Then her father was on the same side. "John Meadows seems down like, Susan. Do try and cheer him up a bit, I am sure he has often cheered thee."

"That he has, father."

Susan pitied Meadows. Pitying him, she forced herself at times to be gracious, and when she did he was so happy that she was alarmed at her power and drew in.

Old Merton saw now how the land lay, and he clung to a marriage between these two as his only hope. "John Meadows will pull me through, if he marries my Susan."

And so the two selfish ones had got the unselfish one between them, one pulling gently, the other pushing quietly, but both without intermission. Thus days and days rolled on.

Meadows now came four times a week instead of two, and courted her openly, and beamed so with happiness that she had not always the heart to rob him of this satisfaction, and he overwhelmed her with kindness and attention of every sort, and, if any one else was present, she was sure to see how much he was respected; and this man whom others courted was her slave. This soothed the pride another had wounded.

One day he poured out his love to her with such passion that he terrified her, and the next time he came she avoided him.

Her father remonstrated. "Girl, you will break that man's heart if you are so unkind to him; he could not say a word because you shunned him like. Why, your heart must be made of stone." A burst of tears was all the reply.

At last two things presented themselves to this poor girl's understanding; that for her there was no chance of earthly happiness, do what she would, and that, strangely enough, she the wretched one had it in her power to make two other beings happy, her father and good Mr. Meadows.

Now, a true woman lives to make others happy. She rarely takes the self-contained views of life men are apt to do.

It passed through Susan's mind: "If I refuse to make these happy, why do I live, what am I on the earth for at all?"

It seemed cruel to her to refuse happiness when she could bestow it without making herself two shades more miserable than she was.

Despair and unselfishness are evil counselors in a scheming, selfish world. The life-blood had been drained out of her heart by so many cruel blows, by the long waiting, the misgivings, the deep woe when she believed George dead, the bitter grief and mortification and sense of wrong when she found he was married to another.

Many of us, male and female, treated as Susan imagined herself treated, have taken another lover out of pique. Susan did not so. She was bitterly piqued, but she did not make that use of her pique.

Despair of happiness, pity, and pure unselfishness, these stood John Meadows' friends with this unhappy dupe, and perhaps my male readers will be incredulous as well as shocked when I relate the manner in which at last this young creature, lovely as an angel, in the spring of life, loving another still, and deluding herself to think she hated and despised him, was one afternoon surprised into giving her hand to a man for whom she did not really care a button.

It was as if she had said: "Is it really true your happiness depends on me? then take me—quick—before my courage fails—are you happy now, my poor soul?" On the other side there were the passionate pleadings of a lover; the deep, manly voice broken with supplication, the male eyes glistening, the diabolical mixture of fraud and cunning with sincerity.

At the first symptom of yielding the man seized her as the hawk the dove. He did not wait for a second hint. He poured out gratitude and protestations. He thanked her, and blessed her, and in his manly ardor caught her to his bosom.

She shut her eyes, and submitted to the caress as to an executioner.

"Pray let me go to my father," she whispered.

She came to her father and told him what she had done, and kissed him, and when he kissed her in return, that rare embrace seemed to her her reward.

Meadows went home on wings—he was in a whirlwind of joy and triumph.

"Aha! what will not a strong will do?" He had no fears, no misgivings. He saw she did not really like him even, but he would make her love him! Let him once get her into his house and into his arms, by degrees she should love him; ay, she should adore him! He held that a young and virtuous woman cannot resist the husband who remains a lover, unless he is a fool as well as a lover. She could resist a man, but hardly the hearth, the marriage-bed, the sacred domestic ties, and a man whose love should be always present, always ardent, yet his temper always cool, and his determination to be loved unflinching.

With this conviction, Meadows had committed crimes of the deepest dye to possess Susan. Villain as he was, it may be doubted whether he would have committed these felonies had he doubted for an instant her ultimate happiness. The unconquerable dog said to himself: "The day will come that I will tell her how I have risked my soul for her; how I have played the villain for her; and she shall throw her arms round my neck, and bless me for committing all those crimes to make her so happy against her will."

It remained to clinch the nail.

He came to Grassmere every day; and one night that the old man was telling Susan and him how badly things were going with him, he said, with a cheerful laugh: "I wonder at you, father-in-law, taking on that way. Do you think Susan will let you be uncomfortable for want of a thousand pounds or two?"

Now this remark was slyly made while Susan was at the other end of the room, so that she could hear it, but was not supposed to. He did not look at her for some time, and then her face was scarlet.

The next day he said privately to old Merton: "The day Susan and I go to church together, you must let me take your engagements and do the best I can with them."

"Ah, John, you are a friend! but it will take a pretty deal to set me straight again."

"How much? Two thousand?"

"More, I am afraid, and too much—"

"Too much for me to take out of my pocket for a stranger; but not for my wife's father—not if it was ten times that."

From that hour Meadows had an ally at Grassmere, working heart and soul to hasten the wedding-day.

Meadows longed for this day; for he could not hide from himself that as a lover he made no advances. Susan's heart was like a globe of ice; he could get no hold of it anywhere. He burned with rage when the bitter truth was forced on him, that, with the topic of George Fielding, he had lost those bright, animated looks of affection she used to bestow on him, and now could only command her polite attention, not always that. Once he ventured on a remonstrance—only once.

She answered coldly that she could not feign; indifferent she was to everything on earth, indifferent she always should be. But for that indifference she should never have consented to marry him. Let him pause then, and think what he was doing, or, better still, give up this folly, and not tie an icicle like her to an honest and warm heart like his.

The deep Meadows never ventured on that ground again. He feared she wanted to be off the marriage, and he determined to hurry it on. He pressed her to name the day. She would not.

"Would she let him name it?"

"No."

Her father came to Meadows' assistance. "I'll name it," said he.

"Father! no! no!"

Old Merton then made a pretense of selecting a day. Rejected one day for one reason, another for another, and pitched on a day only six weeks distant.

The next day Meadows bought the license. "I thought you would like that better than being cried in church, Susan." Susan thanked him and said, "Oh, yes."

That evening he had a note from her in which "she humbly asked his pardon, but she could not marry him; he must excuse her. She trusted to his generosity to let the matter drop, and forgive a poor brokenhearted girl who had behaved ill from weakness of judgment, not lightness of heart."

Two days after this, which remained unanswered, her father came to her in great agitation and said to her: "Have you a mind to have a man's death upon your conscience?"

"Father!"

"I have seen John Meadows, and he is going to kill himself. What sort of a letter was that to write to the poor man? Says he, 'It has come on me like a thunder-clap.' I saw a pistol on his table, and he told me he wouldn't give a button to live. You ought to be ashamed of yourself trifling with folks' hearts so."

"I trifle with folks' hearts! Oh! what shall I do!" cried Susan.

"Think of others as well as yourself," replied the old man in a rage. "Think of me."

"Of you, dear father? Does not your Susan think of you?"

"No! what will become of me if the man kills himself? He is all I have to look to, to save me from ruin."

"What, then?" cried Susan, coloring scarlet, "it is not his life you care for, it is his means of being useful to us! Poor Mr. Meadows! He has no friend but me. I will give you a line to him." The line contained these words: "Forgive me."

Half an hour after receipt of it Meadows was at the farm. Susan was going to make some faint apology. He stopped her and said: "I know you like to make folk happy. I have got a job for you. A gentleman, a friend of mine in Cheshire, wants a bailiff. He has written to me. A word from me will do the business. Now is there any one you would like to oblige? The place is worth five hundred a year." Susan was grateful to him for waiving disagreeable topics. She reflected and said: "Ah! but he is no friend of yours."

"What does that matter if he is yours?"

"Will Fielding."

"With all my heart. Only my name must not be mentioned. You are right. He can marry on this. They would both have starved in 'The Grove.'"

Thus he made the benevolent girl taste the sweets of power. "You will be asked to do many a kind action like this when you are Mrs. Meadows." So he bribed father and daughter each after their kind.

The offer came in form from the gentleman to Will Fielding. He and Miss Holiday had already been cried in church. They were married, and went off to Cheshire.

So Meadows got rid of Will Fielding at a crisis. When it suited his strategy he made his enemy's fortune with as little compunction as he would have ruined him. A man of iron! Cold iron, hot iron, whatever iron was wanted.

Mr. and Mrs. Fielding gone off to Cheshire, and Mrs. Holiday after them on a visit of domestic instruction, Meadows publicly announced his approaching marriage with Miss Merton. The coast being clear, he clinched the last nail. From this day there were gusts of repugnance, but not a shadow of resistance on Susan's side. It was to be.

The weather was fine, and every evening this man and woman walked together. The woman envied by all the women; the man by all the men. Yet they walked side by side like the ghosts of lovers. And, since he was her betrothed, one or two iron-gray hairs in the man's head had turned white, and lines deepened in his face. The victim had unwittingly revenged herself.

He had stabbed her heart again and again, and drained it. He had battered this poor heart till it had become more like leather than flesh and blood, and now he wanted to nestle in it and be warmed by it. To kill the affections and revive them at will. No!!!!

She tried to give happiness and to avoid giving pain, but her heart of hearts was inaccessible. The town had capitulated, but the citadel was empty yet impregnable. And there were moments when flashes of hate mingled with the steady flame of this unhappy man's love, and he was tempted to kill her and himself.

But these weaknesses passed like air, the iron purpose stood firm. This day week they were to be married. Meadows counted the days and exulted; he had faith in the magic ring. It was on this Monday evening then they walked arm in arm in the field, and it so happened that Meadows was not speaking of love, but of a scheme for making all the poor people in Grassmere comfortable, especially of keeping the rain out of their roofs and the wind out of what they vulgarly, but not unreasonably, called their windys, and Susan's color was rising and her eyes brightening at this the one interesting side marriage offered—to make people happy near her and round about her, and she cast a look of gratitude upon her companion—a look that, coming from so lovely a face, might very well pass for love. While thus pleasantly employed the pair suddenly encountered a form in a long bristling beard, who peered into their faces with a singular expression of strange and wild curiosity and anxiety, but did not stop; he was making toward Farnborough.

Susan was a little startled. "Who is that?"

"I don't know."

"He looked as if he knew us."

