BOOK III. 

CHAPTER I. 

 Certes, the lizard is a shy and timorous creature. He runs into chinks and crannies if you come too near to him, and sheds his very tail for fear, if you catch it by the tip. He has not his being in good society: no one cages him, no one pets. He is an idle vagrant. But when he steals through the green herbage, and basks unmolested in the sun, he crowds perhaps as much enjoyment into one summer hour as a parrot, however pampered and erudite, spreads over a whole drawing-room life spent in saying "How dye do" and "Pretty Poll. "

ON that dull and sombre summer morning in which the grandfather andgrandchild departed from the friendly roof of Mr. Merle, very dull andvery sombre were the thoughts of little Sophy. She walked slowly behindthe gray cripple, who had need to lean so heavily on his staff, and hereye had not even a smile for the golden buttercups that glittered on dewymeads alongside the barren road. 

Thus had they proceeded apart and silent till they had passed the secondmilestone. There, Waife, rousing from his own reveries, which wereperhaps yet more dreary than those of the dejected child, haltedabruptly, passed his hand once or twice rapidly over his forehead, and, turning round to Sophy, looked into her face with great kindness as shecame slowly to his side. 

"You are sad, little one?" said he. 

"Very sad, Grandy. "

"And displeased with me? Yes, displeased that I have taken you suddenlyaway from the pretty young gentleman, who was so kind to you, withoutencouraging the chance that you were to meet with him again. "

"It was not like you, Grandy, " answered Sophy; and her under-lip slightlypouted, while the big tears swelled to her eye. 

"True, " said the vagabond; "anything resembling common-sense is not likeme. But don't you think that I did what I felt was best for you? Must Inot have some good cause for it, whenever I have the heart deliberatelyto vex you?"

Sophy took his hand and pressed it, but she could not trust herself tospeak, for she felt that at such effort she would have burst out intohearty crying. Then Waife proceeded to utter many of those wise sayings, old as the hills, and as high above our sorrows as hills are from thevalley in which we walk. He said how foolish it was to unsettle the mindby preposterous fancies and impossible hopes. The pretty young gentlemancould never be anything to her, nor she to the pretty young gentleman. It might be very well for the pretty young gentleman to promise tocorrespond with her, but as soon as he returned to his friends he wouldhave other things to think of, and she would soon be forgotten; whileshe, on the contrary, would be thinking of him, and the Thames and thebutterflies, and find hard life still more irksome. Of all this, andmuch more, in the general way of consolers who set out on the principlethat grief is a matter of logic, did Gentleman Waife deliver himself witha vigour of ratiocination which admitted of no reply, and conveyed not aparticle of comfort. And feeling this, that great actor--not that he wasacting then-suddenly stopped, clasped the child in his arms, and murmuredin broken accents, --"But if I see you thus cast down, I shall have nostrength left to hobble on through the world; and the sooner I lie down, and the dust is shovelled over me, why, the better for you; for it seemsthat Heaven sends you friends, and I tear you from them. "

And then Sophy fairly gave way to her sobs: she twined her little armsround the old man's neck convulsively, kissed his rough face withimploring pathetic fondness, and forced out through her tears, "Don'ttalk so! I've been ungrateful and wicked. I don't care for any one butmy own dear, dear Grandy. "

After this little scene, they both composed themselves, and felt muchlighter of heart. They pursued their journey, no longer apart, but sideby side, and the old man leaning, though very lightly, on the child'sarm. But there was no immediate reaction from gloom to gayety. Waifebegan talking in softened undertones, and vaguely, of his own pastafflictions; and partial as was the reference, how vast did the old man'ssorrows seem beside the child's regrets; and yet he commented on them asif rather in pitying her state than grieving for his own. 

"Ah, at your age, my darling, I had not your troubles and hardships. Ihad not to trudge these dusty roads on foot with a broken-down good-for-nothing scatterling; I trod rich carpets, and slept under silkencurtains. I took the air in gay carriages, --I such a scapegrace; andyou, little child, you so good! All gone, all melted away from me, andnot able now to be sure that you will have a crust of bread this dayweek. "

"Oh, yes! I shall have bread, and you too, Grandy, " cried Sophy, withcheerful voice. "It was you who taught me to pray to God, and said thatin all your troubles God had been good to you: and He has been so good tome since I prayed to Him; for I have no dreadful Mrs. Crane to beat menow, and say things more hard to bear than beating; and you have taken meto yourself. How I prayed for that! And I take care of you too, Grandy, --don't I? I prayed for that too; and as to carriages, " addedSophy, with superb air, "I don't care if I am never in a carriage as longas I live; and you know I have been in a van, which is bigger than acarriage, and I didn't like that at all. But how came people to behaveso ill to you, Grandy?"

"I never said people behaved ill to me, Sophy. "

"Did not they take away the carpets and silk curtains, and all the finethings you had as a little boy?"

"I don't know, " replied Waife, with a puzzled look, "that people actuallytook them away; but they melted away. 

"However, I had much still to be thankful for: I was so strong, and hadsuch high spirits, Sophy, and found people not behaving ill to me, --quitethe contrary, so kind. I found no Crane (she monster) as you did, mylittle angel. Such prospects before me, if I had walked straight towardsthem! But I followed my own fancy, which led me zigzag; and now that Iwould stray back into the high road, you see before you a man whom aJustice of the Peace could send to the treadmill for presuming to livewithout a livelihood. "

SOPHY. --"Not without a livelihood!--the what did you call it?--independent income, --that is, the Three Pounds, Grandy?"

WAIFE (admiringly). --"Sensible child. That is true. Yes, Heaven is verygood to me still. Ah! what signifies fortune? How happy I was with mydear Lizzy, and yet no two persons could live more from hand to mouth. "

SOPHY (rather jealously). --"tizzy?"

WAIFE (with moistened eyes, and looking down). --"My wife. She was onlyspared to me two years: such sunny years! And how grateful I ought to bethat she did not live longer. She was saved--such--such--such shame andmisery!" A long pause. 

Waife resumed, with a rush from memory, as if plucking himself from theclaws of a harpy, --"What's the good of looking back? A man's gone selfis a dead thing. It is not I--now tramping this road, with you to leanupon--whom I see, when I would turn to look behind on that which I oncewas: it is another being, defunct and buried; and when I say to myself, 'that being did so and so, ' it is like reading an epitaph on a tombstone. So, at last, solitary and hopeless, I came back to my own land; and Ifound you, --a blessing greater than I had ever dared to count on. Andhow was I to maintain you, and take you from that long-nosed alligatorcalled Crane, and put you in womanly gentle hands; for I never thoughtthen of subjecting you to all you have since undergone with me, --I whodid not know one useful thing in life by which a man can turn a penny. And then, as I was all alone in a village ale-house, on my way back from-it does not signify from what, or from whence, but I was disappointed anddespairing, Providence mercifully threw in my way--Mr. Rugge, andordained me to be of great service to that ruffian, and that ruffian ofgreat use to me. "

Sorfiy. --"Ah, how was that?"

