"Of all the things in the world, how came he ever to think of giving her that!" ejaculated Mrs. Peckover under her breath; her memory reverting, while she spoke, to the mournful day when strangers had searched the body of Madonna's mother, and had found the Hair Bracelet hidden away in a corner of the dead woman's pocket.

"Hush! let's go on with the game," said Valentine. He, too, was thinking of the Hair Bracelet—thinking of it as it now lay locked up in his bureau down stairs, remembering how he would fain have destroyed it years ago, but that his conscience and sense of honor forbade him; pondering on the fatal discoveries to which, by bare possibility, it might yet lead, if ever it should fall into strangers' hands.

"A Hair Bracelet," continued Zack, quite unconscious of the effect he was producing on two of the card-players behind him; "and such hair, too, as I mean it to be made of!—Why, Madonna will think it more precious than all the diamonds in the world. I defy anybody to have hit on a better idea of the sort of present she's sure to like; it's elegant and appropriate, and all that sort of thing—isn't it?"

"Oh, yes! very nice and pretty indeed," replied Mrs. Blyth, rather absently and confusedly. She knew as much of Madonna's history as her husband did; and was wondering what he would think of the present which young Thorpe proposed giving to their adopted child.

"The thing I want most to know," said Zack, "is what you think would be the best pattern for the bracelet. There will be two kinds of hair in it, which can be made into any shape, of course—your hair and Mrs. Peckover's."

("Not a morsel of my hair shall go towards the bracelet!" muttered Mrs. Peckover, who was listening to what was said, while she went on playing.)

"The difficult hair to bring in, will be mine and Valentine's," pursued Zack. "Mine's long enough, to be sure; I ought to have got it cut a month ago; but it's so stiff and curly; and Blyth keeps his cropped so short—I don't see what they can do with it (do you?), unless they make rings, or stars, or knobs, or something stumpy, in the way of a cross pattern of it."

"The people at the shop will know best," said Mrs. Blyth, resolving to proceed cautiously.

"One thing I'm determined on, though, beforehand," cried Zack,—"the clasp. The clasp shall be a serpent, with turquoise eyes, and a carbuncle tail; and all our initials scored up somehow on his scales. Won't that be splendid? I should like to surprise Madonna with it this very evening."

("You shall never give it to her, if I can help it," grumbled Mrs. Peckover, still soliloquizing under her breath. "If anything in this world can bring her ill-luck, it will be a Hair Bracelet!")

These last words were spoken with perfect seriousness; for they were the result of the strongest superstitious conviction.

From the time when the Hair Bracelet was found on Madonna's mother, Mrs. Peckover had persuaded herself—not unnaturally, in the absence of any information to the contrary—that it had been in some way connected with the ruin and shame which had driven its unhappy possessor forth as an outcast, to die amongst strangers. To believe, in consequence, that a Hair Bracelet had brought "ill-luck" to the mother, and to derive from that belief the conviction that a Hair Bracelet would therefore also bring "ill-luck" to the child, was a perfectly direct and inevitable deductive process to Mrs. Peckover's superstitious mind. The motives which had formerly influenced her to forbid her "little Mary" ever to begin anything important on a Friday, or ever to imperil her prosperity by walking under a ladder, were precisely the motives by which she was now actuated in determining to prevent the presentation of young Thorpe's ill-omened gift.

Although Valentine had only caught a word here and there, to guide him to the subject of Mrs. Peckover's mutterings to herself while the game was going on, he guessed easily enough the general tenor of her thoughts, and suspected that she would, ere long, begin to talk louder than was at all desirable, if Zack proceeded much further with his present topic of conversation. Accordingly, he took advantage of a pause in the game, and of a relapse into another restless fit of walking about the room on young Thorpe's part, to approach his wife's couch, as if he wanted to find something lying near it, and to whisper to her, "Stop his talking any more about that present to Madonna; I'll tell you why another time."

Mrs. Blyth very readily and easily complied with this injunction, by telling Zack (with perfect truth) that she had been already a little too much excited by the events of the evening; and that she must put off all further listening or talking, on her part, till the next night, when she promised to advise him about the bracelet to the best of her power.

He was, however, still too full of his subject to relinquish it easily under no stronger influence than the influence of a polite hint. Having lost one listener in Mrs. Blyth, he boldly tried the experiment of inviting two others to replace her, by addressing himself to the players at the card-table.

"I dare say you have heard what I have been talking about to Mrs. Blyth?" he began.

"Lord, Master Zack!" said Mrs. Peckover, "do you think we haven't had something else to do here, besides listening to you? There, now, don't talk to us, please, till we are done, or you'll throw us out altogether. Don't, sir, on any account, because we are playing for money—sixpence a game."

Repelled on both sides, Zack was obliged to give way. He walked off to try and amuse himself at the book-case. Mrs. Peckover, with a very triumphant air, nodded and winked several times at Valentine across the table; desiring, by these signs, to show him that she could not only be silent herself when the conversation was in danger of approaching a forbidden subject, but could make other people hold their tongues too.

The room was now perfectly quiet, and the game at cribbage proceeded smoothly enough, but not so pleasantly as usual on other occasions. Valentine did not regain his customary good spirits; and Mrs. Peckover relapsed into whispering discontentedly to herself—now and then looking towards the bookcase, where young Thorpe was sitting sleepily, with a volume of engravings on his knee. It was, more or less, a relief to everybody when the supper-tray came up, and the cards were put away for the night.

Zack, becoming quite lively again at the prospect of a little eating and drinking, tried to return to the dangerous subject of the Hair Bracelet; addressing himself, on this occasion, directly to Valentine. He was interrupted, however, before he had spoken three words. Mr. Blyth suddenly remembered that he had an important communication of his own to make to young Thorpe.

"Excuse me, Zack," he said, "I have some news to tell you, which Mrs. Peckover's arrival drove out of my head; and which I must mention at once, while I have the opportunity. Both my pictures are done—what do you think of that?—done, and in their frames. I settled the titles yesterday. The classical landscape is to be called 'The Golden Age,' which is a pretty poetical sort of name; and the figure-subject is to be 'Columbus in Sight of the New World;' which is, I think, simple, affecting, and grand. Wait a minute! the best of it has yet to come. I am going to exhibit both the pictures in the studio to my friends, and my friends' friends, as early as Saturday next."

"You don't mean it!" exclaimed Zack. "Why, it's only January now; and you always used to have your private view of your own pictures, in April, just before they were sent into the Academy Exhibition."

"Quite right," interposed Valentine, "but I am going to make a change this year. The fact is, I have got a job to do in the provinces, which will prevent me from having my picture-show at the usual time. So I mean to have it now. The cards of invitation are coming home from the printer's tomorrow morning. I shall reserve a packet, of course, for you and your friends, when we see you to-morrow night."

Just as Mr. Blyth spoke those words, the clock on the mantel-piece struck the half hour after ten. Having his own private reasons for continuing to preserve the appearance of perfect obedience to his father's domestic regulations, Zack rose at once to say good night, in order to insure being home before the house-door was bolted at eleven o'clock. This time he did not forget Madonna's drawing; but, on the contrary, showed such unusual carefulness in tying his pocket-handkerchief over the frame to preserve it from injury as he carried it through the streets, that she could not help—in the fearless innocence of her heart—unreservedly betraying to him, both by look and manner, how warmly she appreciated his anxiety for the safe preservation of her gift. Never had the bright, kind young face been lovelier in its artless happiness than it appeared at the moment when she was shaking hands with Zack.

Just as Valentine was about to follow his guest out of the room, Mrs. Blyth called him back, reminding him that he had a cold, and begging him not to expose himself to the wintry night air by going down to the door.

"But the servants must be going to bed by this time; and somebody ought to fasten the bolts," remonstrated Mr. Blyth.

"I'll go, sir," said Mrs. Peckover, rising with extraordinary alacrity. "I'll see Master Zack out, and do up the door. Bless your heart! it's no trouble to me. I'm always moving about at home from morning to night, to prevent myself getting fatter. Don't say no, Mr. Blyth, unless you are afraid of trusting an old gossip like me alone with your visitors."

The last words were intended as a sarcasm, and were whispered into Valentine's ear. He understood the allusion to their private conversation together easily enough; and felt that unless he let her have her own way without further contest, he must risk offending an old friend by implying a mistrust of her, which would be simply ridiculous, under the circumstances in which they were placed. So, when his wife nodded to him to take advantage of the offer just made, he accepted it forthwith.

"Now, I'll stop his giving Mary a Hair Bracelet!" thought Mrs. Peckover, as she bustled out after young Thorpe, and closed the room door behind her.

"Wait a bit, young gentleman," she said, arresting his further progress on the first landing. "Just leave off talking a minute, and let me speak. I've got something to say to you. Do you really mean to give Mary that Hair Bracelet?"