"A traveler, I think, dearest. The folk hereabouts have not got to wear those long beards yet."

"Why did you start when he passed us?"

"Did I start, Susan?"

"Your arm twitched me."

"You must have fancied it," replied Meadows, with a sickly smile; "but, come, Susan, the dew is falling, you had better make toward home."

He saw her safe home, then, instead of waiting to supper as usual, got his horse out and rode to the town full gallop.

"Any one been here for me?"

"Yes! a stranger."

"With a long beard?"

"Why, yes, he had."

"He will come again?"

"In half an hour."

"Show him into my room when he comes, and admit no one else."

Meadows was hardly seated in his study and his candles lighted when the servant ushered in his visitor.

"Shut both the doors, and you can go to bed. I will let Mr. Richards out."

"Well?"

"Well, we have done the trick between us, eh?"

"What made you come home without orders?" asked Meadows, somewhat sternly.

"Why, you know as well as me, sir; you have seen them?"

"Who?"

"George Fielding and his mate."

Meadows started. "How should I see them?"

"Sir! Why, they are come home. They gave me the slip, and got away before me. I followed them. They are here. They must be here." Crawley, not noticing Meadows' face, went on. "Sir, when I found they had slipped out of the camp on horseback, and down to Sydney, and saw them with my own eyes go out of the harbor for England, I thought I should have died on the spot. I thought I should never have the courage to face you, but when I met you arm in arm, her eye smiling on you, I knew it was all right then. When did the event come off?"

"What event?"

"The marriage, sir—you and the lady. She is worth all the trouble she has given us."

"You fool," roared Meadows, "we are not married. The wedding is to be this day week!" Crawley started and gasped, "We are ruined, we are undone!"

"Hold your bawling," cried Meadows, fiercely, "and let me think." He buried his face in his hands; when he removed them, he was gloomy but self-possessed. "They are not in England, Crawley, or we should have seen them. They are on the road. You sailed faster than they; passed them at night, perhaps. They will soon be here. My own heart tells me they will be here before Monday. Well, I will beat them still. I will be married Thursday next." The iron man then turned to Crawley, and sternly demanded how he had let the man slip.

Crawley related all, and as he told his tale the tone of Meadows altered. He no longer doubted the zeal of his hireling. He laid his hand on his brow and more than once he groaned and muttered half-articulate expressions of repugnance. At the conclusion he said moodily: "Crawley, you have served me well—too well! All the women upon earth were not worth a murder, and we have been on the brink of several. You went beyond your instructions."

"No, I did not," replied Crawley; "I have got them in my pocket. I will read them to you. See! there is no discretion allowed me. I was to bribe them to rob."

"Where do I countenance the use of deadly weapons?"

"Where is there a word against deadly weapons?" asked Crawley, sharply. "Be just to me, sir," he added in a more whining tone. "You know you are a man that must and will be obeyed. You sent me to Australia to do a certain thing, and you would have flung me to perdition if I had stuck at anything to do it. Well, sir, I tried skill without force—look here," and he placed a small substance like white sugar on the table.

"What is that?"

"Put that in a man's glass he will never taste it, and in half an hour he will sleep you might take the clothes off his back. Three of us watched months and months for a chance, but it was no go; those two were teetotal or next door it."

"I wish I had never sent you out."

"Why," replied Crawley, "there is no harm done, no blood has been spilled except on our own side. George Fielding is coming home all right. Give him up the lady, and he will never know you were his enemy."

"What!" cried Meadows, "wade through all these crimes for nothing? Lie and feign, and intercept letters, and rob and all but assassinate—-and fail? Wade in crime up to my middle, and then wade back again without the prize! Do you see this pistol? it has two barrels; if she and I are ever parted it shall be this way—I'll send her to heaven with one barrel, and myself to hell with the other."

There was a dead silence! Crawley returned to their old relation, and was cowed by the natural ascendency of the greater spirit.

"You need not look like a girl at me," said Meadows, "most likely it won't come to that. It is not easy to beat me, and I shall try every move man's wit can devise—this last," said he, in a voice of iron, touching the pistol as it lay on the table.

There was another pause. Then Meadows rose and said calmly: "You look tired, you shall have a bottle of my old port; and my own heart is staggered, but it is only for a moment." He struck his hand upon his breast, and walked slowly from the room. And Crawley heard his step descend to the hall, and then to the cellar; and the indomitable character of the man rang in his solid tread.

Crawley was uneasy. "Mr. Meadows is getting wildish; it frightens me to see such a man as him burst out like that. He is not to be trusted with a loaded pistol. Ah! and I am in his secrets, deep in his secrets; great men sweep away little folk that know too much. I never saw him with a pistol before." All this passing rapidly through his head, Crawley pounced on the pistol, took off the caps, whipped out a little bottle, and poured some strong stuff into the caps that loosened the detonating powder directly; then with a steel pen he picked it all out and replaced the caps, their virtue gone, before Mr. Meadows returned with two bottles; and the confederates sat in close conclave till the gray of morning broke into the room.

The great man gave but few orders to his subordinate, for this simple reason, that the game had fallen into his own hands.

Still there was something for Crawley to do. He was to have an officer watching to arrest Will Fielding on the old judgment should he, which was hardly to be expected, come to kick up a row and interrupt the wedding. And to-morrow he was to take out a writ against his "father-in-law." Mr. Meadows played a close game. He knew that things are not to be got when they are wanted. His plan was to have everything ready that might be wanted long before it was wanted.

But most of the night passed in relation of what had already taken place, and Crawley was the chief speaker, and magnified his services. He related from his own point of view all that I have told, and Meadows listened with all his soul and intelligence.

At the attack on Mr. Levi, Meadows chuckled. "The old heathen," said he, contemptuously, "I have beat him anyway."

"By the way, sir, have you seen anything of him?" asked Crawley.

"No."

"He is not come home, then."

"Not that I know of; have you any reason to think he has?"

"No, only he left the mine directly after they pelted him; but he would not leave the country any the more for that, and money to be made in it by handfuls."

"Now, Crawley, go and get some sleep. A cold bath for me and then on horseback. I must breakfast at Grassmere."

"Great man, sir! great man! You will beat them yet, sir. You have beat Mr. Levi. Here we are in his house; and he driven away to lay his sly old bones at the Antipodes. Ha! ha! ha!"

The sun came in at the window, and the long conference broke up, and, strange to say, it broke into three. Crawley home to sleep. Meadows to Grassmere. Isaac Levi to smoke an Eastern pipe, and so meditate with more tranquil pulse how to strike with deadliest effect these two, his insolent enemies.

Siste viator—and guess that riddle.



CHAPTER LXXXI.

ISAAC LEVI, rescued by George Fielding, reached his tent smarting with pain and bitter insult; he sat on the floor pale and dusty, and anathematized his adversaries in the Hebrew tongue. Wrath still boiling in his heart, he drew out his letters and read them. Then grief mingled with his anger. Old Cohen, his friend and agent and coeval, was dead. Another self dead.

Besides the hint that this gave him to set his house in order, a distinct consideration drew Isaac now to England. He had trusted much larger interests to old Cohen than he was at all disposed to leave in the hands of Cohen's successors, men of another generation, "progeniem vitiosiorem," he sincerely believed.

Another letter gave him some information about Meadows that added another uneasiness to those he already felt on George's account. Hence his bitter disappointment when he found George gone from the mine, the date of his return uncertain. Hence, too, the purchase of Moore's horses, and the imploring letter to George—measures that proved invaluable to that young man, whose primitive simplicity and wise humility led him not to question the advice of his elder, but obey it.

And so it was that, although the old Jew sailed home upon his own interests, yet during the voyage George Fielding's assumed a great importance, direct and incidental. Direct, because the old man was warm with gratitude to him; indirect, because he boiled over with hate of George's most dangerous enemy. And, as he neared the English coast, the thought that though he was coming to Farnborough he could not come home, grew bitterer and bitterer, and then that he should find his enemy and his insulter in the very house sacred by the shadows of the beloved and dead!!

Finding in Nathan a youth of no common fidelity and shrewdness, Isaac confided in him; and Nathan, proud beyond description of the confidence bestowed on him by one so honored in his tribe, enlisted in his cause with all the ardor of youth tempered by Jewish address.

Often they sat together on the deck, and the young Jewish brain and the old Jewish brain mingled and digested a course of conduct to meet every imaginable contingency; for the facts they at present possessed were only general and vague.

The first result of all this was that these two crept into the town of Farnborough at three o'clock one morning; that Isaac took out a key and unlocked the house that stood next to Meadows' on the left hand; that Isaac took secret possession of the first floor, and Nathan open but not ostentatious possession of the ground-floor, with a tale skillfully concocted to excite no suspicion whatever that Isaac was in any way connected with his presence in the town. Nathan, it is to be observed, had never been in Farnborough before.

The next morning they worked. Nathan went out, locking the door after him, to execute two commissions. He was to find out what the young Cohens were doing, and how far they were likely to prove worthy of the trust reposed in their father; and what Susan Merton was doing, and whether Meadows was courting her or not. The latter part of Nathan's task was terribly easy.

The young man came home late at night, locked the door, made a concerted signal, and was admitted to the senior presence. He found him smoking his Eastern pipe. Nathan with dejected air told him that he had good news; that the Cohens not only thought themselves wiser than their father, which was permissible, but openly declared it, which he, though young, had observed to be a trait confined to very great fools.

"It is well said, my son," quoth Isaac, smoking calmly, "and the other business?"

"Oh, master!" said Nathan, "I bring still worse tidings of her. She is a true Nazarite, a creature without faith. She is betrothed to the man you hate, and whom I, for your sake, hate even to death."

They spoke in an Eastern dialect, which I am paraphrasing here and translating there, according to the measure of my humble abilities. Isaac sucked his pipe very fast; this news was a double blow to his feelings. "If she be indeed a Nazarite without faith, let her go; but judge not the simple hastily. First, let me know how far woman's frailty is to blame; how far man's guile—for not for nothing was Crawley sent out to the mine by Meadows. Let me consider;" and he smoked calmly again.