WAIFE. --"It was fair time in the village wherein I stopped, and Rugge'sprincipal actor was taken off by delirium tremens, which is Latin for adisease common to men who eat little and drink much. Rugge came into thealehouse bemoaning his loss. A bright thought struck me. Once in my dayI had been used to acting. I offered to try my chance on Mr. Rugge'sstage: he caught at me, I at him. I succeeded: we came to terms, and mylittle Sophy was thus taken from that ringleted crocodile, and placedwith Christian females who wore caps and read their Bible. Is not Heavengood to us, Sophy; and to me too--me, such a scamp?"

"And you did all that, --suffered all that for my sake?"

"Suffered, but I liked it. And, besides, I must have done something; andthere were reasons--in short, I was quite happy; no, not actually happy, but comfortable and merry. Providence gives thick hides to animals thatmust exist in cold climates; and to the man whom it reserves for sorrow, Providence gives a coarse, jovial temper. Then, when by a mercy I wassaved from what I most disliked and dreaded, and never would have thoughtof but that I fancied it might be a help to you, --I mean the Londonstage, --and had that bad accident on the railway, how did it end? Oh!in saving you" (and Waife closed his eyes and shuddered), "in saving yourdestiny from what might be much worse for you, body and soul, than theworst that has happened to you with me. And so we have been throwntogether; and so you have supported me; and so, when we could existwithout Mr. Rugge, Providence got rid of him for us. And so we are nowwalking along the high road; and through yonder trees you can catch apeep of the roof under which we are about to rest for a while; and thereyou will learn what I have done with the Three Pounds!"

"It is not the Spotted Boy, Grandy?"

"No, " said Waife, sighing; "the Spotted Boy is a handsome income; but letus only trust in Providence, and I should not wonder if our newacquisition proved a monstrous--"

"Monstrous!"

"Piece of good fortune. "

CHAPTER II. 

 The investment revealed. 

Gentleman Waife passed through a turnstile, down a narrow lane, andreached a solitary cottage. He knocked at the door; an old peasant womanopened it, and dropped him a civil courtesy. "Indeed, sir, I am glad youare come. I 'se most afeared he be dead. "

"Dead!" exclaimed Waife. "Oh, Sophy, if he should be dead!"

"Who?"

Waife did not heed the question. "What makes you think him dead?" saidhe, fumbling in his pockets, from which he at last produced a key. "Youhave not been disobeying my strict orders, and tampering with the door?"

"Lor' love ye, no, sir. But he made such a noise at fust--awful! Andnow he's as still as a corpse. And I did peep through the keyhole, andhe was stretched stark. "

"Hunger, perhaps, " said the Comedian; "'t is his way when he has beenkept fasting much over his usual hours. Follow me, Sophy. " He put asidethe woman, entered the sanded kitchen, ascended a stair that led from it;and Sophy following, stopped at a door and listened: not a sound. Timidly he unlocked the portals and crept in, when, suddenly such arush, --such a spring, and a mass of something vehement yet soft, dingyyet whitish, whirled past the actor, and came pounce against Sophy, whotherewith uttered a shriek. "Stop him, stop him, for heaven's sake, "cried Waife. "Shut the door below, --seize him. " Downstairs, however, went the mass, and downstairs after it hobbled Waife, returning in a fewmoments with the recaptured and mysterious fugitive. "There, " he criedtriumphantly to Sophy, who, standing against the wall with her faceburied in her frock, long refused to look up, --"there, --tame as a lamb, and knows me. See!" he seated himself on the floor, and Sophy, hesitatingly opening her eyes, beheld gravely gazing at her from under aprofusion of shaggy locks an enormous--

CHAPTER III. 

 Denoumente!

POODLE!

CHAPTER IV. 

 Zoology in connection with history. 

"Walk to that young lady, sir, --walk, I say. " The poodle slowly rose onhis hind legs, and, with an aspect inexpressibly solemn, advanced towardsSophy, who hastily receded into the room in which the creature had beenconfined. 

"Make a bow--no--a bow, sir; that is right: you can shake hands anothertime. Run down, Sophy, and ask for his dinner. "

"Yes; that I will;" and Sophy flew down the stairs. 

The dog, still on his hind legs, stood in the centre of the floordignified, but evidently expectant. 

"That will do; lie down and die. Die this moment, sir. " The dogstretched himself out, closed his eyes, and to all appearance gave up theghost. "A most splendid investment, " said Waife, with enthusiasm; "andupon the whole, clog cheap. Ho! you are not to bring up his dinner; itis not you who are to make friends with the dog; it is my little girl;send her up; Sophy, Sophy!"

"She be fritted, sir, " said the woman, holding a plate of caninecomestibles; "but lauk, sir, bent he really dead?"

"Sophy, Sophy"

"Please let me stay here, Grandy, " said Sophy's voice from the foot ofthe stairs. 

"Nonsense! it is sixteen hours since he has had a morsel to eat. And hewill never bite the hand that feeds him now. Come up, I say. "

Sophy slowly reascended, and Waife summoning the poodle to life, insistedupon the child's feeding him. And indeed, when that act of charity wasperformed, the dog evinced his gratitude by a series of unsophisticatedbounds and waggings of the tail, which gradually removed Sophy'sapprehensions, and laid the foundation for that intimate friendship whichis the natural relation between child and dog. 

"And how did you come by him?" asked Sophy; "and is this really the--theINVESTMENT?"

"Shut the door carefully, but see first that the woman is not listening. Lie down, sir, there, at the feet of the young lady. Good dog! How didI come by him? I will tell you. The first day we arrived at the villagewhich we have just left I went into the tobacconist's. While I wasbuying my ounce of canaster that dog entered the shop. In his mouth wasa sixpence wrapped in paper. He lifted himself on his hind legs, andlaid his missive on the counter. The shopwoman--you know her, Mrs. Traill--unfolded the paper and read the order. 'Clever dog that, sir, 'said she. 'To fetch and carry?' said I, indifferently. 'More than that, sir; you shall see. The order is for two penn'orth of snuff. The dogknows he is to take back fourpence. I will give him a pennyshort. ' So she took the sixpence and gave the dog threepence out of it. The dog shook his head and looked gravely into her face. 'That's allyou'll get, ' said she. The dog shook his head again, and tapped his pawonce on the counter, as much as to say, 'I'm not to be done: a pennymore, if you please. ' 'If you'll not take that, you shall have nothing, 'said Mrs. Traill, and she took back the threepence. "