"Oho! then you did hear something at the card-table about it, after all?" said Zack. "Mean? Of course I mean—"

"And you want to put some of my hair in it?"

"To be sure I do! Madonna wouldn't like it without."

"Then you had better make up your mind at once to give her some other present; for not one morsel of my hair shall you have. There now! what do you think of that?"

"I don't believe it, my old darling."

"It's true enough, I can tell you. Not a hair of my head shall you have."

"Why not?"

"Never mind why. I've got my own reasons."

"Very well: if you come to that, I've got my reasons for giving the bracelet; and I mean to give it. If you won't let any of your hair be plaited up along with the rest, it's Madonna you will disappoint—not me."

Mrs. Peckover saw that she must change her tactics, or be defeated.

"Don't you be so dreadful obstinate, Master Zack, and I'll tell you the reason," she said in an altered tone, leading the way lower down into the passage. "I don't want you to give her a Hair Bracelet, because I believe it will bring ill-luck to her—there!"

Zack burst out laughing. "Do you call that a reason? Who ever heard of a Hair Bracelet being an unlucky gift?"

At this moment, the door of Mrs. Blyth's room opened.

"Anything wrong with the lock?" asked Valentine from above. He was rather surprised at the time that elapsed without his hearing the house-door shut.

"All quite right, sir," said Mrs. Peckover; adding in a whisper to Zack:—"Hush! don't say a word!"

"Don't let him keep you in the cold with his nonsense," said Valentine.

"My nonsense!—" began Zack, indignantly.

"He's going, sir," interrupted Mrs. Peckover. "I shall be upstairs in a moment."

"Come in, dear, pray! You're letting all the cold air into the room," exclaimed the voice of Mrs. Blyth.

The door of the room closed again.

"What are you driving at?" asked Zack, in extreme bewilderment.

"I only want you to give her some other present," said Mrs. Peckover, in her most persuasive tones. "You may think it all a whim of mine, if you like—I dare say I'm an old fool; but I don't want you to give her a Hair Bracelet."

"A whim of yours!!!" repeated Zack, with a look which made Mrs. Peckover's cheeks redden with rising indignation. "What! a woman at your time of life subject to whims! My darling Peckover, it won't do! My mind's made up to give her the Hair Bracelet. Nothing in the world can stop me—except, of course, Madonna's having a Hair Bracelet already, which I know she hasn't."

"Oh! you know that, do you, you mischievous Imp? Then, for once in a way, you just know wrong!" exclaimed Mrs. Peckover, losing her temper altogether.

"You don't mean to say so? How very remarkable, to think of her having a Hair Bracelet already, and of my not knowing it!—Mrs. Peckover," continued Zack, mimicking the tone and manner of his old clerical enemy, the Reverend Aaron Yollop, "what I am now about to say grieves me deeply; but I have a solemn duty to discharge, and in the conscientious performance of that duty, I now unhesitatingly express my conviction that the remark you have just made is—a flam."

"It isn't—Monkey!" returned Mrs. Peckover, her anger fairly boiling over, as she nodded her head vehemently in Zack's face.

Just then, Valentine's step became audible in the room above; first moving towards the door, then suddenly retreating from it, as if he had been called back.

"I hav'n't let out what I oughtn't, have I?" thought Mrs. Peckover; calming down directly, when she heard the movement upstairs.

"Oh, you stick to it, do you?" continued Zack. "It's rather odd, old lady, that Mrs. Blyth should have said nothing about this newly-discovered Hair Bracelet of yours while I was talking to her. But she doesn't know, of course: and Valentine doesn't know either, I suppose? By Jove! he's not gone to bed yet: I'll run back, and ask him if Madonna really has got a Hair Bracelet!"

"For God's sake don't!—don't say a word about it, or you'll get me into dreadful trouble!" exclaimed Mrs. Peckover, turning pale as she thought of possible consequences, and catching young Thorpe by the arm when he tried to pass her in the passage.

The step up stairs crossed the room again.

"Well, upon my life," cried Zack, "of all the extraordinary old women

"Hush! he's going to open the door this time; he is indeed!"

"Never mind if he does; I won't say anything," whispered young Thorpe, his natural good nature prompting him to relieve Mrs. Peckover's distress, the moment he became convinced that it was genuine.

"That's a good chap! that's a dear good chap!" exclaimed Mrs. Peckover, squeezing Zack's hand in a fervor of unbounded gratitude.

The door of Mrs. Blyth's room opened for the second time.

"He's gone, sir; he's gone at last!" cried Mrs. Peckover, shutting the house door on the parting guest with inhospitable rapidity, and locking it with elaborate care and extraordinary noise.

"I must manage to make it all safe with Master Zack tomorrow night; though I don't believe I have said a single word I oughtn't to say," thought she, slowly ascending the stairs. "But Mr. Blyth makes such fusses, and works himself into such fidgets about the poor thing being traced and taken away from him (which is all stuff and nonsense), that he would go half distracted if he knew what I said just now to Master Zack. Not that it's so much what I said to him, as what he made out somehow and said to me. But they're so sharp, these young London chaps—they are so awful sharp!"

Here she stopped on the landing to recover her breath; then whispered to herself, as she went on and approached Mr. Blyth's door:

"But one thing I'm determined on; little Mary shan't have that Hair Bracelet!"

* * * * *

Even as Mrs. Peckover walked thinking all the way up-stairs, so did Zack walk wondering all the way home.

What the deuce could these extraordinary remonstrances about his present to Madonna possibly mean? Was it not at least clear from Mrs. Peckover's terror when he talked of asking Blyth whether Madonna really had a Hair Bracelet, that she had told the truth after all? And was it not even plainer still that she had let out a secret in telling that truth, which Blyth must have ordered her to keep? Why keep it? Was this mysterious Hair Bracelet mixed up somehow with the grand secret about Madonna's past history, which Valentine had always kept from him and from everybody? Very likely it was—but why cudgel his brains about what didn't concern him? Was it not—considering the fact, previously forgotten, that he had but fifteen shillings and threepence of disposable money in the world—rather lucky than otherwise that Mrs. Peckover had taken it into her head to stop him from buying what he hadn't the means of paying for? What other present could he buy for Madonna that was pretty, and cheap enough to suit the present state of his pocket? Would she like a thimble? or an almanack? or a pair of cuffs? or a pot of bear's grease?

Here Zack suddenly paused in his mental interrogatories; for he had arrived within sight of his home in Baregrove Square.

A change passed over his handsome face: he frowned, and his color deepened as he looked up at the light in his father's window.

"I'll slip out again to-night, and see life," he muttered doggedly to himself, approaching the door. "The more I'm bullied at home, the oftener I'll go out on the sly."

This rebellious speech was occasioned by the recollection of a domestic scene, which had contributed, early that evening, to swell the list of the Tribulations of Zack. Mr. Thorpe had moral objections to Mr. Blyth's profession, and moral doubts on the subject of Mr. Blyth himself—these last being strengthened by that gentleman's own refusal to explain away the mystery which enveloped the birth and parentage of his adopted child. As a necessary consequence, Mr. Thorpe considered the painter to be no fit companion for a devout young man; and expressed, severely enough, his unmeasured surprise at finding that his son had accepted an invitation from a person of doubtful character. Zack's rejoinder to his father's reproof was decisive, if it was nothing else. He denied everything alleged or suggested against his friend's reputation—lost his temper on being sharply rebuked for the "indecent vehemence" of his language—and left the paternal tea-table in defiance, to go and cultivate the Fine Arts in the doubtful company of Mr. Valentine Blyth.

"Just in time, sir," said the page, grinning at his young master as he opened the door. "It's on the stroke of eleven."

Zack muttered something savage in reply, which it is not perhaps advisable to report. The servant secured the lock and bolts, while he put his hat on the hall table, and lit his bedroom candle.

* * * * *

Rather more than an hour after this time—or, in other words, a little past midnight—the door opened again softly, and Zack appeared on the step, equipped for his nocturnal expedition.

He hesitated, as he put the key into the lock from outside, before he closed the door behind him. He had never done this on former occasions; he could not tell why he did it now. We are mysteries even to ourselves; and there are times when the Voices of the future that are in us, yet not ours, speak, and make the earthly part of us conscious of their presence. Oftenest our mortal sense feels that they are breaking their dread silence at those supreme moments of existence, when on the choice between two apparently trifling alternatives hangs suspended the whole future of a life. And thus it was now with the young man who stood on the threshold of his home, doubtful whether he should pursue or abandon the purpose which was then uppermost in his mind. On his choice between the two alternatives of going on, or going back—which the closing of a door would decide—depended the future of his life, and of other lives that were mingled with it.

He waited a minute undecided, for the warning Voices within him were stronger than his own will: he waited, looking up thoughtfully at the starry loveliness of the winter's night—then closed the door behind him as softly as usual—hesitated again at the last step that led on to the pavement—and then fairly set forth from home, walking at a rapid pace through the streets.