After a long silence, which Nathan was too respectful to break, the old man gave him his commission for to-morrow. He was to try and discover why Susan Merton had written no letters for many months to George; and why she had betrothed herself to the foe. "But reveal nothing in return," said Isaac, "neither ask more than three questions of any one person, lest they say, 'Who is this that being a Jew asks many questions about a Nazarite maiden, and why asks he them?'"

At night Nathan returned full of intelligence. She loved the young man Fielding. She wrote letters to him and received letters from him, until gold was found in Australia. But after this he wrote to her no more letters, wherefore her heart was troubled.

"Ah! and did she write to him?"

"Yes! but received no answer, nor any letter for many months."

"Ah!"(puff!) (puff!)

"Then came a rumor that he was dead, and she mourned for him after the manner of her people many days. Verily, master, I am vexed for the Nazarite maiden, for her tale is sad. Then came a letter from Australia, that said he is not dead, but married to a stranger. Then the maiden said: 'Behold now this twelve months he writes not to me, this then is true'; and she bowed her head, and the color left her cheek. Then this Meadows visited her, and consoled her day by day. And there are those who confidently affirm that her father said often to her, 'Behold now I am a man stricken in years, and the man Meadows is rich'; so the maiden gave her hand to the man, but whether to please the old man her father, or out of the folly and weakness of females, thou, O Isaac, son of Shadrach, shalt determine; seeing that I am young, and little versed in the ways of women, knowing this only by universal report, that they are fair to the eye but often bitter to the taste."

"Aha!" cried Isaac, "but I am old, O Nathan, son of Eli, and with the thorns of old age comes one good fruit, 'experience.' No letters came to him, yet she wrote many. None came to her, yet he wrote many. All this is transparent as glass—here has been fraud as well as guile."

Nathan's eye sparkled. "What is the fraud, master?"

"Nay, that I know not, but I will know!"

"But how, master?"

"By help of thine ears, or my own!"

Nathan looked puzzled. So long as Mr. Levi shut himself up a close prisoner on the first floor what could he hear for himself?

Isaac read the look and smiled. He then rose, and, putting his finger to his lips, led the way to his own apartments. At the staircase-door, which even Nathan had not yet passed, he bade the young man take off his shoes; he himself was in slippers. He took Nathan into a room, the floor of which was entirely covered with mattresses. A staircase, the steps of which were covered with horsehair, went by a tolerably easy slope and spiral movement nearly up to the cornice. Of this cornice a portion about a foot square swung back on a well-oiled hinge, and Isaac drew out from the wall with the utmost caution a piece of gutta-percha piping, to this he screwed on another piece open at the end, and applied it to his ear.

Nathan comprehended it all in a moment. His master could overhear every word uttered in Meadows' study. Levi explained to him that ere he left his old house he had put a new cornice in the room he thought Meadows would sit in, a cornice so deeply ornamented that no one could see the ear he left in it, and had taken out bricks in the wall of the adjoining house and made the other arrangements they were inspecting together. Mr. Levi further explained that his object was simply to overhear and counteract every scheme Meadows should form. He added that he never intended to leave Farnborough for long. His intention had been to establish certain relations in that country, buy some land, and return immediately; but the gold discovery had detained him.

"But, master," said Nathan, "suppose the man had taken his business to the other side of his house?"

"Foolish youth," replied Isaac, "am I not on both sides of him!!"

"Ah! What, is there another on the other?" Isaac nodded.

Thus, while Nathan was collecting facts, Isaac had been watching, "patient as a cat, keen as a lynx," at his ear-hole, and heard—nothing.

Now the next day Nathan came in hastily long before the usual hour. "Master, another enemy is come—the man Crawley! I saw him from the window; he saw not me. What shall I do?"

"Keep the house all day. I would not have him see you. He would say, 'Aha! the old Jew is here, too.'" Nathan's countenance fell. He was a prisoner now as well as his master.

The next morning, rising early to prepare their food, he was surprised to find the old man smoking his pipe down below.

"All is well, my son. My turn has come. I have had great patience, and great is the reward." He then told him with natural exultation the long conference he had been secretly present at between Crawley and Meadows—a conference in which the enemy had laid bare, not his guilt only, but the secret crevice in his coat of mail. "She loves him not!" cried Levi, with exultation. "She is his dupe! With a word I can separate them and confound him utterly."

"Oh, master!" cried the youth eagerly, "speak that word to-day, and let me be there and hear it spoken if I have favor in your eyes."

"Speak it to-day!" cried Levi, with a look of intense surprise at Nathan's simplicity. "Go to, foolish youth!" said he; "what, after I have waited months and months for vengeance, would you have me fritter it away for want of waiting a day or two longer? No, I will strike, not the empty cup from his hand, but the full cup from his lips. Aha! you have seen the Jew insulted and despised in many lands; have patience now and you shall see how he can give blow for blow; ay! old, and feeble, and without a weapon, can strike his adversary to the heart."

Nathan's black eye flashed. "You are the master, I the scholar," said he. "All I ask is to be permitted to share the watching for your enemy's words, since I may not go abroad while it is day."

Thus the old and young lynx lay in ambush all day. And at night the young lynx prowled, but warily, lest Crawley should see him; and every night brought home some scrap of intelligence.

To change the metaphor, it was as though while the Western spider wove his artful web round the innocent fly, the Oriental spider wove another web round him, the threads of which were so subtle as to be altogether invisible. Both East and West leaned with sublime faith on their respective gossamers. nor remembered that "Dieu dispose."



CHAPTER LXXXII.

MEADOWS rode to Grassmere, to try and prevail with Susan to be married on Thursday next, instead of Monday. As he rode he revolved every argument he could think of to gain her compliance. He felt sure she was more inclined to postpone the day than to advance it, but something told him his fate hung on this: "These two men will come home on Monday. I am sure of it. Ay, Monday morning, before we can wed. I will not throw a chance away; the game is too close." Then he remembered with dismay that Susan had been irritable and snappish just before parting yester eve—a trait she had never exhibited to him before. When he arrived, his heart almost failed him, but after some little circumlocution and excuse he revealed the favor, the great favor, he was come to ask. He asked it. She granted it without the shade of a demur. He was no less surprised than delighted, but the truth is that very irritation and snappishness of yesterday was the cause of her consenting; her conscience told her she had been unkind, and he had been too wise to snap in return. So now he benefited by the reaction and little bit of self-reproach. For do but abstain from reproaching a good girl who has been unjust or unkind to you, and ten to one if she does not make you the amemde by word or deed—most likely the latter, for so she can soothe her tender conscience without grazing her equally sensitive pride. Poor Susan little knew the importance of the concession she made so easily.

Meadows galloped home triumphant. But two whole days now between him and his bliss! And that day passed and Tuesday passed. The man lived three days and nights in a state of tension that would have killed some of us or driven us mad; but his intrepid spirit rode the billows of hope and fear like a petrel. And the day before the wedding it did seem as if his adverse fate got suddenly alarmed and made a desperate effort and hurled against him every assailant that could be found. In the morning came his mother, and implored him ere it was too late to give up this marriage. "I have kept silence, yea even from good words," said the aged woman; "but at last I must speak. John, she does not love you. I am a woman and can read a woman's heart; and you fancied her long before George Fielding was false to her, if false he ever was, John."

The old woman said the whole of this last sentence with so much meaning that her son was stung to rage, and interrupted her fiercely: "I looked to find all the world against me, but not my own mother. No matter, so be it; the whole world shan't turn me, and those I don't care to fight I'll fly."

And he turned savagely on his heel and left the old woman there shocked and terrified by his vehemence. She did not stay there long. Soon the scarlet cloak and black bonnet might have been seen wending their way slowly back to the little cottage, the poor old tidy bonnet drooping lower than it was wont. Meadows came back to dinner; he had a mutton-chop in his study, for it was a busy day. While thus employed there came almost bursting into the room a man struck with remorse—Jefferies, the recreant postmaster.

"Mr. Meadows, I can carry on this game no longer, and I won't for any man living!" He then in a wild, loud, and excited way went on to say how the poor girl had come a hundred times for a letter, and looked in his face so wistfully, and once she had said: "Oh, Mr. Jefferies, do have a letter for me!" and how he saw her pale face in his dreams, and little he thought when he became Meadows' tool the length the game was to be carried.

Meadows heard him out; then simply reminded him of his theft, and assured him with an oath that if he dared to confess his villainy—

"My villainy?" shrieked the astonished postmaster.

"Whose else? You have intercepted letters—not I. You have abused the public confidence—not I. So if you are such a fool and sneak as to cut your throat by peaching on yourself, I'll cry louder than you, and I'll show you have emptied letters as well as stopped them. Go home to your wife, and keep quiet, or I'll smash both you and her."

"Oh, I know you are without mercy, and I dare not open my heart while I live; but I will beat you yet, you cruel monster. I will leave a note for Miss Merton, confessing all, and blow out my brains to-night in the office."

The man's manner was wild and despairing. Meadows eyed him sternly. He said with affected coolness: "Jefferies, you are not game to take your own life."

"Ain't I?" was the reply.

"At least I think not."

"To-night will show."

"I must know that before night," cried Meadows, and with the word he sprang on Jefferies and seized him in a grasp of iron, and put a pistol to his head.

"Ah! no! Mr. Meadows. Mercy! mercy!" shrieked the man, in an agony of fear.

"All right," said Meadows, coolly putting up the pistol. "You half imposed on me, and that is something for you to brag of. You won't kill yourself, Jefferies; you are not the stuff. Give over shaking like an aspen, and look and listen. You are in debt. I've bought up two drafts of yours—here they are. Come to me to-morrow, after the wedding, and I will give you them to light your pipe with."

"Oh, Mr. Meadows, that would be one load off my mind."

"You are short of cash, too; come to me—after the wedding, and I'll give you fifty pounds cash."

"You are very liberal, sir. I wish it was in a better cause."

"Now go home, and don't be a sneak and a fool—till after the wedding, or I will sell the bed from under your wife's back, and send you to the stone-jug. Be off."

Jefferies crept away, paralyzed in heart, and Meadows, standing up, called out in a rage: "Are there any more of you that hope to turn John Meadows? then come on, come a thousand strong, with the devil at your back—and then I'll beat you!" And for a moment the respectable man was almost grand; a man-rock standing braving earth and heaven.

