XXXVIII. MARY IN MAYFAIR…

XXXVIII. MARY IN MAYFAIR

On the night which our hero spent by the side of the river, with the results detailed in the last chapter, there was a great ball in Brook-street, Mayfair. It was the height of the season, and of course, balls, concerts, and parties of all kinds were going on in all parts of the Great Babylon, but the entertainment in question was the event of that evening. Persons behind the scenes would have told you at once, had you happened to meet them, and enquire on the subject during the previous ten days, that Brook-street was the place in which everybody who went anywhere ought to spend some hours between eleven and three on this particular evening. If you did not happen to be going there, you had better stay quietly at your club, or your home, and not speak of your engagements for that night.

A great awning had sprung up in the course of the day over the pavement in front of the door, and as the evening closed in, tired lawyers and merchants, on their return from the City, and the riders and drivers on their way home from the park, might have seen Holland's men laying red drugget over the pavement, and Gunter's carts coming and going, and the police "moving on" the street boys and servant maids, and other curious members of the masses, who paused to stare at the preparations.

Then came the lighting up of the rooms, and the blaze of pure white light from the uncurtained ballroom windows spread into the street, and the musicians passed in with their instruments. Then, after a short pause, the carriages of a few intimate friends, who came early at the hostess's express desire, began to drive up, and the Hansom cabs of the contemporaries of the eldest son, from which issued guardsmen and Foreign-office men, and other dancing-youth of the most approved description. Then the crowd collected again round the door--a sadder crowd now to the eye of anyone who has time to look at it; with sallow, haggard looking men here and there on the skirts of it, and tawdry women joking and pushing to the front, through the powdered footmen, and linkmen in red waistcoats, already clamorous and redolent of gin and beer, and scarcely kept back by the half-dozen constables of the A division, told off for the special duty of attending and keeping order on so important an occasion.

Then comes a rush of carriages, and by eleven o'clock the line stretches away half round Grosvenor Square, and moves at a foot's-pace towards the lights, and the music, and the shouting street. In the middle of the line is the comfortable chariot of our friend Mr. Porter--the corners occupied by himself and his wife, while Miss Mary sits well forward between them, her white muslin dress looped up with sprigs of heather spread delicately on either side over their knees, and herself in a pleasant tremor of impatience and excitement.

"How very slow Robert is to-day, mamma! We shall never get to the house."

"He can not get on faster, my dear. The carriage in front of us must set down you know."

"But I wish they would be quicker. I wonder whether we shall know many people? Do you think I shall get partners?"

Not waiting for her mother's reply, she went on to name some of her acquaintance who she knew would be there, and bewailing the hard fate which was keeping her out of the first dances. Mary's excitement and impatience were natural enough. The ball was not like most balls. It was a great battle in the midst of the skirmishes of the season, and she felt the greatness of the occasion.

Mr. and Mrs. Porter had for years past dropped into a quiet sort of dinner-giving life, in which they saw few but their own friends and contemporaries. They generally left London before the season was at its height, and had altogether fallen out of the ball-giving and party going world. Mary's coming out had changed their way of life. For her sake they had spent the winter at Rome, and, now that they were at home again, they were picking up the threads of old acquaintance, and encountering the disagreeables of a return into habits long disused and almost forgotten. The giver of the ball was a stirring man in political life, rich, clever, well-connected, and much sought after. He was an old school-fellow of Mr. Porter's, and their intimacy had never been wholly laid aside, notwithstanding the severance of their paths in life. Now that Mary must be taken out, the Brook-street house was one of the first to which the Porters turned, and the invitation to this ball was one of the first consequences.

If the truth must be told, neither her father nor mother were in sympathy with Mary as they gradually neared the place of setting down, and would far rather have been going to a much less imposing place, where they could have driven up at once to the door, and would not have been made uncomfortable by the shoutings of their names from servant to servant. However, after the first plunge, when they had made their bows to their kind and smiling hostess, and had passed on into the already well filled rooms, their shyness began to wear off, and they could in some sort enjoy the beauty of the sight from a quiet corner. They were not long troubled with Miss Mary. She had not been in the ball-room two minutes before the eldest son of the house had found her out and engaged her for the next waltz. They had met several times already, and were on the best terms; and the freshness and brightness of her look and manner, and the evident enjoyment of her partner, as they laughed and talked together in the intervals of the dance, soon attracted the attention of the young men, who began to ask one another, "Who is Norman dancing with?" and to ejaculate with various strength, according to their several temperaments, as to her face, and figure, and dress.

As they were returning towards Mrs. Porter, Norman was pulled by the sleeve more than once, and begged to be allowed to introduce first one and then another of his friends.

Mary gave herself up to the fascination of the scene. She had never been in rooms so perfectly lighted, with such a floor, such exquisite music, and so many pretty and well-bred looking people, and she gave herself up to enjoy it with all her heart and soul, and danced and laughed and talked herself into the good graces of partner after partner, till she began to attract the notice of some of the ill-natured people who are to be found in every room, and who cannot pardon the pure, and buoyant, and unsuspecting mirth which carries away all but themselves in its bright stream. So Mary passed on from one partner to another, with whom we have no concern, until at last a young lieutenant in the guards who had just finished his second dance with her, led up a friend whom he begged to introduce. "Miss Porter--Mr. St. Cloud;" and then after the usual preliminaries, Mary left her mother's side again and stood up by the side of her new partner.

"It is your first season I believe, Miss Porter?"

"Yes, my first in London."

"I thought so; and you have only just come to town?"

"We came back from Rome six weeks ago, and have been in town ever since."

"But I am sure I have not seen you anywhere this season until to-night. You have not been out much yet?"

"Yes, indeed. Papa and mamma are very good-natured, and go whenever we are asked to a ball, as I am fond of dancing."

"How very odd! and yet I am quite sure I should have remembered it if we had met before in town this year."

"Is it so very odd?" asked Mary, laughing; "London is a very large place; it seems very natural that two people should be able to live in it for a long time without meeting."

"Indeed, you are quite mistaken. You will find out very soon how small London is--at least how small society is, and you will get to know every face quite well--I mean the face of everyone in society."

"You must have a wonderful memory!"

"Yes, I have a good memory for faces, and, by the way, I am sure I have seen you before; but not in town, and I cannot remember where. But it is not at all necessary to have a memory to know everybody in society by sight; you meet every night almost; and altogether there are only two or three hundred faces to remember. And then there is something in the look of people, and the way they come into a room or stand about, which tells you at once whether they are amongst those whom you need trouble yourself about."

"Well, I cannot understand it. I seem to be in a whirl of faces, and can hardly ever remember any of them."

"You will soon get used to it. By the end of the season you will see that I am right. And you ought to make a study of it, or you will never feel at home in London."

"I must make good use of my time then. I suppose I ought to know everybody here, for instance?"

"Almost everybody."

"And I really do not know the names of a dozen people."

"Will you let me give you a lesson?"

"Oh, yes; I shall be much obliged."

"Then let us stand here, and we will take them as they pass to the supper-room."

So they stood near the door-way of the ball-room, and he ran on, exchanging constant nods and remarks with the passers by, as the stream flowed to and from the ices and cup, and then rattling on to his partner with the names and short sketches of the characters and peculiarities of his large acquaintance. Mary was very much amused, and had no time to notice the ill-nature of most of his remarks, and he had the wit to keep within what he considered the most innocent bounds.

"There, you know him of course," he said, as an elderly, soldier-like looking man with a star passed them.

"Yes; at least, I mean I know him by sight. I saw him at the Commemoration at Oxford last year. They gave him an honorary degree on his return from India."

"At Oxford! Were you present at the Grand Commemoration, then?"

"Yes. The Commemoration Ball was the first public ball I was ever at."

"Ah! that explains it all. I must have seen you there. I told you we had met before. I was perfectly sure of it."

"What! were you there, then?"

"Yes. I had the honor of being present at your first ball, you see."

"But how curious that you should remember me!"

"Do you really think so? Surely there are some faces which, once seen, one can never forget."

"I am so glad that you know dear Oxford."

"I know it too well, perhaps, to share your enthusiasm."

"How do you mean?"

"I spent nearly three years there."

"What, were you at Oxford last year?"

"Yes. I left before Commemoration; but I went up for the gaieties, and I am glad of it, as I shall have one pleasant memory of the place now."

"Oh, I wonder you don't love it! But what college were you of?"

"Why, you talk like a graduate. I was of St. Ambrose."

"St. Ambrose! That is my college!"

"Indeed! I wish we had been in residence at the same time."

"I mean that we almost lived there at the Commemoration."

"Have you any relation there, then?"

"No, not a relation, only a distant connexion."

"May I ask his name?"

"Brown. Did you know him?"

"Yes. We were not in the same set. He was a boating man, I think?"

She felt that he was watching her narrowly now, and had great difficulty in keeping herself reasonably composed. As it was she could not help showing a little that she felt embarrassed, and looked down; and changed colour slightly, busying herself with her bouquet. She longed to continue the conversation, but somehow the manner of her partner kept her from doing so. She resolved to recur to the subject carelessly, if they met again, when she knew him better. The fact of his having been at St. Ambrose made her wish to know him better, and gave him a good start in her favor. But for the moment she felt that she must change the subject; so, looking up, she fixed on the first people who happened to be passing, and asked who they were.

"Oh, nobody, constituents probably, or something of that sort."

"I don't understand."

"Why, you see, we are in a political house to-night. So you may set down the people whom nobody knows, as troublesome ten-pounders, or that kind of thing, who would he disagreeable at the next election, if they were not asked."

"Then you do not include them in society?"

"By no manner of means."

"And I need not take the trouble to remember their faces?"

"Of course not. There is a sediment of rubbish at almost every house. At the parties here it is political rubbish. To-morrow night, at Lady Aubrey's--you will be there, I hope?"

"No, we do not know her."

"I am sorry for that. Well, there we shall have the scientific rubbish; and at other houses you see queer artists, and writing people. In fact, it is the rarest thing in the world to get a party where there is nothing of the kind, and, after all, it is rather amusing to watch the habits of the different species."

"Well, to me the rubbish, as you call it, seems much like the rest. I am sure these people were ladies and gentlemen."

"Very likely," he said, lifting his eyebrows; "but you may see at a glance that they have not the air of society. Here again, look yourself. You can see that these are constituents."

To the horror of St. Cloud, the advancing constituents made straight for his partner.

"Mary, my dear!" exclaimed the lady, "where have you been? We have lost you ever since the last dance."

"I have been standing here, mamma," she said; and then, slipping from her late partner's arm, she made a demure little bow, and passed into the ball-room with her father and mother.

St. Cloud bit his lip, and swore at himself under his breath as he looked after them. "What an infernal idiot I must have been not to know that her people would be sure to turn out something of that sort!" thought he. "By Jove, I'll go after them, and set myself right before the little minx has time to think it over!" He took a step or two towards the ball-room, but then thought better of it, or his courage failed him. At any rate, he turned round again, and sought the refreshment-room, where he joined a knot of young gentlemen indulging in delicate little raised pies and salads, and liberal potations at iced claret or champagne cup. Amongst them was the guardsman who had introduced him to Mary, and who received him, as he came up, with--

"Well, St. Cloud, I hope you are alive to your obligations to me."

"For shunting your late partner on to me? Yes, quite."

"You be hanged!" replied the guardsman; "you may pretend what you please now, but you wouldn't let me alone till I had introduced you."

"Are you talking about the girl in white muslin with fern leaves in her hair?" asked another.

"Yes what do you think of her?"

"Devilish taking, I think. I say, can't you introduce me? They say she has tin."

"I can't say I think much of her looks," said St. Cloud, acting up to his principle of telling a lie sooner than let his real thoughts be seen.

"Don't you?" said the guardsman. "Well, I like her form better than anything out this year. Such a clean stepper! You should just dance with her."

And so they went on criticizing Mary and others of their partners, exactly as they would have talked of a stud of racers, till they found themselves sufficiently refreshed to encounter new labors, and broke up returning in twos and threes towards the ball-room.

St. Cloud attached himself to the guardsman, and returned to the charge.

"You seem hit by that girl," he began; "have you known her long?"

"About a week--I met her once before to-night."

"Do you know her people? Who is her father?"

"A plain-headed old party--you wouldn't think it to look at her--but I hear he is very solvent."

"Any sons?"

"Don't know. I like your talking of my being hit, St. Cloud. There she is; I shall go and try for another waltz."

The guardsman was successful, and carried off Mary from her father and mother, who were standing together watching the dancing. St. Cloud, after looking them well over, sought out the hostess, and begged to be introduced to Mr. and Mrs. Porter, gleaning, at the same time, some particulars of who they were. The introduction was effected in a minute, the lady of the house being glad to get anyone to talk to the Porters, who were almost strangers amongst her other guests. She managed, before leaving them, to whisper to Mrs. Porter that he was a young man of excellent connexions.

St. Cloud made the most of his time. He exerted himself to the utmost to please, and, being fluent of speech and thoroughly satisfied with himself, had no shyness or awkwardness to get over, and jumped at once into the good graces of Mary's parents. When she returned after the waltz, she found him, to her no small astonishment, deep in conversation with her mother, who was listening with a pleased expression to his small talk. He pretended not to see her at first, and then begged Mrs. Porter to introduce him formally to her daughter, though he had already had the honour of dancing with her.

Mary put on her shortest and coldest manner, and thought she had never heard of such impertinence. That he should be there talking so familiarly to her mother after the slip he had made to her was almost too much even for her temper. But she went off for another dance, and again returned and found him still there; this time entertaining Mr. Porter with political gossip. The unfavourable impression began to wear off, and she soon resolved not to make up her mind about him without some further knowledge.

In due course he asked her to dance again, and they stood in a quadrille. She stood by him looking straight before her, and perfectly silent, wondering how he would open the conversation. He did not leave her long in suspense.

"What charming people your father and mother are, Miss Porter!" he said; "I am so glad to have been introduced to them."

"Indeed! You are very kind. We ought to be flattered by your study of us, and I am sure I hope you will find it amusing."

St. Cloud was a little embarrassed by the rejoinder, and was not sorry at the moment to find himself called upon to perform the second figure. By the time he was at her side again he had recovered himself.

"You can't understand what a pleasure it is to meet some one with a little freshness"--he paused to think how he should end his sentence.

"Who has not the air of society," she suggested. "Yes, I quite understand."

"Indeed you quite mistake me. Surely you have not taken seriously the nonsense I was talking just now?"

"I am a constituent, you know--I don't understand how to take the talk of society."

"Oh, I see, then, that you are angry at my joke, and will not believe that I knew your father perfectly by sight. You really cannot seriously fancy that I was alluding to anyone connected with you;" and then he proceeded to retail the particulars he had picked up from the lady of the house, as if they had been familiar to him for years, and to launch out again into praises of her father and mother. Mary looked straight up in his face, and, though he did not meet her eye, his manner was so composed, that she began to doubt her own senses, and then he suddenly changed the subject to Oxford and the commemoration, and by the end of the set could flatter himself that he had quite dispelled the cloud which had looked so threatening.

Mary had a great success that evening. She took part in every dance, and might have had two or three partners at once, if they would have been of any use to her. When, at last, Mr. Porter insisted that he would keep his horses no longer, St. Cloud and the guardsman accompanied her to the door, and were assiduous in the cloak room. Young men are pretty much like a drove of sheep; anyone who takes a decided line in certain matters, is sure to lead all the rest.

The guardsman left the ball in the firm belief, as he himself expressed it, that Mary "had done his business for life;" and, being quite above concealment, persisted in singing her praises over his cigar at the club, to which many of the dancers adjourned; and from that night she became the fashion with the set in which St. Cloud lived.

The more enterprising of them, he amongst the foremost, were soon intimate in Mr. Porter's house, and spoke well of his dinners. Mr. Porter changed his hour of riding in the park at their suggestion, and now he and his daughter were always sure of companions. Invitations multiplied, for Mary's success was so decided, that she floated her astonished parents into a whirl of balls and breakfasts. Mr. Porter and his wife were flattered themselves, and pleased to see their daughter admired and enjoying herself; and in the next six weeks Mary had the opportunity of getting all the good and the bad which a girl of eighteen can extract from a London season.

The test was a severe one. Two months of constant excitement, of pleasure-seeking pure and simple, will not leave people just as they found them; and Mary's habits, and thoughts, and ways of looking at and judging of people and things, were much changed by the time that the gay world melted away from Mayfair and Belgravia, and it was time for all respectable people to pull down the blinds and shut the shutters of their town houses.

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XXXIX. WHAT CAME OF THE NIGHT WATCH

The last knot of the dancers came out of the club, and were strolling up St. James's Street, and stopping to chaff the itinerant coffee vendor, who was preparing his stand at the corner of Piccadilly for his early customers, just about the time that Tom was beginning to rouse himself under the alder-tree, and stretch his stiffened limbs, and sniff the morning air. By the time the guardsman had let himself into his lodgings in Mount Street, our hero had undergone his unlooked for bath, and was sitting in a state of utter bewilderment as to what was next to be said or done, dripping and disconcerted, opposite to the equally dripping and, to all appearance, equally disconcerted, poacher.

At first he did not look higher than his antagonist's boots and gaiters, and spent a few seconds by the way in considering whether the arrangement of nails on the bottom of Harry's boots was better than his own. He settled that it must be better for wading on slippery stones, and that he would adopt it, and then passed on to wonder whether Harry's boots were as full of water as his own, and whether corduroys, wet through, must not be very uncomfortable so early in the morning, and congratulated himself on being in flannels.

And so he hung back for second after second, playing with an absurd little thought that would come into his head and give him ever so brief a respite from the effort of facing the situation, and hoping that Harry might do or say something to open the ball. This did not happen. He felt that the longer he waited the harder it would be. He must begin himself. So he raised his head gently, and took a sidelong look at Harry's face, to see whether he could not get some hint for starting, from it. But scarcely had he brought his eyes to bear, when they met Harry's, peering dolefully up from under his eyebrows, on which the water was standing unwiped, while a piece of green weed, which he did not seem to have presence of mind enough to remove, trailed over his dripping locks. There was something in the sight which tickled Tom's sense of humor. He had been prepared for sullen black looks and fierce words, instead of which he was irresistibly reminded of schoolboys caught by their master using a crib, or in other like flagrant delict.

Harry lowered his eyes at once, but lifted them the next moment with a look of surprise, as he heard Tom burst into a hearty fit of laughter. After a short struggle to keep serious, he joined in it himself.

"By Jove, though, Harry, it's no laughing matter," Tom said at last, getting on to his legs, and giving himself a shake.

Harry only replied by looking most doleful again, and picking the weed out of his hair, as he too got up.

"What in the world's to be done?"

"I'm sure I don't know, Master Tom."

"I'm very much surprised to find you at this work, Harry."

"I'm sure, so be I, to find you, Master Tom."

Tom was not prepared for this line of rejoinder. It seemed to be made with perfect innocence, and yet it put him in a corner at once. He did not care to inquire into the reason of Harry's surprise, or to what work he alluded; so he went off on another tack.

"Let us walk up and down a bit to dry ourselves. Now, Harry, you'll speak to me openly, man to man, as an old friend should--won't you?"

"Ay, Master Tom, and glad to do it."

"How long have you taken to poaching?"

"Since last Michaelmas, when they turned me out o' our cottage, and tuk away my bit o' land, and did all as they could to break me down."

"Who do you mean?"

"Why, Squire Wurley as was then--not this one, but the last--and his lawyer, and Farmer Tester."

"Then it was through spite to them that you took to it?"

"Nay, 'twarn't altogether spite, tho' I won't say but what I might ha' thought o' bein' upsides wi them."

"What was it then besides spite?"

"Want o' work. I havn't had no more'n a matter o' six weeks' reg'lar work ever since last fall."

"How's that? Have you tried for it?"

"Well, Master Tom, I won't tell a lie about it. I don't see as I wur bound to go round wi my cap in my hand a beggin' for a day's work to the likes o' them. They knowed well enough as I wur there, ready and willing to work, and they knowed as I wur able to do as good a day's work as e'er man in the parish; and ther's been plenty o' work goin'. But they thought as I should starve, and have to come and beg for't from one or to'ther on 'em. They would ha' liked to ha' seen me clean broke down, that's wut they would, and in the house," and he paused as if his thoughts were getting a little unmanageable.

"But you might have gone to look for work elsewhere."

"I can't see as I had any call to leave the place where I wur bred up, Master Tom. That wur just wut they wanted. Why should I let 'em drive m'out?"

