr. Irwine, who, she saw, was looking at Dinah and advancing towards her. "Poyser is not at home, is he?" said Captain Donnithorne, seating himself where he could see along the short passage to the open dairy-door. "No, sir, he isn't; he's gone to Rosseter to see Mr. West, the factor, about the wool. But there's Father i' the barn, sir, if he'd be of any use." "No, thank you; I'll just look at the whelps and leave a message about them with your shepherd. I must come another day and see your husband; I want to have a consultation with him about horses. Do you know when he's likely to be at liberty?" "Why, sir, you can hardly miss him, except it's o' Treddles'on market-day--that's of a Friday, you know. For if he's anywhere on the farm we can send for him in a minute. If we'd got rid o' the Scantlands, we should have no outlying fields; and I should be glad of it, for if ever anything happens, he's sure to be gone to the Scantlands. Things allays happen so contrairy, if they've a chance; and it's an unnat'ral thing to have one bit o' your farm in one county and all the rest in another." "Ah, the Scantlands would go much better with Choyce's farm, especially as he wants dairyland and you've got plenty. I think yours is the prettiest farm on the estate, though; and do you know, Mrs. Poyser, if I were going to marry and settle, I should be tempted to turn you out, and do up this fine old house, and turn farmer myself." "Oh, sir," said Mrs. Poyser, rather alarmed, "you wouldn't like it at all. As for farming, it's putting money into your pocket wi' your right hand and fetching it out wi' your left. As fur as I can see, it's raising victual for other folks and just getting a mouthful for yourself and your children as you go along. Not as you'd be like a poor man as wants to get his bread--you could afford to lose as much money as you liked i' farming--but it's poor fun losing money, I should think, though I understan' it's what the great folks i' London play at more than anything. For my husband heard at market as Lord Dacey's eldest son had lost thousands upo' thousands to the Prince o' Wales, and they said my lady was going to pawn her jewels to pay for him. But you know more about that than I do, sir. But, as for farming, sir, I canna think as you'd like it; and this house--the draughts in it are enough to cut you through, and it's my opinion the floors upstairs are very rotten, and the rats i' the cellar are beyond anything." "Why, that's a terrible picture, Mrs. Poyser. I think I should be doing you a service to turn you out of such a place. But there's no chance of that. I'm not likely to settle for the next twenty years, till I'm a stout gentleman of forty; and my grandfather would never consent to part with such good tenants as you." "Well, sir, if he thinks so well o' Mr. Poyser for a tenant I wish you could put in a word for him to allow us some new gates for the Five closes, for my husband's been asking and asking till he's tired, and to think o' what he's done for the farm, and's never had a penny allowed him, be the times bad or good. And as I've said to my husband often and often, I'm sure if the captain had anything to do with it, it wouldn't be so. Not as I wish to speak disrespectful o' them as have got the power i' their hands, but it's more than flesh and blood 'ull bear sometimes, to be toiling and striving, and up early and down late, and hardly sleeping a wink when you lie down for thinking as the cheese may swell, or the cows may slip their calf, or the wheat may grow green again i' the sheaf--and after all, at th' end o' the year, it's like as if you'd been cooking a feast and had got the smell of it for your pains." Mrs. Poyser, once launched into conversation, always sailed along without any check from her preliminary awe of the gentry. The confidence she felt in her own powers of exposition was a motive force that overcame all resistance. "I'm afraid I should only do harm instead of good, if I were to speak about the gates, Mrs. Poyser," said the captain, "though I assure you there's no man on the estate I would sooner say a word for than your husband. I know his farm is in better order than any other within ten miles of us; and as for the kitchen," he added, smiling, "I don't believe there's one in the kingdom to beat it. By the by, I've never seen your dairy: I must see your dairy, Mrs. Poyser." "Indeed, sir, it's not fit for you to go in, for Hetty's in the middle o' making the butter, for the churning was thrown late, and I'm quite ashamed." This Mrs. Poyser said blushing, and believing that the captain was really interested in her milk-pans, and would adjust his opinion of her to the appearance of her dairy. "Oh, I've no doubt it's in capital order. Take me in," said the captain, himself leading the way, while Mrs. Poyser followed.

Dinah repairs linens at her aunt's home, called Hall Farm. Mrs. Poyser, Dinah's aunt, scolds the maid for being lazy, even though the maid has been very industrious all day. She laughs when reminiscing about how much Dinah looks like the aunt who raised her after her mother died. Mr. Irwine and Captain Donnithorne arrive, and Captain Donnithorne asks Mrs. Poyser to show him her dairy

CHAPTER V. SEVERAL ADVENTURES THAT HAPPENED TO THE AUTHOR. THE AUTHOR SHOWS HIS SKILL IN NAVIGATION. I should have lived happily enough in that country, if my littleness had not exposed me to several ridiculous and troublesome accidents, some of which I shall venture to relate. Glumdalclitch often carried me into the gardens of the court in my smaller box, and would sometimes take me out of it, and hold me in her hand, or set me down to walk. I remember, before the dwarf left the queen, he followed us one day into those gardens, and my nurse having set me down, he and I being close together, near some dwarf apple-trees, I must needs show my wit by a silly allusion between him and the trees, which happens to hold in their language, as it doth in ours. Whereupon the malicious rogue, watching his opportunity, when I was walking under one of them, shook it directly over my head; by which a dozen apples, each of them near as large as a Bristol barrel, came tumbling about my ears; one of them hit me on the back as I chanced to stoop, and knocked me down flat on my face; but I received no other hurt; and the dwarf was pardoned at my desire, because I had given the provocation. [Illustration] Another day, Glumdalclitch left me on a smooth grass-plot to divert myself, while she walked at some distance with her governess. In the meantime there suddenly fell such a violent shower of hail, that I was immediately, by the force of it, struck to the ground; and when I was down, the hail stones gave me such cruel bangs all over the body as if I had been pelted with tennis-balls, however, I made a shift to creep on all fours, and shelter myself by lying flat on my face on the lee-side of a border of lemon-thyme, but so bruised from head to foot that I could not go abroad in ten days. Neither is this at all to be wondered at, because nature, in that country, observing the same proportion through all her operations, a hail-stone is near eighteen hundred times as large as one in Europe, which I can assert upon experience, having been so curious to weigh and measure them. But a more dangerous accident happened to me in the same garden, when my little nurse, believing she had put me in a secure place, which I often entreated her to do, that I might enjoy my own thoughts, and having left my box at home, to avoid the trouble of carrying it, went to another part of the garden with governess and some ladies of her acquaintance, she was absent and out of hearing, a small white belonging to one of the chief gardeners, having got by accident into the garden, happened to place where I lay: the dog, following the scent, came directly up, and taking me in his mouth, ran straight to his master, wagging his tail, and set me gently on the ground. By good fortune, he had been so well taught, that I was carried between his teeth without the least hurt, or even tearing my clothes. But the poor gardener, who knew me well, and had a great kindness for me, was in a terrible fright: he gently took me up in both his hands, and asked me how I did; but I was so amazed and out of breath, that I could not speak a word. In a few minutes I came to myself, and he carried me safe to my little nurse, who by this time had returned to the place where she left me, and was in cruel agonies when I did not appear nor answer when she called. She severely reprimanded the gardener on account of his dog, but the thing was bushed up and never known at court; for the girl was afraid of the queen's anger, and truly, as to myself, I thought it would not be for my reputation that such a story should go about. This accident absolutely determined Glumdalclitch never to trust me abroad for the future out of her sight. I had been long afraid of this resolution, and therefore concealed from her some little unlucky adventures that happened in those times when I was left by myself. Once a kite, hovering over the garden, made a stoop at me; and if I had not resolutely drawn my hanger, and run under a thick espalier,[67] he would have certainly carried me away in his talons. Another time, walking to the top of a fresh mole-hill, I fell to my neck in the hole through which that animal had cast up the earth. I likewise broke my right shin against the shell of a snail, which I happened to stumble over as I was walking alone and thinking on poor England. I cannot tell whether I were more pleased or mortified to observe in those solitary walks that the smaller birds did not appear to be at all afraid of me, but would hop about within a yard's distance, looking for worms and other food, with as much indifference and security as if no creature at all were near them. I remember a thrush had the confidence to snatch out of my hand with his bill a piece of cake that Glumdalclitch had just given me for my breakfast. When I attempted to catch any of these birds they would boldly turn against me, endeavoring to pick my fingers, which I durst not venture within their reach; and then they would hop back unconcerned to hunt for worms and snails as they did before. But one day I took a thick cudgel, and threw it with all my strength so luckily at a linnet that I knocked him down, and seizing him by the neck with both my hands ran with him in triumph to my nurse. However, the bird, who had only been stunned, recovering himself, gave me so many boxes with his wings on both sides of my head and body, though I held him at arm's length and was out of the reach of his claws, that I was twenty times thinking of letting him go. But I was soon relieved by one of our servants, who wrung off the bird's neck, and I had him next day for dinner by the queen's command. This linnet, as near as I can remember, seemed to be somewhat larger than an English swan. The queen, who often used to hear me talk of my sea-voyages, and took all occasions to divert me when I was melancholy, asked me, whether I understood how to handle a sail or an oar, and whether a little exercise of rowing might not be convenient for my health. I answered, that I understood both very well; for, although nay proper employment had been to be surgeon or doctor to the ship, yet often, upon a pinch, I was forced to work like a common mariner. But I could not see how this could be done in their country, where the smallest wherry was equal to a first-rate man-of-war among us, and such a boat as I could manage would never live in any of their rivers. [Illustration: "THE SMALLER BIRDS DID NOT APPEAR TO BE AT ALL AFRAID OF ME." P. 57.] Her majesty said, if I could contrive a boat, her own joiner should make it, and she would provide a place for me to sail in. The fellow was an ingenious workman, and, by my instructions, in ten days finished a pleasure-boat, with all its tackling, able conveniently to hold eight Europeans. When it was finished, the queen was so delighted that she ran with it in her lap to the king, who ordered it to be put in a cistern full of water, with me in it, by way of trial; where I could not manage my two sculls,[68] or little oars, for want of room. But the queen had before contrived another project. She ordered the joiner to make a wooden trough of three hundred feet long, fifty broad, and eight deep; which, being well pitched, to prevent leaking, was placed on the floor along the wall in an outer room of the palace. It had a cock near the bottom to let out the water, when it began to grow stale; and two servants could easily fill it in half-an-hour. Here I often used to row for my own diversion, as well as that of the queen and her ladies, who thought themselves well entertained with my skill and agility. Sometimes I would put up my sail, and then my business was only to steer, while the ladies gave me a gale with their fans; and when they were weary, some of their pages would blow my sail forward with their breath, while I showed my art by steering starboard[69] or larboard, as I pleased. When I had done, Glumdalclitch always carried back my boat, into her closet, and hung it oh a nail to dry. In this exercise I once met an accident, which had like to have cost me my life; for one of the pages having put my boat into the trough, the governess, who attended Glumdalclitch, very officiously lifted me up to place me in the boat, but I happened to slip through her fingers, and should infallibly have fallen down forty feet upon the floor, if, by the luckiest chance in the world, I had not been stopped by a corking-pin[70] that stuck in the good gentlewoman's stomacher;[71] the head of the pin passed between my shirt and the waistband of my breeches, and thus I held by the middle in the air, till Glumdalclitch ran to my relief. [Illustration: "GAVE ME A GALE WITH THEIR FANS." P. 60.] Another time, one of the servants, whose office it was to fill my trough every third day with fresh water, was so careless as to let a huge frog (not perceiving it) slip out of his pail. The frog lay concealed till I was put into my boat, but then seeing a resting-place, climbed up, and made it lean so much on one side that I was forced to balance it with all my weight on the other to prevent overturning. When the frog was got in, it hopped at once half the length of the boat, and then over my head backwards and forwards. The largeness of its features made it appear the most deformed animal that can be conceived. However, I desired Glumdalclitch to let me deal with it alone. I banged it a good while with one of my sculls, and at last forced it to leap out of the boat. But the greatest danger I ever underwent in that kingdom was from a monkey, who belonged to one of the clerks of the kitchen. Glumdalclitch had locked the up in her closet, while she went somewhere upon business or a visit. The weather being very warm the closet window was left open, as well as the windows and the door of my bigger box, in which I usually lived, because of its largeness and conveniency. As I sat quietly meditating at my table, I heard something bounce in at the closet window, and skip about from one side to the other; whereat, although I was much alarmed, yet I ventured to look out, but not stirring from my seat; and then I saw this frolicsome animal frisking and leaping up and down, till at last he came to my box, which he seemed to view with great pleasure and curiosity, peeping in at the door and every window. [Illustration] I retreated to the farther corner of my room or box; but the monkey looking in at every side, put me into such a fright that I wanted presence of mind to conceal myself under the bed, as I might easily have done. After some time spent in peeping, grinning, and chattering, he at last espied me, and reaching one of his paws in at the door, as a cat does when she plays with a mouse, although I often shifted place to avoid him, he at length seized the lappet of my coat (which, being made of that country silk, was very thick and strong), and dragged me out. He took me out in his right fore-foot, and held me as a nurse does a child, just as I have seen the same sort of creature do with a kitten in Europe: and, when I offered to struggle, he squeezed me so hard that I thought it more prudent to submit. I have good reason to believe that he took me for a young one of his own species, by his often stroking my face very gently with his other paw. In these diversions he was interrupted by a noise at the closet door, as if somebody were opening it; whereupon he suddenly leaped up to the window, at which he had come in, and thence upon the leads and gutters walking upon three legs, and holding me in the fourth, till he clambered up to a roof that was next to ours. I heard Glumdalclitch give a shriek at the moment he was carrying me out. The poor girl was almost distracted. That quarter of the palace was all in an uproar; the servants ran for ladders; the monkey was seen by hundreds in the court, sitting upon the ridge of a building, holding me like a baby in one of his fore-paws: whereat many of the rabble below could not forbear laughing; neither do I think they justly ought to be blamed, for without question, the sight was ridiculous enough to everybody but myself. Some of the people threw up stones, hoping to drive the monkey down; but this was strictly forbidden, or else very probably my brains had been dashed out. The ladders were now applied, and mounted by several men, which the monkey observing, and finding himself almost encompassed, not being able to make speed enough with his three legs, let me drop on a ridge tile, and made his escape. Here I sat for some time, five hundred yards from the ground, expecting every moment to be blown down by the wind, or to fall by my own giddiness, and come tumbling over and over from the ridge to the eaves; but an honest lad, one of my nurse's footmen, climbed up, and putting me into his breeches-pocket, brought me down safe. I was so weak and bruised in the sides with the squeezes given me by this odious animal, that I was forced to keep my bed a fortnight. The king, queen, and all the court, sent every day to inquire after my health, and her majesty made me several visits during my sickness. The monkey was killed, and an order made that no such animal should be kept about the palace. When I attended the king, after my recovery, to return him thanks for his favors, he was pleased to rally me a good deal upon this adventure. He asked me what my thoughts and speculations were while I lay in the monkey's paw. He desired to know what I would have done upon such an occasion in my own country. I told his majesty that in Europe we had no monkeys, except such as were brought for curiosities from other places, and so small, that I could deal with a dozen of them together if they presumed to attack me. And as for that monstrous animal with whom I was so lately engaged (it was, indeed, as large as an elephant) if my fears had suffered me to think so far as to make use of my hanger (looking fiercely, and clapping my hand upon the hilt, as I spoke) when he poked his paw into my chamber, perhaps I should have given him such a wound as would have made him glad to withdraw it with more haste than he put it in. This I delivered in a firm tone, like a person who was jealous lest his courage should be called in question. However, my speech produced nothing else besides a loud laughter, which all the respect due to his majesty from those about him could not make them contain. This made me reflect how vain an attempt it is for a man to endeavor to do himself honor among those who are out of all degree of equality or comparison with him. And yet I have seen the moral of my own behavior very frequent in England since my return, where a little contemptible varlet,[72] without the least title to birth, person, wit, or common-sense, shall presume to look with importance, and put himself upon a foot with the greatest persons of the kingdom. I was every day furnishing the court with some ridiculous story; and Glumdalclitch, although she loved me to excess, yet was arch enough to inform the queen whenever I committed any folly that she thought would be diverting to her majesty. The girl, who had been out of order, was carried by her governess to take the air about an hour's distance, or thirty miles from town. They alighted out of the coach near a small footpath in a field, and, Glumdalclitch setting down my travelling-box, I went out of it to walk. There was a pool of mud in the path, and I must needs try my activity by attempting to leap over it. I took a run, but unfortunately jumped short, and found myself just in the middle up to my knees. I waded through with some difficulty, and one of the footmen wiped me as clean as he could with his handkerchief, for I was filthily bemired; and my nurse confined me to my box till we returned home, when the queen was soon informed of what had passed, and the footman spread it about the court; so that all the mirth for some days was at my expense.

