WE AND THE WORLD:

 A BOOK FOR BOYS. 

 PART I. 

 BY JULIANA HORATIA EWING. 

 SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE, LONDON: NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, W. C. BRIGHTON: 129, NORTH STREET. NEW YORK: E. & J. B. YOUNG & CO. 

[Published under the direction of the General Literature Committee. ]

 DEDICATED TO MY TWELVE NEPHEWS, WILLIAM, FRANCIS, STEPHEN, PHILIP, LEONARD, GODFREY, AND DAVID SMITH; REGINALD, NICHOLAS, AND IVOR GATTY; ALEXANDER, AND CHARLES SCOTT GATTY. 

 J. H. E. 

WE AND THE WORLD. 

CHAPTER I. 

 "All these common features of English landscape evince a calm and settled security, and hereditary transmission of home-bred virtues and local attachments, that speak deeply and touchingly for the moral character of the nation. "--WASHINGTON IRVING'S _Sketch Book_. 

It was a great saying of my poor mother's, especially if my father hadbeen out of spirits about the crops, or the rise in wages, or ourprospects, and had thought better of it again, and showed her the brightside of things, "Well, my dear, I'm sure we've much to be thankful for. "

Which they had, and especially, I often think, for the fact that I wasnot the eldest son. I gave them more trouble than I can think of with acomfortable conscience as it was; but they had Jem to tread in myfather's shoes, and he was a good son to them--GOD bless him for it!

I can remember hearing my father say--"It's bad enough to have Jackwith his nose in a book, and his head in the clouds, on a fine Juneday, with the hay all out, and the glass falling: but if Jem had been alad of whims and fancies, I think it would have broken my poor oldheart. "

I often wonder what made me bother my head with books, and where theperverse spirit came from that possessed me, and tore me, and drove meforth into the world. It did not come from my parents. My mother'sfamily were far from being literary or even enterprising, and myfather's people were a race of small yeomen squires, whose talk was ofdogs and horses and cattle, and the price of hay. We werenorth-of-England people, but not of a commercial or adventurous class, though we were within easy reach of some of the great manufacturingcentres. Quiet country folk we were; old-fashioned, and boastful of ourold-fashionedness, albeit it meant little more than that our manners andcustoms were a generation behindhand of the more cultivated folk, wholive nearer to London. We were proud of our name too, which is writtenin the earliest registers and records of the parish, honourablyconnected with the land we lived on; but which may be searched for invain in the lists of great or even learned Englishmen. 

It never troubled dear old Jem that there had not been a man of markamong all the men who had handed on our name from generation togeneration. He had no feverish ambitions, and as to books, I doubt ifhe ever opened a volume, if he could avoid it, after he wore out threehorn-books and our mother's patience in learning his letters--not eventhe mottle-backed prayer-books which were handed round for familyprayers, and out of which we said the psalms for the day, verse aboutwith my father. I generally found the place, and Jem put his arm over myshoulder and read with me. 

He was a yeoman born. I can just remember--when I was not three yearsold and he was barely four--the fright our mother got from his fearlessfamiliarity with the beasts about the homestead. He and I were playingon the grass-plat before the house when Dolly, an ill-tempered dun cowwe knew well by sight and name, got into the garden and drew near us. AsI sat on the grass--my head at no higher level than the buttercups inthe field beyond--Dolly loomed so large above me that I felt frightenedand began to cry. But Jem, only conscious that she had no businessthere, picked up a stick nearly as big as himself, and trottedindignantly to drive her out. Our mother caught sight of him from anupper window, and knowing that the temper of the cow was not to betrusted, she called wildly to Jem, "Come in, dear, quick! Come in!Dolly's loose!"

"I drive her out!" was Master Jem's reply; and with his little strawhat well on the back of his head, he waddled bravely up to the cow, flourishing his stick. The process interested me, and I dried my tearsand encouraged my brother; but Dolly looked sourly at him, and began tolower her horns. 

"Shoo! shoo!" shouted Jem, waving his arms in farming-man fashion, andbelabouring Dolly's neck with the stick. "Shoo! shoo!"

Dolly planted her forefeet, and dipped her head for a push, but catchinganother small whack on her face, and more authoritative "Shoos!" shechanged her mind, and swinging heavily round, trotted off towards thefield, followed by Jem, waving, shouting, and victorious. My mother gotout in time to help him to fasten the gate, which he was much too smallto do by himself, though, with true squirely instincts, he was trying tosecure it. 

But from our earliest days we both lived on intimate terms with all thelive stock. "Laddie, " an old black cart-horse, was one of our chieffriends. Jem and I used to sit, one behind the other, on his broad back, when our little legs could barely straddle across, and to "grip" withour knees in orthodox fashion was a matter of principle, but impossiblein practice. Laddie's pace was always discreet, however, and I do notthink we should have found a saddle any improvement, even as to safety, upon his warm, satin-smooth back. We steered him more by shouts andsmacks than by the one short end of a dirty rope which was our apologyfor reins; that is, if we had any hand in guiding his course. I am nowdisposed to think that Laddie guided himself. 

But our beast friends were many. The yellow yard-dog always slobberedjoyfully at our approach; partly moved, I fancy, by love for us, andpartly by the exciting hope of being let off his chain. When we wentinto the farmyard the fowls came running to our feet for corn, thepigeons fluttered down over our heads for peas, and the pigs humpedthemselves against the wall of the sty as tightly as they could lean, inhopes of having their backs scratched. The long sweet faces of theplough horses, as they turned in the furrows, were as familiar to us asthe faces of any other labourers in our father's fields, and we got fondof the lambs and ducks and chickens, and got used to their being killedand eaten when our acquaintance reached a certain date, like otherfarm-bred folk, which is one amongst the many proofs of the adaptabilityof human nature. 

So far so good, on my part as well as Jem's. That I should like theanimals "on the place"--the domesticated animals, the workable animals, the eatable animals--this was right and natural, and befitting myfather's son. But my far greater fancy for wild, queer, useless, mischievous, and even disgusting creatures often got me into trouble. Want of sympathy became absolute annoyance as I grew older, and wanderedfarther, and adopted a perfect menagerie of odd beasts in whom myfriends could see no good qualities: such as the snake I kept warm in mytrousers-pocket; the stickleback that I am convinced I tamed in its ownwaters; the toad for whom I built a red house of broken drainpipes atthe back of the strawberry bed, where I used to go and tickle his headon the sly; and the long-whiskered rat in the barn, who knew me well, and whose death nearly broke my heart, though I had seen generations ofunoffending ducklings pass to the kitchen without a tear. 

I think it must have been the beasts that made me take to reading: I wasso fond of Buffon's _Natural History_, of which there was an Englishabridgment on the dining-room bookshelves. 

But my happiest reading days began after the bookseller's agent cameround, and teased my father into taking in the _Penny Cyclopędia_; andthose numbers in which there was a beast, bird, fish, or reptile werethe numbers for me!

I must, however, confess that if a love for reading had been the onlyway in which I had gone astray from the family habits and traditions, Idon't think I should have had much to complain of in the way of blame. 

My father "pish"ed and "pshaw"ed when he caught me "poking over" books, but my dear mother was inclined to regard me as a genius, whose learningmight bring renown of a new kind into the family. In a quiet way of herown, as she went gently about household matters, or knitted my father'sstockings, she was a great day-dreamer--one of the most unselfish kind, however; a builder of air-castles, for those she loved to dwell in;planned, fitted, and furnished according to the measure of heraffections. 

It was perhaps because my father always began by disparaging hersuggestions that (by the balancing action of some instinctive sense ofjustice) he almost always ended by adopting them, whether they were wiseor foolish. He came at last to listen very tolerantly when she dilatedon my future greatness. 

"And if he isn't quite so good a farmer as Jem, it's not as if he werethe eldest, you know, my dear. I'm sure we've much to be thankful forthat dear Jem takes after you as he does. But if Jack turns out agenius, which please God we may live to see and be proud of, he'll makeplenty of money, and he must live with Jem when we're gone, and let Jemmanage it for him, for clever people are never any good at taking careof what they get. And when their families get too big for the old house, love, Jack must build, as he'll be well able to afford to do, and Jemmust let him have the land. The Ladycroft would be as good as anywhere, and a pretty name for the house. It would be a good thing to have someone at that end of the property too, and then the boys would always betogether. "

Poor dear mother! The kernel of her speech lay in the end of it--"Theboys would always be together. " I am sure in her tender heart sheblessed my bookish genius, which was to make wealth as well as fame, andso keep me "about the place, " and the home birds for ever in the nest. 

I knew nothing of it then, of course; but at this time she used to turnmy father's footsteps towards the Ladycroft every Sunday, between theservices, and never wearied of planning my house. 

She was standing one day, her smooth brow knitted in perplexity, beforethe big pink thorn, and had stood so long absorbed in this brown study, that my father said, with a sly smile, "Well, love, and where are you now?"

"In the dairy, my dear, " she answered quite gravely. "The window is tothe north of course, and I'm afraid the thorn must come down. "

My father laughed heartily. He had some sense of humour, but my motherhad none. She was one of the sweetest-tempered women that ever lived, and never dreamed that any one was laughing at her. I have heard myfather say she lay awake that night, and when he asked her why she couldnot sleep he found she was fretting about the pink thorn. 

"It looked so pretty to-day, my dear; and thorns are so bad to move!"

My father knew her too well to hope to console her by joking about it. He said gravely: "There's plenty of time yet, love. The boys are onlyjust in trousers; and we may think of some way to spare it before wecome to bricks and mortar. "

"I've thought of it every way, my dear, I'm afraid, " said my mother witha sigh. But she had full confidence in my father--a trouble shared withhim was half cured, and she soon fell asleep. 

She certainly had a vivid imagination, though it never was cultivated toliterary ends. Perhaps, after all, I inherited that idle fancy, thoseunsatisfied yearnings of my restless heart, from her! Mentalpeculiarities are said to come from one's mother. 

It was Jem who inherited her sweet temper. 

Dear old Jem! He and I were the best of good friends always, and thatsweet temper of his had no doubt much to do with it. He was very muchled by me, though I was the younger, and whatever mischief we got intoit was always my fault. 

It was I who persuaded him to run away from school, under the, as itproved, insufficient disguise of walnut-juice on our faces and hands. It was I who began to dig the hole which was to take us through from thekitchen-garden to the other side of the world. (Jem helped me to fill itup again, when the gardener made a fuss about our having chosen theasparagus-bed as the point of departure, which we did because the earthwas soft there. ) In desert islands or castles, balloons or boats, myhand was first and foremost, and mischief or amusement of every kind, byearth, air, or water, was planned for us by me. 

Now and then, however, Jem could crow over me. How he did deride me whenI asked our mother the foolish question--"Have bees whiskers?"

The bee who betrayed me into this folly was a bumble of the utmostbeauty. The bars of his coat "burned" as "brightly" as those of thetiger in Wombwell's menagerie, and his fur was softer than my mother'sblack velvet mantle. I knew, for I had kissed him lightly as he sat onthe window-frame. I had seen him brushing first one side and then theother side of his head, with an action so exactly that of my fatherbrushing his whiskers on Sunday morning, that I thought the bee might betrimming his; not knowing that he was sweeping the flower-dust off hisantennę with his legs, and putting it into his waistcoat pocket to makebee bread of. 

It was the liberty I took in kissing him that made him not sit stillany more, and hindered me from examining his cheeks for myself. He beganto dance all over the window, humming his own tune, and before he gottired of dancing he found a chink open at the top sash, and sailed awaylike a spot of plush upon the air. 

I had thus no opportunity of becoming intimate with him, but he was thecause of a more lasting friendship--my friendship with Isaac Irvine, thebee-keeper. For when I asked that silly question, my mother said, "Notthat I ever saw, love;" and my father said, "If he wants to know aboutbees, he should go to old Isaac. He'll tell him plenty of queer storiesabout them. "

The first time I saw the bee-keeper was in church, on Catechism Sunday, in circumstances which led to my disgracing myself in a manner that musthave been very annoying to my mother, who had taken infinite pains inteaching us. 

The provoking part of it was that I had not had a fear of breaking down. With poor Jem it was very different. He took twice as much pains as Idid, but he could not get things into his head, and even if they didstick there he found it almost harder to say them properly. We began tolearn the Catechism when we were three years old, and we went on tilllong after we were in trousers; and I am sure Jem never got the threewords "and an inheritor" tidily off the tip of his tongue within myremembrance. And I have seen both him and my mother crying over them ona hot Sunday afternoon. He was always in a fright when we had to say theCatechism in church, and that day, I remember, he shook so that I couldhardly stand straight myself, and Bob Furniss, the blacksmith's son, whostood on the other side of him, whispered quite loud, "Eh! see thee, howMaster Jem _dodders_!" for which Jem gave him an eye as black as hisfather's shop afterwards, for Jem could use his fists if he could notlearn by heart. 

But at the time he could not even compose himself enough to count downthe line of boys and calculate what question would come to him. I did, and when he found he had only got the First Commandment, he was more atease, and though the second, which fell to me, is much longer, I was notin the least afraid of forgetting it, for I could have done the whole ofmy duty to my neighbour if it had been necessary. 

Jem got through very well, and I could hear my mother blessing him overthe top of the pew behind our backs; but just as he finished, no lessthan three bees, who had been hovering over the heads of the workhouseboys opposite, all settled down together on Isaac Irvine's bare hand. 

At the public catechising, which came once a year, and after the secondlesson at evening prayer, the grown-up members of the congregation usedto draw near to the end of their pews to see and hear how we acquittedourselves, and, as it happened on this particular occasion, Master Isaacwas standing exactly opposite to me. As he leaned forward, his handscrossed on the pew-top before him, I had been a good deal fascinated byhis face, which was a very noble one in its rugged way, with snow-whitehair and intense, keenly observing eyes, and when I saw the three beessettle on him without his seeming to notice it, I cried, "They'll stingyou!" before I thought of what I was doing; for I had been severelystung that week myself, and knew what it felt like, and how little goodpowder-blue does. 

With attending to the bees I had not heard the parson say, "SecondCommandment?" and as he was rather deaf he did not hear what I said. Butof course he knew it was not long enough for the right answer, and hesaid, "Speak up, my boy, " and Jem tried to start me by whispering, "Thoushalt not make to thyself"--but the three bees went on sitting on MasterIsaac's hand, and though I began the Second Commandment, I could nottake my eyes off them, and when Master Isaac saw this he smiled andnodded his white head, and said, "Never you mind me, sir. They won'tsting the old bee-keeper. " This assertion so completely turned my headthat every other idea went out of it, and after saying "or in the earthbeneath" three times, and getting no further, the parson called out, "Third Commandment?" and I was passed over--"out of respect to thefamily, " as I was reminded for a twelvemonth afterwards--and Jem pinchedmy leg to comfort me, and my mother sank down on the seat, and did nottake her face out of her pocket-handkerchief till the workhouse boyswere saying "the sacraments. "

My mother was our only teacher till Jem was nine and I was eight yearsold. We had a thin, soft-backed reading book, bound in black cloth, onthe cover of which in gold letters was its name, _Chick-seed withoutChick-weed_; and in this book she wrote our names, and the date at theend of each lesson we conned fairly through. I had got into Part II. , which was "in words of four letters, " and had the chapter about the Shipin it, before Jem's name figured at the end of the chapter about the Dogin Part I. 

My mother was very glad that this chapter seemed to please Jem, and thathe learned to read it quickly, for, good-natured as he was, Jem was toofond of fighting and laying about him: and though it was only "in wordsof three letters, " this brief chapter contained a terrible story, and anexcellent moral, which I remember well even now. 

It was called "The Dog. "

"Why do you cry? The Dog has bit my leg. Why did he do so? I had my batand I hit him as he lay on the mat, so he ran at me and bit my leg. Ah, you may not use the bat if you hit the Dog. It is a hot day, and the Dogmay go mad. One day a Dog bit a boy in the arm, and the boy had his armcut off, for the Dog was mad. And did the boy die? Yes, he did die in aday or two. It is not fit to hit a Dog if he lie on the mat and is not abad Dog. Do not hit a Dog, or a cat, or a boy. "

Jem not only got through this lesson much better than usual, but helingered at my mother's knees, to point with his own little stumpyforefinger to each recurrence of the words "hit a Dog, " and read themall by himself. 

"_Very_ good boy, " said Mother, who was much pleased. "And now read thislast sentence once more, and very nicely. "

"Do--not--hit--a--dog--or--a--cat--or--a--boy, " read Jem in a highsing-song, and with a face of blank indifference, and then with a hastydog's-ear he turned back to the previous page, and spelled out, "I hadmy bat and I hit him as he lay on the mat" so well, that my mothercaught him to her bosom and covered him with kisses. 

"He'll be as good a scholar as Jack yet!" she exclaimed. "But don'tforget, my darling, that my Jem must never 'hit a dog, or a cat, or aboy. ' Now, love, you may put the book away. "

Jem stuck out his lips and looked down, and hesitated. He seemed almostdisposed to go on with his lessons. But he changed his mind, andshutting the book with a bang, he scampered off. As he passed theottoman near the door, he saw Kitty, our old tortoise-shell puss, lyingon it, and (moved perhaps by the occurrence of the word _cat_ in thelast sentence of the lesson) he gave her such a whack with the flat sideof _Chick-seed_ that she bounced up into the air like a sky-rocket, Jemcrying out as he did so, "I had my bat, and I hit him as he lay on themat. "

It was seldom enough that Jem got anything by heart, but he hadcertainly learned this; for when an hour later I went to look for him inthe garden, I found him panting with the exertion of having laid mynice, thick, fresh green crop of mustard and cress flat with the back ofthe coal-shovel, which he could barely lift, but with which he was stillbattering my salad-bed, chanting triumphantly at every stroke, "I had mybat, and I hit him as he lay on the mat. " He was quite out of breath, and I had not much difficulty in pummelling him as he deserved. 

Which shows how true it is, as my dear mother said, that "you never knowwhat to do for the best in bringing up boys. "

Just about the time that we outgrew _Chick-seed_, and that it wasallowed on all hands that even for quiet country-folk with no learnednotions it was high time we were sent to school, our parents were sparedthe trouble of looking out for a school for us by the fact that a schoolcame to us instead, and nothing less than an "Academy" was opened withinthree-quarters of a mile of my father's gate. 

Walnut-tree Farm was an old house that stood some little way from theroad in our favourite lane--a lane full of wild roses and speedwell, with a tiny footpath of disjointed flags like an old pack-horse track. Grass and milfoil grew thickly between the stones, and the turfstretched half-way over the road from each side, for there was littletraffic in the lane, beyond the yearly rumble of the harvesting waggons;and few foot-passengers, except a labourer now and then, a pair or twoof rustic lovers at sundown, a few knots of children in the blackberryseason, and the cows coming home to milking. 

Jem and I played there a good deal, but then we lived close by. 

We were very fond of the old place and there were two good reasons forthe charm it had in our eyes. In the first place, the old man who livedalone in it (for it had ceased to be the dwelling-house of a real farm)was an eccentric old miser, the chief object of whose existence seemedto be to thwart any attempt to pry into the daily details of it. Whatmanner of stimulus this was to boyish curiosity needs no explanation, much as it needs excuse. 

In the second place, Walnut-tree Farm was so utterly different from thehouse which was our home, that everything about it was attractive frommere unaccustomedness. 

Our house had been rebuilt from the foundations by my father. It wassquare-built and very ugly, but it was in such excellent repair that onecould never indulge a more lawless fancy towards any chink or crannyabout it than a desire to "point" the same with a bit of mortar. 

Why it was that my ancestor, who built the old house, and who was not abit better educated or farther-travelled than my father, had built apretty one, whilst my father built an ugly one, is one of the manythings I do not know, and wish I did. 

From the old sketches of it which my grandfather painted on the parlourhandscreens, I think it must have been like a larger edition of thefarm; that is, with long mullioned windows, a broad and gracefullyproportioned doorway with several shallow steps and quaintly-ornamentedlintel; bits of fine work and ornamentation about the woodwork here andthere, put in as if they had been done, not for the look of the thing, but for the love of it, and whitewash over the house-front, and over theapple-trees in the orchard. 

That was what our ancestor's home was like; and it was the sort of housethat became Walnut-tree Academy, where Jem and I went to school. 

CHAPTER II. 

 _Sable_:--"Ha, you! A little more upon the dismal (_forming their countenances_); this fellow has a good mortal look, place him near the corpse; that wainscoat face must be o' top of the stairs; that fellow's almost in a fright (that looks as if he were full of some strange misery) at the end of the hall. So--but I'll fix you all myself. Let's have no laughing now on any provocation. "--_The Funeral_, STEELE. 

At one time I really hoped to make the acquaintance of the old miser ofWalnut-tree Farm. It was when we saved the life of his cat. 

He was very fond of that cat, I think, and it was, to say the least ofit, as eccentric-looking as its master. One eye was yellow and the otherwas blue, which gave it a strange, uncanny expression, and itsrust-coloured fur was not common either as to tint or markings. 

How dear old Jem did belabour the boy we found torturing it! He was mucholder and bigger than we were, but we were two to one, which we reckonedfair enough, considering his size, and that the cat had to be savedsomehow. The poor thing's forepaws were so much hurt that it could notwalk, so we carried it to the farm, and I stood on the shallowdoorsteps, and under the dial, on which was written--

 "Tempora mutantur!"--

and the old miser came out, and we told him about the cat, and he tookit and said we were good boys, and I hoped he would have asked us to goin, but he did not, though we lingered a little; he only put his handinto his pocket, and very slowly brought out sixpence. 

"No, thank you, " said I, rather indignantly. "We don't want anything forsaving the poor cat. "

"I am very fond of it, " he said apologetically, and putting the sixpencecarefully back; but I believe he alluded to the cat. 

I felt more and more strongly that he ought to invite us into theparlour--if there was a parlour--and I took advantage of a backwardmovement on his part to move one shallow step nearer, and said, in aneasy conversational tone, "Your cat has very curious eyes. "

He came out again, and his own eyes glared in the evening light as hetouched me with one of his fingers in a way that made me shiver, andsaid, "If I had been an old woman, and that cat had lived with me in thedays when this house was built, I should have been hanged, or burned asa witch. Twelve men would have done it--twelve reasonable andrespectable men!" He paused, looking over my head at the sky, and thenadded, "But in all good conscience--mind, in all good conscience!"

And after another pause he touched me again (this time my teethchattered), and whispered loudly in my ear, "Never serve on a jury. "After which he banged the door in our faces, and Jem caught hold of myjacket and cried, "Oh! he's quite mad, he'll murder us!" and we tookeach other by the hand and ran home as fast as our feet would carry us. 

We never saw the old miser again, for he died some months afterwards, and, strange to relate, Jem and I were invited to the funeral. 

It was a funeral not to be forgotten. The old man had left the money forit, and a memorandum, with the minutest directions, in the hands of hislawyer. If he had wished to be more popular after his death than he hadbeen in his lifetime, he could not have hit upon any better plan toconciliate in a lump the approbation of his neighbours than that ofproviding for what undertakers call "a first-class funeral. " The goodcustom of honouring the departed, and committing their bodies to theearth with care and respect, was carried, in our old-fashionedneighbourhood, to a point at which what began in reverence ended inwhat was barely decent, and what was meant to be most melancholy becameabsolutely comical. But a sense of the congruous and the incongruous wasnot cultivated amongst us, whereas solid value (in size, quantity andexpense) was perhaps over-estimated. So our furniture, our festivities, and our funerals bore witness. 

No one had ever seen the old miser's furniture, and he gave nofestivities; but he made up for it in his funeral. 

Children, like other uneducated classes, enjoy domestic details, andgoing over the ins and outs of other people's affairs behind theirbacks; especially when the interest is heightened by a touch of gloom, or perfected by the addition of some personal importance in the matter. Jem and I were always fond of funerals, but this funeral, and the fussthat it made in the parish, we were never likely to forget. 

Even our own household was so demoralized by the grim gossip of theoccasion that Jem and I were accused of being unable to amuse ourselves, and of listening to our elders. It was perhaps fortunate for us that afavourite puppy died the day before the funeral, and gave us theopportunity of burying him. 

 "As if our whole vocation Were endless imitation----"

Jem and I had already laid our gardens waste, and built a rude wall ofbroken bricks round them to make a churchyard; and I can clearlyremember that we had so far profited by what we had overheard among ourelders, that I had caught up some phrases which I was rather proud ofdisplaying, and that I quite overawed Jem by the air with which I spokeof "the melancholy occasion"--the "wishes of deceased"--and the"feelings of survivors" when we buried the puppy. 

It was understood that I could not attend the puppy's funeral in myproper person, because I wished to be the undertaker; but the happythought struck me of putting my wheelbarrow alongside of the brick wallwith a note inside it to the effect that I had "sent my carriage as amark of respect. "

In one point we could not emulate the real funeral: that was carried out"regardless of expense. " The old miser had left a long list of the namesof the people who were to be invited to it and to its attendant feast, in which was not only my father's name, but Jem's and mine. Three yardswas the correct length of the black silk scarves which it was the customin the neighbourhood to send to dead people's friends; but the oldmiser's funeral-scarves were a whole yard longer, and of such stifflyribbed silk that Mr. Soot, the mourning draper, assured my mother that"it would stand of itself. " The black gloves cost six shillings a pair, and the sponge-cakes, which used to be sent with the gloves and scarves, were on this occasion ornamented with weeping willows in white sugar. 

Jem and I enjoyed the cake, but the pride we felt in our scarves andgloves was simply boundless. What pleased us particularly was that ourfuneral finery was not enclosed with my father's. Mr. Soot's mandelivered three separate envelopes at the door, and they looked likeletters from some bereaved giant. The envelopes were twenty inches byfourteen, and made of cartridge-paper; the black border was two inchesdeep, and the black seals must have consumed a stick of sealing-waxamong them. They contained the gloves and the scarves, which werelightly gathered together in the middle with knots of black gauzeribbon. 

How exquisitely absurd Jem and I must have looked with four yards ofstiff black silk attached to our little hats I can imagine, if I cannotclearly remember. My dear mother dressed us and saw us off (for, withsome curious relic of pre-civilized notions, women were not allowed toappear at funerals), and I do not think she perceived anything odd inour appearance. She was very gentle, and approved of everything that wasconsidered right by the people she was used to, and she had only twoanxieties about our scarves: first, that they should show the full fouryards of respect to the memory of the deceased; and secondly, that weshould keep them out of the dust, so that they might "come in usefulafterwards. "

She fretted a little because she had not thought of changing our gloves forsmaller sizes (they were eight and a quarter); but my father "pish"ed and"pshaw"ed, and said it was better than if they had been too small, and thatwe should be sure to be late if my mother went on fidgeting. So we pulledthem on--with ease--and picked up the tails of our hatbands--withdifficulty--and followed my father, our hearts beating with pride, and mymother and the maids watching us from the door. We arrived quitehalf-an-hour earlier than we need have done, but the lane was alreadycrowded with complimentary carriages, and curious bystanders, before whomwe held our heads and hatbands up; and the scent of the wild roses was lostfor that day in an all-pervading atmosphere of black dye. We were verytired, I remember, by the time that our turn came to be put into a carriageby Mr. Soot, who murmured--"Pocket-handkerchiefs, gentlemen"--and, following the example of a very pale-faced stranger who was with us, wedrew out the clean handkerchiefs with which our mother had supplied us, andcovered our faces with them. 