"Hist! Mr. Meadows." He turned, and there was Crawley. "A word, sir. Will Fielding is in the town, in such a passion."

"Come to stop the wedding?"

"He was taking a glass of ale at the 'Toad and Pickax,' and you might hear him all over the yard."

"What is he going to do?"

"Sir, he has bought an uncommon heavy whip; he was showing it in the yard. 'This is for John Meadows' back,' said he, 'and I will give it him before the girl he has stolen from my brother. If she takes a dog instead of a man, it shall be a beaten dog,' says he."

Meadows rang the bell. "Harness the mare to the four-wheeled chaise. You know what to do, Crawley."

"Well, I can guess."

"But first get him told that I am always at Grassmere at six o'clock."

"But you won't go there this evening, of course."

"Why not?"

"Aren't you afraid he—"

"Afraid of Will Fielding? Why, you have never looked at me. I do notice your eyes are always on the ground. Crawley, when I was eighteen, one evening (it was harvest home, and all the folk had drunk their wit and manners out) I found a farmer's wife in a lane, hemmed in by three great ignorant brutes that were for kissing her, or some nonsense, and she crying help and murder and ready to faint with fright. It was a decent woman, and a neighbor, so I interfered as thus: I knocked the first fellow senseless on his back with a blow before they knew of me, and then the three were two. I fought the two, giving and taking for full ten minutes, and then I got a chance and one went down. I put my foot on his neck and kept him down for all he could do, and over his body I fought the best man of the lot, and thrashed him so that his whole mug was like a ball of beetroot. When he was quite sick he ran one way, and t'other got up roaring and ran another, and they had to send a hurdle for No. 1. Dame Fielding gave me of her own accord what all the row was about, and more than one, and hearty ones, too, I assure you, and had me in to supper, and told her man, and he shook my hand a good one."

"Why, sir, you don't mean to say the woman you fought for was Mrs. Fielding."

"But I tell you it was, and I had those two boys on my knee, two chubby toads, pulling at my curly hair—! why do I talk of these things? Oh, I remember, it was to show you I am not a man that can be bullied. I am a much better man than I was at eighteen. I won't be married in a black eye if I can help it. But, when I am once married, here I stand against all comers, and if you hear them grumble or threaten you, tell them that any Sunday afternoon, when there is nothing better to be done, I'll throw my cap into the ring and fight all the Fieldings that ever were pupped, one down another come on." Then turning quite cool and contemptuous all in a moment, he said, "These are words, and we have work on hand;" and, even as he spoke, he strode from the room pattered after by Crawley.

At six o'clock Meadows and Susan were walking arm in arm in the garden. Presently they saw a man advancing toward them, with his right hand behind him. "Why, it is Will Fielding," cried Susan, "come to thank you."

"I think not, by the look of him," replied Meadows, coolly.

"Susan, will you be so good as to take your hand from that man's arm. I have got a word to say to him."

Susan did more than requested, seeing at once that mischief was coming. She clung to William's right arm, and while he ground his teeth with ineffectual rage, for she was strong, as her sex are strong, for half a minute, and to throw her off he must have been much rougher with her than he chose to be, three men came behind unobserved by all but Meadows, and captured him on the old judgment. And, Crawley having represented him as a violent man, they literally laid the grasp of the law on him.

"But I have got the money to pay it," remonstrated William.

"Pay it, then."

"But my money is at home, give me two days. I'll write to my wife and she will send it me." The officers, with a coarse laugh, told him he must come with them meantime.

Meadows whispered Susan: "I'll pay it for him to-morrow."

They took off William Fielding in Meadows' four-wheeled chaise.

"Where are they taking him, John?"

"To the county jail."

"Oh, don't let them take him there. Can you not trust him?"

"Yes."

"Then why not pay for him?"

"But I don't carry money in my pocket, and the bank is closed."

"How unfortunate!"

"Very! but I'll send it over to-morrow early, and we will have him out."

"Oh, yes, poor fellow! the very first thing in the morning."

"Yes! the first thing—after we are married."

Soon after this Meadows bade Susan affectionately farewell, and rode off to Newborough to buy his gloves and some presents for his bride. On the road he overtook William Fielding going to jail, leaned over his saddle as he cantered by, and said, "Mrs. Meadows will send the money in to free you in the morning," then on again as cool as a cucumber and cantered into the town before sunset, put up black Rachel at the King's Head, made his purchases, and back to the inn. As he sat in the bar-parlor drinking a glass of ale and chatting with the landlady, two travelers came into the passage. They did not stop in it long, for one of them knew the house and led his companion into the coffee-room. But in that moment, by a flash of recognition, spite of their bronzed color and long beards, Meadows had seen who they were—George Fielding and Thomas Robinson.

Words could not paint in many pages what Meadows passed through in a few seconds. His very body was one moment cold as ice, the next burning.

The coffee-room door was open—he dragged himself into the passage, though each foot in turn seemed glued to the ground, and listened. He came back and sat down in the bar.

"Are they going to stay?" said the mistress to the waiter.

"Yes, to be called at five o'clock."

The bell rang. The waiter went and immediately returned. "Hot with," demanded the waiter, in a sharp, mechanical tone.

"Here, take my keys for the lump sugar," said the landlady, and she poured first the brandy and then the hot water into a tumbler, then went upstairs to see about the travelers' beds.

Meadows was left alone a few moments with the liquor. A sudden flash came to Meadows' eye, he put his hand hastily to his waistcoat-pocket, and then his eye brightened still more. Yes, it was there, he thought he had had the curiosity to keep it by him. He drew out the white lump Crawley had left on his table that night, and flung it into the glass just as the waiter returned with the sugar.

The waiter took the brandy and water into the coffee-room. Meadows sat still as a mouse, his brain boiling and bubbling—awestruck at what he had done, yet meditating worse.

The next time the waiter came in, "Waiter," said he, "one glass among two, that is short allowance."

"Oh! the big one is teetotal," replied the waiter.

"Mrs. White," said Meadows, "if you have got a bed for me I'll sleep here, for my nag is tired and the night is darkish."

"Always a bed for you, Mr. Meadows," was the gracious reply.

Soon the two friends rang for bed-candles. Robinson staggered with drowsiness. Meadows eyed them from behind a newspaper.

Half an hour later Mr. Meadows went to bed, too—but not to sleep.



CHAPTER LXXXIII.

AT seven o'clock in the morning Crawley was at Meadows' house by appointment. To his great surprise the servant told him master had not slept at home. While he was talking to her Meadows galloped up to the door, jumped off, and almost pulled Crawley upstairs with him. "Lock the door, Crawley." Crawley obeyed, but with some reluctance, for Meadows, the iron Meadows, was ghastly and shaken as he had never been shaken before. He sank into a chair. "Perdition seize the hour I first saw her!" As for Crawley, he was paralyzed by the terrible agitation of a spirit so much greater than his own.

"Crawley," said Meadows, with a sudden unnatural calm, "when the devil buys a soul for money how much does he give? a good lump, I hear. He values our souls high—we don't, some of us."

"Mr. Meadows, sir!"

"Now count those," yelled Meadows, bursting out again, and he flung a roll of notes furiously on the ground at Crawley's feet, "count and tell me what my soul has gone for. Oh! oh!"

Crawley seized them and counted them as fast as his trembling fingers would let him. So now an eye all remorse, and another eye all greed, were bent upon the same thing.

"Why, they are all hundred-pound notes, bright as silver from the Bank of England. Oh, dear! how new and crimp they are—where do they come from, sir?"

"From Australia."

"Ah! Oh, impossible! No! nothing is impossible to such a man as you. Twenty."

"They are at Newborough—slept at 'King's Head,'" whispered Meadows.

"Good Heavens! think of that. Thirty—"

"So did I."

"Ah! forty—four thousand pounds."

"The lump of stuff you left here hocussed one—it was a toss-up—luck was on my side—that one carried them—slept like death—long while hunting—found them under his pillow at last."

"Well done! and we fools were always beat at it. Sixty—one—two—five—seven. Seven thousand pounds."

"Seven thousand pounds! Who would have thought it? This is a dear job to me."

"Say a dear job to them and a glorious haul to you; but you deserve it all, ah!"

"Why, you fool," cried Meadows, "do you think I am going to keep the men's money?"

"Keep it? why, of course!"

"What! am I a thief? I, John Meadows, that never wronged a man of a penny? I take his sweetheart, I can't live without her; but I can live without his money. I have crimes enough on my head, but not theft, there I say halt."

"Then why in the name of Heaven did you take them at such a risk?" Crawley put this question roughly, for he was losing his respect for his idol.

"You are as blind as a mole, Crawley," was the disdainful answer. "Don't you see that I have made George Fielding penniless, and that now old Merton won't let him have his daughter? Why should he? He said, 'If you come back with one thousand pounds.' And don't you see that, when the writ is served on old Merton, he will be as strong as fire for me and against him. He can't marry her at all now. I shall soon or late, and the day I marry Susan that same afternoon seven thousand pounds will be put in George Fielding's hand, he won't know by whom, but you and I shall know. I am a sinner, but not a villain."

Crawley gave a dissatisfied grunt. Meadows struck a lucifer match and lighted a candle. He placed the candle in the grate—it was warm weather. "Come, now," said he coolly, "burn them; then they will tell no tales."

Crawley gave a shriek like a mother whose child is falling out of window, and threw himself on his knees, with the notes in his hand behind his back. "No! no! sir! Oh, don't think of it. Talk of crime, what are all the sins we have done together compared with this? You would not burn a wheat-rick, no, not your greatest enemy's; I know you would not, you, are too good a man. This is as bad; the good money that the bountiful Heaven has given us for—for the good of man."

"Come," said Meadows sternly, "no more of this folly," and he laid his iron grasp on Crawley.

"Mercy! mercy! think of me—of your faithful servant, who has risked his life and stuck at nothing for you. How ungrateful great men are!"

"Ungrateful! Crawley! Can you look me in the face and say that?"

"Never till now, but now I can;" and Crawley rose to his feet and faced the great man. The prize he was fighting for gave him supernatural courage. "To whom do you owe them? To me. You could never have had them but for my drug. And yet you would burn them before my eyes. A fortune to poor me."

"To you?"

