He was a bonny boy, and every day his little baby ways became of so great interest to the lonely old man, that he was never happy after business hours until he had the little fellow in the room. He never stayed at his old tavern now for more than half an hour beyond the time it took him to eat his dinner, and even went so far as to tell two or three of his friends what he had done, and invite them home to see the child, in whom—they being themselves fathers of families—they could see nothing extraordinary, and wondered amongst themselves at old Dryce's strange infatuation.

When the boy at last grew able to crawl about, and even to walk from chair to chair, he seemed to have so grown to the old man's heart that Dryce became subject to a kind of transformation. His laugh grew more mellow, as though the violin had been laid near the fire, and played upon gently; a dozen old and forgotten picture-books were disinterred from some box, and toys strewed the floor of the dingy sitting-room. At about this time Mrs. Harris was for a week or more strangely agitated by a letter which was brought to her one morning, and came as she said from her husband, who had been for some time in Australia. Upon her recovery Mr. Dryce inquired a little into her husband's circumstances, and hearing that he was endeavouring to establish an agency in Sydney, wrote a letter requesting him to make some inquiries about a house to which Dryce & Co. had made large consignments, but whose promised remittance had not duly arrived. The old man had other matters to occupy him, however, for with something like a resumption of his old vigour and his business habits he had called for his books, for he had had some serious losses lately, and began to think it necessary to give more personal attention to the current accounts. Still every day he had his little pet into the room to play about his knees, and indeed refused to part with him even when nurse Harris came to put him to bed, often making her stay and take some wine, or consulting her as to some future provisions, for her little charge, for whom she seemed to have even more affection than the old gentleman himself.

It was late one evening that he sat talking to her in this way, but still with a rather absent manner, for his heavy ledgers and cash-books lay beside him on the table. She would have taken the child away, but Mr. Dryce told her to let him remain, and at the same time asked her to step down into the counting-house, and if Mr. Jaggers had not left for the night, to ask him to come up.

Now Mr. Jaggers had so seldom been invited to come upstairs, that, although he of course knew of the adoption of the little foundling, he had never seen the nurse; but that was scarcely any reason for her stopping on her way downstairs and pressing her hand to her side with a sudden spasm of fear.

She got down at last, however, and opening the two doors which led to the passage, at the end of which was the private counting-house, stood there in the shadow and looked in.

Mr. Jaggers was busy at his desk tearing up papers, some of which already blazed upon the hearth. The desk itself was open, and by the light of the shaded lamp she could see that it contained a heavily bound box in which hung a bunch of keys. As she delivered Mr. Dryce's message, still in the shadow of the door, he looked up with a scared face, and dropping the lid of the desk with a loud slam, peered into the darkness.

Mrs. Harris repeated her message, and returned swiftly up the stairs, nor stopped even to go in for the child, but shut herself into her own room. Somehow or other Mr. Jaggers felt a cold perspiration break out all over him, and yet he need scarcely have been cold, for he already had his greatcoat on, and there was a decent fire in the grate burning behind a guard. Still he shivered, and after taking the lamp and once more looking into the entry, gave a deep sigh of relief, and in a half-absent manner locked both box and desk and carefully placed the keys in a breast pocket. Leaving the lamp still burning, he went upstairs and found Mr. Dryce alone, sitting at the table with the books open before him. He looked up as his clerk entered. "Take a seat, Jaggers," he said, "I shall want you for an hour or more, for there are several things here that require explanation."

Mr. Jaggers turned pale, but he took off his coat and laid it along with his hat on the great horsehair sofa at the other end of the room. Then both he and his employer plunged into figures, till the chimes of a distant clock sounded nine. "We must finish this the day after to-morrow, Jaggers," said Mr. Dryce. "I won't keep you longer."

Mr. Jaggers put on his coat and hat, and bade his employer good-night, and he had no sooner left the room than Mrs. Harris came in to fetch the little one, for, as she said, "it was already past his bedtime."

Richard Dryce fell into his chair, and was as near having a fit as ever he had been in his life.

"Good heaven! Mrs. Harris—you don't mean to say you haven't got the boy. He's not here; run and see whether he has gone into Betsy's room; she runs away with him sometimes."

"Mamma!" said a sleepy little voice under the sofa, and Mr. Dryce and the nurse were both on their knees in a moment.

"The precious! why, if he hasn't been asleep all the time!" said Mr. Dryce, kissing the warm rosy cheek; "take him off to bed directly, and bring him down to breakfast in the morning."

Mrs. Harris only just escaped meeting Jaggers on the stairs, up which he was coming, followed by Betty with a flaring tallow candle, and looking carefully on every stair. "I beg your pardon, sir," he said, with a scared look, as he opened the room door, "but have you seen my keys anywhere? I must have dropped them somewhere in the room, I think."

"No," replied Mr. Dryce, "I've seen nothing—most extraordinary!" he said to himself, thinking of the child and forgetting Jaggers.

"It is, sir, very extraordinary," said the clerk, groping on the floor and patting the carpet with his hands. "I know I had them when I came up here, and I can't open my desk where I keep my money."

"Oh! never mind, Jaggers," said Mr. Dryce sleepily. "Here are a couple of sovereigns. If we find the keys, you can have them to-morrow; and if not, we will have a new lock. Come, good night! I'll come down and bolt the office door after you."

Jaggers entreated his employer not to take so much trouble, and delayed so long that the old gentleman began to grow a little impatient. At last he got rid of him by giving him permission to come early on the following morning, when, if his keys were not discovered by the servant in sweeping, he might pick the lock.

Mr. Dryce was in a brown study, sitting looking at the fire, and sipping a glass of hot negus, when Mrs. Harris knocked at the door.

"Excuse me, sir, but have you missed your keys?"

"Hang the keys!" said Mr. Dryce absently. "I beg your pardon, Mrs. Harris; sit down a moment. I was thinking what I could buy our little fellow for a present."

"But these keys, sir? I took them out of the bosom of baby's frock when I undressed him. How he got them I can't tell."

Mr. Dryce took the keys in his hand and looked at them mechanically; then he started and singled out one particular key, held it nearer the light, at the same time comparing it with one of a bunch which he took from his own pocket. He had turned stern and pale.

"I want you to come downstairs with me, Mrs. Harris," he said: "these are the keys Mr. Jaggers has lost, and I'm afraid I shall want a policeman."

First the door of the great iron safe let into the wall. Mr. Dryce knew that it was a cunningly-made lock, and thought that no key but his would open it. It opened easily with Jaggers's key, however; and from the lower drawer was missing all the property which in those days were often kept in such places—bills, gold, and notes to the value of four thousand five hundred pounds.

With feverish haste the old man unlocked the desk and the brass-bound box within it. The latter contained all the missing property, evidently placed there for immediate removal. In the desk were found bills, letters, and correspondence, a glance at which disclosed a long system of fraud and peculation. Above all, amongst the loose papers were the letters that Robert sent to his father, and those which had been written by himself in repentance of the harsh parting which he had brought about with his lost son.

While they were both looking with mute astonishment at these evidences of Jaggers's villany, there came a low knocking at the door, and two men entered, one of them a broad, brown-bearded man in a half seafaring dress, the other a policeman.

"A clerk of yours, named Jaggers," said the latter. "I want to know whether he has robbed you, or if you have reason to suspect him. This party has given him in custody on another charge."

There was a loud scream, and Mrs. Harris fell into the arms of the stranger, who had taken her aside to whisper to her.

"She is my wife," said he to Mr. Dryce. "I am the person to whom you wrote, and I have brought the remittance with me from Australia."

They all went upstairs together, except the policeman, whose question was answered by a recital of the events of the night, and the present of a sovereign.

"Bring down the boy, and let me look at his dear little face," said old Dryce, when they were sitting round the fire.

The child was brought down tenderly, and still asleep.

"God bless him!" said the bearded stranger. "He's not like either of us, Aggy."

"Like either of you?" said Mr. Dryce, surprised. "How should he be like your husband, Mrs. Harris?"

"Don't you know me, sir," said the stranger, taking Mr. Dryce's hand and sitting in the firelight. "My name is Robert Dryce, and this is my child, whose mother left it to the mercy of Heaven, and found that it had reached its natural home. Forgive us, sir, for our child's sake."