"Well, Harry, I'm not going to blame you. I only want to know more about what has been happening to you, that I may be able to advise and help you. Did you ever try for work, or go and tell your story, at the Rectory?"

"Try for work there! No, I never went arter work there."

Tom went on without noticing the change in Harry's tone and manner--

"Then I think you ought to have gone. I know my cousin, Miss Winter, is so anxious to help any man out of work, and particularly you; for--" The whole story of Patty flashed into his mind, and made him stop short and stammer, and look anywhere except at Harry. How he could have forgotten it for a moment in that company was a wonder. All his questioning and patronizing powers went out of him and he felt that their positions were changed, and that he was the culprit. It was clear that Harry knew nothing yet of his own relations with Patty. Did he even suspect them? It must all come out now at any rate, for both their sakes, however it might end. So he turned again, and met Harry's eye, which was now cold and keen, and suspicious.

"You knows all about it, then?"

"Yes; I know that you have been attached to Simon's daughter for a long time, and that he is against it; I wish I could help you, with all my heart. In fact, I did feel my way towards speaking to him about it last year, when I was in hopes of getting you the gardener's place. But I could see that I should do no good."

"I've heard say as you was acquainted with her, when she was away?"

"Yes, I was, when she was with her aunt in Oxford. What then?"

"'Twas there as she larnt her bad ways."

"Bad ways! What do you mean?"

"I means as she larnt to dress fine, and to gee herself airs to them as she'd known from a child, and as'd ha' gone through fire to please her."

"I never saw anything of the kind in her. She was a pleasant, lively girl, and dressed neatly, but never above her station. And I'm sure she has too good a heart to hurt an old friend."

"Wut made her keep shut up in the house when she cum back? ah, for days and weeks;--and arter that, wut made her so flighty and fickle? carryin' herself as proud as a lady a mincin' and a trapesin' along, wi' all the young farmer's a follerin' her, like a fine gentleman's miss."

"Come, Harry, I won't listen to that. You don't believe what you're saying, you know her better."

"You knows her well enough by all seeming."

"I know her too well to believe any harm of her."

"What call have you and the likes o' you wi' her? 'Tis no good comes o' such company keepin'."

"I tell you again, no harm has come of it to her."

"Whose hair does she carry about then in that gold thing as she hangs around her neck?"

Tom blushed scarlet, and lowered his eyes without answering.

"Dost know? 'Tis thine, by--." The words came hissing out between his set teeth. Tom put his hands behind him, expecting to be struck as he lifted his eyes, and said,--

"Yes, it is mine; and, I tell you again, no harm has come of it."

"'Tis a lie. I knowed how 'twas, and 'tis thou hast done it."

"Tom's blood tingled in his veins, and wild words rushed to his tongue, as he stood opposite the man who had just given him the lie, and who waited his reply with clinched hands, and laboring breast, and fierce eye. But the discipline of the last year stood him in good stead. He stood for a moment or two, crushing his hands together behind his back, drew a long breath, and answered,--

"Will you believe my oath, then? I stood by your side at your mother's grave. A man who did that won't lie to you, Harry. I swear to you there's no wrong between me and her. There never was fault on her side. I sought her. She never cared for me, she doesn't care for me. As for that locket, I forced it on her. I own I have wronged her, and wronged you. I have repented it bitterly. I ask your forgiveness, Harry; for the sake of old times, for the sake of your mother!" He spoke from the heart, and saw that his words went home. "Come, Harry" he went on, "you won t turn from an old playfellow, who owns the wrong he has done, and will do all he can to make up for it. You'll shake hands, and say you forgive me."

Tom paused, and held out his hand.

The poacher's face worked violently for a moment or two, and he seemed to struggle once or twice to get his hand out in vain. At last he struck it suddenly into Tom's, turning his head away at the same time. "'Tis what mother would ha' done," he said, "thou cassn't say more. There tis then, though I never thought to do't."

This curious and unexpected explanation, brought thus to a happy issue, put Tom into high spirits, and at once roused the castle-building power within him, which was always ready enough to wake up.

His first care was to persuade Harry that he had better give up poaching, and in this he had much less difficulty than he expected. Harry owned himself sick of the life he was leading already. He admitted that some of the men with whom he had been associating more or less for the last year were the greatest blackguards in the neighborhood. He asked nothing better than to get out of it. But how?

This was all Tom wanted. He would see to that; nothing could be easier.

"I shall go with you back to Englebourn this morning. I'll just leave a note for Wurley to say that I'll be back some time in the day to explain matters to him, and then we will be off at once. We shall be at the rectory by breakfast time. Ah, I forgot;--well, you can stop at David's while I go and speak to my uncle and to Miss Winter."

Harry didn't seem to see what would be the good of this; and David, he said, was not so friendly to him as he had been.

"Then you must wait at the Red Lion. Don't see the good of it! Why, of course, the good of it is that you must be set right with the Englebourn people--that's the first thing to do. I shall explain how the case stands to my uncle, and I know that I can get him to let you have your land again if you stay in the parish, even if he can't give you work himself. But what he must do is, to take you up, to show people that he is your friend, Harry. Well then, if you can get good work--mind it must be real, good, regular work--at Farmer Grove's, or one of the best farmers, stop here by all means, and I will myself take the first cottage which falls vacant and let you have it, and meantime you must lodge with old David. Oh, I'll go and talk him round, never fear. But if you can't get regular work here, why you go off with flying colors; no sneaking off under a cloud and leaving no address. You'll go off with me, as my servant, if you like. But just as you please about that. At any rate, you'll go with me, and I'll take care that it shall be known that I consider you as an old friend. My father has always got plenty of work and will take you on. And then, Harry, after a bit you may be sure all will go right, and I shall be your best man, and dance at your wedding before a year's out."

There is something in this kind of thing which is contagious and irresistible. Tom thoroughly believed all that he was saying; and faith, even of such a poor kind as believing in one's own castles, has its reward. Common sense in vain suggested to Harry that all the clouds which had been gathering round him for a year were not likely to melt away in a morning. Prudence suggested that the sooner he got away the better; which suggestion, indeed, he handed on for what it was worth. But Tom treated prudence with sublime contempt. They would go together, he said, as soon as any one was up at the house, just to let him in to change his things and write a note. Harry needn't fear any unpleasant consequences. Wurley wasn't an ill-natured fellow at bottom, and wouldn't mind a few fish. Talking of fish, where was the one he heard kicking just now as Harry hauled in the line. They went to the place, and, looking in the long grass, soon found the dead trout, still on the night-line, of which the other end remained in the water. Tom seized hold of it, and pulling it carefully in, landed landed another fine trout, while Harry stood by, looking rather sheepish. Tom inspected the method of the lines, which was simple but awfully destructive. The line was long enough to reach across the stream. At one end was a heavy stone, at the other a short stake cut sharp, and driven into the bank well under the water. At intervals of four feet along the line short pieces of fine gimp were fastened, ending in hooks baited alternately with lob-worms and gudgeon. Tom complimented his companion on the killing nature of his cross-line.

"Where are your other lines, Harry?" he asked; "we may as well go and take them up."

"A bit higher up stream, Master Tom;" and so they walked up stream and took up the other lines.

"They'll have the finest dish of fish they've seen this long time at the house to-day," said Tom, as each line came out with two or three fine thick-shouldered fish on it. "I'll you what, Harry, they're deuced well set, these lines of yours, and do you credit. They do; I'm not complimenting you."

"I should rather like to be off, Master Tom, if you don't object. The mornin's gettin' on, and the men will be about. 'Twould be unked for I to be caught."

"Well, Harry, if you are so set on it off with you, but"--

"'Tis too late now; here's keeper."

Tom turned sharp round, and, sure enough, there was the keeper coming down the bank towards them, and not a couple of hundred yards off.

"So it is," said Tom; "well, only hold your tongue, and do just what I tell you."

The keeper came up quickly, and touching his hat to Tom, looked inquiringly at him, and then at Harry. Tom nodded to him, as if everything were just as it should be. He was taking a two-pound fish off the last line; having finished which feat he threw it on the ground by the rest. "There keeper," he said, "there's a fine dish of fish. Now, pick 'em up and come along."

Never was keeper more puzzled. He looked from one to the other, lifting the little short hat from the back of his head, and scratching that somewhat thick skull of his, as his habit was when engaged in what he called thinking, conscious that somebody ought to be tackled, and that he, the keeper, was being mystified, but quite at sea as to how he was to set himself straight.

"Wet, bain't 'ee, sir?" he said at last, nodding at Tom's clothes.

"Dampish, keeper," answered Tom; "I may as well go and change, the servants will be up at the house by this time. Pick up the fish and come along. You do up the lines, Harry."

The keeper and Harry performed their tasks, looking at one another out of the corners of their eyes like the terriers of rival butchers when the carts happen to stop suddenly in the street close to one another. Tom watched them, mischievously delighted with the fun, and then led the way up to the house. When they came to the stable-yard he turned to Harry, and said, "Stop here, I shan't be ten minutes;" adding, in an undertone, "Hold your tongue now;" he then vanished through the dark door, and, hurrying up to his room, changed as quickly as he could.

He was within the ten minutes, but, as he descended the back stairs in his dry things, became aware that his stay had been too long. Noise and laughter came up from the stable-yard, and shouts of, "Go it keeper,"

"Keeper's down,"

"No he bain't," greeted his astonished ears. He sprang down the last steps and rushed into the stable-yard, where he found Harry at his second wrestling match for the day, while two or three stablemen, and a footman, and the gardener, looked on and cheered the combatants with the remarks he had heard on his way down.

Tom made straight to them, and tapping Harry on the shoulder, said--

"Now then, come along, I'm ready."

Whereupon the keeper and Harry disengaged, and the latter picked up his cap.

"You bain't goin', sir!" said the keeper.

"Yes, keeper."

"Not along wi' he?"

"Yes, keeper."

"What, bain't I to take un?"

"Take him! No, what for?"

"For night poachin', look at all them fish," said the keeper indignantly, pointing to the shining heap.

"No, no, keeper, you've nothing to do with it. You may give him the lines though, Harry. I've left a note for your master on my dressing table," Tom said, turning to the footman, "let him have it at breakfast. I'm responsible for him," nodding at Harry, "I shall be back in a few hours, and now come along."

And, to the keeper's astonishment, Tom left the stable-yard, accompanied by Harry.

They were scarcely out of hearing before the stable-yard broke out into uproarious laughter at the keeper's expense and much rude banter was inflicted on him for letting the poacher go. But the keeper's mind for the moment was full of other things. Disregarding their remarks he went on scratching his head, and burst out at last with--

"Dang un! I knows I should ha' drowed un."

"Drow your grandmother," politely remarked one of the stablemen, an acquaintance of Harry Winburn, who knew his repute as a wrestler.

"I should, I tell 'ee," said the keeper as he stooped to gather up the fish, "and to think as he should ha' gone off. Master 'll be like any wild beast when he hears on't. How s'mever, 'tis Mr. Brown's doin's. 'Tis a queer start for a gen'l'man like he to be goin' off wi' a poacher chap and callin' of un Harry. 'Tis past me altogether. But I s'pose he bain't right in's 'ead;" and, so soliloquizing, he carried off the fish to the kitchen.

Meantime, on their walk to Englebourn, Harry, in answer to Tom's inquiries, explained that in his absence the stable-man, his acquaintance, had come up and begun to talk. The keeper had joined in and accused him point-blank of being the man who had thrown him into the furze bush. The story of the keeper's discomfiture on that occasion being well known, a laugh had been raised in which Harry had joined. This brought on a challenge to try a fall then and there, which Harry had accepted, notwithstanding his long morning's work and the ducking he had had. They laughed over the story, though Harry could not help expressing his fears as to how it might all end. They reached Englebourn in time for breakfast. Tom appeared at the rectory, and soon he and Katie were on their old terms. She was delighted to find that he had had an explanation with Harry Winburn; and that there was some chance of bringing that sturdy offender once more back into decent ways;--more delighted perhaps to hear the way in which he spoke of Patty, to whom after breakfast she paid a visit, and returned in due time with the unfortunate locket.

Tom felt as if another coil of the chain he had tied about himself had fallen off. He went out into the village, consulted again with Harry, and returned again to the rectory, to consider what steps were to be taken to get him work. Katie entered into the matter heartily, though forseeing the difficulties in the case. At luncheon the rector was to be sounded on the subject of the allotments. But in the middle of their plans, they were startled by the news that a magistrate's warrant had arrived in the village for the arrest of Harry as a night poacher.

Tom returned to the Grange furious, and before night had had a worse quarrel with young Wurley than with his uncle before him. Had duelling been in fashion still in England, they would probably have fought in a quiet corner of the park before night. As it was they only said bitter things, and parted, agreeing not to know one another in the future.

Three days afterwards, at petty sessions, where Tom brought upon himself the severe censure of the bench for his conduct on the trial, Harry Winburn was committed to Reading gaol for three months.

Readers who will take the trouble to remember the picture of our hero's mental growth during the past year, attempted to be given in a late chapter, and the state of restless dissatisfaction into which his experiences and thoughts and readings had thrown him by the time long vacation had come around again, will perhaps be prepared for the catastrophe which ensued on the conviction and sentence of Harry Winburn at petty sessions.

Hitherto, notwithstanding the strength of the new and revolutionary forces which were mustering round it, there had always been a citadel holding out in his mind, garrisoned by all that was best in the Toryism in which he had been brought up--by loyalty, reverence for established order and established institutions; by family traditions, and the pride of an inherited good name. But now the walls of that citadel went down with a crash, the garrison being put to the sword, or making away, to hide in an out of the way corner, and wait for a reaction.

It was much easier for a youngster, whose attention was once turned to such subjects as had been occupying Tom, to get hold of wild and violent beliefs and notions in those days than now. The state of Europe generally was far more dead and hopeless. There were no wars, certainly, and no expectations of wars. But there was a dull, beaten-down, pent-up feeling abroad, as if the lid were screwed down on the nations, and the thing which had been, however cruel and heavy and mean, was that which was to remain to the end. England was better off than her neighbours, but yet in bad case. In the south and west particularly, several causes had combined, to spread a very bitter feeling abroad amongst the agricultural poor. First among these stood the new poor law, the provisions of which were vigorously carried out in most districts. The poor had as yet felt the harshness only of the new system. Then the land was in many places in the hands of men on their last legs, the old sporting farmers, who had begun business as young men while the great war was going on, had made their money hand over hand for a few years out of the war prices, and had tried to go on living with greyhounds and yeomanry uniforms--"horse to ride and weapon to wear"--through the hard years which had followed. These were bad masters every way, unthrifty, profligate, needy, and narrow-minded. The younger men who were supplanting them were introducing machinery, threshing machines and winnowing machines, to take the little bread which a poor man was still able to earn out of the mouths of his wife and children--so at least the poor thought and muttered to one another; and the mutterings broke out every now and then in the long nights of the winter months in blazing ricks and broken machines. Game preserving was on the increase. Australia and America had not yet become familiar words in every English village, and the labour market was everywhere overstocked; and, last but not least, the corn laws were still in force, and the bitter and exasperating strife in which they went out was at its height. And while Swing and his myrmidons were abroad in the counties, and could scarcely be kept down by yeomanry and poor law guardians, the great towns were in almost worse case. Here too emigration had not set in to thin the labour market; wages were falling, and prices rising; the corn law struggle was better understood and far keener than in the country; and Chartism was gaining force every day, and rising into a huge threatening giant, waiting to put forth his strength, and eager for the occasion which seemed at hand.

You generation of young Englishmen, who were too young then to be troubled with such matters, and have grown into manhood since, you little know--may you never know!--what it is to be living the citizens of a divided and distracted nation. For the time that danger is past. In a happy home and so far as man can judge, in time, and only just in time, came the repeal of the corn laws, and the great cause of strife and the sense of injustice passed away out of men's minds. The nation was roused by the Irish famine, and the fearful distress in other parts of the country, to begin looking steadily and seriously at some of the sores which were festering in its body, and undermining health and life. And so the tide had turned, and England had already passed the critical point; when 1848 came upon Christendom, and the whole of Europe leapt up into a wild blaze of revolution.

Is anyone still inclined to make light of the danger that threatened England in that year, to sneer at the 10th of April, and the monster petition, and the monster meetings on Kennington and other commons? Well, if there be such persons among my readers, I can only say that they can have known nothing of what was going on around them and below them, at that time, and I earnestly hope that their vision has become clearer since then, and that they are not looking with the same eyes that see nothing, at the signs of today. For that there are questions still to be solved by us in England, in this current half-century, quite as likely to tear the nation to pieces as the corn laws, no man with half an eye in his head can doubt. They may seem little clouds like a man's hand on the horizon just now, but they will darken the whole heaven before long, unless we can find wisdom enough amongst us to take the little clouds in hand in time, and make them descend in soft rain.

But such matters need not be spoken of here. All I want to do is to put my young readers in a position to understand how it was that our hero fell away into beliefs and notions, at which Mrs. Grundy and all decent people could only lift up eyes and hands in pious and respectable horror, and became, soon after the incarceration of his friend for night poaching, little better than a physical force Chartist at the age of twenty-one.

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XL. HUE AND CRY

At the end of a gusty wild October afternoon, a man, leading two horses, was marching up and down the little plot of short turf at the top of the Hawk's Lynch. Every now and then he would stop on the brow of the hill to look over the village, and seemed to be waiting for somebody from that quarter. After being well blown, he would turn to his promenade again, or go in under the clump of firs, through which the rising south-west wind, rushing up from the vale below, was beginning to make a moan; and, hitching the horses to some stump or bush, and patting and coaxing them to induce them, if so might be, to stand quiet for a while, would try to settle himself to leeward of one of the larger trees.

But the fates were against all attempts at repose. He had scarcely time to produce a cheroot from his case and light it under many difficulties, when the horses would begin fidgeting, and pulling at their bridles, and shifting round to get their tails to the wind. They clearly did not understand the necessity of the position, and were inclined to be moving stable-wards. So he had to get up again, sling the bridles over his arm, and take to his march up and down the plot of turf; now stopping for a moment or two to try to get his cheroot to burn straight, and pishing and pshawing over its perverseness; now going again and again to the brow, and looking along the road which led to the village, holding his hat on tight with one hand,--for by this time it was blowing half a gale of wind.

Though it was not yet quite the hour for his setting, the sun had disappeared behind a heavy bank of wicked slate-coloured cloud, which looked as though it were rising straight up into the western heavens, while the wind whirled along and twisted into quaint shapes a ragged rift of white vapor, which went hurrying by, almost touching the tops of the moaning firs,--altogether an uncanny evening to be keeping tryst at the top of a wild knoll; and so thought our friend with the horses, and showed it, too, clearly enough, had anyone been there to put a construction on his impatient movements.

There was no one nearer than the village, of which the nearest house was half a mile and more away; so, by way of passing the time, we must exercise our privilege of putting into words what he is half thinking, half muttering to himself:--

"A pleasant night I call this, to be out on a wild goose chase. If ever I saw a screaming storm brewing, there it comes. I'll be hanged if I stop up here to be caught in it for all the crack-brained friends I ever had in the world; and I seem to have a faculty for picking up none but crack-brained ones. I wonder what the plague can keep him so long; he must have been gone an hour. There, steady, steady, old horse. Confound this weed! What rascals these tobacconists are! You never can get a cheroot now worth smoking. Every one of them goes sputtering up the side, or charring up the middle, and tasting like tow soaked in saltpetre and tobacco juice. Well, I suppose I shall get the real thing in India."

"India! In a month from to-day we shall be off. To hear our senior major talk, one might as well be going to the bottomless pit at once. Well, he'll sell out--that's a comfort. Gives us a step, and gets rid of an old ruffian. I don't seem to care much what the place is like if we only get some work; and there will be some work there before long, by all accounts. No more garrison-town life, at any rate. And if I have any luck--a man may get a chance there."