At least Jem says he shut _his_ eyes tight, and kept his face coveredthe whole way, but he always _was_ so conscientious! I held myhandkerchief as well as I could with my gloves; but I contrived to peepfrom behind it, and to see the crowd that lined the road to watch us aswe wound slowly on. 

If these outsiders, who only saw the procession and the funeral, weremoved almost to enthusiasm by the miser's post-mortem liberality, it maybe believed that the guests who were bidden to the feast did not fail toobey the ancient precept, and speak well of the dead. The tables (theywere rickety) literally groaned under the weight of eatables anddrinkables, and the dinner was so prolonged that Jem and I got terriblytired, in spite of the fun of watching the faces of the men we did notknow, to see which got the reddest. 

My father wanted us to go home before the reading of the will, whichtook place in the front parlour; but the lawyer said, "I think the younggentlemen should remain, " for which we were very much obliged to him;though the pale-faced man said quite crossly--"Is there any specialreason for crowding the room with children, who are not even relativesof the deceased?" which made us feel so much ashamed that I think weshould have slipped out by ourselves; but the lawyer, who made noanswer, pushed us gently before him to the top of the room, which wassoon far too full to get out of by the door. 

It was very damp and musty. In several places the paper hung in greatstrips from the walls, and the oddest part of all was that every articleof furniture in the room, and even the hearthrug, was covered withsheets of newspaper pinned over to preserve it. I sat in the corner of asofa, where I could read the trial of a man who murdered somebodytwenty-five years before, but I never got to the end of it, for it wenton behind a very fat man who sat next to me, and he leaned back all thetime and hid it. Jem sat on a little footstool, and fell asleep with hishead on my knee, and did not wake till I nudged him, when our names wereread out in the will. Even then he only half awoke, and the fat mandrove his elbow into me and hurt me dreadfully for whispering in Jem'sear that the old miser had left us ten pounds apiece, for having savedthe life of his cat. 

I do not think any of the strangers (they were distant connections ofthe old man; he had no near relations) had liked our being there; andthe lawyer, who was very kind, had had to tell them several times overthat we really had been invited to the funeral. After our legacies wereknown about they were so cross that we managed to scramble through thewindow, and wandered round the garden. As we sat under the trees wecould hear high words within, and by and by all the men came out andtalked in angry groups about the will. For when all was said and done, it appeared that the old miser had not left a penny to any one of thefuneral party but Jem and me, and that he had left Walnut-tree Farm to acertain Mrs. Wood, of whom nobody knew anything. 

"The wording is so peculiar, " the fat man said to the pale-faced man anda third who had come out with them; "'left to her as a sign of sympathy, if not an act of reparation. ' He must have known whether he owed her anyreparation or not, if he were in his senses. "

"Exactly. If he were in his senses, " said the third man. 

"Where's the money?--that's what I say, " said the pale-faced man. 

"Exactly, sir. That's what _I_ say, too, " said the fat man. 

"There are only two fields, besides the house, " said the third. "He musthave had money, and the lawyer knows of no investments of any kind, hesays. "

"Perhaps he has left it to his cat, " he added, looking very nastily atJem and me. 

"It's oddly put, too, " murmured the pale-faced relation. "The twofields, the house and furniture, and everything of every sort thereincontained. " And the lawyer coming up at that moment, he went slowly backinto the house, looking about him as he went, as if he had lostsomething. 

As the lawyer approached, the fat man got very red in the face. 

"He was as mad as a hatter, sir, " he said, "and we shall dispute thewill. "

"I think you will be wrong, " said the lawyer, blandly. "He waseccentric, my dear sir, very eccentric; but eccentricity is notinsanity, and you will find that the will will stand. "

Jem and I were sitting on an old garden-seat, but the men had talkedwithout paying any attention to us. At this moment Jem, who had left mea minute or two before, came running back and said: "Jack! Do come andlook in at the parlour window. That man with the white face is peepingeverywhere, and under all the newspapers, and he's made himself sodusty! It's such fun!"

Too happy at the prospect of anything in the shape of fun, I followedJem on tiptoe, and when we stood by the open window with our hands overour mouths to keep us from laughing, the pale-faced man was juststruggling with the inside lids of an old japanned tea-caddy. 

He did not see us, he was too busy, and he did not hear us, for he wastalking to himself, and we heard him say, "Everything of every sorttherein contained. "

I suppose the lawyer was right, and that the fat man was convinced ofit, for neither he nor any one else disputed the old miser's will. Jemand I each opened an account in the Savings Bank, and Mrs. Wood cameinto possession of the place. 

Public opinion went up and down a good deal about the old miser still. Whenit leaked out that he had worded the invitation to his funeral to theeffect that, being quite unable to tolerate the follies of hisfellow-creatures, and the antics and absurdities which were necessary toentertain them, he had much pleasure in welcoming his neighbours to afeast, at which he could not reasonably be expected to preside--everybodywho heard it agreed that he must have been mad. 

But it was a long sentence to remember, and not a very easy one tounderstand, and those who saw the plumes and the procession, and thosewho had a talk with the undertaker, and those who got a yard more thanusual of such very good black silk, and those who were able to rememberwhat they had had for dinner, were all charitably inclined to believethat the old man's heart had not been far from being in the rightplace, at whatever angle his head had been set on. 

And then by degrees curiosity moved to Mrs. Wood. Who was she? What wasshe like? What was she to the miser? Would she live at the farm?

To some of these questions the carrier, who was the first to see her, replied. She was "a quiet, genteel-looking sort of a grey-haired widowlady, who looked as if she'd seen a deal of trouble, and was badly off. "

The neighbourhood was not unkindly, and many folk were ready to be civilto the widow if she came to live there. 

"But she never will, " everybody said. "She must let it. Perhaps the newdoctor might think of it at a low rent, he'd be glad of the field forhis horse. What could she do with an old place like that, and not apenny to keep it up with?"

What she did do was to have a school there, and that was how Walnut-treeFarm became Walnut-tree Academy. 

CHAPTER III. 

 "What are little boys made of, made of? What are little boys made of?" _Nursery Rhyme_. 

When the school was opened, Jem and I were sent there at once. Everybodysaid it was "time we were sent somewhere, " and that "we were getting toowild for home. "

I got so tired of hearing this at last, that one day I was goaded toreply that "home was getting too tame for me. " And Jem, who alwaysbacked me up, said, "And me too. " For which piece of swagger weforfeited our suppers; but when we went to bed we found pieces of cakeunder our pillows, for my mother could not bear us to be short of food, however badly we behaved. 

I do not know whether the trousers had anything to do with it, but aboutthe time that Jem and I were put into trousers we lived in a chronicstate of behaving badly. What makes me feel particularly ashamed inthinking of it is, that I know it was not that we came under thepressure of any overwhelming temptations to misbehave and yieldedthrough weakness, but that, according to an expressive nursery formula, we were "seeing how naughty we could be. " I think we were genuinelyanxious to see this undesirable climax; in some measure as a matter ofexperiment, to which all boys are prone, and in which dangerousexperiments, and experiments likely to be followed by explosion, arenaturally preferred. Partly, too, from an irresistible impulse to "raisea row, " and take one's luck of the results. This craving to disturb thecalm current of events, and the good conduct and composure of one'sneighbours as a matter of diversion, must be incomprehensible byphlegmatic people, who never feel it, whilst some Irishmen, I fancy, never quite conquer it, perhaps because they never quite cease to beboys. In any degree I do not for an instant excuse it, and in excess itmust be simply intolerable by better-regulated minds. 

But really, boys who are pickles should be put into jars with soundstoppers, like other pickles, and I wonder that mothers and cooks do notget pots like those that held the forty thieves, and do it. 

I fancy it was because we happened to be in this rough, defiant, mischievous mood, just about the time that Mrs. Wood opened her school, that we did not particularly like our school-mistress. If I had beenfifteen years older, I should soon have got beyond the first impressioncreated by her severe dress, close widow's cap and straight grey hair, and have discovered that the outline of her face was absolutelybeautiful, and I might possibly have detected, what most people failedto detect, that an odd unpleasing effect, caused by the contrast betweenher general style, and an occasional lightness and rapidity and grace ofmovement in her slender figure, came from the fact that she was muchyounger than she looked and affected to be. The impression I did receiveof her appearance I communicated to my mother in far from respectfulpantomime. 

"Well, love, and what do you think of Mrs. Wood?" said she. 

"I think, " chanted I, in that high brassy pitch of voice which Jem and Ihad adopted for this bravado period of our existence--"I think she'slike our old white hen that turned up its eyes and died of the pip. Lack-a-daisy-dee! Lack-a-daisy-dee!"

And I twisted my body about, and strolled up and down the room with asupposed travesty of Mrs. Wood's movements. 

"So she is, " said faithful Jem. "Lack-a-daisy-dee! Lack-a-daisy-dee!"and he wriggled about after me, and knocked over the Berlinwool-basket. 

"Oh dear, oh dear!" said our poor mother. 

Jem righted the basket, and I took a run and a flying leap over it, andhaving cleared it successfully, took another, and yet another, each onesoothing my feelings to the extent by which it shocked my mother's. Atthe third bound, Jem, not to be behindhand, uttered a piercing yell frombehind the sofa. 

"Good gracious, what's the matter?" cried my mother. 

"It's the war-whoop of the Objibeway Indians, " I promptly explained, andhaving emitted another, to which I flattered myself Jem's had been asnothing for hideousness, we departed in file to raise a row in thekitchen. 

Summer passed into autumn. Jem and I really liked going to school, butit was against our principles at that time to allow that we likedanything that we ought to like. 

Some sincere but mistaken efforts to improve our principles were made, Iremember, by a middle-aged single lady, who had known my mother in hergirlhood, and who was visiting her at this unlucky stage of our career. Having failed to cope with us directly, she adopted the plan of talkingimprovingly to our mother and at us, and very severe some of herremarks were, and I don't believe that Mother liked them any betterthan we did. 

The severest she ever made were I think heightened in their severity bythe idea that we were paying unusual attention, as we sat on the floor alittle behind her one day. We were paying a great deal of attention, butit was not so much to Miss Martin as to a stock of wood-lice which I hadcollected, and which I was arranging on the carpet that Jem might seehow they roll themselves into smooth tight balls when you tease them. But at last she talked so that we could not help attending. I dared notsay anything to her, but her own tactics were available. I put thewood-lice back in my pocket, and stretching my arms yawningly above myhead, I said to Jem, "How dull it is! I wish I were a bandit. "

Jem generally outdid me if possible, from sheer willingness and loyaltyof spirit. 

"_I_ should like to be a burglar, " said he. 

And then we both left the room very quietly and politely. But when wegot outside I said, "I hate that woman. "

"So do I, " said Jem; "she regularly hectors over mother--I hate herworst for that. "

"So do I. Jem, doesn't she take pills?"

"I don't know--why?"

"I believe she does; I'm certain I saw a box on her dressing-table. Jem, run like a good chap and see, and if there is one, empty out thepills and bring me the pill-box. "

Jem obeyed, and I sat down on the stairs and began to get the wood-liceout again. There were twelve nice little black balls in my hand when Jemcame back with the pill-box. 

"Hooray!" I cried; "but knock out all the powder, it might smother them. Now, give it to me. "

Jem danced with delight when I put the wood-lice in and put on the lid. 

"I hope she'll shake the box before she opens it, " I said, as wereplaced it on the dressing-table. 

"I hope she will, or they won't be tight. Oh, Jack! Jack! _How many doyou suppose she takes at a time?_"

We never knew, and what is more, we never knew what became of thewood-lice, for, for some reason, she kept our counsel as well as her ownabout the pill-box. 

One thing that helped to reconcile us to spending a good share of oursummer days in Walnut-tree Academy was that the school-mistress made usvery comfortable. Boys at our age are not very sensitive about mattersof taste and colour and so forth, but even we discovered that Mrs. Woodhad that knack of adapting rooms to their inhabitants, and making thempleasant to the eye, which seems to be a trick at the end of somepeople's fingers, and quite unlearnable by others. When she had made theold miser's rooms to her mind, we might have understood, if we hadspeculated about it, how it was that she had not profited by my mother'ssound advice to send all his "rubbishy odds and ends" (the irregularityand ricketiness and dustiness of which made my mother shudder) to be"sold at the nearest auction-rooms, and buy some good solid furniture ofthe cabinet-maker who furnished for everybody in the neighbourhood, which would be the cheapest in the long-run, besides making the roomslook like other people's at last. " That she evaded similarrecommendations of paperhangers and upholsterers, and of wall-papers andcarpets, and curtains with patterns that would "stand, " and wear best, and show dirt least, was a trifle in the eyes of all good housekeepers, when our farming-man's daughter brought the amazing news with her toSunday tea, that "the missus" had had in old Sally, and had torn thepaper off the parlour, and had made Sally "lime-wash the walls, for allthe world as if it was a cellar. " Moreover, she had "gone over" thelower part herself, and was now painting on the top of that. There wasnothing for it, after this news, but to sigh and conclude that therewas something about the old place which made everybody a little queerwho came to live in it. 

But when Jem and I saw the parlour (which was now the school-room), wedecided that it "looked very nice, " and was "uncommonly comfortable. "The change was certainly amazing, and made the funeral day seem longerago than it really was. The walls were not literally lime-washed; but(which is the same thing, except for a little glue!) they weredistempered, a soft pale pea-green. About a yard deep above the wainscotthis was covered with a dark sombre green tint, and along the upper edgeof this, as a border all round the room, the school-mistress had painteda trailing wreath of white periwinkle. The border was painted with thesame materials as the walls, and with very rapid touches. The whiteflowers were skilfully relieved by the dark ground, and the varied tintsof the leaves, from the deep evergreen of the old ones to the paleyellow of the young shoots, had demanded no new colours, and werewonderfully life-like and pretty. There was another border, right roundthe top of the room; but that was painted on paper and fastened on. Itwas a Bible text--"Keep Innocency, and take heed to the thing that isright, for that shall bring a man Peace at the last. " And Mrs. Wood haddone the text also. 

There were no curtains to the broad, mullioned window, which was keptwide open at every lattice; and one long shoot of ivy that had pushed infarther than the rest had been seized, and pinned to the wall inside, where its growth was a subject of study and calculation, during the manymoments when we were "trying to see" how little we could learn of ourlessons. The black-board stood on a polished easel; but the low seatsand desks were of plain pine like the floor, and they were scrupulouslyscrubbed. The cool tint of the walls was somewhat cheered by colouredmaps and prints, and the school-mistress's chair (an old carved oak onethat had been much revived by bees-wax and turpentine since the miser'sdays) stood on the left-hand side of the window--under "Keep Innocency, "and looking towards "Peace at the last. " I know, for when we were allwriting or something of that sort, so that she could sit still, she usedto sit with her hands folded and look up at it, which was what made Jemand me think of the old white hen that turned up its eyes; and madeHorace Simpson say that he believed she had done one of the letterswrong, and could not help looking at it to see if it showed. And by theschool-mistress's chair was the lame boy's sofa. It was the very oldsofa covered with newspapers on which I had read about the murder, whenthe lawyer was reading the will. But she had taken off the paper, andcovered it with turkey red, and red cushions, and a quilt of brownholland and red bordering, to hide his crumpled legs, so that he lookedquite comfortable. 

I remember so well the first day that he came. His father was a parsonon the moors, and this boy had always wanted to go to school in spite ofhis infirmity, and at last his father brought him in a light cart downfrom the moors, to look at it; and when he got him out of the cart, hecarried him in. He was a big man, I remember, with grey hair and bentshoulders, and a very old coat, for it split a little at one of theseams as he was carrying him in, and we laughed. 

When they got into the room, he put the boy down, keeping his arm roundhim, and wiped his face and said--"How deliciously cool!"--and the boystared all round with his great eyes, and then he lifted them to hisfather's face and said--"I'll come here. I do like it. But not to-day, my back is so bad. "

And what makes me know that Horace was wrong, and that Mrs. Wood hadmade no mistake about the letters of the text, is that "CrippleCharlie"--as we called him--could see it so well with lying down. And hetold me one day that when his back was very bad, and he got the fidgetsand could not keep still, he used to fix his eyes on "Peace, " which hadgold round the letters, and shone, and that if he could keep steadily toit, for a good bit, he always fell asleep at the last. But he was veryfanciful, poor chap!

I do not think it was because Jem and I had any real wish to becomeburglars that we made a raid on the walnuts that autumn. I do not eventhink that we cared very much about the walnuts themselves. 

But when it is understood that the raid was to be a raid by night, orrather in those very early hours of the morning which real burglars aresaid almost to prefer; that it was necessary to provide ourselves withthick sticks; that we should have to force the hedge and climb thetrees; that the said trees grew directly under the owner's bedroomwindow, which made the chances of detection hazardously great; and thatwalnut juice (as I have mentioned before) is of a peculiarlyunaccommodating nature, since it will neither disguise you at the timenor wash off afterwards--it will be obvious that the dangers anddelights of the adventure were sufficient to blunt, for the moment, oursense of the fact that we were deliberately going a-thieving. 

"Shall we wear black masks?" said Jem. 

On the whole I said "No, " for I did not know where we should get them, nor, if we did, how we should keep them on. 

"If she has a blunderbuss, and fires, " said I, "you must duck yourhead, remember; but if she springs the rattle we must cut and run. "

"Will her blunderbuss be loaded, do you think?" asked Jem. "Mother saysthe one in _their_ room isn't; she told me so on Saturday. But she sayswe're never to touch it, all the same, for you never can be sure aboutthings of that sort going off. Do you think Mrs. Wood's will be loaded?"

"It may be, " said I, "and of course she might load it if she thought sheheard robbers. "

"I heard father say that if you shoot a burglar outside it's murder, "said Jem, who seemed rather troubled by the thought of the blunderbuss;"but if you shoot him inside it's self-defence. "

"Well, you may spring a rattle outside, anyway, " said I; "and if hersmakes as much noise as ours, it'll be heard all the way here. So mind, if she begins, you must jump down and cut home like mad. "

Armed with these instructions and our thick sticks, Jem and I crept outof the house before the sun was up or a bird awake. The air seemed coldafter our warm beds, and the dew was so drenching in the hedge bottoms, and on the wayside weeds of our favourite lane, that we were soaked tothe knees before we began to force the hedge. I did not think that grassand wild-flowers could have held so much wet. By the time that we hadcrossed the orchard, and I was preparing to grip the grandly scoredtrunk of the nearest walnut-tree with my chilly legs, the heavy peeling, the hard cracking, and the tedious picking of a green walnut was aslittle pleasurable a notion as I had in my brain. 

All the same, I said (as firmly as my chattering teeth would allow) thatI was very glad we had come when we did, for that there certainly werefewer walnuts on the tree than there had been the day before. 

"She's been at them, " said I, almost indignantly. 

"Pickling, " responded Jem with gloomy conciseness; and spurred by thisdiscovery to fresh enthusiasm for our exploit, we promptly plannedoperations. 

"I'll go up the tree, " said I, "and beat, and you can pick them as theyfall. "

Jem was, I fear, only too well accustomed to my arrogating the firstplace in our joint undertakings, and after giving me "a leg up" to anavailable bit of foothold, and handing up my stick, he waited patientlybelow to gather what I beat down. 

The walnuts were few and far between, to say nothing of leaves between, which in walnut-trees are large. The morning twilight was dim, my handswere cold and feebler than my resolution. I had battered down a lot ofleaves and twigs, and two or three walnuts; the sun had got up at last, but rather slowly, as if he found the morning chillier than he expected, and a few rays were darting here and there across the lane, when Jemgave a warning "Hush!" and I left off rustling in time to hear Mrs. Wood's bedroom lattice opened, and to catch sight of something pushedout into the morning mists. 

"Who's there?" said the school-mistress. 

Neither Jem nor I took upon us to inform her, and we were both seizedwith anxiety to know what was at the window. He was too low down and Itoo much buried in foliage to see clearly. Was it the rattle? I took ahasty step downwards at the thought. Or was it the blunderbuss? In mysudden move I slipped on the dew-damped branch, and cracked a rotten onewith my elbow, which made an appalling crash in the early stillness, andsent a walnut--pop! on to Jem's hat, who had already ducked to avoid thefire of the blunderbuss, and now fell on his face under the fullestconviction that he had been shot. 

"Who's there?" said the school-mistress, and (my tumble having broughtme into a more exposed position) she added, "Is that you, Jack and Jem?"

"It's me, " said I, ungrammatically but stoutly, hoping that Jem at anyrate would slip off. 

But he had recovered himself and his loyalty, and unhesitatinglyannounced, "No, it's me, " and was picking the bits of grass off hischeeks and knees when I got down beside him. 

"I'm sorry you came to take my walnuts like this, " said the voice fromabove. She had a particularly clear one, and we could hear it quitewell. "I got a basketful on purpose for you yesterday afternoon. If Ilet it down by a string, do you think you can take it?"

Happily she did not wait for a reply, as we could not have got a wordout between us; but by and by the basketful of walnuts was pushedthrough the lattice and began to descend. It came slowly and unsteadily, and we had abundant leisure to watch it, and also, as we looked up, todiscover what it was that had so puzzled me in Mrs. Wood'sappearance--that when I first discovered that it was a head and not ablunderbuss at the window I had not recognized it for hers. 

She was without her widow's cap, which revealed the fact that her hair, though the two narrow, smooth bands of it which appeared every daybeyond her cap were unmistakably grey, was different in some essentialrespects from (say) Mrs. Jones's, our grey-haired washer-woman. The moreyou saw of Mrs. Jones's head, the less hair you perceived her to have, and the whiter that little appeared. Indeed, the knob into which it wastwisted at the back was much of the colour as well as of the size of atangled reel of dirty white cotton. But Mrs. Wood's hair was far moreabundant than our mother's, and it was darker underneath than on thetop--a fact which was more obvious when the knot into which it wasgathered in her neck was no longer hidden. Deep brown streaks weremingled with the grey in the twists of this, and I could see them quitewell, for the outline of her head was dark against the white-washedmullion of the window, and framed by ivy-leaves. As she leaned out tolower the basket we could see her better and better, and, as it touchedthe ground, the jerk pulled her forward, and the knot of her hairuncoiled and rolled heavily over the window-sill. 

By this time the rays of the sun were level with the windows, and shonefull upon Mrs. Wood's face. I was very much absorbed in looking at her, but I could not forget our peculiar position, and I had an importantquestion to put, which I did without more ado. 

"Please, madam, shall you tell Father?"

"We only want to know, " added Jem. 

She hesitated a minute, and then smiled. "No; I don't think you'll do itagain;" after which she disappeared. 

"She's certainly no sneak, " said I, with an effort to be magnanimous, for I would much rather she had sprung the rattle or fired theblunderbuss. 

"And I say, " said Jem, "isn't she pretty without her cap?"

We looked ruefully at the walnuts. We had lost all appetite for them, and they seemed disgustingly damp, with their green coats reeking withblack bruises. But we could not have left the basket behind, so we putour sticks through the handles, and carried it like the Sunday pictureof the spies carrying the grapes of Eshcol. 

And Jem and I have often since agreed that we never in all our livesfelt so mean as on that occasion, and we sincerely hope that we nevermay. 

Indeed, it is only in some books and some sermons that people aredivided into "the wicked" and "the good, " and that "the wicked" have noconsciences at all. Jem and I had wilfully gone thieving, but we werefar from being utterly hardened, and the school-mistress's generosityweighed heavily upon ours. Repentance and the desire to make atonementseem to go pretty naturally together, and in my case they led to thefollowing dialogue with Jem, on the subject of two exquisite littlebantam hens and a cock, which were our joint property, and which wereknown in the farmyard as "the Major and his wives. "

These titles (which vexed my dear mother from the first) had suggestedthemselves to us on this wise. There was a certain little gentleman whocame to our church, a brewer by profession, and a major in the militiaby choice, who was so small and strutted so much that to the insolentobservation of boyhood he was "exactly like" our new bantam cock. Youngpeople are very apt to overhear what is not intended for theirknowledge, and somehow or other we learned that he was "courting" (ashis third wife) a lady of our parish. His former wives are buried in ourchurchyard. Over the first he had raised an obelisk of marble, so costlyand affectionate that it had won the hearts of his neighbours ingeneral, and of his second wife in particular. When she died the gossipswondered whether the Major would add her name to that of herpredecessor, or "go to the expense" of a new monument. He erected asecond obelisk, and it was taller than the first (height had a curiousfascination for him), and the inscription was more touching than theother. This time the material was Aberdeen granite, and as that is mostdifficult to cut, hard to polish, and heavy to transport, the expensewas enormous. These two monstrosities of mortuary pomp were the pride ofthe parish, and they were familiarly known to us children (and to manyother people) as "the Major's wives. "

When we called the cock "the Major, " we naturally called the hens "theMajor's wives. "

"My dears, I don't like that name at all, " said my mother. "I never likejokes about people who are dead. And for that matter, it really soundsas if they were both alive, which is worse. "

It was during our naughty period, and I strutted on my heels till I musthave looked very like the little brewer himself, and said, "And whyshouldn't they both be alive? Fancy the Major with two wives, one oneach arm, and both as tall as the monuments! What fun!"

As I said the words "one on each arm, " I put up first one and then theother of my own, and having got a satisfactory impetus during the restof my sentence, I crossed the parlour as a catherine-wheel under mymother's nose. It was a new accomplishment, of which I was very proud, and poor Jem somewhat envious. He was clumsy and could not manage it. 

"Oh!" ejaculated my mother, "Jack, I must speak to your father aboutthose dangerous tricks of yours. And it quite shocks me to hear you talkin that light way about wicked things. "

Jem was to my rescue in a moment, driving his hands into the pockets ofhis blouse, and turning them up to see how soon he might hope that hisfingers would burst through the lining. 

"Jacob had two wives, " he said; and he chanted on, quoting imperfectlyfrom Dr. Watts's _Scripture Catechism_, "And Jacob was a good man, therefore his brother hated him. "

"No, no, Jem, " said I, "that was Abel. Jacob was Isaac's younger son, and----"

"Hush! Hush! Hush!" said my mother. "You're not to do Sunday lessons onweek-days. What terrible boys you are!" And, avoiding to fight aboutJacob's wives with Jem, who was pertinacious and said very odd things, my mother did what women often do and are often wise in doing--she laiddown her weapons and began to beseech. 

"My darlings, call your nice little hens some other names. Poor oldmother doesn't like those. "

I was melted in an instant, and began to cast about in my head for newtitles. But Jem was softly obstinate, and he had inherited some of mymother's wheedling ways. He took his hands from his pockets, flung hisarms recklessly round her clean collar, and began stroking (or_pooring_, as we called it) her head with his grubby paws. And as he_poored_ he coaxed--"Dear nice old mammy! It's only us. What can itmatter? Do let us call our bantams what we like. "

And my mother gave in before I had time to. 

The dialogue I held with Jem about the bantams after the walnut raid wasas follows:

"Jem, you're awfully fond of the 'Major and his wives, ' I suppose?"

"Ye-es, " said Jem, "_I am_. But I don't mind, Jack, if you want them foryour very own. I'll give up my share, "--and he sighed. 

"I never saw such a good chap as you are, Jem. But it's not that. Ithought we might give them to Mrs. Wood. It was so beastly about thosedisgusting walnuts. "

"I can't touch walnut pickle now, " said Jem, feelingly. 

"It'd be a very handsome present, " said I. 

"They took a prize at the Agricultural, " said Jem. 