Old Dryce was a shrewd man, but it took an hour to make him understand it all; events had come about so strangely.

"Well," said Robert at last, "I'm glad you were in time to save the money."

"Confound the money!" ejaculated the old man; "at least, too much of it," he added, correcting himself. "This baby's hand has unlocked more treasures for me than all the Bank of England could count on a summer's day."

———————————————

"Oh, I shouldn't like to live in London always," said Kate Bell, whose father was one of the large mill-owners at Barton. "I've been up twice with papa, you know; but we lived in a great square where we could hear the noise of the cabs all night, and of the carts and wagons as soon as daylight came. And then there are such crowds of people in the streets; and if you walk you are pushed about so, and if you ride you can't see anything except from an open carriage. Except the theatre, where I went twice, and the Zoological Gardens and the Crystal Palace, and Hyde Park, where everybody goes before dinner, there's nothing to care for."

"Nothing to care for!" exclaimed Annie Bowers; "why, the streets and the old historical buildings—Westminster Abbey, the Picture Galleries, the great solemn churches, with monuments of poets and warriors, and the constant life and movement and change, must be grand, if one only could stay long enough to get over the feeling that you are only sight-seeing. To be a part of it all, and to be able to go about quietly and live in it, looking and thinking and making one's own pictures and one's own romances of it, would be delightful for six months in the year. I often think it would be grand to spend a summer day in the middle of one of the bridges—Westminster or London Bridge—and watch the boats on the river and the tide of people coming and going, and see the clouds and the sunshine change the colour of the stream and the outlines of the great buildings, and then to go back just at dark and see the same scene by moonlight, with everything transformed and solemn, and listen to the rush of the tide and watch the lights twinkling on wharves and on board boats and barges, and the moon on the great lovely buildings of Westminster, and the dome of St. Paul's in the distance: that is what I should like to do."

"I used to think very much as you do, Annie, when I was last in London," said Miss Grantley; "but then I had very little opportunity of going to theatres or other amusements, for I had no one to take me except in a family party, and had to make the most of the pleasure that is to be found in the wonderful aspects of the great city itself. Of course it is only possible for a poor unprotected creature to see a part of the greatest capital in the world; and so when I went to explore the bridges or any other neighbourhood after dusk I took an escort, and one who knew London so well that he was able to say where I ought and where I ought not to go."

"A policeman, was it, Miss Grantley?" said Kate Bell.

"Oh, dear! no. Policemen have no time to go out as escorts to young or middle-aged ladies," said our governess laughing. "My cavalier was a boy who worked at a printing-office. His mother was a very respectable woman who lived in a tidy house in a very quiet street where she let two furnished rooms, and I was her tenant while I was studying to pass two examinations. I had been staying with old friends of my dear father, for they did not desert me altogether though I was only a governess; indeed, they gave me too large a share of the amusements and sight-seeing which take up so much time, so that I was obliged to bid them good-bye for a good while, and restrict my visits to Sundays or one evening a week. I think my landlady, who was a widow, had been their cook; but at all events she was a good motherly woman, and her boy of fourteen was always ready for an excursion when he came home from work.

"At first I was obliged to repress his sense of being a sort of champion; and once when a bigger and very dirty boy, who had a dog in a string, splashed my dress with mud and nearly threw me down, I had to go home again because my young friend gave him battle, and after fighting for several minutes came out of the fray with his collar so rumpled, his best cap so crushed, and his face so smirched that it was a dearly-bought victory. But he was an excellent boy and an apt pupil, for I used to give him easy lessons in French and mathematics sometimes, so that when I left he was able to attend an advanced class at an evening college in the city. He had the sentiment of a gentleman too, though he was a printer's boy and was always called Bob. He never talked to me unless I spoke to him first or he had to give me some direction or tell me which way we were going; and in the great thoroughfares he would walk either just in front or at a little distance, so that no one would have known we were companions. I used to remonstrate with him sometimes, for it made me feel that I was selfish and discourteous to have him to guide or follow me without acknowledgment; but he always replied that people couldn't talk in the noise of the streets, and that what I came out for was 'to see London or to look at shop-windows, or to see how places looked after dark, or to get a walk and some fresh air on London or Blackfriars' Bridge, and to be able to fancy all manner of things, and yet to have somebody that knew all about London to keep me from being run over or pick-pocketed or interfered with by anybody.'

"Never had lady a more devoted squire; and I really believe he used to read up the history and anecdotes of some of the churches and public buildings, that he might be able to have something to say when I insisted on talking to him as we strolled quietly along in the less-crowded thoroughfares—especially those around St. Paul's and the Royal Exchange, where the city is nearly deserted after the hours of business."

"Well, Miss Grantley, and is it about this very agreeable boy that you are going to tell us a story?" asked Sarah Jorring, who was often rather abrupt and impertinent.

For a moment a shaft of light seemed to dart from those expressive eyes upon the questioner, but the instantaneous gleam of surprise and annoyance passed into a smile.

"I would never willingly forget or be ashamed to speak of true service and real courtesy," she said. "I should—we most of us would—feel some satisfaction in acknowledging the politeness shown to us by a duke or an earl, even though to be scrupulously courteous should be regarded as duties and customs belonging to their station. To have received true and delicate consideration from a printer's boy is therefore more remarkable, and to speak of it with grateful recollection is only just. My own want of courtesy, however, led me to forget that we seldom feel much enthusiasm about the attentions that are bestowed on other people."

We were all silent for a moment, for there was a rebuke even in the gentle tone in which the words were uttered; but presently Annie Bowers said:

"Did you ever know an actor, Miss Grantley?"

"Well, I cannot say I never met an actor," replied our governess; "and yet it was not in London, but at the village near which I lived when I was at home with my dear father, whose house and grounds were not far off, and whose pew in the church had belonged to his family from time immemorial."

"Oh! do let us hear something about that, then," we said.

"Well," replied our governess, "that shall be the story for to-morrow evening—the story of a stranger from London who visited our village."



CHAPTER IV.

A STRANGER FROM LONDON.

HOW it was that we began seriously to consider the expediency of organizing "Penny Readings" in the school-room attached to the quaint old square-towered church at Chewton Cudley I haven't the remotest idea. I fancy it must have been Mr. Petifer, the curate, who suggested it after he had been to preach for a friend of his in London. I know that he was much impressed by what the congregation of St. Boanerges—his friend's church—were doing, and that there was a noticeable difference in his delivery when he read the lessons after his visit. We all observed it, and some of the old-fashioned people thought that he was going to intone—to which there was a strong objection—but his efforts not carrying him beyond a peculiar rising inflection towards the middle of a verse, and a remarkable lingering fall into deep bass at the end, we soon regarded it as a praiseworthy attempt to give variety to his previous vapid utterances, and came rather to like it, as it gave the church somewhat of a cathedral flavour. The old pew-opener and sextoness said that to hear him publish the banns was almost as good as listening to the marriage service itself.

The truth is that we had few changes of any kind at Chewton. It had ceased to be a market town when the new line of railway took the three coaches off the road, and opened a branch to Noxby; and though the tradesfolk contrived to keep their shops open they did a very quiet business indeed. There was nothing actively speculative about the place, and the motto of the town was "Slow and sure." From the two maiden ladies—the Misses Twitwold—who kept the circulating library, and sold stationery and Berlin wool—to the brewer who owned half the beer-shops, or the landlord of the "George and Gate," who kept a select stud of saddle-horses, and had promoted the tradesmen's club—nobody was ever seen in a hurry, not even the doctor who had come to take old Mr. Varico's practice, and was quite a young man from the hospitals. He began by bustling about, and walking as though he was out for a wager, and speaking as though he expected people to do things in a minute; but he soon got over that. Folks at Chewton Cudley had a way of looking with a slow, placid, immovable stare at anybody who showed unseemly haste. If they were told to "be quick" or to "look sharp," they would leave what they were about to gaze with a cow-like serenity at the disturber. It was quite a lesson in placidity even to watch a farm-labourer or a workman sit on a gate or a cart-shaft to eat a slice of bread and cheese. Each bite was only taken after a deliberate investigation of the sides and edges of the hunch, and was slowly masticated during a peculiar ruminating survey of surrounding objects. The possessor of a clasp-knife never closed it with a click; and if any adult person had been seen to run along the High-street public attention would have been aroused by the event.