"Yes! What does it matter to you what becomes of them so that he never sees them again? but it matters all to me. Give them to me and in twelve hours I will be in France with them. You won't miss me, sir. I have done my work. And it will be more prudent, for since I have left you I can't help drinking, and I might talk, you know, sir, I might, and let out what we should both be sorry for. Send me away to foreign countries where I can keep traveling, and make it always summer. I hate the long nights when it is dark. I see such cu-u-rious things. Pray! pray let me go and take these with me, and never trouble you again."

The words, though half nonsense, were the other half cunning, and the tones and looks were piteous. Meadows hesitated. Crawley knew too much; to get rid of him was a bait; and after all to annihilate the thing he had been all his life accumulating went against his heart. He rang the bell. "Hide the notes, Crawley. Bring me two shirts, a razor, and a comb. Crawley, these are the terms. That you don't go near that woman—" Crawley, with a brutal phrase, expressed his delight at the idea of getting rid of her forever. "That you go at once to the railway. Station opens to-day. First train starts in an hour. Up to London, over to France this evening."

"I will, sir. Hurrah! hurrah!" Then Crawley burst into protestations of gratitude which Meadows cut short. He rang for breakfast, fed his accomplice, gave him a great-coat for his journey, and took the precaution of going with him to the station. There he shook hands with him and returned to the principal street and entered the bank.

Crawley kept faith, he hugged his treasure to his bosom and sat down waiting for the train. "Luck is on our side," thought he; "if this had been open yesterday those two would have come on from Newborough."

He watched the preparations, they were decorating the locomotive with bouquets and branches. They did not start punctually, some soi-disant great people had not arrived. "I will have a dram," thought Crawley; he went and had three. Then he came back and as he was standing inspecting the carriages a hand was laid on his shoulder. He looked round, it was Mr. Wood, a functionary with whom he had often done business.

"Ah, Wood! how d'ye do? Going to make the first trip?"

"No, sir! I have business detains me in town."

"What! a capias, eh?" chuckled Crawley.

"Something of the sort. There is a friend of yours hard by wants to speak a word to you."

"Come along, then. Where is he?"

"This way, sir."

Crawley followed Wood to the waiting-room, and there on a bench sat Isaac Levi. Crawley stopped dead short and would have drawn back, but Levi beckoned to a seat near him. Crawley came walking like an automaton from whose joints the oil had suddenly dried. With infinite repugnance he took the seat, not liking to refuse before several persons who saw the invitation. Mr. Wood sat on the other side of him. "What does it all mean?" thought Crawley, but his cue was to seem indifferent or flattered.

"You have shaved your beard, Mr. Crawley," said Isaac, in a low tone.

"My beard! I never had one," replied Crawley, in the same key.

"Yes, you had when last I saw you—in the gold mine; you set ruffians to abuse me, sir."

"Don't you believe that, Mr. Levi."

"I saw it and felt it."

The peculiarity of this situation was, that, the room being full of people, both parties wished, each for his own reason, not to excite general attention, and therefore delivered scarce above a whisper the sort of matter that is generally uttered very loud and excitedly.

"It is my turn now," whispered Levi; "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."

"You must look sharp then," whispered Crawley; "to-morrow perhaps you may not have the chance."

"I never postpone vengeance—when it is ripe."

"Don't you, sir? dear me."

"You have seven thousand pounds about you, Mr. Crawley."

Crawley started and trembled. "Stolen!" whispered Isaac in his very ear. "Give it up to the officer."

Crawley rose instinctively. A firm hand was laid on each of his arms; he sat down again. "What—what—-ever money I have is trusted to me by the wealthiest and most respectable man in the cou—nty, and—"

"Stolen by him, received by you! Give it to Wood, unless you prefer a public search."

"You can't search me without a warrant."

"Here is a warrant from the mayor. Take the notes out of your left breast and give them to the officer, or we must do it by force and publicity."

"I won't without Mr. Meadows' authority. Send for Mr. Meadows if you dare." Isaac reflected. "Well! we will take you to Mr. Meadows. Keep the money till you see him, but we must secure you. Put his coat over his hands first." The great-coat was put over his hands, and the next moment under the coat was heard a little sharp click.

"Let us go to the carriage," said Levi, in a brisk, cheerful tone.

Those present heard the friendly invitation and saw a little string of acquaintances, three in number, break up a conversation and go and get into a fly; one carried a great-coat and bundle before him with both hands.



CHAPTER LXXXIV.

MR. MEADOWS went to the bank—into the parlor—and said he must draw seven thousand pounds of cash and securities. The partners look blank.

"I know," said Meadows, "I should cripple you. Well, I am not going to, nor let any one else—it would not suit my book. Just hand me the securities and let me make over that sum to George Fielding and Thomas Robinson. There! now for some months to come those two men are not to know how rich they are, in fact not till I tell them." A very ready consent to this was given by both partners; I am afraid I might say an eager consent.

"There! now I feel another man, that is off me anyway," and Meadows strode home double the man. Soon his new top-boots were on, and his new dark blue coat with flat double-gilt buttons, and his hat broadish in the brim, and he looked the model of a British yeoman; he reached Grassmere before eleven o'clock. It was to be a very quiet wedding, but the bridesmaids, etc., were there, and Susan all in white, pale but very lovely. Father-in-law cracking jokes, Susan writhing under them.

"Now, then, is it to be a wedding without bells, for I hear none?"

"That it shall not," cried one of the young men; and off they ran to the church.

Meantime Meadows was the life and soul of the mirthful scene. He was in a violent excitement that passed with the rustics for gayety natural to the occasion. They did not notice his anxious glances up the hill that led to Newborough; his eager and repeated looks at his watch, the sigh of relief when the church-bells pealed out, the tremors of impatience, the struggle to appear cool as he sent one to hurry the clerk, another to tell the clergyman the bride was ready; the stamp of the foot when one of the bridesmaids took ten minutes to tie on a bonnet. He walked arm in arm, with Susan waiting for this girl; at last she was ready. Then came one running to say that the parson was not come home yet. What it cost him not to swear at the parson with Susan on his arm and the church in sight!

While he was thus fuming inwardly, a handsome, dark-eyed youth came up and inquired which was the bride. She was pointed out to him. "A letter for you, Miss Merton."

"For me? Who from?"

She glanced at the handwriting, and Meadows looked keenly in the boy's face. "A Jew," said he to himself. "Susan, you have got your gloves on." And in a moment he took the letter from her, but quietly, and opened it as if to return it to her to read. He glanced down it, saw "Jefferies, postmaster," and at the bottom "Isaac Levi." With wonderful presence of mind he tore it in pieces. "An insult, Susan," he cried. "A mean, malignant insult to set you against me—a wife against her husband."

Ere the words were out of his mouth he seized the young Jew and whirled him like a feather into the hands of his friends. "Duck him!" cried he. And in a moment, spite of his remonstrances and attempts at explanation, Nathan was flung into the horse-pond. He struggled out on the other side, and stood on the bank in a stupor of rage and terror, while the bridegroom menaced him with another dose, should he venture to return. "I will tell you all about it to-morrow, Susan."

"Calm yourself," replied Susan. "I know you have enemies, but why punish a messenger for the letter he only carries?"

"You are an angel, Susan. Boys, let him alone, do you hear?" N. B. He had been ducked.

And now a loud hurrah was heard from behind the church. "The parson, at last," cried Meadows, exultingly. Susan lowered her eyes, and hated herself for the shiver that passed through her. To her the parson was the executioner.

It was not the parson. The next moment two figures came round in sight. Meadows turned away with a groan. "George Fielding!" said he. The words dropped, as it were, out of his mouth.

Susan misunderstood this. She thought he read her heart, and ascribed her repugnance to her lingering attachment to George. She was angry with herself for letting this worthy man see her want of pride. "Why do you mention that name to me? What do I care for him who has deceived me? I wish he stood at the church door, that he might see how I would look at him and pass him leaning on your faithful arm."

"Susan!" cried a well-known voice behind her. She trembled and almost crouched ere she turned; but the moment she turned round she gave a scream that brought all the company running, and the bride forgot everything at the sight of George's handsome, honest face beaming truth and love, and threw herself into his arms. George kissed the bride.

"Oh!" cried the bridesmaids, awaking from their stupor, and remembering this was her old lover. "Oh!" "Oh!!" "Oh!!!" on an ascending scale.

These exclamations brought Susan to her senses. She sprang from George as though an adder had stung her; and, red as fire, her eyes like basilisks', she turned on him at a safe distance. "How dare you embrace me? How dare you come where I am? Father, ask this man why he comes here now to make me expose myself, and insult the honest man who honors me with his respect. Oh, father, come to me, and take me away from here."

"Susan, what on earth is this? what have I done?"

"What have you done? You are false to me! you never wrote me a letter for twelve months, and you are married to a lady in Bathurst! Oh, George!"

"If he is," cried Robinson, "he must be slyer than I give him credit for, for I have never left his side night nor day, and I never saw him say three civil words to a woman."

"Mr. Robinson!"

"Yes, Mr. Robinson. Somebody has been making a fool of you, Miss Merton. Why, all his cry night and day has been, 'Susan! Susan!' When we found the great nugget he kisses it, and says he, 'There, that is not because you are gold, but because you take me to Susan.'"

"Hold your tongue, Tom," said George, sternly. "Who puts me on my defense? Is there any man here who has been telling her I have ever had a thought of any girl but her? If there is, let him stand out now and say it to my face if he dares." There was a dead silence. "There is a lie without a backer, it seems;" and he looked round on all the company with his calm superior eye. "And now, Susan, what were you doing on that man's arm?"

"Oh!"

"Miss Merton and I are to be married to-day," said Meadows, "that is why I gave her my arm."

George gasped for breath, but he controlled himself by a mighty effort. "She thought me false, and now she knows I am true. Susan," faltered he, "I say nothing about the promises that have passed between us two, and the ring you gave. Here it is."

"He has kept my ring!"

"I was there before you, Mr. Meadows—but I won't stand upon that; I don't believe there is a man in the world loves a woman in the world better than I love Susan; but still I would not give a snap of the finger to have her if her will was toward another. So please yourself, my lass, and don't cry like that; only this must end. I won't live in doubt a moment, no, nor half a moment. Speak your pleasure and nothing else; choose between John Meadows and George Fielding."