He was not in his usual good spirits. He felt no inclination to sing as was his wont, while passing through the fresh, frosty air: and he wondered why it was so.

The Voices were still speaking faintly and more faintly within him. But we must die before we can become immortal as they are; and their language to us in this life is often as an unknown tongue.



BOOK II. THE SEEKING.



CHAPTER I. THE MAN WITH THE BLACK SKULL-CAP.

The Roman poet who, writing of vice, ascribed its influence entirely to the allurement of the fair disguises that it wore, and asserted that it only needed to be seen with the mask off to excite the hatred of all mankind, uttered a very plausible moral sentiment, which wants nothing to recommend it to the admiration of posterity but a seasoning of practical truth. Even in the most luxurious days of old Rome, it may safely be questioned whether vice could ever afford to disguise itself to win recruits, except from the wealthier classes of the population. But in these modern times it may be decidedly asserted as a fact, that vice, in accomplishing the vast majority of its seductions, uses no disguise at all; appears impudently in its naked deformity; and, instead of horrifying all beholders, in accordance with the prediction of the classical satirist, absolutely attracts a much more numerous congregation of worshippers than has ever yet been brought together by the divinest beauties that virtue can display for the allurement of mankind.

That famous place of public amusement known, a few years since, to the late-roaming youth of London by the name of the Snuggery, affords, among hosts of other instances which might be cited, a notable example to refute the assertion of the ancient poet. The place was principally devoted to the exhibition of musical talent, and opened at a period of the night when the performances at the theaters were over. The orchestral arrangements were comprised in one bad piano, to which were occasionally added, by way of increasing the attractions, performances on the banjo and guitar. All the singers were called "ladies and gentlemen;" and the one long room in which the performances took place was simply furnished with a double row of benches, bearing troughs at their backs for the reception of glasses of liquor.

Innocence itself must have seen at a glance that the Snuggery was an utterly vicious place. Vice never so much as thought of wearing any disguise here. No glimmer of wit played over the foul substance of the songs that were sung, and hid it in dazzle from too close observation. No relic of youth and freshness, no artfully-assumed innocence and vivacity, concealed the squalid deterioration of the worn-out human counterfeits which stood up to sing, and were coarsely painted and padded to look like fine women. Their fellow performers among the men were such sodden-faced blackguards as no shop-boy who applauded them at night would dare to walk out with in the morning. The place itself had as little of the allurement of elegance and beauty about it as the people. Here was no bright gilding on the ceiling—no charm of ornament, no comfort of construction even, in the furniture. Here were no viciously-attractive pictures on the walls—no enervating sweet odors in the atmosphere—no contrivances of ventilation to cleanse away the stench of bad tobacco-smoke and brandy-flavored human breath with which the room reeked all night long. Here, in short, was vice wholly undisguised; recklessly showing itself to every eye, without the varnish of beauty, without the tinsel of wit, without even so much as the flavor of cleanliness to recommend it. Were all beholders instinctively overcome by horror at the sight? Far from it. The Snuggery was crammed to its last benches every night; and the proprietor filled his pockets from the purses of applauding audiences. For, let classical moralists say what they may, vice gathers followers as easily, in modern times, with the mask off, as ever it gathered them in ancient times with the mask on.

It was two o'clock in the morning; and the entertainments in the Snuggery were fast rising to the climax of joviality. A favorite comic song had just been sung by a bloated old man with a bald head and a hairy chin. There was a brief lull of repose, before the amusements resumed their noisy progress. Orders for drink were flying abroad in all directions. Friends were talking at the tops of their voices, and strangers were staring at each other—except at the lower end of the room, where the whole attention of the company was concentrated strangely upon one man.

The person who thus attracted to himself the wandering curiosity of all his neighbors had come in late, had taken the first vacant place he could find near the door, and had sat there listening and looking about him very quietly. He drank and smoked like the rest of the company; but never applauded, never laughed, never exhibited the slightest symptom of astonishment, or pleasure, or impatience, or disgust—though it was evident, from his manner of entering and giving his orders to the waiters, that he visited the Snuggery that night for the first time.

He was not in mourning, for there was no band round his hat; but he was dressed nevertheless in a black frock-coat, waistcoat, and trousers, and wore black kid gloves. He seemed to be very little at his ease in this costume, moving his limbs, whenever he changed his position, as cautiously and constrainedly as if he had been clothed in gossamer instead of stout black broadcloth, shining with its first new gloss on it. His face was tanned to a perfectly Moorish brown, was scarred in two places by the marks of old wounds, and was overgrown by coarse, iron-grey whiskers, which met under his chin. His eyes were light, and rather large, and seemed to be always quietly but vigilantly on the watch. Indeed the whole expression of his face, coarse and heavy as it was in form, was remarkable for its acuteness, for its cool, collected penetration, for its habitually observant, passively-watchful look. Any one guessing at his calling from his manner and appearance would have set him down immediately as the captain of a merchantman, and would have been willing to lay any wager that he had been several times round the world.

But it was not his face, or his dress, or his manner, that drew on him the attention of all his neighbors; it was his head. Under his hat, (which was bran new, like everything else he wore), there appeared, fitting tight round his temples and behind his ears, a black velvet skull-cap. Not a vestige of hair peeped from under it. All round his head, as far as could be seen beneath his hat, which he wore far back over his coat collar, there was nothing but bare flesh, encircled by a rim of black velvet.

From a great proposal for reform, to a small eccentricity in costume, the English are the most intolerant people in the world, in their reception of anything which presents itself to them under the form of a perfect novelty. Let any man display a new project before the Parliament of England, or a new pair of light-green trousers before the inhabitants of London, let the project proclaim itself as useful to all listening ears, and the trousers eloquently assert themselves as beautiful to all beholding eyes, the nation will shrink suspiciously, nevertheless, both from the one and the other; will order the first to "lie on the table," and will hoot, laugh, and stare at the second; will, in short, resent either novelty as an unwarrantable intrusion, for no other discernible reason than that people in general are not used to it.

Quietly as the strange man in black had taken his seat in the Snuggery, he and his skull-cap attracted general attention; and our national weakness displayed itself immediately.

Nobody paused to reflect that he probably wore his black velvet head-dress from necessity; nobody gave him credit for having objections to a wig, which might be perfectly sensible and well founded; and nobody, even in this free country, was liberal enough to consider that he had really as much right to put on a skull-cap under his hat if he chose, as any other man present had to put on a shirt under his waistcoat. The audience saw nothing but the novelty in the way of a head-dress which the stranger wore, and they resented it unanimously, because it was a novelty. First, they expressed this resentment by staring indignantly at him, then by laughing at him, then by making sarcastic remarks on him. He bore their ridicule with the most perfect and provoking coolness. He did not expostulate, or retort, or look angry, or grow red in the face, or fidget in his seat, or get up to go away. He just sat smoking and drinking as quietly as ever, not taking the slightest notice of any of the dozens of people who were all taking notice of him.

His unassailable composure only served to encourage his neighbors to take further liberties with him. One rickety little man, with a spirituous nose and watery eyes, urged on by some women near him, advanced to the stranger's bench, and, expressing his admiration of a skull-cap as a becoming ornamental addition to a hat, announced, with a bow of mock politeness, his anxiety to feel the quality of the velvet. He stretched out his hand as he spoke, not a word of warning or expostulation being uttered by the victim of the intended insult; but the moment his fingers touched the skull-cap, the strange man, still without speaking, without even removing his cigar from his mouth, very deliberately threw all that remained of the glass of hot brandy and water before him in the rickety gentleman's face.

With a scream of pain as the hot liquor flew into his eyes, the miserable little man struck out helplessly with both his fists, and fell down between the benches. A friend who was with him, advanced to avenge his injuries, and was thrown sprawling on the floor. Yells of "Turn him out!" and "Police!" followed; people at the other end of the room jumped up excitably on their seats; the women screamed, the men shouted and swore, glasses were broken, sticks were waved, benches were cracked, and, in one instant, the stranger was assailed by every one of his neighbors who could get near him, on pretense of turning him out.

Just as it seemed a matter of certainty that he must yield to numbers, in spite of his gallant resistance, and be hurled out of the door down the flight of stairs that led to it, a tall young gentleman, with a quantity of light curly hair on his hatless head, leapt up on one of the benches at the opposite side of the gangway running down the middle of the room, and apostrophized the company around him with vehement fistic gesticulation. Alas for the tranquillity of parents with pleasure-loving sons!—alas for Mr. Valentine Blyth's idea of teaching his pupil to be steady, by teaching him to draw!—this furious young gentleman was no other than Mr. Zachary Thorpe, Junior, of Baregrove Square.

"Damn you all, you cowardly counter-jumping scoundrels!" roared Zack, his eyes aflame with valor, generosity, and gin-and-water. "What do you mean by setting on one man in that way? Hit out, sir—hit out right and left! I saw you insulted; and I'm coming to help you!"