The vicar was really the most active person in the town; and though he had lived there in the quaint, ivy-covered parsonage house for twenty years, and had been constantly among his parishioners, he had the same bright, pleasant, and yet grave smile, the same quick, easy step, the same lively way with children and old women, the same impatient toleration of "dawdlers," as had distinguished him on his first coming. He had been a famous cricketer at college, and one of the first things he did was to form a cricket club; but he always said the batsman waited to watch the ball knock down the wicket, and the fielders stood staring into space when they ought to have made a catch. This was his fun, of course, and the cricket club flourished in a sedate, slow-bowling sort of way. So did the penny bank, and the evening school, and the sewing-class—for he was well loved, was our vicar, in spite, or perhaps because, of his offering such a contrast to the larger number of his flock.

He was a bachelor, and his sister kept house for him—a quiet, middle-aged lady a little older than himself, and more accomplished than most of the Chewton ladies were, not only in music and needlework, but in the matter of pickles, puddings, preserves, and domestic medicine, about which she and the doctor had many pleasant discussions, as he declared she was the best friend he had, since her herb-tea and electuaries made people fancy they were ill enough to send for him to complete their cure. That the vicar should have remained unmarried for so many years had almost ceased to be a topic for speculation, for it had somehow become known that some great sorrow had befallen him years before, and it was supposed that he had been "crossed in love;" though, to give them credit, there were unmarried ladies of the congregation who never could and never would believe that a young man such as he must have been, could have spoken in vain to any well-regulated young person possessed of a heart. They came to the conclusion, therefore, that he never told his love; and as he had certainly never told it to them, only a few of his more intimate friends knew that the shadow which had fallen on the lives of those two kindly beings at the vicarage was the early marriage of a younger sister with some adventurer, who had taken her away from the home to which she never had been returned. Only occasional tidings were received of her, for she was seldom to be found at any stated address, and was travelling with her husband from one poor lodging to another in the large towns, where they had sometimes sought for her in vain.

But the vicar was no kill-joy. He entered with hearty good-will into the scheme for weekly penny readings, and delivered an address at the preliminary meeting, in which he alluded with a sly touch of humour to the capabilities of Mr. Binks, the saddler, who was reputed to sing a famous comic song, and of Raspall, the baker, who had once tried his hand at an original Christmas carol. He even called upon the ladies—and we were all of us rather shocked at the time—to bring their music; and as a piano had actually been hired from somewhere, and stood on the platform, he called upon his sister for a song there and then, and she actually—we were surprised—sang one of those old English ballads to hear which we had regarded as the sole privilege of the select few who were invited to take tea at the vicarage, at the sewing meetings which we had associated with the name of Dorcas the widow. We should as soon have thought of seeing Dorcas herself at a sewing-machine as the vicar's sister at a piano in public—but she sang very well, and the applause at the back of the room was uproarious.

So it was when the vicar himself followed with Macaulay's "Lay of Horatius," though of course it was only intended for the front rows—for how could the tradespeople and the labourers understand it? More to their taste was the performance of Mr. Binks, who was with difficulty persuaded to sit on the platform, where, after fixing his eye on the remotest corner of the ceiling, he began by giving himself a circular twist on his chair and, moving his arm as though he were gently whipping a horse, started with a prolonged "Oh-o-o!" and then stopped, coughed, cogitated, and, gathering courage from the ceiling, started again with a more emphatic

"Oh-o-o! Terry O'Rann Was a nice young man,"

and went on to describe in song how some person of that name

"Took whisky punch Every day for his lunch."

The landlord of the George, who was about the middle of the room, shook his head in a deprecating manner at this, and we ladies in the front row were saddened; but the vicar laughed, the brewer led off a round of applause with the farmers, the doctor grinned, and the smaller tradespeople and the boys near the door stamped till the dust from the floor made them sneeze; and when

"Jerry's dead ghost Stood by the bed-post,"

with an imitation of the Irish brogue which everybody admitted was singularly "like the real thing," Mr. Binks had risen in public estimation, and his name was put down on the committee.

The baker was scarcely so successful, for he could remember nothing but the Christmas Carol by which he had risen to transient fame; and as it contained some slight but obvious allusions to Raspall's French rolls and Sally Lunns, with a distant but rhyming reference to rich plum-cake and currant buns, a few disrespectful ejaculations were heard from some unruly boys on the side benches, and the recitation ended in some confusion and suppressed chuckling on the part of the farmers and their wives. But the eldest Miss Rumbelow was persuaded to attempt one of Moore's melodies, and selected "Young Love Once Dwelt," with a singularly wiry accompaniment, and this having restored complete decorum the curate came forward in a surprising manner, and astonished us by that change in voice and delivery to which reference has already been made. He had chosen "Eugene Aram's Dream" as his recitation, and the tone in which he announced the title was, as Mrs. Multover said, "like cold water running down your back." Every breath was held, every eye started as he told us—

"It wors the prame of summerer tame, An even-ing ca-alm and kheoule, When-er fower-and-twenty happy baies Cam trouping out of skheoule."

The boys shifted uneasily on their seats; their master looked anxious, as though something personal was coming; and when the drama reached its height we timid ones in front were fain to pinch each other in a stress of nervous excitement. The tragical conclusion was marked by a simultaneous, low, long, agricultural whistle, which did duty as a sigh, and the audience first stared into each other's faces and then gave a roar of applause, amidst which the vicar announced that the penny readings were established from that night; that books containing suitable pieces for recitation could be obtained at the circulating library; and that practice nights for efficient members would be held on Wednesday evenings.

But everybody went away impressed with Mr. Petifer's sudden accession of dramatic power.

"That comes of the play-house, mark me if it do'ent," said Farmer Shorter, as he buttoned his coat. "Folk do'ent go up to London for notheng, an' curat's been to the tradigy—that's where he's a'been."

This first meeting of our "Penny Reading" Society gave a decided tone to our subsequent proceedings, but we had made but slow progress, and there was still some difficulty in inducing many of the readers to meet the audible remarks, the half-concealed mirth, and even the exaggerated applause of their audiences, when the vicar one evening announced his intention of leaving Chewton for a fortnight on a visit to London, and coming back in time to prepare a grand entertainment at the school-room.

In a few days the vicar returned, and told his sister to have the guest's room got ready, as he expected a professional gentleman from London to visit him in a day or two.

It was on the Wednesday that the idlers about the old coach-yard of the George and Gate woke up from their usual expressionless stare at things in general to notice a stranger who came along at a brisk rate, carrying a small portmanteau, and looking sharply and with a quick penetrating glance at them and the sign and the bar of the tap, where he called for a glass of ale and inquired his way to the vicarage. He was a well-knit, active man of about forty-five, with dark, glossy hair, just beginning to gray; a dark, short moustache; shaven cheeks and chin, with a blue tinge where the beard and whiskers would have been; and he wore well-fitting but rather shabby clothes, which scarcely seemed to be in keeping with the big (false or real) diamond ring on his right hand and a huge breast-pin in his satin stock.

These were the remarks some of us made about him when he appeared on the low platform at our penny reading the next evening, and was introduced by the vicar as "My friend Mr. Walter De Montfort, a gentleman connected with the dramatic profession in London, who has consented to favour us with a reading and to contribute to our improvement as well as to our entertainment."

A good many of us thought we had never heard reading, or rather recitation, till that evening; there was such a keen, bright, intense look in the man's face; such a rich, flexible, sonorous roll in his voice; such a conscious appropriateness in his rather exaggerated gestures, that when he commenced with what I have since learned was a peculiarly stagey expression the poem of "King Robert of Sicily and the Angel," and began to tell us how—

"King-ar-Rroberut of Sissurlee"

dreamed his wonderful dream, we were all eye and ear, and when he had concluded people looked at each other and gasped.

Who was he?—an actor—a manager of a theatre—a great tragedian? How did the vicar first know him? How long was he going to stay? What theatre did he perform at? All these questions were asked among ourselves, and to some of them we obtained answers at the next Dorcas meeting, which was held at the vicarage. Mr. De Montfort was not a regular actor now. He had been, but he now taught elocution and deportment, and had been introduced to the vicar by a brother clergyman in London much interested in the union of church and stage. His credentials were undoubted, but it was feared he was poor. Of his ability everybody spoke highly, and he was so accomplished that the vicar had invited him to stay for several days; but he had told them he must be in London, for he was a widower, with one little child, a girl who was at school, but would be waiting for him to fetch her home for her one week's holiday in the year.