"That is fair," cried one of the bridegrooms. The women secretly admired George. This is a man, thought they—won't stand our nonsense.

Susan looked up in mute astonishment. "What choice can there be? The moment I saw your face, and truth still shining in it, I forgot there was a John Meadows in the world!"

With these words Susan cast a terrified look all round, and, losing every other feeling in a paroxysm of shame, hid her burning face in her hands, and made a sudden bolt into the house and upstairs to her room, where she was followed and discovered by one of her bridesmaids tearing off her wedding-clothes, and laughing and crying all in a breath.

1st Bridegroom. "Well, Josh, what d'ye think?"

2d Bridegroom. "Why, I think there won't be a wedding to-day."

1st Bridegroom. "No, nor to-morrow neither. Sal, put on your bonnet and let's you and I go home. I came to Meadows' wedding; mustn't stay to anybody's else's."

These remarks were delivered openly, pro bono, and dissolved the wedding party. Four principal parties remained—Meadows, old Merton, and the two friends.

"Well, uncle, Susan has spoken her mind, now you speak yours."

"George, I have been an imprudent fool, I am on the brink of ruin. I owe more than two thousand pounds. We heard you had changed your mind, and Meadows came forward like a man, and said he would—"

"Your word, uncle, your promise. I crossed the seas on the faith of it." An upper window was gently opened, and a blushing face listened, and the hand that they were all discussing and disposing of drew back a little curtain, and clutched it convulsively.

"You did, George," said the old farmer.

"Says you, 'Bring back a thousand pounds to show me you are not a fool, and you shall have my daughter,' and she was to have your blessing. Am I right, Mr. Meadows? you were present."

"Those were the words," replied Meadows.

"Well! and have you brought back the thousand pounds?"

"I have."

"John, I must stand to my word; and I will—it is justice. Take the girl, and be as happy as you can with her, and her father in the work-house."

"I take her, and that is as much as to say that neither her father nor any one she respects shall go to the workhouse. How much is my share, Tom?"

"Four thousand pounds."

"No, not so much."

"Yes, it is. Jacky gave you his share of the great nugget, and you gave him sheep in return. Here they are, lads and lasses, seventy of them varying from one five six naught to one six two nine, and all as crimp as a muslin gown new starched. Why? I never put this," and he took pieces of newspaper out of his pocketbook, and looked stupidly at each as it came out.

"Why, Tom?"

"Robbed!"

"Robbed, Tom?"

"Robbed! oh! I put the book under my pillow, and there I found it this morning. Robbed! robbed! Kill me, George, I have ruined you."

"I can't speak," gasped George. "Oh, what is the meaning of this?"

"But I can speak! Don't tell me of a London thief being robbed!!! George Fielding, if you are a man at all, go and leave me and my daughter in peace. If you had come home with money to keep her, I was ready to give you Susan to my own ruin. Now it is your turn to show yourself the right stuff. My daughter has given her hand to a man who can make a lady of her, and set me on my legs again. You can only beggar us. Don't stand in the poor girl's light; for pity's sake, George, leave us in peace."

"You are right, old man; my head is confused;" and George put his hand feebly to his brow. "But I seem to see it is my duty to go, and I'll go." George staggered. Robinson made toward him to support him. "There, don't make a fuss with me. There is nothing the matter with me—only my heart is dead. Let me sit on this bench and draw my breath a minute—and then—I'll go. Give me your hand, Tom. Never heed their jibes. I'd trust you with more gold than the best of them was ever worth."

Robinson began to blubber the moment George took his hand, spite of the money lost. "We worked hard for it, too, good folks, and risked our lives as well as our toil;" and George and Robinson sat hand in hand upon the bench, and turned their heads away—that it was pitiful to see.

But still the pair held one another by the hand, and George said, faltering: "I have got this left me still. Ay, I have heard say that friendship was better than love, and I dare say so it is."

As if to plead against this verdict, Susan came timidly to her lover in his sorrow, and sat on his other side, and laid her head gently on his shoulder. "What signifies money to us two?" she murmured. "Oh, I have been robbed of what was dearer than life this bitter year, and now you are down-hearted at loss of money. How foolish to grieve for such nonsense when I am so hap—hap—happy!" and again the lovely face rested light as down on George's shoulder, weeping deliciously.

"It is hard, Tom," gasped George; "it is bitter hard; but I shall find a little bit of manhood by and by to do my duty. Give me breath! only give me breath! We will go back again where we came from, Tom; only I shall have nothing to work for now. Where is William, if you please? Has he forgotten me, too?"

"William is in prison for debt," said old Merton, gravely.

"No, he is not," put in Meadows, "for I sent the money to let him out an hour ago."

"You sent the money to let my brother out of jail? That sounds queer to me. I suppose I ought to thank you, but I can't."

"I don't ask your thanks, young man."

"You see, George," said old Merton, "ours is a poor family, and it will be a great thing for us all to have such a man as Mr. Meadows in it, if you will only let us."

"Oh, father, you make me blush," cried Susan, beginning to get her first glimpse of his character.

"He doesn't make me blush," cried George; "but he makes me sick. This old man would make me walk out of heaven if he was in it. Come, let us go back to Australia."

"Ay, that is the best thing you can do," cried old Merton.

"If he does, I shall go with him," said Susan, with sudden calmness. She added, dropping her voice, "If he thinks me worthy to go anywhere with him."

"You are worthy of better than that, and better shall be your luck;" and George sat down on the bench with one bitter sob that seemed to tear his manly heart in two.

There was a time Meadows would have melted at this sad sight, but now it enraged him. He whispered fiercely to old Merton: "Touch him on his pride; get rid of him, and your debts shall be all paid that hour; if not—" He then turned to that heart-stricken trio, touched his hat, "Good-day, all the company," said he, and strode away with rage in his heart to set the law in motion against old Merton, and so drive matters to a point.

But before he had taken a dozen steps he was met by two men who planted themselves right before him. "You can't pass, sir."

Meadows looked at them with humorous surprise. They had hooked noses. He did not like that so well.

"Why not?" said he, quietly, but with a wicked look.

One of the men whistled, a man popped out of the churchyard and joined the two; he had a hooked nose. Another came through the gate from the lane; another from behind the house. The scene kept quietly filling with hooked noses till it seemed as if the ten tribes were reassembling from the four winds.

"Are they going to pitch into me?" thought Meadows; and he felt in his pocket to see if his pistol was there.

Meantime, George and Susan and Tom rose to their feet in some astonishment.

"There is a chentleman coming to put a question or two," said the first speaker. And, in fact, an old acquaintance of ours, Mr. Williams, came riding up, and, hooking his horse to the gate, came in, saying, "Oh, here you are, Mr. Meadows. There is a ridiculous charge brought against you, but I am obliged to hear it before dismissing it. Give me a seat. Oh, here is a bench. It is very hot. I am informed that two men belonging to this place have been robbed of seven thousand pounds at the 'King's Head'—the 'King's Heads in Newborough."

"It is true, sir," cried Robinson, "but how did you know?"

"I am here to ask questions," was the sharp answer. "Who are you?"

"Thomas Robinson."

"Which is George Fielding?"

"I am George Fielding, sir.

"Have you been robbed?"

"We have, sir."

"Of how much?"

"Seven thousand pounds."

"Come, that tallies with the old gentleman's account. Hum! where did you sleep last night, Mr. Meadows?"

"At the 'King's Head' in Newborough, sir," replied Meadows, without any visible hesitation.

"Well, that is curious, but I need not say I don't believe it is more than coincidence. Where is the old gentleman? Oh! give way there, and let him come here."

Now all this was inexplicable to Meadows, but still it brought a deadly chill of vague apprehension over him. He felt as if a huge gossamer net was closing round him. Another moment the only spider capable of spinning it stood in front of him. "I thought so," dropped from his lips as Isaac Levi and he stood once more face to face.

"I accuse that man of the theft. Nathan and I heard him tell Crawley that he had drugged the young man's liquor and stolen the notes. Then we heard Crawley beg for the notes, and after much entreaty he gave them him."

"It is true!" cried Robinson, in violent agitation; "it must be true. You know what a light sleeper I am, and how often you had to shake me this morning. I was hocussed and no mistake!"

"Silence!"

"Yes, your worship."

"Where were you, Mr. Levi, to hear all this?"

"In the east room of my house."

"And where was he?"

"In the west room of his house."

"It is impossible."

"Say not so, sir. I will show you it is true. Meantime I will explain it."

He explained his contrivance at full. Meadows hung his head; he saw how terribly the subtle Oriental had outwitted him; yet his presence of mind never for a moment deserted him.

"Sir," said he, "I have had the misfortune to offend Mr. Levi, and he is my sworn enemy. If you really mean to go into this ridiculous affair, allow me to bring witnesses, and I will prove to you he has been threatening vengeance against me these two years—and you know a lie is not much to a Jew. Does this appear likely? I am worth sixty thousand pounds—why should I steal?"

"Why, indeed?" said Mr. Williams. "I stole these notes to give them away—that is your story, is it?"

"Nay, you stole them to beggar your rival, whose letters to the maiden he loved you had intercepted by fraud at the post-office in Farnborough." Susan and George uttered an exclamation at the same moment. "But, having stole them, you gave them to Crawley."

"How generous!" sneered Meadows. "Well, when you find Crawley with seven thousand pounds, and he says I gave them him, Mr. Williams will take your word against mine, and not till then, I think."

"Certainly not—the most respectable man for miles round!"

"So be it," retorted Isaac, coolly; "Nathan, bring Crawley." At that unexpected word, Meadows looked round for a way to escape. The hooked-nosed ones hemmed him in. Crawley was brought out of the fly, quaking with fear.

"Sir," said Levi, "if in that man's bosom, on the left-hand side, the missing notes are not found, let me suffer scorn; but, if they be found, give us justice on the evil-doer."

The constable searched Crawley amid the intense anxiety of all present. He found a bundle of notes. There was a universal cry.

"Stop, sir!" said Robinson, "to make sure I will describe our property—seventy notes of one hundred pounds each. Numbers one five six naught to one six two nine."