"What the deuce can he be about? This all comes of sentiment, now. Why couldn't I go quietly off to India without bothering up to Oxford to see him? Not but what it's a pleasant place enough. I've enjoyed my three days there uncommonly. Food and drink all that can be wished, and plenty of good fellows and fun. The look of the place, too, makes one feel respectable. But, by George, if their divinity is at all like their politics, they must turn out a queer set of parsons--at least if Brown picked up his precious notions at Oxford. He always was a headstrong beggar. What was it he was holding forth about last night? Let's see. 'The sacred right of insurrection.' Yes, that was it, and he talked as if he believed it all too; and if there should be a row, which don't seem unlikely, by Jove, I think he'd act on it, in the sort of temper he's in. How about the sacred right of getting hung or transported? I shouldn't wonder to hear of that some day. Gad! suppose he should be in for an installment of his sacred right to-night. He's capable of it, and of lugging me in with him. What did he say we were come here for? To get some fellow out of a scrape, he said--some sort of poaching radical foster-brother of his, who had been in gaol, and deserved it too, I'll be bound. And he couldn't go down quietly into the village and put up at the public, where I might have set in the tap, and not run the chance of having my skin blown over my ears, and my teeth down my throat, on this cursed look-out place, because he's too well known there. What does that mean? Upon my soul, it looks bad. They may be lynching a J. P. down there, or making a spread eagle of the parish constable at this minute, for anything I know, and as sure as fate, if they are, I shall get my foot in it."

"It will read sweetly in the naval and military intelligence--'A court-martial was held this day at Chatham, president, Colonel Smith, of Her Majesty's 101st Regiment, to try Henry East, a lieutenant in the same distinguished corps, who has been under arrest since the 10th ult., for aiding and abetting the escape of a convict, and taking part in a riot in the village of Englebourn, in the county of Berks. The defense of the accused was that he had a sentimental friendship for a certain Thomas Brown, an undergraduate of St. Ambrose College, Oxford, &c. &c.; and the sentence of the Court--'

"Hang it! It's no laughing matter. Many a fellow has been broken for not making half such a fool of himself as I have done, coming out here on this errand. I'll tell T. B. a bit of my mind as sure as--

"Hullo! didn't I hear a shout? Only the wind, I believe. How it does blow! One of these firs will be down, I expect, just now. The storm will burst in a quarter of an hour. Here goes! I shall ride down into the village, let what will come of it. Steady now--steady. Stand still you old fool; can't you?"

"There, now I'm all right. Solomon said something about a beggar on horseback. Was is Solomon, though? Never mind. He couldn't ride. Never had a horse till he was grown up. But he said some uncommon wise things about having to do with such friends as T. B. So, Harry East, if you please, no more tomfoolery after to-day. You've got a whole skin, and a lieutenant's commission to make your way in the world with, and are troubled with no particular crotchets yourself that need ever get you into trouble. So just you keep clear of other people's. And if your friends must be mending the world, and poor men's plastering, and running their heads against stone walls, why, just you let go of their coat tails."

So muttering and meditating, Harry East paused a moment after mounting, to turn up the collar of the rough shooting-coat which he was wearing, and button it up to the chin, before riding down the hill, when, in the hurly-burly of the wind, a shout came spinning past his ears, plain enough this time; he heard the gate at the end of Englebourn lane down below him shut with a clang, and saw two men running at full speed towards him, straight up the hill.

"Oh! here you are at last," he said, as he watched them. "Well, you don't lose your time now. Somebody must be after them. What's he shouting and waving his hand for? Oh, I'm to bring the cavalry supports down the slope, I suppose. Well, here goes; he has brought off his pal the convict I see--

Says he, you've 'scaped from transportation All upon the briny main; So never give way to no temptation, And don't get drunk nor prig again!

There goes the gate again. By Jove, what's that? Dragoons, as I'm a sinner! There's going to be the d-----st bear-fight."

Saying which, Harry East dug his heels into his horse's sides, holding him up sharply with the curb at the same time, and in another moment, was at the bottom of the solitary mound on which he had been perched for the last hour, and on the brow of the line of hill out of which it rose so abruptly, just at the point for which the two runners were making. He had only time to glance at the pursuers, and saw that one or two rode straight on the track of the fugitives, while the rest skirted away along a parish road which led up the hill side by an easier ascent, when Tom and his companion were by his side. Tom seized the bridle of the led horse, and was in the saddle with one spring.

"Jump up behind," he shouted; "now, then, come along."

"Who are they?" roared East,--in that wind nothing but a shout could be heard,--pointing over his shoulder with his thumb as they turned to the heath.

"Yeomanry."

"After you?"

Tom nodded, as they broke into a gallop, making straight across the heath towards the Oxford road. They were some quarter of a mile in advance before any of their pursuers showed over the brow of the hill behind them. It was already getting dusk, and the great bank of cloud was by this time all but upon them, making the atmosphere denser and darker every second. Then, first one of the men appeared who had ridden straight up the hill under the Hawk's Lynch, and, pulling up for a moment, caught sight of them and gave chase. Half a minute later, and several of those who had kept to the road were also in sight, some distance away on the left, but still near enough to be unpleasant; and they too after a moment's pause, were in full pursuit. At first the fugitives held their own, and the distance between them and their pursuers was not lessened; but it was clear that this could not last. Anything that horse-flesh is capable of, a real good Oxford hack, such as they rode, will do; but to carry two full-grown men at the end of a pretty long day, away from fresh horses and moderate weights, is too much to expect even of Oxford horse-flesh; and the gallant beast which Tom rode was beginning to show signs of distress when they struck into the road. There was a slight dip in the ground a this place, and a little further on the heath rose suddenly again, and the road ran between high banks for a short distance.

As they reached this point they disappeared for the moment from the yeomanry, and the force of the wind was broken by the banks, so that they could breathe more easily, and hear one another's voices.

Tom looked anxiously round at the lieutenant, who shrugged his shoulders in answer to the look, as he bent forward to ease his own horse, and said--

"Can't last another mile."

"What's to be done?"

East again shrugged his shoulders, but said nothing.

"I know, Master Tom," said Harry Winburn.

"What?"

"Pull up a bit, sir."

Tom pulled up, and his horse fell into a walk willingly enough, while East passed on a few strides ahead. Harry Winburn sprang off.

"You ride on now, Master Tom," he said, "I knows the heath well; you let me bide."

"No, no, Harry, not I. I won't leave you now, so let them come, and be hanged."

East had pulled up, and listened to their talk.

"Look here, now," he said to Harry; "put your arm over the hind part of his saddle, and run by the side; you'll find you can go as fast as the horse. Now, you two push on, and strike across the heath. I'll keep the road, and take off this joker behind, who is the only dangerous customer."

"That's like you, old boy," said Tom, "then we'll meet at the first public beyond the heath." They passed ahead in their turn, and turned on to the heath, Harry running by the side, as the lieutenant had advised.

East looked after them, and then put his horse into a steady trot, muttering,

"Like me! yes, devilish like me; I know that well enough. Didn't I always play cat's-paw to his monkey at school? But that convict don't seem such a bad lot after all."

Meantime, Tom and Harry struck away over the heath, as the darkness closed in, and the storm drove down. They stumbled on over the charred furze roots, and splashed through the sloppy peat cuttings, casting anxious, hasty looks over their shoulders as they fled, straining every nerve to get on, and longing for night and the storm.

"Hark! wasn't that a pistol-shot?" said Tom, as they floundered on. The sound came from the road they had left.

"Look, here's some on 'em, then," said Harry; and Tom was aware of two horsemen coming over the brow of the hill on their left, some three hundred yards to the rear. At the same instant his horse stumbled, and came down on his nose and knees. Tom went off over his shoulder, tumbling against Harry, and sending him headlong to the ground, but keeping hold of the bridle. They were up again in a moment.

"Are you hurt?"

"No."

"Come along, then," and Tom was in the saddle again, when the pursuers raised a shout. They had caught sight of them now, and spurred down the slope towards them. Tom was turning his horse's head straight away, but Harry shouted,--

"Keep to the left, Master Tom,--to the left, right on."

It seemed like running into the lion's jaws, but he yielded, and they pushed on down the slope on which they were. Another shout of triumph rose on the howling wind; Tom's heart sank within him. The enemy was closing on them at every stride; another hundred yards, and they must meet at the bottom of the slope. What could Harry be dreaming of? The thought had scarcely time to cross his brain, when down went the two yeomen, horse and man, floundering in a bog above their horses' girths. At the same moment the storm burst on them, the driving mist and pelting rain. The chase was over. They could not have seen a regiment of men at fifty yards' distance.

"You let me lead the horse, Master Tom," shouted Harry Winburn; "I knowed where they was going; 'twill take they the best part o' the night to get out o' that, I knows."

"All right, let's get back to the road, then, as soon as we can," said Tom, surrendering his horse's head to Harry, and turning up his collar, to meet the pitiless deluge which was driving on their flanks. They were drenched to the skin in two minutes; Tom jumped off, and plodded along on the opposite side of his horse to Harry. They did not speak; there was very little to be said under the circumstances, and a great deal to be thought about.

Harry Winburn probably knew the heath as well as any man living, but even he had much difficulty in finding his way back to the road through that storm. However, after some half-hour, spent in beating about, they reached it, and turned their faces northwards towards Oxford. By this time night had come on; but the fury of the storm had passed over them, and the moon began to show every now and then through the driving clouds. At last Tom roused himself out of the brown study in which he had been hitherto plodding along, and turned down his coat collar, and shook himself, and looked up at the sky, and across at his companion, who was still leading the horse along mechanically. It was too dark to see his face, but his walk and general look were listless and dogged; at last Tom broke silence.

"You promised not to do anything, after you came out, without speaking to me." Harry made no reply; so presently he went on:--

"I didn't think you'd have gone in for such a business as that to-night. I shouldn't have minded so much if it had only been machine-breaking; but robbing the cellar and staving in the ale casks and maiming cattle--"

"I'd no hand in that," interrupted Harry.

"I'm glad to hear it. You were certainly leaning against the gate when I came up, and taking no part in it; but you were one of the leaders of the riot."

"He brought it on hisself," said Harry, doggedly. "Tester is a bad man, I know that; and the people have much to complain of: but nothing can justify what was done to-night." Harry made no answer.

"You're known, and they'll be after you the first thing in the morning. I don't know what's to be done."

"'Tis very little odds what happens to me."

"You've no right to say that, Harry. Your friends--"

"I ain't got no friends."

"Well, Harry, I don't think you ought to say that after what has happened to-night. I don't mean to say that my friendship has done you much good yet; but I've done what I could, and--"

"So you hev', Master Tom, so you hev'."

"And I'll stick by you through thick and thin, Harry. But you must take heart and stick by yourself, or we shall never pull you through." Harry groaned, and then, turning at once to what was always uppermost in his mind, said,--

"'Tis no good, now I've been in gaol. Her father wur allus agin me. And now, how be I ever to hold up my head at whoam? I seen her once arter I came out."

"Well, and what happened?" said Tom, after waiting a moment or two.

"She just turned red and pale, and was all flustered like, and made as though she'd have held out her hand; and then tuk and hurried off like a frightened hare, as though she heerd somebody comin'. Ah! 'tis no good! 'tis no good!"

"I don't see anything very hopeless in that," said Tom.

"I've knowed her since she wur that high," went on Harry, holding out his hand about as high as the bottom of his waistcoat, without noticing the interruption, "when her and I went gleanin' together. 'Tis what I've thought on, and lived for. 'Tis four year and better since she and I broke a sixpence auver't. And at times it sim'd as tho' 'twould all cum right, when my poor mother wur livin', tho' her never tuk to it kindly, mother didn't. But 'tis all gone now! and I be that mad wi' myself, and mammered, and down, I be ready to hang myself, Master Tom; and if they just teks and transports me--"

"Oh, nonsense, Harry! You must keep out of that. We shall think of some way to get you out of that before morning. And you must get clear away, and go to work on the railways or somewhere. There's nothing to be downhearted about as far as Patty is concerned."

"Ah! 'tis they as wears it as knows where the shoe pinches. You'd say different if 'twas you, Master Tom."

"Should I?" said Tom; and, after pausing a moment or two, he went on. "What I'm going to say is in confidence. I've never told it to any man yet, and only one has found it out. Now, Harry, I'm much worse off than you are at this minute. Don't I know where the shoe pinches! Why I haven't seen--I've scarcely heard of--of--well, of my sweetheart--there, you'll understand that--for this year and more. I don't know when I may see her again. I don't know that she hasn't clean forgotten me. I don't know that she ever cared a straw for me. Now you know quite well that you are better off than that."

"I bean't so sure o' that, Master Tom. But I be terrible vexed to hear about you."

"Never mind about me. You say you're not sure, Harry. Come, now, you said, not two minutes ago, that you two had broken a sixpence over it. What does that mean, now?"

"Ah! but 'tis four years gone. Her's been a leadin' o' me up and down, and a dancin' o' me round and round purty nigh ever since, let alone the time as she wur at Oxford, when--"

"Well, we won't talk of that, Harry. Come, will yesterday do for you? If you thought she was all right yesterday, would that satisfy you?"

"Ees; and summat to spare."

"You don't believe it, I see. Well, why do you think I came after you to-night? How did I know what was going on?"

"That's just what I've been a-axin' o' myself as we cum along."

"Well, then, I'll tell you. I came because I got a note from her yesterday at Oxford." Tom paused, for he heard a muttered growl from the other side of the horse's head, and could see, even in the fitful moonlight, the angry toss of the head with which his news was received, "I didn't expect this, Harry," he went on presently, "after what I told you just now about myself, it was a hard matter to tell it at all; but, after telling you, I didn't think you'd suspect me any more. However, perhaps I've deserved it. So, to go on with what I was saying, two years ago, when I came to my senses about her, and before I cared for anyone else, I told her to write if ever I could do her a service. Anything that a man could do for his sister I was bound to do for her, and I told her so. She never answered till yesterday, when I got this note," and he dived into the inner breast pocket of his shooting. coat. "If it isn't soaked to pulp, it's in my pocket now. Yes, here it is," and he produced a dirty piece of paper, and handed it across to his companion. "When there's light enough to read it, you'll see plain enough what she means, though your name is not mentioned."

Having finished his statement, Tom retired into himself, and walked along watching the hurrying clouds. After they had gone some hundred yards, Harry cleared his throat once or twice, and at last broke out,--

"Master Tom."

"Well."

"You bean't offended wi' me, sir, I hopes?"

"No, why should I be offended?"

"'Cause I knows I be so all-fired jealous, I can't a'bear to hear o' her talkin', let alone writin' to--"

"Out with it. To me, you were going to say."

"Nay, 'tis mwore nor that."

"All right, Harry, if you only lump me with the rest of mankind, I don't care. But you needn't be jealous of me, and you mustn't be jealous of me, or I sha'n't be able to help you as I want to do. I'll give you my hand and word on it as man to man, there's no thought in my heart towards her that you mightn't see this minute. Do you believe me?"

"Ees; and you'll forgive--"

"There's nothing to forgive, Harry. But now you'll allow your case isn't such a bad one. She must keep a good lookout after you to know what you were likely to be about to-day. And if she didn't care for you, she wouldn't have written to me. That's good sense, I think."

Harry assented, and then Tom went into a consideration of what was to be done, and, as usual, fair castles began to rise in the air. Harry was to start down the line at once, and take work on the railway. In a few weeks he would be captain of a gang, and then what was to hinder his becoming a contractor, and making his fortune, and buying a farm of his own at Englebourn? To all which Harry listened with open ears till they got off the heath, and came upon a small hamlet of some half-dozen cottages scattered along the road.

"There's a public here, I suppose," said Tom, returning to the damp realities of life. Harry indicated the humble place of entertainment for man and horse.

"That's all right. I hope we shall find my friend here;" and they went towards the light which was shining temptingly through the latticed window of the road-side inn.

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XLI. THE LIEUTENANT'S SENTIMENTS AND PROBLEMS

"Stop! It looks so bright that there must be something going on. Surely the yeomanry can never have come on here already?"

Tom laid his hand on the bridle, and they halted on the road opposite the public-house, which lay a little back, with an open space of ground before it. The sign-post, and a long water-trough for the horses of guests to drink at, were pushed forward to the side of road to intimate the whereabouts of the house, and the hack which Harry led was already drinking eagerly.

"Stay here for a minute, and I'll go to the window, and see what's up inside. It's very unlucky, but it will never do for us to go in if there are any people there."

Tom stole softly up to the window out of which the light came. A little scrap of a curtain was drawn across a portion of it, but he could see easily into the room on either side of the curtain. The first glance comforted him, for he saw at once that there was only one person in the kitchen; but who and what he might be was a puzzle. The only thing which was clear at a first glance was, that he was making himself at home.

The room was a moderate-sized kitchen, with a sanded floor, and a large fire-place; a high wooden screen, with a narrow seat in front of it, ran along the side on which the door from the entrance-passage opened. In the middle there was a long rough walnut table, on which stood a large loaf, some cold bacon and cheese, and a yellow jug; a few heavy rush-bottomed chairs and a settle composed the rest of the furniture. On the wall were a few samplers, a warming pan, and shelves with some common delf plates, and cups and saucers. But though the furniture was meagre enough, the kitchen had a look of wondrous comfort for a drenched mortal outside. Tom felt this keenly, and, after a glance round, fixed his attention on the happy occupant, with the view of ascertaining whether he would be a safe person to intrude on under the circumstances. He was seated on a low, three-cornered oak seat, with his back to the window, steadying a furze fagot on the fire with the poker. The fagot blazed and crackled, and roared up the chimney, sending out the bright flickering light which had attracted them, and forming a glorious top to the glowing clear fire of wood embers beneath, into which was inserted a long, funnel-shaped tin, out of which the figure helped himself to some warm compound, when he had settled the fagot to his satisfaction. He was enveloped as to his shoulders in a heavy, dirty-white coat, with huge cape and high collar, which hid the back of his head, such as was then in use by country carriers; but the garment was much too short for him, and his bare arms came out a foot beyond the end of the sleeves. The rest of his costume was even more eccentric, being nothing more or less than a coarse flannel petticoat, and his bare feet rested on the mat in front of the fire.

Tom felt a sudden doubt as to his sanity, which doubt was apparently shared by the widow woman, who kept the house, and her maid-of-all-work, one or other of whom might be seen constantly keeping an eye on their guest from behind the end of the wooden screen. However, it was no time to be over particular; they must rest before going further, and, after all, it was only one man. So Tom thought, and was just on the point of calling Harry to come on, when the figure turned round towards the window, and the face of the lieutenant disclosed itself between the high-peaked gills of the carrier's coat. Tom burst out into a loud laugh, and called out,--

"It's all right, come along."

"I'll just look to the hosses, Master Tom."

"Very well, and then come into the kitchen;" saying which, he hurried into the house, and after tumbling against the maid-of-all-work in the passage, emerged from behind the screen.

"Well, here we are at last, old fellow," he said, slapping East on the shoulder.

"Oh, it's you, is it? I thought you were in the lock-up by this time."

East's costume, as he sat looking up, with a hand on each knee, was even more ridiculous on a close inspection, and Tom roared with laughter again.

"I don't see the joke," said East without moving a muscle.

"You would, though, if you could see yourself. You wonderful old Guy, where did you pick up that toggery?"

"The late lamented husband of the widow Higgs, our landlady, was the owner of the coat. He also bequeathed to her several pairs of breeches, which I have vainly endeavored to get into. The late lamented Higgs was an abominably small man. He must have been very much her worse half. So, in default of other clothing, the widow has kindly obliged me by the loan of one of her own garments."

"Where are your own clothes?"

"There," said East, pointing to a clothes' horse, which Tom had not hitherto remarked, which stood well into the chimney corner; "and they are dry, too," he went on, feeling them; "at least the flannel shirt and trousers are, so I'll get into them again."

"I say, ma'am," he called out, addressing the screen, "I'm going to change my things. So you had better not look in just now. In fact, we can call now, if we want anything."

At this strong hint the widow Higgs was heard bustling away behind the screen, and after her departure East got into some of his own clothes again, offering the cast-off garments of the Higgs family to Tom, who, however, declined, contenting himself with taking off his coat and waistcoat, and hanging them upon the horse. He had been blown comparatively dry in the last half-hour of his walk.

While East was making his toilet, Tom turned to the table, and made an assault on the bread and bacon, and then poured himself out a glass of beer and began to drink it, but was pulled up half way, and put it down with a face all drawn up into puckers by its sharpness.

"I thought you wouldn't appreciate the widow's tap," said East, watching him with a grin. "Regular whistle-belly vengeance, and no mistake! Here, I don't mind giving you some of my compound, though you don't deserve it."

So Tom drew his chair to the fire, and smacked his lips over the long-necked glass, which East handed to him.

"Ah! that's not bad tipple after such a ducking as we've had. Dog's-nose, isn't it?"

East nodded.

"Well, old fellow, I will say you are the best hand I know at making the most of your opportunities. I don't know of anyone else who could have made such a good brew out of that stuff and a drop of gin."