Gulliver's life in Brobdingnag is pretty happy except that his tiny size makes him so vulnerable to danger.When Gulliver is walking under an apple tree, the Queen's dwarf shakes the tree, causing about 12 apples to drop. These apples almost brain Gulliver.Gulliver is sitting on a plot of grass when a sudden hail shower nearly crushes him to death with balls of ice about 1,800 times the size of European hail.The worst danger of all comes when Glumdalclitch leaves Gulliver in the palace gardens while she is talking to her governess. A small white dog gets loose in the garden and carries Gulliver to the feet of her master, the head gardener. The gardener returns Gulliver to Glumdalclitch. When Gulliver is walking under an apple tree, the Queen's dwarf shakes the tree, causing about 12 apples to drop. These apples almost brain Gulliver. Gulliver is sitting on a plot of grass when a sudden hail shower nearly crushes him to death with balls of ice about 1,800 times the size of European hail. The worst danger of all comes when Glumdalclitch leaves Gulliver in the palace gardens while she is talking to her governess. A small white dog gets loose in the garden and carries Gulliver to the feet of her master, the head gardener. The gardener returns Gulliver to Glumdalclitch. Glumdalclitch gets really terrified for Gulliver's safety after this, and decides not to let him out of her sight. Gulliver is kind of bummed, because he likes being able to go on walks by himself - even though he is a bit accident prone. On these walks alone, Gulliver observes that even the birds of Brobdingnag are not afraid of him; they come very close to him looking for worms. He catches one but it pecks him almost to death - he's saved at the last minute by a servant, who kills the bird. These maids of honor like to have Gulliver come and play with them. They frequently press his whole, tiny body against their bosoms - where Gulliver has a chance to observe that they smell really bad to him, because there's just so much of them. The worst thing about being near these maids of honor is that none of them think of Gulliver as a real human being, so they regularly take off their clothes and even pee in front of him. He is disgusted by their huge moles, big pores, hairy skins - he can see all of their imperfections totally magnified, and it is nasty. Gulliver witnesses an execution in Brobdingnag: a criminal is beheaded, and the fountain of blood is huge. The Queen knows that Gulliver is familiar with boats, so she has both a boat and a trough of water three hundred feet long made for him. He often goes to this trough to row or sail, to the amusement of the Queen and her ladies. Once, one of the servants who is supposed to fill Gulliver's trough with water accidentally lets a frog loose. The frog nearly tips over Gulliver's boat. But the worst danger Gulliver finds in Brobdingnag is from a monkey. Glumdalclitch leaves Gulliver in her closet while she's out on some business, but the day is warm and the closet window is open. This monkey swings in from outside and finds Gulliver. It mistakes Gulliver for a baby monkey, grabs him, carries him out of Glumdalclitch's rooms, climbs to a roof nearby, and starts stuffing Gulliver with treats from a bag the monkey is carrying. A small crowd gathers to try and get the monkey to free Gulliver, but they're also laughing hysterically at the sight of Gulliver being force-fed by his adoptive monkey parent. Finally, the monkey drops Gulliver and runs away. Glumdalclitch nurses him back to health. Gulliver goes to visit the King to thank him for his kind thoughts during Gulliver's recovery. The King asks Gulliver how he felt while being held by the monkey. Gulliver claims that, if he hadn't been so frightened at seeing the monkey, he would have scared the beast away with his sword as soon as he saw it. All of the King's courtiers start laughing at how ridiculous Gulliver is: he could never have stabbed that monkey with his sword, because he's way too cowardly. In fact, Gulliver is always appearing like an idiot in front of the court. He has an adventure with a cow pat that Glumdalclitch immediately tells the Queen to make her laugh.

Esther's Narrative It matters little now how much I thought of my living mother who had told me evermore to consider her dead. I could not venture to approach her or to communicate with her in writing, for my sense of the peril in which her life was passed was only to be equalled by my fears of increasing it. Knowing that my mere existence as a living creature was an unforeseen danger in her way, I could not always conquer that terror of myself which had seized me when I first knew the secret. At no time did I dare to utter her name. I felt as if I did not even dare to hear it. If the conversation anywhere, when I was present, took that direction, as it sometimes naturally did, I tried not to hear: I mentally counted, repeated something that I knew, or went out of the room. I am conscious now that I often did these things when there can have been no danger of her being spoken of, but I did them in the dread I had of hearing anything that might lead to her betrayal, and to her betrayal through me. It matters little now how often I recalled the tones of my mother's voice, wondered whether I should ever hear it again as I so longed to do, and thought how strange and desolate it was that it should be so new to me. It matters little that I watched for every public mention of my mother's name; that I passed and repassed the door of her house in town, loving it, but afraid to look at it; that I once sat in the theatre when my mother was there and saw me, and when we were so wide asunder before the great company of all degrees that any link or confidence between us seemed a dream. It is all, all over. My lot has been so blest that I can relate little of myself which is not a story of goodness and generosity in others. I may well pass that little and go on. When we were settled at home again, Ada and I had many conversations with my guardian of which Richard was the theme. My dear girl was deeply grieved that he should do their kind cousin so much wrong, but she was so faithful to Richard that she could not bear to blame him even for that. My guardian was assured of it, and never coupled his name with a word of reproof. "Rick is mistaken, my dear," he would say to her. "Well, well! We have all been mistaken over and over again. We must trust to you and time to set him right." We knew afterwards what we suspected then, that he did not trust to time until he had often tried to open Richard's eyes. That he had written to him, gone to him, talked with him, tried every gentle and persuasive art his kindness could devise. Our poor devoted Richard was deaf and blind to all. If he were wrong, he would make amends when the Chancery suit was over. If he were groping in the dark, he could not do better than do his utmost to clear away those clouds in which so much was confused and obscured. Suspicion and misunderstanding were the fault of the suit? Then let him work the suit out and come through it to his right mind. This was his unvarying reply. Jarndyce and Jarndyce had obtained such possession of his whole nature that it was impossible to place any consideration before him which he did not, with a distorted kind of reason, make a new argument in favour of his doing what he did. "So that it is even more mischievous," said my guardian once to me, "to remonstrate with the poor dear fellow than to leave him alone." I took one of these opportunities of mentioning my doubts of Mr. Skimpole as a good adviser for Richard. "Adviser!" returned my guardian, laughing, "My dear, who would advise with Skimpole?" "Encourager would perhaps have been a better word," said I. "Encourager!" returned my guardian again. "Who could be encouraged by Skimpole?" "Not Richard?" I asked. "No," he replied. "Such an unworldly, uncalculating, gossamer creature is a relief to him and an amusement. But as to advising or encouraging or occupying a serious station towards anybody or anything, it is simply not to be thought of in such a child as Skimpole." "Pray, cousin John," said Ada, who had just joined us and now looked over my shoulder, "what made him such a child?" "What made him such a child?" inquired my guardian, rubbing his head, a little at a loss. "Yes, cousin John." "Why," he slowly replied, roughening his head more and more, "he is all sentiment, and--and susceptibility, and--and sensibility, and--and imagination. And these qualities are not regulated in him, somehow. I suppose the people who admired him for them in his youth attached too much importance to them and too little to any training that would have balanced and adjusted them, and so he became what he is. Hey?" said my guardian, stopping short and looking at us hopefully. "What do you think, you two?" Ada, glancing at me, said she thought it was a pity he should be an expense to Richard. "So it is, so it is," returned my guardian hurriedly. "That must not be. We must arrange that. I must prevent it. That will never do." And I said I thought it was to be regretted that he had ever introduced Richard to Mr. Vholes for a present of five pounds. "Did he?" said my guardian with a passing shade of vexation on his face. "But there you have the man. There you have the man! There is nothing mercenary in that with him. He has no idea of the value of money. He introduces Rick, and then he is good friends with Mr. Vholes and borrows five pounds of him. He means nothing by it and thinks nothing of it. He told you himself, I'll be bound, my dear?" "Oh, yes!" said I. "Exactly!" cried my guardian, quite triumphant. "There you have the man! If he had meant any harm by it or was conscious of any harm in it, he wouldn't tell it. He tells it as he does it in mere simplicity. But you shall see him in his own home, and then you'll understand him better. We must pay a visit to Harold Skimpole and caution him on these points. Lord bless you, my dears, an infant, an infant!" In pursuance of this plan, we went into London on an early day and presented ourselves at Mr. Skimpole's door. He lived in a place called the Polygon, in Somers Town, where there were at that time a number of poor Spanish refugees walking about in cloaks, smoking little paper cigars. Whether he was a better tenant than one might have supposed, in consequence of his friend Somebody always paying his rent at last, or whether his inaptitude for business rendered it particularly difficult to turn him out, I don't know; but he had occupied the same house some years. It was in a state of dilapidation quite equal to our expectation. Two or three of the area railings were gone, the water-butt was broken, the knocker was loose, the bell-handle had been pulled off a long time to judge from the rusty state of the wire, and dirty footprints on the steps were the only signs of its being inhabited. A slatternly full-blown girl who seemed to be bursting out at the rents in her gown and the cracks in her shoes like an over-ripe berry answered our knock by opening the door a very little way and stopping up the gap with her figure. As she knew Mr. Jarndyce (indeed Ada and I both thought that she evidently associated him with the receipt of her wages), she immediately relented and allowed us to pass in. The lock of the door being in a disabled condition, she then applied herself to securing it with the chain, which was not in good action either, and said would we go upstairs? We went upstairs to the first floor, still seeing no other furniture than the dirty footprints. Mr. Jarndyce without further ceremony entered a room there, and we followed. It was dingy enough and not at all clean, but furnished with an odd kind of shabby luxury, with a large footstool, a sofa, and plenty of cushions, an easy-chair, and plenty of pillows, a piano, books, drawing materials, music, newspapers, and a few sketches and pictures. A broken pane of glass in one of the dirty windows was papered and wafered over, but there was a little plate of hothouse nectarines on the table, and there was another of grapes, and another of sponge-cakes, and there was a bottle of light wine. Mr. Skimpole himself reclined upon the sofa in a dressing-gown, drinking some fragrant coffee from an old china cup--it was then about mid-day--and looking at a collection of wallflowers in the balcony. He was not in the least disconcerted by our appearance, but rose and received us in his usual airy manner. "Here I am, you see!" he said when we were seated, not without some little difficulty, the greater part of the chairs being broken. "Here I am! This is my frugal breakfast. Some men want legs of beef and mutton for breakfast; I don't. Give me my peach, my cup of coffee, and my claret; I am content. I don't want them for themselves, but they remind me of the sun. There's nothing solar about legs of beef and mutton. Mere animal satisfaction!" "This is our friend's consulting-room (or would be, if he ever prescribed), his sanctum, his studio," said my guardian to us. "Yes," said Mr. Skimpole, turning his bright face about, "this is the bird's cage. This is where the bird lives and sings. They pluck his feathers now and then and clip his wings, but he sings, he sings!" He handed us the grapes, repeating in his radiant way, "He sings! Not an ambitious note, but still he sings." "These are very fine," said my guardian. "A present?" "No," he answered. "No! Some amiable gardener sells them. His man wanted to know, when he brought them last evening, whether he should wait for the money. 'Really, my friend,' I said, 'I think not--if your time is of any value to you.' I suppose it was, for he went away." My guardian looked at us with a smile, as though he asked us, "Is it possible to be worldly with this baby?" "This is a day," said Mr. Skimpole, gaily taking a little claret in a tumbler, "that will ever be remembered here. We shall call it Saint Clare and Saint Summerson day. You must see my daughters. I have a blue-eyed daughter who is my Beauty daughter, I have a Sentiment daughter, and I have a Comedy daughter. You must see them all. They'll be enchanted." He was going to summon them when my guardian interposed and asked him to pause a moment, as he wished to say a word to him first. "My dear Jarndyce," he cheerfully replied, going back to his sofa, "as many moments as you please. Time is no object here. We never know what o'clock it is, and we never care. Not the way to get on in life, you'll tell me? Certainly. But we DON'T get on in life. We don't pretend to do it." My guardian looked at us again, plainly saying, "You hear him?" "Now, Harold," he began, "the word I have to say relates to Rick." "The dearest friend I have!" returned Mr. Skimpole cordially. "I suppose he ought not to be my dearest friend, as he is not on terms with you. But he is, I can't help it; he is full of youthful poetry, and I love him. If you don't like it, I can't help it. I love him." The engaging frankness with which he made this declaration really had a disinterested appearance and captivated my guardian, if not, for the moment, Ada too. "You are welcome to love him as much as you like," returned Mr. Jarndyce, "but we must save his pocket, Harold." "Oh!" said Mr. Skimpole. "His pocket? Now you are coming to what I don't understand." Taking a little more claret and dipping one of the cakes in it, he shook his head and smiled at Ada and me with an ingenuous foreboding that he never could be made to understand. "If you go with him here or there," said my guardian plainly, "you must not let him pay for both." "My dear Jarndyce," returned Mr. Skimpole, his genial face irradiated by the comicality of this idea, "what am I to do? If he takes me anywhere, I must go. And how can I pay? I never have any money. If I had any money, I don't know anything about it. Suppose I say to a man, how much? Suppose the man says to me seven and sixpence? I know nothing about seven and sixpence. It is impossible for me to pursue the subject with any consideration for the man. I don't go about asking busy people what seven and sixpence is in Moorish--which I don't understand. Why should I go about asking them what seven and sixpence is in Money--which I don't understand?" "Well," said my guardian, by no means displeased with this artless reply, "if you come to any kind of journeying with Rick, you must borrow the money of me (never breathing the least allusion to that circumstance), and leave the calculation to him." "My dear Jarndyce," returned Mr. Skimpole, "I will do anything to give you pleasure, but it seems an idle form--a superstition. Besides, I give you my word, Miss Clare and my dear Miss Summerson, I thought Mr. Carstone was immensely rich. I thought he had only to make over something, or to sign a bond, or a draft, or a cheque, or a bill, or to put something on a file somewhere, to bring down a shower of money." "Indeed it is not so, sir," said Ada. "He is poor." "No, really?" returned Mr. Skimpole with his bright smile. "You surprise me. "And not being the richer for trusting in a rotten reed," said my guardian, laying his hand emphatically on the sleeve of Mr. Skimpole's dressing-gown, "be you very careful not to encourage him in that reliance, Harold." "My dear good friend," returned Mr. Skimpole, "and my dear Miss Simmerson, and my dear Miss Clare, how can I do that? It's business, and I don't know business. It is he who encourages me. He emerges from great feats of business, presents the brightest prospects before me as their result, and calls upon me to admire them. I do admire them--as bright prospects. But I know no more about them, and I tell him so." The helpless kind of candour with which he presented this before us, the light-hearted manner in which he was amused by his innocence, the fantastic way in which he took himself under his own protection and argued about that curious person, combined with the delightful ease of everything he said exactly to make out my guardian's case. The more I saw of him, the more unlikely it seemed to me, when he was present, that he could design, conceal, or influence anything; and yet the less likely that appeared when he was not present, and the less agreeable it was to think of his having anything to do with any one for whom I cared. Hearing that his examination (as he called it) was now over, Mr. Skimpole left the room with a radiant face to fetch his daughters (his sons had run away at various times), leaving my guardian quite delighted by the manner in which he had vindicated his childish character. He soon came back, bringing with him the three young ladies and Mrs. Skimpole, who had once been a beauty but was now a delicate high-nosed invalid suffering under a complication of disorders. "This," said Mr. Skimpole, "is my Beauty daughter, Arethusa--plays and sings odds and ends like her father. This is my Sentiment daughter, Laura--plays a little but don't sing. This is my Comedy daughter, Kitty--sings a little but don't play. We all draw a little and compose a little, and none of us have any idea of time or money." Mrs. Skimpole sighed, I thought, as if she would