It was evident that the vicar's guest had created a very favourable impression on us all, for though Mrs. Marchbold looked at us rather hard, and then pursed up her lips and looked steadily at the vicar's sister, evidently meaning to disconcert that lady with some indication of the thought that was in all our minds, we rather resented the rudeness, and murmured in chorus that it was evident that Mr. De Montfort was quite a gentleman.

"Which is just what he is not," said the lady, who bore Mrs. Marchbold's deprecatory stare with the most complete indifference. "He is not quite a gentleman, and my brother the vicar knows that very well; but he is a clever, amusing man, and his reading will help on the society. On the whole, though, I think it's quite as well he should leave before long, for I'm certain idling about in Chewton will do him no good, especially as he has already kept us up late two nights, because a deputation came to ask him to be a visitor at the tradesmen's club at the George."

Further discussion of the merits or demerits of the gentleman was prevented by his entering the room along with the vicar, who told us he had prevailed on Mr. De Montfort to take tea with us and to read us something from Shakespeare while we were at work. Mr. De Montfort took tea, and talked unceasingly of London, of its streets, shops, people, trades, and amusements. He described to us the stage of a theatre, and told us all about how a play was performed and how the actors came on and went off, opening the door between the parlour and the drawing-room and hanging it with table-covers to represent the front of the stage. Then he recited Hamlet and King Lear; and we all left off work to look at him; and when he wound up with a performance of legerdemain, and brought a vase that had previously been on the mantel-piece out of Mrs. Marchbold's work-bag, and took eggs from a pillow-case, and took four reels of cotton out of Miss Bailey's chignon, we didn't know whether to scream or to laugh, but we all agreed that he was the most entertaining person we had ever met or were likely to meet again.

Mr. De Montfort had grown more familiar to the Chewton Cudley people by that time. He had only been with them a few days, and yet he had a dozen invitations. The vicar had evidently taken an unaccountable liking to him. There were even people who went so far as to say we should hear him read the lessons in church if he were to stay over another Sunday. He had been to two more penny readings, and had held an extra night for instructing some of the members in the art of elocution. Only three people seemed rather doubtful as to their opinion of the visitor. One of these was the vicar's sister. She said nothing slighting, but it was evident that she mistrusted him a little. Another was Mr. Petifer, and his coolness to the stranger was set down to jealousy, especially when he fired up on the subject of the probable reading of the lessons. The third was Mr. Femm, the doctor, but he only grinned, and said he thought he remembered having heard De Montfort recite under another name when he was a student at Guy's Hospital, and used to go to a Hall of Harmony in the Walworth Road. "It's dreadful to hear a doctor talk so," said Mrs. Marchbold; "these young medical men have no reverence."

But the visitor showed such remarkable good humour, and was so very entertaining and was so sedate and respectful to all the ladies that I fancy there was something said about his bringing his little daughter down to Chewton for the holidays. Mr. Binks would have taken De Montfort off the vicar's hands in a minute. Raspall was heard to intimate that he had a nice warm spare room over the bakehouse doing nothing; and our principal butcher, Mr. Clodd, declared boldly that a man like that, who could amuse any company, and was fit for any company, was worth his meat anywhere at holiday-time.

But we had all heard that Mr. De Montfort was about to leave. He had received an invitation from the landlord of the "George and Gate," countersigned by the members of the club, to spend the last evening with them, and they had even gone so far as to wish that the vicar himself—"if they might make so bold—would condescend to look in for an hour."

This request of course could not be complied with, and the guest was about to send a polite refusal—reluctantly, it must be confessed—but the vicar readily excused him. The townsfolk naturally wanted to have him among them again for an evening, and he could return about eleven for a glass of hot spiced elder-wine before going to bed. The vicar had put his hand on De Montfort's shoulder as he said this, and was looking at him in his kind, genial way, when his visitor looked up, rose, hesitated, and seemed about to say something. There was such a remarkable expression in his face that the good parson afterwards said he should never forget it; but it passed, and with a smile, which was half trustful, half sorrowful, the actor turned away.

"Well, then, if you think I ought to go, I'll say yes," he replied; "but I had thought to spend the last night here with you."

"I sha'n't have done work much before ten myself," said the vicar; "for I must see about the beef and bread for the pensioners, and there are the cakes for the school treat, and no end of things. So we'll meet at a late supper; don't stay to the club pies and sausages, but get back in time for ours. There's no need to say, Don't drink too much of the 'George and Gate' ale and brandy, for you never take much of either, so far as I know."

It was a special evening at the "George and Gate," and every member of the club who could leave his shop was there by eight o'clock. The low-ceilinged but handsome parlour was all bright and tidy, and the plates stood on a sideboard ready for supper. Two noble punch-bowls graced the table, and a number of long "churchwarden" pipes supported the large brass coffer filled with tobacco, which opened only by some cunning mechanism, set in motion by dropping a halfpenny in a slit at the top. Mr. Binks was in the chair; Clodd, the butcher, sat opposite; a great fragrance of spice and lemon-peel pervaded the place. It only needed a speech to commence the proceedings, and Mr. Binks was equal to the occasion. It was a hearty welcome to their visitor. He responded with a few words and a recitation. There was a song and another toast, and then the accomplished visitor played on the "George and Gate" fiddle in a manner that astonished everybody—played it behind his back, over his head, under his arm, between his knees with the bow in his mouth. Then he showed a few tricks with the cards, spun plates, passed coins and watches into space, and sung a song with a violin accompaniment. The evening was in his honour, and he opened his whole repertoire of accomplishments. Time passed quickly; the waiters were at the door with the table-cloths ready to lay for supper. Mr. Clodd proposed "The Health of the Vicar." They all rose to do it honour, and called upon De Montfort to reply. He had his glass in his hand—just touching it with his lips. "I wish," he said, and then he stopped; "I wish—I could say what I would do to deserve that he should call me his friend; but—it—can—never—be." They wondered what he would say next, there was such a strange look in his eyes. They were about to ask him what he meant, when everybody there was startled by a sudden cry in the street—a sudden cry and an uproar that penetrated to the inn-yard—the cry of "Fire!" and the trampling of feet. They were all out in a minute, De Montfort first, and without his hat.

"It's your place, Raspall, as I'm a living sinner," said Clodd, forcing himself to the front and commencing to run.

"Don't say so! Don't say so!" cried the baker, "for my missis is up at the school makin' the cakes, and the man's down below settin' the batch, and my little Bess is in bed this hour an' more. Oh, help! help! where's that engine?" But the key of the engine-house had to be found, and the wretched old thing had to be wheeled out, and the hose attached and righted; and before all this could be done the flame, which seemed to have begun at the back of Raspall's shop, had burst through the shutters, and was already lapping the outer wall. It was an old-fashioned house, with a high, rickety portico over the door, and a tall, narrow window a good way above it.

At this window, where the flicker of the flame was reflected through the smoke that was now pouring out and blackening the old woodwork, a glimpse of a child's face had been seen, and Raspall was already in the roadway wringing his hands and calling for a ladder.

"We must get her down from the top of that there portico," cried Clodd; "but I'm too heavy. Here; who'll jump atop of my back, and so try to clamber up?"

"Stand away there!" shouted a strong deep voice; and almost before they could move aside a man shot past them like a catapult, and with one bound had reached the carved cornice of the portico with his right hand. The whole structure quivered, but in another moment he had drawn himself up with the ease of a practised acrobat, and was standing on the top. It was De Montfort.

The window was still far above him, and the glare within showed that the fire had reached the room; but a gutter ran down the wall to the leaden roof of the portico, and he was seen through the smoke to clasp it by a rusty projection and to draw his chin on a level with the sill, to cling to the sill itself with his arm and elbow, and with one tremendous effort to sit there amidst the smoke and to force the sash upward. They had scarcely had time to cry out that he had entered the room when he was out again—pursued by the flame that now roared from the open space, but with something under his arm. Somebody had brought out a large blanket, and four men were holding it; the engine was just beginning to play feebly where it wasn't wanted; and a short ladder had been borrowed from somewhere. He dropped a little heavily from the window, but was on his feet when they called to him to let the child fall, and a cheer went up as he seemed to gather up his strength, and tossed his living burden from him, so that it cleared the edge of the wood-work, and was caught and placed in her father's arms.