With these words Zack tucked up his cuffs, and jumped into the crowd about him. His height, strength, and science as a boxer carried him triumphantly to the opposite bench. Two or three blows on the ribs, and one on the nose which drew blood plentifully, only served to stimulate his ardor and increase the pugilistic ferocity of his expression. In a minute he was by the side of the man with the skull-cap; and the two were fighting back to back, amid roars of applause from the audience at the upper end of the room, who were only spectators of the disturbance.

In the meantime the police had been summoned. But the waiters down-stairs, in their anxiety to see a struggle between two men on one side, and somewhere about two dozen on the other, had neglected to close the street door. The consequence was, that all the cabmen on the stand outside, and all the vagabond night-idlers in the vagabond neighborhood of the Snuggery, poured into the narrow passage, and got up an impromptu riot of their own with the waiters, who tried, too late, to turn them out. Just as the police were forcing their way through the throng below, Zack and the stranger had fought their way out of the throng above, and had got clear of the room.

On the right of the landing, as they approached it, was a door, through which the man with the skull-cap now darted, dragging Zack after him. His temper was just as cool, his quick eye just as vigilant as ever. The key of the door was inside. He locked it, amid a roar of applauding laughter from the people on the staircase, mixed with cries of "Police!" and "Stop 'em in the Court!" from the waiters. The two then descended a steep flight of stairs at headlong speed, and found themselves in a kitchen, confronting an astonished man cook and two female servants. Zack knocked the man down before he could use the rolling-pin which he had snatched up on their appearance; while the stranger coolly took a hat that stood on the dresser, and jammed it tight with one smack of his large hand on young Thorpe's bare head. The next moment they were out in a court into which the kitchen opened, and were running at the top of their speed.

The police, on their side, lost no time; but they had to get out of the crowd in the passage and go round the front of the house, before they could arrive at the turning which led into the court from the street. This gave the fugitives a start; and the neighborhood of alleys, lanes, and by-streets in which their flight immediately involved them, was the neighborhood of all others to favor their escape. While the springing of rattles and the cries of "Stop thief!" were rending the frosty night air in one direction, Zack and the stranger were walking away quietly, arm in arm, in the other.

The man with the skull-cap had taken the lead hitherto, and he took it still; though, from the manner in which he stared about him at corners of streets, and involved himself and his companion every now and then in blind alleys, it was clear enough that he was quite unfamiliar with the part of the town through which they were now walking. Zack, having treated himself that night to his fatal third glass of grog, and having finished half of it before the fight began, was by this time in no condition to care about following any particular path in the great labyrinth of London. He walked on, talking thickly and incessantly to the stranger, who never once answered him. It was of no use to applaud his bravery; to criticize his style of fighting, which was anything but scientific; to express astonishment at his skill in knocking his hat on again, all through the struggle, every time it was knocked off; and to declare admiration of his quickness in taking the cook's hat to cover his companion's bare head, which might have exposed him to suspicion and capture as he passed through the streets. It was of no use to speak on these subjects, or on any others. The imperturbable hero who had not uttered a word all through the fight, was as imperturbable as ever, and would not utter a word after it.

They strayed at last into Fleet Street, and walked to the foot of Ludgate Hill. Here the stranger stopped—glanced towards the open space on the right, where the river ran—gave a rough gasp of relief and satisfaction—and made directly for Blackfriars bridge. He led Zack, who was still thick in his utterance, and unsteady on his legs, to the parapet wall; let go of his arm there, and looking steadily in his face by the light of the gas-lamp, addressed him, for the first time, in a remarkably grave, deliberate voice, and in these words:

"Now, then, young 'un, suppose you pull a breath, and wipe that bloody nose of yours."

Zack, instead of resenting this unceremonious manner of speaking to him—which he might have done, had he been sober—burst into a frantic fit of laughter. The remarkable gravity and composure of the stranger's tone and manner, contrasted with the oddity of the proposition by which he opened the conversation, would have been irresistibly ludicrous even to a man whose faculties were not in an intoxicated condition.

While Zack was laughing till the tears rolled down his cheeks, his odd companion was leaning over the parapet of the bridge, and pulling off his black kid gloves, which had suffered considerably during the progress of the fight. Having rolled them up into a ball, he jerked them contemptuously into the river.

"There goes the first pair of gloves as ever I had on, and the last as ever I mean to wear," he said, spreading out his brawny hands to the sharp night breeze.

Young Thorpe heaved a few last expiring gasps of laughter; then became quiet and serious from sheer exhaustion.

"Go it again," said the man of the skull-cap, staring at him as gravely as ever, "I like to hear you."

"I can't go it again," answered Zack faintly; "I'm out of breath. I say, old boy, you're quite a character! Who are you?"

"I ain't nobody in particular; and I don't know as I've got a single friend to care about who I am, in all England," replied the other. "Give us your hand, young 'un! In the foreign parts where I come from, when one man stands by another, as you've stood by me to-night, them two are brothers together afterwards. You needn't be a brother to me, if you don't like. I mean to be a brother to you, whether you like it or not. My name's Mat. What's your's?"

"Zack," returned young Thorpe, clapping his new acquaintance on the back with brotherly familiarity already. "You're a glorious fellow; and I like your way of talking. Where do you come from, Mat? And what do you wear that queer cap under your hat for?"

"I come from America last," replied Mat, as grave and deliberate as ever. "And I wear this cap because I haven't got no scalp on my head."

"What do you mean?" cried Zack, startled into temporary sobriety, and taking his hand off his new friend's shoulder as quickly as if he had put it on red-hot iron.

"I always mean what I say," continued Mat; "I've got that much good about me, if I haven't got no more. Me and my scalp parted company years ago. I'm here, on a bridge in London, talking to a young chap of the name of Zack. My scalp's on the top of a high pole in some Indian village, anywhere you like about the Amazon country. If there's any puffs of wind going there, like there is here, it's rattling just now, like a bit of dry parchment; and all my hair's a flip-flapping about like a horse's tail, when the flies is in season. I don't know nothing more about my scalp or my hair than that. If you don't believe me, just lay hold of my hat, and I'll show you—"

"No, thank you!" exclaimed Zack, recoiling from the offered hat. "I don't want to see it. But how the deuce do you manage without a scalp?—I never heard of such a thing before in my life—how is it you're not dead? eh?"

"It takes a deal more to kill a tough man than you London chaps think," said Mat. "I was found before my head got cool, and plastered over with leaves and ointment. They'd left a bit of scalp at the back, being in rather too great a hurry to do their work as handily as usual; and a new skin growed over, after a little—a babyish sort of skin, that wasn't half thick enough, and wouldn't bear no new crop of hair. So I had to eke out and keep my head comfortable with an old yellow handkercher; which I always wore till I got to San Francisco, on my way back here. I met with a priest at San Francisco, who told me that I should look a little less like a savage, if I wore a skull-cap like his, instead of a handkercher, when I got back into what he called the civilized world. So I took his advice, and bought this cap. I suppose it looks better than my old yellow handkercher; but it ain't half as comfortable."

"But how did you lose your scalp?" asked Zack—"tell us all about it. Upon my life, you're the most interesting fellow I ever met with! And, I say, let's walk about, while we talk. I feel steadier on my legs now; and it's so infernally cold standing here."

"Which way can we soonest get out of this muck of houses and streets?" asked Mat, surveying the London view around him with an expression of grim disgust. "There ain't no room, even on this bridge, for the wind to blow fairly over a man. I'd just as soon be smothered up in a bed, as smothered up in smoke and stink here."

"What a delightful fellow you are! so entirely out of the common way! Steady, my dear friend. The grog's not quite out of my head yet; and I find I've got the hiccups. Here's my way home, and your way into the fresh air, if you really want it. Come along; and tell me how you lost your scalp."

"There ain't nothing particular to tell. What's your name again?"

"Zack."

"Well, Zack, I was out on the tramp, dodging about after any game that turned up, on the banks of the Amazon—"

"Amazon? what's that? a woman? or a place?"

"Did you ever hear of South America?"

"I can't positively swear to it; but, to the best of my belief, I think I have."

"Well; the Amazon's a longish bit of a river in those parts. I was out, as I told you, on the tramp."

"So I should think! you look like the sort of man who has tramped everywhere, and done everything."

"You're about right there, for a wonder! I've druv cattle in Mexico; I've been out with a gang that went to find an overland road to the North Pole; I've worked through a season or two in catching wild horses on the Pampas; and another season or two in digging gold in California. I went away from England, a tidy lad aboard ship; and here I am back again now, an old vagabond as hasn't a friend to own him. If you want to know exactly who I am, and what I've been up to all my life, that's about as much as I can tell you."