have been glad to strike out this item in the family attainments. I also thought that she rather impressed her sigh upon my guardian and that she took every opportunity of throwing in another. "It is pleasant," said Mr. Skimpole, turning his sprightly eyes from one to the other of us, "and it is whimsically interesting to trace peculiarities in families. In this family we are all children, and I am the youngest." The daughters, who appeared to be very fond of him, were amused by this droll fact, particularly the Comedy daughter. "My dears, it is true," said Mr. Skimpole, "is it not? So it is, and so it must be, because like the dogs in the hymn, 'it is our nature to.' Now, here is Miss Summerson with a fine administrative capacity and a knowledge of details perfectly surprising. It will sound very strange in Miss Summerson's ears, I dare say, that we know nothing about chops in this house. But we don't, not the least. We can't cook anything whatever. A needle and thread we don't know how to use. We admire the people who possess the practical wisdom we want, but we don't quarrel with them. Then why should they quarrel with us? Live and let live, we say to them. Live upon your practical wisdom, and let us live upon you!" He laughed, but as usual seemed quite candid and really to mean what he said. "We have sympathy, my roses," said Mr. Skimpole, "sympathy for everything. Have we not?" "Oh, yes, papa!" cried the three daughters. "In fact, that is our family department," said Mr. Skimpole, "in this hurly-burly of life. We are capable of looking on and of being interested, and we DO look on, and we ARE interested. What more can we do? Here is my Beauty daughter, married these three years. Now I dare say her marrying another child, and having two more, was all wrong in point of political economy, but it was very agreeable. We had our little festivities on those occasions and exchanged social ideas. She brought her young husband home one day, and they and their young fledglings have their nest upstairs. I dare say at some time or other Sentiment and Comedy will bring THEIR husbands home and have THEIR nests upstairs too. So we get on, we don't know how, but somehow." She looked very young indeed to be the mother of two children, and I could not help pitying both her and them. It was evident that the three daughters had grown up as they could and had had just as little haphazard instruction as qualified them to be their father's playthings in his idlest hours. His pictorial tastes were consulted, I observed, in their respective styles of wearing their hair, the Beauty daughter being in the classic manner, the Sentiment daughter luxuriant and flowing, and the Comedy daughter in the arch style, with a good deal of sprightly forehead, and vivacious little curls dotted about the corners of her eyes. They were dressed to correspond, though in a most untidy and negligent way. Ada and I conversed with these young ladies and found them wonderfully like their father. In the meanwhile Mr. Jarndyce (who had been rubbing his head to a great extent, and hinted at a change in the wind) talked with Mrs. Skimpole in a corner, where we could not help hearing the chink of money. Mr. Skimpole had previously volunteered to go home with us and had withdrawn to dress himself for the purpose. "My roses," he said when he came back, "take care of mama. She is poorly to-day. By going home with Mr. Jarndyce for a day or two, I shall hear the larks sing and preserve my amiability. It has been tried, you know, and would be tried again if I remained at home." "That bad man!" said the Comedy daughter. "At the very time when he knew papa was lying ill by his wallflowers, looking at the blue sky," Laura complained. "And when the smell of hay was in the air!" said Arethusa. "It showed a want of poetry in the man," Mr. Skimpole assented, but with perfect good humour. "It was coarse. There was an absence of the finer touches of humanity in it! My daughters have taken great offence," he explained to us, "at an honest man--" "Not honest, papa. Impossible!" they all three protested. "At a rough kind of fellow--a sort of human hedgehog rolled up," said Mr. Skimpole, "who is a baker in this neighbourhood and from whom we borrowed a couple of arm-chairs. We wanted a couple of arm-chairs, and we hadn't got them, and therefore of course we looked to a man who HAD got them, to lend them. Well! This morose person lent them, and we wore them out. When they were worn out, he wanted them back. He had them back. He was contented, you will say. Not at all. He objected to their being worn. I reasoned with him, and pointed out his mistake. I said, 'Can you, at your time of life, be so headstrong, my friend, as to persist that an arm-chair is a thing to put upon a shelf and look at? That it is an object to contemplate, to survey from a distance, to consider from a point of sight? Don't you KNOW that these arm-chairs were borrowed to be sat upon?' He was unreasonable and unpersuadable and used intemperate language. Being as patient as I am at this minute, I addressed another appeal to him. I said, 'Now, my good man, however our business capacities may vary, we are all children of one great mother, Nature. On this blooming summer morning here you see me' (I was on the sofa) 'with flowers before me, fruit upon the table, the cloudless sky above me, the air full of fragrance, contemplating Nature. I entreat you, by our common brotherhood, not to interpose between me and a subject so sublime, the absurd figure of an angry baker!' But he did," said Mr. Skimpole, raising his laughing eyes in playful astonishment; "he did interpose that ridiculous figure, and he does, and he will again. And therefore I am very glad to get out of his way and to go home with my friend Jarndyce." It seemed to escape his consideration that Mrs. Skimpole and the daughters remained behind to encounter the baker, but this was so old a story to all of them that it had become a matter of course. He took leave of his family with a tenderness as airy and graceful as any other aspect in which he showed himself and rode away with us in perfect harmony of mind. We had an opportunity of seeing through some open doors, as we went downstairs, that his own apartment was a palace to the rest of the house. I could have no anticipation, and I had none, that something very startling to me at the moment, and ever memorable to me in what ensued from it, was to happen before this day was out. Our guest was in such spirits on the way home that I could do nothing but listen to him and wonder at him; nor was I alone in this, for Ada yielded to the same fascination. As to my guardian, the wind, which had threatened to become fixed in the east when we left Somers Town, veered completely round before we were a couple of miles from it. Whether of questionable childishness or not in any other matters, Mr. Skimpole had a child's enjoyment of change and bright weather. In no way wearied by his sallies on the road, he was in the drawing-room before any of us; and I heard him at the piano while I was yet looking after my housekeeping, singing refrains of barcaroles and drinking songs, Italian and German, by the score. We were all assembled shortly before dinner, and he was still at the piano idly picking out in his luxurious way little strains of music, and talking between whiles of finishing some sketches of the ruined old Verulam wall to-morrow, which he had begun a year or two ago and had got tired of, when a card was brought in and my guardian read aloud in a surprised voice, "Sir Leicester Dedlock!" The visitor was in the room while it was yet turning round with me and before I had the power to stir. If I had had it, I should have hurried away. I had not even the presence of mind, in my giddiness, to retire to Ada in the window, or to see the window, or to know where it was. I heard my name and found that my guardian was presenting me before I could move to a chair. "Pray be seated, Sir Leicester." "Mr. Jarndyce," said Sir Leicester in reply as he bowed and seated himself, "I do myself the honour of calling here--" "You do ME the honour, Sir Leicester." "Thank you--of calling here on my road from Lincolnshire to express my regret that any cause of complaint, however strong, that I may have against a gentleman who--who is known to you and has been your host, and to whom therefore I will make no farther reference, should have prevented you, still more ladies under your escort and charge, from seeing whatever little there may be to gratify a polite and refined taste at my house, Chesney Wold." "You are exceedingly obliging, Sir Leicester, and on behalf of those ladies (who are present) and for myself, I thank you very much." "It is possible, Mr. Jarndyce, that the gentleman to whom, for the reasons I have mentioned, I refrain from making further allusion--it is possible, Mr. Jarndyce, that that gentleman may have done me the honour so far to misapprehend my character as to induce you to believe that you would not have been received by my local establishment in Lincolnshire with that urbanity, that courtesy, which its members are instructed to show to all ladies and gentlemen who present themselves at that house. I merely beg to observe, sir, that the fact is the reverse." My guardian delicately dismissed this remark without making any verbal answer. "It has given me pain, Mr. Jarndyce," Sir Leicester weightily proceeded. "I assure you, sir, it has given--me--pain--to learn from the housekeeper at Chesney Wold that a gentleman who was in your company in that part of the county, and who would appear to possess a cultivated taste for the fine arts, was likewise deterred by some such cause from examining the family pictures with that leisure, that attention, that care, which he might have desired to bestow upon them and which some of them might possibly have repaid." Here he produced a card and read, with much gravity and a little trouble, through his eye-glass, "Mr. Hirrold--Herald--Harold--Skampling--Skumpling--I beg your pardon--Skimpole." "This is Mr. Harold Skimpole," said my guardian, evidently surprised. "Oh!" exclaimed Sir Leicester, "I am happy to meet Mr. Skimpole and to have the opportunity of tendering my personal regrets. I hope, sir, that when you again find yourself in my part of the county, you will be under no similar sense of restraint." "You are very obliging, Sir Leicester Dedlock. So encouraged, I shall certainly give myself the pleasure and advantage of another visit to your beautiful house. The owners of such places as Chesney Wold," said Mr. Skimpole with his usual happy and easy air, "are public benefactors. They are good enough to maintain a number of delightful objects for the admiration and pleasure of us poor men; and not to reap all the admiration and pleasure that they yield is to be ungrateful to our benefactors." Sir Leicester seemed to approve of this sentiment highly. "An artist, sir?" "No," returned Mr. Skimpole. "A perfectly idle man. A mere amateur." Sir Leicester seemed to approve of this even more. He hoped he might have the good fortune to be at Chesney Wold when Mr. Skimpole next came down into Lincolnshire. Mr. Skimpole professed himself much flattered and honoured. "Mr. Skimpole mentioned," pursued Sir Leicester, addressing himself again to my guardian, "mentioned to the housekeeper, who, as he may have observed, is an old and attached retainer of the family--" ("That is, when I walked through the house the other day, on the occasion of my going down to visit Miss Summerson and Miss Clare," Mr. Skimpole airily explained to us.) "--That the friend with whom he had formerly been staying there was Mr. Jarndyce." Sir Leicester bowed to the bearer of that name. "And hence I became aware of the circumstance for which I have professed my regret. That this should have occurred to any gentleman, Mr. Jarndyce, but especially a gentleman formerly known to Lady Dedlock, and indeed claiming some distant connexion with her, and for whom (as I learn from my Lady herself) she entertains a high respect, does, I assure you, give--me--pain." "Pray say no more about it, Sir Leicester," returned my guardian. "I am very sensible, as I am sure we all are, of your consideration. Indeed the mistake was mine, and I ought to apologize for it." I had not once looked up. I had not seen the visitor and had not even appeared to myself to hear the conversation. It surprises me to find that I can recall it, for it seemed to make no impression on me as it passed. I heard them speaking, but my mind was so confused and my instinctive avoidance of this gentleman made his presence so distressing to me that I thought I understood nothing, through the rushing in my head and the beating of my heart. "I mentioned the subject to Lady Dedlock," said Sir Leicester, rising, "and my Lady informed me that she had had the pleasure of exchanging a few words with Mr. Jarndyce and his wards on the occasion of an accidental meeting during their sojourn in the vicinity. Permit me, Mr. Jarndyce, to repeat to yourself, and to these ladies, the assurance I have already tendered to Mr. Skimpole. Circumstances undoubtedly prevent my saying that it would afford me any gratification to hear that Mr. Boythorn had favoured my house with his presence, but those circumstances are confined to that gentleman himself and do not extend beyond him." "You know my old opinion of him," said Mr. Skimpole, lightly appealing to us. "An amiable bull who is determined to make every colour scarlet!" Sir Leicester Dedlock coughed as if he could not possibly hear another word in reference to such an individual and took his leave with great ceremony and politeness. I got to my own room with all possible speed and remained there until I had recovered my self-command. It had been very much disturbed, but I was thankful to find when I went downstairs again that they only rallied me for having been shy and mute before the great Lincolnshire baronet. By that time I had made up my mind that the period was come when I must tell my guardian what I knew. The possibility of my being brought into contact with my mother, of my being taken to her house, even of Mr. Skimpole's, however distantly associated with me, receiving kindnesses and obligations from her husband, was so painful that I felt I could no longer guide myself without his assistance. When we had retired for the night, and Ada and I had had our usual talk in our pretty room, I went out at my door again and sought my guardian among his books. I knew he always read at that hour, and as I drew near I saw the light shining out into the passage from his reading-lamp. "May I come in, guardian?" "Surely, little woman. What's the matter?" "Nothing is the matter. I thought I would like to take this quiet time of saying a word to you about myself." He put a chair for me, shut his book, and put it by, and turned his kind attentive face towards me. I could not help observing that it wore that curious expression I had observed in it once before--on that night when he had said that he was in no trouble which I could readily understand. "What concerns you, my dear Esther," said he, "concerns us all. You cannot be more ready to speak than I am to hear." "I know that, guardian. But I have such need of your advice and support. Oh! You don't know how much need I have to-night." He looked unprepared for my being so earnest, and even a little alarmed. "Or how anxious I have been to speak to you," said I, "ever since the visitor was here to-day." "The visitor, my dear! Sir Leicester Dedlock?" "Yes." He folded his arms and sat looking at me with an air of the profoundest astonishment, awaiting what I should say next. I did not know how to prepare him. "Why, Esther," said he, breaking into a smile, "our visitor and you are the two last persons on earth I should have thought of connecting together!" "Oh, yes, guardian, I know it. And I too, but a little while ago." The smile passed from his face, and he became graver than before. He crossed to the door to see that it was shut (but I had seen to that) and resumed his seat before me. "Guardian," said I, "do you remember, when we were overtaken by the thunder-storm, Lady Dedlock's speaking to you of her sister?" "Of course. Of course I do." "And reminding you that she and her sister had differed, had gone their several ways?" "Of course." "Why did they separate, guardian?" His face quite altered as he looked at me. "My child, what questions are these! I never knew. No one but themselves ever did know, I believe. Who could tell what the secrets of those two handsome and proud women were! You have seen Lady Dedlock. If you had ever seen her sister, you would know her to have been as resolute and haughty as she." "Oh, guardian, I have seen her many and many a time!" "Seen her?" He paused a little, biting his lip. "Then, Esther, when you spoke to me long ago of Boythorn, and when I told you that he was all but married once, and that the lady did not die, but died to him, and that that time had had its influence on his later life--did you know it all, and know who the lady was?" "No, guardian," I returned, fearful of the light that dimly broke upon me. "Nor do I know yet." "Lady Dedlock's sister." "And why," I could scarcely ask him, "why, guardian, pray tell me why were THEY parted?" "It was her act, and she kept its motives in her inflexible heart. He afterwards did conjecture (but it was mere conjecture) that some injury which her haughty spirit had received in her cause of quarrel with her sister had wounded her beyond all reason, but she wrote him that from the date of that letter she died to him--as in literal truth she did--and that the resolution was exacted from her by her knowledge of his proud temper and his strained sense of honour, which were both her nature too. In consideration for those master points in him, and even in consideration for them in herself, she made the sacrifice, she said, and would live in it and die in it. She did both, I fear; certainly he never saw her, never heard of her from that hour. Nor did any one." "Oh, guardian, what have I done!" I cried, giving way to my grief; "what sorrow have I innocently caused!" "You caused, Esther?" "Yes, guardian. Innocently, but most surely. That secluded sister is my first remembrance." "No, no!" he cried, starting. "Yes, guardian, yes! And HER sister is my mother!" I would have told him all my mother's letter, but he would not hear it then. He spoke so tenderly and wisely to me, and he put so plainly before me all I had myself imperfectly thought and hoped in my better state of mind, that, penetrated as I had been with fervent gratitude towards him through so many years, I believed I had never loved him so dearly, never thanked him in my heart so fully, as I did that night. And when he had taken me to my room and kissed me at the door, and when at last I lay down to sleep, my thought was how could I ever be busy enough, how could I ever be good enough, how in my little way could I ever hope to be forgetful enough of myself, devoted enough to him, and useful enough to others, to show him how I blessed and honoured him.

