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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Wessex Tales, by Thomas Hardy
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Wessex Tales
+
+Author: Thomas Hardy
+
+Release Date: November 2, 2004  [eBook #3056]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WESSEX TALES***
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1919 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+
+WESSEX TALES
+
+
+Contents:
+
+Preface
+An Imaginative Woman
+The Three Strangers
+The Withered Arm
+Fellow-Townsmen
+Interlopers at the Knap
+The Distracted Preacher
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+An apology is perhaps needed for the neglect of contrast which is shown
+by presenting two consecutive stories of hangmen in such a small
+collection as the following.  But in the neighbourhood of county-towns
+tales of executions used to form a large proportion of the local
+traditions; and though never personally acquainted with any chief
+operator at such scenes, the writer of these pages had as a boy the
+privilege of being on speaking terms with a man who applied for the
+office, and who sank into an incurable melancholy because he failed to
+get it, some slight mitigation of his grief being to dwell upon striking
+episodes in the lives of those happier ones who had held it with success
+and renown.  His tale of disappointment used to cause some wonder why his
+ambition should have taken such an unfortunate form, but its nobleness
+was never questioned.  In those days, too, there was still living an old
+woman who, for the cure of some eating disease, had been taken in her
+youth to have her 'blood turned' by a convict's corpse, in the manner
+described in 'The Withered Arm.'
+
+Since writing this story some years ago I have been reminded by an aged
+friend who knew 'Rhoda Brook' that, in relating her dream, my
+forgetfulness has weakened the facts our of which the tale grew.  In
+reality it was while lying down on a hot afternoon that the incubus
+oppressed her and she flung it off, with the results upon the body of the
+original as described.  To my mind the occurrence of such a vision in the
+daytime is more impressive than if it had happened in a midnight dream.
+Readers are therefore asked to correct the misrelation, which affords an
+instance of how our imperfect memories insensibly formalize the fresh
+originality of living fact--from whose shape they slowly depart, as
+machine-made castings depart by degrees from the sharp hand-work of the
+mould.
+
+Among the many devices for concealing smuggled goods in caves and pits of
+the earth, that of planting an apple-tree in a tray or box which was
+placed over the mouth of the pit is, I believe, unique, and it is
+detailed in one of the tales precisely as described by an old carrier of
+'tubs'--a man who was afterwards in my father's employ for over thirty
+years.  I never gathered from his reminiscences what means were adopted
+for lifting the tree, which, with its roots, earth, and receptacle, must
+have been of considerable weight.  There is no doubt, however, that the
+thing was done through many years.  My informant often spoke, too, of the
+horribly suffocating sensation produced by the pair of spirit-tubs slung
+upon the chest and back, after stumbling with the burden of them for
+several miles inland over a rough country and in darkness.  He said that
+though years of his youth and young manhood were spent in this irregular
+business, his profits from the same, taken all together, did not average
+the wages he might have earned in a steady employment, whilst the
+fatigues and risks were excessive.
+
+I may add that the first story in the series turns upon a physical
+possibility that may attach to women of imaginative temperament, and that
+is well supported by the experiences of medical men and other observers
+of such manifestations.
+
+T. H.
+April 1896.
+
+
+
+
+AN IMAGINATIVE WOMAN
+
+
+When William Marchmill had finished his inquiries for lodgings at a well-
+known watering-place in Upper Wessex, he returned to the hotel to find
+his wife.  She, with the children, had rambled along the shore, and
+Marchmill followed in the direction indicated by the military-looking
+hall-porter
+
+'By Jove, how far you've gone!  I am quite out of breath,' Marchmill
+said, rather impatiently, when he came up with his wife, who was reading
+as she walked, the three children being considerably further ahead with
+the nurse.
+
+Mrs. Marchmill started out of the reverie into which the book had thrown
+her.  'Yes,' she said, 'you've been such a long time.  I was tired of
+staying in that dreary hotel.  But I am sorry if you have wanted me,
+Will?'
+
+'Well, I have had trouble to suit myself.  When you see the airy and
+comfortable rooms heard of, you find they are stuffy and uncomfortable.
+Will you come and see if what I've fixed on will do?  There is not much
+room, I am afraid; hut I can light on nothing better.  The town is rather
+full.'
+
+The pair left the children and nurse to continue their ramble, and went
+back together.
+
+In age well-balanced, in personal appearance fairly matched, and in
+domestic requirements conformable, in temper this couple differed, though
+even here they did not often clash, he being equable, if not lymphatic,
+and she decidedly nervous and sanguine.  It was to their tastes and
+fancies, those smallest, greatest particulars, that no common denominator
+could be applied.  Marchmill considered his wife's likes and inclinations
+somewhat silly; she considered his sordid and material.  The husband's
+business was that of a gunmaker in a thriving city northwards, and his
+soul was in that business always; the lady was best characterized by that
+superannuated phrase of elegance 'a votary of the muse.'  An
+impressionable, palpitating creature was Ella, shrinking humanely from
+detailed knowledge of her husband's trade whenever she reflected that
+everything he manufactured had for its purpose the destruction of life.
+She could only recover her equanimity by assuring herself that some, at
+least, of his weapons were sooner or later used for the extermination of
+horrid vermin and animals almost as cruel to their inferiors in species
+as human beings were to theirs.
+
+She had never antecedently regarded this occupation of his as any
+objection to having him for a husband.  Indeed, the necessity of getting
+life-leased at all cost, a cardinal virtue which all good mothers teach,
+kept her from thinking of it at all till she had closed with William, had
+passed the honeymoon, and reached the reflecting stage.  Then, like a
+person who has stumbled upon some object in the dark, she wondered what
+she had got; mentally walked round it, estimated it; whether it were rare
+or common; contained gold, silver, or lead; were a clog or a pedestal,
+everything to her or nothing.
+
+She came to some vague conclusions, and since then had kept her heart
+alive by pitying her proprietor's obtuseness and want of refinement,
+pitying herself, and letting off her delicate and ethereal emotions in
+imaginative occupations, day-dreams, and night-sighs, which perhaps would
+not much have disturbed William if he had known of them.
+
+Her figure was small, elegant, and slight in build, tripping, or rather
+bounding, in movement.  She was dark-eyed, and had that marvellously
+bright and liquid sparkle in each pupil which characterizes persons of
+Ella's cast of soul, and is too often a cause of heartache to the
+possessor's male friends, ultimately sometimes to herself.  Her husband
+was a tall, long-featured man, with a brown beard; he had a pondering
+regard; and was, it must be added, usually kind and tolerant to her.  He
+spoke in squarely shaped sentences, and was supremely satisfied with a
+condition of sublunary things which made weapons a necessity.
+
+Husband and wife walked till they had reached the house they were in
+search of, which stood in a terrace facing the sea, and was fronted by a
+small garden of wind-proof and salt-proof evergreens, stone steps leading
+up to the porch.  It had its number in the row, but, being rather larger
+than the rest, was in addition sedulously distinguished as Coburg House
+by its landlady, though everybody else called it 'Thirteen, New Parade.'
+The spot was bright and lively now; but in winter it became necessary to
+place sandbags against the door, and to stuff up the keyhole against the
+wind and rain, which had worn the paint so thin that the priming and
+knotting showed through.
+
+The householder, who bad been watching for the gentleman's return, met
+them in the passage, and showed the rooms.  She informed them that she
+was a professional man's widow, left in needy circumstances by the rather
+sudden death of her husband, and she spoke anxiously of the conveniences
+of the establishment.
+
+Mrs. Marchmill said that she liked the situation and the house; but, it
+being small, there would not be accommodation enough, unless she could
+have all the rooms.
+
+The landlady mused with an air of disappointment.  She wanted the
+visitors to be her tenants very badly, she said, with obvious honesty.
+But unfortunately two of the rooms were occupied permanently by a
+bachelor gentleman.  He did not pay season prices, it was true; but as he
+kept on his apartments all the year round, and was an extremely nice and
+interesting young man, who gave no trouble, she did not like to turn him
+out for a month's 'let,' even at a high figure.  'Perhaps, however,' she
+added, 'he might offer to go for a time.'
+
+They would not hear of this, and went back to the hotel, intending to
+proceed to the agent's to inquire further.  Hardly had they sat down to
+tea when the landlady called.  Her gentleman, she said, had been so
+obliging as to offer to give up his rooms for three or four weeks rather
+than drive the new-comers away.
+
+'It is very kind, but we won't inconvenience him in that way,' said the
+Marchmills.
+
+'O, it won't inconvenience him, I assure you!' said the landlady
+eloquently.  'You see, he's a different sort of young man from
+most--dreamy, solitary, rather melancholy--and he cares more to be here
+when the south-westerly gales are beating against the door, and the sea
+washes over the Parade, and there's not a soul in the place, than he does
+now in the season.  He'd just as soon be where, in fact, he's going
+temporarily, to a little cottage on the Island opposite, for a change.'
+She hoped therefore that they would come.
+
+The Marchmill family accordingly took possession of the house next day,
+and it seemed to suit them very well.  After luncheon Mr. Marchmill
+strolled out towards the pier, and Mrs. Marchmill, having despatched the
+children to their outdoor amusements on the sands, settled herself in
+more completely, examining this and that article, and testing the
+reflecting powers of the mirror in the wardrobe door.
+
+In the small back sitting-room, which had been the young bachelor's, she
+found furniture of a more personal nature than in the rest.  Shabby
+books, of correct rather than rare editions, were piled up in a queerly
+reserved manner in corners, as if the previous occupant had not conceived
+the possibility that any incoming person of the season's bringing could
+care to look inside them.  The landlady hovered on the threshold to
+rectify anything that Mrs. Marchmill might not find to her satisfaction.
+
+'I'll make this my own little room,' said the latter, 'because the books
+are here.  By the way, the person who has left seems to have a good many.
+He won't mind my reading some of them, Mrs. Hooper, I hope?'
+
+'O dear no, ma'am.  Yes, he has a good many.  You see, he is in the
+literary line himself somewhat.  He is a poet--yes, really a poet--and he
+has a little income of his own, which is enough to write verses on, but
+not enough for cutting a figure, even if he cared to.'
+
+'A poet!  O, I did not know that.'
+
+Mrs. Marchmill opened one of the books, and saw the owner's name written
+on the title-page.  'Dear me!' she continued; 'I know his name very
+well--Robert Trewe--of course I do; and his writings!  And it is his
+rooms we have taken, and him we have turned out of his home?'
+
+Ella Marchmill, sitting down alone a few minutes later, thought with
+interested surprise of Robert Trewe.  Her own latter history will best
+explain that interest.  Herself the only daughter of a struggling man of
+letters, she had during the last year or two taken to writing poems, in
+an endeavour to find a congenial channel in which to let flow her
+painfully embayed emotions, whose former limpidity and sparkle seemed
+departing in the stagnation caused by the routine of a practical
+household and the gloom of bearing children to a commonplace father.
+These poems, subscribed with a masculine pseudonym, had appeared in
+various obscure magazines, and in two cases in rather prominent ones.  In
+the second of the latter the page which bore her effusion at the bottom,
+in smallish print, bore at the top, in large print, a few verses on the
+same subject by this very man, Robert Trewe.  Both of them had, in fact,
+been struck by a tragic incident reported in the daily papers, and had
+used it simultaneously as an inspiration, the editor remarking in a note
+upon the coincidence, and that the excellence of both poems prompted him
+to give them together.
+
+After that event Ella, otherwise 'John Ivy,' had watched with much
+attention the appearance anywhere in print of verse bearing the signature
+of Robert Trewe, who, with a man's unsusceptibility on the question of
+sex, had never once thought of passing himself off as a woman.  To be
+sure, Mrs. Marchmill had satisfied herself with a sort of reason for
+doing the contrary in her case; that nobody might believe in her
+inspiration if they found that the sentiments came from a pushing
+tradesman's wife, from the mother of three children by a matter-of-fact
+small-arms manufacturer.
+
+Trewe's verse contrasted with that of the rank and file of recent minor
+poets in being impassioned rather than ingenious, luxuriant rather than
+finished.  Neither symboliste nor decadent, he was a pessimist in so far
+as that character applies to a man who looks at the worst contingencies
+as well as the best in the human condition.  Being little attracted by
+excellences of form and rhythm apart from content, he sometimes, when
+feeling outran his artistic speed, perpetrated sonnets in the loosely
+rhymed Elizabethan fashion, which every right-minded reviewer said he
+ought not to have done.
+
+With sad and hopeless envy, Ella Marchmill had often and often scanned
+the rival poet's work, so much stronger as it always was than her own
+feeble lines.  She had imitated him, and her inability to touch his level
+would send her into fits of despondency.  Months passed away thus, till
+she observed from the publishers' list that Trewe had collected his
+fugitive pieces into a volume, which was duly issued, and was much or
+little praised according to chance, and had a sale quite sufficient to
+pay for the printing.
+
+This step onward had suggested to John Ivy the idea of collecting her
+pieces also, or at any rate of making up a book of her rhymes by adding
+many in manuscript to the few that had seen the light, for she had been
+able to get no great number into print.  A ruinous charge was made for
+costs of publication; a few reviews noticed her poor little volume; but
+nobody talked of it, nobody bought it, and it fell dead in a fortnight--if
+it had ever been alive.
+
+The author's thoughts were diverted to another groove just then by the
+discovery that she was going to have a third child, and the collapse of
+her poetical venture had perhaps less effect upon her mind than it might
+have done if she had been domestically unoccupied.  Her husband had paid
+the publisher's bill with the doctor's, and there it all had ended for
+the time.  But, though less than a poet of her century, Ella was more
+than a mere multiplier of her kind, and latterly she had begun to feel
+the old afflatus once more.  And now by an odd conjunction she found
+herself in the rooms of Robert Trewe.
+
+She thoughtfully rose from her chair and searched the apartment with the
+interest of a fellow-tradesman.  Yes, the volume of his own verse was
+among the rest.  Though quite familiar with its contents, she read it
+here as if it spoke aloud to her, then called up Mrs. Hooper, the
+landlady, for some trivial service, and inquired again about the young
+man.
+
+'Well, I'm sure you'd be interested in him, ma'am, if you could see him,
+only he's so shy that I don't suppose you will.'  Mrs. Hooper seemed
+nothing loth to minister to her tenant's curiosity about her predecessor.
+'Lived here long?  Yes, nearly two years.  He keeps on his rooms even
+when he's not here: the soft air of this place suits his chest, and he
+likes to be able to come back at any time.  He is mostly writing or
+reading, and doesn't see many people, though, for the matter of that, he
+is such a good, kind young fellow that folks would only be too glad to be
+friendly with him if they knew him.  You don't meet kind-hearted people
+every day.'
+
+'Ah, he's kind-hearted . . . and good.'
+
+'Yes; he'll oblige me in anything if I ask him.  "Mr. Trewe," I say to
+him sometimes, "you are rather out of spirits."  "Well, I am, Mrs.
+Hooper," he'll say, "though I don't know how you should find it out."
+"Why not take a little change?" I ask.  Then in a day or two he'll say
+that he will take a trip to Paris, or Norway, or somewhere; and I assure
+you he comes back all the better for it.'
+
+'Ah, indeed!  His is a sensitive nature, no doubt.'
+
+'Yes.  Still he's odd in some things.  Once when he had finished a poem
+of his composition late at night he walked up and down the room
+rehearsing it; and the floors being so thin--jerry-built houses, you
+know, though I say it myself--he kept me awake up above him till I wished
+him further . . . But we get on very well.'
+
+This was but the beginning of a series of conversations about the rising
+poet as the days went on.  On one of these occasions Mrs. Hooper drew
+Ella's attention to what she had not noticed before: minute scribblings
+in pencil on the wall-paper behind the curtains at the head of the bed.
+
+'O! let me look,' said Mrs. Marchmill, unable to conceal a rush of tender
+curiosity as she bent her pretty face close to the wall.
+
+'These,' said Mrs. Hooper, with the manner of a woman who knew things,
+'are the very beginnings and first thoughts of his verses.  He has tried
+to rub most of them out, but you can read them still.  My belief is that
+he wakes up in the night, you know, with some rhyme in his head, and jots
+it down there on the wall lest he should forget it by the morning.  Some
+of these very lines you see here I have seen afterwards in print in the
+magazines.  Some are newer; indeed, I have not seen that one before.  It
+must have been done only a few days ago.'
+
+'O yes! . . . '
+
+Ella Marchmill flushed without knowing why, and suddenly wished her
+companion would go away, now that the information was imparted.  An
+indescribable consciousness of personal interest rather than literary
+made her anxious to read the inscription alone; and she accordingly
+waited till she could do so, with a sense that a great store of emotion
+would be enjoyed in the act.
+
+Perhaps because the sea was choppy outside the Island, Ella's husband
+found it much pleasanter to go sailing and steaming about without his
+wife, who was a bad sailor, than with her.  He did not disdain to go thus
+alone on board the steamboats of the cheap-trippers, where there was
+dancing by moonlight, and where the couples would come suddenly down with
+a lurch into each other's arms; for, as he blandly told her, the company
+was too mixed for him to take her amid such scenes.  Thus, while this
+thriving manufacturer got a great deal of change and sea-air out of his
+sojourn here, the life, external at least, of Ella was monotonous enough,
+and mainly consisted in passing a certain number of hours each day in
+bathing and walking up and down a stretch of shore.  But the poetic
+impulse having again waxed strong, she was possessed by an inner flame
+which left her hardly conscious of what was proceeding around her.
+
+She had read till she knew by heart Trewe's last little volume of verses,
+and spent a great deal of time in vainly attempting to rival some of
+them, till, in her failure, she burst into tears.  The personal element
+in the magnetic attraction exercised by this circumambient,
+unapproachable master of hers was so much stronger than the intellectual
+and abstract that she could not understand it.  To be sure, she was
+surrounded noon and night by his customary environment, which literally
+whispered of him to her at every moment; but he was a man she had never
+seen, and that all that moved her was the instinct to specialize a
+waiting emotion on the first fit thing that came to hand did not, of
+course, suggest itself to Ella.
+
+In the natural way of passion under the too practical conditions which
+civilization has devised for its fruition, her husband's love for her had
+not survived, except in the form of fitful friendship, any more than, or
+even so much as, her own for him; and, being a woman of very living
+ardours, that required sustenance of some sort, they were beginning to
+feed on this chancing material, which was, indeed, of a quality far
+better than chance usually offers.
+
+One day the children had been playing hide-and-seek in a closet, whence,
+in their excitement, they pulled out some clothing.  Mrs. Hooper
+explained that it belonged to Mr. Trewe, and hung it up in the closet
+again.  Possessed of her fantasy, Ella went later in the afternoon, when
+nobody was in that part of the house, opened the closet, unhitched one of
+the articles, a mackintosh, and put it on, with the waterproof cap
+belonging to it.
+
+'The mantle of Elijah!' she said.  'Would it might inspire me to rival
+him, glorious genius that he is!'
+
+Her eyes always grew wet when she thought like that, and she turned to
+look at herself in the glass.  His heart had beat inside that coat, and
+his brain had worked under that hat at levels of thought she would never
+reach.  The consciousness of her weakness beside him made her feel quite
+sick.  Before she had got the things off her the door opened, and her
+husband entered the room.
+
+'What the devil--'
+
+She blushed, and removed them
+
+'I found them in the closet here,' she said, 'and put them on in a freak.
+What have I else to do?  You are always away!'
+
+'Always away?  Well . . . '
+
+That evening she had a further talk with the landlady, who might herself
+have nourished a half-tender regard for the poet, so ready was she to
+discourse ardently about him.
+
+'You are interested in Mr. Trewe, I know, ma'am,' she said; 'and he has
+just sent to say that he is going to call to-morrow afternoon to look up
+some books of his that he wants, if I'll be in, and he may select them
+from your room?'
+
+'O yes!'
+
+'You could very well meet Mr Trewe then, if you'd like to be in the way!'
+
+She promised with secret delight, and went to bed musing of him.
+
+Next morning her husband observed: 'I've been thinking of what you said,
+Ell: that I have gone about a good deal and left you without much to
+amuse you.  Perhaps it's true.  To-day, as there's not much sea, I'll
+take you with me on board the yacht.'
+
+For the first time in her experience of such an offer Ella was not glad.
+But she accepted it for the moment.  The time for setting out drew near,
+and she went to get ready.  She stood reflecting.  The longing to see the
+poet she was now distinctly in love with overpowered all other
+considerations.
+
+'I don't want to go,' she said to herself.  'I can't bear to be away!  And
+I won't go.'
+
+She told her husband that she had changed her mind about wishing to sail.
+He was indifferent, and went his way.
+
+For the rest of the day the house was quiet, the children having gone out
+upon the sands.  The blinds waved in the sunshine to the soft, steady
+stroke of the sea beyond the wall; and the notes of the Green Silesian
+band, a troop of foreign gentlemen hired for the season, had drawn almost
+all the residents and promenaders away from the vicinity of Coburg House.
+A knock was audible at the door.
+
+Mrs. Marchmill did not hear any servant go to answer it, and she became
+impatient.  The books were in the room where she sat; but nobody came up.
+She rang the bell.
+
+'There is some person waiting at the door,' she said.
+
+'O no, ma'am!  He's gone long ago.  I answered it.'
+
+Mrs. Hooper came in herself.
+
+'So disappointing!' she said.  'Mr. Trewe not coming after all!'
+
+'But I heard him knock, I fancy!'
+
+'No; that was somebody inquiring for lodgings who came to the wrong
+house.  I forgot to tell you that Mr. Trewe sent a note just before lunch
+to say I needn't get any tea for him, as he should not require the books,
+and wouldn't come to select them.'
+
+Ella was miserable, and for a long time could not even re-read his
+mournful ballad on 'Severed Lives,' so aching was her erratic little
+heart, and so tearful her eyes.  When the children came in with wet
+stockings, and ran up to her to tell her of their adventures, she could
+not feel that she cared about them half as much as usual.
+
+* * * * *
+
+'Mrs. Hooper, have you a photograph of--the gentleman who lived here?'
+She was getting to be curiously shy in mentioning his name.
+
+'Why, yes.  It's in the ornamental frame on the mantelpiece in your own
+bedroom, ma'am.'
+
+'No; the Royal Duke and Duchess are in that.'
+
+'Yes, so they are; but he's behind them.  He belongs rightly to that
+frame, which I bought on purpose; but as he went away he said: "Cover me
+up from those strangers that are coming, for God's sake.  I don't want
+them staring at me, and I am sure they won't want me staring at them."  So
+I slipped in the Duke and Duchess temporarily in front of him, as they
+had no frame, and Royalties are more suitable for letting furnished than
+a private young man.  If you take 'em out you'll see him under.  Lord,
+ma'am, he wouldn't mind if he knew it!  He didn't think the next tenant
+would be such an attractive lady as you, or he wouldn't have thought of
+hiding himself; perhaps.'
+
+'Is he handsome?' she asked timidly.
+
+'I call him so.  Some, perhaps, wouldn't.'
+
+'Should I?' she asked, with eagerness.
+
+'I think you would, though some would say he's more striking than
+handsome; a large-eyed thoughtful fellow, you know, with a very electric
+flash in his eye when he looks round quickly, such as you'd expect a poet
+to be who doesn't get his living by it.'
+
+'How old is he?'
+
+'Several years older than yourself, ma'am; about thirty-one or two, I
+think.'
+
+Ella was, as a matter of fact, a few months over thirty herself; but she
+did not look nearly so much.  Though so immature in nature, she was
+entering on that tract of life in which emotional women begin to suspect
+that last love may be stronger than first love; and she would soon, alas,
+enter on the still more melancholy tract when at least the vainer ones of
+her sex shrink from receiving a male visitor otherwise than with their
+backs to the window or the blinds half down.  She reflected on Mrs.
+Hooper's remark, and said no more about age.
+
+Just then a telegram was brought up.  It came from her husband, who had
+gone down the Channel as far as Budmouth with his friends in the yacht,
+and would not be able to get back till next day.
+
+After her light dinner Ella idled about the shore with the children till
+dusk, thinking of the yet uncovered photograph in her room, with a serene
+sense of something ecstatic to come.  For, with the subtle luxuriousness
+of fancy in which this young woman was an adept, on learning that her
+husband was to be absent that night she had refrained from incontinently
+rushing upstairs and opening the picture-frame, preferring to reserve the
+inspection till she could be alone, and a more romantic tinge be imparted
+to the occasion by silence, candles, solemn sea and stars outside, than
+was afforded by the garish afternoon sunlight.
+
+The children had been sent to bed, and Ella soon followed, though it was
+not yet ten o'clock.  To gratify her passionate curiosity she now made
+her preparations, first getting rid of superfluous garments and putting
+on her dressing-gown, then arranging a chair in front of the table and
+reading several pages of Trewe's tenderest utterances.  Then she fetched
+the portrait-frame to the light, opened the back, took out the likeness,
+and set it up before her.
+
+It was a striking countenance to look upon.  The poet wore a luxuriant
+black moustache and imperial, and a slouched hat which shaded the
+forehead.  The large dark eyes, described by the landlady, showed an
+unlimited capacity for misery; they looked out from beneath well-shaped
+brows as if they were reading the universe in the microcosm of the
+confronter's face, and were not altogether overjoyed at what the
+spectacle portended.
+
+Ella murmured in her lowest, richest, tenderest tone: 'And it's you
+who've so cruelly eclipsed me these many times!'
+
+As she gazed long at the portrait she fell into thought, till her eyes
+filled with tears, and she touched the cardboard with her lips.  Then she
+laughed with a nervous lightness, and wiped her eyes.
+
+She thought how wicked she was, a woman having a husband and three
+children, to let her mind stray to a stranger in this unconscionable
+manner.  No, he was not a stranger!  She knew his thoughts and feelings
+as well as she knew her own; they were, in fact, the self-same thoughts
+and feelings as hers, which her husband distinctly lacked; perhaps
+luckily for himself; considering that he had to provide for family
+expenses.
+
+'He's nearer my real self, he's more intimate with the real me than Will
+is, after all, even though I've never seen him,' she said.
+
+She laid his book and picture on the table at the bedside, and when she
+was reclining on the pillow she re-read those of Robert Trewe's verses
+which she had marked from time to time as most touching and true.  Putting
+these aside, she set up the photograph on its edge upon the coverlet, and
+contemplated it as she lay.  Then she scanned again by the light of the
+candle the half-obliterated pencillings on the wall-paper beside her
+head.  There they were--phrases, couplets, bouts-rimes, beginnings and
+middles of lines, ideas in the rough, like Shelley's scraps, and the
+least of them so intense, so sweet, so palpitating, that it seemed as if
+his very breath, warm and loving, fanned her cheeks from those walls,
+walls that had surrounded his head times and times as they surrounded her
+own now.  He must often have put up his hand so--with the pencil in it.
+Yes, the writing was sideways, as it would be if executed by one who
+extended his arm thus.
+
+These inscribed shapes of the poet's world,
+
+   'Forms more real than living man,
+   Nurslings of immortality,'
+
+were, no doubt, the thoughts and spirit-strivings which had come to him
+in the dead of night, when he could let himself go and have no fear of
+the frost of criticism.  No doubt they had often been written up hastily
+by the light of the moon, the rays of the lamp, in the blue-grey dawn, in
+full daylight perhaps never.  And now her hair was dragging where his arm
+had lain when he secured the fugitive fancies; she was sleeping on a
+poet's lips, immersed in the very essence of him, permeated by his spirit
+as by an ether.
+
+While she was dreaming the minutes away thus, a footstep came upon the
+stairs, and in a moment she heard her husband's heavy step on the landing
+immediately without.
+
+'Ell, where are you?'
+
+What possessed her she could not have described, but, with an instinctive
+objection to let her husband know what she had been doing, she slipped
+the photograph under the pillow just as he flung open the door, with the
+air of a man who had dined not badly.
+
+'O, I beg pardon,' said William Marchmill.  'Have you a headache?  I am
+afraid I have disturbed you.'
+
+'No, I've not got a headache,' said she.  'How is it you've come?'
+
+'Well, we found we could get back in very good time after all, and I
+didn't want to make another day of it, because of going somewhere else to-
+morrow.'
+
+'Shall I come down again?'
+
+'O no.  I'm as tired as a dog.  I've had a good feed, and I shall turn in
+straight off.  I want to get out at six o'clock to-morrow if I can . . .
+I shan't disturb you by my getting up; it will be long before you are
+awake.'  And he came forward into the room.
+
+While her eyes followed his movements, Ella softly pushed the photograph
+further out of sight.
+
+'Sure you're not ill?' he asked, bending over her.
+
+'No, only wicked!'
+
+'Never mind that.'  And he stooped and kissed her.
+
+Next morning Marchmill was called at six o'clock; and in waking and
+yawning she heard him muttering to himself: 'What the deuce is this
+that's been crackling under me so?'  Imagining her asleep he searched
+round him and withdrew something.  Through her half-opened eyes she
+perceived it to be Mr. Trewe.
+
+'Well, I'm damned!' her husband exclaimed.
+
+'What, dear?' said she.
+
+'O, you are awake?  Ha! ha!'
+
+'What do you mean?'
+
+'Some bloke's photograph--a friend of our landlady's, I suppose.  I
+wonder how it came here; whisked off the table by accident perhaps when
+they were making the bed.'
+
+'I was looking at it yesterday, and it must have dropped in then.'
+
+'O, he's a friend of yours?  Bless his picturesque heart!'
+
+Ella's loyalty to the object of her admiration could not endure to hear
+him ridiculed.  'He's a clever man!' she said, with a tremor in her
+gentle voice which she herself felt to be absurdly uncalled for.
+
+'He is a rising poet--the gentleman who occupied two of these rooms
+before we came, though I've never seen him.'
+
+'How do you know, if you've never seen him?'
+
+'Mrs. Hooper told me when she showed me the photograph.'
+
+'O; well, I must up and be off.  I shall be home rather early.  Sorry I
+can't take you to-day, dear.  Mind the children don't go getting
+drowned.'
+
+That day Mrs. Marchmill inquired if Mr. Trewe were likely to call at any
+other time.
+
+'Yes,' said Mrs. Hooper.  'He's coming this day week to stay with a
+friend near here till you leave.  He'll be sure to call.'
+
+Marchmill did return quite early in the afternoon; and, opening some
+letters which had arrived in his absence, declared suddenly that he and
+his family would have to leave a week earlier than they had expected to
+do--in short, in three days.
+
+'Surely we can stay a week longer?' she pleaded.  'I like it here.'
+
+'I don't.  It is getting rather slow.'
+
+'Then you might leave me and the children!'
+
+'How perverse you are, Ell!  What's the use?  And have to come to fetch
+you!  No: we'll all return together; and we'll make out our time in North
+Wales or Brighton a little later on.  Besides, you've three days longer
+yet.'
+
+It seemed to be her doom not to meet the man for whose rival talent she
+had a despairing admiration, and to whose person she was now absolutely
+attached.  Yet she determined to make a last effort; and having gathered
+from her landlady that Trewe was living in a lonely spot not far from the
+fashionable town on the Island opposite, she crossed over in the packet
+from the neighbouring pier the following afternoon.
+
+What a useless journey it was!  Ella knew but vaguely where the house
+stood, and when she fancied she had found it, and ventured to inquire of
+a pedestrian if he lived there, the answer returned by the man was that
+he did not know.  And if he did live there, how could she call upon him?
+Some women might have the assurance to do it, but she had not.  How crazy
+he would think her.  She might have asked him to call upon her, perhaps;
+but she had not the courage for that, either.  She lingered mournfully
+about the picturesque seaside eminence till it was time to return to the
+town and enter the steamer for recrossing, reaching home for dinner
+without having been greatly missed.
+
+At the last moment, unexpectedly enough, her husband said that he should
+have no objection to letting her and the children stay on till the end of
+the week, since she wished to do so, if she felt herself able to get home
+without him.  She concealed the pleasure this extension of time gave her;
+and Marchmill went off the next morning alone.
+
+But the week passed, and Trewe did not call.
+
+On Saturday morning the remaining members of the Marchmill family
+departed from the place which had been productive of so much fervour in
+her.  The dreary, dreary train; the sun shining in moted beams upon the
+hot cushions; the dusty permanent way; the mean rows of wire--these
+things were her accompaniment: while out of the window the deep blue sea-
+levels disappeared from her gaze, and with them her poet's home.  Heavy-
+hearted, she tried to read, and wept instead.
+
+Mr. Marchmill was in a thriving way of business, and he and his family
+lived in a large new house, which stood in rather extensive grounds a few
+miles outside the city wherein he carried on his trade.  Ella's life was
+lonely here, as the suburban life is apt to be, particularly at certain
+seasons; and she had ample time to indulge her taste for lyric and
+elegiac composition.  She had hardly got back when she encountered a
+piece by Robert Trewe in the new number of her favourite magazine, which
+must have been written almost immediately before her visit to Solentsea,
+for it contained the very couplet she had seen pencilled on the wallpaper
+by the bed, and Mrs. Hooper had declared to be recent.  Ella could resist
+no longer, but seizing a pen impulsively, wrote to him as a brother-poet,
+using the name of John Ivy, congratulating him in her letter on his
+triumphant executions in metre and rhythm of thoughts that moved his
+soul, as compared with her own brow-beaten efforts in the same pathetic
+trade.
+
+To this address there came a response in a few days, little as she had
+dared to hope for it--a civil and brief note, in which the young poet
+stated that, though he was not well acquainted with Mr. Ivy's verse, he
+recalled the name as being one he had seen attached to some very
+promising pieces; that he was glad to gain Mr. Ivy's acquaintance by
+letter, and should certainly look with much interest for his productions
+in the future.
+
+There must have been something juvenile or timid in her own epistle, as
+one ostensibly coming from a man, she declared to herself; for Trewe
+quite adopted the tone of an elder and superior in this reply.  But what
+did it matter? he had replied; he had written to her with his own hand
+from that very room she knew so well, for he was now back again in his
+quarters.
+
+The correspondence thus begun was continued for two months or more, Ella
+Marchmill sending him from time to time some that she considered to be
+the best of her pieces, which he very kindly accepted, though he did not
+say he sedulously read them, nor did he send her any of his own in
+return.  Ella would have been more hurt at this than she was if she had
+not known that Trewe laboured under the impression that she was one of
+his own sex.
+
+Yet the situation was unsatisfactory.  A flattering little voice told her
+that, were he only to see her, matters would be otherwise.  No doubt she
+would have helped on this by making a frank confession of womanhood, to
+begin with, if something had not happened, to her delight, to render it
+unnecessary.  A friend of her husband's, the editor of the most important
+newspaper in the city and county, who was dining with them one day,
+observed during their conversation about the poet that his (the editor's)
+brother the landscape-painter was a friend of Mr. Trewe's, and that the
+two men were at that very moment in Wales together.
+
+Ella was slightly acquainted with the editor's brother.  The next morning
+down she sat and wrote, inviting him to stay at her house for a short
+time on his way back, and requesting him to bring with him, if
+practicable, his companion Mr. Trewe, whose acquaintance she was anxious
+to make.  The answer arrived after some few days.  Her correspondent and
+his friend Trewe would have much satisfaction in accepting her invitation
+on their way southward, which would be on such and such a day in the
+following week.
+
+Ella was blithe and buoyant.  Her scheme had succeeded; her beloved
+though as yet unseen one was coming.  "Behold, he standeth behind our
+wall; he looked forth at the windows, showing himself through the
+lattice," she thought ecstatically.  "And, lo, the winter is past, the
+rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth, the time of the
+singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our
+land."
+
+But it was necessary to consider the details of lodging and feeding him.
+This she did most solicitously, and awaited the pregnant day and hour.
+
+It was about five in the afternoon when she heard a ring at the door and
+the editor's brother's voice in the hall.  Poetess as she was, or as she
+thought herself, she had not been too sublime that day to dress with
+infinite trouble in a fashionable robe of rich material, having a faint
+resemblance to the chiton of the Greeks, a style just then in vogue among
+ladies of an artistic and romantic turn, which had been obtained by Ella
+of her Bond Street dressmaker when she was last in London.  Her visitor
+entered the drawing-room.  She looked towards his rear; nobody else came
+through the door.  Where, in the name of the God of Love, was Robert
+Trewe?
+
+'O, I'm sorry,' said the painter, after their introductory words had been
+spoken.  'Trewe is a curious fellow, you know, Mrs. Marchmill.  He said
+he'd come; then he said he couldn't.  He's rather dusty.  We've been
+doing a few miles with knapsacks, you know; and he wanted to get on
+home.'
+
+'He--he's not coming?'
+
+'He's not; and he asked me to make his apologies.'
+
+'When did you p-p-part from him?' she asked, her nether lip starting off
+quivering so much that it was like a tremolo-stop opened in her speech.
+She longed to run away from this dreadful bore and cry her eyes out.
+
+'Just now, in the turnpike road yonder there.'
+
+'What! he has actually gone past my gates?'
+
+'Yes.  When we got to them--handsome gates they are, too, the finest bit
+of modern wrought-iron work I have seen--when we came to them we stopped,
+talking there a little while, and then he wished me good-bye and went on.
+The truth is, he's a little bit depressed just now, and doesn't want to
+see anybody.  He's a very good fellow, and a warm friend, but a little
+uncertain and gloomy sometimes; he thinks too much of things.  His poetry
+is rather too erotic and passionate, you know, for some tastes; and he
+has just come in for a terrible slating from the --- Review that was
+published yesterday; he saw a copy of it at the station by accident.
+Perhaps you've read it?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'So much the better.  O, it is not worth thinking of; just one of those
+articles written to order, to please the narrow-minded set of subscribers
+upon whom the circulation depends.  But he's upset by it.  He says it is
+the misrepresentation that hurts him so; that, though he can stand a fair
+attack, he can't stand lies that he's powerless to refute and stop from
+spreading.  That's just Trewe's weak point.  He lives so much by himself
+that these things affect him much more than they would if he were in the
+bustle of fashionable or commercial life.  So he wouldn't come here,
+making the excuse that it all looked so new and monied--if you'll
+pardon--'
+
+'But--he must have known--there was sympathy here!  Has he never said
+anything about getting letters from this address?'
+
+'Yes, yes, he has, from John Ivy--perhaps a relative of yours, he
+thought, visiting here at the time?'
+
+'Did he--like Ivy, did he say?'
+
+'Well, I don't know that he took any great interest in Ivy.'
+
+'Or in his poems?'
+
+'Or in his poems--so far as I know, that is.'
+
+Robert Trewe took no interest in her house, in her poems, or in their
+writer.  As soon as she could get away she went into the nursery and
+tried to let off her emotion by unnecessarily kissing the children, till
+she had a sudden sense of disgust at being reminded how plain-looking
+they were, like their father.
+
+The obtuse and single-minded landscape-painter never once perceived from
+her conversation that it was only Trewe she wanted, and not himself.  He
+made the best of his visit, seeming to enjoy the society of Ella's
+husband, who also took a great fancy to him, and showed him everywhere
+about the neighbourhood, neither of them noticing Ella's mood.
+
+The painter had been gone only a day or two when, while sitting upstairs
+alone one morning, she glanced over the London paper just arrived, and
+read the following paragraph:-
+
+   'SUICIDE OF A POET
+
+   'Mr. Robert Trewe, who has been favourably known for some years as one
+   of our rising lyrists, committed suicide at his lodgings at Solentsea
+   on Saturday evening last by shooting himself in the right temple with
+   a revolver.  Readers hardly need to be reminded that Mr. Trewe has
+   recently attracted the attention of a much wider public than had
+   hitherto known him, by his new volume of verse, mostly of an
+   impassioned kind, entitled "Lyrics to a Woman Unknown," which has been
+   already favourably noticed in these pages for the extraordinary gamut
+   of feeling it traverses, and which has been made the subject of a
+   severe, if not ferocious, criticism in the --- Review.  It is
+   supposed, though not certainly known, that the article may have
+   partially conduced to the sad act, as a copy of the review in question
+   was found on his writing-table; and he has been observed to be in a
+   somewhat depressed state of mind since the critique appeared.'
+
+Then came the report of the inquest, at which the following letter was
+read, it having been addressed to a friend at a distance:-
+
+   'DEAR -,--Before these lines reach your hands I shall be delivered
+   from the inconveniences of seeing, hearing, and knowing more of the
+   things around me.  I will not trouble you by giving my reasons for the
+   step I have taken, though I can assure you they were sound and
+   logical.  Perhaps had I been blessed with a mother, or a sister, or a
+   female friend of another sort tenderly devoted to me, I might have
+   thought it worth while to continue my present existence.  I have long
+   dreamt of such an unattainable creature, as you know, and she, this
+   undiscoverable, elusive one, inspired my last volume; the imaginary
+   woman alone, for, in spite of what has been said in some quarters,
+   there is no real woman behind the title.  She has continued to the
+   last unrevealed, unmet, unwon.  I think it desirable to mention this
+   in order that no blame may attach to any real woman as having been the
+   cause of my decease by cruel or cavalier treatment of me.  Tell my
+   landlady that I am sorry to have caused her this unpleasantness; but
+   my occupancy of the rooms will soon be forgotten.  There are ample
+   funds in my name at the bank to pay all expenses.  R. TREWE.'
+
+Ella sat for a while as if stunned, then rushed into the adjoining
+chamber and flung herself upon her face on the bed.
+
+Her grief and distraction shook her to pieces; and she lay in this frenzy
+of sorrow for more than an hour.  Broken words came every now and then
+from her quivering lips: 'O, if he had only known of me--known of me--me!
+. . . O, if I had only once met him--only once; and put my hand upon his
+hot forehead--kissed him--let him know how I loved him--that I would have
+suffered shame and scorn, would have lived and died, for him!  Perhaps it
+would have saved his dear life! . . . But no--it was not allowed!  God is
+a jealous God; and that happiness was not for him and me!'
+
+All possibilities were over; the meeting was stultified.  Yet it was
+almost visible to her in her fantasy even now, though it could never be
+substantiated -
+
+   'The hour which might have been, yet might not be,
+   Which man's and woman's heart conceived and bore,
+   Yet whereof life was barren.'
+
+* * * * *
+
+She wrote to the landlady at Solentsea in the third person, in as subdued
+a style as she could command, enclosing a postal order for a sovereign,
+and informing Mrs. Hooper that Mrs. Marchmill had seen in the papers the
+sad account of the poet's death, and having been, as Mrs. Hooper was
+aware, much interested in Mr. Trewe during her stay at Coburg House, she
+would be obliged if Mrs. Hooper could obtain a small portion of his hair
+before his coffin was closed down, and send it her as a memorial of him,
+as also the photograph that was in the frame.
+
+By the return-post a letter arrived containing what had been requested.
+Ella wept over the portrait and secured it in her private drawer; the
+lock of hair she tied with white ribbon and put in her bosom, whence she
+drew it and kissed it every now and then in some unobserved nook.
+
+'What's the matter?' said her husband, looking up from his newspaper on
+one of these occasions.  'Crying over something?  A lock of hair?  Whose
+is it?'
+
+'He's dead!' she murmured.
+
+'Who?'
+
+'I don't want to tell you, Will, just now, unless you insist!' she said,
+a sob hanging heavy in her voice.
+
+'O, all right.'
+
+'Do you mind my refusing?  I will tell you some day.'
+
+'It doesn't matter in the least, of course.'
+
+He walked away whistling a few bars of no tune in particular; and when he
+had got down to his factory in the city the subject came into Marchmill's
+head again.
+
+He, too, was aware that a suicide had taken place recently at the house
+they had occupied at Solentsea.  Having seen the volume of poems in his
+wife's hand of late, and heard fragments of the landlady's conversation
+about Trewe when they were her tenants, he all at once said to himself;
+'Why of course it's he!  How the devil did she get to know him?  What sly
+animals women are!'
+
+Then he placidly dismissed the matter, and went on with his daily
+affairs.  By this time Ella at home had come to a determination.  Mrs.
+Hooper, in sending the hair and photograph, had informed her of the day
+of the funeral; and as the morning and noon wore on an overpowering wish
+to know where they were laying him took possession of the sympathetic
+woman.  Caring very little now what her husband or any one else might
+think of her eccentricities; she wrote Marchmill a brief note, stating
+that she was called away for the afternoon and evening, but would return
+on the following morning.  This she left on his desk, and having given
+the same information to the servants, went out of the house on foot.
+
+When Mr. Marchmill reached home early in the afternoon the servants
+looked anxious.  The nurse took him privately aside, and hinted that her
+mistress's sadness during the past few days had been such that she feared
+she had gone out to drown herself.  Marchmill reflected.  Upon the whole
+he thought that she had not done that.  Without saying whither he was
+bound he also started off, telling them not to sit up for him.  He drove
+to the railway-station, and took a ticket for Solentsea.
+
+It was dark when he reached the place, though he had come by a fast
+train, and he knew that if his wife had preceded him thither it could
+only have been by a slower train, arriving not a great while before his
+own.  The season at Solentsea was now past: the parade was gloomy, and
+the flys were few and cheap.  He asked the way to the Cemetery, and soon
+reached it.  The gate was locked, but the keeper let him in, declaring,
+however, that there was nobody within the precincts.  Although it was not
+late, the autumnal darkness had now become intense; and he found some
+difficulty in keeping to the serpentine path which led to the quarter
+where, as the man had told him, the one or two interments for the day had
+taken place.  He stepped upon the grass, and, stumbling over some pegs,
+stooped now and then to discern if possible a figure against the sky.
+
+He could see none; but lighting on a spot where the soil was trodden,
+beheld a crouching object beside a newly made grave.  She heard him, and
+sprang up.
+
+'Ell, how silly this is!' he said indignantly.  'Running away from home--I
+never heard such a thing!  Of course I am not jealous of this unfortunate
+man; but it is too ridiculous that you, a married woman with three
+children and a fourth coming, should go losing your head like this over a
+dead lover! . . . Do you know you were locked in?  You might not have
+been able to get out all night.'
+
+She did not answer.
+
+'I hope it didn't go far between you and him, for your own sake.'
+
+'Don't insult me, Will.'
+
+'Mind, I won't have any more of this sort of thing; do you hear?'
+
+'Very well,' she said.
+
+He drew her arm within his own, and conducted her out of the Cemetery.  It
+was impossible to get back that night; and not wishing to be recognized
+in their present sorry condition, he took her to a miserable little
+coffee-house close to the station, whence they departed early in the
+morning, travelling almost without speaking, under the sense that it was
+one of those dreary situations occurring in married life which words
+could not mend, and reaching their own door at noon.
+
+The months passed, and neither of the twain ever ventured to start a
+conversation upon this episode.  Ella seemed to be only too frequently in
+a sad and listless mood, which might almost have been called pining.  The
+time was approaching when she would have to undergo the stress of
+childbirth for a fourth time, and that apparently did not tend to raise
+her spirits.
+
+'I don't think I shall get over it this time!' she said one day.
+
+'Pooh! what childish foreboding!  Why shouldn't it be as well now as
+ever?'
+
+She shook her head.  'I feel almost sure I am going to die; and I should
+be glad, if it were not for Nelly, and Frank, and Tiny.'
+
+'And me!'
+
+'You'll soon find somebody to fill my place,' she murmured, with a sad
+smile.  'And you'll have a perfect right to; I assure you of that.'
+
+'Ell, you are not thinking still about that--poetical friend of yours?'
+
+She neither admitted nor denied the charge.  'I am not going to get over
+my illness this time,' she reiterated.  'Something tells me I shan't.'
+
+This view of things was rather a bad beginning, as it usually is; and, in
+fact, six weeks later, in the month of May, she was lying in her room,
+pulseless and bloodless, with hardly strength enough left to follow up
+one feeble breath with another, the infant for whose unnecessary life she
+was slowly parting with her own being fat and well.  Just before her
+death she spoke to Marchmill softly:-
+
+'Will, I want to confess to you the entire circumstances of that--about
+you know what--that time we visited Solentsea.  I can't tell what
+possessed me--how I could forget you so, my husband!  But I had got into
+a morbid state: I thought you had been unkind; that you had neglected me;
+that you weren't up to my intellectual level, while he was, and far above
+it.  I wanted a fuller appreciator, perhaps, rather than another lover--'
+
+She could get no further then for very exhaustion; and she went off in
+sudden collapse a few hours later, without having said anything more to
+her husband on the subject of her love for the poet.  William Marchmill,
+in truth, like most husbands of several years' standing, was little
+disturbed by retrospective jealousies, and had not shown the least
+anxiety to press her for confessions concerning a man dead and gone
+beyond any power of inconveniencing him more.
+
+But when she had been buried a couple of years it chanced one day that,
+in turning over some forgotten papers that he wished to destroy before
+his second wife entered the house, he lighted on a lock of hair in an
+envelope, with the photograph of the deceased poet, a date being written
+on the back in his late wife's hand.  It was that of the time they spent
+at Solentsea.
+
+Marchmill looked long and musingly at the hair and portrait, for
+something struck him.  Fetching the little boy who had been the death of
+his mother, now a noisy toddler, he took him on his knee, held the lock
+of hair against the child's head, and set up the photograph on the table
+behind, so that he could closely compare the features each countenance
+presented.  There were undoubtedly strong traces of resemblance; the
+dreamy and peculiar expression of the poet's face sat, as the transmitted
+idea, upon the child's, and the hair was of the same hue.
+
+'I'm damned if I didn't think so!' murmured Marchmill.  'Then she did
+play me false with that fellow at the lodgings!  Let me see: the
+dates--the second week in August . . . the third week in May . . . Yes .
+. . yes . . . Get away, you poor little brat!  You are nothing to me!'
+
+1893.
+
+
+
+
+THE THREE STRANGERS
+
+
+Among the few features of agricultural England which retain an appearance
+but little modified by the lapse of centuries, may be reckoned the high,
+grassy and furzy downs, coombs, or ewe-leases, as they are indifferently
+called, that fill a large area of certain counties in the south and south-
+west.  If any mark of human occupation is met with hereon, it usually
+takes the form of the solitary cottage of some shepherd.
+
+Fifty years ago such a lonely cottage stood on such a down, and may
+possibly be standing there now.  In spite of its loneliness, however, the
+spot, by actual measurement, was not more than five miles from a county-
+town.  Yet that affected it little.  Five miles of irregular upland,
+during the long inimical seasons, with their sleets, snows, rains, and
+mists, afford withdrawing space enough to isolate a Timon or a
+Nebuchadnezzar; much less, in fair weather, to please that less repellent
+tribe, the poets, philosophers, artists, and others who 'conceive and
+meditate of pleasant things.'
+
+Some old earthen camp or barrow, some clump of trees, at least some
+starved fragment of ancient hedge is usually taken advantage of in the
+erection of these forlorn dwellings.  But, in the present case, such a
+kind of shelter had been disregarded.  Higher Crowstairs, as the house
+was called, stood quite detached and undefended.  The only reason for its
+precise situation seemed to be the crossing of two footpaths at right
+angles hard by, which may have crossed there and thus for a good five
+hundred years.  Hence the house was exposed to the elements on all sides.
+But, though the wind up here blew unmistakably when it did blow, and the
+rain hit hard whenever it fell, the various weathers of the winter season
+were not quite so formidable on the coomb as they were imagined to be by
+dwellers on low ground.  The raw rimes were not so pernicious as in the
+hollows, and the frosts were scarcely so severe.  When the shepherd and
+his family who tenanted the house were pitied for their sufferings from
+the exposure, they said that upon the whole they were less inconvenienced
+by 'wuzzes and flames' (hoarses and phlegms) than when they had lived by
+the stream of a snug neighbouring valley.
+
+The night of March 28, 182-, was precisely one of the nights that were
+wont to call forth these expressions of commiseration.  The level
+rainstorm smote walls, slopes, and hedges like the clothyard shafts of
+Senlac and Crecy.  Such sheep and outdoor animals as had no shelter stood
+with their buttocks to the winds; while the tails of little birds trying
+to roost on some scraggy thorn were blown inside-out like umbrellas.  The
+gable-end of the cottage was stained with wet, and the eavesdroppings
+flapped against the wall.  Yet never was commiseration for the shepherd
+more misplaced.  For that cheerful rustic was entertaining a large party
+in glorification of the christening of his second girl.
+
+The guests had arrived before the rain began to fall, and they were all
+now assembled in the chief or living room of the dwelling.  A glance into
+the apartment at eight o'clock on this eventful evening would have
+resulted in the opinion that it was as cosy and comfortable a nook as
+could be wished for in boisterous weather.  The calling of its inhabitant
+was proclaimed by a number of highly-polished sheep-crooks without stems
+that were hung ornamentally over the fireplace, the curl of each shining
+crook varying from the antiquated type engraved in the patriarchal
+pictures of old family Bibles to the most approved fashion of the last
+local sheep-fair.  The room was lighted by half-a-dozen candles, having
+wicks only a trifle smaller than the grease which enveloped them, in
+candlesticks that were never used but at high-days, holy-days, and family
+feasts.  The lights were scattered about the room, two of them standing
+on the chimney-piece.  This position of candles was in itself
+significant.  Candles on the chimney-piece always meant a party.
+
+On the hearth, in front of a back-brand to give substance, blazed a fire
+of thorns, that crackled 'like the laughter of the fool.'
+
+Nineteen persons were gathered here.  Of these, five women, wearing gowns
+of various bright hues, sat in chairs along the wall; girls shy and not
+shy filled the window-bench; four men, including Charley Jake the hedge-
+carpenter, Elijah New the parish-clerk, and John Pitcher, a neighbouring
+dairyman, the shepherd's father-in-law, lolled in the settle; a young man
+and maid, who were blushing over tentative pourparlers on a
+life-companionship, sat beneath the corner-cupboard; and an elderly
+engaged man of fifty or upward moved restlessly about from spots where
+his betrothed was not to the spot where she was.  Enjoyment was pretty
+general, and so much the more prevailed in being unhampered by
+conventional restrictions.  Absolute confidence in each other's good
+opinion begat perfect ease, while the finishing stroke of manner,
+amounting to a truly princely serenity, was lent to the majority by the
+absence of any expression or trait denoting that they wished to get on in
+the world, enlarge their minds, or do any eclipsing thing whatever--which
+nowadays so generally nips the bloom and bonhomie of all except the two
+extremes of the social scale.
+
+Shepherd Fennel had married well, his wife being a dairyman's daughter
+from a vale at a distance, who brought fifty guineas in her pocket--and
+kept them there, till they should be required for ministering to the
+needs of a coming family.  This frugal woman had been somewhat exercised
+as to the character that should be given to the gathering.  A sit-still
+party had its advantages; but an undisturbed position of ease in chairs
+and settles was apt to lead on the men to such an unconscionable deal of
+toping that they would sometimes fairly drink the house dry.  A dancing-
+party was the alternative; but this, while avoiding the foregoing
+objection on the score of good drink, had a counterbalancing disadvantage
+in the matter of good victuals, the ravenous appetites engendered by the
+exercise causing immense havoc in the buttery.  Shepherdess Fennel fell
+back upon the intermediate plan of mingling short dances with short
+periods of talk and singing, so as to hinder any ungovernable rage in
+either.  But this scheme was entirely confined to her own gentle mind:
+the shepherd himself was in the mood to exhibit the most reckless phases
+of hospitality.
+
+The fiddler was a boy of those parts, about twelve years of age, who had
+a wonderful dexterity in jigs and reels, though his fingers were so small
+and short as to necessitate a constant shifting for the high notes, from
+which he scrambled back to the first position with sounds not of unmixed
+purity of tone.  At seven the shrill tweedle-dee of this youngster had
+begun, accompanied by a booming ground-bass from Elijah New, the parish-
+clerk, who had thoughtfully brought with him his favourite musical
+instrument, the serpent.  Dancing was instantaneous, Mrs. Fennel
+privately enjoining the players on no account to let the dance exceed the
+length of a quarter of an hour.
+
+But Elijah and the boy, in the excitement of their position, quite forgot
+the injunction.  Moreover, Oliver Giles, a man of seventeen, one of the
+dancers, who was enamoured of his partner, a fair girl of thirty-three
+rolling years, had recklessly handed a new crown-piece to the musicians,
+as a bribe to keep going as long as they had muscle and wind.  Mrs.
+Fennel, seeing the steam begin to generate on the countenances of her
+guests, crossed over and touched the fiddler's elbow and put her hand on
+the serpent's mouth.  But they took no notice, and fearing she might lose
+her character of genial hostess if she were to interfere too markedly,
+she retired and sat down helpless.  And so the dance whizzed on with
+cumulative fury, the performers moving in their planet-like courses,
+direct and retrograde, from apogee to perigee, till the hand of the well-
+kicked clock at the bottom of the room had travelled over the
+circumference of an hour.
+
+While these cheerful events were in course of enactment within Fennel's
+pastoral dwelling, an incident having considerable bearing on the party
+had occurred in the gloomy night without.  Mrs. Fennel's concern about
+the growing fierceness of the dance corresponded in point of time with
+the ascent of a human figure to the solitary hill of Higher Crowstairs
+from the direction of the distant town.  This personage strode on through
+the rain without a pause, following the little-worn path which, further
+on in its course, skirted the shepherd's cottage.
+
+It was nearly the time of full moon, and on this account, though the sky
+was lined with a uniform sheet of dripping cloud, ordinary objects out of
+doors were readily visible.  The sad wan light revealed the lonely
+pedestrian to be a man of supple frame; his gait suggested that he had
+somewhat passed the period of perfect and instinctive agility, though not
+so far as to be otherwise than rapid of motion when occasion required.  At
+a rough guess, he might have been about forty years of age.  He appeared
+tall, but a recruiting sergeant, or other person accustomed to the
+judging of men's heights by the eye, would have discerned that this was
+chiefly owing to his gauntness, and that he was not more than five-feet-
+eight or nine.
+
+Notwithstanding the regularity of his tread, there was caution in it, as
+in that of one who mentally feels his way; and despite the fact that it
+was not a black coat nor a dark garment of any sort that he wore, there
+was something about him which suggested that he naturally belonged to the
+black-coated tribes of men.  His clothes were of fustian, and his boots
+hobnailed, yet in his progress he showed not the mud-accustomed bearing
+of hobnailed and fustianed peasantry.
+
+By the time that he had arrived abreast of the shepherd's premises the
+rain came down, or rather came along, with yet more determined violence.
+The outskirts of the little settlement partially broke the force of wind
+and rain, and this induced him to stand still.  The most salient of the
+shepherd's domestic erections was an empty sty at the forward corner of
+his hedgeless garden, for in these latitudes the principle of masking the
+homelier features of your establishment by a conventional frontage was
+unknown.  The traveller's eye was attracted to this small building by the
+pallid shine of the wet slates that covered it.  He turned aside, and,
+finding it empty, stood under the pent-roof for shelter.
+
+While he stood, the boom of the serpent within the adjacent house, and
+the lesser strains of the fiddler, reached the spot as an accompaniment
+to the surging hiss of the flying rain on the sod, its louder beating on
+the cabbage-leaves of the garden, on the eight or ten beehives just
+discernible by the path, and its dripping from the eaves into a row of
+buckets and pans that had been placed under the walls of the cottage.  For
+at Higher Crowstairs, as at all such elevated domiciles, the grand
+difficulty of housekeeping was an insufficiency of water; and a casual
+rainfall was utilized by turning out, as catchers, every utensil that the
+house contained.  Some queer stories might be told of the contrivances
+for economy in suds and dish-waters that are absolutely necessitated in
+upland habitations during the droughts of summer.  But at this season
+there were no such exigencies; a mere acceptance of what the skies
+bestowed was sufficient for an abundant store.
+
+At last the notes of the serpent ceased and the house was silent.  This
+cessation of activity aroused the solitary pedestrian from the reverie
+into which he had lapsed, and, emerging from the shed, with an apparently
+new intention, he walked up the path to the house-door.  Arrived here,
+his first act was to kneel down on a large stone beside the row of
+vessels, and to drink a copious draught from one of them.  Having
+quenched his thirst he rose and lifted his hand to knock, but paused with
+his eye upon the panel.  Since the dark surface of the wood revealed
+absolutely nothing, it was evident that he must be mentally looking
+through the door, as if he wished to measure thereby all the
+possibilities that a house of this sort might include, and how they might
+bear upon the question of his entry.
+
+In his indecision he turned and surveyed the scene around.  Not a soul
+was anywhere visible.  The garden-path stretched downward from his feet,
+gleaming like the track of a snail; the roof of the little well (mostly
+dry), the well-cover, the top rail of the garden-gate, were varnished
+with the same dull liquid glaze; while, far away in the vale, a faint
+whiteness of more than usual extent showed that the rivers were high in
+the meads.  Beyond all this winked a few bleared lamplights through the
+beating drops--lights that denoted the situation of the county-town from
+which he had appeared to come.  The absence of all notes of life in that
+direction seemed to clinch his intentions, and he knocked at the door.
+
+Within, a desultory chat had taken the place of movement and musical
+sound.  The hedge-carpenter was suggesting a song to the company, which
+nobody just then was inclined to undertake, so that the knock afforded a
+not unwelcome diversion.
+
+'Walk in!' said the shepherd promptly.
+
+The latch clicked upward, and out of the night our pedestrian appeared
+upon the door-mat.  The shepherd arose, snuffed two of the nearest
+candles, and turned to look at him.
+
+Their light disclosed that the stranger was dark in complexion and not
+unprepossessing as to feature.  His hat, which for a moment he did not
+remove, hung low over his eyes, without concealing that they were large,
+open, and determined, moving with a flash rather than a glance round the
+room.  He seemed pleased with his survey, and, baring his shaggy head,
+said, in a rich deep voice, 'The rain is so heavy, friends, that I ask
+leave to come in and rest awhile.'
+
+'To be sure, stranger,' said the shepherd.  'And faith, you've been lucky
+in choosing your time, for we are having a bit of a fling for a glad
+cause--though, to be sure, a man could hardly wish that glad cause to
+happen more than once a year.'
+
+'Nor less,' spoke up a woman.  'For 'tis best to get your family over and
+done with, as soon as you can, so as to be all the earlier out of the fag
+o't.'
+
+'And what may be this glad cause?' asked the stranger.
+
+'A birth and christening,' said the shepherd.
+
+The stranger hoped his host might not be made unhappy either by too many
+or too few of such episodes, and being invited by a gesture to a pull at
+the mug, he readily acquiesced.  His manner, which, before entering, had
+been so dubious, was now altogether that of a careless and candid man.
+
+'Late to be traipsing athwart this coomb--hey?' said the engaged man of
+fifty.
+
+'Late it is, master, as you say.--I'll take a seat in the chimney-corner,
+if you have nothing to urge against it, ma'am; for I am a little moist on
+the side that was next the rain.'
+
+Mrs. Shepherd Fennel assented, and made room for the self-invited comer,
+who, having got completely inside the chimney-corner, stretched out his
+legs and his arms with the expansiveness of a person quite at home.
+
+'Yes, I am rather cracked in the vamp,' he said freely, seeing that the
+eyes of the shepherd's wife fell upon his boots, 'and I am not well
+fitted either.  I have had some rough times lately, and have been forced
+to pick up what I can get in the way of wearing, but I must find a suit
+better fit for working-days when I reach home.'
+
+'One of hereabouts?' she inquired.
+
+'Not quite that--further up the country.'
+
+'I thought so.  And so be I; and by your tongue you come from my
+neighbourhood.'
+
+'But you would hardly have heard of me,' he said quickly.  'My time would
+be long before yours, ma'am, you see.'
+
+This testimony to the youthfulness of his hostess had the effect of
+stopping her cross-examination.
+
+'There is only one thing more wanted to make me happy,' continued the new-
+comer.  'And that is a little baccy, which I am sorry to say I am out
+of.'
+
+'I'll fill your pipe,' said the shepherd.
+
+'I must ask you to lend me a pipe likewise.'
+
+'A smoker, and no pipe about 'ee?'
+
+'I have dropped it somewhere on the road.'
+
+The shepherd filled and handed him a new clay pipe, saying, as he did so,
+'Hand me your baccy-box--I'll fill that too, now I am about it.'
+
+The man went through the movement of searching his pockets.
+
+'Lost that too?' said his entertainer, with some surprise.
+
+'I am afraid so,' said the man with some confusion.  'Give it to me in a
+screw of paper.'  Lighting his pipe at the candle with a suction that
+drew the whole flame into the bowl, he resettled himself in the corner
+and bent his looks upon the faint steam from his damp legs, as if he
+wished to say no more.
+
+Meanwhile the general body of guests had been taking little notice of
+this visitor by reason of an absorbing discussion in which they were
+engaged with the band about a tune for the next dance.  The matter being
+settled, they were about to stand up when an interruption came in the
+shape of another knock at the door.
+
+At sound of the same the man in the chimney-corner took up the poker and
+began stirring the brands as if doing it thoroughly were the one aim of
+his existence; and a second time the shepherd said, 'Walk in!'  In a
+moment another man stood upon the straw-woven door-mat.  He too was a
+stranger.
+
+This individual was one of a type radically different from the first.
+There was more of the commonplace in his manner, and a certain jovial
+cosmopolitanism sat upon his features.  He was several years older than
+the first arrival, his hair being slightly frosted, his eyebrows bristly,
+and his whiskers cut back from his cheeks.  His face was rather full and
+flabby, and yet it was not altogether a face without power.  A few grog-
+blossoms marked the neighbourhood of his nose.  He flung back his long
+drab greatcoat, revealing that beneath it he wore a suit of cinder-gray
+shade throughout, large heavy seals, of some metal or other that would
+take a polish, dangling from his fob as his only personal ornament.
+Shaking the water-drops from his low-crowned glazed hat, he said, 'I must
+ask for a few minutes' shelter, comrades, or I shall be wetted to my skin
+before I get to Casterbridge.'
+
+'Make yourself at home, master,' said the shepherd, perhaps a trifle less
+heartily than on the first occasion.  Not that Fennel had the least tinge
+of niggardliness in his composition; but the room was far from large,
+spare chairs were not numerous, and damp companions were not altogether
+desirable at close quarters for the women and girls in their
+bright-coloured gowns.
+
+However, the second comer, after taking off his greatcoat, and hanging
+his hat on a nail in one of the ceiling-beams as if he had been specially
+invited to put it there, advanced and sat down at the table.  This had
+been pushed so closely into the chimney-corner, to give all available
+room to the dancers, that its inner edge grazed the elbow of the man who
+had ensconced himself by the fire; and thus the two strangers were
+brought into close companionship.  They nodded to each other by way of
+breaking the ice of unacquaintance, and the first stranger handed his
+neighbour the family mug--a huge vessel of brown ware, having its upper
+edge worn away like a threshold by the rub of whole generations of
+thirsty lips that had gone the way of all flesh, and bearing the
+following inscription burnt upon its rotund side in yellow letters
+
+   THERE IS NO FUN
+   UNTiLL i CUM.
+
+The other man, nothing loth, raised the mug to his lips, and drank on,
+and on, and on--till a curious blueness overspread the countenance of the
+shepherd's wife, who had regarded with no little surprise the first
+stranger's free offer to the second of what did not belong to him to
+dispense.
+
+'I knew it!' said the toper to the shepherd with much satisfaction.  'When
+I walked up your garden before coming in, and saw the hives all of a row,
+I said to myself; "Where there's bees there's honey, and where there's
+honey there's mead."  But mead of such a truly comfortable sort as this I
+really didn't expect to meet in my older days.'  He took yet another pull
+at the mug, till it assumed an ominous elevation.
+
+'Glad you enjoy it!' said the shepherd warmly.
+
+'It is goodish mead,' assented Mrs. Fennel, with an absence of enthusiasm
+which seemed to say that it was possible to buy praise for one's cellar
+at too heavy a price.  'It is trouble enough to make--and really I hardly
+think we shall make any more.  For honey sells well, and we ourselves can
+make shift with a drop o' small mead and metheglin for common use from
+the comb-washings.'
+
+'O, but you'll never have the heart!' reproachfully cried the stranger in
+cinder-gray, after taking up the mug a third time and setting it down
+empty.  'I love mead, when 'tis old like this, as I love to go to church
+o' Sundays, or to relieve the needy any day of the week.'
+
+'Ha, ha, ha!' said the man in the chimney-corner, who, in spite of the
+taciturnity induced by the pipe of tobacco, could not or would not
+refrain from this slight testimony to his comrade's humour.
+
+Now the old mead of those days, brewed of the purest first-year or maiden
+honey, four pounds to the gallon--with its due complement of white of
+eggs, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, mace, rosemary, yeast, and processes of
+working, bottling, and cellaring--tasted remarkably strong; but it did
+not taste so strong as it actually was.  Hence, presently, the stranger
+in cinder-gray at the table, moved by its creeping influence, unbuttoned
+his waistcoat, threw himself back in his chair, spread his legs, and made
+his presence felt in various ways.
+
+'Well, well, as I say,' he resumed, 'I am going to Casterbridge, and to
+Casterbridge I must go.  I should have been almost there by this time;
+but the rain drove me into your dwelling, and I'm not sorry for it.'
+
+'You don't live in Casterbridge?' said the shepherd.
+
+'Not as yet; though I shortly mean to move there.'
+
+'Going to set up in trade, perhaps?'
+
+'No, no,' said the shepherd's wife.  'It is easy to see that the
+gentleman is rich, and don't want to work at anything.'
+
+The cinder-gray stranger paused, as if to consider whether he would
+accept that definition of himself.  He presently rejected it by
+answering, 'Rich is not quite the word for me, dame.  I do work, and I
+must work.  And even if I only get to Casterbridge by midnight I must
+begin work there at eight to-morrow morning.  Yes, het or wet, blow or
+snow, famine or sword, my day's work to-morrow must be done.'
+
+'Poor man!  Then, in spite o' seeming, you be worse off than we?' replied
+the shepherd's wife.
+
+''Tis the nature of my trade, men and maidens.  'Tis the nature of my
+trade more than my poverty . . . But really and truly I must up and off,
+or I shan't get a lodging in the town.'  However, the speaker did not
+move, and directly added, 'There's time for one more draught of
+friendship before I go; and I'd perform it at once if the mug were not
+dry.'
+
+'Here's a mug o' small,' said Mrs. Fennel.  'Small, we call it, though to
+be sure 'tis only the first wash o' the combs.'
+
+'No,' said the stranger disdainfully.  'I won't spoil your first kindness
+by partaking o' your second.'
+
+'Certainly not,' broke in Fennel.  'We don't increase and multiply every
+day, and I'll fill the mug again.'  He went away to the dark place under
+the stairs where the barrel stood.  The shepherdess followed him.
+
+'Why should you do this?' she said reproachfully, as soon as they were
+alone.  'He's emptied it once, though it held enough for ten people; and
+now he's not contented wi' the small, but must needs call for more o' the
+strong!  And a stranger unbeknown to any of us.  For my part, I don't
+like the look o' the man at all.'
+
+'But he's in the house, my honey; and 'tis a wet night, and a
+christening.  Daze it, what's a cup of mead more or less?  There'll be
+plenty more next bee-burning.'
+
+'Very well--this time, then,' she answered, looking wistfully at the
+barrel.  'But what is the man's calling, and where is he one of; that he
+should come in and join us like this?'
+
+'I don't know.  I'll ask him again.'
+
+The catastrophe of having the mug drained dry at one pull by the stranger
+in cinder-gray was effectually guarded against this time by Mrs. Fennel.
+She poured out his allowance in a small cup, keeping the large one at a
+discreet distance from him.  When he had tossed off his portion the
+shepherd renewed his inquiry about the stranger's occupation.
+
+The latter did not immediately reply, and the man in the chimney-corner,
+with sudden demonstrativeness, said, 'Anybody may know my trade--I'm a
+wheelwright.'
+
+'A very good trade for these parts,' said the shepherd.
+
+'And anybody may know mine--if they've the sense to find it out,' said
+the stranger in cinder-gray.
+
+'You may generally tell what a man is by his claws,' observed the hedge-
+carpenter, looking at his own hands.  'My fingers be as full of thorns as
+an old pin-cushion is of pins.'
+
+The hands of the man in the chimney-corner instinctively sought the
+shade, and he gazed into the fire as he resumed his pipe.  The man at the
+table took up the hedge-carpenter's remark, and added smartly, 'True; but
+the oddity of my trade is that, instead of setting a mark upon me, it
+sets a mark upon my customers.'
+
+No observation being offered by anybody in elucidation of this enigma,
+the shepherd's wife once more called for a song.  The same obstacles
+presented themselves as at the former time--one had no voice, another had
+forgotten the first verse.  The stranger at the table, whose soul had now
+risen to a good working temperature, relieved the difficulty by
+exclaiming that, to start the company, he would sing himself.  Thrusting
+one thumb into the arm-hole of his waistcoat, he waved the other hand in
+the air, and, with an extemporizing gaze at the shining sheep-crooks
+above the mantelpiece, began:-
+
+      'O my trade it is the rarest one,
+            Simple shepherds all -
+         My trade is a sight to see;
+   For my customers I tie, and take them up on high,
+         And waft 'em to a far countree!'
+
+The room was silent when he had finished the verse--with one exception,
+that of the man in the chimney-corner, who, at the singer's word,
+'Chorus! 'joined him in a deep bass voice of musical relish -
+
+   'And waft 'em to a far countree!'
+
+Oliver Giles, John Pitcher the dairyman, the parish-clerk, the engaged
+man of fifty, the row of young women against the wall, seemed lost in
+thought not of the gayest kind.  The shepherd looked meditatively on the
+ground, the shepherdess gazed keenly at the singer, and with some
+suspicion; she was doubting whether this stranger were merely singing an
+old song from recollection, or was composing one there and then for the
+occasion.  All were as perplexed at the obscure revelation as the guests
+at Belshazzar's Feast, except the man in the chimney-corner, who quietly
+said, 'Second verse, stranger,' and smoked on.
+
+The singer thoroughly moistened himself from his lips inwards, and went
+on with the next stanza as requested:-
+
+      'My tools are but common ones,
+            Simple shepherds all -
+         My tools are no sight to see:
+   A little hempen string, and a post whereon to swing,
+         Are implements enough for me!'
+
+Shepherd Fennel glanced round.  There was no longer any doubt that the
+stranger was answering his question rhythmically.  The guests one and all
+started back with suppressed exclamations.  The young woman engaged to
+the man of fifty fainted half-way, and would have proceeded, but finding
+him wanting in alacrity for catching her she sat down trembling.
+
+'O, he's the--!' whispered the people in the background, mentioning the
+name of an ominous public officer.  'He's come to do it!  'Tis to be at
+Casterbridge jail to-morrow--the man for sheep-stealing--the poor clock-
+maker we heard of; who used to live away at Shottsford and had no work to
+do--Timothy Summers, whose family were a-starving, and so he went out of
+Shottsford by the high-road, and took a sheep in open daylight, defying
+the farmer and the farmer's wife and the farmer's lad, and every man jack
+among 'em.  He' (and they nodded towards the stranger of the deadly
+trade) 'is come from up the country to do it because there's not enough
+to do in his own county-town, and he's got the place here now our own
+county man's dead; he's going to live in the same cottage under the
+prison wall.'
+
+The stranger in cinder-gray took no notice of this whispered string of
+observations, but again wetted his lips.  Seeing that his friend in the
+chimney-corner was the only one who reciprocated his joviality in any
+way, he held out his cup towards that appreciative comrade, who also held
+out his own.  They clinked together, the eyes of the rest of the room
+hanging upon the singer's actions.  He parted his lips for the third
+verse; but at that moment another knock was audible upon the door.  This
+time the knock was faint and hesitating.
+
+The company seemed scared; the shepherd looked with consternation towards
+the entrance, and it was with some effort that he resisted his alarmed
+wife's deprecatory glance, and uttered for the third time the welcoming
+words, 'Walk in!'
+
+The door was gently opened, and another man stood upon the mat.  He, like
+those who had preceded him, was a stranger.  This time it was a short,
+small personage, of fair complexion, and dressed in a decent suit of dark
+clothes.
+
+'Can you tell me the way to--?' he began: when, gazing round the room to
+observe the nature of the company amongst whom he had fallen, his eyes
+lighted on the stranger in cinder-gray.  It was just at the instant when
+the latter, who had thrown his mind into his song with such a will that
+he scarcely heeded the interruption, silenced all whispers and inquiries
+by bursting into his third verse:-
+
+      'To-morrow is my working day,
+            Simple shepherds all -
+        To-morrow is a working day for me:
+   For the farmer's sheep is slain, and the lad who did it ta'en,
+        And on his soul may God ha' merc-y!'
+
+The stranger in the chimney-corner, waving cups with the singer so
+heartily that his mead splashed over on the hearth, repeated in his bass
+voice as before:-
+
+   'And on his soul may God ha' merc-y!'
+
+All this time the third stranger had been standing in the doorway.
+Finding now that he did not come forward or go on speaking, the guests
+particularly regarded him.  They noticed to their surprise that he stood
+before them the picture of abject terror--his knees trembling, his hand
+shaking so violently that the door-latch by which he supported himself
+rattled audibly: his white lips were parted, and his eyes fixed on the
+merry officer of justice in the middle of the room.  A moment more and he
+had turned, closed the door, and fled.
+
+'What a man can it be?' said the shepherd.
+
+The rest, between the awfulness of their late discovery and the odd
+conduct of this third visitor, looked as if they knew not what to think,
+and said nothing.  Instinctively they withdrew further and further from
+the grim gentleman in their midst, whom some of them seemed to take for
+the Prince of Darkness himself; till they formed a remote circle, an
+empty space of floor being left between them and him -
+
+   ' . . . circulus, cujus centrum diabolus.'
+
+The room was so silent--though there were more than twenty people in
+it--that nothing could be heard but the patter of the rain against the
+window-shutters, accompanied by the occasional hiss of a stray drop that
+fell down the chimney into the fire, and the steady puffing of the man in
+the corner, who had now resumed his pipe of long clay.
+
+The stillness was unexpectedly broken.  The distant sound of a gun
+reverberated through the air--apparently from the direction of the county-
+town.
+
+'Be jiggered!' cried the stranger who had sung the song, jumping up.
+
+'What does that mean?' asked several.
+
+'A prisoner escaped from the jail--that's what it means.'
+
+All listened.  The sound was repeated, and none of them spoke but the man
+in the chimney-corner, who said quietly, 'I've often been told that in
+this county they fire a gun at such times; but I never heard it till
+now.'
+
+'I wonder if it is my man?' murmured the personage in cinder-gray.
+
+'Surely it is!' said the shepherd involuntarily.  'And surely we've zeed
+him!  That little man who looked in at the door by now, and quivered like
+a leaf when he zeed ye and heard your song!'
+
+'His teeth chattered, and the breath went out of his body,' said the
+dairyman.
+
+'And his heart seemed to sink within him like a stone,' said Oliver
+Giles.
+
+'And he bolted as if he'd been shot at,' said the hedge-carpenter.
+
+'True--his teeth chattered, and his heart seemed to sink; and he bolted
+as if he'd been shot at,' slowly summed up the man in the chimney-corner.
+
+'I didn't notice it,' remarked the hangman.
+
+'We were all a-wondering what made him run off in such a fright,'
+faltered one of the women against the wall, 'and now 'tis explained!'
+
+The firing of the alarm-gun went on at intervals, low and sullenly, and
+their suspicions became a certainty.  The sinister gentleman in cinder-
+gray roused himself.  'Is there a constable here?' he asked, in thick
+tones.  'If so, let him step forward.'
+
+The engaged man of fifty stepped quavering out from the wall, his
+betrothed beginning to sob on the back of the chair.
+
+'You are a sworn constable?'
+
+'I be, sir.'
+
+'Then pursue the criminal at once, with assistance, and bring him back
+here.  He can't have gone far.'
+
+'I will, sir, I will--when I've got my staff.  I'll go home and get it,
+and come sharp here, and start in a body.'
+
+'Staff!--never mind your staff; the man'll be gone!'
+
+'But I can't do nothing without my staff--can I, William, and John, and
+Charles Jake?  No; for there's the king's royal crown a painted on en in
+yaller and gold, and the lion and the unicorn, so as when I raise en up
+and hit my prisoner, 'tis made a lawful blow thereby.  I wouldn't 'tempt
+to take up a man without my staff--no, not I.  If I hadn't the law to gie
+me courage, why, instead o' my taking up him he might take up me!'
+
+'Now, I'm a king's man myself; and can give you authority enough for
+this,' said the formidable officer in gray.  'Now then, all of ye, be
+ready.  Have ye any lanterns?'
+
+'Yes--have ye any lanterns?--I demand it!' said the constable.
+
+'And the rest of you able-bodied--'
+
+'Able-bodied men--yes--the rest of ye!' said the constable.
+
+'Have you some good stout staves and pitch-forks--'
+
+'Staves and pitchforks--in the name o' the law!  And take 'em in yer
+hands and go in quest, and do as we in authority tell ye!'
+
+Thus aroused, the men prepared to give chase.  The evidence was, indeed,
+though circumstantial, so convincing, that but little argument was needed
+to show the shepherd's guests that after what they had seen it would look
+very much like connivance if they did not instantly pursue the unhappy
+third stranger, who could not as yet have gone more than a few hundred
+yards over such uneven country.
+
+A shepherd is always well provided with lanterns; and, lighting these
+hastily, and with hurdle-staves in their hands, they poured out of the
+door, taking a direction along the crest of the hill, away from the town,
+the rain having fortunately a little abated.
+
+Disturbed by the noise, or possibly by unpleasant dreams of her baptism,
+the child who had been christened began to cry heart-brokenly in the room
+overhead.  These notes of grief came down through the chinks of the floor
+to the ears of the women below, who jumped up one by one, and seemed glad
+of the excuse to ascend and comfort the baby, for the incidents of the
+last half-hour greatly oppressed them.  Thus in the space of two or three
+minutes the room on the ground-floor was deserted quite.
+
+But it was not for long.  Hardly had the sound of footsteps died away
+when a man returned round the corner of the house from the direction the
+pursuers had taken.  Peeping in at the door, and seeing nobody there, he
+entered leisurely.  It was the stranger of the chimney-corner, who had
+gone out with the rest.  The motive of his return was shown by his
+helping himself to a cut piece of skimmer-cake that lay on a ledge beside
+where he had sat, and which he had apparently forgotten to take with him.
+He also poured out half a cup more mead from the quantity that remained,
+ravenously eating and drinking these as he stood.  He had not finished
+when another figure came in just as quietly--his friend in cinder-gray.
+
+'O--you here?' said the latter, smiling.  'I thought you had gone to help
+in the capture.'  And this speaker also revealed the object of his return
+by looking solicitously round for the fascinating mug of old mead.
+
+'And I thought you had gone,' said the other, continuing his skimmer-cake
+with some effort.
+
+'Well, on second thoughts, I felt there were enough without me,' said the
+first confidentially, 'and such a night as it is, too.  Besides, 'tis the
+business o' the Government to take care of its criminals--not mine.'
+
+'True; so it is.  And I felt as you did, that there were enough without
+me.'
+
+'I don't want to break my limbs running over the humps and hollows of
+this wild country.'
+
+'Nor I neither, between you and me.'
+
+'These shepherd-people are used to it--simple-minded souls, you know,
+stirred up to anything in a moment.  They'll have him ready for me before
+the morning, and no trouble to me at all.'
+
+'They'll have him, and we shall have saved ourselves all labour in the
+matter.'
+
+'True, true.  Well, my way is to Casterbridge; and 'tis as much as my
+legs will do to take me that far.  Going the same way?'
+
+'No, I am sorry to say!  I have to get home over there' (he nodded
+indefinitely to the right), 'and I feel as you do, that it is quite
+enough for my legs to do before bedtime.'
+
+The other had by this time finished the mead in the mug, after which,
+shaking hands heartily at the door, and wishing each other well, they
+went their several ways.
+
+In the meantime the company of pursuers had reached the end of the hog's-
+back elevation which dominated this part of the down.  They had decided
+on no particular plan of action; and, finding that the man of the baleful
+trade was no longer in their company, they seemed quite unable to form
+any such plan now.  They descended in all directions down the hill, and
+straightway several of the party fell into the snare set by Nature for
+all misguided midnight ramblers over this part of the cretaceous
+formation.  The 'lanchets,' or flint slopes, which belted the escarpment
+at intervals of a dozen yards, took the less cautious ones unawares, and
+losing their footing on the rubbly steep they slid sharply downwards, the
+lanterns rolling from their hands to the bottom, and there lying on their
+sides till the horn was scorched through.
+
+When they had again gathered themselves together, the shepherd, as the
+man who knew the country best, took the lead, and guided them round these
+treacherous inclines.  The lanterns, which seemed rather to dazzle their
+eyes and warn the fugitive than to assist them in the exploration, were
+extinguished, due silence was observed; and in this more rational order
+they plunged into the vale.  It was a grassy, briery, moist defile,
+affording some shelter to any person who had sought it; but the party
+perambulated it in vain, and ascended on the other side.  Here they
+wandered apart, and after an interval closed together again to report
+progress.
+
+At the second time of closing in they found themselves near a lonely ash,
+the single tree on this part of the coomb, probably sown there by a
+passing bird some fifty years before.  And here, standing a little to one
+side of the trunk, as motionless as the trunk itself; appeared the man
+they were in quest of; his outline being well defined against the sky
+beyond.  The band noiselessly drew up and faced him.
+
+'Your money or your life!' said the constable sternly to the still
+figure.
+
+'No, no,' whispered John Pitcher.  ''Tisn't our side ought to say that.
+That's the doctrine of vagabonds like him, and we be on the side of the
+law.'
+
+'Well, well,' replied the constable impatiently; 'I must say something,
+mustn't I? and if you had all the weight o' this undertaking upon your
+mind, perhaps you'd say the wrong thing too!--Prisoner at the bar,
+surrender, in the name of the Father--the Crown, I mane!'
+
+The man under the tree seemed now to notice them for the first time, and,
+giving them no opportunity whatever for exhibiting their courage, he
+strolled slowly towards them.  He was, indeed, the little man, the third
+stranger; but his trepidation had in a great measure gone.
+
+'Well, travellers,' he said, 'did I hear ye speak to me?'
+
+'You did: you've got to come and be our prisoner at once!' said the
+constable.  'We arrest 'ee on the charge of not biding in Casterbridge
+jail in a decent proper manner to be hung to-morrow morning.  Neighbours,
+do your duty, and seize the culpet!'
+
+On hearing the charge, the man seemed enlightened, and, saying not
+another word, resigned himself with preternatural civility to the search-
+party, who, with their staves in their hands, surrounded him on all
+sides, and marched him back towards the shepherd's cottage.
+
+It was eleven o'clock by the time they arrived.  The light shining from
+the open door, a sound of men's voices within, proclaimed to them as they
+approached the house that some new events had arisen in their absence.  On
+entering they discovered the shepherd's living room to be invaded by two
+officers from Casterbridge jail, and a well-known magistrate who lived at
+the nearest country-seat, intelligence of the escape having become
+generally circulated.
+
+'Gentlemen,' said the constable, 'I have brought back your man--not
+without risk and danger; but every one must do his duty!  He is inside
+this circle of able-bodied persons, who have lent me useful aid,
+considering their ignorance of Crown work.  Men, bring forward your
+prisoner!'  And the third stranger was led to the light.
+
+'Who is this?' said one of the officials.
+
+'The man,' said the constable.
+
+'Certainly not,' said the turnkey; and the first corroborated his
+statement.
+
+'But how can it be otherwise?' asked the constable.  'Or why was he so
+terrified at sight o' the singing instrument of the law who sat there?'
+Here he related the strange behaviour of the third stranger on entering
+the house during the hangman's song.
+
+'Can't understand it,' said the officer coolly.  'All I know is that it
+is not the condemned man.  He's quite a different character from this
+one; a gauntish fellow, with dark hair and eyes, rather good-looking, and
+with a musical bass voice that if you heard it once you'd never mistake
+as long as you lived.'
+
+'Why, souls--'twas the man in the chimney-corner!'
+
+'Hey--what?' said the magistrate, coming forward after inquiring
+particulars from the shepherd in the background.  'Haven't you got the
+man after all?'
+
+'Well, sir,' said the constable, 'he's the man we were in search of,
+that's true; and yet he's not the man we were in search of.  For the man
+we were in search of was not the man we wanted, sir, if you understand my
+everyday way; for 'twas the man in the chimney-corner!'
+
+'A pretty kettle of fish altogether!' said the magistrate.  'You had
+better start for the other man at once.'
+
+The prisoner now spoke for the first time.  The mention of the man in the
+chimney-corner seemed to have moved him as nothing else could do.  'Sir,'
+he said, stepping forward to the magistrate, 'take no more trouble about
+me.  The time is come when I may as well speak.  I have done nothing; my
+crime is that the condemned man is my brother.  Early this afternoon I
+left home at Shottsford to tramp it all the way to Casterbridge jail to
+bid him farewell.  I was benighted, and called here to rest and ask the
+way.  When I opened the door I saw before me the very man, my brother,
+that I thought to see in the condemned cell at Casterbridge.  He was in
+this chimney-corner; and jammed close to him, so that he could not have
+got out if he had tried, was the executioner who'd come to take his life,
+singing a song about it and not knowing that it was his victim who was
+close by, joining in to save appearances.  My brother looked a glance of
+agony at me, and I knew he meant, "Don't reveal what you see; my life
+depends on it."  I was so terror-struck that I could hardly stand, and,
+not knowing what I did, I turned and hurried away.'
+
+The narrator's manner and tone had the stamp of truth, and his story made
+a great impression on all around.  'And do you know where your brother is
+at the present time?' asked the magistrate.
+
+'I do not.  I have never seen him since I closed this door.'
+
+'I can testify to that, for we've been between ye ever since,' said the
+constable.
+
+'Where does he think to fly to?--what is his occupation?'
+
+'He's a watch-and-clock-maker, sir.'
+
+''A said 'a was a wheelwright--a wicked rogue,' said the constable.
+
+'The wheels of clocks and watches he meant, no doubt,' said Shepherd
+Fennel.  'I thought his hands were palish for's trade.'
+
+'Well, it appears to me that nothing can be gained by retaining this poor
+man in custody,' said the magistrate; 'your business lies with the other,
+unquestionably.'
+
+And so the little man was released off-hand; but he looked nothing the
+less sad on that account, it being beyond the power of magistrate or
+constable to raze out the written troubles in his brain, for they
+concerned another whom he regarded with more solicitude than himself.
+When this was done, and the man had gone his way, the night was found to
+be so far advanced that it was deemed useless to renew the search before
+the next morning.
+
+Next day, accordingly, the quest for the clever sheep-stealer became
+general and keen, to all appearance at least.  But the intended
+punishment was cruelly disproportioned to the transgression, and the
+sympathy of a great many country-folk in that district was strongly on
+the side of the fugitive.  Moreover, his marvellous coolness and daring
+in hob-and-nobbing with the hangman, under the unprecedented
+circumstances of the shepherd's party, won their admiration.  So that it
+may be questioned if all those who ostensibly made themselves so busy in
+exploring woods and fields and lanes were quite so thorough when it came
+to the private examination of their own lofts and outhouses.  Stories
+were afloat of a mysterious figure being occasionally seen in some old
+overgrown trackway or other, remote from turnpike roads; but when a
+search was instituted in any of these suspected quarters nobody was
+found.  Thus the days and weeks passed without tidings.
+
+In brief; the bass-voiced man of the chimney-corner was never recaptured.
+Some said that he went across the sea, others that he did not, but buried
+himself in the depths of a populous city.  At any rate, the gentleman in
+cinder-gray never did his morning's work at Casterbridge, nor met
+anywhere at all, for business purposes, the genial comrade with whom he
+had passed an hour of relaxation in the lonely house on the coomb.
+
+The grass has long been green on the graves of Shepherd Fennel and his
+frugal wife; the guests who made up the christening party have mainly
+followed their entertainers to the tomb; the baby in whose honour they
+all had met is a matron in the sere and yellow leaf.  But the arrival of
+the three strangers at the shepherd's that night, and the details
+connected therewith, is a story as well known as ever in the country
+about Higher Crowstairs.
+
+March 1883.
+
+
+
+
+THE WITHERED ARM
+
+
+CHAPTER I--A LORN MILKMAID
+
+
+It was an eighty-cow dairy, and the troop of milkers, regular and
+supernumerary, were all at work; for, though the time of year was as yet
+but early April, the feed lay entirely in water-meadows, and the cows
+were 'in full pail.'  The hour was about six in the evening, and three-
+fourths of the large, red, rectangular animals having been finished off,
+there was opportunity for a little conversation.
+
+'He do bring home his bride to-morrow, I hear.  They've come as far as
+Anglebury to-day.'
+
+The voice seemed to proceed from the belly of the cow called Cherry, but
+the speaker was a milking-woman, whose face was buried in the flank of
+that motionless beast.
+
+'Hav' anybody seen her?' said another.
+
+There was a negative response from the first.  'Though they say she's a
+rosy-cheeked, tisty-tosty little body enough,' she added; and as the
+milkmaid spoke she turned her face so that she could glance past her
+cow's tail to the other side of the barton, where a thin, fading woman of
+thirty milked somewhat apart from the rest.
+
+'Years younger than he, they say,' continued the second, with also a
+glance of reflectiveness in the same direction.
+
+'How old do you call him, then?'
+
+'Thirty or so.'
+
+'More like forty,' broke in an old milkman near, in a long white pinafore
+or 'wropper,' and with the brim of his hat tied down, so that he looked
+like a woman.  ''A was born before our Great Weir was builded, and I
+hadn't man's wages when I laved water there.'
+
+The discussion waxed so warm that the purr of the milk-streams became
+jerky, till a voice from another cow's belly cried with authority, 'Now
+then, what the Turk do it matter to us about Farmer Lodge's age, or
+Farmer Lodge's new mis'ess?  I shall have to pay him nine pound a year
+for the rent of every one of these milchers, whatever his age or hers.
+Get on with your work, or 'twill be dark afore we have done.  The evening
+is pinking in a'ready.'  This speaker was the dairyman himself; by whom
+the milkmaids and men were employed.
+
+Nothing more was said publicly about Farmer Lodge's wedding, but the
+first woman murmured under her cow to her next neighbour, ''Tis hard for
+she,' signifying the thin worn milkmaid aforesaid.
+
+'O no,' said the second.  'He ha'n't spoke to Rhoda Brook for years.'
+
+When the milking was done they washed their pails and hung them on a many-
+forked stand made of the peeled limb of an oak-tree, set upright in the
+earth, and resembling a colossal antlered horn.  The majority then
+dispersed in various directions homeward.  The thin woman who had not
+spoken was joined by a boy of twelve or thereabout, and the twain went
+away up the field also.
+
+Their course lay apart from that of the others, to a lonely spot high
+above the water-meads, and not far from the border of Egdon Heath, whose
+dark countenance was visible in the distance as they drew nigh to their
+home.
+
+'They've just been saying down in barton that your father brings his
+young wife home from Anglebury to-morrow,' the woman observed.  'I shall
+want to send you for a few things to market, and you'll be pretty sure to
+meet 'em.'
+
+'Yes, mother,' said the boy.  'Is father married then?'
+
+'Yes . . . You can give her a look, and tell me what's she's like, if you
+do see her.'
+
+'Yes, mother.'
+
+'If she's dark or fair, and if she's tall--as tall as I.  And if she
+seems like a woman who has ever worked for a living, or one that has been
+always well off, and has never done anything, and shows marks of the lady
+on her, as I expect she do.'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+They crept up the hill in the twilight, and entered the cottage.  It was
+built of mud-walls, the surface of which had been washed by many rains
+into channels and depressions that left none of the original flat face
+visible; while here and there in the thatch above a rafter showed like a
+bone protruding through the skin.
+
+She was kneeling down in the chimney-corner, before two pieces of turf
+laid together with the heather inwards, blowing at the red-hot ashes with
+her breath till the turves flamed.  The radiance lit her pale cheek, and
+made her dark eyes, that had once been handsome, seem handsome anew.
+'Yes,' she resumed, 'see if she is dark or fair, and if you can, notice
+if her hands be white; if not, see if they look as though she had ever
+done housework, or are milker's hands like mine.'
+
+The boy again promised, inattentively this time, his mother not observing
+that he was cutting a notch with his pocket-knife in the beech-backed
+chair.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II--THE YOUNG WIFE
+
+
+The road from Anglebury to Holmstoke is in general level; but there is
+one place where a sharp ascent breaks its monotony.  Farmers homeward-
+bound from the former market-town, who trot all the rest of the way, walk
+their horses up this short incline.
+
+The next evening, while the sun was yet bright, a handsome new gig, with
+a lemon-coloured body and red wheels, was spinning westward along the
+level highway at the heels of a powerful mare.  The driver was a yeoman
+in the prime of life, cleanly shaven like an actor, his face being toned
+to that bluish-vermilion hue which so often graces a thriving farmer's
+features when returning home after successful dealings in the town.
+Beside him sat a woman, many years his junior--almost, indeed, a girl.
+Her face too was fresh in colour, but it was of a totally different
+quality--soft and evanescent, like the light under a heap of rose-petals.
+
+Few people travelled this way, for it was not a main road; and the long
+white riband of gravel that stretched before them was empty, save of one
+small scarce-moving speck, which presently resolved itself into the
+figure of boy, who was creeping on at a snail's pace, and continually
+looking behind him--the heavy bundle he carried being some excuse for, if
+not the reason of, his dilatoriness.  When the bouncing gig-party slowed
+at the bottom of the incline above mentioned, the pedestrian was only a
+few yards in front.  Supporting the large bundle by putting one hand on
+his hip, he turned and looked straight at the farmer's wife as though he
+would read her through and through, pacing along abreast of the horse.
+
+The low sun was full in her face, rendering every feature, shade, and
+contour distinct, from the curve of her little nostril to the colour of
+her eyes.  The farmer, though he seemed annoyed at the boy's persistent
+presence, did not order him to get out of the way; and thus the lad
+preceded them, his hard gaze never leaving her, till they reached the top
+of the ascent, when the farmer trotted on with relief in his
+lineaments--having taken no outward notice of the boy whatever.
+
+'How that poor lad stared at me!' said the young wife.
+
+'Yes, dear; I saw that he did.'
+
+'He is one of the village, I suppose?'
+
+'One of the neighbourhood.  I think he lives with his mother a mile or
+two off.'
+
+'He knows who we are, no doubt?'
+
+'O yes.  You must expect to be stared at just at first, my pretty
+Gertrude.'
+
+'I do,--though I think the poor boy may have looked at us in the hope we
+might relieve him of his heavy load, rather than from curiosity.'
+
+'O no,' said her husband off-handedly.  'These country lads will carry a
+hundredweight once they get it on their backs; besides his pack had more
+size than weight in it.  Now, then, another mile and I shall be able to
+show you our house in the distance--if it is not too dark before we get
+there.'  The wheels spun round, and particles flew from their periphery
+as before, till a white house of ample dimensions revealed itself, with
+farm-buildings and ricks at the back.
+
+Meanwhile the boy had quickened his pace, and turning up a by-lane some
+mile and half short of the white farmstead, ascended towards the leaner
+pastures, and so on to the cottage of his mother.
+
+She had reached home after her day's milking at the outlying dairy, and
+was washing cabbage at the doorway in the declining light.  'Hold up the
+net a moment,' she said, without preface, as the boy came up.
+
+He flung down his bundle, held the edge of the cabbage-net, and as she
+filled its meshes with the dripping leaves she went on, 'Well, did you
+see her?'
+
+'Yes; quite plain.'
+
+'Is she ladylike?'
+
+'Yes; and more.  A lady complete.'
+
+'Is she young?'
+
+'Well, she's growed up, and her ways be quite a woman's.'
+
+'Of course.  What colour is her hair and face?'
+
+'Her hair is lightish, and her face as comely as a live doll's.'
+
+'Her eyes, then, are not dark like mine?'
+
+'No--of a bluish turn, and her mouth is very nice and red; and when she
+smiles, her teeth show white.'
+
+'Is she tall?' said the woman sharply.
+
+'I couldn't see.  She was sitting down.'
+
+'Then do you go to Holmstoke church to-morrow morning: she's sure to be
+there.  Go early and notice her walking in, and come home and tell me if
+she's taller than I.'
+
+'Very well, mother.  But why don't you go and see for yourself?'
+
+'I go to see her!  I wouldn't look up at her if she were to pass my
+window this instant.  She was with Mr. Lodge, of course.  What did he say
+or do?'
+
+'Just the same as usual.'
+
+'Took no notice of you?'
+
+'None.'
+
+Next day the mother put a clean shirt on the boy, and started him off for
+Holmstoke church.  He reached the ancient little pile when the door was
+just being opened, and he was the first to enter.  Taking his seat by the
+font, he watched all the parishioners file in.  The well-to-do Farmer
+Lodge came nearly last; and his young wife, who accompanied him, walked
+up the aisle with the shyness natural to a modest woman who had appeared
+thus for the first time.  As all other eyes were fixed upon her, the
+youth's stare was not noticed now.
+
+When he reached home his mother said, 'Well?' before he had entered the
+room.
+
+'She is not tall.  She is rather short,' he replied.
+
+'Ah!' said his mother, with satisfaction.