"I know she likes eggs. She beats 'em into a froth and feeds Charliewith 'em, " said I. 

"I think I could eat walnut pickle again if I knew she had the bantams, "sighed Jem, who was really devoted to the little cock-major and theauburn-feathered hens. 

"We'll take 'em this afternoon, " I said. 

We did so--in a basket, Eshcol-grape wise, like the walnuts. When wetold Mother, she made no objection. She would have given her own headoff her shoulders if, by ill-luck, any passer-by had thought of askingfor it. Besides, it solved the difficulty of the objectionable names. 

Mrs. Wood was very loth to take our bantams, but of course Jem and Iwere not going to recall a gift, so she took them at last, and I thinkshe was very much pleased with them. 

She had got her cap on again, tied under her chin, and nothing to beseen of her hair but the very grey piece in front. It made her look sodifferent that I could not keep my eyes off her whilst she was talking, though I knew quite well how rude it is to stare. And my head got sofull of it that I said at last, in spite of myself, "Please, madam, whyis it that part of your hair is grey and part of it dark?"

Her face got rather red, she did not answer for a minute; and Jem, to mygreat relief, changed the subject, by saying, "We were very much obligedto you for not telling Father about the walnuts. "

Mrs. Wood leaned back against the high carving of her old chair andsmiled, and said very slowly, "Would he have been very angry?"

"He'd have flogged us, I expect, " said I. 

"And I expect, " continued Jem, "that he'd have said to us what he saidto Bob Furniss when he took the filberts: 'If you begin by stealingnuts, you'll end by being transported. ' Do you think Jack and I shallend by being transported?" added Jem, who had a merciless talent forapplying general principles to individual cases. 

Mrs. Wood made no reply, neither did she move, but her eyelids fell, and then her eyes looked far worse than if they had been shut, for therewas a little bit open, with nothing but white to be seen. She was stillrather red, and she did not visibly breathe. I have no idea for how manyseconds I had gazed stupidly at her, when Jem gasped, "Is she dead?"

Then I became terror-struck, and crying, "Let's find Mary Anne!" fledinto the kitchen, closely followed by Jem. 

"She's took with them fits occasional, " said Mary Anne, and depositing adripping tin she ran to the parlour. We followed in time to see herstooping over the chair and speaking very loudly in theschool-mistress's ear, "I'll lay ye down, ma'am, shall I?"

But still the widow was silent, on which Mary Anne took her up in herbrawny arms, and laid her on "Cripple Charlie's" sofa, and covered herwith the quilt. 

We settled the Major and his wives into their new abode, and thenhurried home to my mother, who put on her bonnet, and took a bottle ofsomething, and went off to the farm. 

She did not come back till tea-time, and then she was full of poor Mrs. Wood. "Most curious attacks, " she explained to my father; "she canneither move nor speak, and yet she hears everything, though shedoesn't always remember afterwards. She said she thought it was'trouble, ' poor soul!"

"What brought this one on?" said my father. 

"I can't make out, " said my mother. "I hope you boys did nothing tofrighten her, eh? Are you sure you didn't do one of those dreadfulwheels, Jack?"

This I indignantly denied, and Jem supported me. 

My mother's sympathy had been so deeply enlisted, and her report was sodetailed, that Jem and I became bored at last, besides resenting thenotion that we had been to blame. I gave one look into the strawberryjam pot, and finding it empty, said my grace and added, "Women are apoor lot, always turning up their eyes and having fits about nothing. Iknow one thing, nobody 'll ever catch _me_ being bothered with a wife. "

"Nor me neither, " said Jem. 

CHAPTER IV. 

 "The bee, a more adventurous colonist than man. " W. C. BRYANT. 

 "Some silent laws our hearts will make, Which they shall long obey; We for the year to come may take Our temper from to-day. "--WORDSWORTH. 

"You know what an Apiary is, Isaac, of course?"

I was sitting in the bee-master's cottage, opposite to him, in anarm-chair, which was the counterpart of his own, both of them havingcircular backs, diamond-shaped seats, and chintz cushions with frills. It was the summer following that in which Jem and I had tried to see howbadly we could behave; this uncivilized phase had abated: Jem used toride about a great deal with my father, and I had become intimate withIsaac Irvine. 

"You know what an Apiary is, Isaac?" said I. 

"A what, sir?"

"An A-P-I-A-R-Y. "

"To be sure, sir, to be sure, " said Isaac. "An _appyary_" (so he waspleased to pronounce it), "I should be familiar with the name, sir, frommy bee-book, but I never calls my own stock anything but the beehives. _Beehives_ is a good, straightforward sort of a name, sir, and it servesmy turn. "

"Ah, but you see we haven't come to the B's yet, " said I, alluding towhat I was thinking of. 

"Does your father think of keeping 'em, sir?" said Isaac, alluding towhat he was thinking of. 

"Oh, he means to have them bound, I believe, " was my reply. 

The bee-master now betrayed his bewilderment, and we had a hearty laughwhen we discovered that he had been talking about bees whilst I had beentalking about the weekly numbers of the _Penny Cyclopędia_, which hadnot as yet reached the letter B, but in which I had found an article onMaster Isaac's craft, under the word Apiary, which had greatlyinterested me, and ought, I thought, to be interesting to thebee-keeper. Still thinking of this I said, "Do you ever take your bees away from home, Isaac?"

"They're on the moors now, sir, " said Isaac. 

"_Are_ they?" I exclaimed. "Then you're like the Egyptians, and like theFrench, and the Piedmontese; only you didn't take them in a barge. "

"Why, no, sir. The canal don't go nigh-hand of the moors at all. "

"The Egyptians, " said I, leaning back into the capacious arms of mychair, and epitomizing what I had read, "who live in Lower Egypt put alltheir beehives into boats and take them on the river to Upper Egypt. Right up at that end of the Nile the flowers come out earliest, and thebees get all the good out of them there, and then the boats are movedlower down to where the same kind of flowers are only just beginning toblossom, and the bees get all the good out of them there, and so on, andon, and on, till they've travelled right through Egypt, with all thehives piled up, and come back in the boats to where they started from. "

"And every hive a mighty different weight to what it was when they didstart, I'll warrant, " said Master Isaac enthusiastically. "Did you findall that in those penny numbers, Master Jack?"

"Yes, and oh, lots more, Isaac! About lots of things and lots ofcountries. "

"Scholarship's a fine thing, " said the bee-master, "and seeing foreignparts is a fine thing, and many's the time I've wished for both. Isuppose that's the same Egypt that's in the Bible, sir?"

"Yes, " said I, "and the same river Nile that Moses was put on in the arkof bulrushes. "

"There's no countries I'd like to see better than them Biblecountries, " said Master Isaac, "and I've wished it more ever since thatgentleman was here that gave that lecture in the school, with the HolyLand magic-lantern. He'd been there himself, and he explained all theslides. They were grand, some of 'em, when you got 'em straight andsteady for a bit. They're an awkward thing to manage, is slides, sir, and the school-master he wasn't much good at 'em, he said, and thatyoung scoundrel Bob Furniss and another lad got in a hole below theplatform and pulled the sheet. But when you did get 'em, right side up, and the light as it should be, they _were_ grand! There was one theycalled the Wailing Place of the Jews, with every stone standing out asfair as the flags on this floor. John Binder, the mason, was at my elbowwhen that came on, and he clapped his hands, and says he, 'Well, yonbeats all!' But the one for my choice, sir, was the Garden of Gethsemaneby moonlight. I'd only gone to the penny places, for I'm a good size andcan look over most folks' heads, but I thought I must see that a bitnearer, cost what it might. So I found a shilling, and I says to theyoung fellow at the door (it was the pupil-teacher), 'I must go a bitnearer to yon. ' And he says, 'You're not going into the reserved seats, Isaac?' So I says, 'Don't put yourself about, my lad, I shan't interferewith the quality; but if half a day's wage 'll bring me nearer to theGarden of Gethsemane, I'm bound to go. ' And I went. I didn't intrudemyself on nobody, though one gentleman was for making room for me atonce, and twice over he offered me a seat beside him. But I knew mymanners, and I said, 'Thank you, sir, I can see as I stand. ' And I didsee right well, and kicked Bob Furniss too, which was good for allparties. But I'd like to see the very places themselves, Master Jack. "

"So should I, " said I; "but I should like to go farther, all round theworld, I think. Do you know, Isaac, you wouldn't believe what curiousbeasts there are in other countries, and what wonderful people andplaces! Why, we've only got to ATH--No. 135--now; it leaves off at_Athanagilde_, a captain of the Spanish Goths--he's nobody, but thereare _such_ apes in that number! The Mono--there's a picture of him, justlike a man with a tail and horrid feet, who used to sit with the negrowomen when they were at work, and play with bits of paper; and a Quata, who used to be sent to the tavern for wine, and when the children peltedhim he put down the wine and threw stones at them. And there arepictures in all the numbers, of birds and ant-eaters and antelopes, andI don't know what. The Mono and the Quata live in the West Indies, Ithink. You see, I think the A's are rather good numbers; very likely, for there's America, and Asia, and Africa, and Arabia, and Abyssinia, and there'll be Australia before we come to the B's. Oh, Isaac! I dowish I could go round the world!"

I sighed, and the bee-master sighed also, with a profundity that madehis chair creak, well-seasoned as it was. Then he said, "But I'll saythis, Master Jack, next to going to such places the reading about 'emmust come. A penny a week's a penny a week to a poor man, but I reckon Ishall have to make shift to take in those numbers myself. "

Isaac did not take them in, however, for I used to take ours down to hiscottage, and read them aloud to him instead. He liked this much betterthan if he had had to read to himself--he said he could understandreading better when he heard it than when he saw it. For my own part Ienjoyed it very much, and I fancy I read rather well, it being a pointon which Mrs. Wood expended much trouble with us. 

"Listen, Isaac, " said I on my next visit; "this is what I meant aboutthe barge"--and resting the Penny Number on the arm of my chair, I readaloud to the attentive bee-master--"'Goldsmith describes from his ownobservation a kind of floating apiary in some parts of France andPiedmont. They have on board of one barge, he says, threescore or ahundred beehives----'"

"That's an appy-ary if ye like, sir!" ejaculated Master Isaac, interrupting his pipe and me to make way for the observation. 

"Somebody saw 'a convoy of _four thousand_ hives----' on the Nile, " saidI. 

The bee-master gave a resigned sigh. "Go on, Master Jack, " said he. 

"'--well defended from the inclemency of an accidental storm, '" Iproceeded; "'and with these the owners float quietly down the stream;one beehive yields the proprietor a considerable income. Why, he adds, amethod similar to this has never been adopted in England, where we havemore gentle rivers and more flowery banks than in any other part of theworld, I know not; certainly it might be turned to advantage, and yieldthe possessor a secure, though perhaps a moderate, income. '"

I was very fond of the canal which ran near us (and was, for thatmatter, a parish boundary): and the barges, with their cargoes, werealways interesting to me; but a bargeful of bees seemed something quiteout of the common. I thought I should rather like to float down a gentleriver between flowery banks, surrounded by beehives on which I couldrely to furnish me with a secure though moderate income; and I said so. 

"So should I, sir, " said the bee-master. "And I should uncommon like toha' seen the one beehive that brought in a considerable income. Honeymust have been very dear in those parts, Master Jack. However, it's inthe book, so I suppose it's right enough. "

I made no defence of the veracity of the _Cyclopędia_, for I wasthinking of something else, of which, after a few moments, I spoke. 

"Isaac, you don't stay with your bees on the moors. Do you ever go tosee them?"

"To be sure I do, Master Jack, nigh every Sunday through the season. Istart after I get back from morning church, and I come home in the dark, or by moonlight. My missus goes to church in the afternoons, and forthat bit she locks up the house. "

"Oh, I wish you'd take me the next time!" said I. 

"To be sure I will, and too glad sir, if you're allowed to go. "

That _was_ the difficulty, and I knew it. No one who has not lived in ahousehold of old-fashioned middle-class country folk of our type has anynotion how difficult it is for anybody to do anything unusual therein. In such a well-fitted but unelastic establishment the dinner-hour, thecarriage horses, hot water, bedtime, candles, the post, the wash-day, and an extra blanket, from being the ministers of one's comfort, becomethe stern arbiters of one's fate. Spring cleaning--which is somethinglike what it would be to build, paint, and furnish a house, and to "doit at home"--takes place as naturally as the season it celebrates; butif you want the front door kept open after the usual hour for drawingthe bolts and hanging the robbers' bell, it's odds if the master of thehouse has not an apoplectic fit, and if servants of twelve and fourteenyears' standing do not give warning. 

And what is difficult on week-days is on Sundays next door toimpossible, for obvious reasons. 

But one's parents, though they have their little ways like otherpeople, are, as a rule--oh, my heart! made sadder and wiser by theworld's rough experiences, bear witness!--very indulgent; and after agood many ups and downs, and some compromising and coaxing, I got myway. 

On one point my mother was firm, and I feared this would be aninsuperable difficulty. I must go twice to church, as our Sunday customwas--a custom which she saw no good reason for me to break. It is easyto smile at her punctiliousness on this score; but after all theseyears, and on the whole, I think she was right. An unexpected compromisecame to my rescue, however: Isaac Irvine's bees were in the parish ofCripple Charlie's father, within a stone's throw (by the bee-master'sstrong arm) of the church itself, which was a small minster among themoors. Here I promised faithfully to attend Evening Prayer, for which weshould be in time; and I started, by Isaac Irvine's side, on my firstreal "expedition" on the first Sunday in August, with my mother'sblessing and a threepenny-bit with a hole in it, "in case of acollection. "

We dined before we started, I with the rest, and Isaac in our kitchen;but I had no great appetite--I was too much excited--and I willinglyaccepted some large sandwiches made with thick slices of home-made breadand liberal layers of home-made potted meat, "in case I should feelhungry" before I got there. 

It pains me to think how distressed my mother was because I insisted oncarrying the sandwiches in a red and orange spotted handkerchief, whichI had purchased with my own pocket-money, and to which I was deeplyattached, partly from the bombastic nature of the pattern, and partlybecause it was big enough for any grown-up man. "It made me look like atramping sailor, " she said. I did not tell her that this was preciselythe effect at which I aimed, though it was the case; but I coaxed herinto permitting it, and I abstained from passing a certain knowinglittle ash stick through the knot, and hoisting the bundle over my leftshoulder, till I was well out of the grounds. 

My efforts to spare her feelings on this point, however, proved vain. She ran to the landing-window to watch me out of sight, and had a fullview of my figure as I swaggered with a business-like gait by Isaac'sside up the first long hill, having set my hat on the back of my headwith an affectation of profuse heat, my right hand in the bee-master'scoat-pocket for support, and my left holding the stick and bundle at anangle as showy and sailor-like as I could assume. 

"And they'll just meet the Ebenezer folk coming out of chapel, ma'am!"said our housemaid over my mother's shoulder, by way of consolation. 

Our journey was up-hill, for which I was quite prepared. The blue andpurple outline of the moors formed the horizon line visible from ourgardens, whose mistiness or clearness was prophetic of the comingweather, and over which the wind was supposed to blow with uncommon"healthfulness. " I had been there once to blow away the whooping-cough, and I could remember that the sandy road wound up and up, but I did notappreciate till that Sunday how tiring a steady ascent of nearly fivemiles may be. 

We were within sight of the church and within hearing of the bells, whenwe reached a wayside trough, whose brimming measure was for everoverflowed by as bright a rill as ever trickled down a hill-side. 

"It's only the first peal, " said Master Isaac, seating himself on thesandy bank, and wiping his brows. 

My well-accustomed ears confirmed his statement. The bells moved tooslowly for either the second or the third peal, and we had twentyminutes at our disposal. 

It was then that I knew (for the first but not the last time) whatrefreshment for the weary a spotted handkerchief may hold. Thebee-master and I divided the sandwiches, and washed them down withhandfuls of the running rill, so fresh, so cold, so limpid, that (likethe saints and martyrs of a faith) it would convert any one towater-drinking who did not reflect on the commoner and less shiningstreams which come to us through lead pipes and in evil communicationwith sewers. 

We were cool and tidy by the time that the little "Tom Tinkler" bellbegan to "hurry up. "

"You're coming, aren't you?" said I, checked at the churchyard gate byan instinct of some hesitation on Isaac's part. 

"Well, I suppose I am, sir, " said the bee-master, and in he came. 

The thick walls, the stained windows, and the stone floor, which wasbelow the level of the churchyard, made the church very cool. MasterIsaac and I seated ourselves so that we had a good view within, andcould also catch a peep through the open porch of the sunlit countryoutside. Charlie's father was in his place when we got in; histhreadbare coat was covered by the white linen of his office, and I donot think it would have been possible even to my levity to have feltanything but a respectful awe of him in church. 

The cares of this life are not as a rule improving to the countenance. No one who watches faces can have failed to observe that more beauty ismarred and youth curtailed by vulgar worry than by almost any otherdisfigurement. In the less educated classes, where self-control is notvery habitual, and where interests beyond petty and personal ones arerare, the soft brows and tender lips of girlhood are too often puckeredand hardened by mean anxieties, even where these do not affect the girlspersonally, but only imitatively, and as the daily interests of theirstation in life. In such cases the discontented, careworn look is by nomeans a certain indication of corresponding suffering, but there are toomany others in which tempers that should have been generous, and facesthat should have been noble, and aims that should have been high, areblurred and blunted by the real weight of real everyday care. 

There are yet others; in which the spirit is too strong for mortalaccidents to pull it down--minds that the narrowest career cannotvulgarize--faces to which care but adds a look of pathos--souls whichkeep their aims and faiths apart from the fluctuations of "the thingsthat are seen. " The personal influence of natures of this type isgenerally very large, and it was very large in the case of CrippleCharlie's father, and made him a sort of Prophet, Priest, and King overa rough and scattered population, with whom the shy, scholarly poorgentleman had not otherwise much in common. 

It was his personal influence, I am sure, which made the congregation sodevout! There is one rule which, I believe, applies to allcongregations, of every denomination, and any kind of ritual, and thatis, that the enthusiasm of the congregation is in direct proportion tothe enthusiasm of the minister; not merely to his personal worth, noreven to his popularity, for people who rather dislike a clergyman, anddisapprove of his service, will say a louder Amen at his giving ofthanks if his own feelings have a touch of fire, than they would to thatof a more perfunctory parson whom they liked better. As is theheartiness of the priest, so is the heartiness of the people--with suchstrictness that one is disposed almost to credit some of it to actualmagnetism. _Response_ is no empty word in public worship. 

It was no empty word on this occasion. From the ancient clerk (who kepta life-interest in what were now the duties of a choir) to some gapingfarm-lads at my back, everybody said and sang to the utmost of hisability. I may add that Isaac and I involuntarily displayed a zeal whichwas in excess of our Sunday customs; and if my tongue moved gliblyenough with the choir, the bee-master found many an elderly parishionerbesides himself and the clerk who "took" both prayer and praise at suchindependent paces as suited their individual scholarship, spectacles, and notions of reverence. 

It crowned my satisfaction when I found that there was to be acollection. The hymn to which the churchwardens moved about, gatheringthe pence, whose numbers and noisiness seemed in keeping with the restof the service, was a well-known one to us all. It was the favouriteevening hymn of the district. I knew every syllable of it, for Jem and Ialways sang hymns (and invariably this one) with my dear mother, onSunday evening after supper. When we were good, we liked it, and, picking one favourite after another, we often sang nearly through thehymn-book. When we were naughty, we displayed a good deal of skill inmaking derisive faces behind my mother's back, as she sat at the piano, without betraying ourselves, and in getting our tongues out and in againduring the natural pauses and convolutions of the tune. But theseoccasional fits of boyish profanity did not hinder me from having anequally boyish fund of reverence and enthusiasm at the bottom of myheart, and it was with proud and pleasurable emotions that I heard theold clerk give forth the familiar first lines, "Soon shall the evening star with silver ray Shed its mild lustre o'er this sacred day, "

and got my threepenny-bit ready between my finger and thumb. 

Away went the organ, which was played by the vicar's eldestdaughter--away went the vicar's second daughter, who "led the singing"from the vicarage pew with a voice like a bird--away went the choir, which, in spite of surplices, could not be cured of waiting half a beatfor her--and away went the congregation--young men and maidens, old menand children--in one broad tide of somewhat irregular harmony. Isaac didnot know the words as well as I did, so I lent him my hymn-book; oneresult of which was, that the print being small, and the sense of a hymnbeing in his view a far more important matter than the sound of it, hepreached rather than sang--in an unequal cadence which was perturbing tomy more musical ear--the familiar lines, "Still let each awful truth our thoughts engage, That shines revealed on inspiration's page; Nor those blest hours in vain amusement waste Which all who lavish shall lament at last. "

During the next verse my devotions were a little distracted by thegradual approach of a churchwarden for my threepenny-bit, which was hotwith three verses of expectant fingering. Then, to my relief, he tookit, and the bee-master's contribution, and I felt calmer, and listenedto the little prelude which it was always the custom for the organist toplay before the final verse of a hymn. It was also the custom to singthe last verse as loudly as possible, though this is by no meansinvariably appropriate. It fitted the present occasion fairly enough. From where I stood I could see the bellows-blower (the magnetic currentof enthusiasm flowed even to the back of the organ) nerve himself toprodigious pumping--Charlie's sister drew out all the stops--the vicarpassed from the prayer-desk to the pulpit with the rapt look of a manwho walks in a prophetic dream--we pulled ourselves together, MasterIsaac brought the hymn book close to his glasses, and when thetantalizing prelude was past we burst forth with a volume which mergedall discrepancies. As far as I am able to judge of my own performance, I fear I _bawled_ (I'm sure the boy behind me did), "Father of Heaven, in Whom our hopes confide, Whose power defends us, and Whose precepts guide, In life our Guardian, and in death our Friend, Glory supreme be Thine till time shall end!"

The sermon was short, and when the service was over Master Isaac and Ispent a delightful afternoon with his bees among the heather. The"evening star" had come out when we had some tea in the village inn, andwe walked home by moonlight. There was neither wind nor sun, but the airwas almost oppressively pure. The moonshine had taken the colour out ofthe sandy road and the heather, and had painted black shadows by everyboulder, and most things looked asleep except the rill that went onrunning. Only we and the rabbits, and the night moths and the beetles, seemed to be stirring. An occasional bat appeared and vanished like aspectral illusion, and I saw one owl flap across the moor with levelwings against the moon. 

"Oh, I _have_ enjoyed it!" was all I could say when I parted from thebee-master. 

"And so have I, Master Jack, " was his reply, and he hesitated as if hehad something more to say, and then he said it. "I never enjoyed it asmuch, and you can thank your mother, sir, with old Isaac's duty, forsending us to church. I'm sure I don't know why I never went before whenI was up yonder, for I always took notice of the bells. I reckon Ithought I hadn't time, but you can say, with my respects, sir, thatplease GOD I shan't miss again. "

I believe he never did; and Cripple Charlie's father came to look on himas half a parishioner. 

I was glad I had not shirked Evening Prayer myself, though (my sex andage considered) it was not to be expected that I should comfort mymother's heart by confessing as much. Let me confess it now, and confessalso that if it was the first time, it was not the last that I have hadcause to realize--oh women, for our sakes remember it!--into what lightand gentle hands GOD lays the reins that guide men's better selves. 

 * * * * *

The most remarkable event of the day happened at the end of it. WhilstIsaac was feeling the weight of one of his hives, and just after I lostchase of a very peculiar-looking beetle, from his squeezing himself awayfrom me under a boulder, I had caught sight of a bit of white heather, and then bethought me of gathering a nosegay (to include this rarity) ofmoor flowers and grasses for Mrs. Wood. So when we reached the lane onour way home, I bade Isaac good-night, and said I would just run in bythe back way into the farm (we never called it the Academy) and leavethe flowers, that the school-mistress might put them in water. Mary Annewas in the kitchen. 

"Where's Mrs. Wood?" said I, when she had got over that silly squeakwomen always give when you come suddenly on them. 

"Dear, dear, Master Jack! what a turn you did give me! I thought it wasthe tramp. "

"What tramp?" said I. 

"Why, a great lanky man that came skulking here a bit since, and askedfor the missus. She was down the garden, and I've half a notion he wentafter her. I wish you'd go and look for her, Master Jack, and fetch herin. It's as damp as dear knows what, and she takes no more care ofherself than a baby. And I'd be glad to know that man was off the place. There's wall-fruit and lots of things about, a low fellow like thatmight pick up. "

My ears felt a little hot at this allusion to low fellows and gardenthieving, and I hurried off to do Mary Anne's bidding without furtherparley. There was a cloud over the moon as I ran down the back garden, but when I was nearly at the end the moon burst forth again, so that Icould see. And this is what I saw:--

First, a white thing lying on the ground, and it was the widow's cap, and then Mrs. Wood herself, with a gaunt lanky-looking man, such as MaryAnne had described. Her head came nearly to his shoulder, as I was wellable to judge, for he was holding it in his hands and had laid his ownupon it, as if it were a natural resting-place. And his hair comingagainst the darker part of hers, I could see that his was grey all over. Up to this point I had been too much stupefied to move, and I had justbecome conscious that I ought to go, when the white cap lying in themoonlight seemed to catch his eye as it had caught mine; and he set hisheel on it with a vehemence that made me anxious to be off. I could notresist one look back as I left the garden, if only to make sure that Ihad not been dreaming. No, they were there still, and he was lifting thecoil of her hair, which I suppose had come down when the cap was pulledoff, and it took the full stretch of his arm to do so, before it fellheavily from his fingers. 

When I presented myself to my mother with the bunch of flowers still inmy hand, she said, "Did my Jack get these for Mother?"

I shook my head. "No, Mother. For Mrs. Wood. "

"You might have called at the farm as you passed, " said she. 

"I did!" said I. 

"Couldn't you see Mrs. Wood, love?"

"Yes, I saw her, but she'd got the tramp with her. "

"What tramp?" asked my mother in a horror-struck voice, which seemedquite natural to me, for I had been brought up to rank tramps in thesame "dangerous class" with mad dogs, stray bulls, drunken men, andother things which it is undesirable to meet. 

"The great lanky one, " I explained, quoting from Mary Anne. 

"What was he doing with Mrs. Wood?" asked my mother anxiously. 

I had not yet recovered from my own bewilderment, and was reckless ofthe shock inflicted by my reply. 

"_Pooring_ her head, and kissing it. "

CHAPTER V. 

 "To each his sufferings; all are men Condemned alike to groan. The tender for another's pain--" GRAY. 

Not even the miser's funeral had produced in the neighbourhood anythinglike the excitement which followed that Sunday evening. At first mymother--her mind filled by the simplest form of the problem, namely, that Mrs. Wood was in the hands of a tramp--wished my father to take theblunderbuss in his hand and step down to the farm. He had "pish"ed and"pshaw"ed about the blunderbuss, and was beginning to say more, when Iwas dismissed to bed, where I wandered back over the moors in uneasydreams, and woke with the horror of a tramp's hand upon my shoulder. After suffering the terrors of night for some time, and finding myselfno braver with my head under the bedclothes than above them, I beganconscientiously to try my mother's family recipe for "bad dreams andbeing afraid in the dark. " This was to "say over" the Benedicitecorrectly, which (if by a rare chance one were still awake at the end)was to be followed by a succession of the hymns one knew by heart. Itrequired an effort to _begin_, and to _really try_, but the children ofsuch mothers as ours are taught to make efforts, and once fairlystarted, and holding on as a duty, it certainly did tend to divert themind from burglars and ghosts, to get the beasts, creeping things, andfowls of the air into their right places in the chorus of benedictions. That Jem never could discriminate between the "Dews and Frosts" and"Frost and Cold" verses needs no telling. I have often finished andstill been frightened and had to fall back upon the hymns, but thisnight I began to dream pleasanter dreams of Charlie's father and thebee-master before I got to the holy and humble men of heart. 