"Dear! and what did the dog do then, --snarl or bite?" "Not so; he knewhe was in his rights, and did not lower himself by showing bad temper. The dog looked quietly round, saw a basket which contained two or threepounds of candles lying in a corner for the shop boy to take to somecustomer; took up the basket in his mouth, and turned tail, as much as tosay, 'Tit for tat then. ' He understood, you see, what is called 'the lawof reprisals. ' 'Come back this moment, ' cried Mrs. Traill. The dogwalked out of the shop; then she ran after him, and counted the fourpencebefore him, on which he dropped the basket, picked up the right change, and went off demurely. 'To whom does that poodle belong?' said I. 'To apoor drunken man, ' said Mrs. Traill; 'I wish it was in better hands. ''So do I, ma'am, ' answered I; 'did he teach it?' 'No, it was taught byhis brother, who was an old soldier, and died in his house two weeks ago. It knows a great many tricks, and is quite young. It might make afortune as a show, sir. ' So I was thinking. I inquired the owner'saddress, called on him, and found him disposed to sell the dog. But heasked L3, a sum that seemed out of the question then. Still I kept thedog in my eye; called every day to make friends with it, and ascertainits capacities. And at last, thanks to you, Sophy, I bought the dog; andwhat is more, as soon as I had two golden sovereigns to show, I got himfor that sum, and we have still L1. Left (besides small savings from ourlost salaries) to go to the completion of his education, and theadvertisement of his merits. I kept this a secret from Merle, --from all. I would not even let the drunken owner know where I took the dog toyesterday. I brought him here, where, I learned in the village, therewere two rooms to let, locked him up, and my story is told. "

"But why keep it such a secret?"

"Because I don't want Rugge to trace us. He might do one a mischief;because I have a grand project of genteel position and high prices forthe exhibition of that dog. And why should it be known where we comefrom, or what we were? And because, if the owner knew where to find thedog, he might decoy it back from us. Luckily he had not made the dog sofond of him but what, unless it be decoyed, it will accustom itself tous. And now I propose that we should stay a week or so here, and devoteourselves exclusively to developing the native powers of this giftedcreature. Get out the dominos. "

"What is his name?"

"Ha! that is the first consideration. What shall be his name?"

"Has he not one already?"

"Yes, --trivial and unattractive, --Mop! In private life it might pass. But in public life--give a dog a bad name and hang him. Mop, indeed!"

Therewith Mop, considering himself appealed to, rose and stretchedhimself. 

"Right, " said Gentleman Waife; "stretch yourself--you decidedly requireit. "

CHAPTER V. 

 Mop becomes a personage. --Much thought is bestowed on the verbal dignities, without which a personage would become a mop. --The importance of names is apparent in all history. --If Augustus had called himself king, Rome would have risen against him as a Tarquin; so he remained a simple equestrian, and modestly called himself Imperator. --Mop chooses his own title in a most mysterious manner, and ceases to be Mop. 

"The first noticeable defect in your name of Mop, " said Gentleman Waife, "is, as you yourself denote, the want of elongation. Monosyllables arenot imposing, and in striking compositions their meaning is elevated byperiphrasis; that is to say, Sophy, that what before was a short truth, an elegant author elaborates into a long stretch. "

"Certainly, " said Sophy, thoughtfully; "I don't think the name of Mopwould draw! Still he is very like a mop. "

"For that reason the name degrades him the more, and lowers him from anintellectual phenomenon to a physical attribute, which is vulgar. I hopethat that dog will enable us to rise in the scale of being. For whereaswe in acting could only command a threepenny audience--reserved seats ashilling--he may aspire to half-crowns and dress-boxes; that is, if wecan hit on a name which inspires respect. Now, although the dog is big, it is not by his size that he is to become famous, or we might call himHercules or Goliath; neither is it by his beauty, or Adonis would not beunsuitable. It is by his superior sagacity and wisdom. And there I ampuzzled to find his prototype amongst mortals; for, perhaps, it may be myignorance of history--"

"You ignorant, indeed, Grandfather!"

"But considering the innumerable millions who have lived on the earth, itis astonishing how few I can call to mind who have left behind them aproverbial renown for wisdom. There is, indeed, Solomon, but he fell offat the last; and as he belongs to sacred history, we must not take aliberty with his name. Who is there very, very wise, besides Solomon?Think, Sophy, --Profane History. "

Sophy (after a musing pause). --"Puss in Boots. "

"Well, he was wise; but then he was not human; he was a cat. Ha!Socrates. Shall we call him Socrates, Socrates, Socrates?"

SOPHY. --"Socrates, Socrates!" Mop yawned. 

WAIFE. --"He don't take to Socrates, --prosy!"

SOPHY. --"Ah, Mr. Merle's book about the Brazen Head, Friar Bacon! Hemust have been very wise. "

WAIFE. --"Not bad; mysterious, but not recondite; historical, yetfamiliar. What does Mop say to it? Friar, Friar, Friar Bacon, sir, --Friar!"

SOPHY (coaxingly). --"Friar!"

Mop, evidently conceiving that appeal is made to some other personage, canine or human, not present, rouses up, walks to the door, smells at thechink, returns, shakes his head, and rests on his haunches, eying his twofriends superciliously. 

SOPHY. --"He does not take to that name. "

WAIFE. --"He has his reasons for it; and indeed there are many worthypersons who disapprove of anything that savours of magical practices. Mop intimates that on entering public life one should beware of offendingthe respectable prejudices of a class. "

Mr. Waife then, once more resorting to the recesses of scholastic memory, plucked therefrom, somewhat by the head and shoulders, sundry namesreverenced in a by-gone age. He thought of the seven wise men of Greece, but could only recall the nomenclature of two out of the--even, --a sadproof of the distinction between collegiate fame and popular renown. Hecalled Thales; he called Bion. Mop made no response. "Wonderfulintelligence!" said Waife; "he knows that Thales and Bion would notdraw!--obsolete. "

Mop was equally mute to Aristotle. He pricked up his cars at Plato, perhaps because the sound was not wholly dissimilar from that of Ponto, --a name of which he might have had vague reminiscences. The Romans nothaving cultivated an original philosophy, though they contrived toproduce great men without it, Waife passed by that perished people. Hecrossed to China, and tried Confucius. Mop had evidently never heard ofhim. 

"I am at the end of my list, so far as the wise men are concerned, " saidWaife, wiping his forehead. "If Mop were to distinguish himself byvalour, one would find heroes by the dozen, --Achilles, and Hector, andJulius Caesar, and Pompey, and Bonaparte, and Alexander the Great, andthe Duke of Marlborough. Or, if he wrote poetry, we could fit him to ahair. But wise men certainly are scarce, and when one has hit on a wiseman's name it is so little known to the vulgar that it would carry nomore weight with it than Spot or Toby. But necessarily some name the dogmust have, and take to sympathetically. "

Sophy meanwhile had extracted the dominos from Waife's bundle, and withthe dominos an alphabet and a multiplication-table in printed capitals. As the Comedian's one eye rested upon the last, he exclaimed, "But afterall, Mop's great strength will probably be in arithmetic, and the scienceof numbers is the root of all wisdom. Besides, every man, high and low, wants to make a fortune, and associations connected with addition andmultiplication are always pleasing. Who, then, is the sage atcomputation most universally known? Unquestionably Cocker! He must taketo that, Cocker, Cocker" (commandingly), --"C-o-c-k-e-r" (with persuasivesweetness). 