East was not to be mollified by any such compliment. "Have you got many more such jobs as to-day's on hand? I should think they must interfere with reading."

"No. But I call to-day's a real good job."

"Do you? I don't agree. Of course it's a matter of taste. I have the honor of holding Her Majesty's commission; so I may be prejudiced, perhaps."

"What difference does it make whose commission you hold? You wouldn't hold any commission, I know, which would bind you to be a tyrant and oppress the weak and the poor."

"Humbug about your oppressing! Who is the tyrant, I should like to know, the farmer, or the mob that destroys his property? I don't call Swing's mob the weak and the poor."

"That's all very well; but I should like to know how you'd feel if you had no work and a starving family. You don't know what people have to suffer. The only wonder is that all the country isn't in a blaze; and it will be if things last as they are much longer. It must be a bad time which makes such men as Harry Winburn into rioters."

"I don't know anything about Harry Winburn. But I know there's a good deal to be said on the yeomanry side of the question."

"Well, now, East, just consider this-"

"No, I'm not in the humour for considering. I don't want to argue with you."

"Yes, that's always the way. You won't hear what a fellow's got to say, and then set him down for a mischievous fool, because he won't give up beliefs founded on the evidence of his own eyes, and ears, and reason."

"I don't quarrel with any of your beliefs. You've got 'em--I haven't--that's just the difference between us. You've got some sort of faith to fall back upon, in equality, and brotherhood, and a lot of cursed nonsense of that kind. So, I daresay, you could drop down into a navigator, or a shoeblack, or something in that way, to-morrow, and think it pleasant. You might rather enjoy a trip across the water at the expense of your country, like your friend the convict here."

"Don't talk such rot, man. In the first place, he isn't a convict; you know that well enough."

"He is just out of prison, at any rate. However, this sort of thing isn't my line of country at all. So the next time you want to do a bit of gaol delivery on your own hook, don't ask me to help you."

"Well, if I had known all that was going to happen, I wouldn't have asked you to come, old fellow. Come, give us another glass of your dog's-nose, and no more of your sermon, which isn't edifying."

The lieutenant filled the long-necked glass which Tom held out, with the creaming mixture, which he was nursing in the funnel-shaped tin. But he was not prepared to waive his right to lecture, and so continued, while Tom sipped his liquor with much relish, and looked comically across at his old schoolfellow.

"Some fellows have a call to set the world right--I haven't. My gracious sovereign pays me seven and sixpence a day; for which sum I undertake to be shot at on certain occasions and by proper persons, and I hope when the time comes I shall take it as well as another. But that doesn't include turning out to be potted at like a woodcock on your confounded Berkshire wilds by a turnip-headed yeoman. It isn't to be done at the figure."

"What in the world do you mean?"

"I mean just what I say."

"That one of those unspeakable yeomanry has been shooting at you?"

"Just so."

"No, you don't really mean it? Wh-e-e-w! Then that shot we heard was fired at you. 'Pon my honor, I'm very sorry."

"Much good your sorrow would have done me if your precious countryman had held straight."

"Well, what can I say more, East? If there's anything I can do to show you that I really am very sorry and ashamed at having brought you into such a scrape, only tell me what it is."

"I don't suppose your word would go for much at the Horse Guards, or I'd ask you to give me a character for coolness under fire."

"Come, I see you're joking now, old fellow. Do tell us how it happened."

"Well, when you turned off across the common, I pulled up for half a minute, and then held on at a steady slow trot. If I had pushed on ahead, my friend behind would have been just as likely to turn after you as after me. Presently I heard Number One coming tearing along behind; and as soon as he got from between the banks, he saw me and came straight after me down the road. You were well away to the left, so now I just clapped on a bit, to lead him further away from the right scent, and on he came, whooping and hallooing to me to pull up. I didn't see why I hadn't just as good a right to ride along the road at my own pace as he; so the more he shouted, the more I didn't stop. But the beggar had the legs of me. He was mounted on something deuced like a thoroughbred, and gained on me hand over hand. At last when I judged he must be about twenty yards behind, I thought I might as well have a look at him, so I just turned for a moment, when, by Jove, there was my lord, lugging a pistol out of his right holster. He shouted again to me to stop. I turned, ducked my head, and the next moment he pulled trigger, and missed me."

"And what happened then," said Tom, eagerly drawing a long breath.

"Why, I flatter myself I showed considerable generalship. If I had given him time to get at his other pistol, or his toasting fork, it was all up. I dived into my pocket, where by good luck there was some loose powder, and copper caps, and a snuff-box; upset the snuff, grabbed a handful of the mixture, and pulled hard at my horse. Next moment he was by my side, lifting his pistol to knock me over. So I gave him the mixture right in the face, and let him go by. Up went both his hands, and away went he and his horse, somewhere over the common out of sight. I just turned round, and walked quietly back. I didn't see the fun of accepting any more attacks in the rear. Then up rides Number Two, a broad-faced young farmer on a big gray horse, blowing like a grampus. He pulled up short when we met, and stared, and I walked past him. You never saw a fellow look more puzzled. I had regularly stale-mated him. However, he took heart, and shouted, 'had I met the Captain?' I said, 'A gentleman had ridden by on a bright bay.' 'That was he; which way had he gone?' So I pointed generally over the common, and Number Two departed; and then down came the storm, and I turned again, and came on here."

"The Captain! It must have been Wurley, then, who fired at you."

"I don't know who it was. I only hope he won't be blinded."

"It's a strange business altogether," said Tom, looking into the fire; "I scarcely know what to think of it. We should never have pulled through but for you, that's certain."

"I know what to think of it well enough," said East. "But now let's hear what happened to you. They didn't catch you, of course?"

"No, but it was touch and go. I thought it was all up at one time, for Harry would turn right across their line. But he knew what he was about; there was a bog between us, and they came on right into it, and we left them floundering."

"The convict seems to have his head about him, then. Where is he, by the way? I'm curious to have a look at him."

"Looking after the horses. I'll call him in. He ought have something to drink."

Tom went to the door and called Harry, who came out from the rough shed which served as a stable, in his shirt, with a wisp of hay in his hand. He had stripped off coat, and waistcoat, and braces, and had been warming himself by giving the horses a good dressing.

"Why, Harry, you haven't had anything," said Tom; "come across and have a glass of something hot."

Harry followed into the kitchen, and stood by the end of the screen, looking rather uncomfortable, while Tom poured him out a glass of the hot mixture, and the lieutenant looked him over with keen eyes.

"There, take that off. How are the horses?"

"Pretty fresh, Master Tom; but they'd be the better of a bran mash, or somethin' cumfable. I've spoke to the missus about it, and 'tis ready to put on the fire."

"That's right then. Let them have it as quick as you can."

"Then I med fetch it and warm it up here, sir?" said Harry.

"To be sure; the sooner the better."

Harry took off his glass, making a shy sort of duck with his head, accompanied by "your health, sir," to each of his entertainers, and then disappeared into the back kitchen, returned with the mash, which he put on the fire, and went off to the stable again.

"What do you think of him?" said Tom.

"I like to see a fellow let his braces down when he goes to work," said East.

"It's not every fellow who would be strapping away at those horses, instead of making himself at home in the back kitchen."

"No, it isn't," said East.

"Don't you like his looks now?"

"He's not a bad sort, your convict."

"I say, I wish you wouldn't call him names."

"Very good; your unfortunate friend, then. What are you going to do with him?"

"That's just what I've been puzzling about all the way here. What do you think?" And then they drew to the fire again, and began to talk over Harry's prospects. In some ten minutes he returned to the kitchen for the mash, and this time drew a complimentary remark from the lieutenant.

Harry was passionately fond of animals, and especially of horses, and they found it out quickly enough as they always do. The two hacks were by this time almost fresh again, with dry coats, and feet well washed and cleansed; and while working at them, Harry had been thinking over all he had heard that evening, and what with the work and what with his thoughts, found himself getting more hopeful every minute. No one who had seen his face an hour before on the heath would have believed it was the same man who was now patting and fondling the two hacks as they disposed of the mash he had prepared for them. He leant back against the manger, rubbing the ears of Tom's hack--the one which had carried double so well in their first flight--gently with his two hands, while the delighted beast bent down its head, and pressed it against him, and stretched its neck, expressing in all manner of silent ways its equine astonishment and satisfaction. By the light of the single dip, Harry's face grew shorter and shorter, until at last, a quiet humorous look began to creep back into it.

As we have already taken the liberty of putting the thoughts of his betters into words, we must now do so for him; and, if he had expressed his thoughts in his own vernacular as he rubbed the hack's ears in the stable, his speech would have been much as follows:--

"How cums it as I be all changed like, as tho' sum un had tuk and rubbed all the downheartedness out o' me? Here I be, two days out o' gaol, wi' nothin' in the world but the things I stands in,--for in course I med just give up the bits o' things as is left at Daddy Collins's--and they all draggled wi' the wet--and I med be tuk in the mornin' and sent across the water; and yet I feels sum how as peert as a yukkel. So fur as I can see, 'tis jest nothin' but talkin' wi' our Master Tom. What a fine thing 'tis to be a schollard. And yet seemin'ly 'tis nothin' but talk arter all's said and done. But 'tis allus the same; whenever I gets talkin' wi' he, it all cums out as smooth as crame. Fust time as ever I seen him since we wur bwys he talked just as a do now; and then my poor mother died. Then he come in arter the funeral, and talked me up agen, till I thought as I wur to hev our cottage and all the land as I could do good by. But our cottage wur tuk away, and my 'lotment besides. Then cum last summer, and 'twur just the same agen arter his talk, but I got dree months auver that job. And now 'ere I be wi un agen, a-runnin' from the constable; and like to be tuk up and transpworted, and 'tis just the same; and I s'pose 'twill be just the same if ever I gets back, and sees un, and talks wi' un, if I be gwine to be hung. 'Tis a wunnerful thing to be a schollard, to be able to make things look all straight when they be ever so akkerd and unked."

And then Harry left off rubbing the horse's ears; and, pulling the damp piece of paper, which Tom had given him, out of his breeches' pocket, proceeded to flatten it out tenderly on the palm of his hand, and read it by the light of the dip, when the landlady came to inform him that the gentlefolk wanted him in the kitchen. So he folded his treasure up again, and went off to the kitchen. He found Tom standing with his back to the fire, while the lieutenant was sitting at the table, writing on a scrap of paper, which the landlady had produced after much hunting over of drawers. Tom began, with some little hesitation:--

"Oh, Harry, I've been talking matters over with my friend here, and I've changed my mind. It won't do after all for you to stay about at railway work, or anything of that sort. You see you wouldn't be safe. They'd be sure to trace you, and you'd get into trouble about this day's work. And then, after all, it's a very poor opening for a young fellow like you. Now, why shouldn't you enlist into Mr. East's regiment? You'll be in his company, and it's a splendid profession. What do you say now?"

East looked up at poor Harry, who was quite taken aback at this change in his prospects, and could only mutter, that he had never turned his mind to "sodgerin."

"It's just the thing for you," Tom went on. "You can write and keep accounts, and you'll get on famously. Ask Mr. East if you won't. And don't you fear about matters at home. You'll see that'll all come right. I'll pledge you my word it will, and I'll take care that you shall hear everything that goes on there; and, depend upon it, it's your best chance. You'll be back at Englebourn as a sergeant in no time, and be able to snap your fingers at them all. You'll come with us to Steventon station, and take the night train to London, and then in the morning go to Whitehall, and find Mr. East's sergeant. He'll give you a note to him, and they'll send you on to Chatham, where the regiment is. You think it's the best thing for him, don't you?" said Tom, turning to East.

"Yes; I think you'll do very well if you only keep steady. Here's a note to the sergeant, and I shall be back at Chatham in a day or two myself."

Harry took the note mechanically; he was quite unable yet to make any resistance.

"And now get something to eat as quick as you can, for we ought to be off. The horses are all right, I suppose?"

"Yes, Master Tom," said Harry, with an appealing look.

"Where are your coat and waistcoat, Harry?"

"They be in the stable, sir."

"In the stable! Why, they're all wet, then, still?"

"Oh, 'tis no odds about that, Master Tom."

"No odds! Get them in directly, and put them to dry here."

So Harry Winburn went off to the stable to fetch his clothes.

"He's a fine fellow," said East, getting up and coming to the fire; "I've taken quite a fancy to him, but he doesn't fancy enlisting."

"Poor fellow! he has to leave his sweetheart. It's a sad business, but it's the best thing for him, and you'll see he'll go."

Tom was right. Poor Harry came in and dried his clothes, and got his supper; and while he was eating it, and all along the road afterwards, till they reached the station at about eleven o'clock, pleaded in his plain way with Tom against leaving his own country side. And East listened silently, and liked him better and better.

Tom argued with him gently, and turned the matter round on all sides, putting the most hopeful face upon it; and, in the end, talked first himself and then Harry into the belief that it was the best thing that could have happened to him, and more likely than any other course of action to bring everything right between him and all the folk at Englebourn.

So they got into the train at Steventon in pretty good heart, with his fare paid, and half-a-sovereign in his pocket, more and more impressed in his mind with what a wonderful thing it was to be "a schollard."

The two friends rode back to Oxford at a good pace. They had both of them quite enough to think about, and were not in the humour for talk, had place and time served, so that scarce a word passed between them till they had left their horses at the livery stables, and were walking through the silent streets, a few minutes before midnight. Then East broke silence.

"I can't make out how you do it. I'd give half-a-year's pay to get the way of it."

"The way of what? What an you talking about?"

"Why, your way of shutting your eyes, and going in blind."

"Well, that's a queer wish for a fighting man," said Tom, laughing. "We always thought a rusher no good at school, and that the thing to learn was, to go in with your own eyes open, and shut up other people's."

"Ah but we hadn't cut our eye-teeth then. I look at these things from a professional point of view. My business is to get fellows to shut their eyes tight, and I begin to think you can't do it as it should be done, without shutting your own first."

"I don't take."

"Why, look at the way you talked your convict--I beg your pardon--your unfortunate friend--into enlisting tonight. You talked as if you believed every word you were saying to him."

"So I did."

"Well, I should like to have you for a recruiting sergeant, if you could only drop that radical bosh. If I had had to do it, instead of enlisting, he would have gone straight off and hung himself in the stable."

"I'm glad you didn't try your hand at it then."

"Look again at me. Do you think anyone but such a--well I don't want to say anything uncivil--a headlong dog like you could have got me into such a business as to-day's? Now I want to be able to get other fellows to make just such fools of themselves as I've made of myself to-day. How do you do it?"

"I don't know, unless it is that I can't help always looking at the best side of things myself, and so--"

"Most things haven't got a best side."

"Well, at the pretty good side, then."

"Nor a pretty good one."

"If they haven't got a pretty good one, it don't matter how you look at them, I should think."

"No, I don't believe it does--much. Still, I should like to be able to make a fool of myself, too, when I want, with the view of getting others to do ditto, of course."

"I wish I could help you, old fellow; but I don't see my way to it."

"I shall talk to our regimental doctor about it, and get put through a course of fool's-diet before we start for India."

"Flap-doodle, they call it, what fools are fed on. But it's odd that you should have broken out in this place, when all the way home I've been doing nothing but envying you your special talent."

"What's that?"

"Just the opposite one--the art of falling on your feet. I should like to exchange with you."

"You'd make a precious bad bargain of it, then."

"There's twelve striking. I must knock in. Good night. You'll be round to breakfast at nine."

"All right. I believe in your breakfasts, rather," said East, as they shook hands at the gate of St. Ambrose, into which Tom disappeared, while the lieutenant strolled back to the "Mitre."

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XLII. THIRD YEAR

East returned to his regiment in a few days, and at the end of the month the gallant 101st embarked for India. Tom wrote several letters to the lieutenant, inclosing notes to Harry, with gleanings of news from Englebourn, where his escape on the night of the riot had been a nine-days' wonder; and, now that he was fairly "'listed," and out of the way, public opinion was beginning to turn in his favor. In due course a letter arrived from the lieutenant, dated Cape Town, giving a prosperous account of the voyage so far. East did not say much about "your convict," as he still insisted on calling Harry; but the little he did say was very satisfactory, and Tom sent off this part of the letter to Katie, to whom he had confided the whole story, entreating her to make the best use of it in the interest of the young soldier. And, after this out-of-the-way beginning, he settled down into the usual routine of his Oxford life.

This change in his opinions and objects of interest brought him now into more intimate relations with a set of whom he had, as yet, seen little. For want of a better name, we may call them "the party of progress." At their parties, instead of practical jokes, and boisterous mirth, and talk of boats, and bats, and guns, and horses, the highest and deepest questions of morals, and politics, and metaphysics, were discussed, and discussed with a. freshness and enthusiasm which is apt to wear off when doing has to take the place of talking, but has a strange charm of its own while it lasts, and is looked back to with loving regret by those for whom it is no longer a possibility.

With this set Tom soon fraternized, and drank in many new ideas, and took to himself also many new crotchets besides those with which he was already weighted. Almost all his new acquaintances were Liberal in politics, but a few only were ready to go all lengths with him. They were all Union men, and Tom, of course, followed the fashion, and soon propounded theories in that institution which gained him the name of Chartist Brown.

There was a strong mixture of self-conceit in it all. He had a kind of idea that he had discovered something which it was creditable to have discovered, and that it was a very fine thing to have all these feelings for, and sympathies with, "the masses", and to believe in democracy, and "glorious humanity," and "a good time coming," and I know not what other big matters. And, although it startled and pained him at first to hear himself called ugly names, which he had hated and despised from his youth up, and to know that many of his old acquaintances looked upon him, not simply as a madman, but as a madman with snobbish proclivities; yet, when the first plunge was over, there was a good deal on the other hand which tickled his vanity, and was far from being unpleasant.

To do him justice, however, the disagreeables were such that, had there not been some genuine belief at the bottom, he would certainly have been headed back very speedily into the fold of political and social orthodoxy. As it was, amidst the cloud of sophisms, and platitudes, and big, one-sided ideas half-mastered, which filled his thoughts and overflowed in his talk, there was growing in him, and taking firmer hold on him daily, a true and broad sympathy for men as men, and especially for poor men as poor men, and a righteous and burning hatred against all laws, customs, or notions, which, according to his light, either were or seemed to be setting aside, or putting anything else in the place of, or above, the man. It was with him the natural outgrowth of the child's and boy's training (though his father would have been much astonished to be told so), and the instincts of those early days were now getting rapidly set into habits and faiths, and becoming a part of himself.

In this stage of his life, as in so many former ones, Tom got great help from his intercourse with Hardy, now the rising tutor of the college. Hardy was travelling much the same road himself as our hero, but was somewhat further on, and had come into it from a different country, and though quite other obstacles. Their early lives had been very different; and, both by nature and from long and severe self-restraint and discipline, Hardy was much the less impetuous and demonstrative of the two. He did not rush out, therefore (as Tom was too much inclined to do), the moment he had seized hold of the end of a new idea which he felt to be good for him and what he wanted, and brandish it in the face of all comers, and think himself a traitor to the truth if he wasn't trying to make everybody he met with eat it. Hardy, on the contrary, would test his new idea, and turn it over, and prove it as far as he could, and try to get hold of the whole of it, and ruthlessly strip off any tinsel or rose-pink sentiment with which it might happen to be mixed up.

Often and often did Tom suffer under this severe method, and rebel against it, and accuse his friend, both to his face and in his own secret thoughts, of coldness, and want of faith, and all manner of other sins of omission and commission. In the end, however, he generally came round, with more or less of rebellion, according to the severity of the treatment, and acknowledge that, when Hardy brought him down from riding the high horse, it was not without good reason, and that the dust in which he was rolled was always most wholesome dust.

For instance, there was no phrase more frequently in the mouths of the party of progress than "the good cause." It was a fine big-sounding phrase, which could be used with great effect in perorations of speeches at the Union, and was sufficiently indefinite to be easily defended from ordinary attacks, while it saved him who used it the trouble of ascertaining accurately for himself, or settling for his hearers, what it really did mean. But, however satisfactory it might be before promiscuous audiences, and so long as vehement assertion or declaration was all that was required to uphold it, this same "good cause" was liable to come to much grief when it had to get itself defined. Hardy was particularly given to persecution on this subject, when he could get Tom, and, perhaps, one or two others, in a quiet room by themselves. While professing the utmost sympathy for "the good cause," and a hope as strong as theirs that all its enemies might find themselves suspended to lamp-posts as soon as possible, he would pursue it into corners from which escape was most difficult, asking it and its supporters what it exactly was, and driving them from one cloud-land to another, and from "the good cause" to the "people's cause," the "cause of labor," and other like troublesome definitions, until the great idea seemed to have no shape or existence any longer even in their own brains.