+
+'But she's very pretty--very.  In fact, she's lovely.'
+
+The youthful freshness of the yeoman's wife had evidently made an
+impression even on the somewhat hard nature of the boy.
+
+'That's all I want to hear,' said his mother quickly.  'Now, spread the
+table-cloth.  The hare you caught is very tender; but mind that nobody
+catches you.--You've never told me what sort of hands she had.'
+
+'I have never seen 'em.  She never took off her gloves.'
+
+'What did she wear this morning?'
+
+'A white bonnet and a silver-coloured gownd.  It whewed and whistled so
+loud when it rubbed against the pews that the lady coloured up more than
+ever for very shame at the noise, and pulled it in to keep it from
+touching; but when she pushed into her seat, it whewed more than ever.
+Mr. Lodge, he seemed pleased, and his waistcoat stuck out, and his great
+golden seals hung like a lord's; but she seemed to wish her noisy gownd
+anywhere but on her.'
+
+'Not she!  However, that will do now.'
+
+These descriptions of the newly-married couple were continued from time
+to time by the boy at his mother's request, after any chance encounter he
+had had with them.  But Rhoda Brook, though she might easily have seen
+young Mrs. Lodge for herself by walking a couple of miles, would never
+attempt an excursion towards the quarter where the farmhouse lay.  Neither
+did she, at the daily milking in the dairyman's yard on Lodge's outlying
+second farm, ever speak on the subject of the recent marriage.  The
+dairyman, who rented the cows of Lodge, and knew perfectly the tall
+milkmaid's history, with manly kindliness always kept the gossip in the
+cow-barton from annoying Rhoda.  But the atmosphere thereabout was full
+of the subject during the first days of Mrs. Lodge's arrival; and from
+her boy's description and the casual words of the other milkers, Rhoda
+Brook could raise a mental image of the unconscious Mrs Lodge that was
+realistic as a photograph.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III--A VISION
+
+
+One night, two or three weeks after the bridal return, when the boy was
+gone to bed, Rhoda sat a long time over the turf ashes that she had raked
+out in front of her to extinguish them.  She contemplated so intently the
+new wife, as presented to her in her mind's eye over the embers, that she
+forgot the lapse of time.  At last, wearied with her day's work, she too
+retired.
+
+But the figure which had occupied her so much during this and the
+previous days was not to be banished at night.  For the first time
+Gertrude Lodge visited the supplanted woman in her dreams.  Rhoda Brook
+dreamed--since her assertion that she really saw, before falling asleep,
+was not to be believed--that the young wife, in the pale silk dress and
+white bonnet, but with features shockingly distorted, and wrinkled as by
+age, was sitting upon her chest as she lay.  The pressure of Mrs. Lodge's
+person grew heavier; the blue eyes peered cruelly into her face; and then
+the figure thrust forward its left hand mockingly, so as to make the
+wedding-ring it wore glitter in Rhoda's eyes.  Maddened mentally, and
+nearly suffocated by pressure, the sleeper struggled; the incubus, still
+regarding her, withdrew to the foot of the bed, only, however, to come
+forward by degrees, resume her seat, and flash her left hand as before.
+
+Gasping for breath, Rhoda, in a last desperate effort, swung out her
+right hand, seized the confronting spectre by its obtrusive left arm, and
+whirled it backward to the floor, starting up herself as she did so with
+a low cry.
+
+'O, merciful heaven!' she cried, sitting on the edge of the bed in a cold
+sweat; 'that was not a dream--she was here!'
+
+She could feel her antagonist's arm within her grasp even now--the very
+flesh and bone of it, as it seemed.  She looked on the floor whither she
+had whirled the spectre, but there was nothing to be seen.
+
+Rhoda Brook slept no more that night, and when she went milking at the
+next dawn they noticed how pale and haggard she looked.  The milk that
+she drew quivered into the pail; her hand had not calmed even yet, and
+still retained the feel of the arm.  She came home to breakfast as
+wearily as if it had been suppertime.
+
+'What was that noise in your chimmer, mother, last night?' said her son.
+'You fell off the bed, surely?'
+
+'Did you hear anything fall?  At what time?'
+
+'Just when the clock struck two.'
+
+She could not explain, and when the meal was done went silently about her
+household work, the boy assisting her, for he hated going afield on the
+farms, and she indulged his reluctance.  Between eleven and twelve the
+garden-gate clicked, and she lifted her eyes to the window.  At the
+bottom of the garden, within the gate, stood the woman of her vision.
+Rhoda seemed transfixed.
+
+'Ah, she said she would come!' exclaimed the boy, also observing her.
+
+'Said so--when?  How does she know us?'
+
+'I have seen and spoken to her.  I talked to her yesterday.'
+
+'I told you,' said the mother, flushing indignantly, 'never to speak to
+anybody in that house, or go near the place.'
+
+'I did not speak to her till she spoke to me.  And I did not go near the
+place.  I met her in the road.'
+
+'What did you tell her?'
+
+'Nothing.  She said, "Are you the poor boy who had to bring the heavy
+load from market?"  And she looked at my boots, and said they would not
+keep my feet dry if it came on wet, because they were so cracked.  I told
+her I lived with my mother, and we had enough to do to keep ourselves,
+and that's how it was; and she said then, "I'll come and bring you some
+better boots, and see your mother."  She gives away things to other folks
+in the meads besides us.'
+
+Mrs. Lodge was by this time close to the door--not in her silk, as Rhoda
+had seen her in the bed-chamber, but in a morning hat, and gown of common
+light material, which became her better than silk.  On her arm she
+carried a basket.
+
+The impression remaining from the night's experience was still strong.
+Brook had almost expected to see the wrinkles, the scorn, and the cruelty
+on her visitor's face.
+
+She would have escaped an interview, had escape been possible.  There
+was, however, no backdoor to the cottage, and in an instant the boy had
+lifted the latch to Mrs. Lodge's gentle knock.
+
+'I see I have come to the right house,' said she, glancing at the lad,
+and smiling.  'But I was not sure till you opened the door.'
+
+The figure and action were those of the phantom; but her voice was so
+indescribably sweet, her glance so winning, her smile so tender, so
+unlike that of Rhoda's midnight visitant, that the latter could hardly
+believe the evidence of her senses.  She was truly glad that she had not
+hidden away in sheer aversion, as she had been inclined to do.  In her
+basket Mrs. Lodge brought the pair of boots that she had promised to the
+boy, and other useful articles.
+
+At these proofs of a kindly feeling towards her and hers Rhoda's heart
+reproached her bitterly.  This innocent young thing should have her
+blessing and not her curse.  When she left them a light seemed gone from
+the dwelling.  Two days later she came again to know if the boots fitted;
+and less than a fortnight after that paid Rhoda another call.  On this
+occasion the boy was absent.
+
+'I walk a good deal,' said Mrs. Lodge, 'and your house is the nearest
+outside our own parish.  I hope you are well.  You don't look quite
+well.'
+
+Rhoda said she was well enough; and, indeed, though the paler of the two,
+there was more of the strength that endures in her well-defined features
+and large frame, than in the soft-cheeked young woman before her.  The
+conversation became quite confidential as regarded their powers and
+weaknesses; and when Mrs. Lodge was leaving, Rhoda said, 'I hope you will
+find this air agree with you, ma'am, and not suffer from the damp of the
+water-meads.'
+
+The younger one replied that there was not much doubt of it, her general
+health being usually good.  'Though, now you remind me,' she added, 'I
+have one little ailment which puzzles me.  It is nothing serious, but I
+cannot make it out.'
+
+She uncovered her left hand and arm; and their outline confronted Rhoda's
+gaze as the exact original of the limb she had beheld and seized in her
+dream.  Upon the pink round surface of the arm were faint marks of an
+unhealthy colour, as if produced by a rough grasp.  Rhoda's eyes became
+riveted on the discolorations; she fancied that she discerned in them the
+shape of her own four fingers.
+
+'How did it happen?' she said mechanically.
+
+'I cannot tell,' replied Mrs. Lodge, shaking her head.  'One night when I
+was sound asleep, dreaming I was away in some strange place, a pain
+suddenly shot into my arm there, and was so keen as to awaken me.  I must
+have struck it in the daytime, I suppose, though I don't remember doing
+so.'  She added, laughing, 'I tell my dear husband that it looks just as
+if he had flown into a rage and struck me there.  O, I daresay it will
+soon disappear.'
+
+'Ha, ha!  Yes . . . On what night did it come?'
+
+Mrs. Lodge considered, and said it would be a fortnight ago on the
+morrow.  'When I awoke I could not remember where I was,' she added,
+'till the clock striking two reminded me.'
+
+She had named the night and the hour of Rhoda's spectral encounter, and
+Brook felt like a guilty thing.  The artless disclosure startled her; she
+did not reason on the freaks of coincidence; and all the scenery of that
+ghastly night returned with double vividness to her mind.
+
+'O, can it be,' she said to herself, when her visitor had departed, 'that
+I exercise a malignant power over people against my own will?'  She knew
+that she had been slily called a witch since her fall; but never having
+understood why that particular stigma had been attached to her, it had
+passed disregarded.  Could this be the explanation, and had such things
+as this ever happened before?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV--A SUGGESTION
+
+
+The summer drew on, and Rhoda Brook almost dreaded to meet Mrs. Lodge
+again, notwithstanding that her feeling for the young wife amounted well-
+nigh to affection.  Something in her own individuality seemed to convict
+Rhoda of crime.  Yet a fatality sometimes would direct the steps of the
+latter to the outskirts of Holmstoke whenever she left her house for any
+other purpose than her daily work; and hence it happened that their next
+encounter was out of doors.  Rhoda could not avoid the subject which had
+so mystified her, and after the first few words she stammered, 'I hope
+your--arm is well again, ma'am?'  She had perceived with consternation
+that Gertrude Lodge carried her left arm stiffly.
+
+'No; it is not quite well.  Indeed it is no better at all; it is rather
+worse.  It pains me dreadfully sometimes.'
+
+'Perhaps you had better go to a doctor, ma'am.'
+
+She replied that she had already seen a doctor.  Her husband had insisted
+upon her going to one.  But the surgeon had not seemed to understand the
+afflicted limb at all; he had told her to bathe it in hot water, and she
+had bathed it, but the treatment had done no good.
+
+'Will you let me see it?' said the milkwoman.
+
+Mrs. Lodge pushed up her sleeve and disclosed the place, which was a few
+inches above the wrist.  As soon as Rhoda Brook saw it, she could hardly
+preserve her composure.  There was nothing of the nature of a wound, but
+the arm at that point had a shrivelled look, and the outline of the four
+fingers appeared more distinct than at the former time.  Moreover, she
+fancied that they were imprinted in precisely the relative position of
+her clutch upon the arm in the trance; the first finger towards
+Gertrude's wrist, and the fourth towards her elbow.
+
+What the impress resembled seemed to have struck Gertrude herself since
+their last meeting.  'It looks almost like finger-marks,' she said;
+adding with a faint laugh, 'my husband says it is as if some witch, or
+the devil himself, had taken hold of me there, and blasted the flesh.'
+
+Rhoda shivered.  'That's fancy,' she said hurriedly.  'I wouldn't mind
+it, if I were you.'
+
+'I shouldn't so much mind it,' said the younger, with hesitation, 'if--if
+I hadn't a notion that it makes my husband--dislike me--no, love me less.
+Men think so much of personal appearance.'
+
+'Some do--he for one.'
+
+'Yes; and he was very proud of mine, at first.'
+
+'Keep your arm covered from his sight.'
+
+'Ah--he knows the disfigurement is there!'  She tried to hide the tears
+that filled her eyes.
+
+'Well, ma'am, I earnestly hope it will go away soon.'
+
+And so the milkwoman's mind was chained anew to the subject by a horrid
+sort of spell as she returned home.  The sense of having been guilty of
+an act of malignity increased, affect as she might to ridicule her
+superstition.  In her secret heart Rhoda did not altogether object to a
+slight diminution of her successor's beauty, by whatever means it had
+come about; but she did not wish to inflict upon her physical pain.  For
+though this pretty young woman had rendered impossible any reparation
+which Lodge might have made Rhoda for his past conduct, everything like
+resentment at the unconscious usurpation had quite passed away from the
+elder's mind.
+
+If the sweet and kindly Gertrude Lodge only knew of the scene in the bed-
+chamber, what would she think?  Not to inform her of it seemed treachery
+in the presence of her friendliness; but tell she could not of her own
+accord--neither could she devise a remedy.
+
+She mused upon the matter the greater part of the night; and the next
+day, after the morning milking, set out to obtain another glimpse of
+Gertrude Lodge if she could, being held to her by a gruesome fascination.
+By watching the house from a distance the milkmaid was presently able to
+discern the farmer's wife in a ride she was taking alone--probably to
+join her husband in some distant field.  Mrs. Lodge perceived her, and
+cantered in her direction.
+
+'Good morning, Rhoda!' Gertrude said, when she had come up.  'I was going
+to call.'
+
+Rhoda noticed that Mrs. Lodge held the reins with some difficulty.
+
+'I hope--the bad arm,' said Rhoda.
+
+'They tell me there is possibly one way by which I might be able to find
+out the cause, and so perhaps the cure, of it,' replied the other
+anxiously.  'It is by going to some clever man over in Egdon Heath.  They
+did not know if he was still alive--and I cannot remember his name at
+this moment; but they said that you knew more of his movements than
+anybody else hereabout, and could tell me if he were still to be
+consulted.  Dear me--what was his name?  But you know.'
+
+'Not Conjuror Trendle?' said her thin companion, turning pale.
+
+'Trendle--yes.  Is he alive?'
+
+'I believe so,' said Rhoda, with reluctance.
+
+'Why do you call him conjuror?'
+
+'Well--they say--they used to say he was a--he had powers other folks
+have not.'
+
+'O, how could my people be so superstitious as to recommend a man of that
+sort!  I thought they meant some medical man.  I shall think no more of
+him.'
+
+Rhoda looked relieved, and Mrs. Lodge rode on.  The milkwoman had
+inwardly seen, from the moment she heard of her having been mentioned as
+a reference for this man, that there must exist a sarcastic feeling among
+the work-folk that a sorceress would know the whereabouts of the
+exorcist.  They suspected her, then.  A short time ago this would have
+given no concern to a woman of her common-sense.  But she had a haunting
+reason to be superstitious now; and she had been seized with sudden dread
+that this Conjuror Trendle might name her as the malignant influence
+which was blasting the fair person of Gertrude, and so lead her friend to
+hate her for ever, and to treat her as some fiend in human shape.
+
+But all was not over.  Two days after, a shadow intruded into the window-
+pattern thrown on Rhoda Brook's floor by the afternoon sun.  The woman
+opened the door at once, almost breathlessly.
+
+'Are you alone?' said Gertrude.  She seemed to be no less harassed and
+anxious than Brook herself.
+
+'Yes,' said Rhoda.
+
+'The place on my arm seems worse, and troubles me!' the young farmer's
+wife went on.  'It is so mysterious!  I do hope it will not be an
+incurable wound.  I have again been thinking of what they said about
+Conjuror Trendle.  I don't really believe in such men, but I should not
+mind just visiting him, from curiosity--though on no account must my
+husband know.  Is it far to where he lives?'
+
+'Yes--five miles,' said Rhoda backwardly.  'In the heart of Egdon.'
+
+'Well, I should have to walk.  Could not you go with me to show me the
+way--say to-morrow afternoon?'
+
+'O, not I--that is,' the milkwoman murmured, with a start of dismay.
+Again the dread seized her that something to do with her fierce act in
+the dream might be revealed, and her character in the eyes of the most
+useful friend she had ever had be ruined irretrievably.
+
+Mrs. Lodge urged, and Rhoda finally assented, though with much misgiving.
+Sad as the journey would be to her, she could not conscientiously stand
+in the way of a possible remedy for her patron's strange affliction.  It
+was agreed that, to escape suspicion of their mystic intent, they should
+meet at the edge of the heath at the corner of a plantation which was
+visible from the spot where they now stood.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V--CONJUROR TRENDLE
+
+
+By the next afternoon Rhoda would have done anything to escape this
+inquiry.  But she had promised to go.  Moreover, there was a horrid
+fascination at times in becoming instrumental in throwing such possible
+light on her own character as would reveal her to be something greater in
+the occult world than she had ever herself suspected.
+
+She started just before the time of day mentioned between them, and half-
+an-hour's brisk walking brought her to the south-eastern extension of the
+Egdon tract of country, where the fir plantation was.  A slight figure,
+cloaked and veiled, was already there.  Rhoda recognized, almost with a
+shudder, that Mrs. Lodge bore her left arm in a sling.
+
+They hardly spoke to each other, and immediately set out on their climb
+into the interior of this solemn country, which stood high above the rich
+alluvial soil they had left half-an-hour before.  It was a long walk;
+thick clouds made the atmosphere dark, though it was as yet only early
+afternoon; and the wind howled dismally over the hills of the heath--not
+improbably the same heath which had witnessed the agony of the Wessex
+King Ina, presented to after-ages as Lear.  Gertrude Lodge talked most,
+Rhoda replying with monosyllabic preoccupation.  She had a strange
+dislike to walking on the side of her companion where hung the afflicted
+arm, moving round to the other when inadvertently near it.  Much heather
+had been brushed by their feet when they descended upon a cart-track,
+beside which stood the house of the man they sought.
+
+He did not profess his remedial practices openly, or care anything about
+their continuance, his direct interests being those of a dealer in furze,
+turf, 'sharp sand,' and other local products.  Indeed, he affected not to
+believe largely in his own powers, and when warts that had been shown him
+for cure miraculously disappeared--which it must be owned they infallibly
+did--he would say lightly, 'O, I only drink a glass of grog upon
+'em--perhaps it's all chance,' and immediately turn the subject.
+
+He was at home when they arrived, having in fact seen them descending
+into his valley.  He was a gray-bearded man, with a reddish face, and he
+looked singularly at Rhoda the first moment he beheld her.  Mrs. Lodge
+told him her errand; and then with words of self-disparagement he
+examined her arm.
+
+'Medicine can't cure it,' he said promptly.  ''Tis the work of an enemy.'
+
+Rhoda shrank into herself, and drew back.
+
+'An enemy?  What enemy?' asked Mrs. Lodge.
+
+He shook his head.  'That's best known to yourself,' he said.  'If you
+like, I can show the person to you, though I shall not myself know who it
+is.  I can do no more; and don't wish to do that.'
+
+She pressed him; on which he told Rhoda to wait outside where she stood,
+and took Mrs. Lodge into the room.  It opened immediately from the door;
+and, as the latter remained ajar, Rhoda Brook could see the proceedings
+without taking part in them.  He brought a tumbler from the dresser,
+nearly filled it with water, and fetching an egg, prepared it in some
+private way; after which he broke it on the edge of the glass, so that
+the white went in and the yolk remained.  As it was getting gloomy, he
+took the glass and its contents to the window, and told Gertrude to watch
+them closely.  They leant over the table together, and the milkwoman
+could see the opaline hue of the egg-fluid changing form as it sank in
+the water, but she was not near enough to define the shape that it
+assumed.
+
+'Do you catch the likeness of any face or figure as you look?' demanded
+the conjuror of the young woman.
+
+She murmured a reply, in tones so low as to be inaudible to Rhoda, and
+continued to gaze intently into the glass.  Rhoda turned, and walked a
+few steps away.
+
+When Mrs. Lodge came out, and her face was met by the light, it appeared
+exceedingly pale--as pale as Rhoda's--against the sad dun shades of the
+upland's garniture.  Trendle shut the door behind her, and they at once
+started homeward together.  But Rhoda perceived that her companion had
+quite changed.
+
+'Did he charge much?' she asked tentatively.
+
+'O no--nothing.  He would not take a farthing,' said Gertrude.
+
+'And what did you see?' inquired Rhoda.
+
+'Nothing I--care to speak of.'  The constraint in her manner was
+remarkable; her face was so rigid as to wear an oldened aspect, faintly
+suggestive of the face in Rhoda's bed-chamber.
+
+'Was it you who first proposed coming here?' Mrs. Lodge suddenly
+inquired, after a long pause.  'How very odd, if you did!'
+
+'No.  But I am not sorry we have come, all things considered,' she
+replied.  For the first time a sense of triumph possessed her, and she
+did not altogether deplore that the young thing at her side should learn
+that their lives had been antagonized by other influences than their own.
+
+The subject was no more alluded to during the long and dreary walk home.
+But in some way or other a story was whispered about the many-dairied
+lowland that winter that Mrs. Lodge's gradual loss of the use of her left
+arm was owing to her being 'overlooked' by Rhoda Brook.  The latter kept
+her own counsel about the incubus, but her face grew sadder and thinner;
+and in the spring she and her boy disappeared from the neighbourhood of
+Holmstoke.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI--A SECOND ATTEMPT
+
+
+Half-a-dozen years passed away, and Mr. and Mrs. Lodge's married
+experience sank into prosiness, and worse.  The farmer was usually gloomy
+and silent: the woman whom he had wooed for her grace and beauty was
+contorted and disfigured in the left limb; moreover, she had brought him
+no child, which rendered it likely that he would be the last of a family
+who had occupied that valley for some two hundred years.  He thought of
+Rhoda Brook and her son; and feared this might be a judgment from heaven
+upon him.
+
+The once blithe-hearted and enlightened Gertrude was changing into an
+irritable, superstitious woman, whose whole time was given to
+experimenting upon her ailment with every quack remedy she came across.
+She was honestly attached to her husband, and was ever secretly hoping
+against hope to win back his heart again by regaining some at least of
+her personal beauty.  Hence it arose that her closet was lined with
+bottles, packets, and ointment-pots of every description--nay, bunches of
+mystic herbs, charms, and books of necromancy, which in her schoolgirl
+time she would have ridiculed as folly.
+
+'Damned if you won't poison yourself with these apothecary messes and
+witch mixtures some time or other,' said her husband, when his eye
+chanced to fall upon the multitudinous array.
+
+She did not reply, but turned her sad, soft glance upon him in such heart-
+swollen reproach that he looked sorry for his words, and added, 'I only
+meant it for your good, you know, Gertrude.'
+
+'I'll clear out the whole lot, and destroy them,' said she huskily, 'and
+try such remedies no more!'
+
+'You want somebody to cheer you,' he observed.  'I once thought of
+adopting a boy; but he is too old now.  And he is gone away I don't know
+where.'
+
+She guessed to whom he alluded; for Rhoda Brook's story had in the course
+of years become known to her; though not a word had ever passed between
+her husband and herself on the subject.  Neither had she ever spoken to
+him of her visit to Conjuror Trendle, and of what was revealed to her, or
+she thought was revealed to her, by that solitary heath-man.
+
+She was now five-and-twenty; but she seemed older.
+
+'Six years of marriage, and only a few months of love,' she sometimes
+whispered to herself.  And then she thought of the apparent cause, and
+said, with a tragic glance at her withering limb, 'If I could only again
+be as I was when he first saw me!'
+
+She obediently destroyed her nostrums and charms; but there remained a
+hankering wish to try something else--some other sort of cure altogether.
+She had never revisited Trendle since she had been conducted to the house
+of the solitary by Rhoda against her will; but it now suddenly occurred
+to Gertrude that she would, in a last desperate effort at deliverance
+from this seeming curse, again seek out the man, if he yet lived.  He was
+entitled to a certain credence, for the indistinct form he had raised in
+the glass had undoubtedly resembled the only woman in the world who--as
+she now knew, though not then--could have a reason for bearing her ill-
+will.  The visit should be paid.
+
+This time she went alone, though she nearly got lost on the heath, and
+roamed a considerable distance out of her way.  Trendle's house was
+reached at last, however: he was not indoors, and instead of waiting at
+the cottage, she went to where his bent figure was pointed out to her at
+work a long way off.  Trendle remembered her, and laying down the handful
+of furze-roots which he was gathering and throwing into a heap, he
+offered to accompany her in her homeward direction, as the distance was
+considerable and the days were short.  So they walked together, his head
+bowed nearly to the earth, and his form of a colour with it.
+
+'You can send away warts and other excrescences I know,' she said; 'why
+can't you send away this?'  And the arm was uncovered.
+
+'You think too much of my powers!' said Trendle; 'and I am old and weak
+now, too.  No, no; it is too much for me to attempt in my own person.
+What have ye tried?'
+
+She named to him some of the hundred medicaments and counterspells which
+she had adopted from time to time.  He shook his head.
+
+'Some were good enough,' he said approvingly; 'but not many of them for
+such as this.  This is of the nature of a blight, not of the nature of a
+wound; and if you ever do throw it off; it will be all at once.'
+
+'If I only could!'
+
+'There is only one chance of doing it known to me.  It has never failed
+in kindred afflictions,--that I can declare.  But it is hard to carry
+out, and especially for a woman.'
+
+'Tell me!' said she.
+
+'You must touch with the limb the neck of a man who's been hanged.'
+
+She started a little at the image he had raised.
+
+'Before he's cold--just after he's cut down,' continued the conjuror
+impassively.
+
+'How can that do good?'
+
+'It will turn the blood and change the constitution.  But, as I say, to
+do it is hard.  You must get into jail, and wait for him when he's
+brought off the gallows.  Lots have done it, though perhaps not such
+pretty women as you.  I used to send dozens for skin complaints.  But
+that was in former times.  The last I sent was in '13--near twenty years
+ago.'
+
+He had no more to tell her; and, when he had put her into a straight
+track homeward, turned and left her, refusing all money as at first.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII--A RIDE
+
+
+The communication sank deep into Gertrude's mind.  Her nature was rather
+a timid one; and probably of all remedies that the white wizard could
+have suggested there was not one which would have filled her with so much
+aversion as this, not to speak of the immense obstacles in the way of its
+adoption.
+
+Casterbridge, the county-town, was a dozen or fifteen miles off; and
+though in those days, when men were executed for horse-stealing, arson,
+and burglary, an assize seldom passed without a hanging, it was not
+likely that she could get access to the body of the criminal unaided.  And
+the fear of her husband's anger made her reluctant to breathe a word of
+Trendle's suggestion to him or to anybody about him.
+
+She did nothing for months, and patiently bore her disfigurement as
+before.  But her woman's nature, craving for renewed love, through the
+medium of renewed beauty (she was but twenty-five), was ever stimulating
+her to try what, at any rate, could hardly do her any harm.  'What came
+by a spell will go by a spell surely,' she would say.  Whenever her
+imagination pictured the act she shrank in terror from the possibility of
+it: then the words of the conjuror, 'It will turn your blood,' were seen
+to be capable of a scientific no less than a ghastly interpretation; the
+mastering desire returned, and urged her on again.
+
+There was at this time but one county paper, and that her husband only
+occasionally borrowed.  But old-fashioned days had old-fashioned means,
+and news was extensively conveyed by word of mouth from market to market,
+or from fair to fair, so that, whenever such an event as an execution was
+about to take place, few within a radius of twenty miles were ignorant of
+the coming sight; and, so far as Holmstoke was concerned, some
+enthusiasts had been known to walk all the way to Casterbridge and back
+in one day, solely to witness the spectacle.  The next assizes were in
+March; and when Gertrude Lodge heard that they had been held, she
+inquired stealthily at the inn as to the result, as soon as she could
+find opportunity.
+
+She was, however, too late.  The time at which the sentences were to be
+carried out had arrived, and to make the journey and obtain admission at
+such short notice required at least her husband's assistance.  She dared
+not tell him, for she had found by delicate experiment that these
+smouldering village beliefs made him furious if mentioned, partly because
+he half entertained them himself.  It was therefore necessary to wait for
+another opportunity.
+
+Her determination received a fillip from learning that two epileptic
+children had attended from this very village of Holmstoke many years
+before with beneficial results, though the experiment had been strongly
+condemned by the neighbouring clergy.  April, May, June, passed; and it
+is no overstatement to say that by the end of the last-named month
+Gertrude well-nigh longed for the death of a fellow-creature.  Instead of
+her formal prayers each night, her unconscious prayer was, 'O Lord, hang
+some guilty or innocent person soon!'
+
+This time she made earlier inquiries, and was altogether more systematic
+in her proceedings.  Moreover, the season was summer, between the
+haymaking and the harvest, and in the leisure thus afforded him her
+husband had been holiday-taking away from home.
+
+The assizes were in July, and she went to the inn as before.  There was
+to be one execution--only one--for arson.
+
+Her greatest problem was not how to get to Casterbridge, but what means
+she should adopt for obtaining admission to the jail.  Though access for
+such purposes had formerly never been denied, the custom had fallen into
+desuetude; and in contemplating her possible difficulties, she was again
+almost driven to fall back upon her husband.  But, on sounding him about
+the assizes, he was so uncommunicative, so more than usually cold, that
+she did not proceed, and decided that whatever she did she would do
+alone.
+
+Fortune, obdurate hitherto, showed her unexpected favour.  On the
+Thursday before the Saturday fixed for the execution, Lodge remarked to
+her that he was going away from home for another day or two on business
+at a fair, and that he was sorry he could not take her with him.
+
+She exhibited on this occasion so much readiness to stay at home that he
+looked at her in surprise.  Time had been when she would have shown deep
+disappointment at the loss of such a jaunt.  However, he lapsed into his
+usual taciturnity, and on the day named left Holmstoke.
+
+It was now her turn.  She at first had thought of driving, but on
+reflection held that driving would not do, since it would necessitate her
+keeping to the turnpike-road, and so increase by tenfold the risk of her
+ghastly errand being found out.  She decided to ride, and avoid the
+beaten track, notwithstanding that in her husband's stables there was no
+animal just at present which by any stretch of imagination could be
+considered a lady's mount, in spite of his promise before marriage to
+always keep a mare for her.  He had, however, many cart-horses, fine ones
+of their kind; and among the rest was a serviceable creature, an equine
+Amazon, with a back as broad as a sofa, on which Gertrude had
+occasionally taken an airing when unwell.  This horse she chose.
+
+On Friday afternoon one of the men brought it round.  She was dressed,
+and before going down looked at her shrivelled arm.  'Ah!' she said to
+it, 'if it had not been for you this terrible ordeal would have been
+saved me!'
+
+When strapping up the bundle in which she carried a few articles of
+clothing, she took occasion to say to the servant, 'I take these in case
+I should not get back to-night from the person I am going to visit.  Don't
+be alarmed if I am not in by ten, and close up the house as usual.  I
+shall be at home to-morrow for certain.'  She meant then to privately
+tell her husband: the deed accomplished was not like the deed projected.
+He would almost certainly forgive her.
+
+And then the pretty palpitating Gertrude Lodge went from her husband's
+homestead; but though her goal was Casterbridge she did not take the
+direct route thither through Stickleford.  Her cunning course at first
+was in precisely the opposite direction.  As soon as she was out of
+sight, however, she turned to the left, by a road which led into Egdon,
+and on entering the heath wheeled round, and set out in the true course,
+due westerly.  A more private way down the county could not be imagined;
+and as to direction, she had merely to keep her horse's head to a point a
+little to the right of the sun.  She knew that she would light upon a
+furze-cutter or cottager of some sort from time to time, from whom she
+might correct her bearing.
+
+Though the date was comparatively recent, Egdon was much less fragmentary
+in character than now.  The attempts--successful and otherwise--at
+cultivation on the lower slopes, which intrude and break up the original
+heath into small detached heaths, had not been carried far; Enclosure
+Acts had not taken effect, and the banks and fences which now exclude the
+cattle of those villagers who formerly enjoyed rights of commonage
+thereon, and the carts of those who had turbary privileges which kept
+them in firing all the year round, were not erected.  Gertrude,
+therefore, rode along with no other obstacles than the prickly furze
+bushes, the mats of heather, the white water-courses, and the natural
+steeps and declivities of the ground.
+
+Her horse was sure, if heavy-footed and slow, and though a draught
+animal, was easy-paced; had it been otherwise, she was not a woman who
+could have ventured to ride over such a bit of country with a half-dead
+arm.  It was therefore nearly eight o'clock when she drew rein to breathe
+the mare on the last outlying high point of heath-land towards
+Casterbridge, previous to leaving Egdon for the cultivated valleys.
+
+She halted before a pool called Rushy-pond, flanked by the ends of two
+hedges; a railing ran through the centre of the pond, dividing it in
+half.  Over the railing she saw the low green country; over the green
+trees the roofs of the town; over the roofs a white flat facade, denoting
+the entrance to the county jail.  On the roof of this front specks were
+moving about; they seemed to be workmen erecting something.  Her flesh
+crept.  She descended slowly, and was soon amid corn-fields and pastures.
+In another half-hour, when it was almost dusk, Gertrude reached the White
+Hart, the first inn of the town on that side.
+
+Little surprise was excited by her arrival; farmers' wives rode on
+horseback then more than they do now; though, for that matter, Mrs. Lodge
+was not imagined to be a wife at all; the innkeeper supposed her some
+harum-skarum young woman who had come to attend 'hang-fair' next day.
+Neither her husband nor herself ever dealt in Casterbridge market, so
+that she was unknown.  While dismounting she beheld a crowd of boys
+standing at the door of a harness-maker's shop just above the inn,
+looking inside it with deep interest.
+
+'What is going on there?' she asked of the ostler.
+
+'Making the rope for to-morrow.'
+
+She throbbed responsively, and contracted her arm.
+
+''Tis sold by the inch afterwards,' the man continued.  'I could get you
+a bit, miss, for nothing, if you'd like?'
+
+She hastily repudiated any such wish, all the more from a curious
+creeping feeling that the condemned wretch's destiny was becoming
+interwoven with her own; and having engaged a room for the night, sat
+down to think.
+
+Up to this time she had formed but the vaguest notions about her means of
+obtaining access to the prison.  The words of the cunning-man returned to
+her mind.  He had implied that she should use her beauty, impaired though
+it was, as a pass-key.  In her inexperience she knew little about jail
+functionaries; she had heard of a high-sheriff and an under-sheriff; but
+dimly only.  She knew, however, that there must be a hangman, and to the
+hangman she determined to apply.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII--A WATER-SIDE HERMIT
+
+
+At this date, and for several years after, there was a hangman to almost
+every jail.  Gertrude found, on inquiry, that the Casterbridge official
+dwelt in a lonely cottage by a deep slow river flowing under the cliff on
+which the prison buildings were situate--the stream being the self-same
+one, though she did not know it, which watered the Stickleford and
+Holmstoke meads lower down in its course.
+
+Having changed her dress, and before she had eaten or drunk--for she
+could not take her ease till she had ascertained some
+particulars--Gertrude pursued her way by a path along the water-side to
+the cottage indicated.  Passing thus the outskirts of the jail, she
+discerned on the level roof over the gateway three rectangular lines
+against the sky, where the specks had been moving in her distant view;
+she recognized what the erection was, and passed quickly on.  Another
+hundred yards brought her to the executioner's house, which a boy pointed
+out It stood close to the same stream, and was hard by a weir, the waters
+of which emitted a steady roar.
+
+While she stood hesitating the door opened, and an old man came forth
+shading a candle with one hand.  Locking the door on the outside, he
+turned to a flight of wooden steps fixed against the end of the cottage,
+and began to ascend them, this being evidently the staircase to his
+bedroom.  Gertrude hastened forward, but by the time she reached the foot
+of the ladder he was at the top.  She called to him loudly enough to be
+heard above the roar of the weir; he looked down and said, 'What d'ye
+want here?'
+
+'To speak to you a minute.'
+
+The candle-light, such as it was, fell upon her imploring, pale, upturned
+face, and Davies (as the hangman was called) backed down the ladder.  'I
+was just going to bed,' he said; '"Early to bed and early to rise," but I
+don't mind stopping a minute for such a one as you.  Come into house.'  He
+reopened the door, and preceded her to the room within.
+
+The implements of his daily work, which was that of a jobbing gardener,
+stood in a corner, and seeing probably that she looked rural, he said,
+'If you want me to undertake country work I can't come, for I never leave
+Casterbridge for gentle nor simple--not I.  My real calling is officer of
+justice,' he added formally.
+
+'Yes, yes!  That's it.  To-morrow!'
+
+'Ah!  I thought so.  Well, what's the matter about that?  'Tis no use to
+come here about the knot--folks do come continually, but I tell 'em one
+knot is as merciful as another if ye keep it under the ear.  Is the
+unfortunate man a relation; or, I should say, perhaps' (looking at her
+dress) 'a person who's been in your employ?'
+
+'No.  What time is the execution?'
+
+'The same as usual--twelve o'clock, or as soon after as the London mail-
+coach gets in.  We always wait for that, in case of a reprieve.'
+
+'O--a reprieve--I hope not!' she said involuntarily,
+
+'Well,--hee, hee!--as a matter of business, so do I!  But still, if ever
+a young fellow deserved to be let off, this one does; only just turned
+eighteen, and only present by chance when the rick was fired.  Howsomever,
+there's not much risk of it, as they are obliged to make an example of
+him, there having been so much destruction of property that way lately.'
+
+'I mean,' she explained, 'that I want to touch him for a charm, a cure of
+an affliction, by the advice of a man who has proved the virtue of the
+remedy.'
+
+'O yes, miss!  Now I understand.  I've had such people come in past
+years.  But it didn't strike me that you looked of a sort to require
+blood-turning.  What's the complaint?  The wrong kind for this, I'll be
+bound.'
+
+'My arm.'  She reluctantly showed the withered skin.
+
+'Ah--'tis all a-scram!' said the hangman, examining it.
+
+'Yes,' said she.
+
+'Well,' he continued, with interest, 'that is the class o' subject, I'm
+bound to admit!  I like the look of the place; it is truly as suitable
+for the cure as any I ever saw.  'Twas a knowing-man that sent 'ee,
+whoever he was.'
+
+'You can contrive for me all that's necessary?' she said breathlessly.
+
+'You should really have gone to the governor of the jail, and your doctor
+with 'ee, and given your name and address--that's how it used to be done,
+if I recollect.  Still, perhaps, I can manage it for a trifling fee.'
+
+'O, thank you!  I would rather do it this way, as I should like it kept
+private.'
+
+'Lover not to know, eh?'
+
+'No--husband.'
+
+'Aha!  Very well.  I'll get ee' a touch of the corpse.'
+
+'Where is it now?' she said, shuddering.
+
+'It?--he, you mean; he's living yet.  Just inside that little small
+winder up there in the glum.'  He signified the jail on the cliff above.
+
+She thought of her husband and her friends.  'Yes, of course,' she said;
+'and how am I to proceed?'
+
+He took her to the door.  'Now, do you be waiting at the little wicket in
+the wall, that you'll find up there in the lane, not later than one
+o'clock.  I will open it from the inside, as I shan't come home to dinner
+till he's cut down.  Good-night.  Be punctual; and if you don't want
+anybody to know 'ee, wear a veil.  Ah--once I had such a daughter as
+you!'
+
+She went away, and climbed the path above, to assure herself that she
+would be able to find the wicket next day.  Its outline was soon visible
+to her--a narrow opening in the outer wall of the prison precincts.  The
+steep was so great that, having reached the wicket, she stopped a moment
+to breathe; and, looking back upon the water-side cot, saw the hangman
+again ascending his outdoor staircase.  He entered the loft or chamber to
+which it led, and in a few minutes extinguished his light.
+
+The town clock struck ten, and she returned to the White Hart as she had
+come.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX--A RENCOUNTER
+
+
+It was one o'clock on Saturday.  Gertrude Lodge, having been admitted to
+the jail as above described, was sitting in a waiting-room within the
+second gate, which stood under a classic archway of ashlar, then
+comparatively modern, and bearing the inscription, 'COVNTY JAIL: 1793.'
+This had been the facade she saw from the heath the day before.  Near at
+hand was a passage to the roof on which the gallows stood.
+
+The town was thronged, and the market suspended; but Gertrude had seen
+scarcely a soul.  Having kept her room till the hour of the appointment,
+she had proceeded to the spot by a way which avoided the open space below
+the cliff where the spectators had gathered; but she could, even now,
+hear the multitudinous babble of their voices, out of which rose at
+intervals the hoarse croak of a single voice uttering the words, 'Last
+dying speech and confession!'  There had been no reprieve, and the
+execution was over; but the crowd still waited to see the body taken
+down.
+
+Soon the persistent girl heard a trampling overhead, then a hand beckoned
+to her, and, following directions, she went out and crossed the inner
+paved court beyond the gatehouse, her knees trembling so that she could
+scarcely walk.  One of her arms was out of its sleeve, and only covered
+by her shawl.
+
+On the spot at which she had now arrived were two trestles, and before
+she could think of their purpose she heard heavy feet descending stairs
+somewhere at her back.  Turn her head she would not, or could not, and,
+rigid in this position, she was conscious of a rough coffin passing her
+shoulder, borne by four men.  It was open, and in it lay the body of a
+young man, wearing the smockfrock of a rustic, and fustian breeches.  The
+corpse had been thrown into the coffin so hastily that the skirt of the
+smockfrock was hanging over.  The burden was temporarily deposited on the
+trestles.
+
+By this time the young woman's state was such that a gray mist seemed to
+float before her eyes, on account of which, and the veil she wore, she
+could scarcely discern anything: it was as though she had nearly died,
+but was held up by a sort of galvanism.
+
+'Now!' said a voice close at hand, and she was just conscious that the
+word had been addressed to her.
+
+By a last strenuous effort she advanced, at the same time hearing persons
+approaching behind her.  She bared her poor curst arm; and Davies,
+uncovering the face of the corpse, took Gertrude's hand, and held it so
+that her arm lay across the dead man's neck, upon a line the colour of an
+unripe blackberry, which surrounded it.
+
+Gertrude shrieked: 'the turn o' the blood,' predicted by the conjuror,
+had taken place.  But at that moment a second shriek rent the air of the
+enclosure: it was not Gertrude's, and its effect upon her was to make her
+start round.
+
+Immediately behind her stood Rhoda Brook, her face drawn, and her eyes
+red with weeping.  Behind Rhoda stood Gertrude's own husband; his
+countenance lined, his eyes dim, but without a tear.
+
+'D-n you! what are you doing here?' he said hoarsely.
+
+'Hussy--to come between us and our child now!' cried Rhoda.  'This is the
+meaning of what Satan showed me in the vision!  You are like her at
+last!'  And clutching the bare arm of the younger woman, she pulled her
+unresistingly back against the wall.  Immediately Brook had loosened her
+hold the fragile young Gertrude slid down against the feet of her
+husband.  When he lifted her up she was unconscious.
+
+The mere sight of the twain had been enough to suggest to her that the
+dead young man was Rhoda's son.  At that time the relatives of an
+executed convict had the privilege of claiming the body for burial, if
+they chose to do so; and it was for this purpose that Lodge was awaiting
+the inquest with Rhoda.  He had been summoned by her as soon as the young
+man was taken in the crime, and at different times since; and he had
+attended in court during the trial.  This was the 'holiday' he had been
+indulging in of late.  The two wretched parents had wished to avoid
+exposure; and hence had come themselves for the body, a waggon and sheet
+for its conveyance and covering being in waiting outside.
+
+Gertrude's case was so serious that it was deemed advisable to call to
+her the surgeon who was at hand.  She was taken out of the jail into the
+town; but she never reached home alive.  Her delicate vitality, sapped
+perhaps by the paralyzed arm, collapsed under the double shock that
+followed the severe strain, physical and mental, to which she had
+subjected herself during the previous twenty-four hours.  Her blood had
+been 'turned' indeed--too far.  Her death took place in the town three
+days after.
+
+Her husband was never seen in Casterbridge again; once only in the old
+market-place at Anglebury, which he had so much frequented, and very
+seldom in public anywhere.  Burdened at first with moodiness and remorse,
+he eventually changed for the better, and appeared as a chastened and
+thoughtful man.  Soon after attending the funeral of his poor young wife
+he took steps towards giving up the farms in Holmstoke and the adjoining
+parish, and, having sold every head of his stock, he went away to Port-
+Bredy, at the other end of the county, living there in solitary lodgings
+till his death two years later of a painless decline.  It was then found
+that he had bequeathed the whole of his not inconsiderable property to a
+reformatory for boys, subject to the payment of a small annuity to Rhoda
+Brook, if she could be found to claim it.
+
+For some time she could not be found; but eventually she reappeared in
+her old parish,--absolutely refusing, however, to have anything to do
+with the provision made for her.  Her monotonous milking at the dairy was
+resumed, and followed for many long years, till her form became bent, and
+her once abundant dark hair white and worn away at the forehead--perhaps
+by long pressure against the cows.  Here, sometimes, those who knew her
+experiences would stand and observe her, and wonder what sombre thoughts
+were beating inside that impassive, wrinkled brow, to the rhythm of the
+alternating milk-streams.
+
+('Blackwood's Magazine,' January 1888.)
+
+
+
+
+FELLOW-TOWNSMEN
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+The shepherd on the east hill could shout out lambing intelligence to the
+shepherd on the west hill, over the intervening town chimneys, without
+great inconvenience to his voice, so nearly did the steep pastures
+encroach upon the burghers' backyards.  And at night it was possible to
+stand in the very midst of the town and hear from their native paddocks
+on the lower levels of greensward the mild lowing of the farmer's
+heifers, and the profound, warm blowings of breath in which those
+creatures indulge.  But the community which had jammed itself in the
+valley thus flanked formed a veritable town, with a real mayor and
+corporation, and a staple manufacture.
+
+During a certain damp evening five-and-thirty years ago, before the
+twilight was far advanced, a pedestrian of professional appearance,
+carrying a small bag in his hand and an elevated umbrella, was descending
+one of these hills by the turnpike road when he was overtaken by a
+phaeton.
+
+'Hullo, Downe--is that you?' said the driver of the vehicle, a young man
+of pale and refined appearance.  'Jump up here with me, and ride down to
+your door.'
+
+The other turned a plump, cheery, rather self-indulgent face over his
+shoulder towards the hailer.
+
+'O, good evening, Mr. Barnet--thanks,' he said, and mounted beside his
+acquaintance.
+
+They were fellow-burgesses of the town which lay beneath them, but though
+old and very good friends, they were differently circumstanced.  Barnet
+was a richer man than the struggling young lawyer Downe, a fact which was
+to some extent perceptible in Downe's manner towards his companion,
+though nothing of it ever showed in Barnet's manner towards the
+solicitor.  Barnet's position in the town was none of his own making; his
+father had been a very successful flax-merchant in the same place, where
+the trade was still carried on as briskly as the small capacities of its
+quarters would allow.  Having acquired a fair fortune, old Mr. Barnet had
+retired from business, bringing up his son as a gentleman-burgher, and,
+it must be added, as a well-educated, liberal-minded young man.
+
+'How is Mrs. Barnet?' asked Downe.
+
+'Mrs. Barnet was very well when I left home,' the other answered
+constrainedly, exchanging his meditative regard of the horse for one of
+self-consciousness.
+
+Mr. Downe seemed to regret his inquiry, and immediately took up another
+thread of conversation.  He congratulated his friend on his election as a
+council-man; he thought he had not seen him since that event took place;
+Mrs. Downe had meant to call and congratulate Mrs. Barnet, but he feared
+that she had failed to do so as yet.
+
+Barnet seemed hampered in his replies.  'We should have been glad to see
+you.  I--my wife would welcome Mrs. Downe at any time, as you know . . .
+Yes, I am a member of the corporation--rather an inexperienced member,
+some of them say.  It is quite true; and I should have declined the
+honour as premature--having other things on my hands just now, too--if it
+had not been pressed upon me so very heartily.'
+
+'There is one thing you have on your hands which I can never quite see
+the necessity for,' said Downe, with good-humoured freedom.  'What the
+deuce do you want to build that new mansion for, when you have already
+got such an excellent house as the one you live in?'
+
+Barnet's face acquired a warmer shade of colour; but as the question had
+been idly asked by the solicitor while regarding the surrounding flocks
+and fields, he answered after a moment with no apparent embarrassment -
+
+'Well, we wanted to get out of the town, you know: the house I am living
+in is rather old and inconvenient.'  Mr. Downe declared that he had
+chosen a pretty site for the new building.  They would be able to see for
+miles and miles from the windows.  Was he going to give it a name?  He
+supposed so.
+
+Barnet thought not.  There was no other house near that was likely to be
+mistaken for it.  And he did not care for a name.
+
+'But I think it has a name!'  Downe observed: 'I went past--when was
+it?--this morning; and I saw something,--"Chateau Ringdale," I think it
+was, stuck up on a board!'
+
+'It was an idea she--we had for a short time,' said Barnet hastily.  'But
+we have decided finally to do without a name--at any rate such a name as
+that.  It must have been a week ago that you saw it.  It was taken down
+last Saturday . . . Upon that matter I am firm!' he added grimly.
+
+Downe murmured in an unconvinced tone that he thought he had seen it
+yesterday.
+
+Talking thus they drove into the town.  The street was unusually still
+for the hour of seven in the evening; an increasing drizzle had prevailed
+since the afternoon, and now formed a gauze across the yellow lamps, and
+trickled with a gentle rattle down the heavy roofs of stone tile, that
+bent the house-ridges hollow-backed with its weight, and in some
+instances caused the walls to bulge outwards in the upper story.  Their
+route took them past the little town-hall, the Black-Bull Hotel, and
+onward to the junction of a small street on the right, consisting of a
+row of those two-and-two windowed brick residences of no particular age,
+which are exactly alike wherever found, except in the people they
+contain.
+
+'Wait--I'll drive you up to your door,' said Barnet, when Downe prepared
+to alight at the corner.  He thereupon turned into the narrow street,
+when the faces of three little girls could be discerned close to the
+panes of a lighted window a few yards ahead, surmounted by that of a
+young matron, the gaze of all four being directed eagerly up the empty
+street.  'You are a fortunate fellow, Downe,' Barnet continued, as mother
+and children disappeared from the window to run to the door.  'You must
+be happy if any man is.  I would give a hundred such houses as my new one
+to have a home like yours.'
+
+'Well--yes, we get along pretty comfortably,' replied Downe complacently.
+
+'That house, Downe, is none of my ordering,' Barnet broke out, revealing
+a bitterness hitherto suppressed, and checking the horse a moment to
+finish his speech before delivering up his passenger.  'The house I have
+already is good enough for me, as you supposed.  It is my own freehold;
+it was built by my grandfather, and is stout enough for a castle.  My
+father was born there, lived there, and died there.  I was born there,
+and have always lived there; yet I must needs build a new one.'
+
+'Why do you?' said Downe.
+
+'Why do I?  To preserve peace in the household.  I do anything for that;
+but I don't succeed.  I was firm in resisting "Chateau Ringdale,"
+however; not that I would not have put up with the absurdity of the name,
+but it was too much to have your house christened after Lord Ringdale,
+because your wife once had a fancy for him.  If you only knew everything,
+you would think all attempt at reconciliation hopeless.  In your happy
+home you have had no such experiences; and God forbid that you ever
+should.  See, here they are all ready to receive you!'
+
+'Of course!  And so will your wife be waiting to receive you,' said
+Downe.  'Take my word for it she will!  And with a dinner prepared for
+you far better than mine.'
+
+'I hope so,' Barnet replied dubiously.
+
+He moved on to Downe's door, which the solicitor's family had already
+opened.  Downe descended, but being encumbered with his bag and umbrella,
+his foot slipped, and he fell upon his knees in the gutter.
+
+'O, my dear Charles!' said his wife, running down the steps; and, quite
+ignoring the presence of Barnet, she seized hold of her husband, pulled
+him to his feet, and kissed him, exclaiming, 'I hope you are not hurt,
+darling!'  The children crowded round, chiming in piteously, 'Poor papa!'
+
+'He's all right,' said Barnet, perceiving that Downe was only a little
+muddy, and looking more at the wife than at the husband.  Almost at any
+other time--certainly during his fastidious bachelor years--he would have
+thought her a too demonstrative woman; but those recent circumstances of
+his own life to which he had just alluded made Mrs. Downe's solicitude so
+affecting that his eye grew damp as he witnessed it.  Bidding the lawyer
+and his family good-night he left them, and drove slowly into the main
+street towards his own house.
+
+The heart of Barnet was sufficiently impressionable to be influenced by
+Downe's parting prophecy that he might not be so unwelcome home as he
+imagined: the dreary night might, at least on this one occasion, make
+Downe's forecast true.  Hence it was in a suspense that he could hardly
+have believed possible that he halted at his door.  On entering his wife
+was nowhere to be seen, and he inquired for her.  The servant informed
+him that her mistress had the dressmaker with her, and would be engaged
+for some time.
+
+'Dressmaker at this time of day!'
+
+'She dined early, sir, and hopes you will excuse her joining you this
+evening.'
+
+'But she knew I was coming to-night?'
+
+'O yes, sir.'
+
+'Go up and tell her I am come.'
+
+The servant did so; but the mistress of the house merely transmitted her
+former words.
+
+Barnet said nothing more, and presently sat down to his lonely meal,
+which was eaten abstractedly, the domestic scene he had lately witnessed
+still impressing him by its contrast with the situation here.  His mind
+fell back into past years upon a certain pleasing and gentle being whose
+face would loom out of their shades at such times as these.  Barnet
+turned in his chair, and looked with unfocused eyes in a direction
+southward from where he sat, as if he saw not the room but a long way
+beyond.  'I wonder if she lives there still!' he said.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+He rose with a sudden rebelliousness, put on his hat and coat, and went
+out of the house, pursuing his way along the glistening pavement while
+eight o'clock was striking from St. Mary's tower, and the apprentices and
+shopmen were slamming up the shutters from end to end of the town.  In
+two minutes only those shops which could boast of no attendant save the
+master or the mistress remained with open eyes.  These were ever somewhat
+less prompt to exclude customers than the others: for their owners' ears
+the closing hour had scarcely the cheerfulness that it possessed for the
+hired servants of the rest.  Yet the night being dreary the delay was not
+for long, and their windows, too, blinked together one by one.
+
+During this time Barnet had proceeded with decided step in a direction at
+right angles to the broad main thoroughfare of the town, by a long street
+leading due southward.  Here, though his family had no more to do with
+the flax manufacture, his own name occasionally greeted him on gates and
+warehouses, being used allusively by small rising tradesmen as a
+recommendation, in such words as 'Smith, from Barnet & Co.'--'Robinson,
+late manager at Barnet's.'  The sight led him to reflect upon his
+father's busy life, and he questioned if it had not been far happier than
+his own.
+
+The houses along the road became fewer, and presently open ground
+appeared between them on either side, the track on the right hand rising
+to a higher level till it merged in a knoll.  On the summit a row of
+builders' scaffold-poles probed the indistinct sky like spears, and at
+their bases could be discerned the lower courses of a building lately
+begun.  Barnet slackened his pace and stood for a few moments without
+leaving the centre of the road, apparently not much interested in the
+sight, till suddenly his eye was caught by a post in the fore part of the
+ground bearing a white board at the top.  He went to the rails, vaulted
+over, and walked in far enough to discern painted upon the board 'Chateau
+Ringdale.'
+
+A dismal irony seemed to lie in the words, and its effect was to irritate
+him.  Downe, then, had spoken truly.  He stuck his umbrella into the sod,
+and seized the post with both hands, as if intending to loosen and throw
+it down.  Then, like one bewildered by an opposition which would exist
+none the less though its manifestations were removed, he allowed his arms
+to sink to his side.
+
+'Let it be,' he said to himself.  'I have declared there shall be
+peace--if possible.'
+
+Taking up his umbrella he quietly left the enclosure, and went on his
+way, still keeping his back to the town.  He had advanced with more
+decision since passing the new building, and soon a hoarse murmur rose
+upon the gloom; it was the sound of the sea.  The road led to the
+harbour, at a distance of a mile from the town, from which the trade of
+the district was fed.  After seeing the obnoxious name-board Barnet had
+forgotten to open his umbrella, and the rain tapped smartly on his hat,
+and occasionally stroked his face as he went on.
+
+Though the lamps were still continued at the roadside, they stood at
+wider intervals than before, and the pavement had given place to common
+road.  Every time he came to a lamp an increasing shine made itself
+visible upon his shoulders, till at last they quite glistened with wet.
+The murmur from the shore grew stronger, but it was still some distance
+off when he paused before one of the smallest of the detached houses by
+the wayside, standing in its own garden, the latter being divided from
+the road by a row of wooden palings.  Scrutinizing the spot to ensure
+that he was not mistaken, he opened the gate and gently knocked at the
+cottage door.
+
+When he had patiently waited minutes enough to lead any man in ordinary
+cases to knock again, the door was heard to open, though it was
+impossible to see by whose hand, there being no light in the passage.
+Barnet said at random, 'Does Miss Savile live here?'
+
+A youthful voice assured him that she did live there, and by a sudden
+afterthought asked him to come in.  It would soon get a light, it said:
+but the night being wet, mother had not thought it worth while to trim
+the passage lamp.
+
+'Don't trouble yourself to get a light for me,' said Barnet hastily; 'it
+is not necessary at all.  Which is Miss Savile's sitting-room?'
+
+The young person, whose white pinafore could just be discerned, signified
+a door in the side of the passage, and Barnet went forward at the same
+moment, so that no light should fall upon his face.  On entering the room
+he closed the door behind him, pausing till he heard the retreating
+footsteps of the child.
+
+He found himself in an apartment which was simply and neatly, though not
+poorly furnished; everything, from the miniature chiffonnier to the
+shining little daguerreotype which formed the central ornament of the
+mantelpiece, being in scrupulous order.  The picture was enclosed by a
+frame of embroidered card-board--evidently the work of feminine hands--and
+it was the portrait of a thin faced, elderly lieutenant in the navy.  From
+behind the lamp on the table a female form now rose into view, that of a
+young girl, and a resemblance between her and the portrait was early
+discoverable.  She had been so absorbed in some occupation on the other
+side of the lamp as to have barely found time to realize her visitor's
+presence.
+
+They both remained standing for a few seconds without speaking.  The face
+that confronted Barnet had a beautiful outline; the Raffaelesque oval of
+its contour was remarkable for an English countenance, and that
+countenance housed in a remote country-road to an unheard-of harbour.  But
+her features did not do justice to this splendid beginning: Nature had
+recollected that she was not in Italy; and the young lady's lineaments,
+though not so inconsistent as to make her plain, would have been accepted
+rather as pleasing than as correct.  The preoccupied expression which,
+like images on the retina, remained with her for a moment after the state
+that caused it had ceased, now changed into a reserved, half-proud, and
+slightly indignant look, in which the blood diffused itself quickly
+across her cheek, and additional brightness broke the shade of her rather
+heavy eyes.
+
+'I know I have no business here,' he said, answering the look.  'But I
+had a great wish to see you, and inquire how you were.  You can give your
+hand to me, seeing how often I have held it in past days?'
+
+'I would rather forget than remember all that, Mr. Barnet,' she answered,
+as she coldly complied with the request.  'When I think of the
+circumstances of our last meeting, I can hardly consider it kind of you
+to allude to such a thing as our past--or, indeed, to come here at all.'
+
+'There was no harm in it surely?  I don't trouble you often, Lucy.'
+
+'I have not had the honour of a visit from you for a very long time,
+certainly, and I did not expect it now,' she said, with the same
+stiffness in her air.  'I hope Mrs. Barnet is very well?'
+
+'Yes, yes!' he impatiently returned.  'At least I suppose so--though I
+only speak from inference!'
+
+'But she is your wife, sir,' said the young girl tremulously.
+
+The unwonted tones of a man's voice in that feminine chamber had startled
+a canary that was roosting in its cage by the window; the bird awoke
+hastily, and fluttered against the bars.  She went and stilled it by
+laying her face against the cage and murmuring a coaxing sound.  It might
+partly have been done to still herself.
+
+'I didn't come to talk of Mrs. Barnet,' he pursued; 'I came to talk of
+you, of yourself alone; to inquire how you are getting on since your
+great loss.'  And he turned towards the portrait of her father.
+
+'I am getting on fairly well, thank you.'
+
+The force of her utterance was scarcely borne out by her look; but Barnet
+courteously reproached himself for not having guessed a thing so natural;
+and to dissipate all embarrassment, added, as he bent over the table,
+'What were you doing when I came?--painting flowers, and by candlelight?'
+
+'O no,' she said, 'not painting them--only sketching the outlines.  I do
+that at night to save time--I have to get three dozen done by the end of
+the month.'
+
+Barnet looked as if he regretted it deeply.  'You will wear your poor
+eyes out,' he said, with more sentiment than he had hitherto shown.  'You
+ought not to do it.  There was a time when I should have said you must
+not.  Well--I almost wish I had never seen light with my own eyes when I
+think of that!'
+
+'Is this a time or place for recalling such matters?' she asked, with
+dignity.  'You used to have a gentlemanly respect for me, and for
+yourself.  Don't speak any more as you have spoken, and don't come again.
+I cannot think that this visit is serious, or was closely considered by
+you.'
+
+'Considered: well, I came to see you as an old and good friend--not to
+mince matters, to visit a woman I loved.  Don't be angry!  I could not
+help doing it, so many things brought you into my mind . . . This evening
+I fell in with an acquaintance, and when I saw how happy he was with his
+wife and family welcoming him home, though with only one-tenth of my
+income and chances, and thought what might have been in my case, it
+fairly broke down my discretion, and off I came here.  Now I am here I
+feel that I am wrong to some extent.  But the feeling that I should like
+to see you, and talk of those we used to know in common, was very
+strong.'
+
+'Before that can be the case a little more time must pass,' said Miss
+Savile quietly; 'a time long enough for me to regard with some calmness
+what at present I remember far too impatiently--though it may be you
+almost forget it.  Indeed you must have forgotten it long before you
+acted as you did.'  Her voice grew stronger and more vivacious as she
+added: 'But I am doing my best to forget it too, and I know I shall
+succeed from the progress I have made already!'
+
+She had remained standing till now, when she turned and sat down, facing
+half away from him.
+
+Barnet watched her moodily.  'Yes, it is only what I deserve,' he said.
+'Ambition pricked me on--no, it was not ambition, it was wrongheadedness!
+Had I but reflected . . . '  He broke out vehemently: 'But always
+remember this, Lucy: if you had written to me only one little line after
+that misunderstanding, I declare I should have come back to you.  That
+ruined me!' he slowly walked as far as the little room would allow him to
+go, and remained with his eyes on the skirting.
+
+'But, Mr. Barnet, how could I write to you?  There was no opening for my
+doing so.'
+
+'Then there ought to have been,' said Barnet, turning.  'That was my
+fault!'
+
+'Well, I don't know anything about that; but as there had been nothing
+said by me which required any explanation by letter, I did not send one.
+Everything was so indefinite, and feeling your position to be so much
+wealthier than mine, I fancied I might have mistaken your meaning.  And
+when I heard of the other lady--a woman of whose family even you might be
+proud--I thought how foolish I had been, and said nothing.'
+
+'Then I suppose it was destiny--accident--I don't know what, that
+separated us, dear Lucy.  Anyhow you were the woman I ought to have made
+my wife--and I let you slip, like the foolish man that I was!'
+
+'O, Mr. Barnet,' she said, almost in tears, 'don't revive the subject to
+me; I am the wrong one to console you--think, sir,--you should not be
+here--it would be so bad for me if it were known!'
+
+'It would--it would, indeed,' he said hastily.  'I am not right in doing
+this, and I won't do it again.'
+
+'It is a very common folly of human nature, you know, to think the course
+you did not adopt must have been the best,' she continued, with gentle
+solicitude, as she followed him to the door of the room.  'And you don't
+know that I should have accepted you, even if you had asked me to be your
+wife.'  At this his eye met hers, and she dropped her gaze.  She knew
+that her voice belied her.  There was a silence till she looked up to
+add, in a voice of soothing playfulness, 'My family was so much poorer
+than yours, even before I lost my dear father, that--perhaps your
+companions would have made it unpleasant for us on account of my
+deficiencies.'
+
+'Your disposition would soon have won them round,' said Barnet.
+
+She archly expostulated: 'Now, never mind my disposition; try to make it
+up with your wife!  Those are my commands to you.  And now you are to
+leave me at once.'
+
+'I will.  I must make the best of it all, I suppose,' he replied, more
+cheerfully than he had as yet spoken.  'But I shall never again meet with
+such a dear girl as you!'  And he suddenly opened the door, and left her
+alone.  When his glance again fell on the lamps that were sparsely ranged
+along the dreary level road, his eyes were in a state which showed straw-
+like motes of light radiating from each flame into the surrounding air.
+
+On the other side of the way Barnet observed a man under an umbrella,
+walking parallel with himself.  Presently this man left the footway, and
+gradually converged on Barnet's course.  The latter then saw that it was
+Charlson, a surgeon of the town, who owed him money.  Charlson was a man
+not without ability; yet he did not prosper.  Sundry circumstances stood
+in his way as a medical practitioner: he was needy; he was not a coddle;
+he gossiped with men instead of with women; he had married a stranger
+instead of one of the town young ladies; and he was given to
+conversational buffoonery.  Moreover, his look was quite erroneous.  Those
+only proper features in the family doctor, the quiet eye, and the thin
+straight passionless lips which never curl in public either for laughter
+or for scorn, were not his; he had a full-curved mouth, and a bold black
+eye that made timid people nervous.  His companions were what in old
+times would have been called boon companions--an expression which, though
+of irreproachable root, suggests fraternization carried to the point of
+unscrupulousness.  All this was against him in the little town of his
+adoption.
+
+Charlson had been in difficulties, and to oblige him Barnet had put his
+name to a bill; and, as he had expected, was called upon to meet it when
+it fell due.  It had been only a matter of fifty pounds, which Barnet
+could well afford to lose, and he bore no ill-will to the thriftless
+surgeon on account of it.  But Charlson had a little too much brazen
+indifferentism in his composition to be altogether a desirable
+acquaintance.
+
+'I hope to be able to make that little bill-business right with you in
+the course of three weeks, Mr. Barnet,' said Charlson with hail-fellow
+friendliness.
+
+Barnet replied good-naturedly that there was no hurry.
+
+This particular three weeks had moved on in advance of Charlson's present
+with the precision of a shadow for some considerable time.
+
+'I've had a dream,' Charlson continued.  Barnet knew from his tone that
+the surgeon was going to begin his characteristic nonsense, and did not
+encourage him.  'I've had a dream,' repeated Charlson, who required no
+encouragement.  'I dreamed that a gentleman, who has been very kind to
+me, married a haughty lady in haste, before he had quite forgotten a nice
+little girl he knew before, and that one wet evening, like the present,
+as I was walking up the harbour-road, I saw him come out of that dear
+little girl's present abode.'
+
+Barnet glanced towards the speaker.  The rays from a neighbouring lamp
+struck through the drizzle under Charlson's umbrella, so as just to
+illumine his face against the shade behind, and show that his eye was
+turned up under the outer corner of its lid, whence it leered with impish
+jocoseness as he thrust his tongue into his cheek.
+
+'Come,' said Barnet gravely, 'we'll have no more of that.'
+
+'No, no--of course not,' Charlson hastily answered, seeing that his
+humour had carried him too far, as it had done many times before.  He was
+profuse in his apologies, but Barnet did not reply.  Of one thing he was
+certain--that scandal was a plant of quick root, and that he was bound to
+obey Lucy's injunction for Lucy's own sake.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+He did so, to the letter; and though, as the crocus followed the snowdrop
+and the daffodil the crocus in Lucy's garden, the harbour-road was a not
+unpleasant place to walk in, Barnet's feet never trod its stones, much
+less approached her door.  He avoided a saunter that way as he would have
+avoided a dangerous dram, and took his airings a long distance northward,
+among severely square and brown ploughed fields, where no other townsman
+came.  Sometimes he went round by the lower lanes of the borough, where
+the rope-walks stretched in which his family formerly had share, and
+looked at the rope-makers walking backwards, overhung by apple-trees and
+bushes, and intruded on by cows and calves, as if trade had established
+itself there at considerable inconvenience to Nature.
+
+One morning, when the sun was so warm as to raise a steam from the south-
+eastern slopes of those flanking hills that looked so lovely above the
+old roofs, but made every low-chimneyed house in the town as smoky as
+Tophet, Barnet glanced from the windows of the town-council room for lack
+of interest in what was proceeding within.  Several members of the
+corporation were present, but there was not much business doing, and in a
+few minutes Downe came leisurely across to him, saying that he seldom saw
+Barnet now.
+
+Barnet owned that he was not often present.
+
+Downe looked at the crimson curtain which hung down beside the panes,
+reflecting its hot hues into their faces, and then out of the window.  At
+that moment there passed along the street a tall commanding lady, in whom
+the solicitor recognized Barnet's wife.  Barnet had done the same thing,
+and turned away.
+
+'It will be all right some day,' said Downe, with cheering sympathy.
+
+'You have heard, then, of her last outbreak?'
+
+Downe depressed his cheerfulness to its very reverse in a moment.  'No, I
+have not heard of anything serious,' he said, with as long a face as one
+naturally round could be turned into at short notice.  'I only hear vague
+reports of such things.'
+
+'You may think it will be all right,' said Barnet drily.  'But I have a
+different opinion . . . No, Downe, we must look the thing in the face.
+Not poppy nor mandragora--however, how are your wife and children?'
+
+Downe said that they were all well, thanks; they were out that morning
+somewhere; he was just looking to see if they were walking that way.  Ah,
+there they were, just coming down the street; and Downe pointed to the
+figures of two children with a nursemaid, and a lady walking behind them.
+
+'You will come out and speak to her?' he asked.
+
+'Not this morning.  The fact is I don't care to speak to anybody just
+now.'
+
+'You are too sensitive, Mr. Barnet.  At school I remember you used to get
+as red as a rose if anybody uttered a word that hurt your feelings.'
+
+Barnet mused.  'Yes,' he admitted, 'there is a grain of truth in that.  It
+is because of that I often try to make peace at home.  Life would be
+tolerable then at any rate, even if not particularly bright.'
+
+'I have thought more than once of proposing a little plan to you,' said
+Downe with some hesitation.  'I don't know whether it will meet your
+views, but take it or leave it, as you choose.  In fact, it was my wife
+who suggested it: that she would be very glad to call on Mrs. Barnet and
+get into her confidence.  She seems to think that Mrs. Barnet is rather
+alone in the town, and without advisers.  Her impression is that your
+wife will listen to reason.  Emily has a wonderful way of winning the
+hearts of people of her own sex.'
+
+'And of the other sex too, I think.  She is a charming woman, and you
+were a lucky fellow to find her.'
+
+'Well, perhaps I was,' simpered Downe, trying to wear an aspect of being
+the last man in the world to feel pride.  'However, she will be likely to
+find out what ruffles Mrs. Barnet.  Perhaps it is some misunderstanding,
+you know--something that she is too proud to ask you to explain, or some
+little thing in your conduct that irritates her because she does not
+fully comprehend you.  The truth is, Emily would have been more ready to
+make advances if she had been quite sure of her fitness for Mrs. Barnet's
+society, who has of course been accustomed to London people of good
+position, which made Emily fearful of intruding.'
+
+Barnet expressed his warmest thanks for the well-intentioned proposition.
+There was reason in Mrs. Downe's fear--that he owned.  'But do let her
+call,' he said.  'There is no woman in England I would so soon trust on
+such an errand.  I am afraid there will not be any brilliant result;
+still I shall take it as the kindest and nicest thing if she will try it,
+and not be frightened at a repulse.'
+
+When Barnet and Downe had parted, the former went to the Town Savings-
+Bank, of which he was a trustee, and endeavoured to forget his troubles
+in the contemplation of low sums of money, and figures in a network of
+red and blue lines.  He sat and watched the working-people making their
+deposits, to which at intervals he signed his name.  Before he left in
+the afternoon Downe put his head inside the door.
+
+'Emily has seen Mrs. Barnet,' he said, in a low voice.  'She has got Mrs.
+Barnet's promise to take her for a drive down to the shore to-morrow, if
+it is fine.  Good afternoon!'
+
+Barnet shook Downe by the hand without speaking, and Downe went away.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+The next day was as fine as the arrangement could possibly require.  As
+the sun passed the meridian and declined westward, the tall shadows from
+the scaffold-poles of Barnet's rising residence streaked the ground as
+far as to the middle of the highway.  Barnet himself was there inspecting
+the progress of the works for the first time during several weeks.  A
+building in an old-fashioned town five-and-thirty years ago did not, as
+in the modern fashion, rise from the sod like a booth at a fair.  The
+foundations and lower courses were put in and allowed to settle for many
+weeks before the superstructure was built up, and a whole summer of
+drying was hardly sufficient to do justice to the important issues
+involved.  Barnet stood within a window-niche which had as yet received
+no frame, and thence looked down a slope into the road.  The wheels of a
+chaise were heard, and then his handsome Xantippe, in the company of Mrs.
+Downe, drove past on their way to the shore.  They were driving slowly;
+there was a pleasing light in Mrs. Downe's face, which seemed faintly to
+reflect itself upon the countenance of her companion--that politesse du
+coeur which was so natural to her having possibly begun already to work
+results.  But whatever the situation, Barnet resolved not to interfere,
+or do anything to hazard the promise of the day.  He might well afford to
+trust the issue to another when he could never direct it but to ill
+himself.  His wife's clenched rein-hand in its lemon-coloured glove, her
+stiff erect figure, clad in velvet and lace, and her boldly-outlined
+face, passed on, exhibiting their owner as one fixed for ever above the
+level of her companion--socially by her early breeding, and materially by
+her higher cushion.
+
+Barnet decided to allow them a proper time to themselves, and then stroll
+down to the shore and drive them home.  After lingering on at the house
+for another hour he started with this intention.  A few hundred yards
+below 'Chateau Ringdale' stood the cottage in which the late lieutenant's
+daughter had her lodging.  Barnet had not been so far that way for a long
+time, and as he approached the forbidden ground a curious warmth passed
+into him, which led him to perceive that, unless he were careful, he
+might have to fight the battle with himself about Lucy over again.  A
+tenth of his present excuse would, however, have justified him in
+travelling by that road to-day.
+
+He came opposite the dwelling, and turned his eyes for a momentary glance
+into the little garden that stretched from the palings to the door.  Lucy
+was in the enclosure; she was walking and stooping to gather some
+flowers, possibly for the purpose of painting them, for she moved about
+quickly, as if anxious to save time.  She did not see him; he might have
+passed unnoticed; but a sensation which was not in strict unison with his
+previous sentiments that day led him to pause in his walk and watch her.
+She went nimbly round and round the beds of anemones, tulips, jonquils,
+polyanthuses, and other old-fashioned flowers, looking a very charming
+figure in her half-mourning bonnet, and with an incomplete nosegay in her
+left hand.  Raising herself to pull down a lilac blossom she observed
+him.
+
+'Mr. Barnet!' she said, innocently smiling.  'Why, I have been thinking
+of you many times since Mrs. Barnet went by in the pony-carriage, and now
+here you are!'
+
+'Yes, Lucy,' he said.
+
+Then she seemed to recall particulars of their last meeting, and he
+believed that she flushed, though it might have been only the fancy of
+his own supersensitivenesss.
+
+'I am going to the harbour,' he added.
+
+'Are you?' Lucy remarked simply.  'A great many people begin to go there
+now the summer is drawing on.'
+
+Her face had come more into his view as she spoke, and he noticed how
+much thinner and paler it was than when he had seen it last.  'Lucy, how
+weary you look! tell me, can I help you?' he was going to cry out.--'If I
+do,' he thought, 'it will be the ruin of us both!'  He merely said that
+the afternoon was fine, and went on his way.
+
+As he went a sudden blast of air came over the hill as if in
+contradiction to his words, and spoilt the previous quiet of the scene.
+The wind had already shifted violently, and now smelt of the sea.
+
+The harbour-road soon began to justify its name.  A gap appeared in the
+rampart of hills which shut out the sea, and on the left of the opening
+rose a vertical cliff, coloured a burning orange by the sunlight, the
+companion cliff on the right being livid in shade.  Between these cliffs,
+like the Libyan bay which sheltered the shipwrecked Trojans, was a little
+haven, seemingly a beginning made by Nature herself of a perfect harbour,
+which appealed to the passer-by as only requiring a little human industry
+to finish it and make it famous, the ground on each side as far back as
+the daisied slopes that bounded the interior valley being a mere layer of
+blown sand.  But the Port-Bredy burgesses a mile inland had, in the
+course of ten centuries, responded many times to that mute appeal, with
+the result that the tides had invariably choked up their works with sand
+and shingle as soon as completed.  There were but few houses here: a
+rough pier, a few boats, some stores, an inn, a residence or two, a ketch
+unloading in the harbour, were the chief features of the settlement.  On
+the open ground by the shore stood his wife's pony-carriage, empty, the
+boy in attendance holding the horse.
+
+When Barnet drew nearer, he saw an indigo-coloured spot moving swiftly
+along beneath the radiant base of the eastern cliff, which proved to be a
+man in a jersey, running with all his might.  He held up his hand to
+Barnet, as it seemed, and they approached each other.  The man was local,
+but a stranger to him.
+
+'What is it, my man?' said Barnet.
+
+'A terrible calamity!' the boatman hastily explained.  Two ladies had
+been capsized in a boat--they were Mrs. Downe and Mrs. Barnet of the old
+town; they had driven down there that afternoon--they had alighted, and
+it was so fine, that, after walking about a little while, they had been
+tempted to go out for a short sail round the cliff.  Just as they were
+putting in to the shore, the wind shifted with a sudden gust, the boat
+listed over, and it was thought they were both drowned.  How it could
+have happened was beyond his mind to fathom, for John Green knew how to
+sail a boat as well as any man there.
+
+'Which is the way to the place?' said Barnet.
+
+It was just round the cliff.
+
+'Run to the carriage and tell the boy to bring it to the place as soon as
+you can.  Then go to the Harbour Inn and tell them to ride to town for a
+doctor.  Have they been got out of the water?'
+
+'One lady has.'
+
+'Which?'
+
+'Mrs. Barnet.  Mrs. Downe, it is feared, has fleeted out to sea.'
+
+Barnet ran on to that part of the shore which the cliff had hitherto
+obscured from his view, and there discerned, a long way ahead, a group of
+fishermen standing.  As soon as he came up one or two recognized him,
+and, not liking to meet his eye, turned aside with misgiving.  He went
+amidst them and saw a small sailing-boat lying draggled at the water's
+edge; and, on the sloping shingle beside it, a soaked and sandy woman's
+form in the velvet dress and yellow gloves of his wife.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+All had been done that could be done.  Mrs. Barnet was in her own house
+under medical hands, but the result was still uncertain.  Barnet had
+acted as if devotion to his wife were the dominant passion of his
+existence.  There had been much to decide--whether to attempt restoration
+of the apparently lifeless body as it lay on the shore--whether to carry
+her to the Harbour Inn--whether to drive with her at once to his own
+house.  The first course, with no skilled help or appliances near at
+hand, had seemed hopeless.  The second course would have occupied nearly
+as much time as a drive to the town, owing to the intervening ridges of
+shingle, and the necessity of crossing the harbour by boat to get to the
+house, added to which much time must have elapsed before a doctor could
+have arrived down there.  By bringing her home in the carriage some
+precious moments had slipped by; but she had been laid in her own bed in
+seven minutes, a doctor called to her side, and every possible
+restorative brought to bear upon her.
+
+At what a tearing pace he had driven up that road, through the yellow
+evening sunlight, the shadows flapping irksomely into his eyes as each
+wayside object rushed past between him and the west!  Tired workmen with
+their baskets at their backs had turned on their homeward journey to
+wonder at his speed.  Halfway between the shore and Port-Bredy town he
+had met Charlson, who had been the first surgeon to hear of the accident.
+He was accompanied by his assistant in a gig.  Barnet had sent on the
+latter to the coast in case that Downe's poor wife should by that time
+have been reclaimed from the waves, and had brought Charlson back with
+him to the house.
+
+Barnet's presence was not needed here, and he felt it to be his next duty
+to set off at once and find Downe, that no other than himself might break
+the news to him.
+
+He was quite sure that no chance had been lost for Mrs. Downe by his
+leaving the shore.  By the time that Mrs. Barnet had been laid in the
+carriage, a much larger group had assembled to lend assistance in finding
+her friend, rendering his own help superfluous.  But the duty of breaking
+the news was made doubly painful by the circumstance that the catastrophe
+which had befallen Mrs. Downe was solely the result of her own and her
+husband's loving-kindness towards himself.
+
+He found Downe in his office.  When the solicitor comprehended the
+intelligence he turned pale, stood up, and remained for a moment
+perfectly still, as if bereft of his faculties; then his shoulders
+heaved, he pulled out his handkerchief and began to cry like a child.  His
+sobs might have been heard in the next room.  He seemed to have no idea
+of going to the shore, or of doing anything; but when Barnet took him
+gently by the hand and proposed to start at once, he quietly acquiesced,
+neither uttering any further word nor making any effort to repress his
+tears.
+
+Barnet accompanied him to the shore, where, finding that no trace had as
+yet been seen of Mrs. Downe, and that his stay would be of no avail, he
+left Downe with his friends and the young doctor, and once more hastened
+back to his own house.
+
+At the door he met Charlson.  'Well!'  Barnet said.
+
+'I have just come down,' said the doctor; 'we have done everything, but
+without result.  I sympathize with you in your bereavement.'
+
+Barnet did not much appreciate Charlson's sympathy, which sounded to his
+ears as something of a mockery from the lips of a man who knew what
+Charlson knew about their domestic relations.  Indeed there seemed an odd
+spark in Charlson's full black eye as he said the words; but that might
+have been imaginary.
+
+'And, Mr. Barnet,' Charlson resumed, 'that little matter between us--I
+hope to settle it finally in three weeks at least.'
+
+'Never mind that now,' said Barnet abruptly.  He directed the surgeon to
+go to the harbour in case his services might even now be necessary there:
+and himself entered the house.
+
+The servants were coming from his wife's chamber, looking helplessly at
+each other and at him.  He passed them by and entered the room, where he
+stood mutely regarding the bed for a few minutes, after which he walked
+into his own dressing-room adjoining, and there paced up and down.  In a
+minute or two he noticed what a strange and total silence had come over
+the upper part of the house; his own movements, muffled as they were by
+the carpet, seemed noisy, and his thoughts to disturb the air like
+articulate utterances.  His eye glanced through the window.  Far down the
+road to the harbour a roof detained his gaze: out of it rose a red
+chimney, and out of the red chimney a curl of smoke, as from a fire newly
+kindled.  He had often seen such a sight before.  In that house lived
+Lucy Savile; and the smoke was from the fire which was regularly lighted
+at this time to make her tea.
+
+After that he went back to the bedroom, and stood there some time
+regarding his wife's silent form.  She was a woman some years older than
+himself, but had not by any means overpassed the maturity of good looks
+and vigour.  Her passionate features, well-defined, firm, and statuesque
+in life, were doubly so now: her mouth and brow, beneath her purplish
+black hair, showed only too clearly that the turbulency of character
+which had made a bear-garden of his house had been no temporary phase of
+her existence.  While he reflected, he suddenly said to himself, I wonder
+if all has been done?
+
+The thought was led up to by his having fancied that his wife's features
+lacked in its complete form the expression which he had been accustomed
+to associate with the faces of those whose spirits have fled for ever.
+The effacement of life was not so marked but that, entering uninformed,
+he might have supposed her sleeping.  Her complexion was that seen in the
+numerous faded portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds; it was pallid in
+comparison with life, but there was visible on a close inspection the
+remnant of what had once been a flush; the keeping between the cheeks and
+the hollows of the face being thus preserved, although positive colour
+was gone.  Long orange rays of evening sun stole in through chinks in the
+blind, striking on the large mirror, and being thence reflected upon the
+crimson hangings and woodwork of the heavy bedstead, so that the general
+tone of light was remarkably warm; and it was probable that something
+might be due to this circumstance.  Still the fact impressed him as
+strange.  Charlson had been gone more than a quarter of an hour: could it
+be possible that he had left too soon, and that his attempts to restore
+her had operated so sluggishly as only now to have made themselves felt?
+Barnet laid his hand upon her chest, and fancied that ever and anon a
+faint flutter of palpitation, gentle as that of a butterfly's wing,
+disturbed the stillness there--ceasing for a time, then struggling to go
+on, then breaking down in weakness and ceasing again.
+
+Barnet's mother had been an active practitioner of the healing art among
+her poorer neighbours, and her inspirations had all been derived from an
+octavo volume of Domestic Medicine, which at this moment was lying, as it
+had lain for many years, on a shelf in Barnet's dressing-room.  He
+hastily fetched it, and there read under the head 'Drowning:'-
+
+   'Exertions for the recovery of any person who has not been immersed
+   for a longer period than half-an-hour should be continued for at least
+   four hours, as there have been many cases in which returning life has
+   made itself visible even after a longer interval.
+
+   'Should, however, a weak action of any of the organs show itself when
+   the case seems almost hopeless, our efforts must be redoubled; the
+   feeble spark in this case requires to be solicited; it will certainly
+   disappear under a relaxation of labour.'
+
+Barnet looked at his watch; it was now barely two hours and a half from
+the time when he had first heard of the accident.  He threw aside the
+book and turned quickly to reach a stimulant which had previously been
+used.  Pulling up the blind for more light, his eye glanced out of the
+window.  There he saw that red chimney still smoking cheerily, and that
+roof, and through the roof that somebody.  His mechanical movements
+stopped, his hand remained on the blind-cord, and he seemed to become
+breathless, as if he had suddenly found himself treading a high rope.
+
+While he stood a sparrow lighted on the windowsill, saw him, and flew
+away.  Next a man and a dog walked over one of the green hills which
+bulged above the roofs of the town.  But Barnet took no notice.
+
+We may wonder what were the exact images that passed through his mind
+during those minutes of gazing upon Lucy Savile's house, the sparrow, the
+man and the dog, and Lucy Savile's house again.  There are honest men who
+will not admit to their thoughts, even as idle hypotheses, views of the
+future that assume as done a deed which they would recoil from doing; and
+there are other honest men for whom morality ends at the surface of their
+own heads, who will deliberate what the first will not so much as
+suppose.  Barnet had a wife whose pretence distracted his home; she now
+lay as in death; by merely doing nothing--by letting the intelligence
+which had gone forth to the world lie undisturbed--he would effect such a
+deliverance for himself as he had never hoped for, and open up an
+opportunity of which till now he had never dreamed.  Whether the
+conjuncture had arisen through any unscrupulous, ill-considered impulse
+of Charlson to help out of a strait the friend who was so kind as never
+to press him for what was due could not be told; there was nothing to
+prove it; and it was a question which could never be asked.  The
+triangular situation--himself--his wife--Lucy Savile--was the one clear
+thing.
+
+From Barnet's actions we may infer that he supposed such and such a
+result, for a moment, but did not deliberate.  He withdrew his hazel eyes
+from the scene without, calmly turned, rang the bell for assistance, and
+vigorously exerted himself to learn if life still lingered in that
+motionless frame.  In a short time another surgeon was in attendance; and
+then Barnet's surmise proved to be true.  The slow life timidly heaved
+again; but much care and patience were needed to catch and retain it, and
+a considerable period elapsed before it could be said with certainty that
+Mrs. Barnet lived.  When this was the case, and there was no further room
+for doubt, Barnet left the chamber.  The blue evening smoke from Lucy's
+chimney had died down to an imperceptible stream, and as he walked about
+downstairs he murmured to himself, 'My wife was dead, and she is alive
+again.'
+
+It was not so with Downe.  After three hours' immersion his wife's body
+had been recovered, life, of course, being quite extinct.  Barnet on
+descending, went straight to his friend's house, and there learned the
+result.  Downe was helpless in his wild grief, occasionally even
+hysterical.  Barnet said little, but finding that some guiding hand was
+necessary in the sorrow-stricken household, took upon him to supervise
+and manage till Downe should be in a state of mind to do so for himself.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+One September evening, four months later, when Mrs. Barnet was in perfect
+health, and Mrs. Downe but a weakening memory, an errand-boy paused to
+rest himself in front of Mr. Barnet's old house, depositing his basket on
+one of the window-sills.  The street was not yet lighted, but there were
+lights in the house, and at intervals a flitting shadow fell upon the
+blind at his elbow.  Words also were audible from the same apartment, and
+they seemed to be those of persons in violent altercation.  But the boy
+could not gather their purport, and he went on his way.
+
+Ten minutes afterwards the door of Barnet's house opened, and a tall
+closely-veiled lady in a travelling-dress came out and descended the
+freestone steps.  The servant stood in the doorway watching her as she
+went with a measured tread down the street.  When she had been out of
+sight for some minutes Barnet appeared at the door from within.
+
+'Did your mistress leave word where she was going?' he asked.
+
+'No, sir.'
+
+'Is the carriage ordered to meet her anywhere?'
+
+'No, sir.'
+
+'Did she take a latch-key?'
+
+'No, sir.'
+
+Barnet went in again, sat down in his chair, and leaned back.  Then in
+solitude and silence he brooded over the bitter emotions that filled his
+heart.  It was for this that he had gratuitously restored her to life,
+and made his union with another impossible!  The evening drew on, and
+nobody came to disturb him.  At bedtime he told the servants to retire,
+that he would sit up for Mrs. Barnet himself; and when they were gone he
+leaned his head upon his hand and mused for hours.
+
+The clock struck one, two; still his wife came not, and, with impatience
+added to depression, he went from room to room till another weary hour
+had passed.  This was not altogether a new experience for Barnet; but she
+had never before so prolonged her absence.  At last he sat down again and
+fell asleep.
+
+He awoke at six o'clock to find that she had not returned.  In searching
+about the rooms he discovered that she had taken a case of jewels which
+had been hers before her marriage.  At eight a note was brought him; it
+was from his wife, in which she stated that she had gone by the coach to
+the house of a distant relative near London, and expressed a wish that
+certain boxes, articles of clothing, and so on, might be sent to her
+forthwith.  The note was brought to him by a waiter at the Black-Bull
+Hotel, and had been written by Mrs. Barnet immediately before she took
+her place in the stage.
+
+By the evening this order was carried out, and Barnet, with a sense of
+relief, walked out into the town.  A fair had been held during the day,
+and the large clear moon which rose over the most prominent hill flung
+its light upon the booths and standings that still remained in the
+street, mixing its rays curiously with those from the flaring naphtha
+lamps.  The town was full of country-people who had come in to enjoy
+themselves, and on this account Barnet strolled through the streets
+unobserved.  With a certain recklessness he made for the harbour-road,
+and presently found himself by the shore, where he walked on till he came
+to the spot near which his friend the kindly Mrs. Downe had lost her
+life, and his own wife's life had been preserved.  A tremulous pathway of
+bright moonshine now stretched over the water which had engulfed them,
+and not a living soul was near.
+
+Here he ruminated on their characters, and next on the young girl in whom
+he now took a more sensitive interest than at the time when he had been
+free to marry her.  Nothing, so far as he was aware, had ever appeared in
+his own conduct to show that such an interest existed.  He had made it a
+point of the utmost strictness to hinder that feeling from influencing in
+the faintest degree his attitude towards his wife; and this was made all
+the more easy for him by the small demand Mrs. Barnet made upon his
+attentions, for which she ever evinced the greatest contempt; thus
+unwittingly giving him the satisfaction of knowing that their severance
+owed nothing to jealousy, or, indeed, to any personal behaviour of his at
+all.  Her concern was not with him or his feelings, as she frequently
+told him; but that she had, in a moment of weakness, thrown herself away
+upon a common burgher when she might have aimed at, and possibly brought
+down, a peer of the realm.  Her frequent depreciation of Barnet in these
+terms had at times been so intense that he was sorely tempted to
+retaliate on her egotism by owning that he loved at the same low level on
+which he lived; but prudence had prevailed, for which he was now
+thankful.
+
+Something seemed to sound upon the shingle behind him over and above the
+raking of the wave.  He looked round, and a slight girlish shape appeared
+quite close to him, He could not see her face because it was in the
+direction of the moon.
+
+'Mr. Barnet?' the rambler said, in timid surprise.  The voice was the
+voice of Lucy Savile.
+
+'Yes,' said Barnet.  'How can I repay you for this pleasure?'
+
+'I only came because the night was so clear.  I am now on my way home.'
+
+'I am glad we have met.  I want to know if you will let me do something
+for you, to give me an occupation, as an idle man?  I am sure I ought to
+help you, for I know you are almost without friends.'
+
+She hesitated.  'Why should you tell me that?' she said.
+
+'In the hope that you will be frank with me.'
+
+'I am not altogether without friends here.  But I am going to make a
+little change in my life--to go out as a teacher of freehand drawing and
+practical perspective, of course I mean on a comparatively humble scale,
+because I have not been specially educated for that profession.  But I am
+sure I shall like it much.'
+
+'You have an opening?'
+
+'I have not exactly got it, but I have advertised for one.'
+
+'Lucy, you must let me help you!'
+
+'Not at all.'
+
+'You need not think it would compromise you, or that I am indifferent to
+delicacy.  I bear in mind how we stand.  It is very unlikely that you
+will succeed as teacher of the class you mention, so let me do something
+of a different kind for you.  Say what you would like, and it shall be
+done.'
+
+'No; if I can't be a drawing-mistress or governess, or something of that
+sort, I shall go to India and join my brother.'
+
+'I wish I could go abroad, anywhere, everywhere with you, Lucy, and leave
+this place and its associations for ever!'
+
+She played with the end of her bonnet-string, and hastily turned aside.
+'Don't ever touch upon that kind of topic again,' she said, with a quick
+severity not free from anger.  'It simply makes it impossible for me to
+see you, much less receive any guidance from you.  No, thank you, Mr.
+Barnet; you can do nothing for me at present; and as I suppose my
+uncertainty will end in my leaving for India, I fear you never will.  If
+ever I think you can do anything, I will take the trouble to ask you.
+Till then, good-bye.'
+
+The tone of her latter words was equivocal, and while he remained in
+doubt whether a gentle irony was or was not inwrought with their sound,
+she swept lightly round and left him alone.  He saw her form get smaller
+and smaller along the damp belt of sea-sand between ebb and flood; and
+when she had vanished round the cliff into the harbour-road, he himself
+followed in the same direction.
+
+That her hopes from an advertisement should be the single thread which
+held Lucy Savile in England was too much for Barnet.  On reaching the
+town he went straight to the residence of Downe, now a widower with four
+children.  The young motherless brood had been sent to bed about a
+quarter of an hour earlier, and when Barnet entered he found Downe
+sitting alone.  It was the same room as that from which the family had
+been looking out for Downe at the beginning of the year, when Downe had
+slipped into the gutter and his wife had been so enviably tender towards
+him.  The old neatness had gone from the house; articles lay in places
+which could show no reason for their presence, as if momentarily
+deposited there some months ago, and forgotten ever since; there were no
+flowers; things were jumbled together on the furniture which should have
+been in cupboards; and the place in general had that stagnant,
+unrenovated air which usually pervades the maimed home of the widower.
+
+Downe soon renewed his customary full-worded lament over his wife, and
+even when he had worked himself up to tears, went on volubly, as if a
+listener were a luxury to be enjoyed whenever he could be caught.
+
+'She was a treasure beyond compare, Mr. Barnet!  I shall never see such
+another.  Nobody now to nurse me--nobody to console me in those daily
+troubles, you know, Barnet, which make consolation so necessary to a
+nature like mine.  It would be unbecoming to repine, for her spirit's
+home was elsewhere--the tender light in her eyes always showed it; but it
+is a long dreary time that I have before me, and nobody else can ever
+fill the void left in my heart by her loss--nobody--nobody!'  And Downe
+wiped his eyes again.
+
+'She was a good woman in the highest sense,' gravely answered Barnet,
+who, though Downe's words drew genuine compassion from his heart, could
+not help feeling that a tender reticence would have been a finer tribute
+to Mrs. Downe's really sterling virtues than such a second-class lament
+as this.
+
+'I have something to show you,' Downe resumed, producing from a drawer a
+sheet of paper on which was an elaborate design for a canopied tomb.
+'This has been sent me by the architect, but it is not exactly what I
+want.'
+
+'You have got Jones to do it, I see, the man who is carrying out my
+house,' said Barnet, as he glanced at the signature to the drawing.
+
+'Yes, but it is not quite what I want.  I want something more
+striking--more like a tomb I have seen in St. Paul's Cathedral.  Nothing
+less will do justice to my feelings, and how far short of them that will
+fall!'
+
+Barnet privately thought the design a sufficiently imposing one as it
+stood, even extravagantly ornate; but, feeling that he had no right to
+criticize, he said gently, 'Downe, should you not live more in your
+children's lives at the present time, and soften the sharpness of regret
+for your own past by thinking of their future?'
+
+'Yes, yes; but what can I do more?' asked Downe, wrinkling his forehead
+hopelessly.
+
+It was with anxious slowness that Barnet produced his reply--the secret
+object of his visit to-night.  'Did you not say one day that you ought by
+rights to get a governess for the children?'
+
+Downe admitted that he had said so, but that he could not see his way to
+it.  'The kind of woman I should like to have,' he said, 'would be rather
+beyond my means.  No; I think I shall send them to school in the town
+when they are old enough to go out alone.'
+
+'Now, I know of something better than that.  The late Lieutenant Savile's
+daughter, Lucy, wants to do something for herself in the way of teaching.
+She would be inexpensive, and would answer your purpose as well as
+anybody for six or twelve months.  She would probably come daily if you
+were to ask her, and so your housekeeping arrangements would not be much
+affected.'
+
+'I thought she had gone away,' said the solicitor, musing.  'Where does
+she live?'
+
+Barnet told him, and added that, if Downe should think of her as
+suitable, he would do well to call as soon as possible, or she might be
+on the wing.  'If you do see her,' he said, 'it would be advisable not to
+mention my name.  She is rather stiff in her ideas of me, and it might
+prejudice her against a course if she knew that I recommended it.'
+
+Downe promised to give the subject his consideration, and nothing more
+was said about it just then.  But when Barnet rose to go, which was not
+till nearly bedtime, he reminded Downe of the suggestion and went up the
+street to his own solitary home with a sense of satisfaction at his
+promising diplomacy in a charitable cause.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+The walls of his new house were carried up nearly to their full height.
+By a curious though not infrequent reaction, Barnet's feelings about that
+unnecessary structure had undergone a change; he took considerable
+interest in its progress as a long-neglected thing, his wife before her
+departure having grown quite weary of it as a hobby.  Moreover, it was an
+excellent distraction for a man in the unhappy position of having to live
+in a provincial town with nothing to do.  He was probably the first of
+his line who had ever passed a day without toil, and perhaps something
+like an inherited instinct disqualifies such men for a life of pleasant
+inaction, such as lies in the power of those whose leisure is not a
+personal accident, but a vast historical accretion which has become part
+of their natures.
+
+Thus Barnet got into a way of spending many of his leisure hours on the
+site of the new building, and he might have been seen on most days at
+this time trying the temper of the mortar by punching the joints with his
+stick, looking at the grain of a floor-board, and meditating where it
+grew, or picturing under what circumstances the last fire would be
+kindled in the at present sootless chimneys.  One day when thus occupied
+he saw three children pass by in the company of a fair young woman, whose
+sudden appearance caused him to flush perceptibly.
+
+'Ah, she is there,' he thought.  'That's a blessed thing.'
+
+Casting an interested glance over the rising building and the busy
+workmen, Lucy Savile and the little Downes passed by; and after that time
+it became a regular though almost unconscious custom of Barnet to stand
+in the half-completed house and look from the ungarnished windows at the
+governess as she tripped towards the sea-shore with her young charges,
+which she was in the habit of doing on most fine afternoons.  It was on
+one of these occasions, when he had been loitering on the first-floor
+landing, near the hole left for the staircase, not yet erected, that
+there appeared above the edge of the floor a little hat, followed by a
+little head.
+
+Barnet withdrew through a doorway, and the child came to the top of the
+ladder, stepping on to the floor and crying to her sisters and Miss
+Savile to follow.  Another head rose above the floor, and another, and
+then Lucy herself came into view.  The troop ran hither and thither
+through the empty, shaving-strewn rooms, and Barnet came forward.
+
+Lucy uttered a small exclamation: she was very sorry that she had
+intruded; she had not the least idea that Mr. Barnet was there: the
+children had come up, and she had followed.
+
+Barnet replied that he was only too glad to see them there.  'And now,
+let me show you the rooms,' he said.
+
+She passively assented, and he took her round.  There was not much to
+show in such a bare skeleton of a house, but he made the most of it, and
+explained the different ornamental fittings that were soon to be fixed
+here and there.  Lucy made but few remarks in reply, though she seemed
+pleased with her visit, and stole away down the ladder, followed by her
+companions.
+
+After this the new residence became yet more of a hobby for Barnet.
+Downe's children did not forget their first visit, and when the windows
+were glazed, and the handsome staircase spread its broad low steps into
+the hall, they came again, prancing in unwearied succession through every
+room from ground-floor to attics, while Lucy stood waiting for them at
+the door.  Barnet, who rarely missed a day in coming to inspect progress,
+stepped out from the drawing-room.
+
+'I could not keep them out,' she said, with an apologetic blush.  'I
+tried to do so very much: but they are rather wilful, and we are directed
+to walk this way for the sea air.'