I slept long then, and Mother would not let me be awakened. When I didopen my eyes Jem was sitting at the end of the bed, dying to tell me thenews. 

"Jack! you have waked, haven't you? I see your eyes. Don't shut 'emagain. What _do_ you think? _Mrs. Wood's husband has come home!_"

I never knew the ins and outs of the story very exactly. At the timethat what did become generally known was fresh in people's minds Jem andI were not by way of being admitted to "grown-up" conversations; andthough Mrs. Wood's husband and I became intimate friends, I neitherwished nor dared to ask him more about his past than he chose to tell, for I knew enough to know that it must be a most intolerable pain torecall it. 

What we had all heard of the story was this. Mr. Wood had been a headclerk in a house of business. A great forgery was committed against hisemployers, and he was accused. He was tried, condemned, and sentenced tofourteen years' penal servitude, which, in those days, meanttransportation abroad. For some little time the jury had not beenunanimous. One man doubted the prisoner's guilt--the man we afterwardsknew as the old miser of Walnut-tree Farm. But he was over-persuaded atlast, and Mr. Wood was convicted and sentenced. He had spent ten yearsof his penal servitude in Bermuda when a man lying in Maidstone Jailunder sentence of death for murder, confessed (amongst other crimes ofwhich he disburdened his conscience) that it was he, and not the man whohad been condemned, who had committed the forgery. Investigationconfirmed the truth of this statement, and Mr. Wood was "pardoned" andbrought home. 

He had just come. He was the tramp. 

In this life the old miser never knew that his first judgment had beenthe just one, but the doubt which seems always to have hauntedhim--whether he had not helped to condemn the innocent--was the reasonof his bequest to the convict's wife, and explained much of themysterious wording of the will. 

It was a tragic tale, and gave a terrible interest to the gaunt, white-haired, shattered-looking man who was the hero of it. It had onepoint of special awe for me, and I used to watch him in church and thinkof it, till I am ashamed to say that I forgot even when to stand up andsit down. He had served ten years of his sentence. Ten years! Ten timesthree hundred and sixty-five days! All the days of the years of my life. The weight of that undeserved punishment had fallen on him the year thatI was born, and all that long, long time of home with Mother and Fatherand Jem--all the haymaking summers and snowballing winters--whilst Jemand I had never been away from home, and had had so much fun, andnothing very horrid that I could call to mind except the mumps--he hadbeen an exile working in chains. I remember rousing up with a start fromthe realization of this one Sunday to find myself still standing in themiddle of the Litany. My mother was behaving too well herself to find meout, and though Jem was giggling he dared not move, because he waskneeling next my father, whose back was turned to me. I knelt down, andstarted to hear the parson say--"show Thy pity upon all prisoners andcaptives!" And then I knew what it is to wish when it is too late. For Idid so wish I had really prayed for prisoners and captives every Sunday, because then I should have prayed for that poor man nearly all the longtime he had been so miserable; for we began to go to church very early, and one learns to pray easier and sooner than one learns anything else. 

All this had happened in the holidays, but when they were over schoolopened as before, and with additional scholars; for sympathy was wideand warm with the school-mistress. Strangely enough, both partners inthe firm which had prosecuted Mr. Wood were dead. Their successorsoffered him employment, but he could not face the old associations. Ibelieve he found it so hard to face any one, that this was the reason ofhis staying at home for a time and helping in the school. I don't thinkwe boys made him uncomfortable as grown-up strangers seemed to do, andhe was particularly fond of Cripple Charlie. 

This brought me into contact with him, for Charlie and I were greatfriends. He was as well pleased to be read to out of the Penny Numbersas the bee-master, and he was interested in things of which IsaacIrvine was completely ignorant. 

Our school was a day-school, but Charlie had been received by Mrs. Woodas a boarder. His poor back could not have borne to be jolted to andfrom the moors every day. So he lived at Walnut-tree Farm, and now andthen his father would come down in a light cart, lent by one of theparishioners, and take Charlie home from Saturday to Monday, and thenbring him back again. 

The sisters came to see him too, by turns, sometimes walking andsometimes riding a rough-coated pony, who was well content to be tied toa gate, and eat some of the grass that overgrew the lane. And oftenCharlie came to _us_, especially in haytime, for haycocks seem verycomfortable (for people whose backs hurt) to lean against; and we couldcover his legs with hay too, as he liked them to be hidden. There is noneed to say how tender my mother was to him, and my father used to lookat him half puzzledly and half pitifully, and always spoke to him inquite a different tone of voice to the one he used with other boys. 

Jem gave Charlie the best puppy out of the curly brown spaniel lot; buthe didn't really like being with him, though he was sorry for him, andhe could not bear seeing his poor legs. 

"They make me feel horrid, " Jem said. "And even when they're coveredup, I know they're there. "

"You're a chip of the old block, Jem, " said my father, "I'd give aguinea to a hospital any day sooner than see a patient. I'm as sorry ascan be for the poor lad, but he turns me queer, though I feel ashamed ofit. I like things _sound_. Your mother's different; she likes 'em betterfor being sick and sorry, and I suppose Jack takes after her. "

My father was wrong about me. Pity for Charlie was not half of the tiebetween us. When he was talking, or listening to the penny numbers, Inever thought about his legs or his back, and I don't now understand howanybody could. 

He read and remembered far more than I did, and he was even wilder aboutstrange countries. He had as adventurous a spirit as any lad in theschool, cramped up as it was in that misshapen body. I knew he'd haveliked to go round the world as well as I, and he often laughed andsaid--"What's more, Jack, if I'd the money I would. People are very kindto poor wretches like me all over the world. I should never want ahelping hand, and the only difference between us would be, that I shouldbe carried on board ship by some kind-hearted blue-jacket, and you'dhave to scramble for yourself. "

He was very anxious to know Isaac Irvine, and when I brought thebee-master to see him, they seemed to hold friendly converse with theirlooks even before either of them spoke. It was a bad day with Charlie, but he set his lips against the pain, and raised himself on one arm tostare out of his big brown eyes at the old man, who met them with assteady a gaze out of his. Then Charlie lowered himself again, and saidin a tone of voice by which I knew he was pleased, "I'm so glad you'vecome to see me, old Isaac. It's very kind of you. Jack says you know alot about live things, and that you like the numbers we like in the_Penny Cyclopędia_. I wanted to see you, for I think you and I are muchin the same boat; you're old, and I'm crippled, and we're both too poorto travel. But Jack's to go, and when he's gone, you and I'll follow himon the map. "

"GOD willing, sir, " said the bee-master; and when he said that, I knewhow sorry he felt for poor Charlie, for when he was moved he always saidvery short things, and generally something religious. 

And for all Charlie's whims and fancies, and in all his pain andfretfulness, and through fits of silence and sensitiveness, he had nevera better friend than Isaac Irvine. Indeed the bee-master was one ofthose men (to be found in all ranks) whose delicate tenderness might notbe guessed from the size and roughness of the outer man. 

Our neighbours were all very kind to Mr. Wood, in their own way, butthey were a little impatient of his slowness to be sociable, and had, Ithink, a sort of feeling that the ex-convict ought not only to enjoyevening parties more than other people, but to be just a little moregrateful for being invited. 

However, one must have a strong and sensitive imagination to cultivatewide sympathies when one lives a quiet, methodical life in the placewhere one's father and grandfather lived out quiet methodical livesbefore one; and I do not think we were an imaginative race. 

The school-master (as we used to call him) had seen and suffered so muchmore of life than we, that I do not think he resented the clumsiness ofour sympathy; but now I look back I fancy that he must have felt as ifhe wanted years of peace and quiet in which to try and forget the yearsof suffering. Old Isaac said one day, "I reckon the master feels as ifhe wanted to sit down and say to hisself over and over again, 'I'm afree man, I'm a free man, I'm a free man, ' till he can fair trusthimself to believe it. "

Isaac was probably right, and perhaps evening parties, though they aremeant for treats, are not the best places to sit down and feel free in, particularly when there are a lot of strange people who have heard adreadful story about you, and want to see what you look like after it. 

During the summer holidays Jem and I were out the whole day long. Whenwe came in I was ready for the Penny Numbers, but Jem always fellasleep, even if he did not go to bed at once. My father did just thesame. I think their feeling about houses was of a perfectly primitivekind. They looked upon them as comfortable shelter for sleeping andeating, but not at all as places in which to pursue any occupation. Life, for them, was lived out-of-doors. 

I know now how dull this must have made the evenings for my mother, andthat it was very selfish of me to wait till my father was asleep (forfear he should say "no"), and then to ask her leave to take the PennyNumbers down to the farm and sit with Cripple Charlie. 

Now and then she would go too, and chat with Mrs. Wood, whilst theschool-master and I were turning the terrestrial globe by Charlie'ssofa; but as a rule Charlie and I were alone, and the Woods went roundthe homestead together, and came home hand in hand, through the garden, and we laughed to think how we had taken him for a tramp. 

And sometimes on a summer's evening, when we talked and read aloud toeach other across a quaint oak table that had been the miser's, offar-away lands and strange birds of gorgeous plumage, the school-mastersat silent in the arm-chair by the open lattice, resting his white headagainst the mullion that the ivy was creeping up, and listened to theblackbirds and thrushes as their songs dropped by odd notes intosilence, and gazed at the near fields and trees, and the littlehomestead with its hayricks on the hill, when the grass was apple-greenin the gold mist of sunset: and went on gazing when that had faded intofog, and the hedgerow elms were black against the sky, as if the eyecould not be filled with seeing, nor the ear with hearing!

CHAPTER VI. 

 "Who, doomed to go in company with Pain, Turns his necessity to glorious gain. " WORDSWORTH. 

"Jack, " said Charlie, "listen!"

He was reading bits out of the numbers to me, whilst I was rigging aminiature yacht to sail on the dam; and Mrs. Wood's husband was making aplan of something at another table, and occasionally giving me adviceabout my masts and sails. "It's about the South American forests, " saidCharlie. "'There every tree has a character of its own; each has itspeculiar foliage, and probably also a tint unlike that of the treeswhich surround it. Gigantic vegetables of the most different familiesintermix their branches; five-leaved bignonias grow by the side ofbonduc-trees; cassias shed their yellow blossoms upon the rich fronds ofarborescent ferns; myrtles and eugenias, with their thousand arms, contrast with the elegant simplicity of palms; and among the airyfoliage of the mimosa the ceropia elevates its giant leaves and heavycandelabra-shaped branches. Of some trees the trunk is perfectly smooth, of others it is defended by enormous spines, and the whole are oftenapparently sustained by the slanting stems of a huge wild fig-tree. Withus, the oak, the chestnut, and the beech seem as if they bore noflowers, so small are they and so little distinguishable except bynaturalists; but in the forests of South America it is often the mostgigantic trees that produce the most brilliant flowers; cassias hangdown their pendants of golden blossoms, vochisias unfold their singularbunches; corollas, longer than those of our foxglove, sometimes yellowor sometimes purple, load the arborescent bignonias; while the chorisiasare covered, as it were, with lilies, only their colours are richer andmore varied; grasses also appear in form of bamboos, as the mostgraceful of trees; bauhinias, bignonias, and aroideous plants clinground the trees like enormous cables; orchideous plants and bromeliasoverrun their limbs, or fasten themselves to them when prostrated by thestorm, and make even their dead remains become verdant with leaves andflowers not their own. '"

Though he could read very well, Charlie had, so far, rather stumbledthrough the long names in this description, but he finished off withfluency, not to say enthusiasm. "'Such are the ancient forests, flourishing in a damp and fertile soil, and clothed with perpetualgreen. '"

I was half-way through a profound sigh when I caught the school-master'seye, who had paused in his plan-making and was listening with his headupon his hand. 

"What a groan!" he exclaimed. "What's the matter?"

"It sounds so splendid!" I answered, "and I'm so afraid I shall neversee it. I told Father last night I should like to be a sailor, but heonly said 'Stuff and nonsense, ' and that there was a better berthwaiting for me in Uncle Henry's office than any of the Queen's shipswould provide for me; and Mother begged me never to talk of it any more, if I didn't want to break her heart"--and I sighed again. 

The school-master had a long smooth face, which looked longer frommelancholy, and he turned it and his arms over the back of the chair, and looked at me with the watchful listening look his eyes always had;but I am not sure if he was really paying much attention to me, for hetalked (as he often did) as if he were talking to himself. 

"I wanted to be a soldier, " he said, "and my father wouldn't let me. Ioften used to wish I had run away and enlisted, when I was withQuarter-master McCulloch, of the Engineers (he'd risen from the ranksand was younger than me), in Bermuda. "

"Bermuda! That's not very far from South America, is it?" said I, looking across to the big map of the world. "Is it very beautiful, too?"

The school-master's eyes contracted as if he were short-sighted, orlooking at something inside his own head. But he smiled as he answered--

"The poet says, 'A pleasing land of drowsy-head it is, Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye; And of gay castles in the clouds that pass, For ever flushing round a summer sky. '"

"But are there any curious beasts and plants and that sort of thing?" Iasked. 

"I believe there were no native animals originally, " said theschool-master. "I mean inland ones. But the fowls of the air and thefishes of the sea are of all lovely forms and colours. And such coralsand sponges, and sea-anemones, blooming like flowers in the transparentpools of the warm blue water that washes the coral reefs and fills thelittle creeks and bays!"

I gasped--and he went on. "The commonest trees, I think, are palms andcedars. Lots of the old houses were built of cedar, and I've heard ofold cedar furniture to be picked up here and there, as some people buyold oak out of English farm-houses. It is very durable and deliriouslyscented. People used to make cedar bonfires when the small-pox wasabout, to keep away infection. The gardens will grow anything, and plotsof land are divided by oleander hedges of many colours. "

"Oh--h!" ejaculated I, in long-drawn notes of admiration. Theschool-master's eyes twinkled. 

"Not only, " continued he, "do very gaudy lobsters and quaint cray-fishand crabs with lanky legs dispute your attention on the shore with theshell-fish of the loveliest hues; there is no lack of remarkablecreatures indoors. Monstrous spiders, whose bite is very unpleasant, drop from the roof; tarantulas and scorpions get into your boots, andcockroaches, hideous to behold and disgusting to smell, invade everyplace from your bed to your store-cupboard. If you possess anything, from food and clothing to books and boxes, the ants will find it anddevour it, and if you possess a garden the mosquitoes will find you anddevour you. "

"Oh--h!" I exclaimed once more, but this time in a different tone. 

Mr. Wood laughed heartily. "Tropical loveliness has its drawbacks, Jack. Perhaps some day when your clothes are moulded, and your brain feelsmouldy too with damp heat, and you can neither work in the sun nor beat peace in the shade, you may wish you were sitting on a stool in youruncle's office, undisturbed by venomous insects, and cool in a Novemberfog. "

I laughed too, but I shook my head. 

"No. I shan't mind the insects if I can get there. Charlie, were thosewonderful ants old Isaac said you'd been reading about, Bermuda ants?"

I did not catch Charlie's muttered reply, and when I looked round I sawthat his face was buried in the red cushions, and that he was (what Jemused to call) "in one of his tempers. "

I don't exactly know how it was. I don't think Charlie was jealous orreally cross, but he used to take fits of fancying he was in the way, and out of it all (from being a cripple), if we seemed to be very busywithout him, especially about such things as planning adventures. I knewwhat was the matter directly, but I'm afraid my consolation was ratherclumsy. 

"Don't be cross, Charlie, " I said; "I thought you were listening too, and if it's because you think you won't be able to go, I don't believethere's really a bit more chance of my going, though my legs _are_ allright. "

"Don't bother about me, " said Charlie; "but I wish you'd put thesenumbers down, they're in my way. " And he turned pettishly over. 

Before I could move, the school-master had taken the papers, and wasstanding over Charlie's couch, with his right hand against the wall, atthe level of his head, and his left arm hanging by his side; and Isuppose it was his attitude which made me notice, before he began tospeak, what a splendid figure he had, and how strong he looked. He spokein an odd, abrupt sort of voice, very different from the way he had beentalking to me, but he looked down at Charlie so intensely, that I thinkhe felt it through the cushions, and lifted his head. 

"When your father has been bringing you down here, or at any time whenyou have been out amongst other people, have you ever overheard themsaying, 'Poor chap! it's a sad thing, ' and things of that kind, as ifthey were sorry for you?"

Cripple Charlie's face flushed scarlet, and my own cheeks burned, as Ilooked daggers at the school-master, for what seemed a brutalinsensibility to the lame boy's feelings. He did not condescend, however, to meet my eyes. His own were still fixed steadily onCharlie's, and he went on. 

"_I've heard it. _ My ears are quick, and for many a Sunday after I cameI caught the whispers behind me as I went up the aisle, 'Poor man!''Poor gentleman!' 'He looks bad, too!' One morning an old woman, in abig black bonnet, said, 'Poor soul!' so close to me, that I lookeddown, and met her withered eyes, full of tears--for me!--and I said, 'Thank you, mother, ' and she fingered the sleeve of my coat with hertrembling hand (the veins were standing out on it like ropes), and said, 'I've knowed trouble myself, my dear. The Lord bless yours to you!'"

"It must have been Betty Johnson, " I interpolated; but the school-masterdid not even look at me. 

"You and I, " he said, bending nearer to Cripple Charlie, "have had ourshare of this life's pain so dealt out to us that any one can see andpity us. My boy, take a fellow-sufferer's word for it, it is wise andgood not to shrink from the seeing and pitying. The weight of the crossspreads itself and becomes lighter if one learns to suffer with othersas well as with oneself, to take pity and to give it. And as one learnsto be pained with the pains of others, one learns to be happy in theirhappiness and comforted by their sympathy, and then no man's life can bequite empty of pleasure. I don't know if my troubles have been lighteror heavier ones than yours----"

The school-master stopped short, and turned his head so that his facewas almost hidden against his hand upon the wall. Charlie's big eyeswere full of tears, and I am sure I distinctly felt my ears pokeforwards on my head with anxious curiosity to catch what Mr. Wood wouldtell us about that dreadful time of which he had never spoken. 

"When I was your age, " he said bluntly, "I was unusually lithe andactive and strong for mine. When I was half as old again, I was strongerthan any man I knew, and had many a boyish triumph out of my strength, because I was slender and graceful, and this concealed my powers. I hadall the energies and ambitions natural to unusual vigour and manlyskill. I wanted to be a soldier, but it was not to be, and I spent myyouth at a desk in a house of business. I adapted myself, but none theless I chafed whenever I heard of manly exploits, and of the delightsand dangers that came of seeing the world. I used to think I could bearanything to cross the seas and see foreign climes. I did cross theAtlantic at last--a convict in a convict ship (GOD help any man whoknows what that is!), and I spent the ten best years of my manhood atthe hulks working in chains. You've never lost freedom, my lad, so youhave never felt what it is not to be able to believe you've got it back. You don't know what it is to turn nervous at the responsibility of beingyour own master for a whole day, or to wake in a dainty room, with thebirds singing at the open window, and to shut your eyes quickly and prayto go on dreaming a bit, because you feel sure you're really in yourhammock in the hulks. "

The school-master lifted his other hand above his head, and pressed bothon it, as if he were in pain. What Charlie was doing I don't know, but Ifelt so miserable I could not help crying, and had to hunt for mypocket-handkerchief under the table. It was full of acorns, and by thetime I had emptied it and dried my eyes, Mr. Wood was lifting Charlie inhis arms, and arranging his cushions. 

"Oh, thank you!" Charlie said, as he leant back; "how comfortable youhave made me!"

"I have been sick-nurse, amongst other trades. For some months I was ahospital warder. "

"Was that when----" Charlie began, and then he stopped short, and said, "Oh, I beg your pardon!"

"Yes; it was when I was a convict, " said the school-master. "No offence, my boy. If I preach I must try to practise. Jack's eyes are dropping outof his head to hear more of Bermuda, and you and I will put our whimsand moods on one side, and we'll all tell travellers' tales together. "

Cripple Charlie kept on saying "Thank you, " and I know he was very sorrynot to be able to think of anything more to say, for he told me so. Hewanted to have thanked him better, because he knew that Mr. Wood hadtalked about his having been a convict, when he did not like to talkabout it, just to show Charlie that he knew what pain, and not beingable to do what you want, feel like, and that Charlie ought not to fancyhe was neglected. 

And that was the beginning of all the stories the school-master used totell us, and of the natural history lessons he gave us, and of histeaching me to stuff birds, and do all kinds of things. 

We used to say to him, "You're better than the Penny Numbers, for you'requite as interesting, and we're sure you're true. " And the odd thing wasthat he made Charlie much more contented, because he started him with somany collections, whilst he made me only more and more anxious to seethe world. 

CHAPTER VII. 

 "Much would have more, and lost all. "--_English Proverb_. 

 "Learn you to an ill habit, and ye'll ca't custom. " _Scotch Proverb_. 

The lane was full of colour that autumn, the first autumn of theconvict's return. The leaves turned early, and fell late, and made thehedges gayer than when the dog-roses were out; for not only were theleaves of all kinds brighter than many flowers, but the berries (fromthe holly and mountain-ash to the hips and haws) were so thick-set, andso red and shining, that, as my dear mother said, "they looked almostartificial. "

I remember it well, because of two things. First, that Jem got five ofthe largest hips we had ever seen off a leafless dog-rose branch whichstuck far out of the hedge, and picked the little green coronets off, sothat they were smooth and glossy, and egg-shaped, and crimson on oneside and yellow on the other; and then he got an empty chaffinch's nestclose by and put the five hips into it, and took it home, and persuadedAlice our new parlourmaid that it was a robin redbreast's nest with eggsin it. And she believed it, for she came from London and knew no better. 

The second thing I remember that autumn by, is that everybody expected ahard winter because of the berries being so fine, and the hard winternever came, and the birds ate worms and grubs and left most of the hedgefruits where they were. 

November was bright and mild, and the morning frosts only made theberries all the glossier when the sun came out. We had one or twosnow-storms in December, and then we all said, "Now it's coming!" butthe snow melted away and left no bones behind. In January the snow laylonger, and left big bones on the moors, and Jem and I made a slide toschool on the pack track, and towards the end of the month the mill-damfroze hard, and we had slides fifteen yards long, and skating; andWinter seemed to have come back in good earnest to fetch his bones away. 

Jem was great fun in frosty weather; Charlie and I used to die oflaughing at him. I think cold made him pugnacious; he seemed alwaysready for a row, and was constantly in one. The January frost came inour Christmas holidays, so Jem had lots of time on his hands; he spentalmost all of it out of doors, and he devoted a good deal of it tofighting with the rough lads of the village. There was a standingsubject of quarrel, which is a great thing for either tribes orindividuals who have a turn that way. A pond at the corner of the lowerpaddock was fed by a stream which also fed the mill-dam; and themill-dam was close by, though, as it happened, not on my father'sproperty. Old custom made the mill-dam the winter resort of all thevillage sliders and skaters, and my father displayed a good deal oftoleration when those who could not find room for a new slide, or wishedto practise their "outer edge" in a quiet spot, came climbing over thewall (there was no real thoroughfare) and invaded our pond. 

Perhaps it is because gratitude is a fatiguing virtue, or perhaps it isbecause self-esteem has no practical limits, that favours are seldomregarded as such for long. They are either depreciated, or claimed asrights; very often both. And what is common in all classes is almostuniversal amongst the uneducated. You have only to make a system ofgiving your cast-off clothes to some shivering family, and you will nothave to wait long for an eloquent essay on their shabbiness, or for anoutburst of sincere indignation if you venture to reserve a warm jacketfor a needy relative. Prescriptive rights, in short, grow faster thanpumpkins, which is amongst the many warnings life affords us to be justas well as generous. Thence it had come about that the young roughs ofthe village regarded our pond to all winter intents and purposes astheirs, and my father as only so far and so objectionably concerned inthe matter that he gave John Binder a yearly job in patching up the wallwhich it took them three months' trouble to kick a breach in. 

Our neighbours were what is called "very independent" folk. In thegrown-up people this was modified by the fact that no one who has toearn his own livelihood can be quite independent of other people; if hewould live he must let live, and throw a little civility into thebargain. But boys of an age when their parents found meals and hobnailedboots for them whether they behaved well or ill, were able to displayindependence in its roughest form. And when the boys of ourneighbourhood were rough, they were very rough indeed. 

The village boys had their Christmas holidays about the same time thatwe had ours, which left them as much spare time for sliding and skatingas we had, but they had their dinner at twelve o'clock, whilst we hadours at one, so that any young roughs who wished to damage our pond werejust comfortably beginning their mischief as Jem and I were saying gracebefore meat, and the thought of it took away our appetites again andagain. 

That winter they were particularly aggravating. The December frost wasa very imperfect one, and the mill-dam never bore properly, so the boysswarmed over our pond, which was shallow and safe. Very few of themcould even hobble on skates, and those few carried the art no fartherthan by cutting up the slides. But thaw came on, so that there was nosliding, and then the young roughs amused themselves with stamping holesin the soft ice with their hobnailed heels. When word came to us thatthey were taking the stones off our wall and pitching them down on tothe soft ice below, to act as skaters' stumbling-blocks for the rest ofthat hard winter which we expected, Jem's indignation was not greaterthan mine. My father was not at home, and indeed, when we had complainedbefore, he rather snubbed us, and said that we could not want the wholeof the pond to ourselves, and that he had always lived quietly with hisneighbours and we must learn to do the same, and so forth. No action atall calculated to assuage our thirst for revenge was likely to be takenby him, so Jem and I held a council by Charlie's sofa, and it was acouncil of war. At the end we all three solemnly shook hands, andCharlie was left to write and despatch brief notes of summons to ourmore distant school-mates, whilst Jem and I tucked up our trousers, wound our comforters sternly round our throats, and went forth indifferent directions to gather the rest. 

(Having lately been reading about the Highlanders, who used to sendround a fiery cross when the clans were called to battle, I should haveliked to do so in this instance; but as some of the Academy boys were nogreater readers than Jem, they might not have known what it meant, so weabandoned the notion. )

There was not an Academy boy worth speaking of who was in time fordinner the following day; and several of them brought brothers orcousins to the fray. By half-past twelve we had crept down the fieldthat was on the other side of our wall, and had hidden ourselves invarious corners of a cattle-shed, where a big cart and some sail-clothand a turnip heap provided us with ambush. By and by certain familiarwhoops and hullohs announced that the enemy was coming. One or twobigger boys made for the dam (which I confess was a relief to us), butour own particular foes advanced with a rush upon the wall. 

"They hevn't coomed yet, hev they?" we heard the sexton's son say, as hepeeped over at our pond. 

"Noa, " was the reply. "It's not gone one yet. "

"It's gone one by t' church. I yeard it as we was coming up t' lane. "

"T' church clock's always hafe-an-hour fasst, thee knows. "

"It isn't!"

"It is. "

"T' church clock's t' one to go by, anyhow, " the sexton's sonmaintained. 

His friend guffawed aloud. 