"Esther's Narrative" Esther studiously avoids mentioning Lady Dedlock, and she does her best not to think about her. She says it doesn't matter how she struggled not to think about her voice or how she obsessively looked for Lady Dedlock's name in public. Esther and Ada talk with Mr. Jarndyce about Richard. Mr. Jarndyce no longer seems to hope that Richard will give up the Jarndyce and Jarndyce lawsuit. Esther reveals that Skimpole has been encouraging Richard, but Mr. Jarndyce can't be angry because Skimpole is such a child. Esther also tells him that Skimpole introduced Richard to Vholes for five pounds, but Mr. Jarndyce is convinced Skimpole didn't mean any harm. They go to London to visit Skimpole, who lives in a dingy apartment. He is happy to see them and seems characteristically childlike, which seems to be a relief to Mr. Jarndyce. He tells Skimpole that he mustn't take money from Richard, but Skimpole says he can't refuse. He says he thought Richard was rich. He also says he is unable to stop encouraging Richard in the lawsuit, since he understands nothing about it. Skimpole introduces them to his three daughters and his wife and prepares to go to Bleak House with the group. Esther observes that she didn't anticipate at this point that something very remarkable was going to happen by the end of the day. Sir Leicester visits Bleak House unexpectedly. He tells Mr. Jarndyce, Esther, and Ada that he hopes that they are not under the impression that, because of his feud with Boythorn, they aren't welcome at Chesney Wold. He says that Mrs. Rouncewell told him that a friend of theirs named Skimpole was prevented from seeing the family art. Mr. Jarndyce introduces him to Skimpole, who is in the room. Skimpole says he will visit again. Sir Leicester says he regrets if there was any confusion about their welcome at Chesney Wold, especially since Lady Dedlock respects Mr. Jarndyce. Esther decides to tell Mr. Jarndyce her secret. She asks if he remembers Lady Dedlock speaking of her sister, and that the two women had parted ways. She asks why they separated, but Mr. Jarndyce claims not to know. But he asks if Esther knows that Boythorn's old lover was Lady Dedlock's sister. Esther responds that she hadn't known this. Mr. Jarndyce tells her that this sister and Boythorn separated because of a quarrel she had with Lady Dedlock. She wrote Boythorn a letter saying she was dead to him, and he never saw her again. Esther is overcome with grief because she believes that she has caused Boythorn's heartbreak. She tells Mr. Jarndyce that the sister was her caretaker, and Lady Dedlock is her mother. Mr. Jarndyce comforts her and Esther is deeply grateful to him for his kindness, feeling that she can never repay him

In due time, Mr. Micawber's petition was ripe for hearing; and that gentleman was ordered to be discharged under the Act, to my great joy. His creditors were not implacable; and Mrs. Micawber informed me that even the revengeful boot-maker had declared in open court that he bore him no malice, but that when money was owing to him he liked to be paid. He said he thought it was human nature. Mr. Micawber returned to the King's Bench when his case was over, as some fees were to be settled, and some formalities observed, before he could be actually released. The club received him with transport, and held an harmonic meeting that evening in his honour; while Mrs. Micawber and I had a lamb's fry in private, surrounded by the sleeping family. 'On such an occasion I will give you, Master Copperfield,' said Mrs. Micawber, 'in a little more flip,' for we had been having some already, 'the memory of my papa and mama.' 'Are they dead, ma'am?' I inquired, after drinking the toast in a wine-glass. 'My mama departed this life,' said Mrs. Micawber, 'before Mr. Micawber's difficulties commenced, or at least before they became pressing. My papa lived to bail Mr. Micawber several times, and then expired, regretted by a numerous circle.' Mrs. Micawber shook her head, and dropped a pious tear upon the twin who happened to be in hand. As I could hardly hope for a more favourable opportunity of putting a question in which I had a near interest, I said to Mrs. Micawber: 'May I ask, ma'am, what you and Mr. Micawber intend to do, now that Mr. Micawber is out of his difficulties, and at liberty? Have you settled yet?' 'My family,' said Mrs. Micawber, who always said those two words with an air, though I never could discover who came under the denomination, 'my family are of opinion that Mr. Micawber should quit London, and exert his talents in the country. Mr. Micawber is a man of great talent, Master Copperfield.' I said I was sure of that. 'Of great talent,' repeated Mrs. Micawber. 'My family are of opinion, that, with a little interest, something might be done for a man of his ability in the Custom House. The influence of my family being local, it is their wish that Mr. Micawber should go down to Plymouth. They think it indispensable that he should be upon the spot.' 'That he may be ready?' I suggested. 'Exactly,' returned Mrs. Micawber. 'That he may be ready--in case of anything turning up.' 'And do you go too, ma'am?' The events of the day, in combination with the twins, if not with the flip, had made Mrs. Micawber hysterical, and she shed tears as she replied: 'I never will desert Mr. Micawber. Mr. Micawber may have concealed his difficulties from me in the first instance, but his sanguine temper may have led him to expect that he would overcome them. The pearl necklace and bracelets which I inherited from mama, have been disposed of for less than half their value; and the set of coral, which was the wedding gift of my papa, has been actually thrown away for nothing. But I never will desert Mr. Micawber. No!' cried Mrs. Micawber, more affected than before, 'I never will do it! It's of no use asking me!' I felt quite uncomfortable--as if Mrs. Micawber supposed I had asked her to do anything of the sort!--and sat looking at her in alarm. 'Mr. Micawber has his faults. I do not deny that he is improvident. I do not deny that he has kept me in the dark as to his resources and his liabilities both,' she went on, looking at the wall; 'but I never will desert Mr. Micawber!' Mrs. Micawber having now raised her voice into a perfect scream, I was so frightened that I ran off to the club-room, and disturbed Mr. Micawber in the act of presiding at a long table, and leading the chorus of Gee up, Dobbin, Gee ho, Dobbin, Gee up, Dobbin, Gee up, and gee ho--o--o! with the tidings that Mrs. Micawber was in an alarming state, upon which he immediately burst into tears, and came away with me with his waistcoat full of the heads and tails of shrimps, of which he had been partaking. 'Emma, my angel!' cried Mr. Micawber, running into the room; 'what is the matter?' 'I never will desert you, Micawber!' she exclaimed. 'My life!' said Mr. Micawber, taking her in his arms. 'I am perfectly aware of it.' 'He is the parent of my children! He is the father of my twins! He is the husband of my affections,' cried Mrs. Micawber, struggling; 'and I ne--ver--will--desert Mr. Micawber!' Mr. Micawber was so deeply affected by this proof of her devotion (as to me, I was dissolved in tears), that he hung over her in a passionate manner, imploring her to look up, and to be calm. But the more he asked Mrs. Micawber to look up, the more she fixed her eyes on nothing; and the more he asked her to compose herself, the more she wouldn't. Consequently Mr. Micawber was soon so overcome, that he mingled his tears with hers and mine; until he begged me to do him the favour of taking a chair on the staircase, while he got her into bed. I would have taken my leave for the night, but he would not hear of my doing that until the strangers' bell should ring. So I sat at the staircase window, until he came out with another chair and joined me. 'How is Mrs. Micawber now, sir?' I said. 'Very low,' said Mr. Micawber, shaking his head; 'reaction. Ah, this has been a dreadful day! We stand alone now--everything is gone from us!' Mr. Micawber pressed my hand, and groaned, and afterwards shed tears. I was greatly touched, and disappointed too, for I had expected that we should be quite gay on this happy and long-looked-for occasion. But Mr. and Mrs. Micawber were so used to their old difficulties, I think, that they felt quite shipwrecked when they came to consider that they were released from them. All their elasticity was departed, and I never saw them half so wretched as on this night; insomuch that when the bell rang, and Mr. Micawber walked with me to the lodge, and parted from me there with a blessing, I felt quite afraid to leave him by himself, he was so profoundly miserable. But through all the confusion and lowness of spirits in which we had been, so unexpectedly to me, involved, I plainly discerned that Mr. and Mrs. Micawber and their family were going away from London, and that a parting between us was near at hand. It was in my walk home that night, and in the sleepless hours which followed when I lay in bed, that the thought first occurred to me--though I don't know how it came into my head--which afterwards shaped itself into a settled resolution. I had grown to be so accustomed to the Micawbers, and had been so intimate with them in their distresses, and was so utterly friendless without them, that the prospect of being thrown upon some new shift for a lodging, and going once more among unknown people, was like being that moment turned adrift into my present life, with such a knowledge of it ready made as experience had given me. All the sensitive feelings it wounded so cruelly, all the shame and misery it kept alive within my breast, became more poignant as I thought of this; and I determined that the life was unendurable. That there was no hope of escape from it, unless the escape was my own act, I knew quite well. I rarely heard from Miss Murdstone, and never from Mr. Murdstone: but two or three parcels of made or mended clothes had come up for me, consigned to Mr. Quinion, and in each there was a scrap of paper to the effect that J. M. trusted D. C. was applying himself to business, and devoting himself wholly to his duties--not the least hint of my ever being anything else than the common drudge into which I was fast settling down. The very next day showed me, while my mind was in the first agitation of what it had conceived, that Mrs. Micawber had not spoken of their going away without warrant. They took a lodging in the house where I lived, for a week; at the expiration of which time they were to start for Plymouth. Mr. Micawber himself came down to the counting-house, in the afternoon, to tell Mr. Quinion that he must relinquish me on the day of his departure, and to give me a high character, which I am sure I deserved. And Mr. Quinion, calling in Tipp the carman, who was a married man, and had a room to let, quartered me prospectively on him--by our mutual consent, as he had every reason to think; for I said nothing, though my resolution was now taken. I passed my evenings with Mr. and Mrs. Micawber, during the remaining term of our residence under the same roof; and I think we became fonder of one another as the time went on. On the last Sunday, they invited me to dinner; and we had a loin of pork and apple sauce, and a pudding. I had bought a spotted wooden horse over-night as a parting gift to little Wilkins Micawber--that was the boy--and a doll for little Emma. I had also bestowed a shilling on the Orfling, who was about to be disbanded. We had a very pleasant day, though we were all in a tender state about our approaching separation. 'I shall never, Master Copperfield,' said Mrs. Micawber, 'revert to the period when Mr. Micawber was in difficulties, without thinking of you. Your conduct has always been of the most delicate and obliging description. You have never been a lodger. You have been a friend.' 'My dear,' said Mr. Micawber; 'Copperfield,' for so he had been accustomed to call me, of late, 'has a heart to feel for the distresses of his fellow-creatures when they are behind a cloud, and a head to plan, and a hand to--in short, a general ability to dispose of such available property as could be made away with.' I expressed my sense of this commendation, and said I was very sorry we were going to lose one another. 'My dear young friend,' said Mr. Micawber, 'I am older than you; a man of some experience in life, and--and of some experience, in short, in difficulties, generally speaking. At present, and until something turns up (which I am, I may say, hourly expecting), I have nothing to bestow but advice. Still my advice is so far worth taking, that--in short, that I have never taken it myself, and am the'--here Mr. Micawber, who had been beaming and smiling, all over his head and face, up to the present moment, checked himself and frowned--'the miserable wretch you behold.' 'My dear Micawber!' urged his wife. 'I say,' returned Mr. Micawber, quite forgetting himself, and smiling again, 'the miserable wretch you behold. My advice is, never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time. Collar him!' 'My poor papa's maxim,' Mrs. Micawber observed. 'My dear,' said Mr. Micawber, 'your papa was very well in his way, and Heaven forbid that I should disparage him. Take him for all in all, we ne'er shall--in short, make the acquaintance, probably, of anybody else possessing, at his time of life, the same legs for gaiters, and able to read the same description of print, without spectacles. But he applied that maxim to our marriage, my dear; and that was so far prematurely entered into, in consequence, that I never recovered the expense.' Mr. Micawber looked aside at Mrs. Micawber, and added: 'Not that I am sorry for it. Quite the contrary, my love.' After which, he was grave for a minute or so. 'My other piece of advice, Copperfield,' said Mr. Micawber, 'you know. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. The blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, the god of day goes down upon the dreary scene, and--and in short you are for ever floored. As I am!' To make his example the more impressive, Mr. Micawber drank a glass of punch with an air of great enjoyment and satisfaction, and whistled the College Hornpipe. I did not fail to assure him that I would store these precepts in my mind, though indeed I had no need to do so, for, at the time, they affected me visibly. Next morning I met the whole family at the coach office, and saw them, with a desolate heart, take their places outside, at the back. 'Master Copperfield,' said Mrs. Micawber, 'God bless you! I never can forget all that, you know, and I never would if I could.' 'Copperfield,' said Mr. Micawber, 'farewell! Every happiness and prosperity! If, in the progress of revolving years, I could persuade myself that my blighted destiny had been a warning to you, I should feel that I had not occupied another man's place in existence altogether in vain. In case of anything turning up (of which I am rather confident), I shall be extremely happy if it should be in my power to improve your prospects.' I think, as Mrs. Micawber sat at the back of the coach, with the children, and I stood in the road looking wistfully at them, a mist cleared from her eyes, and she saw what a little creature I really was. I think so, because she beckoned to me to climb up, with quite a new and motherly expression in her face, and put her arm round my neck, and gave me just such a kiss as she might have given to her own boy. I had barely time to get down again before the coach started, and I could hardly see the family for the handkerchiefs they waved. It was gone in a minute. The Orfling and I stood looking vacantly at each other in the middle of the road, and then shook hands and said good-bye; she going back, I suppose, to St. Luke's workhouse, as I went to begin my weary day at Murdstone and Grinby's. But with no intention of passing many more weary days there. No. I had resolved to run away.---To go, by some means or other, down into the country, to the only relation I had in the world, and tell my story to my aunt, Miss Betsey. I have already observed that I don't know how this desperate idea came into my brain. But, once there, it remained there; and hardened into a purpose than which I have never entertained a more determined purpose in my life. I am far from sure that I believed there was anything hopeful in it, but my mind was thoroughly made up that it must be carried into execution. Again, and again, and a hundred times again, since the night when the thought had first occurred to me and banished sleep, I had gone over that old story of my poor mother's about my birth, which it had been one of my great delights in the old time to hear her tell, and which I knew by heart. My aunt walked into that story, and walked out of it, a dread and awful personage; but there was one little trait in her behaviour which I liked to dwell on, and which gave me some faint shadow of encouragement. I could not forget how my mother had thought that she felt her touch her pretty hair with no ungentle hand; and though it might have been altogether my mother's fancy, and might have had no foundation whatever in fact, I made a little picture, out of it, of my terrible aunt relenting towards the girlish beauty that I recollected so well and loved so much, which softened the whole narrative. It is very possible that it had been in my mind a long time, and had gradually engendered my determination. As I did not even know where Miss Betsey lived, I wrote a long letter to Peggotty, and asked her, incidentally, if she remembered; pretending that I had heard of such a lady living at a certain place I named at random, and had a curiosity to know if it were the same. In the course of that letter, I told Peggotty that I had a particular occasion for half a guinea; and that if she could lend me that sum until I could repay it, I should be very much obliged to her, and would tell her afterwards what I had wanted it for. Peggotty's answer soon arrived, and was, as usual, full of affectionate devotion. She enclosed the half guinea (I was afraid she must have had a world of trouble to get it out of Mr. Barkis's box), and told me that Miss Betsey lived near Dover, but whether at Dover itself, at Hythe, Sandgate, or Folkestone, she could not say. One of our men, however, informing me on my asking him about these places, that they were all close together, I deemed this enough for my object, and resolved to set out at the end of that week. Being a very honest little creature, and unwilling to disgrace the memory I was going to leave behind me at Murdstone and Grinby's, I considered myself bound to remain until Saturday night; and, as I had been paid a week's wages in advance when I first came there, not to present myself in the counting-house at the usual hour, to receive my stipend. For this express reason, I had borrowed the half-guinea, that I might not be without a fund for my travelling-expenses. Accordingly, when the Saturday night came, and we were all waiting in the warehouse to be paid, and Tipp the carman, who always took precedence, went in first to draw his money, I shook Mick Walker by the hand; asked him, when it came to his turn to be paid, to say to Mr. Quinion that I had gone to move my box to Tipp's; and, bidding a last good night to Mealy Potatoes, ran away. My box was at my old lodging, over the water, and I had written a direction for it on the back of one of our address cards that we nailed on the casks: 'Master David, to be left till called for, at the Coach Office, Dover.' This I had in my pocket ready to put on the box, after I should have got it out of the house; and as I went towards my lodging, I looked about me for someone who would help me to carry it to the booking-office. There was a long-legged young man with a very little empty donkey-cart, standing near the Obelisk, in the Blackfriars Road, whose eye I caught as I was going by, and who, addressing me as 'Sixpenn'orth of bad ha'pence,' hoped 'I should know him agin to swear to'--in allusion, I have no doubt, to my staring at him. I stopped to assure him that I had not done so in bad manners, but uncertain whether he might or might not like a job. 'Wot job?' said the long-legged young man. 'To move a box,' I answered. 'Wot box?' said the long-legged young man. I told him mine, which was down that street there, and which I wanted him to take to the Dover coach office for sixpence. 'Done with you for a tanner!' said the long-legged young man, and directly got upon his cart, which was nothing but a large wooden tray on wheels, and rattled away at such a rate, that it was as much as I could do to keep pace with the donkey. There was a defiant manner about this young man, and particularly about the way in which he chewed straw as he spoke to me, that I did not much like; as the bargain was made, however, I took him upstairs to the room I was leaving, and we brought the box down, and put it on his cart. Now, I was unwilling to put the direction-card on there, lest any of my landlord's family should fathom what I was doing, and detain me; so I said to the young man that I would be glad if he would stop for a minute, when he came to the dead-wall of the King's Bench prison. The words were no sooner out of my mouth, than he rattled away as if he, my box, the cart, and the donkey, were all equally mad; and I was quite out of breath with running and calling after him, when I caught him at the place appointed. Being much flushed and excited, I tumbled my half-guinea out of my pocket in pulling the card out. I put it in my mouth for safety, and though my hands trembled a good deal, had just tied the card on very much to my satisfaction, when I felt myself violently chucked under the chin by the long-legged young man, and saw my half-guinea fly out of my mouth into his hand. 'Wot!' said the young man, seizing me by my jacket collar, with a frightful grin. 'This is a pollis case, is it? You're a-going to bolt, are you? Come to the pollis, you young warmin, come to the pollis!' 'You give me my money back, if you please,' said I, very much frightened; 'and leave me alone.' 'Come to the pollis!' said the young man. 'You shall prove it yourn to the pollis.' 'Give me my box and money, will you,' I cried, bursting into tears. The young man still replied: 'Come to the pollis!' and was dragging me against the donkey in a violent manner, as if there were any affinity between that animal and a magistrate, when he changed his mind, jumped into the cart, sat upon my box, and, exclaiming that he would drive to the pollis straight, rattled away harder than ever. I ran after him as fast as I could, but I had no breath to call out with, and should not have dared to call out, now, if I had. I narrowly escaped being run over, twenty times at least, in half a mile. Now I lost him, now I saw him, now I lost him, now I was cut at with a whip, now shouted at, now down in the mud, now up again, now running into somebody's arms, now running headlong at a post. At length, confused by fright and heat, and doubting whether half London might not by this time be turning out for my apprehension, I left the young man to go where he would with my box and money; and, panting and crying, but never stopping, faced about for Greenwich, which I had understood was on the Dover Road: taking very little more out of the world, towards the retreat of my aunt, Miss Betsey, than I had brought into it, on the night when my arrival gave her so much umbrage.