+
+'Do let them make the house their regular playground, and you yours,'
+said Barnet.  'There is no better place for children to romp and take
+their exercise in than an empty house, particularly in muddy or damp
+weather such as we shall get a good deal of now; and this place will not
+be furnished for a long long time--perhaps never.  I am not at all
+decided about it.'
+
+'O, but it must!' replied Lucy, looking round at the hall.  'The rooms
+are excellent, twice as high as ours; and the views from the windows are
+so lovely.'
+
+'I daresay, I daresay,' he said absently.
+
+'Will all the furniture be new?' she asked.
+
+'All the furniture be new--that's a thing I have not thought of.  In fact
+I only come here and look on.  My father's house would have been large
+enough for me, but another person had a voice in the matter, and it was
+settled that we should build.  However, the place grows upon me; its
+recent associations are cheerful, and I am getting to like it fast.'
+
+A certain uneasiness in Lucy's manner showed that the conversation was
+taking too personal a turn for her.  'Still, as modern tastes develop,
+people require more room to gratify them in,' she said, withdrawing to
+call the children; and serenely bidding him good afternoon she went on
+her way.
+
+Barnet's life at this period was singularly lonely, and yet he was
+happier than he could have expected.  His wife's estrangement and
+absence, which promised to be permanent, left him free as a boy in his
+movements, and the solitary walks that he took gave him ample opportunity
+for chastened reflection on what might have been his lot if he had only
+shown wisdom enough to claim Lucy Savile when there was no bar between
+their lives, and she was to be had for the asking.  He would occasionally
+call at the house of his friend Downe; but there was scarcely enough in
+common between their two natures to make them more than friends of that
+excellent sort whose personal knowledge of each other's history and
+character is always in excess of intimacy, whereby they are not so likely
+to be severed by a clash of sentiment as in cases where intimacy springs
+up in excess of knowledge.  Lucy was never visible at these times, being
+either engaged in the school-room, or in taking an airing out of doors;
+but, knowing that she was now comfortable, and had given up the, to him,
+depressing idea of going off to the other side of the globe, he was quite
+content.
+
+The new house had so far progressed that the gardeners were beginning to
+grass down the front.  During an afternoon which he was passing in
+marking the curve for the carriage-drive, he beheld her coming in boldly
+towards him from the road.  Hitherto Barnet had only caught her on the
+premises by stealth; and this advance seemed to show that at last her
+reserve had broken down.
+
+A smile gained strength upon her face as she approached, and it was quite
+radiant when she came up, and said, without a trace of embarrassment, 'I
+find I owe you a hundred thanks--and it comes to me quite as a surprise!
+It was through your kindness that I was engaged by Mr. Downe.  Believe
+me, Mr. Barnet, I did not know it until yesterday, or I should have
+thanked you long and long ago!'
+
+'I had offended you--just a trifle--at the time, I think?' said Barnet,
+smiling, 'and it was best that you should not know.'
+
+'Yes, yes,' she returned hastily.  'Don't allude to that; it is past and
+over, and we will let it be.  The house is finished almost, is it not?
+How beautiful it will look when the evergreens are grown!  Do you call
+the style Palladian, Mr. Barnet?'
+
+'I--really don't quite know what it is.  Yes, it must be Palladian,
+certainly.  But I'll ask Jones, the architect; for, to tell the truth, I
+had not thought much about the style: I had nothing to do with choosing
+it, I am sorry to say.'
+
+She would not let him harp on this gloomy refrain, and talked on bright
+matters till she said, producing a small roll of paper which he had
+noticed in her hand all the while, 'Mr. Downe wished me to bring you this
+revised drawing of the late Mrs. Downe's tomb, which the architect has
+just sent him.  He would like you to look it over.'
+
+The children came up with their hoops, and she went off with them down
+the harbour-road as usual.  Barnet had been glad to get those words of
+thanks; he had been thinking for many months that he would like her to
+know of his share in finding her a home such as it was; and what he could
+not do for himself, Downe had now kindly done for him.  He returned to
+his desolate house with a lighter tread; though in reason he hardly knew
+why his tread should be light.
+
+On examining the drawing, Barnet found that, instead of the vast altar-
+tomb and canopy Downe had determined on at their last meeting, it was to
+be a more modest memorial even than had been suggested by the architect;
+a coped tomb of good solid construction, with no useless elaboration at
+all.  Barnet was truly glad to see that Downe had come to reason of his
+own accord; and he returned the drawing with a note of approval.
+
+He followed up the house-work as before, and as he walked up and down the
+rooms, occasionally gazing from the windows over the bulging green hills
+and the quiet harbour that lay between them, he murmured words and
+fragments of words, which, if listened to, would have revealed all the
+secrets of his existence.  Whatever his reason in going there, Lucy did
+not call again: the walk to the shore seemed to be abandoned: he must
+have thought it as well for both that it should be so, for he did not go
+anywhere out of his accustomed ways to endeavour to discover her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+The winter and the spring had passed, and the house was complete.  It was
+a fine morning in the early part of June, and Barnet, though not in the
+habit of rising early, had taken a long walk before breakfast; returning
+by way of the new building.  A sufficiently exciting cause of his
+restlessness to-day might have been the intelligence which had reached
+him the night before, that Lucy Savile was going to India after all, and
+notwithstanding the representations of her friends that such a journey
+was unadvisable in many ways for an unpractised girl, unless some more
+definite advantage lay at the end of it than she could show to be the
+case.  Barnet's walk up the slope to the building betrayed that he was in
+a dissatisfied mood.  He hardly saw that the dewy time of day lent an
+unusual freshness to the bushes and trees which had so recently put on
+their summer habit of heavy leafage, and made his newly-laid lawn look as
+well established as an old manorial meadow.  The house had been so
+adroitly placed between six tall elms which were growing on the site
+beforehand, that they seemed like real ancestral trees; and the rooks,
+young and old, cawed melodiously to their visitor.
+
+The door was not locked, and he entered.  No workmen appeared to be
+present, and he walked from sunny window to sunny window of the empty
+rooms, with a sense of seclusion which might have been very pleasant but
+for the antecedent knowledge that his almost paternal care of Lucy Savile
+was to be thrown away by her wilfulness.  Footsteps echoed through an
+adjoining room; and bending his eyes in that direction, he perceived Mr.
+Jones, the architect.  He had come to look over the building before
+giving the contractor his final certificate.  They walked over the house
+together.  Everything was finished except the papering: there were the
+latest improvements of the period in bell-hanging, ventilating, smoke-
+jacks, fire-grates, and French windows.  The business was soon ended, and
+Jones, having directed Barnet's attention to a roll of wall-paper
+patterns which lay on a bench for his choice, was leaving to keep another
+engagement, when Barnet said, 'Is the tomb finished yet for Mrs. Downe?'
+
+'Well--yes: it is at last,' said the architect, coming back and speaking
+as if he were in a mood to make a confidence.  'I have had no end of
+trouble in the matter, and, to tell the truth, I am heartily glad it is
+over.'
+
+Barnet expressed his surprise.  'I thought poor Downe had given up those
+extravagant notions of his? then he has gone back to the altar and canopy
+after all?  Well, he is to be excused, poor fellow!'
+
+'O no--he has not at all gone back to them--quite the reverse,' Jones
+hastened to say.  'He has so reduced design after design, that the whole
+thing has been nothing but waste labour for me; till in the end it has
+become a common headstone, which a mason put up in half a day.'
+
+'A common headstone?' said Barnet.
+
+'Yes.  I held out for some time for the addition of a footstone at least.
+But he said, "O no--he couldn't afford it."'
+
+'Ah, well--his family is growing up, poor fellow, and his expenses are
+getting serious.'
+
+'Yes, exactly,' said Jones, as if the subject were none of his.  And
+again directing Barnet's attention to the wall-papers, the bustling
+architect left him to keep some other engagement.
+
+'A common headstone,' murmured Barnet, left again to himself.  He mused a
+minute or two, and next began looking over and selecting from the
+patterns; but had not long been engaged in the work when he heard another
+footstep on the gravel without, and somebody enter the open porch.
+
+Barnet went to the door--it was his manservant in search of him.
+
+'I have been trying for some time to find you, sir,' he said.  'This
+letter has come by the post, and it is marked immediate.  And there's
+this one from Mr. Downe, who called just now wanting to see you.'  He
+searched his pocket for the second.
+
+Barnet took the first letter--it had a black border, and bore the London
+postmark.  It was not in his wife's handwriting, or in that of any person
+he knew; but conjecture soon ceased as he read the page, wherein he was
+briefly informed that Mrs. Barnet had died suddenly on the previous day,
+at the furnished villa she had occupied near London.
+
+Barnet looked vaguely round the empty hall, at the blank walls, out of
+the doorway.  Drawing a long palpitating breath, and with eyes downcast,
+he turned and climbed the stairs slowly, like a man who doubted their
+stability.  The fact of his wife having, as it were, died once already,
+and lived on again, had entirely dislodged the possibility of her actual
+death from his conjecture.  He went to the landing, leant over the
+balusters, and after a reverie, of whose duration he had but the faintest
+notion, turned to the window and stretched his gaze to the cottage
+further down the road, which was visible from his landing, and from which
+Lucy still walked to the solicitor's house by a cross path.  The faint
+words that came from his moving lips were simply, 'At last!'
+
+Then, almost involuntarily, Barnet fell down on his knees and murmured
+some incoherent words of thanksgiving.  Surely his virtue in restoring
+his wife to life had been rewarded!  But, as if the impulse struck
+uneasily on his conscience, he quickly rose, brushed the dust from his
+trousers and set himself to think of his next movements.  He could not
+start for London for some hours; and as he had no preparations to make
+that could not be made in half-an-hour, he mechanically descended and
+resumed his occupation of turning over the wall-papers.  They had all got
+brighter for him, those papers.  It was all changed--who would sit in the
+rooms that they were to line?  He went on to muse upon Lucy's conduct in
+so frequently coming to the house with the children; her occasional blush
+in speaking to him; her evident interest in him.  What woman can in the
+long run avoid being interested in a man whom she knows to be devoted to
+her?  If human solicitation could ever effect anything, there should be
+no going to India for Lucy now.  All the papers previously chosen seemed
+wrong in their shades, and he began from the beginning to choose again.
+
+While entering on the task he heard a forced 'Ahem!' from without the
+porch, evidently uttered to attract his attention, and footsteps again
+advancing to the door.  His man, whom he had quite forgotten in his
+mental turmoil, was still waiting there.
+
+'I beg your pardon, sir,' the man said from round the doorway; 'but
+here's the note from Mr. Downe that you didn't take.  He called just
+after you went out, and as he couldn't wait, he wrote this on your study-
+table.'
+
+He handed in the letter--no black-bordered one now, but a
+practical-looking note in the well-known writing of the solicitor.
+
+   'DEAR BARNET'--it ran--'Perhaps you will be prepared for the
+   information I am about to give--that Lucy Savile and myself are going
+   to be married this morning.  I have hitherto said nothing as to my
+   intention to any of my friends, for reasons which I am sure you will
+   fully appreciate.  The crisis has been brought about by her expressing
+   her intention to join her brother in India.  I then discovered that I
+   could not do without her.
+
+   'It is to be quite a private wedding; but it is my particular wish
+   that you come down here quietly at ten, and go to church with us; it
+   will add greatly to the pleasure I shall experience in the ceremony,
+   and, I believe, to Lucy's also.  I have called on you very early to
+   make the request, in the belief that I should find you at home; but
+   you are beforehand with me in your early rising.--Yours sincerely, C.
+   Downe.'
+
+'Need I wait, sir?' said the servant after a dead silence.
+
+'That will do, William.  No answer,' said Barnet calmly.
+
+When the man had gone Barnet re-read the letter.  Turning eventually to
+the wall-papers, which he had been at such pains to select, he
+deliberately tore them into halves and quarters, and threw them into the
+empty fireplace.  Then he went out of the house; locked the door, and
+stood in the front awhile.  Instead of returning into the town, he went
+down the harbour-road and thoughtfully lingered about by the sea, near
+the spot where the body of Downe's late wife had been found and brought
+ashore.
+
+Barnet was a man with a rich capacity for misery, and there is no doubt
+that he exercised it to its fullest extent now.  The events that had, as
+it were, dashed themselves together into one half-hour of this day showed
+that curious refinement of cruelty in their arrangement which often
+proceeds from the bosom of the whimsical god at other times known as
+blind Circumstance.  That his few minutes of hope, between the reading of
+the first and second letters, had carried him to extraordinary heights of
+rapture was proved by the immensity of his suffering now.  The sun
+blazing into his face would have shown a close watcher that a horizontal
+line, which he had never noticed before, but which was never to be gone
+thereafter, was somehow gradually forming itself in the smooth of his
+forehead.  His eyes, of a light hazel, had a curious look which can only
+be described by the word bruised; the sorrow that looked from them being
+largely mixed with the surprise of a man taken unawares.
+
+The secondary particulars of his present position, too, were odd enough,
+though for some time they appeared to engage little of his attention.  Not
+a soul in the town knew, as yet, of his wife's death; and he almost owed
+Downe the kindness of not publishing it till the day was over: the
+conjuncture, taken with that which had accompanied the death of Mrs.
+Downe, being so singular as to be quite sufficient to darken the pleasure
+of the impressionable solicitor to a cruel extent, if made known to him.
+But as Barnet could not set out on his journey to London, where his wife
+lay, for some hours (there being at this date no railway within a
+distance of many miles), no great reason existed why he should leave the
+town.
+
+Impulse in all its forms characterized Barnet, and when he heard the
+distant clock strike the hour of ten his feet began to carry him up the
+harbour-road with the manner of a man who must do something to bring
+himself to life.  He passed Lucy Savile's old house, his own new one, and
+came in view of the church.  Now he gave a perceptible start, and his
+mechanical condition went away.  Before the church-gate were a couple of
+carriages, and Barnet then could perceive that the marriage between Downe
+and Lucy was at that moment being solemnized within.  A feeling of
+sudden, proud self-confidence, an indocile wish to walk unmoved in spite
+of grim environments, plainly possessed him, and when he reached the
+wicket-gate he turned in without apparent effort.  Pacing up the paved
+footway he entered the church and stood for a while in the nave passage.
+A group of people was standing round the vestry door; Barnet advanced
+through these and stepped into the vestry.
+
+There they were, busily signing their names.  Seeing Downe about to look
+round, Barnet averted his somewhat disturbed face for a second or two;
+when he turned again front to front he was calm and quite smiling; it was
+a creditable triumph over himself, and deserved to be remembered in his
+native town.  He greeted Downe heartily, offering his congratulations.
+
+It seemed as if Barnet expected a half-guilty look upon Lucy's face; but
+no, save the natural flush and flurry engendered by the service just
+performed, there was nothing whatever in her bearing which showed a
+disturbed mind: her gray-brown eyes carried in them now as at other times
+the well-known expression of common-sensed rectitude which never went so
+far as to touch on hardness.  She shook hands with him, and Downe said
+warmly, 'I wish you could have come sooner: I called on purpose to ask
+you.  You'll drive back with us now?'
+
+'No, no,' said Barnet; 'I am not at all prepared; but I thought I would
+look in upon you for a moment, even though I had not time to go home and
+dress.  I'll stand back and see you pass out, and observe the effect of
+the spectacle upon myself as one of the public.'
+
+Then Lucy and her husband laughed, and Barnet laughed and retired; and
+the quiet little party went gliding down the nave and towards the porch,
+Lucy's new silk dress sweeping with a smart rustle round the
+base-mouldings of the ancient font, and Downe's little daughters
+following in a state of round-eyed interest in their position, and that
+of Lucy, their teacher and friend.
+
+So Downe was comforted after his Emily's death, which had taken place
+twelve months, two weeks, and three days before that time.
+
+When the two flys had driven off and the spectators had vanished, Barnet
+followed to the door, and went out into the sun.  He took no more trouble
+to preserve a spruce exterior; his step was unequal, hesitating, almost
+convulsive; and the slight changes of colour which went on in his face
+seemed refracted from some inward flame.  In the churchyard he became
+pale as a summer cloud, and finding it not easy to proceed he sat down on
+one of the tombstones and supported his head with his hand.
+
+Hard by was a sexton filling up a grave which he had not found time to
+finish on the previous evening.  Observing Barnet, he went up to him, and
+recognizing him, said, 'Shall I help you home, sir?'
+
+'O no, thank you,' said Barnet, rousing himself and standing up.  The
+sexton returned to his grave, followed by Barnet, who, after watching him
+awhile, stepped into the grave, now nearly filled, and helped to tread in
+the earth.
+
+The sexton apparently thought his conduct a little singular, but he made
+no observation, and when the grave was full, Barnet suddenly stopped,
+looked far away, and with a decided step proceeded to the gate and
+vanished.  The sexton rested on his shovel and looked after him for a few
+moments, and then began banking up the mound.
+
+In those short minutes of treading in the dead man Barnet had formed a
+design, but what it was the inhabitants of that town did not for some
+long time imagine.  He went home, wrote several letters of business,
+called on his lawyer, an old man of the same place who had been the legal
+adviser of Barnet's father before him, and during the evening overhauled
+a large quantity of letters and other documents in his possession.  By
+eleven o'clock the heap of papers in and before Barnet's grate had
+reached formidable dimensions, and he began to burn them.  This, owing to
+their quantity, it was not so easy to do as he had expected, and he sat
+long into the night to complete the task.
+
+The next morning Barnet departed for London, leaving a note for Downe to
+inform him of Mrs. Barnet's sudden death, and that he was gone to bury
+her; but when a thrice-sufficient time for that purpose had elapsed, he
+was not seen again in his accustomed walks, or in his new house, or in
+his old one.  He was gone for good, nobody knew whither.  It was soon
+discovered that he had empowered his lawyer to dispose of all his
+property, real and personal, in the borough, and pay in the proceeds to
+the account of an unknown person at one of the large London banks.  The
+person was by some supposed to be himself under an assumed name; but few,
+if any, had certain knowledge of that fact.
+
+The elegant new residence was sold with the rest of his possessions; and
+its purchaser was no other than Downe, now a thriving man in the borough,
+and one whose growing family and new wife required more roomy
+accommodation than was afforded by the little house up the narrow side
+street.  Barnet's old habitation was bought by the trustees of the
+Congregational Baptist body in that town, who pulled down the
+time-honoured dwelling and built a new chapel on its site.  By the time
+the last hour of that, to Barnet, eventful year had chimed, every vestige
+of him had disappeared from the precincts of his native place, and the
+name became extinct in the borough of Port-Bredy, after having been a
+living force therein for more than two hundred years.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Twenty-one years and six months do not pass without setting a mark even
+upon durable stone and triple brass; upon humanity such a period works
+nothing less than transformation.  In Barnet's old birthplace vivacious
+young children with bones like india-rubber had grown up to be stable men
+and women, men and women had dried in the skin, stiffened, withered, and
+sunk into decrepitude; while selections from every class had been
+consigned to the outlying cemetery.  Of inorganic differences the
+greatest was that a railway had invaded the town, tying it on to a main
+line at a junction a dozen miles off.  Barnet's house on the
+harbour-road, once so insistently new, had acquired a respectable
+mellowness, with ivy, Virginia creepers, lichens, damp patches, and even
+constitutional infirmities of its own like its elder fellows.  Its
+architecture, once so very improved and modern, had already become stale
+in style, without having reached the dignity of being old-fashioned.
+Trees about the harbour-road had increased in circumference or
+disappeared under the saw; while the church had had such a tremendous
+practical joke played upon it by some facetious restorer or other as to
+be scarce recognizable by its dearest old friends.
+
+During this long interval George Barnet had never once been seen or heard
+of in the town of his fathers.
+
+It was the evening of a market-day, and some half-dozen middle-aged
+farmers and dairymen were lounging round the bar of the Black-Bull Hotel,
+occasionally dropping a remark to each other, and less frequently to the
+two barmaids who stood within the pewter-topped counter in a perfunctory
+attitude of attention, these latter sighing and making a private
+observation to one another at odd intervals, on more interesting
+experiences than the present.
+
+'Days get shorter,' said one of the dairymen, as he looked towards the
+street, and noticed that the lamp-lighter was passing by.
+
+The farmers merely acknowledged by their countenances the propriety of
+this remark, and finding that nobody else spoke, one of the barmaids said
+'yes,' in a tone of painful duty.
+
+'Come fair-day we shall have to light up before we start for home-along.'
+
+'That's true,' his neighbour conceded, with a gaze of blankness.
+
+'And after that we shan't see much further difference all's winter.'
+
+The rest were not unwilling to go even so far as this.
+
+The barmaid sighed again, and raised one of her hands from the counter on
+which they rested to scratch the smallest surface of her face with the
+smallest of her fingers.  She looked towards the door, and presently
+remarked, 'I think I hear the 'bus coming in from station.'
+
+The eyes of the dairymen and farmers turned to the glass door dividing
+the hall from the porch, and in a minute or two the omnibus drew up
+outside.  Then there was a lumbering down of luggage, and then a man came
+into the hall, followed by a porter with a portmanteau on his poll, which
+he deposited on a bench.
+
+The stranger was an elderly person, with curly ashen white hair, a deeply-
+creviced outer corner to each eyelid, and a countenance baked by
+innumerable suns to the colour of terra-cotta, its hue and that of his
+hair contrasting like heat and cold respectively.  He walked meditatively
+and gently, like one who was fearful of disturbing his own mental
+equilibrium.  But whatever lay at the bottom of his breast had evidently
+made him so accustomed to its situation there that it caused him little
+practical inconvenience.
+
+He paused in silence while, with his dubious eyes fixed on the barmaids,
+he seemed to consider himself.  In a moment or two he addressed them, and
+asked to be accommodated for the night.  As he waited he looked curiously
+round the hall, but said nothing.  As soon as invited he disappeared up
+the staircase, preceded by a chambermaid and candle, and followed by a
+lad with his trunk.  Not a soul had recognized him.
+
+A quarter of an hour later, when the farmers and dairymen had driven off
+to their homesteads in the country, he came downstairs, took a biscuit
+and one glass of wine, and walked out into the town, where the radiance
+from the shop-windows had grown so in volume of late years as to flood
+with cheerfulness every standing cart, barrow, stall, and idler that
+occupied the wayside, whether shabby or genteel.  His chief interest at
+present seemed to lie in the names painted over the shop-fronts and on
+door-ways, as far as they were visible; these now differed to an ominous
+extent from what they had been one-and-twenty years before.
+
+The traveller passed on till he came to the bookseller's, where he looked
+in through the glass door.  A fresh-faced young man was standing behind
+the counter, otherwise the shop was empty.  The gray-haired observer
+entered, asked for some periodical by way of paying for admission, and
+with his elbow on the counter began to turn over the pages he had bought,
+though that he read nothing was obvious.
+
+At length he said, 'Is old Mr. Watkins still alive?' in a voice which had
+a curious youthful cadence in it even now.
+
+'My father is dead, sir,' said the young man.
+
+'Ah, I am sorry to hear it,' said the stranger.  'But it is so many years
+since I last visited this town that I could hardly expect it should be
+otherwise.'  After a short silence he continued--'And is the firm of
+Barnet, Browse, and Company still in existence?--they used to be large
+flax-merchants and twine-spinners here?'
+
+'The firm is still going on, sir, but they have dropped the name of
+Barnet.  I believe that was a sort of fancy name--at least, I never knew
+of any living Barnet.  'Tis now Browse and Co.'
+
+'And does Andrew Jones still keep on as architect?'
+
+'He's dead, sir.'
+
+'And the Vicar of St. Mary's--Mr. Melrose?'
+
+'He's been dead a great many years.'
+
+'Dear me!'  He paused yet longer, and cleared his voice.  'Is Mr. Downe,
+the solicitor, still in practice?'
+
+'No, sir, he's dead.  He died about seven years ago.'
+
+Here it was a longer silence still; and an attentive observer would have
+noticed that the paper in the stranger's hand increased its imperceptible
+tremor to a visible shake.  That gray-haired gentleman noticed it
+himself, and rested the paper on the counter.  'Is Mrs. Downe still
+alive?' he asked, closing his lips firmly as soon as the words were out
+of his mouth, and dropping his eyes.
+
+'Yes, sir, she's alive and well.  She's living at the old place.'
+
+'In East Street?'
+
+'O no; at Chateau Ringdale.  I believe it has been in the family for some
+generations.'
+
+'She lives with her children, perhaps?'
+
+'No; she has no children of her own.  There were some Miss Downes; I
+think they were Mr. Downe's daughters by a former wife; but they are
+married and living in other parts of the town.  Mrs. Downe lives alone.'
+
+'Quite alone?'
+
+'Yes, sir; quite alone.'
+
+The newly-arrived gentleman went back to the hotel and dined; after which
+he made some change in his dress, shaved back his beard to the fashion
+that had prevailed twenty years earlier, when he was young and
+interesting, and once more emerging, bent his steps in the direction of
+the harbour-road.  Just before getting to the point where the pavement
+ceased and the houses isolated themselves, he overtook a shambling,
+stooping, unshaven man, who at first sight appeared like a professional
+tramp, his shoulders having a perceptible greasiness as they passed under
+the gaslight.  Each pedestrian momentarily turned and regarded the other,
+and the tramp-like gentleman started back.
+
+'Good--why--is that Mr. Barnet?  'Tis Mr. Barnet, surely!'
+
+'Yes; and you are Charlson?'
+
+'Yes--ah--you notice my appearance.  The Fates have rather ill-used me.
+By-the-bye, that fifty pounds.  I never paid it, did I? . . . But I was
+not ungrateful!'  Here the stooping man laid one hand emphatically on the
+palm of the other.  'I gave you a chance, Mr. George Barnet, which many
+men would have thought full value received--the chance to marry your
+Lucy.  As far as the world was concerned, your wife was a drowned woman,
+hey?'
+
+'Heaven forbid all that, Charlson!'
+
+'Well, well, 'twas a wrong way of showing gratitude, I suppose.  And now
+a drop of something to drink for old acquaintance' sake!  And Mr. Barnet,
+she's again free--there's a chance now if you care for it--ha, ha!'  And
+the speaker pushed his tongue into his hollow cheek and slanted his eye
+in the old fashion.
+
+'I know all,' said Barnet quickly; and slipping a small present into the
+hands of the needy, saddening man, he stepped ahead and was soon in the
+outskirts of the town.
+
+He reached the harbour-road, and paused before the entrance to a well-
+known house.  It was so highly bosomed in trees and shrubs planted since
+the erection of the building that one would scarcely have recognized the
+spot as that which had been a mere neglected slope till chosen as a site
+for a dwelling.  He opened the swing-gate, closed it noiselessly, and
+gently moved into the semicircular drive, which remained exactly as it
+had been marked out by Barnet on the morning when Lucy Savile ran in to
+thank him for procuring her the post of governess to Downe's children.
+But the growth of trees and bushes which revealed itself at every step
+was beyond all expectation; sun-proof and moon-proof bowers vaulted the
+walks, and the walls of the house were uniformly bearded with creeping
+plants as high as the first-floor windows.
+
+After lingering for a few minutes in the dusk of the bending boughs, the
+visitor rang the door-bell, and on the servant appearing, he announced
+himself as 'an old friend of Mrs. Downe's.'
+
+The hall was lighted, but not brightly, the gas being turned low, as if
+visitors were rare.  There was a stagnation in the dwelling; it seemed to
+be waiting.  Could it really be waiting for him?  The partitions which
+had been probed by Barnet's walking-stick when the mortar was green, were
+now quite brown with the antiquity of their varnish, and the ornamental
+woodwork of the staircase, which had glistened with a pale yellow newness
+when first erected, was now of a rich wine-colour.  During the servant's
+absence the following colloquy could be dimly heard through the nearly
+closed door of the drawing-room.
+
+'He didn't give his name?'
+
+'He only said "an old friend," ma'am.'
+
+'What kind of gentleman is he?'
+
+'A staidish gentleman, with gray hair.'
+
+The voice of the second speaker seemed to affect the listener greatly.
+After a pause, the lady said, 'Very well, I will see him.'
+
+And the stranger was shown in face to face with the Lucy who had once
+been Lucy Savile.  The round cheek of that formerly young lady had, of
+course, alarmingly flattened its curve in her modern representative; a
+pervasive grayness overspread her once dark brown hair, like morning rime
+on heather.  The parting down the middle was wide and jagged; once it had
+been a thin white line, a narrow crevice between two high banks of shade.
+But there was still enough left to form a handsome knob behind, and some
+curls beneath inwrought with a few hairs like silver wires were very
+becoming.  In her eyes the only modification was that their originally
+mild rectitude of expression had become a little more stringent than
+heretofore.  Yet she was still girlish--a girl who had been gratuitously
+weighted by destiny with a burden of five-and-forty years instead of her
+proper twenty.
+
+'Lucy, don't you know me?' he said, when the servant had closed the door.
+
+'I knew you the instant I saw you!' she returned cheerfully.  'I don't
+know why, but I always thought you would come back to your old town
+again.'
+
+She gave him her hand, and then they sat down.  'They said you were
+dead,' continued Lucy, 'but I never thought so.  We should have heard of
+it for certain if you had been.'
+
+'It is a very long time since we met.'
+
+'Yes; what you must have seen, Mr. Barnet, in all these roving years, in
+comparison with what I have seen in this quiet place!'  Her face grew
+more serious.  'You know my husband has been dead a long time?  I am a
+lonely old woman now, considering what I have been; though Mr. Downe's
+daughters--all married--manage to keep me pretty cheerful.'
+
+'And I am a lonely old man, and have been any time these twenty years.'
+
+'But where have you kept yourself?  And why did you go off so
+mysteriously?'
+
+'Well, Lucy, I have kept myself a little in America, and a little in
+Australia, a little in India, a little at the Cape, and so on; I have not
+stayed in any place for a long time, as it seems to me, and yet more than
+twenty years have flown.  But when people get to my age two years go like
+one!--Your second question, why did I go away so mysteriously, is surely
+not necessary.  You guessed why, didn't you?'
+
+'No, I never once guessed,' she said simply; 'nor did Charles, nor did
+anybody as far as I know.'
+
+'Well, indeed!  Now think it over again, and then look at me, and say if
+you can't guess?'
+
+She looked him in the face with an inquiring smile.  'Surely not because
+of me?' she said, pausing at the commencement of surprise.
+
+Barnet nodded, and smiled again; but his smile was sadder than hers.
+
+'Because I married Charles?' she asked.
+
+'Yes; solely because you married him on the day I was free to ask you to
+marry me.  My wife died four-and-twenty hours before you went to church
+with Downe.  The fixing of my journey at that particular moment was
+because of her funeral; but once away I knew I should have no inducement
+to come back, and took my steps accordingly.'
+
+Her face assumed an aspect of gentle reflection, and she looked up and
+down his form with great interest in her eyes.  'I never thought of it!'
+she said.  'I knew, of course, that you had once implied some warmth of
+feeling towards me, but I concluded that it passed off.  And I have
+always been under the impression that your wife was alive at the time of
+my marriage.  Was it not stupid of me!--But you will have some tea or
+something?  I have never dined late, you know, since my husband's death.
+I have got into the way of making a regular meal of tea.  You will have
+some tea with me, will you not?'
+
+The travelled man assented quite readily, and tea was brought in.  They
+sat and chatted over the meal, regardless of the flying hour.  'Well,
+well!' said Barnet presently, as for the first time he leisurely surveyed
+the room; 'how like it all is, and yet how different!  Just where your
+piano stands was a board on a couple of trestles, bearing the patterns of
+wall-papers, when I was last here.  I was choosing them--standing in this
+way, as it might be.  Then my servant came in at the door, and handed me
+a note, so.  It was from Downe, and announced that you were just going to
+be married to him.  I chose no more wall-papers--tore up all those I had
+selected, and left the house.  I never entered it again till now.'
+
+'Ah, at last I understand it all,' she murmured.
+
+They had both risen and gone to the fireplace.  The mantel came almost on
+a level with her shoulder, which gently rested against it, and Barnet
+laid his hand upon the shelf close beside her shoulder.  'Lucy,' he said,
+'better late than never.  Will you marry me now?'
+
+She started back, and the surprise which was so obvious in her wrought
+even greater surprise in him that it should be so.  It was difficult to
+believe that she had been quite blind to the situation, and yet all
+reason and common sense went to prove that she was not acting.
+
+'You take me quite unawares by such a question!' she said, with a forced
+laugh of uneasiness.  It was the first time she had shown any
+embarrassment at all.  'Why,' she added, 'I couldn't marry you for the
+world.'
+
+'Not after all this!  Why not?'
+
+'It is--I would--I really think I may say it--I would upon the whole
+rather marry you, Mr. Barnet, than any other man I have ever met, if I
+ever dreamed of marriage again.  But I don't dream of it--it is quite out
+of my thoughts; I have not the least intention of marrying again.'
+
+'But--on my account--couldn't you alter your plans a little?  Come!'
+
+'Dear Mr. Barnet,' she said with a little flutter, 'I would on your
+account if on anybody's in existence.  But you don't know in the least
+what it is you are asking--such an impracticable thing--I won't say
+ridiculous, of course, because I see that you are really in earnest, and
+earnestness is never ridiculous to my mind.'
+
+'Well, yes,' said Barnet more slowly, dropping her hand, which he had
+taken at the moment of pleading, 'I am in earnest.  The resolve, two
+months ago, at the Cape, to come back once more was, it is true, rather
+sudden, and as I see now, not well considered.  But I am in earnest in
+asking.'
+
+'And I in declining.  With all good feeling and all kindness, let me say
+that I am quite opposed to the idea of marrying a second time.'
+
+'Well, no harm has been done,' he answered, with the same subdued and
+tender humorousness that he had shown on such occasions in early life.
+'If you really won't accept me, I must put up with it, I suppose.'  His
+eye fell on the clock as he spoke.  'Had you any notion that it was so
+late?' he asked.  'How absorbed I have been!'
+
+She accompanied him to the hall, helped him to put on his overcoat, and
+let him out of the house herself.
+
+'Good-night,' said Barnet, on the doorstep, as the lamp shone in his
+face.  'You are not offended with me?'
+
+'Certainly not.  Nor you with me?'
+
+'I'll consider whether I am or not,' he pleasantly replied.  'Good-night.'
+
+She watched him safely through the gate; and when his footsteps had died
+away upon the road, closed the door softly and returned to the room.  Here
+the modest widow long pondered his speeches, with eyes dropped to an
+unusually low level.  Barnet's urbanity under the blow of her refusal
+greatly impressed her.  After having his long period of probation
+rendered useless by her decision, he had shown no anger, and had
+philosophically taken her words as if he deserved no better ones.  It was
+very gentlemanly of him, certainly; it was more than gentlemanly; it was
+heroic and grand.  The more she meditated, the more she questioned the
+virtue of her conduct in checking him so peremptorily; and went to her
+bedroom in a mood of dissatisfaction.  On looking in the glass she was
+reminded that there was not so much remaining of her former beauty as to
+make his frank declaration an impulsive natural homage to her cheeks and
+eyes; it must undoubtedly have arisen from an old staunch feeling of his,
+deserving tenderest consideration.  She recalled to her mind with much
+pleasure that he had told her he was staying at the Black-Bull Hotel; so
+that if, after waiting a day or two, he should not, in his modesty, call
+again, she might then send him a nice little note.  To alter her views
+for the present was far from her intention; but she would allow herself
+to be induced to reconsider the case, as any generous woman ought to do.
+
+The morrow came and passed, and Mr. Barnet did not drop in.  At every
+knock, light youthful hues flew across her cheek; and she was abstracted
+in the presence of her other visitors.  In the evening she walked about
+the house, not knowing what to do with herself; the conditions of
+existence seemed totally different from those which ruled only four-and-
+twenty short hours ago.  What had been at first a tantalizing elusive
+sentiment was getting acclimatized within her as a definite hope, and her
+person was so informed by that emotion that she might almost have stood
+as its emblematical representative by the time the clock struck ten.  In
+short, an interest in Barnet precisely resembling that of her early youth
+led her present heart to belie her yesterday's words to him, and she
+longed to see him again.
+
+The next day she walked out early, thinking she might meet him in the
+street.  The growing beauty of her romance absorbed her, and she went
+from the street to the fields, and from the fields to the shore, without
+any consciousness of distance, till reminded by her weariness that she
+could go no further.  He had nowhere appeared.  In the evening she took a
+step which under the circumstances seemed justifiable; she wrote a note
+to him at the hotel, inviting him to tea with her at six precisely, and
+signing her note 'Lucy.'
+
+In a quarter of an hour the messenger came back.  Mr. Barnet had left the
+hotel early in the morning of the day before, but he had stated that he
+would probably return in the course of the week.
+
+The note was sent back, to be given to him immediately on his arrival.
+
+There was no sign from the inn that this desired event had occurred,
+either on the next day or the day following.  On both nights she had been
+restless, and had scarcely slept half-an-hour.
+
+On the Saturday, putting off all diffidence, Lucy went herself to the
+Black-Bull, and questioned the staff closely.
+
+Mr. Barnet had cursorily remarked when leaving that he might return on
+the Thursday or Friday, but they were directed not to reserve a room for
+him unless he should write.
+
+He had left no address.
+
+Lucy sorrowfully took back her note went home, and resolved to wait.
+
+She did wait--years and years--but Barnet never reappeared.
+
+April 1880.
+
+
+
+
+INTERLOPERS AT THE KNAP
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+The north road from Casterbridge is tedious and lonely, especially in
+winter-time.  Along a part of its course it connects with Long-Ash Lane,
+a monotonous track without a village or hamlet for many miles, and with
+very seldom a turning.  Unapprized wayfarers who are too old, or too
+young, or in other respects too weak for the distance to be traversed,
+but who, nevertheless, have to walk it, say, as they look wistfully
+ahead, 'Once at the top of that hill, and I must surely see the end of
+Long-Ash Lane!'  But they reach the hilltop, and Long-Ash Lane stretches
+in front as mercilessly as before.
+
+Some few years ago a certain farmer was riding through this lane in the
+gloom of a winter evening.  The farmer's friend, a dairyman, was riding
+beside him.  A few paces in the rear rode the farmer's man.  All three
+were well horsed on strong, round-barrelled cobs; and to be well horsed
+was to be in better spirits about Long-Ash Lane than poor pedestrians
+could attain to during its passage.
+
+But the farmer did not talk much to his friend as he rode along.  The
+enterprise which had brought him there filled his mind; for in truth it
+was important.  Not altogether so important was it, perhaps, when
+estimated by its value to society at large; but if the true measure of a
+deed be proportionate to the space it occupies in the heart of him who
+undertakes it, Farmer Charles Darton's business to-night could hold its
+own with the business of kings.
+
+He was a large farmer.  His turnover, as it is called, was probably
+thirty thousand pounds a year.  He had a great many draught horses, a
+great many milch cows, and of sheep a multitude.  This comfortable
+position was, however, none of his own making.  It had been created by
+his father, a man of a very different stamp from the present
+representative of the line.
+
+Darton, the father, had been a one-idea'd character, with a buttoned-up
+pocket and a chink-like eye brimming with commercial subtlety.  In Darton
+the son, this trade subtlety had become transmuted into emotional, and
+the harshness had disappeared; he would have been called a sad man but
+for his constant care not to divide himself from lively friends by piping
+notes out of harmony with theirs.  Contemplative, he allowed his mind to
+be a quiet meeting-place for memories and hopes.  So that, naturally
+enough, since succeeding to the agricultural calling, and up to his
+present age of thirty-two, he had neither advanced nor receded as a
+capitalist--a stationary result which did not agitate one of his
+unambitious, unstrategic nature, since he had all that he desired.  The
+motive of his expedition to-night showed the same absence of anxious
+regard for Number One.
+
+The party rode on in the slow, safe trot proper to night-time and bad
+roads, Farmer Darton's head jigging rather unromantically up and down
+against the sky, and his motions being repeated with bolder emphasis by
+his friend Japheth Johns; while those of the latter were travestied in
+jerks still less softened by art in the person of the lad who attended
+them.  A pair of whitish objects hung one on each side of the latter,
+bumping against him at each step, and still further spoiling the grace of
+his seat.  On close inspection they might have been perceived to be open
+rush baskets--one containing a turkey, and the other some bottles of
+wine.
+
+'D'ye feel ye can meet your fate like a man, neighbour Darton?' asked
+Johns, breaking a silence which had lasted while five-and-twenty hedgerow
+trees had glided by.
+
+Mr. Darton with a half-laugh murmured, 'Ay--call it my fate!  Hanging and
+wiving go by destiny.'  And then they were silent again.
+
+The darkness thickened rapidly, at intervals shutting down on the land in
+a perceptible flap, like the wave of a wing.  The customary close of day
+was accelerated by a simultaneous blurring of the air.  With the fall of
+night had come a mist just damp enough to incommode, but not sufficient
+to saturate them.  Countrymen as they were--born, as may be said, with
+only an open door between them and the four seasons--they regarded the
+mist but as an added obscuration, and ignored its humid quality.
+
+They were travelling in a direction that was enlivened by no modern
+current of traffic, the place of Darton's pilgrimage being an
+old-fashioned village--one of the Hintocks (several villages of that
+name, with a distinctive prefix or affix, lying thereabout)--where the
+people make the best cider and cider-wine in all Wessex, and where the
+dunghills smell of pomace instead of stable refuse as elsewhere.  The
+lane was sometimes so narrow that the brambles of the hedge, which hung
+forward like anglers' rods over a stream, scratched their hats and curry-
+combed their whiskers as they passed.  Yet this neglected lane had been a
+highway to Queen Elizabeth's subjects and the cavalcades of the past.  Its
+day was over now, and its history as a national artery done for ever.
+
+'Why I have decided to marry her,' resumed Darton (in a measured musical
+voice of confidence which revealed a good deal of his composition), as he
+glanced round to see that the lad was not too near, 'is not only that I
+like her, but that I can do no better, even from a fairly practical point
+of view.  That I might ha' looked higher is possibly true, though it is
+really all nonsense.  I have had experience enough in looking above me.
+"No more superior women for me," said I--you know when.  Sally is a
+comely, independent, simple character, with no make-up about her, who'll
+think me as much a superior to her as I used to think--you know who I
+mean--was to me.'
+
+'Ay,' said Johns.  'However, I shouldn't call Sally Hall simple.  Primary,
+because no Sally is; secondary, because if some could be, this one
+wouldn't.  'Tis a wrong denomination to apply to a woman, Charles, and
+affects me, as your best man, like cold water.  'Tis like recommending a
+stage play by saying there's neither murder, villainy, nor harm of any
+sort in it, when that's what you've paid your half-crown to see.'
+
+'Well; may your opinion do you good.  Mine's a different one.'  And
+turning the conversation from the philosophical to the practical, Darton
+expressed a hope that the said Sally had received what he'd sent on by
+the carrier that day.
+
+Johns wanted to know what that was.
+
+'It is a dress,' said Darton.  'Not exactly a wedding-dress; though she
+may use it as one if she likes.  It is rather serviceable than
+showy--suitable for the winter weather.'
+
+'Good,' said Johns.  'Serviceable is a wise word in a bridegroom.  I
+commend ye, Charles.'
+
+'For,' said Darton, 'why should a woman dress up like a rope-dancer
+because she's going to do the most solemn deed of her life except dying?'
+
+'Faith, why?  But she will, because she will, I suppose,' said Dairyman
+Johns.
+
+'H'm,' said Darton.
+
+The lane they followed had been nearly straight for several miles, but it
+now took a turn, and winding uncertainly for some distance forked into
+two.  By night country roads are apt to reveal ungainly qualities which
+pass without observation during day; and though Darton had travelled this
+way before, he had not done so frequently, Sally having been wooed at the
+house of a relative near his own.  He never remembered seeing at this
+spot a pair of alternative ways looking so equally probable as these two
+did now.  Johns rode on a few steps.
+
+'Don't be out of heart, sonny,' he cried.  'Here's a handpost.  Enoch--come
+and climm this post, and tell us the way.'
+
+The lad dismounted, and jumped into the hedge where the post stood under
+a tree.
+
+'Unstrap the baskets, or you'll smash up that wine!' cried Darton, as the
+young man began spasmodically to climb the post, baskets and all.
+
+'Was there ever less head in a brainless world?' said Johns.  'Here,
+simple Nocky, I'll do it.'  He leapt off, and with much puffing climbed
+the post, striking a match when he reached the top, and moving the light
+along the arm, the lad standing and gazing at the spectacle.
+
+'I have faced tantalization these twenty years with a temper as mild as
+milk!' said Japheth; 'but such things as this don't come short of
+devilry!'  And flinging the match away, he slipped down to the ground.
+
+'What's the matter?' asked Darton.
+
+'Not a letter, sacred or heathen--not so much as would tell us the way to
+the great fireplace--ever I should sin to say it!  Either the moss and
+mildew have eat away the words, or we have arrived in a land where the
+natyves have lost the art o' writing, and should ha' brought our compass
+like Christopher Columbus.'
+
+'Let us take the straightest road,' said Darton placidly; 'I shan't be
+sorry to get there--'tis a tiresome ride.  I would have driven if I had
+known.'
+
+'Nor I neither, sir,' said Enoch.  'These straps plough my shoulder like
+a zull.  If 'tis much further to your lady's home, Maister Darton, I
+shall ask to be let carry half of these good things in my innerds--hee,
+hee!'
+
+'Don't you be such a reforming radical, Enoch,' said Johns sternly.
+'Here, I'll take the turkey.'
+
+This being done, they went forward by the right-hand lane, which ascended
+a hill, the left winding away under a plantation.  The pit-a-pat of their
+horses' hoofs lessened up the slope; and the ironical directing-post
+stood in solitude as before, holding out its blank arms to the raw
+breeze, which brought a snore from the wood as if Skrymir the Giant were
+sleeping there.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Three miles to the left of the travellers, along the road they had not
+followed, rose an old house with mullioned windows of Ham-hill stone, and
+chimneys of lavish solidity.  It stood at the top of a slope beside
+King's-Hintock village-street; and immediately in front of it grew a
+large sycamore-tree, whose bared roots formed a convenient staircase from
+the road below to the front door of the dwelling.  Its situation gave the
+house what little distinctive name it possessed, namely, 'The Knap.'  Some
+forty yards off a brook dribbled past, which, for its size, made a great
+deal of noise.  At the back was a dairy barton, accessible for vehicles
+and live-stock by a side 'drong.'  Thus much only of the character of the
+homestead could be divined out of doors at this shady evening-time.
+
+But within there was plenty of light to see by, as plenty was construed
+at Hintock.  Beside a Tudor fireplace, whose moulded four-centred arch
+was nearly hidden by a figured blue-cloth blower, were seated two
+women--mother and daughter--Mrs. Hall, and Sarah, or Sally; for this was
+a part of the world where the latter modification had not as yet been
+effaced as a vulgarity by the march of intellect.  The owner of the name
+was the young woman by whose means Mr. Darton proposed to put an end to
+his bachelor condition on the approaching day.
+
+The mother's bereavement had been so long ago as not to leave much mark
+of its occurrence upon her now, either in face or clothes.  She had
+resumed the mob-cap of her early married life, enlivening its whiteness
+by a few rose-du-Barry ribbons.  Sally required no such aids to pinkness.
+Roseate good-nature lit up her gaze; her features showed curves of
+decision and judgment; and she might have been regarded without much
+mistake as a warm-hearted, quick-spirited, handsome girl.
+
+She did most of the talking, her mother listening with a half-absent air,
+as she picked up fragments of red-hot wood ember with the tongs, and
+piled them upon the brands.  But the number of speeches that passed was
+very small in proportion to the meanings exchanged.  Long experience
+together often enabled them to see the course of thought in each other's
+minds without a word being spoken.  Behind them, in the centre of the
+room, the table was spread for supper, certain whiffs of air laden with
+fat vapours, which ever and anon entered from the kitchen, denoting its
+preparation there.
+
+'The new gown he was going to send you stays about on the way like
+himself,' Sally's mother was saying.
+
+'Yes, not finished, I daresay,' cried Sally independently.  'Lord, I
+shouldn't be amazed if it didn't come at all!  Young men make such kind
+promises when they are near you, and forget 'em when they go away.  But
+he doesn't intend it as a wedding-gown--he gives it to me merely as a
+gown to wear when I like--a travelling-dress is what it would be called
+by some.  Come rathe or come late it don't much matter, as I have a dress
+of my own to fall back upon.  But what time is it?'
+
+She went to the family clock and opened the glass, for the hour was not
+otherwise discernible by night, and indeed at all times was rather a
+thing to be investigated than beheld, so much more wall than window was
+there in the apartment.  'It is nearly eight,' said she.
+
+'Eight o'clock, and neither dress nor man,' said Mrs. Hall.
+
+'Mother, if you think to tantalize me by talking like that, you are much
+mistaken!  Let him be as late as he will--or stay away altogether--I
+don't care,' said Sally.  But a tender, minute quaver in the negation
+showed that there was something forced in that statement.
+
+Mrs. Hall perceived it, and drily observed that she was not so sure about
+Sally not caring.  'But perhaps you don't care so much as I do, after
+all,' she said.  'For I see what you don't, that it is a good and
+flourishing match for you; a very honourable offer in Mr. Darton.  And I
+think I see a kind husband in him.  So pray God 'twill go smooth, and
+wind up well.'
+
+Sally would not listen to misgivings.  Of course it would go smoothly,
+she asserted.  'How you are up and down, mother!' she went on.  'At this
+moment, whatever hinders him, we are not so anxious to see him as he is
+to be here, and his thought runs on before him, and settles down upon us
+like the star in the east.  Hark!' she exclaimed, with a breath of
+relief, her eyes sparkling.  'I heard something.  Yes--here they are!'
+
+The next moment her mother's slower ear also distinguished the familiar
+reverberation occasioned by footsteps clambering up the roots of the
+sycamore.
+
+'Yes it sounds like them at last,' she said.  'Well, it is not so very
+late after all, considering the distance.'
+
+The footfall ceased, and they arose, expecting a knock.  They began to
+think it might have been, after all, some neighbouring villager under
+Bacchic influence, giving the centre of the road a wide berth, when their
+doubts were dispelled by the new-comer's entry into the passage.  The
+door of the room was gently opened, and there appeared, not the pair of
+travellers with whom we have already made acquaintance, but a pale-faced
+man in the garb of extreme poverty--almost in rags.
+
+'O, it's a tramp--gracious me!' said Sally, starting back.
+
+His cheeks and eye-orbits were deep concaves--rather, it might be, from
+natural weakness of constitution than irregular living, though there were
+indications that he had led no careful life.  He gazed at the two women
+fixedly for a moment: then with an abashed, humiliated demeanour, dropped
+his glance to the floor, and sank into a chair without uttering a word.
+
+Sally was in advance of her mother, who had remained standing by the
+fire.  She now tried to discern the visitor across the candles.
+
+'Why--mother,' said Sally faintly, turning back to Mrs. Hall.  'It is
+Phil, from Australia!'
+
+Mrs. Hall started, and grew pale, and a fit of coughing seized the man
+with the ragged clothes.  'To come home like this!' she said.  'O,
+Philip--are you ill?'
+
+'No, no, mother,' replied he impatiently, as soon as he could speak.
+
+'But for God's sake how do you come here--and just now too?'
+
+'Well, I am here,' said the man.  'How it is I hardly know.  I've come
+home, mother, because I was driven to it.  Things were against me out
+there, and went from bad to worse.'
+
+'Then why didn't you let us know?--you've not writ a line for the last
+two or three years.'
+
+The son admitted sadly that he had not.  He said that he had hoped and
+thought he might fetch up again, and be able to send good news.  Then he
+had been obliged to abandon that hope, and had finally come home from
+sheer necessity--previously to making a new start.  'Yes, things are very
+bad with me,' he repeated, perceiving their commiserating glances at his
+clothes.
+
+They brought him nearer the fire, took his hat from his thin hand, which
+was so small and smooth as to show that his attempts to fetch up again
+had not been in a manual direction.  His mother resumed her inquiries,
+and dubiously asked if he had chosen to come that particular night for
+any special reason.
+
+For no reason, he told her.  His arrival had been quite at random.  Then
+Philip Hall looked round the room, and saw for the first time that the
+table was laid somewhat luxuriously, and for a larger number than
+themselves; and that an air of festivity pervaded their dress.  He asked
+quickly what was going on.
+
+'Sally is going to be married in a day or two,' replied the mother; and
+she explained how Mr. Darton, Sally's intended husband, was coming there
+that night with the groomsman, Mr. Johns, and other details.  'We thought
+it must be their step when we heard you,' said Mrs. Hall.
+
+The needy wanderer looked again on the floor.  'I see--I see,' he
+murmured.  'Why, indeed, should I have come to-night?  Such folk as I are
+not wanted here at these times, naturally.  And I have no business
+here--spoiling other people's happiness.'
+
+'Phil,' said his mother, with a tear in her eye, but with a thinness of
+lip and severity of manner which were presumably not more than past
+events justified; 'since you speak like that to me, I'll speak honestly
+to you.  For these three years you have taken no thought for us.  You
+left home with a good supply of money, and strength and education, and
+you ought to have made good use of it all.  But you come back like a
+beggar; and that you come in a very awkward time for us cannot be denied.
+Your return to-night may do us much harm.  But mind--you are welcome to
+this home as long as it is mine.  I don't wish to turn you adrift.  We
+will make the best of a bad job; and I hope you are not seriously ill?'
+
+'O no.  I have only this infernal cough.'
+
+She looked at him anxiously.  'I think you had better go to bed at once,'
+she said.
+
+'Well--I shall be out of the way there,' said the son wearily.  'Having
+ruined myself, don't let me ruin you by being seen in these togs, for
+Heaven's sake.  Who do you say Sally is going to be married to--a Farmer
+Darton?'
+
+'Yes--a gentleman-farmer--quite a wealthy man.  Far better in station
+than she could have expected.  It is a good thing, altogether.'
+
+'Well done, little Sal!' said her brother, brightening and looking up at
+her with a smile.  'I ought to have written; but perhaps I have thought
+of you all the more.  But let me get out of sight.  I would rather go and
+jump into the river than be seen here.  But have you anything I can
+drink?  I am confoundedly thirsty with my long tramp.'
+
+'Yes, yes, we will bring something upstairs to you,' said Sally, with
+grief in her face.
+
+'Ay, that will do nicely.  But, Sally and mother--'  He stopped, and they
+waited.  'Mother, I have not told you all,' he resumed slowly, still
+looking on the floor between his knees.  'Sad as what you see of me is,
+there's worse behind.'
+
+His mother gazed upon him in grieved suspense, and Sally went and leant
+upon the bureau, listening for every sound, and sighing.  Suddenly she
+turned round, saying, 'Let them come, I don't care!  Philip, tell the
+worst, and take your time.'
+
+'Well, then,' said the unhappy Phil, 'I am not the only one in this mess.
+Would to Heaven I were!  But--'
+
+'O, Phil!'
+
+'I have a wife as destitute as I.'
+
+'A wife?' said his mother.
+
+'Unhappily!'
+
+'A wife!  Yes, that is the way with sons!'
+
+'And besides--' said he.
+
+'Besides!  O, Philip, surely--'
+
+'I have two little children.'
+
+'Wife and children!' whispered Mrs. Hall, sinking down confounded.
+
+'Poor little things!' said Sally involuntarily.
+
+His mother turned again to him.  'I suppose these helpless beings are
+left in Australia?'
+
+'No.  They are in England.'
+
+'Well, I can only hope you've left them in a respectable place.'
+
+'I have not left them at all.  They are here--within a few yards of us.
+In short, they are in the stable.'
+
+'Where?'
+
+'In the stable.  I did not like to bring them indoors till I had seen
+you, mother, and broken the bad news a bit to you.  They were very tired,
+and are resting out there on some straw.'
+
+Mrs. Hall's fortitude visibly broke down.  She had been brought up not
+without refinement, and was even more moved by such a collapse of genteel
+aims as this than a substantial dairyman's widow would in ordinary have
+been moved.  'Well, it must be borne,' she said, in a low voice, with her
+hands tightly joined.  'A starving son, a starving wife, starving
+children!  Let it be.  But why is this come to us now, to-day, to-night?
+Could no other misfortune happen to helpless women than this, which will
+quite upset my poor girl's chance of a happy life?  Why have you done us
+this wrong, Philip?  What respectable man will come here, and marry open-
+eyed into a family of vagabonds?'
+
+'Nonsense, mother!' said Sally vehemently, while her face flushed.
+'Charley isn't the man to desert me.  But if he should be, and won't
+marry me because Phil's come, let him go and marry elsewhere.  I won't be
+ashamed of my own flesh and blood for any man in England--not I!'  And
+then Sally turned away and burst into tears.
+
+'Wait till you are twenty years older and you will tell a different
+tale,' replied her mother.
+
+The son stood up.  'Mother,' he said bitterly, 'as I have come, so I will
+go.  All I ask of you is that you will allow me and mine to lie in your
+stable to-night.  I give you my word that we'll be gone by break of day,
+and trouble you no further!'
+
+Mrs. Hall, the mother, changed at that.  'O no,' she answered hastily;
+'never shall it be said that I sent any of my own family from my door.
+Bring 'em in, Philip, or take me out to them.'
+
+'We will put 'em all into the large bedroom,' said Sally, brightening,
+'and make up a large fire.  Let's go and help them in, and call Rebekah.'
+(Rebekah was the woman who assisted at the dairy and housework; she lived
+in a cottage hard by with her husband, who attended to the cows.)
+
+Sally went to fetch a lantern from the back-kitchen, but her brother
+said, 'You won't want a light.  I lit the lantern that was hanging
+there.'
+
+'What must we call your wife?' asked Mrs. Hall.
+
+'Helena,' said Philip.
+
+With shawls over their heads they proceeded towards the back door.
+
+'One minute before you go,' interrupted Philip.  'I--I haven't confessed
+all.'
+
+'Then Heaven help us!' said Mrs. Hall, pushing to the door and clasping
+her hands in calm despair.
+
+'We passed through Evershead as we came,' he continued, 'and I just
+looked in at the "Sow-and-Acorn" to see if old Mike still kept on there
+as usual.  The carrier had come in from Sherton Abbas at that moment, and
+guessing that I was bound for this place--for I think he knew me--he
+asked me to bring on a dressmaker's parcel for Sally that was marked
+"immediate."  My wife had walked on with the children.  'Twas a flimsy
+parcel, and the paper was torn, and I found on looking at it that it was
+a thick warm gown.  I didn't wish you to see poor Helena in a shabby
+state.  I was ashamed that you should--'twas not what she was born to.  I
+untied the parcel in the road, took it on to her where she was waiting in
+the Lower Barn, and told her I had managed to get it for her, and that
+she was to ask no question.  She, poor thing, must have supposed I
+obtained it on trust, through having reached a place where I was known,
+for she put it on gladly enough.  She has it on now.  Sally has other
+gowns, I daresay.'
+
+Sally looked at her mother, speechless.
+
+'You have others, I daresay!' repeated Phil, with a sick man's
+impatience.  'I thought to myself, "Better Sally cry than Helena freeze."
+Well, is the dress of great consequence?  'Twas nothing very ornamental,
+as far as I could see.'
+
+'No--no; not of consequence,' returned Sally sadly, adding in a gentle
+voice, 'You will not mind if I lend her another instead of that one, will
+you?'
+
+Philip's agitation at the confession had brought on another attack of the
+cough, which seemed to shake him to pieces.  He was so obviously unfit to
+sit in a chair that they helped him upstairs at once; and having hastily
+given him a cordial and kindled the bedroom fire, they descended to fetch
+their unhappy new relations.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+It was with strange feelings that the girl and her mother, lately so
+cheerful, passed out of the back door into the open air of the barton,
+laden with hay scents and the herby breath of cows.  A fine sleet had
+begun to fall, and they trotted across the yard quickly.  The stable-door
+was open; a light shone from it--from the lantern which always hung
+there, and which Philip had lighted, as he said.  Softly nearing the
+door, Mrs. Hall pronounced the name 'Helena!'
+
+There was no answer for the moment.  Looking in she was taken by
+surprise.  Two people appeared before her.  For one, instead of the
+drabbish woman she had expected, Mrs. Hall saw a pale, dark-eyed,
+ladylike creature, whose personality ruled her attire rather than was
+ruled by it.  She was in a new and handsome gown, of course, and an old
+bonnet.  She was standing up, agitated; her hand was held by her
+companion--none else than Sally's affianced, Farmer Charles Darton, upon
+whose fine figure the pale stranger's eyes were fixed, as his were fixed
+upon her.  His other hand held the rein of his horse, which was standing
+saddled as if just led in.
+
+At sight of Mrs. Hall they both turned, looking at her in a way neither
+quite conscious nor unconscious, and without seeming to recollect that
+words were necessary as a solution to the scene.  In another moment Sally
+entered also, when Mr. Darton dropped his companion's hand, led the horse
+aside, and came to greet his betrothed and Mrs. Hall.
+
+'Ah!' he said, smiling--with something like forced composure--'this is a
+roundabout way of arriving, you will say, my dear Mrs. Hall.  But we lost
+our way, which made us late.  I saw a light here, and led in my horse at
+once--my friend Johns and my man have gone back to the little inn with
+theirs, not to crowd you too much.  No sooner had I entered than I saw
+that this lady had taken temporary shelter here--and found I was
+intruding.'
+
+'She is my daughter-in-law,' said Mrs. Hall calmly.  'My son, too, is in
+the house, but he has gone to bed unwell.'
+
+Sally had stood staring wonderingly at the scene until this moment,
+hardly recognizing Darton's shake of the hand.  The spell that bound her
+was broken by her perceiving the two little children seated on a heap of
+hay.  She suddenly went forward, spoke to them, and took one on her arm
+and the other in her hand.
+
+'And two children?' said Mr. Darton, showing thus that he had not been
+there long enough as yet to understand the situation.
+
+'My grandchildren,' said Mrs. Hall, with as much affected ease as before.
+
+Philip Hall's wife, in spite of this interruption to her first
+rencounter, seemed scarcely so much affected by it as to feel any one's
+presence in addition to Mr. Darton's.  However, arousing herself by a
+quick reflection, she threw a sudden critical glance of her sad eyes upon
+Mrs. Hall; and, apparently finding her satisfactory, advanced to her in a
+meek initiative.  Then Sally and the stranger spoke some friendly words
+to each other, and Sally went on with the children into the house.  Mrs.
+Hall and Helena followed, and Mr. Darton followed these, looking at
+Helena's dress and outline, and listening to her voice like a man in a
+dream.
+
+By the time the others reached the house Sally had already gone upstairs
+with the tired children.  She rapped against the wall for Rebekah to come
+in and help to attend to them, Rebekah's house being a little 'spit-and-
+dab' cabin leaning against the substantial stone-work of Mrs. Hall's
+taller erection.  When she came a bed was made up for the little ones,
+and some supper given to them.  On descending the stairs after seeing
+this done Sally went to the sitting-room.  Young Mrs. Hall entered it
+just in advance of her, having in the interim retired with her mother-in-
+law to take off her bonnet, and otherwise make herself presentable.  Hence
+it was evident that no further communication could have passed between
+her and Mr. Darton since their brief interview in the stable.
+
+Mr. Japheth Johns now opportunely arrived, and broke up the restraint of
+the company, after a few orthodox meteorological commentaries had passed
+between him and Mrs. Hall by way of introduction.  They at once sat down
+to supper, the present of wine and turkey not being produced for
+consumption to-night, lest the premature display of those gifts should
+seem to throw doubt on Mrs. Hall's capacities as a provider.
+
+'Drink hearty, Mr. Johns--drink hearty,' said that matron magnanimously.
+'Such as it is there's plenty of.  But perhaps cider-wine is not to your
+taste?--though there's body in it.'
+
+'Quite the contrairy, ma'am--quite the contrairy,' said the dairyman.
+'For though I inherit the malt-liquor principle from my father, I am a
+cider-drinker on my mother's side.  She came from these parts, you know.
+And there's this to be said for't--'tis a more peaceful liquor, and don't
+lie about a man like your hotter drinks.  With care, one may live on it a
+twelvemonth without knocking down a neighbour, or getting a black eye
+from an old acquaintance.'
+
+The general conversation thus begun was continued briskly, though it was
+in the main restricted to Mrs. Hall and Japheth, who in truth required
+but little help from anybody.  There being slight call upon Sally's
+tongue, she had ample leisure to do what her heart most desired, namely,
+watch her intended husband and her sister-in-law with a view of
+elucidating the strange momentary scene in which her mother and herself
+had surprised them in the stable.  If that scene meant anything, it
+meant, at least, that they had met before.  That there had been no time
+for explanations Sally could see, for their manner was still one of
+suppressed amazement at each other's presence there.  Darton's eyes, too,
+fell continually on the gown worn by Helena as if this were an added
+riddle to his perplexity; though to Sally it was the one feature in the
+case which was no mystery.  He seemed to feel that fate had impishly
+changed his vis-a-vis in the lover's jig he was about to foot; that while
+the gown had been expected to enclose a Sally, a Helena's face looked out
+from the bodice; that some long-lost hand met his own from the sleeves.
+
+Sally could see that whatever Helena might know of Darton, she knew
+nothing of how the dress entered into his embarrassment.  And at moments
+the young girl would have persuaded herself that Darton's looks at her
+sister-in-law were entirely the fruit of the clothes query.  But surely
+at other times a more extensive range of speculation and sentiment was
+expressed by her lover's eye than that which the changed dress would
+account for.
+
+Sally's independence made her one of the least jealous of women.  But
+there was something in the relations of these two visitors which ought to
+be explained.
+
+Japheth Johns continued to converse in his well-known style,
+interspersing his talk with some private reflections on the position of
+Darton and Sally, which, though the sparkle in his eye showed them to be
+highly entertaining to himself, were apparently not quite communicable to
+the company.  At last he withdrew for the night, going off to the
+roadside inn half-a-mile back, whither Darton promised to follow him in a
+few minutes.
+
+Half-an-hour passed, and then Mr. Darton also rose to leave, Sally and
+her sister-in-law simultaneously wishing him good-night as they retired
+upstairs to their rooms.  But on his arriving at the front door with Mrs.
+Hall a sharp shower of rain began to come down, when the widow suggested
+that he should return to the fire-side till the storm ceased.
+
+Darton accepted her proposal, but insisted that, as it was getting late,
+and she was obviously tired, she should not sit up on his account, since
+he could let himself out of the house, and would quite enjoy smoking a
+pipe by the hearth alone.  Mrs. Hall assented; and Darton was left by
+himself.  He spread his knees to the brands, lit up his tobacco as he had
+said, and sat gazing into the fire, and at the notches of the chimney-
+crook which hung above.
+
+An occasional drop of rain rolled down the chimney with a hiss, and still
+he smoked on; but not like a man whose mind was at rest.  In the long
+run, however, despite his meditations, early hours afield and a long ride
+in the open air produced their natural result.  He began to doze.
+
+How long he remained in this half-unconscious state he did not know.  He
+suddenly opened his eyes.  The back-brand had burnt itself in two, and
+ceased to flame; the light which he had placed on the mantelpiece had
+nearly gone out.  But in spite of these deficiencies there was a light in
+the apartment, and it came from elsewhere.  Turning his head he saw
+Philip Hall's wife standing at the entrance of the room with a bed-candle
+in one hand, a small brass tea-kettle in the other, and his gown, as it
+certainly seemed, still upon her.
+
+'Helena!' said Darton, starting up.
+
+Her countenance expressed dismay, and her first words were an apology.
+'I--did not know you were here, Mr. Darton,' she said, while a blush
+flashed to her cheek.  'I thought every one had retired--I was coming to
+make a little water boil; my husband seems to be worse.  But perhaps the
+kitchen fire can be lighted up again.'
+
+'Don't go on my account.  By all means put it on here as you intended,'
+said Darton.  'Allow me to help you.'  He went forward to take the kettle
+from her hand, but she did not allow him, and placed it on the fire
+herself.
+
+They stood some way apart, one on each side of the fireplace, waiting
+till the water should boil, the candle on the mantel between them, and
+Helena with her eyes on the kettle.  Darton was the first to break the
+silence.  'Shall I call Sally?' he said.
+
+'O no,' she quickly returned.  'We have given trouble enough already.  We
+have no right here.  But we are the sport of fate, and were obliged to
+come.'
+
+'No right here!' said he in surprise.
+
+'None.  I can't explain it now,' answered Helena.  'This kettle is very
+slow.'
+
+There was another pause; the proverbial dilatoriness of watched pots was
+never more clearly exemplified.
+
+Helena's face was of that sort which seems to ask for assistance without
+the owner's knowledge--the very antipodes of Sally's, which was
+self-reliance expressed.  Darton's eyes travelled from the kettle to
+Helena's face, then back to the kettle, then to the face for rather a
+longer time.  'So I am not to know anything of the mystery that has
+distracted me all the evening?' he said.  'How is it that a woman, who
+refused me because (as I supposed) my position was not good enough for
+her taste, is found to be the wife of a man who certainly seems to be
+worse off than I?'
+
+'He had the prior claim,' said she.
+
+'What! you knew him at that time?'
+
+'Yes, yes!  Please say no more,' she implored.
+
+'Whatever my errors, I have paid for them during the last five years!'
+
+The heart of Darton was subject to sudden overflowings.  He was kind to a
+fault.  'I am sorry from my soul,' he said, involuntarily approaching
+her.  Helena withdrew a step or two, at which he became conscious of his
+movement, and quickly took his former place.  Here he stood without
+speaking, and the little kettle began to sing.
+
+'Well, you might have been my wife if you had chosen,' he said at last.
+'But that's all past and gone.  However, if you are in any trouble or
+poverty I shall be glad to be of service, and as your relation by
+marriage I shall have a right to be.  Does your uncle know of your
+distress?'
+
+'My uncle is dead.  He left me without a farthing.  And now we have two
+children to maintain.'
+
+'What, left you nothing?  How could he be so cruel as that?'
+
+'I disgraced myself in his eyes.'
+
+'Now,' said Darton earnestly, 'let me take care of the children, at least
+while you are so unsettled.  You belong to another, so I cannot take care
+of you.'
+
+'Yes you can,' said a voice; and suddenly a third figure stood beside
+them.  It was Sally.  'You can, since you seem to wish to?' she repeated.
+'She no longer belongs to another . . . My poor brother is dead!'
+
+Her face was red, her eyes sparkled, and all the woman came to the front.
+'I have heard it!' she went on to him passionately.  'You can protect her
+now as well as the children!'  She turned then to her agitated sister-in-
+law.  'I heard something,' said Sally (in a gentle murmur, differing much
+from her previous passionate words), 'and I went into his room.  It must
+have been the moment you left.  He went off so quickly, and weakly, and
+it was so unexpected, that I couldn't leave even to call you.'
+
+Darton was just able to gather from the confused discourse which followed
+that, during his sleep by the fire, this brother whom he had never seen
+had become worse; and that during Helena's absence for water the end had
+unexpectedly come.  The two young women hastened upstairs, and he was
+again left alone.
+
+* * * * *
+
+After standing there a short time he went to the front door and looked
+out; till, softly closing it behind him, he advanced and stood under the
+large sycamore-tree.  The stars were flickering coldly, and the dampness
+which had just descended upon the earth in rain now sent up a chill from
+it.  Darton was in a strange position, and he felt it.  The unexpected
+appearance, in deep poverty, of Helena--a young lady, daughter of a
+deceased naval officer, who had been brought up by her uncle, a
+solicitor, and had refused Darton in marriage years ago--the passionate,
+almost angry demeanour of Sally at discovering them, the abrupt
+announcement that Helena was a widow; all this coming together was a
+conjuncture difficult to cope with in a moment, and made him question
+whether he ought to leave the house or offer assistance.  But for Sally's
+manner he would unhesitatingly have done the latter.
+
+He was still standing under the tree when the door in front of him
+opened, and Mrs. Hall came out.  She went round to the garden-gate at the
+side without seeing him.  Darton followed her, intending to speak.
+
+Pausing outside, as if in thought, she proceeded to a spot where the sun
+came earliest in spring-time, and where the north wind never blew; it was
+where the row of beehives stood under the wall.  Discerning her object,
+he waited till she had accomplished it.
+
+It was the universal custom thereabout to wake the bees by tapping at
+their hives whenever a death occurred in the household, under the belief
+that if this were not done the bees themselves would pine away and perish
+during the ensuing year.  As soon as an interior buzzing responded to her
+tap at the first hive Mrs. Hall went on to the second, and thus passed
+down the row.  As soon as she came back he met her.
+
+'What can I do in this trouble, Mrs. Hall?' he said.
+
+'O--nothing, thank you, nothing,' she said in a tearful voice, now just
+perceiving him.  'We have called Rebekah and her husband, and they will
+do everything necessary.'  She told him in a few words the particulars of
+her son's arrival, broken in health--indeed, at death's very door, though
+they did not suspect it--and suggested, as the result of a conversation
+between her and her daughter, that the wedding should be postponed.
+
+'Yes, of course,' said Darton.  'I think now to go straight to the inn
+and tell Johns what has happened.'  It was not till after he had shaken
+hands with her that he turned hesitatingly and added, 'Will you tell the
+mother of his children that, as they are now left fatherless, I shall be
+glad to take the eldest of them, if it would be any convenience to her
+and to you?'
+
+Mrs. Hall promised that her son's widow should he told of the offer, and
+they parted.  He retired down the rooty slope and disappeared in the
+direction of the inn, where he informed Johns of the circumstances.
+Meanwhile Mrs. Hall had entered the house, Sally was downstairs in the
+sitting-room alone, and her mother explained to her that Darton had
+readily assented to the postponement.
+
+'No doubt he has,' said Sally, with sad emphasis.  'It is not put off for
+a week, or a month, or a year.  I shall never marry him, and she will!'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Time passed, and the household on the Knap became again serene under the
+composing influences of daily routine.  A desultory, very desultory
+correspondence, dragged on between Sally Hall and Darton, who, not quite
+knowing how to take her petulant words on the night of her brother's
+death, had continued passive thus long.  Helena and her children remained
+at the dairy-house, almost of necessity, and Darton therefore deemed it
+advisable to stay away.
+
+One day, seven months later on, when Mr. Darton was as usual at his farm,
+twenty miles from Hintock, a note reached him from Helena.  She thanked
+him for his kind offer about her children, which her mother-in-law had
+duly communicated, and stated that she would be glad to accept it as
+regarded the eldest, the boy.  Helena had, in truth, good need to do so,
+for her uncle had left her penniless, and all application to some
+relatives in the north had failed.  There was, besides, as she said, no
+good school near Hintock to which she could send the child.
+
+On a fine summer day the boy came.  He was accompanied half-way by Sally
+and his mother--to the 'White Horse,' at Chalk Newton--where he was
+handed over to Darton's bailiff in a shining spring-cart, who met them
+there.
+
+He was entered as a day-scholar at a popular school at Casterbridge,
+three or four miles from Darton's, having first been taught by Darton to
+ride a forest-pony, on which he cantered to and from the aforesaid fount
+of knowledge, and (as Darton hoped) brought away a promising headful of
+the same at each diurnal expedition.  The thoughtful taciturnity into
+which Darton had latterly fallen was quite dissipated by the presence of
+this boy.
+
+When the Christmas holidays came it was arranged that he should spend
+them with his mother.  The journey was, for some reason or other,
+performed in two stages, as at his coming, except that Darton in person
+took the place of the bailiff, and that the boy and himself rode on
+horseback.
+
+Reaching the renowned 'White Horse,' Darton inquired if Miss and young
+Mrs. Hall were there to meet little Philip (as they had agreed to be).  He
+was answered by the appearance of Helena alone at the door.
+
+'At the last moment Sally would not come,' she faltered.
+
+That meeting practically settled the point towards which these
+long-severed persons were converging.  But nothing was broached about it
+for some time yet.  Sally Hall had, in fact, imparted the first decisive
+motion to events by refusing to accompany Helena.  She soon gave them a
+second move by writing the following note
+
+   '[Private.]
+
+   'DEAR CHARLES,--Living here so long and intimately with Helena, I have
+   naturally learnt her history, especially that of it which refers to
+   you.  I am sure she would accept you as a husband at the proper time,
+   and I think you ought to give her the opportunity.  You inquire in an
+   old note if I am sorry that I showed temper (which it wasn't) that
+   night when I heard you talking to her.  No, Charles, I am not sorry at
+   all for what I said then.--Yours sincerely, SALLY HALL.'
+
+Thus set in train, the transfer of Darton's heart back to its original
+quarters proceeded by mere lapse of time.  In the following July, Darton
+went to his friend Japheth to ask him at last to fulfil the bridal office
+which had been in abeyance since the previous January twelvemonths.
+
+'With all my heart, man o' constancy!' said Dairyman Johns warmly.  'I've
+lost most of my genteel fair complexion haymaking this hot weather, 'tis
+true, but I'll do your business as well as them that look better.  There
+be scents and good hair-oil in the world yet, thank God, and they'll take
+off the roughest o' my edge.  I'll compliment her.  "Better late than
+never, Sally Hall," I'll say.'
+
+'It is not Sally,' said Darton hurriedly.  'It is young Mrs. Hall.'
+
+Japheth's face, as soon as he really comprehended, became a picture of
+reproachful dismay.  'Not Sally?' he said.  'Why not Sally?  I can't
+believe it!  Young Mrs. Hall!  Well, well--where's your wisdom?'
+
+Darton shortly explained particulars; but Johns would not be reconciled.
+'She was a woman worth having if ever woman was,' he cried.  'And now to
+let her go!'
+
+'But I suppose I can marry where I like,' said Darton.
+
+'H'm,' replied the dairyman, lifting his eyebrows expressively.  'This
+don't become you, Charles--it really do not.  If I had done such a thing
+you would have sworn I was a curst no'thern fool to be drawn off the
+scent by such a red-herring doll-oll-oll.'
+
+Farmer Darton responded in such sharp terms to this laconic opinion that
+the two friends finally parted in a way they had never parted before.
+Johns was to be no groomsman to Darton after all.  He had flatly
+declined.  Darton went off sorry, and even unhappy, particularly as
+Japheth was about to leave that side of the county, so that the words
+which had divided them were not likely to be explained away or softened
+down.
+
+A short time after the interview Darton was united to Helena at a simple
+matter-of fact wedding; and she and her little girl joined the boy who
+had already grown to look on Darton's house as home.
+
+For some months the farmer experienced an unprecedented happiness and
+satisfaction.  There had been a flaw in his life, and it was as neatly
+mended as was humanly possible.  But after a season the stream of events
+followed less clearly, and there were shades in his reveries.  Helena was
+a fragile woman, of little staying power, physically or morally, and
+since the time that he had originally known her--eight or ten years
+before--she had been severely tried.  She had loved herself out, in
+short, and was now occasionally given to moping.  Sometimes she spoke
+regretfully of the gentilities of her early life, and instead of
+comparing her present state with her condition as the wife of the unlucky
+Hall, she mused rather on what it had been before she took the first
+fatal step of clandestinely marrying him.  She did not care to please
+such people as those with whom she was thrown as a thriving farmer's
+wife.  She allowed the pretty trifles of agricultural domesticity to
+glide by her as sorry details, and had it not been for the children
+Darton's house would have seemed but little brighter than it had been
+before.
+
+This led to occasional unpleasantness, until Darton sometimes declared to
+himself that such endeavours as his to rectify early deviations of the
+heart by harking back to the old point mostly failed of success.  'Perhaps
+Johns was right,' he would say.  'I should have gone on with Sally.
+Better go with the tide and make the best of its course than stem it at
+the risk of a capsize.'  But he kept these unmelodious thoughts to
+himself, and was outwardly considerate and kind.
+
+This somewhat barren tract of his life had extended to less than a year
+and a half when his ponderings were cut short by the loss of the woman
+they concerned.  When she was in her grave he thought better of her than
+when she had been alive; the farm was a worse place without her than with
+her, after all.  No woman short of divine could have gone through such an
+experience as hers with her first husband without becoming a little
+soured.  Her stagnant sympathies, her sometimes unreasonable manner, had
+covered a heart frank and well meaning, and originally hopeful and warm.
+She left him a tiny red infant in white wrappings.  To make life as easy
+as possible to this touching object became at once his care.
+
+As this child learnt to walk and talk Darton learnt to see feasibility in
+a scheme which pleased him.  Revolving the experiment which he had
+hitherto made upon life, he fancied he had gained wisdom from his
+mistakes and caution from his miscarriages.
+
+What the scheme was needs no penetration to discover.  Once more he had
+opportunity to recast and rectify his ill-wrought situations by returning
+to Sally Hall, who still lived quietly on under her mother's roof at
+Hintock.  Helena had been a woman to lend pathos and refinement to a
+home; Sally was the woman to brighten it.  She would not, as Helena did,
+despise the rural simplicities of a farmer's fireside.  Moreover, she had
+a pre-eminent qualification for Darton's household; no other woman could
+make so desirable a mother to her brother's two children and Darton's one
+as Sally--while Darton, now that Helena had gone, was a more promising
+husband for Sally than he had ever been when liable to reminders from an
+uncured sentimental wound.
+
+Darton was not a man to act rapidly, and the working out of his
+reparative designs might have been delayed for some time.  But there came
+a winter evening precisely like the one which had darkened over that
+former ride to Hintock, and he asked himself why he should postpone
+longer, when the very landscape called for a repetition of that attempt.
+
+He told his man to saddle the mare, booted and spurred himself with a
+younger horseman's nicety, kissed the two youngest children, and rode
+off.  To make the journey a complete parallel to the first, he would fain
+have had his old acquaintance Japheth Johns with him.  But Johns, alas!
+was missing.  His removal to the other side of the county had left
+unrepaired the breach which had arisen between him and Darton; and though
+Darton had forgiven him a hundred times, as Johns had probably forgiven
+Darton, the effort of reunion in present circumstances was one not likely
+to be made.
+
+He screwed himself up to as cheerful a pitch as he could without his
+former crony, and became content with his own thoughts as he rode,
+instead of the words of a companion.  The sun went down; the boughs
+appeared scratched in like an etching against the sky; old crooked men
+with faggots at their backs said 'Good-night, sir,' and Darton replied
+'Good-night' right heartily.
+
+By the time he reached the forking roads it was getting as dark as it had
+been on the occasion when Johns climbed the directing-post.  Darton made
+no mistake this time.  'Nor shall I be able to mistake, thank Heaven,
+when I arrive,' he murmured.  It gave him peculiar satisfaction to think
+that the proposed marriage, like his first, was of the nature of setting
+in order things long awry, and not a momentary freak of fancy.
+
+Nothing hindered the smoothness of his journey, which seemed not half its
+former length.  Though dark, it was only between five and six o'clock
+when the bulky chimneys of Mrs. Hall's residence appeared in view behind
+the sycamore-tree.  On second thoughts he retreated and put up at the ale-
+house as in former time; and when he had plumed himself before the inn
+mirror, called for something to drink, and smoothed out the incipient
+wrinkles of care, he walked on to the Knap with a quick step.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+That evening Sally was making 'pinners' for the milkers, who were now
+increased by two, for her mother and herself no longer joined in milking
+the cows themselves.  But upon the whole there was little change in the
+household economy, and not much in its appearance, beyond such minor
+particulars as that the crack over the window, which had been a hundred
+years coming, was a trifle wider; that the beams were a shade blacker;
+that the influence of modernism had supplanted the open chimney corner by
+a grate; that Rebekah, who had worn a cap when she had plenty of hair,
+had left it off now she had scarce any, because it was reported that caps
+were not fashionable; and that Sally's face had naturally assumed a more
+womanly and experienced cast.
+
+Mrs. Hall was actually lifting coals with the tongs, as she had used to
+do.
+
+'Five years ago this very night, if I am not mistaken--' she said, laying
+on an ember.
+
+'Not this very night--though 'twas one night this week,' said the correct
+Sally.
+
+'Well, 'tis near enough.  Five years ago Mr. Darton came to marry you,
+and my poor boy Phil came home to die.'  She sighed.  'Ah, Sally,' she
+presently said, 'if you had managed well Mr. Darton would have had you,
+Helena or none.'
+
+'Don't be sentimental about that, mother,' begged Sally.  'I didn't care
+to manage well in such a case.  Though I liked him, I wasn't so anxious.
+I would never have married the man in the midst of such a hitch as that
+was,' she added with decision; 'and I don't think I would if he were to
+ask me now.'
+
+'I am not sure about that, unless you have another in your eye.'
+
+'I wouldn't; and I'll tell you why.  I could hardly marry him for love at
+this time o' day.  And as we've quite enough to live on if we give up the
+dairy to-morrow, I should have no need to marry for any meaner reason . .
+. I am quite happy enough as I am, and there's an end of it.'
+
+Now it was not long after this dialogue that there came a mild rap at the
+door, and in a moment there entered Rebekah, looking as though a ghost
+had arrived.  The fact was that that accomplished skimmer and churner
+(now a resident in the house) had overheard the desultory observations
+between mother and daughter, and on opening the door to Mr. Darton
+thought the coincidence must have a grisly meaning in it.  Mrs. Hall
+welcomed the farmer with warm surprise, as did Sally, and for a moment
+they rather wanted words.
+
+'Can you push up the chimney-crook for me, Mr Darton? the notches hitch,'
+said the matron.  He did it, and the homely little act bridged over the
+awkward consciousness that he had been a stranger for four years.
+
+Mrs. Hall soon saw what he had come for, and left the principals together
+while she went to prepare him a late tea, smiling at Sally's recent hasty
+assertions of indifference, when she saw how civil Sally was.  When tea
+was ready she joined them.  She fancied that Darton did not look so
+confident as when he had arrived; but Sally was quite light-hearted, and
+the meal passed pleasantly.
+
+About seven he took his leave of them.  Mrs. Hall went as far as the door
+to light him down the slope.  On the doorstep he said frankly--'I came to
+ask your daughter to marry me; chose the night and everything, with an
+eye to a favourable answer.  But she won't.'
+
+'Then she's a very ungrateful girl!' emphatically said Mrs. Hall.
+
+Darton paused to shape his sentence, and asked, 'I--I suppose there's
+nobody else more favoured?'
+
+'I can't say that there is, or that there isn't,' answered Mrs. Hall.
+'She's private in some things.  I'm on your side, however, Mr. Darton,
+and I'll talk to her.'
+
+'Thank 'ee, thank 'ee!' said the farmer in a gayer accent; and with this
+assurance the not very satisfactory visit came to an end.  Darton
+descended the roots of the sycamore, the light was withdrawn, and the
+door closed.  At the bottom of the slope he nearly ran against a man
+about to ascend.
+
+'Can a jack-o'-lent believe his few senses on such a dark night, or can't
+he?' exclaimed one whose utterance Darton recognized in a moment, despite
+its unexpectedness.  'I dare not swear he can, though I fain would!'  The
+speaker was Johns.
+
+Darton said he was glad of this opportunity, bad as it was, of putting an
+end to the silence of years, and asked the dairyman what he was
+travelling that way for.
+
+Japheth showed the old jovial confidence in a moment.  'I'm going to see
+your--relations--as they always seem to me,' he said--'Mrs. Hall and
+Sally.  Well, Charles, the fact is I find the natural barbarousness of
+man is much increased by a bachelor life, and, as your leavings were
+always good enough for me, I'm trying civilization here.'  He nodded
+towards the house.
+
+'Not with Sally--to marry her?' said Darton, feeling something like a
+rill of ice water between his shoulders.
+
+'Yes, by the help of Providence and my personal charms.  And I think I
+shall get her.  I am this road every week--my present dairy is only four
+miles off, you know, and I see her through the window.  'Tis rather odd
+that I was going to speak practical to-night to her for the first time.
+You've just called?'
+
+'Yes, for a short while.  But she didn't say a word about you.'
+
+'A good sign, a good sign.  Now that decides me.  I'll swing the mallet
+and get her answer this very night as I planned.'
+
+A few more remarks, and Darton, wishing his friend joy of Sally in a
+slightly hollow tone of jocularity, bade him good-bye.  Johns promised to
+write particulars, and ascended, and was lost in the shade of the house
+and tree.  A rectangle of light appeared when Johns was admitted, and all
+was dark again.
+
+'Happy Japheth!' said Darton.  'This then is the explanation!'
+
+He determined to return home that night.  In a quarter of an hour he
+passed out of the village, and the next day went about his swede-lifting
+and storing as if nothing had occurred.
+
+He waited and waited to hear from Johns whether the wedding-day was
+fixed: but no letter came.  He learnt not a single particular till,
+meeting Johns one day at a horse-auction, Darton exclaimed
+genially--rather more genially than he felt--'When is the joyful day to
+be?'
+
+To his great surprise a reciprocity of gladness was not conspicuous in
+Johns.  'Not at all,' he said, in a very subdued tone.  ''Tis a bad job;
+she won't have me.'
+
+Darton held his breath till he said with treacherous solicitude, 'Try
+again--'tis coyness.'
+
+'O no,' said Johns decisively.  'There's been none of that.  We talked it
+over dozens of times in the most fair and square way.  She tells me
+plainly, I don't suit her.  'Twould be simply annoying her to ask her
+again.  Ah, Charles, you threw a prize away when you let her slip five
+years ago.'
+
+'I did--I did,' said Darton.
+
+He returned from that auction with a new set of feelings in play.  He had
+certainly made a surprising mistake in thinking Johns his successful
+rival.  It really seemed as if he might hope for Sally after all.
+
+This time, being rather pressed by business, Darton had recourse to pen-
+and-ink, and wrote her as manly and straightforward a proposal as any
+woman could wish to receive.  The reply came promptly:-
+
+   'DEAR MR. DARTON,--I am as sensible as any woman can be of the
+   goodness that leads you to make me this offer a second time.  Better
+   women than I would be proud of the honour, for when I read your nice
+   long speeches on mangold-wurzel, and such like topics, at the
+   Casterbridge Farmers' Club, I do feel it an honour, I assure you.  But
+   my answer is just the same as before.  I will not try to explain what,
+   in truth, I cannot explain--my reasons; I will simply say that I must
+   decline to be married to you.  With good wishes as in former times, I
+   am, your faithful friend,
+
+   'SALLY HALL.'
+
+Darton dropped the letter hopelessly.  Beyond the negative, there was
+just a possibility of sarcasm in it--'nice long speeches on
+mangold-wurzel' had a suspicious sound.  However, sarcasm or none, there
+was the answer, and he had to be content.
+
+He proceeded to seek relief in a business which at this time engrossed
+much of his attention--that of clearing up a curious mistake just current
+in the county, that he had been nearly ruined by the recent failure of a
+local bank.  A farmer named Darton had lost heavily, and the similarity
+of name had probably led to the error.  Belief in it was so persistent
+that it demanded several days of letter-writing to set matters straight,
+and persuade the world that he was as solvent as ever he had been in his
+life.  He had hardly concluded this worrying task when, to his delight,
+another letter arrived in the handwriting of Sally.
+
+Darton tore it open; it was very short.
+
+   'DEAR MR. DARTON,--We have been so alarmed these last few days by the
+   report that you were ruined by the stoppage of --'s Bank, that, now it
+   is contradicted I hasten, by my mother's wish, to say how truly glad
+   we are to find there is no foundation for the report.  After your
+   kindness to my poor brother's children, I can do no less than write at
+   such a moment.  We had a letter from each of them a few days ago.--Your
+   faithful friend,
+
+   'SALLY HALL.'
+
+'Mercenary little woman!' said Darton to himself with a smile.  'Then
+that was the secret of her refusal this time--she thought I was ruined.'
+
+Now, such was Darton, that as hours went on he could not help feeling too
+generously towards Sally to condemn her in this.  What did he want in a
+wife? he asked himself.  Love and integrity.  What next?  Worldly wisdom.
+And was there really more than worldly wisdom in her refusal to go aboard
+a sinking ship?  She now knew it was otherwise.  'Begad,' he said, 'I'll
+try her again.'
+
+The fact was he had so set his heart upon Sally, and Sally alone, that
+nothing was to be allowed to baulk him; and his reasoning was purely
+formal.
+
+Anniversaries having been unpropitious, he waited on till a bright day
+late in May--a day when all animate nature was fancying, in its trusting,
+foolish way, that it was going to bask out of doors for evermore.  As he
+rode through Long-Ash Lane it was scarce recognizable as the track of his
+two winter journeys.  No mistake could be made now, even with his eyes
+shut.  The cuckoo's note was at its best, between April tentativeness and
+midsummer decrepitude, and the reptiles in the sun behaved as winningly
+as kittens on a hearth.  Though afternoon, and about the same time as on
+the last occasion, it was broad day and sunshine when he entered Hintock,
+and the details of the Knap dairy-house were visible far up the road.  He
+saw Sally in the garden, and was set vibrating.  He had first intended to
+go on to the inn; but 'No,' he said; 'I'll tie my horse to the garden-
+gate.  If all goes well it can soon be taken round: if not, I mount and
+ride away'
+
+The tall shade of the horseman darkened the room in which Mrs. Hall sat,
+and made her start, for he had ridden by a side path to the top of the
+slope, where riders seldom came.  In a few seconds he was in the garden
+with Sally.
+
+Five--ay, three minutes--did the business at the back of that row of
+bees.  Though spring had come, and heavenly blue consecrated the scene,
+Darton succeeded not.  'No,' said Sally firmly.  'I will never, never
+marry you, Mr. Darton.  I would have done it once; but now I never can.'
+
+'But!'--implored Mr. Darton.  And with a burst of real eloquence he went
+on to declare all sorts of things that he would do for her.  He would
+drive her to see her mother every week--take her to London--settle so
+much money upon her--Heaven knows what he did not promise, suggest, and
+tempt her with.  But it availed nothing.  She interposed with a stout
+negative, which closed the course of his argument like an iron gate
+across a highway.  Darton paused.
+
+'Then,' said he simply, 'you hadn't heard of my supposed failure when you
+declined last time?'
+
+'I had not,' she said.  'But if I had 'twould have been all the same.'
+
+'And 'tis not because of any soreness from my slighting you years ago?'
+
+'No.  That soreness is long past.'
+
+'Ah--then you despise me, Sally?'
+
+'No,' she slowly answered.  'I don't altogether despise you.  I don't
+think you quite such a hero as I once did--that's all.  The truth is, I
+am happy enough as I am; and I don't mean to marry at all.  Now, may I
+ask a favour, sir?'  She spoke with an ineffable charm, which, whenever
+he thought of it, made him curse his loss of her as long as he lived.
+
+'To any extent.'
+
+'Please do not put this question to me any more.  Friends as long as you
+like, but lovers and married never.'
+
+'I never will,' said Darton.  'Not if I live a hundred years.'
+
+And he never did.  That he had worn out his welcome in her heart was only
+too plain.
+
+When his step-children had grown up, and were placed out in life, all
+communication between Darton and the Hall family ceased.  It was only by
+chance that, years after, he learnt that Sally, notwithstanding the
+solicitations her attractions drew down upon her, had refused several
+offers of marriage, and steadily adhered to her purpose of leading a
+single life
+
+May 1884.
+
+
+
+
+THE DISTRACTED PREACHER
+
+
+CHAPTER I--HOW HIS COLD WAS CURED
+
+
+Something delayed the arrival of the Wesleyan minister, and a young man
+came temporarily in his stead.  It was on the thirteenth of January 183-
+that Mr. Stockdale, the young man in question, made his humble entry into
+the village, unknown, and almost unseen.  But when those of the
+inhabitants who styled themselves of his connection became acquainted
+with him, they were rather pleased with the substitute than otherwise,
+though he had scarcely as yet acquired ballast of character sufficient to
+steady the consciences of the hundred-and-forty Methodists of pure blood
+who, at this time, lived in Nether-Moynton, and to give in addition
+supplementary support to the mixed race which went to church in the
+morning and chapel in the evening, or when there was a tea--as many as a
+hundred-and-ten people more, all told, and including the parish-clerk in
+the winter-time, when it was too dark for the vicar to observe who passed
+up the street at seven o'clock--which, to be just to him, he was never
+anxious to do.
+
+It was owing to this overlapping of creeds that the celebrated population-
+puzzle arose among the denser gentry of the district around
+Nether-Moynton: how could it be that a parish containing fifteen score of
+strong full-grown Episcopalians, and nearly thirteen score of
+well-matured Dissenters, numbered barely two-and-twenty score adults in
+all?
+
+The young man being personally interesting, those with whom he came in
+contact were content to waive for a while the graver question of his
+sufficiency.  It is said that at this time of his life his eyes were
+affectionate, though without a ray of levity; that his hair was curly,
+and his figure tall; that he was, in short, a very lovable youth, who won
+upon his female hearers as soon as they saw and heard him, and caused
+them to say, 'Why didn't we know of this before he came, that we might
+have gied him a warmer welcome!'
+
+The fact was that, knowing him to be only provisionally selected, and
+expecting nothing remarkable in his person or doctrine, they and the rest
+of his flock in Nether-Moynton had felt almost as indifferent about his
+advent as if they had been the soundest church-going parishioners in the
+country, and he their true and appointed parson.  Thus when Stockdale set
+foot in the place nobody had secured a lodging for him, and though his
+journey had given him a bad cold in the head, he was forced to attend to
+that business himself.  On inquiry he learnt that the only possible
+accommodation in the village would be found at the house of one Mrs.
+Lizzy Newberry, at the upper end of the street.
+
+It was a youth who gave this information, and Stockdale asked him who
+Mrs. Newberry might be.
+
+The boy said that she was a widow-woman, who had got no husband, because
+he was dead.  Mr. Newberry, he added, had been a well-to-do man enough,
+as the saying was, and a farmer; but he had gone off in a decline.  As
+regarded Mrs. Newberry's serious side, Stockdale gathered that she was
+one of the trimmers who went to church and chapel both.
+
+'I'll go there,' said Stockdale, feeling that, in the absence of purely
+sectarian lodgings, he could do no better.
+
+'She's a little particular, and won't hae gover'ment folks, or curates,
+or the pa'son's friends, or such like,' said the lad dubiously.
+
+'Ah, that may be a promising sign: I'll call.  Or no; just you go up and
+ask first if she can find room for me.  I have to see one or two persons
+on another matter.  You will find me down at the carrier's.'
+
+In a quarter of an hour the lad came back, and said that Mrs. Newberry
+would have no objection to accommodate him, whereupon Stockdale called at
+the house.
+
+It stood within a garden-hedge, and seemed to be roomy and comfortable.
+He saw an elderly woman, with whom he made arrangements to come the same
+night, since there was no inn in the place, and he wished to house
+himself as soon as possible; the village being a local centre from which
+he was to radiate at once to the different small chapels in the
+neighbourhood.  He forthwith sent his luggage to Mrs. Newberry's from the
+carrier's, where he had taken shelter, and in the evening walked up to
+his temporary home.
+
+As he now lived there, Stockdale felt it unnecessary to knock at the
+door; and entering quietly he had the pleasure of hearing footsteps
+scudding away like mice into the back quarters.  He advanced to the
+parlour, as the front room was called, though its stone floor was
+scarcely disguised by the carpet, which only over-laid the trodden areas,
+leaving sandy deserts under the bulging mouldings of the table-legs,
+playing with brass furniture.  But the room looked snug and cheerful.  The
+firelight shone out brightly, trembling on the knobs and handles, and
+lurking in great strength on the under surface of the chimney-piece.  A
+deep arm-chair, covered with horsehair, and studded with a countless
+throng of brass nails, was pulled up on one side of the fireplace.  The
+tea-things were on the table, the teapot cover was open, and a little
+hand-bell had been laid at that precise point towards which a person
+seated in the great chair might be expected instinctively to stretch his
+hand.
+
+Stockdale sat down, not objecting to his experience of the room thus far,
+and began his residence by tinkling the bell.  A little girl crept in at
+the summons, and made tea for him.  Her name, she said, was Marther
+Sarer, and she lived out there, nodding towards the road and village
+generally.  Before Stockdale had got far with his meal, a tap sounded on
+the door behind him, and on his telling the inquirer to come in, a rustle
+of garments caused him to turn his head.  He saw before him a fine and
+extremely well-made young woman, with dark hair, a wide, sensible,
+beautiful forehead, eyes that warmed him before he knew it, and a mouth
+that was in itself a picture to all appreciative souls.
+
+'Can I get you anything else for tea?' she said, coming forward a step or
+two, an expression of liveliness on her features, and her hand waving the
+door by its edge.
+
+'Nothing, thank you,' said Stockdale, thinking less of what he replied
+than of what might be her relation to the household.
+
+'You are quite sure?' said the young woman, apparently aware that he had
+not considered his answer.
+
+He conscientiously examined the tea-things, and found them all there.
+'Quite sure, Miss Newberry,' he said.
+
+'It is Mrs. Newberry,' she said.  'Lizzy Newberry, I used to be Lizzy
+Simpkins.'
+
+'O, I beg your pardon, Mrs. Newberry.'  And before he had occasion to say
+more she left the room.
+
+Stockdale remained in some doubt till Martha Sarah came to clear the
+table.  'Whose house is this, my little woman,' said he.
+
+'Mrs. Lizzy Newberry's, sir.'