"Jump! jump for your life!" they cried, for the wretched portico had begun to sway, and every lip turned white. It was too late; he had stooped to swing himself off, when the whole thing fell in ruin, and he in the midst of it, covered with the heavy lead and woodwork, and the stone and bricks that had come down with it.

A score of strong and willing hands lifted the wreck away piecemeal, and, under the direction of the doctor, got him out and placed him on a hurdle made soft with blankets and straw. He was insensible, but his face and head were uninjured, for he was found lying with his arms protecting both. Carefully they bore him to the vicarage, the vicar following, and his sister already at the door with everything ready.

It was nearly an hour before the sad group of men who stood outside anxiously waiting heard that he was so seriously injured that his life was in danger, and that he was still unconscious. Raspall was crying more for the accident than for his injured house, which was still smouldering, though the engine had at last put out the fire. His child was safe, but he felt almost guilty for rejoicing that her life had been spared. Binks and Clodd sat patiently on the fence opposite the vicarage talking in low tones. At last the vicar came out to them and told them to go home. The patient would not be left for a moment. In the morning he would let them know if there was any change.

There was a change, but only after long efforts to restore consciousness; and the vicar himself sat by the injured man's bedside, with something in his hand upon which his tears fell as he looked at it by the light of the shaded lamp. When De Montfort had been carried in and placed upon the bed the doctor had asked to be allowed to undress him—without help—as it required a practised hand, and for a moment the vicar left the room to bring up some restorative and the bandages which had been sent for to the surgery. He had turned into the dining-room, when to his surprise the doctor came quickly but softly downstairs, entered the room, and gently closed the door.

"Do you feel that you could bear another great shock just now?" he said in a curious tone, taking hold of the vicar's wrist as he spoke. "Yes, I think you can; your nerves are pretty firm."

"What do you mean? Is he dead?"

"No; but I have undressed him, and under his shirt near his heart found something which I think you ought to see. I may be mistaken, but I seldom miss observing a likeness, especially one so strong as this"—and he held out a locket attached to a silken cord and holding a likeness.

The vicar trembled as he stretched out his hand for it. Some prevision of the truth had already flashed upon him; and as he carried the trinket to the candle above the mantel-piece he leaned heavily against the wall and groaned as though he had been smitten with sudden pain.

"A man like that could scarcely have been cruel to a woman, at all events," said the doctor in a low but emphatic tone. "Poverty is not the worst of human ills, and even occasional want, if it be not too prolonged, is endurable—more endurable than brutal neglect and indifference. This poor fellow was going home to his child, I think?"

The vicar clasped the young man's hand, and bent his noble gray head upon his shoulder. "Take my thanks, my dear friend," he said with a sob. "You have recalled me to myself. He was my sister's husband."

As the vicar sat by the bedside that night watching, watching, the injured man moved and tried to raise himself, but fell back with a heavy sigh.

The good parson was bending over him in a moment.

"Shall I fetch the doctor again?" he asked.

"No; I must speak to you now, alone."

It was nearly an hour before the vicar went to the stair-head, and called for his sister and the doctor to come up. We never heard quite what took place—what was the conversation between the vicar and his guest. But the next day the vicar went to London, and before the week was out a plain funeral went from the vicarage to the old churchyard, and the curate conducting the burial service had to stop with his handkerchief to his eyes, for in the church, clad in deep mourning, was a little girl whose silent sobbing was only hushed when the aunt whom she had but just found took her in her arms and pressed the little pale face to her bosom.

Nobody knew what name was on the locket, for it was replaced where it so long had rested, and was buried when the heart beneath it had ceased to beat; but the name afterwards carved on the tombstone was not De Montfort.

———————————————

"I don't think I shall be able to collect my wits enough to tell a story this evening," said our governess as we sat at tea on the Thursday evening, "for I've had a long letter to answer and to think over; but I fancied you liked my story about the Baby's Hand, and so if you please I'll read you another from a little black-covered manuscript book which my old friend gave me. He said it was a story about a very near friend and schoolfellow of his, and was one of the most pathetic and affecting histories that he had ever known. I don't suppose you'll think so. Still it is rather affecting, though it is only a tale of disappointment in love; but then it was a love that lasted for a lifetime and survived death."



CHAPTER V.

THE STORY OF A BOOKWORM.

YES, she is dead, and on her snow-strewn grave I left a bunch of winter flowers but yesterday. Ah, me! I never go and wander in that dingy churchyard, where the sound of the great roaring city is hushed to a sleepy murmur, but I seem to leave half my poor life there; would that I could leave it all, I sometimes think, and that when the sexton comes to bring the keys of the church on a Sunday morning he should find the mere body of me lying there, my head leaning on the stone that bears her name—not his name—her name, her one dear name by which I called her last of all.

But these are ill thoughts, and as the poet says "this way madness lies." Let me get to my books, there is comfort and companionship in them; and yet I have held my finger in this page till the light is gone and it's too dark to read.

I suppose I was meant for a bookworm, and yet I didn't like school. At all events I didn't like the Free Grammar School of St. Bothwyn By-Church, to which I had the privilege of being elected when my poor father was clerk of the Company, and lived in the old hall till he bought this little house in Hoxton. Ah me! how I seem to see the old black oaken wainscot of the court room, and the little parlour where the firelight danced in deep crimson flecks and pools in the polished floor, and the shadowy panels! How I can remember going in after dark in winter evenings and sitting there, a lonely motherless boy, and seeming to be lost in some mysterious way to the outside world, as I pored over tales of old romance, or when I grew older traced the origin of some quaint custom in one of the heavy leather-bound volumes that filled the narrow cramped bookcase of the clerk's office!

In the midst of my dreaming one thing was real to me, and I suppose it was a part of my queer character, that what was said to be fancy in other young men was the one fact of my life. I mean love. Apart from the daily routine of the office, which often became mechanical, so that I could pursue it and think of other things even while it was going on, I had no true life in the present—that is to say no strongly conscious life of my own, apart from the region of imagination—except when I was sitting in the deep old escutcheoned bay-window of the Hall, looking out upon the old shaded courtyard, where the sunlight, darting amidst the spreading plane-trees, flecked and chequered the marble pavement, and the little carved fountain trilled and rippled till it incited the canary hanging in its gilded cage to break into song that drowned its splashing murmur, and silenced the sparrows twittering about the heavy woodwork of the old porch. That was my real world, because there was one figure, one face, that held me to it, as though by a spell that I could not, and never sought to break. I scarcely remember the time I did not love her.

Mary never suspected, as I sat watching her at work, or reading to her on those summer evenings, that my heart was ready to break out into words of passionate entreaty. She had been so used to see me sitting there, or to run with me round the little paved courtyard, or the old dingy grass plot in the midst of its prim gravel walks at the side of the hall that I had become an ordinary association of her life. I had left school while she was still learning of a governess, who came four times a week to teach her, for her father was a man of more consideration than mine. But Mary was motherless as I was. Our mothers had been dear friends in their school-girl days and afterwards; and our fathers were old acquaintances; and so it came about that I was often at the Hall for the week round after office hours, and that I seemed to belong as much to the place as the old, fat, wheezy, brown spaniel that stood upon the broad stone step and welcomed me with tail and tongue. But while I remained, as it were, stationary—an old-fashioned boy, an older-fashioned youth, an antiquated man—she altered. Occasionally when I went to see her she had gone out visiting, and I was left to dream away the evening in the old window waiting for her return, or, if I knew which way she came, loitering in the street in case she should be unattended by the maid who was usually sent to meet or to fetch her when her father did not go himself.

It was on one of these evenings that I suddenly understood what was the cause of the undefinable change that I had noticed in her manner some time before. In the previous week the company had held a court dinner, and that was the evening when the alderman introduced his son—"My son, the captain," as he called him—a captain by purchase, and with the right to wear a brilliant uniform and long moustachios. A chuckle-pated fellow, for all his scarlet coat and clanking heels, but with a bullying, insolent air. When the feast was over, and the guests were preparing to go, it was time for me to go too, for I had been late helping to make up some of the accounts in the office; and, after taking my hat off the hook in the passage, turned to the old sitting-room to look for Mary, that I might say, "Good-night."