Liking Life on my own Account no better, I form a great Resolution. Mr. Micawber is released from jail and his debts are resolved. The family decides to move to look for work. David decides he will not stay in London without the Micawbers and resolves to run away to his aunt Betsey. He borrows some money from Peggotty and hires a young man to help him move his box to the coach station. Along the way, the young man steals David's money and possessions

"Thrice happy she that is so well assured Unto herself and settled so in heart That neither will for better be allured Ne fears to worse with any chance to start, But like a steddy ship doth strongly part The raging waves and keeps her course aright; Ne aught for tempest doth from it depart, Ne aught for fairer weather's false delight. Such self-assurance need not fear the spight Of grudging foes; ne favour seek of friends; But in the stay of her own stedfast might Neither to one herself nor other bends. Most happy she that most assured doth rest, But he most happy who such one loves best." --SPENSER. The doubt hinted by Mr. Vincy whether it were only the general election or the end of the world that was coming on, now that George the Fourth was dead, Parliament dissolved, Wellington and Peel generally depreciated and the new King apologetic, was a feeble type of the uncertainties in provincial opinion at that time. With the glow-worm lights of country places, how could men see which were their own thoughts in the confusion of a Tory Ministry passing Liberal measures, of Tory nobles and electors being anxious to return Liberals rather than friends of the recreant Ministers, and of outcries for remedies which seemed to have a mysteriously remote bearing on private interest, and were made suspicious by the advocacy of disagreeable neighbors? Buyers of the Middlemarch newspapers found themselves in an anomalous position: during the agitation on the Catholic Question many had given up the "Pioneer"--which had a motto from Charles James Fox and was in the van of progress--because it had taken Peel's side about the Papists, and had thus blotted its Liberalism with a toleration of Jesuitry and Baal; but they were ill-satisfied with the "Trumpet," which--since its blasts against Rome, and in the general flaccidity of the public mind (nobody knowing who would support whom)--had become feeble in its blowing. It was a time, according to a noticeable article in the "Pioneer," when the crying needs of the country might well counteract a reluctance to public action on the part of men whose minds had from long experience acquired breadth as well as concentration, decision of judgment as well as tolerance, dispassionateness as well as energy--in fact, all those qualities which in the melancholy experience of mankind have been the least disposed to share lodgings. Mr. Hackbutt, whose fluent speech was at that time floating more widely than usual, and leaving much uncertainty as to its ultimate channel, was heard to say in Mr. Hawley's office that the article in question "emanated" from Brooke of Tipton, and that Brooke had secretly bought the "Pioneer" some months ago. "That means mischief, eh?" said Mr. Hawley. "He's got the freak of being a popular man now, after dangling about like a stray tortoise. So much the worse for him. I've had my eye on him for some time. He shall be prettily pumped upon. He's a damned bad landlord. What business has an old county man to come currying favor with a low set of dark-blue freemen? As to his paper, I only hope he may do the writing himself. It would be worth our paying for." "I understand he has got a very brilliant young fellow to edit it, who can write the highest style of leading article, quite equal to anything in the London papers. And he means to take very high ground on Reform." "Let Brooke reform his rent-roll. He's a cursed old screw, and the buildings all over his estate are going to rack. I suppose this young fellow is some loose fish from London." "His name is Ladislaw. He is said to be of foreign extraction." "I know the sort," said Mr. Hawley; "some emissary. He'll begin with flourishing about the Rights of Man and end with murdering a wench. That's the style." "You must concede that there are abuses, Hawley," said Mr. Hackbutt, foreseeing some political disagreement with his family lawyer. "I myself should never favor immoderate views--in fact I take my stand with Huskisson--but I cannot blind myself to the consideration that the non-representation of large towns--" "Large towns be damned!" said Mr. Hawley, impatient of exposition. "I know a little too much about Middlemarch elections. Let 'em quash every pocket borough to-morrow, and bring in every mushroom town in the kingdom--they'll only increase the expense of getting into Parliament. I go upon facts." Mr. Hawley's disgust at the notion of the "Pioneer" being edited by an emissary, and of Brooke becoming actively political--as if a tortoise of desultory pursuits should protrude its small head ambitiously and become rampant--was hardly equal to the annoyance felt by some members of Mr. Brooke's own family. The result had oozed forth gradually, like the discovery that your neighbor has set up an unpleasant kind of manufacture which will be permanently under your nostrils without legal remedy. The "Pioneer" had been secretly bought even before Will Ladislaw's arrival, the expected opportunity having offered itself in the readiness of the proprietor to part with a valuable property which did not pay; and in the interval since Mr. Brooke had written his invitation, those germinal ideas of making his mind tell upon the world at large which had been present in him from his younger years, but had hitherto lain in some obstruction, had been sprouting under cover. The development was much furthered by a delight in his guest which proved greater even than he had anticipated. For it seemed that Will was not only at home in all those artistic and literary subjects which Mr. Brooke had gone into at one time, but that he was strikingly ready at seizing the points of the political situation, and dealing with them in that large spirit which, aided by adequate memory, lends itself to quotation and general effectiveness of treatment. "He seems to me a kind of Shelley, you know," Mr. Brooke took an opportunity of saying, for the gratification of Mr. Casaubon. "I don't mean as to anything objectionable--laxities or atheism, or anything of that kind, you know--Ladislaw's sentiments in every way I am sure are good--indeed, we were talking a great deal together last night. But he has the same sort of enthusiasm for liberty, freedom, emancipation--a fine thing under guidance--under guidance, you know. I think I shall be able to put him on the right tack; and I am the more pleased because he is a relation of yours, Casaubon." If the right tack implied anything more precise than the rest of Mr. Brooke's speech, Mr. Casaubon silently hoped that it referred to some occupation at a great distance from Lowick. He had disliked Will while he helped him, but he had begun to dislike him still more now that Will had declined his help. That is the way with us when we have any uneasy jealousy in our disposition: if our talents are chiefly of the burrowing kind, our honey-sipping cousin (whom we have grave reasons for objecting to) is likely to have a secret contempt for us, and any one who admires him passes an oblique criticism on ourselves. Having the scruples of rectitude in our souls, we are above the meanness of injuring him--rather we meet all his claims on us by active benefits; and the drawing of cheques for him, being a superiority which he must recognize, gives our bitterness a milder infusion. Now Mr. Casaubon had been deprived of that superiority (as anything more than a remembrance) in a sudden, capricious manner. His antipathy to Will did not spring from the common jealousy of a winter-worn husband: it was something deeper, bred by his lifelong claims and discontents; but Dorothea, now that she was present--Dorothea, as a young wife who herself had shown an offensive capability of criticism, necessarily gave concentration to the uneasiness which had before been vague. Will Ladislaw on his side felt that his dislike was flourishing at the expense of his gratitude, and spent much inward discourse in justifying the dislike. Casaubon hated him--he knew that very well; on his first entrance he could discern a bitterness in the mouth and a venom in the glance which would almost justify declaring war in spite of past benefits. He was much obliged to Casaubon in the past, but really the act of marrying this wife was a set-off against the obligation. It was a question whether gratitude which refers to what is done for one's self ought not to give way to indignation at what is done against another. And Casaubon had done a wrong to Dorothea in marrying her. A man was bound to know himself better than that, and if he chose to grow gray crunching bones in a cavern, he had no business to be luring a girl into his companionship. "It is the most horrible of virgin-sacrifices," said Will; and he painted to himself what were Dorothea's inward sorrows as if he had been writing a choric wail. But he would never lose sight of her: he would watch over her--if he gave up everything else in life he would watch over her, and she should know that she had one slave in the world, Will had--to use Sir Thomas Browne's phrase--a "passionate prodigality" of statement both to himself and others. The simple truth was that nothing then invited him so strongly as the presence of Dorothea. Invitations of the formal kind had been wanting, however, for Will had never been asked to go to Lowick. Mr. Brooke, indeed, confident of doing everything agreeable which Casaubon, poor fellow, was too much absorbed to think of, had arranged to bring Ladislaw to Lowick several times (not neglecting meanwhile to introduce him elsewhere on every opportunity as "a young relative of Casaubon's"). And though Will had not seen Dorothea alone, their interviews had been enough to restore her former sense of young companionship with one who was cleverer than herself, yet seemed ready to be swayed by her. Poor Dorothea before her marriage had never found much room in other minds for what she cared most to say; and she had not, as we know, enjoyed her husband's superior instruction so much as she had expected. If she spoke with any keenness of interest to Mr. Casaubon, he heard her with an air of patience as if she had given a quotation from the Delectus familiar to him from his tender years, and sometimes mentioned curtly what ancient sects or personages had held similar ideas, as if there were too much of that sort in stock already; at other times he would inform her that she was mistaken, and reassert what her remark had questioned. But Will Ladislaw always seemed to see more in what she said than she herself saw. Dorothea had little vanity, but she had the ardent woman's need to rule beneficently by making the joy of another soul. Hence the mere chance of seeing Will occasionally was like a lunette opened in the wall of her prison, giving her a glimpse of the sunny air; and this pleasure began to nullify her original alarm at what her husband might think about the introduction of Will as her uncle's guest. On this subject Mr. Casaubon had remained dumb. But Will wanted to talk with Dorothea alone, and was impatient of slow circumstance. However slight the terrestrial intercourse between Dante and Beatrice or Petrarch and Laura, time changes the proportion of things, and in later days it is preferable to have fewer sonnets and more conversation. Necessity excused stratagem, but stratagem was limited by the dread of offending Dorothea. He found out at last that he wanted to take a particular sketch at Lowick; and one morning when Mr. Brooke had to drive along the Lowick road on his way to the county town, Will asked to be set down with his sketch-book and camp-stool at Lowick, and without announcing himself at the Manor settled himself to sketch in a position where he must see Dorothea if she came out to walk--and he knew that she usually walked an hour in the morning. But the stratagem was defeated by the weather. Clouds gathered with treacherous quickness, the rain came down, and Will was obliged to take shelter in the house. He intended, on the strength of relationship, to go into the drawing-room and wait there without being announced; and seeing his old acquaintance the butler in the hall, he said, "Don't mention that I am here, Pratt; I will wait till luncheon; I know Mr. Casaubon does not like to be disturbed when he is in the library." "Master is out, sir; there's only Mrs. Casaubon in the library. I'd better tell her you're here, sir," said Pratt, a red-cheeked man given to lively converse with Tantripp, and often agreeing with her that it must be dull for Madam. "Oh, very well; this confounded rain has hindered me from sketching," said Will, feeling so happy that he affected indifference with delightful ease. In another minute he was in the library, and Dorothea was meeting him with her sweet unconstrained smile. "Mr. Casaubon has gone to the Archdeacon's," she said, at once. "I don't know whether he will be at home again long before dinner. He was uncertain how long he should be. Did you want to say anything particular to him?" "No; I came to sketch, but the rain drove me in. Else I would not have disturbed you yet. I supposed that Mr. Casaubon was here, and I know he dislikes interruption at this hour." "I am indebted to the rain, then. I am so glad to see you." Dorothea uttered these common words with the simple sincerity of an unhappy child, visited at school. "I really came for the chance of seeing you alone," said Will, mysteriously forced to be just as simple as she was. He could not stay to ask himself, why not? "I wanted to talk about things, as we did in Rome. It always makes a difference when other people are present." "Yes," said Dorothea, in her clear full tone of assent. "Sit down." She seated herself on a dark ottoman with the brown books behind her, looking in her plain dress of some thin woollen-white material, without a single ornament on her besides her wedding-ring, as if she were under a vow to be different from all other women; and Will sat down opposite her at two yards' distance, the light falling on his bright curls and delicate but rather petulant profile, with its defiant curves of lip and chin. Each looked at the other as if they had been two flowers which had opened then and there. Dorothea for the moment forgot her husband's mysterious irritation against Will: it seemed fresh water at her thirsty lips to speak without fear to the one person whom she had found receptive; for in looking backward through sadness she exaggerated a past solace. "I have often thought that I should like to talk to you again," she said, immediately. "It seems strange to me how many things I said to you." "I remember them all," said Will, with the unspeakable content in his soul of feeling that he was in the presence of a creature worthy to be perfectly loved. I think his own feelings at that moment were perfect, for we mortals have our divine moments, when love is satisfied in the completeness of the beloved object. "I have tried to learn a great deal since we were in Rome," said Dorothea. "I can read Latin a little, and I am beginning to understand just a little Greek. I can help Mr. Casaubon better now. I can find out references for him and save his eyes in many ways. But it is very difficult to be learned; it seems as if people were worn out on the way to great thoughts, and can never enjoy them because they are too tired." "If a man has a capacity for great thoughts, he is likely to overtake them before he is decrepit," said Will, with irrepressible quickness. But through certain sensibilities Dorothea was as quick as he, and seeing her face change, he added, immediately, "But it is quite true that the best minds have been sometimes overstrained in working out their ideas." "You correct me," said Dorothea. "I expressed myself ill. I should have said that those who have great thoughts get too much worn in working them out. I used to feel about that, even when I was a little girl; and it always seemed to me that the use I should like to make of my life would be to help some one who did great works, so that his burthen might be lighter." Dorothea was led on to this bit of autobiography without any sense of making a revelation. But she had never before said anything to Will which threw so strong a light on her marriage. He did not shrug his shoulders; and for want of that muscular outlet he thought the more irritably of beautiful lips kissing holy skulls and other emptinesses ecclesiastically enshrined. Also he had to take care that his speech should not betray that thought. "But you may easily carry the help too far," he said, "and get over-wrought yourself. Are you not too much shut up? You already look paler. It would be better for Mr. Casaubon to have a secretary; he could easily get a man who would do half his work for him. It would save him more effectually, and you need only help him in lighter ways." "How can you think of that?" said Dorothea, in a tone of earnest remonstrance. "I should have no happiness if I did not help him in his work. What could I do? There is no good to be done in Lowick. The only thing I desire is to help him more. And he objects to a secretary: please not to mention that again." "Certainly not, now I know your feeling. But I have heard both Mr. Brooke and Sir James Chettam express the same wish." "Yes?" said Dorothea, "but they don't understand--they want me to be a great deal on horseback, and have the garden altered and new conservatories, to fill up my days. I thought you could understand that one's mind has other wants," she added, rather impatiently--"besides, Mr. Casaubon cannot bear to hear of a secretary." "My mistake is excusable," said Will. "In old days I used to hear Mr. Casaubon speak as if he looked forward to having a secretary. Indeed he held out the prospect of that office to me. But I turned out to be--not good enough for it." Dorothea was trying to extract out of this an excuse for her husband's evident repulsion, as she said, with a playful smile, "You were not a steady worker enough." "No," said Will, shaking his head backward somewhat after the manner of a spirited horse. And then, the old irritable demon prompting him to give another good pinch at the moth-wings of poor Mr. Casaubon's glory, he went on, "And I have seen since that Mr. Casaubon does not like any one to overlook his work and know thoroughly what he is doing. He is too doubtful--too uncertain of himself. I may not be good for much, but he dislikes me because I disagree with him." Will was not without his intentions to be always generous, but our tongues are little triggers which have usually been pulled before general intentions can be brought to bear. And it was too intolerable that Casaubon's dislike of him should not be fairly accounted for to Dorothea. Yet when he had spoken he was rather uneasy as to the effect on her. But Dorothea was strangely quiet--not immediately indignant, as she had been on a like occasion in Rome. And the cause lay deep. She was no longer struggling against the perception of facts, but adjusting herself to their clearest perception; and now when she looked steadily at her husband's failure, still more at his possible consciousness of failure, she seemed to be looking along the one track where duty became tenderness. Will's want of reticence might have been met with more severity, if he had not already been recommended to her mercy by her husband's dislike, which must seem hard to her till she saw better reason for it. She did not answer at once, but after looking down ruminatingly she said, with some earnestness, "Mr. Casaubon must have overcome his dislike