Mop looked puzzled; he put his head first on one side, then on the other. 

SOPHY (with mellifluous endearment). --"Cocker, good Cocker; Cocker dear!"

BOTH. --"Cocker, Cocker, Cocker!"

Excited and bewildered, Mop put up his head, and gave vent to hisperplexities in a long and lugubrious howl, to which certainly none whoheard it could have desired addition or multiplication. 

"Stop this instant, sir, --stop; I shoot you! You are dead, --down!"Waife adjusted his staff to his shoulder gun-wise; and at the word ofcommand, "Down, " Mop was on his side, stiff and lifeless. "Still, " saidWaife, "a name connected with profound calculation would be the mostappropriate; for instance, Sir Isaac--"

Before the. Comedian could get out the word Newton, Mop had sprung tohis four feet, and, with wagging tail and wriggling back, evinced a senseof beatified recognition. 

"Astounding!" said Waife, rather awed. "Can it be the name?Impossible. Sir Isaac, Sir Isaac!"

"Bow-wow!" answered Mop, joyously. 

"If there be any truth in the doctrine of metempsychosis, " falteredGentleman Waife, "if the great Newton could have transmigrated into thatincomparable animal! Newton, Newton!" To that name Mop made noobeisance, but, evidently still restless, walked round the room, smellingat every corner, and turning to look back with inquisitive earnestness athis new master. 

"He does not seem to catch at the name of Newton, " said Waife, trying itthrice again, and vainly, "and yet he seems extremely well versed in theprinciple of gravity. Sir Isaac!" The dog bounded towards him, put hispaws on his shoulder, and licked his face. "Just cut out those figurescarefully, my dear, and see if we can get him to tell us how much twiceten are--I mean by addressing him as Sir Isaac. "

Sophy cut the figures from the multiplication table, and arranged them, at Waife's instruction, in a circle on the floor. "Now, Sir Isaac. " Moplifted a paw, and walked deliberately round the letters. "Now, SirIsaac, how much are ten times two?" Mop deliberately made his survey andcalculation, and, pausing at twenty, stooped, and took the letters in hismouth. 

"It is not natural, " cried Sophy, much alarmed. "It must be wicked, andI'd rather have nothing to do with it, please. "

"Silly child! He was but obeying my sign. He had been taught that trickalready under the name of Mop. The only strange thing is, that he shoulddo it also under the name of Sir Isaac, and much more cheerfully too. However, whether he has been the great Newton or not, a live dog isbetter than a dead lion. But it is clear that, in acknowledging the nameof Sir Isaac, he does not encourage us to take that of Newton; and he isright: for it might be thought unbecoming to apply to an animal, howeverextraordinary, who by the severity of fortune is compelled to exhibit histalents for a small pecuniary reward, the family name of so great aphilosopher. Sir Isaac, after all, is a vague appellation; any dog has aright to be Sir Isaac--Newton may be left conjectural. Let us see if wecan add to our arithmetical information. Look at me, Sir Isaac. " SirIsaac looked and grinned affectionately; and under that title learned anew combination with a facility that might have relieved Sophy's mind ofall superstitious belief that the philosopher was resuscitated in thedog, had she known that in life that great master of calculations themost abstruse could not accurately cast up a simple sum in addition. Nothing brought him to the end of his majestic tether like dot and carryone. Notable type of our human incompleteness, where men might deem ourstudies had made us most complete! Notable type, too, of that grandestorder of all human genius which seems to arrive at results by intuition, which a child might pose by a row of figures on a slate, while it issolving the laws that link the stars to infinity! But /revenons a nosmoutons/, what was the astral attraction that incontestably bound thereminiscences of Mop to the cognominal distinction of Sir Isaac? I hadprepared a very erudite and subtle treatise upon this query, enlivened byquotations from the ancient Mystics, --such as Iamblicus and Proclus, --aswell as by a copious reference to the doctrine of the more modernSpiritualists, from Sir Kenelm Digby and Swedenborg, to Monsieur Cahagnetand Judge Edwards. It was to be called Inquiry into the Law ofAffinities, by Philomopsos: when, unluckily for my treatise, I arrived atthe knowledge of a fact which, though it did not render the treatise lesscurious, knocked on the head the theory upon which it was based. Thebaptismal name of the old soldier, Mop's first proprietor and earliestpreceptor, was Isaac; and his master being called in the homely householdby that Christian name, the sound had entered into Mop's youngest andmost endeared associations. His canine affections had done much towardsripening his scholastic education. "Where is Isaac?" "Call Isaac!""Fetch Isaac his hat, " etc. Stilled was that name when the old soldierdied; but when heard again, Mop's heart was moved, and in missing the oldmaster, he felt more at home with the new. As for the title, "Sir, " itwas a mere expletive in his ears. Such was the fact, and such thededuction to be drawn from it. Not that it will satisfy every one. Iknow that philosophers who deny all that they have not witnessed, andrefuse to witness what they resolve to deny, will reject the story intoto; and will prove, by reference to their own dogs, that a dog neverrecognizes the name of his master, --never yet could be taught arithmetic. I know also that there are Mystics who will prefer to believe that Mopwas in direct spiritual communication with unseen Isaacs, or in a stateof clairvoyance, or under the influence of the odic fluid. But did weever yet find in human reason a question with only one side to it? Isnot truth a polygon? Have not sages arisen in our day to deny even theprinciple of gravity, for which we bad been so long contentedly takingthe word of the great Sir Isaac? It is that blessed spirit ofcontroversy which keeps the world going; and it is that which, perhaps, explains why Mr. Waife, when his memory was fairly put to it, couldremember, out of the history of the myriads who have occupied our planetfrom the date of Adam to that in which I now write, so very few men whomthe world will agree to call wise, and out of that very few so scant apercentage with names sufficiently known to make them more popularlysignificant of pre-eminent sagacity than if they had been called--Mops. 

CHAPTER VI. 

 The vagrant having got his dog, proceeds to hunt fortune with it, leaving behind him a trap to catch rats. --What the trap does catch is "just like his luck. "

Sir Isaac, to designate him by his new name, improved much uponacquaintance. He was still in the ductile season of youth, and tookto learning as an amusement to himself. His last master, a stupid sot, had not gained his affections; and perhaps even the old soldier, thoughgratefully remembered and mourned, had not stolen into his innermostheart, as Waife and Sophy gently contrived to do. In short, in a veryfew days he became perfectly accustomed and extremely attached to them. When Waife had ascertained the extent of his accomplishments, and addedsomewhat to their range in matters which cost no great trouble, heapplied himself to the task of composing a little drama which might bringthem all into more interesting play, and in which though Sophy andhimself were performers the dog had the premier role. And as soon asthis was done, and the dog's performances thus ranged into methodicalorder and sequence, he resolved to set off to a considerable town at somedistance, and to which Mr. Rugge was no visitor. 