But Hardy's persecution, provoking as it was for the time, never went to the undermining of any real conviction in the minds of his juniors, or the shaking of anything which did not need shaking, but only helped them to clear their ideas and brains as to what they were talking and thinking about, and gave them glimpses--soon clouded over again, but most useful, nevertheless--of the truth; that there were a good many knotty questions to be solved before a man could be quite sure that he had found out the way to set the world thoroughly to rights, and heal all the ills that flesh is heir to.

Hardy treated another of his friend's most favorite notions even with less respect than this one of "the good cause." Democracy, that "universal democracy," which their favourite author had recently declared to be "an inevitable fact of the days in which we live", was, perhaps, on the whole, the pet idea of the small section of liberal young Oxford, with whom Tom was now hand and glove. They lost no opportunity of worshipping it, and doing battle for it; and, indeed, most of them did very truly believe that that state of the world which this universal democracy was to bring about, and which was coming no man could say how soon, was to be in fact that age of peace and good-will which men had dreamt of in all times, when the lion should lie down with the kid, and nation should not vex nation any more.

After hearing something to this effect from Tom on several occasions, Hardy cunningly lured him to his rooms on the pretence of talking over the prospects of the boat club, and then, having seated him by the fire, which he himself proceeded to assault gently with the poker, propounded suddenly to him the question,

"Brown, I should like to know what you mean by 'democracy'?"

Tom at once saw the trap into which he had fallen, and made several efforts to break away, but unsuccessfully; and, being seated to a cup of tea, and allowed to smoke, was then and there grievously oppressed, and mangled, and sat upon, by his oldest and best friend. He took his ground carefully, and propounded only what he felt sure that Hardy himself would at once accept--what no man of any worth could possibly take exception to. "He meant much more," he said, "than this; but for the present purpose it would be enough for him to say that, whatever else it might mean, democracy in his mouth always meant that every man should have a share in the government of his country."

Hardy, seeming to acquiesce, and making a sudden change in the subject of their talk, decoyed his innocent guest away from the thought of democracy for a few minutes, by holding up to him the flag of hero-worship, in which worship Tom was, of course, a sedulous believer. Then, having involved him in most difficult country, his persecutor opened fire upon him from masked batteries of the most deadly kind, the guns being all from the armory of his own prophets.

"You long for the rule of the ablest man, everywhere, at all times? To find your ablest man, and then give him power, and obey him--that you hold to be about the highest act of wisdom which a nation can be capable of?"

"Yes; and you know you believe that to, Hardy, just as firmly as I do."

"I hope so. But then, how about our universal democracy, and every man having a share in the government of his country?"

Tom felt that his flank was turned; in fact, the contrast of his two beliefs had never struck him vividly before, and he was consequently much confused. But Hardy went on tapping a big coal gently with the poker, and gave him time to recover himself and collect his thoughts.

"I don't mean, of course, that every man is to have an actual share in the government," he said at last.

"But every man is somehow to have a share; and, if not an actual one, I can't see what the proposition comes to."

"I call it having a share in the government when a man has share in saying who shall govern him."

"Well, you'll own that's a very different thing. But let's see; will that find our wisest governor for us--letting all the most foolish men in the nation have a say as to who he is to be?"

"Come now, Hardy, I've heard you say that you are for manhood suffrage."

"That's another question; you let in another idea there. At present we are considering whether the vox populi is the best test for finding your best man. I'm afraid all history is against you."

"That's a good joke. Now, there I defy you, Hardy."

"Begin at the beginning, then, and let us see."

"I suppose you'll say, then, that the Egyptian and Babylonian empires were better than the little Jewish republic."

"Republic! well, let that pass. But I never heard that the Jews elected Moses, or any of the judges."

"Well, never mind the Jews; they're an exceptional case; you can't argue from them."

"I don't admit that. I believe just the contrary. But go on."

"Well, then, what do you say to the glorious Greek republics, with Athens at the head of them?"

"I say that no nation ever treated their best men so badly. I see I must put on a lecture in Aristophanes for your special benefit. Vain, irritable, shallow, suspicious old Demus, with his two oboli in his cheek, and doubting only between Cleon and the sausage-seller, which he shall choose for his wisest man--not to govern, but to serve his whims and caprices. You must call another witness, I think."

"But that's a caricature."

"Take the picture, then, out of Thucydides, Plato, Xenophon, how you will--you won't mend the matter much. You shouldn't go so fast, Brown; you won't mind my saying so, I know. You don't get clear in your own mind before you pitch into everyone who comes across you, and so do your own side (which I admit is mostly the right one) more harm than good."

Tom couldn't stand being put down so summarily, and fought over the ground from one country to another, from Rome to the United States, with all the arguments he could muster, but with little success. That unfortunate first admission of his, he felt it throughout, like a millstone round his neck, and could not help admitting to himself, when he left, that there was a good deal in Hardy's concluding remark,--"You'll find it rather a tough business to get your 'universal democracy' and 'government by the wisest' to pull together in one coach."

Notwithstanding all such occasional reverses and cold baths, however, Tom went on strengthening himself in his new opinions, and maintaining them with all the zeal of a convert. The shelves of his bookcase, and the walls of his room, soon began to show signs of the change which was taking place in his ways of looking at men and things. Hitherto a framed engraving of George III had hung over his mantle-piece; but early in this, his third year, the frame had disappeared for a few days, and when it reappeared, the solemn face of John Milton looked out from it, while the honest monarch had retired into a portfolio. A facsimile of Magna Charta soon displaced a large colored print of "A Day With the Pycheley", and soon afterwards the death warrant of Charles I. with its grim and resolute rows of signatures and seals, appeared on the wall in a place of honour, in the neighbourhood of Milton.

Squire Brown was passing through Oxford, and paid his son a visit soon after this last arrangement had been completed. He dined in hall, at the high table, being still a member of the college, and afterwards came with Hardy to Tom's rooms to have a quiet glass of wine, and spend the evening with his son and a few of his friends, who had been asked to meet "the governor."

Tom had a struggle with himself whether he should not remove the death-warrant into his bedroom for the evening, and had actually taken if down with this view; but in the end he could not stomach such a backsliding, and so restored it to its place. "I have never concealed my opinions from my father," he thought, "though I don't think he quite knows what they are. But if he doesn't, he ought, and the sooner the better. I should be a sneak to try to hide them. I know he won't like it, but he is always just and fair, and will make allowances. At any rate, up it goes again."

And so he re-hung the death-warrant, but with the devout secret hope that his father might not see it.

The wine-party went off admirably. The men were nice, gentlemanly, intelligent fellows; and the Squire, who had been carefully planted by Tom with his back to the death-warrant, enjoyed himself very much. At last they all went, except Hardy; and now the nervous time approached. For a short time longer the three sat at the wine-table while the squire enlarged upon the great improvement in young men, and the habits of the University, especially in the matter of drinking. Tom had only opened three bottles of port. In his time the men would have drunk certainly not less than a bottle a man; and other like remarks he made, as he sipped his coffee, and then, pushing back his chair, said, "Well, Tom, hadn't your servant better clear away, and then we can draw round the fire, and have a talk."

"Wouldn't you like to take a turn while he is clearing? There's the Martyr's Memorial you haven't seen."

"No, thank you. I know the place well enough. I don't come to walk about in the dark. We sha'n't be in your man's way."

And so Tom's scout came in to clear away, took out the extra leaves of the table, put on the cloth, and laid tea. During these operations Mr. Brown was standing with his back to the fire, looking about him as he talked. When there was more space to move in, he began to walk up and down, and very soon took to remarking the furniture and arrangements of the room. One after the other the pictures came under his notice. Most of them escaped without comment, the Squire simply pausing a moment, and then taking up his walk again. Magna Charta drew forth his hearty approval. It was a capital notion to hang such things on his walls, instead of bad prints of steeple-chases, or trash of that sort. "Ah, here's something else of the same kind. Why, Tom, what's this?" said the squire, as he paused before the death-warrant. There was a moment or two of dead silence, while the Squire's eyes ran down the names, from Jo. Bradshaw to Miles Corbet; and then he turned, and came and sat down opposite to his son. Tom expected his father to be vexed, but was not the least prepared for the tone of pain, and sorrow, and anger, in which he first inquired, and then remonstrated.

For some time past the Squire and his son had not felt so comfortable together as of old. Mr. Brown had been annoyed by much that Tom had done in the case of Harry Winburn, though he did not know all. There had sprung up a barrier somehow or other between them, neither of them knew how. They had often felt embarrassed at being left alone together during the past year, and found that there were certain topics which they could not talk upon, which they avoided by mutual consent. Every now and then the constraint and embarrassment fell off for a short time, for at bottom they loved and appreciated one another heartily; but the divergences in their thoughts and habits had become very serious, and seemed likely to increase rather than not. They felt keenly the chasm between the two generations. As they looked at one another from opposite banks, each in his secret heart blamed the other in great measure for that which was the fault of neither. Mixed with the longings which each felt for a better understanding was enough of reserve and indignation to prevent them from coming to it. The discovery of their differences was too recent, and they were too much alike in character and temper, for either to make large enough allowance for, or to be really tolerant of, the other.

This was the first occasion on which they had come to outspoken and serious difference; and though the collision had been exceedingly painful to both, yet when they parted for the night, it was with a feeling of relief that the ice had been thoroughly broken. Before his father left the room, Tom had torn the facsimile of the death-warrant out of its frame, and put it in the fire, protesting, however, at the same time, that, though "he did thist out of deference to his father, and was deeply grieved at having given him pain, he could not and would not give up his convictions, or pretend that they were changed, or even shaken."

The Squire walked back to his hotel deeply moved. Who can wonder? He was a man full of living and vehement convictions. One of his early recollections had been the arrival in England of the news of the beheading of Louis XVI, and the doings of the Reign of Terror. He had been bred in the times when it was held impossible for a gentleman or a Christian to hold such views as his son had been maintaining, and, like many of the noblest Englishmen of his time, had gone with and accepted the creed of the day.

Tom remained behind, dejected and melancholy; now accusing his father of injustice and bigotry, now longing to go after him, and give up everything. What were all his opinions and convictions compared with his father's confidence and love? At breakfast the next morning, however, after each of them had had time for thinking over what had passed, they met with a cordiality which was as pleasant to each as it was unlooked for; and from this visit of his father to him at Oxford, Tom dated a new and more satisfactory epoch in their intercourse.

The fact had begun to dawn on the Squire that the world had changed a good deal since his time. He saw that young men were much improved in some ways, and acknowledged the fact heartily; on the other hand, they had taken up with a lot of new notions which he could not understand, and thought mischievous and bad. Perhaps Tom might get over them as he got to be older and wiser, and in the meantime he must take the evil with the good. At any rate he was too fair a man to try to dragoon his son out of anything which he really believed. Tom on his part gratefully accepted the change in his father's manner, and took all means of showing his gratitude by consulting and talking freely to him on such subjects as they could agree upon, which were numerous, keeping in the back-ground the questions which had provoked painful discussions between them. By degrees these even could be tenderly approached; and, now that they were approached in a different spirit, the honest beliefs of the father and son no longer looked so monstrous to one another, the hard and sharp outlines began to wear off, and the views of each of them to be modified. Thus, bit by bit, by a slow but sure process, a better understanding than ever was re-established between them.

This beginning of a better state of things in his relations with his father consoled Tom for many other matters that seemed to go wrong with him, and was a constant bit of bright sky to turn to when the rest of his horizon looked dark and dreary, as it did often enough.

For it proved a very trying year to him, this his third and last year at the University; a year full of large dreams and small performances, of unfulfilled hopes and struggles to set himself right, ending ever more surely in failure and disappointment. The common pursuits of the place had lost their freshness, and with it much of their charm. He was beginning to feel himself in a cage, and to beat against the bars of it.

Often, in spite of all his natural hopefulness, his heart seemed to sicken and turn cold, without any apparent reason; his old pursuits palled on him, and he scarcely cared to turn to new ones. What was it that made life so blank to him at these times? How was it that he could not keep the spirit within him alive and warm?

It was easier to ask such questions than to get an answer. Was it not this place he was living in and the ways of it? No, for the place and its ways were the same as ever, and his own way of life in it better than ever before. Was it the want of sight or tidings of Mary? Sometimes he thought so, and then cast the thought away as treason. His love for her was ever sinking deeper into him, and raising and purifying him. Light and strength and life came from that source; craven weariness and coldness of heart, come from whence they might, were not from that quarter. But precious as his love was to him, and deeply as it affected his whole life, he felt that there must be something beyond it--that its full satisfaction would not be enough for him. The bed was too narrow for a man to stretch himself on. What he was in search of must underlie and embrace his human love, and support it. Beyond and above all private and personal desires and hopes and longings, he was conscious of a restless craving and feeling about after something, which he could not grasp, and yet which was not avoiding him, which seemed to be mysteriously laying hold of him and surrounding him.

The routine of chapels, and lectures, and reading for degree, boating, cricketing, Union-debating,--all well enough in their way--left this vacuum unfilled. There was a great outer visible world, the problems and puzzles of which were rising before him and haunting him more and more; and a great inner and invisible world opening round him in awful depth. He seemed to be standing on the brink of each--now shivering and helpless, feeling like an atom about to be whirled into the great flood and carried he knew not where--now ready to plunge in and take his part, full of hope and belief that he was meant to buffet in the strength of a man with the seen and the unseen, and to be subdued by neither.

In such a year as this, a bit of steady, bright blue sky was a boon beyond all price, and so he felt it to be. And it was not only with his father that Tom regained lost ground in this year. He was in a state of mind in which he could not bear to neglect or lose any particle of human sympathy, and so he turned to old friendships, and revived the correspondence with several of his old school-fellows, and particularly with Arthur, to the great delight of the latter, who had mourned bitterly over the few half-yearly lines, all he had got from Tom of late, in answer to his own letters, which had themselves, under the weight of neglect, gradually dwindled down to mere formal matters. A specimen of the later correspondence may fitly close the chapter:--

ST. AMBROSE

"Dear Geordie--I can hardly pardon you for having gone to Cambridge, though you have got a Trinity scholarship--which I suppose is, on the whole, quite as good a thing as anything of the sort you could have got up here. I had so looked forward to having you here though, and now I feel that we shall probably scarcely ever meet. You will go your way and I mine; and one alters so quickly, and gets into such strange new grooves, that unless one sees a man about once a week at least, you may be just like strangers when you are thrown together again. If you had come up here it would have been all right, and we should have gone all through life as we were when I left school, and as I know we should be again in no time if you had come here. But now, who can tell?

"What makes me think so much of this is a visit of a few days that East paid me just before his regiment went to India. I feel that if he hadn't done it, and we had not met till he came back--years hence perhaps--we should never have been to one another what we shall be now. The break would have been too great. Now it's all right. You would have liked to see the old fellow grown into a man, but not a bit altered--just the quiet, old way, pooh-poohing you, and pretending to care for nothing, but ready to cut the nose off his face, or go through fire and water for you at a pinch, if you'll only let him go his own way about it, and have his grumble, and say that he does it all from the worst possible motives.

"But we must try not to lose hold of one another, Geordie. It would be a bitter day to me if I thought anything of the kind could ever happen again. We must write more to one another. I've been awfully lazy, I know, about it for this last year and more; but then I always thought you would be coming up here, and so that it didn't matter much. But now I will turn over a new leaf, and write to you about my secret thoughts, my works and ways; and you must do it too. If we can only tide over the next year or two we shall get into plain sailing, and I suppose it will all right then. At least, I can't believe that one is likely to have many such up-and-down years in one's life as the last two. If one is, goodness knows where I shall end. You know the outline of what has happened to me from my letters, and the talks we have had in my flying visits to the old school, but you haven't a notion of the troubles of mind I've been in, and the changes I've gone through. I can hardly believe it myself when I look back. However I'm quite sure I have got on; that's my great comfort. It is a strange blind sort of world, that's a fact, with lots of blind alleys, down which you go blundering in the fog after some seedy gaslight, which you take for the sun till you run against the wall at the end, and find out that the light is a gaslight, and that there's no thoroughfare. But for all that one does get on. You get to know the sun's light better and better, and to keep out of the blind alleys; and I am surer and surer every day, that there's always sunlight enough for every honest fellow--though I didn't think so a few months back--and a good sound road under his feet, if he will only step out on it.

"Talking of blind alleys puts me in mind of your last. Aren't you going down a blind alley, or something worse? There's no wall to bring you up, that I can see down the turn you've taken; and then, what's the practical use of it all? What good would you do to yourself, or anyone else, if you could get to the end of it? I can't for the life of me fancy, I confess, what you think will come of speculating about necessity and free will. I only know that I can hold out my hand before me, and can move it to the right or left, despite of all the powers in heaven or earth. As I sit here writing to you, I can let into my heart, and give the reins to, all sorts of devil's passions, or to the Spirit of God. Well, that's enough for me. I know it of myself, and I believe you know it of yourself, and everybody knows it of themselves or himself; and why you can't be satisfied with that, passes my comprehension. As if one hasn't got puzzles enough, and bothers enough, under one's nose, without going a-field after a lot of metaphysical quibbles. No, I'm wrong,--not going a-field,--anything one has to go a-field for is all right. What a fellow meets outside himself he isn't responsible for, and must do the best he can with. But to go on for ever looking inside of one's self, and groping about amongst one's own sensations, and ideas, and whimsies of one kind and another, I can't conceive a poorer line of business than that. Don't you get into it now, that's a dear boy.

"Very likely you'll tell me you can't help it; that every one has his own difficulties, and must fight them out, and that mine are one sort, and yours another. Well, perhaps you may be right. I hope I'm getting to know that my plummet isn't to measure all the world. But it does seem a pity that men shouldn't be thinking about how to cure some of the wrongs which poor dear old England is pretty near dying of, instead of taking the edge off their brains, and spending all their steam in speculating about all kinds of things, which wouldn't make any poor man in the world--or rich one either, for that matter--a bit better off, if they were all found out, and settled to-morrow. But here I am at the end of my paper. Don't be angry at my jobation; but write me a long answer of your own free will, and believe me ever affectionately yours,

"T. B."

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XLIII. AFTERNOON VISITORS

Miss Mary Porter was sitting alone in the front drawing-room of her father's house, in Belgravia, on the afternoon of a summer's day in this same year. Two years and more have passed over her head since we first met her, and she may be a thought more sedate and better dressed, but there is no other change to be noticed in her.

The room was for the most part much like other rooms in that quarter of the world. There were few luxuries in the way of furniture which fallen man can desire which were not to be found there, but over and above this, there was an elegance in the arrangement of all the nick-nacks and ornaments, and an appropriateness and good taste in the placing of every piece of furniture and vase of flowers, which showed that a higher order of mind than the upholsterer's or housemaid's was constantly overlooking and working there. Everything seemed to be in its exact place, in the best place which could have been thought of for it, and to be the best thing which could have been thought of for the place. And yet this perfection did not strike you particularly at first, or surprise you in any way, but sank into you gradually, so that, until you forced yourself to consider the matter, you could not in the least say why the room had such a very pleasant effect on you.

The young lady to whom this charm was chiefly owing was sitting by a buhl work-table, on which lay her embroidery and a book. She was reading a letter, which seemed deeply to interest her; for she did not hear the voice of the butler, who had just opened the door and disturbed her solitude, until he had repeated for the second time, "Mr. Smith." Then Mary jumped up, and, hastily folding her letter, put it into her pocket. She was rather provoked at having allowed herself to be caught there alone by afternoon visitors, and with the servants for having let anyone in; nevertheless, she welcomed Mr. Smith with a cordiality of manner which perhaps rather more than represented her real feelings, and, with a "let mamma know," to the butler, set to work to entertain her visitor. She would have had no difficulty in doing this under ordinary circumstances, as all that Mr. Smith wanted was a good listener. He was a somewhat heavy and garrulous old gentleman, with many imaginary, and a few real troubles, the constant contemplation of which served to occupy the whole of his own time, and as much of his friends' as he could get them to give him. But scarcely had he settled himself comfortably in an easy chair opposite to his victim, when the butler entered again, and announced, "Mr. St. Cloud."