of you so far as his actions were concerned: and that is admirable." "Yes; he has shown a sense of justice in family matters. It was an abominable thing that my grandmother should have been disinherited because she made what they called a mesalliance, though there was nothing to be said against her husband except that he was a Polish refugee who gave lessons for his bread." "I wish I knew all about her!" said Dorothea. "I wonder how she bore the change from wealth to poverty: I wonder whether she was happy with her husband! Do you know much about them?" "No; only that my grandfather was a patriot--a bright fellow--could speak many languages--musical--got his bread by teaching all sorts of things. They both died rather early. And I never knew much of my father, beyond what my mother told me; but he inherited the musical talents. I remember his slow walk and his long thin hands; and one day remains with me when he was lying ill, and I was very hungry, and had only a little bit of bread." "Ah, what a different life from mine!" said Dorothea, with keen interest, clasping her hands on her lap. "I have always had too much of everything. But tell me how it was--Mr. Casaubon could not have known about you then." "No; but my father had made himself known to Mr. Casaubon, and that was my last hungry day. My father died soon after, and my mother and I were well taken care of. Mr. Casaubon always expressly recognized it as his duty to take care of us because of the harsh injustice which had been shown to his mother's sister. But now I am telling you what is not new to you." In his inmost soul Will was conscious of wishing to tell Dorothea what was rather new even in his own construction of things--namely, that Mr. Casaubon had never done more than pay a debt towards him. Will was much too good a fellow to be easy under the sense of being ungrateful. And when gratitude has become a matter of reasoning there are many ways of escaping from its bonds. "No," answered Dorothea; "Mr. Casaubon has always avoided dwelling on his own honorable actions." She did not feel that her husband's conduct was depreciated; but this notion of what justice had required in his relations with Will Ladislaw took strong hold on her mind. After a moment's pause, she added, "He had never told me that he supported your mother. Is she still living?" "No; she died by an accident--a fall--four years ago. It is curious that my mother, too, ran away from her family, but not for the sake of her husband. She never would tell me anything about her family, except that she forsook them to get her own living--went on the stage, in fact. She was a dark-eyed creature, with crisp ringlets, and never seemed to be getting old. You see I come of rebellious blood on both sides," Will ended, smiling brightly at Dorothea, while she was still looking with serious intentness before her, like a child seeing a drama for the first time. But her face, too, broke into a smile as she said, "That is your apology, I suppose, for having yourself been rather rebellious; I mean, to Mr. Casaubon's wishes. You must remember that you have not done what he thought best for you. And if he dislikes you--you were speaking of dislike a little while ago--but I should rather say, if he has shown any painful feelings towards you, you must consider how sensitive he has become from the wearing effect of study. Perhaps," she continued, getting into a pleading tone, "my uncle has not told you how serious Mr. Casaubon's illness was. It would be very petty of us who are well and can bear things, to think much of small offences from those who carry a weight of trial." "You teach me better," said Will. "I will never grumble on that subject again." There was a gentleness in his tone which came from the unutterable contentment of perceiving--what Dorothea was hardly conscious of--that she was travelling into the remoteness of pure pity and loyalty towards her husband. Will was ready to adore her pity and loyalty, if she would associate himself with her in manifesting them. "I have really sometimes been a perverse fellow," he went on, "but I will never again, if I can help it, do or say what you would disapprove." "That is very good of you," said Dorothea, with another open smile. "I shall have a little kingdom then, where I shall give laws. But you will soon go away, out of my rule, I imagine. You will soon be tired of staying at the Grange." "That is a point I wanted to mention to you--one of the reasons why I wished to speak to you alone. Mr. Brooke proposes that I should stay in this neighborhood. He has bought one of the Middlemarch newspapers, and he wishes me to conduct that, and also to help him in other ways." "Would not that be a sacrifice of higher prospects for you?" said Dorothea. "Perhaps; but I have always been blamed for thinking of prospects, and not settling to anything. And here is something offered to me. If you would not like me to accept it, I will give it up. Otherwise I would rather stay in this part of the country than go away. I belong to nobody anywhere else." "I should like you to stay very much," said Dorothea, at once, as simply and readily as she had spoken at Rome. There was not the shadow of a reason in her mind at the moment why she should not say so. "Then I _will_ stay," said Ladislaw, shaking his head backward, rising and going towards the window, as if to see whether the rain had ceased. But the next moment, Dorothea, according to a habit which was getting continually stronger, began to reflect that her husband felt differently from herself, and she colored deeply under the double embarrassment of having expressed what might be in opposition to her husband's feeling, and of having to suggest this opposition to Will. His face was not turned towards her, and this made it easier to say-- "But my opinion is of little consequence on such a subject. I think you should be guided by Mr. Casaubon. I spoke without thinking of anything else than my own feeling, which has nothing to do with the real question. But it now occurs to me--perhaps Mr. Casaubon might see that the proposal was not wise. Can you not wait now and mention it to him?" "I can't wait to-day," said Will, inwardly seared by the possibility that Mr. Casaubon would enter. "The rain is quite over now. I told Mr. Brooke not to call for me: I would rather walk the five miles. I shall strike across Halsell Common, and see the gleams on the wet grass. I like that." He approached her to shake hands quite hurriedly, longing but not daring to say, "Don't mention the subject to Mr. Casaubon." No, he dared not, could not say it. To ask her to be less simple and direct would be like breathing on the crystal that you want to see the light through. And there was always the other great dread--of himself becoming dimmed and forever ray-shorn in her eyes. "I wish you could have stayed," said Dorothea, with a touch of mournfulness, as she rose and put out her hand. She also had her thought which she did not like to express:--Will certainly ought to lose no time in consulting Mr. Casaubon's wishes, but for her to urge this might seem an undue dictation. So they only said "Good-by," and Will quitted the house, striking across the fields so as not to run any risk of encountering Mr. Casaubon's carriage, which, however, did not appear at the gate until four o'clock. That was an unpropitious hour for coming home: it was too early to gain the moral support under ennui of dressing his person for dinner, and too late to undress his mind of the day's frivolous ceremony and affairs, so as to be prepared for a good plunge into the serious business of study. On such occasions he usually threw into an easy-chair in the library, and allowed Dorothea to read the London papers to him, closing his eyes the while. To-day, however, he declined that relief, observing that he had already had too many public details urged upon him; but he spoke more cheerfully than usual, when Dorothea asked about his fatigue, and added with that air of formal effort which never forsook him even when he spoke without his waistcoat and cravat-- "I have had the gratification of meeting my former acquaintance, Dr. Spanning, to-day, and of being praised by one who is himself a worthy recipient of praise. He spoke very handsomely of my late tractate on the Egyptian Mysteries,--using, in fact, terms which it would not become me to repeat." In uttering the last clause, Mr. Casaubon leaned over the elbow of his chair, and swayed his head up and down, apparently as a muscular outlet instead of that recapitulation which would not have been becoming. "I am very glad you have had that pleasure," said Dorothea, delighted to see her husband less weary than usual at this hour. "Before you came I had been regretting that you happened to be out to-day." "Why so, my dear?" said Mr. Casaubon, throwing himself backward again. "Because Mr. Ladislaw has been here; and he has mentioned a proposal of my uncle's which I should like to know your opinion of." Her husband she felt was really concerned in this question. Even with her ignorance of the world she had a vague impression that the position offered to Will was out of keeping with his family connections, and certainly Mr. Casaubon had a claim to be consulted. He did not speak, but merely bowed. "Dear uncle, you know, has many projects. It appears that he has bought one of the Middlemarch newspapers, and he has asked Mr. Ladislaw to stay in this neighborhood and conduct the paper for him, besides helping him in other ways." Dorothea looked at her husband while she spoke, but he had at first blinked and finally closed his eyes, as if to save them; while his lips became more tense. "What is your opinion?" she added, rather timidly, after a slight pause. "Did Mr. Ladislaw come on purpose to ask my opinion?" said Mr. Casaubon, opening his eyes narrowly with a knife-edged look at Dorothea. She was really uncomfortable on the point he inquired about, but she only became a little more serious, and her eyes did not swerve. "No," she answered immediately, "he did not say that he came to ask your opinion. But when he mentioned the proposal, he of course expected me to tell you of it." Mr. Casaubon was silent. "I feared that you might feel some objection. But certainly a young man with so much talent might be very useful to my uncle--might help him to do good in a better way. And Mr. Ladislaw wishes to have some fixed occupation. He has been blamed, he says, for not seeking something of that kind, and he would like to stay in this neighborhood because no one cares for him elsewhere." Dorothea felt that this was a consideration to soften her husband. However, he did not speak, and she presently recurred to Dr. Spanning and the Archdeacon's breakfast. But there was no longer sunshine on these subjects. The next morning, without Dorothea's knowledge, Mr. Casaubon despatched the following letter, beginning "Dear Mr. Ladislaw" (he had always before addressed him as "Will"):-- "Mrs. Casaubon informs me that a proposal has been made to you, and (according to an inference by no means stretched) has on your part been in some degree entertained, which involves your residence in this neighborhood in a capacity which I am justified in saying touches my own position in such a way as renders it not only natural and warrantable in me when that effect is viewed under the influence of legitimate feeling, but incumbent on me when the same effect is considered in the light of my responsibilities, to state at once that your acceptance of the proposal above indicated would be highly offensive to me. That I have some claim to the exercise of a veto here, would not, I believe, be denied by any reasonable person cognizant of the relations between us: relations which, though thrown into the past by your recent procedure, are not thereby annulled in their character of determining antecedents. I will not here make reflections on any person's judgment. It is enough for me to point out to yourself that there are certain social fitnesses and proprieties which should hinder a somewhat near relative of mine from becoming any wise conspicuous in this vicinity in a status not only much beneath my own, but associated at best with the sciolism of literary or political adventurers. At any rate, the contrary issue must exclude you from further reception at my house. Yours faithfully, "EDWARD CASAUBON." Meanwhile Dorothea's mind was innocently at work towards the further embitterment of her husband; dwelling, with a sympathy that grew to agitation, on what Will had told her about his parents and grandparents. Any private hours in her day were usually spent in her blue-green boudoir, and she had come to be very fond of its pallid quaintness. Nothing had been outwardly altered there; but while the summer had gradually advanced over the western fields beyond the avenue of elms, the bare room had gathered within it those memories of an inward life which fill the air as with a cloud of good or bad angels, the invisible yet active forms of our spiritual triumphs or our spiritual falls. She had been so used to struggle for and to find resolve in looking along the avenue towards the arch of western light that the vision itself had gained a communicating power. Even the pale stag seemed to have reminding glances and to mean mutely, "Yes, we know." And the group of delicately touched miniatures had made an audience as of beings no longer disturbed about their own earthly lot, but still humanly interested. Especially the mysterious "Aunt Julia" about whom Dorothea had never found it easy to question her husband. And now, since her conversation with Will, many fresh images had gathered round that Aunt Julia who was Will's grandmother; the presence of that delicate miniature, so like a living face that she knew, helping to concentrate her feelings. What a wrong, to cut off the girl from the family protection and inheritance only because she had chosen a man who was poor! Dorothea, early troubling her elders with questions about the facts around her, had wrought herself into some independent clearness as to the historical, political reasons why eldest sons had superior rights, and why land should be entailed: those reasons, impressing her with a certain awe, might be weightier than she knew, but here was a question of ties which left them uninfringed. Here was a daughter whose child--even according to the ordinary aping of aristocratic institutions by people who are no more aristocratic than retired grocers, and who have no more land to "keep together" than a lawn and a paddock--would have a prior claim. Was inheritance a question of liking or of responsibility? All the energy of Dorothea's nature went on the side of responsibility--the fulfilment of claims founded on our own deeds, such as marriage and parentage. It was true, she said to herself, that Mr. Casaubon had a debt to the Ladislaws--that he had to pay back what the Ladislaws had been wronged of. And now she began to think of her husband's will, which had been made at the time of their marriage, leaving the bulk of his property to her, with proviso in case of her having children. That ought to be altered; and no time ought to be lost. This very question which had just arisen about Will Ladislaw's occupation, was the occasion for placing things on a new, right footing. Her husband, she felt sure, according to all his previous conduct, would be ready to take the just view, if she proposed it--she, in whose interest an unfair concentration of the property had been urged. His sense of right had surmounted and would continue to surmount anything that might be called antipathy. She suspected that her uncle's scheme was disapproved by Mr. Casaubon, and this made it seem all the more opportune that a fresh understanding should be begun, so that instead of Will's starting penniless and accepting the first function that offered itself, he should find himself in possession of a rightful income which should be paid by her husband during his life, and, by an immediate alteration of the will, should be secured at his death. The vision of all this as what ought to be done seemed to Dorothea like a sudden letting in of daylight, waking her from her previous stupidity and incurious self-absorbed ignorance about her husband's relation to others. Will Ladislaw had refused Mr. Casaubon's future aid on a ground that no longer appeared right to her; and Mr. Casaubon had never himself seen fully what was the claim upon him. "But he will!" said Dorothea. "The great strength of his character lies here. And what are we doing with our money? We make no use of half of our income. My own money buys me nothing but an uneasy conscience." There was a peculiar fascination for Dorothea in this division of property intended for herself, and always regarded by her as excessive. She was blind, you see, to many things obvious to others--likely to tread in the wrong places, as Celia had warned her; yet her blindness to whatever did not lie in her own pure purpose carried her safely by the side of precipices where vision would have been perilous with fear. The thoughts which had gathered vividness in the solitude of her boudoir occupied her incessantly through the day on which Mr. Casaubon had sent his letter to Will. Everything seemed hindrance to her till she could find an opportunity of opening her heart to her husband. To his preoccupied mind all subjects were to be approached gently, and she had never since his illness lost from her consciousness the dread of agitating him. But when young ardor is set brooding over the conception of a prompt deed, the deed itself seems to start forth with independent life, mastering ideal obstacles. The day passed in a sombre fashion, not unusual, though Mr. Casaubon was perhaps unusually silent; but there were hours of the night which might be counted on as opportunities of conversation; for Dorothea, when aware of her husband's sleeplessness, had established a habit of rising, lighting a candle, and reading him to sleep again. And this night she was from the beginning sleepless, excited by resolves. He slept as usual for a few hours, but she had risen softly and had sat in the darkness for nearly an hour before he said-- "Dorothea, since you are up, will you light a candle?" "Do you feel ill, dear?" was her first question, as she obeyed him. "No, not at all; but I shall be obliged, since you are up, if you will read me a few pages of Lowth." "May I talk to you a little instead?" said Dorothea. "Certainly." "I have been thinking about money all day--that I have always had too much, and especially the prospect of too much." "These, my dear Dorothea, are providential arrangements." "But if one has too much in consequence of others being wronged, it seems to me that the divine voice which tells us to set that wrong right must be obeyed." "What, my love, is the bearing of your remark?" "That you have been too liberal in arrangements for me--I mean, with regard to property; and that makes me unhappy." "How so? I have none but comparatively distant connections." "I have been led to think about your aunt Julia, and how she was left in poverty only because she married a poor man, an act which was not disgraceful, since he was not unworthy. It was on that ground, I know, that you educated Mr. Ladislaw and provided for his mother." Dorothea waited a few moments for some answer that would help her onward. None came, and her next words seemed the more forcible to her, falling clear upon the dark silence. "But surely we should regard his claim as a much greater one, even to the half of that property which I know that you have destined for me. And I think he ought at once to be provided for on that understanding. It is not right that he should be in the dependence of poverty while we are rich. And if there is any objection to the proposal he mentioned, the giving him his true place and his true share would set aside any