His bill at the cottage made but slight inroad into his pecuniaryresources; for in the intervals of leisure from his instructions to SirIsaac, Waife had performed various little services to the lone widow withwhom they lodged, which Mrs. Saunders (such was her name) insisted uponregarding as money's worth. He had repaired and regulated to a minute anold clock which had taken no note of time for the last three years; hehad mended all the broken crockery by some cement of his own invention, and for which she got him the materials. And here his ingenuity wasremarkable, for when there was only a fragment to be found of a cup and afragment or two of a saucer, he united them both into some pretty form, which, if not useful, at all events looked well on a shelf. He bound, insmart showy papers, sundry tattered old books which had belonged to hislandlady's defunct husband, a Scotch gardener, and which she displayed ona side table, under the japan tea-tray. More than all, he was of serviceto her in her vocation; for Mrs. Saunders eked out a small pension--whichshe derived from the affectionate providence of her Scotch husband, ininsuring his life in her favour--by the rearing and sale of poultry; andWaife saved her the expense of a carpenter by the construction of a newcoop, elevated above the reach of the rats, who had hitherto made sadravage amongst the chickens; while he confided to her certain secrets inthe improvement of breed and the cheaper processes of fattening, whichexcited her gratitude no less than her wonder. "The fact is, " saidGentleman Waife, "that my life has known makeshifts. Once, in a foreigncountry, I kept poultry, upon the principle that the poultry should keepme. "

Strange it was to notice such versatility of invention, such readiness ofresource, such familiarity with divers nooks and crannies in thepractical experience of life, in a man now so hard put to it for alivelihood. There are persons, however, who might have a good stock oftalent, if they did not turn it all into small change. And you, reader, know as well as I do, that when a sovereign or a shilling is once brokeninto, the change scatters and dispends itself in a way quiteunaccountable. Still coppers are useful in household bills; and whenWaife was really at a pinch, somehow or other, by hook or by crook, hescraped together intellectual halfpence enough to pay his way. 

Mrs. Saunders grew quite fond of her lodgers. Waife she regarded as aprodigy of genius; Sophy was the prettiest and best of children. SirIsaac, she took for granted, was worthy of his owners. But the Comediandid not confide to her his dog's learning, nor the use to which hedesigned to put it. And in still greater precaution, when he took hisleave, he extracted from Mrs. Saunders a solemn promise that she wouldset no one on his track in case of impertinent inquiries. 

"You see before you, " said he, "a man who has enemies, such as rats areto your chickens: chickens despise rats when raised, as yours are now, above the reach of claws and teeth. Some day or other I may so raise acoop for that little one: I am too old for coops. Meanwhile, if a ratcomes sneaking here after us, send it off the wrong way, with a flea inits ear. "

Mrs. Saunders promised, between tears and laughter; blessed Waife, kissedSophy, patted Sir Isaac, and stood long at her threshold watching thethree, as the early sun lit their forms receding in the narrow greenlane, --dewdrops sparkling on the hedgerows, and the skylark springingupward from the young corn. 

Then she slowly turned indoors, and her home seemed very solitary. Wecan accustom ourselves to loneliness, but we should beware of infringingthe custom. Once admit two or three faces seated at your hearthside, orgazing out from your windows on the laughing sun, and when they are gone, they carry off the glow from your grate and the sunbeam from your panes. Poor Mrs. Saunders! in vain she sought to rouse herself, to put the roomsto rights, to attend to the chickens to distract her thoughts. The one-eyed cripple, the little girl, the shaggy-faced dog, still haunted her;and when at noon she dined all alone off the remnants of the last night'ssocial supper, the very click of the renovated clock seemed to say, "Gone, gone;" and muttering, "Ah! gone, " she reclined back on her chair, and indulged herself in a good womanlike cry. From this luxury she wasstartled by a knock at the door. "Could they have come back?" No; thedoor opened, and a genteel young man, in a black coat and whiteneckcloth, stepped in. 

"I beg your pardon, ma'am--your name 's Saunders--sell poultry?"

"At your service, sir. Spring chickens?" Poor people, whatever theirgrief, must sell their chickens, if they have any to sell. 

"Thank you, ma'am; not at this moment. The fact is, that I call to makesome inquiries Have not you lodgers here?"

Lodgers! at that word the expanding soul of Mrs. Saunders reclosedhermetically; the last warning of Waife revibrated in her ears this whiteneckclothed gentleman, was he not a rat?

"No, sir, I ha'n't no lodgers. "

"But you have had some lately, eh? a crippled elderly man and a littlegirl. "

"Don't know anything about them; leastways, " said Mrs. Saunders, suddenlyremembering that she was told less to deny facts than to send inquirersupon wrong directions, " leastways, at this blessed time. Pray, sir, whatmakes you ask?"

"Why, I was instructed to come down to ------, and find out where thisperson, one William Waife, had gone. Arrived yesterday, ma'am. All Icould hear is, that a person answering to his description left the placeseveral days ago, and had been seen by a boy, who was tending sheep, tocome down the lane to your house, and you were supposed to have lodgers(you take lodgers sometimes, I think, ma'am), because you had been buyingsome trifling articles of food not in your usual way of custom. Circumstantial evidence, ma'am: you can have no motive to conceal thetruth. "

"I should think not indeed, sir, " retorted Mrs. Saunders, whom theominous words "circumstantial evidence" set doubly on her guard. "I didsee a gentleman such as you mention, and a pretty young lady, about tendays agone, or so, and they did lodge here a night or two, but they aregone to--"

"Yes, ma'am, --gone where?"

"Lunnon. "

"Really--very likely. By the train or on foot?"

"On foot, I s'pose. "

"Thank you, ma'am. If you should see them again, or hear where they are, oblige me by conveying this card to Mr. Waife. My employer, ma'am, Mr. Gotobed, Craven Street, Strand, --eminent solicitor. He has something ofimportance to communciate to Mr. Waife. "

"Yes, sir, --a lawyer; I understand. " And as of all ratlike animals inthe world Mrs. Saunders had the ignorance to deem a lawyer was the mostemphatically devouring, she congratulated herself with her whole heart onthe white lies she had told in favour of the intended victims. 

The black-coated gentleman having thus obeyed his instructions andattained his object, nodded, went his way, and regained the fly which hehad left at the turnstile. "Back to the inn, " cried he, "quick: I mustbe in time for the three o'clock train to London. "

And thus terminated the result of the great barrister's firstinstructions to his eminent solicitor to discover a lame man and a littlegirl. No inquiry, on the whole, could have been more skilfullyconducted. Mr. Gotobed sends his head clerk; the head clerk employs thepoliceman of the village; gets upon the right track; comes to the righthouse; and is altogether in the wrong, --in a manner highly creditable tohis researches. 

"In London, of course: all people of that kind come back to London, " saidMr. Gotobed. "Give me the heads in writing, that I may report to mydistinguished client. Most satisfactory. That young man will push hisway, --businesslike and methodical. "

CHAPTER VII. 

 The cloud has its silver lining. 