Mary was now no longer at her ease. Her manner of receiving her new visitor was constrained; and yet it was clear that he was on easy terms in the house. She asked the butler where his mistress was, and heard with vexation that she had gone out, but was expected home almost immediately. Charging him to let her mother know the moment she returned, Mary turned to her unwelcome task, and sat herself down again with such resignation as she was capable of at the moment. The conduct of her visitors was by no means calculated to restore her composure, or make her comfortable between them. She was sure that they knew one another; but neither of then would speak to the other. There the two sat on, each resolutely bent on tiring the other out; the elder crooning on to her in an undertone, and ignoring the younger, who in his turn put on an air of serene unconsciousness of the presence of his senior, and gazed about the room, and watched Mary, making occasional remarks to her as if no one else were present. On and on they sat, her only comfort being the hope that neither of them would have the conscience to stay on after the departure of the other.

Between them Mary was driven to her wits' end, and looked for her mother or for some new visitor to come to her help, as Wellington looked for the Prussians on the afternoon of June 18th. At length youth and insolence prevailed, and Mr. Smith rose to go. Mary got up too, and after his departure remained standing, in hopes that her other visitor would take the hint and follow the good example. But St. Cloud had not the least intention of moving.

"Really, your good-nature is quite astonishing, Miss Porter," he said, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, and following the pattern of one of the flowers on the carpet with his cane, which gave him the opportunity of showing his delicately gloved hand to advantage.

"Indeed, why do you think so?" she asked, taking up her embroidery and pretending to begin working.

"Have I not good reason, after sitting this half-hour and seeing you enduring old Smith--the greatest bore in London? I don't believe there are three houses where the servants dare let him in. It would be as much as their places are worth. No porter could hope for a character who let him in twice in the season."

"Poor Mr. Smith," said Mary, smiling. "But you know we have no porter, and," she suddenly checked herself, and added gravely, "he is an old friend, and papa and mamma like him."

"But the wearisomeness of his grievances! Those three sons in the Plungers, and their eternal scrapes! How you could manage to keep a civil face! It was a masterpiece of polite patience."

"Indeed, I am very sorry for his troubles. I wonder where mamma can be? We are going to drive. Shall you be in the Park? I think it must be time for me to dress."

"I hope not. It is so seldom that I see you except in crowded rooms. Can you wonder that I should value such a chance as this?"

"Were you at the new opera last night?" asked Mary, carefully avoiding his eye, and sticking to her work, but scarcely able to conceal her nervousness and discomfort.

"Yes, I was there; but--"

"Oh, do tell me about it, then; I hear it was a great success."

"Another time. We can talk of the opera anywhere. Let me speak now of something else. You must have seen, Miss Porter,--"

"How can you think I will talk of anything till you have told me about the opera?" interrupted Mary rapidly and nervously. "Was Grisi very fine? The chief part was composed for her, was it not? and dear old Lablache--"

"I will tell you all about it presently, if you will let me, in five minutes' time--I only ask for five minutes--"

"Five minutes! Oh, no, not five seconds. I must hear about the new opera before I will listen to a word of anything else."

"Indeed, Miss Porter, you must pardon me for disobeying. But I may not have such a chance as this again for months."

With which prelude he drew his chair towards hers and Mary was just trying to make up her mind to jump up and run right out of the room, when the door opened, and the butler walked in with a card on a waiter. Mary had never felt so relieved in her life, and could have hugged the solemn old domestic when he said, presenting the card to her,

"The gentleman asked if Mrs. or you were in, Miss, and told me to bring it up, and find whether you would see him on particular business. He's waiting in the hall."

"Oh, yes, I know. Of course. Yes, say I will see him directly. I mean, ask him to come up now."

"Shall I show him into the library, Miss?"

"No, no; in here; do you understand?"

"Yes, Miss," replied the butter, with a deprecatory look at St. Cloud, as much as to say, "You see, I can't help it," in answer to his impatient telegraphic signals. St. Cloud had been very liberal to the Porters' servants.

Mary's confidence had all come back. Relief was at hand. She could trust herself to hold St. Cloud at bay now, as it could not be for more than a few minutes. When she turned to him the nervousness had quite gone out of her manner, and she spoke in her old tone again, as she laid her embroidery aside.

"How lucky that you should be here! Look; I think you must be acquainted," she said, holding out the card which the butler had given her to St. Cloud.

He took it mechanically, and looked at it, and then crushed it in his hand, and was going to speak. She prevented him.

"I was right, I'm sure. You do know him?"

"I didn't see the name," he said almost fiercely.

"The name on the card which I gave you just now?--Mr. Grey. He is curate in one of the poor Westminster districts. You must remember him, for he was of your college. He was at Oxford with you. I made his acquaintance at the Commemoration. He will be so glad to meet an old friend."

St. Cloud was too much provoked to answer; and the next moment the door opened, and the butler announced Mr. Grey.

Grey came into the room timidly, carrying his head a little down as usual, and glancing uncomfortably about in a manner which used to make Drysdale say that he always looked as though he had just been robbing a hen-roost. Mary went forward to meet him, holding out her hand cordially.

"I am so glad to see you," she said. "How kind of you to call when you are so busy! Mamma will be here directly. I think you must remember Mr. St. Cloud--Mr. Grey."

St. Cloud's patience was now quite gone. He drew himself up, making the slightest possible inclination towards Grey, and then, without taking any further notice of him, turned to Mary with a look which he meant to be full of pitying admiration for her, and contempt of her visitor; but, as she would not look at him, it was thrown away. So he made his bow and stalked out of the room, angrily debating with himself, as he went down the stairs, whether she could have understood him. He was so fully convinced of the sacrifice which a man in his position was making in paying serious attention to a girl with little fortune and no connexion, that he soon consoled himself in the belief that her embarrassment only arose from shyness, and that the moment he could explain himself she would be his obedient and grateful servant. Meantime Mary sat down opposite to the curate, and listened to him as he unfolded his errand awkwardly enough. An execution was threatened in the house of a poor struggling widow, whom Mrs. Porter had employed to do needlework occasionally, and who was behind with her rent through sickness. He was afraid that her things would be taken and sold in the morning, unless she could borrow two sovereigns. He had so many claims on him, that he could not lend her the money himself, and so had come out to see what he could do amongst those who knew her.

By the time Grey had arrived at the end of his story, Mary had made up her mind--not without a little struggle--to sacrifice the greater part of what was left of her quarter's allowance. After all, it would only be wearing cleaned gloves instead of new ones, and giving up her new riding-hat till next quarter. So she jumped up, and said gaily, "Is that all, Mr. Grey? I have the money, and I will lend it her with pleasure. I will fetch it directly."

She tripped off to her room, and soon came back with the money; and just then the butler came in with tea, and Mary asked Mr. Grey to take some. He looked tired, she said, and if he would wait a little time, he would see her mother, who would be sure to do something more for the poor woman.

Grey had risen to leave, and was standing, hat in hand, ready to go. He was in the habit of reckoning with himself strictly for every minute of his day, and was never quite satisfied with himself unless he was doing the most disagreeable thing which circumstances for the time being allowed him to do. But greater and stronger men than Grey, from Adam downwards, have yielded to the temptation before which he now succumbed. He looked out of the corners of his eyes; and there was something so fresh and bright in the picture of the dainty little tea-service and the young lady behind it, the tea which she was beginning to pour out smelt so refreshing, and her hand and figure looked so pretty in the operation, that, with a sigh of departing resolution, he gave in, put his hat on the floor, and sat down opposite to the tempter.

Grey took a cup of tea, and then another. He thought he had never tasted anything so good. The delicious rich cream, and the tempting plate of bread and butter were too much for him. He fairly gave way, and resigned himself to physical enjoyment, and sipped his tea, and looked over his cup at Mary, sitting there bright and kind and ready to go on pouring out for him to any extent. It seemed to him as if an atmosphere of light and joy surrounded her, within the circle of which he was sitting and absorbing. Tea was the only stimulant that Grey ever took, and he had more need of it than usual, for he had given away the chop, which was his ordinary dinner, to a starving woman. He was faint with fasting and the bad air of the hovels in which he had been spending his morning. The elegance of the room, the smell of the flowers, the charm of companionship with a young woman of his own rank, and the contrast of the whole to his common way of life, carried him away, and hopes and thoughts began to creep into his head to which he had long been a stranger. Mary did her very best to make his visit pleasant to him. She had a great respect for the self-denying life which she knew he was leading; and the nervousness and shyness of his manners were of a kind, which, instead of infecting her, gave her confidence, and made her feel quite at her ease with him. She was so grateful to him for having delivered her out of her recent embarrassment, that she was more than usually kind in her manner.

She saw how he was enjoying himself; and thought what good it must do him to forget his usual occupations for a short time. So she talked positive gossip to him, risked his opinion on riding habits, and very soon was telling him the plot of a new novel which she had just been reading, with an animation and playfulness which would have warmed the heart of an anchorite. For a short quarter of an hour Grey resigned himself; but at the end of that time he became suddenly and painfully conscious of what he was doing, and stopped himself short in the middle of an altogether worldly compliment, which he detected himself in the act of paying to his too fascinating young hostess. He felt that retreat was his only chance, and so grasped his hat again, and rose with a deep sigh, and a sudden change of manner which alarmed Mary.

"I hope you are not ill, Mr. Grey?" she said, anxiously.

"No, not the least, thank you. But--but--in short, I must go to my work. I ought to apologize, indeed, for having stayed so long."

"Oh, you have not been here more than twenty minutes. Pray stay, and see mamma; she must be in directly."

"Thank you; you are very kind. I should like it very much, but indeed I cannot."

Mary felt that it would be no kindness to press it further, and so rose herself, and held out her hand. Grey took it, and it is not quite certain to this day whether he did not press it in that farewell shake more than was absolutely necessary. If he did, we may be quite sure that he administered exemplary punishment to himself afterwards for so doing. He would gladly have left now, but his over-sensitive conscience forbade it. He had forgotten his office, he thought, hitherto, but there was time yet not to be altogether false to it. So he looked grave and shy again, and said,

"You will not be offended with me, Miss Porter, if I speak to you as a clergyman?"

Mary was a little disconcerted, but answered almost immediately,--

"Oh, no. Pray say anything which you think you ought to say."

"I am afraid there must be a great temptation in living always in beautiful rooms like this, with no one but prosperous people. Do you not think so?"

"But one cannot help it. Surely, Mr. Grey, you do not think it can be wrong?"

"No, not wrong. But it must be very trying. It must be very necessary to do something to lessen the temptation of such a life."

"I do not understand you. What could one do?"

"Might you not take up some work which would not be pleasant, such as visiting the poor?"

"I should be very glad; but we do not know any poor people in London."

"There are very miserable districts near here."

"Yes, and papa and mamma are very kind, I know, in helping whenever they can hear of a proper case. But it is so different from the country. There it is so easy and pleasant to go into the cottages where everyone knows you, and most of the people work for papa, and one is sure of being welcomed, and that nobody will be rude. But here I should be afraid. It would seem so impertinent to go to people's houses of whom one knows nothing. I should never know what to say."

"It is not easy or pleasant duty which is the best for us. Great cities could never be evangelized, Miss Porter, if all ladies thought as you do."

"I think, Mr. Grey," said Mary, rather nettled, "that everyone has not the gift of lecturing the poor, and setting them right; and, if they have not, they had better not try to do it. And as for the rest, there is plenty of the same kind of work to be done, I believe, amongst the people of one's own class."

"You are joking, Miss Porter."

"No, I am not joking at all. I believe that rich people are quite as unhappy as poor. Their troubles are not the same, of course, and are generally of their own making. But troubles of the mind are worse, surely, than troubles of the body?"

"Certainly; and it is the highest work of the ministry to deal with spiritual trials. But you will pardon me for saying that I cannot think this is the proper work for--for--"

"For me, you would say. We must be speaking of quite different things, I am sure. I only mean that I can listen to the troubles and grievances of anyone who likes to talk of them to me, and try to comfort them a little, and to make things look brighter, and to keep cheerful. It is not easy always even to do this."

"It is not, indeed. But would it not be easier if you could do as I suggest? Going out of one's own class, and trying to care for and help the poor, braces the mind more than anything else."

"You ought to know my cousin Katie," said Mary, glad to make a diversion; "that is just what she would say. Indeed, I think you must have seen her at Oxford; did you not?"

"I believe I had the honor of meeting her at the rooms of a friend. I think he said she was also a cousin of his."

"Mr. Brown, you mean? Yes; did you know him?"

"Oh, yes. You will think it strange, as we are so very unlike; but I knew him better than I knew almost any one."

"Poor Katie is very anxious about him. I hope you thought well of him. You do not think he is likely to go very wrong?"

"No, indeed. I could wish he were sounder on Church questions, but that may come. Do you know that he is in London?"

"I had heard so."

"He has been several times to my schools. He used to help me at Oxford, and has a capital way with the boys."

At this moment the clock on the mantel-piece struck a quarter. The sound touched some chord in Grey which made him grasp his hat again, and prepare for another attempt to get away.

"I hope you will pardon--" He pulled himself up short, in the fear lest he were going again to be false (as he deemed it) to his calling, and stood the picture of nervous discomfort.

Mary came to his relief. "I am sorry you must go, Mr. Grey," she said; "I should have so liked to have talked to you more about Oxford. You will call again soon, I hope?"

At which last speech Grey, casting an imploring glance at her, muttered something which she could not catch, and fled from the room.

Mary stood looking dreamily out of the window for a few minutes, till the entrance of her mother roused her, and she turned to pour out a cup of tea for her.

"It is cold, mamma dear; do let me make some fresh."

"No, thank you, dear; this will do very well," said Mrs. Porter; and she took off her bonnet and sipped the cold tea. Mary watched her silently for a minute, and then, taking the letter she had been reading out of her pocket, said, "I have a letter from Katie, mamma."

Mrs. Porter took the letter and read it; and, as Mary still watched, she saw a puzzled look coming over her mother's face. Mrs. Porter finished the letter, and then looked stealthily at Mary, who on her side was now busily engaged in putting up the tea-things.

"It is very embarrassing," said Mrs. Porter.

"What, mamma?"

"Oh, of course, my dear, I mean Katie's telling us of her cousin's being in London, and sending us his address--" and then she paused.

"Why, mamma?"

"Your papa will have to make up his mind whether he will ask him to the house. Katie would surely never have told him that she has written."

"Mr. and Mrs. Brown were so very kind. It would seem so strange, so ungrateful, not to ask him."

"I am afraid he is not the sort of young man--in short, I must speak to your papa."

Mrs. Porter looked hard at her daughter, who was still busied with the tea-things. She had risen, bonnet in hand, to leave the room; but now changed her mind, and, crossing to her daughter, put her arm round her neck. Mary looked up steadily into her eyes, then blushed slightly, and said quietly,

"No, mamma; indeed, it is not as you think."

Her mother stooped and kissed her, and left the room, telling her to get dressed, as the carriage would be round in a few minutes.

Her trials for the day were not over. She could see by their manner at dinner that her father and mother had been talking about her. Her father took her to a ball in the evening, where they met St. Cloud, who fastened himself to them. She was dancing a quadrille, and her father stood near her, talking confidentially to St. Cloud. In the intervals of the dance, scraps of their conversation reached her.

"You knew him, then, at Oxford?"

"Yes, very slightly."

"I should like to ask you now, as a friend--" Here Mary's partner reminded her that she ought to be dancing. When she had returned to her place again she heard--

"You think, then, that it was a bad business?"

"It was notorious in the college. We never had any doubt on the subject."

"My niece has told Mrs. Porter that there really was nothing wrong in it."

"Indeed? I am happy to hear it."

"I should like to think well of him, as he is a connexion of my wife. In other respects now--"

Here again she was carried away by the dance. When she returned, she caught the end of a sentence of St. Cloud's, "You will consider what I have said in confidence?"

"Certainly," answered Mr. Porter; "and I am exceedingly obliged to you." And then the dance was over, and Mary returned to her father's side. She had never enjoyed a ball less than this, and persuaded her father to leave early, which he was delighted to do.

When she reached her own room, Mary took off her wreath and ornaments, and then sat down and fell into a brown study, which lasted for some time. At last she roused herself with a sigh, and thought she had never had so tiring a day, though she could hardly tell why, and felt half inclined to have a good cry, if she could only have made up her mind what about. However, being a sensible young woman, she resisted the temptation, and hardly taking the trouble to roll up her hair, went to bed and slept soundly.

Mr. Porter found his wife sitting up for him; they were evidently both full of the same subject.

"Well, dear?" she said, as he entered the room.

Mr. Porter put down his candle, and shook his head.

"You don't think Katie can be right then? She must have capital opportunities of judging, you know, dear."

"But she is no judge. What can a girl like Katie know about such things?"

"Well, dear, do you know I really cannot think there was anything very wrong, though I did think so at first, I own."

"But I find that his character was bad--decidedly bad--always. Young St. Cloud didn't like to say much to me, which was natural, of course. Young men never like to betray one another; but I could see what he thought. He is a right-minded young man and very agreeable."

"I do not take to him very much."

"His connexions and prospects, too, are capital. I sometimes think he has a fancy for Mary. Haven't you remarked it?"

"Yes, dear. But as to the other matter? Shall you ask him here?"

"Well, dear, I do not think there is any need. He is only in town, I suppose, for a short time, and it is not at all likely that we should know where he is, you see."

"But if he should call?"

"Of course then we must be civil. We can consider then what is to be done."

Spotted a typo or a problem in this chapter? Tell us

XLIV. THE INTERCEPTED LETTER-BAG

"Dear Katie;--At home, you see, without having answered your last kind letter of counsel and sympathy. But I couldn't write in town, I was in such a queer state all the time. I enjoyed nothing, not even the match at Lord's, or the race; only walking at night in the square, and watching her window, and seeing her at a distance in Rotten Row."

"I followed your advice at last, though it went against the grain uncommonly. It did seem so unlike what I had a right to expect from them--after all the kindness my father and mother had shown them when they came into our neighborhood, and after I had been so intimate there, running in and out just like a son of their own--that they shouldn't take the slightest notice of me all the time I was in London. I shouldn't have wondered if you hadn't explained; but after that, and after you had told them my direction, and when they knew that I was within five minutes' walk of their house constantly (for they knew all about Grey's schools, and that I was there three or four times a week), I do think it was too bad. However, as I was going to tell you, I went at last, for I couldn't leave town without trying to see her; and I believe I have finished it all off. I don't know. I'm very low about it, at any rate, and want to tell you all that passed, and to hear what you think. I have no one to consult but you, Katie. What should I do without you? But you were born to help and comfort all the world. I shan't rest till I know what you think about this last crisis in my history."

"I put off going till my last day in town, and then called twice. The first time, 'not at home.' But I was determined now to see somebody and make out something; so I left my card, and a message that, as I was leaving town next day, I would call again. When I called again at 6 o'clock, I was shown into the library, and presently your uncle came in. I felt very uncomfortable, and I think he did too; but he shook hands cordially enough, asked why I had not called before, and said he was sorry to hear I was going out of town so soon. Do you believe he meant it? I didn't. But it put me out, because it made it look as if it had been my fault that I hadn't been there before. I said I didn't know that he would have liked me to call, but I felt that he had got the best of the start."

"Then he asked after all at home, and talked of his boys, and how they were getting on at school. By this time I had got my head again; so I went back to my calling, and said that I had felt that I could never come to their house as a common acquaintance, and, as I did not know whether they would ever let me come in any other capacity, I had kept away till now."

"Your uncle didn't like it, I know; for he got up and walked about, and then said he didn't understand me. Well, I was quite reckless by this time. It was my last chance, I felt; so I looked hard into my hat, and said that I had been over head and ears in love with Mary for two years. Of course there was no getting out of the business after that. I kept on staring into my hat; so I don't know how he took it; but the first thing he said was that he had had some suspicions of this, and now my confession gave him a right to ask me several questions. In the first place, had I ever spoken to her? No; never directly. What did I mean by directly? I meant that I had never either spoken or written to her on the subject--in fact, I hadn't seen her except at a distance for the last two years--but I could not say that she might not have found it out from my manner. Had I ever told anyone else? No. And this was quite true, Katie, for both you and Hardy found it out."