"And it's a reight 'un to go by too, my sakes! when thee feyther shiftst' time back'ards and for'ards every Sunday morning to suit hissen. "

"To suit hissen! To suit t' ringers, ye mean!" said the sexton's son. 

"What's thou to do wi' t' ringers?" was the reply, enforced apparentlyby a punch in the back, and the two lads came cuffing and struggling upthe field, much to my alarm, but fortunately they were too busy tonotice us. 

Meanwhile, the rest had not been idle at the wall. Jem had climbed onthe cart, and peeping through a brick hole he could see that they hadwith some difficulty disengaged a very heavy stone. As we were turningour heads to watch the two lads fighting near our hiding-place, we heardthe stone strike with a heavy thud upon the rotten ice below, and it wasechoed by a groan of satisfaction from above. 

("Ready!" I whispered. )

"You'll break somebody's nose when it's frosted in, " cried Bob Furniss, in a tone of sincere gratification. 

"Eh, Tim Binder! there'll be a rare job for thee feyther next spring, fettling up this wall, by t' time we've done wi' it. "

"Let me come, " we heard Tim say. "Thou can't handle a stone. Let mecome. Th' ice is as soft as loppered milk, and i' ten minutes, I'll fillyon bit they're so chuff of skating on, as thick wi' stones as aquarry. "

("Now!" I said. )

Our foes considerably outnumbered us, but I think they were at adisadvantage. They had worked off a good deal of their steam, and ourswas at explosion point. We took them by surprise and in the rear. Theyhad had some hard exercise, and we were panting to begin. As a matter offact those who could get away ran away. We caught all we could, andpunched and pummelled and rolled them in the snow to our hearts'content. 

Jem never was much of a talker, and I never knew him speak when he wasfighting; but three several times on this occasion, I heard him say verystiffly and distinctly (he was on the top of Tim Binder), "I'll fettlethee! I'll fettle thee! I'll fettle thee!"

The battle was over, the victory was ours, but the campaign was notended, and thenceforward the disadvantages would be for us. Even realwarfare is complicated when men fight with men less civilized thanthemselves; and we had learnt before now that when we snowballed eachother or snowballed the rougher "lot" of village boys, we did so underdifferent conditions. _We_ had our own code of honour and fairness, butBob Furniss was not above putting a stone into a snowball if he owed agrudge. 

So when we heard a rumour that the bigger "roughs" were going to jointhe younger ones, and lie in wait to "pay us off" the first day we camedown to the ice, I cannot say we felt comfortable, though we resolved tobe courageous. Meanwhile, the thaw continued, which suspendedoperations, and gave time, which is good for healing; and Christmascame, and we and our foes met and mingled in the mummeries of theseason, and wished each other Happy New Years, and said nothing aboutthe pond. 

How my father came to hear of the matter we did not know at the time, but one morning he summoned Jem and me, and bade us tell him all aboutit. I was always rather afraid of my father, and I should have made outa very stammering story, but Jem flushed up like a turkey-cock, and gaveour version of the business very straightforwardly. The other side ofthe tale my father had evidently heard, and we fancied he must haveheard also of the intended attack on us, for it never took place, andwe knew of interviews which he had with John Binder and others of ourneighbours; and when the frost came in January, we found that the stoneshad been taken out of the pond, and my father gave us a sharp lectureagainst being quarrelsome and giving ourselves airs, and it endedwith--"The pond is mine. I wish you to remember it, because it makes ityour duty to be hospitable and civil to the boys I allow to go on it. And I have very decidedly warned them and their parents to remember it, because if my permission for fair amusement is abused to damage andtrespass, I shall withdraw the favour and prosecute intruders. But theday I shut up my pond from my neighbours, I shall forbid you and Jack togo on it again unless the fault is more entirely on one side than it'slikely to be when boys squabble. "

My father waved our dismissal, but I hesitated. 

"The boys won't think we told tales to you to get out of another fight?"I gasped. 

"Everybody knows perfectly well how I heard. It came to the sexton'sears, and he very properly informed me. "

I felt relieved, and the first day we had on the ice went off veryfairly. The boys were sheepish at first and slow to come on, and whenthey had assembled in force they were inclined to be bullying. But Jemand I kept our tempers, and by and by my father came down to see us, and headed a long slide in which we and our foes were combined. As heleft he pinched Jem's frosty ear, and said, "Let me hear if there's anyreal malice, but don't double your fists at every trifle. Slide and letslide! slide and let slide!" And he took a pinch of snuff and departed. 

And Jem was wonderfully peaceable for the rest of the day. A word frommy father went a long way with him. They were very fond of each other. 

I had no love of fighting for fighting's sake, and I had other interestsbesides sliding and skating; so I was well satisfied that we got throughthe January frost without further breaches of the peace. Towards the endof the month we all went a good deal upon the mill-dam, and Mr. Wood(assisted by me as far as watching, handing tools and asking questionswent) made a rough sledge, in which he pushed Charlie before him as heskated; and I believe the village boys, as well as his ownschool-fellows, were glad that Cripple Charlie had a share in the winterfun, for wherever Mr. Wood drove him, both sliders and skaters made way. 

And even on the pond there were no more real battles that winter. Onlynow and then some mischievous urchin tripped up our brand-new skates, and begged our pardon as he left us on our backs. And more than once, when "the island" in the middle of the pond was a very fairyland ofhoar-frosted twigs and snow-plumed larches, I have seen its whiteloveliness rudely shaken, and skating round to discover the cause, havebeheld Jem, with cheeks redder than his scarlet comforter, return an"accidental" shove with interest; or posed like a ruffled robinredbreast, to defend a newly-made slide against intruders. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

 "He it was who sent the snowflakes Sifting, hissing through the forest; Froze the ponds, the lakes, the rivers, * * * * * Shinbegis, the diver, feared not. " _The Song of Hiawatha_. 

The first day of February was mild, and foggy, and cloudy, and in thenight I woke feeling very hot, and threw off my quilt, and heard thedripping of soft rain in the dark outside, and thought, "There goes ourskating. " Towards morning, however, I woke again, and had to pull thequilt back into its place, and when I started after breakfast to seewhat the dam looked like, there was a sharpish frost, which, comingafter a day of thaw, had given the ice such a fine smooth surface as wehad not had for long. 

I felt quite sorry for Jem, because he was going in the dog-cart with myfather to see a horse, and as I hadn't got him to skate with, I wentdown to the farm after breakfast, to see what Charlie and the Woods weregoing to do. Charlie was not well, but Mr. Wood said he would come tothe dam with me after dinner, as he had to go to the next village onbusiness, and the dam lay in his way. 

"Keep to the pond this morning, Jack, " he added, to my astonishment. "Remember it thawed all yesterday; and if the wheel was freed and hasbeen turning, it has run water off from under the ice, and all may notbe sound that's smooth. "

The pond was softer than it looked, but the mill-dam was most tempting. A sheet of "glare ice, " as Americans say, smooth and clear as anewly-washed window-pane. I did not go on it, but I brought Mr. Wood toit early in the afternoon, in the full hope that he would give me leave. 

We found several young men on the bank, some fastening their skates andsome trying the ice with their heels, and as we stood there the numbersincreased, and most of them went on without hesitation; and when theyrushed in groups together, I noticed that the ice slightly swayed. 

"The ice bends a good deal, " said Mr. Wood to a man standing next to us. 

"They say it's not so like to break when it bends, " was the reply; andthe man moved on. 

A good many of the elder men from the village had come up, and a group, including John Binder, now stood alongside of us. 

"There's a good sup of water atop of it, " said the mason; and I noticedthen that the ice seemed to look wetter, like newly-washed glass still, but like glass that wants wiping dry. 

"I'm afraid the ice is not safe, " said the school-master. 

"It's a tidy thickness, sir, " said John Binder, and a heavy man, withhis hands in his pockets and his back turned to us, stepped down andgave two or three jumps, and then got up again, and, with his back stillturned towards us, said, "It's reight enough. "

"It's right enough for one man, but not for a crowd, I'm afraid. Was thewater-wheel freed last night, do you know?"

"It was loosed last night, but it's froz again, " said a bystander. 

"It's not freezing now, " said the school-master, "and you may see howmuch larger that weak place where the stream is has got since yesterday. However, " he added, good-humouredly, "I suppose you think you know yourown mill-dam and its ways better than I can?"

"Well, " said the heavy man, still with his back to us, "I reckon we'veslid on this dam a many winters afore _you_ come. No offence, I hope?"

"By no means, " said the school-master; "but if you old hands do beginto feel doubtful as the afternoon goes on, call off those lads at theother end in good time. And if you could warn them not to go in rushestogether--but perhaps they would not listen to you, " he added with aspice of malice. 

"I don't suppose they would, sir, " said John Binder, candidly. "They'revery venturesome, is lads. "

"I reckon they'll suit themselves, " said the heavy man, and he jumped onto the ice, and went off, still with his back to us. 

"If I hadn't lived so many years out of England and out of the world, "said the school-master, turning to me with a half-vexed laugh, "I don'tsuppose I should discredit myself to no purpose by telling fools theyare in danger. Jack! will you promise me not to go on the dam thisafternoon?"

"It is dangerous, is it?" I asked reluctantly; for I wanted sorely tojoin the rest. 

"That's a matter of opinion, it seems. But I have a wish that you shouldnot go on till I come back. I'll be as quick as I can. Promise me. "

"I promise, " said I. 

"Will you walk with me?" he asked. But I refused. I thought I wouldrather watch the others; and accordingly, after I had followed theschool-master with my eyes as he strode off at a pace that promisedsoon to bring him back, I put my hands into my pockets and joined thegroups of watchers on the bank. I suppose if I had thought about it, Imight have observed that though I was dawdling about, my nose and earsand fingers were not nipped. Mr. Wood was right, --it had not beenfreezing for hours past. 

The first thing I looked for was the heavy man. He was so clumsy-lookingthat I quite expected him to fall when he walked off on to ice only fitfor skaters. But as I looked closer I saw that the wet on the top wasbeginning to have a curdled look, and that the glassiness of themill-dam was much diminished. The heavy man's heavy boots got goodfoothold, and several of his friends, seeing this, went after him. Andmy promise weighed sorely on me. 

The next thing that drew my attention was a lad of about seventeen, whowas skating really well. Indeed, everybody was looking at him, for hewas the only one of the villagers who could perform in any but theclumsiest fashion, and, with an active interest that hovered betweenjeering and applause, his neighbours followed him up and down the dam. As I might not go on, I wandered up and down the bank too, andoccasionally joined in a murmured cheer when he deftly evaded someintentional blunderer, or cut a figure at the request of his particularfriends. I got tired at last, and went down to the pond, where Iploughed about for a time on my skates in solitude, for the pond wasempty. Then I ran up to the house to see if Jem had come back, but hehad not, and I returned to the dam to wait for the school-master. 

The crowd was larger than before, for everybody's work-hours were over;and the skater was still displaying himself. He was doing very difficultfigures now, and I ran round to where the bank was covered with peoplewatching him. In the minute that followed I remember three things withcurious distinctness. First, that I saw Mr. Wood coming back, only onefield off, and beckoned to him to be quick, because the lad wasbeginning to cut a double three backwards, and I wanted theschool-master to see it. Secondly, that the sight of him seemed suddenlyto bring to my mind that we were all on the far side of the dam, theside he thought dangerous. And thirdly, that, quickly as my eyes passedfrom Mr. Wood to the skater, I caught sight of a bloated-looking youngman, whom we all knew as a sort of typical "bad lot, " standing withanother man who was a great better, and from a movement between them, itjust flashed through my head that they were betting as to whether thelad would cut the double three backwards or not. 

He cut one--two--and then he turned too quickly and his skate caught inthe softening ice, and when he came headlong, his head struck, andwhere it struck it went through. It looked so horrible that it was arelief to see him begin to struggle; but the weakened ice broke aroundhim with every effort, and he went down. 

For many a year afterwards I used to dream of his face as he sank, andof the way the ice heaved like the breast of some living thing, and fellback, and of the heavy waves that rippled over it out of that awfulhole. But great as was the shock, it was small to the storm of shame andagony that came over me when I realized that every comrade who had beenaround the lad had saved himself by a rush to the bank, where we huddledtogether, a gaping crowd of foolhardy cowards, without skill to doanything or heart to dare anything to save him. 

At that time it maddened me so, that I felt that if I could not help thelad I would rather be drowned in the hole with him, and I began toscramble in a foolish way down the bank, but John Binder caught me bythe arm and pulled me back, and said (I suppose to soothe me), "Yon's the school-master, sir;" and then I saw Mr. Wood fling himselfover the hedge by the alder thicket (he was rather good at high jumps), and come flying along the bank towards us, when he said, "What's the matter?"

I threw my arms round him and sobbed, "He was cutting a double threebackwards, and he went in. "

Mr. Wood unclasped my arms and turned to the rest. 

"What have you done with him?" he said. "Did he hurt himself?"

If the crowd was cowardly and helpless, it was not indifferent; and Ishall never forget the haggard faces that turned by one impulse, where adozen grimy hands pointed--to the hole. 

"He's drowned dead. " "He's under t' ice. " "He went right down, " severalmen hastened to reply, but most of them only enforced the muteexplanation of their pointed finger with, "He's yonder. "

For yet an instant I don't think Mr. Wood believed it, and then heseized the man next to him (without looking, for he was blind with rage)and said, "He's yonder, _and you're here_?"

As it happened, it was the man who had talked with his back to us. Hewas very big and very heavy, but he reeled when Mr. Wood shook him, likea feather caught by a storm. 

"You were foolhardy enough an hour ago, " said the school-master. "Won'tone of you venture on to your own dam to help a drowning man?"

"There's none on us can swim, sir, " said John Binder. "It's a badjob"--and he gave a sob that made me begin to cry again, and severalother people too--"but where'd be t' use of drowning five or six moreatop of him?"

"Can any of you run if you can't swim?" said the school-master. "Get astout rope--as fast as you can, and send somebody for the doctor and abottle of brandy, and a blanket or two to carry him home in. Jack! Holdthese. "

I took his watch and his purse, and he went down the bank and walked onto the ice; but after a time his feet went through as the skater's headhad gone. 

"It ain't a bit of use. There's nought to be done, " said the bystanders:for, except those who had run to do Mr. Wood's bidding, we were allwatching and all huddled closer to the edge than ever. The school-masterwent down on his hands and knees, on which a big lad, with his hands inhis trouser-pockets, guffawed. 

"What's he up to now?" he asked. 

"Thee may haud thee tongue if thee can do nought, " said a mill-girl whohad come up. "I reckon he knows what he's efter better nor thee. " Shehad pushed to the front, and was crouched upon the edge, and seemed verymuch excited. "GOD bless him for trying to save t' best lad in t'village i' any fashion, say I! There's them that's nearer kin to him andnot so kind. "

Perhaps the strict justice of this taunt prevented a reply (for therelurks some fairness in the roughest of us), or perhaps the crowd, beingchiefly men knew from experience that there are occasions when it isbest to let a woman say her say. 

"Ye see he's trying to spread hisself out, " John Binder explained inpacific tones. "I reckon he thinks it'll bear him if he shifts half ofhis weight on to his hands. "

The girl got nearer to the mason, and looked up at him with her eyesfull of tears. 

"Thank ye, John, " she said. "D'ye think he'll get him out?"

"Maybe he will, my lass. He's a man that knows what he's doing. I'll sayso much for him. "

"Nay!" added the mason sorrowfully. "Th' ice 'll never hold him--hishand's in--and there goes his knee. Maester! maester!" he shouted, "comeoff! come off!" and many a voice besides mine echoed him, "Come off!come off!"

The girl got John Binder by the arm, and said hoarsely, "Fetch him off!He's a reight good 'un--over good to be drownded, if--if it's of nouse. " And she sat down on the bank, and pulled her mill-shawl over herhead, and cried as I had never seen any one cry before. 

I was so busy watching her that I did not see that Mr. Wood had got backto the bank. Several hands were held out to help him, but he shook hishead and said--"Got a knife?"

Two or three jack-knives were out in an instant. He pointed to the alderthicket. "I want two poles, " he said, "sixteen feet long, if you can, and as thick as my wrist at the bottom. "

"All right, sir. "

He sat down on the bank, and I rushed up and took one of his cold wethands in both mine, and said, "Please, please, don't go on any more. "

"He must be dead ever so long ago, " I added, repeating what I had heard. 

"He hasn't been in the water ten minutes, " said the school-master, laughing, "Jack! Jack! you're not half ready for travelling yet. Youmust learn not to lose your head and your heart and your wits and yoursense of time in this fashion, if you mean to be any good at a pinch toyourself or your neighbours. Has the rope come?"

"No, sir. "

"Those poles?" said the school-master, getting up. 

"They're here!" I shouted, as a young forest of poles came towards us, so willing had been the owners of the jack-knives. The thickest hadbeen cut by the heavy man, and Mr. Wood took it first. 

"Thank you, friend, " he said. The man didn't speak, and he turned hisback as usual, but he gave a sideways surly nod before he turned. Theschool-master chose a second pole, and then pushed both before him rightout on to the ice, in such a way that with the points touching eachother they formed a sort of huge A, the thicker ends being the nearer tothe bank. 

"Now, Jack, " said he, "pay attention; and no more blubbering. There'salways plenty of time for giving way _afterwards_. "

As he spoke he scrambled on to the poles, and began to work himself andthem over the ice, wriggling in a kind of snake fashion in the directionof the hole. We watched him breathlessly, but within ten yards of thehole he stopped. He evidently dared not go on; and the same thoughtseized all of us--"Can he get back?" Spreading his legs and arms he nowlay flat upon the poles, peering towards the hole as if to try if hecould see anything of the drowning man. It was only for an instant, thenhe rolled over on to the rotten ice, smashed through, and sank moresuddenly than the skater had done. 

The mill-girl jumped up with a wild cry and rushed to the water, butJohn Binder pulled her back as he had pulled me. Martha, our housemaid, said afterwards (and was ready to take oath on the gilt-edged Churchservice my mother gave her) that the girl was so violent that it tookfourteen men to hold her; but Martha wasn't there, and I only saw two, one at each arm, and when she fainted they laid her down and left her, and hurried back to see what was going on. For tenderness is an acquiredgrace in men, and it was not common in our neighbourhood. 

What was going on was that John Binder had torn his hat from his headand was saying, "I don't know if there's aught we _can_ do, but I can'tgo home myself and leave him yonder. I'm a married man with a family, but I don't vally _my_ life if----"

But the rest of this speech was drowned in noise more eloquent thanwords, and then it broke into cries of "See thee!--It is--it's t'maester! and he has--no!--yea!--he _has_--he's gotten him. Polly, lass!he's fetched up thy Arthur by t' hair of his heead. "

It was strictly true. The school-master told me afterwards how it was. When he found that the ice would bear no longer, he rolled into thewater on purpose, but, to his horror, he felt himself seized by thedrowning man, which pulled him suddenly down. The lad had risen once, itseems, though we had not seen him, and had got a breath of air at thehole, but the edge broke in his numbed fingers, and he sank again anddrifted under the ice. When he rose the second time, by an odd chance itwas just where Mr. Wood broke in, and his clutch of the school-masternearly cost both their lives. 

"If ever, " said Mr. Wood, when he was talking about it afterwards, "ifever, Jack, when you're out in the world you get under water, andsomebody tries to save you, when he grips _you_, don't seize _him_, ifyou can muster self-control to avoid it. If you cling to him, you'lleither drown both, or you'll force him to do as I did--throttle you, tokeep you quiet. "

"Did you?" I gasped. 

"Of course I did. I got him by the throat and dived with him--the onlyreal risk I ran, as I did not know how deep the dam was. "

"It's an old quarry, " said I. 

"I know now. We went down well, and I squeezed his throat as we went. Assoon as he was still we naturally rose, and I turned on my back and gothim by the head. I looked about for the hole, and saw it glimmeringabove me like a moon in a fog, and then up we came. "

When they did come up, our joy was so great that for the moment we feltas if all was accomplished; but far the hardest part really was to come. When the school-master clutched the poles once more, and drove one underthe lad's arms and under his own left arm, and so kept his burdenafloat whilst he broke a swimming path for himself with the other, ouradmiration of his cleverness gave place to the blessed thought that itmight now be possible to help him. The sight of the poles seemedsuddenly to suggest it, and in a moment every spare pole had beenseized, and, headed by our heavy friend, eight or ten men plunged in, and, smashing the ice before them, waded out to meet the school-master. On the bank we were dead silent; in the water they neither stopped norspoke till it was breast high round their leader. 

I have often thought, and have always felt quite sure, that if the heavyman had gone on till the little grey waves and the bits of ice closedover him, not a soul of those who followed him would--nay, _could_--haveturned back. Heroism, like cowardice, is contagious, and I do not thinkthere was one of us by that time who would have feared to dare orgrudged to die. 

As it was, the heavy man stood still and shouted for the rope. It hadcome, and perhaps it was not the smallest effect of the day's teaching, that those on the bank paid it out at once to those in the water till itreached the leader, without waiting to ask why he wanted it. The graceof obedience is slow to be learnt by disputatious northmen, but we hadhad some hard teaching that afternoon. 

When the heavy man got the rope he tied the middle part of it roundhimself, and, coiling the shorter end, he sent it, as if it had been aquoit, skimming over the ice towards the school-master. As it unwounditself it slid along, and after a struggle Mr. Wood grasped it. I fancyhe fastened it round the lad's body; and got his own hands freer tobreak the ice before them. Then the heavy man turned, and the long endof the line, passing from hand to hand in the water, was seized upon thebank by every one who could get hold of it. I never was more squeezedand buffeted in my life; but we fairly fought for the privilege oftouching if it were but a strand of the rope that dragged them in. 

And a flock of wild birds, resting on their journey at the other end ofthe mill-dam, rose in terror and pursued their seaward way; so wild andso prolonged were the echoes of that strange, speechless cry in whichcollective man gives vent to overpowering emotion. 

It is odd, when one comes to think of it, but I know it is true, for twosensible words would have stuck in my own throat and choked me, but Icheered till I could cheer no longer. 

CHAPTER IX. 

 "In doubtful matters Courage may do much:--In desperate --Patience. "--_Old Proverb_. 

The young skater duly recovered, and thenceforward Mr. Wood's popularityin the village was established, and the following summer he started aswimming-class, to which the young men flocked with more readiness thanthey commonly showed for efforts made to improve them. 

For my own part I had so realized, to my shame, that one may feel veryadventurous and yet not know how to venture or what to venture in thetime of need, that my whole heart was set upon getting the school-masterto teach me to swim and to dive, with any other lessons in preparednessof body and mind which I was old enough to profit by. And if the truetales of his own experiences were more interesting than the PennyNumbers, it was better still to feel that one was qualifying in one'sown proper person for a life of adventure. 

During the winter Mr. Wood built a boat, which was christened the_Adela_, after his wife. It was an interesting process to us all. I hungabout and did my best to be helpful, and both Jem and I spoiled oureveryday trousers, and rubbed the boat's sides, the day she was painted. It was from the _Adela_ that Jem and I had our first swimming-lessons, Mr. Wood lowering us with a rope under our arms, by which he gave us asmuch support as was needed, whilst he taught us how to strike out. 

We had swimming-races on the canal, and having learned to swim and divewithout our clothes, we learnt to do so in them, and found it much moredifficult for swimming and easier for diving. It was then that thetrousers we had damaged when the _Adela_ was built came in mostusefully, and saved us from having to attempt the at least equallydifficult task of persuading my mother to let us spoil good ones in anamusement which had the unpardonable quality of being "very odd. "

Dear old Charlie had as much fun out of the boat as we had, though hecould not learn to dive. He used to look as if every minute of a pull upthe canal on a sunny evening gave him pleasure; and the brown Irishspaniel Jem gave him used to swim after the boat and look up inCharlie's face as if it knew how he enjoyed it. And later on, Mr. Woodtaught Bob Furniss to row and Charlie to steer; so that Charlie couldsometimes go out and feel quite free to stop the boat when and where heliked. That was after he started so many collections of insects andwater-weeds, and shells, and things you can only see under a microscope. Bob and he used to take all kinds of pots and pans and nets and dipperswith them, so that Charlie could fish up what he wanted, and keep thingsseparate. He was obliged to keep the live things he got for hisfresh-water aquarium in different jam-pots, because he could never besure which would eat up which till he knew them better, and thewater-scorpions and the dragon-fly larvę ate everything. Bob Furniss didnot mind pulling in among the reeds and waiting as long as you wanted. Mr. Wood sometimes wanted to get back to his work, but Bob never wantedto get back to his. And he was very good-natured about getting into thewater and wading and grubbing for things; indeed, I think he got to likeit. 

At first Mr. Wood had been rather afraid of trusting Charlie with him. He thought Bob might play tricks with the boat, even though he knew howto manage her, when there was only one helpless boy with him. But Mrs. Furniss said, "Nay! Our Bob's a bad 'un, but he's not one of that sort, he'll not plague them that's afflicted. " And she was quite right; forthough his father said he could be trusted with nothing else, we foundhe could be trusted with Cripple Charlie. 

It was two days before the summer holidays came to an end that Charlieasked me to come down to the farm and help him to put away his ferncollection and a lot of other things into the places that he hadarranged for them in his room; for now that the school-room was wantedagain, he could not leave his papers and boxes about there. Charlielived at the farm altogether now. He was better there than on the moors, so he boarded there and went home for visits. The room Mrs. Wood hadgiven him was the one where the old miser had slept. In a memorandumleft with his will it appeared that he had expressed a wish that thefurniture of that room should not be altered, which was how they knew itwas his. So Mrs. Wood had kept the curious old oak bed (the back ofwhich was fastened into the wall), and an old oak press, with a greatnumber of drawers with brass handles to them, and all the queerfurniture that she found there, just as it was. Even the brasswarming-pan was only rubbed and put back in its place, and the bigbellows were duly hung up by the small fire-place. But everything was sopolished up and cleaned, the walls re-papered with a soft grey-greenpaper spangled with dog-daisies, and the room so brightened up withfresh blinds and bedclothes, and a bit of bright carpet, that it didnot look in the least dismal, and Charlie was very proud and very fondof it. It had two windows, one where the beehive was, and one very sunnyone, where he had a balm of Gilead that Isaac's wife gave him, and hisold medicine-bottles full of cuttings on the upper ledge. The old womenused to send him "slippings" off their fairy roses and myrtles andfuchsias, and they rooted very well in that window, there was so muchsun. 

Charlie had only just begun a fern collection, and I had saved mypocket-money (I did not want it for anything else) and had bought himseveral quires of cartridge-paper; and Dr. Brown had given him a packetof medicine-labels to cut up into strips to fasten his specimens inwith, and the collection looked very well and very scientific; and allthat remained was to find a good place to put it away in. The drawers ofthe press were of all shapes and sizes, but there were two longish veryshallow ones that just matched each other, and when I pulled one of themout, and put the fern-papers in, they fitted exactly, and the drawerjust held half the collection. I called Charlie to look, and he hobbledup on his crutches and was delighted, but he said he should like to putthe others in himself, so I got him into a chair, and shut up the fulldrawer and pulled out the empty one, and went down-stairs for the twomoleskins we were curing, and the glue-pot, and the toffy-tin, and someother things that had to be cleared out of the school-room now theholidays were over. 

When I came back the fern-papers were still outside, and Charlie waslooking flushed and cross. 