Thus turning his back on the good fortune which he had so carefullycautioned Mrs. Saunders against favouring on his behalf, the vagrant wasnow on his way to the ancient municipal town of Gatesboro', which, beingthe nearest place of fitting opulence and population, Mr. Waife hadresolved to honour with the debut of Sir Isaac as soon as he hadappropriated to himself the services of that promising quadruped. He had consulted a map of the county before quitting Mr. Merle's roof, and ascertained that he could reach Gatesboro' by a short cut for foot-travellers along fields and lanes. He was always glad to avoid the highroad: doubtless for such avoidance he had good reasons. But prudentialreasons were in this instance supported by vagrant inclinations. Highroads are for the prosperous. By-paths and ill-luck go together. Butby-paths have their charm, and ill-luck its pleasant moments. 

They passed then from the high road into a long succession of greenpastures, through which a straight public path conducted them into one ofthose charming lanes never seen out of this bowery England, --a lane deepsunk amidst high banks with overhanging oaks, and quivering ash, gnarledwych-elm, vivid holly and shaggy brambles, with wild convolvulus andcreeping woodbine forcing sweet life through all. Sometimes the banksopened abruptly, leaving patches of green sward, and peeps through stillsequestered gates, or over moss-grown pales, into the park or paddock ofsome rural thane. New villas or old manor-houses on lawny uplands, knitting, as it were, together England's feudal memories with England'sfreeborn hopes, --the old land with its young people; for England is soold, and the English are so young! And the gray cripple and the bright-haired child often paused, and gazed upon the demesnes and homes ofowners whose lots were cast in such pleasant places. But there was nogrudging envy in their gaze; perhaps because their life was too remotefrom those grand belongings. And therefore they could enjoy and possessevery banquet of the eye. For at least the beauty of what we see is oursfor the moment, on the simple condition that we do not covet the thingwhich gives to our eyes that beauty. As the measureless sky and theunnumbered stars are equally granted to king and to beggar; and in ourwildest ambition we do not sigh for a monopoly of the empyrean, or thefee-simple of the planets: so the earth too, with all its fenced gardensand embattled walls, all its landmarks of stern property and churlishownership, is ours too by right of eye. Ours to gaze on the fairpossessions with such delight as the gaze can give; grudging to theunseen owner his other, and, it may be, more troubled rights, as littleas we grudge an astral proprietor his acres of light in Capricorn. Benignant is the law that saith, "Thou shalt not covet. "

When the sun was at the highest our wayfarers found a shadowy nook fortheir rest and repast. Before them ran a shallow limpid trout-stream;on the other side its margin, low grassy meadows, a farmhouse in thedistance, backed by a still grove, from which rose a still church towerand its still spire. Behind them, a close-shaven sloping lawn terminatedthe hedgerow of the lane; seen clearly above it, with parterres offlowers on the sward, drooping lilacs and laburnums farther back, and apervading fragrance from the brief-lived and rich syringas. The cripplehad climbed over a wooden rail that separated the lane from the rill, andseated himself under the shade of a fantastic hollow thorn-tree. Sophy, reclined beside him, was gathering some pale scentless violets from amound which the brambles had guarded from the sun. The dog had descendedto the waters to quench his thirst, but still stood knee-deep in theshallow stream, and appeared lost in philosophical contemplation of aswarm of minnows, which his immersion had disturbed, but which now madeitself again visible on the farther side of the glassy brook, undulatinground and round a tiny rocklet which interrupted the glide of the waves, and caused them to break into a low melodious murmur. "For these and allthy mercies, O Lord, make us thankful, " said the victim of ill-luck, inthe tritest words of a pious custom. But never, perhaps, at aldermanicfeasts was the grace more sincerely said. 

And then he untied the bundle, which the dog, who had hitherto carried itby the way, had now carefully deposited at his side. "As I live, "ejaculated Waife, "Mrs. Saunders is a woman in ten thousand. See, Sophy, not contented with the bread and cheese to which I bade her stint herbeneficence, a whole chicken, --a little cake too for you, Sophy; she hasnot even forgotten the salt. Sophy, that woman deserves the handsomesttoken of our gratitude; and we will present her with a silver teapot thefirst moment we can afford it. "

His spirits exhilarated by the unexpected good cheer, the Comedian gaveway to his naturally blithe humour; and between every mouthful he rattledor rather drolled on, now infant-like, now sage-like. He cast out therays of his liberal humour, careless where they fell, --on the child, onthe dog, on the fishes that played beneath the wave, on the cricket thatchirped amidst the grass; the woodpecker tapped the tree, and thecripple's merry voice answered it in bird-like mimicry. To this riot ofgenial babble there was a listener, of whom neither grandfather norgrandchild was aware. Concealed by thick brushwood a few paces fartheron, a young angler, who might be five or six and twenty, had seatedhimself, just before the arrival of our vagrant to those banks andwaters, for the purpose of changing an unsuccessful fly. At the sound ofvoices, perhaps suspecting an unlicensed rival, for that part of thestream was preserved, --he had suspended his task, and noiselessly putaside the clustering leaves to reconnoitre. The piety of Waife's simplegrace seemed to surprise him pleasingly, for a sweet approving smilecrossed his lips. He continued to look and to listen. He forgot thefly, and a trout sailed him by unheeded. But Sir Isaac, having probablysatisfied his speculative mind as to the natural attributes of minnows, now slowly reascended the bank, and after a brief halt and a sniff, walked majestically towards the hidden observer, looked at him with greatsolemnity, and uttered an inquisitive bark, --a bark not hostile, notmenacing; purely and dryly interrogative. Thus detected, the anglerrose; and Waife, whose attention was directed that way by the bark, sawhim, called to Sir Isaac, and said politely, "There is no harm in my dog, sir. "

The young man muttered some inaudible reply, and, lifting up his rod asin sign of his occupation or excuse for his vicinity, came out from theintervening foliage, and stepped quietly to Waife's side. Sir Isaacfollowed him, sniffed again, seemed satisfied; and seating himself on hishaunches, fixed his attention upon the remains of the chicken which laydefenceless on the grass. The new comer was evidently of the rank ofgentleman; his figure was slim and graceful, his face pale, meditative, refined. He would have impressed you at once with the idea of what hereally was, --an Oxford scholar; and you would perhaps have guessed himdesigned for the ministry of the Church, if not actually in orders. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

 Mr. Waife excites the admiration, and benignly pities the infirmity, of an Oxford scholar. 

"You are str-str-strangers?" said the Oxonian, after a violent exertionto express himself, caused by an impediment in his speech. 

WAIFE. --"Yes, sir, travellers. I trust we are not trespassing: this isnot private ground, I think?"