"You don't say so! Wait a minute, though; there's one thing—you're not troubled with the hiccups, are you, after eating supper? (I've been a martyr to hiccups ever since I was a child.) But, I say, there's one thing you haven't told me yet; you haven't told me what your other name is besides Mat. Mine's Thorpe."

"I haven't heard the sound of the other name you're asking after for a matter of better than twenty year: and I don't care if I never hear it again." His voice sank huskily, and he turned his head a little away from Zack, as he said those words. "They nicknamed me 'Marksman,' when I used to go out with the exploring gangs, because I was the best shot of all of them. You call me Marksman, too, if you don't like Mat. Mister Mathew Marksman, if you please: everybody seems to be a 'Mister' here. You're one, of course. I don't mean to call you 'Mister' for all that. I shall stick to Zack; it's short, and there's no bother about it."

"All right, old fellow! and I'll stick to Mat, which is shorter still by a whole letter. But, I say, you haven't told the story yet about how you lost your scalp."

"There's no story in it, Do you know what it is to have a man dodging after you through these odds and ends of streets here? I dare say you do. Well, I had three skulking thieves of Indians dodging after me, over better than four hundred miles of lonesome country, where I might have bawled for help for a whole week on end, and never made anybody hear me. They wanted my scalp, and they wanted my rifle, and they got both at last, at the end of their man-hunt, because I couldn't get any sleep."

"Not get any sleep. Why not?"

"Because they was three, and I was only one, to be sure! One of them kep' watch while the other two slept. I hadn't nobody to keep watch for me; and my life depended on my eyes being open night and day. I took a dog's snooze once, and was woke out of it by an arrow in my face. I kep' on a long time after that, before I give out; but at last I got the horrors, and thought the prairie was all a-fire, and run from it. I don't know how long I run on in that mad state; I only know that the horrors turned out to be the saving of my life. I missed my own trail, and struck into another, which was a trail of friendly Indians—people I'd traded with, you know. And I came up with 'em somehow, near enough for the stragglers of their hunting party to hear me skreek when my scalp was took. Now you know as much about it as I do; I can't tell you no more, except that I woke up like, in an Indian wigwam, with a crop of cool leaves on my head, instead of a crop of hair."

"A crop of leaves! What a jolly old Jack-in-the-Green you must have looked like! Which of those scars on your face is the arrow-wound, eh? Oh, that's it—is it? I say, old boy, you've got a black eye! Did any of those fellows in the Snuggery hit hard enough to hurt you?"

"Hurt me? Chaps like them hurt Me!!" Tickled by the extravagance of the idea which Zack's question suggested to him, Mat shook his sturdy shoulders, and indulged himself in a gruff chuckle, which seemed to claim some sort of barbarous relationship with a laugh.

"Ah! of course they haven't hurt you;—I didn't think they had," said Zack, whose pugilistic sympathies were deeply touched by the contempt with which his new friend treated the bumps and bruises received in the fight. "Go on, Mat, I like adventures of your sort. What did you do after your head healed up?"

"Well, I got tired of dodging about the Amazon, and went south, and learnt to throw a lasso, and took a turn at the wild horses. Galloping did my head good."

"It's just what would do my head good too. Yours is the sort of life, Mat, for me! How did you first come to lead it? Did you run away from home?"

"No. I served aboard ship, where I was put out, being too idle a vagabond to be kep' at home. I always wanted to run wild somewheres for a change; but I didn't really go to do it, till I picked up a letter which was waiting for me in port, at the Brazils. There was news in that letter which sickened me of going home again; so I deserted, and went off on the tramp. And I've been mostly on the tramp ever since, till I got here last Sunday."

"What! have you only been in England since Sunday?"

"That's all. I made a good time of it in California, where I've been last, digging gold. My mate, as was with me, got a talking about the old country, and wrought on me so that I went back with him to see it again. So, instead of gambling away all my money over there" (Mat carelessly jerked his hand in a westerly direction), "I've come to spend it over here; and I'm going down into the country to-morrow, to see if anybody lives to own me at the old place."

"And suppose nobody does? What then?"

"Then I shall go back again. After twenty years among the savages, or little better, I'm not fit for the sort of thing as goes on among you here. I can't sleep in a bed; I can't stop in a room; I can't be comfortable in decent clothes; I can't stray into a singing-shop, as I did to-night, without a dust being kicked up all round me, because I haven't got a proper head of hair like everybody else. I can't shake up along with the rest of you, nohow; I'm used to hard lines and a wild country; and I shall go back and die over there among the lonesome places where there's plenty of room for me." And again Mat jerked his hand carelessly in the direction of the American continent.

"Oh, don't talk about going back!" cried Zack; "you're sure to find somebody left at home—don't you think so yourself, old fellow?"

Mat made no answer. He suddenly slackened; then, as suddenly, increased his pace; dragging young Thorpe with him at a headlong rate.

"You're sure to find somebody," continued Zack, in his offhand, familiar way. "I don't know—gently! we're not walking for a wager—I don't know whether you're married or not?" (Mat still made no answer, and walked faster than ever.) "But if you havn't got wife or child, every fellow's got a father and mother, you know; and most fellows have got brothers or sisters—"

"Good night," said Mat, stopping short, and abruptly holding out his hand.

"Why! what's the matter now?" asked Zack, in astonishment. "What do you want to part company for already? We are not near the end of the streets yet. Have I said anything that's offended you?"

"No, you havn't. You can come and talk to me if you like, the day after to-morrow. I shall be back then, whatever happens. I said I'd be like a brother to you; and that means, in my lingo, doing anything you ask. Come and smoke a pipe along with me, as soon as I'm back again. Do you know Kirk Street? It's nigh on the Market. Do you know a 'bacco shop in Kirk Street? It's got a green door, and Fourteen written on it in yaller paint. When I am shut up in a room of my own, which isn't often, I'm shut up there. I can't give you the key of the house, because I want it myself."

"Kirk Street? That's my way. Why can't we go on together? What do you want to say good-night here for?"

"Because I want to be left by myself. It's not your fault; but you've set me thinking of something that don't make me easy in my mind. I've led a lonesome life of it, young 'un; straying away months and months out in the wilderness, without a human being to speak to, I dare say that wasn't a right sort of life for a man to take up with; but I did take up with it; and I can't get over liking it sometimes still. When I'm not easy in my mind, I want to be left lonesome as I used to be. I want it now. Good night."

Before Zack could enter his new friend's address in his pocket-book, Mat had crossed the road, and had disappeared in the dark distance dotted with gaslights. In another moment, the last thump of his steady footstep died away on the pavement, in the morning stillness of the street.

"That's rather an odd fellow"—thought Zack as he pursued his own road—"and we have got acquainted with each other in rather an odd way. I shall certainly go and see him though, on Thursday; something may come of it, one of these days."

Zack was a careless guesser; but, in this case, he guessed right. Something did come of it.



CHAPTER II. THE PRODIGAL'S RETURN.

When Zack reached Baregrove Square, it was four in the morning. The neighboring church clock struck the hour as he approached his own door.

Immediately after parting with Mat, malicious Fate so ordained it that he passed one of those late—or, to speak more correctly, early—public-houses, which are open to customers during the "small hours" of the morning. He was parched with thirst; and the hiccuping fit which had seized him in the company of his new friend had not yet subsided. "Suppose I try what a drop of brandy will do for me," thought Zack, stopping at the fatal entrance of the public-house.

He went in easily enough—but he came out with no little difficulty. However, he had achieved his purpose of curing the hiccups. The remedy employed acted, to be sure, on his legs as well as his stomach—but that was a trifling physiological eccentricity quite unworthy of notice.

He was far too exclusively occupied in chuckling over the remembrance of the agreeably riotous train of circumstances which had brought his new acquaintance and himself together, to take any notice of his own personal condition, or to observe that his course over the pavement was of a somewhat sinuous nature, as he walked home. It was only when he pulled the door-key out of his pocket, and tried to put it into the keyhole, that his attention was fairly directed to himself; and then he discovered that his hands were helpless, and that he was also by no means rigidly steady on his legs.

There are some men whose minds get drunk, and some men whose bodies get drunk, under the influence of intoxicating liquor. Zack belonged to the second class. He was perfectly capable of understanding what was said to him, and of knowing what he said himself, long after his utterance had grown thick, and his gait had become uncertain. He was now quite conscious that his visit to the public-house had by no means tended to sober him; and quite awake to the importance of noiselessly stealing up to bed—but he was, at the same time, totally unable to put the key into the door at the first attempt, or to look comfortably for the key-hole, without previously leaning against the area railings at his side.

"Steady," muttered Zack, "I'm done for if I make any noise." Here he felt for the keyhole, and guided the key elaborately, with his left hand, into its proper place. He next opened the door, so quietly that he was astonished at himself—entered the passage with marvelous stealthiness—then closed the door again, and cried "Hush!" when he found that he had let the lock go a little too noisily.