+
+'Then Mrs. Newberry is not the old lady I saw this afternoon?'
+
+'No.  That's Mrs. Newberry's mother.  It was Mrs. Newberry who comed in
+to you just by now, because she wanted to see if you was good-looking.'
+
+Later in the evening, when Stockdale was about to begin supper, she came
+again.  'I have come myself, Mr. Stockdale,' she said.  The minister
+stood up in acknowledgment of the honour.  'I am afraid little Marther
+might not make you understand.  What will you have for supper?--there's
+cold rabbit, and there's a ham uncut.'
+
+Stockdale said he could get on nicely with those viands, and supper was
+laid.  He had no more than cut a slice when tap-tap came to the door
+again.  The minister had already learnt that this particular rhythm in
+taps denoted the fingers of his enkindling landlady, and the doomed young
+fellow buried his first mouthful under a look of receptive blandness.
+
+'We have a chicken in the house, Mr. Stockdale--I quite forgot to mention
+it just now.  Perhaps you would like Marther Sarer to bring it up?'
+
+Stockdale had advanced far enough in the art of being a young man to say
+that he did not want the chicken, unless she brought it up herself; but
+when it was uttered he blushed at the daring gallantry of the speech,
+perhaps a shade too strong for a serious man and a minister.  In three
+minutes the chicken appeared, but, to his great surprise, only in the
+hands of Martha Sarah.  Stockdale was disappointed, which perhaps it was
+intended that he should be.
+
+He had finished supper, and was not in the least anticipating Mrs.
+Newberry again that night, when she tapped and entered as before.
+Stockdale's gratified look told that she had lost nothing by not
+appearing when expected.  It happened that the cold in the head from
+which the young man suffered had increased with the approach of night,
+and before she had spoken he was seized with a violent fit of sneezing
+which he could not anyhow repress.
+
+Mrs. Newberry looked full of pity.  'Your cold is very bad to-night, Mr.
+Stockdale.'
+
+Stockdale replied that it was rather troublesome.
+
+'And I've a good mind'--she added archly, looking at the cheerless glass
+of water on the table, which the abstemious minister was going to drink.
+
+'Yes, Mrs. Newberry?'
+
+'I've a good mind that you should have something more likely to cure it
+than that cold stuff.'
+
+'Well,' said Stockdale, looking down at the glass, 'as there is no inn
+here, and nothing better to be got in the village, of course it will do.'
+
+To this she replied, 'There is something better, not far off, though not
+in the house.  I really think you must try it, or you may be ill.  Yes,
+Mr. Stockdale, you shall.'  She held up her finger, seeing that he was
+about to speak.  'Don't ask what it is; wait, and you shall see.'
+
+Lizzy went away, and Stockdale waited in a pleasant mood.  Presently she
+returned with her bonnet and cloak on, saying, 'I am so sorry, but you
+must help me to get it.  Mother has gone to bed.  Will you wrap yourself
+up, and come this way, and please bring that cup with you?'
+
+Stockdale, a lonely young fellow, who had for weeks felt a great craving
+for somebody on whom to throw away superfluous interest, and even
+tenderness, was not sorry to join her; and followed his guide through the
+back door, across the garden, to the bottom, where the boundary was a
+wall.  This wall was low, and beyond it Stockdale discerned in the night
+shades several grey headstones, and the outlines of the church roof and
+tower.
+
+'It is easy to get up this way,' she said, stepping upon a bank which
+abutted on the wall; then putting her foot on the top of the stonework,
+and descending a spring inside, where the ground was much higher, as is
+the manner of graveyards to be.  Stockdale did the same, and followed her
+in the dusk across the irregular ground till they came to the tower door,
+which, when they had entered, she softly closed behind them.
+
+'You can keep a secret?' she said, in a musical voice.
+
+'Like an iron chest!' said he fervently.
+
+Then from under her cloak she produced a small lighted lantern, which the
+minister had not noticed that she carried at all.  The light showed them
+to be close to the singing-gallery stairs, under which lay a heap of
+lumber of all sorts, but consisting mostly of decayed framework, pews,
+panels, and pieces of flooring, that from time to time had been removed
+from their original fixings in the body of the edifice and replaced by
+new.
+
+'Perhaps you will drag some of those boards aside?' she said, holding the
+lantern over her head to light him better.  'Or will you take the lantern
+while I move them?'
+
+'I can manage it,' said the young man, and acting as she ordered, he
+uncovered, to his surprise, a row of little barrels bound with wood
+hoops, each barrel being about as large as the nave of a heavy waggon-
+wheel.
+
+When they were laid open Lizzy fixed her eyes on him, as if she wondered
+what he would say.
+
+'You know what they are?' she asked, finding that he did not speak.
+
+'Yes, barrels,' said Stockdale simply.  He was an inland man, the son of
+highly respectable parents, and brought up with a single eye to the
+ministry; and the sight suggested nothing beyond the fact that such
+articles were there.
+
+'You are quite right, they are barrels,' she said, in an emphatic tone of
+candour that was not without a touch of irony.
+
+Stockdale looked at her with an eye of sudden misgiving.  'Not smugglers'
+liquor?' he said.
+
+'Yes,' said she.  'They are tubs of spirit that have accidentally come
+over in the dark from France.'
+
+In Nether-Moynton and its vicinity at this date people always smiled at
+the sort of sin called in the outside world illicit trading; and these
+little kegs of gin and brandy were as well known to the inhabitants as
+turnips.  So that Stockdale's innocent ignorance, and his look of alarm
+when he guessed the sinister mystery, seemed to strike Lizzy first as
+ludicrous, and then as very awkward for the good impression that she
+wished to produce upon him.
+
+'Smuggling is carried on here by some of the people,' she said in a
+gentle, apologetic voice.  'It has been their practice for generations,
+and they think it no harm.  Now, will you roll out one of the tubs?'
+
+'What to do with it?' said the minister.
+
+'To draw a little from it to cure your cold,' she answered.  'It is so
+'nation strong that it drives away that sort of thing in a jiffy.  O, it
+is all right about our taking it.  I may have what I like; the owner of
+the tubs says so.  I ought to have had some in the house, and then I
+shouldn't ha' been put to this trouble; but I drink none myself, and so I
+often forget to keep it indoors.'
+
+'You are allowed to help yourself, I suppose, that you may not inform
+where their hiding-place is?'
+
+'Well, no; not that particularly; but I may take any if I want it.  So
+help yourself.'
+
+'I will, to oblige you, since you have a right to it,' murmured the
+minister; and though he was not quite satisfied with his part in the
+performance, he rolled one of the 'tubs' out from the corner into the
+middle of the tower floor.  'How do you wish me to get it out--with a
+gimlet, I suppose?'
+
+'No, I'll show you,' said his interesting companion; and she held up with
+her other hand a shoemaker's awl and a hammer.  'You must never do these
+things with a gimlet, because the wood-dust gets in; and when the buyers
+pour out the brandy that would tell them that the tub had been broached.
+An awl makes no dust, and the hole nearly closes up again.  Now tap one
+of the hoops forward.'
+
+Stockdale took the hammer and did so.
+
+'Now make the hole in the part that was covered by the hoop.'
+
+He made the hole as directed.  'It won't run out,' he said.
+
+'O yes it will,' said she.  'Take the tub between your knees, and squeeze
+the heads; and I'll hold the cup.'
+
+Stockdale obeyed; and the pressure taking effect upon the tub, which
+seemed, to be thin, the spirit spirted out in a stream.  When the cup was
+full he ceased pressing, and the flow immediately stopped.  'Now we must
+fill up the keg with water,' said Lizzy, 'or it will cluck like forty
+hens when it is handled, and show that 'tis not full.'
+
+'But they tell you you may take it?'
+
+'Yes, the smugglers: but the buyers must not know that the smugglers have
+been kind to me at their expense.'
+
+'I see,' said Stockdale doubtfully.  'I much question the honesty of this
+proceeding.'
+
+By her direction he held the tub with the hole upwards, and while he went
+through the process of alternately pressing and ceasing to press, she
+produced a bottle of water, from which she took mouthfuls, conveying each
+to the keg by putting her pretty lips to the hole, where it was sucked in
+at each recovery of the cask from pressure.  When it was again full he
+plugged the hole, knocked the hoop down to its place, and buried the tub
+in the lumber as before.
+
+'Aren't the smugglers afraid that you will tell?' he asked, as they
+recrossed the churchyard.
+
+'O no; they are not afraid of that.  I couldn't do such a thing.'
+
+'They have put you into a very awkward corner,' said Stockdale
+emphatically.  'You must, of course, as an honest person, sometimes feel
+that it is your duty to inform--really you must.'
+
+'Well, I have never particularly felt it as a duty; and, besides, my
+first husband--'  She stopped, and there was some confusion in her voice.
+Stockdale was so honest and unsophisticated that he did not at once
+discern why she paused: but at last he did perceive that the words were a
+slip, and that no woman would have uttered 'first husband' by accident
+unless she had thought pretty frequently of a second.  He felt for her
+confusion, and allowed her time to recover and proceed.  'My husband,'
+she said, in a self-corrected tone, 'used to know of their doings, and so
+did my father, and kept the secret.  I cannot inform, in fact, against
+anybody.'
+
+'I see the hardness of it,' he continued, like a man who looked far into
+the moral of things.  'And it is very cruel that you should be tossed and
+tantalized between your memories and your conscience.  I do hope, Mrs.
+Newberry, that you will soon see your way out of this unpleasant
+position.'
+
+'Well, I don't just now,' she murmured.
+
+By this time they had passed over the wall and entered the house, where
+she brought him a glass and hot water, and left him to his own
+reflections.  He looked after her vanishing form, asking himself whether
+he, as a respectable man, and a minister, and a shining light, even
+though as yet only of the halfpenny-candle sort, were quite justified in
+doing this thing.  A sneeze settled the question; and he found that when
+the fiery liquor was lowered by the addition of twice or thrice the
+quantity of water, it was one of the prettiest cures for a cold in the
+head that he had ever known, particularly at this chilly time of the
+year.
+
+Stockdale sat in the deep chair about twenty minutes sipping and
+meditating, till he at length took warmer views of things, and longed for
+the morrow, when he would see Mrs. Newberry again.  He then felt that,
+though chronologically at a short distance, it would in an emotional
+sense be very long before to-morrow came, and walked restlessly round the
+room.  His eye was attracted by a framed and glazed sampler in which a
+running ornament of fir-trees and peacocks surrounded the following
+pretty bit of sentiment:-
+
+   'Rose-leaves smell when roses thrive,
+   Here's my work while I'm alive;
+   Rose-leaves smell when shrunk and shed,
+   Here's my work when I am dead.
+
+   'Lizzy Simpkins.  Fear God.  Honour the King.
+
+   'Aged 11 years.
+
+''Tis hers,' he said to himself.  'Heavens, how I like that name!'
+
+Before he had done thinking that no other name from Abigail to Zenobia
+would have suited his young landlady so well, tap-tap came again upon the
+door; and the minister started as her face appeared yet another time,
+looking so disinterested that the most ingenious would have refrained
+from asserting that she had come to affect his feelings by her seductive
+eyes.
+
+'Would you like a fire in your room, Mr. Stockdale, on account of your
+cold?'
+
+The minister, being still a little pricked in the conscience for
+countenancing her in watering the spirits, saw here a way to
+self-chastisement.  'No, I thank you,' he said firmly; 'it is not
+necessary.  I have never been used to one in my life, and it would be
+giving way to luxury too far.'
+
+'Then I won't insist,' she said, and disconcerted him by vanishing
+instantly.
+
+Wondering if she was vexed by his refusal, he wished that he had chosen
+to have a fire, even though it should have scorched him out of bed and
+endangered his self-discipline for a dozen days.  However, he consoled
+himself with what was in truth a rare consolation for a budding lover,
+that he was under the same roof with Lizzy; her guest, in fact, to take a
+poetical view of the term lodger; and that he would certainly see her on
+the morrow.
+
+The morrow came, and Stockdale rose early, his cold quite gone.  He had
+never in his life so longed for the breakfast hour as he did that day,
+and punctually at eight o'clock, after a short walk, to reconnoitre the
+premises, he re-entered the door of his dwelling.  Breakfast passed, and
+Martha Sarah attended, but nobody came voluntarily as on the night before
+to inquire if there were other wants which he had not mentioned, and
+which she would attempt to gratify.  He was disappointed, and went out,
+hoping to see her at dinner.  Dinner time came; he sat down to the meal,
+finished it, lingered on for a whole hour, although two new teachers were
+at that moment waiting at the chapel-door to speak to him by appointment.
+It was useless to wait longer, and he slowly went his way down the lane,
+cheered by the thought that, after all, he would see her in the evening,
+and perhaps engage again in the delightful tub-broaching in the
+neighbouring church tower, which proceeding he resolved to render more
+moral by steadfastly insisting that no water should be introduced to fill
+up, though the tub should cluck like all the hens in Christendom.  But
+nothing could disguise the fact that it was a queer business; and his
+countenance fell when he thought how much more his mind was interested in
+that matter than in his serious duties.
+
+However, compunction vanished with the decline of day.  Night came, and
+his tea and supper; but no Lizzy Newberry, and no sweet temptations.  At
+last the minister could bear it no longer, and said to his quaint little
+attendant, 'Where is Mrs. Newberry to-day?' judiciously handing a penny
+as he spoke.
+
+'She's busy,' said Martha.
+
+'Anything serious happened?' he asked, handing another penny, and
+revealing yet additional pennies in the background.
+
+'O no--nothing at all!' said she, with breathless confidence.  'Nothing
+ever happens to her.  She's only biding upstairs in bed because 'tis her
+way sometimes.'
+
+Being a young man of some honour, he would not question further, and
+assuming that Lizzy must have a bad headache, or other slight ailment, in
+spite of what the girl had said, he went to bed dissatisfied, not even
+setting eyes on old Mrs. Simpkins.  'I said last night that I should see
+her to-morrow,' he reflected; 'but that was not to be!'
+
+Next day he had better fortune, or worse, meeting her at the foot of the
+stairs in the morning, and being favoured by a visit or two from her
+during the day--once for the purpose of making kindly inquiries about his
+comfort, as on the first evening, and at another time to place a bunch of
+winter-violets on his table, with a promise to renew them when they
+drooped.  On these occasions there was something in her smile which
+showed how conscious she was of the effect she produced, though it must
+be said that it was rather a humorous than a designing consciousness, and
+savoured more of pride than of vanity.
+
+As for Stockdale, he clearly perceived that he possessed unlimited
+capacity for backsliding, and wished that tutelary saints were not denied
+to Dissenters.  He set a watch upon his tongue and eyes for the space of
+one hour and a half, after which he found it was useless to struggle
+further, and gave himself up to the situation.  'The other minister will
+be here in a month,' he said to himself when sitting over the fire.  'Then
+I shall be off, and she will distract my mind no more! . . . And then,
+shall I go on living by myself for ever?  No; when my two years of
+probation are finished, I shall have a furnished house to live in, with a
+varnished door and a brass knocker; and I'll march straight back to her,
+and ask her flat, as soon as the last plate is on the dresser!
+
+Thus a titillating fortnight was passed by young Stockdale, during which
+time things proceeded much as such matters have done ever since the
+beginning of history.  He saw the object of attachment several times one
+day, did not see her at all the next, met her when he least expected to
+do so, missed her when hints and signs as to where she should be at a
+given hour almost amounted to an appointment.  This mild coquetry was
+perhaps fair enough under the circumstances of their being so closely
+lodged, and Stockdale put up with it as philosophically as he was able.
+Being in her own house, she could, after vexing him or disappointing him
+of her presence, easily win him back by suddenly surrounding him with
+those little attentions which her position as his landlady put it in her
+power to bestow.  When he had waited indoors half the day to see her, and
+on finding that she would not be seen, had gone off in a huff to the
+dreariest and dampest walk he could discover, she would restore
+equilibrium in the evening with 'Mr. Stockdale, I have fancied you must
+feel draught o' nights from your bedroom window, and so I have been
+putting up thicker curtains this afternoon while you were out;' or, 'I
+noticed that you sneezed twice again this morning, Mr. Stockdale.  Depend
+upon it that cold is hanging about you yet; I am sure it is--I have
+thought of it continually; and you must let me make a posset for you.'
+
+Sometimes in coming home he found his sitting-room rearranged, chairs
+placed where the table had stood, and the table ornamented with the few
+fresh flowers and leaves that could be obtained at this season, so as to
+add a novelty to the room.  At times she would be standing on a chair
+outside the house, trying to nail up a branch of the monthly rose which
+the winter wind had blown down; and of course he stepped forward to
+assist her, when their hands got mixed in passing the shreds and nails.
+Thus they became friends again after a disagreement.  She would utter on
+these occasions some pretty and deprecatory remark on the necessity of
+her troubling him anew; and he would straightway say that he would do a
+hundred times as much for her if she should so require.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II--HOW HE SAW TWO OTHER MEN
+
+
+Matters being in this advancing state, Stockdale was rather surprised one
+cloudy evening, while sitting in his room, at hearing her speak in low
+tones of expostulation to some one at the door.  It was nearly dark, but
+the shutters were not yet closed, nor the candles lighted; and Stockdale
+was tempted to stretch his head towards the window.  He saw outside the
+door a young man in clothes of a whitish colour, and upon reflection
+judged their wearer to be the well-built and rather handsome miller who
+lived below.  The miller's voice was alternately low and firm, and
+sometimes it reached the level of positive entreaty; but what the words
+were Stockdale could in no way hear.
+
+Before the colloquy had ended, the minister's attention was attracted by
+a second incident.  Opposite Lizzy's home grew a clump of laurels,
+forming a thick and permanent shade.  One of the laurel boughs now
+quivered against the light background of sky, and in a moment the head of
+a man peered out, and remained still.  He seemed to be also much
+interested in the conversation at the door, and was plainly lingering
+there to watch and listen.  Had Stockdale stood in any other relation to
+Lizzy than that of a lover, he might have gone out and investigated the
+meaning of this: but being as yet but an unprivileged ally, he did
+nothing more than stand up and show himself against the firelight,
+whereupon the listener disappeared, and Lizzy and the miller spoke in
+lower tones.
+
+Stockdale was made so uneasy by the circumstance, that as soon as the
+miller was gone, he said, 'Mrs. Newberry, are you aware that you were
+watched just now, and your conversation heard?'
+
+'When?' she said.
+
+'When you were talking to that miller.  A man was looking from the laurel-
+tree as jealously as if he could have eaten you.'
+
+She showed more concern than the trifling event seemed to demand, and he
+added, 'Perhaps you were talking of things you did not wish to be
+overheard?'
+
+'I was talking only on business,' she said.
+
+'Lizzy, be frank!' said the young man.  'If it was only on business, why
+should anybody wish to listen to you?'
+
+She looked curiously at him.  'What else do you think it could be, then?'
+
+'Well--the only talk between a young woman and man that is likely to
+amuse an eavesdropper.'
+
+'Ah yes,' she said, smiling in spite of her preoccupation.  'Well, my
+cousin Owlett has spoken to me about matrimony, every now and then,
+that's true; but he was not speaking of it then.  I wish he had been
+speaking of it, with all my heart.  It would have been much less serious
+for me.'
+
+'O Mrs. Newberry!'
+
+'It would.  Not that I should ha' chimed in with him, of course.  I wish
+it for other reasons.  I am glad, Mr. Stockdale, that you have told me of
+that listener.  It is a timely warning, and I must see my cousin again.'
+
+'But don't go away till I have spoken,' said the minister.  'I'll out
+with it at once, and make no more ado.  Let it be Yes or No between us,
+Lizzy; please do!'  And he held out his hand, in which she freely allowed
+her own to rest, but without speaking.
+
+'You mean Yes by that?' he asked, after waiting a while.
+
+'You may be my sweetheart, if you will.'
+
+'Why not say at once you will wait for me until I have a house and can
+come back to marry you.'
+
+'Because I am thinking--thinking of something else,' she said with
+embarrassment.  'It all comes upon me at once, and I must settle one
+thing at a time.'
+
+'At any rate, dear Lizzy, you can assure me that the miller shall not be
+allowed to speak to you except on business? You have never directly
+encouraged him?'
+
+She parried the question by saying, 'You see, he and his party have been
+in the habit of leaving things on my premises sometimes, and as I have
+not denied him, it makes him rather forward.'
+
+'Things--what things?'
+
+'Tubs--they are called Things here.'
+
+'But why don't you deny him, my dear Lizzy?'
+
+'I cannot well.'
+
+'You are too timid.  It is unfair of him to impose so upon you, and get
+your good name into danger by his smuggling tricks.  Promise me that the
+next time he wants to leave his tubs here you will let me roll them into
+the street?'
+
+She shook her head.  'I would not venture to offend the neighbours so
+much as that,' said she, 'or do anything that would be so likely to put
+poor Owlett into the hands of the excisemen.'
+
+Stockdale sighed, and said that he thought hers a mistaken generosity
+when it extended to assisting those who cheated the king of his dues.  'At
+any rate, you will let me make him keep his distance as your lover, and
+tell him flatly that you are not for him?'
+
+'Please not, at present,' she said.  'I don't wish to offend my old
+neighbours.  It is not only Owlett who is concerned.'
+
+'This is too bad,' said Stockdale impatiently.
+
+'On my honour, I won't encourage him as my lover,' Lizzy answered
+earnestly.  'A reasonable man will be satisfied with that.'
+
+'Well, so I am,' said Stockdale, his countenance clearing.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III--THE MYSTERIOUS GREATCOAT
+
+
+Stockdale now began to notice more particularly a feature in the life of
+his fair landlady, which he had casually observed but scarcely ever
+thought of before.  It was that she was markedly irregular in her hours
+of rising.  For a week or two she would be tolerably punctual, reaching
+the ground-floor within a few minutes of half-past seven.  Then suddenly
+she would not be visible till twelve at noon, perhaps for three or four
+days in succession; and twice he had certain proof that she did not leave
+her room till half-past three in the afternoon.  The second time that
+this extreme lateness came under his notice was on a day when he had
+particularly wished to consult with her about his future movements; and
+he concluded, as he always had done, that she had a cold, headache, or
+other ailment, unless she had kept herself invisible to avoid meeting and
+talking to him, which he could hardly believe.  The former supposition
+was disproved, however, by her innocently saying, some days later, when
+they were speaking on a question of health, that she had never had a
+moment's heaviness, headache, or illness of any kind since the previous
+January twelvemonth.
+
+'I am glad to hear it,' said he.  'I thought quite otherwise.'
+
+'What, do I look sickly?' she asked, turning up her face to show the
+impossibility of his gazing on it and holding such a belief for a moment.
+
+'Not at all; I merely thought so from your being sometimes obliged to
+keep your room through the best part of the day.'
+
+'O, as for that--it means nothing,' she murmured, with a look which some
+might have called cold, and which was the worst look that he liked to see
+upon her.  'It is pure sleepiness, Mr. Stockdale.'
+
+'Never!'
+
+'It is, I tell you.  When I stay in my room till half-past three in the
+afternoon, you may always be sure that I slept soundly till three, or I
+shouldn't have stayed there.'
+
+'It is dreadful,' said Stockdale, thinking of the disastrous effects of
+such indulgence upon the household of a minister, should it become a
+habit of everyday occurrence.
+
+'But then,' she said, divining his good and prescient thoughts, 'it only
+happens when I stay awake all night.  I don't go to sleep till five or
+six in the morning sometimes.'
+
+'Ah, that's another matter,' said Stockdale.  'Sleeplessness to such an
+alarming extent is real illness.  Have you spoken to a doctor?'
+
+'O no--there is no need for doing that--it is all natural to me.'  And
+she went away without further remark.
+
+Stockdale might have waited a long time to know the real cause of her
+sleeplessness, had it not happened that one dark night he was sitting in
+his bedroom jotting down notes for a sermon, which occupied him
+perfunctorily for a considerable time after the other members of the
+household had retired.  He did not get to bed till one o'clock.  Before
+he had fallen asleep he heard a knocking at the front door, first rather
+timidly performed, and then louder.  Nobody answered it, and the person
+knocked again.  As the house still remained undisturbed, Stockdale got
+out of bed, went to his window, which overlooked the door, and opening
+it, asked who was there.
+
+A young woman's voice replied that Susan Wallis was there, and that she
+had come to ask if Mrs. Newberry could give her some mustard to make a
+plaster with, as her father was taken very ill on the chest.
+
+The minister, having neither bell nor servant, was compelled to act in
+person.  'I will call Mrs. Newberry,' he said.  Partly dressing himself;
+he went along the passage and tapped at Lizzy's door.  She did not
+answer, and, thinking of her erratic habits in the matter of sleep, he
+thumped the door persistently, when he discovered, by its moving ajar
+under his knocking, that it had only been gently pushed to.  As there was
+now a sufficient entry for the voice, he knocked no longer, but said in
+firm tones, 'Mrs. Newberry, you are wanted.'
+
+The room was quite silent; not a breathing, not a rustle, came from any
+part of it.  Stockdale now sent a positive shout through the open space
+of the door: 'Mrs. Newberry!'--still no answer, or movement of any kind
+within.  Then he heard sounds from the opposite room, that of Lizzy's
+mother, as if she had been aroused by his uproar though Lizzy had not,
+and was dressing herself hastily.  Stockdale softly closed the younger
+woman's door and went on to the other, which was opened by Mrs. Simpkins
+before he could reach it.  She was in her ordinary clothes, and had a
+light in her hand.
+
+'What's the person calling about?' she said in alarm.
+
+Stockdale told the girl's errand, adding seriously, 'I cannot wake Mrs.
+Newberry.'
+
+'It is no matter,' said her mother.  'I can let the girl have what she
+wants as well as my daughter.'  And she came out of the room and went
+downstairs.
+
+Stockdale retired towards his own apartment, saying, however, to Mrs.
+Simpkins from the landing, as if on second thoughts, 'I suppose there is
+nothing the matter with Mrs. Newberry, that I could not wake her?'
+
+'O no,' said the old lady hastily.  'Nothing at all.'
+
+Still the minister was not satisfied.  'Will you go in and see?' he said.
+'I should be much more at ease.'
+
+Mrs. Simpkins returned up the staircase, went to her daughter's room, and
+came out again almost instantly.  'There is nothing at all the matter
+with Lizzy,' she said; and descended again to attend to the applicant,
+who, having seen the light, had remained quiet during this interval.
+
+Stockdale went into his room and lay down as before.  He heard Lizzy's
+mother open the front door, admit the girl, and then the murmured
+discourse of both as they went to the store-cupboard for the medicament
+required.  The girl departed, the door was fastened, Mrs. Simpkins came
+upstairs, and the house was again in silence.  Still the minister did not
+fall asleep.  He could not get rid of a singular suspicion, which was all
+the more harassing in being, if true, the most unaccountable thing within
+his experience.  That Lizzy Newberry was in her bedroom when he made such
+a clamour at the door he could not possibly convince himself;
+notwithstanding that he had heard her come upstairs at the usual time, go
+into her chamber, and shut herself up in the usual way.  Yet all reason
+was so much against her being elsewhere, that he was constrained to go
+back again to the unlikely theory of a heavy sleep, though he had heard
+neither breath nor movement during a shouting and knocking loud enough to
+rouse the Seven Sleepers.
+
+Before coming to any positive conclusion he fell asleep himself, and did
+not awake till day.  He saw nothing of Mrs. Newberry in the morning,
+before he went out to meet the rising sun, as he liked to do when the
+weather was fine; but as this was by no means unusual, he took no notice
+of it.  At breakfast-time he knew that she was not far off by hearing her
+in the kitchen, and though he saw nothing of her person, that back
+apartment being rigorously closed against his eyes, she seemed to be
+talking, ordering, and bustling about among the pots and skimmers in so
+ordinary a manner, that there was no reason for his wasting more time in
+fruitless surmise.
+
+The minister suffered from these distractions, and his extemporized
+sermons were not improved thereby.  Already he often said Romans for
+Corinthians in the pulpit, and gave out hymns in strange cramped metres,
+that hitherto had always been skipped, because the congregation could not
+raise a tune to fit them.  He fully resolved that as soon as his few
+weeks of stay approached their end he would cut the matter short, and
+commit himself by proposing a definite engagement, repenting at leisure
+if necessary.
+
+With this end in view, he suggested to her on the evening after her
+mysterious sleep that they should take a walk together just before dark,
+the latter part of the proposition being introduced that they might
+return home unseen.  She consented to go; and away they went over a
+stile, to a shrouded footpath suited for the occasion.  But, in spite of
+attempts on both sides, they were unable to infuse much spirit into the
+ramble.  She looked rather paler than usual, and sometimes turned her
+head away.
+
+'Lizzy,' said Stockdale reproachfully, when they had walked in silence a
+long distance.
+
+'Yes,' said she.
+
+'You yawned--much my company is to you!'  He put it in that way, but he
+was really wondering whether her yawn could possibly have more to do with
+physical weariness from the night before than mental weariness of that
+present moment.  Lizzy apologized, and owned that she was rather tired,
+which gave him an opening for a direct question on the point; but his
+modesty would not allow him to put it to her; and he uncomfortably
+resolved to wait.
+
+The month of February passed with alternations of mud and frost, rain and
+sleet, east winds and north-westerly gales.  The hollow places in the
+ploughed fields showed themselves as pools of water, which had settled
+there from the higher levels, and had not yet found time to soak away.
+The birds began to get lively, and a single thrush came just before
+sunset each evening, and sang hopefully on the large elm-tree which stood
+nearest to Mrs. Newberry's house.  Cold blasts and brittle earth had
+given place to an oozing dampness more unpleasant in itself than frost;
+but it suggested coming spring, and its unpleasantness was of a bearable
+kind.
+
+Stockdale had been going to bring about a practical understanding with
+Lizzy at least half-a-dozen times; but, what with the mystery of her
+apparent absence on the night of the neighbour's call, and her curious
+way of lying in bed at unaccountable times, he felt a check within him
+whenever he wanted to speak out.  Thus they still lived on as
+indefinitely affianced lovers, each of whom hardly acknowledged the
+other's claim to the name of chosen one.  Stockdale persuaded himself
+that his hesitation was owing to the postponement of the ordained
+minister's arrival, and the consequent delay in his own departure, which
+did away with all necessity for haste in his courtship; but perhaps it
+was only that his discretion was reasserting itself, and telling him that
+he had better get clearer ideas of Lizzy before arranging for the grand
+contract of his life with her.  She, on her part, always seemed ready to
+be urged further on that question than he had hitherto attempted to go;
+but she was none the less independent, and to a degree which would have
+kept from flagging the passion of a far more mutable man.
+
+On the evening of the first of March he went casually into his bedroom
+about dusk, and noticed lying on a chair a greatcoat, hat, and breeches.
+Having no recollection of leaving any clothes of his own in that spot, he
+went and examined them as well as he could in the twilight, and found
+that they did not belong to him.  He paused for a moment to consider how
+they might have got there.  He was the only man living in the house; and
+yet these were not his garments, unless he had made a mistake.  No, they
+were not his.  He called up Martha Sarah.
+
+'How did these things come in my room?' he said, flinging the
+objectionable articles to the floor.
+
+Martha said that Mrs. Newberry had given them to her to brush, and that
+she had brought them up there thinking they must be Mr. Stockdale's, as
+there was no other gentleman a-lodging there.
+
+'Of course you did,' said Stockdale.  'Now take them down to your
+mis'ess, and say they are some clothes I have found here and know nothing
+about.'
+
+As the door was left open he heard the conversation downstairs.  'How
+stupid!' said Mrs. Newberry, in a tone of confusion.  'Why, Marther
+Sarer, I did not tell you to take 'em to Mr. Stockdale's room?'
+
+'I thought they must be his as they was so muddy,' said Martha humbly.
+
+'You should have left 'em on the clothes-horse,' said the young mistress
+severely; and she came upstairs with the garments on her arm, quickly
+passed Stockdale's room, and threw them forcibly into a closet at the end
+of a passage.  With this the incident ended, and the house was silent
+again.
+
+There would have been nothing remarkable in finding such clothes in a
+widow's house had they been clean; or moth-eaten, or creased, or mouldy
+from long lying by; but that they should be splashed with recent mud
+bothered Stockdale a good deal.  When a young pastor is in the aspen
+stage of attachment, and open to agitation at the merest trifles, a
+really substantial incongruity of this complexion is a disturbing thing.
+However, nothing further occurred at that time; but he became watchful,
+and given to conjecture, and was unable to forget the circumstance.
+
+One morning, on looking from his window, he saw Mrs. Newberry herself
+brushing the tails of a long drab greatcoat, which, if he mistook not,
+was the very same garment as the one that had adorned the chair of his
+room.  It was densely splashed up to the hollow of the back with
+neighbouring Nether-Moynton mud, to judge by its colour, the spots being
+distinctly visible to him in the sunlight.  The previous day or two
+having been wet, the inference was irresistible that the wearer had quite
+recently been walking some considerable distance about the lanes and
+fields.  Stockdale opened the window and looked out, and Mrs. Newberry
+turned her head.  Her face became slowly red; she never had looked
+prettier, or more incomprehensible, he waved his hand affectionately, and
+said good-morning; she answered with embarrassment, having ceased her
+occupation on the instant that she saw him, and rolled up the coat half-
+cleaned.
+
+Stockdale shut the window.  Some simple explanation of her proceeding was
+doubtless within the bounds of possibility; but he himself could not
+think of one; and he wished that she had placed the matter beyond
+conjecture by voluntarily saying something about it there and then.
+
+But, though Lizzy had not offered an explanation at the moment, the
+subject was brought forward by her at the next time of their meeting.  She
+was chatting to him concerning some other event, and remarked that it
+happened about the time when she was dusting some old clothes that had
+belonged to her poor husband.
+
+'You keep them clean out of respect to his memory?' said Stockdale
+tentatively.
+
+'I air and dust them sometimes,' she said, with the most charming
+innocence in the world.
+
+'Do dead men come out of their graves and walk in mud?' murmured the
+minister, in a cold sweat at the deception that she was practising.
+
+'What did you say?' asked Lizzy.
+
+'Nothing, nothing,' said he mournfully.  'Mere words--a phrase that will
+do for my sermon next Sunday.'  It was too plain that Lizzy was unaware
+that he had seen actual pedestrian splashes upon the skirts of the tell-
+tale overcoat, and that she imagined him to believe it had come direct
+from some chest or drawer.
+
+The aspect of the case was now considerably darker.  Stockdale was so
+much depressed by it that he did not challenge her explanation, or
+threaten to go off as a missionary to benighted islanders, or reproach
+her in any way whatever.  He simply parted from her when she had done
+talking, and lived on in perplexity, till by degrees his natural manner
+became sad and constrained.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV--AT THE TIME OF THE NEW MOON
+
+
+The following Thursday was changeable, damp, and gloomy; and the night
+threatened to be windy and unpleasant.  Stockdale had gone away to
+Knollsea in the morning, to be present at some commemoration service
+there, and on his return he was met by the attractive Lizzy in the
+passage.  Whether influenced by the tide of cheerfulness which had
+attended him that day, or by the drive through the open air, or whether
+from a natural disposition to let bygones alone, he allowed himself to be
+fascinated into forgetfulness of the greatcoat incident, and upon the
+whole passed a pleasant evening; not so much in her society as within
+sound of her voice, as she sat talking in the back parlour to her mother,
+till the latter went to bed.  Shortly after this Mrs. Newberry retired,
+and then Stockdale prepared to go upstairs himself.  But before he left
+the room he remained standing by the dying embers awhile, thinking long
+of one thing and another; and was only aroused by the flickering of his
+candle in the socket as it suddenly declined and went out.  Knowing that
+there were a tinder-box, matches, and another candle in his bedroom, he
+felt his way upstairs without a light.  On reaching his chamber he laid
+his hand on every possible ledge and corner for the tinderbox, but for a
+long time in vain.  Discovering it at length, Stockdale produced a spark,
+and was kindling the brimstone, when he fancied that he heard a movement
+in the passage.  He blew harder at the lint, the match flared up, and
+looking by aid of the blue light through the door, which had been
+standing open all this time, he was surprised to see a male figure
+vanishing round the top of the staircase with the evident intention of
+escaping unobserved.  The personage wore the clothes which Lizzy had been
+brushing, and something in the outline and gait suggested to the minister
+that the wearer was Lizzy herself.
+
+But he was not sure of this; and, greatly excited, Stockdale determined
+to investigate the mystery, and to adopt his own way for doing it.  He
+blew out the match without lighting the candle, went into the passage,
+and proceeded on tiptoe towards Lizzy's room.  A faint grey square of
+light in the direction of the chamber-window as he approached told him
+that the door was open, and at once suggested that the occupant was gone.
+He turned and brought down his fist upon the handrail of the staircase:
+'It was she; in her late husband's coat and hat!'
+
+Somewhat relieved to find that there was no intruder in the case, yet
+none the less surprised, the minister crept down the stairs, softly put
+on his boots, overcoat, and hat, and tried the front door.  It was
+fastened as usual: he went to the back door, found this unlocked, and
+emerged into the garden.  The night was mild and moonless, and rain had
+lately been falling, though for the present it had ceased.  There was a
+sudden dropping from the trees and bushes every now and then, as each
+passing wind shook their boughs.  Among these sounds Stockdale heard the
+faint fall of feet upon the road outside, and he guessed from the step
+that it was Lizzy's.  He followed the sound, and, helped by the
+circumstance of the wind blowing from the direction in which the
+pedestrian moved, he got nearly close to her, and kept there, without
+risk of being overheard.  While he thus followed her up the street or
+lane, as it might indifferently be called, there being more hedge than
+houses on either side, a figure came forward to her from one of the
+cottage doors.  Lizzy stopped; the minister stepped upon the grass and
+stopped also.
+
+'Is that Mrs. Newberry?' said the man who had come out, whose voice
+Stockdale recognized as that of one of the most devout members of his
+congregation.
+
+'It is,' said Lizzy.
+
+'I be quite ready--I've been here this quarter-hour.'
+
+'Ah, John,' said she, 'I have bad news; there is danger to-night for our
+venture.'
+
+'And d'ye tell o't!  I dreamed there might be.'
+
+'Yes,' she said hurriedly; 'and you must go at once round to where the
+chaps are waiting, and tell them they will not be wanted till to-morrow
+night at the same time.  I go to burn the lugger off.'
+
+'I will,' he said; and instantly went off through a gate, Lizzy
+continuing her way.
+
+On she tripped at a quickening pace till the lane turned into the
+turnpike-road, which she crossed, and got into the track for Ringsworth.
+Here she ascended the hill without the least hesitation, passed the
+lonely hamlet of Holworth, and went down the vale on the other side.
+Stockdale had never taken any extensive walks in this direction, but he
+was aware that if she persisted in her course much longer she would draw
+near to the coast, which was here between two and three miles distant
+from Nether-Moynton; and as it had been about a quarter-past eleven
+o'clock when they set out, her intention seemed to be to reach the shore
+about midnight.
+
+Lizzy soon ascended a small mound, which Stockdale at the same time
+adroitly skirted on the left; and a dull monotonous roar burst upon his
+ear.  The hillock was about fifty yards from the top of the cliffs, and
+by day it apparently commanded a full view of the bay.  There was light
+enough in the sky to show her disguised figure against it when she
+reached the top, where she paused, and afterwards sat down.  Stockdale,
+not wishing on any account to alarm her at this moment, yet desirous of
+being near her, sank upon his hands and knees, crept a little higher up,
+and there stayed still.
+
+The wind was chilly, the ground damp, and his position one in which he
+did not care to remain long.  However, before he had decided to leave it,
+the young man heard voices behind him.  What they signified he did not
+know; but, fearing that Lizzy was in danger, he was about to run forward
+and warn her that she might be seen, when she crept to the shelter of a
+little bush which maintained a precarious existence in that exposed spot;
+and her form was absorbed in its dark and stunted outline as if she had
+become part of it.  She had evidently heard the men as well as he.  They
+passed near him, talking in loud and careless tones, which could be heard
+above the uninterrupted washings of the sea, and which suggested that
+they were not engaged in any business at their own risk.  This proved to
+be the fact: some of their words floated across to him, and caused him to
+forget at once the coldness of his situation.
+
+'What's the vessel?'
+
+'A lugger, about fifty tons.'
+
+'From Cherbourg, I suppose?'
+
+'Yes, 'a b'lieve.'
+
+'But it don't all belong to Owlett?'
+
+'O no.  He's only got a share.  There's another or two in it--a farmer
+and such like, but the names I don't know.'
+
+The voices died away, and the heads and shoulders of the men diminished
+towards the cliff, and dropped out of sight.
+
+'My darling has been tempted to buy a share by that unbeliever Owlett,'
+groaned the minister, his honest affection for Lizzy having quickened to
+its intensest point during these moments of risk to her person and name.
+'That's why she's here,' he said to himself.  'O, it will be the ruin of
+her!'
+
+His perturbation was interrupted by the sudden bursting out of a bright
+and increasing light from the spot where Lizzy was in hiding.  A few
+seconds later, and before it had reached the height of a blaze, he heard
+her rush past him down the hollow like a stone from a sling, in the
+direction of home.  The light now flared high and wide, and showed its
+position clearly.  She had kindled a bough of furze and stuck it into the
+bush under which she had been crouching; the wind fanned the flame, which
+crackled fiercely, and threatened to consume the bush as well as the
+bough.  Stockdale paused just long enough to notice thus much, and then
+followed rapidly the route taken by the young woman.  His intention was
+to overtake her, and reveal himself as a friend; but run as he would he
+could see nothing of her.  Thus he flew across the open country about
+Holworth, twisting his legs and ankles in unexpected fissures and
+descents, till, on coming to the gate between the downs and the road, he
+was forced to pause to get breath.  There was no audible movement either
+in front or behind him, and he now concluded that she had not outrun him,
+but that, hearing him at her heels, and believing him one of the excise
+party, she had hidden herself somewhere on the way, and let him pass by.
+
+He went on at a more leisurely pace towards the village.  On reaching the
+house he found his surmise to be correct, for the gate was on the latch,
+and the door unfastened, just as he had left them.  Stockdale closed the
+door behind him, and waited silently in the passage.  In about ten
+minutes he heard the same light footstep that he had heard in going out;
+it paused at the gate, which opened and shut softly, and then the door-
+latch was lifted, and Lizzy came in.
+
+Stockdale went forward and said at once, 'Lizzy, don't be frightened.  I
+have been waiting up for you.'
+
+She started, though she had recognized the voice.  'It is Mr. Stockdale,
+isn't it?' she said.
+
+'Yes,' he answered, becoming angry now that she was safe indoors, and not
+alarmed.  'And a nice game I've found you out in to-night.  You are in
+man's clothes, and I am ashamed of you!'
+
+Lizzy could hardly find a voice to answer this unexpected reproach.
+
+'I am only partly in man's clothes,' she faltered, shrinking back to the
+wall.  'It is only his greatcoat and hat and breeches that I've got on,
+which is no harm, as he was my own husband; and I do it only because a
+cloak blows about so, and you can't use your arms.  I have got my own
+dress under just the same--it is only tucked in!  Will you go away
+upstairs and let me pass?  I didn't want you to see me at such a time as
+this!'
+
+'But I have a right to see you!  How do you think there can be anything
+between us now?'  Lizzy was silent.  'You are a smuggler,' he continued
+sadly.
+
+'I have only a share in the run,' she said.
+
+'That makes no difference.  Whatever did you engage in such a trade as
+that for, and keep it such a secret from me all this time?'
+
+'I don't do it always.  I only do it in winter-time when 'tis new moon.'
+
+'Well, I suppose that's because it can't be done anywhen else . . . You
+have regularly upset me, Lizzy.'
+
+'I am sorry for that,' Lizzy meekly replied.
+
+'Well now,' said he more tenderly, 'no harm is done as yet.  Won't you
+for the sake of me give up this blamable and dangerous practice
+altogether?'
+
+'I must do my best to save this run,' said she, getting rather husky in
+the throat.  'I don't want to give you up--you know that; but I don't
+want to lose my venture.  I don't know what to do now!  Why I have kept
+it so secret from you is that I was afraid you would be angry if you
+knew.'
+
+'I should think so!  I suppose if I had married you without finding this
+out you'd have gone on with it just the same?'
+
+'I don't know.  I did not think so far ahead.  I only went to-night to
+burn the folks off, because we found that the excisemen knew where the
+tubs were to be landed.'
+
+'It is a pretty mess to be in altogether, is this,' said the distracted
+young minister.  'Well, what will you do now?'
+
+Lizzy slowly murmured the particulars of their plan, the chief of which
+were that they meant to try their luck at some other point of the shore
+the next night; that three landing-places were always agreed upon before
+the run was attempted, with the understanding that, if the vessel was
+'burnt off' from the first point, which was Ringsworth, as it had been by
+her to-night, the crew should attempt to make the second, which was
+Lulstead Cove, on the second night; and if there, too, danger threatened,
+they should on the third night try the third place, which was behind a
+headland further west.
+
+'Suppose the officers hinder them landing there too?' he said, his
+attention to this interesting programme displacing for a moment his
+concern at her share in it.
+
+'Then we shan't try anywhere else all this dark--that's what we call the
+time between moon and moon--and perhaps they'll string the tubs to a
+stray-line, and sink 'em a little-ways from shore, and take the bearings;
+and then when they have a chance they'll go to creep for 'em.'
+
+'What's that?'
+
+'O, they'll go out in a boat and drag a creeper--that's a grapnel--along
+the bottom till it catch hold of the stray-line.'
+
+The minister stood thinking; and there was no sound within doors but the
+tick of the clock on the stairs, and the quick breathing of Lizzy, partly
+from her walk and partly from agitation, as she stood close to the wall,
+not in such complete darkness but that he could discern against its
+whitewashed surface the greatcoat and broad hat which covered her.
+
+'Lizzy, all this is very wrong,' he said.  'Don't you remember the lesson
+of the tribute-money?  "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's."
+Surely you have heard that read times enough in your growing up?'
+
+'He's dead,' she pouted.
+
+'But the spirit of the text is in force just the same.'
+
+'My father did it, and so did my grandfather, and almost everybody in
+Nether-Moynton lives by it, and life would be so dull if it wasn't for
+that, that I should not care to live at all.'
+
+'I am nothing to live for, of course,' he replied bitterly.  'You would
+not think it worth while to give up this wild business and live for me
+alone?'
+
+'I have never looked at it like that.'
+
+'And you won't promise and wait till I am ready?'
+
+'I cannot give you my word to-night.'  And, looking thoughtfully down,
+she gradually moved and moved away, going into the adjoining room, and
+closing the door between them.  She remained there in the dark till he
+was tired of waiting, and had gone up to his own chamber.
+
+Poor Stockdale was dreadfully depressed all the next day by the
+discoveries of the night before.  Lizzy was unmistakably a fascinating
+young woman, but as a minister's wife she was hardly to be contemplated.
+'If I had only stuck to father's little grocery business, instead of
+going in for the ministry, she would have suited me beautifully!' he said
+sadly, until he remembered that in that case he would never have come
+from his distant home to Nether-Moynton, and never have known her.
+
+The estrangement between them was not complete, but it was sufficient to
+keep them out of each other's company.  Once during the day he met her in
+the garden-path, and said, turning a reproachful eye upon her, 'Do you
+promise, Lizzy?'  But she did not reply.  The evening drew on, and he
+knew well enough that Lizzy would repeat her excursion at night--her half-
+offended manner had shown that she had not the slightest intention of
+altering her plans at present.  He did not wish to repeat his own share
+of the adventure; but, act as he would, his uneasiness on her account
+increased with the decline of day.  Supposing that an accident should
+befall her, he would never forgive himself for not being there to help,
+much as he disliked the idea of seeming to countenance such unlawful
+escapades.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V--HOW THEY WENT TO LULSTEAD COVE
+
+
+As he had expected, she left the house at the same hour at night, this
+time passing his door without stealth, as if she knew very well that he
+would be watching, and were resolved to brave his displeasure.  He was
+quite ready, opened the door quickly, and reached the back door almost as
+soon as she.
+
+'Then you will go, Lizzy?' he said as he stood on the step beside her,
+who now again appeared as a little man with a face altogether unsuited to
+his clothes.
+
+'I must,' she said, repressed by his stern manner.
+
+'Then I shall go too,' said he.
+
+'And I am sure you will enjoy it!' she exclaimed in more buoyant tones.
+'Everybody does who tries it.'
+
+'God forbid that I should!' he said.  'But I must look after you.'
+
+They opened the wicket and went up the road abreast of each other, but at
+some distance apart, scarcely a word passing between them.  The evening
+was rather less favourable to smuggling enterprise than the last had
+been, the wind being lower, and the sky somewhat clear towards the north.
+
+'It is rather lighter,' said Stockdale.
+
+''Tis, unfortunately,' said she.  'But it is only from those few stars
+over there.  The moon was new to-day at four o'clock, and I expected
+clouds.  I hope we shall be able to do it this dark, for when we have to
+sink 'em for long it makes the stuff taste bleachy, and folks don't like
+it so well.'
+
+Her course was different from that of the preceding night, branching off
+to the left over Lord's Barrow as soon as they had got out of the lane
+and crossed the highway.  By the time they reached Chaldon Down,
+Stockdale, who had been in perplexed thought as to what he should say to
+her, decided that he would not attempt expostulation now, while she was
+excited by the adventure, but wait till it was over, and endeavour to
+keep her from such practices in future.  It occurred to him once or
+twice, as they rambled on, that should they be surprised by the
+excisemen, his situation would be more awkward than hers, for it would be
+difficult to prove his true motive in coming to the spot; but the risk
+was a slight consideration beside his wish to be with her.
+
+They now arrived at a ravine which lay on the outskirts of Chaldon, a
+village two miles on their way towards the point of the shore they
+sought.  Lizzy broke the silence this time: 'I have to wait here to meet
+the carriers.  I don't know if they have come yet.  As I told you, we go
+to Lulstead Cove to-night, and it is two miles further than Ringsworth.'
+
+It turned out that the men had already come; for while she spoke two or
+three dozen heads broke the line of the slope, and a company of them at
+once descended from the bushes where they had been lying in wait.  These
+carriers were men whom Lizzy and other proprietors regularly employed to
+bring the tubs from the boat to a hiding-place inland.  They were all
+young fellows of Nether-Moynton, Chaldon, and the neighbourhood, quiet
+and inoffensive persons, who simply engaged to carry the cargo for Lizzy
+and her cousin Owlett, as they would have engaged in any other labour for
+which they were fairly well paid.
+
+At a word from her they closed in together.  'You had better take it
+now,' she said to them; and handed to each a packet.  It contained six
+shillings, their remuneration for the night's undertaking, which was paid
+beforehand without reference to success or failure; but, besides this,
+they had the privilege of selling as agents when the run was successfully
+made.  As soon as it was done, she said to them, 'The place is the old
+one near Lulstead Cove;' the men till that moment not having been told
+whither they were bound, for obvious reasons.  'Owlett will meet you
+there,' added Lizzy.  'I shall follow behind, to see that we are not
+watched.'
+
+The carriers went on, and Stockdale and Mrs. Newberry followed at a
+distance of a stone's throw.  'What do these men do by day?' he said.
+
+'Twelve or fourteen of them are labouring men.  Some are brickmakers,
+some carpenters, some shoe-makers, some thatchers.  They are all known to
+me very well.  Nine of 'em are of your own congregation.'
+
+'I can't help that,' said Stockdale.
+
+'O, I know you can't.  I only told you.  The others are more
+church-inclined, because they supply the pa'son with all the spirits he
+requires, and they don't wish to show unfriendliness to a customer.'
+
+'How do you choose 'em?' said Stockdale.
+
+'We choose 'em for their closeness, and because they are strong and
+surefooted, and able to carry a heavy load a long way without being
+tired.'
+
+Stockdale sighed as she enumerated each particular, for it proved how far
+involved in the business a woman must be who was so well acquainted with
+its conditions and needs.  And yet he felt more tenderly towards her at
+this moment than he had felt all the foregoing day.  Perhaps it was that
+her experienced manner and hold indifference stirred his admiration in
+spite of himself.
+
+'Take my arm, Lizzy,' he murmured.
+
+'I don't want it,' she said.  'Besides, we may never be to each other
+again what we once have been.'
+
+'That depends upon you,' said he, and they went on again as before.
+
+The hired carriers paced along over Chaldon Down with as little
+hesitation as if it had been day, avoiding the cart-way, and leaving the
+village of East Chaldon on the left, so as to reach the crest of the hill
+at a lonely trackless place not far from the ancient earthwork called
+Round Pound.  An hour's brisk walking brought them within sound of the
+sea, not many hundred yards from Lulstead Cove.  Here they paused, and
+Lizzy and Stockdale came up with them, when they went on together to the
+verge of the cliff.  One of the men now produced an iron bar, which he
+drove firmly into the soil a yard from the edge, and attached to it a
+rope that he had uncoiled from his body.  They all began to descend,
+partly stepping, partly sliding down the incline, as the rope slipped
+through their hands.
+
+'You will not go to the bottom, Lizzy?' said Stockdale anxiously.
+
+'No.  I stay here to watch,' she said.  'Owlett is down there.'
+
+The men remained quite silent when they reached the shore; and the next
+thing audible to the two at the top was the dip of heavy oars, and the
+dashing of waves against a boat's bow.  In a moment the keel gently
+touched the shingle, and Stockdale heard the footsteps of the thirty-six
+carriers running forwards over the pebbles towards the point of landing.
+
+There was a sousing in the water as of a brood of ducks plunging in,
+showing that the men had not been particular about keeping their legs, or
+even their waists, dry from the brine: but it was impossible to see what
+they were doing, and in a few minutes the shingle was trampled again.  The
+iron bar sustaining the rope, on which Stockdale's hand rested, began to
+swerve a little, and the carriers one by one appeared climbing up the
+sloping cliff; dripping audibly as they came, and sustaining themselves
+by the guide-rope.  Each man on reaching the top was seen to be carrying
+a pair of tubs, one on his back and one on his chest, the two being slung
+together by cords passing round the chine hoops, and resting on the
+carrier's shoulders.  Some of the stronger men carried three by putting
+an extra one on the top behind, but the customary load was a pair, these
+being quite weighty enough to give their bearer the sensation of having
+chest and backbone in contact after a walk of four or five miles.
+
+'Where is Owlett?' said Lizzy to one of them.
+
+'He will not come up this way,' said the carrier.  'He's to bide on shore
+till we be safe off.'  Then, without waiting for the rest, the foremost
+men plunged across the down; and, when the last had ascended, Lizzy
+pulled up the rope, wound it round her arm, wriggled the bar from the
+sod, and turned to follow the carriers.
+
+'You are very anxious about Owlett's safety,' said the minister.
+
+'Was there ever such a man!' said Lizzy.  'Why, isn't he my cousin?'
+
+'Yes.  Well, it is a bad night's work,' said Stockdale heavily.  'But
+I'll carry the bar and rope for you.'
+
+'Thank God, the tubs have got so far all right,' said she.
+
+Stockdale shook his head, and, taking the bar, walked by her side towards
+the downs; and the moan of the sea was heard no more.
+
+'Is this what you meant the other day when you spoke of having business
+with Owlett?' the young man asked.
+
+'This is it,' she replied.  'I never see him on any other matter.'
+
+'A partnership of that kind with a young man is very odd.'
+
+'It was begun by my father and his, who were brother-laws.'
+
+Her companion could not blind himself to the fact that where tastes and
+pursuits were so akin as Lizzy's and Owlett's, and where risks were
+shared, as with them, in every undertaking, there would be a peculiar
+appropriateness in her answering Owlett's standing question on matrimony
+in the affirmative.  This did not soothe Stockdale, its tendency being
+rather to stimulate in him an effort to make the pair as inappropriate as
+possible, and win her away from this nocturnal crew to correctness of
+conduct and a minister's parlour in some far-removed inland county.
+
+They had been walking near enough to the file of carriers for Stockdale
+to perceive that, when they got into the road to the village, they split
+up into two companies of unequal size, each of which made off in a
+direction of its own.  One company, the smaller of the two, went towards
+the church, and by the time that Lizzy and Stockdale reached their own
+house these men had scaled the churchyard wall, and were proceeding
+noiselessly over the grass within.
+
+'I see that Owlett has arranged for one batch to be put in the church
+again,' observed Lizzy.  'Do you remember my taking you there the first
+night you came?'
+
+'Yes, of course,' said Stockdale.  'No wonder you had permission to
+broach the tubs--they were his, I suppose?'
+
+'No, they were not--they were mine; I had permission from myself.  The
+day after that they went several miles inland in a waggon-load of manure,
+and sold very well.'
+
+At this moment the group of men who had made off to the left some time
+before began leaping one by one from the hedge opposite Lizzy's house,
+and the first man, who had no tubs upon his shoulders, came forward.
+
+'Mrs. Newberry, isn't it?' he said hastily.
+
+'Yes, Jim,' said she.  'What's the matter?'
+
+'I find that we can't put any in Badger's Clump to-night, Lizzy,' said
+Owlett.  'The place is watched.  We must sling the apple-tree in the
+orchet if there's time.  We can't put any more under the church lumber
+than I have sent on there, and my mixen hev already more in en than is
+safe.'
+
+'Very well,' she said.  'Be quick about it--that's all.  What can I do?'
+
+'Nothing at all, please.  Ah, it is the minister!--you two that can't do
+anything had better get indoors and not be zeed.'
+
+While Owlett thus conversed, in a tone so full of contraband anxiety and
+so free from lover's jealousy, the men who followed him had been
+descending one by one from the hedge; and it unfortunately happened that
+when the hindmost took his leap, the cord slipped which sustained his
+tubs: the result was that both the kegs fell into the road, one of them
+being stove in by the blow.
+
+''Od drown it all!' said Owlett, rushing back.
+
+'It is worth a good deal, I suppose?' said Stockdale.
+
+'O no--about two guineas and half to us now,' said Lizzy excitedly.  'It
+isn't that--it is the smell!  It is so blazing strong before it has been
+lowered by water, that it smells dreadfully when spilt in the road like
+that!  I do hope Latimer won't pass by till it is gone off.'
+
+Owlett and one or two others picked up the burst tub and began to scrape
+and trample over the spot, to disperse the liquor as much as possible;
+and then they all entered the gate of Owlett's orchard, which adjoined
+Lizzy's garden on the right.  Stockdale did not care to follow them, for
+several on recognizing him had looked wonderingly at his presence, though
+they said nothing.  Lizzy left his side and went to the bottom of the
+garden, looking over the hedge into the orchard, where the men could be
+dimly seen bustling about, and apparently hiding the tubs.  All was done
+noiselessly, and without a light; and when it was over they dispersed in
+different directions, those who had taken their cargoes to the church
+having already gone off to their homes.
+
+Lizzy returned to the garden-gate, over which Stockdale was still
+abstractedly leaning.  'It is all finished: I am going indoors now,' she
+said gently.  'I will leave the door ajar for you.'
+
+'O no--you needn't,' said Stockdale; 'I am coming too.'
+
+But before either of them had moved, the faint clatter of horses' hoofs
+broke upon the ear, and it seemed to come from the point where the track
+across the down joined the hard road.
+
+'They are just too late!' cried Lizzy exultingly.
+
+'Who?' said Stockdale.
+
+'Latimer, the riding-officer, and some assistant of his.  We had better
+go indoors.'
+
+They entered the house, and Lizzy bolted the door.  'Please don't get a
+light, Mr. Stockdale,' she said.
+
+'Of course I will not,' said he.
+
+'I thought you might be on the side of the king,' said Lizzy, with
+faintest sarcasm.
+
+'I am,' said Stockdale.  'But, Lizzy Newberry, I love you, and you know
+it perfectly well; and you ought to know, if you do not, what I have
+suffered in my conscience on your account these last few days!'
+
+'I guess very well,' she said hurriedly.  'Yet I don't see why.  Ah, you
+are better than I!'
+
+The trotting of the horses seemed to have again died away, and the pair
+of listeners touched each other's fingers in the cold 'Good-night' of
+those whom something seriously divided.  They were on the landing, but
+before they had taken three steps apart, the tramp of the horsemen
+suddenly revived, almost close to the house.  Lizzy turned to the
+staircase window, opened the casement about an inch, and put her face
+close to the aperture.  'Yes, one of 'em is Latimer,' she whispered.  'He
+always rides a white horse.  One would think it was the last colour for a
+man in that line.'
+
+Stockdale looked, and saw the white shape of the animal as it passed by;
+but before the riders had gone another ten yards, Latimer reined in his
+horse, and said something to his companion which neither Stockdale nor
+Lizzy could hear.  Its drift was, however, soon made evident, for the
+other man stopped also; and sharply turning the horses' heads they
+cautiously retraced their steps.  When they were again opposite Mrs.
+Newberry's garden, Latimer dismounted, and the man on the dark horse did
+the same.
+
+Lizzy and Stockdale, intently listening and observing the proceedings,
+naturally put their heads as close as possible to the slit formed by the
+slightly opened casement; and thus it occurred that at last their cheeks
+came positively into contact.  They went on listening, as if they did not
+know of the singular incident which had happened to their faces, and the
+pressure of each to each rather increased than lessened with the lapse of
+time.
+
+They could hear the excisemen sniffing the air like hounds as they paced
+slowly along.  When they reached the spot where the tub had burst, both
+stopped on the instant.
+
+'Ay, ay, 'tis quite strong here,' said the second officer.  'Shall we
+knock at the door?'
+
+'Well, no,' said Latimer.  'Maybe this is only a trick to put us off the
+scent.  They wouldn't kick up this stink anywhere near their
+hiding-place.  I have known such things before.'
+
+'Anyhow, the things, or some of 'em, must have been brought this way,'
+said the other.
+
+'Yes,' said Latimer musingly.  'Unless 'tis all done to tole us the wrong
+way.  I have a mind that we go home for to-night without saying a word,
+and come the first thing in the morning with more hands.  I know they
+have storages about here, but we can do nothing by this owl's light.  We
+will look round the parish and see if everybody is in bed, John; and if
+all is quiet, we will do as I say.'
+
+They went on, and the two inside the window could hear them passing
+leisurely through the whole village, the street of which curved round at
+the bottom and entered the turnpike road at another junction.  This way
+the excisemen followed, and the amble of their horses died quite away.
+
+'What will you do?' said Stockdale, withdrawing from his position.
+
+She knew that he alluded to the coming search by the officers, to divert
+her attention from their own tender incident by the casement, which he
+wished to be passed over as a thing rather dreamt of than done.  'O,
+nothing,' she replied, with as much coolness as she could command under
+her disappointment at his manner.  'We often have such storms as this.
+You would not be frightened if you knew what fools they are.  Fancy
+riding o' horseback through the place: of course they will hear and see
+nobody while they make that noise; but they are always afraid to get off,
+in case some of our fellows should burst out upon 'em, and tie them up to
+the gate-post, as they have done before now.  Good-night, Mr. Stockdale.'
+
+She closed the window and went to her room, where a tear fell from her
+eyes; and that not because of the alertness of the riding-officers.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI--THE GREAT SEARCH AT NETHER-MOYNTON
+
+
+Stockdale was so excited by the events of the evening, and the dilemma
+that he was placed in between conscience and love, that he did not sleep,
+or even doze, but remained as broadly awake as at noonday.  As soon as
+the grey light began to touch ever so faintly the whiter objects in his
+bedroom he arose, dressed himself, and went downstairs into the road.
+
+The village was already astir.  Several of the carriers had heard the
+well-known tramp of Latimer's horse while they were undressing in the
+dark that night, and had already communicated with each other and Owlett
+on the subject.  The only doubt seemed to be about the safety of those
+tubs which had been left under the church gallery-stairs, and after a
+short discussion at the corner of the mill, it was agreed that these
+should be removed before it got lighter, and hidden in the middle of a
+double hedge bordering the adjoining field.  However, before anything
+could be carried into effect, the footsteps of many men were heard coming
+down the lane from the highway.
+
+'Damn it, here they be,' said Owlett, who, having already drawn the hatch
+and started his mill for the day, stood stolidly at the mill-door covered
+with flour, as if the interest of his whole soul was bound up in the
+shaking walls around him.
+
+The two or three with whom he had been talking dispersed to their usual
+work, and when the excise officers, and the formidable body of men they
+had hired, reached the village cross, between the mill and Mrs.
+Newberry's house, the village wore the natural aspect of a place
+beginning its morning labours.
+
+'Now,' said Latimer to his associates, who numbered thirteen men in all,
+'what I know is that the things are somewhere in this here place.  We
+have got the day before us, and 'tis hard if we can't light upon 'em and
+get 'em to Budmouth Custom-house before night.  First we will try the
+fuel-houses, and then we'll work our way into the chimmers, and then to
+the ricks and stables, and so creep round.  You have nothing but your
+noses to guide ye, mind, so use 'em to-day if you never did in your lives
+before.'
+
+Then the search began.  Owlett, during the early part, watched from his
+mill-window, Lizzy from the door of her house, with the greatest self-
+possession.  A farmer down below, who also had a share in the run, rode
+about with one eye on his fields and the other on Latimer and his
+myrmidons, prepared to put them off the scent if he should be asked a
+question.  Stockdale, who was no smuggler at all, felt more anxiety than
+the worst of them, and went about his studies with a heavy heart, coming
+frequently to the door to ask Lizzy some question or other on the
+consequences to her of the tubs being found.
+
+'The consequences,' she said quietly, 'are simply that I shall lose 'em.
+As I have none in the house or garden, they can't touch me personally.'
+
+'But you have some in the orchard?'
+
+'Owlett rents that of me, and he lends it to others.  So it will be hard
+to say who put any tubs there if they should be found.'
+
+There was never such a tremendous sniffing known as that which took place
+in Nether-Moynton parish and its vicinity this day.  All was done
+methodically, and mostly on hands and knees.  At different hours of the
+day they had different plans.  From daybreak to breakfast-time the
+officers used their sense of smell in a direct and straightforward manner
+only, pausing nowhere but at such places as the tubs might be supposed to
+be secreted in at that very moment, pending their removal on the
+following night.  Among the places tested and examined were
+
+Hollow trees        Cupboards         Culverts
+Potato-graves       Clock-cases       Hedgerows
+Fuel-houses         Chimney-flues     Faggot-ricks
+Bedrooms            Rainwater-butts   Haystacks
+Apple-lofts         Pigsties          Coppers and ovens.
+
+After breakfast they recommenced with renewed vigour, taking a new line;
+that is to say, directing their attention to clothes that might be
+supposed to have come in contact with the tubs in their removal from the
+shore, such garments being usually tainted with the spirit, owing to its
+oozing between the staves.  They now sniffed at -
+
+Smock-frocks                 Smiths' and shoemakers' aprons
+Old shirts and waistcoats    Knee-naps and hedging-gloves
+Coats and hats               Tarpaulins
+Breeches and leggings        Market-cloaks
+Women's shawls and gowns     Scarecrows
+
+And as soon as the mid-day meal was over, they pushed their search into
+places where the spirits might have been thrown away in alarm:-
+
+Horse-ponds       Mixens         Sinks in yards
+Stable-drains     Wet ditches    Road-scrapings, and
+Cinder-heaps      Cesspools      Back-door gutters.
+
+But still these indefatigable excisemen discovered nothing more than the
+original tell-tale smell in the road opposite Lizzy's house, which even
+yet had not passed off.
+
+'I'll tell ye what it is, men,' said Latimer, about three o'clock in the
+afternoon, 'we must begin over again.  Find them tubs I will.'
+
+The men, who had been hired for the day, looked at their hands and knees,
+muddy with creeping on all fours so frequently, and rubbed their noses,
+as if they had almost had enough of it; for the quantity of bad air which
+had passed into each one's nostril had rendered it nearly as insensible
+as a flue.  However, after a moment's hesitation, they prepared to start
+anew, except three, whose power of smell had quite succumbed under the
+excessive wear and tear of the day.
+
+By this time not a male villager was to be seen in the parish.  Owlett
+was not at his mill, the farmers were not in their fields, the parson was
+not in his garden, the smith had left his forge, and the wheelwright's
+shop was silent.
+
+'Where the divil are the folk gone?' said Latimer, waking up to the fact
+of their absence, and looking round.  'I'll have 'em up for this!  Why
+don't they come and help us?  There's not a man about the place but the
+Methodist parson, and he's an old woman.  I demand assistance in the
+king's name!'
+
+'We must find the jineral public afore we can demand that,' said his
+lieutenant.
+
+'Well, well, we shall do better without 'em,' said Latimer, who changed
+his moods at a moment's notice.  'But there's great cause of suspicion in
+this silence and this keeping out of sight, and I'll bear it in mind.  Now
+we will go across to Owlett's orchard, and see what we can find there.'
+
+Stockdale, who heard this discussion from the garden-gate, over which he
+had been leaning, was rather alarmed, and thought it a mistake of the
+villagers to keep so completely out of the way.  He himself, like the
+excisemen, had been wondering for the last half-hour what could have
+become of them.  Some labourers were of necessity engaged in distant
+fields, but the master-workmen should have been at home; though one and
+all, after just showing themselves at their shops, had apparently gone
+off for the day.  He went in to Lizzy, who sat at a back window sewing,
+and said, 'Lizzy, where are the men?'
+
+Lizzy laughed.  'Where they mostly are when they're run so hard as this.'
+She cast her eyes to heaven.  'Up there,' she said.
+
+Stockdale looked up.  'What--on the top of the church tower?' he asked,
+seeing the direction of her glance.
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Well, I expect they will soon have to come down,' said he gravely.  'I
+have been listening to the officers, and they are going to search the
+orchard over again, and then every nook in the church.'
+
+Lizzy looked alarmed for the first time.  'Will you go and tell our
+folk?' she said.  'They ought to be let know.'  Seeing his conscience
+struggling within him like a boiling pot, she added, 'No, never mind,
+I'll go myself.'
+
+She went out, descended the garden, and climbed over the churchyard wall
+at the same time that the preventive-men were ascending the road to the
+orchard.  Stockdale could do no less than follow her.  By the time that
+she reached the tower entrance he was at her side, and they entered
+together.
+
+Nether-Moynton church-tower was, as in many villages, without a turret,
+and the only way to the top was by going up to the singers' gallery, and
+thence ascending by a ladder to a square trap-door in the floor of the
+bell-loft, above which a permanent ladder was fixed, passing through the
+bells to a hole in the roof.  When Lizzy and Stockdale reached the
+gallery and looked up, nothing but the trap-door and the five holes for
+the bell-ropes appeared.  The ladder was gone.
+
+'There's no getting up,' said Stockdale.
+
+'O yes, there is,' said she.  'There's an eye looking at us at this
+moment through a knot-hole in that trap-door.'
+
+And as she spoke the trap opened, and the dark line of the ladder was
+seen descending against the white-washed wall.  When it touched the
+bottom Lizzy dragged it to its place, and said, 'If you'll go up, I'll
+follow.'
+
+The young man ascended, and presently found himself among consecrated
+bells for the first time in his life, nonconformity having been in the
+Stockdale blood for some generations.  He eyed them uneasily, and looked
+round for Lizzy.  Owlett stood here, holding the top of the ladder.
+
+'What, be you really one of us?' said the miller.
+
+'It seems so,' said Stockdale sadly.
+
+'He's not,' said Lizzy, who overheard.  'He's neither for nor against us.
+He'll do us no harm.'
+
+She stepped up beside them, and then they went on to the next stage,
+which, when they had clambered over the dusty bell-carriages, was of easy
+ascent, leading towards the hole through which the pale sky appeared, and
+into the open air.  Owlett remained behind for a moment, to pull up the
+lower ladder.
+
+'Keep down your heads,' said a voice, as soon as they set foot on the
+flat.
+
+Stockdale here beheld all the missing parishioners, lying on their
+stomachs on the tower roof, except a few who, elevated on their hands and
+knees, were peeping through the embrasures of the parapet.  Stockdale did
+the same, and saw the village lying like a map below him, over which
+moved the figures of the excisemen, each foreshortened to a crablike
+object, the crown of his hat forming a circular disc in the centre of
+him.  Some of the men had turned their heads when the young preacher's
+figure arose among them.
+
+'What, Mr. Stockdale?' said Matt Grey, in a tone of surprise.
+
+'I'd as lief that it hadn't been,' said Jim Clarke.  'If the pa'son
+should see him a trespassing here in his tower, 'twould be none the
+better for we, seeing how 'a do hate chapel-members.  He'd never buy a
+tub of us again, and he's as good a customer as we have got this side o'
+Warm'll.'
+
+'Where is the pa'son?' said Lizzy.
+
+'In his house, to be sure, that he mid see nothing of what's going
+on--where all good folks ought to be, and this young man likewise.'
+
+'Well, he has brought some news,' said Lizzy.  'They are going to search
+the orchet and church; can we do anything if they should find?'
+
+'Yes,' said her cousin Owlett.  'That's what we've been talking o', and
+we have settled our line.  Well, be dazed!'
+
+The exclamation was caused by his perceiving that some of the searchers,
+having got into the orchard, and begun stooping and creeping hither and
+thither, were pausing in the middle, where a tree smaller than the rest
+was growing.  They drew closer, and bent lower than ever upon the ground.
+
+'O, my tubs!' said Lizzy faintly, as she peered through the parapet at
+them.
+
+'They have got 'em, 'a b'lieve,' said Owlett.
+
+The interest in the movements of the officers was so keen that not a
+single eye was looking in any other direction; but at that moment a shout
+from the church beneath them attracted the attention of the smugglers, as
+it did also of the party in the orchard, who sprang to their feet and
+went towards the churchyard wall.  At the same time those of the
+Government men who had entered the church unperceived by the smugglers
+cried aloud, 'Here be some of 'em at last.'
+
+The smugglers remained in a blank silence, uncertain whether 'some of
+'em' meant tubs or men; but again peeping cautiously over the edge of the
+tower they learnt that tubs were the things descried; and soon these
+fated articles were brought one by one into the middle of the churchyard
+from their hiding-place under the gallery-stairs.
+
+'They are going to put 'em on Hinton's vault till they find the rest!'
+said Lizzy hopelessly.  The excisemen had, in fact, begun to pile up the
+tubs on a large stone slab which was fixed there; and when all were
+brought out from the tower, two or three of the men were left standing by
+them, the rest of the party again proceeding to the orchard.
+
+The interest of the smugglers in the next manoeuvres of their enemies
+became painfully intense.  Only about thirty tubs had been secreted in
+the lumber of the tower, but seventy were hidden in the orchard, making
+up all that they had brought ashore as yet, the remainder of the cargo
+having been tied to a sinker and dropped overboard for another night's
+operations.  The excisemen, having re-entered the orchard, acted as if
+they were positive that here lay hidden the rest of the tubs, which they
+were determined to find before nightfall.  They spread themselves out
+round the field, and advancing on all fours as before, went anew round
+every apple-tree in the enclosure.  The young tree in the middle again
+led them to pause, and at length the whole company gathered there in a
+way which signified that a second chain of reasoning had led to the same
+results as the first.
+
+When they had examined the sod hereabouts for some minutes, one of the
+men rose, ran to a disused porch of the church where tools were kept, and
+returned with the sexton's pickaxe and shovel, with which they set to
+work.
+
+'Are they really buried there?' said the minister, for the grass was so
+green and uninjured that it was difficult to believe it had been
+disturbed.  The smugglers were too interested to reply, and presently
+they saw, to their chagrin, the officers stand several on each side of
+the tree; and, stooping and applying their hands to the soil, they bodily
+lifted the tree and the turf around it.  The apple-tree now showed itself
+to be growing in a shallow box, with handles for lifting at each of the
+four sides.  Under the site of the tree a square hole was revealed, and
+an exciseman went and looked down.
+
+'It is all up now,' said Owlett quietly.  'And now all of ye get down
+before they notice we are here; and be ready for our next move.  I had
+better bide here till dark, or they may take me on suspicion, as 'tis on
+my ground.  I'll be with ye as soon as daylight begins to pink in.'
+
+'And I?' said Lizzy.
+
+'You please look to the linch-pins and screws; then go indoors and know
+nothing at all.  The chaps will do the rest.'
+
+The ladder was replaced, and all but Owlett descended, the men passing
+off one by one at the back of the church, and vanishing on their
+respective errands.
+
+Lizzy walked boldly along the street, followed closely by the minister.
+
+'You are going indoors, Mrs. Newberry?' he said.
+
+She knew from the words 'Mrs. Newberry' that the division between them
+had widened yet another degree.
+
+'I am not going home,' she said.  'I have a little thing to do before I
+go in.  Martha Sarah will get your tea.'
+
+'O, I don't mean on that account,' said Stockdale.  'What can you have to
+do further in this unhallowed affair?'
+
+'Only a little,' she said.
+
+'What is that?  I'll go with you.'
+
+'No, I shall go by myself.  Will you please go indoors?  I shall be there
+in less than an hour.'
+
+'You are not going to run any danger, Lizzy?' said the young man, his
+tenderness reasserting itself.
+
+'None whatever--worth mentioning,' answered she, and went down towards
+the Cross.
+
+Stockdale entered the garden gate, and stood behind it looking on.  The
+excisemen were still busy in the orchard, and at last he was tempted to
+enter, and watch their proceedings.  When he came closer he found that
+the secret cellar, of whose existence he had been totally unaware, was
+formed by timbers placed across from side to side about a foot under the
+ground, and grassed over.
+
+The excisemen looked up at Stockdale's fair and downy countenance, and
+evidently thinking him above suspicion, went on with their work again.  As
+soon as all the tubs were taken out, they began tearing up the turf;
+pulling out the timbers, and breaking in the sides, till the cellar was
+wholly dismantled and shapeless, the apple-tree lying with its roots high
+to the air.  But the hole which had in its time held so much contraband
+merchandize was never completely filled up, either then or afterwards, a
+depression in the greensward marking the spot to this day.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII--THE WALK TO WARM'ELL CROSS AND AFTERWARDS
+
+
+As the goods had all to be carried to Budmouth that night, the
+excisemen's next object was to find horses and carts for the journey, and
+they went about the village for that purpose.  Latimer strode hither and
+thither with a lump of chalk in his hand, marking broad-arrows so
+vigorously on every vehicle and set of harness that he came across, that
+it seemed as if he would chalk broad-arrows on the very hedges and roads.
+The owner of every conveyance so marked was bound to give it up for
+Government purposes.  Stockdale, who had had enough of the scene, turned
+indoors thoughtful and depressed.  Lizzy was already there, having come
+in at the back, though she had not yet taken off her bonnet.  She looked
+tired, and her mood was not much brighter than his own.  They had but
+little to say to each other; and the minister went away and attempted to
+read; but at this he could not succeed, and he shook the little bell for
+tea.
+
+Lizzy herself brought in the tray, the girl having run off into the
+village during the afternoon, too full of excitement at the proceedings
+to remember her state of life.  However, almost before the sad lovers had
+said anything to each other, Martha came in in a steaming state.
+
+'O, there's such a stoor, Mrs. Newberry and Mr. Stockdale!  The king's
+excisemen can't get the carts ready nohow at all!  They pulled Thomas
+Ballam's, and William Rogers's, and Stephen Sprake's carts into the road,
+and off came the wheels, and down fell the carts; and they found there
+was no linch-pins in the arms; and then they tried Samuel Shane's waggon,
+and found that the screws were gone from he, and at last they looked at
+the dairyman's cart, and he's got none neither!  They have gone now to
+the blacksmith's to get some made, but he's nowhere to be found!'
+
+Stockdale looked at Lizzy, who blushed very slightly, and went out of the
+room, followed by Martha Sarah.  But before they had got through the
+passage there was a rap at the front door, and Stockdale recognized
+Latimer's voice addressing Mrs. Newberry, who had turned back.
+
+'For God's sake, Mrs. Newberry, have you seen Hardman the blacksmith up
+this way?  If we could get hold of him, we'd e'en a'most drag him by the
+hair of his head to his anvil, where he ought to be.'
+
+'He's an idle man, Mr. Latimer,' said Lizzy archly.  'What do you want
+him for?'
+
+'Why, there isn't a horse in the place that has got more than three shoes
+on, and some have only two.  The waggon-wheels be without strakes, and
+there's no linch-pins to the carts.  What with that, and the bother about
+every set of harness being out of order, we shan't be off before
+nightfall--upon my soul we shan't.  'Tis a rough lot, Mrs. Newberry, that
+you've got about you here; but they'll play at this game once too often,
+mark my words they will!  There's not a man in the parish that don't
+deserve to be whipped.'
+
+It happened that Hardman was at that moment a little further up the lane,
+smoking his pipe behind a holly-bush.  When Latimer had done speaking he
+went on in this direction, and Hardman, hearing the exciseman's steps,
+found curiosity too strong for prudence.  He peeped out from the bush at
+the very moment that Latimer's glance was on it.  There was nothing left
+for him to do but to come forward with unconcern.
+
+'I've been looking for you for the last hour!' said Latimer with a glare
+in his eye.
+
+'Sorry to hear that,' said Hardman.  'I've been out for a stroll, to look
+for more hid tubs, to deliver 'em up to Gover'ment.'
+
+'O yes, Hardman, we know it,' said Latimer, with withering sarcasm.  'We
+know that you'll deliver 'em up to Gover'ment.  We know that all the
+parish is helping us, and have been all day!  Now you please walk along
+with me down to your shop, and kindly let me hire ye in the king's name.'
+
+They went down the lane together; and presently there resounded from the
+smithy the ring of a hammer not very briskly swung.  However, the carts
+and horses were got into some sort of travelling condition, but it was
+not until after the clock had struck six, when the muddy roads were
+glistening under the horizontal light of the fading day.  The smuggled
+tubs were soon packed into the vehicles, and Latimer, with three of his
+assistants, drove slowly out of the village in the direction of the port
+of Budmouth, some considerable number of miles distant, the other
+excisemen being left to watch for the remainder of the cargo, which they
+knew to have been sunk somewhere between Ringsworth and Lulstead Cove,
+and to unearth Owlett, the only person clearly implicated by the
+discovery of the cave.
+
+Women and children stood at the doors as the carts, each chalked with the
+Government pitchfork, passed in the increasing twilight; and as they
+stood they looked at the confiscated property with a melancholy
+expression that told only too plainly the relation which they bore to the
+trade.
+
+'Well, Lizzy,' said Stockdale, when the crackle of the wheels had nearly
+died away.  'This is a fit finish to your adventure.  I am truly thankful
+that you have got off without suspicion, and the loss only of the liquor.
+Will you sit down and let me talk to you?'
+
+'By and by,' she said.  'But I must go out now.'
+
+'Not to that horrid shore again?' he said blankly.
+
+'No, not there.  I am only going to see the end of this day's business.'
+
+He did not answer to this, and she moved towards the door slowly, as if
+waiting for him to say something more.
+
+'You don't offer to come with me,' she added at last.  'I suppose that's
+because you hate me after all this?'
+
+'Can you say it, Lizzy, when you know I only want to save you from such
+practices?  Come with you of course I will, if it is only to take care of
+you.  But why will you go out again?'
+
+'Because I cannot rest indoors.  Something is happening, and I must know
+what.  Now, come!'  And they went into the dusk together.
+
+When they reached the turnpike-road she turned to the right, and he soon
+perceived that they were following the direction of the excisemen and
+their load.  He had given her his arm, and every now and then she
+suddenly pulled it back, to signify that he was to halt a moment and
+listen.  They had walked rather quickly along the first quarter of a
+mile, and on the second or third time of standing still she said, 'I hear
+them ahead--don't you?'
+
+'Yes,' he said; 'I hear the wheels.  But what of that?'
+
+'I only want to know if they get clear away from the neighbourhood.'
+
+'Ah,' said he, a light breaking upon him.  'Something desperate is to be
+attempted!--and now I remember there was not a man about the village when
+we left.'
+
+'Hark!' she murmured.  The noise of the cartwheels had stopped, and given
+place to another sort of sound.
+
+''Tis a scuffle!' said Stockdale.  'There'll be murder!  Lizzy, let go my
+arm; I am going on.  On my conscience, I must not stay here and do
+nothing!'
+
+'There'll be no murder, and not even a broken head,' she said.  'Our men
+are thirty to four of them: no harm will be done at all.'
+
+'Then there is an attack!' exclaimed Stockdale; 'and you knew it was to
+be.  Why should you side with men who break the laws like this?'
+
+'Why should you side with men who take from country traders what they
+have honestly bought wi' their own money in France?' said she firmly.
+
+'They are not honestly bought,' said he.
+
+'They are,' she contradicted.  'I and Owlett and the others paid thirty
+shillings for every one of the tubs before they were put on board at
+Cherbourg, and if a king who is nothing to us sends his people to steal
+our property, we have a right to steal it back again.'
+
+Stockdale did not stop to argue the matter, but went quickly in the
+direction of the noise, Lizzy keeping at his side.  'Don't you interfere,
+will you, dear Richard?' she said anxiously, as they drew near.  'Don't
+let us go any closer: 'tis at Warm'ell Cross where they are seizing 'em.
+You can do no good, and you may meet with a hard blow!'
+
+'Let us see first what is going on,' he said.  But before they had got
+much further the noise of the cartwheels began again; and Stockdale soon
+found that they were coming towards him.  In another minute the three
+carts came up, and Stockdale and Lizzy stood in the ditch to let them
+pass.
+
+Instead of being conducted by four men, as had happened when they went
+out of the village, the horses and carts were now accompanied by a body
+of from twenty to thirty, all of whom, as Stockdale perceived to his
+astonishment, had blackened faces.  Among them walked six or eight huge
+female figures, whom, from their wide strides, Stockdale guessed to be
+men in disguise.  As soon as the party discerned Lizzy and her companion
+four or five fell back, and when the carts had passed, came close to the
+pair.
+
+'There is no walking up this way for the present,' said one of the gaunt
+women, who wore curls a foot long, dangling down the sides of her face,
+in the fashion of the time.  Stockdale recognized this lady's voice as
+Owlett's.
+
+'Why not?' said Stockdale.  'This is the public highway.'
+
+'Now look here, youngster,' said Owlett.  'O, 'tis the Methodist
+parson!--what, and Mrs. Newberry!  Well, you'd better not go up that way,
+Lizzy.  They've all run off, and folks have got their own again.'
+
+The miller then hastened on and joined his comrades.  Stockdale and Lizzy
+also turned back.  'I wish all this hadn't been forced upon us,' she said
+regretfully.  'But if those excisemen had got off with the tubs, half the
+people in the parish would have been in want for the next month or two.'
+
+Stockdale was not paying much attention to her words, and he said, 'I
+don't think I can go back like this.  Those four poor excisemen may be
+murdered for all I know.'
+
+'Murdered!' said Lizzy impatiently.  'We don't do murder here.'
+
+'Well, I shall go as far as Warm'ell Cross to see,' said Stockdale
+decisively; and, without wishing her safe home or anything else, the
+minister turned back.  Lizzy stood looking at him till his form was
+absorbed in the shades; and then, with sadness, she went in the direction
+of Nether-Moynton.
+
+The road was lonely, and after nightfall at this time of the year there
+was often not a passer for hours.  Stockdale pursued his way without
+hearing a sound beyond that of his own footsteps; and in due time he
+passed beneath the trees of the plantation which surrounded the Warm'ell
+Cross-road.  Before he had reached the point of intersection he heard
+voices from the thicket.
+
+'Hoi-hoi-hoi!  Help, help!'
+
+The voices were not at all feeble or despairing, but they were
+unmistakably anxious.  Stockdale had no weapon, and before plunging into
+the pitchy darkness of the plantation he pulled a stake from the hedge,
+to use in case of need.  When he got among the trees he shouted--'What's
+the matter--where are you?'
+
+'Here,' answered the voices; and, pushing through the brambles in that
+direction, he came near the objects of his search.
+
+'Why don't you come forward?' said Stockdale.
+
+'We be tied to the trees!'
+
+'Who are you?'
+
+'Poor Will Latimer the exciseman!' said one plaintively.  'Just come and
+cut these cords, there's a good man.  We were afraid nobody would pass by
+to-night.'
+
+Stockdale soon loosened them, upon which they stretched their limbs and
+stood at their ease.
+
+'The rascals!' said Latimer, getting now into a rage, though he had
+seemed quite meek when Stockdale first came up.  ''Tis the same set of
+fellows.  I know they were Moynton chaps to a man.'
+
+'But we can't swear to 'em,' said another.  'Not one of 'em spoke.'
+
+'What are you going to do?' said Stockdale.
+
+'I'd fain go back to Moynton, and have at 'em again!' said Latimer.
+
+'So would we!' said his comrades.
+
+'Fight till we die!' said Latimer.
+
+'We will, we will!' said his men.
+
+'But,' said Latimer, more frigidly, as they came out of the plantation,
+'we don't know that these chaps with black faces were Moynton men?  And
+proof is a hard thing.'
+
+'So it is,' said the rest.
+
+'And therefore we won't do nothing at all,' said Latimer, with complete
+dispassionateness.  'For my part, I'd sooner be them than we.  The
+clitches of my arms are burning like fire from the cords those two
+strapping women tied round 'em.  My opinion is, now I have had time to
+think o't, that you may serve your Gover'ment at too high a price.  For
+these two nights and days I have not had an hour's rest; and, please God,
+here's for home-along.'
+
+The other officers agreed heartily to this course; and, thanking
+Stockdale for his timely assistance, they parted from him at the Cross,
+taking themselves the western road, and Stockdale going back to Nether-
+Moynton.
+
+During that walk the minister was lost in reverie of the most painful
+kind.  As soon as he got into the house, and before entering his own
+rooms, he advanced to the door of the little back parlour in which Lizzy
+usually sat with her mother.  He found her there alone.  Stockdale went
+forward, and, like a man in a dream, looked down upon the table that
+stood between him and the young woman, who had her bonnet and cloak still
+on.  As he did not speak, she looked up from her chair at him, with
+misgiving in her eye.
+
+'Where are they gone?' he then said listlessly.
+
+'Who?--I don't know.  I have seen nothing of them since.  I came straight
+in here.'
+
+'If your men can manage to get off with those tubs, it will be a great
+profit to you, I suppose?'
+
+'A share will be mine, a share my cousin Owlett's, a share to each of the
+two farmers, and a share divided amongst the men who helped us.'
+
+'And you still think,' he went on slowly, 'that you will not give this
+business up?'
+
+Lizzy rose, and put her hand upon his shoulder.  'Don't ask that,' she
+whispered.  'You don't know what you are asking.  I must tell you, though
+I meant not to do it.  What I make by that trade is all I have to keep my
+mother and myself with.'
+
+He was astonished.  'I did not dream of such a thing,' he said.  'I would
+rather have swept the streets, had I been you.  What is money compared
+with a clear conscience?'
+
+'My conscience is clear.  I know my mother, but the king I have never
+seen.  His dues are nothing to me.  But it is a great deal to me that my
+mother and I should live.'
+
+'Marry me, and promise to give it up.  I will keep your mother.'
+
+'It is good of you,' she said, trembling a little.  'Let me think of it
+by myself.  I would rather not answer now.'
+
+She reserved her answer till the next day, and came into his room with a
+solemn face.  'I cannot do what you wished!' she said passionately.  'It
+is too much to ask.  My whole life ha' been passed in this way.'  Her
+words and manner showed that before entering she had been struggling with
+herself in private, and that the contention had been strong.
+
+Stockdale turned pale, but he spoke quietly.  'Then, Lizzy, we must part.
+I cannot go against my principles in this matter, and I cannot make my
+profession a mockery.  You know how I love you, and what I would do for
+you; but this one thing I cannot do.'
+
+'But why should you belong to that profession?' she burst out.  'I have
+got this large house; why can't you marry me, and live here with us, and
+not be a Methodist preacher any more?  I assure you, Richard, it is no
+harm, and I wish you could only see it as I do!  We only carry it on in
+winter: in summer it is never done at all.  It stirs up one's dull life
+at this time o' the year, and gives excitement, which I have got so used
+to now that I should hardly know how to do 'ithout it.  At nights, when
+the wind blows, instead of being dull and stupid, and not noticing
+whether it do blow or not, your mind is afield, even if you are not
+afield yourself; and you are wondering how the chaps are getting on; and
+you walk up and down the room, and look out o' window, and then you go
+out yourself, and know your way about as well by night as by day, and
+have hairbreadth escapes from old Latimer and his fellows, who are too
+stupid ever to really frighten us, and only make us a bit nimble.'
+
+'He frightened you a little last night, anyhow: and I would advise you to
+drop it before it is worse.'
+
+She shook her head.  'No, I must go on as I have begun.  I was born to
+it.  It is in my blood, and I can't be cured.  O, Richard, you cannot
+think what a hard thing you have asked, and how sharp you try me when you
+put me between this and my love for 'ee!'
+
+Stockdale was leaning with his elbow on the mantelpiece, his hands over
+his eyes.  'We ought never to have met, Lizzy,' he said.  'It was an ill
+day for us!  I little thought there was anything so hopeless and
+impossible in our engagement as this.  Well, it is too late now to regret
+consequences in this way.  I have had the happiness of seeing you and
+knowing you at least.'
+
+'You dissent from Church, and I dissent from State,' she said.  'And I
+don't see why we are not well matched.'
+
+He smiled sadly, while Lizzy remained looking down, her eyes beginning to
+overflow.
+
+That was an unhappy evening for both of them, and the days that followed
+were unhappy days.  Both she and he went mechanically about their
+employments, and his depression was marked in the village by more than
+one of his denomination with whom he came in contact.  But Lizzy, who
+passed her days indoors, was unsuspected of being the cause: for it was
+generally understood that a quiet engagement to marry existed between her
+and her cousin Owlett, and had existed for some time.
+
+Thus uncertainly the week passed on; till one morning Stockdale said to
+her: 'I have had a letter, Lizzy.  I must call you that till I am gone.'
+
+'Gone?' said she blankly.
+
+'Yes,' he said.  'I am going from this place.  I felt it would be better
+for us both that I should not stay after what has happened.  In fact, I
+couldn't stay here, and look on you from day to day, without becoming
+weak and faltering in my course.  I have just heard of an arrangement by
+which the other minister can arrive here in about a week; and let me go
+elsewhere.'
+
+That he had all this time continued so firmly fixed in his resolution
+came upon her as a grievous surprise.  'You never loved me!' she said
+bitterly.
+
+'I might say the same,' he returned; 'but I will not.  Grant me one
+favour.  Come and hear my last sermon on the day before I go.'
+
+Lizzy, who was a church-goer on Sunday mornings, frequently attended
+Stockdale's chapel in the evening with the rest of the double-minded; and
+she promised.
+
+It became known that Stockdale was going to leave, and a good many people
+outside his own sect were sorry to hear it.  The intervening days flew
+rapidly away, and on the evening of the Sunday which preceded the morning
+of his departure Lizzy sat in the chapel to hear him for the last time.
+The little building was full to overflowing, and he took up the subject
+which all had expected, that of the contraband trade so extensively
+practised among them.  His hearers, in laying his words to their own
+hearts, did not perceive that they were most particularly directed
+against Lizzy, till the sermon waxed warm, and Stockdale nearly broke
+down with emotion.  In truth his own earnestness, and her sad eyes
+looking up at him, were too much for the young man's equanimity.  He
+hardly knew how he ended.  He saw Lizzy, as through a mist, turn and go
+away with the rest of the congregation; and shortly afterwards followed
+her home.
+
+She invited him to supper, and they sat down alone, her mother having, as
+was usual with her on Sunday nights, gone to bed early.
+
+'We will part friends, won't we?' said Lizzy, with forced gaiety, and
+never alluding to the sermon: a reticence which rather disappointed him.
+
+'We will,' he said, with a forced smile on his part; and they sat down.
+
+It was the first meal that they had ever shared together in their lives,
+and probably the last that they would so share.  When it was over, and
+the indifferent conversation could no longer be continued, he arose and
+took her hand.  'Lizzy,' he said, 'do you say we must part--do you?'
+
+'You do,' she said solemnly.  'I can say no more.'
+
+'Nor I,' said he.  'If that is your answer, good-bye!'
+
+Stockdale bent over her and kissed her, and she involuntarily returned
+his kiss.  'I shall go early,' he said hurriedly.  'I shall not see you
+again.'
+
+And he did leave early.  He fancied, when stepping forth into the grey
+morning light, to mount the van which was to carry him away, that he saw
+a face between the parted curtains of Lizzy's window, but the light was
+faint, and the panes glistened with wet; so he could not be sure.
+Stockdale mounted the vehicle, and was gone; and on the following Sunday
+the new minister preached in the chapel of the Moynton Wesleyans.
+
+One day, two years after the parting, Stockdale, now settled in a midland
+town, came into Nether-Moynton by carrier in the original way.  Jogging
+along in the van that afternoon he had put questions to the driver, and
+the answers that he received interested the minister deeply.  The result
+of them was that he went without the least hesitation to the door of his
+former lodging.  It was about six o'clock in the evening, and the same
+time of year as when he had left; now, too, the ground was damp and
+glistening, the west was bright, and Lizzy's snowdrops were raising their
+heads in the border under the wall.
+
+Lizzy must have caught sight of him from the window, for by the time that
+he reached the door she was there holding it open: and then, as if she
+had not sufficiently considered her act of coming out, she drew herself
+back, saying with some constraint, 'Mr. Stockdale!'
+
+'You knew it was,' said Stockdale, taking her hand.  'I wrote to say I
+should call.'
+
+'Yes, but you did not say when,' she answered.
+
+'I did not.  I was not quite sure when my business would lead me to these
+parts.'
+
+'You only came because business brought you near?'
+
+'Well, that is the fact; but I have often thought I should like to come
+on purpose to see you . . . But what's all this that has happened?  I
+told you how it would be, Lizzy, and you would not listen to me.'
+
+'I would not,' she said sadly.  'But I had been brought up to that life;
+and it was second nature to me.  However, it is all over now.  The
+officers have blood-money for taking a man dead or alive, and the trade
+is going to nothing.  We were hunted down like rats.'
+
+'Owlett is quite gone, I hear.'
+
+'Yes.  He is in America.  We had a dreadful struggle that last time, when
+they tried to take him.  It is a perfect miracle that he lived through
+it; and it is a wonder that I was not killed.  I was shot in the hand.  It
+was not by aim; the shot was really meant for my cousin; but I was
+behind, looking on as usual, and the bullet came to me.  It bled
+terribly, but I got home without fainting; and it healed after a time.
+You know how he suffered?'
+
+'No,' said Stockdale.  'I only heard that he just escaped with his life.'
+
+'He was shot in the back; but a rib turned the ball.  He was badly hurt.
+We would not let him be took.  The men carried him all night across the
+meads to Kingsbere, and hid him in a barn, dressing his wound as well as
+they could, till he was so far recovered as to be able to get about.  He
+had gied up his mill for some time; and at last he got to Bristol, and
+took a passage to America, and he's settled in Wisconsin.'
+
+'What do you think of smuggling now?' said the minister gravely.
+
+'I own that we were wrong,' said she.  'But I have suffered for it.  I am
+very poor now, and my mother has been dead these twelve months . . . But
+won't you come in, Mr. Stockdale?'
+
+Stockdale went in; and it is to be supposed that they came to an
+understanding; for a fortnight later there was a sale of Lizzy's
+furniture, and after that a wedding at a chapel in a neighbouring town.
+
+He took her away from her old haunts to the home that he had made for
+himself in his native county, where she studied her duties as a
+minister's wife with praiseworthy assiduity.  It is said that in after
+years she wrote an excellent tract called Render unto Caesar; or, The
+Repentant Villagers, in which her own experience was anonymously used as
+the introductory story.  Stockdale got it printed, after making some
+corrections, and putting in a few powerful sentences of his own; and many
+hundreds of copies were distributed by the couple in the course of their
+married life.
+
+April 1879.
+
+
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WESSEX TALES***
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diff --git a/old/3056.zip b/old/3056.zip
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Wessex Tales by Thomas Hardy
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+Title:  Wessex Tales
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+Author:  Thomas Hardy
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+
+
+WESSEX TALES
+
+
+
+
+Contents:
+
+Preface
+An Imaginative Woman
+The Three Strangers
+The Withered Arm
+Fellow-Townsmen
+Interlopers at the Knap
+The Distracted Preacher
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+
+An apology is perhaps needed for the neglect of contrast which is
+shown by presenting two consecutive stories of hangmen in such a
+small collection as the following.  But in the neighbourhood of
+county-towns tales of executions used to form a large proportion of
+the local traditions; and though never personally acquainted with
+any chief operator at such scenes, the writer of these pages had as
+a boy the privilege of being on speaking terms with a man who
+applied for the office, and who sank into an incurable melancholy
+because he failed to get it, some slight mitigation of his grief
+being to dwell upon striking episodes in the lives of those happier
+ones who had held it with success and renown.  His tale of
+disappointment used to cause some wonder why his ambition should
+have taken such an unfortunate form, but its nobleness was never
+questioned.  In those days, too, there was still living an old woman
+who, for the cure of some eating disease, had been taken in her
+youth to have her 'blood turned' by a convict's corpse, in the
+manner described in 'The Withered Arm.'