OXONIAN. --"And if-f-f-f--it were, my f-f-father would not war-n-n youoff-ff--f. "

"Is it your father's ground, then? Sir, I beg you a thousand pardons. "

The apology was made in the Comedian's grandest style: it imposed greatlyon the young scholar. Waife might have been a duke in disguise; but Iwill do the angler the justice to say that such discovery of rank wouldhave impressed him little more in the vagrant's favour. It had been thatimpromptu "grace"--that thanksgiving which the scholar felt was forsomething more than the carnal food--which had first commanded hisrespect and wakened his interest. Then that innocent careless talk--partuttered to dog and child, part soliloquized, part thrown out to the earsof the lively teeming Nature--had touched a somewhat kindred chord in theangler's soul; for he was somewhat of a poet and much of a soliloquist, and could confer with Nature, nor feel that impediment in speech whichobstructed his intercourse with men. Having thus far indicated that oraldefect in our new acquaintance, the reader will cheerfully excuse me fornot enforcing it over much. Let it be among the things /subaudita/, asthe sense of it gave to a gifted and aspiring nature, thwarted in thesublime career of Preacher, an exquisite mournful pain. And I no morelike to raise a laugh at his infirmity behind his back, than I shouldbefore his pale, powerful, melancholy face; therefore I suppress theinfirmity in giving the reply. 

OXONIAN. --" On the other side the lane, where the garden slopes downward, is my father's house. This ground is his property certainly, but he putsit to its best use, in lending it to those who so piously acknowledgethat Father from whom all good comes. Your child, I presume, sir?"

"My grandchild. "

"She seems delicate: I hope you have not far to go?"

"Not very far, thank you, sir. But my little girl looks more delicatethan she is. You are not tired, darling?"

"Oh, not at all!" There was no mistaking the looks of real loveinterchanged between the old man and the child; the scholar felt muchinterested and somewhat puzzled. 

"Who and what could they be? so unlike foot wayfarers!" On the otherhand, too, Waife took a liking to the courteous young man, and conceiveda sincere pity for his physical affliction. But he did not for thosereasons depart from the discreet caution he had prescribed to himself inseeking new fortunes and shunning old perils, so he turned the subject. 

"You are an angler, sir? I suppose the trout in the stream run small?"

"Not very: a little higher up I have caught them at four pounds weight. "

WAIFE. --"There goes a fine fish yonder, --see! balancing himself betweenthose weeds. "

OXONIAN. --"Poor fellow, let him be safe to-day. After all, it is a cruelsport, and I should break myself of it. But it is strange that whateverour love for Nature we always seek some excuse for trusting ourselvesalone to her. A gun, a rod, a sketch-book, a geologist's hammer, anentomologist's net, a something. "

WAIFE. --"Is it not because all our ideas would run wild if notconcentrated on a definite pursuit? Fortune and Nature are earnestfemales, though popular beauties; and they do not look upon coquettishtriflers in the light of genuine wooers. "

The Oxonian, who, in venting his previous remark, had thought it likelyhe should be above his listener's comprehension, looked surprised. Whatpursuits, too, had this one-eyed philosopher?

"You have a definite pursuit, sir?"

"I--alas! when a man moralizes, it is a sign that he has known error: itis because I have been a trifler that I rail against triflers. Andtalking of that, time flies, and we must be off and away. "

Sophy re-tied the bundle. Sir Isaac, on whom, meanwhile, she hadbestowed the remains of the chicken, jumped up and described a circle. 

"I wish you success in your pursuit, whatever it be, " stuttered out theangler. 

"And I no less heartily, sir, wish you success in yours. "

"Mine! Success there is beyond my power. "

"How, sir? Does it rest so much with others?"

"No, my failure is in myself. My career should be the Church, my pursuitthe cure of souls, and--and--this pitiful infirmity! How can I speak theDivine Word--I--I--a stutterer!"

The young man did not pause for an answer, but plunged through thebrushwood that bespread the banks of the rill, and his hurried path couldbe traced by the wave of the foliage through which he forced his way. 

"We all have our burdens, " said Gentleman Waife, as Sir Isaac took up thebundle and stalked on, placid and refreshed. 

CHAPTER IX. 

 The nomad, entering into civilized life, adopts its arts, shaves his poodle, and puts on a black coat. --Hints at the process by which a Cast-off exalts himself into a Take-in. 

At twilight they stopped at a quiet inn within eight miles of Gatesboro'. Sophy, much tired, was glad to creep to bed. Waife sat up long afterher; and, in preparation for the eventful morrow, washed and shaved SirIsaac. You would not have known the dog again; he was dazzling. NotUlysses, rejuvenated by Pallas Athene, could have been more changed forthe better. His flanks revealed a skin most daintily mottled; his tailbecame leonine, with an imperial tuft; his mane fell in long curls likethe beard of a Ninevite king; his boots were those of a courtier in thereign of Charles II. ; his eyes looked forth in dark splendour from lockswhite as the driven snow. This feat performed, Waife slept the sleep ofthe righteous, and Sir Isaac, stretched on the floor beside the bed, licked his mottled flanks and shivered: "/il faut souffrir pour etrebeau/. " Much marvelling, Sophy the next morning beheld the dog; but, before she was up, Waife had paid the bill and was waiting for her onthe road, impatient to start. He did not heed her exclamation, halfcompassionate, half admiring; he was absorbed in thought. Thus theyproceeded slowly on till within two miles of the town, and then Waifeturned aside, entered a wood, and there, with the aid of Sophy, put thedog upon a deliberate rehearsal of the anticipated drama. The dog wasnot in good spirits, but he went through his part with mechanicalaccuracy, though slight enthusiasm. 

"He is to be relied upon, in spite of his French origin, " said Waife. "All national prejudice fades before the sense of a common interest. And we shall always find more genuine solidity of character in a Frenchpoodle than in an English mastiff, whenever a poodle is of use to us andthe mastiff is not. But oh, waste of care! oh, sacrifice of time toempty names! oh, emblem of fashionable education! It never struck mebefore, --does it not, child though thou art, strike thee now, --by thenecessities of our drama, this animal must be a French dog?"

"Well, Grandfather?"

"And we have given him an English name! Precious result of our ownscholastic training, taught at preparatory academies precisely that whichavails us naught when we are to face the world! What is to be done?Unlearn him his own cognomen, --teach him another name, --too late, toolate. We cannot afford the delay. "

"I don't see why he should be called any name at all. He observes yoursigns just as well without. "

"If I had but discovered that at the beginning. Pity! Such a fine nametoo. Sir Isaac! /Vanitas vanitatum!/ What desire chiefly kindles theambitious? To create a name, perhaps bequeath a title, --exalt into SirIsaacs a progeny of slops! And, after all, it is possible (let us hopeit in this instance) that a sensible young dog may learn his letters andshoulder his musket just as well, though all the appellations by whichhumanity knows him be condensed into a pitiful monosyllable. Nevertheless (as you will find when you are older), people are obliged inpractice to renounce for themselves the application of those rules whichthey philosophically prescribe for others. Thus, while I grant that achange of name for that dog is a question belonging to the policy of Ifsand Buts, commonly called the policy of Expediency, about which one maydiffer from others and one's own self every quarter of an hour, a changeof name for me belongs to the policy of Must and Shall; namely the policyof Necessity, against which let no dog bark, --though I have known dogshowl at it! William Waife is no more: he is dead; he is buried; and evenJuliet Araminta is the baseless fabric of a vision. "

Sophy raised inquiringly her blue guileless eyes. 