He listened before he attempted to light his candle. The air of the house felt strangely close and hot, after the air out of doors. The dark stillness above and around him was instinct with an awful and virtuous repose; and was deepened ominously by the solemn tick-tick of the kitchen clock—never audible from the passage in the day time: terribly and incomprehensibly distinct at this moment.

"I won't bolt the door," he whispered to himself, "till I have struck a—" Here the unreliability of brandy as a curative agent in cases of fermentation in the stomach, was palpably demonstrated by a sudden return of the hiccuping fit. "Hush!" cried Zack for the second time; terrified at the violence and suddenness of the relapse, and clapping his hand to his mouth when it was too late.

After groping, on his knees, with extraordinary perseverance all round the rim of his bed-room candlestick, which stood on one of the hall chairs, he succeeded—not in finding the box of matches—but in knocking it off the chair, and sending it rolling over the stone floor, until it was stopped by the opposite wall. With some difficulty he captured it, and struck a light. Never, in all Zack's experience, had any former matches caught flame with such a shrill report, as was produced from the one disastrous match which he happened to select to light his candle with.

The next thing to be done was to bolt the door. He succeeded very well with the bolt at the top, but failed signally with the bolt at the bottom, which appeared particularly difficult to deal with that night. It first of all creaked fiercely on being moved—then stuck spitefully just at the entrance of the staple—then slipped all of a sudden, under moderate pressure, and ran like lightning into its appointed place, with a bang of malicious triumph. "If that doesn't bring my father down"—thought Zack, listening with all his ears, and stifling the hiccups with all his might—"he's a harder sleeper than I take him for."

But no door opened, no voice called, no sound of any kind broke the mysterious stillness of the bedroom regions. Zack sat down on the stairs, and took his boots off, got up again with some little difficulty, listened, took his candlestick, listened once more, whispered to himself, "Now for it!" and began the perilous ascent to his own room.

He held tight by the banisters, only falling against them, and making them crack from top to bottom once, before he reached the drawing-room landing. He ascended the second flight of stairs without casualties of any kind, until he got to the top step, close by his father's bed-room door. Here, by a dire fatality, the stifled hiccups burst beyond all control; and distinctly asserted themselves by one convulsive yelp, which betrayed Zack into a start of horror. The start shook his candlestick: the extinguisher, which lay loose in it, dropped out, hopped playfully down the stone stairs, and rolled over the landing with a loud and lively ring—a devilish and brazen flourish of exultation in honor of its own activity.

"Oh Lord!" faintly ejaculated Zack, as he heard somebody's voice speaking, and somebody's body moving, in the bed-room; and remembered that he had to mount another flight of stairs—wooden stairs this time—before he got to his own quarters on the garret-floor.

He went up, however, directly, with the recklessness of despair; every separate stair creaking and cracking under him, as if a young elephant had been retiring to bed instead of a young man. He blew out his light, tore off his clothes, and, slipping between the sheets, began to breathe elaborately, as if he was fast asleep—in the desperate hope of being still able to deceive his father, if Mr. Thorpe came up stairs to look after him.

No sooner had he assumed a recumbent position than a lusty and ceaseless singing began in his ears, which bewildered and half deafened him. His bed, the room, the house, the whole world tore round and round, and heaved up and down frantically with him. He ceased to be a human being: he became a giddy atom, spinning drunkenly in illimitable space. He started up in bed, and was recalled to a sense of his humanity by a cold perspiration and a deathly qualm. Hiccups burst from him no longer; but they were succeeded by another and a louder series of sound—sounds familiar to everybody who has ever been at sea—sounds nautically and lamentably associated with white basins, whirling waves, and misery of mortal stomachs wailing in emetic despair.

In the momentary pauses between the rapidly successive attacks of the malady which now overwhelmed him, and which he attributed in after-life entirely to the dyspeptic influences of toasted cheese, Zack was faintly conscious of the sound of slippered feet ascending the stairs. His back was to the door. He had no strength to move, no courage to look round, no voice to raise in supplication. He knew that his door was opened—that a light came into the room—that a voice cried "Degraded beast!"—that the door was suddenly shut again with a bang—and that he was left once more in total darkness. He did not care for the light, or the voice, or the banging of the door: he did not think of them afterwards; he did not mourn over the past, or speculate on the future. He just sank back on his pillow with a gasp, drew the clothes over him with a groan, and fell asleep, blissfully reckless of the retribution that was to come with the coming daylight.

When he woke, late the next morning, conscious of nothing, at first, except that it was thawing fast out of doors, and that he had a violent headache, but gradually recalled to a remembrance of the memorable fight in the Snuggery by a sense of soreness in his ribs, and a growing conviction that his nose had become too large for his face, Zack's memory began, correctly though confusedly, to retrace the circumstances attending his return home, and his disastrous journey up stairs to bed. With these recollections were mingled others of the light which had penetrated into his room, after his own candle was out; of the voice which had denounced him as a "Degraded beast;" and of the banging of the door which had followed. There could be no doubt that it was his father who had entered the room and apostrophized him in the briefly emphatic terms which he was now calling to mind. Never had Mr. Thorpe, on any former occasion, been known to call names, or bang doors. It was quite clear that he had discovered everything, and was exasperated with his son as he had never been exasperated with any other human being before in his life.

Just as Zack arrived at this conclusion, he heard the rustling of his mother's dress on the stairs, and Mrs. Thorpe, with her handkerchief to her eyes, presented herself woefully at his bedside. Profoundly and penitently wretched, he tried to gain his mother's forgiveness before he encountered his father's wrath. To do him justice, he was so thoroughly ashamed to meet her eye, that he turned his face to the wall, and in that position appealed to his mother's compassion in the most moving terms, and with the most vehement protestations which he had ever addressed to her.

The only effect he produced on Mrs. Thorpe was to make her walk up and down the room in violent agitation, sobbing bitterly. Now and then a few words burst lamentably and incoherently from her lips. They were just articulate enough for him to gather from them that his father had discovered everything, had suffered in consequence from an attack of palpitation of the heart, and had felt himself, on rising that morning, so unequal, both in mind and body, to deal unaided with the enormity of his son's offense, that he had just gone out to request the co-operation of the Reverend Aaron Yollop. On discovering this, Zack's penitence changed instantly into a curious mixture of indignation and alarm. He turned round quickly towards his mother. But, before he could open his lips, she informed him, speaking with an unexampled severity of tone, that he was on no account to think of going to the office as usual, but was to wait at home until his father's return—and then hurried from the room. The fact was, that Mrs. Thorpe distrusted her own inflexibility, if she stayed too long in the presence of her penitent son; but Zack could not, unhappily, know this. He could only see that she left him abruptly, after delivering an ominous message; and could only place the gloomiest interpretation on her conduct.

"When mother turns against me, I've lost my last chance." He stopped before he ended the sentence, and sat up in bed, deliberating with himself for a minute or two. "I could make up my mind to bear anything from my father, because he has a right to be angry with me, after what I've done. But if I stand old Yollop again, I'll be—" Here, whatever Zack said was smothered in the sound of a blow, expressive of fury and despair, which he administered to the mattress on which he was sitting. Having relieved himself thus, he jumped out of bed, pronouncing at last in real earnest those few words of fatal slang which had often burst from his lips in other days as an empty threat:—

"It's all over with me; I must bolt from home."

He refreshed both mind and body by a good wash; but still his resolution did not falter. He hurried on his clothes, looked out of window, listened at his door; and all this time his purpose never changed. Remembering but too well the persecution he had already suffered at the hands of Mr. Yollop, the conviction that it would now be repeated with fourfold severity was enough of itself to keep him firm to his desperate intention. When he had done dressing, his thoughts were suddenly recalled by the sight of his pocket-book to his companion of the past night. As he reflected on the appointment for Thursday morning, his eyes brightened, and he said to himself aloud, while he turned resolutely to the door, "That queer fellow talked of going back to America. If I can't do anything else, I'll go back with him!"

Just as his hand was on the lock, he was startled by a knock at the door. He opened it, and found the housemaid on the landing with a letter for him. Returning to the window, he hastily undid the envelope. Several gaily-printed invitation cards with gilt edges dropped out. There was a letter among them, which proved to be in Mr. Blyth's handwriting, and ran thus:—

"Wednesday.

"MY DEAR ZACK—The enclosed are the tickets for my picture show, which I told you about yesterday evening. I send them now, instead of waiting to give them to you to-night, at Lavvie's suggestion. She thinks only three days' notice, from now to Saturday, rather short, and considers it advisable to save even a few hours, so as to enable you to give your friends the most time possible to make their arrangements for coming to my studio. Post all the invitation tickets, therefore, that you send about among your connection, at once, as I am posting mine; and you will save a day by that means, which is a good deal. Patty is obliged to pass your house this morning on an errand, so I send my letter by her. How conveniently things sometimes turn out, don't they?