"He took a good many turns before speaking again. Then he said I had acted as a gentleman hitherto and he should be very plain with me. Of course I must see that, looking at my prospects and his daughter's, it could not be an engagement which he could look on with much favor from a worldly point of view. Nevertheless, he had the highest respect and regard for my family, so that, if in some years' time I was in a position to marry, he should not object on this score; but there were other matters which were in his eyes of more importance. He had heard (who could have told him?) that I had taken up very violent opinions--opinions which, to say nothing more of them, would very much damage my prospects of success in life; and that I was in the habit of associating with the advocates of such opinions--persons who, he must say, were not fit companions for a gentleman--and of writing violent articles in low revolutionary newspapers, such as the Wessex Freeman. Yes, I confessed I had written. Would I give up these things? I had a great mind to say flat, no, and I believe I ought to have; but as his tone was kind, I couldn't help trying to meet him. So I said I would give up writing or speaking publicly about such matters, but I couldn't pretend not to believe what I did believe. Perhaps, as my opinions had altered so much already, very likely they might again."

"He seemed to be rather amused at that, and said he sincerely hoped they might. But now came the most serious point; he had heard very bad stories of me at Oxford, but he would not press me with them. There were too few young men whose lives would bear looking into for him to insist much on such matters, and he was ready to let bygones be bygones. But I must remember that he had himself seen me in one very awkward position. I broke in, and said I had hoped that had been explained to him. I could not defend my Oxford life; or could not defend myself as to this particular case at one time; but there had been nothing in it that I was ashamed of since before the time I knew his daughter."

"On my honour, had I absolutely and entirely broken off all relations with her? He had been told that I still kept up a correspondence with her."

"Yes, I still wrote to her, and saw her occasionally; but it was only to give her news of a young man from her village, who was now serving in India. He had no other way of communicating with her."

"It was a most curious arrangement; did I mean that this young man was going to be married to her?"

"I hoped so."

"Why should he not write to her at once, if they were engaged to be married?"

"They were not exactly engaged; it was rather hard to explain. Here your uncle seemed to lose patience, for he interrupted me and said, 'Really, it must be clear to me, as a reasonable man, that, if this connexion were not absolutely broken off, there must be an end of everything, so far as his daughter was concerned. Would I give my word of honor to break it off at once, and completely?' I tried to explain again; but he would have nothing but 'yes' or 'no.' Dear Katie, what could I do? I have written to Patty that, till I die, she may always reckon on me as on a brother; and I promised Harry never to lose sight of her, and to let her know everything that happens to him. Your uncle would not hear me; so I said, "No." And he said, 'Then our interview had better end,' and rang the bell. Somebody, I'm sure, has been slandering me to him; who can it be?"

"I didn't say another word, or offer to shake hands, but got up and walked out of the room, as it was no good waiting for the servant to come. When I got into the hall the front door was open, and I heard her voice. I stopped dead short. She was saying something to some people who had been out riding with her. The next moment the door shut, and she tripped in in her riding-habit, and grey gloves, and hat, with the dearest little grey plume in it. She went humming along, and up six or eight steps, without seeing me. Then I moved a step, and she stopped and looked and gave a start. I don't know whether my face was awfully miserable, but, when our eyes met, her's seemed to fill with pity and uneasiness, and inquiry, and the bright look to melt away altogether; and then she blushed and ran down stairs again, and held out her hand, saying, 'I am so glad to see you, after all this long time.' I pressed it, but I don't think I said anything. I forget; the butler came into the hall, and stood by the door. She paused another moment, looked confused, and then, as the library door opened, went away up stairs, with a kind 'good-bye.' She dropped a little bunch of violets, which she had worn in the breast of her habit, as she went away. I went and picked them up, although your uncle had now come out of the library, and then made the best of my way into the street."

"There, Katie, I have told you everything, exactly as it happened. Do write to me, dear, and tell me, now, what you think. Is it all over? What can I do? Can you do anything for me? I feel it is better in one respect. Her father can never say now that I didn't tell him all about it. But what is to happen? I am so restless. I can settle to nothing, and do nothing, but fish. I moon away all my time by the water-side, dreaming. But I don't mean to let it beat me much longer. Here's the fourth day since I saw her. I came away the next morning. I shall give myself a week; and, dear, do write me a long letter at once, and interpret it all to me. A woman knows so wonderfully what things mean. But don't make it out better than you really think. Nobody can stop my going on loving her, that's a comfort; and while I can do that, and don't know she loves anybody else, I ought to be happier than any other man in the world. Yes, I ought to be, but I ain't. I will be, though; see if I won't. Heigho! Do write directly, my dear counsellor, to your affectionate cousin. T.B.

"P. S.--I had almost forgotten my usual budget. I enclose my last from India. You will see by it that Harry is getting on famously. I am more glad than I can tell you that my friend East has taken him as his servant. He couldn't be under a better master. Poor Harry! I sometimes think his case is more hopeless than my own. How is it to come right? or mine?"

ENGLEBOURN

"DEAR COUSIN,--You will believe how I devoured your letter; though, when I had read the first few lines and saw what was coming, it made me stop and tremble. At first I could have cried over it for vexation; but, now I have thought about it a little, I really do not see any reason to be discouraged. At any rate, Uncle Robert now knows all about it, and will get used to the idea, and Mary seems to have received you just as you ought to have wished that she should. I am thankful that you have left off pressing me to write to her about you, for I am sure that would not be honorable; and, to reward you, I enclose a letter of hers, which came yesterday. You will see that she speaks with such pleasure of having just caught a glimpse of you that you need not regret the shortness of the interview. You could not expect her to say more, because, after all, she can only guess; and I cannot do more than answer as if I were quite innocent too. I am sure you will be very thankful to me some day for not having been your mouthpiece, as I was so very near being. You need not return the letter. I suppose I am getting more hopeful as I grow older--indeed, I am sure I am; for three or four years ago I should have been in despair about you, and now I am nearly sure that all will come right."

"But, indeed, cousin Tom, you cannot, or ought not to wonder at Uncle Robert's objecting to your opinions. And then I am so surprised to find you saying that you think you may very likely change them. Because, if that is the case, it would be so much better if you would not write and talk about them. Unless you are quite convinced of such things as you write in that dreadful paper, you really ought not to go on writing them so very much as if you believed them."

"And now I am speaking to you about this, which I have often had on my mind to speak to you about, I must ask you not to send me that Wessex Freeman any more. I am always delighted to hear what you think; and there is a great deal in the articles you mark for me which seems very fine; and I dare say you quite believe it all when you write it. Only I am afraid lest papa or anyone of the servants should open the papers, or get hold of them after I have opened them; for I am sure there are a great many wicked things in the other parts of the paper. So, please do not send it to me, but write and tell me yourself anything that you wish me to know of what you are thinking about and doing. As I did not like to burn the papers, and was afraid to keep them here, I have generally sent them on to your friend Mr. Hardy. He does not know who sends them; and now you might send them yourself straight to him, as I do not know his address in the country. As you are going up again to keep a term, I wish you would talk them over with him, and see what he thinks about them. You will think this very odd of me, but you know you have always said how much you rely on his judgment, and that you have learnt so much from him. So I am sure you would wish to consult him; and, if he thinks that you ought to go on writing, it will be a great help to you to know it."

"I am so very glad to be able to tell you how well Martha is getting on. I have always read to her the extracts from the letters from India which you have sent me, and she is very much obliged to you for sending them. I think there is no doubt that she is, and always has been, attached to poor widow Winburn's son, and, now that he is behaving so well, I can see that it gives her great pleasure to hear about him. Only, I hope he will be able to come back before very long, because she is very much admired, and is likely to have so many chances of settling in life, that it is a great chance whether attachment to him will be strong enough to keep her single if he should be absent for many years."

"Do you know I have a sort of superstition, that your fate hangs upon theirs in some curious manner--the two stories have been so interwoven--and that they will both be settled happily much sooner than we dare to hope even just now."

"Don't think, my dear cousin, that this letter is cold, or that I do not take the very deepest interest in all that concerns you. You and Mary are always in my thoughts, and there is nothing in the world I would not do for you both which I thought would help you. I am sure it would do you harm if I were only a go-between. Papa is much as usual. He gets out a good deal in his chair in the sun this fine weather. He desires me to say how glad he should be if you will come over soon and pay us a visit. I hope you will come very soon."

"Ever believe me, dear Tom,

"Your affectionate cousin,

"KATIE."

"November.

"DEAR TOM,--I hear that what you in England call a mail is to leave camp this evening; so, that you may have no excuse for not writing to me constantly, I am sitting down to spin you such a yarn as I can under the disadvantages circumstances in which this will leave me.

"This time last year, or somewhere thereabouts, I was enjoying academic life with you at Oxford; and now here I am, encamped at some unpronounceable place beyond Umbala. You won't be much the wiser for that. What do you know about Umbala? I didn't myself know that there was such a place till a month ago, when we were ordered to march up here. But one lives and learns. Marching over India has its disagreeables, of which dysentery and dust are about the worst. A lot of our fellows are down with the former; amongst others my captain; so I am in command of the company. If it were not for the glorious privilege of grumbling, I think that we should all own that we liked the life. Moving about, though one does get frozen and broiled regularly once in twenty-four hours, suits me; besides, they talk of matters coming to a crisis, and no end of fighting to be done directly. You'll know more about what's going on from the papers than we do, but here they say the ball may begin any day; so we are making forced marches to be up in time. I wonder how I shall like it. Perhaps, in my next, I may tell you how a bullet sounds when it comes at you. If there is any fighting, I expect our regiment will make their mark. We are in tip-top order; the colonel is a grand fellow, and the regiment feels his hand down to the youngest drummer boy. What a deal of good I will do when I'm a colonel!

"I duly delivered the enclosure in your last to your convict, who is rapidly ascending the ladder of promotion. I am disgusted at this myself, for I have had to give him up, and there never was such a jewel of a servant; but, of course, it's a great thing for him. He is covering sergeant of my company, and the smartest coverer we have, too. I have got a regular broth of a boy, an Irishman, in his place, who leads me a dog of a life. I took him chiefly because he very nearly beat me in a foot-race. Our senior major is a Pat himself, and, it seems, knew something of Larry's powers. So, one day at mess, he offered to back him against anyone in the regiment for 200 yards. My captain took him up and named me, and the race came off next day; and a precious narrow thing it was, but I managed to win by a neck for the honor of the old school. He is a lazy scatter-brained creature, utterly indifferent to fact, and I am obliged to keep the brandy flask under lock and key; but the humour and absolute good-temper of the animal impose upon me, and I really think he is attached to me. So I keep him on, grumbling horribly at the change from that orderly, punctual, clean, accurate convict. Depend upon it, that fellow will do. He makes his way everywhere, with officers and men. He is a gentleman at heart, and, by the way, you would be surprised at the improvement in his manners and speech. There is hardly a taste of Berkshire left in his deealect. He has read all the books I could lend him or borrow for him and is fast picking up Hindustanee. So you see, after all, I am come round to your opinion that we did a good afternoon's work on that precious stormy common when we carried off the convict from the authorities of his native land, and was first under fire. As you are a performer in that line, couldn't you carry off his sweetheart and send her out here? After the sea voyage there isn't much above 1,000 miles to come by dauk; and tell her, with my compliments, he is well worth coming twice the distance for. Poor fellow! It is a bad lookout for him, I'm afraid, as he may not get home this ten years; and, though he isn't a kind to be easily lolled, there are serious odds against him, even if he keeps all right. I almost wish you had never told me his story.

"We are going into cantonments as soon as this expedition is over, in a splendid pig district, and I look forward to some real sport. All the men who have had any tell me it beats the best fox hunt all to fits for excitement. I have got my eye on a famous native horse, who is to be had cheap. The brute is in the habit of kneeling on his masters, and tearing them with his teeth when he gets them off, but nothing can touch him while you keep on his back. 'Howsumdever,' as your countrymen say, I shall have a shy at him, if I can get him at my price.

"I've nothing more to say. There's nobody you knew here, except the convict sergeant, and it is awfully hard to fill a letter home unless you have somebody to talk about. Yes, by the way, there is one little fellow, an ensign, just joined, who says he remembers us at school. He can't be more than eighteen or nineteen, and was an urchin in the lower school, I suppose, when we were leaving. I don't remember his face, but it's a very good one, and he is a bright gentlemanly youngster as you would wish to see. His name is Jones. Do you remember him? He will be a godsend to me. I have him to chum with me on this march.

"Keep up your letters as you love me. You at home little know what it is to enjoy a letter. Never mind what you put in it; anything will do from home, and I've nobody much else to write to me.

"There goes the 'assembly.' Why, I can't think, seeing that we have done our day's march. However, I must turn out and see what's up."

* * * * * * * * * *

"December.

"I have just fallen on this letter, which I had quite forgotten, or, rather, had fancied I had sent off to you three weeks and more ago. My baggage has just come to hand, and the scrawl turned up in my paper cases. Well, I have plenty to tell you now, at any rate, if I have time to tell it. That 'assembly' which stopped me short sounded in consequence of the arrival of one of the commander-in-chief's aides in our camp with the news that the enemy was over the Sutlej. We were to march at once, with two six-pounders and a squadron of cavalry, on a fort occupied by an outlying lot of them which commanded a ford, and was to be taken and destroyed, and the rascals who held it dispersed; after which we were to join the main army. Our colonel had the command, so we were on the route within an hour, leaving a company and the baggage to follow as it could; and from that time to this, forced marching and hard fighting have been the order of the day.

"We drew first blood next morning. The enemy were in some force outside the fort, and showed fight in very rough ground covered with bushes, out of which we had to drive them, which we did after a sharp struggle, and the main body drew off altogether. Then the fort had to be taken. Our two guns worked away at it till dark. In the night two of the gunners, who volunteered for the service, crept close up to the place, and reported that there was nothing to hinder our running right into it. Accordingly the colonel resolved to rush it at daybreak, and my company was told off to lead. The captain being absent, I had to command. I was with the dear old chief the last thing at night, getting his instructions; ten minutes with him before going into action would make a hare fight.

"There was cover to within one hundred and fifty yards of the place; and there I, and poor little Jones; and the men, spent the night in a dry ditch. An hour before daybreak we were on the alert, and served out rations, and then they began playing tricks on one another as if we were out for a junketing. I sat with my watch in my hand, feeling queer, and wondering whether I was a greater coward than the rest. Then came a streak of light. I put up my watch, formed the men; up went a rocket, my signal, and out into the open we went at the double. We hadn't got over a third of the ground when bang went the fort guns, and the grape-shot were whistling about our ears; so I shouted 'Forward!' and away we went as hard as we could go. I was obliged to go ahead, you see, because every man of them knew I had beaten Larry, their best runner, when he had no gun to carry; but I didn't half like it, and should have blessed any hole or bramble which would have sent me over and given them time to catch me. But the ground was provokingly level; and so I was at the first mound and over it several lengths in front of the men, and among a lot of black fellows serving the guns. They came at me like wild cats, and how I got off is a mystery. I parried a cut from one fellow, and dodged a second; a third rushed at my left side. I just caught the flash of his tulwar, and thought it was all up, when he jumped into the air, shot through the heart by Sergeant Winburn; and the next moment Master Larry rushed by me and plunged his bayonet into my friend in front. It turned me as sick as a dog. I can't fancy anything more disagreeable than seeing the operation for the first time, except being struck oneself. The supporting companies were in in another minute, with the dear old chief himself, who came up and shook hands with me, and said I had done credit to the regiment. Then I began to look about, and missed poor little Jones. We found him about twenty yards from the place with two grape-shot through him, stone dead, and smiling like a child asleep. We buried him in the fort. I cut off some of his hair, and sent it home to his mother. Her last letter was in his breast pocket, and a lock of bright brown hair of some one's. I sent them back, too, and his sword.

"Since then we have been with the army, and had three or four general actions; about which I can tell you nothing, except that we have lost about the third of the regiment, and have always been told we have won. Steps go fast enough; my captain died of wounds and dysentery a week ago; so I have the company in earnest. How long I shall hold it, is another question; for, though there's a slack, we haven't done with sharp work yet, I can see.

"How often we've talked, years ago, of what it must feel like going into battle! Well, the chief thing I felt when the grape came down pretty thick for the first time, as we were advancing, was a sort of gripes in the stomach which made me want to go forward stooping. But I didn't give in to it; the chief was riding close behind us, joking the youngsters who were ducking their heads, and so cheery and cool, that he made old soldiers of us at once. What with smoke, and dust, and excitement, you know scarcely anything of what is going on. The finest sight I have seen is the artillery going into action. Nothing stops those fellows. Places you would crane at out hunting they go right over, guns, carriages, men, and all, leaving any cavalry we've got out here well behind. Do you know what a nullah is? Well, it's a great gap, like a huge dry canal, fifteen or twenty feet deep. We were halted behind one in the last great fight, awaiting the order to advance, when a battery came up at full gallop. We all made sure they must be pulled up the nullah. They never pulled bridle. 'Leading gun, right turn!' sang out the subaltern; and down they went sideways into the nullah. Then, 'Left turn;' up the other bank, one gun after another, the horses scrambling like cats up and down places that my men had to use their hands to scramble up, and away on the other side to within 200 yards of the enemy; and then, round like lightning, and look out in front.

"Altogether, it's sickening work, though there's a grand sort of feeling of carrying your life in your hand. They say the Sepoy regiments have behaved shamefully. There is no sign of anything like funk among our fellows that I have seen. Sergeant Winburn has distinguished himself everywhere. He is like my shadow, and I can see he tries to watch over my precious carcase, and get between me and danger. He would be a deal more missed in the world than I. Except you, old friend, I don't know who would care much if I were knocked over to-morrow. Aunts and cousins are my nearest relations. You know I never was a snuffler; but this sort of life makes one serious, if one has any reverence at all in one. You'll be glad to have this line, if you don't hear from me again. I've often thought in the last month that we shall never see one another again in this world. But, whether in this world or any other, you know I am and always shall be,

"Your affectionate friend,

"H. EAST."

CAMP OF THE SUTLEJ, January.

"DEAR MASTER TOM;--The captain's last words was, if anything happened I was to be sure to write and tell you. And so I take up my pen, though you will know as I am not used to writing, to tell you the misfortune as has happened to our regiment. Because, if you was to ask any man in our regiment, let it be who it would, he would say as the captain was the best officer as ever led men. Not but what there's a many of them as will go to the front as brave as lions, and don't value shot no more than if it was rotten apples; and men as is men will go after such. But 'tis the captain's manners and ways, with a kind word for any poor fellow as is hurt, or sick and tired, and making no account of hisself, and, as you may say, no bounce with him; that's what makes the difference.

"As it might be last Saturday, we came upon the enemy where he was posted very strong, with guns all along his front, and served till we got right up to them, the runners being cut down and bayoneted when we got right up amongst them, and no quarter given; and there was great banks of earth, too, to clamber over, and more guns behind; so, with the marching up in front and losing so many officers and men, our regiment was that wild when we got amongst them, that 'twas awful to see, and, if there was any prisoners taken, it was more by mistake than not.

"Me and three or four more settled, when the word came to prepare for action, to keep with the captain, because 'twas known to everyone as no odds would stop him, and he would never mind hisself. The dust and smoke and noise was that thick you couldn't see nor hear anything after our regiment was in action; but, so far as I seen, when we was wheeled into line and got the word to advance, there was as it might be as far as from our old cottage to the Hawk's Lynch to go over before we got to the guns which was playing into us all the way. Our line went up very steady, only where men was knocked down; and, when we came to within a matter of sixty yards, the officers jumped out and waved their swords, for 'twas no use to give words, and the ranks was broken by reason of the running up to take the guns from the enemy. Me and the rest went after the captain; but he, being so light of foot, was first by maybe ten yards or so, at the mound, and so up before we was by him. But, though they was all round him like bees when we got to him, 'twas not then as he was hit. There was more guns further on, and we and they drove on all together; and, though they was beaten, being fine tall men and desperate, there was many of them fighting hard, and, as you might say, a man scarcely knowed how he got hit. I kept to the captain as close as ever I could, but there was times when I had to mind myself. Just as we came to the last gun's, Larry, that's the captain's servant, was trying by hisself to turn one of them round, so as to fire on the enemy as they took the river to the back of their lines all in a huddle. So I turned to lend him a hand; and, when I looked round next moment, there was the captain a-staggering like a drunken man, and he so strong and lissom up to then, and never had a scratch since the war begun, and this the last minute of it pretty nigh, for the enemy was all cut to pieces and drowned that day. I got to him before he fell, and we laid him down gently, and did the best we could for him. But he was bleeding dreadful with a great gash in his side, and his arm broke, and two gunshot wounds. Our surgeon was killed, and 'twas hours before his wounds was dressed, and 'twill be God's mercy if ever he gets round; though they do say if the fever and dysentery keeps off, and he can get out of this country and home, there's no knowing but that he may get the better of it all, but not to serve with the regiment again for years to come.