"I don't know how you managed, " he said, "but I can't get them in. Thisdrawer must be shorter than the other; it doesn't go nearly so farback. "

"Oh yes, it does, Charlie!" I insisted, for I felt as certain as peoplealways do feel about little details of that kind. "The drawers areexactly alike; you can't have got the fern-sheets quite flush with eachother, " and I began to arrange the trayful of things I had broughtup-stairs in the bottom of the cupboard. 

"I _know_ it's the drawer, " I heard Charlie say. ("He's as obstinate aspossible, " thought I. )

Then I heard him banging at the wood with his fists and his crutch. ("He_is_ in a temper!" was my mental comment. ) After this my attention wasdistracted for a second or two by seeing what I thought was a bit oftoffy left in the tin, and biting it and finding it was a piece ofsheet-glue. I had not spit out all the disgust of it, when Charliecalled me in low, awe-struck tones: "Jack! come here. Quick!"

I ran to him. The drawer was open, but it seemed to have another drawerinside it, a long, narrow, shallow one. 

"I hit the back, and this sprang out, " said Charlie. "It's a secretdrawer--and look!"

I did look. The secret drawer was closely packed with rolls of thinleaflets, which we were old enough to recognize as bank-notes, and withlittle bags of wash-leather; and when Charlie opened the little bagsthey were filled with gold. 

There was a paper with the money, written by the old miser, to say thatit was a codicil to his will, and that the money was all for Mrs. Wood. Why he had not left it to her in the will itself seemed very puzzling, but his lawyer (whom the Woods consulted about it) said that he alwaysdid things in a very eccentric way, but generally for some sort ofreason, even if it were rather a freaky one, and that perhaps he thoughtthat the relations would be less spiteful at first if they did not knowabout the money, and that Mrs. Wood would soon find it, if she used andvalued his old press. 

I don't quite know whether there was any fuss with the relations aboutthis part of the bequest, but I suppose the lawyer managed it all right, for the Woods got the money and gave up the school. But they kept theold house, and bought some more land, and Walnut-tree Academy becameWalnut-tree Farm once more. And Cripple Charlie lived on with them, andhe was so happy, it really seemed as if my dear mother was right whenshe said to my father, "I am so pleased, my dear, for that poor boy'ssake, I can hardly help crying. He's got two homes and two fathers andmothers, where many a young man has none, as if to make good hisaffliction to him. "

It puzzles me, even now, to think how my father could have sent Jem andme to Crayshaw's school. (Nobody ever called him Mr. Crayshaw except theparents of pupils who lived at a distance. In the neighbourhood he andhis whole establishment were lumped under the one word _Crayshaw's_, andas a farmer hard by once said to me, "Crayshaw's is universallydisrespected. ")

I do not think it was merely because "Crayshaw's" was cheap that we weresent there, though my father had so few reasons to give for his choicethat he quoted that among them. A man with whom he had had businessdealings (which gave him much satisfaction for some years, and moredissatisfaction afterwards) did really, I think, persuade my father tosend us to this school, one evening when they were dining together. 

Few things are harder to guess at than the grounds on which anEnglishman of my father's type "makes up his mind"; and yet thequestion is an important one, for an idea once lodged in his head, aconviction once as much his own as the family acres, and you will assoon part him from the one as from the other. I have known littlematters of domestic improvements, in which my mother's comfort wasconcerned and her experience conclusive, for which he grudged a fewshillings, and was absolutely impenetrable by her persuasions andrepresentations. And I have known him waste pounds on things of the mostcurious variety, foisted on him by advertising agents without knowledge, trial, or rational ground of confidence. I suppose that persistency, aglibber tongue than he himself possessed, a mass of printed rubbishwhich always looks imposing to the unliterary, that primitivecombination of authoritativeness and hospitality which makes some men asready to say Yes to a stranger as they are to say No at home, andperhaps some lack of moral courage, may account for it. I can clearlyremember how quaintly sheepish my father used to look after committingsome such folly, and how, after the first irrepressible fall ofcountenance, my mother would have defended him against anybody else'sopinion, let alone her own. Young as I was I could feel that, and had apretty accurate estimate of the value of the moral lecture on faith inone's fellow-creatures, which was an unfailing outward sign of myfather's inward conviction that he had been taken in by a rogue. I knewtoo, well enough, that my mother's hasty and earnest Amen to thisdiscourse was an equally reliable token of her knowledge that my fathersorely needed defending, and some instinct made me aware also that myfather knew that this was so. That he knew that it was that tendergenerosity towards one's beloved, in which so many of her sex so farexceeds ours, and not an intellectual conviction of his wisdom, whichmade her support what he had done, and that feeling this he feltdissatisfied, and snapped at her accordingly. 

The dislike my dear mother took to the notion of our going to Crayshaw'sonly set seals to our fate, and the manner of her protests was not morefortunate than the matter. She was timid and vacillating from wifelyhabit, whilst motherly anxiety goaded her to be persistent and almostirritable on the subject. Habitually regarding her own wishes and viewsas worthless, she quoted the Woods at every turn of her arguments, whichwas a mistake, for my father was sufficiently like the rest of hisneighbours not to cotton very warmly to people whose tastes, experiences, and lines of thought were so much out of the common asthose of the ex-convict and his wife. Moreover, he had made up his mind, and when one has done that, he is proof against seventy men who canrender a reason. 

To rumours which accused "Crayshaw's" of undue severity, of discomfort, of bad teaching and worse manners, my father opposed arguments which heallowed were "old-fashioned" and which were far-fetched from the days ofour great-grandfather. 

A strict school-master was a good school-master, and if more parentswere as wise as Solomon on the subject of the rod, Old England would notbe discredited by such a namby-pamby race as young men of the presentday seemed by all accounts to be. It was high time the boys did rough ita bit; would my mother have them always tied to her apron-strings? GreatBritain would soon be Little Britain if boys were to be brought up likeyoung ladies. As to teaching, it was the fashion to make a fuss aboutit, and a pretty pass learning brought some folks to, to judge by thepapers and all one heard. His own grandfather lived to ninety-seven, anddied sitting in his chair, in a bottle-green coat and buff breeches. Hewore a pig-tail to the day of his death, and never would be contradictedby anybody. He had often told my father that at the school _he_ went to, the master signed the receipts for his money with a cross, but the usherwas a bit of a scholar, and the boys had cream to their porridge onSundays. And the old gentleman managed his own affairs to ninety-seven, and threw the doctor's medicine-bottles out of the window then. He diedwithout a doubt on his mind or a debt on his books, and my father(taking a pinch out of Great-Grandfather's snuff-box) hoped Jem and Imight do as well. 

In short, we were sent to "Crayshaw's. "

It was not a happy period of my life. It was not a good or wholesomeperiod; and I am not fond of recalling it. The time came when I shrankfrom telling Charlie everything, almost as if he had been a girl. Hislife was lived in such a different atmosphere, under such differentconditions. I could not trouble him, and I did not believe he could makeallowances for me. But on our first arrival I wrote him a long letter(Jem never wrote letters), and the other day he showed it to me. It wasa first impression, but a sufficiently vivid and truthful one, so I giveit here. 

"CRAYSHAW'S (for that's what they call it here, and a beastly hole it is). "_Monday_. 

"MY DEAR OLD CHARLIE, --We came earlier than was settled, for Father gotimpatient and there was nothing to stop us, but I don't think oldCrayshaw liked our coming so soon. You never saw such a place, it's sodreary. A boy showed us straight into the school-room. There are threerows of double desks running down the room and disgustingly dirty, Idon't know what Mrs. Wood would say, and old Crayshaw's desk is in frontof the fire, so that he can see all the boys sideways, and it just stopsany heat coming to them. And there he was, and I don't think Fatherliked the look of him particularly, you never saw an uglier. Such aflaming face and red eyes like Bob Furniss's ferret and great bigwhiskers; but I'll make you a picture of him, at least I'll make twopictures, for Lewis Lorraine says he's got no beard on Sundays, andrather a good one on Saturdays. Lorraine is a very rum fellow, but Ilike him. It was he showed us in, and he did catch it afterwards, but heonly makes fun of it. Old Crayshaw's desk had got a lot of canes on oneside of it and a most beastly dirty snuffy red and green handkerchief onthe other, and an ink-pot in the middle. He made up to Father likeanything and told such thumpers. He said there were six boys in oneroom, but really there's twelve. Jem and I sleep together. There'snothing to wash in and no prayers. If you say them you get boots at yourhead, and one hit Jem behind the ear, so I pulled his sleeve and said, 'Get up, you can say them in bed, ' But you know Jem, and he said, 'Waittill I've done, _God bless Father and Mother_, ' and when he had, he wentin and fought, and I backed him up, and them old Crayshaw found us, andoh, how he did beat us!

"----_Wednesday_. Old Snuffy is a regular brute, and I don't care if hefinds this and sees what I say. But he won't, for the milkman is takingit. He always does if you can pay him. But I've put most of my moneyinto the bank. Three of the top boys have a bank, and we all have todeposit, only I kept fourpence in one of my boots. They give usbank-notes for a penny and a halfpenny; they make them themselves. Thesweet-shop takes them. They only give you eleven penny notes for ashilling in the bank, or else it would burst. At dinner we have a lot ofpudding to begin with, and it's very heavy. You can hardly eat anythingafterwards. The first day Lorraine said quite out loud and very polite, 'Did you say _duff before meat_, young gentlemen?' and I couldn't helplaughing, and old Snuffy beat his head horridly with his dirty fists. But Lorraine minds nothing; he says he knows old Snuffy will kill himsome day, but he says he doesn't want to live, for his father and motherare dead; he only wants to catch old Snuffy in three more booby-trapsbefore he dies. He's caught him in four already. You see, when oldSnuffy is cat-walking he wears goloshes that he may sneak about better, and the way Lorraine makes booby-traps is by balancing cans of water onthe door when it's ajar, so that he gets doused, and the can falls onhis head, and strings across the bottom of the door, not far from theground, so that he catches his goloshes and comes down. The otherfellows say that old Crayshaw had a lot of money given him in trust forLorraine, and he's spent it all, and Lorraine has no one to stick up forhim, and that's why Crayshaw hates him. 

"----_Saturday_. I could not catch the milkman, and now I've got yourletter, though Snuffy read it first. Jem and I cry dreadful in bed. That's the comfort of being together. I'll try and be as good as I can, but you don't know what this place is. It's very different to the farm. Do you remember the row about that book Horace Simpson got? I wish youcould see the books the boys have here. At least I don't wish it, for Iwish I didn't look at them, the milkman brings them; he always will ifyou can pay him. When I saw old Snuffy find one in Smith's desk, Iexpected he would half kill him, but he didn't do much to him, he onlytook the book away; and Lorraine says he never does beat them much forthat, because he doesn't want them to leave off buying them, because hewants them himself. Don't tell the Woods this. Don't tell Mother Jem andI cry, or else she'll be miserable. I don't so much mind the beatings(Lorraine says you get hard in time), nor the washing at the sink--northe duff puddings--but it is such a beastly hole, and he is such an oldbrute, and I feel so dreadful I can't tell you. Give my love to Mrs. Wood and to Mr. Wood, and to Carlo and to Mary Anne, and to your deardear self, and to Isaac when you see him. "And I am your affectionate friend, "JACK. 

"P. S. Jem sends his best love, and he's got two black eyes. 

"P. S. No. 2. You would be sorry for Lorraine if you knew him. SometimesI'm afraid he'll kill himself, for he says there's really nothing in theBible about suicide. So I said--killing yourself is as bad as killinganybody else. So he said--is stealing from yourself as bad as stealingfrom anybody else? And we had a regular _argue_. Some of the boysargle-bargle on Sundays, he says, but most of them fight. When theydiffer, they put tin-tacks with the heads downwards on each other'splaces on the forms in school, and if they run into you and you scream, old Snuffy beats you. The milkman brings them, by the half-ounce, withvery sharp points, if you can pay him. Most of the boys are a horridlot, and so dirty. Lorraine is as dirty as the rest, and I asked himwhy, and he said it was because he'd thrown up the sponge; but he gotrather red, and he's washed himself cleaner this morning. He says he hasan uncle in India, and some time ago he wrote to him, and told him aboutCrayshaw's, and gave the milkman a diamond pin, that had been hisfather's, and Snuffy didn't know about, to post it with plenty ofstamps, but he thinks he can't have put plenty on, for no answer evercame. I've told him I'll post another one for him in the holidays. Don'tsay anything about this back in your letters. He reads 'em all. 

"----_Monday_. I've caught the milkman at last, he'll take it thisevening. The lessons here are regular rubbish. I'm so glad I've a goodknife, for if you have you can dig holes in your desk to put collectionsin. The boy next to me has earwigs, but you have to keep a look-out, orhe puts them in your ears. I turned up a stone near the sink thismorning, and got five wood-lice for mine. It's considered a very goodcollection. "

CHAPTER X. 

 "But none inquired how Peter used the rope, Or what the bruise that made the stripling stoop; None could the ridges on his back behold, None sought him shiv'ring in the winter's cold. * * * * * The pitying women raised a clamour round. " CRABBE, _The Borough_. 

A great many people say that all suffering is good for one, and I amsure pain does improve one very often, and in many ways. It teaches onesympathy, it softens and it strengthens. But I cannot help thinking thatthere are some evil experiences which only harden and stain. The best Ican say for what we endured at Crayshaw's is that it _was_ experience, and so I suppose could not fail to teach one something, which, as Jemsays, was "more than Snuffy did. "

The affection with which I have heard men speak of their school-days andschool-masters makes me know that Mr. Crayshaw was not a common type ofpedagogue. He was not a common type of man, happily; but I have metother specimens in other parts of the world in which his leading qualitywas as fully developed, though their lives had nothing in common withhis except the opportunities of irresponsible power. 

The old wounds are scars now, it is long past and over, and I am grownup, and have roughed it in the world; but I say quite deliberately thatI believe that Mr. Crayshaw was not merely a harsh man, uncultured andinconsiderate, having need and greed of money, taking pupils cheap, teaching them little or nothing, and keeping a kind of rough order withtoo much flogging, --but that the mischief of him was that he waspossessed by a passion (not the less fierce because it was unnatural)which grew with indulgence and opportunity, as other passions grow, andthat this was a passion for cruelty. 

One does not rough it long in this wicked world without seeing morecruelty both towards human beings and towards animals than one cares tothink about; but a large proportion of common cruelty comes ofignorance, bad tradition and uncultured sympathies. Some painfuloutbreaks of inhumanity, where one would least expect it, are no doubtstrictly to be accounted for by disease. But over and above these commonand these exceptional instances, one cannot escape the conviction thatirresponsible power is opportunity in all hands and a direct temptationin some to cruelty, and that it affords horrible development to thosemorbid cases in which cruelty becomes a passion. 

That there should ever come a thirst for blood in men as well as tigers, is bad enough but conceivable when linked with deadly struggle, or atthe wild dictates of revenge. But a lust for cruelty growing fiercer bysecret and unchecked indulgence, a hideous pleasure in seeing andinflicting pain, seems so inhuman a passion that we shrink fromacknowledging that this is ever so. 

And if it belonged to the past alone, to barbarous despotisms or tosavage life, one might wisely forget it; for the dark pages of humanhistory are unwholesome as well as unpleasant reading, unless the mindbe very sane in a body very sound. But those in whose hands lie thedestinies of the young and of the beasts who serve and love us, of theweak, the friendless, the sick and the insane, have not, alas! thisexcuse for ignoring the black records of man's abuse of power!

The records of its abuse in the savage who loads women's slendershoulders with his burdens, leaves his sick to the wayside jackal, andknocks his aged father on the head when he is past work; the brutalityof slave-drivers, the iniquities of vice-maddened Easterndespots;--such things those who never have to deal with them may affordto forget. 

But men who act for those who have no natural protectors, or have lostthe power of protecting themselves, who legislate for those who have novoice in the making of laws, and for the brute creation, which we win toour love and domesticate for our convenience; who apprentice pauper boysand girls, who meddle with the matters of weak women, sick persons, andyoung children, are bound to face a far sadder issue. That even in thesedays, when human love again and again proves itself not only strongerthan death, but stronger than all the selfish hopes of life; when theeveryday manners of everyday men are concessions of courtesy to thosewho have not the strength to claim it; when children and pet animals arespoiled to grotesqueness; when the good deeds of priest and physician, nurse and teacher, surpass all earthly record of them--man, as man, isno more to be trusted with unchecked power than hitherto. 

The secret histories of households, where power should be safest in thehands of love; of hospitals, of schools, of orphanages, of poorhouses, of lunatic-asylums, of religious communities founded for GOD'S worshipand man's pity, of institutions which assume the sacred title as well asthe responsibilities of Home--from the single guardian of some ruralidiot to the great society which bears the blessed Name of Jesus--havenot each and all their dark stories, their hushed-up scandals, to provehow dire is the need of public opinion without, and of righteous carewithin, that what is well begun should be well continued?

If any one doubts this, let him pause on each instance, one by one, andthink of what he has seen, and heard, and read, and known of; and hewill surely come to the conviction that human nature cannot, even in thevery service of charity, be safely trusted with the secret exercise ofirresponsible power, and that no light can be too fierce to beat uponand purify every spot where the weak are committed to the tender merciesof the consciences of the strong. 

Mr. Crayshaw's conscience was not a tender one, and very little lightcame into his out-of-the-way establishment, and no check whatever uponhis cruelty. It had various effects on the different boys. It killed onein my day, and the doctor (who had been "in a difficulty" some yearsback, over a matter through which Mr. Crayshaw helped him with bail andtestimony) certified to heart disease, and we all had ourpocket-handkerchiefs washed, and went to the funeral. And Snuffy hadcards printed with a black edge, and several angels and a broken lily, and the hymn--

 "Death has been here and borne away A brother from our side; Just in the morning of his day, As young as we he died. "

--and sent them to all the parents. But the pupils had to pay for thestamps. And my dear mother cried dreadfully, first because she was sosorry for the boy, and secondly because she ever had felt uncharitablytowards Mr. Crayshaw. 

Crayshaw's cruelty crushed others, it made liars and sneaks of boysnaturally honest, and it produced in Lorraine an unchildlike despairthat was almost grand, so far was the spirit above the flesh in him. ButI think its commonest and strangest result was to make the boys bullyeach other. 

One of the least cruel of the tyrannies the big boys put upon the littleones, sometimes bore very hardly on those who were not strong. They usedto ride races on our backs and have desperate mounted battles andtournaments. In many a playground and home since then I have seen boystilt and race, and steeplechase, with smaller boys upon their backs, andplenty of wholesome rough-and-tumble in the game; and it has given me atwinge of heartache to think how, even when we were at play, Crayshaw'sbaneful spirit cursed us with its example, so that the big and strongcould not be happy except at the expense of the little and weak. 

For it was the big ones who rode the little ones, with neatly-cutash-sticks and clumsy spurs. I can see them now, with the thin legs ofthe small boys tottering under them, like a young donkey overridden by acoal-heaver. 

I was a favourite horse, for I was active and nimble, and (which wasmore to the point) well made. It was the shambling, ill-proportionedlads who suffered most. The biggest boy in school rode me, as a rule, but he was not at all a bad bully, so I was lucky. He never spurred me, and he boasted of my willingness and good paces. I am sure he did notknow, I don't suppose he ever stopped to think, how bad it was for me, or what an aching lump of prostration I felt when it was over. The day Ifainted after winning a steeplechase, he turned a bucket of cold waterover me, and as this roused me into a tingling vitality of pain, he wasquite proud of his treatment, and told me nothing brought a really goodhorse round after a hard day like a bucket of clean water. And (so muchare we the creatures of our conditions!) I remember feeling somethingapproaching to satisfaction at the reflection that I had "gone till Idropped, " and had been brought round after the manner of thebest-conducted stables. 

It was not that that made Jem and me run away. (For we did run away. )Overstrain and collapse, ill-usage short of torture, hard living andshort commons, one got a certain accustomedness to, according to themerciful law which within certain limits makes a second nature for usout of use and wont. The one pain that knew no pause, and allowed of norevival, the evil that overbore us, mind and body, was the evil ofconstant dread. Upon us little boys fear lay always, and the terror ofit was that it was uncertain. What would come next, and from whom, wenever knew. 

It was I who settled we should run away. I did it the night that Jemgave in, and would do nothing but cry noiselessly into his sleeve andwish he was dead. So I settled it and told Lorraine. I wanted him tocome too, but he would not. He pretended that he did not care, and hesaid he had nowhere to go to. But he got into Snuffy's very own room atdaybreak whilst we stood outside and heard him snoring; and very loud hemust have snored too, for I could hear my heart thumping so I should nothave thought I could have heard anything else. And Lorraine took theback-door key off the drawers, and let us out, and took it back again. He feared nothing. There was a walnut-tree by the gate, and Jem said, "Suppose we do our faces like gipsies, so that nobody may know us. " (ForJem was terribly frightened of being taken back. ) So we found some oldbits of peel and rubbed our cheeks, but we dared not linger long overit, and I said, "We'd better get further on, and we can hide if we hearsteps or wheels. " So we took each other's hands, and for nearly a milewe ran as hard as we could go, looking back now and then over ourshoulders, like the picture of Christian and Hopeful running away fromthe Castle of Giant Despair. 

We were particularly afraid of the milkman, for milkmen drive aboutearly, and he had taken a runaway boy back to Crayshaw's years before, and Snuffy gave him five shillings. They said he once helped another boyto get away, but it was a big one, who gave him his gold watch. He woulddo anything if you paid him. Jem and I had each a little bundle in ahandkerchief, but nothing in them that the milkman would have cared for. We managed very well, for we got behind a wall when he went by, and Ifelt so much cheered up I thought we should get home that day, far as itwas. But when we got back into the road, I found that Jem was limping, for Snuffy had stamped on his foot when Jem had had it stuck out beyondthe desk, when he was writing; and the running had made it worse, and atlast he sat down by the roadside, and said I was to go on home and sendback for him. It was not very likely I would leave him to the chance ofbeing pursued by Mr. Crayshaw; but there he sat, and I thought I nevershould have persuaded him to get on my back, for good-natured as he is, Jem is as obstinate as a pig. But I said, "What's the use of my havingbeen first horse with the heaviest weight in school, if I can't carryyou?" So he got up and I carried him a long way, and then a cartovertook us, and we got a lift home. And they knew us quite well, whichshows how little use walnut-juice is, and it is disgusting to get off. 

I think, as it happened, it was very unfortunate that we had discolouredour faces; for though my mother was horrified at our being so thin andpinched-looking, my father said that of course we looked frights withbrown daubs all over our cheeks and necks. But then he never did noticepeople looking ill. He was very angry indeed, at first, about ourrunning away, and would not listen to what we said. He was angry toowith my dear mother, because she believed us, and called Snuffy a badman and a brute. And he ordered the dog-cart to be brought round, andsaid that Martha was to give us some breakfast, and that we might bethankful to get that instead of a flogging, for that when _he_ ran awayfrom school to escape a thrashing, his father gave him one thrashingwhile the dog-cart was being brought round, and drove him straight backto school, where the school-master gave him another. 

"And a very good thing for me, " said my father, buttoning his coat, whilst my mother and Martha went about crying, and Jem and I stoodsilent. If we were to go back, the more we told, the worse would beSnuffy's revenge. An unpleasant hardness was beginning to creep over me. "The next time I run away, " was my thought, "I shall not run home. " Butwith this came a rush of regret for Jem's sake. I knew that Crayshaw's, did more harm to him than to me, and almost involuntarily I put my armsround him, thinking that if they would only let him stay, I could goback and bear anything, like Lewis Lorraine. Jem had been crying, andwhen he hid his face on my shoulder, and leaned against me, I thought itwas for comfort, but he got heavier and heavier, till I called out, andhe rolled from my arms and was caught in my father's. He had beenstanding about on the bad foot, and pain and weariness and hunger andfright overpowered him, and he had fainted. 

The dog-cart was counter-ordered, and Jem was put to bed, and Marthaserved me a breakfast that would have served six full-grown men. I atefar more than satisfied me, but far less than satisfied Martha, whoseemed to hope that cold fowl and boiled eggs, fried bacon and pickledbeef, plain cakes and currant cakes, jam and marmalade, buttered toast, strong tea and unlimited sugar and yellow cream, would atone for thepast in proportion to the amount I ate, if it did not fatten me underher eyes. I really think I spent the rest of the day in stupor. I amsure it was not till the following morning that I learned the decisionto which my father had come about us. 

Jem was too obviously ill to be anywhere at present but at home; and myfather decided that he would not send him back to Crayshaw's at all, butto a much more expensive school in the south of England, to which theparson of our parish was sending one of his sons. I was to return toCrayshaw's at once; he could not afford the expensive school for usboth, and Jem was the eldest. Besides which, he was not going tocountenance rebellion in any school to which he sent his sons, or toinsult a man so highly recommended to him as Mr. Crayshaw had been. There certainly seemed to have been some severity, and the boys seemedto be a very rough lot; but Jem would fight, and if he gave he musttake. His great-grandfather was just the same, and _he_ fought thePutney Pet when he was five-and-twenty, and his parents thought he wassitting quietly at his desk in Fetter Lane. 

I loved Jem too well to be jealous of him, but I was not the lessconscious of the tender tone in which my father always spoke even ofhis faults, and of the way it stiffened and cooled when he added that Iwas not so ready with my fists, but that I was as fond of my own way asJem was of a fight; but that setting up for being unlike other peopledidn't do for school life, and that the Woods had done me no kindness bymaking a fool of me. He added, however, that he should request Mr. Crayshaw, as a personal favour, that I should receive no punishment forrunning away, as I had suffered sufficiently already. 

We had told very little of the true history of Crayshaw's before Jemfainted, and I felt no disposition to further confidences. I took ascheerful a farewell of my mother as I could, for her sake; and put on agood deal of swagger and "don't care" to console Jem. He said, "You'reas plucky as Lorraine, " and then his eyes shut again. He was too ill tothink much, and I kissed his head and left him. After which I gotstoutly into the dog-cart, and we drove back up the dreary hills downwhich Jem and I had run away. 

That Snuffy was bland to cringing before my father did not give me hopethat I should escape his direst revenge; and the expression ofLorraine's face showed me, by its sympathy, what _he_ expected. But wewere both wrong, and for reasons which we then knew nothing about. 

Cruelty was, as I have said, Mr. Crayshaw's ruling passion, but it wasnot his only vice. There was a whispered tradition that he had once beenin jail for a misuse of his acquirements in the art of penmanship; andif you heard his name cropping up in the confidential conversation ofsuch neighbours as small farmers, the postman, the parish overseer, andthe like, it was sure to be linked with unpleasingly suggestiveexpressions, such as--"a dirty bit of business, " "a nasty job that, " "anawkward affair, " "very near got into trouble, " "a bit of bother aboutit, but Driver and Quills pulled him through; theirs isn't a nicebusiness, and they're men of t' same feather as Crayshaw, so I reckonthey're friends. " Many such hints have I heard, for the 'White Lion' wasnext door to the sweet-shop, and in summer, refreshment of a sober kind, with conversation to match, was apt to be enjoyed on the benchesoutside. The good wives of the neighbourhood used no such euphuisms astheir more prudent husbands, when they spoke of Crayshaw's. Indeed oneof the whispered anecdotes of Snuffy's past was of a hushed-up storythat was just saved from becoming a scandal, but in reference to whichMr. Crayshaw was even more narrowly saved from a crowd of women who hadtaken the too-tardy law into their own hands. I remember myself theretreat of an unpaid washer-woman from the back premises of Crayshaw'son one occasion, and the unmistakable terms in which she expressed heropinions. 