Mr. Williams examined the bundle, and at once handed them over to Robinson, who shoved them hastily into George's hands and danced for joy.

Mr. Williams looked ruefully at Meadows, then he hesitated; then, turning sharply to Crawley, he said, "Where did you get these?"

Meadows tried to catch his eye and prevail on him to say nothing; but Crawley, who had not heard Levi's evidence, made sure of saving himself by means of Meadows' reputation.

"I had them from Mr. Meadows," he cried; "and what about it? it is not the first time he has trusted me with much larger sums than that."

"Oh! you had them from Mr. Meadows?"

"Yes, I had!"

"Mr. Meadows, I am sorry to say I must commit you; but I still hope you will clear yourself elsewhere."

"I have not the least uneasiness about that, sir, thank you. You will admit me to bail, of course?"

"Impossible! Wood, here is a warrant, I will sign it."

While the magistrate was signing the warrant, Meadows' head fell upon his breast; he seemed to collapse standing.

Isaac Levi eyed him scornfully. "You had no mercy on the old Jew. You took his house from him, not for your need but for hate. So he made that house a trap and caught you in your villainy."

"Yes! you have caught me," cried Meadows, "but you will never cage me!" and in a moment his pistol was at his own temple and he pulled the trigger—the cap failed; he pulled the other trigger, the other cap failed. He gave a yell like a wounded tiger, and stood at bay gnashing his teeth with rage and despair. Half a dozen men threw themselves upon him, and a struggle ensued that almost baffles description. He dragged those six men about up and down, some clinging to his legs, some to his body. He whirled nearly every one of them to the ground in turn; and, when by pulling at his legs they got him down, he fought like a badger on his back, seized two by the throat, and putting his feet under another drove him into the air doubled up like a ball, and he fell on Levi and sent the old man into Mr. Williams' arms, who sat down with a Jew in his lap, to the derangement of his magisterial dignity.

At last he was mastered, and his hands tied behind him with two handkerchiefs.

"Take the rascal to jail!" cried Williams, in a passion. Meadows groaned. "Ay! take me," said he, "you can't make me live there. I've lived respected all these years, and now I shall be called a felon. Take me where I may hide my head and die!" and the wretched man moved away with feeble steps, his strength and spirit crushed now his hands were tied.

Then Crawley followed him, abusing and reviling him. "So this is the end of all your maneuvering! Oh, what a fool I was to side with such a bungler as you against Mr. Levi. Here am I, an innocent man, ruined through knowing a thief—ah! you don't like that word, but what else are you but a thief?" and so he followed his late idol and heaped reproaches and insults on him, till at last Meadows turned round and cast a vague look of mute despair, as much as to say, "How am I fallen, when this can trample me!"

One of the company saw this look and understood it. Yielding to an impulse he took three steps, and laid his hand on Crawley. "Ye little snake," said he, "let the man alone!" and he sent Crawley spinning like a teetotum; then turned on his own heel and came away, looking a little red and ashamed of what he had done. My reader shall guess which of the company this was.

Half way to the county jail Meadows and Crawley met William Fielding coming back.

It took hours and hours to realize all the happiness that had fallen on two loving hearts. First had to pass away many a spasm of terror at the wrongs they had suffered, the danger they had escaped, the long misery they had grazed. They remained rooted to the narrow spot of ground where such great and strange events had passed in a few minutes, and their destinies had fluctuated so violently, and all ended in joy unspeakable. And everybody put questions to everybody, and all compared notes, and the hours fled while they unraveled their own strange story. And Susan and George almost worshipped Isaac Levi; and Susan kissed him and called him her father, and hung upon his neck all gratitude. And he passed his hand over her chestnut hair, and said, "Go to, foolish child," but his deep rich voice trembled a little, and wonderful tenderness and benevolence glistened in that fiery eye.

He would now have left them, but nobody there would part with him; behooved him to stay and eat fish and pudding with them—the meat they would excuse him if he would be good and not talk about going again. And after dinner George and Tom must tell their whole story; and, as they told their eventful lives, it was observed that the hearers were far more agitated than the narrators. The latter had been in a gold mine; had supped so full of adventures and crimes and horrors that nothing astonished them, and they were made sensible of the tremendous scenes they had been through by the loud ejaculations, the pallor, the excitement of their hearers. As for Susan, again and again during the men's narratives the tears streamed down her face, and once she was taken faint at George's peril, and the story had to be interrupted and water sprinkled on her, and the men in their innocence were for not going on with their part, but she peremptorily insisted, and sneered at them for being so foolish as to take any notice of her foolishness—she would have every word. After all was he not there alive and well, sent back to her safe after so many perils, never, never to leave England again!

"Oh, giorno felice!" A day to be imagined; or described by a pen a thousand times greater and subtler than mine, but of this be sure—it was a day such as, neither to Susan nor George, nor to you nor me, nor to any man or woman upon earth, has ever come twice between the cradle and the grave.



CHAPTER LXXXV.

A MONTH of Elysium. And then one day George asked Susan, plump, when it would be agreeable to her to marry him.

"Marry you, George?" replied Susan, opening her eyes; "why, never! I shall never marry any one after—you must be well aware of that." Susan proceeded to inform George, that, though foolishness was a part of her character, selfishness was not; recent events had destroyed an agreeable delusion under which she had imagined herself worthy to be Mrs. George Fielding; she therefore, though with some reluctance, intended to resign that situation to some wiser and better woman than she had turned out. In this agreeable resolution she persisted, varying it occasionally with little showers of tears unaccompanied by the slightest convulsion of the muscles of the face. But, as I am not, like George Fielding, in love with Susan Merton, or with self-deception (another's), I spare the reader all the pretty things this young lady said and believed and did, to postpone her inevitable happiness. Yes, inevitable, for this sort of thing never yet kept lovers long apart since the world was, except in a novel worse than common. I will but relate how that fine fellow, George, dried "these foolish drops" on one occasion.

"Susan," said he, "if I had found you going to be married to another man with the roses on your cheek, I should have turned on my heel and back to Australia. But a look in your face was enough; you were miserable, and any old fool could see your heart was dead against it; look at you now blooming like a rose, so what is the use of us two fighting against human nature? we can't be happy apart—let us come together."

"Ah! George, if I thought your happiness depended on having—a foolish wife—"

"Why, you know it does," replied the inadvertent Agricola.

"That alters the case; sooner than you should be unhappy—I think—I—"

"Name the day, then."

In short the bells rang a merry peal, and to reconcile Susan to her unavoidable happiness, Mr. Eden came down and gave an additional weight (in her way of viewing things) to the marriage ceremony by officiating. It must be owned that this favorable circumstance cost her a few tears, too.

How so, Mr. Reade?

Marry, sir, thus: Mr. Eden was what they call eccentric; among his other deviations from usage he delivered the meaning of sentences in church along with the words.

This was a thunder-clap to poor Susan. She had often heard a chanting machine utter the marriage service all on one note, and heard it with a certain smile of unintelligent complacency her sex wear out of politeness; but when the man Eden told her at the altar with simple earnestness what a high and deep and solemn contract she was making then and there with God and man, she began to cry, and wept like April through the ceremony.

I have not quite done with this pair, but leave them a few minutes, for some words are due to other characters, and to none, I think, more than to this very Mr. Eden, whose zeal and wisdom brought our hero and unheroine happily together through the subtle sequence of causes I have related, the prime thread a converted thief.

Mr. Eden's strength broke down under the prodigious effort to defeat the effect of separate confinement on the bodies and souls of his prisoners. Dr. Gulson ordered him abroad. Having now since the removal of Hawes given the separate and silent system a long and impartial trial, his last public act was to write at the foot of his report a solemn protest against it, as an impious and mad attempt to defy God's will as written on the face of man's nature—to crush too those very instincts from which rise communities, cities, laws, prisons, churches, civilization—and to wreck souls and bodies under pretense of curing souls, not by knowledge, wisdom, patience, Christian love, or any great moral effort, but by the easy and physical expedient of turning one key on each prisoner instead of on a score.

"These," said Mr. Eden, "are the dreams of selfish, lazy, heartless dunces and reckless bigots, dwarf Robespierres, with self-deceiving hearts that dream philanthropy, fluent lips that cant philanthropy and hands swift to shed blood—which is not blood to them—because they are mere sensual brutes, so low in intelligence that, although men are murdered and die before their eyes, they cannot see it was murder, because there was no knocking on the head or cutting of throats."

The reverend gentleman then formally washed his hands of the bloodshed and reason-shed of the separate system, and resigned his office, earnestly requesting at the same time that, as soon as the government should come round to his opinion, they would permit him to co-operate in any enlightened experiment where God should no longer be defied by a knot of worms as in —— Jail.

Then he went abroad, but though professedly hunting health he visited and inspected half the principal prisons in Europe. After many months events justified his prediction. The government started a large prison on common sense and humanity, and Mr. Lacy's interest procured Mr. Eden the place of its chaplain.

This prison was what every prison in the English provinces will be in five years' time—a well-ordered community, an epitome of the world at large, for which a prison is to prepare men, not unfit them as frenzied dunces would do; it was also a self-sustaining community, like the world. The prisoners ate prisoner-grown corn and meat, wore prisoner-made clothes and bedding, wire lighted by gas made in the prison, etc., etc., etc., etc. The agricultural laborers had out-door work suited to their future destiny, and mechanical trades were zealously ransacked for the city rogues. Anti-theft reigned triumphant. No idleness, no wicked waste of sweat.

The members of this community sleep in separate cells, as men do in other well-ordered communities, but they do not pine and wither and die in cells for offenses committee outside the prison walls. Here, if you see a man caged like a wild beast all day, you may be sure he is there, not so much for his own good as for that of the little community in which he has proved himself unworthy to mix pro tem. Foul language and contamination are checkmated here, not by the lazy, selfish, cruel expedient of universal solitude, but by Argus-like surveillance. Officers, sufficient in number, listen with sharp ears, and look with keen eyes. The contaminator is sure to be seized and confined till prudence, if not virtue, ties his tongue. Thus he is disarmed, and the better-disposed encourage one another. Compare this legitimate and necessary use of that most terrible of tortures, the cell, with the tigro-asinine use of it in seven English prisons out of nine at the present date. It is just the difference between arsenic as used by a good physician and by a poisoner. It is the difference between a razor-bladed, needle-pointed knife in the hands of a Christian, a philosopher, a skilled surgeon, and the same knife in the hands of a savage, a brute, a scoundrel, or a fanatical idiot.