"I hope, Master Tom, as I've told you all the captain would like as you should know; only, being not much used to writing, I hope you will excuse mistakes. And, if so be that it won't be too much troubling of you, and the captain should go home, and you could write to say as things was going on at home as before, which the captain always gave to me to read when the mail come in, it would be a great help towards keeping up a good heart and in a foreign land, which is hard at times to do. There is some things which I make bold to send by a comrade going home sick. I don't know as they will seem much, but I hope as you will accept of the sword, which belonged to one of her officers, and the rest to her. Also, on account of what was in the last piece as you forwarded, I send a letter to go along with the things, if Miss Winter, who have been so kind, or you would deliver the same. To whom I make bold to send my respects as well as to yourself, and hoping this will find you well and all friends.

"From your respectful,

"HENRY WINBURN,

"Colour-sergeant. 101st Regiment."

"March.

"My DEAR TOM;--I begin to think I may see you again yet, but it has been a near shave. I hope Sergeant Winburn's letter, and the returns, in which I see I was put down "dangerously wounded," will not have frightened you very much. The war is over; and, if I live to get down to Calcutta you will see me in the summer, please God. The end was like the beginning--going right up to the guns. Our regiment is frightfully cut up; there are only 300 men left under arms--the rest dead or in hospital. I am sick at heart at it, and weak in body, and can only write a few lines at a time, but will get on with this as I can, in time for next mail.

* * * * *

"Since beginning this letter I have had another relapse. So, in case I should never finish it, I will say at once what I most want to say. Winburn has saved my life more than once, and is besides one of the noblest and bravest fellows in the world; so I mean to provide for him in case anything should happen to me. I have made a will, and appointed you my executor, and left him a legacy. You must buy his discharge, and get him home and married to the Englebourn beauty as soon as possible. But what I want you to understand is, that if the legacy isn't enough to do this, and make all straight with her old curmudgeon of a father, it is my first wish that whatever will do it should be made up to him. He has been in hospital with a bad flesh wound, and has let out to me the whole of his story, of which you had only given me the heads. If that young women does not wait for him, and book him, I shall give up all faith in petticoats. Now that's done I feel more at ease.

"Let me see. I haven't written for six weeks and more, just before our last great fight. You'll know all about it from the papers long before you get this--a bloody business; I am loath to think of it. I was knocked over in the last of their entrenchments, and should then and there have bled to death had it not been for Winburn. He never left me, though the killing, and plundering, and roystering afterwards was going on all around, and strong temptation to a fellow when his blood is up, and he sees his comrades at it, after such work as we have had. What's more he caught my Irish fellow and made him stay by me too, and between them they managed to prop me up and stop the bleeding, though it was touch and go. I never thought they would manage it. You can't think what a curious feeling it is, the life going out of you. I was perfectly conscious, and knew all they were doing and saying, and thought quite clearly, though in a sort of dreamy way, about you, and a whole jumble of people and things at home. It was the most curious painless mixture of dream and life, getting more dreamy every minute. I don't suppose I could have opened my eyes or spoken; at any rate I had no wish to do so, and didn't try. Several times the thought of death came close to me; and, whether it was the odd state I was in, or what else I don't know, but the only feeling I had, was one of intense curiosity. I should think I must have lain there, with Winburn supporting my head, and moistening my lips with rum-and-water, for four or five hours, before a doctor could be got. He had managed to drive Larry about till he had found, or borrowed, or stolen the drink, and then kept him making short cruises in search of help in the shape of hospital-staff, ambulances, or doctors, from which Master Larry always came back without the slightest success. My belief is, he employed those precious minutes, when he was from under his sergeant's eye, in looting. At last, Winburn got impatient, and I heard him telling Larry what he was to do while he was gone himself to find a doctor; and then I was moved as gently as if I had been a sick girl. I heard him go off with a limp, but did not know till long after of his wound.

"Larry had made such a wailing and to-do when they first found me, that a natural reaction now set in, and he began gently and tenderly to run over in his mind what could be made out of 'the captin,' and what would become of his things. I found out this, partly through his habit of talking to himself, and partly from the precaution which he took of ascertaining where my watch and purse were, and what else I had upon me. It tickled me immensely to hear him. Presently I found he was examining my boots, which he pronounced 'iligant entirely,' and wondered whether he could get them on. The 'serjint' would never want them. And he then proceeded to assert, while he actually began unlacing them, that the 'captin' would never have 'bet him' but for the boots which 'was worth ten feet in a furlong to any man.' 'Shure, 'tis too late now; but wouldn't I like to run him agin with bare feet?' I couldn't stand that, and just opened my eyes a little, and moved my hand, and said, 'Done.' I wanted to add, 'you rascal,' but that was too much for me. Larry's face of horror, which I just caught through my half-opened eyes, would have made me roar, if I had had strength for it. I believe the resolution I made that he should never go about in my boots helped to pull me through; but, as soon as Winburn came back with the doctor, Master Larry departed, and I much doubt whether I shall ever set eyes on him again in the flesh. Not if he can help it, certainly. The regiment, what's left of it, is away in the Punjaub, and he with it. Winburn, as I told you, is hard hit, but no danger. I have great hopes that he will be invalided. You may depend upon it he will escort me home, if any interest of mine can manage it; and the dear old chief is so kind to me that I think he will arrange it somehow.

"I must be wonderfully better to have spun such a yarn. Writing those first ten lines nearly finished me, a week ago, and now I am scarcely tired after all this scrawl. If that rascal, Larry, escapes hanging another year, and comes back home, I will run him yet, and thrash his head off.

"There is something marvelously life-giving in the idea of sailing for old England again; and I mean to make a strong fight for seeing you again, old boy. God bless you. Write again for the chance, directing to my agents at Calcutta as before.

"Ever your half-alive, but whole-hearted and affectionate friend,

"H. EAST"

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XLV. MASTER'S TERM

One more look into the old college where we have spent so much time already, not, I hope, altogether unpleasantly. Our hero is up in the summer term, keeping his three weeks' residence, the necessary preliminary to an M. A. degree. We find him sitting in Hardy's rooms; tea is over, scouts out of college, candles lighted, and silence reigning, except when distant sounds of mirth come from some undergraduates' rooms on the opposite side of quad, through the open windows.

Hardy is deep in the budget of Indian letters, some of which we have read in the last chapter; and Tom reads them over again as his friend finishes them, and then carefully folds them up and puts them back in their places in a large pocket-case. Except for an occasional explanatory remark, or exclamation of interest, no word passes until Hardy finishes the last letter. Then he breaks out into praises of the two Harrys, which gladdens Tom's heart as he fastens the case, and puts it back in his pocket, saying, "Yes, you won't find two finer fellows in a long summer's day; no, nor in twenty."

"And you expect them home, then, in a week or two?"

"Yes, I think so. Just about the time I shall be going down."

"Don't talk about going down. You haven't been here a week."

"Just a week. One out of three. Three weeks wasted in keeping one's Master's term! Why can't you give a fellow his degree quietly, without making him come and kick his heels here for three weeks?"

"You ungrateful dog! Do you mean to say you haven't enjoyed coming back, and sitting in dignity in the bachelors' seats in chapel, and at the bachelors' table in hall, and thinking how much wiser you are than the undergraduates? Besides, your old friends want to see you, and you ought to want to see them."

"Well, I am very glad to see something of you again, old fellow. I don't find that a year's absence has made any change in you. But who else is there that I care to see? My old friends are gone, and the year has made a great gap between me and the youngsters. They look on me as a sort of don."

"Of course they do. Why, you are a sort of don. You will be an M. A. in a fortnight, and a member of Convocation."

"Very likely; but I don't appreciate the dignity. I can tell you being up here now is anything but enjoyable. You have never broken with the place. And then, you always did your duty, and have done the college credit. You can't enter into the feelings of a fellow whose connexion with Oxford has been quite broken off, and who wasted three parts of his time here, when he comes back to keep his Master's."

"Come, come, Tom. You might have read more certainly, with benefit to yourself and college, and taken a higher degree. But, after all, didn't the place do you a great deal of good? and you didn't do it much harm. I don't like to see you in this sort of gloomy state; it isn't natural to you."

"It is becoming natural. You haven't seen much of me during the last year, or you would have remarked it. And then, as I tell you, Oxford, when one has nothing to do in it but to moon about, thinking over one's past follies and sins, isn't cheerful. It never was a very cheerful place to me at the best of times."

"Not even at pulling times?"

"Well, the river is the part I like best to think of. But even the river makes me rather melancholy now. One feels one has done with it."

"Why, Tom, I believe your melancholy comes from their not having asked you to pull in the boat."

"Perhaps it does. Don't you call it degrading to be pulling in the torpid in one's old age?"

"Mortified vanity, man! They have a capital boat. I wonder how we should have liked to have been turned out for some bachelor just because he had pulled a good oar in his day?"

"Not at all. I don't blame the young ones, and I hope to do my duty in the torpid. By the way, they are an uncommonly nice set of youngsters. Much better behaved in every way than we were, unless it is that they put on their best manners before me."

"No, I don't think they do. The fact is they are really fine young fellows."

"So I think. And I'll tell you what, Jack; since we are sitting and talking our minds to one another at last, like old times, somebody has made the most wonderful change in this college. I rather think it is seeing what St. Ambrose's is now, and thinking what it was in my time, and what an uncommon member of society I should have turned out if I had had the luck to have been here now instead of then, that makes me down in the mouth--more even than having to pull in the torpid instead of the racing boat."

"You do think it is improved, then?"

"Think! Why it is a different place altogether; and, as you are the only new tutor, it must have been your doing. Now I want to know your secret."

"I've no secret, except taking a real interest in all that the men do, and living with them as much as I can. You may fancy it isn't much of a trial to me to steer the boat down or run on the bank and coach the crew."

"Ah! I remember you were beginning that before I left, in your first year. I knew that would answer."

"Yes. The fact is, I find that just what I like best is the very best thing for the men. With very few exceptions they are all glad to be stirred up, and meet me nearly halfway in reading, and three-quarters in everything else. I believe they would make me captain to-morrow."

"And why don't you let them?"

"No; there's a time for everything. I go in in the scratch fours for the pewters, and--more by token--my crew won them two years running. Look at my trophies," and he pointed to two pewter pots, engraved with the college arms, which stood on his side-board.

"Well, I dare say you're right. But what does the president say?"

"Oh, he is a convert. Didn't you see him on the bank when you torpids made your bump the other night?"

"No, you don't mean it? Well, do you know, a sort of vision of black tights, and a broad-brimmed hat, crossed me, but I never gave it a second thought. And so the president comes out to see the St. Ambrose boat row?"

"Seldom misses two nights running."

"Then, 'carry me out, and bury me decently'. Have you seen old Tom walking around Peckwater lately on his clapper, smoking a cigar with the Dean of Christ Church? Don't be afraid. I am ready for anything you like to tell me. Draw any amount you like on my faith; I shall honor the draft after that."

"The president isn't a bad judge of an oar, when he sets his mind to it."

"Isn't he? But, I say, Jack--no sell--how in the world did it happen?"

"I believe it happened chiefly through his talks with me. When I was first made tutor he sent for me and told me he had heard I encouraged the young men in boating, and he must positively forbid it. I didn't care much about staying up; so I was pretty plain with him, and said, 'if I was not allowed to take the line I thought best in such matters, I must resign at the end of the term.' He assented, but afterwards thought better of it, and sent for me again, and we had several encounters. I took my ground very civilly but firmly, and he had to give up one objection after another. I think the turning point was when he quoted St. Paul on me, and said I was teaching boys to worship physical strength, instead of teaching them to keep under their bodies and bring them into subjection. Of course I countered him there with tremendous effect. The old boy took it very well, only saying he feared it was no use to argue further--in this matter of boat-racing he had come to a conclusion, not without serious thought, many years before. However, he came round quietly. And so he has on other points. In fact, he is a wonderfully open-minded man for his age, if you only put things to him the right way."

"Has he come round about gentlemen-commoners? I see you have only two or three up."

"Yes. We haven't given up taking them altogether. I hope that may come soon. But I and another tutor took to plucking them ruthlessly at matriculation, unless they were quite up to the commoner standard. The consequence was, a row in common room. We stood out, and won. Luckily, as you know, it has always been given out here that all under-graduates, gentlemen-commoners and commoners, have to pass the same college examinations, and to attend the same course of lectures. You know also what a mere sham and pretence the rule had become. Well, we simply made a reality of it, and in answer to all objectors said, 'Is it our rule or not? If it is, we are bound to act on it. If you want to alter it, there are the regular ways of doing so.' After a little grumbling they let us have our way, and the consequence is, that velvet is getting scarce at St. Ambrose."

"What a blessing! What other miracles have you been performing?"

"The best reform we have carried is throwing the kitchen and cellar open to the undergraduates."

"W-h-e-w! That's just the sort of reform we should have appreciated. Fancy Drysdale's lot with the key of the college cellars, at about ten o'clock on a shiny night."

"You don't quite understand the reform. You remember, when you were an undergraduate you couldn't give a dinner in college, and you had to buy your wine anywhere?"

"Yes. And awful firewater we used to get. The governor supplied me, like a wise man."

"Well, we have placed the college in the relation of benevolent father. Every undergraduate now can give two dinners a term in his own rooms, from the kitchen; or more, if he comes and asks, and has any reason to give. We take care that they have a good dinner at a reasonable rate, and the men are delighted with the arrangement. I don't believe there are three men in the college now who have hotel bills. And we let them have all their wine out of the college cellars."

"That's what I call good common sense. Of course it must answer in every way. And you find they all come to you?"

"Almost all. They can't get anything like the wine we give them at the price, and they know it."

"Do you make them pay ready money?"

"The dinners and wine are charged in their battel bills; so they have to pay once a term, just as they do for their orders at commons."

"It must swell their battel bills awfully."

"Yes, but battel bills always come in at the beginning of term when they are flush of money. Besides, they all know that battel bills must be paid. In a small way it is the best thing that ever was done for St. Ambrose's. You see it cuts so many ways. Keeps men in the college, knocks off the most objectionable bills at inns and pastry-cooks', keeps them from being poisoned, makes them pay their bills regularly, shows them that we like them to be able to live like gentlemen--"

"And lets you dons know what they are all about, and how much they spend in the way of entertaining."

"Yes; and a very good thing for them too. They know that we shall not interfere while they behave like gentlemen."

"Oh, I'm not objecting. And was this your doing, too?"

"No, a joint business. We hatched it in the common room, and then the bursar spoke to the president, who was furious, and said we were giving the sanction of the college to disgraceful luxury and extravagance. Luckily he had not the power of stopping us, and now is convinced."

"The goddess of common sense seems to have alighted again in the quad of St. Ambrose. You'll never leave the place, Jack, now you're beginning to get everything your own way."

"On the contrary, I don't mean to stop up more than another year at the outside. I have been tutor nearly three years now; that's about long enough."

"Do you think you're right? You seem to have hit on your line in life wonderfully. You like the work and the work likes you. You are doing a heap of good up here. You'll be president in a year or two, depend on it. I should say you had better stick to Oxford."

"No. I should be of no use in a year or two. We want a constant current of fresh blood here."

"In a general way. But you don't get a man every day who can throw himself into the men's pursuits, and can get hold of them in the right way. And then, after all, when a fellow has got such work cut out for him as you have, Oxford must be an uncommonly pleasant place to live in."

"Pleasant enough in many ways. But you seem to have forgotten how you used to rail against it."

"Yes. Because I never hit off the right ways of the place. But if I had taken a first and got a fellowship, I should like it well enough I dare say."

"Being a fellow, on the contrary, makes it worse. While one was an undergraduate, one could feel virtuous and indignant at the vices of Oxford, at least at those which one did not indulge in, particularly at the flunkeyism and money-worship which are our most prevalent and disgraceful sins. But when one is a fellow it is quite another affair. They become a sore burthen then, enough to break one's heart."

"Why, Jack, we're changing characters to-night. Fancy your coming out in the abusive line! Why I never said harder things of Alma Mater myself. However, there's plenty of flunkeyism and money-worship everywhere else."

"Yes, but it is not so heart-breaking in other places. When one thinks what a great centre of learning and faith Oxford ought to be like--that its highest educational work should just be the deliverance of us all from flunkeyism and money-worship--and then looks at matters here without rose-colored spectacles, it gives one sometimes a sort of chilly leaden despondency, which is very hard to struggle against."

"I am sorry to hear you talk like that, Jack, for one can't help loving the place after all."

"So I do, God knows. If I didn't I shouldn't care for its shortcomings."

"Well, the flunkeyism and money-worship were bad enough, but I don't think they were the worst things--at least not in my day. Our neglects were almost worse than our worships."

"You mean the want of all reverence for parents? Well, perhaps that lies at the root of the false worships. They spring up on the vacant soil."

"And the want of reverence for women, Jack. The worst of all, to my mind!"

"Perhaps you are right. But we are not at the bottom yet."

"How do you mean?"

"I mean that we must worship God before we can reverence parents or women, or root out flunkeyism and money-worship."

"Yes. But, after all, can we fairly lay that sin on Oxford? Surely, whatever may be growing up side by side with it, there's more Christianity here than almost anywhere else."

"Plenty of common-room Christianity--belief in a dead God. There, I have never said it to anyone but you, but that is the slough we have to get out of. Don't think that I despair for us. We shall do it yet; but it will be sore work, stripping off the comfortable wine-party religion in which we are wrapped up--work for our strongest and our wisest."

"And yet you think of leaving?"

"There are other reasons. I will tell you some day. But now, to turn to other matters, how have you been getting on this last year? You write so seldom that I am all behind-hand."

"Oh, much the same as usual."

"Then you are still like one of those who went out to David?"

"No, I'm not in debt."

"But discontented?"

"Pretty much like you there, Jack. However, content is no virtue, that I can see, while there's anything to mend. Who is going to be contented with game-preserving, and corn-laws, and grinding the faces of the poor? David's camp was a better place than Saul's, any day."

Hardy got up, opened a drawer, and took out a bundle of papers, which Tom recognized as the Wessex Freeman. He felt rather uncomfortable, as his friend seated himself again, and began looking them over.

"You see what I have here," he said.

Tom nodded.

"Well, there are some of the articles I should like to ask you about, if you don't object."

"No; go on."

"Here is one, then, to begin with. I won't read it all. Let me see; here is what I was looking for," and he began reading; "One would think, to hear these landlords, our rulers, talk, that the glorious green fields, the deep woods the everlasting hills, and the rivers that run among them, were made for the sole purpose of ministering to their greedy lusts and mean ambitions; that they may roll out amongst unrealities their pitiful mock lives, from their silk and lace cradles to their spangled coffins, studded with silver knobs, and lying coats of arms, reaping where they have not sown, and gathering where they have not strewed, making the omer small and the ephah great, that they may sell the refuse of the wheat--"

"That'll do, Jack; but what's the date of that paper?"

"July last. Is it yours, then?"

"Yes. And I allow it's too strong and one-sided. I have given up writing altogether; will that satisfy you? I don't see my own way clear enough yet. But, for all that, I'm not ashamed of what I wrote in that paper."

"I have nothing more to say after that, except that I'm heartily glad you have given up writing for the present."

"But I say, old fellow, how did you get these papers, and know about my articles?"

"They were sent me. Shall I burn them now or would you like to have them? We needn't say anything more about them."

"Burn them by all means. I suppose a friend sent them to you?"

"I suppose so." Hardy went on burning the papers in silence; and as Tom watched him, a sudden light seemed to break upon him.

"I say, Jack," he said presently, "a little bird has been whispering something to me about that friend." Hardy winched a little, and redoubled his diligence in burning the papers. Tom looked on smiling, and thinking how to go on, now that he had so unexpectedly turned the tables on his monitor, when the clock struck twelve.

"Hullo!" he said, getting up; "time for me to knock out, or old Copas will be in bed. To go back to where we started from to-night--as soon as East and Harry Winburn get back we shall have some jolly doings at Englebourn. There'll be a wedding, I hope, and you'll come over and do parson for us, won't you?"

"You mean for Patty? Of course I will."

"The little bird whispered to me that you wouldn't dislike visiting that part of the old county. Good night, Jack. I wish you success, old fellow, with all my heart, and I hope after all that you may leave St. Ambrose's within the year."

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