"Don't tell me! I know Crayshaw's well enough; such folks is a curse toa country-side, but judgment overtakes 'em at last. "

"Judgment, " as the good woman worded it, kept threatening Mr. Crayshawlong before it overtook him, as it is apt to disturb scoundrels who keepa hypocritical good name above their hidden misdeeds. As it happened, atthe very time Jem and I ran away from him, Mr. Crayshaw himself wasliving in terror of one or two revelations, and to be deserted by two ofhis most respectably connected boys was an ill-timed misfortune. Thecountenance my father had been so mistaken as to afford to hisestablishment was very important to him, for we were the only pupilsfrom within fifty miles, and our parents' good word constituted an"unexceptionable reference. "

Thus it was that Snuffy pleaded humbly (but in vain) for the return ofJem, and that he not only promised that I should not suffer, but to myamazement kept his word. 

Judgment lingered over the head of Crayshaw's for two years longer, andI really think my being there had something to do with maintaining itstottering reputation. I was almost the only lad in the school whoseparents were alive and at hand and in a good position, and my father'sname stifled scandal. Most of the others were orphans, being cheaplyeducated by distant relatives or guardians, or else the sons of poorwidows who were easily bamboozled by Snuffy's fluent letters, and thereligious leaflets which it was his custom to enclose. (In several ofthese cases, he was "managing" the poor women's "affairs" for them. ) Oneor two boys belonged to people living abroad. Indeed, the worst bully inthe school was a half-caste, whose smile, when he showed his gleamingteeth, boded worse than any other boy's frown. He was a wonderfulacrobat, and could do extraordinary tricks of all sorts. My being nimbleand ready made me very useful to him as a confederate in the exhibitionswhich his intense vanity delighted to give on half-holidays, and kept mein his good graces till I was old enough to take care of myself. Oh, howevery boy who dreaded him applauded at these entertainments! And whatdangerous feats I performed, every other fear being lost in the fear ofhim! I owe him no grudge for what he forced me to do (though I have hadto bear real fire without flinching when he failed in a conjuring trick, which should only have simulated the real thing); what I learned fromhim has come in so useful since, that I forgive him all. 

I was there for two years longer. Snuffy bullied me less, and hated methe more. I knew it, and he knew that I knew it. It was a hateful life, but I am sure the influence of a good home holds one up in very evilpaths. Every time we went back to our respective schools my father gaveus ten shillings, and told us to mind our books, and my mother kissed usand made us promise we would say our prayers every day. I could not bearto break my promise, though I used to say them in bed (the old form welearnt from her), and often in such a very unfit frame of mind, thatthey were what it is very easy to call "a mockery. "

GOD knows (Who alone knows the conditions under which each soul blundersand spells on through life's hard lessons) if they were a mockery. _I_know they were unworthy to be offered to Him, but that the habit helpedto keep me straight I am equally sure. Then I had a good home to go toduring the holidays. That was everything, and it is in all humblenessthat I say that I do not think the ill experiences of those yearsdegraded me much. I managed to keep some truth and tenderness about me;and I am thankful to remember that I no more cringed to Crayshaw thanLorraine did, and that though I stayed there till I was a big boy, Inever maltreated a little one. 

CHAPTER XI. 

 "Whose powers shed round him in the common strife Or mild concerns of ordinary life, A constant influence, a peculiar grace; * * * * * * Or if an unexpected call succeed, Come when it will, is equal to the need. " WORDSWORTH'S _Happy Warrior. _

Judgement came at last. During my first holidays I had posted a letterfrom Lewis Lorraine to the uncle in India to whom he had beforeendeavoured to appeal. The envelope did not lack stamps, but the addresswas very imperfect, and it was many months in reaching him. He wrote aletter, which Lewis never received, Mr. Crayshaw probably knew why. Buttwelve months after that Colonel Jervois came to England, and he lost notime in betaking himself to Crayshaw's. From Crayshaw's he came to myfather, the only "unexceptionable reference" left to Snuffy to putforward. 

The Colonel came with a soldier's promptness, and, with the utmostcourtesy of manner, went straight to the point. His life had notaccustomed him to our neighbourly unwillingness to interfere withanything that did not personally concern us, nor to the prudent patiencewith which country folk will wink long at local evils. In the upshotwhat he asked was what my mother had asked three years before. Had myfather personal knowledge or good authority for believing the school tobe a well-conducted one, and Mr. Crayshaw a fit man for his responsiblepost? Had he ever heard rumours to the man's discredit?

Replies that must do for a wife will not always answer a man who putsthe same questions. My great-grandfather's memory was not evoked on thisoccasion, and my father frankly confessed that his personal knowledge ofCrayshaw's was very small, and that the man on whose recommendation hehad sent us to school there had just proved to be a rascal and aswindler. Our mother had certainly heard rumours of severity, but he hadregarded her maternal anxiety as excessive, etc. , etc. In short, my dearfather saw that he had been wrong, and confessed it, and was now asready as the Colonel to expose Snuffy's misdeeds. 

No elaborate investigation was needed. An attack once made on Mr. Crayshaw's hollow reputation, it cracked on every side; first hintscrept out, then scandals flew. The Colonel gave no quarter, and he didnot limit his interest to his own nephew. 

"A widow's son, ma'am, " so he said to my mother, bowing over her hand ashe led her in to dinner, in a style to which we were quite unaccustomed;"a widow's son, ma'am, should find a father in every honest man who canassist him. "

The tide having turned against Snuffy, his friends (of the Driver andQuills type) turned with it. But they gained nothing, for one morning hegot up as early as we had done, and ran away, and I never heard of himagain. And before nightfall the neighbours, who had so long toleratedhis wickedness, broke every pane of glass in his windows. 

During all this, Lewis Lorraine and his uncle stayed at our house. TheColonel spent his time between holding indignant investigations, writingindignant letters (which he allowed us to seal with his huge signet), and walking backwards and forwards to the town to buy presents for thelittle boys. 

When Snuffy ran away, and the school was left to itself, Colonel Jervoisstrode off to the nearest farm, requisitioned a waggon, and havingpacked the boys into it, bought loaves and milk enough to breakfastthem all, and transported the whole twenty-eight to our door. He leftfour with my mother, and marched off with the rest. The Woods took in alarge batch, and in the course of the afternoon he had for love or moneyquartered them all. He betrayed no nervousness in dealing with numbers, in foraging for supplies, or in asking for what he wanted. Whilst otherpeople had been doubting whether it might not "create unpleasantness" tointerfere in this case and that, the Colonel had fought each boy'sbattle, and seen most of them off on their homeward journeys. He wasused to dealing with men, and with emergencies, and it puzzled him whenmy Uncle Henry consulted his law-books and advised caution, and myfather saw his agent on farm business, whilst the fate of one ofCrayshaw's victims yet hung in the balance. 

When all was over the Colonel left us, and took Lewis with him, and hisdeparture raised curiously mixed feelings of regret and relief. 

He had quite won my mother's heart, chiefly by his energy and tendernessfor the poor boys, and partly by his kindly courtesy and deferencetowards her. Indeed all ladies liked him--all, that is, who knew him. Before they came under the influence of his pleasantness and politeness, he shared the half-hostile reception to which any person or anythingthat was foreign to our daily experience was subjected in ourneighbourhood. So that the first time Colonel Jervois appeared in ourpew, Mrs. Simpson (the wife of a well-to-do man of business who livednear us) said to my mother after church, "I see you've got one of themilitary with you, " and her tone was more critical than congratulatory. But when my mother, with unconscious diplomacy, had kept her toluncheon, and the Colonel had handed her to her seat, and had strokedhis moustache, and asked in his best manner if she meant to devote herson to the service of his country, Mrs. Simpson undid herbonnet-strings, fairly turned her back on my father, and was quiteunconscious when Martha handed the potatoes; and she left us wreathed insmiles, and resolved that Mr. Simpson should buy their son Horace acommission instead of taking him into the business. Mr. Simpson did notshare her views, and I believe he said some rather nasty things aboutswaggering, and not having one sixpence to rub against another. And Mrs. Simpson (who was really devoted to Horace and could hardly bear him outof her sight) reflected that it was possible to get shot as well as togrow a moustache if you went into the army; but she still maintainedthat she should always remember the Colonel as a thorough gentleman, anda wonderful judge of the character of boys. 

The Colonel made great friends with the Woods, and he was deeplyadmired by our rector, who, like many parsons, had a very militaryheart, and delighted in exciting tales of the wide world which he couldnever explore. It was perhaps natural that my father should hardly bedevoted to a stranger who had practically reproached his negligence, butthe one thing that did draw him towards the old Indian officer was hishabit of early rising. My father was always up before any of us, but hegenerally found the Colonel out before him, enjoying the early hours ofthe day as men who have lived in hot climates are accustomed to do. Theyused to come in together in very pleasant moods to breakfast; but withthe post-bag Lorraine's uncle was sure to be moved to volubleindignation, or pity, or to Utopian plans to which my father listenedwith puzzled impatience. He did not understand the Colonel, which wasperhaps not to be wondered at. 

His moral courage had taken away our breath, and physical courage wasstamped upon his outward man. If he was anything he was manly. It wasbecause he was in some respects very womanly too, that he puzzled myfather's purely masculine brain. The mixture, and the vehemence of themixture, were not in his line. He would have turned "Crayshaw's"matters over in his own mind as often as hay in a wet season beforegrappling with the whole bad business as the Colonel had done. And onthe other hand, it made him feel uncomfortable and almost ashamed to seetears standing in the old soldier's eyes as he passionately blamedhimself for what had been suffered by "my sister's son. "

The servants one and all adored Colonel Jervois. They are rather acutejudges of good breeding, and men and maids were at one on the fact thathe was a visitor who conferred social distinction on the establishment. They had decided that we should "dine late so long as The Gentleman" waswith us, whilst my mother was thinking how to break so weighty aninnovation to such valuable servants. They served him with alacrity, andapproved of his brief orders and gracious thanks. The Colonel didunheard-of things with impunity--threw open his bedroom shutters atnight, and more than once unbarred and unbolted the front door to gooutside for a late cigar. Nothing puzzled Martha more than the nattinesswith which he put all the bolts and bars back into their places, as ifhe had been used to the door as long as she had. 

Indeed he had all that power of making himself at home, which is mostfully acquired by having had to provide for yourself in strange places, but he carried it too far. 

One day he penetrated into the kitchen (having previously been rummagingthe kitchen-garden) and insisted upon teaching our cook how to makecurry. The lesson was much needed, and it was equally well intended, butit was a mistake. Everything cannot be carried by storm, whatever themilitary may think. Jane said, "Yes, sir, " at every point thatapproached to a pause in the Colonel's ample instructions, but she nevermoved her eyes from the magnificent moustache which drooped above thestew-pan, nor her thoughts from the one idea produced by theoccasion--that The Gentleman had caught her without her cap. In shortour curries were no worse, and no better, in consequence of the shock tokitchen etiquette (for that was all) which she received. 

And yet we modified our household ways for him, as they were nevermodified for any one else. On Martha's weekly festival for cleaning thebedrooms (and if a room was occupied for a night, she scrubbed after theintruder as if he had brought the plague in his portmanteau) thesmartest visitor we ever entertained had to pick his or her way throughthe upper regions of the house, where soap and soda were wafted on highand unexpected breezes along passages filled with washstands andclothes-baskets, cane-seated chairs and baths, mops, pails and brooms. But the Colonel had "given such a jump" on meeting a towel-horse atlarge round a sharp corner, and had seemed so uncomfortable on findingeverything that he thought was inside his room turned outside, that forthat week Martha left the lower part of the house uncleaned, and did notturn either the dining or drawing rooms into the hall on their appointeddays. She had her revenge when he was gone. 

On the day of his departure, my lamentations had met with the warmestsympathy as I stirred toffy over Jane's kitchen fire, whilst Marthalingered with the breakfast things, after a fashion very unusual withher, and gazed at the toast-rack and said, "the Colonel had eatennothing of a breakfast to travel on. " But next morning, I met her inanother mood. It was a mood to which we were not strangers, though itdid not often occur. In brief, Martha (like many another invaluabledomestic) "had a temper of her own"; but to do her justice her illfeelings generally expended themselves in a rage for work, and in takingas little ease herself as she allowed to other people. I knew what itmeant when I found her cleaning the best silver when she ought to havebeen eating her breakfast; but my head was so full of the Colonel, thatI could not help talking about him, even if the temptation to teaseMartha had not been overwhelming. No reply could I extract; only once, as she passed swiftly to the china cupboard, with the whole Crown Derbytea and coffee service on one big tray (the Colonel had praised hercoffee), I heard her mutter--"Soldiers is very upsetting. " Certainly, considering what she did in the way of scolding, scouring, blackleading, polishing and sand-papering that week, it was not Martha's fault if wedid not "get straight again, " furniture and feelings. I've heard her saythat Calais sand would "fetch anything off, " and I think it had fetchedthe Colonel off her heart by the time that the cleaning was done. 

It had no such effect on mine. Lewis Lorraine himself did not worshiphis uncle more devoutly than I. Colonel Jervois had given me a newideal. It was possible, then, to be enthusiastic without being unmanly;to live years out of England, and come back more patriotic than manypeople who stayed comfortably at home; to go forth into the world and bethe simpler as well as the wiser, the softer as well as the stronger forthe experience? So it seemed. And yet Lewis had told me, with such tearsas Snuffy never made him shed, how tender his uncle was to hisunworthiness, what allowances he made for the worst that Lewis could sayof himself, and what hope he gave him of a good and happy future. 

"He cried as bad as I did, " Lewis said, "and begged me to forgive himfor having trusted so much to my other guardian. Do you know, Jack, Snuffy regularly forged a letter like my handwriting, to answer that oneUncle Eustace wrote, which he kept back? He might well do such goodcopies, and write the year of Our Lord with a swan at the end of thelast flourish! And you remember what we heard about his having been inprison--but, oh, dear! I don't want to remember. He says I am to forget, and he forbade me to talk about Crayshaw's, and said I was not totrouble my head about anything that had happened there. He kept saying, 'Forget, my boy, forget! Say GOD help me, and look forward. Whilethere's life there's always the chance of a better life for every one. Forget! forget!'"

Lewis departed with his uncle. Charlie went for two nights to the moors. Jem's holidays had not begun, and in our house we were "cleaning down"after the Colonel as if he had been the sweeps. 

I went to old Isaac for sympathy. He had become very rheumatic the lasttwo years, but he was as intelligent as ever, and into his willing ear Ipoured all that I could tell of my hero, and much that I only imagined. 

His sympathy met me more than half-way. The villagers as a body wereunbounded in their approval of the Colonel, and Mrs. Irvine was evengreedier than old Isaac for every particular I could impart respectinghim. 

"He's a _handsome_ gentleman, " said the bee-master's wife, "and hepassed us (my neighbour, Mrs. Mettam, and me) as near, sir, as I am toyou, with a gold-headed stick in his hand, and them lads following afterhim, for all the world like the Good Shepherd and his flock. "

I managed not to laugh, and old Isaac added, "There's a many in thisvillage, sir, would have been glad to have taken the liberty ofexpressing themselves to the Colonel, and a _depitation_ did get as faras your father's gates one night, but they turned bashful and come homeagain. And I know, for one, Master Jack, that if me and my missus hadhad a room fit to offer one of them poor young gentlemen, I'd have givena week's wage to do it, and the old woman would have been happy to herdying day. "

CHAPTER XII. 

 "GOD help me! save I take my part Of danger on the roaring sea, A devil rises in my heart, Far worse than any death to me. " TENNYSON'S _Sailor-boy_. 

The fact that my father had sent me back against my will to a schoolwhere I had suffered so much and learnt so little, ought perhaps to havedrawn us together when he discovered his mistake. Unfortunately it didnot. He was deeply annoyed with himself for having been taken in bySnuffy, but he transferred some of this annoyance to me, on groundswhich cut me to the soul, and which I fear I resented so much that I wasnot in a mood that was favourable to producing a better understandingbetween us. The injustice which I felt so keenly was, that my fatherreproached me with having what he called "kept him in the dark" aboutthe life at Crayshaw's. At my age I must have seen how wicked the manand his system were. 

I reminded him that I had run away from them once, and had told allthat I dared, but that he would not hear me then. He would not hear menow. 

"I don't wish to discuss the subject. It is a very painful one, " he said(and I believe it was as physically distressing to him as the thought ofCripple Charlie's malformation). "I have no wish to force yourconfidence when it is too late, " he added (and it was this which I feltto be so hard). "I don't blame you; you have other friends who suit youbetter, but you have never been fully open with me. All I can say is, ifMr. Wood was better informed than I have been, and did not acquaint me, he has behaved in a manner which---- There--don't speak! we'll dismiss thesubject. You have suffered enough, if you have not acted as I shouldhave expected you to act. I blame myself unutterably, and I hope I seemy way to such a comfortable and respectable start in life for you thatthese three years in that vile place may not be to your permanentdisadvantage. "

I was just opening my lips to thank him, when he got up and went to histall desk, where he took a pinch of snuff, and then added as he turnedaway, "Thank GOD I have _one_ son who is frank with his father!"

My lips were sealed in an instant. This, then, was my reward for thathard journey of escape, with Jem on my back, which had only saved him;for having stifled envy in gladness for his sake, when (in those bitsof our different holidays which overlapped each other) I saw and feltthe contrast between our opportunities; for having suffered my harderlot in silence that my mother might not fret, when I felt certain thatmy father would not interfere! My heart beat as if it would have pumpedthe tears into my eyes by main force, but I kept them back, and saidsteadily enough, "Is that all, sir?"

My father did not look up, but he nodded his head and said, "Yes; youmay go. "

As I went he called me back. 

"Are you going to the farm this afternoon?"

To my own infinite annoyance I blushed as I answered, "I was going tosit with Charlie a bit, unless you have any objection. "

"Not at all. I only asked for information. I have no wish to interferewith any respectable friends you may be disposed to give your confidenceto. But I should like it to be understood that either your mother or Imust have some knowledge of your movements. "

"Mother knew quite well I was going!" I exclaimed "Why, I've got aparcel to take to Mrs. Wood from her. "

"Very good. There's no occasion to display temper. Shut the door afteryou. "

I shut it very gently. (If three years at Crayshaw's had taught menothing else, it had taught me much self-control. ) Then I got away tothe first hiding-place I could find, and buried my head upon my arms. Would not a beating from Snuffy have been less hard to bear? Surely sorebones from those one despises are not so painful as a sore heart fromthose one loves. 

Our household affections were too sound at the core for the mere fact ofdispleasing my father not to weigh heavily on my soul. But I could nothelp defending myself in my own mind against what I knew to beinjustice. 

Jem "frank with his father"? Well he might be, when our father'spartiality met him half-way at every turn. _That_ was no fancy of mine. I had the clearest of childish remembrances of an occasion when I wantedto do something which our farming-man thought my father would notapprove, and how when I urged the fact that Jem had already done it withimpunity, he shook his head wiseacrely, and said, "Aye, aye, MasterJack. But ye know they say some folks may steal a horse, when otherfolks mayn't look over the hedge. "

The vagueness of "some folks" and "other folks" had left the proverbdark to my understanding when I heard it, but I remembered it till Iunderstood it. 

I never was really jealous of Jem. He was far too good-natured andunspoilt, and I was too fond of him. Besides which, if the mental toneof our country lives was at rather a dull level, it was also wholesomelyunfavourable to the cultivation of morbid grievances, or the dissectionof one's own hurt feelings. If I had told anybody about me, from my dearmother down to our farming-man, that I was misunderstood and wantedsympathy, I should probably have been answered that many a lad of my agewas homeless and wanted boots. As a matter of reasoning the reply wouldhave been defective, but for practical purposes it would have been muchto the point. And it is fair to this rough-and-ready sort of philosophyto defend it from a common charge of selfishness. It was not that Ishould have been the happier because another lad was miserable, but thatan awakened sympathy with his harder fate would tend to dwarf egotisticabsorption in my own. Such considerations, in short, are nojustification of those who are responsible for needless evil orneglected good, but they are handy helps to those who suffer from them, and who feel sadly sorry for themselves. 

I am sure the early-begun and oft-reiterated teaching of dailythankfulness for daily blessing was very useful to me at Crayshaw's andhas been useful to me ever since. With my dear mother herself it wasmerely part of that pure and constant piety which ran through her dailylife, like a stream that is never frozen and never runs dry. In me ithad no such grace, but it was an early-taught good habit (as instinctiveas any bodily habit) to feel--"Well, I'm thankful things are not so withme;" as quickly as "Ah, it might have been thus!" Looking at the fatesand fortunes and dispositions of other boys, I had, even at Snuffy's"much to be thankful for" as well as much to endure, and it was a goodthing for me that I could balance the two. For if the grace ofthankfulness does not solve the riddles of life, it lends a willingshoulder to its common burdens. 

I certainly had needed all my philosophy at home as well as at school. It was hard to come back, one holiday-time after another, ignorantexcept for books that I devoured in the holidays, and for my ownindependent studies of maps, and an old geography book at Snuffy's fromwhich I was allowed to give lessons to the lowest form; rough in looks, and dress, and manners (I knew it, but it requires some self-respecteven to use a nail-brush, and self-respect was next door to impossibleat Crayshaw's); and with my north-country accent deepened, and myconversation disfigured by slang which, not being fashionable slang, wasas inadmissible as thieves' lingo; it was hard, I say, to come backthus, and meet dear old Jem, and generally one at least of hisschool-fellows whom he had asked to be allowed to invite--both of themwell dressed, well cared for, and well mannered, full of games that werenot in fashion at Crayshaw's, and slang as "correct" as it wasunintelligible. 

Jem's heart was as true to me as ever, but he was not so thin-skinned asI am. He was never a fellow who worried himself much about anything, andI don't think it struck him I could feel hurt or lonely. He would say, "I say, Jack, what a beastly way your hair is cut. I wish Father wouldlet you come to our school:" or, "Don't say it was a dirty trick--say itwas a beastly chouse, or something of that sort. We're awfullyparticular about talking at ----'s, and I don't want Cholmondley to hearyou. "

Jem was wonderfully polished-up himself, and as pugnacious on behalf ofall the institutions of his school as he had once been about our pond. Igot my hair as near right as one cutting and the town hair-cutter couldbring it, and mended my manners and held my own with good temper. Whenit came to feats of skill or endurance, I more than held my own. Indeed, I so amazed one very "swell" little friend of Jem's whose mother (atitled lady) had allowed him to spend part of the summer holidays withJem for change of air, that he vowed I must go and stay with him in thewinter, and do juggler and acrobat at their Christmas theatricals. Buthe may have reported me as being rough as well as ready, for herladyship never ratified the invitation. Not that I would have left homeat Christmas, and not that I lacked pleasure in the holidays. But otherfashions of games and speech and boyish etiquette lay between me andJem; hospitality, if not choice, kept him closely with hisschool-fellows, and neither they nor he had part in the day-dreams of mysoul. 

For the spell of the Penny Numbers had not grown weaker as I grew older. In the holidays I came back to them as to friends. At school they madethe faded maps on Snuffy's dirty walls alive with visions, and many anight as I lay awake with pain and over-weariness in the stiflingdormitory, my thoughts took refuge not in dreams of home nor in castlesof the air, but in phantom ships that sailed for ever round the world. 

The day of the interview with my father I roused myself from mygrievances to consider a more practical question. Why should I not go tosea? No matter whose fault it was, there was no doubt that I wasill-educated, and that I did not please my father as Jem did. On theother hand I was strong and hardy, nimble and willing to obey; and I hadroughed it enough, in all conscience. I must have ill luck indeed, if Ilit upon a captain more cruel than Mr. Crayshaw. I did not know exactlyhow it was to be accomplished, but I knew enough to know that I couldnot aim at the Royal Navy. Of course I should have preferred it. I hadnever seen naval officers, but if they were like officers in the army, like Colonel Jervois, for instance, it was with such a port and bearingthat I would fain have carried myself when I grew up to be a man. Iguessed, however, that money and many other considerations might make itimpossible for me to be a midshipman; but I had heard of boys beingapprenticed to merchant-vessels, and I resolved to ask my father if hewould so apprentice me. 

He refused, and he accompanied his refusal with an unfavourablecommentary on my character and conduct, which was not the less bitterbecause the accusations were chiefly general. 

This sudden fancy for the sea--well, if it were not a sudden fancy, buta dream of my life, what a painful instance it afforded of my habitualwant of frankness!--This long-concealed project which I had suddenlybrought to the surface--I had talked about it to my mother years ago, had I, but it had distressed her, and even to my father, but he hadsnubbed me?--then I had been deliberately fostering aims and plans towhich I had always known that my parents would be opposed. My fatherdidn't believe a word of it. It was the old story. I must be peculiarat any price. I must have something new to amuse me, and be unlike therest of the family. It was always the same. For years I had found moresatisfaction from the conversation of a man who had spent ten years ofhis life in the hulks than from that of my own father. Then this IndianColonel had taken my fancy, and it had made him sick to see thewomanish--he could call it no better, the _weak-womanish_--way in whichI worshipped him. If I were a daughter instead of a son, my capriceswould distress and astonish him less. He could have sent me to mymother, and my mother might have sent me to my needle. In a son, fromwhom he looked for manly feeling and good English common-sense, it waspainful in the extreme. Vanity, the love of my own way, and want ofcandour--(my father took a pinch of snuff between each count of theindictment)--these were my besetting sins, and would lead me intoserious trouble. This new fad, just, too, when he had made mostfavourable arrangements for my admission into my Uncle Henry's office asthe first step in a prosperous career. I didn't know; didn't I? Perhapsnot. Perhaps I had been at the Woods' when he and my mother werespeaking of it. But now I did know. The matter was decided, and he hopedI should profit by my opportunities. I might go, and I was to shut thedoor after me. 

I omit what my father said of the matter from a religious point ofview, though he accused me of flying in the face of Providence as wellas the Fifth Commandment. The piety which kept a pure and GOD-fearingatmosphere about my home, and to which I owe all the strength I havefound against evil since I left it, was far too sincere in both myparents for me to speak of any phase of it with disrespect. Though I maysay here that I think it is to be wished that more good people exercisedjudgment as well as faith in tracing the will of Heaven in their own. Practically I did not even then believe that I was more "called" to thatstation of life which was to be found in Uncle Henry's office, than tothat station of life which I should find on board a vessel in theMerchant Service, and it only discredited truth in my inmost soul whenmy father put his plans for my career in that light. Just as I could nothelp feeling it unfair that a commandment which might have been fairlyappealed to if I had disobeyed him, should be used against me inargument because I disagreed with him. 

I did disagree with him utterly. Uncle Henry's office was a gloomyplace, where I had had to endure long periods of waiting as a child whenmy mother took us in to the dentist, and had shopping and visiting ofuncertain length to do. Uncle Henry himself was no favourite with me. Hewas harder than my father if you vexed him, and less genial when youdidn't. And I wanted to go to sea. But it did not seem a light matter tome to oppose my parents, and they were both against me. My dear motherwas thrown into the profoundest distress by the bare notion. In her viewto be at sea was merely to run an imminent and ceaseless risk ofshipwreck; and even this jeopardy of life and limb was secondary to thedangers that going ashore in foreign places would bring upon my mind andmorals. 