+
+Since writing this story some years ago I have been reminded by an
+aged friend who knew 'Rhoda Brook' that, in relating her dream, my
+forgetfulness has weakened the facts our of which the tale grew.  In
+reality it was while lying down on a hot afternoon that the incubus
+oppressed her and she flung it off, with the results upon the body
+of the original as described.  To my mind the occurrence of such a
+vision in the daytime is more impressive than if it had happened in
+a midnight dream.  Readers are therefore asked to correct the
+misrelation, which affords an instance of how our imperfect memories
+insensibly formalize the fresh originality of living fact--from
+whose shape they slowly depart, as machine-made castings depart by
+degrees from the sharp hand-work of the mould.
+
+Among the many devices for concealing smuggled goods in caves and
+pits of the earth, that of planting an apple-tree in a tray or box
+which was placed over the mouth of the pit is, I believe, unique,
+and it is detailed in one of the tales precisely as described by an
+old carrier of 'tubs'--a man who was afterwards in my father's
+employ for over thirty years.  I never gathered from his
+reminiscences what means were adopted for lifting the tree, which,
+with its roots, earth, and receptacle, must have been of
+considerable weight.  There is no doubt, however, that the thing was
+done through many years.  My informant often spoke, too, of the
+horribly suffocating sensation produced by the pair of spirit-tubs
+slung upon the chest and back, after stumbling with the burden of
+them for several miles inland over a rough country and in darkness.
+He said that though years of his youth and young manhood were spent
+in this irregular business, his profits from the same, taken all
+together, did not average the wages he might have earned in a steady
+employment, whilst the fatigues and risks were excessive.
+
+I may add that the first story in the series turns upon a physical
+possibility that may attach to women of imaginative temperament, and
+that is well supported by the experiences of medical men and other
+observers of such manifestations.
+
+T. H.
+April 1896.
+
+
+
+
+AN IMAGINATIVE WOMAN
+
+
+
+
+When William Marchmill had finished his inquiries for lodgings at a
+well-known watering-place in Upper Wessex, he returned to the hotel
+to find his wife.  She, with the children, had rambled along the
+shore, and Marchmill followed in the direction indicated by the
+military-looking hall-porter
+
+'By Jove, how far you've gone!  I am quite out of breath,' Marchmill
+said, rather impatiently, when he came up with his wife, who was
+reading as she walked, the three children being considerably further
+ahead with the nurse.
+
+Mrs. Marchmill started out of the reverie into which the book had
+thrown her.  'Yes,' she said, 'you've been such a long time.  I was
+tired of staying in that dreary hotel.  But I am sorry if you have
+wanted me, Will?'
+
+'Well, I have had trouble to suit myself.  When you see the airy and
+comfortable rooms heard of, you find they are stuffy and
+uncomfortable.  Will you come and see if what I've fixed on will do?
+There is not much room, I am afraid; hut I can light on nothing
+better.  The town is rather full.'
+
+The pair left the children and nurse to continue their ramble, and
+went back together.
+
+In age well-balanced, in personal appearance fairly matched, and in
+domestic requirements conformable, in temper this couple differed,
+though even here they did not often clash, he being equable, if not
+lymphatic, and she decidedly nervous and sanguine.  It was to their
+tastes and fancies, those smallest, greatest particulars, that no
+common denominator could be applied.  Marchmill considered his
+wife's likes and inclinations somewhat silly; she considered his
+sordid and material.  The husband's business was that of a gunmaker
+in a thriving city northwards, and his soul was in that business
+always; the lady was best characterized by that superannuated phrase
+of elegance 'a votary of the muse.'  An impressionable, palpitating
+creature was Ella, shrinking humanely from detailed knowledge of her
+husband's trade whenever she reflected that everything he
+manufactured had for its purpose the destruction of life.  She could
+only recover her equanimity by assuring herself that some, at least,
+of his weapons were sooner or later used for the extermination of
+horrid vermin and animals almost as cruel to their inferiors in
+species as human beings were to theirs.
+
+She had never antecedently regarded this occupation of his as any
+objection to having him for a husband.  Indeed, the necessity of
+getting life-leased at all cost, a cardinal virtue which all good
+mothers teach, kept her from thinking of it at all till she had
+closed with William, had passed the honeymoon, and reached the
+reflecting stage.  Then, like a person who has stumbled upon some
+object in the dark, she wondered what she had got; mentally walked
+round it, estimated it; whether it were rare or common; contained
+gold, silver, or lead; were a clog or a pedestal, everything to her
+or nothing.
+
+She came to some vague conclusions, and since then had kept her
+heart alive by pitying her proprietor's obtuseness and want of
+refinement, pitying herself, and letting off her delicate and
+ethereal emotions in imaginative occupations, day-dreams, and night-
+sighs, which perhaps would not much have disturbed William if he had
+known of them.
+
+Her figure was small, elegant, and slight in build, tripping, or
+rather bounding, in movement.  She was dark-eyed, and had that
+marvellously bright and liquid sparkle in each pupil which
+characterizes persons of Ella's cast of soul, and is too often a
+cause of heartache to the possessor's male friends, ultimately
+sometimes to herself.  Her husband was a tall, long-featured man,
+with a brown beard; he had a pondering regard; and was, it must be
+added, usually kind and tolerant to her.  He spoke in squarely
+shaped sentences, and was supremely satisfied with a condition of
+sublunary things which made weapons a necessity.
+
+Husband and wife walked till they had reached the house they were in
+search of, which stood in a terrace facing the sea, and was fronted
+by a small garden of wind-proof and salt-proof evergreens, stone
+steps leading up to the porch.  It had its number in the row, but,
+being rather larger than the rest, was in addition sedulously
+distinguished as Coburg House by its landlady, though everybody else
+called it 'Thirteen, New Parade.'  The spot was bright and lively
+now; but in winter it became necessary to place sandbags against the
+door, and to stuff up the keyhole against the wind and rain, which
+had worn the paint so thin that the priming and knotting showed
+through.
+
+The householder, who bad been watching for the gentleman's return,
+met them in the passage, and showed the rooms.  She informed them
+that she was a professional man's widow, left in needy circumstances
+by the rather sudden death of her husband, and she spoke anxiously
+of the conveniences of the establishment.
+
+Mrs. Marchmill said that she liked the situation and the house; but,
+it being small, there would not be accommodation enough, unless she
+could have all the rooms.
+
+The landlady mused with an air of disappointment.  She wanted the
+visitors to be her tenants very badly, she said, with obvious
+honesty.  But unfortunately two of the rooms were occupied
+permanently by a bachelor gentleman.  He did not pay season prices,
+it was true; but as he kept on his apartments all the year round,
+and was an extremely nice and interesting young man, who gave no
+trouble, she did not like to turn him out for a month's 'let,' even
+at a high figure.  'Perhaps, however,' she added, 'he might offer to
+go for a time.'
+
+They would not hear of this, and went back to the hotel, intending
+to proceed to the agent's to inquire further.  Hardly had they sat
+down to tea when the landlady called.  Her gentleman, she said, had
+been so obliging as to offer to give up his rooms for three or four
+weeks rather than drive the new-comers away.
+
+'It is very kind, but we won't inconvenience him in that way,' said
+the Marchmills.
+
+'O, it won't inconvenience him, I assure you!' said the landlady
+eloquently.  'You see, he's a different sort of young man from most-
+-dreamy, solitary, rather melancholy--and he cares more to be here
+when the south-westerly gales are beating against the door, and the
+sea washes over the Parade, and there's not a soul in the place,
+than he does now in the season.  He'd just as soon be where, in
+fact, he's going temporarily, to a little cottage on the Island
+opposite, for a change.'  She hoped therefore that they would come.
+
+The Marchmill family accordingly took possession of the house next
+day, and it seemed to suit them very well.  After luncheon Mr.
+Marchmill strolled out towards the pier, and Mrs. Marchmill, having
+despatched the children to their outdoor amusements on the sands,
+settled herself in more completely, examining this and that article,
+and testing the reflecting powers of the mirror in the wardrobe
+door.
+
+In the small back sitting-room, which had been the young bachelor's,
+she found furniture of a more personal nature than in the rest.
+Shabby books, of correct rather than rare editions, were piled up in
+a queerly reserved manner in corners, as if the previous occupant
+had not conceived the possibility that any incoming person of the
+season's bringing could care to look inside them.  The landlady
+hovered on the threshold to rectify anything that Mrs. Marchmill
+might not find to her satisfaction.
+
+'I'll make this my own little room,' said the latter, 'because the
+books are here.  By the way, the person who has left seems to have a
+good many.  He won't mind my reading some of them, Mrs. Hooper, I
+hope?'
+
+'O dear no, ma'am.  Yes, he has a good many.  You see, he is in the
+literary line himself somewhat.  He is a poet--yes, really a poet--
+and he has a little income of his own, which is enough to write
+verses on, but not enough for cutting a figure, even if he cared
+to.'
+
+'A poet!  O, I did not know that.'
+
+Mrs. Marchmill opened one of the books, and saw the owner's name
+written on the title-page.  'Dear me!' she continued; 'I know his
+name very well--Robert Trewe--of course I do; and his writings!  And
+it is HIS rooms we have taken, and HIM we have turned out of his
+home?'
+
+Ella Marchmill, sitting down alone a few minutes later, thought with
+interested surprise of Robert Trewe.  Her own latter history will
+best explain that interest.  Herself the only daughter of a
+struggling man of letters, she had during the last year or two taken
+to writing poems, in an endeavour to find a congenial channel in
+which to let flow her painfully embayed emotions, whose former
+limpidity and sparkle seemed departing in the stagnation caused by
+the routine of a practical household and the gloom of bearing
+children to a commonplace father.  These poems, subscribed with a
+masculine pseudonym, had appeared in various obscure magazines, and
+in two cases in rather prominent ones.  In the second of the latter
+the page which bore her effusion at the bottom, in smallish print,
+bore at the top, in large print, a few verses on the same subject by
+this very man, Robert Trewe.  Both of them had, in fact, been struck
+by a tragic incident reported in the daily papers, and had used it
+simultaneously as an inspiration, the editor remarking in a note
+upon the coincidence, and that the excellence of both poems prompted
+him to give them together.
+
+After that event Ella, otherwise 'John Ivy,' had watched with much
+attention the appearance anywhere in print of verse bearing the
+signature of Robert Trewe, who, with a man's unsusceptibility on the
+question of sex, had never once thought of passing himself off as a
+woman.  To be sure, Mrs. Marchmill had satisfied herself with a sort
+of reason for doing the contrary in her case; that nobody might
+believe in her inspiration if they found that the sentiments came
+from a pushing tradesman's wife, from the mother of three children
+by a matter-of-fact small-arms manufacturer.
+
+Trewe's verse contrasted with that of the rank and file of recent
+minor poets in being impassioned rather than ingenious, luxuriant
+rather than finished.  Neither symboliste nor decadent, he was a
+pessimist in so far as that character applies to a man who looks at
+the worst contingencies as well as the best in the human condition.
+Being little attracted by excellences of form and rhythm apart from
+content, he sometimes, when feeling outran his artistic speed,
+perpetrated sonnets in the loosely rhymed Elizabethan fashion, which
+every right-minded reviewer said he ought not to have done.
+
+With sad and hopeless envy, Ella Marchmill had often and often
+scanned the rival poet's work, so much stronger as it always was
+than her own feeble lines.  She had imitated him, and her inability
+to touch his level would send her into fits of despondency.  Months
+passed away thus, till she observed from the publishers' list that
+Trewe had collected his fugitive pieces into a volume, which was
+duly issued, and was much or little praised according to chance, and
+had a sale quite sufficient to pay for the printing.
+
+This step onward had suggested to John Ivy the idea of collecting
+her pieces also, or at any rate of making up a book of her rhymes by
+adding many in manuscript to the few that had seen the light, for
+she had been able to get no great number into print.  A ruinous
+charge was made for costs of publication; a few reviews noticed her
+poor little volume; but nobody talked of it, nobody bought it, and
+it fell dead in a fortnight--if it had ever been alive.
+
+The author's thoughts were diverted to another groove just then by
+the discovery that she was going to have a third child, and the
+collapse of her poetical venture had perhaps less effect upon her
+mind than it might have done if she had been domestically
+unoccupied.  Her husband had paid the publisher's bill with the
+doctor's, and there it all had ended for the time.  But, though less
+than a poet of her century, Ella was more than a mere multiplier of
+her kind, and latterly she had begun to feel the old afflatus once
+more.  And now by an odd conjunction she found herself in the rooms
+of Robert Trewe.
+
+She thoughtfully rose from her chair and searched the apartment with
+the interest of a fellow-tradesman.  Yes, the volume of his own
+verse was among the rest.  Though quite familiar with its contents,
+she read it here as if it spoke aloud to her, then called up Mrs.
+Hooper, the landlady, for some trivial service, and inquired again
+about the young man.
+
+'Well, I'm sure you'd be interested in him, ma'am, if you could see
+him, only he's so shy that I don't suppose you will.'  Mrs. Hooper
+seemed nothing loth to minister to her tenant's curiosity about her
+predecessor.  'Lived here long?  Yes, nearly two years.  He keeps on
+his rooms even when he's not here:  the soft air of this place suits
+his chest, and he likes to be able to come back at any time.  He is
+mostly writing or reading, and doesn't see many people, though, for
+the matter of that, he is such a good, kind young fellow that folks
+would only be too glad to be friendly with him if they knew him.
+You don't meet kind-hearted people every day.'
+
+'Ah, he's kind-hearted . . . and good.'
+
+'Yes; he'll oblige me in anything if I ask him.  "Mr. Trewe," I say
+to him sometimes, "you are rather out of spirits."  "Well, I am,
+Mrs. Hooper," he'll say, "though I don't know how you should find it
+out."  "Why not take a little change?" I ask.  Then in a day or two
+he'll say that he will take a trip to Paris, or Norway, or
+somewhere; and I assure you he comes back all the better for it.'
+
+'Ah, indeed!  His is a sensitive nature, no doubt.'
+
+'Yes.  Still he's odd in some things.  Once when he had finished a
+poem of his composition late at night he walked up and down the room
+rehearsing it; and the floors being so thin--jerry-built houses, you
+know, though I say it myself--he kept me awake up above him till I
+wished him further . . . But we get on very well.'
+
+This was but the beginning of a series of conversations about the
+rising poet as the days went on.  On one of these occasions Mrs.
+Hooper drew Ella's attention to what she had not noticed before:
+minute scribblings in pencil on the wall-paper behind the curtains
+at the head of the bed.
+
+'O! let me look,' said Mrs. Marchmill, unable to conceal a rush of
+tender curiosity as she bent her pretty face close to the wall.
+
+'These,' said Mrs. Hooper, with the manner of a woman who knew
+things, 'are the very beginnings and first thoughts of his verses.
+He has tried to rub most of them out, but you can read them still.
+My belief is that he wakes up in the night, you know, with some
+rhyme in his head, and jots it down there on the wall lest he should
+forget it by the morning.  Some of these very lines you see here I
+have seen afterwards in print in the magazines.  Some are newer;
+indeed, I have not seen that one before.  It must have been done
+only a few days ago.'
+
+'O yes! . . . '
+
+Ella Marchmill flushed without knowing why, and suddenly wished her
+companion would go away, now that the information was imparted.  An
+indescribable consciousness of personal interest rather than
+literary made her anxious to read the inscription alone; and she
+accordingly waited till she could do so, with a sense that a great
+store of emotion would be enjoyed in the act.
+
+Perhaps because the sea was choppy outside the Island, Ella's
+husband found it much pleasanter to go sailing and steaming about
+without his wife, who was a bad sailor, than with her.  He did not
+disdain to go thus alone on board the steamboats of the cheap-
+trippers, where there was dancing by moonlight, and where the
+couples would come suddenly down with a lurch into each other's
+arms; for, as he blandly told her, the company was too mixed for him
+to take her amid such scenes.  Thus, while this thriving
+manufacturer got a great deal of change and sea-air out of his
+sojourn here, the life, external at least, of Ella was monotonous
+enough, and mainly consisted in passing a certain number of hours
+each day in bathing and walking up and down a stretch of shore.  But
+the poetic impulse having again waxed strong, she was possessed by
+an inner flame which left her hardly conscious of what was
+proceeding around her.
+
+She had read till she knew by heart Trewe's last little volume of
+verses, and spent a great deal of time in vainly attempting to rival
+some of them, till, in her failure, she burst into tears.  The
+personal element in the magnetic attraction exercised by this
+circumambient, unapproachable master of hers was so much stronger
+than the intellectual and abstract that she could not understand it.
+To be sure, she was surrounded noon and night by his customary
+environment, which literally whispered of him to her at every
+moment; but he was a man she had never seen, and that all that moved
+her was the instinct to specialize a waiting emotion on the first
+fit thing that came to hand did not, of course, suggest itself to
+Ella.
+
+In the natural way of passion under the too practical conditions
+which civilization has devised for its fruition, her husband's love
+for her had not survived, except in the form of fitful friendship,
+any more than, or even so much as, her own for him; and, being a
+woman of very living ardours, that required sustenance of some sort,
+they were beginning to feed on this chancing material, which was,
+indeed, of a quality far better than chance usually offers.
+
+One day the children had been playing hide-and-seek in a closet,
+whence, in their excitement, they pulled out some clothing.  Mrs.
+Hooper explained that it belonged to Mr. Trewe, and hung it up in
+the closet again.  Possessed of her fantasy, Ella went later in the
+afternoon, when nobody was in that part of the house, opened the
+closet, unhitched one of the articles, a mackintosh, and put it on,
+with the waterproof cap belonging to it.
+
+'The mantle of Elijah!' she said.  'Would it might inspire me to
+rival him, glorious genius that he is!'
+
+Her eyes always grew wet when she thought like that, and she turned
+to look at herself in the glass.  HIS heart had beat inside that
+coat, and HIS brain had worked under that hat at levels of thought
+she would never reach.  The consciousness of her weakness beside him
+made her feel quite sick.  Before she had got the things off her the
+door opened, and her husband entered the room.
+
+'What the devil--'
+
+She blushed, and removed them
+
+'I found them in the closet here,' she said, 'and put them on in a
+freak.  What have I else to do?  You are always away!'
+
+'Always away?  Well . . . '
+
+That evening she had a further talk with the landlady, who might
+herself have nourished a half-tender regard for the poet, so ready
+was she to discourse ardently about him.
+
+'You are interested in Mr. Trewe, I know, ma'am,' she said; 'and he
+has just sent to say that he is going to call to-morrow afternoon to
+look up some books of his that he wants, if I'll be in, and he may
+select them from your room?'
+
+'O yes!'
+
+'You could very well meet Mr Trewe then, if you'd like to be in the
+way!'
+
+She promised with secret delight, and went to bed musing of him.
+
+Next morning her husband observed:  'I've been thinking of what you
+said, Ell:  that I have gone about a good deal and left you without
+much to amuse you.  Perhaps it's true.  To-day, as there's not much
+sea, I'll take you with me on board the yacht.'
+
+For the first time in her experience of such an offer Ella was not
+glad.  But she accepted it for the moment.  The time for setting out
+drew near, and she went to get ready.  She stood reflecting.  The
+longing to see the poet she was now distinctly in love with
+overpowered all other considerations.
+
+'I don't want to go,' she said to herself.  'I can't bear to be
+away!  And I won't go.'
+
+She told her husband that she had changed her mind about wishing to
+sail.  He was indifferent, and went his way.
+
+For the rest of the day the house was quiet, the children having
+gone out upon the sands.  The blinds waved in the sunshine to the
+soft, steady stroke of the sea beyond the wall; and the notes of the
+Green Silesian band, a troop of foreign gentlemen hired for the
+season, had drawn almost all the residents and promenaders away from
+the vicinity of Coburg House.  A knock was audible at the door.
+
+Mrs. Marchmill did not hear any servant go to answer it, and she
+became impatient.  The books were in the room where she sat; but
+nobody came up.  She rang the bell.
+
+'There is some person waiting at the door,' she said.
+
+'O no, ma'am!  He's gone long ago.  I answered it.'
+
+Mrs. Hooper came in herself.
+
+'So disappointing!' she said.  'Mr. Trewe not coming after all!'
+
+'But I heard him knock, I fancy!'
+
+'No; that was somebody inquiring for lodgings who came to the wrong
+house.  I forgot to tell you that Mr. Trewe sent a note just before
+lunch to say I needn't get any tea for him, as he should not require
+the books, and wouldn't come to select them.'
+
+Ella was miserable, and for a long time could not even re-read his
+mournful ballad on 'Severed Lives,' so aching was her erratic little
+heart, and so tearful her eyes.  When the children came in with wet
+stockings, and ran up to her to tell her of their adventures, she
+could not feel that she cared about them half as much as usual.
+
+* * *
+
+'Mrs. Hooper, have you a photograph of--the gentleman who lived
+here?'  She was getting to be curiously shy in mentioning his name.
+
+'Why, yes.  It's in the ornamental frame on the mantelpiece in your
+own bedroom, ma'am.'
+
+'No; the Royal Duke and Duchess are in that.'
+
+'Yes, so they are; but he's behind them.  He belongs rightly to that
+frame, which I bought on purpose; but as he went away he said:
+"Cover me up from those strangers that are coming, for God's sake.
+I don't want them staring at me, and I am sure they won't want me
+staring at them."  So I slipped in the Duke and Duchess temporarily
+in front of him, as they had no frame, and Royalties are more
+suitable for letting furnished than a private young man.  If you
+take 'em out you'll see him under.  Lord, ma'am, he wouldn't mind if
+he knew it!  He didn't think the next tenant would be such an
+attractive lady as you, or he wouldn't have thought of hiding
+himself; perhaps.'
+
+'Is he handsome?' she asked timidly.
+
+'_I_ call him so.  Some, perhaps, wouldn't.'
+
+'Should I?' she asked, with eagerness.
+
+'I think you would, though some would say he's more striking than
+handsome; a large-eyed thoughtful fellow, you know, with a very
+electric flash in his eye when he looks round quickly, such as you'd
+expect a poet to be who doesn't get his living by it.'
+
+'How old is he?'
+
+'Several years older than yourself, ma'am; about thirty-one or two,
+I think.'
+
+Ella was, as a matter of fact, a few months over thirty herself; but
+she did not look nearly so much.  Though so immature in nature, she
+was entering on that tract of life in which emotional women begin to
+suspect that last love may be stronger than first love; and she
+would soon, alas, enter on the still more melancholy tract when at
+least the vainer ones of her sex shrink from receiving a male
+visitor otherwise than with their backs to the window or the blinds
+half down.  She reflected on Mrs. Hooper's remark, and said no more
+about age.
+
+Just then a telegram was brought up.  It came from her husband, who
+had gone down the Channel as far as Budmouth with his friends in the
+yacht, and would not be able to get back till next day.
+
+After her light dinner Ella idled about the shore with the children
+till dusk, thinking of the yet uncovered photograph in her room,
+with a serene sense of something ecstatic to come.  For, with the
+subtle luxuriousness of fancy in which this young woman was an
+adept, on learning that her husband was to be absent that night she
+had refrained from incontinently rushing upstairs and opening the
+picture-frame, preferring to reserve the inspection till she could
+be alone, and a more romantic tinge be imparted to the occasion by
+silence, candles, solemn sea and stars outside, than was afforded by
+the garish afternoon sunlight.
+
+The children had been sent to bed, and Ella soon followed, though it
+was not yet ten o'clock.  To gratify her passionate curiosity she
+now made her preparations, first getting rid of superfluous garments
+and putting on her dressing-gown, then arranging a chair in front of
+the table and reading several pages of Trewe's tenderest utterances.
+Then she fetched the portrait-frame to the light, opened the back,
+took out the likeness, and set it up before her.
+
+It was a striking countenance to look upon.  The poet wore a
+luxuriant black moustache and imperial, and a slouched hat which
+shaded the forehead.  The large dark eyes, described by the
+landlady, showed an unlimited capacity for misery; they looked out
+from beneath well-shaped brows as if they were reading the universe
+in the microcosm of the confronter's face, and were not altogether
+overjoyed at what the spectacle portended.
+
+Ella murmured in her lowest, richest, tenderest tone:  'And it's YOU
+who've so cruelly eclipsed me these many times!'
+
+As she gazed long at the portrait she fell into thought, till her
+eyes filled with tears, and she touched the cardboard with her lips.
+Then she laughed with a nervous lightness, and wiped her eyes.
+
+She thought how wicked she was, a woman having a husband and three
+children, to let her mind stray to a stranger in this unconscionable
+manner.  No, he was not a stranger!  She knew his thoughts and
+feelings as well as she knew her own; they were, in fact, the self-
+same thoughts and feelings as hers, which her husband distinctly
+lacked; perhaps luckily for himself; considering that he had to
+provide for family expenses.
+
+'He's nearer my real self, he's more intimate with the real me than
+Will is, after all, even though I've never seen him,' she said.
+
+She laid his book and picture on the table at the bedside, and when
+she was reclining on the pillow she re-read those of Robert Trewe's
+verses which she had marked from time to time as most touching and
+true.  Putting these aside, she set up the photograph on its edge
+upon the coverlet, and contemplated it as she lay.  Then she scanned
+again by the light of the candle the half-obliterated pencillings on
+the wall-paper beside her head.  There they were--phrases, couplets,
+bouts-rimes, beginnings and middles of lines, ideas in the rough,
+like Shelley's scraps, and the least of them so intense, so sweet,
+so palpitating, that it seemed as if his very breath, warm and
+loving, fanned her cheeks from those walls, walls that had
+surrounded his head times and times as they surrounded her own now.
+He must often have put up his hand so--with the pencil in it.  Yes,
+the writing was sideways, as it would be if executed by one who
+extended his arm thus.
+
+These inscribed shapes of the poet's world,
+
+
+'Forms more real than living man,
+Nurslings of immortality,'
+
+
+were, no doubt, the thoughts and spirit-strivings which had come to
+him in the dead of night, when he could let himself go and have no
+fear of the frost of criticism.  No doubt they had often been
+written up hastily by the light of the moon, the rays of the lamp,
+in the blue-grey dawn, in full daylight perhaps never.  And now her
+hair was dragging where his arm had lain when he secured the
+fugitive fancies; she was sleeping on a poet's lips, immersed in the
+very essence of him, permeated by his spirit as by an ether.
+
+While she was dreaming the minutes away thus, a footstep came upon
+the stairs, and in a moment she heard her husband's heavy step on
+the landing immediately without.
+
+'Ell, where are you?'
+
+What possessed her she could not have described, but, with an
+instinctive objection to let her husband know what she had been
+doing, she slipped the photograph under the pillow just as he flung
+open the door, with the air of a man who had dined not badly.
+
+'O, I beg pardon,' said William Marchmill.  'Have you a headache?  I
+am afraid I have disturbed you.'
+
+'No, I've not got a headache,' said she.  'How is it you've come?'
+
+'Well, we found we could get back in very good time after all, and I
+didn't want to make another day of it, because of going somewhere
+else to-morrow.'
+
+'Shall I come down again?'
+
+'O no.  I'm as tired as a dog.  I've had a good feed, and I shall
+turn in straight off.  I want to get out at six o'clock to-morrow if
+I can . . . I shan't disturb you by my getting up; it will be long
+before you are awake.'  And he came forward into the room.
+
+While her eyes followed his movements, Ella softly pushed the
+photograph further out of sight.
+
+'Sure you're not ill?' he asked, bending over her.
+
+'No, only wicked!'
+
+'Never mind that.'  And he stooped and kissed her.
+
+Next morning Marchmill was called at six o'clock; and in waking and
+yawning she heard him muttering to himself:  'What the deuce is this
+that's been crackling under me so?'  Imagining her asleep he
+searched round him and withdrew something.  Through her half-opened
+eyes she perceived it to be Mr. Trewe.
+
+'Well, I'm damned!' her husband exclaimed.
+
+'What, dear?' said she.
+
+'O, you are awake?  Ha! ha!'
+
+'What DO you mean?'
+
+'Some bloke's photograph--a friend of our landlady's, I suppose.  I
+wonder how it came here; whisked off the table by accident perhaps
+when they were making the bed.'
+
+'I was looking at it yesterday, and it must have dropped in then.'
+
+'O, he's a friend of yours?  Bless his picturesque heart!'
+
+Ella's loyalty to the object of her admiration could not endure to
+hear him ridiculed.  'He's a clever man!' she said, with a tremor in
+her gentle voice which she herself felt to be absurdly uncalled for.
+
+'He is a rising poet--the gentleman who occupied two of these rooms
+before we came, though I've never seen him.'
+
+'How do you know, if you've never seen him?'
+
+'Mrs. Hooper told me when she showed me the photograph.'
+
+'O; well, I must up and be off.  I shall be home rather early.
+Sorry I can't take you to-day, dear.  Mind the children don't go
+getting drowned.'
+
+That day Mrs. Marchmill inquired if Mr. Trewe were likely to call at
+any other time.
+
+'Yes,' said Mrs. Hooper.  'He's coming this day week to stay with a
+friend near here till you leave.  He'll be sure to call.'
+
+Marchmill did return quite early in the afternoon; and, opening some
+letters which had arrived in his absence, declared suddenly that he
+and his family would have to leave a week earlier than they had
+expected to do--in short, in three days.
+
+'Surely we can stay a week longer?' she pleaded.  'I like it here.'
+
+'I don't.  It is getting rather slow.'
+
+'Then you might leave me and the children!'
+
+'How perverse you are, Ell!  What's the use?  And have to come to
+fetch you!  No:  we'll all return together; and we'll make out our
+time in North Wales or Brighton a little later on.  Besides, you've
+three days longer yet.'
+
+It seemed to be her doom not to meet the man for whose rival talent
+she had a despairing admiration, and to whose person she was now
+absolutely attached.  Yet she determined to make a last effort; and
+having gathered from her landlady that Trewe was living in a lonely
+spot not far from the fashionable town on the Island opposite, she
+crossed over in the packet from the neighbouring pier the following
+afternoon.
+
+What a useless journey it was!  Ella knew but vaguely where the
+house stood, and when she fancied she had found it, and ventured to
+inquire of a pedestrian if he lived there, the answer returned by
+the man was that he did not know.  And if he did live there, how
+could she call upon him?  Some women might have the assurance to do
+it, but she had not.  How crazy he would think her.  She might have
+asked him to call upon her, perhaps; but she had not the courage for
+that, either.  She lingered mournfully about the picturesque seaside
+eminence till it was time to return to the town and enter the
+steamer for recrossing, reaching home for dinner without having been
+greatly missed.
+
+At the last moment, unexpectedly enough, her husband said that he
+should have no objection to letting her and the children stay on
+till the end of the week, since she wished to do so, if she felt
+herself able to get home without him.  She concealed the pleasure
+this extension of time gave her; and Marchmill went off the next
+morning alone.
+
+But the week passed, and Trewe did not call.
+
+On Saturday morning the remaining members of the Marchmill family
+departed from the place which had been productive of so much fervour
+in her.  The dreary, dreary train; the sun shining in moted beams
+upon the hot cushions; the dusty permanent way; the mean rows of
+wire--these things were her accompaniment:  while out of the window
+the deep blue sea-levels disappeared from her gaze, and with them
+her poet's home.  Heavy-hearted, she tried to read, and wept
+instead.
+
+Mr. Marchmill was in a thriving way of business, and he and his
+family lived in a large new house, which stood in rather extensive
+grounds a few miles outside the city wherein he carried on his
+trade.  Ella's life was lonely here, as the suburban life is apt to
+be, particularly at certain seasons; and she had ample time to
+indulge her taste for lyric and elegiac composition.  She had hardly
+got back when she encountered a piece by Robert Trewe in the new
+number of her favourite magazine, which must have been written
+almost immediately before her visit to Solentsea, for it contained
+the very couplet she had seen pencilled on the wallpaper by the bed,
+and Mrs. Hooper had declared to be recent.  Ella could resist no
+longer, but seizing a pen impulsively, wrote to him as a brother-
+poet, using the name of John Ivy, congratulating him in her letter
+on his triumphant executions in metre and rhythm of thoughts that
+moved his soul, as compared with her own brow-beaten efforts in the
+same pathetic trade.
+
+To this address there came a response in a few days, little as she
+had dared to hope for it--a civil and brief note, in which the young
+poet stated that, though he was not well acquainted with Mr. Ivy's
+verse, he recalled the name as being one he had seen attached to
+some very promising pieces; that he was glad to gain Mr. Ivy's
+acquaintance by letter, and should certainly look with much interest
+for his productions in the future.
+
+There must have been something juvenile or timid in her own epistle,
+as one ostensibly coming from a man, she declared to herself; for
+Trewe quite adopted the tone of an elder and superior in this reply.
+But what did it matter? he had replied; he had written to her with
+his own hand from that very room she knew so well, for he was now
+back again in his quarters.
+
+The correspondence thus begun was continued for two months or more,
+Ella Marchmill sending him from time to time some that she
+considered to be the best of her pieces, which he very kindly
+accepted, though he did not say he sedulously read them, nor did he
+send her any of his own in return.  Ella would have been more hurt
+at this than she was if she had not known that Trewe laboured under
+the impression that she was one of his own sex.
+
+Yet the situation was unsatisfactory.  A flattering little voice
+told her that, were he only to see her, matters would be otherwise.
+No doubt she would have helped on this by making a frank confession
+of womanhood, to begin with, if something had not happened, to her
+delight, to render it unnecessary.  A friend of her husband's, the
+editor of the most important newspaper in the city and county, who
+was dining with them one day, observed during their conversation
+about the poet that his (the editor's) brother the landscape-painter
+was a friend of Mr. Trewe's, and that the two men were at that very
+moment in Wales together.
+
+Ella was slightly acquainted with the editor's brother.  The next
+morning down she sat and wrote, inviting him to stay at her house
+for a short time on his way back, and requesting him to bring with
+him, if practicable, his companion Mr. Trewe, whose acquaintance she
+was anxious to make.  The answer arrived after some few days.  Her
+correspondent and his friend Trewe would have much satisfaction in
+accepting her invitation on their way southward, which would be on
+such and such a day in the following week.
+
+Ella was blithe and buoyant.  Her scheme had succeeded; her beloved
+though as yet unseen one was coming.  "Behold, he standeth behind
+our wall; he looked forth at the windows, showing himself through
+the lattice," she thought ecstatically.  "And, lo, the winter is
+past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers appear on the earth,
+the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the
+turtle is heard in our land."
+
+But it was necessary to consider the details of lodging and feeding
+him.  This she did most solicitously, and awaited the pregnant day
+and hour.
+
+It was about five in the afternoon when she heard a ring at the door
+and the editor's brother's voice in the hall.  Poetess as she was,
+or as she thought herself, she had not been too sublime that day to
+dress with infinite trouble in a fashionable robe of rich material,
+having a faint resemblance to the chiton of the Greeks, a style just
+then in vogue among ladies of an artistic and romantic turn, which
+had been obtained by Ella of her Bond Street dressmaker when she was
+last in London.  Her visitor entered the drawing-room.  She looked
+towards his rear; nobody else came through the door.  Where, in the
+name of the God of Love, was Robert Trewe?
+
+'O, I'm sorry,' said the painter, after their introductory words had
+been spoken.  'Trewe is a curious fellow, you know, Mrs. Marchmill.
+He said he'd come; then he said he couldn't.  He's rather dusty.
+We've been doing a few miles with knapsacks, you know; and he wanted
+to get on home.'
+
+'He--he's not coming?'
+
+'He's not; and he asked me to make his apologies.'
+
+'When did you p-p-part from him?' she asked, her nether lip starting
+off quivering so much that it was like a tremolo-stop opened in her
+speech.  She longed to run away from this dreadful bore and cry her
+eyes out.
+
+'Just now, in the turnpike road yonder there.'
+
+'What! he has actually gone past my gates?'
+
+'Yes.  When we got to them--handsome gates they are, too, the finest
+bit of modern wrought-iron work I have seen--when we came to them we
+stopped, talking there a little while, and then he wished me good-
+bye and went on.  The truth is, he's a little bit depressed just
+now, and doesn't want to see anybody.  He's a very good fellow, and
+a warm friend, but a little uncertain and gloomy sometimes; he
+thinks too much of things.  His poetry is rather too erotic and
+passionate, you know, for some tastes; and he has just come in for a
+terrible slating from the -- Review that was published yesterday; he
+saw a copy of it at the station by accident.  Perhaps you've read
+it?'
+
+'No.'
+
+'So much the better.  O, it is not worth thinking of; just one of
+those articles written to order, to please the narrow-minded set of
+subscribers upon whom the circulation depends.  But he's upset by
+it.  He says it is the misrepresentation that hurts him so; that,
+though he can stand a fair attack, he can't stand lies that he's
+powerless to refute and stop from spreading.  That's just Trewe's
+weak point.  He lives so much by himself that these things affect
+him much more than they would if he were in the bustle of
+fashionable or commercial life.  So he wouldn't come here, making
+the excuse that it all looked so new and monied--if you'll pardon--'
+
+'But--he must have known--there was sympathy here!  Has he never
+said anything about getting letters from this address?'
+
+'Yes, yes, he has, from John Ivy--perhaps a relative of yours, he
+thought, visiting here at the time?'
+
+'Did he--like Ivy, did he say?'
+
+'Well, I don't know that he took any great interest in Ivy.'
+
+'Or in his poems?'
+
+'Or in his poems--so far as I know, that is.'
+
+Robert Trewe took no interest in her house, in her poems, or in
+their writer.  As soon as she could get away she went into the
+nursery and tried to let off her emotion by unnecessarily kissing
+the children, till she had a sudden sense of disgust at being
+reminded how plain-looking they were, like their father.
+
+The obtuse and single-minded landscape-painter never once perceived
+from her conversation that it was only Trewe she wanted, and not
+himself.  He made the best of his visit, seeming to enjoy the
+society of Ella's husband, who also took a great fancy to him, and
+showed him everywhere about the neighbourhood, neither of them
+noticing Ella's mood.
+
+The painter had been gone only a day or two when, while sitting
+upstairs alone one morning, she glanced over the London paper just
+arrived, and read the following paragraph:-
+
+
+'SUICIDE OF A POET
+
+'Mr. Robert Trewe, who has been favourably known for some years as
+one of our rising lyrists, committed suicide at his lodgings at
+Solentsea on Saturday evening last by shooting himself in the right
+temple with a revolver.  Readers hardly need to be reminded that Mr.
+Trewe has recently attracted the attention of a much wider public
+than had hitherto known him, by his new volume of verse, mostly of
+an impassioned kind, entitled "Lyrics to a Woman Unknown," which has
+been already favourably noticed in these pages for the extraordinary
+gamut of feeling it traverses, and which has been made the subject
+of a severe, if not ferocious, criticism in the -- Review.  It is
+supposed, though not certainly known, that the article may have
+partially conduced to the sad act, as a copy of the review in
+question was found on his writing-table; and he has been observed to
+be in a somewhat depressed state of mind since the critique
+appeared.'
+
+
+Then came the report of the inquest, at which the following letter
+was read, it having been addressed to a friend at a distance:-
+
+
+'DEAR -,--Before these lines reach your hands I shall be delivered
+from the inconveniences of seeing, hearing, and knowing more of the
+things around me.  I will not trouble you by giving my reasons for
+the step I have taken, though I can assure you they were sound and
+logical.  Perhaps had I been blessed with a mother, or a sister, or
+a female friend of another sort tenderly devoted to me, I might have
+thought it worth while to continue my present existence.  I have
+long dreamt of such an unattainable creature, as you know, and she,
+this undiscoverable, elusive one, inspired my last volume; the
+imaginary woman alone, for, in spite of what has been said in some
+quarters, there is no real woman behind the title.  She has
+continued to the last unrevealed, unmet, unwon.  I think it
+desirable to mention this in order that no blame may attach to any
+real woman as having been the cause of my decease by cruel or
+cavalier treatment of me.  Tell my landlady that I am sorry to have
+caused her this unpleasantness; but my occupancy of the rooms will
+soon be forgotten.  There are ample funds in my name at the bank to
+pay all expenses.  R. TREWE.'
+
+
+Ella sat for a while as if stunned, then rushed into the adjoining
+chamber and flung herself upon her face on the bed.
+
+Her grief and distraction shook her to pieces; and she lay in this
+frenzy of sorrow for more than an hour.  Broken words came every now
+and then from her quivering lips:  'O, if he had only known of me--
+known of me--me! . . . O, if I had only once met him--only once; and
+put my hand upon his hot forehead--kissed him--let him know how I
+loved him--that I would have suffered shame and scorn, would have
+lived and died, for him!  Perhaps it would have saved his dear life!
+. . . But no--it was not allowed!  God is a jealous God; and that
+happiness was not for him and me!'
+
+All possibilities were over; the meeting was stultified.  Yet it was
+almost visible to her in her fantasy even now, though it could never
+be substantiated -
+
+
+'The hour which might have been, yet might not be,
+Which man's and woman's heart conceived and bore,
+Yet whereof life was barren.'
+
+
+She wrote to the landlady at Solentsea in the third person, in as
+subdued a style as she could command, enclosing a postal order for a
+sovereign, and informing Mrs. Hooper that Mrs. Marchmill had seen in
+the papers the sad account of the poet's death, and having been, as
+Mrs. Hooper was aware, much interested in Mr. Trewe during her stay
+at Coburg House, she would be obliged if Mrs. Hooper could obtain a
+small portion of his hair before his coffin was closed down, and
+send it her as a memorial of him, as also the photograph that was in
+the frame.
+
+By the return-post a letter arrived containing what had been
+requested.  Ella wept over the portrait and secured it in her
+private drawer; the lock of hair she tied with white ribbon and put
+in her bosom, whence she drew it and kissed it every now and then in
+some unobserved nook.
+
+'What's the matter?' said her husband, looking up from his newspaper
+on one of these occasions.  'Crying over something?  A lock of hair?
+Whose is it?'
+
+'He's dead!' she murmured.
+
+'Who?'
+
+'I don't want to tell you, Will, just now, unless you insist!' she
+said, a sob hanging heavy in her voice.
+
+'O, all right.'
+
+'Do you mind my refusing?  I will tell you some day.'
+
+'It doesn't matter in the least, of course.'
+
+He walked away whistling a few bars of no tune in particular; and
+when he had got down to his factory in the city the subject came
+into Marchmill's head again.
+
+He, too, was aware that a suicide had taken place recently at the
+house they had occupied at Solentsea.  Having seen the volume of
+poems in his wife's hand of late, and heard fragments of the
+landlady's conversation about Trewe when they were her tenants, he
+all at once said to himself; 'Why of course it's he!  How the devil
+did she get to know him?  What sly animals women are!'
+
+Then he placidly dismissed the matter, and went on with his daily
+affairs.  By this time Ella at home had come to a determination.
+Mrs. Hooper, in sending the hair and photograph, had informed her of
+the day of the funeral; and as the morning and noon wore on an
+overpowering wish to know where they were laying him took possession
+of the sympathetic woman.  Caring very little now what her husband
+or any one else might think of her eccentricities; she wrote
+Marchmill a brief note, stating that she was called away for the
+afternoon and evening, but would return on the following morning.
+This she left on his desk, and having given the same information to
+the servants, went out of the house on foot.
+
+When Mr. Marchmill reached home early in the afternoon the servants
+looked anxious.  The nurse took him privately aside, and hinted that
+her mistress's sadness during the past few days had been such that
+she feared she had gone out to drown herself.  Marchmill reflected.
+Upon the whole he thought that she had not done that.  Without
+saying whither he was bound he also started off, telling them not to
+sit up for him.  He drove to the railway-station, and took a ticket
+for Solentsea.
+
+It was dark when he reached the place, though he had come by a fast
+train, and he knew that if his wife had preceded him thither it
+could only have been by a slower train, arriving not a great while
+before his own.  The season at Solentsea was now past:  the parade
+was gloomy, and the flys were few and cheap.  He asked the way to
+the Cemetery, and soon reached it.  The gate was locked, but the
+keeper let him in, declaring, however, that there was nobody within
+the precincts.  Although it was not late, the autumnal darkness had
+now become intense; and he found some difficulty in keeping to the
+serpentine path which led to the quarter where, as the man had told
+him, the one or two interments for the day had taken place.  He
+stepped upon the grass, and, stumbling over some pegs, stooped now
+and then to discern if possible a figure against the sky.
+
+He could see none; but lighting on a spot where the soil was
+trodden, beheld a crouching object beside a newly made grave.  She
+heard him, and sprang up.
+
+'Ell, how silly this is!' he said indignantly.  'Running away from
+home--I never heard such a thing!  Of course I am not jealous of
+this unfortunate man; but it is too ridiculous that you, a married
+woman with three children and a fourth coming, should go losing your
+head like this over a dead lover! . . . Do you know you were locked
+in?  You might not have been able to get out all night.'
+
+She did not answer.
+
+'I hope it didn't go far between you and him, for your own sake.'
+
+'Don't insult me, Will.'
+
+'Mind, I won't have any more of this sort of thing; do you hear?'
+
+'Very well,' she said.
+
+He drew her arm within his own, and conducted her out of the
+Cemetery.  It was impossible to get back that night; and not wishing
+to be recognized in their present sorry condition, he took her to a
+miserable little coffee-house close to the station, whence they
+departed early in the morning, travelling almost without speaking,
+under the sense that it was one of those dreary situations occurring
+in married life which words could not mend, and reaching their own
+door at noon.
+
+The months passed, and neither of the twain ever ventured to start a
+conversation upon this episode.  Ella seemed to be only too
+frequently in a sad and listless mood, which might almost have been
+called pining.  The time was approaching when she would have to
+undergo the stress of childbirth for a fourth time, and that
+apparently did not tend to raise her spirits.
+
+'I don't think I shall get over it this time!' she said one day.
+
+'Pooh! what childish foreboding!  Why shouldn't it be as well now as
+ever?'
+
+She shook her head.  'I feel almost sure I am going to die; and I
+should be glad, if it were not for Nelly, and Frank, and Tiny.'
+
+'And me!'
+
+'You'll soon find somebody to fill my place,' she murmured, with a
+sad smile.  'And you'll have a perfect right to; I assure you of
+that.'
+
+'Ell, you are not thinking still about that--poetical friend of
+yours?'
+
+She neither admitted nor denied the charge.  'I am not going to get
+over my illness this time,' she reiterated.  'Something tells me I
+shan't.'
+
+This view of things was rather a bad beginning, as it usually is;
+and, in fact, six weeks later, in the month of May, she was lying in
+her room, pulseless and bloodless, with hardly strength enough left
+to follow up one feeble breath with another, the infant for whose
+unnecessary life she was slowly parting with her own being fat and
+well.  Just before her death she spoke to Marchmill softly:-
+
+'Will, I want to confess to you the entire circumstances of that--
+about you know what--that time we visited Solentsea.  I can't tell
+what possessed me--how I could forget you so, my husband!  But I had
+got into a morbid state:  I thought you had been unkind; that you
+had neglected me; that you weren't up to my intellectual level,
+while he was, and far above it.  I wanted a fuller appreciator,
+perhaps, rather than another lover--'
+
+She could get no further then for very exhaustion; and she went off
+in sudden collapse a few hours later, without having said anything
+more to her husband on the subject of her love for the poet.
+William Marchmill, in truth, like most husbands of several years'
+standing, was little disturbed by retrospective jealousies, and had
+not shown the least anxiety to press her for confessions concerning
+a man dead and gone beyond any power of inconveniencing him more.
+
+But when she had been buried a couple of years it chanced one day
+that, in turning over some forgotten papers that he wished to
+destroy before his second wife entered the house, he lighted on a
+lock of hair in an envelope, with the photograph of the deceased
+poet, a date being written on the back in his late wife's hand.  It
+was that of the time they spent at Solentsea.
+
+Marchmill looked long and musingly at the hair and portrait, for
+something struck him.  Fetching the little boy who had been the
+death of his mother, now a noisy toddler, he took him on his knee,
+held the lock of hair against the child's head, and set up the
+photograph on the table behind, so that he could closely compare the
+features each countenance presented.  There were undoubtedly strong
+traces of resemblance; the dreamy and peculiar expression of the
+poet's face sat, as the transmitted idea, upon the child's, and the
+hair was of the same hue.
+
+'I'm damned if I didn't think so!' murmured Marchmill.  'Then she
+DID play me false with that fellow at the lodgings!  Let me see:
+the dates--the second week in August . . . the third week in May . .
+. Yes . . . yes . . . Get away, you poor little brat!  You are
+nothing to me!'
+
+1893.
+
+
+
+
+THE THREE STRANGERS
+
+
+
+
+Among the few features of agricultural England which retain an
+appearance but little modified by the lapse of centuries, may be
+reckoned the high, grassy and furzy downs, coombs, or ewe-leases, as
+they are indifferently called, that fill a large area of certain
+counties in the south and south-west.  If any mark of human
+occupation is met with hereon, it usually takes the form of the
+solitary cottage of some shepherd.
+
+Fifty years ago such a lonely cottage stood on such a down, and may
+possibly be standing there now.  In spite of its loneliness,
+however, the spot, by actual measurement, was not more than five
+miles from a county-town.  Yet that affected it little.  Five miles
+of irregular upland, during the long inimical seasons, with their
+sleets, snows, rains, and mists, afford withdrawing space enough to
+isolate a Timon or a Nebuchadnezzar; much less, in fair weather, to
+please that less repellent tribe, the poets, philosophers, artists,
+and others who 'conceive and meditate of pleasant things.'
+
+Some old earthen camp or barrow, some clump of trees, at least some
+starved fragment of ancient hedge is usually taken advantage of in
+the erection of these forlorn dwellings.  But, in the present case,
+such a kind of shelter had been disregarded.  Higher Crowstairs, as
+the house was called, stood quite detached and undefended.  The only
+reason for its precise situation seemed to be the crossing of two
+footpaths at right angles hard by, which may have crossed there and
+thus for a good five hundred years.  Hence the house was exposed to
+the elements on all sides.  But, though the wind up here blew
+unmistakably when it did blow, and the rain hit hard whenever it
+fell, the various weathers of the winter season were not quite so
+formidable on the coomb as they were imagined to be by dwellers on
+low ground.  The raw rimes were not so pernicious as in the hollows,
+and the frosts were scarcely so severe.  When the shepherd and his
+family who tenanted the house were pitied for their sufferings from
+the exposure, they said that upon the whole they were less
+inconvenienced by 'wuzzes and flames' (hoarses and phlegms) than
+when they had lived by the stream of a snug neighbouring valley.
+
+The night of March 28, 182-, was precisely one of the nights that
+were wont to call forth these expressions of commiseration.  The
+level rainstorm smote walls, slopes, and hedges like the clothyard
+shafts of Senlac and Crecy.  Such sheep and outdoor animals as had
+no shelter stood with their buttocks to the winds; while the tails
+of little birds trying to roost on some scraggy thorn were blown
+inside-out like umbrellas.  The gable-end of the cottage was stained
+with wet, and the eavesdroppings flapped against the wall.  Yet
+never was commiseration for the shepherd more misplaced.  For that
+cheerful rustic was entertaining a large party in glorification of
+the christening of his second girl.
+
+The guests had arrived before the rain began to fall, and they were
+all now assembled in the chief or living room of the dwelling.  A
+glance into the apartment at eight o'clock on this eventful evening
+would have resulted in the opinion that it was as cosy and
+comfortable a nook as could be wished for in boisterous weather.
+The calling of its inhabitant was proclaimed by a number of highly-
+polished sheep-crooks without stems that were hung ornamentally over
+the fireplace, the curl of each shining crook varying from the
+antiquated type engraved in the patriarchal pictures of old family
+Bibles to the most approved fashion of the last local sheep-fair.
+The room was lighted by half-a-dozen candles, having wicks only a
+trifle smaller than the grease which enveloped them, in candlesticks
+that were never used but at high-days, holy-days, and family feasts.
+The lights were scattered about the room, two of them standing on
+the chimney-piece.  This position of candles was in itself
+significant.  Candles on the chimney-piece always meant a party.
+
+On the hearth, in front of a back-brand to give substance, blazed a
+fire of thorns, that crackled 'like the laughter of the fool.'
+
+Nineteen persons were gathered here.  Of these, five women, wearing
+gowns of various bright hues, sat in chairs along the wall; girls
+shy and not shy filled the window-bench; four men, including Charley
+Jake the hedge-carpenter, Elijah New the parish-clerk, and John
+Pitcher, a neighbouring dairyman, the shepherd's father-in-law,
+lolled in the settle; a young man and maid, who were blushing over
+tentative pourparlers on a life-companionship, sat beneath the
+corner-cupboard; and an elderly engaged man of fifty or upward moved
+restlessly about from spots where his betrothed was not to the spot
+where she was.  Enjoyment was pretty general, and so much the more
+prevailed in being unhampered by conventional restrictions.
+Absolute confidence in each other's good opinion begat perfect ease,
+while the finishing stroke of manner, amounting to a truly princely
+serenity, was lent to the majority by the absence of any expression
+or trait denoting that they wished to get on in the world, enlarge
+their minds, or do any eclipsing thing whatever--which nowadays so
+generally nips the bloom and bonhomie of all except the two extremes
+of the social scale.
+
+Shepherd Fennel had married well, his wife being a dairyman's
+daughter from a vale at a distance, who brought fifty guineas in her
+pocket--and kept them there, till they should be required for
+ministering to the needs of a coming family.  This frugal woman had
+been somewhat exercised as to the character that should be given to
+the gathering.  A sit-still party had its advantages; but an
+undisturbed position of ease in chairs and settles was apt to lead
+on the men to such an unconscionable deal of toping that they would
+sometimes fairly drink the house dry.  A dancing-party was the
+alternative; but this, while avoiding the foregoing objection on the
+score of good drink, had a counterbalancing disadvantage in the
+matter of good victuals, the ravenous appetites engendered by the
+exercise causing immense havoc in the buttery.  Shepherdess Fennel
+fell back upon the intermediate plan of mingling short dances with
+short periods of talk and singing, so as to hinder any ungovernable
+rage in either.  But this scheme was entirely confined to her own
+gentle mind:  the shepherd himself was in the mood to exhibit the
+most reckless phases of hospitality.
+
+The fiddler was a boy of those parts, about twelve years of age, who
+had a wonderful dexterity in jigs and reels, though his fingers were
+so small and short as to necessitate a constant shifting for the
+high notes, from which he scrambled back to the first position with
+sounds not of unmixed purity of tone.  At seven the shrill tweedle-
+dee of this youngster had begun, accompanied by a booming ground-
+bass from Elijah New, the parish-clerk, who had thoughtfully brought
+with him his favourite musical instrument, the serpent.  Dancing was
+instantaneous, Mrs. Fennel privately enjoining the players on no
+account to let the dance exceed the length of a quarter of an hour.
+
+But Elijah and the boy, in the excitement of their position, quite
+forgot the injunction.  Moreover, Oliver Giles, a man of seventeen,
+one of the dancers, who was enamoured of his partner, a fair girl of
+thirty-three rolling years, had recklessly handed a new crown-piece
+to the musicians, as a bribe to keep going as long as they had
+muscle and wind.  Mrs. Fennel, seeing the steam begin to generate on
+the countenances of her guests, crossed over and touched the
+fiddler's elbow and put her hand on the serpent's mouth.  But they
+took no notice, and fearing she might lose her character of genial
+hostess if she were to interfere too markedly, she retired and sat
+down helpless.  And so the dance whizzed on with cumulative fury,
+the performers moving in their planet-like courses, direct and
+retrograde, from apogee to perigee, till the hand of the well-kicked
+clock at the bottom of the room had travelled over the circumference
+of an hour.
+
+While these cheerful events were in course of enactment within
+Fennel's pastoral dwelling, an incident having considerable bearing
+on the party had occurred in the gloomy night without.  Mrs.
+Fennel's concern about the growing fierceness of the dance
+corresponded in point of time with the ascent of a human figure to
+the solitary hill of Higher Crowstairs from the direction of the
+distant town.  This personage strode on through the rain without a
+pause, following the little-worn path which, further on in its
+course, skirted the shepherd's cottage.
+
+It was nearly the time of full moon, and on this account, though the
+sky was lined with a uniform sheet of dripping cloud, ordinary
+objects out of doors were readily visible.  The sad wan light
+revealed the lonely pedestrian to be a man of supple frame; his gait
+suggested that he had somewhat passed the period of perfect and
+instinctive agility, though not so far as to be otherwise than rapid
+of motion when occasion required.  At a rough guess, he might have
+been about forty years of age.  He appeared tall, but a recruiting
+sergeant, or other person accustomed to the judging of men's heights
+by the eye, would have discerned that this was chiefly owing to his
+gauntness, and that he was not more than five-feet-eight or nine.
+
+Notwithstanding the regularity of his tread, there was caution in
+it, as in that of one who mentally feels his way; and despite the
+fact that it was not a black coat nor a dark garment of any sort
+that he wore, there was something about him which suggested that he
+naturally belonged to the black-coated tribes of men.  His clothes
+were of fustian, and his boots hobnailed, yet in his progress he
+showed not the mud-accustomed bearing of hobnailed and fustianed
+peasantry.
+
+By the time that he had arrived abreast of the shepherd's premises
+the rain came down, or rather came along, with yet more determined
+violence.  The outskirts of the little settlement partially broke
+the force of wind and rain, and this induced him to stand still.
+The most salient of the shepherd's domestic erections was an empty
+sty at the forward corner of his hedgeless garden, for in these
+latitudes the principle of masking the homelier features of your
+establishment by a conventional frontage was unknown.  The
+traveller's eye was attracted to this small building by the pallid
+shine of the wet slates that covered it.  He turned aside, and,
+finding it empty, stood under the pent-roof for shelter.
+
+While he stood, the boom of the serpent within the adjacent house,
+and the lesser strains of the fiddler, reached the spot as an
+accompaniment to the surging hiss of the flying rain on the sod, its
+louder beating on the cabbage-leaves of the garden, on the eight or
+ten beehives just discernible by the path, and its dripping from the
+eaves into a row of buckets and pans that had been placed under the
+walls of the cottage.  For at Higher Crowstairs, as at all such
+elevated domiciles, the grand difficulty of housekeeping was an
+insufficiency of water; and a casual rainfall was utilized by
+turning out, as catchers, every utensil that the house contained.
+Some queer stories might be told of the contrivances for economy in
+suds and dish-waters that are absolutely necessitated in upland
+habitations during the droughts of summer.  But at this season there
+were no such exigencies; a mere acceptance of what the skies
+bestowed was sufficient for an abundant store.
+
+At last the notes of the serpent ceased and the house was silent.
+This cessation of activity aroused the solitary pedestrian from the
+reverie into which he had lapsed, and, emerging from the shed, with
+an apparently new intention, he walked up the path to the house-
+door.  Arrived here, his first act was to kneel down on a large
+stone beside the row of vessels, and to drink a copious draught from
+one of them.  Having quenched his thirst he rose and lifted his hand
+to knock, but paused with his eye upon the panel.  Since the dark
+surface of the wood revealed absolutely nothing, it was evident that
+he must be mentally looking through the door, as if he wished to
+measure thereby all the possibilities that a house of this sort
+might include, and how they might bear upon the question of his
+entry.
+
+In his indecision he turned and surveyed the scene around.  Not a
+soul was anywhere visible.  The garden-path stretched downward from
+his feet, gleaming like the track of a snail; the roof of the little
+well (mostly dry), the well-cover, the top rail of the garden-gate,
+were varnished with the same dull liquid glaze; while, far away in
+the vale, a faint whiteness of more than usual extent showed that
+the rivers were high in the meads.  Beyond all this winked a few
+bleared lamplights through the beating drops--lights that denoted
+the situation of the county-town from which he had appeared to come.
+The absence of all notes of life in that direction seemed to clinch
+his intentions, and he knocked at the door.
+
+Within, a desultory chat had taken the place of movement and musical
+sound.  The hedge-carpenter was suggesting a song to the company,
+which nobody just then was inclined to undertake, so that the knock
+afforded a not unwelcome diversion.
+
+'Walk in!' said the shepherd promptly.
+
+The latch clicked upward, and out of the night our pedestrian
+appeared upon the door-mat.  The shepherd arose, snuffed two of the
+nearest candles, and turned to look at him.
+
+Their light disclosed that the stranger was dark in complexion and
+not unprepossessing as to feature.  His hat, which for a moment he
+did not remove, hung low over his eyes, without concealing that they
+were large, open, and determined, moving with a flash rather than a
+glance round the room.  He seemed pleased with his survey, and,
+baring his shaggy head, said, in a rich deep voice, 'The rain is so
+heavy, friends, that I ask leave to come in and rest awhile.'
+
+'To be sure, stranger,' said the shepherd.  'And faith, you've been
+lucky in choosing your time, for we are having a bit of a fling for
+a glad cause--though, to be sure, a man could hardly wish that glad
+cause to happen more than once a year.'
+
+'Nor less,' spoke up a woman.  'For 'tis best to get your family
+over and done with, as soon as you can, so as to be all the earlier
+out of the fag o't.'
+
+'And what may be this glad cause?' asked the stranger.
+
+'A birth and christening,' said the shepherd.
+
+The stranger hoped his host might not be made unhappy either by too
+many or too few of such episodes, and being invited by a gesture to
+a pull at the mug, he readily acquiesced.  His manner, which, before
+entering, had been so dubious, was now altogether that of a careless
+and candid man.
+
+'Late to be traipsing athwart this coomb--hey?' said the engaged man
+of fifty.
+
+'Late it is, master, as you say.--I'll take a seat in the chimney-
+corner, if you have nothing to urge against it, ma'am; for I am a
+little moist on the side that was next the rain.'
+
+Mrs. Shepherd Fennel assented, and made room for the self-invited
+comer, who, having got completely inside the chimney-corner,
+stretched out his legs and his arms with the expansiveness of a
+person quite at home.
+
+'Yes, I am rather cracked in the vamp,' he said freely, seeing that
+the eyes of the shepherd's wife fell upon his boots, 'and I am not
+well fitted either.  I have had some rough times lately, and have
+been forced to pick up what I can get in the way of wearing, but I
+must find a suit better fit for working-days when I reach home.'
+
+'One of hereabouts?' she inquired.
+
+'Not quite that--further up the country.'
+
+'I thought so.  And so be I; and by your tongue you come from my
+neighbourhood.'
+
+'But you would hardly have heard of me,' he said quickly.  'My time
+would be long before yours, ma'am, you see.'
+
+This testimony to the youthfulness of his hostess had the effect of
+stopping her cross-examination.
+
+'There is only one thing more wanted to make me happy,' continued
+the new-comer.  'And that is a little baccy, which I am sorry to say
+I am out of.'
+
+'I'll fill your pipe,' said the shepherd.
+
+'I must ask you to lend me a pipe likewise.'
+
+'A smoker, and no pipe about 'ee?'
+
+'I have dropped it somewhere on the road.'
+
+The shepherd filled and handed him a new clay pipe, saying, as he
+did so, 'Hand me your baccy-box--I'll fill that too, now I am about
+it.'
+
+The man went through the movement of searching his pockets.
+
+'Lost that too?' said his entertainer, with some surprise.
+
+'I am afraid so,' said the man with some confusion.  'Give it to me
+in a screw of paper.'  Lighting his pipe at the candle with a
+suction that drew the whole flame into the bowl, he resettled
+himself in the corner and bent his looks upon the faint steam from
+his damp legs, as if he wished to say no more.
+
+Meanwhile the general body of guests had been taking little notice
+of this visitor by reason of an absorbing discussion in which they
+were engaged with the band about a tune for the next dance.  The
+matter being settled, they were about to stand up when an
+interruption came in the shape of another knock at the door.
+
+At sound of the same the man in the chimney-corner took up the poker
+and began stirring the brands as if doing it thoroughly were the one
+aim of his existence; and a second time the shepherd said, 'Walk
+in!'  In a moment another man stood upon the straw-woven door-mat.
+He too was a stranger.
+
+This individual was one of a type radically different from the
+first.  There was more of the commonplace in his manner, and a
+certain jovial cosmopolitanism sat upon his features.  He was
+several years older than the first arrival, his hair being slightly
+frosted, his eyebrows bristly, and his whiskers cut back from his
+cheeks.  His face was rather full and flabby, and yet it was not
+altogether a face without power.  A few grog-blossoms marked the
+neighbourhood of his nose.  He flung back his long drab greatcoat,
+revealing that beneath it he wore a suit of cinder-gray shade
+throughout, large heavy seals, of some metal or other that would
+take a polish, dangling from his fob as his only personal ornament.
+Shaking the water-drops from his low-crowned glazed hat, he said, 'I
+must ask for a few minutes' shelter, comrades, or I shall be wetted
+to my skin before I get to Casterbridge.'
+
+'Make yourself at home, master,' said the shepherd, perhaps a trifle
+less heartily than on the first occasion.  Not that Fennel had the
+least tinge of niggardliness in his composition; but the room was
+far from large, spare chairs were not numerous, and damp companions
+were not altogether desirable at close quarters for the women and
+girls in their bright-coloured gowns.
+
+However, the second comer, after taking off his greatcoat, and
+hanging his hat on a nail in one of the ceiling-beams as if he had
+been specially invited to put it there, advanced and sat down at the
+table.  This had been pushed so closely into the chimney-corner, to
+give all available room to the dancers, that its inner edge grazed
+the elbow of the man who had ensconced himself by the fire; and thus
+the two strangers were brought into close companionship.  They
+nodded to each other by way of breaking the ice of unacquaintance,
+and the first stranger handed his neighbour the family mug--a huge
+vessel of brown ware, having its upper edge worn away like a
+threshold by the rub of whole generations of thirsty lips that had
+gone the way of all flesh, and bearing the following inscription
+burnt upon its rotund side in yellow letters
+
+
+THERE IS NO FUN
+UNTiLL i CUM.
+
+
+The other man, nothing loth, raised the mug to his lips, and drank
+on, and on, and on--till a curious blueness overspread the
+countenance of the shepherd's wife, who had regarded with no little
+surprise the first stranger's free offer to the second of what did
+not belong to him to dispense.
+
+'I knew it!' said the toper to the shepherd with much satisfaction.
+'When I walked up your garden before coming in, and saw the hives
+all of a row, I said to myself; "Where there's bees there's honey,
+and where there's honey there's mead."  But mead of such a truly
+comfortable sort as this I really didn't expect to meet in my older
+days.'  He took yet another pull at the mug, till it assumed an
+ominous elevation.
+
+'Glad you enjoy it!' said the shepherd warmly.
+
+'It is goodish mead,' assented Mrs. Fennel, with an absence of
+enthusiasm which seemed to say that it was possible to buy praise
+for one's cellar at too heavy a price.  'It is trouble enough to
+make--and really I hardly think we shall make any more.  For honey
+sells well, and we ourselves can make shift with a drop o' small
+mead and metheglin for common use from the comb-washings."
+
+'O, but you'll never have the heart!' reproachfully cried the
+stranger in cinder-gray, after taking up the mug a third time and
+setting it down empty.  'I love mead, when 'tis old like this, as I
+love to go to church o' Sundays, or to relieve the needy any day of
+the week.'
+
+'Ha, ha, ha!' said the man in the chimney-corner, who, in spite of
+the taciturnity induced by the pipe of tobacco, could not or would
+not refrain from this slight testimony to his comrade's humour.
+
+Now the old mead of those days, brewed of the purest first-year or
+maiden honey, four pounds to the gallon--with its due complement of
+white of eggs, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, mace, rosemary, yeast, and
+processes of working, bottling, and cellaring--tasted remarkably
+strong; but it did not taste so strong as it actually was.  Hence,
+presently, the stranger in cinder-gray at the table, moved by its
+creeping influence, unbuttoned his waistcoat, threw himself back in
+his chair, spread his legs, and made his presence felt in various
+ways.
+
+'Well, well, as I say,' he resumed, 'I am going to Casterbridge, and
+to Casterbridge I must go.  I should have been almost there by this
+time; but the rain drove me into your dwelling, and I'm not sorry
+for it.'
+
+'You don't live in Casterbridge?' said the shepherd.
+
+'Not as yet; though I shortly mean to move there.'
+
+'Going to set up in trade, perhaps?'
+
+'No, no,' said the shepherd's wife.  'It is easy to see that the
+gentleman is rich, and don't want to work at anything.'
+
+The cinder-gray stranger paused, as if to consider whether he would
+accept that definition of himself.  He presently rejected it by
+answering, 'Rich is not quite the word for me, dame.  I do work, and
+I must work.  And even if I only get to Casterbridge by midnight I
+must begin work there at eight to-morrow morning.  Yes, het or wet,
+blow or snow, famine or sword, my day's work to-morrow must be
+done.'
+
+'Poor man!  Then, in spite o' seeming, you be worse off than we?'
+replied the shepherd's wife.
+
+''Tis the nature of my trade, men and maidens.  'Tis the nature of
+my trade more than my poverty . . . But really and truly I must up
+and off, or I shan't get a lodging in the town.'  However, the
+speaker did not move, and directly added, 'There's time for one more
+draught of friendship before I go; and I'd perform it at once if the
+mug were not dry.'
+
+'Here's a mug o' small,' said Mrs. Fennel.  'Small, we call it,
+though to be sure 'tis only the first wash o' the combs.'
+
+'No,' said the stranger disdainfully.  'I won't spoil your first
+kindness by partaking o' your second.'
+
+'Certainly not,' broke in Fennel.  'We don't increase and multiply
+every day, and I'll fill the mug again.'  He went away to the dark
+place under the stairs where the barrel stood.  The shepherdess
+followed him.
+
+'Why should you do this?' she said reproachfully, as soon as they
+were alone.  'He's emptied it once, though it held enough for ten
+people; and now he's not contented wi' the small, but must needs
+call for more o' the strong!  And a stranger unbeknown to any of us.
+For my part, I don't like the look o' the man at all.'
+
+'But he's in the house, my honey; and 'tis a wet night, and a
+christening.  Daze it, what's a cup of mead more or less?  There'll
+be plenty more next bee-burning.'
+
+'Very well--this time, then,' she answered, looking wistfully at the
+barrel.  'But what is the man's calling, and where is he one of;
+that he should come in and join us like this?'
+
+'I don't know.  I'll ask him again.'
+
+The catastrophe of having the mug drained dry at one pull by the
+stranger in cinder-gray was effectually guarded against this time by
+Mrs. Fennel.  She poured out his allowance in a small cup, keeping
+the large one at a discreet distance from him.  When he had tossed
+off his portion the shepherd renewed his inquiry about the
+stranger's occupation.
+
+The latter did not immediately reply, and the man in the chimney-
+corner, with sudden demonstrativeness, said, 'Anybody may know my
+trade--I'm a wheelwright.'
+
+'A very good trade for these parts,' said the shepherd.
+
+'And anybody may know mine--if they've the sense to find it out,'
+said the stranger in cinder-gray.
+
+'You may generally tell what a man is by his claws,' observed the
+hedge-carpenter, looking at his own hands.  'My fingers be as full
+of thorns as an old pin-cushion is of pins.'
+
+The hands of the man in the chimney-corner instinctively sought the
+shade, and he gazed into the fire as he resumed his pipe.  The man
+at the table took up the hedge-carpenter's remark, and added
+smartly, 'True; but the oddity of my trade is that, instead of
+setting a mark upon me, it sets a mark upon my customers.'
+
+No observation being offered by anybody in elucidation of this
+enigma, the shepherd's wife once more called for a song.  The same
+obstacles presented themselves as at the former time--one had no
+voice, another had forgotten the first verse.  The stranger at the
+table, whose soul had now risen to a good working temperature,
+relieved the difficulty by exclaiming that, to start the company, he
+would sing himself.  Thrusting one thumb into the arm-hole of his
+waistcoat, he waved the other hand in the air, and, with an
+extemporizing gaze at the shining sheep-crooks above the
+mantelpiece, began:-
+
+
+'O my trade it is the rarest one,
+Simple shepherds all -
+My trade is a sight to see;
+For my customers I tie, and take them up on high,
+And waft 'em to a far countree!'
+
+
+The room was silent when he had finished the verse--with one
+exception, that of the man in the chimney-corner, who, at the
+singer's word, 'Chorus! 'joined him in a deep bass voice of musical
+relish -
+
+
+'And waft 'em to a far countree!'
+
+
+Oliver Giles, John Pitcher the dairyman, the parish-clerk, the
+engaged man of fifty, the row of young women against the wall,
+seemed lost in thought not of the gayest kind.  The shepherd looked
+meditatively on the ground, the shepherdess gazed keenly at the
+singer, and with some suspicion; she was doubting whether this
+stranger were merely singing an old song from recollection, or was
+composing one there and then for the occasion.  All were as
+perplexed at the obscure revelation as the guests at Belshazzar's
+Feast, except the man in the chimney-corner, who quietly said,
+'Second verse, stranger,' and smoked on.
+
+The singer thoroughly moistened himself from his lips inwards, and
+went on with the next stanza as requested:-
+
+
+'My tools are but common ones,
+Simple shepherds all -
+My tools are no sight to see:
+A little hempen string, and a post whereon to swing,
+Are implements enough for me!'
+
+
+Shepherd Fennel glanced round.  There was no longer any doubt that
+the stranger was answering his question rhythmically.  The guests
+one and all started back with suppressed exclamations.  The young
+woman engaged to the man of fifty fainted half-way, and would have
+proceeded, but finding him wanting in alacrity for catching her she
+sat down trembling.
+
+'O, he's the--!' whispered the people in the background, mentioning
+the name of an ominous public officer.  'He's come to do it!  'Tis
+to be at Casterbridge jail to-morrow--the man for sheep-stealing--
+the poor clock-maker we heard of; who used to live away at
+Shottsford and had no work to do--Timothy Summers, whose family were
+a-starving, and so he went out of Shottsford by the high-road, and
+took a sheep in open daylight, defying the farmer and the farmer's
+wife and the farmer's lad, and every man jack among 'em.  He' (and
+they nodded towards the stranger of the deadly trade) 'is come from
+up the country to do it because there's not enough to do in his own
+county-town, and he's got the place here now our own county man's
+dead; he's going to live in the same cottage under the prison wall.'
+
+The stranger in cinder-gray took no notice of this whispered string
+of observations, but again wetted his lips.  Seeing that his friend
+in the chimney-corner was the only one who reciprocated his
+joviality in any way, he held out his cup towards that appreciative
+comrade, who also held out his own.  They clinked together, the eyes
+of the rest of the room hanging upon the singer's actions.  He
+parted his lips for the third verse; but at that moment another
+knock was audible upon the door.  This time the knock was faint and
+hesitating.
+
+The company seemed scared; the shepherd looked with consternation
+towards the entrance, and it was with some effort that he resisted
+his alarmed wife's deprecatory glance, and uttered for the third
+time the welcoming words, 'Walk in!'
+
+The door was gently opened, and another man stood upon the mat.  He,
+like those who had preceded him, was a stranger.  This time it was a
+short, small personage, of fair complexion, and dressed in a decent
+suit of dark clothes.
+
+'Can you tell me the way to--?' he began:  when, gazing round the
+room to observe the nature of the company amongst whom he had
+fallen, his eyes lighted on the stranger in cinder-gray.  It was
+just at the instant when the latter, who had thrown his mind into
+his song with such a will that he scarcely heeded the interruption,
+silenced all whispers and inquiries by bursting into his third
+verse:-
+
+
+'To-morrow is my working day,
+Simple shepherds all -
+To-morrow is a working day for me:
+For the farmer's sheep is slain, and the lad who did it ta'en,
+And on his soul may God ha' merc-y!'
+
+
+The stranger in the chimney-corner, waving cups with the singer so
+heartily that his mead splashed over on the hearth, repeated in his
+bass voice as before:-
+
+
+'And on his soul may God ha' merc-y!'
+
+
+All this time the third stranger had been standing in the doorway.
+Finding now that he did not come forward or go on speaking, the
+guests particularly regarded him.  They noticed to their surprise
+that he stood before them the picture of abject terror--his knees
+trembling, his hand shaking so violently that the door-latch by
+which he supported himself rattled audibly:  his white lips were
+parted, and his eyes fixed on the merry officer of justice in the
+middle of the room.  A moment more and he had turned, closed the
+door, and fled.
+
+'What a man can it be?' said the shepherd.
+
+The rest, between the awfulness of their late discovery and the odd
+conduct of this third visitor, looked as if they knew not what to
+think, and said nothing.  Instinctively they withdrew further and
+further from the grim gentleman in their midst, whom some of them
+seemed to take for the Prince of Darkness himself; till they formed
+a remote circle, an empty space of floor being left between them and
+him -
+
+
+' . . . circulus, cujus centrum diabolus.'
+
+
+The room was so silent--though there were more than twenty people in
+it--that nothing could be heard but the patter of the rain against
+the window-shutters, accompanied by the occasional hiss of a stray
+drop that fell down the chimney into the fire, and the steady
+puffing of the man in the corner, who had now resumed his pipe of
+long clay.
+
+The stillness was unexpectedly broken.  The distant sound of a gun
+reverberated through the air--apparently from the direction of the
+county-town.
+
+'Be jiggered!' cried the stranger who had sung the song, jumping up.
+
+'What does that mean?' asked several.
+
+'A prisoner escaped from the jail--that's what it means.'
+
+All listened.  The sound was repeated, and none of them spoke but
+the man in the chimney-corner, who said quietly, 'I've often been
+told that in this county they fire a gun at such times; but I never
+heard it till now.'
+
+'I wonder if it is MY man?' murmured the personage in cinder-gray.
+
+'Surely it is!' said the shepherd involuntarily.  'And surely we've
+zeed him!  That little man who looked in at the door by now, and
+quivered like a leaf when he zeed ye and heard your song!'
+
+'His teeth chattered, and the breath went out of his body,' said the
+dairyman.
+
+'And his heart seemed to sink within him like a stone,' said Oliver
+Giles.
+
+'And he bolted as if he'd been shot at,' said the hedge-carpenter.
+
+'True--his teeth chattered, and his heart seemed to sink; and he
+bolted as if he'd been shot at,' slowly summed up the man in the
+chimney-corner.
+
+'I didn't notice it,' remarked the hangman.
+
+'We were all a-wondering what made him run off in such a fright,'
+faltered one of the women against the wall, 'and now 'tis
+explained!'
+
+The firing of the alarm-gun went on at intervals, low and sullenly,
+and their suspicions became a certainty.  The sinister gentleman in
+cinder-gray roused himself.  'Is there a constable here?' he asked,
+in thick tones.  'If so, let him step forward.'
+
+The engaged man of fifty stepped quavering out from the wall, his
+betrothed beginning to sob on the back of the chair.
+
+'You are a sworn constable?'
+
+'I be, sir.'
+
+'Then pursue the criminal at once, with assistance, and bring him
+back here.  He can't have gone far.'
+
+'I will, sir, I will--when I've got my staff.  I'll go home and get
+it, and come sharp here, and start in a body.'
+
+'Staff!--never mind your staff; the man'll be gone!'
+
+'But I can't do nothing without my staff--can I, William, and John,
+and Charles Jake?  No; for there's the king's royal crown a painted
+on en in yaller and gold, and the lion and the unicorn, so as when I
+raise en up and hit my prisoner, 'tis made a lawful blow thereby.  I
+wouldn't 'tempt to take up a man without my staff--no, not I.  If I
+hadn't the law to gie me courage, why, instead o' my taking up him
+he might take up me!'
+
+'Now, I'm a king's man myself; and can give you authority enough for
+this,' said the formidable officer in gray.  'Now then, all of ye,
+be ready.  Have ye any lanterns?'
+
+'Yes--have ye any lanterns?--I demand it!' said the constable.
+
+'And the rest of you able-bodied--'
+
+'Able-bodied men--yes--the rest of ye!' said the constable.
+
+'Have you some good stout staves and pitch-forks--'
+
+'Staves and pitchforks--in the name o' the law!  And take 'em in yer
+hands and go in quest, and do as we in authority tell ye!'
+
+Thus aroused, the men prepared to give chase.  The evidence was,
+indeed, though circumstantial, so convincing, that but little
+argument was needed to show the shepherd's guests that after what
+they had seen it would look very much like connivance if they did
+not instantly pursue the unhappy third stranger, who could not as
+yet have gone more than a few hundred yards over such uneven
+country.
+
+A shepherd is always well provided with lanterns; and, lighting
+these hastily, and with hurdle-staves in their hands, they poured
+out of the door, taking a direction along the crest of the hill,
+away from the town, the rain having fortunately a little abated.
+
+Disturbed by the noise, or possibly by unpleasant dreams of her
+baptism, the child who had been christened began to cry heart-
+brokenly in the room overhead.  These notes of grief came down
+through the chinks of the floor to the ears of the women below, who
+jumped up one by one, and seemed glad of the excuse to ascend and
+comfort the baby, for the incidents of the last half-hour greatly
+oppressed them.  Thus in the space of two or three minutes the room
+on the ground-floor was deserted quite.
+
+But it was not for long.  Hardly had the sound of footsteps died
+away when a man returned round the corner of the house from the
+direction the pursuers had taken.  Peeping in at the door, and
+seeing nobody there, he entered leisurely.  It was the stranger of
+the chimney-corner, who had gone out with the rest.  The motive of
+his return was shown by his helping himself to a cut piece of
+skimmer-cake that lay on a ledge beside where he had sat, and which
+he had apparently forgotten to take with him.  He also poured out
+half a cup more mead from the quantity that remained, ravenously
+eating and drinking these as he stood.  He had not finished when
+another figure came in just as quietly--his friend in cinder-gray.
+
+'O--you here?' said the latter, smiling.  'I thought you had gone to
+help in the capture.'  And this speaker also revealed the object of
+his return by looking solicitously round for the fascinating mug of
+old mead.
+
+'And I thought you had gone,' said the other, continuing his
+skimmer-cake with some effort.
+
+'Well, on second thoughts, I felt there were enough without me,'
+said the first confidentially, 'and such a night as it is, too.
+Besides, 'tis the business o' the Government to take care of its
+criminals--not mine.'
+
+'True; so it is.  And I felt as you did, that there were enough
+without me.'
+
+'I don't want to break my limbs running over the humps and hollows
+of this wild country.'
+
+'Nor I neither, between you and me.'
+
+'These shepherd-people are used to it--simple-minded souls, you
+know, stirred up to anything in a moment.  They'll have him ready
+for me before the morning, and no trouble to me at all.'
+
+'They'll have him, and we shall have saved ourselves all labour in
+the matter.'
+
+'True, true.  Well, my way is to Casterbridge; and 'tis as much as
+my legs will do to take me that far.  Going the same way?'
+
+'No, I am sorry to say!  I have to get home over there' (he nodded
+indefinitely to the right), 'and I feel as you do, that it is quite
+enough for my legs to do before bedtime.'
+
+The other had by this time finished the mead in the mug, after
+which, shaking hands heartily at the door, and wishing each other
+well, they went their several ways.
+
+In the meantime the company of pursuers had reached the end of the
+hog's-back elevation which dominated this part of the down.  They
+had decided on no particular plan of action; and, finding that the
+man of the baleful trade was no longer in their company, they seemed
+quite unable to form any such plan now.  They descended in all
+directions down the hill, and straightway several of the party fell
+into the snare set by Nature for all misguided midnight ramblers
+over this part of the cretaceous formation.  The 'lanchets,' or
+flint slopes, which belted the escarpment at intervals of a dozen
+yards, took the less cautious ones unawares, and losing their
+footing on the rubbly steep they slid sharply downwards, the
+lanterns rolling from their hands to the bottom, and there lying on
+their sides till the horn was scorched through.
+
+When they had again gathered themselves together, the shepherd, as
+the man who knew the country best, took the lead, and guided them
+round these treacherous inclines.  The lanterns, which seemed rather
+to dazzle their eyes and warn the fugitive than to assist them in
+the exploration, were extinguished, due silence was observed; and in
+this more rational order they plunged into the vale.  It was a
+grassy, briery, moist defile, affording some shelter to any person
+who had sought it; but the party perambulated it in vain, and
+ascended on the other side.  Here they wandered apart, and after an
+interval closed together again to report progress.
+
+At the second time of closing in they found themselves near a lonely
+ash, the single tree on this part of the coomb, probably sown there
+by a passing bird some fifty years before.  And here, standing a
+little to one side of the trunk, as motionless as the trunk itself;
+appeared the man they were in quest of; his outline being well
+defined against the sky beyond.  The band noiselessly drew up and
+faced him.
+
+'Your money or your life!' said the constable sternly to the still
+figure.
+
+'No, no,' whispered John Pitcher.  ''Tisn't our side ought to say
+that.  That's the doctrine of vagabonds like him, and we be on the
+side of the law.'
+
+'Well, well,' replied the constable impatiently; 'I must say
+something, mustn't I? and if you had all the weight o' this
+undertaking upon your mind, perhaps you'd say the wrong thing too!--
+Prisoner at the bar, surrender, in the name of the Father--the
+Crown, I mane!'
+
+The man under the tree seemed now to notice them for the first time,
+and, giving them no opportunity whatever for exhibiting their
+courage, he strolled slowly towards them.  He was, indeed, the
+little man, the third stranger; but his trepidation had in a great
+measure gone.
+
+'Well, travellers,' he said, 'did I hear ye speak to me?'
+
+'You did:  you've got to come and be our prisoner at once!' said the
+constable.  'We arrest 'ee on the charge of not biding in
+Casterbridge jail in a decent proper manner to be hung to-morrow
+morning.  Neighbours, do your duty, and seize the culpet!'
+
+On hearing the charge, the man seemed enlightened, and, saying not
+another word, resigned himself with preternatural civility to the
+search-party, who, with their staves in their hands, surrounded him
+on all sides, and marched him back towards the shepherd's cottage.
+
+It was eleven o'clock by the time they arrived.  The light shining
+from the open door, a sound of men's voices within, proclaimed to
+them as they approached the house that some new events had arisen in
+their absence.  On entering they discovered the shepherd's living
+room to be invaded by two officers from Casterbridge jail, and a
+well-known magistrate who lived at the nearest country-seat,
+intelligence of the escape having become generally circulated.
+
+'Gentlemen,' said the constable, 'I have brought back your man--not
+without risk and danger; but every one must do his duty!  He is
+inside this circle of able-bodied persons, who have lent me useful
+aid, considering their ignorance of Crown work.  Men, bring forward
+your prisoner!'  And the third stranger was led to the light.
+
+'Who is this?' said one of the officials.
+
+'The man,' said the constable.
+
+'Certainly not,' said the turnkey; and the first corroborated his
+statement.
+
+'But how can it be otherwise?' asked the constable.  'Or why was he
+so terrified at sight o' the singing instrument of the law who sat
+there?'  Here he related the strange behaviour of the third stranger
+on entering the house during the hangman's song.
+
+'Can't understand it,' said the officer coolly.  'All I know is that
+it is not the condemned man.  He's quite a different character from
+this one; a gauntish fellow, with dark hair and eyes, rather good-
+looking, and with a musical bass voice that if you heard it once
+you'd never mistake as long as you lived.'
+
+'Why, souls--'twas the man in the chimney-corner!'
+
+'Hey--what?' said the magistrate, coming forward after inquiring
+particulars from the shepherd in the background.  'Haven't you got
+the man after all?'
+
+'Well, sir,' said the constable, 'he's the man we were in search of,
+that's true; and yet he's not the man we were in search of.  For the
+man we were in search of was not the man we wanted, sir, if you
+understand my every-day way; for 'twas the man in the chimney-
+corner!'
+
+'A pretty kettle of fish altogether!' said the magistrate.  'You had
+better start for the other man at once.'
+
+The prisoner now spoke for the first time.  The mention of the man
+in the chimney-corner seemed to have moved him as nothing else could
+do.  'Sir,' he said, stepping forward to the magistrate, 'take no
+more trouble about me.  The time is come when I may as well speak.
+I have done nothing; my crime is that the condemned man is my
+brother.  Early this afternoon I left home at Shottsford to tramp it
+all the way to Casterbridge jail to bid him farewell.  I was
+benighted, and called here to rest and ask the way.  When I opened
+the door I saw before me the very man, my brother, that I thought to
+see in the condemned cell at Casterbridge.  He was in this chimney-
+corner; and jammed close to him, so that he could not have got out
+if he had tried, was the executioner who'd come to take his life,
+singing a song about it and not knowing that it was his victim who
+was close by, joining in to save appearances.  My brother looked a
+glance of agony at me, and I knew he meant, "Don't reveal what you
+see; my life depends on it."  I was so terror-struck that I could
+hardly stand, and, not knowing what I did, I turned and hurried
+away.'
+
+The narrator's manner and tone had the stamp of truth, and his story
+made a great impression on all around.  'And do you know where your
+brother is at the present time?' asked the magistrate.
+
+'I do not.  I have never seen him since I closed this door.'
+
+'I can testify to that, for we've been between ye ever since,' said
+the constable.
+
+'Where does he think to fly to?--what is his occupation?'
+
+'He's a watch-and-clock-maker, sir.'
+
+''A said 'a was a wheelwright--a wicked rogue,' said the constable.
+
+'The wheels of clocks and watches he meant, no doubt,' said Shepherd
+Fennel.  'I thought his hands were palish for's trade.'
+
+'Well, it appears to me that nothing can be gained by retaining this
+poor man in custody,' said the magistrate; 'your business lies with
+the other, unquestionably.'
+
+And so the little man was released off-hand; but he looked nothing
+the less sad on that account, it being beyond the power of
+magistrate or constable to raze out the written troubles in his
+brain, for they concerned another whom he regarded with more
+solicitude than himself.  When this was done, and the man had gone
+his way, the night was found to be so far advanced that it was
+deemed useless to renew the search before the next morning.
+
+Next day, accordingly, the quest for the clever sheep-stealer became
+general and keen, to all appearance at least.  But the intended
+punishment was cruelly disproportioned to the transgression, and the
+sympathy of a great many country-folk in that district was strongly
+on the side of the fugitive.  Moreover, his marvellous coolness and
+daring in hob-and-nobbing with the hangman, under the unprecedented
+circumstances of the shepherd's party, won their admiration.  So
+that it may be questioned if all those who ostensibly made
+themselves so busy in exploring woods and fields and lanes were
+quite so thorough when it came to the private examination of their
+own lofts and outhouses.  Stories were afloat of a mysterious figure
+being occasionally seen in some old overgrown trackway or other,
+remote from turnpike roads; but when a search was instituted in any
+of these suspected quarters nobody was found.  Thus the days and
+weeks passed without tidings.
+
+In brief; the bass-voiced man of the chimney-corner was never
+recaptured.  Some said that he went across the sea, others that he
+did not, but buried himself in the depths of a populous city.  At
+any rate, the gentleman in cinder-gray never did his morning's work
+at Casterbridge, nor met anywhere at all, for business purposes, the
+genial comrade with whom he had passed an hour of relaxation in the
+lonely house on the coomb.
+
+The grass has long been green on the graves of Shepherd Fennel and
+his frugal wife; the guests who made up the christening party have
+mainly followed their entertainers to the tomb; the baby in whose
+honour they all had met is a matron in the sere and yellow leaf.
+But the arrival of the three strangers at the shepherd's that night,
+and the details connected therewith, is a story as well known as
+ever in the country about Higher Crowstairs.
+
+March 1883.
+
+
+
+
+THE WITHERED ARM
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I--A LORN MILKMAID
+
+
+
+It was an eighty-cow dairy, and the troop of milkers, regular and
+supernumerary, were all at work; for, though the time of year was as
+yet but early April, the feed lay entirely in water-meadows, and the
+cows were 'in full pail.'  The hour was about six in the evening,
+and three-fourths of the large, red, rectangular animals having been
+finished off, there was opportunity for a little conversation.
+
+'He do bring home his bride to-morrow, I hear.  They've come as far
+as Anglebury to-day.'
+
+The voice seemed to proceed from the belly of the cow called Cherry,
+but the speaker was a milking-woman, whose face was buried in the
+flank of that motionless beast.
+
+'Hav' anybody seen her?' said another.
+
+There was a negative response from the first.  'Though they say
+she's a rosy-cheeked, tisty-tosty little body enough,' she added;
+and as the milkmaid spoke she turned her face so that she could
+glance past her cow's tail to the other side of the barton, where a
+thin, fading woman of thirty milked somewhat apart from the rest.
+
+'Years younger than he, they say,' continued the second, with also a
+glance of reflectiveness in the same direction.
+
+'How old do you call him, then?'
+
+'Thirty or so.'
+
+'More like forty,' broke in an old milkman near, in a long white
+pinafore or 'wropper,' and with the brim of his hat tied down, so
+that he looked like a woman.  ''A was born before our Great Weir was
+builded, and I hadn't man's wages when I laved water there.'
+
+The discussion waxed so warm that the purr of the milk-streams
+became jerky, till a voice from another cow's belly cried with
+authority, 'Now then, what the Turk do it matter to us about Farmer
+Lodge's age, or Farmer Lodge's new mis'ess?  I shall have to pay him
+nine pound a year for the rent of every one of these milchers,
+whatever his age or hers.  Get on with your work, or 'twill be dark
+afore we have done.  The evening is pinking in a'ready.'  This
+speaker was the dairyman himself; by whom the milkmaids and men were
+employed.
+
+Nothing more was said publicly about Farmer Lodge's wedding, but the
+first woman murmured under her cow to her next neighbour, ''Tis hard
+for SHE,' signifying the thin worn milkmaid aforesaid.
+
+'O no,' said the second.  'He ha'n't spoke to Rhoda Brook for
+years.'
+
+When the milking was done they washed their pails and hung them on a
+many-forked stand made of the peeled limb of an oak-tree, set
+upright in the earth, and resembling a colossal antlered horn.  The
+majority then dispersed in various directions homeward.  The thin
+woman who had not spoken was joined by a boy of twelve or
+thereabout, and the twain went away up the field also.
+
+Their course lay apart from that of the others, to a lonely spot
+high above the water-meads, and not far from the border of Egdon
+Heath, whose dark countenance was visible in the distance as they
+drew nigh to their home.
+
+'They've just been saying down in barton that your father brings his
+young wife home from Anglebury to-morrow,' the woman observed.  'I
+shall want to send you for a few things to market, and you'll be
+pretty sure to meet 'em.'
+
+'Yes, mother,' said the boy.  'Is father married then?'
+
+'Yes . . . You can give her a look, and tell me what's she's like,
+if you do see her.'
+
+'Yes, mother.'
+
+'If she's dark or fair, and if she's tall--as tall as I.  And if she
+seems like a woman who has ever worked for a living, or one that has
+been always well off, and has never done anything, and shows marks
+of the lady on her, as I expect she do.'
+
+'Yes.'
+
+They crept up the hill in the twilight, and entered the cottage.  It
+was built of mud-walls, the surface of which had been washed by many
+rains into channels and depressions that left none of the original
+flat face visible; while here and there in the thatch above a rafter
+showed like a bone protruding through the skin.
+
+She was kneeling down in the chimney-corner, before two pieces of
+turf laid together with the heather inwards, blowing at the red-hot
+ashes with her breath till the turves flamed.  The radiance lit her
+pale cheek, and made her dark eyes, that had once been handsome,
+seem handsome anew.  'Yes,' she resumed, 'see if she is dark or
+fair, and if you can, notice if her hands be white; if not, see if
+they look as though she had ever done housework, or are milker's
+hands like mine.'
+
+The boy again promised, inattentively this time, his mother not
+observing that he was cutting a notch with his pocket-knife in the
+beech-backed chair.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II--THE YOUNG WIFE
+
+
+
+The road from Anglebury to Holmstoke is in general level; but there
+is one place where a sharp ascent breaks its monotony.  Farmers
+homeward-bound from the former market-town, who trot all the rest of
+the way, walk their horses up this short incline.
+
+The next evening, while the sun was yet bright, a handsome new gig,
+with a lemon-coloured body and red wheels, was spinning westward
+along the level highway at the heels of a powerful mare.  The driver
+was a yeoman in the prime of life, cleanly shaven like an actor, his
+face being toned to that bluish-vermilion hue which so often graces
+a thriving farmer's features when returning home after successful
+dealings in the town.  Beside him sat a woman, many years his
+junior--almost, indeed, a girl.  Her face too was fresh in colour,
+but it was of a totally different quality--soft and evanescent, like
+the light under a heap of rose-petals.
+
+Few people travelled this way, for it was not a main road; and the
+long white riband of gravel that stretched before them was empty,
+save of one small scarce-moving speck, which presently resolved
+itself into the figure of boy, who was creeping on at a snail's
+pace, and continually looking behind him--the heavy bundle he
+carried being some excuse for, if not the reason of, his
+dilatoriness.  When the bouncing gig-party slowed at the bottom of
+the incline above mentioned, the pedestrian was only a few yards in
+front.  Supporting the large bundle by putting one hand on his hip,
+he turned and looked straight at the farmer's wife as though he
+would read her through and through, pacing along abreast of the
+horse.
+
+The low sun was full in her face, rendering every feature, shade,
+and contour distinct, from the curve of her little nostril to the
+colour of her eyes.  The farmer, though he seemed annoyed at the
+boy's persistent presence, did not order him to get out of the way;
+and thus the lad preceded them, his hard gaze never leaving her,
+till they reached the top of the ascent, when the farmer trotted on
+with relief in his lineaments--having taken no outward notice of the
+boy whatever.
+
+'How that poor lad stared at me!' said the young wife.
+
+'Yes, dear; I saw that he did.'
+
+'He is one of the village, I suppose?'
+
+'One of the neighbourhood.  I think he lives with his mother a mile
+or two off.'
+
+'He knows who we are, no doubt?'
+
+'O yes.  You must expect to be stared at just at first, my pretty
+Gertrude.'
+
+'I do,--though I think the poor boy may have looked at us in the
+hope we might relieve him of his heavy load, rather than from
+curiosity.'
+
+'O no,' said her husband off-handedly.  'These country lads will
+carry a hundredweight once they get it on their backs; besides his
+pack had more size than weight in it.  Now, then, another mile and I
+shall be able to show you our house in the distance--if it is not
+too dark before we get there.'  The wheels spun round, and particles
+flew from their periphery as before, till a white house of ample
+dimensions revealed itself, with farm-buildings and ricks at the
+back.
+
+Meanwhile the boy had quickened his pace, and turning up a by-lane
+some mile and half short of the white farmstead, ascended towards
+the leaner pastures, and so on to the cottage of his mother.
+
+She had reached home after her day's milking at the outlying dairy,
+and was washing cabbage at the doorway in the declining light.
+'Hold up the net a moment,' she said, without preface, as the boy
+came up.
+
+He flung down his bundle, held the edge of the cabbage-net, and as
+she filled its meshes with the dripping leaves she went on, 'Well,
+did you see her?'
+
+'Yes; quite plain.'
+
+'Is she ladylike?'
+
+'Yes; and more.  A lady complete.'
+
+'Is she young?'
+
+'Well, she's growed up, and her ways be quite a woman's.'
+
+'Of course.  What colour is her hair and face?'
+
+'Her hair is lightish, and her face as comely as a live doll's.'
+
+'Her eyes, then, are not dark like mine?'
+
+'No--of a bluish turn, and her mouth is very nice and red; and when
+she smiles, her teeth show white.'
+
+'Is she tall?' said the woman sharply.
+
+'I couldn't see.  She was sitting down.'
+
+'Then do you go to Holmstoke church to-morrow morning:  she's sure
+to be there.  Go early and notice her walking in, and come home and
+tell me if she's taller than I.'
+
+'Very well, mother.  But why don't you go and see for yourself?'
+
+'_I_ go to see her!  I wouldn't look up at her if she were to pass
+my window this instant.  She was with Mr. Lodge, of course.  What
+did he say or do?'
+
+'Just the same as usual.'
+
+'Took no notice of you?'
+
+'None.'
+
+Next day the mother put a clean shirt on the boy, and started him
+off for Holmstoke church.  He reached the ancient little pile when
+the door was just being opened, and he was the first to enter.
+Taking his seat by the font, he watched all the parishioners file
+in.  The well-to-do Farmer Lodge came nearly last; and his young
+wife, who accompanied him, walked up the aisle with the shyness
+natural to a modest woman who had appeared thus for the first time.
+As all other eyes were fixed upon her, the youth's stare was not
+noticed now.
+
+When he reached home his mother said, 'Well?' before he had entered
+the room.
+
+'She is not tall.  She is rather short,' he replied.
+
+'Ah!' said his mother, with satisfaction.
+
+'But she's very pretty--very.  In fact, she's lovely.'
+
+The youthful freshness of the yeoman's wife had evidently made an
+impression even on the somewhat hard nature of the boy.
+
+'That's all I want to hear,' said his mother quickly.  'Now, spread
+the table-cloth.  The hare you caught is very tender; but mind that
+nobody catches you.--You've never told me what sort of hands she
+had.'
+
+'I have never seen 'em.  She never took off her gloves.'
+
+'What did she wear this morning?'