It was beyond her time for being about, especially on the court nights, but to my surprise, as I opened the door she was standing there with the captain, who was holding her hand. He had no business there, and she knew it. The other diners were already coming down the stairs at the end of the passage. He must have stolen down quickly, and she must have been waiting for him. This all passed through my mind in a moment as I stood looking at him, such an ugly leer upon his face as he bent over her hand that I had to clench my fingers till the blood started in the nails to keep down my rising wrath.

"Hallo! who is this?" he said, as he turned with a swagger, but without dropping her hand.

"Oh! Richard, I thought you'd gone home long ago. It's only a friend of my father's, and he's so near-sighted I suppose he did not see anybody here," she replied in a flutter.

"Confounded little manners," said the captain, staring at me.

I was dumb—and my limbs seemed to be rigid.

"Is he deaf too?" asked the captain with a grin. "Confounded little manners, really."

"You're welcome to the little there are," I blurted out; "you have none of your own. Mary, shall I take you to your father?"

She pushed away my outstretched hand and hurried from the room; and he went out also after bestowing upon me an oath which I could hear him repeat as he sought his hat and cloak in the hall. I stood there without a word. My heart had seemed to drop within me as a coal fire burnt to ashes falls together in a grate. The warmth that kept it alive had gone out suddenly. But it smouldered yet, and when I went to meet her a few evenings afterwards I had determined to gather courage and speak to her once for all. I walked mechanically through the streets between the Hall and Doctors' Commons, where she had gone on a visit, and was just turning by the old garden beyond the Proctors' College when I heard voices close to me, and looking up, saw her walking with him, clinging to his arm, looking into his face. I hesitated for a moment, and they saw me. "Good-night!" said she in a formal voice as she clutched his arm tighter, and they both passed on.

So all was over. It was many weeks before I went again to see her father. It might have been many more. I think I should never have gone again but for my own father saying to me, "Dick, my son, I can see and feel for you too, but bear up; you are no boy now, you know. And I had set my heart on it too; so had our old friend. He wants you to go and see him, Dick, to help him make up his quarterly account, as you used to do. Perhaps she'll tire of this popinjay—and, when she comes to her senses—"

"Or when he deserts her," I interrupted bitterly.

The dear old man said no more, but pressed my hand—his other hand upon my shoulder. "Go and see our old friend," he repeated presently.

I went—taking care to avoid the familiar sitting-room and to go only to the office. There her father sat, looking strangely worn and anxious, but he rose to greet me.

He was pleased to see me. I could see that by the smile that brought something of the old look back upon his face; but his voice shook as he told me that at the first rumour of active service the pompous alderman had bought the captain off, and that now he had all his time to dangle after Mary. It had broken him, he said; he was not the man he had been. His accounts confused him, and his cash-balance was short. He was going that very night to see an old cousin, to ask if she would take charge of Mary for a while; and if I would only once more look through the books while he was gone, perhaps I might put them right.

It was a cold night, near Christmas, and there was a bright fire in the office, which seemed to light the room with a ruddy glow that quite paled the flame of the shaded lamp upon the writing-table. All was so still that the ticking of the old clock upon a bracket seemed to grow into an emphatic beat upon my ear quickened with nervous pain; but I sat down and was soon immersed in my accustomed drudgery of figures, so that, when I had taken out sundry balances, and checked the totals with a sum of money in gold and silver that lay upon the table in a leather bag, I had ceased to note how the night wore on; and after tying up the cash and placing it inside the secretaire, of which I turned the key, I sat down before the fire in a high-backed old leather chair and began to think, or dream, no matter which.

Above the high carved mantel was a little round old-fashioned mirror, and as I lay back in the chair my purblind eyes were fixed upon it as it reflected the mingled gleams of lamp and fire that touched the shining surfaces of the oaken wall or the furniture of the room. My back was to the door, and yet by the sudden passing of a shadow across the glass I saw that it was being opened stealthily—and all the doors were too heavy and well hung to make a sound, if only the locks were noiselessly turned. I was so concealed by the great chair, and by the darkness of the corner where I sat beyond the radius of the lamp, that the intruder advanced quickly. He evidently expected to find nobody there, and, with scarcely a glance round, went to the table, peered amongst the books, and then, as though not finding what he sought, turned to the secretaire, and with a sudden wrench of the key opened it. I had had time to think what I should do, and as his hand closed on the bag of money I sprang to the bell beside the fireplace and rang it furiously; then darted across the room and stood with my back to the door. The captain—for it was he, and I had known him by his height and figure—gave a sort of shriek and turned livid as he dropped the bag and came towards me.

"You here!" he said. "It's well that I happened to come in and catch you."

"Stand back!" I cried, "or I'll raise the neighbourhood to see the noble captain who has turned thief. You don't go till the servants at least know who and what you are."

"You fool!" he retorted, his face working. "It's only your word against mine; and who has the most right here, I'd like to know?"

All this time some one was pushing heavily against the door from the outside, and a woman was whimpering there. I stepped back, still facing him, and flung it open. It was Mary, looking white and wild, and holding a sealed letter in her hand.

"What is this? Why are you here, Algernon?" she asked, turning to the captain.

"He was here to rob your father of another treasure besides yourself," I said. "He is a thief, and I will proclaim him as such."

"A thief! How dare you?" she said, her face all aflame. "Do you know you are speaking of my husband?"

"Husband!" I cried—"Husband!" And I leaned on a chair for support.

"Richard," she said, placing the letter on the table, "I brought this that I might leave it for my father when he came in. You will see that he has it, will you?—or if you go before his return, let him find it when he comes."

Married! The room swam round; and as I stood there, dumb and sick, they seemed to swim with it out at the door.

When I came to myself the place was still as death, save for the ticking of the clock and the click of the failing fire. But there lay the letter. Another moment, as it seemed to me, and her father had let himself in and I had placed it in his hand. He read it half through before he quite understood what had been inclosed in it—a narrow printed slip of paper. Suddenly he unfolded that and carried it nearer the light.

"Married!" he said. "Well, thank God for that! But—but—married, and to him!"—and he fell forward on the table.

He didn't die. People don't mostly die of these shocks. The months went on; the years went on; and though he'd never seen his daughter, nor rightly knew where she was, he heard that her husband had an allowance made him by his father after his gambling debts had been paid; but the alderman had taken his head clerk into partnership, and there was an end of the captain's going into the business.

My dear old father died and left me this house and his small savings. I seldom went to the Hall, though I should have been welcome there. Four times a year I lent a hand with the accounts for the sake of old routine, and stayed to eat a little supper and drink a glass of the famous claret, or to smoke a pipe with the old gentleman, who was failing greatly. His daughter was never mentioned between us, and I supposed he had lost sight of her altogether, when, one night, he said quite suddenly: "Dick, I wish you'd take a letter and a message to Mary for me."

He hadn't called me Dick for years, and I thought he was drivelling, but he held an open letter into which he was folding some banknotes.

"You may read it, Dick. They are in London, but she has not been to see me, and she writes for help to tide over some difficulties, she says, till her husband can see his father. She evidently doesn't know that the alderman's in the bankruptcy court. Poor dear, poor dear, she's reaping the fruits of her disobedience, and yet she will not come to see me. To her own hand, Dick, to her own hand only, must this letter go. It tells her how, in the last resort, she may seek my cousin, if she will not come to me before I die. My poor savings—they are but little, Dick—will be in trust for her with my cousin, but she sha'n't know that from me. Could you take this to-morrow morning, Dick?"

I could do no less than promise to convey it to her, and the next morning set off to find the house, in a rather mean neighbourhood, where I found that she and her husband had taken furnished lodgings. A servant girl took up my name, and I was asked to walk upstairs. There, upon the landing, stood the woman I had not seen since the night she left her father's home, but changed, as years should not have changed her, and with a pleading anxious look in her scared eyes that was grievous to see.

"Richard," she said with a faint smile, and holding out her hand, "is it you?"

"I come as the bearer of a written message," I replied; "but if I can ever do you real service you know well enough that I should gladly aid you."