"Introduce anybody you like; but I should prefer intellectual people; my figure-subject of 'Columbus in sight of the New World' being treated mystically, and, therefore, adapted to tax the popular mind to the utmost. Please warn your friends beforehand that it is a work of high art, and that nobody can hope to understand it in a hurry.

"Affectionately yours,

"V. BLYTH."

The perusal of this letter reminded Zack of certain recent aspirations in the direction of the fine arts, which had escaped his slippery memory altogether, while he was thinking of his future prospects. "I'll stick to my first idea," he thought, "and be an artist, if Blyth will let me, after what's happened. If he won't, I've got Mat to fall back upon; and I'll run as wild in America as ever he did."

Reflecting thus, Zack descended cautiously to the back parlor, which was called a "library." The open door showed him that no one was in the room. He went in, and in great haste scrawled the following answer to Mr. Blyth's letter:—

"MY DEAR BLYTH—Thank you for the tickets. I have got into a dreadful scrape, having been found out coming home tipsy at four in the morning, which I did by stealing the family door-key. My prospects after this are so extremely unpleasant that I am going to make a bolt of it. I write these lines in a tearing hurry, for fear my father should come home before I have done—he having gone to Yollop's to set the parson at me again worse than ever.

"I can't come to you to-night, because your house would be the first place they would send to after me. But I mean to be an artist, if you won't desert me. Don't, my dear fellow! I know I'm a scamp; but I'll try and be a reformed character, if you will only stick by me. When you take your walk tomorrow, I shall be at the turnpike in the Laburnum Road, waiting for you, at three o'clock. If you won't come there, or won't speak to me when you do come, I shall leave England and take to something desperate.

"I have got a new friend—the best and most interesting fellow in the world. He has been half his life in the wilds of America; so, if you don't give me the go-by, I shall bring him to see your picture of Columbus.

"I feel so miserable, and have got such a headache, that I can't write any more. Ever yours,

"Z. THORPE, JUN."

After directing this letter, and placing it in his pocket to be put into the post by his own hand, Zack looked towards the door and hesitated—advanced a step or two to go out—and ended by returning to the writing-table, and taking a fresh sheet of paper out of the portfolio before him.

"I can't leave the old lady (though she won't forgive me) without writing a line to keep up her spirits and say goodbye," he thought, as he dipped the pen in the ink, and began in his usual dashing, scrawling way. But he could not get beyond "My dear Mother." The writing of those three words seemed to have suddenly paralyzed him. The strong hand that had struck out so sturdily all through the fight, trembled now at merely touching a sheet of paper. Still, he tried desperately to write something, even if it were only the one word, "Goodbye."—tried till the tears came into his eyes, and made all further effort hopeless.

He crumpled up the paper and rose hastily, brushing away the tears with his hand, and feeling a strange dread and distrust of himself as he did so. It was rarely, very rarely, that his eyes were moistened as they were moistened now. Few human beings have lived to be twenty years of age without shedding more tears than had ever been shed by Zack.

"I can't write to her while I'm at home, and I know she's in the next room to me. I will send her a letter when I'm out of the house, saying it's only for a little time, and that I'm coming back when the angry part of this infernal business is all blown over." Such was his resolution, as he tore up the crumpled paper, and went out quickly into the passage.

He took his hat from the table. His hat? No: he remembered that it was the hat which had been taken from the man at the tavern. At the most momentous instant of his life—when his heart was bowing down before the thought of his mother—when he was leaving home in secret, perhaps for ever—the current of his thoughts could be incomprehensibly altered in its course by the influence of such a trifle as this!

It was thus with him; it is thus with all of us. Our faculties are never more completely at the mercy of the smallest interests of our being, than when they appear to be most fully absorbed by the mightiest. And it is well for us that there exists this seeming imperfection in our nature. The first cure of many a grief, after the hour of parting, or in the house of death, has begun, insensibly to ourselves, with the first moment when we were betrayed into thinking of so little a thing even as a daily meal.

The rain which had accompanied the thaw was falling faster and faster; inside the house was dead silence, and outside it damp desolation, as Zack opened the street door, and, without hesitating a moment, dashed out desperately through mud and wet, to cast himself loose on the thronged world of London as a fugitive from his own home.

He paused before he took the turning out of the square; the recollections of weeks, months, years past, all whirling through his memory in a few moments of time. He paused, looking through the damp, foggy atmosphere at the door which he had just left—never, it might be, to approach it again; then moved away, buttoned his coat over his chest with trembling, impatient fingers, and saying to himself, "I've done it, and nothing can undo it now," turned his back resolutely on Baregrove Square.



CHAPTER III. THE SEARCH BEGUN.

The street which Mat had chosen for his place of residence in London, was situated in a densely populous, and by no means respectable neighborhood. In Kirk Street the men of the fustian-jacket and seal-skin cap clustered tumultuous round the lintels of the gin-shop doors. Here ballad-bellowing, and organ grinding, and voices of costermongers, singing of poor men's luxuries, never ceased all through the hum of day, and penetrated far into the frowzy repose of latest night. Here, on Saturday evenings especially, the butcher smacked with appreciating hand the fat carcasses that hung around him; and flourishing his steel, roared aloud to every woman who passed the shop door with a basket, to come in and buy—buy—buy! Here, with foul frequency, the language of the natives was interspersed with such words as reporters indicate in the newspapers by an expressive black line; and on this "beat," more than on most others, the night police were chosen from men of mighty strength to protect the sober part of the street community, and of notable cunning to persuade the drunken part to retire harmlessly brawling into the seclusion of their own homes.

Such was the place in which Mat had set up his residence, after twenty years of wandering amid the wilds of the great American Continent.

Never was tenant of any order or degree known to make such conditions with a landlord as were made by this eccentric stranger. Every household convenience with which the people at the lodgings could offer to accommodate him, Mat considered to be a domestic nuisance which it was particularly desirable to get rid of. He stipulated that nobody should be allowed to clean his room but himself; that the servant-of-all-work should never attempt to make his bed, or offer to put sheets on it, or venture to cook him a morsel of dinner when he stopped at home; and that he should be free to stay away unexpectedly for days and nights together, if he chose, without either landlord or landlady presuming to be anxious or to make inquiries about him, as long as they had his rent in their pockets. This rent he willingly covenanted to pay beforehand, week by week, as long as his stay lasted; and he was also ready to fee the servant occasionally, provided she would engage solemnly "not to upset his temper by doing anything for him."

The proprietor of the house (and tobacco-shop) was at first extremely inclined to be distrustful; but as he was likewise extremely familiar with poverty, he was not proof against the auriferous halo which the production of a handful of bright sovereigns shed gloriously over the oddities of the new lodger. The bargain was struck; and Mat went away directly to fetch his personal baggage.

After an absence of some little time, he returned with a large corn-sack on his back, and a long rifle in his hand. This was his luggage.

First putting the rifle on his bed, in the back room, he cleared away all the little second-hand furniture with which the front room was decorated; packing the three rickety chairs together in one corner, and turning up the cracked round table in another. Then, untying a piece of cord which secured the mouth of the corn-sack, he emptied it over his shoulder into the middle of the room—just (as the landlady afterwards said) as if it was coals coming in instead of luggage. Among the things which fell out on the floor in a heap, were—some bearskins and a splendid buffalo-hide, neatly packed; a pipe, two red flannel shirts, a tobacco-pouch, and an Indian blanket; a leather bag, a gunpowder flask, two squares of yellow soap, a bullet mold, and a nightcap; a tomahawk, a paper of nails, a scrubbing-brush, a hammer, and an old gridiron. Having emptied the sack, Mat took up the buffalo hide, and spread it out on his bed, with a very expressive sneer at the patchwork counterpane and meager curtains. He next threw down the bear skins, with the empty sack under them, in an unoccupied corner; propped up the leather bag between two angles of the wall; took his pipe from the floor; left everything else lying in the middle of the room; and, sitting down on the bearskins with his back against the bag, told the astonished landlord that he was quite settled and comfortable, and would thank him to go down stairs, and send up a pound of the strongest tobacco he had in the shop.

Mat's subsequent proceedings during the rest of the day—especially such as were connected with his method of laying in a stock of provisions, and cooking his own dinner—exhibited the same extraordinary disregard of all civilized precedent which had marked his first entry into the lodgings. After he had dined, he took a nap on his bear skins; woke up grumbling at the close air and the confined room; smoked a long series of pipes, looking out of window all the time with quietly observant, constantly attentive eyes; and, finally, rising to the climax of all his previous oddities, came down when the tobacco shop was being shut up after the closing of the neighboring theater, and coolly asked which was his nearest way into the country, as he wanted to clear his head, and stretch his legs, by making a walking night of it in the fresh air.