+
+'A white bonnet and a silver-coloured gownd.  It whewed and whistled
+so loud when it rubbed against the pews that the lady coloured up
+more than ever for very shame at the noise, and pulled it in to keep
+it from touching; but when she pushed into her seat, it whewed more
+than ever.  Mr. Lodge, he seemed pleased, and his waistcoat stuck
+out, and his great golden seals hung like a lord's; but she seemed
+to wish her noisy gownd anywhere but on her.'
+
+'Not she!  However, that will do now.'
+
+These descriptions of the newly-married couple were continued from
+time to time by the boy at his mother's request, after any chance
+encounter he had had with them.  But Rhoda Brook, though she might
+easily have seen young Mrs. Lodge for herself by walking a couple of
+miles, would never attempt an excursion towards the quarter where
+the farmhouse lay.  Neither did she, at the daily milking in the
+dairyman's yard on Lodge's outlying second farm, ever speak on the
+subject of the recent marriage.  The dairyman, who rented the cows
+of Lodge, and knew perfectly the tall milkmaid's history, with manly
+kindliness always kept the gossip in the cow-barton from annoying
+Rhoda.  But the atmosphere thereabout was full of the subject during
+the first days of Mrs. Lodge's arrival; and from her boy's
+description and the casual words of the other milkers, Rhoda Brook
+could raise a mental image of the unconscious Mrs Lodge that was
+realistic as a photograph.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III--A VISION
+
+
+
+One night, two or three weeks after the bridal return, when the boy
+was gone to bed, Rhoda sat a long time over the turf ashes that she
+had raked out in front of her to extinguish them.  She contemplated
+so intently the new wife, as presented to her in her mind's eye over
+the embers, that she forgot the lapse of time.  At last, wearied
+with her day's work, she too retired.
+
+But the figure which had occupied her so much during this and the
+previous days was not to be banished at night.  For the first time
+Gertrude Lodge visited the supplanted woman in her dreams.  Rhoda
+Brook dreamed--since her assertion that she really saw, before
+falling asleep, was not to be believed--that the young wife, in the
+pale silk dress and white bonnet, but with features shockingly
+distorted, and wrinkled as by age, was sitting upon her chest as she
+lay.  The pressure of Mrs. Lodge's person grew heavier; the blue
+eyes peered cruelly into her face; and then the figure thrust
+forward its left hand mockingly, so as to make the wedding-ring it
+wore glitter in Rhoda's eyes.  Maddened mentally, and nearly
+suffocated by pressure, the sleeper struggled; the incubus, still
+regarding her, withdrew to the foot of the bed, only, however, to
+come forward by degrees, resume her seat, and flash her left hand as
+before.
+
+Gasping for breath, Rhoda, in a last desperate effort, swung out her
+right hand, seized the confronting spectre by its obtrusive left
+arm, and whirled it backward to the floor, starting up herself as
+she did so with a low cry.
+
+'O, merciful heaven!' she cried, sitting on the edge of the bed in a
+cold sweat; 'that was not a dream--she was here!'
+
+She could feel her antagonist's arm within her grasp even now--the
+very flesh and bone of it, as it seemed.  She looked on the floor
+whither she had whirled the spectre, but there was nothing to be
+seen.
+
+Rhoda Brook slept no more that night, and when she went milking at
+the next dawn they noticed how pale and haggard she looked.  The
+milk that she drew quivered into the pail; her hand had not calmed
+even yet, and still retained the feel of the arm.  She came home to
+breakfast as wearily as if it had been suppertime.
+
+'What was that noise in your chimmer, mother, last night?' said her
+son.  'You fell off the bed, surely?'
+
+'Did you hear anything fall?  At what time?'
+
+'Just when the clock struck two.'
+
+She could not explain, and when the meal was done went silently
+about her household work, the boy assisting her, for he hated going
+afield on the farms, and she indulged his reluctance.  Between
+eleven and twelve the garden-gate clicked, and she lifted her eyes
+to the window.  At the bottom of the garden, within the gate, stood
+the woman of her vision.  Rhoda seemed transfixed.
+
+'Ah, she said she would come!' exclaimed the boy, also observing
+her.
+
+'Said so--when?  How does she know us?'
+
+'I have seen and spoken to her.  I talked to her yesterday.'
+
+'I told you,' said the mother, flushing indignantly, 'never to speak
+to anybody in that house, or go near the place.'
+
+'I did not speak to her till she spoke to me.  And I did not go near
+the place.  I met her in the road.'
+
+'What did you tell her?'
+
+'Nothing.  She said, "Are you the poor boy who had to bring the
+heavy load from market?"  And she looked at my boots, and said they
+would not keep my feet dry if it came on wet, because they were so
+cracked.  I told her I lived with my mother, and we had enough to do
+to keep ourselves, and that's how it was; and she said then, "I'll
+come and bring you some better boots, and see your mother."  She
+gives away things to other folks in the meads besides us.'
+
+Mrs. Lodge was by this time close to the door--not in her silk, as
+Rhoda had seen her in the bed-chamber, but in a morning hat, and
+gown of common light material, which became her better than silk.
+On her arm she carried a basket.
+
+The impression remaining from the night's experience was still
+strong.  Brook had almost expected to see the wrinkles, the scorn,
+and the cruelty on her visitor's face.
+
+She would have escaped an interview, had escape been possible.
+There was, however, no backdoor to the cottage, and in an instant
+the boy had lifted the latch to Mrs. Lodge's gentle knock.
+
+'I see I have come to the right house,' said she, glancing at the
+lad, and smiling.  'But I was not sure till you opened the door.'
+
+The figure and action were those of the phantom; but her voice was
+so indescribably sweet, her glance so winning, her smile so tender,
+so unlike that of Rhoda's midnight visitant, that the latter could
+hardly believe the evidence of her senses.  She was truly glad that
+she had not hidden away in sheer aversion, as she had been inclined
+to do.  In her basket Mrs. Lodge brought the pair of boots that she
+had promised to the boy, and other useful articles.
+
+At these proofs of a kindly feeling towards her and hers Rhoda's
+heart reproached her bitterly.  This innocent young thing should
+have her blessing and not her curse.  When she left them a light
+seemed gone from the dwelling.  Two days later she came again to
+know if the boots fitted; and less than a fortnight after that paid
+Rhoda another call.  On this occasion the boy was absent.
+
+'I walk a good deal,' said Mrs. Lodge, 'and your house is the
+nearest outside our own parish.  I hope you are well.  You don't
+look quite well.'
+
+Rhoda said she was well enough; and, indeed, though the paler of the
+two, there was more of the strength that endures in her well-defined
+features and large frame, than in the soft-cheeked young woman
+before her.  The conversation became quite confidential as regarded
+their powers and weaknesses; and when Mrs. Lodge was leaving, Rhoda
+said, 'I hope you will find this air agree with you, ma'am, and not
+suffer from the damp of the water-meads.'
+
+The younger one replied that there was not much doubt of it, her
+general health being usually good.  'Though, now you remind me,' she
+added, 'I have one little ailment which puzzles me.  It is nothing
+serious, but I cannot make it out.'
+
+She uncovered her left hand and arm; and their outline confronted
+Rhoda's gaze as the exact original of the limb she had beheld and
+seized in her dream.  Upon the pink round surface of the arm were
+faint marks of an unhealthy colour, as if produced by a rough grasp.
+Rhoda's eyes became riveted on the discolorations; she fancied that
+she discerned in them the shape of her own four fingers.
+
+'How did it happen?' she said mechanically.
+
+'I cannot tell,' replied Mrs. Lodge, shaking her head.  'One night
+when I was sound asleep, dreaming I was away in some strange place,
+a pain suddenly shot into my arm there, and was so keen as to awaken
+me.  I must have struck it in the daytime, I suppose, though I don't
+remember doing so.'  She added, laughing, 'I tell my dear husband
+that it looks just as if he had flown into a rage and struck me
+there.  O, I daresay it will soon disappear.'
+
+'Ha, ha!  Yes . . . On what night did it come?'
+
+Mrs. Lodge considered, and said it would be a fortnight ago on the
+morrow.  'When I awoke I could not remember where I was,' she added,
+'till the clock striking two reminded me.'
+
+She had named the night and the hour of Rhoda's spectral encounter,
+and Brook felt like a guilty thing.  The artless disclosure startled
+her; she did not reason on the freaks of coincidence; and all the
+scenery of that ghastly night returned with double vividness to her
+mind.
+
+'O, can it be,' she said to herself, when her visitor had departed,
+'that I exercise a malignant power over people against my own will?'
+She knew that she had been slily called a witch since her fall; but
+never having understood why that particular stigma had been attached
+to her, it had passed disregarded.  Could this be the explanation,
+and had such things as this ever happened before?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV--A SUGGESTION
+
+
+
+The summer drew on, and Rhoda Brook almost dreaded to meet Mrs.
+Lodge again, notwithstanding that her feeling for the young wife
+amounted well-nigh to affection.  Something in her own individuality
+seemed to convict Rhoda of crime.  Yet a fatality sometimes would
+direct the steps of the latter to the outskirts of Holmstoke
+whenever she left her house for any other purpose than her daily
+work; and hence it happened that their next encounter was out of
+doors.  Rhoda could not avoid the subject which had so mystified
+her, and after the first few words she stammered, 'I hope your--arm
+is well again, ma'am?'  She had perceived with consternation that
+Gertrude Lodge carried her left arm stiffly.
+
+'No; it is not quite well.  Indeed it is no better at all; it is
+rather worse.  It pains me dreadfully sometimes.'
+
+'Perhaps you had better go to a doctor, ma'am.'
+
+She replied that she had already seen a doctor.  Her husband had
+insisted upon her going to one.  But the surgeon had not seemed to
+understand the afflicted limb at all; he had told her to bathe it in
+hot water, and she had bathed it, but the treatment had done no
+good.
+
+'Will you let me see it?' said the milkwoman.
+
+Mrs. Lodge pushed up her sleeve and disclosed the place, which was a
+few inches above the wrist.  As soon as Rhoda Brook saw it, she
+could hardly preserve her composure.  There was nothing of the
+nature of a wound, but the arm at that point had a shrivelled look,
+and the outline of the four fingers appeared more distinct than at
+the former time.  Moreover, she fancied that they were imprinted in
+precisely the relative position of her clutch upon the arm in the
+trance; the first finger towards Gertrude's wrist, and the fourth
+towards her elbow.
+
+What the impress resembled seemed to have struck Gertrude herself
+since their last meeting.  'It looks almost like finger-marks,' she
+said; adding with a faint laugh, 'my husband says it is as if some
+witch, or the devil himself, had taken hold of me there, and blasted
+the flesh.'
+
+Rhoda shivered.  'That's fancy,' she said hurriedly.  'I wouldn't
+mind it, if I were you.'
+
+'I shouldn't so much mind it,' said the younger, with hesitation,
+'if--if I hadn't a notion that it makes my husband--dislike me--no,
+love me less.  Men think so much of personal appearance.'
+
+'Some do--he for one.'
+
+'Yes; and he was very proud of mine, at first.'
+
+'Keep your arm covered from his sight.'
+
+'Ah--he knows the disfigurement is there!'  She tried to hide the
+tears that filled her eyes.
+
+'Well, ma'am, I earnestly hope it will go away soon.'
+
+And so the milkwoman's mind was chained anew to the subject by a
+horrid sort of spell as she returned home.  The sense of having been
+guilty of an act of malignity increased, affect as she might to
+ridicule her superstition.  In her secret heart Rhoda did not
+altogether object to a slight diminution of her successor's beauty,
+by whatever means it had come about; but she did not wish to inflict
+upon her physical pain.  For though this pretty young woman had
+rendered impossible any reparation which Lodge might have made Rhoda
+for his past conduct, everything like resentment at the unconscious
+usurpation had quite passed away from the elder's mind.
+
+If the sweet and kindly Gertrude Lodge only knew of the scene in the
+bed-chamber, what would she think?  Not to inform her of it seemed
+treachery in the presence of her friendliness; but tell she could
+not of her own accord--neither could she devise a remedy.
+
+She mused upon the matter the greater part of the night; and the
+next day, after the morning milking, set out to obtain another
+glimpse of Gertrude Lodge if she could, being held to her by a
+gruesome fascination.  By watching the house from a distance the
+milkmaid was presently able to discern the farmer's wife in a ride
+she was taking alone--probably to join her husband in some distant
+field.  Mrs. Lodge perceived her, and cantered in her direction.
+
+'Good morning, Rhoda!' Gertrude said, when she had come up.  'I was
+going to call.'
+
+Rhoda noticed that Mrs. Lodge held the reins with some difficulty.
+
+'I hope--the bad arm,' said Rhoda.
+
+'They tell me there is possibly one way by which I might be able to
+find out the cause, and so perhaps the cure, of it,' replied the
+other anxiously.  'It is by going to some clever man over in Egdon
+Heath.  They did not know if he was still alive--and I cannot
+remember his name at this moment; but they said that you knew more
+of his movements than anybody else hereabout, and could tell me if
+he were still to be consulted.  Dear me--what was his name?  But you
+know.'
+
+'Not Conjuror Trendle?' said her thin companion, turning pale.
+
+'Trendle--yes.  Is he alive?'
+
+'I believe so,' said Rhoda, with reluctance.
+
+'Why do you call him conjuror?'
+
+'Well--they say--they used to say he was a--he had powers other
+folks have not.'
+
+'O, how could my people be so superstitious as to recommend a man of
+that sort!  I thought they meant some medical man.  I shall think no
+more of him.'
+
+Rhoda looked relieved, and Mrs. Lodge rode on.  The milkwoman had
+inwardly seen, from the moment she heard of her having been
+mentioned as a reference for this man, that there must exist a
+sarcastic feeling among the work-folk that a sorceress would know
+the whereabouts of the exorcist.  They suspected her, then.  A short
+time ago this would have given no concern to a woman of her common-
+sense.  But she had a haunting reason to be superstitious now; and
+she had been seized with sudden dread that this Conjuror Trendle
+might name her as the malignant influence which was blasting the
+fair person of Gertrude, and so lead her friend to hate her for
+ever, and to treat her as some fiend in human shape.
+
+But all was not over.  Two days after, a shadow intruded into the
+window-pattern thrown on Rhoda Brook's floor by the afternoon sun.
+The woman opened the door at once, almost breathlessly.
+
+'Are you alone?' said Gertrude.  She seemed to be no less harassed
+and anxious than Brook herself.
+
+'Yes,' said Rhoda.
+
+'The place on my arm seems worse, and troubles me!' the young
+farmer's wife went on.  'It is so mysterious!  I do hope it will not
+be an incurable wound.  I have again been thinking of what they said
+about Conjuror Trendle.  I don't really believe in such men, but I
+should not mind just visiting him, from curiosity--though on no
+account must my husband know.  Is it far to where he lives?'
+
+'Yes--five miles,' said Rhoda backwardly.  'In the heart of Egdon.'
+
+'Well, I should have to walk.  Could not you go with me to show me
+the way--say to-morrow afternoon?'
+
+'O, not I--that is,' the milkwoman murmured, with a start of dismay.
+Again the dread seized her that something to do with her fierce act
+in the dream might be revealed, and her character in the eyes of the
+most useful friend she had ever had be ruined irretrievably.
+
+Mrs. Lodge urged, and Rhoda finally assented, though with much
+misgiving.  Sad as the journey would be to her, she could not
+conscientiously stand in the way of a possible remedy for her
+patron's strange affliction.  It was agreed that, to escape
+suspicion of their mystic intent, they should meet at the edge of
+the heath at the corner of a plantation which was visible from the
+spot where they now stood.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V--CONJUROR TRENDLE
+
+
+
+By the next afternoon Rhoda would have done anything to escape this
+inquiry.  But she had promised to go.  Moreover, there was a horrid
+fascination at times in becoming instrumental in throwing such
+possible light on her own character as would reveal her to be
+something greater in the occult world than she had ever herself
+suspected.
+
+She started just before the time of day mentioned between them, and
+half-an-hour's brisk walking brought her to the south-eastern
+extension of the Egdon tract of country, where the fir plantation
+was.  A slight figure, cloaked and veiled, was already there.  Rhoda
+recognized, almost with a shudder, that Mrs. Lodge bore her left arm
+in a sling.
+
+They hardly spoke to each other, and immediately set out on their
+climb into the interior of this solemn country, which stood high
+above the rich alluvial soil they had left half-an-hour before.  It
+was a long walk; thick clouds made the atmosphere dark, though it
+was as yet only early afternoon; and the wind howled dismally over
+the hills of the heath--not improbably the same heath which had
+witnessed the agony of the Wessex King Ina, presented to after-ages
+as Lear.  Gertrude Lodge talked most, Rhoda replying with
+monosyllabic preoccupation.  She had a strange dislike to walking on
+the side of her companion where hung the afflicted arm, moving round
+to the other when inadvertently near it.  Much heather had been
+brushed by their feet when they descended upon a cart-track, beside
+which stood the house of the man they sought.
+
+He did not profess his remedial practices openly, or care anything
+about their continuance, his direct interests being those of a
+dealer in furze, turf, 'sharp sand,' and other local products.
+Indeed, he affected not to believe largely in his own powers, and
+when warts that had been shown him for cure miraculously
+disappeared--which it must be owned they infallibly did--he would
+say lightly, 'O, I only drink a glass of grog upon 'em--perhaps it's
+all chance,' and immediately turn the subject.
+
+He was at home when they arrived, having in fact seen them
+descending into his valley.  He was a gray-bearded man, with a
+reddish face, and he looked singularly at Rhoda the first moment he
+beheld her.  Mrs. Lodge told him her errand; and then with words of
+self-disparagement he examined her arm.
+
+'Medicine can't cure it,' he said promptly.  ''Tis the work of an
+enemy.'
+
+Rhoda shrank into herself, and drew back.
+
+'An enemy?  What enemy?' asked Mrs. Lodge.
+
+He shook his head.  'That's best known to yourself,' he said.  'If
+you like, I can show the person to you, though I shall not myself
+know who it is.  I can do no more; and don't wish to do that.'
+
+She pressed him; on which he told Rhoda to wait outside where she
+stood, and took Mrs. Lodge into the room.  It opened immediately
+from the door; and, as the latter remained ajar, Rhoda Brook could
+see the proceedings without taking part in them.  He brought a
+tumbler from the dresser, nearly filled it with water, and fetching
+an egg, prepared it in some private way; after which he broke it on
+the edge of the glass, so that the white went in and the yolk
+remained.  As it was getting gloomy, he took the glass and its
+contents to the window, and told Gertrude to watch them closely.
+They leant over the table together, and the milkwoman could see the
+opaline hue of the egg-fluid changing form as it sank in the water,
+but she was not near enough to define the shape that it assumed.
+
+'Do you catch the likeness of any face or figure as you look?'
+demanded the conjuror of the young woman.
+
+She murmured a reply, in tones so low as to be inaudible to Rhoda,
+and continued to gaze intently into the glass.  Rhoda turned, and
+walked a few steps away.
+
+When Mrs. Lodge came out, and her face was met by the light, it
+appeared exceedingly pale--as pale as Rhoda's--against the sad dun
+shades of the upland's garniture.  Trendle shut the door behind her,
+and they at once started homeward together.  But Rhoda perceived
+that her companion had quite changed.
+
+'Did he charge much?' she asked tentatively.
+
+'O no--nothing.  He would not take a farthing,' said Gertrude.
+
+'And what did you see?' inquired Rhoda.
+
+'Nothing I--care to speak of.'  The constraint in her manner was
+remarkable; her face was so rigid as to wear an oldened aspect,
+faintly suggestive of the face in Rhoda's bed-chamber.
+
+'Was it you who first proposed coming here?' Mrs. Lodge suddenly
+inquired, after a long pause.  'How very odd, if you did!'
+
+'No.  But I am not sorry we have come, all things considered,' she
+replied.  For the first time a sense of triumph possessed her, and
+she did not altogether deplore that the young thing at her side
+should learn that their lives had been antagonized by other
+influences than their own.
+
+The subject was no more alluded to during the long and dreary walk
+home.  But in some way or other a story was whispered about the
+many-dairied lowland that winter that Mrs. Lodge's gradual loss of
+the use of her left arm was owing to her being 'overlooked' by Rhoda
+Brook.  The latter kept her own counsel about the incubus, but her
+face grew sadder and thinner; and in the spring she and her boy
+disappeared from the neighbourhood of Holmstoke.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI--A SECOND ATTEMPT
+
+
+
+Half-a-dozen years passed away, and Mr. and Mrs. Lodge's married
+experience sank into prosiness, and worse.  The farmer was usually
+gloomy and silent:  the woman whom he had wooed for her grace and
+beauty was contorted and disfigured in the left limb; moreover, she
+had brought him no child, which rendered it likely that he would be
+the last of a family who had occupied that valley for some two
+hundred years.  He thought of Rhoda Brook and her son; and feared
+this might be a judgment from heaven upon him.
+
+The once blithe-hearted and enlightened Gertrude was changing into
+an irritable, superstitious woman, whose whole time was given to
+experimenting upon her ailment with every quack remedy she came
+across.  She was honestly attached to her husband, and was ever
+secretly hoping against hope to win back his heart again by
+regaining some at least of her personal beauty.  Hence it arose that
+her closet was lined with bottles, packets, and ointment-pots of
+every description--nay, bunches of mystic herbs, charms, and books
+of necromancy, which in her schoolgirl time she would have ridiculed
+as folly.
+
+'Damned if you won't poison yourself with these apothecary messes
+and witch mixtures some time or other,' said her husband, when his
+eye chanced to fall upon the multitudinous array.
+
+She did not reply, but turned her sad, soft glance upon him in such
+heart-swollen reproach that he looked sorry for his words, and
+added, 'I only meant it for your good, you know, Gertrude.'
+
+'I'll clear out the whole lot, and destroy them,' said she huskily,
+'and try such remedies no more!'
+
+'You want somebody to cheer you,' he observed.  'I once thought of
+adopting a boy; but he is too old now.  And he is gone away I don't
+know where.'
+
+She guessed to whom he alluded; for Rhoda Brook's story had in the
+course of years become known to her; though not a word had ever
+passed between her husband and herself on the subject.  Neither had
+she ever spoken to him of her visit to Conjuror Trendle, and of what
+was revealed to her, or she thought was revealed to her, by that
+solitary heath-man.
+
+She was now five-and-twenty; but she seemed older.
+
+'Six years of marriage, and only a few months of love,' she
+sometimes whispered to herself.  And then she thought of the
+apparent cause, and said, with a tragic glance at her withering
+limb, 'If I could only again be as I was when he first saw me!'
+
+She obediently destroyed her nostrums and charms; but there remained
+a hankering wish to try something else--some other sort of cure
+altogether.  She had never revisited Trendle since she had been
+conducted to the house of the solitary by Rhoda against her will;
+but it now suddenly occurred to Gertrude that she would, in a last
+desperate effort at deliverance from this seeming curse, again seek
+out the man, if he yet lived.  He was entitled to a certain
+credence, for the indistinct form he had raised in the glass had
+undoubtedly resembled the only woman in the world who--as she now
+knew, though not then--could have a reason for bearing her ill-will.
+The visit should be paid.
+
+This time she went alone, though she nearly got lost on the heath,
+and roamed a considerable distance out of her way.  Trendle's house
+was reached at last, however:  he was not indoors, and instead of
+waiting at the cottage, she went to where his bent figure was
+pointed out to her at work a long way off.  Trendle remembered her,
+and laying down the handful of furze-roots which he was gathering
+and throwing into a heap, he offered to accompany her in her
+homeward direction, as the distance was considerable and the days
+were short.  So they walked together, his head bowed nearly to the
+earth, and his form of a colour with it.
+
+'You can send away warts and other excrescences I know,' she said;
+'why can't you send away this?'  And the arm was uncovered.
+
+'You think too much of my powers!' said Trendle; 'and I am old and
+weak now, too.  No, no; it is too much for me to attempt in my own
+person.  What have ye tried?'
+
+She named to him some of the hundred medicaments and counterspells
+which she had adopted from time to time.  He shook his head.
+
+'Some were good enough,' he said approvingly; 'but not many of them
+for such as this.  This is of the nature of a blight, not of the
+nature of a wound; and if you ever do throw it off; it will be all
+at once.'
+
+'If I only could!'
+
+'There is only one chance of doing it known to me.  It has never
+failed in kindred afflictions,--that I can declare.  But it is hard
+to carry out, and especially for a woman.'
+
+'Tell me!' said she.
+
+'You must touch with the limb the neck of a man who's been hanged.'
+
+She started a little at the image he had raised.
+
+'Before he's cold--just after he's cut down,' continued the conjuror
+impassively.
+
+'How can that do good?'
+
+'It will turn the blood and change the constitution.  But, as I say,
+to do it is hard.  You must get into jail, and wait for him when
+he's brought off the gallows.  Lots have done it, though perhaps not
+such pretty women as you.  I used to send dozens for skin
+complaints.  But that was in former times.  The last I sent was in
+'13--near twenty years ago.'
+
+He had no more to tell her; and, when he had put her into a straight
+track homeward, turned and left her, refusing all money as at first.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII--A RIDE
+
+
+
+The communication sank deep into Gertrude's mind.  Her nature was
+rather a timid one; and probably of all remedies that the white
+wizard could have suggested there was not one which would have
+filled her with so much aversion as this, not to speak of the
+immense obstacles in the way of its adoption.
+
+Casterbridge, the county-town, was a dozen or fifteen miles off; and
+though in those days, when men were executed for horse-stealing,
+arson, and burglary, an assize seldom passed without a hanging, it
+was not likely that she could get access to the body of the criminal
+unaided.  And the fear of her husband's anger made her reluctant to
+breathe a word of Trendle's suggestion to him or to anybody about
+him.
+
+She did nothing for months, and patiently bore her disfigurement as
+before.  But her woman's nature, craving for renewed love, through
+the medium of renewed beauty (she was but twenty-five), was ever
+stimulating her to try what, at any rate, could hardly do her any
+harm.  'What came by a spell will go by a spell surely,' she would
+say.  Whenever her imagination pictured the act she shrank in terror
+from the possibility of it:  then the words of the conjuror, 'It
+will turn your blood,' were seen to be capable of a scientific no
+less than a ghastly interpretation; the mastering desire returned,
+and urged her on again.
+
+There was at this time but one county paper, and that her husband
+only occasionally borrowed.  But old-fashioned days had old-
+fashioned means, and news was extensively conveyed by word of mouth
+from market to market, or from fair to fair, so that, whenever such
+an event as an execution was about to take place, few within a
+radius of twenty miles were ignorant of the coming sight; and, so
+far as Holmstoke was concerned, some enthusiasts had been known to
+walk all the way to Casterbridge and back in one day, solely to
+witness the spectacle.  The next assizes were in March; and when
+Gertrude Lodge heard that they had been held, she inquired
+stealthily at the inn as to the result, as soon as she could find
+opportunity.
+
+She was, however, too late.  The time at which the sentences were to
+be carried out had arrived, and to make the journey and obtain
+admission at such short notice required at least her husband's
+assistance.  She dared not tell him, for she had found by delicate
+experiment that these smouldering village beliefs made him furious
+if mentioned, partly because he half entertained them himself.  It
+was therefore necessary to wait for another opportunity.
+
+Her determination received a fillip from learning that two epileptic
+children had attended from this very village of Holmstoke many years
+before with beneficial results, though the experiment had been
+strongly condemned by the neighbouring clergy.  April, May, June,
+passed; and it is no overstatement to say that by the end of the
+last-named month Gertrude well-nigh longed for the death of a
+fellow-creature.  Instead of her formal prayers each night, her
+unconscious prayer was, 'O Lord, hang some guilty or innocent person
+soon!'
+
+This time she made earlier inquiries, and was altogether more
+systematic in her proceedings.  Moreover, the season was summer,
+between the haymaking and the harvest, and in the leisure thus
+afforded him her husband had been holiday-taking away from home.
+
+The assizes were in July, and she went to the inn as before.  There
+was to be one execution--only one--for arson.
+
+Her greatest problem was not how to get to Casterbridge, but what
+means she should adopt for obtaining admission to the jail.  Though
+access for such purposes had formerly never been denied, the custom
+had fallen into desuetude; and in contemplating her possible
+difficulties, she was again almost driven to fall back upon her
+husband.  But, on sounding him about the assizes, he was so
+uncommunicative, so more than usually cold, that she did not
+proceed, and decided that whatever she did she would do alone.
+
+Fortune, obdurate hitherto, showed her unexpected favour.  On the
+Thursday before the Saturday fixed for the execution, Lodge remarked
+to her that he was going away from home for another day or two on
+business at a fair, and that he was sorry he could not take her with
+him.
+
+She exhibited on this occasion so much readiness to stay at home
+that he looked at her in surprise.  Time had been when she would
+have shown deep disappointment at the loss of such a jaunt.
+However, he lapsed into his usual taciturnity, and on the day named
+left Holmstoke.
+
+It was now her turn.  She at first had thought of driving, but on
+reflection held that driving would not do, since it would
+necessitate her keeping to the turnpike-road, and so increase by
+tenfold the risk of her ghastly errand being found out.  She decided
+to ride, and avoid the beaten track, notwithstanding that in her
+husband's stables there was no animal just at present which by any
+stretch of imagination could be considered a lady's mount, in spite
+of his promise before marriage to always keep a mare for her.  He
+had, however, many cart-horses, fine ones of their kind; and among
+the rest was a serviceable creature, an equine Amazon, with a back
+as broad as a sofa, on which Gertrude had occasionally taken an
+airing when unwell.  This horse she chose.
+
+On Friday afternoon one of the men brought it round.  She was
+dressed, and before going down looked at her shrivelled arm.  'Ah!'
+she said to it, 'if it had not been for you this terrible ordeal
+would have been saved me!'
+
+When strapping up the bundle in which she carried a few articles of
+clothing, she took occasion to say to the servant, 'I take these in
+case I should not get back to-night from the person I am going to
+visit.  Don't be alarmed if I am not in by ten, and close up the
+house as usual.  I shall be at home to-morrow for certain.'  She
+meant then to privately tell her husband:  the deed accomplished was
+not like the deed projected.  He would almost certainly forgive her.
+
+And then the pretty palpitating Gertrude Lodge went from her
+husband's homestead; but though her goal was Casterbridge she did
+not take the direct route thither through Stickleford.  Her cunning
+course at first was in precisely the opposite direction.  As soon as
+she was out of sight, however, she turned to the left, by a road
+which led into Egdon, and on entering the heath wheeled round, and
+set out in the true course, due westerly.  A more private way down
+the county could not be imagined; and as to direction, she had
+merely to keep her horse's head to a point a little to the right of
+the sun.  She knew that she would light upon a furze-cutter or
+cottager of some sort from time to time, from whom she might correct
+her bearing.
+
+Though the date was comparatively recent, Egdon was much less
+fragmentary in character than now.  The attempts--successful and
+otherwise--at cultivation on the lower slopes, which intrude and
+break up the original heath into small detached heaths, had not been
+carried far; Enclosure Acts had not taken effect, and the banks and
+fences which now exclude the cattle of those villagers who formerly
+enjoyed rights of commonage thereon, and the carts of those who had
+turbary privileges which kept them in firing all the year round,
+were not erected.  Gertrude, therefore, rode along with no other
+obstacles than the prickly furze bushes, the mats of heather, the
+white water-courses, and the natural steeps and declivities of the
+ground.
+
+Her horse was sure, if heavy-footed and slow, and though a draught
+animal, was easy-paced; had it been otherwise, she was not a woman
+who could have ventured to ride over such a bit of country with a
+half-dead arm.  It was therefore nearly eight o'clock when she drew
+rein to breathe the mare on the last outlying high point of heath-
+land towards Casterbridge, previous to leaving Egdon for the
+cultivated valleys.
+
+She halted before a pool called Rushy-pond, flanked by the ends of
+two hedges; a railing ran through the centre of the pond, dividing
+it in half.  Over the railing she saw the low green country; over
+the green trees the roofs of the town; over the roofs a white flat
+facade, denoting the entrance to the county jail.  On the roof of
+this front specks were moving about; they seemed to be workmen
+erecting something.  Her flesh crept.  She descended slowly, and was
+soon amid corn-fields and pastures.  In another half-hour, when it
+was almost dusk, Gertrude reached the White Hart, the first inn of
+the town on that side.
+
+Little surprise was excited by her arrival; farmers' wives rode on
+horseback then more than they do now; though, for that matter, Mrs.
+Lodge was not imagined to be a wife at all; the innkeeper supposed
+her some harum-skarum young woman who had come to attend 'hang-fair'
+next day.  Neither her husband nor herself ever dealt in
+Casterbridge market, so that she was unknown.  While dismounting she
+beheld a crowd of boys standing at the door of a harness-maker's
+shop just above the inn, looking inside it with deep interest.
+
+'What is going on there?' she asked of the ostler.
+
+'Making the rope for to-morrow.'
+
+She throbbed responsively, and contracted her arm.
+
+''Tis sold by the inch afterwards,' the man continued.  'I could get
+you a bit, miss, for nothing, if you'd like?'
+
+She hastily repudiated any such wish, all the more from a curious
+creeping feeling that the condemned wretch's destiny was becoming
+interwoven with her own; and having engaged a room for the night,
+sat down to think.
+
+Up to this time she had formed but the vaguest notions about her
+means of obtaining access to the prison.  The words of the cunning-
+man returned to her mind.  He had implied that she should use her
+beauty, impaired though it was, as a pass-key.  In her inexperience
+she knew little about jail functionaries; she had heard of a high-
+sheriff and an under-sheriff; but dimly only.  She knew, however,
+that there must be a hangman, and to the hangman she determined to
+apply.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII--A WATER-SIDE HERMIT
+
+
+
+At this date, and for several years after, there was a hangman to
+almost every jail.  Gertrude found, on inquiry, that the
+Casterbridge official dwelt in a lonely cottage by a deep slow river
+flowing under the cliff on which the prison buildings were situate--
+the stream being the self-same one, though she did not know it,
+which watered the Stickleford and Holmstoke meads lower down in its
+course.
+
+Having changed her dress, and before she had eaten or drunk--for she
+could not take her ease till she had ascertained some particulars--
+Gertrude pursued her way by a path along the water-side to the
+cottage indicated.  Passing thus the outskirts of the jail, she
+discerned on the level roof over the gateway three rectangular lines
+against the sky, where the specks had been moving in her distant
+view; she recognized what the erection was, and passed quickly on.
+Another hundred yards brought her to the executioner's house, which
+a boy pointed out It stood close to the same stream, and was hard by
+a weir, the waters of which emitted a steady roar.
+
+While she stood hesitating the door opened, and an old man came
+forth shading a candle with one hand.  Locking the door on the
+outside, he turned to a flight of wooden steps fixed against the end
+of the cottage, and began to ascend them, this being evidently the
+staircase to his bedroom.  Gertrude hastened forward, but by the
+time she reached the foot of the ladder he was at the top.  She
+called to him loudly enough to be heard above the roar of the weir;
+he looked down and said, 'What d'ye want here?'
+
+'To speak to you a minute.'
+
+The candle-light, such as it was, fell upon her imploring, pale,
+upturned face, and Davies (as the hangman was called) backed down
+the ladder.  'I was just going to bed,' he said; '"Early to bed and
+early to rise," but I don't mind stopping a minute for such a one as
+you.  Come into house.'  He reopened the door, and preceded her to
+the room within.
+
+The implements of his daily work, which was that of a jobbing
+gardener, stood in a corner, and seeing probably that she looked
+rural, he said, 'If you want me to undertake country work I can't
+come, for I never leave Casterbridge for gentle nor simple--not I.
+My real calling is officer of justice,' he added formally.
+
+'Yes, yes!  That's it.  To-morrow!'
+
+'Ah!  I thought so.  Well, what's the matter about that?  'Tis no
+use to come here about the knot--folks do come continually, but I
+tell 'em one knot is as merciful as another if ye keep it under the
+ear.  Is the unfortunate man a relation; or, I should say, perhaps'
+(looking at her dress) 'a person who's been in your employ?'
+
+'No.  What time is the execution?'
+
+'The same as usual--twelve o'clock, or as soon after as the London
+mail-coach gets in.  We always wait for that, in case of a
+reprieve.'
+
+'O--a reprieve--I hope not!' she said involuntarily,
+
+'Well,--hee, hee!--as a matter of business, so do I!  But still, if
+ever a young fellow deserved to be let off, this one does; only just
+turned eighteen, and only present by chance when the rick was fired.
+Howsomever, there's not much risk of it, as they are obliged to make
+an example of him, there having been so much destruction of property
+that way lately.'
+
+'I mean,' she explained, 'that I want to touch him for a charm, a
+cure of an affliction, by the advice of a man who has proved the
+virtue of the remedy.'
+
+'O yes, miss!  Now I understand.  I've had such people come in past
+years.  But it didn't strike me that you looked of a sort to require
+blood-turning.  What's the complaint?  The wrong kind for this, I'll
+be bound.'
+
+'My arm.'  She reluctantly showed the withered skin.
+
+'Ah--'tis all a-scram!' said the hangman, examining it.
+
+'Yes,' said she.
+
+'Well,' he continued, with interest, 'that IS the class o' subject,
+I'm bound to admit!  I like the look of the place; it is truly as
+suitable for the cure as any I ever saw.  'Twas a knowing-man that
+sent 'ee, whoever he was.'
+
+'You can contrive for me all that's necessary?' she said
+breathlessly.
+
+'You should really have gone to the governor of the jail, and your
+doctor with 'ee, and given your name and address--that's how it used
+to be done, if I recollect.  Still, perhaps, I can manage it for a
+trifling fee.'
+
+'O, thank you!  I would rather do it this way, as I should like it
+kept private.'
+
+'Lover not to know, eh?'
+
+'No--husband.'
+
+'Aha!  Very well.  I'll get ee' a touch of the corpse.'
+
+'Where is it now?' she said, shuddering.
+
+'It?--HE, you mean; he's living yet.  Just inside that little small
+winder up there in the glum.'  He signified the jail on the cliff
+above.
+
+She thought of her husband and her friends.  'Yes, of course,' she
+said; 'and how am I to proceed?'
+
+He took her to the door.  'Now, do you be waiting at the little
+wicket in the wall, that you'll find up there in the lane, not later
+than one o'clock.  I will open it from the inside, as I shan't come
+home to dinner till he's cut down.  Good-night.  Be punctual; and if
+you don't want anybody to know 'ee, wear a veil.  Ah--once I had
+such a daughter as you!'
+
+She went away, and climbed the path above, to assure herself that
+she would be able to find the wicket next day.  Its outline was soon
+visible to her--a narrow opening in the outer wall of the prison
+precincts.  The steep was so great that, having reached the wicket,
+she stopped a moment to breathe; and, looking back upon the water-
+side cot, saw the hangman again ascending his outdoor staircase.  He
+entered the loft or chamber to which it led, and in a few minutes
+extinguished his light.
+
+The town clock struck ten, and she returned to the White Hart as she
+had come.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX--A RENCOUNTER
+
+
+
+It was one o'clock on Saturday.  Gertrude Lodge, having been
+admitted to the jail as above described, was sitting in a waiting-
+room within the second gate, which stood under a classic archway of
+ashlar, then comparatively modern, and bearing the inscription,
+'COVNTY JAIL:  1793.'  This had been the facade she saw from the
+heath the day before.  Near at hand was a passage to the roof on
+which the gallows stood.
+
+The town was thronged, and the market suspended; but Gertrude had
+seen scarcely a soul.  Having kept her room till the hour of the
+appointment, she had proceeded to the spot by a way which avoided
+the open space below the cliff where the spectators had gathered;
+but she could, even now, hear the multitudinous babble of their
+voices, out of which rose at intervals the hoarse croak of a single
+voice uttering the words, 'Last dying speech and confession!'  There
+had been no reprieve, and the execution was over; but the crowd
+still waited to see the body taken down.
+
+Soon the persistent girl heard a trampling overhead, then a hand
+beckoned to her, and, following directions, she went out and crossed
+the inner paved court beyond the gatehouse, her knees trembling so
+that she could scarcely walk.  One of her arms was out of its
+sleeve, and only covered by her shawl.
+
+On the spot at which she had now arrived were two trestles, and
+before she could think of their purpose she heard heavy feet
+descending stairs somewhere at her back.  Turn her head she would
+not, or could not, and, rigid in this position, she was conscious of
+a rough coffin passing her shoulder, borne by four men.  It was
+open, and in it lay the body of a young man, wearing the smockfrock
+of a rustic, and fustian breeches.  The corpse had been thrown into
+the coffin so hastily that the skirt of the smockfrock was hanging
+over.  The burden was temporarily deposited on the trestles.
+
+By this time the young woman's state was such that a gray mist
+seemed to float before her eyes, on account of which, and the veil
+she wore, she could scarcely discern anything:  it was as though she
+had nearly died, but was held up by a sort of galvanism.
+
+'Now!' said a voice close at hand, and she was just conscious that
+the word had been addressed to her.
+
+By a last strenuous effort she advanced, at the same time hearing
+persons approaching behind her.  She bared her poor curst arm; and
+Davies, uncovering the face of the corpse, took Gertrude's hand, and
+held it so that her arm lay across the dead man's neck, upon a line
+the colour of an unripe blackberry, which surrounded it.
+
+Gertrude shrieked:  'the turn o' the blood,' predicted by the
+conjuror, had taken place.  But at that moment a second shriek rent
+the air of the enclosure:  it was not Gertrude's, and its effect
+upon her was to make her start round.
+
+Immediately behind her stood Rhoda Brook, her face drawn, and her
+eyes red with weeping.  Behind Rhoda stood Gertrude's own husband;
+his countenance lined, his eyes dim, but without a tear.
+
+'D-n you! what are you doing here?' he said hoarsely.
+
+'Hussy--to come between us and our child now!' cried Rhoda.  'This
+is the meaning of what Satan showed me in the vision!  You are like
+her at last!'  And clutching the bare arm of the younger woman, she
+pulled her unresistingly back against the wall.  Immediately Brook
+had loosened her hold the fragile young Gertrude slid down against
+the feet of her husband.  When he lifted her up she was unconscious.
+
+The mere sight of the twain had been enough to suggest to her that
+the dead young man was Rhoda's son.  At that time the relatives of
+an executed convict had the privilege of claiming the body for
+burial, if they chose to do so; and it was for this purpose that
+Lodge was awaiting the inquest with Rhoda.  He had been summoned by
+her as soon as the young man was taken in the crime, and at
+different times since; and he had attended in court during the
+trial.  This was the 'holiday' he had been indulging in of late.
+The two wretched parents had wished to avoid exposure; and hence had
+come themselves for the body, a waggon and sheet for its conveyance
+and covering being in waiting outside.
+
+Gertrude's case was so serious that it was deemed advisable to call
+to her the surgeon who was at hand.  She was taken out of the jail
+into the town; but she never reached home alive.  Her delicate
+vitality, sapped perhaps by the paralyzed arm, collapsed under the
+double shock that followed the severe strain, physical and mental,
+to which she had subjected herself during the previous twenty-four
+hours.  Her blood had been 'turned' indeed--too far.  Her death took
+place in the town three days after.
+
+Her husband was never seen in Casterbridge again; once only in the
+old market-place at Anglebury, which he had so much frequented, and
+very seldom in public anywhere.  Burdened at first with moodiness
+and remorse, he eventually changed for the better, and appeared as a
+chastened and thoughtful man.  Soon after attending the funeral of
+his poor young wife he took steps towards giving up the farms in
+Holmstoke and the adjoining parish, and, having sold every head of
+his stock, he went away to Port-Bredy, at the other end of the
+county, living there in solitary lodgings till his death two years
+later of a painless decline.  It was then found that he had
+bequeathed the whole of his not inconsiderable property to a
+reformatory for boys, subject to the payment of a small annuity to
+Rhoda Brook, if she could be found to claim it.
+
+For some time she could not be found; but eventually she reappeared
+in her old parish,--absolutely refusing, however, to have anything
+to do with the provision made for her.  Her monotonous milking at
+the dairy was resumed, and followed for many long years, till her
+form became bent, and her once abundant dark hair white and worn
+away at the forehead--perhaps by long pressure against the cows.
+Here, sometimes, those who knew her experiences would stand and
+observe her, and wonder what sombre thoughts were beating inside
+that impassive, wrinkled brow, to the rhythm of the alternating
+milk-streams.
+
+('Blackwood's Magazine,' January 1888.)
+
+
+
+
+FELLOW-TOWNSMEN
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+
+The shepherd on the east hill could shout out lambing intelligence
+to the shepherd on the west hill, over the intervening town
+chimneys, without great inconvenience to his voice, so nearly did
+the steep pastures encroach upon the burghers' backyards.  And at
+night it was possible to stand in the very midst of the town and
+hear from their native paddocks on the lower levels of greensward
+the mild lowing of the farmer's heifers, and the profound, warm
+blowings of breath in which those creatures indulge.  But the
+community which had jammed itself in the valley thus flanked formed
+a veritable town, with a real mayor and corporation, and a staple
+manufacture.
+
+During a certain damp evening five-and-thirty years ago, before the
+twilight was far advanced, a pedestrian of professional appearance,
+carrying a small bag in his hand and an elevated umbrella, was
+descending one of these hills by the turnpike road when he was
+overtaken by a phaeton.
+
+'Hullo, Downe--is that you?' said the driver of the vehicle, a young
+man of pale and refined appearance.  'Jump up here with me, and ride
+down to your door.'
+
+The other turned a plump, cheery, rather self-indulgent face over
+his shoulder towards the hailer.
+
+'O, good evening, Mr. Barnet--thanks,' he said, and mounted beside
+his acquaintance.
+
+They were fellow-burgesses of the town which lay beneath them, but
+though old and very good friends, they were differently
+circumstanced.  Barnet was a richer man than the struggling young
+lawyer Downe, a fact which was to some extent perceptible in Downe's
+manner towards his companion, though nothing of it ever showed in
+Barnet's manner towards the solicitor.  Barnet's position in the
+town was none of his own making; his father had been a very
+successful flax-merchant in the same place, where the trade was
+still carried on as briskly as the small capacities of its quarters
+would allow.  Having acquired a fair fortune, old Mr. Barnet had
+retired from business, bringing up his son as a gentleman-burgher,
+and, it must be added, as a well-educated, liberal-minded young man.
+
+'How is Mrs. Barnet?' asked Downe.
+
+'Mrs. Barnet was very well when I left home,' the other answered
+constrainedly, exchanging his meditative regard of the horse for one
+of self-consciousness.
+
+Mr. Downe seemed to regret his inquiry, and immediately took up
+another thread of conversation.  He congratulated his friend on his
+election as a council-man; he thought he had not seen him since that
+event took place; Mrs. Downe had meant to call and congratulate Mrs.
+Barnet, but he feared that she had failed to do so as yet.
+
+Barnet seemed hampered in his replies.  'WE should have been glad to
+see you.  I--my wife would welcome Mrs. Downe at any time, as you
+know . . . Yes, I am a member of the corporation--rather an
+inexperienced member, some of them say.  It is quite true; and I
+should have declined the honour as premature--having other things on
+my hands just now, too--if it had not been pressed upon me so very
+heartily.'
+
+'There is one thing you have on your hands which I can never quite
+see the necessity for,' said Downe, with good-humoured freedom.
+'What the deuce do you want to build that new mansion for, when you
+have already got such an excellent house as the one you live in?'
+
+Barnet's face acquired a warmer shade of colour; but as the question
+had been idly asked by the solicitor while regarding the surrounding
+flocks and fields, he answered after a moment with no apparent
+embarrassment -
+
+'Well, we wanted to get out of the town, you know:  the house I am
+living in is rather old and inconvenient.'  Mr. Downe declared that
+he had chosen a pretty site for the new building.  They would be
+able to see for miles and miles from the windows.  Was he going to
+give it a name?  He supposed so.
+
+Barnet thought not.  There was no other house near that was likely
+to be mistaken for it.  And he did not care for a name.
+
+'But I think it has a name!'  Downe observed:  'I went past--when
+was it?--this morning; and I saw something,--"Chateau Ringdale," I
+think it was, stuck up on a board!'
+
+'It was an idea she--we had for a short time,' said Barnet hastily.
+'But we have decided finally to do without a name--at any rate such
+a name as that.  It must have been a week ago that you saw it.  It
+was taken down last Saturday . . . Upon that matter I am firm!' he
+added grimly.
+
+Downe murmured in an unconvinced tone that he thought he had seen it
+yesterday.
+
+Talking thus they drove into the town.  The street was unusually
+still for the hour of seven in the evening; an increasing drizzle
+had prevailed since the afternoon, and now formed a gauze across the
+yellow lamps, and trickled with a gentle rattle down the heavy roofs
+of stone tile, that bent the house-ridges hollow-backed with its
+weight, and in some instances caused the walls to bulge outwards in
+the upper story.  Their route took them past the little town-hall,
+the Black-Bull Hotel, and onward to the junction of a small street
+on the right, consisting of a row of those two-and-two windowed
+brick residences of no particular age, which are exactly alike
+wherever found, except in the people they contain.
+
+'Wait--I'll drive you up to your door,' said Barnet, when Downe
+prepared to alight at the corner.  He thereupon turned into the
+narrow street, when the faces of three little girls could be
+discerned close to the panes of a lighted window a few yards ahead,
+surmounted by that of a young matron, the gaze of all four being
+directed eagerly up the empty street.  'You are a fortunate fellow,
+Downe,' Barnet continued, as mother and children disappeared from
+the window to run to the door.  'You must be happy if any man is.  I
+would give a hundred such houses as my new one to have a home like
+yours.'
+
+'Well--yes, we get along pretty comfortably,' replied Downe
+complacently.
+
+'That house, Downe, is none of my ordering,' Barnet broke out,
+revealing a bitterness hitherto suppressed, and checking the horse a
+moment to finish his speech before delivering up his passenger.
+'The house I have already is good enough for me, as you supposed.
+It is my own freehold; it was built by my grandfather, and is stout
+enough for a castle.  My father was born there, lived there, and
+died there.  I was born there, and have always lived there; yet I
+must needs build a new one.'
+
+'Why do you?' said Downe.
+
+'Why do I?  To preserve peace in the household.  I do anything for
+that; but I don't succeed.  I was firm in resisting "Chateau
+Ringdale," however; not that I would not have put up with the
+absurdity of the name, but it was too much to have your house
+christened after Lord Ringdale, because your wife once had a fancy
+for him.  If you only knew everything, you would think all attempt
+at reconciliation hopeless.  In your happy home you have had no such
+experiences; and God forbid that you ever should.  See, here they
+are all ready to receive you!'
+
+'Of course!  And so will your wife be waiting to receive you,' said
+Downe.  'Take my word for it she will!  And with a dinner prepared
+for you far better than mine.'
+
+'I hope so,' Barnet replied dubiously.
+
+He moved on to Downe's door, which the solicitor's family had
+already opened.  Downe descended, but being encumbered with his bag
+and umbrella, his foot slipped, and he fell upon his knees in the
+gutter.
+
+'O, my dear Charles!' said his wife, running down the steps; and,
+quite ignoring the presence of Barnet, she seized hold of her
+husband, pulled him to his feet, and kissed him, exclaiming, 'I hope
+you are not hurt, darling!'  The children crowded round, chiming in
+piteously, 'Poor papa!'
+
+'He's all right,' said Barnet, perceiving that Downe was only a
+little muddy, and looking more at the wife than at the husband.
+Almost at any other time--certainly during his fastidious bachelor
+years--he would have thought her a too demonstrative woman; but
+those recent circumstances of his own life to which he had just
+alluded made Mrs. Downe's solicitude so affecting that his eye grew
+damp as he witnessed it.  Bidding the lawyer and his family good-
+night he left them, and drove slowly into the main street towards
+his own house.
+
+The heart of Barnet was sufficiently impressionable to be influenced
+by Downe's parting prophecy that he might not be so unwelcome home
+as he imagined:  the dreary night might, at least on this one
+occasion, make Downe's forecast true.  Hence it was in a suspense
+that he could hardly have believed possible that he halted at his
+door.  On entering his wife was nowhere to be seen, and he inquired
+for her.  The servant informed him that her mistress had the
+dressmaker with her, and would be engaged for some time.
+
+'Dressmaker at this time of day!'
+
+'She dined early, sir, and hopes you will excuse her joining you
+this evening.'
+
+'But she knew I was coming to-night?'
+
+'O yes, sir.'
+
+'Go up and tell her I am come.'
+
+The servant did so; but the mistress of the house merely transmitted
+her former words.
+
+Barnet said nothing more, and presently sat down to his lonely meal,
+which was eaten abstractedly, the domestic scene he had lately
+witnessed still impressing him by its contrast with the situation
+here.  His mind fell back into past years upon a certain pleasing
+and gentle being whose face would loom out of their shades at such
+times as these.  Barnet turned in his chair, and looked with
+unfocused eyes in a direction southward from where he sat, as if he
+saw not the room but a long way beyond.  'I wonder if she lives
+there still!' he said.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+
+He rose with a sudden rebelliousness, put on his hat and coat, and
+went out of the house, pursuing his way along the glistening
+pavement while eight o'clock was striking from St. Mary's tower, and
+the apprentices and shopmen were slamming up the shutters from end
+to end of the town.  In two minutes only those shops which could
+boast of no attendant save the master or the mistress remained with
+open eyes.  These were ever somewhat less prompt to exclude
+customers than the others:  for their owners' ears the closing hour
+had scarcely the cheerfulness that it possessed for the hired
+servants of the rest.  Yet the night being dreary the delay was not
+for long, and their windows, too, blinked together one by one.
+
+During this time Barnet had proceeded with decided step in a
+direction at right angles to the broad main thoroughfare of the
+town, by a long street leading due southward.  Here, though his
+family had no more to do with the flax manufacture, his own name
+occasionally greeted him on gates and warehouses, being used
+allusively by small rising tradesmen as a recommendation, in such
+words as 'Smith, from Barnet & Co.'--'Robinson, late manager at
+Barnet's.'  The sight led him to reflect upon his father's busy
+life, and he questioned if it had not been far happier than his own.
+
+The houses along the road became fewer, and presently open ground
+appeared between them on either side, the track on the right hand
+rising to a higher level till it merged in a knoll.  On the summit a
+row of builders' scaffold-poles probed the indistinct sky like
+spears, and at their bases could be discerned the lower courses of a
+building lately begun.  Barnet slackened his pace and stood for a
+few moments without leaving the centre of the road, apparently not
+much interested in the sight, till suddenly his eye was caught by a
+post in the fore part of the ground bearing a white board at the
+top.  He went to the rails, vaulted over, and walked in far enough
+to discern painted upon the board 'Chateau Ringdale.'
+
+A dismal irony seemed to lie in the words, and its effect was to
+irritate him.  Downe, then, had spoken truly.  He stuck his umbrella
+into the sod, and seized the post with both hands, as if intending
+to loosen and throw it down.  Then, like one bewildered by an
+opposition which would exist none the less though its manifestations
+were removed, he allowed his arms to sink to his side.
+
+'Let it be,' he said to himself.  'I have declared there shall be
+peace--if possible.'
+
+Taking up his umbrella he quietly left the enclosure, and went on
+his way, still keeping his back to the town.  He had advanced with
+more decision since passing the new building, and soon a hoarse
+murmur rose upon the gloom; it was the sound of the sea.  The road
+led to the harbour, at a distance of a mile from the town, from
+which the trade of the district was fed.  After seeing the obnoxious
+name-board Barnet had forgotten to open his umbrella, and the rain
+tapped smartly on his hat, and occasionally stroked his face as he
+went on.
+
+Though the lamps were still continued at the roadside, they stood at
+wider intervals than before, and the pavement had given place to
+common road.  Every time he came to a lamp an increasing shine made
+itself visible upon his shoulders, till at last they quite glistened
+with wet.  The murmur from the shore grew stronger, but it was still
+some distance off when he paused before one of the smallest of the
+detached houses by the wayside, standing in its own garden, the
+latter being divided from the road by a row of wooden palings.
+Scrutinizing the spot to ensure that he was not mistaken, he opened
+the gate and gently knocked at the cottage door.
+
+When he had patiently waited minutes enough to lead any man in
+ordinary cases to knock again, the door was heard to open, though it
+was impossible to see by whose hand, there being no light in the
+passage.  Barnet said at random, 'Does Miss Savile live here?'
+
+A youthful voice assured him that she did live there, and by a
+sudden afterthought asked him to come in.  It would soon get a
+light, it said:  but the night being wet, mother had not thought it
+worth while to trim the passage lamp.
+
+'Don't trouble yourself to get a light for me,' said Barnet hastily;
+'it is not necessary at all.  Which is Miss Savile's sitting-room?'
+
+The young person, whose white pinafore could just be discerned,
+signified a door in the side of the passage, and Barnet went forward
+at the same moment, so that no light should fall upon his face.  On
+entering the room he closed the door behind him, pausing till he
+heard the retreating footsteps of the child.
+
+He found himself in an apartment which was simply and neatly, though
+not poorly furnished; everything, from the miniature chiffonnier to
+the shining little daguerreotype which formed the central ornament
+of the mantelpiece, being in scrupulous order.  The picture was
+enclosed by a frame of embroidered card-board--evidently the work of
+feminine hands--and it was the portrait of a thin faced, elderly
+lieutenant in the navy.  From behind the lamp on the table a female
+form now rose into view, that of a young girl, and a resemblance
+between her and the portrait was early discoverable.  She had been
+so absorbed in some occupation on the other side of the lamp as to
+have barely found time to realize her visitor's presence.
+
+They both remained standing for a few seconds without speaking.  The
+face that confronted Barnet had a beautiful outline; the
+Raffaelesque oval of its contour was remarkable for an English
+countenance, and that countenance housed in a remote country-road to
+an unheard-of harbour.  But her features did not do justice to this
+splendid beginning:  Nature had recollected that she was not in
+Italy; and the young lady's lineaments, though not so inconsistent
+as to make her plain, would have been accepted rather as pleasing
+than as correct.  The preoccupied expression which, like images on
+the retina, remained with her for a moment after the state that
+caused it had ceased, now changed into a reserved, half-proud, and
+slightly indignant look, in which the blood diffused itself quickly
+across her cheek, and additional brightness broke the shade of her
+rather heavy eyes.
+
+'I know I have no business here,' he said, answering the look.  'But
+I had a great wish to see you, and inquire how you were.  You can
+give your hand to me, seeing how often I have held it in past days?'
+
+'I would rather forget than remember all that, Mr. Barnet,' she
+answered, as she coldly complied with the request.  'When I think of
+the circumstances of our last meeting, I can hardly consider it kind
+of you to allude to such a thing as our past--or, indeed, to come
+here at all.'
+
+'There was no harm in it surely?  I don't trouble you often, Lucy.'
+
+'I have not had the honour of a visit from you for a very long time,
+certainly, and I did not expect it now,' she said, with the same
+stiffness in her air.  'I hope Mrs. Barnet is very well?'
+
+'Yes, yes!' he impatiently returned.  'At least I suppose so--though
+I only speak from inference!'
+
+'But she is your wife, sir,' said the young girl tremulously.
+
+The unwonted tones of a man's voice in that feminine chamber had
+startled a canary that was roosting in its cage by the window; the
+bird awoke hastily, and fluttered against the bars.  She went and
+stilled it by laying her face against the cage and murmuring a
+coaxing sound.  It might partly have been done to still herself.
+
+'I didn't come to talk of Mrs. Barnet,' he pursued; 'I came to talk
+of you, of yourself alone; to inquire how you are getting on since
+your great loss.'  And he turned towards the portrait of her father.
+
+'I am getting on fairly well, thank you.'
+
+The force of her utterance was scarcely borne out by her look; but
+Barnet courteously reproached himself for not having guessed a thing
+so natural; and to dissipate all embarrassment, added, as he bent
+over the table, 'What were you doing when I came?--painting flowers,
+and by candlelight?'
+
+'O no,' she said, 'not painting them--only sketching the outlines.
+I do that at night to save time--I have to get three dozen done by
+the end of the month.'
+
+Barnet looked as if he regretted it deeply.  'You will wear your
+poor eyes out,' he said, with more sentiment than he had hitherto
+shown.  'You ought not to do it.  There was a time when I should
+have said you must not.  Well--I almost wish I had never seen light
+with my own eyes when I think of that!'
+
+'Is this a time or place for recalling such matters?' she asked,
+with dignity.  'You used to have a gentlemanly respect for me, and
+for yourself.  Don't speak any more as you have spoken, and don't
+come again.  I cannot think that this visit is serious, or was
+closely considered by you.'
+
+'Considered:  well, I came to see you as an old and good friend--not
+to mince matters, to visit a woman I loved.  Don't be angry!  I
+could not help doing it, so many things brought you into my mind . .
+. This evening I fell in with an acquaintance, and when I saw how
+happy he was with his wife and family welcoming him home, though
+with only one-tenth of my income and chances, and thought what might
+have been in my case, it fairly broke down my discretion, and off I
+came here.  Now I am here I feel that I am wrong to some extent.
+But the feeling that I should like to see you, and talk of those we
+used to know in common, was very strong.'
+
+'Before that can be the case a little more time must pass,' said
+Miss Savile quietly; 'a time long enough for me to regard with some
+calmness what at present I remember far too impatiently--though it
+may be you almost forget it.  Indeed you must have forgotten it long
+before you acted as you did.'  Her voice grew stronger and more
+vivacious as she added:  'But I am doing my best to forget it too,
+and I know I shall succeed from the progress I have made already!'
+
+She had remained standing till now, when she turned and sat down,
+facing half away from him.
+
+Barnet watched her moodily.  'Yes, it is only what I deserve,' he
+said.  'Ambition pricked me on--no, it was not ambition, it was
+wrongheadedness!  Had I but reflected . . . '  He broke out
+vehemently:  'But always remember this, Lucy:  if you had written to
+me only one little line after that misunderstanding, I declare I
+should have come back to you.  That ruined me!' he slowly walked as
+far as the little room would allow him to go, and remained with his
+eyes on the skirting.
+
+'But, Mr. Barnet, how could I write to you?  There was no opening
+for my doing so.'
+
+'Then there ought to have been,' said Barnet, turning.  'That was my
+fault!'
+
+'Well, I don't know anything about that; but as there had been
+nothing said by me which required any explanation by letter, I did
+not send one.  Everything was so indefinite, and feeling your
+position to be so much wealthier than mine, I fancied I might have
+mistaken your meaning.  And when I heard of the other lady--a woman
+of whose family even you might be proud--I thought how foolish I had
+been, and said nothing.'
+
+'Then I suppose it was destiny--accident--I don't know what, that
+separated us, dear Lucy.  Anyhow you were the woman I ought to have
+made my wife--and I let you slip, like the foolish man that I was!'
+
+'O, Mr. Barnet,' she said, almost in tears, 'don't revive the
+subject to me; I am the wrong one to console you--think, sir,--you
+should not be here--it would be so bad for me if it were known!'
+
+'It would--it would, indeed,' he said hastily.  'I am not right in
+doing this, and I won't do it again.'
+
+'It is a very common folly of human nature, you know, to think the
+course you did NOT adopt must have been the best,' she continued,
+with gentle solicitude, as she followed him to the door of the room.
+'And you don't know that I should have accepted you, even if you had
+asked me to be your wife.'  At this his eye met hers, and she
+dropped her gaze.  She knew that her voice belied her.  There was a
+silence till she looked up to add, in a voice of soothing
+playfulness, 'My family was so much poorer than yours, even before I
+lost my dear father, that--perhaps your companions would have made
+it unpleasant for us on account of my deficiencies.'
+
+'Your disposition would soon have won them round,' said Barnet.
+
+She archly expostulated:  'Now, never mind my disposition; try to
+make it up with your wife!  Those are my commands to you.  And now
+you are to leave me at once.'
+
+'I will.  I must make the best of it all, I suppose,' he replied,
+more cheerfully than he had as yet spoken.  'But I shall never again
+meet with such a dear girl as you!'  And he suddenly opened the
+door, and left her alone.  When his glance again fell on the lamps
+that were sparsely ranged along the dreary level road, his eyes were
+in a state which showed straw-like motes of light radiating from
+each flame into the surrounding air.
+
+On the other side of the way Barnet observed a man under an
+umbrella, walking parallel with himself.  Presently this man left
+the footway, and gradually converged on Barnet's course.  The latter
+then saw that it was Charlson, a surgeon of the town, who owed him
+money.  Charlson was a man not without ability; yet he did not
+prosper.  Sundry circumstances stood in his way as a medical
+practitioner:  he was needy; he was not a coddle; he gossiped with
+men instead of with women; he had married a stranger instead of one
+of the town young ladies; and he was given to conversational
+buffoonery.  Moreover, his look was quite erroneous.  Those only
+proper features in the family doctor, the quiet eye, and the thin
+straight passionless lips which never curl in public either for
+laughter or for scorn, were not his; he had a full-curved mouth, and
+a bold black eye that made timid people nervous.  His companions
+were what in old times would have been called boon companions--an
+expression which, though of irreproachable root, suggests
+fraternization carried to the point of unscrupulousness.  All this
+was against him in the little town of his adoption.
+
+Charlson had been in difficulties, and to oblige him Barnet had put
+his name to a bill; and, as he had expected, was called upon to meet
+it when it fell due.  It had been only a matter of fifty pounds,
+which Barnet could well afford to lose, and he bore no ill-will to
+the thriftless surgeon on account of it.  But Charlson had a little
+too much brazen indifferentism in his composition to be altogether a
+desirable acquaintance.
+
+'I hope to be able to make that little bill-business right with you
+in the course of three weeks, Mr. Barnet,' said Charlson with hail-
+fellow friendliness.
+
+Barnet replied good-naturedly that there was no hurry.
+
+This particular three weeks had moved on in advance of Charlson's
+present with the precision of a shadow for some considerable time.
+
+'I've had a dream,' Charlson continued.  Barnet knew from his tone
+that the surgeon was going to begin his characteristic nonsense, and
+did not encourage him.  'I've had a dream,' repeated Charlson, who
+required no encouragement.  'I dreamed that a gentleman, who has
+been very kind to me, married a haughty lady in haste, before he had
+quite forgotten a nice little girl he knew before, and that one wet
+evening, like the present, as I was walking up the harbour-road, I
+saw him come out of that dear little girl's present abode.'
+
+Barnet glanced towards the speaker.  The rays from a neighbouring
+lamp struck through the drizzle under Charlson's umbrella, so as
+just to illumine his face against the shade behind, and show that
+his eye was turned up under the outer corner of its lid, whence it
+leered with impish jocoseness as he thrust his tongue into his
+cheek.
+
+'Come,' said Barnet gravely, 'we'll have no more of that.'
+
+'No, no--of course not,' Charlson hastily answered, seeing that his
+humour had carried him too far, as it had done many times before.
+He was profuse in his apologies, but Barnet did not reply.  Of one
+thing he was certain--that scandal was a plant of quick root, and
+that he was bound to obey Lucy's injunction for Lucy's own sake.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+
+He did so, to the letter; and though, as the crocus followed the
+snowdrop and the daffodil the crocus in Lucy's garden, the harbour-
+road was a not unpleasant place to walk in, Barnet's feet never trod
+its stones, much less approached her door.  He avoided a saunter
+that way as he would have avoided a dangerous dram, and took his
+airings a long distance northward, among severely square and brown
+ploughed fields, where no other townsman came.  Sometimes he went
+round by the lower lanes of the borough, where the rope-walks
+stretched in which his family formerly had share, and looked at the
+rope-makers walking backwards, overhung by apple-trees and bushes,
+and intruded on by cows and calves, as if trade had established
+itself there at considerable inconvenience to Nature.
+
+One morning, when the sun was so warm as to raise a steam from the
+south-eastern slopes of those flanking hills that looked so lovely
+above the old roofs, but made every low-chimneyed house in the town
+as smoky as Tophet, Barnet glanced from the windows of the town-
+council room for lack of interest in what was proceeding within.
+Several members of the corporation were present, but there was not
+much business doing, and in a few minutes Downe came leisurely
+across to him, saying that he seldom saw Barnet now.
+
+Barnet owned that he was not often present.
+
+Downe looked at the crimson curtain which hung down beside the
+panes, reflecting its hot hues into their faces, and then out of the
+window.  At that moment there passed along the street a tall
+commanding lady, in whom the solicitor recognized Barnet's wife.
+Barnet had done the same thing, and turned away.
+
+'It will be all right some day,' said Downe, with cheering sympathy.
+
+'You have heard, then, of her last outbreak?'
+
+Downe depressed his cheerfulness to its very reverse in a moment.
+'No, I have not heard of anything serious,' he said, with as long a
+face as one naturally round could be turned into at short notice.
+'I only hear vague reports of such things.'
+
+'You may think it will be all right,' said Barnet drily.  'But I
+have a different opinion . . . No, Downe, we must look the thing in
+the face.  Not poppy nor mandragora--however, how are your wife and
+children?'
+
+Downe said that they were all well, thanks; they were out that
+morning somewhere; he was just looking to see if they were walking
+that way.  Ah, there they were, just coming down the street; and
+Downe pointed to the figures of two children with a nursemaid, and a
+lady walking behind them.
+
+'You will come out and speak to her?' he asked.
+
+'Not this morning.  The fact is I don't care to speak to anybody
+just now.'
+
+'You are too sensitive, Mr. Barnet.  At school I remember you used
+to get as red as a rose if anybody uttered a word that hurt your
+feelings.'
+
+Barnet mused.  'Yes,' he admitted, 'there is a grain of truth in
+that.  It is because of that I often try to make peace at home.
+Life would be tolerable then at any rate, even if not particularly
+bright.'
+
+'I have thought more than once of proposing a little plan to you,'
+said Downe with some hesitation.  'I don't know whether it will meet
+your views, but take it or leave it, as you choose.  In fact, it was
+my wife who suggested it:  that she would be very glad to call on
+Mrs. Barnet and get into her confidence.  She seems to think that
+Mrs. Barnet is rather alone in the town, and without advisers.  Her
+impression is that your wife will listen to reason.  Emily has a
+wonderful way of winning the hearts of people of her own sex.'
+
+'And of the other sex too, I think.  She is a charming woman, and
+you were a lucky fellow to find her.'
+
+'Well, perhaps I was,' simpered Downe, trying to wear an aspect of
+being the last man in the world to feel pride.  'However, she will
+be likely to find out what ruffles Mrs. Barnet.  Perhaps it is some
+misunderstanding, you know--something that she is too proud to ask
+you to explain, or some little thing in your conduct that irritates
+her because she does not fully comprehend you.  The truth is, Emily
+would have been more ready to make advances if she had been quite
+sure of her fitness for Mrs. Barnet's society, who has of course
+been accustomed to London people of good position, which made Emily
+fearful of intruding.'
+
+Barnet expressed his warmest thanks for the well-intentioned
+proposition.  There was reason in Mrs. Downe's fear--that he owned.
+'But do let her call,' he said.  'There is no woman in England I
+would so soon trust on such an errand.  I am afraid there will not
+be any brilliant result; still I shall take it as the kindest and
+nicest thing if she will try it, and not be frightened at a
+repulse.'
+
+When Barnet and Downe had parted, the former went to the Town
+Savings-Bank, of which he was a trustee, and endeavoured to forget
+his troubles in the contemplation of low sums of money, and figures
+in a network of red and blue lines.  He sat and watched the working-
+people making their deposits, to which at intervals he signed his
+name.  Before he left in the afternoon Downe put his head inside the
+door.
+
+'Emily has seen Mrs. Barnet,' he said, in a low voice.  'She has got
+Mrs. Barnet's promise to take her for a drive down to the shore to-
+morrow, if it is fine.  Good afternoon!'
+
+Barnet shook Downe by the hand without speaking, and Downe went
+away.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+
+The next day was as fine as the arrangement could possibly require.
+As the sun passed the meridian and declined westward, the tall
+shadows from the scaffold-poles of Barnet's rising residence
+streaked the ground as far as to the middle of the highway.  Barnet
+himself was there inspecting the progress of the works for the first
+time during several weeks.  A building in an old-fashioned town
+five-and-thirty years ago did not, as in the modern fashion, rise
+from the sod like a booth at a fair.  The foundations and lower
+courses were put in and allowed to settle for many weeks before the
+superstructure was built up, and a whole summer of drying was hardly
+sufficient to do justice to the important issues involved.  Barnet
+stood within a window-niche which had as yet received no frame, and
+thence looked down a slope into the road.  The wheels of a chaise
+were heard, and then his handsome Xantippe, in the company of Mrs.
+Downe, drove past on their way to the shore.  They were driving
+slowly; there was a pleasing light in Mrs. Downe's face, which
+seemed faintly to reflect itself upon the countenance of her
+companion--that politesse du coeur which was so natural to her
+having possibly begun already to work results.  But whatever the
+situation, Barnet resolved not to interfere, or do anything to
+hazard the promise of the day.  He might well afford to trust the
+issue to another when he could never direct it but to ill himself.
+His wife's clenched rein-hand in its lemon-coloured glove, her stiff
+erect figure, clad in velvet and lace, and her boldly-outlined face,
+passed on, exhibiting their owner as one fixed for ever above the
+level of her companion--socially by her early breeding, and
+materially by her higher cushion.
+
+Barnet decided to allow them a proper time to themselves, and then
+stroll down to the shore and drive them home.  After lingering on at
+the house for another hour he started with this intention.  A few
+hundred yards below 'Chateau Ringdale' stood the cottage in which
+the late lieutenant's daughter had her lodging.  Barnet had not been
+so far that way for a long time, and as he approached the forbidden
+ground a curious warmth passed into him, which led him to perceive
+that, unless he were careful, he might have to fight the battle with
+himself about Lucy over again.  A tenth of his present excuse would,
+however, have justified him in travelling by that road to-day.
+
+He came opposite the dwelling, and turned his eyes for a momentary
+glance into the little garden that stretched from the palings to the
+door.  Lucy was in the enclosure; she was walking and stooping to
+gather some flowers, possibly for the purpose of painting them, for
+she moved about quickly, as if anxious to save time.  She did not
+see him; he might have passed unnoticed; but a sensation which was
+not in strict unison with his previous sentiments that day led him
+to pause in his walk and watch her.  She went nimbly round and round
+the beds of anemones, tulips, jonquils, polyanthuses, and other old-
+fashioned flowers, looking a very charming figure in her half-
+mourning bonnet, and with an incomplete nosegay in her left hand.
+Raising herself to pull down a lilac blossom she observed him.
+
+'Mr. Barnet!' she said, innocently smiling.  'Why, I have been
+thinking of you many times since Mrs. Barnet went by in the pony-
+carriage, and now here you are!'
+
+'Yes, Lucy,' he said.
+
+Then she seemed to recall particulars of their last meeting, and he
+believed that she flushed, though it might have been only the fancy
+of his own supersensitivenesss.
+
+'I am going to the harbour,' he added.
+
+'Are you?' Lucy remarked simply.  'A great many people begin to go
+there now the summer is drawing on.'
+
+Her face had come more into his view as she spoke, and he noticed
+how much thinner and paler it was than when he had seen it last.
+'Lucy, how weary you look! tell me, can I help you?' he was going to
+cry out.--'If I do,' he thought, 'it will be the ruin of us both!'
+He merely said that the afternoon was fine, and went on his way.
+
+As he went a sudden blast of air came over the hill as if in
+contradiction to his words, and spoilt the previous quiet of the
+scene.  The wind had already shifted violently, and now smelt of the
+sea.
+
+The harbour-road soon began to justify its name.  A gap appeared in
+the rampart of hills which shut out the sea, and on the left of the
+opening rose a vertical cliff, coloured a burning orange by the
+sunlight, the companion cliff on the right being livid in shade.
+Between these cliffs, like the Libyan bay which sheltered the
+shipwrecked Trojans, was a little haven, seemingly a beginning made
+by Nature herself of a perfect harbour, which appealed to the
+passer-by as only requiring a little human industry to finish it and
+make it famous, the ground on each side as far back as the daisied
+slopes that bounded the interior valley being a mere layer of blown
+sand.  But the Port-Bredy burgesses a mile inland had, in the course
+of ten centuries, responded many times to that mute appeal, with the
+result that the tides had invariably choked up their works with sand
+and shingle as soon as completed.  There were but few houses here:
+a rough pier, a few boats, some stores, an inn, a residence or two,
+a ketch unloading in the harbour, were the chief features of the
+settlement.  On the open ground by the shore stood his wife's pony-
+carriage, empty, the boy in attendance holding the horse.
+
+When Barnet drew nearer, he saw an indigo-coloured spot moving
+swiftly along beneath the radiant base of the eastern cliff, which
+proved to be a man in a jersey, running with all his might.  He held
+up his hand to Barnet, as it seemed, and they approached each other.
+The man was local, but a stranger to him.
+
+'What is it, my man?' said Barnet.
+
+'A terrible calamity!' the boatman hastily explained.  Two ladies
+had been capsized in a boat--they were Mrs. Downe and Mrs. Barnet of
+the old town; they had driven down there that afternoon--they had
+alighted, and it was so fine, that, after walking about a little
+while, they had been tempted to go out for a short sail round the
+cliff.  Just as they were putting in to the shore, the wind shifted
+with a sudden gust, the boat listed over, and it was thought they
+were both drowned.  How it could have happened was beyond his mind
+to fathom, for John Green knew how to sail a boat as well as any man
+there.
+
+'Which is the way to the place?' said Barnet.
+
+It was just round the cliff.
+
+'Run to the carriage and tell the boy to bring it to the place as
+soon as you can.  Then go to the Harbour Inn and tell them to ride
+to town for a doctor.  Have they been got out of the water?'
+
+'One lady has.'
+
+'Which?'
+
+'Mrs. Barnet.  Mrs. Downe, it is feared, has fleeted out to sea.'
+
+Barnet ran on to that part of the shore which the cliff had hitherto
+obscured from his view, and there discerned, a long way ahead, a
+group of fishermen standing.  As soon as he came up one or two
+recognized him, and, not liking to meet his eye, turned aside with
+misgiving.  He went amidst them and saw a small sailing-boat lying
+draggled at the water's edge; and, on the sloping shingle beside it,
+a soaked and sandy woman's form in the velvet dress and yellow
+gloves of his wife.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+
+All had been done that could be done.  Mrs. Barnet was in her own
+house under medical hands, but the result was still uncertain.
+Barnet had acted as if devotion to his wife were the dominant
+passion of his existence.  There had been much to decide--whether to
+attempt restoration of the apparently lifeless body as it lay on the
+shore--whether to carry her to the Harbour Inn--whether to drive
+with her at once to his own house.  The first course, with no
+skilled help or appliances near at hand, had seemed hopeless.  The
+second course would have occupied nearly as much time as a drive to
+the town, owing to the intervening ridges of shingle, and the
+necessity of crossing the harbour by boat to get to the house, added
+to which much time must have elapsed before a doctor could have
+arrived down there.  By bringing her home in the carriage some
+precious moments had slipped by; but she had been laid in her own
+bed in seven minutes, a doctor called to her side, and every
+possible restorative brought to bear upon her.
+
+At what a tearing pace he had driven up that road, through the
+yellow evening sunlight, the shadows flapping irksomely into his
+eyes as each wayside object rushed past between him and the west!
+Tired workmen with their baskets at their backs had turned on their
+homeward journey to wonder at his speed.  Halfway between the shore
+and Port-Bredy town he had met Charlson, who had been the first
+surgeon to hear of the accident.  He was accompanied by his
+assistant in a gig.  Barnet had sent on the latter to the coast in
+case that Downe's poor wife should by that time have been reclaimed
+from the waves, and had brought Charlson back with him to the house.
+
+Barnet's presence was not needed here, and he felt it to be his next
+duty to set off at once and find Downe, that no other than himself
+might break the news to him.
+
+He was quite sure that no chance had been lost for Mrs. Downe by his
+leaving the shore.  By the time that Mrs. Barnet had been laid in
+the carriage, a much larger group had assembled to lend assistance
+in finding her friend, rendering his own help superfluous.  But the
+duty of breaking the news was made doubly painful by the
+circumstance that the catastrophe which had befallen Mrs. Downe was
+solely the result of her own and her husband's loving-kindness
+towards himself.
+
+He found Downe in his office.  When the solicitor comprehended the
+intelligence he turned pale, stood up, and remained for a moment
+perfectly still, as if bereft of his faculties; then his shoulders
+heaved, he pulled out his handkerchief and began to cry like a
+child.  His sobs might have been heard in the next room.  He seemed
+to have no idea of going to the shore, or of doing anything; but
+when Barnet took him gently by the hand and proposed to start at
+once, he quietly acquiesced, neither uttering any further word nor
+making any effort to repress his tears.
+
+Barnet accompanied him to the shore, where, finding that no trace
+had as yet been seen of Mrs. Downe, and that his stay would be of no
+avail, he left Downe with his friends and the young doctor, and once
+more hastened back to his own house.
+
+At the door he met Charlson.  'Well!'  Barnet said.
+
+'I have just come down,' said the doctor; 'we have done everything,
+but without result.  I sympathize with you in your bereavement.'
+
+Barnet did not much appreciate Charlson's sympathy, which sounded to
+his ears as something of a mockery from the lips of a man who knew
+what Charlson knew about their domestic relations.  Indeed there
+seemed an odd spark in Charlson's full black eye as he said the
+words; but that might have been imaginary.
+
+'And, Mr. Barnet,' Charlson resumed, 'that little matter between us-
+-I hope to settle it finally in three weeks at least.'
+
+'Never mind that now,' said Barnet abruptly.  He directed the
+surgeon to go to the harbour in case his services might even now be
+necessary there:  and himself entered the house.
+
+The servants were coming from his wife's chamber, looking helplessly
+at each other and at him.  He passed them by and entered the room,
+where he stood mutely regarding the bed for a few minutes, after
+which he walked into his own dressing-room adjoining, and there
+paced up and down.  In a minute or two he noticed what a strange and
+total silence had come over the upper part of the house; his own
+movements, muffled as they were by the carpet, seemed noisy, and his
+thoughts to disturb the air like articulate utterances.  His eye
+glanced through the window.  Far down the road to the harbour a roof
+detained his gaze:  out of it rose a red chimney, and out of the red
+chimney a curl of smoke, as from a fire newly kindled.  He had often
+seen such a sight before.  In that house lived Lucy Savile; and the
+smoke was from the fire which was regularly lighted at this time to
+make her tea.
+
+After that he went back to the bedroom, and stood there some time
+regarding his wife's silent form.  She was a woman some years older
+than himself, but had not by any means overpassed the maturity of
+good looks and vigour.  Her passionate features, well-defined, firm,
+and statuesque in life, were doubly so now:  her mouth and brow,
+beneath her purplish black hair, showed only too clearly that the
+turbulency of character which had made a bear-garden of his house
+had been no temporary phase of her existence.  While he reflected,
+he suddenly said to himself, I wonder if all has been done?
+
+The thought was led up to by his having fancied that his wife's
+features lacked in its complete form the expression which he had
+been accustomed to associate with the faces of those whose spirits
+have fled for ever.  The effacement of life was not so marked but
+that, entering uninformed, he might have supposed her sleeping.  Her
+complexion was that seen in the numerous faded portraits by Sir
+Joshua Reynolds; it was pallid in comparison with life, but there
+was visible on a close inspection the remnant of what had once been
+a flush; the keeping between the cheeks and the hollows of the face
+being thus preserved, although positive colour was gone.  Long
+orange rays of evening sun stole in through chinks in the blind,
+striking on the large mirror, and being thence reflected upon the
+crimson hangings and woodwork of the heavy bedstead, so that the
+general tone of light was remarkably warm; and it was probable that
+something might be due to this circumstance.  Still the fact
+impressed him as strange.  Charlson had been gone more than a
+quarter of an hour:  could it be possible that he had left too soon,
+and that his attempts to restore her had operated so sluggishly as
+only now to have made themselves felt?  Barnet laid his hand upon
+her chest, and fancied that ever and anon a faint flutter of
+palpitation, gentle as that of a butterfly's wing, disturbed the
+stillness there--ceasing for a time, then struggling to go on, then
+breaking down in weakness and ceasing again.
+
+Barnet's mother had been an active practitioner of the healing art
+among her poorer neighbours, and her inspirations had all been
+derived from an octavo volume of Domestic Medicine, which at this
+moment was lying, as it had lain for many years, on a shelf in
+Barnet's dressing-room.  He hastily fetched it, and there read under
+the head 'Drowning:'-
+
+
+'Exertions for the recovery of any person who has not been immersed
+for a longer period than half-an-hour should be continued for at
+least four hours, as there have been many cases in which returning
+life has made itself visible even after a longer interval.
+
+'Should, however, a weak action of any of the organs show itself
+when the case seems almost hopeless, our efforts must be redoubled;
+the feeble spark in this case requires to be solicited; it will
+certainly disappear under a relaxation of labour.'
+
+
+Barnet looked at his watch; it was now barely two hours and a half
+from the time when he had first heard of the accident.  He threw
+aside the book and turned quickly to reach a stimulant which had
+previously been used.  Pulling up the blind for more light, his eye
+glanced out of the window.  There he saw that red chimney still
+smoking cheerily, and that roof, and through the roof that somebody.
+His mechanical movements stopped, his hand remained on the blind-
+cord, and he seemed to become breathless, as if he had suddenly
+found himself treading a high rope.
+
+While he stood a sparrow lighted on the windowsill, saw him, and
+flew away.  Next a man and a dog walked over one of the green hills
+which bulged above the roofs of the town.  But Barnet took no
+notice.
+
+We may wonder what were the exact images that passed through his
+mind during those minutes of gazing upon Lucy Savile's house, the
+sparrow, the man and the dog, and Lucy Savile's house again.  There
+are honest men who will not admit to their thoughts, even as idle
+hypotheses, views of the future that assume as done a deed which
+they would recoil from doing; and there are other honest men for
+whom morality ends at the surface of their own heads, who will
+deliberate what the first will not so much as suppose.  Barnet had a
+wife whose pretence distracted his home; she now lay as in death; by
+merely doing nothing--by letting the intelligence which had gone
+forth to the world lie undisturbed--he would effect such a
+deliverance for himself as he had never hoped for, and open up an
+opportunity of which till now he had never dreamed.  Whether the
+conjuncture had arisen through any unscrupulous, ill-considered
+impulse of Charlson to help out of a strait the friend who was so
+kind as never to press him for what was due could not be told; there
+was nothing to prove it; and it was a question which could never be
+asked.  The triangular situation--himself--his wife--Lucy Savile--
+was the one clear thing.
+
+From Barnet's actions we may infer that he SUPPOSED such and such a
+result, for a moment, but did not deliberate.  He withdrew his hazel
+eyes from the scene without, calmly turned, rang the bell for
+assistance, and vigorously exerted himself to learn if life still
+lingered in that motionless frame.  In a short time another surgeon
+was in attendance; and then Barnet's surmise proved to be true.  The
+slow life timidly heaved again; but much care and patience were
+needed to catch and retain it, and a considerable period elapsed
+before it could be said with certainty that Mrs. Barnet lived.  When
+this was the case, and there was no further room for doubt, Barnet
+left the chamber.  The blue evening smoke from Lucy's chimney had
+died down to an imperceptible stream, and as he walked about
+downstairs he murmured to himself, 'My wife was dead, and she is
+alive again.'
+
+It was not so with Downe.  After three hours' immersion his wife's
+body had been recovered, life, of course, being quite extinct.
+Barnet on descending, went straight to his friend's house, and there
+learned the result.  Downe was helpless in his wild grief,
+occasionally even hysterical.  Barnet said little, but finding that
+some guiding hand was necessary in the sorrow-stricken household,
+took upon him to supervise and manage till Downe should be in a
+state of mind to do so for himself.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+
+One September evening, four months later, when Mrs. Barnet was in
+perfect health, and Mrs. Downe but a weakening memory, an errand-boy
+paused to rest himself in front of Mr. Barnet's old house,
+depositing his basket on one of the window-sills.  The street was
+not yet lighted, but there were lights in the house, and at
+intervals a flitting shadow fell upon the blind at his elbow.  Words
+also were audible from the same apartment, and they seemed to be
+those of persons in violent altercation.  But the boy could not
+gather their purport, and he went on his way.
+
+Ten minutes afterwards the door of Barnet's house opened, and a tall
+closely-veiled lady in a travelling-dress came out and descended the
+freestone steps.  The servant stood in the doorway watching her as
+she went with a measured tread down the street.  When she had been
+out of sight for some minutes Barnet appeared at the door from
+within.
+
+'Did your mistress leave word where she was going?' he asked.
+
+'No, sir.'
+
+'Is the carriage ordered to meet her anywhere?'
+
+'No, sir.'
+
+'Did she take a latch-key?'
+
+'No, sir.'
+
+Barnet went in again, sat down in his chair, and leaned back.  Then
+in solitude and silence he brooded over the bitter emotions that
+filled his heart.  It was for this that he had gratuitously restored
+her to life, and made his union with another impossible!  The
+evening drew on, and nobody came to disturb him.  At bedtime he told
+the servants to retire, that he would sit up for Mrs. Barnet
+himself; and when they were gone he leaned his head upon his hand
+and mused for hours.
+
+The clock struck one, two; still his wife came not, and, with
+impatience added to depression, he went from room to room till
+another weary hour had passed.  This was not altogether a new
+experience for Barnet; but she had never before so prolonged her
+absence.  At last he sat down again and fell asleep.
+
+He awoke at six o'clock to find that she had not returned.  In
+searching about the rooms he discovered that she had taken a case of
+jewels which had been hers before her marriage.  At eight a note was
+brought him; it was from his wife, in which she stated that she had
+gone by the coach to the house of a distant relative near London,
+and expressed a wish that certain boxes, articles of clothing, and
+so on, might be sent to her forthwith.  The note was brought to him
+by a waiter at the Black-Bull Hotel, and had been written by Mrs.
+Barnet immediately before she took her place in the stage.
+
+By the evening this order was carried out, and Barnet, with a sense
+of relief, walked out into the town.  A fair had been held during
+the day, and the large clear moon which rose over the most prominent
+hill flung its light upon the booths and standings that still
+remained in the street, mixing its rays curiously with those from
+the flaring naphtha lamps.  The town was full of country-people who
+had come in to enjoy themselves, and on this account Barnet strolled
+through the streets unobserved.  With a certain recklessness he made
+for the harbour-road, and presently found himself by the shore,
+where he walked on till he came to the spot near which his friend
+the kindly Mrs. Downe had lost her life, and his own wife's life had
+been preserved.  A tremulous pathway of bright moonshine now
+stretched over the water which had engulfed them, and not a living
+soul was near.
+
+Here he ruminated on their characters, and next on the young girl in
+whom he now took a more sensitive interest than at the time when he
+had been free to marry her.  Nothing, so far as he was aware, had
+ever appeared in his own conduct to show that such an interest
+existed.  He had made it a point of the utmost strictness to hinder
+that feeling from influencing in the faintest degree his attitude
+towards his wife; and this was made all the more easy for him by the
+small demand Mrs. Barnet made upon his attentions, for which she
+ever evinced the greatest contempt; thus unwittingly giving him the
+satisfaction of knowing that their severance owed nothing to
+jealousy, or, indeed, to any personal behaviour of his at all.  Her
+concern was not with him or his feelings, as she frequently told
+him; but that she had, in a moment of weakness, thrown herself away
+upon a common burgher when she might have aimed at, and possibly
+brought down, a peer of the realm.  Her frequent depreciation of
+Barnet in these terms had at times been so intense that he was
+sorely tempted to retaliate on her egotism by owning that he loved
+at the same low level on which he lived; but prudence had prevailed,
+for which he was now thankful.
+
+Something seemed to sound upon the shingle behind him over and above
+the raking of the wave.  He looked round, and a slight girlish shape
+appeared quite close to him, He could not see her face because it
+was in the direction of the moon.
+
+'Mr. Barnet?' the rambler said, in timid surprise.  The voice was
+the voice of Lucy Savile.
+
+'Yes,' said Barnet.  'How can I repay you for this pleasure?'
+
+'I only came because the night was so clear.  I am now on my way
+home.'
+
+'I am glad we have met.  I want to know if you will let me do
+something for you, to give me an occupation, as an idle man?  I am
+sure I ought to help you, for I know you are almost without
+friends.'
+
+She hesitated.  'Why should you tell me that?' she said.
+
+'In the hope that you will be frank with me.'
+
+'I am not altogether without friends here.  But I am going to make a
+little change in my life--to go out as a teacher of freehand drawing
+and practical perspective, of course I mean on a comparatively
+humble scale, because I have not been specially educated for that
+profession.  But I am sure I shall like it much.'
+
+'You have an opening?'
+
+'I have not exactly got it, but I have advertised for one.'
+
+'Lucy, you must let me help you!'
+
+'Not at all.'
+
+'You need not think it would compromise you, or that I am
+indifferent to delicacy.  I bear in mind how we stand.  It is very
+unlikely that you will succeed as teacher of the class you mention,
+so let me do something of a different kind for you.  Say what you
+would like, and it shall be done.'
+
+'No; if I can't be a drawing-mistress or governess, or something of
+that sort, I shall go to India and join my brother.'
+
+'I wish I could go abroad, anywhere, everywhere with you, Lucy, and
+leave this place and its associations for ever!'
+
+She played with the end of her bonnet-string, and hastily turned
+aside.  'Don't ever touch upon that kind of topic again,' she said,
+with a quick severity not free from anger.  'It simply makes it
+impossible for me to see you, much less receive any guidance from
+you.  No, thank you, Mr. Barnet; you can do nothing for me at
+present; and as I suppose my uncertainty will end in my leaving for
+India, I fear you never will.  If ever I think you CAN do anything,
+I will take the trouble to ask you.  Till then, good-bye.'
+
+The tone of her latter words was equivocal, and while he remained in
+doubt whether a gentle irony was or was not inwrought with their
+sound, she swept lightly round and left him alone.  He saw her form
+get smaller and smaller along the damp belt of sea-sand between ebb
+and flood; and when she had vanished round the cliff into the
+harbour-road, he himself followed in the same direction.
+
+That her hopes from an advertisement should be the single thread
+which held Lucy Savile in England was too much for Barnet.  On
+reaching the town he went straight to the residence of Downe, now a
+widower with four children.  The young motherless brood had been
+sent to bed about a quarter of an hour earlier, and when Barnet
+entered he found Downe sitting alone.  It was the same room as that
+from which the family had been looking out for Downe at the
+beginning of the year, when Downe had slipped into the gutter and
+his wife had been so enviably tender towards him.  The old neatness
+had gone from the house; articles lay in places which could show no
+reason for their presence, as if momentarily deposited there some
+months ago, and forgotten ever since; there were no flowers; things
+were jumbled together on the furniture which should have been in
+cupboards; and the place in general had that stagnant, unrenovated
+air which usually pervades the maimed home of the widower.
+
+Downe soon renewed his customary full-worded lament over his wife,
+and even when he had worked himself up to tears, went on volubly, as
+if a listener were a luxury to be enjoyed whenever he could be
+caught.
+
+'She was a treasure beyond compare, Mr. Barnet!  I shall never see
+such another.  Nobody now to nurse me--nobody to console me in those
+daily troubles, you know, Barnet, which make consolation so
+necessary to a nature like mine.  It would be unbecoming to repine,
+for her spirit's home was elsewhere--the tender light in her eyes
+always showed it; but it is a long dreary time that I have before
+me, and nobody else can ever fill the void left in my heart by her
+loss--nobody--nobody!'  And Downe wiped his eyes again.
+
+'She was a good woman in the highest sense,' gravely answered
+Barnet, who, though Downe's words drew genuine compassion from his
+heart, could not help feeling that a tender reticence would have
+been a finer tribute to Mrs. Downe's really sterling virtues than
+such a second-class lament as this.
+
+'I have something to show you,' Downe resumed, producing from a
+drawer a sheet of paper on which was an elaborate design for a
+canopied tomb.  'This has been sent me by the architect, but it is
+not exactly what I want.'
+
+'You have got Jones to do it, I see, the man who is carrying out my
+house,' said Barnet, as he glanced at the signature to the drawing.
+
+'Yes, but it is not quite what I want.  I want something more
+striking--more like a tomb I have seen in St. Paul's Cathedral.
+Nothing less will do justice to my feelings, and how far short of
+them that will fall!'
+
+Barnet privately thought the design a sufficiently imposing one as
+it stood, even extravagantly ornate; but, feeling that he had no
+right to criticize, he said gently, 'Downe, should you not live more
+in your children's lives at the present time, and soften the
+sharpness of regret for your own past by thinking of their future?'
+
+'Yes, yes; but what can I do more?' asked Downe, wrinkling his
+forehead hopelessly.
+
+It was with anxious slowness that Barnet produced his reply--the
+secret object of his visit to-night.  'Did you not say one day that
+you ought by rights to get a governess for the children?'
+
+Downe admitted that he had said so, but that he could not see his
+way to it.  'The kind of woman I should like to have,' he said,
+'would be rather beyond my means.  No; I think I shall send them to
+school in the town when they are old enough to go out alone.'
+
+'Now, I know of something better than that.  The late Lieutenant
+Savile's daughter, Lucy, wants to do something for herself in the
+way of teaching.  She would be inexpensive, and would answer your
+purpose as well as anybody for six or twelve months.  She would
+probably come daily if you were to ask her, and so your housekeeping
+arrangements would not be much affected.'
+
+'I thought she had gone away,' said the solicitor, musing.  'Where
+does she live?'
+
+Barnet told him, and added that, if Downe should think of her as
+suitable, he would do well to call as soon as possible, or she might
+be on the wing.  'If you do see her,' he said, 'it would be
+advisable not to mention my name.  She is rather stiff in her ideas
+of me, and it might prejudice her against a course if she knew that
+I recommended it.'
+
+Downe promised to give the subject his consideration, and nothing
+more was said about it just then.  But when Barnet rose to go, which
+was not till nearly bedtime, he reminded Downe of the suggestion and
+went up the street to his own solitary home with a sense of
+satisfaction at his promising diplomacy in a charitable cause.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+
+The walls of his new house were carried up nearly to their full
+height.  By a curious though not infrequent reaction, Barnet's
+feelings about that unnecessary structure had undergone a change; he
+took considerable interest in its progress as a long-neglected
+thing, his wife before her departure having grown quite weary of it
+as a hobby.  Moreover, it was an excellent distraction for a man in
+the unhappy position of having to live in a provincial town with
+nothing to do.  He was probably the first of his line who had ever
+passed a day without toil, and perhaps something like an inherited
+instinct disqualifies such men for a life of pleasant inaction, such
+as lies in the power of those whose leisure is not a personal
+accident, but a vast historical accretion which has become part of
+their natures.
+
+Thus Barnet got into a way of spending many of his leisure hours on
+the site of the new building, and he might have been seen on most
+days at this time trying the temper of the mortar by punching the
+joints with his stick, looking at the grain of a floor-board, and
+meditating where it grew, or picturing under what circumstances the
+last fire would be kindled in the at present sootless chimneys.  One
+day when thus occupied he saw three children pass by in the company
+of a fair young woman, whose sudden appearance caused him to flush
+perceptibly.
+
+'Ah, she is there,' he thought.  'That's a blessed thing.'
+
+Casting an interested glance over the rising building and the busy
+workmen, Lucy Savile and the little Downes passed by; and after that
+time it became a regular though almost unconscious custom of Barnet
+to stand in the half-completed house and look from the ungarnished
+windows at the governess as she tripped towards the sea-shore with
+her young charges, which she was in the habit of doing on most fine
+afternoons.  It was on one of these occasions, when he had been
+loitering on the first-floor landing, near the hole left for the
+staircase, not yet erected, that there appeared above the edge of
+the floor a little hat, followed by a little head.
+
+Barnet withdrew through a doorway, and the child came to the top of
+the ladder, stepping on to the floor and crying to her sisters and
+Miss Savile to follow.  Another head rose above the floor, and
+another, and then Lucy herself came into view.  The troop ran hither
+and thither through the empty, shaving-strewn rooms, and Barnet came
+forward.
+
+Lucy uttered a small exclamation:  she was very sorry that she had
+intruded; she had not the least idea that Mr. Barnet was there:  the
+children had come up, and she had followed.
+
+Barnet replied that he was only too glad to see them there.  'And
+now, let me show you the rooms,' he said.
+
+She passively assented, and he took her round.  There was not much
+to show in such a bare skeleton of a house, but he made the most of
+it, and explained the different ornamental fittings that were soon
+to be fixed here and there.  Lucy made but few remarks in reply,
+though she seemed pleased with her visit, and stole away down the
+ladder, followed by her companions.
+
+After this the new residence became yet more of a hobby for Barnet.
+Downe's children did not forget their first visit, and when the
+windows were glazed, and the handsome staircase spread its broad low
+steps into the hall, they came again, prancing in unwearied
+succession through every room from ground-floor to attics, while
+Lucy stood waiting for them at the door.  Barnet, who rarely missed
+a day in coming to inspect progress, stepped out from the drawing-
+room.
+
+'I could not keep them out,' she said, with an apologetic blush.  'I
+tried to do so very much:  but they are rather wilful, and we are
+directed to walk this way for the sea air.'