So when my father spoke kindly to me at supper, and said that he hadarranged with Mr. Wood that I should read with him for two hours everyevening, in preparation for my future life as an articled clerk, myheart was softened. I thanked him gratefully, and resolved for my ownpart to follow what seemed to be the plain path of duty, though it ledto Uncle Henry's office, and not out into the world. 

The capacity in which I began life in Uncle Henry's office was that ofoffice boy, and the situation was attended in my case with manyfavourable conditions. Uncle Henry wished me to sleep on the premises, as my predecessor had done, but an accidental circumstance led to mycoming home daily, which I infinitely preferred. This was nothing lessthan an outbreak of boils all over me, upon which, every domesticapplication having failed, and gallons of herb tea only making meworse, Dr. Brown was called in, and pronounced my health in sore need ofrestoration. The regimen of Crayshaw's was not to be recovered from in aday, and the old doctor would not hear of my living altogether in thetown. If I went to the office at all, he said, I must ride in early, andride out in the evening. So much fresh air and exercise were imperative, and I must eat two solid meals a day under no less careful an eye thanthat of my mother. 

She was delighted. She thought (even more than usual) that Doctor Brownwas a very Solomon in spectacles, and I quite agreed with her. The fewwords that followed gave a slight shock to her favourable opinion of hiswisdom, but I need hardly say that it confirmed mine. 

He had given me a kindly slap on the shoulder, which happened at thatmoment to be the sorest point in my body, and I was in no small painfrom head to foot. I only tightened my lips, but I suppose he bethoughthimself of what he had done, and he looked keenly at me and said, "Youcan bear pain, Master Jack?"

"Oh, Jack's a very brave boy, " said my dear mother. "Indeed, he's onlytoo brave. He upset his father and me terribly last week by wanting togo to sea instead of to the office. "

"And much better for him, ma'am, " said the old doctor, promptly; "he'llmake a first-rate sailor, and if Crayshaw's is all the schooling he'shad, a very indifferent clerk. "

"That's just what I think!" I began, but my mother coloured crimson withdistress, and I stopped, and went after her worsted ball which she haddropped, whilst she appealed to Doctor Brown. 

"Pray don't say so, Doctor Brown. Jack is _very_ good, and it's all_quite_ decided. I couldn't part with him, and his father would be _so_annoyed if the subject----"

"Tut, tut, ma'am!" said the doctor, pocketing his spectacles; "I neverinterfere with family affairs, and I never repeat what I hear. The firstrules of the profession, young gentleman, and very good general rulesfor anybody. "

I got quite well again, and my new life began. I rode in and out of thetown every day on Rob Roy, our red-haired pony. After tea I went to thefarm to be taught by Mr. Wood, and at every opportunity I devoured suchbooks as I could lay my hands on. I fear I had very little excuse fornot being contented now. And yet I was not content. 

It seems absurd to say that the drains had anything to do with it, butthe horrible smell which pervaded the office added to thedistastefulness of the place, and made us all feel ill and fretful, except my uncle, and Moses Benson, the Jew clerk. He was never ill, andhe said he smelt nothing; which shows that one may have a very big noseto very little purpose. 

My uncle pooh-poohed the unwholesome state of the office, for tworeasons which certainly had some weight. The first was that he himselfhad been there for five-and-twenty years without suffering by it; andthe second was, that the defects of drainage were so radical that (theplace belonging to that period of house-building when the system ofdrainage was often worse than none at all) half the premises, if nothalf the street, would have to be pulled down for any effectual remedy. So it was left as it was, and when Mr. Burton, the head clerk, had worseheadaches than usual, he used to give me sixpence for chloride of lime, which I distributed at my discretion, and on those days Moses Bensonused generally to say that he "fancied he smelt something. "

Moses Benson was an articled clerk to my uncle, but he had nopretensions to be considered a gentleman. His father kept a small shopwhere second-hand watches were the most obvious goods; but the old manwas said to have money, though the watches did not seem to sell veryfast, and his son had duly qualified for his post, and had paid a goodpremium. Moses was only two or three years older than I, not that Icould have told anything about his age from his looks. He was sallow, and had a big nose; his hands were fat, his feet were small, and I thinkhis head was large, but perhaps his hair made it look larger than itwas, for it was thick and very black, and though it was curly, it wasnot like Jem's; the curls were more like short ringlets, and if he bentover his desk they hid his forehead, and when he put his head back tothink, they lay on his coat-collar. And I suppose it was partly becausehe could not smell with his nose, that he used such very stronghair-oil, and so much of it. It used to make his coat-collar in a horridstate, but he always kept a little bottle of "scouring drops" on theledge of his desk, and when it got very bad, I knelt behind him on thecorner of his stool and scoured his coat-collar with a little bit offlannel. Not that I did it half so well as he could. He wore veryodd-looking clothes, but he took great care of them, and was alwaystouching them up, and "reviving" his hat with one of Mrs. O'Flannagan'sirons. He used to sell bottles of the scouring drops to the otherclerks, and once he got me to get my mother to buy some. He gave me agood many little odd jobs to do for him, but he always thanked me, andfrom the beginning to the end of our acquaintance he was invariablykind. 

I remember a very odd scene that happened at the beginning of it. 

Mr. Burton (the other clerk, whose time was to expire the followingyear, which was to make a vacancy for me) was a very different man fromMoses Benson. He was respectably connected, and looked down on "theJew-boy, " but he was hot-tempered, and rather slow-witted, and I thinkMoses could manage him; and I think it was he who kept their constant"tiffs" from coming to real quarrels. 

One day, very soon after I began office-life, Benson sent me out to gethim some fancy notepaper, and when I came back I saw the red-haired Mr. Burton standing by the desk and looking rather more sickly and crossthan usual. I laid down the paper and the change, and asked if Bensonwanted anything else. He thanked me exceedingly kindly, and said, "No, "and I went out of the enclosure and back to the corner where I had beencutting out some newspaper extracts for my uncle. At the same time Idrew from under my overcoat which was lying there, an old railway volumeof one of Cooper's novels which Charlie had lent me. I ought not to havebeen reading novels in office-hours, but I had had to stop short lastnight because my candle went out just at the most exciting point, and Ihad had no time to see what became of everybody before I started fortown in the morning. I could bear suspense no longer, and plunged intomy book. 

How it was in these circumstances that I heard what the two clerks weresaying, I don't know. They talked constantly in these open enclosures, when they knew I was within hearing. On this occasion I suppose theythought I had gone out, and it was some minutes before I discovered thatthey were talking of me. Burton spoke first, and in an irritated tone. 

"You treat this young shaver precious different to the last one. "

The Jew spoke very softly, and with an occasional softening of theconsonants in his words. "How obsherving you are!" said he. 

Burton snorted. "It don't take much observation to see that. But Isuppose you have your reasons. You Jews are always so sly. That's howyou get on so, I suppose. "

"You Gentiles, " replied Moses (and the Jew's voice had tones which gavehim an infinite advantage in retaliating scorn), "you Gentiles would doas well as we do if you were able to foresee and knew how to wait. Youhave all the selfishness for success, my dear, but the gifts of prophecyand patience are wanting to you. "

"That's nothing to do with your little game about the boy, " saidBurton; "however, I suppose you can keep your own secrets. "

"I have no secrets, " said Moses gently. "And if you take my advice, younever will have. If you have no secrets, my dear, they will never befound out. If you tell your little designs, your best friends will besatisfied, and will not invent less creditable ones for you. "

"If they did, you'd talk 'em down, " said Burton roughly. "Short of awoman I never met such a hand at jaw. You'll be in Parliament yet----"("It is possible!" said the Jew hastily, ) "with that long tongue ofyours. But you haven't told us about the boy, for all you've said. "

"About this boy, " said Moses, "a proverb will be shorter than my jaw. 'The son of the house is not a servant for ever. ' As to the other--hewas taken for charity and dismissed for theft, is it not so? He camefrom the dirt, and he went back to the dirt. They often do. Why should Ibe civil to him?"

What reply Mr. Burton would have made to this question I had noopportunity of judging. My uncle called him, and he ran hastilyup-stairs. And when he had gone, the Jew came slowly out, and crossedthe office as if he were going into the street. By this time myconscience was pricking hard, and I shoved my book under my coat andcalled to him: "Mr. Benson. "

"You?" he said. 

"I am very sorry, " I stammered, blushing, "but I heard what you weresaying. I did not mean to listen. I thought you knew that I was there. "

"It is of no importance, " he said, turning away; "I have no secrets. "

But I detained him. 

"Mr. Benson! Tell me, please. You _were_ talking about me, weren't you?What did you mean about the son of the house not being a servant forever?"

He hesitated for an instant, and then turned round and came nearer tome. 

"It is true, is it not?" he said. "Next year you may be clerk. In timeyou may be your uncle's confidential clerk, which I should like to bemyself. You may eventually be partner, as I should like to be; and inthe long run you may succeed him, as I should like to do. It is a goodbusiness, my dear, a sound business, a business of which much, verymuch, more might be made. You might die rich, very rich. You might bemayor, you might be Member, you might--but what is the use? _You willnot. _ You do not see it, though I am telling you. You will not wait forit, though it would come. What is that book you hid when I came in?"

"It is about North American Indians, " said I, dragging it forth. "I amvery sorry, but I left off last night at such an exciting bit. "

The Jew was thumbing the pages, with his black ringlets close abovethem. 

"Novels in office-hours!" said he; but he was very good-natured aboutit, and added, "I've one or two books at home, if you're fond of thiskind of reading, and will promise me not to forget your duties. "

"Oh, I promise!" said I. 

"I'll put them under my desk in the corner, " he said; "indeed, I wouldpart with some of them for a trifle. "

I thanked him warmly, but what he had said was still hanging in my mind, and I added, "Are there real prophets among the Jews now-a-days, Mr. Benson?"

"They will make nothing by it, if there are, " said he; and there was atone of mysteriousness in his manner of speaking which roused myromantic curiosity. "A few of ush (very few, my dear!) mould our ownfates, and the lives of the rest are moulded by what men have withinthem rather than by what they find without. If there were a true prophetin every market-place to tell each man of his future, it would not alterthe destinies of seven men in thish wide world. "

As Moses spoke the swing door was pushed open, and one of my uncle'sclients entered. He was an influential man, and a very tall one. The Jewbent his ringlets before him, almost beneath his elbow, and slipped outas he came in. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

 "Then, hey for boot and horse, lad, And round the world away! Young blood must have its course, lad, And every dog his day. "--C. KINGSLEY. 

Moses Benson was as good as his word in the matter of books ofadventure. Dirty books, some without backs, and some with very greasyones (for which, if I bought them, I seldom paid more than half-price), but full of dangers and discoveries, the mightiness of manhood, and thewonders of the world. I read them at odd moments of my working hours, and dreamed of them when I went home to bed. And it was more fascinatingstill to look out, with Charlie's help, in the Penny Numbers, for theforeign places, and people, and creatures mentioned in the tales, and tofind that the truth was often stranger than the fiction. 

To live a fancy-life of adventure in my own head, was not merely anamusement to me at this time--it was a refuge. Matters did not reallyimprove between me and my father, though I had obeyed his wishes. Itwas by his arrangement that I spent so much of my time at home with theWoods, and yet it remained a grievance that I liked to do so. Whether mydear mother had given up all hopes of my becoming a genius I do notknow, but my father's contempt for my absorption in a book was unabated. I felt this if he came suddenly upon me with my head in my hands and mynose in a tattered volume; and if I went on with my reading it was witha sense of being in the wrong, whilst if I shut up the book and tried tothrow myself into outside interests, my father's manner showed me thatmy efforts had only discredited my candour. 

As is commonly the case, it was chiefly little things that pulled thewrong way of the stuff of life between us, but they pulled it very muchaskew. I was selfishly absorbed in my own dreams, and I think my dearfather made a mistake which is a too common bit of tyranny betweenpeople who love each other and live together. He was not satisfied withmy _doing_ what he liked, he expected me to _be_ what he liked, that is, to be another person instead of myself. Wives and daughters seem now andthen to respond to this expectation as to the call of duty, and tobecome inconsistent echoes, odd mixtures of severity and hesitancy, hypocrites on the highest grounds; but sons are not often soself-effacing, and it was not the case with me. It was so much the casewith my dear mother, that she never was of the slightest use (which shemight have been) when my father and I misunderstood each other. By myfather's views of the moment she always hastily set her own, whetherthey were fair or unfair to me; and she made up for it by indulging meat every point that did not cross an expressed wish of my father's, orthat could not annoy him because he was not there. She never held thescales between us. 

And yet it was the thought of her which kept me from taking my fate intomy own hands again and again. To have obeyed my father seemed to havedone so little towards making him satisfied with me, that I found noconsolation at home for the distastefulness of the office; and more thanonce I resolved to run away, and either enlist or go to Liverpool (whichwas at no great distance from us) and get on board some vessel that wasabout to sail for other lands. But when I thought of my mother'sdistress, I could not face it, and I let my half-formed projects slideagain. 

Oddly enough, it was Uncle Henry who brought matters to a crisis. Ithink my father was disappointed (though he did not blame me) that Isecured no warmer a place in Uncle Henry's affections than I did. UncleHenry had no children, and if he took a fancy to me and I pleased him, such a career as the Jew-clerk had sketched for me would probably bemine. This dawned on me by degrees through chance remarks from my fatherand the more open comments of friends. For good manners with us were notof a sensitively refined order, and to be clapped on the backwith--"Well, Jack, you've got into a good berth, I hear. I suppose youlook to succeed your uncle some day?" was reckoned a friendlyfamiliarity rather than an offensive impertinence. 

I learned that my parents had hoped that, as I was his nephew, UncleHenry would take me as clerk without the usual premium. Indeed, when myuncle first urged my going to him, he had more than hinted that heshould not expect a premium with his brother's son. But he was fond ofhis money (of which he had plenty), and when people are that, they areapt to begin to grudge, if there is time, between promise andperformance. Uncle Henry had a whole year in which to think aboutforegoing two or three hundred pounds, and as it drew to a close, itseemed to worry him to such a degree, that he proposed to take me forhalf the usual premium instead of completely remitting it; and he saidsomething about my being a stupid sort of boy, and of very little use tohim for some time to come. He said it to justify himself for drawingback, I am quite sure, but it did me no good at home. 

My father had plenty of honourable pride, and he would hear of nocompromise. He said that he should pay the full premium for me thatUncle Henry's other clerks had had to pay, and from this no revulsion offeeling on my uncle's part would move him. He was quite bland with UncleHenry, and he was not quite bland towards me. 

When I fairly grasped the situation (and I contrived to get a prettyclear account of it from my mother), there rushed upon me the convictionthat a new phase had come over my prospects. When I put aside my ownlongings for my father's will; and every time that office life seemedintolerable to me, and I was tempted to break my bonds, and thoughtbetter of it and settled down again, this thought had always remainedbehind: "I will try; and if the worst comes to the worst, and I reallycannot settle down into a clerk, I can but run away then. " Butcircumstances had altered my case, I felt that now I must make up mymind for good and all. My father would have to make some littlesacrifices to find the money, and when it was once paid, I could not letit be in vain. Come what might, I must stick to the office then, and forlife. 

Some weeks passed whilst I was turning this over and over in my mind. Iwas constantly forgetting things in the office, but Moses Benson helpedme out of every scrape. He was kinder and kinder, so that I often feltsorry that I could not feel fonder of him, and that his notions of funand amusement only disgusted me instead of making us friends. Theyconvinced me of one thing. My dear mother's chief dread about my goingout of my own country was for the wicked ways I might learn in strangelands. A town with an unpronounceable name suggested foreign iniquitiesto her tender fears, but our own town, where she and everybody we knewbought everything we daily used, did not frighten her at all. I did nottell her, but I was quite convinced myself that I might get pretty deepinto mischief in my idle hours, even if I lived within five miles ofhome, and had only my uncle's clerks for my comrades. 

During these weeks Jem came home for the holidays. He was at a publicschool now, which many of our friends regarded as an extravagant follyon my father's part. We had a very happy time together, and this wouldhave gone far to keep me at home, if it had not, at the same time, deepened my disgust with our town, and my companions in the office. Inplain English, the training of two good schools, and the society of boyssuperior to himself, had made a gentleman of Jem, and the contrastbetween his looks and ways, and manners, and those of my uncle's clerkswere not favourable to the latter. How proud my father was of him! Withme he was in a most irritable mood; and one grumble to which I heard himgive utterance, that it was very inconvenient to have to pay this moneyjust at the most expensive period of Jem's education, went heavily intothe scale for running away. And that night, as it happened, Jem and Isat up late, and had a long and loving chat. He abused the office to myheart's content, and was very sympathetic when I told him that I hadwished to go to sea, and how my father had refused to allow me. 

"I think he made a great mistake, " said Jem; and he told me of "afellow's brother" that he knew about, who was in the Merchant Service, and how well he was doing. "It's not even as if Uncle Henry were comingout generously, " he added. 

Dear, dear! How pleasant it was to hear somebody else talk on my side ofthe question. And who was I that I should rebuke Jem for calling ourworthy uncle a curmudgeon, and stigmatising the Jew-clerk as a dirtybeast? I really dared not tell him that Moses grew more familiar as mytime to be articled drew near; that he called me Jack Sprat, and hisdearest friend, and offered to procure me the "silver-top" (orchampagne)--which he said I must "stand" on the day I took my place atthe fellow desk to his--of the first quality and at less than costprice; and that he had provided me gratis with a choice of "excuses"(they were unblushing lies) to give to our good mother for spending thatevening in town, and "having a spree. "

From my affairs we came to talk of Jem's, and I found that even he, poorchap! was not without his troubles. He confided to me, with manyexpressions of shame and vexation, that he had got into debt, but havingbrought home good reports and even a prize on this occasion, he hoped topersuade my father to pay what he owed. 

"You see, Jack, he's awfully good to me, but he will do things his ownway, and what's worse, the way they were done in his young days. Youremember the row we had about his giving me an allowance? He didn't wantto, because he never had one, only tips from his governor when the oldgentleman was pleased with him. And he said it was quite enough to sendme to such a good and expensive school, and I ought to think of that, and not want more because I had got much. We'd an awful row, for Ithought it was so unfair his making out I was greedy and ungrateful, andI told him so, and I said I was quite game to go to a cheap school if heliked, only wherever I was I did want to be 'like the other fellows. ' Ibegged him to take me away and to let me go somewhere cheap with you;and I said, if the fellows there had no allowances, we could do without. As I told him, it's not the beastly things that you buy that you careabout, only of course you don't like to be the only fellow who can't buy'em. So then he came round, and said I should have an allowance, but Imust do with a very small one. So I said, Very well, then I mustn't goin for the games. Then he wouldn't have that; so then I made out a listof what the subscriptions are to cricket, and so on, and then yourflannels and shoes, and it came to double what he offered me. He said itwas simply disgraceful that boys shouldn't be able to be properlyeducated, and have an honest game at cricket for the huge price he paid, without the parents being fleeced for all sorts of extravagances atexorbitant prices. And I know well enough it's disgraceful, what we haveto pay for school books and for things of all sorts you have to get inthe town; but, as I said to the governor, why don't you kick up a dustwith the head master, or write to the papers--what's the good of rowingus? One must have what other fellows have, and get 'em where otherfellows get 'em. But he never did--I wish he would. I should enjoyfighting old Pompous if I were in his place. But they're as civil asbutter to each other, and then old Pompous goes on feathering his nest, and backing up the tradespeople, and the governor pitches into theyoung men of the present day. "

"He did give you the bigger allowance, didn't he?" said I, at this pausein Jem's rhetoric. 

"Yes, he did. He's awfully good to me. But you know, Jack, he never paidit quite all, and he never paid it quite in time. I found out from mymother he did it on purpose to make me value it more, and be morecareful. Doesn't it seem odd he shouldn't see that I can't pay thesubscriptions a few shillings short or a few days late? One must findthe money somehow, and then one has to pay for that, and then you'reshort, and go on tick, and it runs up, and then they dun you, and you'recleaned out, and there you are!"

At which climax old Jem laid his curly head on his arms, and I began tothink very seriously. 

"How much do you owe?"

Jem couldn't say. He thought he could reckon up, so I got a pencil andmade a list from his dictation, and from his memory, which was rathervague. When it was done (and there seemed to be a misty margin beyond), I was horrified. "Why, my dear fellow!" I exclaimed, "if you'd had yourallowance ever so regularly, it wouldn't have covered this sort ofthing. "

"I know, I know, " said poor Jem, clutching remorsefully at his curls. "I've been a regular fool! Jack! whatever you do--never tick. It's thevery mischief. You never know what you owe, and so you feel vague andorder more. And you never know what you don't owe, which is worse, forsometimes you're in such despair, it would be quite a relief to catchsome complaint and die. It's like going about with a stone round yourneck, and nobody kind enough to drown you. I can't stand any more of it. I shall make a clean breast to Father, and if he can't set me straight, I won't go back; I'll work on the farm sooner, and let him pay my billsinstead of my schooling--and serve old Pompous right. "

Poor Jem! long after he had cheered up and gone to bed, I sat up andthought. When my premium was paid where was the money for Jem's debts tocome from? And would my father be in the humour to pay them? If he didnot, Jem would not go back to school. Of that I was quite certain. Jemhad thought over his affairs, which was an effort for him, but he alwaysthought in one direction. His thoughts never went backwards and forwardsas mine did. If he had made up his mind, there was no more prospect ofhis changing it than if he had been my father. And if the happy termsbetween them were broken, and Jem's career checked when he was doing sowell!--the scales that weighed my own future were becoming very unevennow. 

I clasped my hands and thought. If I ran away, the money would be therefor Jem's debts, and his errors would look pale in the light of myaudacity, and he would be dearer than ever at home, whilst for me werefreedom, independence (for I had not a doubt of earningbread-and-cheese, if only as a working man): perhaps a betterunderstanding with my father when I had been able to prove my courageand industry, or even when he got the temperate and dutiful letter Imeant to post to him when I was fairly off; and beyond all, the desireof my eyes, the sight of the world. 

Should I stay now? And for what? To see old Jem at logger-heads with myfather, and perhaps demoralized by an inferior school? To turn my ownback and shut my eyes for ever on all that the wide seas embrace; myhighest goal to be to grow as rich as Uncle Henry or richer, and perhapsas mean or meaner? Should I choose for life a life I hated, and setseals to my choice by drinking silver-top with the Jew-clerk?--No, Moses, no!

 * * * * *

I got up soon after dawn and was in the garden at sunrise the morningthat I ran away. I had made my plans carefully, and carried them out, sofar with success. 

Including the old miser's bequest which his lawyer had paid, there werethirteen pounds to my name in the town savings-bank, and this sum I haddrawn out to begin life with. I wrapped a five-pound note in a lovingletter to Jem, and put both into the hymn-book on his shelf--I knew itwould not be opened till Sunday. Very few runaways have as much as eightpounds to make a start with: and as one could not be quite certain howmy father would receive Jem's confession, I thought he might be glad ofa few pounds of his own, and I knew he had spent his share of themiser's money long ago. 

I meant to walk to a station about seven miles distant, and there taketrain for Liverpool. I should be clumsy indeed, I thought, if I couldnot stow away on board some vessel, as hundreds of lads had done beforeme, and make myself sufficiently useful to pay my passage when I wasfound out. 

When I got into the garden I kicked my foot against something in thegrass. It was my mother's little gardening-fork. She had been tidyingher pet perennial border, and my father had called her hastily, and shehad left it half finished, and had forgotten the fork. A few minutesmore or less were of no great importance to me, for it was very early, so I finished the border quite neatly, and took the fork indoors. 

I put it in a corner of the hall where the light was growing strongerand making familiar objects clear. In a house like ours and amongstpeople like us, furniture was not chopped and changed and decorated asit is now. The place had looked like this ever since I could remember, and it would look like this tomorrow morning, though my eyes would notsee it. I stood stupidly by the hall table where my father's gloves layneatly one upon the other beside his hat. I took them up, almostmechanically, and separated them, and laid them together again finger tofinger, and thumb to thumb, and held them with a stupid sort of feeling, as if I could never put them down and go away. 

What would my father's face be like when he took them up this verymorning to go out and look for me? and when--oh when!--should I see hisface again?

I began to feel what one is apt to learn too late, that in childhood onetakes the happiness of home for granted, and kicks against the pricks ofits grievances, not having felt the far harder buffetings of the world. Moreover (which one does not think of then), that parental blunders andinjustices are the mistakes and tyrannies of a special love that one maygo many a mile on one's own wilful way and not meet a second time. Who--in the wide world--would care to be bothered with my confidence, and blame me for withholding it? Should I meet many people to whom itwould matter if we misunderstood each other? Would anybody hereafterlove me well enough to be disappointed in me? Would other men care somuch for my fate as to insist on guiding it by lines of their ownruling?

I pressed the gloves passionately against my eyes to keep in the tears. If my day-dreams had been the only question, I should have changed mymind now. If the home grievances had been all, I should have waited fortime and patience to mend them. I could not have broken all theseheart-strings. I should never have run away. But there was much more, and my convictions were not changed, though I felt as if I might havemanaged better as regards my father. 

Would he forgive me? I hoped and believed so. Would my mother forgiveme? I knew she would--as GOD forgives. 

And with the thought of her, I knelt down, and put my head on the halltable and prayed from my soul--not for fair winds, and prosperousvoyages, and good luck, and great adventures; but that it might pleaseGOD to let me see Home again, and the faces that I loved, ah, so dearly, after all!

And then I got up, and crossed the threshold, and went out into theworld. 

 END OF PART I. 

 RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, LONDON & BUNGAY. 

_The present Series of Mrs. Ewing's Works is the only authorized, complete, and uniform Edition published. _

_It will consist of 18 volumes, Small Crown 8vo, at 2s. 6d. Per vol. , issued, as far as possible, in chronological order, and these willappear at the rate of two volumes every two months, so that the Serieswill be completed within 18 months. The device of the cover wasspecially designed by a Friend of Mrs. Ewing. _

_The following is a list of the books included in the Series--_

1. MELCHIOR'S DREAM, AND OTHER TALES. 

2. MRS. OVERTHEWAY'S REMEMBRANCES. 

3. OLD-FASHIONED FAIRY TALES. 

4. A FLAT IRON FOR A FARTHING. 

5. THE BROWNIES, AND OTHER TALES. 

6. SIX TO SIXTEEN. 

7. LOB LIE-BY-THE-FIRE, AND OTHER TALES. 

8. JAN OF THE WINDMILL. 

9. VERSES FOR CHILDREN, AND SONGS. 

10. THE PEACE EGG--A CHRISTMAS MUMMING PLAY--HINTS FOR PRIVATETHEATRICALS, &c. 

11. A GREAT EMERGENCY, AND OTHER TALES. 

12. BROTHERS OF PITY, AND OTHER TALES OF BEASTS AND MEN. 

13. WE AND THE WORLD, Part I. 

14. WE AND THE WORLD, Part II. 

15. JACKANAPES--DADDY DARWIN'S DOVECOTE--THE STORY OF A SHORT LIFE. 

16. MARY'S MEADOW, AND OTHER TALES OF FIELDS AND FLOWERS. 

17. MISCELLANEA, including The Mystery of the Bloody Hand--WonderStories--Tales of the Khoja, and other translations. 

18. JULIANA HORATIA EWING AND HER BOOKS, with a selection from Mrs. Ewing's Letters.