"Thank you, Richard," she said gently, "I know it; but my father, he is well? His writing has changed though, it trembles so," and she burst into tears as she went to the landing window to read the letter. She had but just finished, and was slipping it into the bosom of her dress, when, with a sudden gesture, she said, "I dare not stay. I hear him coming up the street. Good-bye, good-bye, and take my love to papa, my dear, dear love. Say I'll write again or see him; but now go, and take no notice."

I went down, and should have passed quietly from the house, but a latch-key turned in the street door, and, as I tried to go out, the "Captain" stood in the way. I knew him, bloated, shabby, and broken down as he looked, but should have said nothing had he not also recognized me, and turned upon me with an oath, wanting to know what I did there.

I had heard of their address, I said, and that misfortune had overtaken his father, and had come to see whether I could do anything to help them.

Could I lend him a ten-pound note there and then? he asked, with an ugly laugh; and when I said, I had no such sum, he broke out again in a torrent of abuse.

I would have pushed past him, but he seized me by the arm, and swung me round facing him. I still strove to get away, when I heard his wife's imploring voice upon the stairs; and he spoke words that made the little blood that was in me surge swift and hot to my face. In a moment I had wrenched myself free, and struck him full on the mouth with my clenched hand. He was cowed for a moment, and turned white, but there were two or three people looking on by that time.

"You miserable old pantaloon," he screamed, as he made a rush at me.

But I had one hand on the knob of the door, and, swinging round as though I worked on a pivot, I caught him full between the eyes, and sent him sprawling among the hats and umbrellas that he had knocked down in his fall. Then I closed the door, and walked away. The page is turned for ever now, I muttered to myself. I cannot even meet her father again. Poor old gentleman!—he died—he died too soon; but not before I'd seen him and held his hand in mine. But she had never been to the old home; and on inquiring at the place where they had lodged, it was believed that they had gone abroad after the death of their two children.

So that was the bitter ending, I thought. And all that dead past was to be closed like a page in a book that is read and clasped.

Yes; but the book is reopened sometimes, where a sprig of rue has been placed to mark between the leaves.

I didn't change. I was long past changing. And I followed my old pursuits; went to my old haunts; wore my old clothes, as I do now, from day to day.

So years went on, until one dreary afternoon in November—one bright and sunny afternoon it might have been for its influence on my dim calendar—I was rummaging one of the boxes of a bookstall in Holborn, when the keeper of it came out and put two or three battered volumes among the rest. Instinctively I took one of them up and opened it. A great throb came into my heart and made me reel; for it was a prayer-book, and there on the title-page was her name—hers, and in my handwriting of years and years ago. The prayer-book that I had given her.

"Dear me, sir, you look faint-like," says the dealer; "let me fetch you a stool, or come in and sit down a bit."

"Can you—tell—me," I gasped, "where you bought this book? Where and when?"

"Where? Why here. When? Why five minutes ago, along with two or three more, of no particular value, of a poor little thing that said it was all her mother had to part with—Stop, sir, stop; why, there she is coming out of the grocer's shop this very minute. Run after the old gentleman, James; he'll do himself a mischief, or be run over, or something."

For I had dashed after the child like a madman, my hat off, the open book in my hand. James had outrun me though, and was now coming back with a child—a young girl—poorly clad; oh! so poorly clad; but yet like Mary—my Mary—on the day I wrote that name in the book still open in my hand.

"Mary!" I gasped.

"Yes, sir," said the child; "I must make haste home, or my mother will have no tea."

* * * * *

No, no, I will not dwell on the recollection of that poor room, with its evidences of want, its signs of suffering; nor of all that might have been said and was not. By the bedside of the woman whom I had loved and lost, and who was now passing from the world into the great reality of life, I had few words to speak. The only witness of the promise I made—except the Lord and His angels—was the silently weeping girl, his only remaining child. Almost the only words were:—

"Mary."

"Dick."

And the child stood there clasping her mother's hand—my hand; to be in future my child and the child of the mother in heaven; and who shall tell but at the resurrection——

Ah! I hear her foot upon the stair, her sweet voice singing as she comes—that sweet sweet voice that one day, maybe, will sing me to sleep.

———————————————

"Ah-h-h!" sighed Mrs. Parmigan, who had listened to the last two stories without saying a word but with an expression of wonder. "How you can remember so much about people I can't imagine; but really, my dear, these love stories never do end except in the saddest way. Now if I could only write a tale, which I know is, of course, quite impossible, it should be every word of it true, and everybody should be as happy as the day is long."

"But then you see, dear Mrs. Parmigan, that wouldn't be every word true," said Miss Grantley with her grave smile. "I hope, my dear young friends here are mostly happy with me at school, but there are times when we don't feel altogether in harmony, and lessons are not learned, and our tempers get the upper hand, and the sun seems to have gone behind a cloud and the world turns the wrong way, till the storm lowers and breaks, and then come regret and forbearance, and the stillness, and 'the gentle shining after rain.' Life is often a rather difficult school, and our education in this world is not completed without trouble and the discipline of pain and the finding of strength through weakness and of truth through error. But come, old lady, I am not to be led into a lecture, especially to a person of your years and experience, so tell me what you mean,—where am I to find 'a love story,' as you call it, that shall be without bitter-sweet, and come to a bright ending without going through a dark passage?"

"Well, to tell you the truth, my dear, I was first thinking of my own very happy, but at the same time very commonplace and unromantic married life with Mr. Parmigan, who, as you know, was in the Bank of England, and came home as regularly as the clock struck half-past five; but then I was trying to recall what Mrs. Schwartz the cooper's wife was telling you that day when we went into her house out of the rain after our long walk from Fernside."

"What! has that pretty, fair, round rosy-cheeked German woman a romance in her life?" asked Annie Bowers. "I declare I've often thought there must have been some kind of sentimental recollection in those great dreamy blue eyes. What a fine, strong-looking man her husband is too! Marion and I have often stood looking into the shed while he has been at work making tubs and casks, and sometimes we have heard him singing some German song as we walked that way. He speaks English so well too; but Mrs. Schwartz has a pretty buzzing accent, even the two flaxen-headed children have caught it, and talk in what seems to be a German idiom."

"Well, would you like me to try and repeat Mrs. Schwartz's story as she has told it to me?" said our governess. "I must let you know, however, that she and I are very old friends, for I have been to see her over and over again, and she and her children have been here to tea several times in the holidays, her husband fetching them home in the evening. I was selfish in that, for I wanted to refresh my own ear with the German accent, and they both speak well, particularly the master cooper, who like most of his countrymen was a true journeyman, and travelled all over the country to practise his trade before he was drafted off to the army to fight in the Franco-German War."

"Oh tell us the Schwartz love story!" said Sarah Jorring, "and try to tell it just as you heard it; it would be so much more sentimental."

"But not in German," we cried, "that wouldn't be fair, to give us a German exercise under the pretence of a story; we'll have it in English."

"Well, you shall have it in something like the original German-English, which seems to me very much to resemble real old English, and sounds to my ear more simple and more fit for story-telling than the more modern tongue. You must try to picture to yourselves Mrs. Schwartz when she was younger and paler, and wore a round white cap and great silver ear-rings, and was in fact a slender, rather pale pretty girl with a plaintive look in her great blue eyes, and a voice soft and low. The story arose from our talking about the fashion of Christmas-trees having been adopted in England, and the recollection of the last Christmas-tree that she had seen at her old home with her former mistress caused her to say with a deep sigh, 'Ach! Ich habe gelebt und geliebet;' so I will call the story 'I have lived and loved,' and you must try to fancy that Mrs. Schwartz is speaking."



CHAPTER VI.

"I HAVE LIVED AND LOVED."

"SO we will hang up the Polichinello that thy dear father sent thee from afar, little Loisl; for who knows but thou and Heinrich, and I, thy mother, may see him yet before the eve of Christmas, and while the snow is on the ground. We will keep the tree here, near the window, and should he come not, we will light it afresh every night that it may shine a welcome to the dear father, and keep our hearts alive with hope."

This is what I heard my dear mistress say when it wanted yet a week to Christmas in the year 1871, and the master, her husband, was still there with the Crown Prince before Paris along with his regiment. He was ober-lieutenant, one of many going to fight against France, and ever since the beginning, till after Sedan, after Domremy, after Metz, had been with his men in the camp, and wherever there was much danger always in the front. It was wonder to me how I had come to learn all about the war and the campaign, but girl as I was (Lisba is but a child even now, my dear mistress would say), I also had one dear to me—with the Red Prince and the army before Orleans.