+
+'Do let them make the house their regular playground, and you
+yours,' said Barnet.  'There is no better place for children to romp
+and take their exercise in than an empty house, particularly in
+muddy or damp weather such as we shall get a good deal of now; and
+this place will not be furnished for a long long time--perhaps
+never.  I am not at all decided about it.'
+
+'O, but it must!' replied Lucy, looking round at the hall.  'The
+rooms are excellent, twice as high as ours; and the views from the
+windows are so lovely.'
+
+'I daresay, I daresay,' he said absently.
+
+'Will all the furniture be new?' she asked.
+
+'All the furniture be new--that's a thing I have not thought of.  In
+fact I only come here and look on.  My father's house would have
+been large enough for me, but another person had a voice in the
+matter, and it was settled that we should build.  However, the place
+grows upon me; its recent associations are cheerful, and I am
+getting to like it fast.'
+
+A certain uneasiness in Lucy's manner showed that the conversation
+was taking too personal a turn for her.  'Still, as modern tastes
+develop, people require more room to gratify them in,' she said,
+withdrawing to call the children; and serenely bidding him good
+afternoon she went on her way.
+
+Barnet's life at this period was singularly lonely, and yet he was
+happier than he could have expected.  His wife's estrangement and
+absence, which promised to be permanent, left him free as a boy in
+his movements, and the solitary walks that he took gave him ample
+opportunity for chastened reflection on what might have been his lot
+if he had only shown wisdom enough to claim Lucy Savile when there
+was no bar between their lives, and she was to be had for the
+asking.  He would occasionally call at the house of his friend
+Downe; but there was scarcely enough in common between their two
+natures to make them more than friends of that excellent sort whose
+personal knowledge of each other's history and character is always
+in excess of intimacy, whereby they are not so likely to be severed
+by a clash of sentiment as in cases where intimacy springs up in
+excess of knowledge.  Lucy was never visible at these times, being
+either engaged in the school-room, or in taking an airing out of
+doors; but, knowing that she was now comfortable, and had given up
+the, to him, depressing idea of going off to the other side of the
+globe, he was quite content.
+
+The new house had so far progressed that the gardeners were
+beginning to grass down the front.  During an afternoon which he was
+passing in marking the curve for the carriage-drive, he beheld her
+coming in boldly towards him from the road.  Hitherto Barnet had
+only caught her on the premises by stealth; and this advance seemed
+to show that at last her reserve had broken down.
+
+A smile gained strength upon her face as she approached, and it was
+quite radiant when she came up, and said, without a trace of
+embarrassment, 'I find I owe you a hundred thanks--and it comes to
+me quite as a surprise!  It was through your kindness that I was
+engaged by Mr. Downe.  Believe me, Mr. Barnet, I did not know it
+until yesterday, or I should have thanked you long and long ago!'
+
+'I had offended you--just a trifle--at the time, I think?' said
+Barnet, smiling, 'and it was best that you should not know.'
+
+'Yes, yes,' she returned hastily.  'Don't allude to that; it is past
+and over, and we will let it be.  The house is finished almost, is
+it not?  How beautiful it will look when the evergreens are grown!
+Do you call the style Palladian, Mr. Barnet?'
+
+'I--really don't quite know what it is.  Yes, it must be Palladian,
+certainly.  But I'll ask Jones, the architect; for, to tell the
+truth, I had not thought much about the style:  I had nothing to do
+with choosing it, I am sorry to say.'
+
+She would not let him harp on this gloomy refrain, and talked on
+bright matters till she said, producing a small roll of paper which
+he had noticed in her hand all the while, 'Mr. Downe wished me to
+bring you this revised drawing of the late Mrs. Downe's tomb, which
+the architect has just sent him.  He would like you to look it
+over.'
+
+The children came up with their hoops, and she went off with them
+down the harbour-road as usual.  Barnet had been glad to get those
+words of thanks; he had been thinking for many months that he would
+like her to know of his share in finding her a home such as it was;
+and what he could not do for himself, Downe had now kindly done for
+him.  He returned to his desolate house with a lighter tread; though
+in reason he hardly knew why his tread should be light.
+
+On examining the drawing, Barnet found that, instead of the vast
+altar-tomb and canopy Downe had determined on at their last meeting,
+it was to be a more modest memorial even than had been suggested by
+the architect; a coped tomb of good solid construction, with no
+useless elaboration at all.  Barnet was truly glad to see that Downe
+had come to reason of his own accord; and he returned the drawing
+with a note of approval.
+
+He followed up the house-work as before, and as he walked up and
+down the rooms, occasionally gazing from the windows over the
+bulging green hills and the quiet harbour that lay between them, he
+murmured words and fragments of words, which, if listened to, would
+have revealed all the secrets of his existence.  Whatever his reason
+in going there, Lucy did not call again:  the walk to the shore
+seemed to be abandoned:  he must have thought it as well for both
+that it should be so, for he did not go anywhere out of his
+accustomed ways to endeavour to discover her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+
+The winter and the spring had passed, and the house was complete.
+It was a fine morning in the early part of June, and Barnet, though
+not in the habit of rising early, had taken a long walk before
+breakfast; returning by way of the new building.  A sufficiently
+exciting cause of his restlessness to-day might have been the
+intelligence which had reached him the night before, that Lucy
+Savile was going to India after all, and notwithstanding the
+representations of her friends that such a journey was unadvisable
+in many ways for an unpractised girl, unless some more definite
+advantage lay at the end of it than she could show to be the case.
+Barnet's walk up the slope to the building betrayed that he was in a
+dissatisfied mood.  He hardly saw that the dewy time of day lent an
+unusual freshness to the bushes and trees which had so recently put
+on their summer habit of heavy leafage, and made his newly-laid lawn
+look as well established as an old manorial meadow.  The house had
+been so adroitly placed between six tall elms which were growing on
+the site beforehand, that they seemed like real ancestral trees; and
+the rooks, young and old, cawed melodiously to their visitor.
+
+The door was not locked, and he entered.  No workmen appeared to be
+present, and he walked from sunny window to sunny window of the
+empty rooms, with a sense of seclusion which might have been very
+pleasant but for the antecedent knowledge that his almost paternal
+care of Lucy Savile was to be thrown away by her wilfulness.
+Footsteps echoed through an adjoining room; and bending his eyes in
+that direction, he perceived Mr. Jones, the architect.  He had come
+to look over the building before giving the contractor his final
+certificate.  They walked over the house together.  Everything was
+finished except the papering:  there were the latest improvements of
+the period in bell-hanging, ventilating, smoke-jacks, fire-grates,
+and French windows.  The business was soon ended, and Jones, having
+directed Barnet's attention to a roll of wall-paper patterns which
+lay on a bench for his choice, was leaving to keep another
+engagement, when Barnet said, 'Is the tomb finished yet for Mrs.
+Downe?'
+
+'Well--yes:  it is at last,' said the architect, coming back and
+speaking as if he were in a mood to make a confidence.  'I have had
+no end of trouble in the matter, and, to tell the truth, I am
+heartily glad it is over.'
+
+Barnet expressed his surprise.  'I thought poor Downe had given up
+those extravagant notions of his? then he has gone back to the altar
+and canopy after all?  Well, he is to be excused, poor fellow!'
+
+'O no--he has not at all gone back to them--quite the reverse,'
+Jones hastened to say.  'He has so reduced design after design, that
+the whole thing has been nothing but waste labour for me; till in
+the end it has become a common headstone, which a mason put up in
+half a day.'
+
+'A common headstone?' said Barnet.
+
+'Yes.  I held out for some time for the addition of a footstone at
+least.  But he said, "O no--he couldn't afford it."'
+
+'Ah, well--his family is growing up, poor fellow, and his expenses
+are getting serious.'
+
+'Yes, exactly,' said Jones, as if the subject were none of his.  And
+again directing Barnet's attention to the wall-papers, the bustling
+architect left him to keep some other engagement.
+
+'A common headstone,' murmured Barnet, left again to himself.  He
+mused a minute or two, and next began looking over and selecting
+from the patterns; but had not long been engaged in the work when he
+heard another footstep on the gravel without, and somebody enter the
+open porch.
+
+Barnet went to the door--it was his manservant in search of him.
+
+'I have been trying for some time to find you, sir,' he said.  'This
+letter has come by the post, and it is marked immediate.  And
+there's this one from Mr. Downe, who called just now wanting to see
+you.'  He searched his pocket for the second.
+
+Barnet took the first letter--it had a black border, and bore the
+London postmark.  It was not in his wife's handwriting, or in that
+of any person he knew; but conjecture soon ceased as he read the
+page, wherein he was briefly informed that Mrs. Barnet had died
+suddenly on the previous day, at the furnished villa she had
+occupied near London.
+
+Barnet looked vaguely round the empty hall, at the blank walls, out
+of the doorway.  Drawing a long palpitating breath, and with eyes
+downcast, he turned and climbed the stairs slowly, like a man who
+doubted their stability.  The fact of his wife having, as it were,
+died once already, and lived on again, had entirely dislodged the
+possibility of her actual death from his conjecture.  He went to the
+landing, leant over the balusters, and after a reverie, of whose
+duration he had but the faintest notion, turned to the window and
+stretched his gaze to the cottage further down the road, which was
+visible from his landing, and from which Lucy still walked to the
+solicitor's house by a cross path.  The faint words that came from
+his moving lips were simply, 'At last!'
+
+Then, almost involuntarily, Barnet fell down on his knees and
+murmured some incoherent words of thanksgiving.  Surely his virtue
+in restoring his wife to life had been rewarded!  But, as if the
+impulse struck uneasily on his conscience, he quickly rose, brushed
+the dust from his trousers and set himself to think of his next
+movements.  He could not start for London for some hours; and as he
+had no preparations to make that could not be made in half-an-hour,
+he mechanically descended and resumed his occupation of turning over
+the wall-papers.  They had all got brighter for him, those papers.
+It was all changed--who would sit in the rooms that they were to
+line?  He went on to muse upon Lucy's conduct in so frequently
+coming to the house with the children; her occasional blush in
+speaking to him; her evident interest in him.  What woman can in the
+long run avoid being interested in a man whom she knows to be
+devoted to her?  If human solicitation could ever effect anything,
+there should be no going to India for Lucy now.  All the papers
+previously chosen seemed wrong in their shades, and he began from
+the beginning to choose again.
+
+While entering on the task he heard a forced 'Ahem!' from without
+the porch, evidently uttered to attract his attention, and footsteps
+again advancing to the door.  His man, whom he had quite forgotten
+in his mental turmoil, was still waiting there.
+
+'I beg your pardon, sir,' the man said from round the doorway; 'but
+here's the note from Mr. Downe that you didn't take.  He called just
+after you went out, and as he couldn't wait, he wrote this on your
+study-table.'
+
+He handed in the letter--no black-bordered one now, but a practical-
+looking note in the well-known writing of the solicitor.
+
+
+'DEAR BARNET'--it ran--'Perhaps you will be prepared for the
+information I am about to give--that Lucy Savile and myself are
+going to be married this morning.  I have hitherto said nothing as
+to my intention to any of my friends, for reasons which I am sure
+you will fully appreciate.  The crisis has been brought about by her
+expressing her intention to join her brother in India.  I then
+discovered that I could not do without her.
+
+'It is to be quite a private wedding; but it is my particular wish
+that you come down here quietly at ten, and go to church with us; it
+will add greatly to the pleasure I shall experience in the ceremony,
+and, I believe, to Lucy's also.  I have called on you very early to
+make the request, in the belief that I should find you at home; but
+you are beforehand with me in your early rising.--Yours sincerely,
+C. Downe.'
+
+
+'Need I wait, sir?' said the servant after a dead silence.
+
+'That will do, William.  No answer,' said Barnet calmly.
+
+When the man had gone Barnet re-read the letter.  Turning eventually
+to the wall-papers, which he had been at such pains to select, he
+deliberately tore them into halves and quarters, and threw them into
+the empty fireplace.  Then he went out of the house; locked the
+door, and stood in the front awhile.  Instead of returning into the
+town, he went down the harbour-road and thoughtfully lingered about
+by the sea, near the spot where the body of Downe's late wife had
+been found and brought ashore.
+
+Barnet was a man with a rich capacity for misery, and there is no
+doubt that he exercised it to its fullest extent now.  The events
+that had, as it were, dashed themselves together into one half-hour
+of this day showed that curious refinement of cruelty in their
+arrangement which often proceeds from the bosom of the whimsical god
+at other times known as blind Circumstance.  That his few minutes of
+hope, between the reading of the first and second letters, had
+carried him to extraordinary heights of rapture was proved by the
+immensity of his suffering now.  The sun blazing into his face would
+have shown a close watcher that a horizontal line, which he had
+never noticed before, but which was never to be gone thereafter, was
+somehow gradually forming itself in the smooth of his forehead.  His
+eyes, of a light hazel, had a curious look which can only be
+described by the word bruised; the sorrow that looked from them
+being largely mixed with the surprise of a man taken unawares.
+
+The secondary particulars of his present position, too, were odd
+enough, though for some time they appeared to engage little of his
+attention.  Not a soul in the town knew, as yet, of his wife's
+death; and he almost owed Downe the kindness of not publishing it
+till the day was over:  the conjuncture, taken with that which had
+accompanied the death of Mrs. Downe, being so singular as to be
+quite sufficient to darken the pleasure of the impressionable
+solicitor to a cruel extent, if made known to him.  But as Barnet
+could not set out on his journey to London, where his wife lay, for
+some hours (there being at this date no railway within a distance of
+many miles), no great reason existed why he should leave the town.
+
+Impulse in all its forms characterized Barnet, and when he heard the
+distant clock strike the hour of ten his feet began to carry him up
+the harbour-road with the manner of a man who must do something to
+bring himself to life.  He passed Lucy Savile's old house, his own
+new one, and came in view of the church.  Now he gave a perceptible
+start, and his mechanical condition went away.  Before the church-
+gate were a couple of carriages, and Barnet then could perceive that
+the marriage between Downe and Lucy was at that moment being
+solemnized within.  A feeling of sudden, proud self-confidence, an
+indocile wish to walk unmoved in spite of grim environments, plainly
+possessed him, and when he reached the wicket-gate he turned in
+without apparent effort.  Pacing up the paved footway he entered the
+church and stood for a while in the nave passage.  A group of people
+was standing round the vestry door; Barnet advanced through these
+and stepped into the vestry.
+
+There they were, busily signing their names.  Seeing Downe about to
+look round, Barnet averted his somewhat disturbed face for a second
+or two; when he turned again front to front he was calm and quite
+smiling; it was a creditable triumph over himself, and deserved to
+be remembered in his native town.  He greeted Downe heartily,
+offering his congratulations.
+
+It seemed as if Barnet expected a half-guilty look upon Lucy's face;
+but no, save the natural flush and flurry engendered by the service
+just performed, there was nothing whatever in her bearing which
+showed a disturbed mind:  her gray-brown eyes carried in them now as
+at other times the well-known expression of common-sensed rectitude
+which never went so far as to touch on hardness.  She shook hands
+with him, and Downe said warmly, 'I wish you could have come sooner:
+I called on purpose to ask you.  You'll drive back with us now?'
+
+'No, no,' said Barnet; 'I am not at all prepared; but I thought I
+would look in upon you for a moment, even though I had not time to
+go home and dress.  I'll stand back and see you pass out, and
+observe the effect of the spectacle upon myself as one of the
+public.'
+
+Then Lucy and her husband laughed, and Barnet laughed and retired;
+and the quiet little party went gliding down the nave and towards
+the porch, Lucy's new silk dress sweeping with a smart rustle round
+the base-mouldings of the ancient font, and Downe's little daughters
+following in a state of round-eyed interest in their position, and
+that of Lucy, their teacher and friend.
+
+So Downe was comforted after his Emily's death, which had taken
+place twelve months, two weeks, and three days before that time.
+
+When the two flys had driven off and the spectators had vanished,
+Barnet followed to the door, and went out into the sun.  He took no
+more trouble to preserve a spruce exterior; his step was unequal,
+hesitating, almost convulsive; and the slight changes of colour
+which went on in his face seemed refracted from some inward flame.
+In the churchyard he became pale as a summer cloud, and finding it
+not easy to proceed he sat down on one of the tombstones and
+supported his head with his hand.
+
+Hard by was a sexton filling up a grave which he had not found time
+to finish on the previous evening.  Observing Barnet, he went up to
+him, and recognizing him, said, 'Shall I help you home, sir?'
+
+'O no, thank you,' said Barnet, rousing himself and standing up.
+The sexton returned to his grave, followed by Barnet, who, after
+watching him awhile, stepped into the grave, now nearly filled, and
+helped to tread in the earth.
+
+The sexton apparently thought his conduct a little singular, but he
+made no observation, and when the grave was full, Barnet suddenly
+stopped, looked far away, and with a decided step proceeded to the
+gate and vanished.  The sexton rested on his shovel and looked after
+him for a few moments, and then began banking up the mound.
+
+In those short minutes of treading in the dead man Barnet had formed
+a design, but what it was the inhabitants of that town did not for
+some long time imagine.  He went home, wrote several letters of
+business, called on his lawyer, an old man of the same place who had
+been the legal adviser of Barnet's father before him, and during the
+evening overhauled a large quantity of letters and other documents
+in his possession.  By eleven o'clock the heap of papers in and
+before Barnet's grate had reached formidable dimensions, and he
+began to burn them.  This, owing to their quantity, it was not so
+easy to do as he had expected, and he sat long into the night to
+complete the task.
+
+The next morning Barnet departed for London, leaving a note for
+Downe to inform him of Mrs. Barnet's sudden death, and that he was
+gone to bury her; but when a thrice-sufficient time for that purpose
+had elapsed, he was not seen again in his accustomed walks, or in
+his new house, or in his old one.  He was gone for good, nobody knew
+whither.  It was soon discovered that he had empowered his lawyer to
+dispose of all his property, real and personal, in the borough, and
+pay in the proceeds to the account of an unknown person at one of
+the large London banks.  The person was by some supposed to be
+himself under an assumed name; but few, if any, had certain
+knowledge of that fact.
+
+The elegant new residence was sold with the rest of his possessions;
+and its purchaser was no other than Downe, now a thriving man in the
+borough, and one whose growing family and new wife required more
+roomy accommodation than was afforded by the little house up the
+narrow side street.  Barnet's old habitation was bought by the
+trustees of the Congregational Baptist body in that town, who pulled
+down the time-honoured dwelling and built a new chapel on its site.
+By the time the last hour of that, to Barnet, eventful year had
+chimed, every vestige of him had disappeared from the precincts of
+his native place, and the name became extinct in the borough of
+Port-Bredy, after having been a living force therein for more than
+two hundred years.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+
+Twenty-one years and six months do not pass without setting a mark
+even upon durable stone and triple brass; upon humanity such a
+period works nothing less than transformation.  In Barnet's old
+birthplace vivacious young children with bones like india-rubber had
+grown up to be stable men and women, men and women had dried in the
+skin, stiffened, withered, and sunk into decrepitude; while
+selections from every class had been consigned to the outlying
+cemetery.  Of inorganic differences the greatest was that a railway
+had invaded the town, tying it on to a main line at a junction a
+dozen miles off.  Barnet's house on the harbour-road, once so
+insistently new, had acquired a respectable mellowness, with ivy,
+Virginia creepers, lichens, damp patches, and even constitutional
+infirmities of its own like its elder fellows.  Its architecture,
+once so very improved and modern, had already become stale in style,
+without having reached the dignity of being old-fashioned.  Trees
+about the harbour-road had increased in circumference or disappeared
+under the saw; while the church had had such a tremendous practical
+joke played upon it by some facetious restorer or other as to be
+scarce recognizable by its dearest old friends.
+
+During this long interval George Barnet had never once been seen or
+heard of in the town of his fathers.
+
+It was the evening of a market-day, and some half-dozen middle-aged
+farmers and dairymen were lounging round the bar of the Black-Bull
+Hotel, occasionally dropping a remark to each other, and less
+frequently to the two barmaids who stood within the pewter-topped
+counter in a perfunctory attitude of attention, these latter sighing
+and making a private observation to one another at odd intervals, on
+more interesting experiences than the present.
+
+'Days get shorter,' said one of the dairymen, as he looked towards
+the street, and noticed that the lamp-lighter was passing by.
+
+The farmers merely acknowledged by their countenances the propriety
+of this remark, and finding that nobody else spoke, one of the
+barmaids said 'yes,' in a tone of painful duty.
+
+'Come fair-day we shall have to light up before we start for home-
+along.'
+
+'That's true,' his neighbour conceded, with a gaze of blankness.
+
+'And after that we shan't see much further difference all's winter.'
+
+The rest were not unwilling to go even so far as this.
+
+The barmaid sighed again, and raised one of her hands from the
+counter on which they rested to scratch the smallest surface of her
+face with the smallest of her fingers.  She looked towards the door,
+and presently remarked, 'I think I hear the 'bus coming in from
+station.'
+
+The eyes of the dairymen and farmers turned to the glass door
+dividing the hall from the porch, and in a minute or two the omnibus
+drew up outside.  Then there was a lumbering down of luggage, and
+then a man came into the hall, followed by a porter with a
+portmanteau on his poll, which he deposited on a bench.
+
+The stranger was an elderly person, with curly ashen white hair, a
+deeply-creviced outer corner to each eyelid, and a countenance baked
+by innumerable suns to the colour of terra-cotta, its hue and that
+of his hair contrasting like heat and cold respectively.  He walked
+meditatively and gently, like one who was fearful of disturbing his
+own mental equilibrium.  But whatever lay at the bottom of his
+breast had evidently made him so accustomed to its situation there
+that it caused him little practical inconvenience.
+
+He paused in silence while, with his dubious eyes fixed on the
+barmaids, he seemed to consider himself.  In a moment or two he
+addressed them, and asked to be accommodated for the night.  As he
+waited he looked curiously round the hall, but said nothing.  As
+soon as invited he disappeared up the staircase, preceded by a
+chambermaid and candle, and followed by a lad with his trunk.  Not a
+soul had recognized him.
+
+A quarter of an hour later, when the farmers and dairymen had driven
+off to their homesteads in the country, he came downstairs, took a
+biscuit and one glass of wine, and walked out into the town, where
+the radiance from the shop-windows had grown so in volume of late
+years as to flood with cheerfulness every standing cart, barrow,
+stall, and idler that occupied the wayside, whether shabby or
+genteel.  His chief interest at present seemed to lie in the names
+painted over the shop-fronts and on door-ways, as far as they were
+visible; these now differed to an ominous extent from what they had
+been one-and-twenty years before.
+
+The traveller passed on till he came to the bookseller's, where he
+looked in through the glass door.  A fresh-faced young man was
+standing behind the counter, otherwise the shop was empty.  The
+gray-haired observer entered, asked for some periodical by way of
+paying for admission, and with his elbow on the counter began to
+turn over the pages he had bought, though that he read nothing was
+obvious.
+
+At length he said, 'Is old Mr. Watkins still alive?' in a voice
+which had a curious youthful cadence in it even now.
+
+'My father is dead, sir,' said the young man.
+
+'Ah, I am sorry to hear it,' said the stranger.  'But it is so many
+years since I last visited this town that I could hardly expect it
+should be otherwise.'  After a short silence he continued--'And is
+the firm of Barnet, Browse, and Company still in existence?--they
+used to be large flax-merchants and twine-spinners here?'
+
+'The firm is still going on, sir, but they have dropped the name of
+Barnet.  I believe that was a sort of fancy name--at least, I never
+knew of any living Barnet.  'Tis now Browse and Co.'
+
+'And does Andrew Jones still keep on as architect?'
+
+'He's dead, sir.'
+
+'And the Vicar of St. Mary's--Mr. Melrose?'
+
+'He's been dead a great many years.'
+
+'Dear me!'  He paused yet longer, and cleared his voice.  'Is Mr.
+Downe, the solicitor, still in practice?'
+
+'No, sir, he's dead.  He died about seven years ago.'
+
+Here it was a longer silence still; and an attentive observer would
+have noticed that the paper in the stranger's hand increased its
+imperceptible tremor to a visible shake.  That gray-haired gentleman
+noticed it himself, and rested the paper on the counter.  'Is MRS.
+Downe still alive?' he asked, closing his lips firmly as soon as the
+words were out of his mouth, and dropping his eyes.
+
+'Yes, sir, she's alive and well.  She's living at the old place.'
+
+'In East Street?'
+
+'O no; at Chateau Ringdale.  I believe it has been in the family for
+some generations.'
+
+'She lives with her children, perhaps?'
+
+'No; she has no children of her own.  There were some Miss Downes; I
+think they were Mr. Downe's daughters by a former wife; but they are
+married and living in other parts of the town.  Mrs. Downe lives
+alone.'
+
+'Quite alone?'
+
+'Yes, sir; quite alone.'
+
+The newly-arrived gentleman went back to the hotel and dined; after
+which he made some change in his dress, shaved back his beard to the
+fashion that had prevailed twenty years earlier, when he was young
+and interesting, and once more emerging, bent his steps in the
+direction of the harbour-road.  Just before getting to the point
+where the pavement ceased and the houses isolated themselves, he
+overtook a shambling, stooping, unshaven man, who at first sight
+appeared like a professional tramp, his shoulders having a
+perceptible greasiness as they passed under the gaslight.  Each
+pedestrian momentarily turned and regarded the other, and the tramp-
+like gentleman started back.
+
+'Good--why--is that Mr. Barnet?  'Tis Mr. Barnet, surely!'
+
+'Yes; and you are Charlson?'
+
+'Yes--ah--you notice my appearance.  The Fates have rather ill-used
+me.  By-the-bye, that fifty pounds.  I never paid it, did I? . . .
+But I was not ungrateful!'  Here the stooping man laid one hand
+emphatically on the palm of the other.  'I gave you a chance, Mr.
+George Barnet, which many men would have thought full value
+received--the chance to marry your Lucy.  As far as the world was
+concerned, your wife was a DROWNED WOMAN, hey?'
+
+'Heaven forbid all that, Charlson!'
+
+'Well, well, 'twas a wrong way of showing gratitude, I suppose.  And
+now a drop of something to drink for old acquaintance' sake!  And
+Mr. Barnet, she's again free--there's a chance now if you care for
+it--ha, ha!'  And the speaker pushed his tongue into his hollow
+cheek and slanted his eye in the old fashion.
+
+'I know all,' said Barnet quickly; and slipping a small present into
+the hands of the needy, saddening man, he stepped ahead and was soon
+in the outskirts of the town.
+
+He reached the harbour-road, and paused before the entrance to a
+well-known house.  It was so highly bosomed in trees and shrubs
+planted since the erection of the building that one would scarcely
+have recognized the spot as that which had been a mere neglected
+slope till chosen as a site for a dwelling.  He opened the swing-
+gate, closed it noiselessly, and gently moved into the semicircular
+drive, which remained exactly as it had been marked out by Barnet on
+the morning when Lucy Savile ran in to thank him for procuring her
+the post of governess to Downe's children.  But the growth of trees
+and bushes which revealed itself at every step was beyond all
+expectation; sun-proof and moon-proof bowers vaulted the walks, and
+the walls of the house were uniformly bearded with creeping plants
+as high as the first-floor windows.
+
+After lingering for a few minutes in the dusk of the bending boughs,
+the visitor rang the door-bell, and on the servant appearing, he
+announced himself as 'an old friend of Mrs. Downe's.'
+
+The hall was lighted, but not brightly, the gas being turned low, as
+if visitors were rare.  There was a stagnation in the dwelling; it
+seemed to be waiting.  Could it really be waiting for him?  The
+partitions which had been probed by Barnet's walking-stick when the
+mortar was green, were now quite brown with the antiquity of their
+varnish, and the ornamental woodwork of the staircase, which had
+glistened with a pale yellow newness when first erected, was now of
+a rich wine-colour.  During the servant's absence the following
+colloquy could be dimly heard through the nearly closed door of the
+drawing-room.
+
+'He didn't give his name?'
+
+'He only said "an old friend," ma'am.'
+
+'What kind of gentleman is he?'
+
+'A staidish gentleman, with gray hair.'
+
+The voice of the second speaker seemed to affect the listener
+greatly.  After a pause, the lady said, 'Very well, I will see him.'
+
+And the stranger was shown in face to face with the Lucy who had
+once been Lucy Savile.  The round cheek of that formerly young lady
+had, of course, alarmingly flattened its curve in her modern
+representative; a pervasive grayness overspread her once dark brown
+hair, like morning rime on heather.  The parting down the middle was
+wide and jagged; once it had been a thin white line, a narrow
+crevice between two high banks of shade.  But there was still enough
+left to form a handsome knob behind, and some curls beneath
+inwrought with a few hairs like silver wires were very becoming.  In
+her eyes the only modification was that their originally mild
+rectitude of expression had become a little more stringent than
+heretofore.  Yet she was still girlish--a girl who had been
+gratuitously weighted by destiny with a burden of five-and-forty
+years instead of her proper twenty.
+
+'Lucy, don't you know me?' he said, when the servant had closed the
+door.
+
+'I knew you the instant I saw you!' she returned cheerfully.  'I
+don't know why, but I always thought you would come back to your old
+town again.'
+
+She gave him her hand, and then they sat down.  'They said you were
+dead,' continued Lucy, 'but I never thought so.  We should have
+heard of it for certain if you had been.'
+
+'It is a very long time since we met.'
+
+'Yes; what you must have seen, Mr. Barnet, in all these roving
+years, in comparison with what I have seen in this quiet place!'
+Her face grew more serious.  'You know my husband has been dead a
+long time?  I am a lonely old woman now, considering what I have
+been; though Mr. Downe's daughters--all married--manage to keep me
+pretty cheerful.'
+
+'And I am a lonely old man, and have been any time these twenty
+years.'
+
+'But where have you kept yourself?  And why did you go off so
+mysteriously?'
+
+'Well, Lucy, I have kept myself a little in America, and a little in
+Australia, a little in India, a little at the Cape, and so on; I
+have not stayed in any place for a long time, as it seems to me, and
+yet more than twenty years have flown.  But when people get to my
+age two years go like one!--Your second question, why did I go away
+so mysteriously, is surely not necessary.  You guessed why, didn't
+you?'
+
+'No, I never once guessed,' she said simply; 'nor did Charles, nor
+did anybody as far as I know.'
+
+'Well, indeed!  Now think it over again, and then look at me, and
+say if you can't guess?'
+
+She looked him in the face with an inquiring smile.  'Surely not
+because of me?' she said, pausing at the commencement of surprise.
+
+Barnet nodded, and smiled again; but his smile was sadder than hers.
+
+'Because I married Charles?' she asked.
+
+'Yes; solely because you married him on the day I was free to ask
+you to marry me.  My wife died four-and-twenty hours before you went
+to church with Downe.  The fixing of my journey at that particular
+moment was because of her funeral; but once away I knew I should
+have no inducement to come back, and took my steps accordingly.'
+
+Her face assumed an aspect of gentle reflection, and she looked up
+and down his form with great interest in her eyes.  'I never thought
+of it!' she said.  'I knew, of course, that you had once implied
+some warmth of feeling towards me, but I concluded that it passed
+off.  And I have always been under the impression that your wife was
+alive at the time of my marriage.  Was it not stupid of me!--But you
+will have some tea or something?  I have never dined late, you know,
+since my husband's death.  I have got into the way of making a
+regular meal of tea.  You will have some tea with me, will you not?'
+
+The travelled man assented quite readily, and tea was brought in.
+They sat and chatted over the meal, regardless of the flying hour.
+'Well, well!' said Barnet presently, as for the first time he
+leisurely surveyed the room; 'how like it all is, and yet how
+different!  Just where your piano stands was a board on a couple of
+trestles, bearing the patterns of wall-papers, when I was last here.
+I was choosing them--standing in this way, as it might be.  Then my
+servant came in at the door, and handed me a note, so.  It was from
+Downe, and announced that you were just going to be married to him.
+I chose no more wall-papers--tore up all those I had selected, and
+left the house.  I never entered it again till now.'
+
+'Ah, at last I understand it all,' she murmured.
+
+They had both risen and gone to the fireplace.  The mantel came
+almost on a level with her shoulder, which gently rested against it,
+and Barnet laid his hand upon the shelf close beside her shoulder.
+'Lucy,' he said, 'better late than never.  Will you marry me now?'
+
+She started back, and the surprise which was so obvious in her
+wrought even greater surprise in him that it should be so.  It was
+difficult to believe that she had been quite blind to the situation,
+and yet all reason and common sense went to prove that she was not
+acting.
+
+'You take me quite unawares by such a question!' she said, with a
+forced laugh of uneasiness.  It was the first time she had shown any
+embarrassment at all.  'Why,' she added, 'I couldn't marry you for
+the world.'
+
+'Not after all this!  Why not?'
+
+'It is--I would--I really think I may say it--I would upon the whole
+rather marry you, Mr. Barnet, than any other man I have ever met, if
+I ever dreamed of marriage again.  But I don't dream of it--it is
+quite out of my thoughts; I have not the least intention of marrying
+again.'
+
+'But--on my account--couldn't you alter your plans a little?  Come!'
+
+'Dear Mr. Barnet,' she said with a little flutter, 'I would on your
+account if on anybody's in existence.  But you don't know in the
+least what it is you are asking--such an impracticable thing--I
+won't say ridiculous, of course, because I see that you are really
+in earnest, and earnestness is never ridiculous to my mind.'
+
+'Well, yes,' said Barnet more slowly, dropping her hand, which he
+had taken at the moment of pleading, 'I am in earnest.  The resolve,
+two months ago, at the Cape, to come back once more was, it is true,
+rather sudden, and as I see now, not well considered.  But I am in
+earnest in asking.'
+
+'And I in declining.  With all good feeling and all kindness, let me
+say that I am quite opposed to the idea of marrying a second time.'
+
+'Well, no harm has been done,' he answered, with the same subdued
+and tender humorousness that he had shown on such occasions in early
+life.  'If you really won't accept me, I must put up with it, I
+suppose.'  His eye fell on the clock as he spoke.  'Had you any
+notion that it was so late?' he asked.  'How absorbed I have been!'
+
+She accompanied him to the hall, helped him to put on his overcoat,
+and let him out of the house herself.
+
+'Good-night,' said Barnet, on the doorstep, as the lamp shone in his
+face.  'You are not offended with me?'
+
+'Certainly not.  Nor you with me?'
+
+'I'll consider whether I am or not,' he pleasantly replied.  'Good-
+night.'
+
+She watched him safely through the gate; and when his footsteps had
+died away upon the road, closed the door softly and returned to the
+room.  Here the modest widow long pondered his speeches, with eyes
+dropped to an unusually low level.  Barnet's urbanity under the blow
+of her refusal greatly impressed her.  After having his long period
+of probation rendered useless by her decision, he had shown no
+anger, and had philosophically taken her words as if he deserved no
+better ones.  It was very gentlemanly of him, certainly; it was more
+than gentlemanly; it was heroic and grand.  The more she meditated,
+the more she questioned the virtue of her conduct in checking him so
+peremptorily; and went to her bedroom in a mood of dissatisfaction.
+On looking in the glass she was reminded that there was not so much
+remaining of her former beauty as to make his frank declaration an
+impulsive natural homage to her cheeks and eyes; it must undoubtedly
+have arisen from an old staunch feeling of his, deserving tenderest
+consideration.  She recalled to her mind with much pleasure that he
+had told her he was staying at the Black-Bull Hotel; so that if,
+after waiting a day or two, he should not, in his modesty, call
+again, she might then send him a nice little note.  To alter her
+views for the present was far from her intention; but she would
+allow herself to be induced to reconsider the case, as any generous
+woman ought to do.
+
+The morrow came and passed, and Mr. Barnet did not drop in.  At
+every knock, light youthful hues flew across her cheek; and she was
+abstracted in the presence of her other visitors.  In the evening
+she walked about the house, not knowing what to do with herself; the
+conditions of existence seemed totally different from those which
+ruled only four-and-twenty short hours ago.  What had been at first
+a tantalizing elusive sentiment was getting acclimatized within her
+as a definite hope, and her person was so informed by that emotion
+that she might almost have stood as its emblematical representative
+by the time the clock struck ten.  In short, an interest in Barnet
+precisely resembling that of her early youth led her present heart
+to belie her yesterday's words to him, and she longed to see him
+again.
+
+The next day she walked out early, thinking she might meet him in
+the street.  The growing beauty of her romance absorbed her, and she
+went from the street to the fields, and from the fields to the
+shore, without any consciousness of distance, till reminded by her
+weariness that she could go no further.  He had nowhere appeared.
+In the evening she took a step which under the circumstances seemed
+justifiable; she wrote a note to him at the hotel, inviting him to
+tea with her at six precisely, and signing her note 'Lucy.'
+
+In a quarter of an hour the messenger came back.  Mr. Barnet had
+left the hotel early in the morning of the day before, but he had
+stated that he would probably return in the course of the week.
+
+The note was sent back, to be given to him immediately on his
+arrival.
+
+There was no sign from the inn that this desired event had occurred,
+either on the next day or the day following.  On both nights she had
+been restless, and had scarcely slept half-an-hour.
+
+On the Saturday, putting off all diffidence, Lucy went herself to
+the Black-Bull, and questioned the staff closely.
+
+Mr. Barnet had cursorily remarked when leaving that he might return
+on the Thursday or Friday, but they were directed not to reserve a
+room for him unless he should write.
+
+He had left no address.
+
+Lucy sorrowfully took back her note went home, and resolved to wait.
+
+She did wait--years and years--but Barnet never reappeared.
+
+April 1880.
+
+
+
+
+INTERLOPERS AT THE KNAP
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+
+The north road from Casterbridge is tedious and lonely, especially
+in winter-time.  Along a part of its course it connects with Long-
+Ash Lane, a monotonous track without a village or hamlet for many
+miles, and with very seldom a turning.  Unapprized wayfarers who are
+too old, or too young, or in other respects too weak for the
+distance to be traversed, but who, nevertheless, have to walk it,
+say, as they look wistfully ahead, 'Once at the top of that hill,
+and I must surely see the end of Long-Ash Lane!'  But they reach the
+hilltop, and Long-Ash Lane stretches in front as mercilessly as
+before.
+
+Some few years ago a certain farmer was riding through this lane in
+the gloom of a winter evening.  The farmer's friend, a dairyman, was
+riding beside him.  A few paces in the rear rode the farmer's man.
+All three were well horsed on strong, round-barrelled cobs; and to
+be well horsed was to be in better spirits about Long-Ash Lane than
+poor pedestrians could attain to during its passage.
+
+But the farmer did not talk much to his friend as he rode along.
+The enterprise which had brought him there filled his mind; for in
+truth it was important.  Not altogether so important was it,
+perhaps, when estimated by its value to society at large; but if the
+true measure of a deed be proportionate to the space it occupies in
+the heart of him who undertakes it, Farmer Charles Darton's business
+to-night could hold its own with the business of kings.
+
+He was a large farmer.  His turnover, as it is called, was probably
+thirty thousand pounds a year.  He had a great many draught horses,
+a great many milch cows, and of sheep a multitude.  This comfortable
+position was, however, none of his own making.  It had been created
+by his father, a man of a very different stamp from the present
+representative of the line.
+
+Darton, the father, had been a one-idea'd character, with a
+buttoned-up pocket and a chink-like eye brimming with commercial
+subtlety.  In Darton the son, this trade subtlety had become
+transmuted into emotional, and the harshness had disappeared; he
+would have been called a sad man but for his constant care not to
+divide himself from lively friends by piping notes out of harmony
+with theirs.  Contemplative, he allowed his mind to be a quiet
+meeting-place for memories and hopes.  So that, naturally enough,
+since succeeding to the agricultural calling, and up to his present
+age of thirty-two, he had neither advanced nor receded as a
+capitalist--a stationary result which did not agitate one of his
+unambitious, unstrategic nature, since he had all that he desired.
+The motive of his expedition tonight showed the same absence of
+anxious regard for Number One.
+
+The party rode on in the slow, safe trot proper to night-time and
+bad roads, Farmer Darton's head jigging rather unromantically up and
+down against the sky, and his motions being repeated with bolder
+emphasis by his friend Japheth Johns; while those of the latter were
+travestied in jerks still less softened by art in the person of the
+lad who attended them.  A pair of whitish objects hung one on each
+side of the latter, bumping against him at each step, and still
+further spoiling the grace of his seat.  On close inspection they
+might have been perceived to be open rush baskets--one containing a
+turkey, and the other some bottles of wine.
+
+'D'ye feel ye can meet your fate like a man, neighbour Darton?'
+asked Johns, breaking a silence which had lasted while five-and-
+twenty hedgerow trees had glided by.
+
+Mr. Darton with a half-laugh murmured, 'Ay--call it my fate!
+Hanging and wiving go by destiny.'  And then they were silent again.
+
+The darkness thickened rapidly, at intervals shutting down on the
+land in a perceptible flap, like the wave of a wing.  The customary
+close of day was accelerated by a simultaneous blurring of the air.
+With the fall of night had come a mist just damp enough to
+incommode, but not sufficient to saturate them.  Countrymen as they
+were--born, as may be said, with only an open door between them and
+the four seasons--they regarded the mist but as an added
+obscuration, and ignored its humid quality.
+
+They were travelling in a direction that was enlivened by no modern
+current of traffic, the place of Darton's pilgrimage being an old-
+fashioned village--one of the Hintocks (several villages of that
+name, with a distinctive prefix or affix, lying thereabout)--where
+the people make the best cider and cider-wine in all Wessex, and
+where the dunghills smell of pomace instead of stable refuse as
+elsewhere.  The lane was sometimes so narrow that the brambles of
+the hedge, which hung forward like anglers' rods over a stream,
+scratched their hats and curry-combed their whiskers as they passed.
+Yet this neglected lane had been a highway to Queen Elizabeth's
+subjects and the cavalcades of the past.  Its day was over now, and
+its history as a national artery done for ever.
+
+'Why I have decided to marry her,' resumed Darton (in a measured
+musical voice of confidence which revealed a good deal of his
+composition), as he glanced round to see that the lad was not too
+near, 'is not only that I like her, but that I can do no better,
+even from a fairly practical point of view.  That I might ha' looked
+higher is possibly true, though it is really all nonsense.  I have
+had experience enough in looking above me.  "No more superior women
+for me," said I--you know when.  Sally is a comely, independent,
+simple character, with no make-up about her, who'll think me as much
+a superior to her as I used to think--you know who I mean--was to
+me.'
+
+'Ay,' said Johns.  'However, I shouldn't call Sally Hall simple.
+Primary, because no Sally is; secondary, because if some could be,
+this one wouldn't.  'Tis a wrong denomination to apply to a woman,
+Charles, and affects me, as your best man, like cold water.  'Tis
+like recommending a stage play by saying there's neither murder,
+villainy, nor harm of any sort in it, when that's what you've paid
+your half-crown to see.'
+
+'Well; may your opinion do you good.  Mine's a different one.'  And
+turning the conversation from the philosophical to the practical,
+Darton expressed a hope that the said Sally had received what he'd
+sent on by the carrier that day.
+
+Johns wanted to know what that was.
+
+'It is a dress,' said Darton.  'Not exactly a wedding-dress; though
+she may use it as one if she likes.  It is rather serviceable than
+showy--suitable for the winter weather.'
+
+'Good,' said Johns.  'Serviceable is a wise word in a bridegroom.  I
+commend ye, Charles.'
+
+'For,' said Darton, 'why should a woman dress up like a rope-dancer
+because she's going to do the most solemn deed of her life except
+dying?'
+
+'Faith, why?  But she will, because she will, I suppose,' said
+Dairyman Johns.
+
+'H'm,' said Darton.
+
+The lane they followed had been nearly straight for several miles,
+but it now took a turn, and winding uncertainly for some distance
+forked into two.  By night country roads are apt to reveal ungainly
+qualities which pass without observation during day; and though
+Darton had travelled this way before, he had not done so frequently,
+Sally having been wooed at the house of a relative near his own.  He
+never remembered seeing at this spot a pair of alternative ways
+looking so equally probable as these two did now.  Johns rode on a
+few steps.
+
+'Don't be out of heart, sonny,' he cried.  'Here's a handpost.
+Enoch--come and climm this post, and tell us the way.'
+
+The lad dismounted, and jumped into the hedge where the post stood
+under a tree.
+
+'Unstrap the baskets, or you'll smash up that wine!' cried Darton,
+as the young man began spasmodically to climb the post, baskets and
+all.
+
+'Was there ever less head in a brainless world?' said Johns.  'Here,
+simple Nocky, I'll do it.'  He leapt off, and with much puffing
+climbed the post, striking a match when he reached the top, and
+moving the light along the arm, the lad standing and gazing at the
+spectacle.
+
+'I have faced tantalization these twenty years with a temper as mild
+as milk!' said Japheth; 'but such things as this don't come short of
+devilry!'  And flinging the match away, he slipped down to the
+ground.
+
+'What's the matter?' asked Darton.
+
+'Not a letter, sacred or heathen--not so much as would tell us the
+way to the great fireplace--ever I should sin to say it!  Either the
+moss and mildew have eat away the words, or we have arrived in a
+land where the natyves have lost the art o' writing, and should ha'
+brought our compass like Christopher Columbus.'
+
+'Let us take the straightest road,' said Darton placidly; 'I shan't
+be sorry to get there--'tis a tiresome ride.  I would have driven if
+I had known.'
+
+'Nor I neither, sir,' said Enoch.  'These straps plough my shoulder
+like a zull.  If 'tis much further to your lady's home, Maister
+Darton, I shall ask to be let carry half of these good things in my
+innerds--hee, hee!'
+
+'Don't you be such a reforming radical, Enoch,' said Johns sternly.
+'Here, I'll take the turkey.'
+
+This being done, they went forward by the right-hand lane, which
+ascended a hill, the left winding away under a plantation.  The pit-
+a-pat of their horses' hoofs lessened up the slope; and the ironical
+directing-post stood in solitude as before, holding out its blank
+arms to the raw breeze, which brought a snore from the wood as if
+Skrymir the Giant were sleeping there.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+
+Three miles to the left of the travellers, along the road they had
+not followed, rose an old house with mullioned windows of Ham-hill
+stone, and chimneys of lavish solidity.  It stood at the top of a
+slope beside King's-Hintock village-street; and immediately in front
+of it grew a large sycamore-tree, whose bared roots formed a
+convenient staircase from the road below to the front door of the
+dwelling.  Its situation gave the house what little distinctive name
+it possessed, namely, 'The Knap.'  Some forty yards off a brook
+dribbled past, which, for its size, made a great deal of noise.  At
+the back was a dairy barton, accessible for vehicles and live-stock
+by a side 'drong.'  Thus much only of the character of the homestead
+could be divined out of doors at this shady evening-time.
+
+But within there was plenty of light to see by, as plenty was
+construed at Hintock.  Beside a Tudor fireplace, whose moulded four-
+centred arch was nearly hidden by a figured blue-cloth blower, were
+seated two women--mother and daughter--Mrs. Hall, and Sarah, or
+Sally; for this was a part of the world where the latter
+modification had not as yet been effaced as a vulgarity by the march
+of intellect.  The owner of the name was the young woman by whose
+means Mr. Darton proposed to put an end to his bachelor condition on
+the approaching day.
+
+The mother's bereavement had been so long ago as not to leave much
+mark of its occurrence upon her now, either in face or clothes.  She
+had resumed the mob-cap of her early married life, enlivening its
+whiteness by a few rose-du-Barry ribbons.  Sally required no such
+aids to pinkness.  Roseate good-nature lit up her gaze; her features
+showed curves of decision and judgment; and she might have been
+regarded without much mistake as a warm-hearted, quick-spirited,
+handsome girl.
+
+She did most of the talking, her mother listening with a half-absent
+air, as she picked up fragments of red-hot wood ember with the
+tongs, and piled them upon the brands.  But the number of speeches
+that passed was very small in proportion to the meanings exchanged.
+Long experience together often enabled them to see the course of
+thought in each other's minds without a word being spoken.  Behind
+them, in the centre of the room, the table was spread for supper,
+certain whiffs of air laden with fat vapours, which ever and anon
+entered from the kitchen, denoting its preparation there.
+
+'The new gown he was going to send you stays about on the way like
+himself,' Sally's mother was saying.
+
+'Yes, not finished, I daresay,' cried Sally independently.  'Lord, I
+shouldn't be amazed if it didn't come at all!  Young men make such
+kind promises when they are near you, and forget 'em when they go
+away.  But he doesn't intend it as a wedding-gown--he gives it to me
+merely as a gown to wear when I like--a travelling-dress is what it
+would be called by some.  Come rathe or come late it don't much
+matter, as I have a dress of my own to fall back upon.  But what
+time is it?'
+
+She went to the family clock and opened the glass, for the hour was
+not otherwise discernible by night, and indeed at all times was
+rather a thing to be investigated than beheld, so much more wall
+than window was there in the apartment.  'It is nearly eight,' said
+she.
+
+'Eight o'clock, and neither dress nor man,' said Mrs. Hall.
+
+'Mother, if you think to tantalize me by talking like that, you are
+much mistaken!  Let him be as late as he will--or stay away
+altogether--I don't care,' said Sally.  But a tender, minute quaver
+in the negation showed that there was something forced in that
+statement.
+
+Mrs. Hall perceived it, and drily observed that she was not so sure
+about Sally not caring.  'But perhaps you don't care so much as I
+do, after all,' she said.  'For I see what you don't, that it is a
+good and flourishing match for you; a very honourable offer in Mr.
+Darton.  And I think I see a kind husband in him.  So pray God
+'twill go smooth, and wind up well.'
+
+Sally would not listen to misgivings.  Of course it would go
+smoothly, she asserted.  'How you are up and down, mother!' she went
+on.  'At this moment, whatever hinders him, we are not so anxious to
+see him as he is to be here, and his thought runs on before him, and
+settles down upon us like the star in the east.  Hark!' she
+exclaimed, with a breath of relief, her eyes sparkling.  'I heard
+something.  Yes--here they are!'
+
+The next moment her mother's slower ear also distinguished the
+familiar reverberation occasioned by footsteps clambering up the
+roots of the sycamore.
+
+'Yes it sounds like them at last,' she said.  'Well, it is not so
+very late after all, considering the distance.'
+
+The footfall ceased, and they arose, expecting a knock.  They began
+to think it might have been, after all, some neighbouring villager
+under Bacchic influence, giving the centre of the road a wide berth,
+when their doubts were dispelled by the new-comer's entry into the
+passage.  The door of the room was gently opened, and there
+appeared, not the pair of travellers with whom we have already made
+acquaintance, but a pale-faced man in the garb of extreme poverty--
+almost in rags.
+
+'O, it's a tramp--gracious me!' said Sally, starting back.
+
+His cheeks and eye-orbits were deep concaves--rather, it might be,
+from natural weakness of constitution than irregular living, though
+there were indications that he had led no careful life.  He gazed at
+the two women fixedly for a moment:  then with an abashed,
+humiliated demeanour, dropped his glance to the floor, and sank into
+a chair without uttering a word.
+
+Sally was in advance of her mother, who had remained standing by the
+fire.  She now tried to discern the visitor across the candles.
+
+'Why--mother,' said Sally faintly, turning back to Mrs. Hall.  'It
+is Phil, from Australia!'
+
+Mrs. Hall started, and grew pale, and a fit of coughing seized the
+man with the ragged clothes.  'To come home like this!' she said.
+'O, Philip--are you ill?'
+
+'No, no, mother,' replied he impatiently, as soon as he could speak.
+
+'But for God's sake how do you come here--and just now too?'
+
+'Well, I am here,' said the man.  'How it is I hardly know.  I've
+come home, mother, because I was driven to it.  Things were against
+me out there, and went from bad to worse.'
+
+'Then why didn't you let us know?--you've not writ a line for the
+last two or three years.'
+
+The son admitted sadly that he had not.  He said that he had hoped
+and thought he might fetch up again, and be able to send good news.
+Then he had been obliged to abandon that hope, and had finally come
+home from sheer necessity--previously to making a new start.  'Yes,
+things are very bad with me,' he repeated, perceiving their
+commiserating glances at his clothes.
+
+They brought him nearer the fire, took his hat from his thin hand,
+which was so small and smooth as to show that his attempts to fetch
+up again had not been in a manual direction.  His mother resumed her
+inquiries, and dubiously asked if he had chosen to come that
+particular night for any special reason.
+
+For no reason, he told her.  His arrival had been quite at random.
+Then Philip Hall looked round the room, and saw for the first time
+that the table was laid somewhat luxuriously, and for a larger
+number than themselves; and that an air of festivity pervaded their
+dress.  He asked quickly what was going on.
+
+'Sally is going to be married in a day or two,' replied the mother;
+and she explained how Mr. Darton, Sally's intended husband, was
+coming there that night with the groomsman, Mr. Johns, and other
+details.  'We thought it must be their step when we heard you,' said
+Mrs. Hall.
+
+The needy wanderer looked again on the floor.  'I see--I see,' he
+murmured.  'Why, indeed, should I have come to-night?  Such folk as
+I are not wanted here at these times, naturally.  And I have no
+business here--spoiling other people's happiness.'
+
+'Phil,' said his mother, with a tear in her eye, but with a thinness
+of lip and severity of manner which were presumably not more than
+past events justified; 'since you speak like that to me, I'll speak
+honestly to you.  For these three years you have taken no thought
+for us.  You left home with a good supply of money, and strength and
+education, and you ought to have made good use of it all.  But you
+come back like a beggar; and that you come in a very awkward time
+for us cannot be denied.  Your return to-night may do us much harm.
+But mind--you are welcome to this home as long as it is mine.  I
+don't wish to turn you adrift.  We will make the best of a bad job;
+and I hope you are not seriously ill?'
+
+'O no.  I have only this infernal cough.'
+
+She looked at him anxiously.  'I think you had better go to bed at
+once,' she said.
+
+'Well--I shall be out of the way there,' said the son wearily.
+'Having ruined myself, don't let me ruin you by being seen in these
+togs, for Heaven's sake.  Who do you say Sally is going to be
+married to--a Farmer Darton?'
+
+'Yes--a gentleman-farmer--quite a wealthy man.  Far better in
+station than she could have expected.  It is a good thing,
+altogether.'
+
+'Well done, little Sal!' said her brother, brightening and looking
+up at her with a smile.  'I ought to have written; but perhaps I
+have thought of you all the more.  But let me get out of sight.  I
+would rather go and jump into the river than be seen here.  But have
+you anything I can drink?  I am confoundedly thirsty with my long
+tramp.'
+
+'Yes, yes, we will bring something upstairs to you,' said Sally,
+with grief in her face.
+
+'Ay, that will do nicely.  But, Sally and mother--'  He stopped, and
+they waited.  'Mother, I have not told you all,' he resumed slowly,
+still looking on the floor between his knees.  'Sad as what you see
+of me is, there's worse behind.'
+
+His mother gazed upon him in grieved suspense, and Sally went and
+leant upon the bureau, listening for every sound, and sighing.
+Suddenly she turned round, saying, 'Let them come, I don't care!
+Philip, tell the worst, and take your time.'
+
+'Well, then,' said the unhappy Phil, 'I am not the only one in this
+mess.  Would to Heaven I were!  But--'
+
+'O, Phil!'
+
+'I have a wife as destitute as I.'
+
+'A wife?' said his mother.
+
+'Unhappily!'
+
+'A wife!  Yes, that is the way with sons!'
+
+'And besides--' said he.
+
+'Besides!  O, Philip, surely--'
+
+'I have two little children.'
+
+'Wife and children!' whispered Mrs. Hall, sinking down confounded.
+
+'Poor little things!' said Sally involuntarily.
+
+His mother turned again to him.  'I suppose these helpless beings
+are left in Australia?'
+
+'No.  They are in England.'
+
+'Well, I can only hope you've left them in a respectable place.'
+
+'I have not left them at all.  They are here--within a few yards of
+us.  In short, they are in the stable.'
+
+'Where?'
+
+'In the stable.  I did not like to bring them indoors till I had
+seen you, mother, and broken the bad news a bit to you.  They were
+very tired, and are resting out there on some straw.'
+
+Mrs. Hall's fortitude visibly broke down.  She had been brought up
+not without refinement, and was even more moved by such a collapse
+of genteel aims as this than a substantial dairyman's widow would in
+ordinary have been moved.  'Well, it must be borne,' she said, in a
+low voice, with her hands tightly joined.  'A starving son, a
+starving wife, starving children!  Let it be.  But why is this come
+to us now, to-day, to-night?  Could no other misfortune happen to
+helpless women than this, which will quite upset my poor girl's
+chance of a happy life?  Why have you done us this wrong, Philip?
+What respectable man will come here, and marry open-eyed into a
+family of vagabonds?'
+
+'Nonsense, mother!' said Sally vehemently, while her face flushed.
+'Charley isn't the man to desert me.  But if he should be, and won't
+marry me because Phil's come, let him go and marry elsewhere.  I
+won't be ashamed of my own flesh and blood for any man in England--
+not I!'  And then Sally turned away and burst into tears.
+
+'Wait till you are twenty years older and you will tell a different
+tale,' replied her mother.
+
+The son stood up.  'Mother,' he said bitterly, 'as I have come, so I
+will go.  All I ask of you is that you will allow me and mine to lie
+in your stable to-night.  I give you my word that we'll be gone by
+break of day, and trouble you no further!'
+
+Mrs. Hall, the mother, changed at that.  'O no,' she answered
+hastily; 'never shall it be said that I sent any of my own family
+from my door.  Bring 'em in, Philip, or take me out to them.'
+
+'We will put 'em all into the large bedroom,' said Sally,
+brightening, 'and make up a large fire.  Let's go and help them in,
+and call Rebekah.'  (Rebekah was the woman who assisted at the dairy
+and housework; she lived in a cottage hard by with her husband, who
+attended to the cows.)
+
+Sally went to fetch a lantern from the back-kitchen, but her brother
+said, 'You won't want a light.  I lit the lantern that was hanging
+there.'
+
+'What must we call your wife?' asked Mrs. Hall.
+
+'Helena,' said Philip.
+
+With shawls over their heads they proceeded towards the back door.
+
+'One minute before you go,' interrupted Philip.  'I--I haven't
+confessed all.'
+
+'Then Heaven help us!' said Mrs. Hall, pushing to the door and
+clasping her hands in calm despair.
+
+'We passed through Evershead as we came,' he continued, 'and I just
+looked in at the "Sow-and-Acorn" to see if old Mike still kept on
+there as usual.  The carrier had come in from Sherton Abbas at that
+moment, and guessing that I was bound for this place--for I think he
+knew me--he asked me to bring on a dressmaker's parcel for Sally
+that was marked "immediate."  My wife had walked on with the
+children.  'Twas a flimsy parcel, and the paper was torn, and I
+found on looking at it that it was a thick warm gown.  I didn't wish
+you to see poor Helena in a shabby state.  I was ashamed that you
+should--'twas not what she was born to.  I untied the parcel in the
+road, took it on to her where she was waiting in the Lower Barn, and
+told her I had managed to get it for her, and that she was to ask no
+question.  She, poor thing, must have supposed I obtained it on
+trust, through having reached a place where I was known, for she put
+it on gladly enough.  She has it on now.  Sally has other gowns, I
+daresay.'
+
+Sally looked at her mother, speechless.
+
+'You have others, I daresay!' repeated Phil, with a sick man's
+impatience.  'I thought to myself, "Better Sally cry than Helena
+freeze."  Well, is the dress of great consequence?  'Twas nothing
+very ornamental, as far as I could see.'
+
+'No--no; not of consequence,' returned Sally sadly, adding in a
+gentle voice, 'You will not mind if I lend her another instead of
+that one, will you?'
+
+Philip's agitation at the confession had brought on another attack
+of the cough, which seemed to shake him to pieces.  He was so
+obviously unfit to sit in a chair that they helped him upstairs at
+once; and having hastily given him a cordial and kindled the bedroom
+fire, they descended to fetch their unhappy new relations.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+
+It was with strange feelings that the girl and her mother, lately so
+cheerful, passed out of the back door into the open air of the
+barton, laden with hay scents and the herby breath of cows.  A fine
+sleet had begun to fall, and they trotted across the yard quickly.
+The stable-door was open; a light shone from it--from the lantern
+which always hung there, and which Philip had lighted, as he said.
+Softly nearing the door, Mrs. Hall pronounced the name 'Helena!'
+
+There was no answer for the moment.  Looking in she was taken by
+surprise.  Two people appeared before her.  For one, instead of the
+drabbish woman she had expected, Mrs. Hall saw a pale, dark-eyed,
+ladylike creature, whose personality ruled her attire rather than
+was ruled by it.  She was in a new and handsome gown, of course, and
+an old bonnet.  She was standing up, agitated; her hand was held by
+her companion--none else than Sally's affianced, Farmer Charles
+Darton, upon whose fine figure the pale stranger's eyes were fixed,
+as his were fixed upon her.  His other hand held the rein of his
+horse, which was standing saddled as if just led in.
+
+At sight of Mrs. Hall they both turned, looking at her in a way
+neither quite conscious nor unconscious, and without seeming to
+recollect that words were necessary as a solution to the scene.  In
+another moment Sally entered also, when Mr. Darton dropped his
+companion's hand, led the horse aside, and came to greet his
+betrothed and Mrs. Hall.
+
+'Ah!' he said, smiling--with something like forced composure--'this
+is a roundabout way of arriving, you will say, my dear Mrs. Hall.
+But we lost our way, which made us late.  I saw a light here, and
+led in my horse at once--my friend Johns and my man have gone back
+to the little inn with theirs, not to crowd you too much.  No sooner
+had I entered than I saw that this lady had taken temporary shelter
+here--and found I was intruding.'
+
+'She is my daughter-in-law,' said Mrs. Hall calmly.  'My son, too,
+is in the house, but he has gone to bed unwell.'
+
+Sally had stood staring wonderingly at the scene until this moment,
+hardly recognizing Darton's shake of the hand.  The spell that bound
+her was broken by her perceiving the two little children seated on a
+heap of hay.  She suddenly went forward, spoke to them, and took one
+on her arm and the other in her hand.
+
+'And two children?' said Mr. Darton, showing thus that he had not
+been there long enough as yet to understand the situation.
+
+'My grandchildren,' said Mrs. Hall, with as much affected ease as
+before.
+
+Philip Hall's wife, in spite of this interruption to her first
+rencounter, seemed scarcely so much affected by it as to feel any
+one's presence in addition to Mr. Darton's.  However, arousing
+herself by a quick reflection, she threw a sudden critical glance of
+her sad eyes upon Mrs. Hall; and, apparently finding her
+satisfactory, advanced to her in a meek initiative.  Then Sally and
+the stranger spoke some friendly words to each other, and Sally went
+on with the children into the house.  Mrs. Hall and Helena followed,
+and Mr. Darton followed these, looking at Helena's dress and
+outline, and listening to her voice like a man in a dream.
+
+By the time the others reached the house Sally had already gone
+upstairs with the tired children.  She rapped against the wall for
+Rebekah to come in and help to attend to them, Rebekah's house being
+a little 'spit-and-dab' cabin leaning against the substantial stone-
+work of Mrs. Hall's taller erection.  When she came a bed was made
+up for the little ones, and some supper given to them.  On
+descending the stairs after seeing this done Sally went to the
+sitting-room.  Young Mrs. Hall entered it just in advance of her,
+having in the interim retired with her mother-in-law to take off her
+bonnet, and otherwise make herself presentable.  Hence it was
+evident that no further communication could have passed between her
+and Mr. Darton since their brief interview in the stable.
+
+Mr. Japheth Johns now opportunely arrived, and broke up the
+restraint of the company, after a few orthodox meteorological
+commentaries had passed between him and Mrs. Hall by way of
+introduction.  They at once sat down to supper, the present of wine
+and turkey not being produced for consumption to-night, lest the
+premature display of those gifts should seem to throw doubt on Mrs.
+Hall's capacities as a provider.
+
+'Drink hearty, Mr. Johns--drink hearty,' said that matron
+magnanimously.  'Such as it is there's plenty of.  But perhaps
+cider-wine is not to your taste?--though there's body in it.'
+
+'Quite the contrairy, ma'am--quite the contrairy,' said the
+dairyman.  'For though I inherit the malt-liquor principle from my
+father, I am a cider-drinker on my mother's side.  She came from
+these parts, you know.  And there's this to be said for't--'tis a
+more peaceful liquor, and don't lie about a man like your hotter
+drinks.  With care, one may live on it a twelvemonth without
+knocking down a neighbour, or getting a black eye from an old
+acquaintance.'
+
+The general conversation thus begun was continued briskly, though it
+was in the main restricted to Mrs. Hall and Japheth, who in truth
+required but little help from anybody.  There being slight call upon
+Sally's tongue, she had ample leisure to do what her heart most
+desired, namely, watch her intended husband and her sister-in-law
+with a view of elucidating the strange momentary scene in which her
+mother and herself had surprised them in the stable.  If that scene
+meant anything, it meant, at least, that they had met before.  That
+there had been no time for explanations Sally could see, for their
+manner was still one of suppressed amazement at each other's
+presence there.  Darton's eyes, too, fell continually on the gown
+worn by Helena as if this were an added riddle to his perplexity;
+though to Sally it was the one feature in the case which was no
+mystery.  He seemed to feel that fate had impishly changed his vis-
+a-vis in the lover's jig he was about to foot; that while the gown
+had been expected to enclose a Sally, a Helena's face looked out
+from the bodice; that some long-lost hand met his own from the
+sleeves.
+
+Sally could see that whatever Helena might know of Darton, she knew
+nothing of how the dress entered into his embarrassment.  And at
+moments the young girl would have persuaded herself that Darton's
+looks at her sister-in-law were entirely the fruit of the clothes
+query.  But surely at other times a more extensive range of
+speculation and sentiment was expressed by her lover's eye than that
+which the changed dress would account for.
+
+Sally's independence made her one of the least jealous of women.
+But there was something in the relations of these two visitors which
+ought to be explained.
+
+Japheth Johns continued to converse in his well-known style,
+interspersing his talk with some private reflections on the position
+of Darton and Sally, which, though the sparkle in his eye showed
+them to be highly entertaining to himself, were apparently not quite
+communicable to the company.  At last he withdrew for the night,
+going off to the roadside inn half-a-mile back, whither Darton
+promised to follow him in a few minutes.
+
+Half-an-hour passed, and then Mr. Darton also rose to leave, Sally
+and her sister-in-law simultaneously wishing him good-night as they
+retired upstairs to their rooms.  But on his arriving at the front
+door with Mrs. Hall a sharp shower of rain began to come down, when
+the widow suggested that he should return to the fire-side till the
+storm ceased.
+
+Darton accepted her proposal, but insisted that, as it was getting
+late, and she was obviously tired, she should not sit up on his
+account, since he could let himself out of the house, and would
+quite enjoy smoking a pipe by the hearth alone.  Mrs. Hall assented;
+and Darton was left by himself.  He spread his knees to the brands,
+lit up his tobacco as he had said, and sat gazing into the fire, and
+at the notches of the chimney-crook which hung above.
+
+An occasional drop of rain rolled down the chimney with a hiss, and
+still he smoked on; but not like a man whose mind was at rest.  In
+the long run, however, despite his meditations, early hours afield
+and a long ride in the open air produced their natural result.  He
+began to doze.
+
+How long he remained in this half-unconscious state he did not know.
+He suddenly opened his eyes.  The back-brand had burnt itself in
+two, and ceased to flame; the light which he had placed on the
+mantelpiece had nearly gone out.  But in spite of these deficiencies
+there was a light in the apartment, and it came from elsewhere.
+Turning his head he saw Philip Hall's wife standing at the entrance
+of the room with a bed-candle in one hand, a small brass tea-kettle
+in the other, and HIS gown, as it certainly seemed, still upon her.
+
+'Helena!' said Darton, starting up.
+
+Her countenance expressed dismay, and her first words were an
+apology.  'I--did not know you were here, Mr. Darton,' she said,
+while a blush flashed to her cheek.  'I thought every one had
+retired--I was coming to make a little water boil; my husband seems
+to be worse.  But perhaps the kitchen fire can be lighted up again.'
+
+'Don't go on my account.  By all means put it on here as you
+intended,' said Darton.  'Allow me to help you.'  He went forward to
+take the kettle from her hand, but she did not allow him, and placed
+it on the fire herself.
+
+They stood some way apart, one on each side of the fireplace,
+waiting till the water should boil, the candle on the mantel between
+them, and Helena with her eyes on the kettle.  Darton was the first
+to break the silence.  'Shall I call Sally?' he said.
+
+'O no,' she quickly returned.  'We have given trouble enough
+already.  We have no right here.  But we are the sport of fate, and
+were obliged to come.'
+
+'No right here!' said he in surprise.
+
+'None.  I can't explain it now,' answered Helena.  'This kettle is
+very slow.'
+
+There was another pause; the proverbial dilatoriness of watched pots
+was never more clearly exemplified.
+
+Helena's face was of that sort which seems to ask for assistance
+without the owner's knowledge--the very antipodes of Sally's, which
+was self-reliance expressed.  Darton's eyes travelled from the
+kettle to Helena's face, then back to the kettle, then to the face
+for rather a longer time.  'So I am not to know anything of the
+mystery that has distracted me all the evening?' he said.  'How is
+it that a woman, who refused me because (as I supposed) my position
+was not good enough for her taste, is found to be the wife of a man
+who certainly seems to be worse off than I?'
+
+'He had the prior claim,' said she.
+
+'What! you knew him at that time?'
+
+'Yes, yes!  Please say no more,' she implored.
+
+'Whatever my errors, I have paid for them during the last five
+years!'
+
+The heart of Darton was subject to sudden overflowings.  He was kind
+to a fault.  'I am sorry from my soul,' he said, involuntarily
+approaching her.  Helena withdrew a step or two, at which he became
+conscious of his movement, and quickly took his former place.  Here
+he stood without speaking, and the little kettle began to sing.
+
+'Well, you might have been my wife if you had chosen,' he said at
+last.  'But that's all past and gone.  However, if you are in any
+trouble or poverty I shall be glad to be of service, and as your
+relation by marriage I shall have a right to be.  Does your uncle
+know of your distress?'
+
+'My uncle is dead.  He left me without a farthing.  And now we have
+two children to maintain.'
+
+'What, left you nothing?  How could he be so cruel as that?'
+
+'I disgraced myself in his eyes.'
+
+'Now,' said Darton earnestly, 'let me take care of the children, at
+least while you are so unsettled.  YOU belong to another, so I
+cannot take care of you.'
+
+'Yes you can,' said a voice; and suddenly a third figure stood
+beside them.  It was Sally.  'You can, since you seem to wish to?'
+she repeated.  'She no longer belongs to another . . . My poor
+brother is dead!'
+
+Her face was red, her eyes sparkled, and all the woman came to the
+front.  'I have heard it!' she went on to him passionately.  'You
+can protect her now as well as the children!'  She turned then to
+her agitated sister-in-law.  'I heard something,' said Sally (in a
+gentle murmur, differing much from her previous passionate words),
+'and I went into his room.  It must have been the moment you left.
+He went off so quickly, and weakly, and it was so unexpected, that I
+couldn't leave even to call you.'
+
+Darton was just able to gather from the confused discourse which
+followed that, during his sleep by the fire, this brother whom he
+had never seen had become worse; and that during Helena's absence
+for water the end had unexpectedly come.  The two young women
+hastened upstairs, and he was again left alone.
+
+
+After standing there a short time he went to the front door and
+looked out; till, softly closing it behind him, he advanced and
+stood under the large sycamore-tree.  The stars were flickering
+coldly, and the dampness which had just descended upon the earth in
+rain now sent up a chill from it.  Darton was in a strange position,
+and he felt it.  The unexpected appearance, in deep poverty, of
+Helena--a young lady, daughter of a deceased naval officer, who had
+been brought up by her uncle, a solicitor, and had refused Darton in
+marriage years ago--the passionate, almost angry demeanour of Sally
+at discovering them, the abrupt announcement that Helena was a
+widow; all this coming together was a conjuncture difficult to cope
+with in a moment, and made him question whether he ought to leave
+the house or offer assistance.  But for Sally's manner he would
+unhesitatingly have done the latter.
+
+He was still standing under the tree when the door in front of him
+opened, and Mrs. Hall came out.  She went round to the garden-gate
+at the side without seeing him.  Darton followed her, intending to
+speak.
+
+Pausing outside, as if in thought, she proceeded to a spot where the
+sun came earliest in spring-time, and where the north wind never
+blew; it was where the row of beehives stood under the wall.
+Discerning her object, he waited till she had accomplished it.
+
+It was the universal custom thereabout to wake the bees by tapping
+at their hives whenever a death occurred in the household, under the
+belief that if this were not done the bees themselves would pine
+away and perish during the ensuing year.  As soon as an interior
+buzzing responded to her tap at the first hive Mrs. Hall went on to
+the second, and thus passed down the row.  As soon as she came back
+he met her.
+
+'What can I do in this trouble, Mrs. Hall?' he said.
+
+'O--nothing, thank you, nothing,' she said in a tearful voice, now
+just perceiving him.  'We have called Rebekah and her husband, and
+they will do everything necessary.'  She told him in a few words the
+particulars of her son's arrival, broken in health--indeed, at
+death's very door, though they did not suspect it--and suggested, as
+the result of a conversation between her and her daughter, that the
+wedding should be postponed.
+
+'Yes, of course,' said Darton.  'I think now to go straight to the
+inn and tell Johns what has happened.'  It was not till after he had
+shaken hands with her that he turned hesitatingly and added, 'Will
+you tell the mother of his children that, as they are now left
+fatherless, I shall be glad to take the eldest of them, if it would
+be any convenience to her and to you?'
+
+Mrs. Hall promised that her son's widow should he told of the offer,
+and they parted.  He retired down the rooty slope and disappeared in
+the direction of the inn, where he informed Johns of the
+circumstances.  Meanwhile Mrs. Hall had entered the house, Sally was
+downstairs in the sitting-room alone, and her mother explained to
+her that Darton had readily assented to the postponement.
+
+'No doubt he has,' said Sally, with sad emphasis.  'It is not put
+off for a week, or a month, or a year.  I shall never marry him, and
+she will!'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+
+Time passed, and the household on the Knap became again serene under
+the composing influences of daily routine.  A desultory, very
+desultory correspondence, dragged on between Sally Hall and Darton,
+who, not quite knowing how to take her petulant words on the night
+of her brother's death, had continued passive thus long.  Helena and
+her children remained at the dairy-house, almost of necessity, and
+Darton therefore deemed it advisable to stay away.
+
+One day, seven months later on, when Mr. Darton was as usual at his
+farm, twenty miles from Hintock, a note reached him from Helena.
+She thanked him for his kind offer about her children, which her
+mother-in-law had duly communicated, and stated that she would be
+glad to accept it as regarded the eldest, the boy.  Helena had, in
+truth, good need to do so, for her uncle had left her penniless, and
+all application to some relatives in the north had failed.  There
+was, besides, as she said, no good school near Hintock to which she
+could send the child.
+
+On a fine summer day the boy came.  He was accompanied half-way by
+Sally and his mother--to the 'White Horse,' at Chalk Newton--where
+he was handed over to Darton's bailiff in a shining spring-cart, who
+met them there.
+
+He was entered as a day-scholar at a popular school at Casterbridge,
+three or four miles from Darton's, having first been taught by
+Darton to ride a forest-pony, on which he cantered to and from the
+aforesaid fount of knowledge, and (as Darton hoped) brought away a
+promising headful of the same at each diurnal expedition.  The
+thoughtful taciturnity into which Darton had latterly fallen was
+quite dissipated by the presence of this boy.
+
+When the Christmas holidays came it was arranged that he should
+spend them with his mother.  The journey was, for some reason or
+other, performed in two stages, as at his coming, except that Darton
+in person took the place of the bailiff, and that the boy and
+himself rode on horseback.
+
+Reaching the renowned 'White Horse,' Darton inquired if Miss and
+young Mrs. Hall were there to meet little Philip (as they had agreed
+to be).  He was answered by the appearance of Helena alone at the
+door.
+
+'At the last moment Sally would not come,' she faltered.
+
+That meeting practically settled the point towards which these long-
+severed persons were converging.  But nothing was broached about it
+for some time yet.  Sally Hall had, in fact, imparted the first
+decisive motion to events by refusing to accompany Helena.  She soon
+gave them a second move by writing the following note
+
+
+'[Private.]
+
+'DEAR CHARLES,--Living here so long and intimately with Helena, I
+have naturally learnt her history, especially that of it which
+refers to you.  I am sure she would accept you as a husband at the
+proper time, and I think you ought to give her the opportunity.  You
+inquire in an old note if I am sorry that I showed temper (which it
+WASN'T) that night when I heard you talking to her.  No, Charles, I
+am not sorry at all for what I said then.--Yours sincerely, SALLY
+HALL.'
+
+
+Thus set in train, the transfer of Darton's heart back to its
+original quarters proceeded by mere lapse of time.  In the following
+July, Darton went to his friend Japheth to ask him at last to fulfil
+the bridal office which had been in abeyance since the previous
+January twelvemonths.
+
+'With all my heart, man o' constancy!' said Dairyman Johns warmly.
+'I've lost most of my genteel fair complexion haymaking this hot
+weather, 'tis true, but I'll do your business as well as them that
+look better.  There be scents and good hair-oil in the world yet,
+thank God, and they'll take off the roughest o' my edge.  I'll
+compliment her.  "Better late than never, Sally Hall," I'll say.'
+
+'It is not Sally,' said Darton hurriedly.  'It is young Mrs. Hall.'
+
+Japheth's face, as soon as he really comprehended, became a picture
+of reproachful dismay.  'Not Sally?' he said.  'Why not Sally?  I
+can't believe it!  Young Mrs. Hall!  Well, well--where's your
+wisdom?'
+
+Darton shortly explained particulars; but Johns would not be
+reconciled.  'She was a woman worth having if ever woman was,' he
+cried.  'And now to let her go!'
+
+'But I suppose I can marry where I like,' said Darton.
+
+'H'm,' replied the dairyman, lifting his eyebrows expressively.
+'This don't become you, Charles--it really do not.  If I had done
+such a thing you would have sworn I was a curst no'thern fool to be
+drawn off the scent by such a red-herring doll-oll-oll.'
+
+Farmer Darton responded in such sharp terms to this laconic opinion
+that the two friends finally parted in a way they had never parted
+before.  Johns was to be no groomsman to Darton after all.  He had
+flatly declined.  Darton went off sorry, and even unhappy,
+particularly as Japheth was about to leave that side of the county,
+so that the words which had divided them were not likely to be
+explained away or softened down.
+
+A short time after the interview Darton was united to Helena at a
+simple matter-of fact wedding; and she and her little girl joined
+the boy who had already grown to look on Darton's house as home.
+
+For some months the farmer experienced an unprecedented happiness
+and satisfaction.  There had been a flaw in his life, and it was as
+neatly mended as was humanly possible.  But after a season the
+stream of events followed less clearly, and there were shades in his
+reveries.  Helena was a fragile woman, of little staying power,
+physically or morally, and since the time that he had originally
+known her--eight or ten years before--she had been severely tried.
+She had loved herself out, in short, and was now occasionally given
+to moping.  Sometimes she spoke regretfully of the gentilities of
+her early life, and instead of comparing her present state with her
+condition as the wife of the unlucky Hall, she mused rather on what
+it had been before she took the first fatal step of clandestinely
+marrying him.  She did not care to please such people as those with
+whom she was thrown as a thriving farmer's wife.  She allowed the
+pretty trifles of agricultural domesticity to glide by her as sorry
+details, and had it not been for the children Darton's house would
+have seemed but little brighter than it had been before.
+
+This led to occasional unpleasantness, until Darton sometimes
+declared to himself that such endeavours as his to rectify early
+deviations of the heart by harking back to the old point mostly
+failed of success.  'Perhaps Johns was right,' he would say.  'I
+should have gone on with Sally.  Better go with the tide and make
+the best of its course than stem it at the risk of a capsize.'  But
+he kept these unmelodious thoughts to himself, and was outwardly
+considerate and kind.
+
+This somewhat barren tract of his life had extended to less than a
+year and a half when his ponderings were cut short by the loss of
+the woman they concerned.  When she was in her grave he thought
+better of her than when she had been alive; the farm was a worse
+place without her than with her, after all.  No woman short of
+divine could have gone through such an experience as hers with her
+first husband without becoming a little soured.  Her stagnant
+sympathies, her sometimes unreasonable manner, had covered a heart
+frank and well meaning, and originally hopeful and warm.  She left
+him a tiny red infant in white wrappings.  To make life as easy as
+possible to this touching object became at once his care.
+
+As this child learnt to walk and talk Darton learnt to see
+feasibility in a scheme which pleased him.  Revolving the experiment
+which he had hitherto made upon life, he fancied he had gained
+wisdom from his mistakes and caution from his miscarriages.
+
+What the scheme was needs no penetration to discover.  Once more he
+had opportunity to recast and rectify his ill-wrought situations by
+returning to Sally Hall, who still lived quietly on under her
+mother's roof at Hintock.  Helena had been a woman to lend pathos
+and refinement to a home; Sally was the woman to brighten it.  She
+would not, as Helena did, despise the rural simplicities of a
+farmer's fireside.  Moreover, she had a pre-eminent qualification
+for Darton's household; no other woman could make so desirable a
+mother to her brother's two children and Darton's one as Sally--
+while Darton, now that Helena had gone, was a more promising husband
+for Sally than he had ever been when liable to reminders from an
+uncured sentimental wound.
+
+Darton was not a man to act rapidly, and the working out of his
+reparative designs might have been delayed for some time.  But there
+came a winter evening precisely like the one which had darkened over
+that former ride to Hintock, and he asked himself why he should
+postpone longer, when the very landscape called for a repetition of
+that attempt.
+
+He told his man to saddle the mare, booted and spurred himself with
+a younger horseman's nicety, kissed the two youngest children, and
+rode off.  To make the journey a complete parallel to the first, he
+would fain have had his old acquaintance Japheth Johns with him.
+But Johns, alas! was missing.  His removal to the other side of the
+county had left unrepaired the breach which had arisen between him
+and Darton; and though Darton had forgiven him a hundred times, as
+Johns had probably forgiven Darton, the effort of reunion in present
+circumstances was one not likely to be made.
+
+He screwed himself up to as cheerful a pitch as he could without his
+former crony, and became content with his own thoughts as he rode,
+instead of the words of a companion.  The sun went down; the boughs
+appeared scratched in like an etching against the sky; old crooked
+men with faggots at their backs said 'Good-night, sir,' and Darton
+replied 'Good-night' right heartily.
+
+By the time he reached the forking roads it was getting as dark as
+it had been on the occasion when Johns climbed the directing-post.
+Darton made no mistake this time.  'Nor shall I be able to mistake,
+thank Heaven, when I arrive,' he murmured.  It gave him peculiar
+satisfaction to think that the proposed marriage, like his first,
+was of the nature of setting in order things long awry, and not a
+momentary freak of fancy.
+
+Nothing hindered the smoothness of his journey, which seemed not
+half its former length.  Though dark, it was only between five and
+six o'clock when the bulky chimneys of Mrs. Hall's residence
+appeared in view behind the sycamore-tree.  On second thoughts he
+retreated and put up at the ale-house as in former time; and when he
+had plumed himself before the inn mirror, called for something to
+drink, and smoothed out the incipient wrinkles of care, he walked on
+to the Knap with a quick step.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+
+That evening Sally was making 'pinners' for the milkers, who were
+now increased by two, for her mother and herself no longer joined in
+milking the cows themselves.  But upon the whole there was little
+change in the household economy, and not much in its appearance,
+beyond such minor particulars as that the crack over the window,
+which had been a hundred years coming, was a trifle wider; that the
+beams were a shade blacker; that the influence of modernism had
+supplanted the open chimney corner by a grate; that Rebekah, who had
+worn a cap when she had plenty of hair, had left it off now she had
+scarce any, because it was reported that caps were not fashionable;
+and that Sally's face had naturally assumed a more womanly and
+experienced cast.
+
+Mrs. Hall was actually lifting coals with the tongs, as she had used
+to do.
+
+'Five years ago this very night, if I am not mistaken--' she said,
+laying on an ember.
+
+'Not this very night--though 'twas one night this week,' said the
+correct Sally.
+
+'Well, 'tis near enough.  Five years ago Mr. Darton came to marry
+you, and my poor boy Phil came home to die.'  She sighed.  'Ah,
+Sally,' she presently said, 'if you had managed well Mr. Darton
+would have had you, Helena or none.'
+
+'Don't be sentimental about that, mother,' begged Sally.  'I didn't
+care to manage well in such a case.  Though I liked him, I wasn't so
+anxious.  I would never have married the man in the midst of such a
+hitch as that was,' she added with decision; 'and I don't think I
+would if he were to ask me now.'
+
+'I am not sure about that, unless you have another in your eye.'
+
+'I wouldn't; and I'll tell you why.  I could hardly marry him for
+love at this time o' day.  And as we've quite enough to live on if
+we give up the dairy to-morrow, I should have no need to marry for
+any meaner reason . . . I am quite happy enough as I am, and there's
+an end of it.'
+
+Now it was not long after this dialogue that there came a mild rap
+at the door, and in a moment there entered Rebekah, looking as
+though a ghost had arrived.  The fact was that that accomplished
+skimmer and churner (now a resident in the house) had overheard the
+desultory observations between mother and daughter, and on opening
+the door to Mr. Darton thought the coincidence must have a grisly
+meaning in it.  Mrs. Hall welcomed the farmer with warm surprise, as
+did Sally, and for a moment they rather wanted words.
+
+'Can you push up the chimney-crook for me, Mr Darton? the notches
+hitch,' said the matron.  He did it, and the homely little act
+bridged over the awkward consciousness that he had been a stranger
+for four years.
+
+Mrs. Hall soon saw what he had come for, and left the principals
+together while she went to prepare him a late tea, smiling at
+Sally's recent hasty assertions of indifference, when she saw how
+civil Sally was.  When tea was ready she joined them.  She fancied
+that Darton did not look so confident as when he had arrived; but
+Sally was quite light-hearted, and the meal passed pleasantly.
+
+About seven he took his leave of them.  Mrs. Hall went as far as the
+door to light him down the slope.  On the doorstep he said frankly--
+'I came to ask your daughter to marry me; chose the night and
+everything, with an eye to a favourable answer.  But she won't.'
+
+'Then she's a very ungrateful girl!' emphatically said Mrs. Hall.
+
+Darton paused to shape his sentence, and asked, 'I--I suppose
+there's nobody else more favoured?'
+
+'I can't say that there is, or that there isn't,' answered Mrs.
+Hall.  'She's private in some things.  I'm on your side, however,
+Mr. Darton, and I'll talk to her.'
+
+'Thank 'ee, thank 'ee!' said the farmer in a gayer accent; and with
+this assurance the not very satisfactory visit came to an end.
+Darton descended the roots of the sycamore, the light was withdrawn,
+and the door closed.  At the bottom of the slope he nearly ran
+against a man about to ascend.
+
+'Can a jack-o'-lent believe his few senses on such a dark night, or
+can't he?' exclaimed one whose utterance Darton recognized in a
+moment, despite its unexpectedness.  'I dare not swear he can,
+though I fain would!'  The speaker was Johns.
+
+Darton said he was glad of this opportunity, bad as it was, of
+putting an end to the silence of years, and asked the dairyman what
+he was travelling that way for.
+
+Japheth showed the old jovial confidence in a moment.  'I'm going to
+see your--relations--as they always seem to me,' he said--'Mrs. Hall
+and Sally.  Well, Charles, the fact is I find the natural
+barbarousness of man is much increased by a bachelor life, and, as
+your leavings were always good enough for me, I'm trying
+civilization here.'  He nodded towards the house.
+
+'Not with Sally--to marry her?' said Darton, feeling something like
+a rill of ice water between his shoulders.
+
+'Yes, by the help of Providence and my personal charms.  And I think
+I shall get her.  I am this road every week--my present dairy is
+only four miles off, you know, and I see her through the window.
+'Tis rather odd that I was going to speak practical to-night to her
+for the first time.  You've just called?'
+
+'Yes, for a short while.  But she didn't say a word about you.'
+
+'A good sign, a good sign.  Now that decides me.  I'll swing the
+mallet and get her answer this very night as I planned.'
+
+A few more remarks, and Darton, wishing his friend joy of Sally in a
+slightly hollow tone of jocularity, bade him good-bye.  Johns
+promised to write particulars, and ascended, and was lost in the
+shade of the house and tree.  A rectangle of light appeared when
+Johns was admitted, and all was dark again.
+
+'Happy Japheth!' said Darton.  'This then is the explanation!'
+
+He determined to return home that night.  In a quarter of an hour he
+passed out of the village, and the next day went about his swede-
+lifting and storing as if nothing had occurred.
+
+He waited and waited to hear from Johns whether the wedding-day was
+fixed:  but no letter came.  He learnt not a single particular till,
+meeting Johns one day at a horse-auction, Darton exclaimed genially-
+-rather more genially than he felt--'When is the joyful day to be?'
+
+To his great surprise a reciprocity of gladness was not conspicuous
+in Johns.  'Not at all,' he said, in a very subdued tone.  ''Tis a
+bad job; she won't have me.'
+
+Darton held his breath till he said with treacherous solicitude,
+'Try again--'tis coyness.'
+
+'O no,' said Johns decisively.  'There's been none of that.  We
+talked it over dozens of times in the most fair and square way.  She
+tells me plainly, I don't suit her.  'Twould be simply annoying her
+to ask her again.  Ah, Charles, you threw a prize away when you let
+her slip five years ago.'
+
+'I did--I did,' said Darton.
+
+He returned from that auction with a new set of feelings in play.
+He had certainly made a surprising mistake in thinking Johns his
+successful rival.  It really seemed as if he might hope for Sally
+after all.
+
+This time, being rather pressed by business, Darton had recourse to
+pen-and-ink, and wrote her as manly and straightforward a proposal
+as any woman could wish to receive.  The reply came promptly:-
+
+
+'DEAR MR. DARTON,--I am as sensible as any woman can be of the
+goodness that leads you to make me this offer a second time.  Better
+women than I would be proud of the honour, for when I read your nice
+long speeches on mangold-wurzel, and such like topics, at the
+Casterbridge Farmers' Club, I do feel it an honour, I assure you.
+But my answer is just the same as before.  I will not try to explain
+what, in truth, I cannot explain--my reasons; I will simply say that
+I must decline to be married to you.  With good wishes as in former
+times, I am, your faithful friend,
+
+'SALLY HALL.'
+
+
+Darton dropped the letter hopelessly.  Beyond the negative, there
+was just a possibility of sarcasm in it--'nice long speeches on
+mangold-wurzel' had a suspicious sound.  However, sarcasm or none,
+there was the answer, and he had to be content.
+
+He proceeded to seek relief in a business which at this time
+engrossed much of his attention--that of clearing up a curious
+mistake just current in the county, that he had been nearly ruined
+by the recent failure of a local bank.  A farmer named Darton had
+lost heavily, and the similarity of name had probably led to the
+error.  Belief in it was so persistent that it demanded several days
+of letter-writing to set matters straight, and persuade the world
+that he was as solvent as ever he had been in his life.  He had
+hardly concluded this worrying task when, to his delight, another
+letter arrived in the handwriting of Sally.
+
+Darton tore it open; it was very short.
+
+
+'DEAR MR. DARTON,--We have been so alarmed these last few days by
+the report that you were ruined by the stoppage of --'s Bank, that,
+now it is contradicted I hasten, by my mother's wish, to say how
+truly glad we are to find there is no foundation for the report.
+After your kindness to my poor brother's children, I can do no less
+than write at such a moment.  We had a letter from each of them a
+few days ago.--Your faithful friend,
+
+'SALLY HALL.'
+
+
+'Mercenary little woman!' said Darton to himself with a smile.
+'Then that was the secret of her refusal this time--she thought I
+was ruined.'
+
+Now, such was Darton, that as hours went on he could not help
+feeling too generously towards Sally to condemn her in this.  What
+did he want in a wife? he asked himself.  Love and integrity.  What
+next?  Worldly wisdom.  And was there really more than worldly
+wisdom in her refusal to go aboard a sinking ship?  She now knew it
+was otherwise.  'Begad,' he said, 'I'll try her again.'
+
+The fact was he had so set his heart upon Sally, and Sally alone,
+that nothing was to be allowed to baulk him; and his reasoning was
+purely formal.
+
+Anniversaries having been unpropitious, he waited on till a bright
+day late in May--a day when all animate nature was fancying, in its
+trusting, foolish way, that it was going to bask out of doors for
+evermore.  As he rode through Long-Ash Lane it was scarce
+recognizable as the track of his two winter journeys.  No mistake
+could be made now, even with his eyes shut.  The cuckoo's note was
+at its best, between April tentativeness and midsummer decrepitude,
+and the reptiles in the sun behaved as winningly as kittens on a
+hearth.  Though afternoon, and about the same time as on the last
+occasion, it was broad day and sunshine when he entered Hintock, and
+the details of the Knap dairy-house were visible far up the road.
+He saw Sally in the garden, and was set vibrating.  He had first
+intended to go on to the inn; but 'No,' he said; 'I'll tie my horse
+to the garden-gate.  If all goes well it can soon be taken round:
+if not, I mount and ride away'
+
+The tall shade of the horseman darkened the room in which Mrs. Hall
+sat, and made her start, for he had ridden by a side path to the top
+of the slope, where riders seldom came.  In a few seconds he was in
+the garden with Sally.
+
+Five--ay, three minutes--did the business at the back of that row of
+bees.  Though spring had come, and heavenly blue consecrated the
+scene, Darton succeeded not.  'NO,' said Sally firmly.  'I will
+never, never marry you, Mr. Darton.  I would have done it once; but
+now I never can.'
+
+'But!'--implored Mr. Darton.  And with a burst of real eloquence he
+went on to declare all sorts of things that he would do for her.  He
+would drive her to see her mother every week--take her to London--
+settle so much money upon her--Heaven knows what he did not promise,
+suggest, and tempt her with.  But it availed nothing.  She
+interposed with a stout negative, which closed the course of his
+argument like an iron gate across a highway.  Darton paused.
+
+'Then,' said he simply, 'you hadn't heard of my supposed failure
+when you declined last time?'
+
+'I had not,' she said.  'But if I had 'twould have been all the
+same.'
+
+'And 'tis not because of any soreness from my slighting you years
+ago?'
+
+'No.  That soreness is long past.'
+
+'Ah--then you despise me, Sally?'
+
+'No,' she slowly answered.  'I don't altogether despise you.  I
+don't think you quite such a hero as I once did--that's all.  The
+truth is, I am happy enough as I am; and I don't mean to marry at
+all.  Now, may _I_ ask a favour, sir?'  She spoke with an ineffable
+charm, which, whenever he thought of it, made him curse his loss of
+her as long as he lived.
+
+'To any extent.'
+
+'Please do not put this question to me any more.  Friends as long as
+you like, but lovers and married never.'
+
+'I never will,' said Darton.  'Not if I live a hundred years.'
+
+And he never did.  That he had worn out his welcome in her heart was
+only too plain.
+
+When his step-children had grown up, and were placed out in life,
+all communication between Darton and the Hall family ceased.  It was
+only by chance that, years after, he learnt that Sally,
+notwithstanding the solicitations her attractions drew down upon
+her, had refused several offers of marriage, and steadily adhered to
+her purpose of leading a single life
+
+May 1884.
+
+
+
+
+THE DISTRACTED PREACHER
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I--HOW HIS COLD WAS CURED
+
+
+
+Something delayed the arrival of the Wesleyan minister, and a young
+man came temporarily in his stead.  It was on the thirteenth of
+January 183- that Mr. Stockdale, the young man in question, made his
+humble entry into the village, unknown, and almost unseen.  But when
+those of the inhabitants who styled themselves of his connection
+became acquainted with him, they were rather pleased with the
+substitute than otherwise, though he had scarcely as yet acquired
+ballast of character sufficient to steady the consciences of the
+hundred-and-forty Methodists of pure blood who, at this time, lived
+in Nether-Moynton, and to give in addition supplementary support to
+the mixed race which went to church in the morning and chapel in the
+evening, or when there was a tea--as many as a hundred-and-ten
+people more, all told, and including the parish-clerk in the winter-
+time, when it was too dark for the vicar to observe who passed up
+the street at seven o'clock--which, to be just to him, he was never
+anxious to do.
+
+It was owing to this overlapping of creeds that the celebrated
+population-puzzle arose among the denser gentry of the district
+around Nether-Moynton:  how could it be that a parish containing
+fifteen score of strong full-grown Episcopalians, and nearly
+thirteen score of well-matured Dissenters, numbered barely two-and-
+twenty score adults in all?
+
+The young man being personally interesting, those with whom he came
+in contact were content to waive for a while the graver question of
+his sufficiency.  It is said that at this time of his life his eyes
+were affectionate, though without a ray of levity; that his hair was
+curly, and his figure tall; that he was, in short, a very lovable
+youth, who won upon his female hearers as soon as they saw and heard
+him, and caused them to say, 'Why didn't we know of this before he
+came, that we might have gied him a warmer welcome!'
+
+The fact was that, knowing him to be only provisionally selected,
+and expecting nothing remarkable in his person or doctrine, they and
+the rest of his flock in Nether-Moynton had felt almost as
+indifferent about his advent as if they had been the soundest
+church-going parishioners in the country, and he their true and
+appointed parson.  Thus when Stockdale set foot in the place nobody
+had secured a lodging for him, and though his journey had given him
+a bad cold in the head, he was forced to attend to that business
+himself.  On inquiry he learnt that the only possible accommodation
+in the village would be found at the house of one Mrs. Lizzy
+Newberry, at the upper end of the street.
+
+It was a youth who gave this information, and Stockdale asked him
+who Mrs. Newberry might be.
+
+The boy said that she was a widow-woman, who had got no husband,
+because he was dead.  Mr. Newberry, he added, had been a well-to-do
+man enough, as the saying was, and a farmer; but he had gone off in
+a decline.  As regarded Mrs. Newberry's serious side, Stockdale
+gathered that she was one of the trimmers who went to church and
+chapel both.
+
+'I'll go there,' said Stockdale, feeling that, in the absence of
+purely sectarian lodgings, he could do no better.
+
+'She's a little particular, and won't hae gover'ment folks, or
+curates, or the pa'son's friends, or such like,' said the lad
+dubiously.
+
+'Ah, that may be a promising sign:  I'll call.  Or no; just you go
+up and ask first if she can find room for me.  I have to see one or
+two persons on another matter.  You will find me down at the
+carrier's.'
+
+In a quarter of an hour the lad came back, and said that Mrs.
+Newberry would have no objection to accommodate him, whereupon
+Stockdale called at the house.
+
+It stood within a garden-hedge, and seemed to be roomy and
+comfortable.  He saw an elderly woman, with whom he made
+arrangements to come the same night, since there was no inn in the
+place, and he wished to house himself as soon as possible; the
+village being a local centre from which he was to radiate at once to
+the different small chapels in the neighbourhood.  He forthwith sent
+his luggage to Mrs. Newberry's from the carrier's, where he had
+taken shelter, and in the evening walked up to his temporary home.
+
+As he now lived there, Stockdale felt it unnecessary to knock at the
+door; and entering quietly he had the pleasure of hearing footsteps
+scudding away like mice into the back quarters.  He advanced to the
+parlour, as the front room was called, though its stone floor was
+scarcely disguised by the carpet, which only over-laid the trodden
+areas, leaving sandy deserts under the bulging mouldings of the
+table-legs, playing with brass furniture.  But the room looked snug
+and cheerful.  The firelight shone out brightly, trembling on the
+knobs and handles, and lurking in great strength on the under
+surface of the chimney-piece.  A deep arm-chair, covered with
+horsehair, and studded with a countless throng of brass nails, was
+pulled up on one side of the fireplace.  The tea-things were on the
+table, the teapot cover was open, and a little hand-bell had been
+laid at that precise point towards which a person seated in the
+great chair might be expected instinctively to stretch his hand.
+
+Stockdale sat down, not objecting to his experience of the room thus
+far, and began his residence by tinkling the bell.  A little girl
+crept in at the summons, and made tea for him.  Her name, she said,
+was Marther Sarer, and she lived out there, nodding towards the road
+and village generally.  Before Stockdale had got far with his meal,
+a tap sounded on the door behind him, and on his telling the
+inquirer to come in, a rustle of garments caused him to turn his
+head.  He saw before him a fine and extremely well-made young woman,
+with dark hair, a wide, sensible, beautiful forehead, eyes that
+warmed him before he knew it, and a mouth that was in itself a
+picture to all appreciative souls.
+
+'Can I get you anything else for tea?' she said, coming forward a
+step or two, an expression of liveliness on her features, and her
+hand waving the door by its edge.
+
+'Nothing, thank you,' said Stockdale, thinking less of what he
+replied than of what might be her relation to the household.