motive for his accepting it." "Mr. Ladislaw has probably been speaking to you on this subject?" said Mr. Casaubon, with a certain biting quickness not habitual to him. "Indeed, no!" said Dorothea, earnestly. "How can you imagine it, since he has so lately declined everything from you? I fear you think too hardly of him, dear. He only told me a little about his parents and grandparents, and almost all in answer to my questions. You are so good, so just--you have done everything you thought to be right. But it seems to me clear that more than that is right; and I must speak about it, since I am the person who would get what is called benefit by that 'more' not being done." There was a perceptible pause before Mr. Casaubon replied, not quickly as before, but with a still more biting emphasis. "Dorothea, my love, this is not the first occasion, but it were well that it should be the last, on which you have assumed a judgment on subjects beyond your scope. Into the question how far conduct, especially in the matter of alliances, constitutes a forfeiture of family claims, I do not now enter. Suffice it, that you are not here qualified to discriminate. What I now wish you to understand is, that I accept no revision, still less dictation within that range of affairs which I have deliberated upon as distinctly and properly mine. It is not for you to interfere between me and Mr. Ladislaw, and still less to encourage communications from him to you which constitute a criticism on my procedure." Poor Dorothea, shrouded in the darkness, was in a tumult of conflicting emotions. Alarm at the possible effect on himself of her husband's strongly manifested anger, would have checked any expression of her own resentment, even if she had been quite free from doubt and compunction under the consciousness that there might be some justice in his last insinuation. Hearing him breathe quickly after he had spoken, she sat listening, frightened, wretched--with a dumb inward cry for help to bear this nightmare of a life in which every energy was arrested by dread. But nothing else happened, except that they both remained a long while sleepless, without speaking again. The next day, Mr. Casaubon received the following answer from Will Ladislaw:-- "DEAR MR. CASAUBON,--I have given all due consideration to your letter of yesterday, but I am unable to take precisely your view of our mutual position. With the fullest acknowledgment of your generous conduct to me in the past, I must still maintain that an obligation of this kind cannot fairly fetter me as you appear to expect that it should. Granted that a benefactor's wishes may constitute a claim; there must always be a reservation as to the quality of those wishes. They may possibly clash with more imperative considerations. Or a benefactor's veto might impose such a negation on a man's life that the consequent blank might be more cruel than the benefaction was generous. I am merely using strong illustrations. In the present case I am unable to take your view of the bearing which my acceptance of occupation--not enriching certainly, but not dishonorable--will have on your own position which seems to me too substantial to be affected in that shadowy manner. And though I do not believe that any change in our relations will occur (certainly none has yet occurred) which can nullify the obligations imposed on me by the past, pardon me for not seeing that those obligations should restrain me from using the ordinary freedom of living where I choose, and maintaining myself by any lawful occupation I may choose. Regretting that there exists this difference between us as to a relation in which the conferring of benefits has been entirely on your side-- I remain, yours with persistent obligation, WILL LADISLAW." Poor Mr. Casaubon felt (and must not we, being impartial, feel with him a little?) that no man had juster cause for disgust and suspicion than he. Young Ladislaw, he was sure, meant to defy and annoy him, meant to win Dorothea's confidence and sow her mind with disrespect, and perhaps aversion, towards her husband. Some motive beneath the surface had been needed to account for Will's sudden change of course in rejecting Mr. Casaubon's aid and quitting his travels; and this defiant determination to fix himself in the neighborhood by taking up something so much at variance with his former choice as Mr. Brooke's Middlemarch projects, revealed clearly enough that the undeclared motive had relation to Dorothea. Not for one moment did Mr. Casaubon suspect Dorothea of any doubleness: he had no suspicions of her, but he had (what was little less uncomfortable) the positive knowledge that her tendency to form opinions about her husband's conduct was accompanied with a disposition to regard Will Ladislaw favorably and be influenced by what he said. His own proud reticence had prevented him from ever being undeceived in the supposition that Dorothea had originally asked her uncle to invite Will to his house. And now, on receiving Will's letter, Mr. Casaubon had to consider his duty. He would never have been easy to call his action anything else than duty; but in this case, contending motives thrust him back into negations. Should he apply directly to Mr. Brooke, and demand of that troublesome gentleman to revoke his proposal? Or should he consult Sir James Chettam, and get him to concur in remonstrance against a step which touched the whole family? In either case Mr. Casaubon was aware that failure was just as probable as success. It was impossible for him to mention Dorothea's name in the matter, and without some alarming urgency Mr. Brooke was as likely as not, after meeting all representations with apparent assent, to wind up by saying, "Never fear, Casaubon! Depend upon it, young Ladislaw will do you credit. Depend upon it, I have put my finger on the right thing." And Mr. Casaubon shrank nervously from communicating on the subject with Sir James Chettam, between whom and himself there had never been any cordiality, and who would immediately think of Dorothea without any mention of her. Poor Mr. Casaubon was distrustful of everybody's feeling towards him, especially as a husband. To let any one suppose that he was jealous would be to admit their (suspected) view of his disadvantages: to let them know that he did not find marriage particularly blissful would imply his conversion to their (probably) earlier disapproval. It would be as bad as letting Carp, and Brasenose generally, know how backward he was in organizing the matter for his "Key to all Mythologies." All through his life Mr. Casaubon had been trying not to admit even to himself the inward sores of self-doubt and jealousy. And on the most delicate of all personal subjects, the habit of proud suspicious reticence told doubly. Thus Mr. Casaubon remained proudly, bitterly silent. But he had forbidden Will to come to Lowick Manor, and he was mentally preparing other measures of frustration.

The chapter opens with historical and political context: the old King has died and so Parliament's session has ended. This tells us the exact date: it's the summer of 1830. Historical Context Time: George Eliot assumes her readers in the 1870s would remember this, so the context she gives is short on detail. We're going to give you the low-down on the political situation in England at the time, because, unless you specialize in the history of British politics, a lot of it might be unfamiliar. King George IV was pretty unpopular during his life because he spent money like crazy and was a little too excited about his ceremonial rights as a king. In fact, the British system requires the king to divide power with the two houses of Parliament , and old George didn't like sharing power with anyone. So George IV wasn't popular either with the people or with Parliament because of his extravagance, and no one was sorry when he died. His death meant all kinds of changes, politically speaking - a new monarch means that they have to hold new elections. But because change is in the air, everything seems topsy-turvy. No one knows what party is going to be elected. The two parties in England at this point are the Whigs and the Tories . There are also some more radically liberal politicians out there, who think that maybe more people should have the right to vote , but no one really takes the Radicals seriously. And back to the story. The new election has all the residents of Middlemarch pretty excited. Word gets around town that Mr. Brooke has bought a local newspaper, called the Pioneer, which had a reputation as a liberal rag. Rumor also has it that Brooke has hired some new outsider, possibly a foreigner, named Ladislaw, to edit the newspaper. Brooke thinks that Casaubon will be delighted that he's hired his young relative. Casaubon isn't so happy about this. He never liked Will, and likes him even less now that Will is independent. Will knows that Casaubon hates him, and uses that as an excuse to go on disliking Casaubon, despite Casaubon's past generosity to him. Will wants to see Dorothea, but knows that Casaubon might not like it. He goes to sketch at Lowick , hoping that he might run into Dorothea as if by accident in the garden. But it starts raining, so he's forced to take shelter in the house. The butler informs him that Mr. Casaubon is out, but that Mrs. Casaubon is alone in the library. Will, inspired by Dorothea's simplicity, tells her the truth: he's come on purpose to see her alone. He has a crush, but he honestly does just want to talk with her. They'd had such a good understanding at Rome. Dorothea doesn't suspect the crush, though, and is happy to see him again. She's been lonely. They discuss Casaubon's work, as they did in Rome - and again Will feels an irrepressible desire to burst Dorothea's bubble. He wants to deflate her over-inflated sense of Casaubon's intelligence and importance. But Dorothea's already figured out that Casaubon's work isn't as important as she originally thought, and has also figured out that Casaubon is at least partly aware of it himself. And so she feels sorry for him. Will tells her about his own family, acknowledging that Casaubon had been generous to him, but also adding that it was only fair, considering that his grandmother had been unfairly cut out of the family will because of her marriage to a Polish musician. He also tells her that his mother had run away from her family, too, but had never told him why. She had become an actress to escape from her family for some reason, and had later married his father. Will then tells Dorothea about the newspaper that Brooke wants him to edit, and asks her advice: does she think he should stay in the neighborhood to work for Brooke? Dorothea wants him to stay, and says so, but then remembers that Casaubon might not agree. She suggests that Will wait and ask Casaubon himself. Will asks Dorothea to mention it to her husband for him; he can't wait around. When Dorothea does tell Casaubon that Will is planning on staying in the neighborhood to work for a liberal newspaper, Casaubon sends a very stiff, formal letter to Will, telling him that it's not an appropriate profession for him. Dorothea, meanwhile, knows nothing about the letter, and is reflecting on what Will told her about his family. Dorothea thinks that she and Casaubon should give Will a portion of their income, since it really would have been his if his grandmother hadn't been disinherited. Casaubon is naturally irritated when Dorothea suggests this. After all, he put the kid through school, despite the fact that he never liked him, and now Dorothea says that they aren't doing enough? So Casaubon tells Dorothea to mind her own business. And Will sends Casaubon a polite letter telling him to mind his. He's planning on staying in town and working for Mr. Brooke's newspaper, so there. Casaubon doesn't think that Will is trying to seduce Dorothea, but he is suspicious that Will is trying to win her over and make her disrespect her husband. But Casaubon doesn't say anything to anybody - he doesn't want people to know how insecure and jealous he is. He tells Will not to visit Lowick as long as he's working for a newspaper, but that's it.

It was a hazy sunrise in August. The denser nocturnal vapours, attacked by the warm beams, were dividing and shrinking into isolated fleeces within hollows and coverts, where they waited till they should be dried away to nothing. The sun, on account of the mist, had a curious sentient, personal look, demanding the masculine pronoun for its adequate expression. His present aspect, coupled with the lack of all human forms in the scene, explained the old-time heliolatries in a moment. One could feel that a saner religion had never prevailed under the sky. The luminary was a golden-haired, beaming, mild-eyed, God-like creature, gazing down in the vigour and intentness of youth upon an earth that was brimming with interest for him. His light, a little later, broke though chinks of cottage shutters, throwing stripes like red-hot pokers upon cupboards, chests of drawers, and other furniture within; and awakening harvesters who were not already astir. But of all ruddy things that morning the brightest were two broad arms of painted wood, which rose from the margin of yellow cornfield hard by Marlott village. They, with two others below, formed the revolving Maltese cross of the reaping-machine, which had been brought to the field on the previous evening to be ready for operations this day. The paint with which they were smeared, intensified in hue by the sunlight, imparted to them a look of having been dipped in liquid fire. The field had already been "opened"; that is to say, a lane a few feet wide had been hand-cut through the wheat along the whole circumference of the field for the first passage of the horses and machine. Two groups, one of men and lads, the other of women, had come down the lane just at the hour when the shadows of the eastern hedge-top struck the west hedge midway, so that the heads of the groups were enjoying sunrise while their feet were still in the dawn. They disappeared from the lane between the two stone posts which flanked the nearest field-gate. Presently there arose from within a ticking like the love-making of the grasshopper. The machine had begun, and a moving concatenation of three horses and the aforesaid long rickety machine was visible over the gate, a driver sitting upon one of the hauling horses, and an attendant on the seat of the implement. Along one side of the field the whole wain went, the arms of the mechanical reaper revolving slowly, till it passed down the hill quite out of sight. In a minute it came up on the other side of the field at the same equable pace; the glistening brass star in the forehead of the fore horse first catching the eye as it rose into view over the stubble, then the bright arms, and then the whole machine. The narrow lane of stubble encompassing the field grew wider with each circuit, and the standing corn was reduced to a smaller area as the morning wore on. Rabbits, hares, snakes, rats, mice, retreated inwards as into a fastness, unaware of the ephemeral nature of their refuge, and of the doom that awaited them later in the day when, their covert shrinking to a more and more horrible narrowness, they were huddled together, friends and foes, till the last few yards of upright wheat fell also under the teeth of the unerring reaper, and they were every one put to death by the sticks and stones of the harvesters. The reaping-machine left the fallen corn behind it in little heaps, each heap being of the quantity for a sheaf; and upon these the active binders in the rear laid their hands--mainly women, but some of them men in print shirts, and trousers supported round their waists by leather straps, rendering useless the two buttons behind, which twinkled and bristled with sunbeams at every movement of each wearer, as if they were a pair of eyes in the small of his back. But those of the other sex were the most interesting of this company of binders, by reason of the charm which is acquired by woman when she becomes part and parcel of outdoor nature, and is not merely an object set down therein as at ordinary times. A field-man is a personality afield; a field-woman is a portion of the field; she had somehow lost her own margin, imbibed the essence of her surrounding, and assimilated herself with it. The women--or rather girls, for they were mostly young--wore drawn cotton bonnets with great flapping curtains to keep off the sun, and gloves to prevent their hands being wounded by the stubble. There was one wearing a pale pink jacket, another in a cream-coloured tight-sleeved gown, another in a petticoat as red as the arms of the reaping-machine; and others, older, in the brown-rough "wropper" or over-all--the old-established and most appropriate dress of the field-woman, which the young ones were abandoning. This morning the eye returns involuntarily to the girl in the pink cotton jacket, she being the most flexuous and finely-drawn figure of them all. But her bonnet is pulled so far over her brow that none of her face is disclosed while she binds, though her complexion may be guessed from a stray twine or two of dark brown hair which extends below the curtain of her bonnet. Perhaps one reason why she seduces casual attention is that she never courts it, though the other women often gaze around them. Her binding proceeds with clock-like monotony. From the sheaf last finished she draws a handful of ears, patting their tips with her left palm to bring them even. Then, stooping low, she moves forward, gathering the corn with both hands against her knees, and pushing her left gloved hand under the bundle to meet the right on the other side, holding the corn in an embrace like that of a lover. She brings the ends of the bond together, and kneels on the sheaf while she ties it, beating back her skirts now and then when lifted by the breeze. A bit of her naked arm is visible between the buff leather of the gauntlet and the sleeve of her gown; and as the day wears on its feminine smoothness becomes scarified by the stubble and bleeds. At intervals she stands up to rest, and to retie her disarranged apron, or to pull her bonnet straight. Then one can see the oval face of a handsome young woman with deep dark eyes and long heavy clinging tresses, which seem to clasp in a beseeching way anything they fall against. The cheeks are paler, the teeth more regular, the red lips thinner than is usual in a country-bred girl. It is Tess Durbeyfield, otherwise d'Urberville, somewhat changed--the same, but not the same; at the present stage of her existence living as a stranger and an alien here, though it was no strange land that she was in. After a long seclusion she had come to a resolve to undertake outdoor work in her native village, the busiest season of the year in the agricultural world having arrived, and nothing that she could do within the house being so remunerative for the time as harvesting in the fields. The movements of the other women were more or less similar to Tess's, the whole bevy of them drawing together like dancers in a quadrille at the completion of a sheaf by each, every one placing her sheaf on end against those of the rest, till a shock, or "stitch" as it was here called, of ten or a dozen was formed. They went to breakfast, and came again, and the work proceeded as before. As the hour of eleven drew near a person watching her might have noticed that every now and then Tess's glance flitted wistfully to the brow of the hill, though she did not pause in her sheafing. On the verge of the hour the heads of a group of children, of ages ranging from six to fourteen, rose over the stubbly convexity of the hill. The face of Tess flushed slightly, but still she did not pause. The eldest of the comers, a girl who wore a triangular shawl, its corner draggling on the stubble, carried in her arms what at first