He began the next morning by cleaning both his rooms thoroughly with his own hands; and seemed to enjoy the occupation mightily in his own grim, grave way. His dining, napping, smoking, and observant study of the street view from his window, followed as on the previous day. But at night, instead of setting forth into the country as before, he wandered into the streets; and, in the course of his walk, happened to pass the door of the Snuggery. What happened to him there is already known; but what became of him afterwards remains to be seen.

On leaving Zack, he walked straight on; not slackening his pace, not noticing whither he went, not turning to go back till daybreak. It was past nine o'clock before he presented himself at the tobacco-shop, bringing in with him a goodly share of mud and wet from the thawing ground and rainy sky outside. His long walk did not seem to have relieved the uneasiness of mind which had induced him to separate so suddenly from Zack. He talked almost perpetually to himself in a muttering, incoherent way; his heavy brow was contracted, and the scars of the old wounds on his face looked angry and red. The first thing he did was to make some inquiries of his landlord relating to railway traveling, and to the part of London in which a certain terminus that he had been told of was situated. Finding it not easy to make him understand any directions connected with this latter point, the shopkeeper suggested sending for a cab to take him to the railway. He briefly assented to that arrangement; occupying the time before the vehicle arrived, in walking sullenly backwards and forwards over the pavement in front of the shop door.

When the cab came to take him up, he insisted, with characteristic regardlessness of appearances, on riding upon the roof, because he could get more air to blow over him, and more space for stretching his legs in, there than inside. Arriving in this irregular and vagabond fashion at the terminus, he took his ticket for DIBBLEDEAN, a quiet little market town in one of the midland counties.

When he was set down at the station, he looked about him rather perplexedly at first; but soon appeared to recognize a road, visible at some little distance, which led to the town; and towards which he immediately directed his steps, scorning all offers of accommodation from the local omnibus.

It did not happen to be market day; and the thaw looked even more dreary at Dibbledean than it looked in London. Down the whole perspective of the High Street there appeared only three human figures—a woman in pattens; a child under a large umbrella; and a man with a hamper on his back, walking towards the yard of the principal inn.

Mat had slackened his pace more and more as he approached the town, until he slackened it altogether at last, by coming to a dead stand-still under the walls of the old church, which stood at one extremity of the High Street, in what seemed to be the suburban district of Dibbledean. He waited for some time, looking over the low parapet wall which divided the churchyard from the road—then slowly approached a gate leading to a path among the grave-stones—stopped at it—apparently changed his purpose—and, turning off abruptly, walked up the High Street.

He did not pause again till he arrived opposite a long, low, gabled house, evidently one of the oldest buildings in the place, though brightly painted and whitewashed, to look as new and unpicturesque as possible. The basement story was divided into two shops; which, however, proclaimed themselves as belonging now, and having belonged also in former days, to one and the same family. Over the larger of the two was painted in letters of goodly size:—

Bradford and Son (late Joshua Grice), Linendrapers, Hosiers, &c., &c.

The board on which these words were traced was continued over the smaller shop, where it was additionally superscribed thus:—

Mrs. Bradford (late Joanna Grice), Milliner and Dressmaker.

Regardless of rain, and droppings from eaves that trickled heavily down his hat and coat, Mat stood motionless, reading and re-reading these inscriptions from the opposite side of the way. Though the whole man, from top to toe, was the very impersonation of firmness, he nevertheless hesitated most unnaturally now. At one moment he seemed to be on the point of entering the shop before him—at another, he turned half round towards the churchyard which he had left behind him. At last he decided to go back to the churchyard, and retraced his steps accordingly.

He entered quickly by the gate at which he had delayed before; and pursued the path among the graves a little way. Then striking off over the grass, after a moment's consideration and looking about him, he wound his course hither and thither among the turf mounds, and stopped suddenly at a plain flat tombstone, raised horizontally above the earth by a foot or so of brickwork. Bending down over it, he read the characters engraven on the slab.

There were four inscriptions, all of the simplest and shortest kind, comprising nothing but a record of the names, ages, and birth and death dates of the dead who lay beneath. The first two inscriptions notified the deaths of children:—"Joshua Grice, son of Joshua and Susan Grice, of this parish, aged four years;" and "Susan Grice, daughter of the above, aged thirteen years." The next death recorded was the mother's: and the last was the father's, at the age of sixty-two. Below this followed a quotation from the New Testament:—Come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. It was on these lines, and on the record above them of the death of Joshua Grice the elder, that the eyes of the lonely reader rested longest; his lips murmuring several times, as he looked down on the letters:—"He lived to be an old man—he lived to be an old man after all!"

There was sufficient vacant space left towards the bottom of the tombstone for two or three more inscriptions; and it appeared as if Mat expected to have seen more. He looked intently at the vacant space, and measured it roughly with his fingers, comparing it with the space above, which was occupied by letters. "Not there, at any rate!" he said to himself, as he left the churchyard, and walked back to the town.

This time he entered the double shop—the hosiery division of it—without hesitation. No one was there, but the young man who served behind the counter. And right glad the young man looked, having been long left without a soul to speak to on that rainy morning, to see some one—even a stranger with an amazing skull-cap under his hat—enter the shop at last.

What could he serve the gentleman with? The gentleman had not come to buy. He only desired to know whether Joanna Grice, who used to keep the dressmaker's shop, was still living?

Still living, certainly! the young man replied, with brisk civility. Miss Grice, whose brother once had the business now carried on by Bradford and Son, still resided in the town; and was a very curious old person, who never went out, and let nobody inside her doors. Most of her old friends were dead; and those who were still alive she had broken with. She was full of fierce, wild ways; was suspected of being crazy; and was execrated by the boys of Dibbledean as an "old tiger-cat." In all probability, her intellects were a little shaken, years ago, by a dreadful scandal in the family, which quite crushed them down, being very respectable, religious people—

At this point the young man was interrupted, in a very uncivil manner, by the stranger, who desired to hear nothing about the scandal, but who had another question to ask. This question seemed rather a difficult one to put; for he began it two or three times, in two or three different forms of words, and failed to get on with it. At last, he ended by asking, generally, whether any other members of old Mr. Grice's family were still alive.

For a moment or so the shopman was stupid and puzzled, and asked what other members the gentleman meant. Old Mrs. Grice had died some time ago; and there had been two children who died young, and whose names were in the churchyard. "Did the gentleman mean the second daughter, who lived and grew up beautiful, and was, as the story went, the cause of all the scandal? If so, the young person ran away, and died miserably somehow—nobody knew how; and was supposed to have been buried like a pauper somewhere—nobody knew where, unless it was Miss Grice—"

The young man stopped and looked perplexed. A sudden change had passed over the strange gentleman's face. His swarthy cheeks had turned to a cold clay color, through which his two scars seemed to burn fiercer than ever, like streaks of fire. His heavy hand and arm trembled a little as he leaned against the counter. Was he going to be taken ill? No: he walked at once from the counter to the door—turned round there, and asked where Joanna Grice lived. The young man answered, the second turning to the right, down a street, which ended in a lane of cottages. Miss Grice's was the last cottage on the left hand; but he could assure the gentleman that it would be quite useless to go there, for she let nobody in. The gentleman thanked him, and went, nevertheless.

"I didn't think it would have took me so," Mat said, walking quickly up the street; "and it wouldn't if I'd heard it anywhere else. But I'm not the man I was, now I'm in the old place again. Over twenty year of hardening, don't seem to have hardened me yet!"

He followed the directions given him, correctly enough, arrived at the last cottage on his left hand, and tried the garden gate. It was locked; and there was no bell to ring. But the paling was low, and Mat was not scrupulous. He got over it, and advanced to the cottage door. It opened, like other doors in the country, merely by turning the handle of the lock. He went in without any hesitation, and entered the first room into which the passage led him. It was a small parlor; and, at the back window, which looked out on a garden, sat Joanna Grice, a thin, dwarfish old woman, poring over a big book which looked like a Bible. She started from her chair, as she heard the sound of footsteps, and tottered up fiercely, with wild wandering grey eyes and horny threatening hands, to meet the intruder. He let her come close to him; then mentioned a name—pronouncing it twice, very distinctly.

She paused instantly, livid pale, with gaping lips, and arms hanging rigid at her side; as if that name, or the voice in which it had been uttered, had frozen up in a moment all the little life left in her. Then she moved back slowly, groping with her hands like one in the dark—back, till she touched the wall of the room Against this she leaned, trembling violently; not speaking a word; her wild eyes staring panic-stricken on the man who was confronting her.

He sat down unbidden, and asked if she did not remember him. No answer was given; no movement made that might serve instead of an answer. He asked again; a little impatiently this time. She nodded her head and stared at him—still speechless, still trembling.

He told her what he had heard at the shop; and using the shopman's phrases, asked whether it was true that the daughter of old Mr. Grice, who was the cause of all the scandal in the family, had died long since, away from her home, and in a miserable way?

There was something in his look, as he spoke, which seemed to oblige her to answer against her will. She said Yes; and trembled more violently than ever.