+
+'You are quite sure?' said the young woman, apparently aware that he
+had not considered his answer.
+
+He conscientiously examined the tea-things, and found them all
+there.  'Quite sure, Miss Newberry,' he said.
+
+'It is Mrs. Newberry,' she said.  'Lizzy Newberry, I used to be
+Lizzy Simpkins.'
+
+'O, I beg your pardon, Mrs. Newberry.'  And before he had occasion
+to say more she left the room.
+
+Stockdale remained in some doubt till Martha Sarah came to clear the
+table.  'Whose house is this, my little woman,' said he.
+
+'Mrs. Lizzy Newberry's, sir.'
+
+'Then Mrs. Newberry is not the old lady I saw this afternoon?'
+
+'No.  That's Mrs. Newberry's mother.  It was Mrs. Newberry who comed
+in to you just by now, because she wanted to see if you was good-
+looking.'
+
+Later in the evening, when Stockdale was about to begin supper, she
+came again.  'I have come myself, Mr. Stockdale,' she said.  The
+minister stood up in acknowledgment of the honour.  'I am afraid
+little Marther might not make you understand.  What will you have
+for supper?--there's cold rabbit, and there's a ham uncut.'
+
+Stockdale said he could get on nicely with those viands, and supper
+was laid.  He had no more than cut a slice when tap-tap came to the
+door again.  The minister had already learnt that this particular
+rhythm in taps denoted the fingers of his enkindling landlady, and
+the doomed young fellow buried his first mouthful under a look of
+receptive blandness.
+
+'We have a chicken in the house, Mr. Stockdale--I quite forgot to
+mention it just now.  Perhaps you would like Marther Sarer to bring
+it up?'
+
+Stockdale had advanced far enough in the art of being a young man to
+say that he did not want the chicken, unless she brought it up
+herself; but when it was uttered he blushed at the daring gallantry
+of the speech, perhaps a shade too strong for a serious man and a
+minister.  In three minutes the chicken appeared, but, to his great
+surprise, only in the hands of Martha Sarah.  Stockdale was
+disappointed, which perhaps it was intended that he should be.
+
+He had finished supper, and was not in the least anticipating Mrs.
+Newberry again that night, when she tapped and entered as before.
+Stockdale's gratified look told that she had lost nothing by not
+appearing when expected.  It happened that the cold in the head from
+which the young man suffered had increased with the approach of
+night, and before she had spoken he was seized with a violent fit of
+sneezing which he could not anyhow repress.
+
+Mrs. Newberry looked full of pity.  'Your cold is very bad to-night,
+Mr. Stockdale.'
+
+Stockdale replied that it was rather troublesome.
+
+'And I've a good mind'--she added archly, looking at the cheerless
+glass of water on the table, which the abstemious minister was going
+to drink.
+
+'Yes, Mrs. Newberry?'
+
+'I've a good mind that you should have something more likely to cure
+it than that cold stuff.'
+
+'Well,' said Stockdale, looking down at the glass, 'as there is no
+inn here, and nothing better to be got in the village, of course it
+will do.'
+
+To this she replied, 'There is something better, not far off, though
+not in the house.  I really think you must try it, or you may be
+ill.  Yes, Mr. Stockdale, you shall.'  She held up her finger,
+seeing that he was about to speak.  'Don't ask what it is; wait, and
+you shall see.'
+
+Lizzy went away, and Stockdale waited in a pleasant mood.  Presently
+she returned with her bonnet and cloak on, saying, 'I am so sorry,
+but you must help me to get it.  Mother has gone to bed.  Will you
+wrap yourself up, and come this way, and please bring that cup with
+you?'
+
+Stockdale, a lonely young fellow, who had for weeks felt a great
+craving for somebody on whom to throw away superfluous interest, and
+even tenderness, was not sorry to join her; and followed his guide
+through the back door, across the garden, to the bottom, where the
+boundary was a wall.  This wall was low, and beyond it Stockdale
+discerned in the night shades several grey headstones, and the
+outlines of the church roof and tower.
+
+'It is easy to get up this way,' she said, stepping upon a bank
+which abutted on the wall; then putting her foot on the top of the
+stonework, and descending a spring inside, where the ground was much
+higher, as is the manner of graveyards to be.  Stockdale did the
+same, and followed her in the dusk across the irregular ground till
+they came to the tower door, which, when they had entered, she
+softly closed behind them.
+
+'You can keep a secret?' she said, in a musical voice.
+
+'Like an iron chest!' said he fervently.
+
+Then from under her cloak she produced a small lighted lantern,
+which the minister had not noticed that she carried at all.  The
+light showed them to be close to the singing-gallery stairs, under
+which lay a heap of lumber of all sorts, but consisting mostly of
+decayed framework, pews, panels, and pieces of flooring, that from
+time to time had been removed from their original fixings in the
+body of the edifice and replaced by new.
+
+'Perhaps you will drag some of those boards aside?' she said,
+holding the lantern over her head to light him better.  'Or will you
+take the lantern while I move them?'
+
+'I can manage it,' said the young man, and acting as she ordered, he
+uncovered, to his surprise, a row of little barrels bound with wood
+hoops, each barrel being about as large as the nave of a heavy
+waggon-wheel.
+
+When they were laid open Lizzy fixed her eyes on him, as if she
+wondered what he would say.
+
+'You know what they are?' she asked, finding that he did not speak.
+
+'Yes, barrels,' said Stockdale simply.  He was an inland man, the
+son of highly respectable parents, and brought up with a single eye
+to the ministry; and the sight suggested nothing beyond the fact
+that such articles were there.
+
+'You are quite right, they are barrels,' she said, in an emphatic
+tone of candour that was not without a touch of irony.
+
+Stockdale looked at her with an eye of sudden misgiving.  'Not
+smugglers' liquor?' he said.
+
+'Yes,' said she.  'They are tubs of spirit that have accidentally
+come over in the dark from France.'
+
+In Nether-Moynton and its vicinity at this date people always smiled
+at the sort of sin called in the outside world illicit trading; and
+these little kegs of gin and brandy were as well known to the
+inhabitants as turnips.  So that Stockdale's innocent ignorance, and
+his look of alarm when he guessed the sinister mystery, seemed to
+strike Lizzy first as ludicrous, and then as very awkward for the
+good impression that she wished to produce upon him.
+
+'Smuggling is carried on here by some of the people,' she said in a
+gentle, apologetic voice.  'It has been their practice for
+generations, and they think it no harm.  Now, will you roll out one
+of the tubs?'
+
+'What to do with it?' said the minister.
+
+'To draw a little from it to cure your cold,' she answered.  'It is
+so 'nation strong that it drives away that sort of thing in a jiffy.
+O, it is all right about our taking it.  I may have what I like; the
+owner of the tubs says so.  I ought to have had some in the house,
+and then I shouldn't ha' been put to this trouble; but I drink none
+myself, and so I often forget to keep it indoors.'
+
+'You are allowed to help yourself, I suppose, that you may not
+inform where their hiding-place is?'
+
+'Well, no; not that particularly; but I may take any if I want it.
+So help yourself.'
+
+'I will, to oblige you, since you have a right to it,' murmured the
+minister; and though he was not quite satisfied with his part in the
+performance, he rolled one of the 'tubs' out from the corner into
+the middle of the tower floor.  'How do you wish me to get it out--
+with a gimlet, I suppose?'
+
+'No, I'll show you,' said his interesting companion; and she held up
+with her other hand a shoemaker's awl and a hammer.  'You must never
+do these things with a gimlet, because the wood-dust gets in; and
+when the buyers pour out the brandy that would tell them that the
+tub had been broached.  An awl makes no dust, and the hole nearly
+closes up again.  Now tap one of the hoops forward.'
+
+Stockdale took the hammer and did so.
+
+'Now make the hole in the part that was covered by the hoop.'
+
+He made the hole as directed.  'It won't run out,' he said.
+
+'O yes it will,' said she.  'Take the tub between your knees, and
+squeeze the heads; and I'll hold the cup.'
+
+Stockdale obeyed; and the pressure taking effect upon the tub, which
+seemed, to be thin, the spirit spirted out in a stream.  When the
+cup was full he ceased pressing, and the flow immediately stopped.
+'Now we must fill up the keg with water,' said Lizzy, 'or it will
+cluck like forty hens when it is handled, and show that 'tis not
+full.'
+
+'But they tell you you may take it?'
+
+'Yes, the SMUGGLERS:  but the BUYERS must not know that the
+smugglers have been kind to me at their expense.'
+
+'I see,' said Stockdale doubtfully.  'I much question the honesty of
+this proceeding.'
+
+By her direction he held the tub with the hole upwards, and while he
+went through the process of alternately pressing and ceasing to
+press, she produced a bottle of water, from which she took
+mouthfuls, conveying each to the keg by putting her pretty lips to
+the hole, where it was sucked in at each recovery of the cask from
+pressure.  When it was again full he plugged the hole, knocked the
+hoop down to its place, and buried the tub in the lumber as before.
+
+'Aren't the smugglers afraid that you will tell?' he asked, as they
+recrossed the churchyard.
+
+'O no; they are not afraid of that.  I couldn't do such a thing.'
+
+'They have put you into a very awkward corner,' said Stockdale
+emphatically.  'You must, of course, as an honest person, sometimes
+feel that it is your duty to inform--really you must.'
+
+'Well, I have never particularly felt it as a duty; and, besides, my
+first husband--'  She stopped, and there was some confusion in her
+voice.  Stockdale was so honest and unsophisticated that he did not
+at once discern why she paused:  but at last he did perceive that
+the words were a slip, and that no woman would have uttered 'first
+husband' by accident unless she had thought pretty frequently of a
+second.  He felt for her confusion, and allowed her time to recover
+and proceed.  'My husband,' she said, in a self-corrected tone,
+'used to know of their doings, and so did my father, and kept the
+secret.  I cannot inform, in fact, against anybody.'
+
+'I see the hardness of it,' he continued, like a man who looked far
+into the moral of things.  'And it is very cruel that you should be
+tossed and tantalized between your memories and your conscience.  I
+do hope, Mrs. Newberry, that you will soon see your way out of this
+unpleasant position.'
+
+'Well, I don't just now,' she murmured.
+
+By this time they had passed over the wall and entered the house,
+where she brought him a glass and hot water, and left him to his own
+reflections.  He looked after her vanishing form, asking himself
+whether he, as a respectable man, and a minister, and a shining
+light, even though as yet only of the halfpenny-candle sort, were
+quite justified in doing this thing.  A sneeze settled the question;
+and he found that when the fiery liquor was lowered by the addition
+of twice or thrice the quantity of water, it was one of the
+prettiest cures for a cold in the head that he had ever known,
+particularly at this chilly time of the year.
+
+Stockdale sat in the deep chair about twenty minutes sipping and
+meditating, till he at length took warmer views of things, and
+longed for the morrow, when he would see Mrs. Newberry again.  He
+then felt that, though chronologically at a short distance, it would
+in an emotional sense be very long before to-morrow came, and walked
+restlessly round the room.  His eye was attracted by a framed and
+glazed sampler in which a running ornament of fir-trees and peacocks
+surrounded the following pretty bit of sentiment:-
+
+
+'Rose-leaves smell when roses thrive,
+Here's my work while I'm alive;
+Rose-leaves smell when shrunk and shed,
+Here's my work when I am dead.
+
+'Lizzy Simpkins.  Fear God.  Honour the King.
+'Aged 11 years.
+
+
+''Tis hers,' he said to himself.  'Heavens, how I like that name!'
+
+Before he had done thinking that no other name from Abigail to
+Zenobia would have suited his young landlady so well, tap-tap came
+again upon the door; and the minister started as her face appeared
+yet another time, looking so disinterested that the most ingenious
+would have refrained from asserting that she had come to affect his
+feelings by her seductive eyes.
+
+'Would you like a fire in your room, Mr. Stockdale, on account of
+your cold?'
+
+The minister, being still a little pricked in the conscience for
+countenancing her in watering the spirits, saw here a way to self-
+chastisement.  'No, I thank you,' he said firmly; 'it is not
+necessary.  I have never been used to one in my life, and it would
+be giving way to luxury too far.'
+
+'Then I won't insist,' she said, and disconcerted him by vanishing
+instantly.
+
+Wondering if she was vexed by his refusal, he wished that he had
+chosen to have a fire, even though it should have scorched him out
+of bed and endangered his self-discipline for a dozen days.
+However, he consoled himself with what was in truth a rare
+consolation for a budding lover, that he was under the same roof
+with Lizzy; her guest, in fact, to take a poetical view of the term
+lodger; and that he would certainly see her on the morrow.
+
+The morrow came, and Stockdale rose early, his cold quite gone.  He
+had never in his life so longed for the breakfast hour as he did
+that day, and punctually at eight o'clock, after a short walk, to
+reconnoitre the premises, he re-entered the door of his dwelling.
+Breakfast passed, and Martha Sarah attended, but nobody came
+voluntarily as on the night before to inquire if there were other
+wants which he had not mentioned, and which she would attempt to
+gratify.  He was disappointed, and went out, hoping to see her at
+dinner.  Dinner time came; he sat down to the meal, finished it,
+lingered on for a whole hour, although two new teachers were at that
+moment waiting at the chapel-door to speak to him by appointment.
+It was useless to wait longer, and he slowly went his way down the
+lane, cheered by the thought that, after all, he would see her in
+the evening, and perhaps engage again in the delightful tub-
+broaching in the neighbouring church tower, which proceeding he
+resolved to render more moral by steadfastly insisting that no water
+should be introduced to fill up, though the tub should cluck like
+all the hens in Christendom.  But nothing could disguise the fact
+that it was a queer business; and his countenance fell when he
+thought how much more his mind was interested in that matter than in
+his serious duties.
+
+However, compunction vanished with the decline of day.  Night came,
+and his tea and supper; but no Lizzy Newberry, and no sweet
+temptations.  At last the minister could bear it no longer, and said
+to his quaint little attendant, 'Where is Mrs. Newberry to-day?'
+judiciously handing a penny as he spoke.
+
+'She's busy,' said Martha.
+
+'Anything serious happened?' he asked, handing another penny, and
+revealing yet additional pennies in the background.
+
+'O no--nothing at all!' said she, with breathless confidence.
+'Nothing ever happens to her.  She's only biding upstairs in bed
+because 'tis her way sometimes.'
+
+Being a young man of some honour, he would not question further, and
+assuming that Lizzy must have a bad headache, or other slight
+ailment, in spite of what the girl had said, he went to bed
+dissatisfied, not even setting eyes on old Mrs. Simpkins.  'I said
+last night that I should see her to-morrow,' he reflected; 'but that
+was not to be!'
+
+Next day he had better fortune, or worse, meeting her at the foot of
+the stairs in the morning, and being favoured by a visit or two from
+her during the day--once for the purpose of making kindly inquiries
+about his comfort, as on the first evening, and at another time to
+place a bunch of winter-violets on his table, with a promise to
+renew them when they drooped.  On these occasions there was
+something in her smile which showed how conscious she was of the
+effect she produced, though it must be said that it was rather a
+humorous than a designing consciousness, and savoured more of pride
+than of vanity.
+
+As for Stockdale, he clearly perceived that he possessed unlimited
+capacity for backsliding, and wished that tutelary saints were not
+denied to Dissenters.  He set a watch upon his tongue and eyes for
+the space of one hour and a half, after which he found it was
+useless to struggle further, and gave himself up to the situation.
+'The other minister will be here in a month,' he said to himself
+when sitting over the fire.  'Then I shall be off, and she will
+distract my mind no more! . . . And then, shall I go on living by
+myself for ever?  No; when my two years of probation are finished, I
+shall have a furnished house to live in, with a varnished door and a
+brass knocker; and I'll march straight back to her, and ask her
+flat, as soon as the last plate is on the dresser!
+
+Thus a titillating fortnight was passed by young Stockdale, during
+which time things proceeded much as such matters have done ever
+since the beginning of history.  He saw the object of attachment
+several times one day, did not see her at all the next, met her when
+he least expected to do so, missed her when hints and signs as to
+where she should be at a given hour almost amounted to an
+appointment.  This mild coquetry was perhaps fair enough under the
+circumstances of their being so closely lodged, and Stockdale put up
+with it as philosophically as he was able.  Being in her own house,
+she could, after vexing him or disappointing him of her presence,
+easily win him back by suddenly surrounding him with those little
+attentions which her position as his landlady put it in her power to
+bestow.  When he had waited indoors half the day to see her, and on
+finding that she would not be seen, had gone off in a huff to the
+dreariest and dampest walk he could discover, she would restore
+equilibrium in the evening with 'Mr. Stockdale, I have fancied you
+must feel draught o' nights from your bedroom window, and so I have
+been putting up thicker curtains this afternoon while you were out;'
+or, 'I noticed that you sneezed twice again this morning, Mr.
+Stockdale.  Depend upon it that cold is hanging about you yet; I am
+sure it is--I have thought of it continually; and you must let me
+make a posset for you.'
+
+Sometimes in coming home he found his sitting-room rearranged,
+chairs placed where the table had stood, and the table ornamented
+with the few fresh flowers and leaves that could be obtained at this
+season, so as to add a novelty to the room.  At times she would be
+standing on a chair outside the house, trying to nail up a branch of
+the monthly rose which the winter wind had blown down; and of course
+he stepped forward to assist her, when their hands got mixed in
+passing the shreds and nails.  Thus they became friends again after
+a disagreement.  She would utter on these occasions some pretty and
+deprecatory remark on the necessity of her troubling him anew; and
+he would straightway say that he would do a hundred times as much
+for her if she should so require.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II--HOW HE SAW TWO OTHER MEN
+
+
+
+Matters being in this advancing state, Stockdale was rather
+surprised one cloudy evening, while sitting in his room, at hearing
+her speak in low tones of expostulation to some one at the door.  It
+was nearly dark, but the shutters were not yet closed, nor the
+candles lighted; and Stockdale was tempted to stretch his head
+towards the window.  He saw outside the door a young man in clothes
+of a whitish colour, and upon reflection judged their wearer to be
+the well-built and rather handsome miller who lived below.  The
+miller's voice was alternately low and firm, and sometimes it
+reached the level of positive entreaty; but what the words were
+Stockdale could in no way hear.
+
+Before the colloquy had ended, the minister's attention was
+attracted by a second incident.  Opposite Lizzy's home grew a clump
+of laurels, forming a thick and permanent shade.  One of the laurel
+boughs now quivered against the light background of sky, and in a
+moment the head of a man peered out, and remained still.  He seemed
+to be also much interested in the conversation at the door, and was
+plainly lingering there to watch and listen.  Had Stockdale stood in
+any other relation to Lizzy than that of a lover, he might have gone
+out and investigated the meaning of this:  but being as yet but an
+unprivileged ally, he did nothing more than stand up and show
+himself against the firelight, whereupon the listener disappeared,
+and Lizzy and the miller spoke in lower tones.
+
+Stockdale was made so uneasy by the circumstance, that as soon as
+the miller was gone, he said, 'Mrs. Newberry, are you aware that you
+were watched just now, and your conversation heard?'
+
+'When?' she said.
+
+'When you were talking to that miller.  A man was looking from the
+laurel-tree as jealously as if he could have eaten you.'
+
+She showed more concern than the trifling event seemed to demand,
+and he added, 'Perhaps you were talking of things you did not wish
+to be overheard?'
+
+'I was talking only on business,' she said.
+
+'Lizzy, be frank!' said the young man.  'If it was only on business,
+why should anybody wish to listen to you?'
+
+She looked curiously at him.  'What else do you think it could be,
+then?'
+
+'Well--the only talk between a young woman and man that is likely to
+amuse an eavesdropper.'
+
+'Ah yes,' she said, smiling in spite of her preoccupation.  'Well,
+my cousin Owlett has spoken to me about matrimony, every now and
+then, that's true; but he was not speaking of it then.  I wish he
+had been speaking of it, with all my heart.  It would have been much
+less serious for me.'
+
+'O Mrs. Newberry!'
+
+'It would.  Not that I should ha' chimed in with him, of course.  I
+wish it for other reasons.  I am glad, Mr. Stockdale, that you have
+told me of that listener.  It is a timely warning, and I must see my
+cousin again.'
+
+'But don't go away till I have spoken,' said the minister.  'I'll
+out with it at once, and make no more ado.  Let it be Yes or No
+between us, Lizzy; please do!'  And he held out his hand, in which
+she freely allowed her own to rest, but without speaking.
+
+'You mean Yes by that?' he asked, after waiting a while.
+
+'You may be my sweetheart, if you will.'
+
+'Why not say at once you will wait for me until I have a house and
+can come back to marry you.'
+
+'Because I am thinking--thinking of something else,' she said with
+embarrassment.  'It all comes upon me at once, and I must settle one
+thing at a time.'
+
+'At any rate, dear Lizzy, you can assure me that the miller shall
+not be allowed to speak to you except on business? You have never
+directly encouraged him?'
+
+She parried the question by saying, 'You see, he and his party have
+been in the habit of leaving things on my premises sometimes, and as
+I have not denied him, it makes him rather forward.'
+
+'Things--what things?'
+
+'Tubs--they are called Things here.'
+
+'But why don't you deny him, my dear Lizzy?'
+
+'I cannot well.'
+
+'You are too timid.  It is unfair of him to impose so upon you, and
+get your good name into danger by his smuggling tricks.  Promise me
+that the next time he wants to leave his tubs here you will let me
+roll them into the street?'
+
+She shook her head.  'I would not venture to offend the neighbours
+so much as that,' said she, 'or do anything that would be so likely
+to put poor Owlett into the hands of the excisemen.'
+
+Stockdale sighed, and said that he thought hers a mistaken
+generosity when it extended to assisting those who cheated the king
+of his dues.  'At any rate, you will let me make him keep his
+distance as your lover, and tell him flatly that you are not for
+him?'
+
+'Please not, at present,' she said.  'I don't wish to offend my old
+neighbours.  It is not only Owlett who is concerned.'
+
+'This is too bad,' said Stockdale impatiently.
+
+'On my honour, I won't encourage him as my lover,' Lizzy answered
+earnestly.  'A reasonable man will be satisfied with that.'
+
+'Well, so I am,' said Stockdale, his countenance clearing.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III--THE MYSTERIOUS GREATCOAT
+
+
+
+Stockdale now began to notice more particularly a feature in the
+life of his fair landlady, which he had casually observed but
+scarcely ever thought of before.  It was that she was markedly
+irregular in her hours of rising.  For a week or two she would be
+tolerably punctual, reaching the ground-floor within a few minutes
+of half-past seven.  Then suddenly she would not be visible till
+twelve at noon, perhaps for three or four days in succession; and
+twice he had certain proof that she did not leave her room till
+half-past three in the afternoon.  The second time that this extreme
+lateness came under his notice was on a day when he had particularly
+wished to consult with her about his future movements; and he
+concluded, as he always had done, that she had a cold, headache, or
+other ailment, unless she had kept herself invisible to avoid
+meeting and talking to him, which he could hardly believe.  The
+former supposition was disproved, however, by her innocently saying,
+some days later, when they were speaking on a question of health,
+that she had never had a moment's heaviness, headache, or illness of
+any kind since the previous January twelvemonth.
+
+'I am glad to hear it,' said he.  'I thought quite otherwise.'
+
+'What, do I look sickly?' she asked, turning up her face to show the
+impossibility of his gazing on it and holding such a belief for a
+moment.
+
+'Not at all; I merely thought so from your being sometimes obliged
+to keep your room through the best part of the day.'
+
+'O, as for that--it means nothing,' she murmured, with a look which
+some might have called cold, and which was the worst look that he
+liked to see upon her.  'It is pure sleepiness, Mr. Stockdale.'
+
+'Never!'
+
+'It is, I tell you.  When I stay in my room till half-past three in
+the afternoon, you may always be sure that I slept soundly till
+three, or I shouldn't have stayed there.'
+
+'It is dreadful,' said Stockdale, thinking of the disastrous effects
+of such indulgence upon the household of a minister, should it
+become a habit of everyday occurrence.
+
+'But then,' she said, divining his good and prescient thoughts, 'it
+only happens when I stay awake all night.  I don't go to sleep till
+five or six in the morning sometimes.'
+
+'Ah, that's another matter,' said Stockdale.  'Sleeplessness to such
+an alarming extent is real illness.  Have you spoken to a doctor?'
+
+'O no--there is no need for doing that--it is all natural to me.'
+And she went away without further remark.
+
+Stockdale might have waited a long time to know the real cause of
+her sleeplessness, had it not happened that one dark night he was
+sitting in his bedroom jotting down notes for a sermon, which
+occupied him perfunctorily for a considerable time after the other
+members of the household had retired.  He did not get to bed till
+one o'clock.  Before he had fallen asleep he heard a knocking at the
+front door, first rather timidly performed, and then louder.  Nobody
+answered it, and the person knocked again.  As the house still
+remained undisturbed, Stockdale got out of bed, went to his window,
+which overlooked the door, and opening it, asked who was there.
+
+A young woman's voice replied that Susan Wallis was there, and that
+she had come to ask if Mrs. Newberry could give her some mustard to
+make a plaster with, as her father was taken very ill on the chest.
+
+The minister, having neither bell nor servant, was compelled to act
+in person.  'I will call Mrs. Newberry,' he said.  Partly dressing
+himself; he went along the passage and tapped at Lizzy's door.  She
+did not answer, and, thinking of her erratic habits in the matter of
+sleep, he thumped the door persistently, when he discovered, by its
+moving ajar under his knocking, that it had only been gently pushed
+to.  As there was now a sufficient entry for the voice, he knocked
+no longer, but said in firm tones, 'Mrs. Newberry, you are wanted.'
+
+The room was quite silent; not a breathing, not a rustle, came from
+any part of it.  Stockdale now sent a positive shout through the
+open space of the door:  'Mrs. Newberry!'--still no answer, or
+movement of any kind within.  Then he heard sounds from the opposite
+room, that of Lizzy's mother, as if she had been aroused by his
+uproar though Lizzy had not, and was dressing herself hastily.
+Stockdale softly closed the younger woman's door and went on to the
+other, which was opened by Mrs. Simpkins before he could reach it.
+She was in her ordinary clothes, and had a light in her hand.
+
+'What's the person calling about?' she said in alarm.
+
+Stockdale told the girl's errand, adding seriously, 'I cannot wake
+Mrs. Newberry.'
+
+'It is no matter,' said her mother.  'I can let the girl have what
+she wants as well as my daughter.'  And she came out of the room and
+went downstairs.
+
+Stockdale retired towards his own apartment, saying, however, to
+Mrs. Simpkins from the landing, as if on second thoughts, 'I suppose
+there is nothing the matter with Mrs. Newberry, that I could not
+wake her?'
+
+'O no,' said the old lady hastily.  'Nothing at all.'
+
+Still the minister was not satisfied.  'Will you go in and see?' he
+said.  'I should be much more at ease.'
+
+Mrs. Simpkins returned up the staircase, went to her daughter's
+room, and came out again almost instantly.  'There is nothing at all
+the matter with Lizzy,' she said; and descended again to attend to
+the applicant, who, having seen the light, had remained quiet during
+this interval.
+
+Stockdale went into his room and lay down as before.  He heard
+Lizzy's mother open the front door, admit the girl, and then the
+murmured discourse of both as they went to the store-cupboard for
+the medicament required.  The girl departed, the door was fastened,
+Mrs. Simpkins came upstairs, and the house was again in silence.
+Still the minister did not fall asleep.  He could not get rid of a
+singular suspicion, which was all the more harassing in being, if
+true, the most unaccountable thing within his experience.  That
+Lizzy Newberry was in her bedroom when he made such a clamour at the
+door he could not possibly convince himself; notwithstanding that he
+had heard her come upstairs at the usual time, go into her chamber,
+and shut herself up in the usual way.  Yet all reason was so much
+against her being elsewhere, that he was constrained to go back
+again to the unlikely theory of a heavy sleep, though he had heard
+neither breath nor movement during a shouting and knocking loud
+enough to rouse the Seven Sleepers.
+
+Before coming to any positive conclusion he fell asleep himself, and
+did not awake till day.  He saw nothing of Mrs. Newberry in the
+morning, before he went out to meet the rising sun, as he liked to
+do when the weather was fine; but as this was by no means unusual,
+he took no notice of it.  At breakfast-time he knew that she was not
+far off by hearing her in the kitchen, and though he saw nothing of
+her person, that back apartment being rigorously closed against his
+eyes, she seemed to be talking, ordering, and bustling about among
+the pots and skimmers in so ordinary a manner, that there was no
+reason for his wasting more time in fruitless surmise.
+
+The minister suffered from these distractions, and his extemporized
+sermons were not improved thereby.  Already he often said Romans for
+Corinthians in the pulpit, and gave out hymns in strange cramped
+metres, that hitherto had always been skipped, because the
+congregation could not raise a tune to fit them.  He fully resolved
+that as soon as his few weeks of stay approached their end he would
+cut the matter short, and commit himself by proposing a definite
+engagement, repenting at leisure if necessary.
+
+With this end in view, he suggested to her on the evening after her
+mysterious sleep that they should take a walk together just before
+dark, the latter part of the proposition being introduced that they
+might return home unseen.  She consented to go; and away they went
+over a stile, to a shrouded footpath suited for the occasion.  But,
+in spite of attempts on both sides, they were unable to infuse much
+spirit into the ramble.  She looked rather paler than usual, and
+sometimes turned her head away.
+
+'Lizzy,' said Stockdale reproachfully, when they had walked in
+silence a long distance.
+
+'Yes,' said she.
+
+'You yawned--much my company is to you!'  He put it in that way, but
+he was really wondering whether her yawn could possibly have more to
+do with physical weariness from the night before than mental
+weariness of that present moment.  Lizzy apologized, and owned that
+she was rather tired, which gave him an opening for a direct
+question on the point; but his modesty would not allow him to put it
+to her; and he uncomfortably resolved to wait.
+
+The month of February passed with alternations of mud and frost,
+rain and sleet, east winds and north-westerly gales.  The hollow
+places in the ploughed fields showed themselves as pools of water,
+which had settled there from the higher levels, and had not yet
+found time to soak away.  The birds began to get lively, and a
+single thrush came just before sunset each evening, and sang
+hopefully on the large elm-tree which stood nearest to Mrs.
+Newberry's house.  Cold blasts and brittle earth had given place to
+an oozing dampness more unpleasant in itself than frost; but it
+suggested coming spring, and its unpleasantness was of a bearable
+kind.
+
+Stockdale had been going to bring about a practical understanding
+with Lizzy at least half-a-dozen times; but, what with the mystery
+of her apparent absence on the night of the neighbour's call, and
+her curious way of lying in bed at unaccountable times, he felt a
+check within him whenever he wanted to speak out.  Thus they still
+lived on as indefinitely affianced lovers, each of whom hardly
+acknowledged the other's claim to the name of chosen one.  Stockdale
+persuaded himself that his hesitation was owing to the postponement
+of the ordained minister's arrival, and the consequent delay in his
+own departure, which did away with all necessity for haste in his
+courtship; but perhaps it was only that his discretion was
+reasserting itself, and telling him that he had better get clearer
+ideas of Lizzy before arranging for the grand contract of his life
+with her.  She, on her part, always seemed ready to be urged further
+on that question than he had hitherto attempted to go; but she was
+none the less independent, and to a degree which would have kept
+from flagging the passion of a far more mutable man.
+
+On the evening of the first of March he went casually into his
+bedroom about dusk, and noticed lying on a chair a greatcoat, hat,
+and breeches.  Having no recollection of leaving any clothes of his
+own in that spot, he went and examined them as well as he could in
+the twilight, and found that they did not belong to him.  He paused
+for a moment to consider how they might have got there.  He was the
+only man living in the house; and yet these were not his garments,
+unless he had made a mistake.  No, they were not his.  He called up
+Martha Sarah.
+
+'How did these things come in my room?' he said, flinging the
+objectionable articles to the floor.
+
+Martha said that Mrs. Newberry had given them to her to brush, and
+that she had brought them up there thinking they must be Mr.
+Stockdale's, as there was no other gentleman a-lodging there.
+
+'Of course you did,' said Stockdale.  'Now take them down to your
+mis'ess, and say they are some clothes I have found here and know
+nothing about.'
+
+As the door was left open he heard the conversation downstairs.
+'How stupid!' said Mrs. Newberry, in a tone of confusion.  'Why,
+Marther Sarer, I did not tell you to take 'em to Mr. Stockdale's
+room?'
+
+'I thought they must be his as they was so muddy,' said Martha
+humbly.
+
+'You should have left 'em on the clothes-horse,' said the young
+mistress severely; and she came upstairs with the garments on her
+arm, quickly passed Stockdale's room, and threw them forcibly into a
+closet at the end of a passage.  With this the incident ended, and
+the house was silent again.
+
+There would have been nothing remarkable in finding such clothes in
+a widow's house had they been clean; or moth-eaten, or creased, or
+mouldy from long lying by; but that they should be splashed with
+recent mud bothered Stockdale a good deal.  When a young pastor is
+in the aspen stage of attachment, and open to agitation at the
+merest trifles, a really substantial incongruity of this complexion
+is a disturbing thing.  However, nothing further occurred at that
+time; but he became watchful, and given to conjecture, and was
+unable to forget the circumstance.
+
+One morning, on looking from his window, he saw Mrs. Newberry
+herself brushing the tails of a long drab greatcoat, which, if he
+mistook not, was the very same garment as the one that had adorned
+the chair of his room.  It was densely splashed up to the hollow of
+the back with neighbouring Nether-Moynton mud, to judge by its
+colour, the spots being distinctly visible to him in the sunlight.
+The previous day or two having been wet, the inference was
+irresistible that the wearer had quite recently been walking some
+considerable distance about the lanes and fields.  Stockdale opened
+the window and looked out, and Mrs. Newberry turned her head.  Her
+face became slowly red; she never had looked prettier, or more
+incomprehensible, he waved his hand affectionately, and said good-
+morning; she answered with embarrassment, having ceased her
+occupation on the instant that she saw him, and rolled up the coat
+half-cleaned.
+
+Stockdale shut the window.  Some simple explanation of her
+proceeding was doubtless within the bounds of possibility; but he
+himself could not think of one; and he wished that she had placed
+the matter beyond conjecture by voluntarily saying something about
+it there and then.
+
+But, though Lizzy had not offered an explanation at the moment, the
+subject was brought forward by her at the next time of their
+meeting.  She was chatting to him concerning some other event, and
+remarked that it happened about the time when she was dusting some
+old clothes that had belonged to her poor husband.
+
+'You keep them clean out of respect to his memory?' said Stockdale
+tentatively.
+
+'I air and dust them sometimes,' she said, with the most charming
+innocence in the world.
+
+'Do dead men come out of their graves and walk in mud?' murmured the
+minister, in a cold sweat at the deception that she was practising.
+
+'What did you say?' asked Lizzy.
+
+'Nothing, nothing,' said he mournfully.  'Mere words--a phrase that
+will do for my sermon next Sunday.'  It was too plain that Lizzy was
+unaware that he had seen actual pedestrian splashes upon the skirts
+of the tell-tale overcoat, and that she imagined him to believe it
+had come direct from some chest or drawer.
+
+The aspect of the case was now considerably darker.  Stockdale was
+so much depressed by it that he did not challenge her explanation,
+or threaten to go off as a missionary to benighted islanders, or
+reproach her in any way whatever.  He simply parted from her when
+she had done talking, and lived on in perplexity, till by degrees
+his natural manner became sad and constrained.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV--AT THE TIME OF THE NEW MOON
+
+
+
+The following Thursday was changeable, damp, and gloomy; and the
+night threatened to be windy and unpleasant.  Stockdale had gone
+away to Knollsea in the morning, to be present at some commemoration
+service there, and on his return he was met by the attractive Lizzy
+in the passage.  Whether influenced by the tide of cheerfulness
+which had attended him that day, or by the drive through the open
+air, or whether from a natural disposition to let bygones alone, he
+allowed himself to be fascinated into forgetfulness of the greatcoat
+incident, and upon the whole passed a pleasant evening; not so much
+in her society as within sound of her voice, as she sat talking in
+the back parlour to her mother, till the latter went to bed.
+Shortly after this Mrs. Newberry retired, and then Stockdale
+prepared to go upstairs himself.  But before he left the room he
+remained standing by the dying embers awhile, thinking long of one
+thing and another; and was only aroused by the flickering of his
+candle in the socket as it suddenly declined and went out.  Knowing
+that there were a tinder-box, matches, and another candle in his
+bedroom, he felt his way upstairs without a light.  On reaching his
+chamber he laid his hand on every possible ledge and corner for the
+tinderbox, but for a long time in vain.  Discovering it at length,
+Stockdale produced a spark, and was kindling the brimstone, when he
+fancied that he heard a movement in the passage.  He blew harder at
+the lint, the match flared up, and looking by aid of the blue light
+through the door, which had been standing open all this time, he was
+surprised to see a male figure vanishing round the top of the
+staircase with the evident intention of escaping unobserved.  The
+personage wore the clothes which Lizzy had been brushing, and
+something in the outline and gait suggested to the minister that the
+wearer was Lizzy herself.
+
+But he was not sure of this; and, greatly excited, Stockdale
+determined to investigate the mystery, and to adopt his own way for
+doing it.  He blew out the match without lighting the candle, went
+into the passage, and proceeded on tiptoe towards Lizzy's room.  A
+faint grey square of light in the direction of the chamber-window as
+he approached told him that the door was open, and at once suggested
+that the occupant was gone.  He turned and brought down his fist
+upon the handrail of the staircase:  'It was she; in her late
+husband's coat and hat!'
+
+Somewhat relieved to find that there was no intruder in the case,
+yet none the less surprised, the minister crept down the stairs,
+softly put on his boots, overcoat, and hat, and tried the front
+door.  It was fastened as usual:  he went to the back door, found
+this unlocked, and emerged into the garden.  The night was mild and
+moonless, and rain had lately been falling, though for the present
+it had ceased.  There was a sudden dropping from the trees and
+bushes every now and then, as each passing wind shook their boughs.
+Among these sounds Stockdale heard the faint fall of feet upon the
+road outside, and he guessed from the step that it was Lizzy's.  He
+followed the sound, and, helped by the circumstance of the wind
+blowing from the direction in which the pedestrian moved, he got
+nearly close to her, and kept there, without risk of being
+overheard.  While he thus followed her up the street or lane, as it
+might indifferently be called, there being more hedge than houses on
+either side, a figure came forward to her from one of the cottage
+doors.  Lizzy stopped; the minister stepped upon the grass and
+stopped also.
+
+'Is that Mrs. Newberry?' said the man who had come out, whose voice
+Stockdale recognized as that of one of the most devout members of
+his congregation.
+
+'It is,' said Lizzy.
+
+'I be quite ready--I've been here this quarter-hour.'
+
+'Ah, John,' said she, 'I have bad news; there is danger to-night for
+our venture.'
+
+'And d'ye tell o't!  I dreamed there might be.'
+
+'Yes,' she said hurriedly; 'and you must go at once round to where
+the chaps are waiting, and tell them they will not be wanted till
+to-morrow night at the same time.  I go to burn the lugger off.'
+
+'I will,' he said; and instantly went off through a gate, Lizzy
+continuing her way.
+
+On she tripped at a quickening pace till the lane turned into the
+turnpike-road, which she crossed, and got into the track for
+Ringsworth.  Here she ascended the hill without the least
+hesitation, passed the lonely hamlet of Holworth, and went down the
+vale on the other side.  Stockdale had never taken any extensive
+walks in this direction, but he was aware that if she persisted in
+her course much longer she would draw near to the coast, which was
+here between two and three miles distant from Nether-Moynton; and as
+it had been about a quarter-past eleven o'clock when they set out,
+her intention seemed to be to reach the shore about midnight.
+
+Lizzy soon ascended a small mound, which Stockdale at the same time
+adroitly skirted on the left; and a dull monotonous roar burst upon
+his ear.  The hillock was about fifty yards from the top of the
+cliffs, and by day it apparently commanded a full view of the bay.
+There was light enough in the sky to show her disguised figure
+against it when she reached the top, where she paused, and
+afterwards sat down.  Stockdale, not wishing on any account to alarm
+her at this moment, yet desirous of being near her, sank upon his
+hands and knees, crept a little higher up, and there stayed still.
+
+The wind was chilly, the ground damp, and his position one in which
+he did not care to remain long.  However, before he had decided to
+leave it, the young man heard voices behind him.  What they
+signified he did not know; but, fearing that Lizzy was in danger, he
+was about to run forward and warn her that she might be seen, when
+she crept to the shelter of a little bush which maintained a
+precarious existence in that exposed spot; and her form was absorbed
+in its dark and stunted outline as if she had become part of it.
+She had evidently heard the men as well as he.  They passed near
+him, talking in loud and careless tones, which could be heard above
+the uninterrupted washings of the sea, and which suggested that they
+were not engaged in any business at their own risk.  This proved to
+be the fact:  some of their words floated across to him, and caused
+him to forget at once the coldness of his situation.
+
+'What's the vessel?'
+
+'A lugger, about fifty tons.'
+
+'From Cherbourg, I suppose?'
+
+'Yes, 'a b'lieve.'
+
+'But it don't all belong to Owlett?'
+
+'O no.  He's only got a share.  There's another or two in it--a
+farmer and such like, but the names I don't know.'
+
+The voices died away, and the heads and shoulders of the men
+diminished towards the cliff, and dropped out of sight.
+
+'My darling has been tempted to buy a share by that unbeliever
+Owlett,' groaned the minister, his honest affection for Lizzy having
+quickened to its intensest point during these moments of risk to her
+person and name.  'That's why she's here,' he said to himself.  'O,
+it will be the ruin of her!'
+
+His perturbation was interrupted by the sudden bursting out of a
+bright and increasing light from the spot where Lizzy was in hiding.
+A few seconds later, and before it had reached the height of a
+blaze, he heard her rush past him down the hollow like a stone from
+a sling, in the direction of home.  The light now flared high and
+wide, and showed its position clearly.  She had kindled a bough of
+furze and stuck it into the bush under which she had been crouching;
+the wind fanned the flame, which crackled fiercely, and threatened
+to consume the bush as well as the bough.  Stockdale paused just
+long enough to notice thus much, and then followed rapidly the route
+taken by the young woman.  His intention was to overtake her, and
+reveal himself as a friend; but run as he would he could see nothing
+of her.  Thus he flew across the open country about Holworth,
+twisting his legs and ankles in unexpected fissures and descents,
+till, on coming to the gate between the downs and the road, he was
+forced to pause to get breath.  There was no audible movement either
+in front or behind him, and he now concluded that she had not outrun
+him, but that, hearing him at her heels, and believing him one of
+the excise party, she had hidden herself somewhere on the way, and
+let him pass by.
+
+He went on at a more leisurely pace towards the village.  On
+reaching the house he found his surmise to be correct, for the gate
+was on the latch, and the door unfastened, just as he had left them.
+Stockdale closed the door behind him, and waited silently in the
+passage.  In about ten minutes he heard the same light footstep that
+he had heard in going out; it paused at the gate, which opened and
+shut softly, and then the door-latch was lifted, and Lizzy came in.
+
+Stockdale went forward and said at once, 'Lizzy, don't be
+frightened.  I have been waiting up for you.'
+
+She started, though she had recognized the voice.  'It is Mr.
+Stockdale, isn't it?' she said.
+
+'Yes,' he answered, becoming angry now that she was safe indoors,
+and not alarmed.  'And a nice game I've found you out in to-night.
+You are in man's clothes, and I am ashamed of you!'
+
+Lizzy could hardly find a voice to answer this unexpected reproach.
+
+'I am only partly in man's clothes,' she faltered, shrinking back to
+the wall.  'It is only his greatcoat and hat and breeches that I've
+got on, which is no harm, as he was my own husband; and I do it only
+because a cloak blows about so, and you can't use your arms.  I have
+got my own dress under just the same--it is only tucked in!  Will
+you go away upstairs and let me pass?  I didn't want you to see me
+at such a time as this!'
+
+'But I have a right to see you!  How do you think there can be
+anything between us now?'  Lizzy was silent.  'You are a smuggler,'
+he continued sadly.
+
+'I have only a share in the run,' she said.
+
+'That makes no difference.  Whatever did you engage in such a trade
+as that for, and keep it such a secret from me all this time?'
+
+'I don't do it always.  I only do it in winter-time when 'tis new
+moon.'
+
+'Well, I suppose that's because it can't be done anywhen else . . .
+You have regularly upset me, Lizzy.'
+
+'I am sorry for that,' Lizzy meekly replied.
+
+'Well now,' said he more tenderly, 'no harm is done as yet.  Won't
+you for the sake of me give up this blamable and dangerous practice
+altogether?'
+
+'I must do my best to save this run,' said she, getting rather husky
+in the throat.  'I don't want to give you up--you know that; but I
+don't want to lose my venture.  I don't know what to do now!  Why I
+have kept it so secret from you is that I was afraid you would be
+angry if you knew.'
+
+'I should think so!  I suppose if I had married you without finding
+this out you'd have gone on with it just the same?'
+
+'I don't know.  I did not think so far ahead.  I only went to-night
+to burn the folks off, because we found that the excisemen knew
+where the tubs were to be landed.'
+
+'It is a pretty mess to be in altogether, is this,' said the
+distracted young minister.  'Well, what will you do now?'
+
+Lizzy slowly murmured the particulars of their plan, the chief of
+which were that they meant to try their luck at some other point of
+the shore the next night; that three landing-places were always
+agreed upon before the run was attempted, with the understanding
+that, if the vessel was 'burnt off' from the first point, which was
+Ringsworth, as it had been by her to-night, the crew should attempt
+to make the second, which was Lulstead Cove, on the second night;
+and if there, too, danger threatened, they should on the third night
+try the third place, which was behind a headland further west.
+
+'Suppose the officers hinder them landing there too?' he said, his
+attention to this interesting programme displacing for a moment his
+concern at her share in it.
+
+'Then we shan't try anywhere else all this dark--that's what we call
+the time between moon and moon--and perhaps they'll string the tubs
+to a stray-line, and sink 'em a little-ways from shore, and take the
+bearings; and then when they have a chance they'll go to creep for
+'em.'
+
+'What's that?'
+
+'O, they'll go out in a boat and drag a creeper--that's a grapnel--
+along the bottom till it catch hold of the stray-line.'
+
+The minister stood thinking; and there was no sound within doors but
+the tick of the clock on the stairs, and the quick breathing of
+Lizzy, partly from her walk and partly from agitation, as she stood
+close to the wall, not in such complete darkness but that he could
+discern against its whitewashed surface the greatcoat and broad hat
+which covered her.
+
+'Lizzy, all this is very wrong,' he said.  'Don't you remember the
+lesson of the tribute-money?  "Render unto Caesar the things that
+are Caesar's."  Surely you have heard that read times enough in your
+growing up?'
+
+'He's dead,' she pouted.
+
+'But the spirit of the text is in force just the same.'
+
+'My father did it, and so did my grandfather, and almost everybody
+in Nether-Moynton lives by it, and life would be so dull if it
+wasn't for that, that I should not care to live at all.'
+
+'I am nothing to live for, of course,' he replied bitterly.  'You
+would not think it worth while to give up this wild business and
+live for me alone?'
+
+'I have never looked at it like that.'
+
+'And you won't promise and wait till I am ready?'
+
+'I cannot give you my word to-night.'  And, looking thoughtfully
+down, she gradually moved and moved away, going into the adjoining
+room, and closing the door between them.  She remained there in the
+dark till he was tired of waiting, and had gone up to his own
+chamber.
+
+Poor Stockdale was dreadfully depressed all the next day by the
+discoveries of the night before.  Lizzy was unmistakably a
+fascinating young woman, but as a minister's wife she was hardly to
+be contemplated.  'If I had only stuck to father's little grocery
+business, instead of going in for the ministry, she would have
+suited me beautifully!' he said sadly, until he remembered that in
+that case he would never have come from his distant home to Nether-
+Moynton, and never have known her.
+
+The estrangement between them was not complete, but it was
+sufficient to keep them out of each other's company.  Once during
+the day he met her in the garden-path, and said, turning a
+reproachful eye upon her, 'Do you promise, Lizzy?'  But she did not
+reply.  The evening drew on, and he knew well enough that Lizzy
+would repeat her excursion at night--her half-offended manner had
+shown that she had not the slightest intention of altering her plans
+at present.  He did not wish to repeat his own share of the
+adventure; but, act as he would, his uneasiness on her account
+increased with the decline of day.  Supposing that an accident
+should befall her, he would never forgive himself for not being
+there to help, much as he disliked the idea of seeming to
+countenance such unlawful escapades.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V--HOW THEY WENT TO LULSTEAD COVE
+
+
+
+As he had expected, she left the house at the same hour at night,
+this time passing his door without stealth, as if she knew very well
+that he would be watching, and were resolved to brave his
+displeasure.  He was quite ready, opened the door quickly, and
+reached the back door almost as soon as she.
+
+'Then you will go, Lizzy?' he said as he stood on the step beside
+her, who now again appeared as a little man with a face altogether
+unsuited to his clothes.
+
+'I must,' she said, repressed by his stern manner.
+
+'Then I shall go too,' said he.
+
+'And I am sure you will enjoy it!' she exclaimed in more buoyant
+tones.  'Everybody does who tries it.'
+
+'God forbid that I should!' he said.  'But I must look after you.'
+
+They opened the wicket and went up the road abreast of each other,
+but at some distance apart, scarcely a word passing between them.
+The evening was rather less favourable to smuggling enterprise than
+the last had been, the wind being lower, and the sky somewhat clear
+towards the north.
+
+'It is rather lighter,' said Stockdale.
+
+''Tis, unfortunately,' said she.  'But it is only from those few
+stars over there.  The moon was new to-day at four o'clock, and I
+expected clouds.  I hope we shall be able to do it this dark, for
+when we have to sink 'em for long it makes the stuff taste bleachy,
+and folks don't like it so well.'
+
+Her course was different from that of the preceding night, branching
+off to the left over Lord's Barrow as soon as they had got out of
+the lane and crossed the highway.  By the time they reached Chaldon
+Down, Stockdale, who had been in perplexed thought as to what he
+should say to her, decided that he would not attempt expostulation
+now, while she was excited by the adventure, but wait till it was
+over, and endeavour to keep her from such practices in future.  It
+occurred to him once or twice, as they rambled on, that should they
+be surprised by the excisemen, his situation would be more awkward
+than hers, for it would be difficult to prove his true motive in
+coming to the spot; but the risk was a slight consideration beside
+his wish to be with her.
+
+They now arrived at a ravine which lay on the outskirts of Chaldon,
+a village two miles on their way towards the point of the shore they
+sought.  Lizzy broke the silence this time:  'I have to wait here to
+meet the carriers.  I don't know if they have come yet.  As I told
+you, we go to Lulstead Cove to-night, and it is two miles further
+than Ringsworth.'
+
+It turned out that the men had already come; for while she spoke two
+or three dozen heads broke the line of the slope, and a company of
+them at once descended from the bushes where they had been lying in
+wait.  These carriers were men whom Lizzy and other proprietors
+regularly employed to bring the tubs from the boat to a hiding-place
+inland.  They were all young fellows of Nether-Moynton, Chaldon, and
+the neighbourhood, quiet and inoffensive persons, who simply engaged
+to carry the cargo for Lizzy and her cousin Owlett, as they would
+have engaged in any other labour for which they were fairly well
+paid.
+
+At a word from her they closed in together.  'You had better take it
+now,' she said to them; and handed to each a packet.  It contained
+six shillings, their remuneration for the night's undertaking, which
+was paid beforehand without reference to success or failure; but,
+besides this, they had the privilege of selling as agents when the
+run was successfully made.  As soon as it was done, she said to
+them, 'The place is the old one near Lulstead Cove;' the men till
+that moment not having been told whither they were bound, for
+obvious reasons.  'Owlett will meet you there,' added Lizzy.  'I
+shall follow behind, to see that we are not watched.'
+
+The carriers went on, and Stockdale and Mrs. Newberry followed at a
+distance of a stone's throw.  'What do these men do by day?' he
+said.
+
+'Twelve or fourteen of them are labouring men.  Some are
+brickmakers, some carpenters, some shoe-makers, some thatchers.
+They are all known to me very well.  Nine of 'em are of your own
+congregation.'
+
+'I can't help that,' said Stockdale.
+
+'O, I know you can't.  I only told you.  The others are more church-
+inclined, because they supply the pa'son with all the spirits he
+requires, and they don't wish to show unfriendliness to a customer.'
+
+'How do you choose 'em?' said Stockdale.
+
+'We choose 'em for their closeness, and because they are strong and
+surefooted, and able to carry a heavy load a long way without being
+tired.'
+
+Stockdale sighed as she enumerated each particular, for it proved
+how far involved in the business a woman must be who was so well
+acquainted with its conditions and needs.  And yet he felt more
+tenderly towards her at this moment than he had felt all the
+foregoing day.  Perhaps it was that her experienced manner and hold
+indifference stirred his admiration in spite of himself.
+
+'Take my arm, Lizzy,' he murmured.
+
+'I don't want it,' she said.  'Besides, we may never be to each
+other again what we once have been.'
+
+'That depends upon you,' said he, and they went on again as before.
+
+The hired carriers paced along over Chaldon Down with as little
+hesitation as if it had been day, avoiding the cart-way, and leaving
+the village of East Chaldon on the left, so as to reach the crest of
+the hill at a lonely trackless place not far from the ancient
+earthwork called Round Pound.  An hour's brisk walking brought them
+within sound of the sea, not many hundred yards from Lulstead Cove.
+Here they paused, and Lizzy and Stockdale came up with them, when
+they went on together to the verge of the cliff.  One of the men now
+produced an iron bar, which he drove firmly into the soil a yard
+from the edge, and attached to it a rope that he had uncoiled from
+his body.  They all began to descend, partly stepping, partly
+sliding down the incline, as the rope slipped through their hands.
+
+'You will not go to the bottom, Lizzy?' said Stockdale anxiously.
+
+'No.  I stay here to watch,' she said.  'Owlett is down there.'
+
+The men remained quite silent when they reached the shore; and the
+next thing audible to the two at the top was the dip of heavy oars,
+and the dashing of waves against a boat's bow.  In a moment the keel
+gently touched the shingle, and Stockdale heard the footsteps of the
+thirty-six carriers running forwards over the pebbles towards the
+point of landing.
+
+There was a sousing in the water as of a brood of ducks plunging in,
+showing that the men had not been particular about keeping their
+legs, or even their waists, dry from the brine:  but it was
+impossible to see what they were doing, and in a few minutes the
+shingle was trampled again.  The iron bar sustaining the rope, on
+which Stockdale's hand rested, began to swerve a little, and the
+carriers one by one appeared climbing up the sloping cliff; dripping
+audibly as they came, and sustaining themselves by the guide-rope.
+Each man on reaching the top was seen to be carrying a pair of tubs,
+one on his back and one on his chest, the two being slung together
+by cords passing round the chine hoops, and resting on the carrier's
+shoulders.  Some of the stronger men carried three by putting an
+extra one on the top behind, but the customary load was a pair,
+these being quite weighty enough to give their bearer the sensation
+of having chest and backbone in contact after a walk of four or five
+miles.
+
+'Where is Owlett?' said Lizzy to one of them.
+
+'He will not come up this way,' said the carrier.  'He's to bide on
+shore till we be safe off.'  Then, without waiting for the rest, the
+foremost men plunged across the down; and, when the last had
+ascended, Lizzy pulled up the rope, wound it round her arm, wriggled
+the bar from the sod, and turned to follow the carriers.
+
+'You are very anxious about Owlett's safety,' said the minister.
+
+'Was there ever such a man!' said Lizzy.  'Why, isn't he my cousin?'
+
+'Yes.  Well, it is a bad night's work,' said Stockdale heavily.
+'But I'll carry the bar and rope for you.'
+
+'Thank God, the tubs have got so far all right,' said she.
+
+Stockdale shook his head, and, taking the bar, walked by her side
+towards the downs; and the moan of the sea was heard no more.
+
+'Is this what you meant the other day when you spoke of having
+business with Owlett?' the young man asked.
+
+'This is it,' she replied.  'I never see him on any other matter.'
+
+'A partnership of that kind with a young man is very odd.'
+
+'It was begun by my father and his, who were brother-laws.'
+
+Her companion could not blind himself to the fact that where tastes
+and pursuits were so akin as Lizzy's and Owlett's, and where risks
+were shared, as with them, in every undertaking, there would be a
+peculiar appropriateness in her answering Owlett's standing question
+on matrimony in the affirmative.  This did not soothe Stockdale, its
+tendency being rather to stimulate in him an effort to make the pair
+as inappropriate as possible, and win her away from this nocturnal
+crew to correctness of conduct and a minister's parlour in some far-
+removed inland county.
+
+They had been walking near enough to the file of carriers for
+Stockdale to perceive that, when they got into the road to the
+village, they split up into two companies of unequal size, each of
+which made off in a direction of its own.  One company, the smaller
+of the two, went towards the church, and by the time that Lizzy and
+Stockdale reached their own house these men had scaled the
+churchyard wall, and were proceeding noiselessly over the grass
+within.
+
+'I see that Owlett has arranged for one batch to be put in the
+church again,' observed Lizzy.  'Do you remember my taking you there
+the first night you came?'
+
+'Yes, of course,' said Stockdale.  'No wonder you had permission to
+broach the tubs--they were his, I suppose?'
+
+'No, they were not--they were mine; I had permission from myself.
+The day after that they went several miles inland in a waggon-load
+of manure, and sold very well.'
+
+At this moment the group of men who had made off to the left some
+time before began leaping one by one from the hedge opposite Lizzy's
+house, and the first man, who had no tubs upon his shoulders, came
+forward.
+
+'Mrs. Newberry, isn't it?' he said hastily.
+
+'Yes, Jim,' said she.  'What's the matter?'
+
+'I find that we can't put any in Badger's Clump to-night, Lizzy,'
+said Owlett.  'The place is watched.  We must sling the apple-tree
+in the orchet if there's time.  We can't put any more under the
+church lumber than I have sent on there, and my mixen hev already
+more in en than is safe.'
+
+'Very well,' she said.  'Be quick about it--that's all.  What can I
+do?'
+
+'Nothing at all, please.  Ah, it is the minister!--you two that
+can't do anything had better get indoors and not be zeed.'
+
+While Owlett thus conversed, in a tone so full of contraband anxiety
+and so free from lover's jealousy, the men who followed him had been
+descending one by one from the hedge; and it unfortunately happened
+that when the hindmost took his leap, the cord slipped which
+sustained his tubs:  the result was that both the kegs fell into the
+road, one of them being stove in by the blow.
+
+''Od drown it all!' said Owlett, rushing back.
+
+'It is worth a good deal, I suppose?' said Stockdale.
+
+'O no--about two guineas and half to us now,' said Lizzy excitedly.
+'It isn't that--it is the smell!  It is so blazing strong before it
+has been lowered by water, that it smells dreadfully when spilt in
+the road like that!  I do hope Latimer won't pass by till it is gone
+off.'
+
+Owlett and one or two others picked up the burst tub and began to
+scrape and trample over the spot, to disperse the liquor as much as
+possible; and then they all entered the gate of Owlett's orchard,
+which adjoined Lizzy's garden on the right.  Stockdale did not care
+to follow them, for several on recognizing him had looked
+wonderingly at his presence, though they said nothing.  Lizzy left
+his side and went to the bottom of the garden, looking over the
+hedge into the orchard, where the men could be dimly seen bustling
+about, and apparently hiding the tubs.  All was done noiselessly,
+and without a light; and when it was over they dispersed in
+different directions, those who had taken their cargoes to the
+church having already gone off to their homes.
+
+Lizzy returned to the garden-gate, over which Stockdale was still
+abstractedly leaning.  'It is all finished:  I am going indoors
+now,' she said gently.  'I will leave the door ajar for you.'
+
+'O no--you needn't,' said Stockdale; 'I am coming too.'
+
+But before either of them had moved, the faint clatter of horses'
+hoofs broke upon the ear, and it seemed to come from the point where
+the track across the down joined the hard road.
+
+'They are just too late!' cried Lizzy exultingly.
+
+'Who?' said Stockdale.
+
+'Latimer, the riding-officer, and some assistant of his.  We had
+better go indoors.'
+
+They entered the house, and Lizzy bolted the door.  'Please don't
+get a light, Mr. Stockdale,' she said.
+
+'Of course I will not,' said he.
+
+'I thought you might be on the side of the king,' said Lizzy, with
+faintest sarcasm.
+
+'I am,' said Stockdale.  'But, Lizzy Newberry, I love you, and you
+know it perfectly well; and you ought to know, if you do not, what I
+have suffered in my conscience on your account these last few days!'
+
+'I guess very well,' she said hurriedly.  'Yet I don't see why.  Ah,
+you are better than I!'
+
+The trotting of the horses seemed to have again died away, and the
+pair of listeners touched each other's fingers in the cold 'Good-
+night' of those whom something seriously divided.  They were on the
+landing, but before they had taken three steps apart, the tramp of
+the horsemen suddenly revived, almost close to the house.  Lizzy
+turned to the staircase window, opened the casement about an inch,
+and put her face close to the aperture.  'Yes, one of 'em is
+Latimer,' she whispered.  'He always rides a white horse.  One would
+think it was the last colour for a man in that line.'
+
+Stockdale looked, and saw the white shape of the animal as it passed
+by; but before the riders had gone another ten yards, Latimer reined
+in his horse, and said something to his companion which neither
+Stockdale nor Lizzy could hear.  Its drift was, however, soon made
+evident, for the other man stopped also; and sharply turning the
+horses' heads they cautiously retraced their steps.  When they were
+again opposite Mrs. Newberry's garden, Latimer dismounted, and the
+man on the dark horse did the same.
+
+Lizzy and Stockdale, intently listening and observing the
+proceedings, naturally put their heads as close as possible to the
+slit formed by the slightly opened casement; and thus it occurred
+that at last their cheeks came positively into contact.  They went
+on listening, as if they did not know of the singular incident which
+had happened to their faces, and the pressure of each to each rather
+increased than lessened with the lapse of time.
+
+They could hear the excisemen sniffing the air like hounds as they
+paced slowly along.  When they reached the spot where the tub had
+burst, both stopped on the instant.
+
+'Ay, ay, 'tis quite strong here,' said the second officer.  'Shall
+we knock at the door?'
+
+'Well, no,' said Latimer.  'Maybe this is only a trick to put us off
+the scent.  They wouldn't kick up this stink anywhere near their
+hiding-place.  I have known such things before.'
+
+'Anyhow, the things, or some of 'em, must have been brought this
+way,' said the other.
+
+'Yes,' said Latimer musingly.  'Unless 'tis all done to tole us the
+wrong way.  I have a mind that we go home for to-night without
+saying a word, and come the first thing in the morning with more
+hands.  I know they have storages about here, but we can do nothing
+by this owl's light.  We will look round the parish and see if
+everybody is in bed, John; and if all is quiet, we will do as I
+say.'
+
+They went on, and the two inside the window could hear them passing
+leisurely through the whole village, the street of which curved
+round at the bottom and entered the turnpike road at another
+junction.  This way the excisemen followed, and the amble of their
+horses died quite away.
+
+'What will you do?' said Stockdale, withdrawing from his position.
+
+She knew that he alluded to the coming search by the officers, to
+divert her attention from their own tender incident by the casement,
+which he wished to be passed over as a thing rather dreamt of than
+done.  'O, nothing,' she replied, with as much coolness as she could
+command under her disappointment at his manner.  'We often have such
+storms as this.  You would not be frightened if you knew what fools
+they are.  Fancy riding o' horseback through the place:  of course
+they will hear and see nobody while they make that noise; but they
+are always afraid to get off, in case some of our fellows should
+burst out upon 'em, and tie them up to the gate-post, as they have
+done before now.  Good-night, Mr. Stockdale.'
+
+She closed the window and went to her room, where a tear fell from
+her eyes; and that not because of the alertness of the riding-
+officers.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI--THE GREAT SEARCH AT NETHER-MOYNTON
+
+
+
+Stockdale was so excited by the events of the evening, and the
+dilemma that he was placed in between conscience and love, that he
+did not sleep, or even doze, but remained as broadly awake as at
+noonday.  As soon as the grey light began to touch ever so faintly
+the whiter objects in his bedroom he arose, dressed himself, and
+went downstairs into the road.
+
+The village was already astir.  Several of the carriers had heard
+the well-known tramp of Latimer's horse while they were undressing
+in the dark that night, and had already communicated with each other
+and Owlett on the subject.  The only doubt seemed to be about the
+safety of those tubs which had been left under the church gallery-
+stairs, and after a short discussion at the corner of the mill, it
+was agreed that these should be removed before it got lighter, and
+hidden in the middle of a double hedge bordering the adjoining
+field.  However, before anything could be carried into effect, the
+footsteps of many men were heard coming down the lane from the
+highway.
+
+'Damn it, here they be,' said Owlett, who, having already drawn the
+hatch and started his mill for the day, stood stolidly at the mill-
+door covered with flour, as if the interest of his whole soul was
+bound up in the shaking walls around him.
+
+The two or three with whom he had been talking dispersed to their
+usual work, and when the excise officers, and the formidable body of
+men they had hired, reached the village cross, between the mill and
+Mrs. Newberry's house, the village wore the natural aspect of a
+place beginning its morning labours.
+
+'Now,' said Latimer to his associates, who numbered thirteen men in
+all, 'what I know is that the things are somewhere in this here
+place.  We have got the day before us, and 'tis hard if we can't
+light upon 'em and get 'em to Budmouth Custom-house before night.
+First we will try the fuel-houses, and then we'll work our way into
+the chimmers, and then to the ricks and stables, and so creep round.
+You have nothing but your noses to guide ye, mind, so use 'em to-day
+if you never did in your lives before.'
+
+Then the search began.  Owlett, during the early part, watched from
+his mill-window, Lizzy from the door of her house, with the greatest
+self-possession.  A farmer down below, who also had a share in the
+run, rode about with one eye on his fields and the other on Latimer
+and his myrmidons, prepared to put them off the scent if he should
+be asked a question.  Stockdale, who was no smuggler at all, felt
+more anxiety than the worst of them, and went about his studies with
+a heavy heart, coming frequently to the door to ask Lizzy some
+question or other on the consequences to her of the tubs being
+found.
+
+'The consequences,' she said quietly, 'are simply that I shall lose
+'em.  As I have none in the house or garden, they can't touch me
+personally.'
+
+'But you have some in the orchard?'
+
+'Owlett rents that of me, and he lends it to others.  So it will be
+hard to say who put any tubs there if they should be found.'
+
+There was never such a tremendous sniffing known as that which took
+place in Nether-Moynton parish and its vicinity this day.  All was
+done methodically, and mostly on hands and knees.  At different
+hours of the day they had different plans.  From daybreak to
+breakfast-time the officers used their sense of smell in a direct
+and straightforward manner only, pausing nowhere but at such places
+as the tubs might be supposed to be secreted in at that very moment,
+pending their removal on the following night.  Among the places
+tested and examined were
+
+Hollow trees        Cupboards         Culverts
+Potato-graves       Clock-cases       Hedgerows
+Fuel-houses         Chimney-flues     Faggot-ricks
+Bedrooms            Rainwater-butts   Haystacks
+Apple-lofts         Pigsties          Coppers and ovens.
+
+After breakfast they recommenced with renewed vigour, taking a new
+line; that is to say, directing their attention to clothes that
+might be supposed to have come in contact with the tubs in their
+removal from the shore, such garments being usually tainted with the
+spirit, owing to its oozing between the staves.  They now sniffed at
+-
+
+Smock-frocks                 Smiths' and shoemakers' aprons
+Old shirts and waistcoats    Knee-naps and hedging-gloves
+Coats and hats               Tarpaulins
+Breeches and leggings        Market-cloaks
+Women's shawls and gowns     Scarecrows
+
+And as soon as the mid-day meal was over, they pushed their search
+into places where the spirits might have been thrown away in alarm:-
+
+Horse-ponds       Mixens         Sinks in yards
+Stable-drains     Wet ditches    Road-scrapings, and
+Cinder-heaps      Cesspools      Back-door gutters.
+
+But still these indefatigable excisemen discovered nothing more than
+the original tell-tale smell in the road opposite Lizzy's house,
+which even yet had not passed off.
+
+'I'll tell ye what it is, men,' said Latimer, about three o'clock in
+the afternoon, 'we must begin over again.  Find them tubs I will.'
+
+The men, who had been hired for the day, looked at their hands and
+knees, muddy with creeping on all fours so frequently, and rubbed
+their noses, as if they had almost had enough of it; for the
+quantity of bad air which had passed into each one's nostril had
+rendered it nearly as insensible as a flue.  However, after a
+moment's hesitation, they prepared to start anew, except three,
+whose power of smell had quite succumbed under the excessive wear
+and tear of the day.
+
+By this time not a male villager was to be seen in the parish.
+Owlett was not at his mill, the farmers were not in their fields,
+the parson was not in his garden, the smith had left his forge, and
+the wheelwright's shop was silent.
+
+'Where the divil are the folk gone?' said Latimer, waking up to the
+fact of their absence, and looking round.  'I'll have 'em up for
+this!  Why don't they come and help us?  There's not a man about the
+place but the Methodist parson, and he's an old woman.  I demand
+assistance in the king's name!'
+
+'We must find the jineral public afore we can demand that,' said his
+lieutenant.
+
+'Well, well, we shall do better without 'em,' said Latimer, who
+changed his moods at a moment's notice.  'But there's great cause of
+suspicion in this silence and this keeping out of sight, and I'll
+bear it in mind.  Now we will go across to Owlett's orchard, and see
+what we can find there.'
+
+Stockdale, who heard this discussion from the garden-gate, over
+which he had been leaning, was rather alarmed, and thought it a
+mistake of the villagers to keep so completely out of the way.  He
+himself, like the excisemen, had been wondering for the last half-
+hour what could have become of them.  Some labourers were of
+necessity engaged in distant fields, but the master-workmen should
+have been at home; though one and all, after just showing themselves
+at their shops, had apparently gone off for the day.  He went in to
+Lizzy, who sat at a back window sewing, and said, 'Lizzy, where are
+the men?'
+
+Lizzy laughed.  'Where they mostly are when they're run so hard as
+this.'  She cast her eyes to heaven.  'Up there,' she said.
+
+Stockdale looked up.  'What--on the top of the church tower?' he
+asked, seeing the direction of her glance.
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'Well, I expect they will soon have to come down,' said he gravely.
+'I have been listening to the officers, and they are going to search
+the orchard over again, and then every nook in the church.'
+
+Lizzy looked alarmed for the first time.  'Will you go and tell our
+folk?' she said.  'They ought to be let know.'  Seeing his
+conscience struggling within him like a boiling pot, she added, 'No,
+never mind, I'll go myself.'
+
+She went out, descended the garden, and climbed over the churchyard
+wall at the same time that the preventive-men were ascending the
+road to the orchard.  Stockdale could do no less than follow her.
+By the time that she reached the tower entrance he was at her side,
+and they entered together.
+
+Nether-Moynton church-tower was, as in many villages, without a
+turret, and the only way to the top was by going up to the singers'
+gallery, and thence ascending by a ladder to a square trap-door in
+the floor of the bell-loft, above which a permanent ladder was
+fixed, passing through the bells to a hole in the roof.  When Lizzy
+and Stockdale reached the gallery and looked up, nothing but the
+trap-door and the five holes for the bell-ropes appeared.  The
+ladder was gone.
+
+'There's no getting up,' said Stockdale.
+
+'O yes, there is,' said she.  'There's an eye looking at us at this
+moment through a knot-hole in that trap-door.'
+
+And as she spoke the trap opened, and the dark line of the ladder
+was seen descending against the white-washed wall.  When it touched
+the bottom Lizzy dragged it to its place, and said, 'If you'll go
+up, I'll follow.'
+
+The young man ascended, and presently found himself among
+consecrated bells for the first time in his life, nonconformity
+having been in the Stockdale blood for some generations.  He eyed
+them uneasily, and looked round for Lizzy.  Owlett stood here,
+holding the top of the ladder.
+
+'What, be you really one of us?' said the miller.
+
+'It seems so,' said Stockdale sadly.
+
+'He's not,' said Lizzy, who overheard.  'He's neither for nor
+against us.  He'll do us no harm.'
+
+She stepped up beside them, and then they went on to the next stage,
+which, when they had clambered over the dusty bell-carriages, was of
+easy ascent, leading towards the hole through which the pale sky
+appeared, and into the open air.  Owlett remained behind for a
+moment, to pull up the lower ladder.
+
+'Keep down your heads,' said a voice, as soon as they set foot on
+the flat.
+
+Stockdale here beheld all the missing parishioners, lying on their
+stomachs on the tower roof, except a few who, elevated on their
+hands and knees, were peeping through the embrasures of the parapet.
+Stockdale did the same, and saw the village lying like a map below
+him, over which moved the figures of the excisemen, each
+foreshortened to a crablike object, the crown of his hat forming a
+circular disc in the centre of him.  Some of the men had turned
+their heads when the young preacher's figure arose among them.
+
+'What, Mr. Stockdale?' said Matt Grey, in a tone of surprise.
+
+'I'd as lief that it hadn't been,' said Jim Clarke.  'If the pa'son
+should see him a trespassing here in his tower, 'twould be none the
+better for we, seeing how 'a do hate chapel-members.  He'd never buy
+a tub of us again, and he's as good a customer as we have got this
+side o' Warm'll.'
+
+'Where is the pa'son?' said Lizzy.
+
+'In his house, to be sure, that he mid see nothing of what's going
+on--where all good folks ought to be, and this young man likewise.'
+
+'Well, he has brought some news,' said Lizzy.  'They are going to
+search the orchet and church; can we do anything if they should
+find?'
+
+'Yes,' said her cousin Owlett.  'That's what we've been talking o',
+and we have settled our line.  Well, be dazed!'
+
+The exclamation was caused by his perceiving that some of the
+searchers, having got into the orchard, and begun stooping and
+creeping hither and thither, were pausing in the middle, where a
+tree smaller than the rest was growing.  They drew closer, and bent
+lower than ever upon the ground.
+
+'O, my tubs!' said Lizzy faintly, as she peered through the parapet
+at them.
+
+'They have got 'em, 'a b'lieve,' said Owlett.
+
+The interest in the movements of the officers was so keen that not a
+single eye was looking in any other direction; but at that moment a
+shout from the church beneath them attracted the attention of the
+smugglers, as it did also of the party in the orchard, who sprang to
+their feet and went towards the churchyard wall.  At the same time
+those of the Government men who had entered the church unperceived
+by the smugglers cried aloud, 'Here be some of 'em at last.'
+
+The smugglers remained in a blank silence, uncertain whether 'some
+of 'em' meant tubs or men; but again peeping cautiously over the
+edge of the tower they learnt that tubs were the things descried;
+and soon these fated articles were brought one by one into the
+middle of the churchyard from their hiding-place under the gallery-
+stairs.
+
+'They are going to put 'em on Hinton's vault till they find the
+rest!' said Lizzy hopelessly.  The excisemen had, in fact, begun to
+pile up the tubs on a large stone slab which was fixed there; and
+when all were brought out from the tower, two or three of the men
+were left standing by them, the rest of the party again proceeding
+to the orchard.
+
+The interest of the smugglers in the next manoeuvres of their
+enemies became painfully intense.  Only about thirty tubs had been
+secreted in the lumber of the tower, but seventy were hidden in the
+orchard, making up all that they had brought ashore as yet, the
+remainder of the cargo having been tied to a sinker and dropped
+overboard for another night's operations.  The excisemen, having re-
+entered the orchard, acted as if they were positive that here lay
+hidden the rest of the tubs, which they were determined to find
+before nightfall.  They spread themselves out round the field, and
+advancing on all fours as before, went anew round every apple-tree
+in the enclosure.  The young tree in the middle again led them to
+pause, and at length the whole company gathered there in a way which
+signified that a second chain of reasoning had led to the same
+results as the first.
+
+When they had examined the sod hereabouts for some minutes, one of
+the men rose, ran to a disused porch of the church where tools were
+kept, and returned with the sexton's pickaxe and shovel, with which
+they set to work.
+
+'Are they really buried there?' said the minister, for the grass was
+so green and uninjured that it was difficult to believe it had been
+disturbed.  The smugglers were too interested to reply, and
+presently they saw, to their chagrin, the officers stand several on
+each side of the tree; and, stooping and applying their hands to the
+soil, they bodily lifted the tree and the turf around it.  The
+apple-tree now showed itself to be growing in a shallow box, with
+handles for lifting at each of the four sides.  Under the site of
+the tree a square hole was revealed, and an exciseman went and
+looked down.
+
+'It is all up now,' said Owlett quietly.  'And now all of ye get
+down before they notice we are here; and be ready for our next move.
+I had better bide here till dark, or they may take me on suspicion,
+as 'tis on my ground.  I'll be with ye as soon as daylight begins to
+pink in.'
+
+'And I?' said Lizzy.
+
+'You please look to the linch-pins and screws; then go indoors and
+know nothing at all.  The chaps will do the rest.'
+
+The ladder was replaced, and all but Owlett descended, the men
+passing off one by one at the back of the church, and vanishing on
+their respective errands.
+
+Lizzy walked boldly along the street, followed closely by the
+minister.
+
+'You are going indoors, Mrs. Newberry?' he said.
+
+She knew from the words 'Mrs. Newberry' that the division between
+them had widened yet another degree.
+
+'I am not going home,' she said.  'I have a little thing to do
+before I go in.  Martha Sarah will get your tea.'
+
+'O, I don't mean on that account,' said Stockdale.  'What CAN you
+have to do further in this unhallowed affair?'
+
+'Only a little,' she said.
+
+'What is that?  I'll go with you.'
+
+'No, I shall go by myself.  Will you please go indoors?  I shall be
+there in less than an hour.'
+
+'You are not going to run any danger, Lizzy?' said the young man,
+his tenderness reasserting itself.
+
+'None whatever--worth mentioning,' answered she, and went down
+towards the Cross.
+
+Stockdale entered the garden gate, and stood behind it looking on.
+The excisemen were still busy in the orchard, and at last he was
+tempted to enter, and watch their proceedings.  When he came closer
+he found that the secret cellar, of whose existence he had been
+totally unaware, was formed by timbers placed across from side to
+side about a foot under the ground, and grassed over.
+
+The excisemen looked up at Stockdale's fair and downy countenance,
+and evidently thinking him above suspicion, went on with their work
+again.  As soon as all the tubs were taken out, they began tearing
+up the turf; pulling out the timbers, and breaking in the sides,
+till the cellar was wholly dismantled and shapeless, the apple-tree
+lying with its roots high to the air.  But the hole which had in its
+time held so much contraband merchandize was never completely filled
+up, either then or afterwards, a depression in the greensward
+marking the spot to this day.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII--THE WALK TO WARM'ELL CROSS AND AFTERWARDS
+
+
+
+As the goods had all to be carried to Budmouth that night, the
+excisemen's next object was to find horses and carts for the
+journey, and they went about the village for that purpose.  Latimer
+strode hither and thither with a lump of chalk in his hand, marking
+broad-arrows so vigorously on every vehicle and set of harness that
+he came across, that it seemed as if he would chalk broad-arrows on
+the very hedges and roads.  The owner of every conveyance so marked
+was bound to give it up for Government purposes.  Stockdale, who had
+had enough of the scene, turned indoors thoughtful and depressed.
+Lizzy was already there, having come in at the back, though she had
+not yet taken off her bonnet.  She looked tired, and her mood was
+not much brighter than his own.  They had but little to say to each
+other; and the minister went away and attempted to read; but at this
+he could not succeed, and he shook the little bell for tea.
+
+Lizzy herself brought in the tray, the girl having run off into the
+village during the afternoon, too full of excitement at the
+proceedings to remember her state of life.  However, almost before
+the sad lovers had said anything to each other, Martha came in in a
+steaming state.
+
+'O, there's such a stoor, Mrs. Newberry and Mr. Stockdale!  The
+king's excisemen can't get the carts ready nohow at all!  They
+pulled Thomas Ballam's, and William Rogers's, and Stephen Sprake's
+carts into the road, and off came the wheels, and down fell the
+carts; and they found there was no linch-pins in the arms; and then
+they tried Samuel Shane's waggon, and found that the screws were
+gone from he, and at last they looked at the dairyman's cart, and
+he's got none neither!  They have gone now to the blacksmith's to
+get some made, but he's nowhere to be found!'
+
+Stockdale looked at Lizzy, who blushed very slightly, and went out
+of the room, followed by Martha Sarah.  But before they had got
+through the passage there was a rap at the front door, and Stockdale
+recognized Latimer's voice addressing Mrs. Newberry, who had turned
+back.
+
+'For God's sake, Mrs. Newberry, have you seen Hardman the blacksmith
+up this way?  If we could get hold of him, we'd e'en a'most drag him
+by the hair of his head to his anvil, where he ought to be.'
+
+'He's an idle man, Mr. Latimer,' said Lizzy archly.  'What do you
+want him for?'
+
+'Why, there isn't a horse in the place that has got more than three
+shoes on, and some have only two.  The waggon-wheels be without
+strakes, and there's no linch-pins to the carts.  What with that,
+and the bother about every set of harness being out of order, we
+shan't be off before nightfall--upon my soul we shan't.  'Tis a
+rough lot, Mrs. Newberry, that you've got about you here; but
+they'll play at this game once too often, mark my words they will!
+There's not a man in the parish that don't deserve to be whipped.'
+
+It happened that Hardman was at that moment a little further up the
+lane, smoking his pipe behind a holly-bush.  When Latimer had done
+speaking he went on in this direction, and Hardman, hearing the
+exciseman's steps, found curiosity too strong for prudence.  He
+peeped out from the bush at the very moment that Latimer's glance
+was on it.  There was nothing left for him to do but to come forward
+with unconcern.
+
+'I've been looking for you for the last hour!' said Latimer with a
+glare in his eye.
+
+'Sorry to hear that,' said Hardman.  'I've been out for a stroll, to
+look for more hid tubs, to deliver 'em up to Gover'ment.'
+
+'O yes, Hardman, we know it,' said Latimer, with withering sarcasm.
+'We know that you'll deliver 'em up to Gover'ment.  We know that all
+the parish is helping us, and have been all day!  Now you please
+walk along with me down to your shop, and kindly let me hire ye in
+the king's name.'
+
+They went down the lane together; and presently there resounded from
+the smithy the ring of a hammer not very briskly swung.  However,
+the carts and horses were got into some sort of travelling
+condition, but it was not until after the clock had struck six, when
+the muddy roads were glistening under the horizontal light of the
+fading day.  The smuggled tubs were soon packed into the vehicles,
+and Latimer, with three of his assistants, drove slowly out of the
+village in the direction of the port of Budmouth, some considerable
+number of miles distant, the other excisemen being left to watch for
+the remainder of the cargo, which they knew to have been sunk
+somewhere between Ringsworth and Lulstead Cove, and to unearth
+Owlett, the only person clearly implicated by the discovery of the
+cave.
+
+Women and children stood at the doors as the carts, each chalked
+with the Government pitchfork, passed in the increasing twilight;
+and as they stood they looked at the confiscated property with a
+melancholy expression that told only too plainly the relation which
+they bore to the trade.
+
+'Well, Lizzy,' said Stockdale, when the crackle of the wheels had
+nearly died away.  'This is a fit finish to your adventure.  I am
+truly thankful that you have got off without suspicion, and the loss
+only of the liquor.  Will you sit down and let me talk to you?'
+
+'By and by,' she said.  'But I must go out now.'
+
+'Not to that horrid shore again?' he said blankly.
+
+'No, not there.  I am only going to see the end of this day's
+business.'
+
+He did not answer to this, and she moved towards the door slowly, as
+if waiting for him to say something more.
+
+'You don't offer to come with me,' she added at last.  'I suppose
+that's because you hate me after all this?'
+
+'Can you say it, Lizzy, when you know I only want to save you from
+such practices?  Come with you of course I will, if it is only to
+take care of you.  But why will you go out again?'
+
+'Because I cannot rest indoors.  Something is happening, and I must
+know what.  Now, come!'  And they went into the dusk together.
+
+When they reached the turnpike-road she turned to the right, and he
+soon perceived that they were following the direction of the
+excisemen and their load.  He had given her his arm, and every now
+and then she suddenly pulled it back, to signify that he was to halt
+a moment and listen.  They had walked rather quickly along the first
+quarter of a mile, and on the second or third time of standing still
+she said, 'I hear them ahead--don't you?'
+
+'Yes,' he said; 'I hear the wheels.  But what of that?'
+
+'I only want to know if they get clear away from the neighbourhood.'
+
+'Ah,' said he, a light breaking upon him.  'Something desperate is
+to be attempted!--and now I remember there was not a man about the
+village when we left.'
+
+'Hark!' she murmured.  The noise of the cartwheels had stopped, and
+given place to another sort of sound.
+
+''Tis a scuffle!' said Stockdale.  'There'll be murder!  Lizzy, let
+go my arm; I am going on.  On my conscience, I must not stay here
+and do nothing!'
+
+'There'll be no murder, and not even a broken head,' she said.  'Our
+men are thirty to four of them:  no harm will be done at all.'
+
+'Then there IS an attack!' exclaimed Stockdale; 'and you knew it was
+to be.  Why should you side with men who break the laws like this?'
+
+'Why should you side with men who take from country traders what
+they have honestly bought wi' their own money in France?' said she
+firmly.
+
+'They are not honestly bought,' said he.
+
+'They are,' she contradicted.  'I and Owlett and the others paid
+thirty shillings for every one of the tubs before they were put on
+board at Cherbourg, and if a king who is nothing to us sends his
+people to steal our property, we have a right to steal it back
+again.'
+
+Stockdale did not stop to argue the matter, but went quickly in the
+direction of the noise, Lizzy keeping at his side.  'Don't you
+interfere, will you, dear Richard?' she said anxiously, as they drew
+near.  'Don't let us go any closer:  'tis at Warm'ell Cross where
+they are seizing 'em.  You can do no good, and you may meet with a
+hard blow!'
+
+'Let us see first what is going on,' he said.  But before they had
+got much further the noise of the cartwheels began again; and
+Stockdale soon found that they were coming towards him.  In another
+minute the three carts came up, and Stockdale and Lizzy stood in the
+ditch to let them pass.
+
+Instead of being conducted by four men, as had happened when they
+went out of the village, the horses and carts were now accompanied
+by a body of from twenty to thirty, all of whom, as Stockdale
+perceived to his astonishment, had blackened faces.  Among them
+walked six or eight huge female figures, whom, from their wide
+strides, Stockdale guessed to be men in disguise.  As soon as the
+party discerned Lizzy and her companion four or five fell back, and
+when the carts had passed, came close to the pair.
+
+'There is no walking up this way for the present,' said one of the
+gaunt women, who wore curls a foot long, dangling down the sides of
+her face, in the fashion of the time.  Stockdale recognized this
+lady's voice as Owlett's.
+
+'Why not?' said Stockdale.  'This is the public highway.'
+
+'Now look here, youngster,' said Owlett.  'O, 'tis the Methodist
+parson!--what, and Mrs. Newberry!  Well, you'd better not go up that
+way, Lizzy.  They've all run off, and folks have got their own
+again.'
+
+The miller then hastened on and joined his comrades.  Stockdale and
+Lizzy also turned back.  'I wish all this hadn't been forced upon
+us,' she said regretfully.  'But if those excisemen had got off with
+the tubs, half the people in the parish would have been in want for
+the next month or two.'
+
+Stockdale was not paying much attention to her words, and he said,
+'I don't think I can go back like this.  Those four poor excisemen
+may be murdered for all I know.'
+
+'Murdered!' said Lizzy impatiently.  'We don't do murder here.'
+
+'Well, I shall go as far as Warm'ell Cross to see,' said Stockdale
+decisively; and, without wishing her safe home or anything else, the
+minister turned back.  Lizzy stood looking at him till his form was
+absorbed in the shades; and then, with sadness, she went in the
+direction of Nether-Moynton.
+
+The road was lonely, and after nightfall at this time of the year
+there was often not a passer for hours.  Stockdale pursued his way
+without hearing a sound beyond that of his own footsteps; and in due
+time he passed beneath the trees of the plantation which surrounded
+the Warm'ell Cross-road.  Before he had reached the point of
+intersection he heard voices from the thicket.
+
+'Hoi-hoi-hoi!  Help, help!'
+
+The voices were not at all feeble or despairing, but they were
+unmistakably anxious.  Stockdale had no weapon, and before plunging
+into the pitchy darkness of the plantation he pulled a stake from
+the hedge, to use in case of need.  When he got among the trees he
+shouted--'What's the matter--where are you?'
+
+'Here,' answered the voices; and, pushing through the brambles in
+that direction, he came near the objects of his search.
+
+'Why don't you come forward?' said Stockdale.
+
+'We be tied to the trees!'
+
+'Who are you?'
+
+'Poor Will Latimer the exciseman!' said one plaintively.  'Just come
+and cut these cords, there's a good man.  We were afraid nobody
+would pass by to-night.'
+
+Stockdale soon loosened them, upon which they stretched their limbs
+and stood at their ease.
+
+'The rascals!' said Latimer, getting now into a rage, though he had
+seemed quite meek when Stockdale first came up.  ''Tis the same set
+of fellows.  I know they were Moynton chaps to a man.'
+
+'But we can't swear to 'em,' said another.  'Not one of 'em spoke.'
+
+'What are you going to do?' said Stockdale.
+
+'I'd fain go back to Moynton, and have at 'em again!' said Latimer.
+
+'So would we!' said his comrades.
+
+'Fight till we die!' said Latimer.
+
+'We will, we will!' said his men.
+
+'But,' said Latimer, more frigidly, as they came out of the
+plantation, 'we don't KNOW that these chaps with black faces were
+Moynton men?  And proof is a hard thing.'
+
+'So it is,' said the rest.
+
+'And therefore we won't do nothing at all,' said Latimer, with
+complete dispassionateness.  'For my part, I'd sooner be them than
+we.  The clitches of my arms are burning like fire from the cords
+those two strapping women tied round 'em.  My opinion is, now I have
+had time to think o't, that you may serve your Gover'ment at too
+high a price.  For these two nights and days I have not had an
+hour's rest; and, please God, here's for home-along.'
+
+The other officers agreed heartily to this course; and, thanking
+Stockdale for his timely assistance, they parted from him at the
+Cross, taking themselves the western road, and Stockdale going back
+to Nether-Moynton.
+
+During that walk the minister was lost in reverie of the most
+painful kind.  As soon as he got into the house, and before entering
+his own rooms, he advanced to the door of the little back parlour in
+which Lizzy usually sat with her mother.  He found her there alone.
+Stockdale went forward, and, like a man in a dream, looked down upon
+the table that stood between him and the young woman, who had her
+bonnet and cloak still on.  As he did not speak, she looked up from
+her chair at him, with misgiving in her eye.
+
+'Where are they gone?' he then said listlessly.
+
+'Who?--I don't know.  I have seen nothing of them since.  I came
+straight in here.'
+
+'If your men can manage to get off with those tubs, it will be a
+great profit to you, I suppose?'
+
+'A share will be mine, a share my cousin Owlett's, a share to each
+of the two farmers, and a share divided amongst the men who helped
+us.'
+
+'And you still think,' he went on slowly, 'that you will not give
+this business up?'
+
+Lizzy rose, and put her hand upon his shoulder.  'Don't ask that,'
+she whispered.  'You don't know what you are asking.  I must tell
+you, though I meant not to do it.  What I make by that trade is all
+I have to keep my mother and myself with.'
+
+He was astonished.  'I did not dream of such a thing,' he said.  'I
+would rather have swept the streets, had I been you.  What is money
+compared with a clear conscience?'
+
+'My conscience is clear.  I know my mother, but the king I have
+never seen.  His dues are nothing to me.  But it is a great deal to
+me that my mother and I should live.'
+
+'Marry me, and promise to give it up.  I will keep your mother.'
+
+'It is good of you,' she said, trembling a little.  'Let me think of
+it by myself.  I would rather not answer now.'
+
+She reserved her answer till the next day, and came into his room
+with a solemn face.  'I cannot do what you wished!' she said
+passionately.  'It is too much to ask.  My whole life ha' been
+passed in this way.'  Her words and manner showed that before
+entering she had been struggling with herself in private, and that
+the contention had been strong.
+
+Stockdale turned pale, but he spoke quietly.  'Then, Lizzy, we must
+part.  I cannot go against my principles in this matter, and I
+cannot make my profession a mockery.  You know how I love you, and
+what I would do for you; but this one thing I cannot do.'
+
+'But why should you belong to that profession?' she burst out.  'I
+have got this large house; why can't you marry me, and live here
+with us, and not be a Methodist preacher any more?  I assure you,
+Richard, it is no harm, and I wish you could only see it as I do!
+We only carry it on in winter:  in summer it is never done at all.
+It stirs up one's dull life at this time o' the year, and gives
+excitement, which I have got so used to now that I should hardly
+know how to do 'ithout it.  At nights, when the wind blows, instead
+of being dull and stupid, and not noticing whether it do blow or
+not, your mind is afield, even if you are not afield yourself; and
+you are wondering how the chaps are getting on; and you walk up and
+down the room, and look out o' window, and then you go out yourself,
+and know your way about as well by night as by day, and have
+hairbreadth escapes from old Latimer and his fellows, who are too
+stupid ever to really frighten us, and only make us a bit nimble.'
+
+'He frightened you a little last night, anyhow:  and I would advise
+you to drop it before it is worse.'
+
+She shook her head.  'No, I must go on as I have begun.  I was born
+to it.  It is in my blood, and I can't be cured.  O, Richard, you
+cannot think what a hard thing you have asked, and how sharp you try
+me when you put me between this and my love for 'ee!'
+
+Stockdale was leaning with his elbow on the mantelpiece, his hands
+over his eyes.  'We ought never to have met, Lizzy,' he said.  'It
+was an ill day for us!  I little thought there was anything so
+hopeless and impossible in our engagement as this.  Well, it is too
+late now to regret consequences in this way.  I have had the
+happiness of seeing you and knowing you at least.'
+
+'You dissent from Church, and I dissent from State,' she said.  'And
+I don't see why we are not well matched.'
+
+He smiled sadly, while Lizzy remained looking down, her eyes
+beginning to overflow.
+
+That was an unhappy evening for both of them, and the days that
+followed were unhappy days.  Both she and he went mechanically about
+their employments, and his depression was marked in the village by
+more than one of his denomination with whom he came in contact.  But
+Lizzy, who passed her days indoors, was unsuspected of being the
+cause:  for it was generally understood that a quiet engagement to
+marry existed between her and her cousin Owlett, and had existed for
+some time.
+
+Thus uncertainly the week passed on; till one morning Stockdale said
+to her:  'I have had a letter, Lizzy.  I must call you that till I
+am gone.'
+
+'Gone?' said she blankly.
+
+'Yes,' he said.  'I am going from this place.  I felt it would be
+better for us both that I should not stay after what has happened.
+In fact, I couldn't stay here, and look on you from day to day,
+without becoming weak and faltering in my course.  I have just heard
+of an arrangement by which the other minister can arrive here in
+about a week; and let me go elsewhere.'
+
+That he had all this time continued so firmly fixed in his
+resolution came upon her as a grievous surprise.  'You never loved
+me!' she said bitterly.
+
+'I might say the same,' he returned; 'but I will not.  Grant me one
+favour.  Come and hear my last sermon on the day before I go.'
+
+Lizzy, who was a church-goer on Sunday mornings, frequently attended
+Stockdale's chapel in the evening with the rest of the double-
+minded; and she promised.
+
+It became known that Stockdale was going to leave, and a good many
+people outside his own sect were sorry to hear it.  The intervening
+days flew rapidly away, and on the evening of the Sunday which
+preceded the morning of his departure Lizzy sat in the chapel to
+hear him for the last time.  The little building was full to
+overflowing, and he took up the subject which all had expected, that
+of the contraband trade so extensively practised among them.  His
+hearers, in laying his words to their own hearts, did not perceive
+that they were most particularly directed against Lizzy, till the
+sermon waxed warm, and Stockdale nearly broke down with emotion.  In
+truth his own earnestness, and her sad eyes looking up at him, were
+too much for the young man's equanimity.  He hardly knew how he
+ended.  He saw Lizzy, as through a mist, turn and go away with the
+rest of the congregation; and shortly afterwards followed her home.
+
+She invited him to supper, and they sat down alone, her mother
+having, as was usual with her on Sunday nights, gone to bed early.
+
+'We will part friends, won't we?' said Lizzy, with forced gaiety,
+and never alluding to the sermon:  a reticence which rather
+disappointed him.
+
+'We will,' he said, with a forced smile on his part; and they sat
+down.
+
+It was the first meal that they had ever shared together in their
+lives, and probably the last that they would so share.  When it was
+over, and the indifferent conversation could no longer be continued,
+he arose and took her hand.  'Lizzy,' he said, 'do you say we must
+part--do you?'
+
+'You do,' she said solemnly.  'I can say no more.'
+
+'Nor I,' said he.  'If that is your answer, good-bye!'
+
+Stockdale bent over her and kissed her, and she involuntarily
+returned his kiss.  'I shall go early,' he said hurriedly.  'I shall
+not see you again.'
+
+And he did leave early.  He fancied, when stepping forth into the
+grey morning light, to mount the van which was to carry him away,
+that he saw a face between the parted curtains of Lizzy's window,
+but the light was faint, and the panes glistened with wet; so he
+could not be sure.  Stockdale mounted the vehicle, and was gone; and
+on the following Sunday the new minister preached in the chapel of
+the Moynton Wesleyans.
+
+
+One day, two years after the parting, Stockdale, now settled in a
+midland town, came into Nether-Moynton by carrier in the original
+way.  Jogging along in the van that afternoon he had put questions
+to the driver, and the answers that he received interested the
+minister deeply.  The result of them was that he went without the
+least hesitation to the door of his former lodging.  It was about
+six o'clock in the evening, and the same time of year as when he had
+left; now, too, the ground was damp and glistening, the west was
+bright, and Lizzy's snowdrops were raising their heads in the border
+under the wall.
+
+Lizzy must have caught sight of him from the window, for by the time
+that he reached the door she was there holding it open:  and then,
+as if she had not sufficiently considered her act of coming out, she
+drew herself back, saying with some constraint, 'Mr. Stockdale!'
+
+'You knew it was,' said Stockdale, taking her hand.  'I wrote to say
+I should call.'
+
+'Yes, but you did not say when,' she answered.
+
+'I did not.  I was not quite sure when my business would lead me to
+these parts.'
+
+'You only came because business brought you near?'
+
+'Well, that is the fact; but I have often thought I should like to
+come on purpose to see you . . . But what's all this that has
+happened?  I told you how it would be, Lizzy, and you would not
+listen to me.'
+
+'I would not,' she said sadly.  'But I had been brought up to that
+life; and it was second nature to me.  However, it is all over now.
+The officers have blood-money for taking a man dead or alive, and
+the trade is going to nothing.  We were hunted down like rats.'
+
+'Owlett is quite gone, I hear.'
+
+'Yes.  He is in America.  We had a dreadful struggle that last time,
+when they tried to take him.  It is a perfect miracle that he lived
+through it; and it is a wonder that I was not killed.  I was shot in
+the hand.  It was not by aim; the shot was really meant for my
+cousin; but I was behind, looking on as usual, and the bullet came
+to me.  It bled terribly, but I got home without fainting; and it
+healed after a time.  You know how he suffered?'
+
+'No,' said Stockdale.  'I only heard that he just escaped with his
+life.'
+
+'He was shot in the back; but a rib turned the ball.  He was badly
+hurt.  We would not let him be took.  The men carried him all night
+across the meads to Kingsbere, and hid him in a barn, dressing his
+wound as well as they could, till he was so far recovered as to be
+able to get about.  He had gied up his mill for some time; and at
+last he got to Bristol, and took a passage to America, and he's
+settled in Wisconsin.'
+
+'What do you think of smuggling now?' said the minister gravely.
+
+'I own that we were wrong,' said she.  'But I have suffered for it.
+I am very poor now, and my mother has been dead these twelve months
+. . . But won't you come in, Mr. Stockdale?'
+
+Stockdale went in; and it is to be supposed that they came to an
+understanding; for a fortnight later there was a sale of Lizzy's
+furniture, and after that a wedding at a chapel in a neighbouring
+town.
+
+He took her away from her old haunts to the home that he had made
+for himself in his native county, where she studied her duties as a
+minister's wife with praiseworthy assiduity.  It is said that in
+after years she wrote an excellent tract called Render unto Caesar;
+or, The Repentant Villagers, in which her own experience was
+anonymously used as the introductory story.  Stockdale got it
+printed, after making some corrections, and putting in a few
+powerful sentences of his own; and many hundreds of copies were
+distributed by the couple in the course of their married life.
+
+April 1879.
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg eText Wessex Tales
+
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