sight seemed to be a doll, but proved to be an infant in long clothes. Another brought some lunch. The harvesters ceased working, took their provisions, and sat down against one of the shocks. Here they fell to, the men plying a stone jar freely, and passing round a cup. Tess Durbeyfield had been one of the last to suspend her labours. She sat down at the end of the shock, her face turned somewhat away from her companions. When she had deposited herself a man in a rabbit-skin cap, and with a red handkerchief tucked into his belt, held the cup of ale over the top of the shock for her to drink. But she did not accept his offer. As soon as her lunch was spread she called up the big girl, her sister, and took the baby of her, who, glad to be relieved of the burden, went away to the next shock and joined the other children playing there. Tess, with a curiously stealthy yet courageous movement, and with a still rising colour, unfastened her frock and began suckling the child. The men who sat nearest considerately turned their faces towards the other end of the field, some of them beginning to smoke; one, with absent-minded fondness, regretfully stroking the jar that would no longer yield a stream. All the women but Tess fell into animated talk, and adjusted the disarranged knots of their hair. When the infant had taken its fill, the young mother sat it upright in her lap, and looking into the far distance, dandled it with a gloomy indifference that was almost dislike; then all of a sudden she fell to violently kissing it some dozens of times, as if she could never leave off, the child crying at the vehemence of an onset which strangely combined passionateness with contempt. "She's fond of that there child, though she mid pretend to hate en, and say she wishes the baby and her too were in the churchyard," observed the woman in the red petticoat. "She'll soon leave off saying that," replied the one in buff. "Lord, 'tis wonderful what a body can get used to o' that sort in time!" "A little more than persuading had to do wi' the coming o't, I reckon. There were they that heard a sobbing one night last year in The Chase; and it mid ha' gone hard wi' a certain party if folks had come along." "Well, a little more, or a little less, 'twas a thousand pities that it should have happened to she, of all others. But 'tis always the comeliest! The plain ones be as safe as churches--hey, Jenny?" The speaker turned to one of the group who certainly was not ill-defined as plain. It was a thousand pities, indeed; it was impossible for even an enemy to feel otherwise on looking at Tess as she sat there, with her flower-like mouth and large tender eyes, neither black nor blue nor grey nor violet; rather all those shades together, and a hundred others, which could be seen if one looked into their irises--shade behind shade--tint beyond tint--around pupils that had no bottom; an almost standard woman, but for the slight incautiousness of character inherited from her race. A resolution which had surprised herself had brought her into the fields this week for the first time during many months. After wearing and wasting her palpitating heart with every engine of regret that lonely inexperience could devise, common sense had illuminated her. She felt that she would do well to be useful again--to taste anew sweet independence at any price. The past was past; whatever it had been, it was no more at hand. Whatever its consequences, time would close over them; they would all in a few years be as if they had never been, and she herself grassed down and forgotten. Meanwhile the trees were just as green as before; the birds sang and the sun shone as clearly now as ever. The familiar surroundings had not darkened because of her grief, nor sickened because of her pain. She might have seen that what had bowed her head so profoundly--the thought of the world's concern at her situation--was founded on an illusion. She was not an existence, an experience, a passion, a structure of sensations, to anybody but herself. To all humankind besides, Tess was only a passing thought. Even to friends she was no more than a frequently passing thought. If she made herself miserable the livelong night and day it was only this much to them--"Ah, she makes herself unhappy." If she tried to be cheerful, to dismiss all care, to take pleasure in the daylight, the flowers, the baby, she could only be this idea to them--"Ah, she bears it very well." Moreover, alone in a desert island would she have been wretched at what had happened to her? Not greatly. If she could have been but just created, to discover herself as a spouseless mother, with no experience of life except as the parent of a nameless child, would the position have caused her to despair? No, she would have taken it calmly, and found pleasure therein. Most of the misery had been generated by her conventional aspect, and not by her innate sensations. Whatever Tess's reasoning, some spirit had induced her to dress herself up neatly as she had formerly done, and come out into the fields, harvest-hands being greatly in demand just then. This was why she had borne herself with dignity, and had looked people calmly in the face at times, even when holding the baby in her arms. The harvest-men rose from the shock of corn, and stretched their limbs, and extinguished their pipes. The horses, which had been unharnessed and fed, were again attached to the scarlet machine. Tess, having quickly eaten her own meal, beckoned to her eldest sister to come and take away the baby, fastened her dress, put on the buff gloves again, and stooped anew to draw a bond from the last completed sheaf for the tying of the next. In the afternoon and evening the proceedings of the morning were continued, Tess staying on till dusk with the body of harvesters. Then they all rode home in one of the largest wagons, in the company of a broad tarnished moon that had risen from the ground to the eastwards, its face resembling the outworn gold-leaf halo of some worm-eaten Tuscan saint. Tess's female companions sang songs, and showed themselves very sympathetic and glad at her reappearance out of doors, though they could not refrain from mischievously throwing in a few verses of the ballad about the maid who went to the merry green wood and came back a changed state. There are counterpoises and compensations in life; and the event which had made of her a social warning had also for the moment made her the most interesting personage in the village to many. Their friendliness won her still farther away from herself, their lively spirits were contagious, and she became almost gay. But now that her moral sorrows were passing away a fresh one arose on the natural side of her which knew no social law. When she reached home it was to learn to her grief that the baby had been suddenly taken ill since the afternoon. Some such collapse had been probable, so tender and puny was its frame; but the event came as a shock nevertheless. The baby's offence against society in coming into the world was forgotten by the girl-mother; her soul's desire was to continue that offence by preserving the life of the child. However, it soon grew clear that the hour of emancipation for that little prisoner of the flesh was to arrive earlier than her worst misgiving had conjectured. And when she had discovered this she was plunged into a misery which transcended that of the child's simple loss. Her baby had not been baptized. Tess had drifted into a frame of mind which accepted passively the consideration that if she should have to burn for what she had done, burn she must, and there was an end of it. Like all village girls, she was well grounded in the Holy Scriptures, and had dutifully studied the histories of Aholah and Aholibah, and knew the inferences to be drawn therefrom. But when the same question arose with regard to the baby, it had a very different colour. Her darling was about to die, and no salvation. It was nearly bedtime, but she rushed downstairs and asked if she might send for the parson. The moment happened to be one at which her father's sense of the antique nobility of his family was highest, and his sensitiveness to the smudge which Tess had set upon that nobility most pronounced, for he had just returned from his weekly booze at Rolliver's Inn. No parson should come inside his door, he declared, prying into his affairs, just then, when, by her shame, it had become more necessary than ever to hide them. He locked the door and put the key in his pocket. The household went to bed, and, distressed beyond measure, Tess retired also. She was continually waking as she lay, and in the middle of the night found that the baby was still worse. It was obviously dying--quietly and painlessly, but none the less surely. In her misery she rocked herself upon the bed. The clock struck the solemn hour of one, that hour when fancy stalks outside reason, and malignant possibilities stand rock-firm as facts. She thought of the child consigned to the nethermost corner of hell, as its double doom for lack of baptism and lack of legitimacy; saw the arch-fiend tossing it with his three-pronged fork, like the one they used for heating the oven on baking days; to which picture she added many other quaint and curious details of torment sometimes taught the young in this Christian country. The lurid presentment so powerfully affected her imagination in the silence of the sleeping house that her nightgown became damp with perspiration, and the bedstead shook with each throb of her heart. The infant's breathing grew more difficult, and the mother's mental tension increased. It was useless to devour the little thing with kisses; she could stay in bed no longer, and walked feverishly about the room. "O merciful God, have pity; have pity upon my poor baby!" she cried. "Heap as much anger as you want to upon me, and welcome; but pity the child!" She leant against the chest of drawers, and murmured incoherent supplications for a long while, till she suddenly started up. "Ah! perhaps baby can be saved! Perhaps it will be just the same!" She spoke so brightly that it seemed as though her face might have shone in the gloom surrounding her. She lit a candle, and went to a second and a third bed under the wall, where she awoke her young sisters and brothers, all of whom occupied the same room. Pulling out the washing-stand so that she could get behind it, she poured some water from a jug, and made them kneel around, putting their hands together with fingers exactly vertical. While the children, scarcely awake, awe-stricken at her manner, their eyes growing larger and larger, remained in this position, she took the baby from her bed--a child's child--so immature as scarce to seem a sufficient personality to endow its producer with the maternal title. Tess then stood erect with the infant on her arm beside the basin; the next sister held the Prayer-Book open before her, as the clerk at church held it before the parson; and thus the girl set about baptizing her child. Her figure looked singularly tall and imposing as she stood in her long white nightgown, a thick cable of twisted dark hair hanging straight down her back to her waist. The kindly dimness of the weak candle abstracted from her form and features the little blemishes which sunlight might have revealed--the stubble scratches upon her wrists, and the weariness of her eyes--her high enthusiasm having a transfiguring effect upon the face which had been her undoing, showing it as a thing of immaculate beauty, with a touch of dignity which was almost regal. The little ones kneeling round, their sleepy eyes blinking and red, awaited her preparations full of a suspended wonder which their physical heaviness at that hour would not allow to become active. The most impressed of them said: "Be you really going to christen him, Tess?" The girl-mother replied in a grave affirmative. "What's his name going to be?" She had not thought of that, but a name suggested by a phrase in the book of Genesis came into her head as she proceeded with the baptismal service, and now she pronounced it: "SORROW, I baptize thee in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." She sprinkled the water, and there was silence. "Say 'Amen,' children." The tiny voices piped in obedient response, "Amen!" Tess went on: "We receive this child"--and so forth--"and do sign him with the sign of the Cross." Here she dipped her hand into the basin, and fervently drew an immense cross upon the baby with her forefinger, continuing with the customary sentences as to his manfully fighting against sin, the world, and the devil, and being a faithful soldier and servant unto his life's end. She duly went on with the Lord's Prayer, the children lisping it after her in a thin gnat-like wail, till, at the conclusion, raising their voices to clerk's pitch, they again piped into silence, "Amen!" Then their sister, with much augmented confidence in the efficacy of the sacrament, poured forth from the bottom of her heart the thanksgiving that follows, uttering it boldly and triumphantly in the stopt-diapason note which her voice acquired when her heart was in her speech, and which will never be forgotten by those who knew her. The ecstasy of faith almost apotheosized her; it set upon her face a glowing irradiation, and brought a red spot into the middle of each cheek; while the miniature candle-flame inverted in her eye-pupils shone like a diamond. The children gazed up at her with more and more reverence, and no longer had a will for questioning. She did not look like Sissy to them now, but as a being large, towering, and awful--a divine personage with whom they had nothing in common. Poor Sorrow's campaign against sin, the world, and the devil was doomed to be of limited brilliancy--luckily perhaps for himself, considering his beginnings. In the blue of the morning that fragile soldier and servant breathed his last, and when the other children awoke they cried bitterly, and begged Sissy to have another pretty baby. The calmness which had possessed Tess since the christening remained with her in the infant's loss. In the daylight, indeed, she felt her terrors about his soul to have been somewhat exaggerated; whether well founded or not, she had no uneasiness now, reasoning that if Providence would not ratify such an act of approximation she, for one, did not value the kind of heaven lost by the irregularity--either for herself or for her child. So passed away Sorrow the Undesired--that intrusive creature, that bastard gift of shameless Nature, who respects not the social law; a waif to whom eternal Time had been a matter of days merely, who knew not that such things as years and centuries ever were; to whom the cottage interior was the universe, the week's weather climate, new-born babyhood human existence, and the instinct to suck human knowledge. Tess, who mused on the christening a good deal, wondered if it were doctrinally sufficient to secure a Christian burial for the child. Nobody could tell this but the parson of the parish, and he was a new-comer, and did not know her. She went to his house after dusk, and stood by the gate, but could not summon courage to go in. The enterprise would have been abandoned if she had not by accident met him coming homeward as she turned away. In the gloom she did not mind speaking freely. "I should like to ask you something, sir." He expressed his willingness to listen, and she told the story of the baby's illness and the extemporized ordinance. "And now, sir," she added earnestly, "can you tell me this--will it be just the same for him as if you had baptized him?" Having the natural feelings of a tradesman at finding that a job he should have been called in for had been unskilfully botched by his customers among themselves, he was disposed to say no. Yet the dignity of the girl, the strange tenderness in her voice, combined to affect his nobler impulses--or rather those that he had left in him after ten years of endeavour to graft technical belief on actual scepticism. The man and the ecclesiastic fought within him, and the victory fell to the man. "My dear girl," he said, "it will be just the same." "Then will you give him a Christian burial?" she asked quickly. The Vicar felt himself cornered. Hearing of the baby's illness, he had conscientiously gone to the house after nightfall to perform the rite, and, unaware that the refusal to admit him had come from Tess's father and not from Tess, he could not allow the plea of necessity for its irregular administration. "Ah--that's another matter," he said. "Another matter--why?" asked Tess, rather warmly. "Well--I would willingly do so if only we two were concerned. But I must not--for certain reasons." "Just for once, sir!" "Really I must not." "O sir!" She seized his hand as she spoke. He withdrew it, shaking his head. "Then I don't like you!" she burst out, "and I'll never come to your church no more!" "Don't talk so rashly." "Perhaps it will be just the same to him if you don't? ... Will it be just the same? Don't for God's sake speak as saint to sinner, but as you yourself to me myself--poor me!" How the Vicar reconciled his answer with the strict notions he supposed himself to hold on these subjects it is beyond a layman's power to tell, though not to excuse. Somewhat moved, he said in this case also-- "It will be just the same." So the baby was carried in a small deal box, under an ancient woman's shawl, to the churchyard that night, and buried by lantern-light, at the cost of a shilling and a pint of beer to the sexton, in that shabby corner of God's allotment where He lets the nettles grow, and where all unbaptized infants, notorious drunkards, suicides, and others of the conjecturally damned are laid. In spite of the untoward surroundings, however, Tess bravely made a little cross of two laths and a piece of string, and having bound it with flowers, she stuck it up at the head of the grave one evening when she could enter the churchyard without being seen, putting at the foot also a bunch of the same flowers in a little jar of water to keep them alive. What matter was it that on the outside of the jar the eye of mere observation noted the words "Keelwell's Marmalade"? The eye of maternal affection did not see them in its vision of higher things.

On a hot August afternoon, the sun beats down on Marlott while men and women work in the corn fields. Among the women is Tess, whom the other women watch carefully. At intervals she rests, for she has been somewhat changed. After a long seclusion she had decided to undertake outdoor work during the busiest season of the year. When she finishes her labor, during lunch her sister brings Tess's child to her so that she may breastfeed it. A nearby woman observes that Tess is fond of her child, although she might pretend to hate it. Tess had come to bear herself with dignity and to resolve not to wallow in her own self-pity. However, as her sorrows over bearing an illegitimate child fade away, a fresh sorrow arises. The baby takes ill. When Tess returns home after work, she finds that the baby had taken ill. Tess realizes that the baby has not been baptized. Tess begs her father to send for the parson, but he refuses out of pride. Tess goes to bed, but the infant's breathing grows more difficult and Tess prays for pity. Tess finally decides to baptize the infant herself: she gives it the name Sorrow. As she baptizes Sorrow, Tess appears to her siblings as a large, towering, divine personage. When Tess awakes the next morning, she finds that Sorrow has died. Tess wonders whether if it were doctrinally sufficient to secure a Christian burial for the child. She asks the new parson, and he agrees that Sorrow had been properly baptized, but he refuses to give a Christian burial out of community reasons. She tells him not to speak to her as saint to sinner, but as person to person. Finally he agrees that the burial will be the same.