Herr postmaster Schwartz—ah! he came to talk to my mistress and to bring letters to her from her brave husband, and I was sewing, or busy in the room, and heard all—as he would stay in the kitchen on his way out and tell us all about it—Bertha and me; and once he handed me a letter.

Oh! how my hand trembled as I took it; how the Herr postmaster looked at me through his horn spectacles and watched me, for he knew the writing! it was his son's, the writing of Franz. And I felt the blood rush up hot to my face, and the tears blind me as I placed in my bodice the little letter that I dare not open while there were questioning eyes to ask: "What is he to thee, Lisba, and what says he?"

Bertha knew. Bertha was yet more of a child than I, for she was two years younger, but old was she in sentiment, and too often we would talk together far into the night, but in whispers lest we should wake the little ones, for Bertha slept next the great nursery, where our mistress had also made her bed, and I would steal into her room to pore over the map that the Herr postmaster had drawn with his pencil in the kitchen to show where our armies had been, and where the cruel battles were fought. In Alsace and to Lorraine, by Neiderbronn, at Weissenburg, at Woerth, at Saarbruck, at Metz, at Sedan, "where," said Herr postmaster, "we have received the sword of the Emperor Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, who is now our prisoner in the Palace of the Habichtswald."

Then—ah! me, to think that they should be taken to the end of the world—right into France, to Donchery, to Chalons. As near as Strasbourg, as far as Rheims, and then on to Paris—or near it—at the place called Nogent-sur-Marne; that is where our dear master, the ober-lieutenant, was with the army of the Crown Prince; and we grieved and waited, for he had had a wound, we heard, though now he was healed. And the fighting went on, though hundreds of our brave men of the troops—the landwehr, the reserve—were hurt, or maimed, or killed. And many women wept over their knitting or their spinning; and the coming of the holy Christmas time brought not peace, though the Herr postmaster said the hungry war was now nearly over, but its jaws were not yet done clinking, and would yet gnash many to death.

Franz! ah! he was with the Red Prince at Orleans, where they had fought the French army of the Loire. Nor did Franz go alone, for there went with him his best friend, his dutz brueder, Hofer, from Esmansdorff, whither Franz had gone three years before to follow his trade of cask-cooper and wheelwright, and there met Hofer, whose family were of the Tyrolese Protestants that came from Zitterthal to find a refuge in our land.

He came to Saueichenwald, to our village, this Hofer—a dark well-looking man—not fair like Franz, nor with his broad chest and clear blue eyes—but tall and quick, with crisp curling hair, and long fingers. I have told him that he had hawk's eyes, for he could see the birds on the trees, and if he had pleased, could have shot them with his rifle, so far was his sight, so true his aim; but he hated to kill or hurt any living thing, and loved best to play the fiddle when he was not at work in his tan-yard. Yet now, he too was gone to the war, and was in the midst of the slaying and burning. When first he came home with Franz to Saueichenwald, I was afraid, for though I loved him not, but loved Franz only, his eyes were ever fixed on me, and he came often to the homestead; even when Franz came not he would be there in the yellow sunshine of the autumn evening by the gate that led to the apple orchard, or at the wicket, where Bertha and I used to stand after coming from the dairy or the hen-house; nor was he unwelcome to the master, who wondered at his shooting and leaping with a pole; nor to the dear mistress, for whom he brought a work-box, all of beautifully carved wood; nor to the little ones, Loisl and Heinrich, to whom he played the fiddle, and whom he taught to dance or showed how the chamois is hunted.

Often when I have stood with Bertha—for we always went together—at the gate, he would come with his keen bright laugh and hawk's eyes, and leap the wall that inclosed the dairy yard. Franz, too, had noticed how he sought us, and one red evening when we were crossing the orchard, and Hofer walked between us with an arm about each, Franz came in by the old path from the wood on the other side, and stood there looking still and grieved. Laughing ever, Hofer carried us both in to where Franz stood, and with his long arms still about us caught him with a hand on each wrist, and so stood we, two girls in the midst of two men's encircling arms.

"Hof, is it that thou lov'st Lisba?" said Frank sternly; "if so, thou doest not well."

"I both love her and do well, my brother," replied Hofer. "I love her because I love thee, and in mine eyes she is thy wife. See thou then," and he held up his long right hand, "I am no brawler; but he who would do her ill or move his tongue against her would have to reckon with me as much as with thee, for she is thine and I am thine too, as thou art mine, or what means the dagger scar in our arms that we both know of?" Then taking me by the hand he leads me to Franz and kisses me gently on the forehead, and even while I am putting the face of Franz from mine I see that Hofer has stooped to kiss the poor child Bertha also, whose hand is in his, but whose face is bowed down and red as the wild berry. If I am a child, as my dear mistress says, then is Bertha but an infant, and cannot know of love that should turn her cheek to flame and bring bright tears into her eyes.

Ah me!—that evening—how we stood and watched the sun go down till the night came, and with a dark blue shutter left only a long crevice where the fire shone through; how we wandered back hand in hand, and parted with a hasty "good-night" when we heard the church clock chime; and that is not long ago, though it seems to have gone so far back; for next day came the tidings of a levy for the army—men were wanted. Not one by one, but altogether, the young and then the middle-aged were called out to fight in France or to guard the frontier, and we—we were left (the dear mistress said "we")—to wait and weep, and with only the Herr postmaster, the father of Franz, to bring us news, and read to us the stories of the battles, and bring to the dear mistress her letters. For I had one letter and no more; and that told me that Franz and Hofer had met in the same army of the Red Prince and were comrades, but not in the same corps; but that once they came near together on the field, and in the thick of the fight Franz had struck down a man's arm uplifted to kill his brother.

It is easy to see how I came to learn so much of the war, and of the places where it raged, for old Schwartz was proud of his knowledge, and read to us and drew maps, and we had nothing else to talk about. The village was very still, and people from the nearest town talked only of the war and of those who had left them. Ours is a quiet place with romantic scenes around it, and but just beyond the shadow of the giant mountain Riesengebirge. We can see the blue profile of the Schneekoppe; and there are those—the old ones—who still talk of the legends of Rubezahl, the counter of turnips (the mountain spirit), who took all kinds of disguises to punish avarice and cruelty, and to reward honesty and help the poor. Among the poor went our dear mistress now, or they came to her for sympathy; she who, like themselves, like all of us, except brotherless young ones such as Bertha, grieved for a lover, or a husband, or a brother, gone to the war. It was not likely to be a merry Christmastide in Germanland, except that the news of victory, or of fortresses taken, came and stirred the slow blood of the people who were left. But we longed and prayed for peace—we women did at all events—and with some there was scarcely heart to trim and deck the Christmas-tree; to tell the children to prepare for the visit of the Christ Kindlein on Christmas Eve, who would bring good gifts to the good, but would leave the naughty to Pelsnichol to come and whip them with his great birch. In some villages like ours an old man disguised with a long beard and gown, and a great bag, would go about at Christmastide to the houses where the people had expected him, and would carry the gifts to the children, and would show others who were naughty the birch, and give them nothing. But we had no Pelsnichol at our house, only sweet talk about the child Christ, and the gifts of the wise men, and of the love that should be among little ones—the love and the heart-giving.

So the tree was decked, and placed in the window ready to light on Christmas Eve, in the hope that it might be a sign of love and welcome. And we were on the watch all day, and every night Bertha would go out and sit upon the wall, looking out towards the road to the town, until the light was no more seen in the belfry of the church, and the clock chimed supper-time. I told not our dear mistress of this, for was it not for Franz and the dear master that the child kept watch?—but I went not myself to that outlook, though my heart stood still every time Bertha returned, with her head bent down, and had seen no one coming. She had a presentiment or fancy, she said, that the wanderer would return after nightfall. I knew not,—I began to tell lies to myself that I cared not,—and for this reason; I had long feared that the Herr postmaster liked not me to be loved by his son; for behold he was postmaster, and had been a builder of organs, and the dear master was godfather to Franz, while I—well, I had nothing, but the dear mistress was my godmother, and my father had been pastor of a village, and had taught me some things before he died.