Mr. Eden had returned from abroad but a fortnight when he was called on to unite George and Susan.

I have little more to add than that he was very hard worked and supremely happy in his new situation, and that I have failed to do him justice in these pages. But he shall have justice one day, when pitiless asses will find themselves more foul in the eyes of the All-pure than the thieves they crushed under four walls, and "The just shall shine forth as the sun, and they that turn* many to righteousness as the stars forever and ever."

* Not crush.

Thomas Robinson did not stay long at Grassmere. Things were said in the village that wounded him. Ill-repute will not stop directly ill-conduct does. He went to see Mr. Eden, sent his name in as Mr. Sinclair, was received with open arms, and gave the good man a glow of happiness such as most of us, I fear, go to the grave without feeling—or earning. He presented him a massive gold ring he had hammered out of a nugget. Mr. Eden had never worn a ring in his life, but he wore this with an innocent pride, and showed it people, and valued it more than he would the Pitt diamond, which a French king bought of an English subject, and the price was so heavy he paid for it by installments spread over many years.

Robinson very wisely went back to Australia, and, more wisely still, married Jenny, with whom he had corresponded ever since he left her.

I have no fear he will ever break the Eighth Commandment again. His heart was touched long ago, and ever since then his understanding had received conviction upon conviction; for, oh, the blaze of light that enters our souls when our fate puts us in his place—in her place—in their place—whom we used to strike, never realizing how it hurt them! He is respected for his intelligence and good-nature; he is sober, industrious, pushing and punctilious in business. One trait of the Bohemian remains. About every four months a restlessness comes over him; then the wise Jenny of her own accord proposes a trip. Poor Tom's eyes sparkle directly; off they go together. A foolish wife would have made him go alone. They come back, and my lord goes to his duties with fresh zest till the periodical fit comes again. No harm ever comes of it.

Servants are at a great premium, masters at a discount, in the colony; hence a domestic phenomenon, which my English readers can hardly conceive, but I am told my American friends have a faint glimpse of it in the occasional deportment of their "helps" in out-of-the-way places.

Now Tom, and especially Jenny, had looked forward to reigning in their own house, and it was therefore a disappointment when they found themselves snubbed and treated with hauteur, and Jenny revolted against servant after servant, who straightway abdicated and left her forlorn. At last their advertisement was answered by a male candidate for menial authority, who proved to be Mr. Miles, their late master. Tom and Jenny colored up, and both agreed it was out of the question—they should feel too ashamed. Mr. Miles answered by offering to bet a crown he should make them the best servant in the street; and, strange to say, the bargain was struck and he did turn out a model servant. He was civil and respectful, especially in public, and never abused his situation. Comparing his conduct with his predecessors', it really appeared that a gentleman can beat snobs in various relations of life. As Tom's master and Jenny's, he had never descended to servility, nor was he betrayed into arrogance now that he had risen to be their servant.

A word about Jacky. After the meal off the scented rabbit in the bush, Robinson said slyly to George: "I thought you promised Jacky a hiding—well, here he is."

"Now, Tom," replied the other, coloring up, "is it reasonable, and he has just saved our two lives? but if you think that I won't take him to task, you are much mistaken."

George then remonstrated with the chief for spoiling Abner with his tomahawk. Jacky opened his eyes with astonishment and admiration. Here was another instance of the white fellow's wonderful power of seeing things a good way behind him. He half closed his eyes, and tried in humble imitation to peer back into the past. Yes! he could just manage to see himself very indistinctly giving Abner a crack; but stop! let him see, it was impossible to be positive, but was not there also some small trifle of insolence, ingratitude, and above all bungality, on the part of this Abner? When the distance had become too great to see the whole of a transaction, why strain the eyes looking at a part? Finally Jacky submitted that these microscopic researches cost a good deal of trouble, and on the whole his tribe were wiser than the white fellows in this, that they reveled in the present, and looked on the past as a period that never had been, and the future as one that never would be. On this George resigned the moral culture of his friend. "Soil is not altogether bad," said Agricola, "but, bless your heart, it isn't a quarter of an inch deep."

On George's departure, Jacky, being under the temporary impression of his words, collected together a mixed company of blacks, and marched them to his possessions. Arrived, he harangued them on the cleverness of the white fellows, and invited them to play at Europeans.

"Behold this ingenious structure," said he, in Australian; "this is called a house; its use is to protect us from the weather at night; all you have to do is to notice which way the wind blows, and go and lie down on the opposite side of the house and there you are. Then again, when you are cold, you will find a number of wooden articles in the house. You go in, you bring them out and burn them and are warm." He then produced what he had always considered the chef d'oeuvre of the white races, a box of lucifer matches; this, too, was a present from George. "See what clever fellows they are," said he, "they carry about fire, which is fire or not fire at the fortunate possessor's will;" and he let off a lucifer. These the tribe admired, but doubted whether all those little sticks had the same marvelous property and would become fire in the hour of need; Jacky sneered at their incredulity, and let them all off one by one in a series of preliminary experiments; this impaired their future usefulness. In short, they settled there; one or two's heads had to be broken for killing the breeders for dinner, and that practice stopped; but the pot-bellied youngsters generally celebrated the birth of a lamb by spearing it. They slept on the lee side of the house, warmed at night by the chairs and tables, etc., which they lighted. They got on very nicely, only one fine morning, without the slightest warning, whir-r-r-r they all went off to the woods, Jacky and all, and never returned. The remaining bullocks strayed devious, and the douce McLaughlan blandly absorbed the sheep.

Hasty and imperfect as my sketch of this Jacky is, give it a place in your notebook of sketches, for in a few years the Australian savage will breathe only in these pages, and the Saxon plow will erase his very grave, his milmeridien.

brutus lived; but the form and strength he had abused were gone—he is the shape of a note of interrogation, and by a coincidence is now an "asker," i.e., he begs, receives alms, and sets on a gang of burglars, with whom he is in league, to rob the good Christians that show him pity.

mephistopheles came suddenly to grief; when gold was found in Victoria he crossed over to that port and robbed. One day he robbed the tent of an old man, a native of the colony, who was digging there with his son, a lad of fifteen. Now these currency lads are very sharp and determined. The youngster caught a glimpse of the retiring thief and followed him and saw him enter a tent. He watched at the entrance, and when mephistopheles came out again, he put a pistol to the man's breast and shot him dead without a word of remonstrance, accusation or explanation.

A few diggers ran out of their claims. "If our gold is not on him," says the youngster, "I have made a mistake."

The gold was found on the carcass, and the diggers went coolly back to their work.

The youngster went directly to the commissioner and told him what he had done. "I don't see that I am called on to interfere," replied that functionary; "he was taken in the act; you have buried him, of course."

"Not I. I let him lie for whoever chose to own him."

"You let him lie? What, when there is a printed order from the government stuck over the whole mine that nobody is to leave carrion about! You go off directly and bury your carrion or you will get into trouble, young man." And the official's manner became harsh and threatening.

If ever a man was "shot like a dog," surely the assassin of Carlo was.

Mr. Meadows in the prison refused his food, and fell into a deep depression; but the third day he revived, and fell to scheming again. He sent to Mr. Levi and offered to give him a long lease of his old house if he would but be absent from the trial. This was a sore temptation to the old man. But meantime stronger measures were taken in his defense and without consulting him.

One evening that Susan and George were in the garden at Grassmere, suddenly an old woman came toward them with slow and hesitating steps. Susan fled at the sight of her—she hated the very name this old woman bore. George stood his ground, looking sheepish; the old woman stood before him trembling violently and fighting against her tears. She could not speak, but held out a letter to him. He took it, the ink was rusty, it was written twenty years ago; it was from his mother to her neighbor, Mrs. Meadows, then on a visit at Newborough, telling her how young John had fought for and protected her against a band of drunken ruffians, and how grateful she was.

"And I do hope, dame, he will be as good friends with my lads when they are men as you and I have been this many a day."

George did not speak for a long time. He held the letter, and it trembled a little in his hand. He looked at the old woman, standing a piteous, silent supplicant. "Mrs. Meadows," said he, scarce above a whisper, "give me this letter, if you will be so good. I have not got her handwriting, except our names in the Bible."

She gave him the letter half reluctantly, and looked fearfully and inquiringly in his face. He smiled kindly, and a sort of proud curl came for a moment to his lip, and the woman read the man. This royal rustic would not have taken the letter if he had not granted the mother's unspoken prayer.

"God bless you both!" said she, and went on her way.

The assizes came, and Meadows' two plaintiffs both were absent: Robinson gone to Australia, and George forfeited his recognizances and had, to pay a hundred pound for it. The defendants were freed. Then Isaac Levi said to himself, "He will not keep faith with me." But he did not know his man. Meadows had a conscience, though an oblique one. A promise from him was sacred in his own eyes. A man came to Grassmere and left a hundred pound in a letter for George Fielding. Then he went on to Levi, and gave him a parcel and a note. The parcel contained the title-deeds of the house; and the note said: "Take the house and the furniture and pay me what you consider they are worth. And, old man, I think you might take your curse off me, for I have never known a heart at rest since you laid it on me, and you see now our case is altered—you have a home now and John Meadows has none."

Then the old man was softened, and he wrote a line in reply, and said: "Three just men shall value the house and furniture, and I will pay, etc., etc. Put now adversity to profit—repent and prosper. Isaac Levi wishes you no ill from this day, but rather good." Thus died, as mortal feelings are apt to die, an enmity its owners thought immortal.

A steam-vessel glided down the Thames bound for Port Phillip. On the deck were to be seen a little girl crying bitterly—this was Hannah—a stalwart, yeoman-like figure, who stood unmoved as the shores glided by,

Omne solum forti patria,

and an old woman who held his arm as if she needed to feel him at the moment of leaving her native land. This old woman had hated and denounced his sins, and there was scarce a point of morality on which she thoroughly agreed with him. Yet at threescore years and ten she left her native land with two sole objects—to comfort this stout man, and win him to repentance.

THE END