"You see before you a man who has used up the name of Waife, and who onentering the town of Gatesboro' becomes a sober, staid, and respectablepersonage, under the appellation of Chapman. You are Miss Chapman. Rugge and his Exhibition 'leave not a wrack behind. '"

Sophy smiled, and then sighed, --the smile for her grandfather's gayspirits; wherefore the sigh? Was it that some instinct in that fresh, loyal nature revolted from the thought of these aliases, which, ifrequisite for safety, were still akin to imposture? If so, poor child, she had much yet to set right with her conscience! All I can say is, that after she had smiled she sighed. And more reasonably might a readerask his author to subject a zephyr to the microscope than a female's sighto analysis. 

"Take the dog with you, my dear, back into the lane; I will join you in afew minutes. You are neatly dressed, and, if not, would look so. I, inthis old coat, have the air of a pedler, so I will change it, and enterthe town of Gatesboro' in the character of--a man whom you will soon seebefore you. Leave those things alone, de-Isaacized Sir Isaac! Followyour mistress, --go!"

Sophy left the wood, and walked on slowly towards the town, with her handpensively resting on Sir Isaac's head. In less than ten minutes she wasjoined by Waife, attired in respectable black; his hat and shoes wellbrushed; a new green shade to his eye; and with his finest air of /Perenoble/. He was now in his favourite element. HE WAS ACTING: call it notimposture. Was Lord Chatham an impostor when he draped his flannels intothe folds of the toga, and arranged the curls of his wig so as to addmore sublime effect to the majesty of his brow and the terrors of itsnod? And certainly, considering that Waife, after all, was but aprofessional vagabond, considering all the turns and shifts to which hehas been put for bread and salt, the wonder is, not that he is full ofstage tricks and small deceptions, but that he has contrived to retain atheart so much childish simplicity. When a man for a series of years hasonly had his wits to live by, I say not that he is necessarily a rogue, --he may be a good fellow; but you can scarcely expect his code of honourto be precisely the same as Sir Philip Sidney's. Homer expresses throughthe lips of Achilles that sublime love of truth which even in thoseremote times was the becoming characteristic of a gentleman and asoldier. But then, Achilles is well off during his whole life, which, though distinguished, is short. On the other hand Ulysses, who is sorelyput to it, kept out of his property in Ithaca, and, in short, living onhis wits, is not the less befriended by the immaculate Pallas because hiswisdom savours somewhat of stage trick and sharp practice. And as toconvenient aliases and white fibs, where would have been the use of hiswits, if Ulysses had disdained such arts, and been magnanimously munchedup by Polyphemus? Having thus touched on the epic side of Mr. Waife'scharacter with the clemency due to human nature, but with the cautionrequired by the interests of society, permit him to resume a "duplexcourse, " sanctioned by ancient precedent, but not commended to modernimitation. 

Just as our travellers neared the town, the screech of a railway whistleresounded towards the right, --a long train rushed from the jaws of atunnel and shot into the neighbouring station. 

"How lucky!" exclaimed Waife; "make haste, my dear!"

Was he going to take the train? Pshaw! he was at his journey's end. He was going to mix with the throng that would soon stream through thosewhite gates into the town; he was going to purloin the respectableappearance of a passenger by the train. And so well did he act the partof a bewildered stranger just vomited forth into unfamiliar places by oneof those panting steam monsters, --so artfully, amidst the busycompetition of nudging elbows, over-bearing shoulders, and theimpedimenta of carpet-bags, portmanteaus, babies in arms, and shin-assailing trucks, did he look round, consequentially, on the /qui vive/, turning his one eye, now on Sophy, now on Sir Isaac, and griping hisbundle to his breast as if he suspected all his neighbours to be Thugs, condottieri, and swellmob, --that in an instant fly-men, omnibus drivers, cads, and porters marked him for their own. "Gatesboro' Arms, " "SpreadEagle, " "Royal Hotel, " "Saracen's Head; very comfortable, centre of HighStreet, opposite the Town Hall, "--were shouted, bawled, whispered, orwhined into his ear. 

"Is there an honest porter?" asked the Comedian, piteously. An Irishmanpresented himself. "And is it meself can serve your honour?"--"Take thisbundle, and walk on before me to the High Street. "--"Could not I take thebundle, Grandfather? The man will charge so much, " said the prudentSophy. "Hush! you indeed!" said the Pere Noble, as if addressing anexiled Altesse royale, --"you take a bundle--Miss--Chapman!"

They soon gained the High Street. Waife examined the fronts of thevarious inns which they passed by with an eye accustomed to decipher thephysiognomy of hostelries. The Saracen's Head pleased him, though itsimposing size daunted Sophy. He arrested the steps of the porter, "Follow me close, " and stepped across the open threshold into the bar. The landlady herself was there, portly and imposing, with an auburntoupet, a silk gown, a cameo brooch, and an ample bosom. 

"You have a private sitting-room, ma'am?" said the Comedian, lifting hishat. There are so many ways of lifting a hat, -for instance, the way forwhich Louis XIV. Was so renowned. But the Comedian's way on the presentoccasion rather resembled that of the late Duke of B--------, not quiteroyal, but as near to royalty as becomes a subject. He added, recoveringhis head, --"And on the first floor?" The landlady did not courtesy, butshe bowed, emerged from the bar, and set foot on the broad stairs; then, looking back graciously, her eyes rested on Sir Isaac, who had stalkedforth in advance and with expansive nostrils sniffed. She hesitated. "Your dog, sir! shall Boots take it round to the stables?"

"The stables, ma'am--the stables, my dear, " turning to Sophy, with asmile more ducal than the previous bow; "what would they say at home ifthey heard that noble animal was consigned to-stables? Ma'am, my dog ismy companion, and as much accustomed to drawing-rooms as I am myself. "Still the landlady paused. The dog might be accustomed to drawing-rooms, but her drawing-room was not accustomed to dogs. She had just laid downa new carpet. And such are the strange and erratic affinities in nature, such are the incongruous concatenations in the cross-stitch of ideas, that there are associations between dogs and carpets, which, if wrongfulto the owners of dogs, beget no unreasonable apprehensions in theproprietors of carpets. So there stood the landlady, and there stood thedog! and there they might be standing to this day had not the Comediandissolved the spell. "Take up my effects again, " said he, turning to theporter; "doubtless they are more habituated to distinguish between dogand dog at the Royal Hotel. "

The landlady was mollified in a moment. Nor was it only the rivalriesthat necessarily existed between the Saracen's Head and the Royal Hotelthat had due weight with her. A gentleman who could not himself deign tocarry even that small bundle must be indeed a gentleman! Had he comewith a portmanteau--even with a carpet-bag--the porter's service wouldhave been no evidence of rank; but accustomed as she was chiefly togentlemen engaged in commercial pursuits, it was new to her experience, --a gentleman with effects so light, and hands so aristocraticallyhelpless. Herein were equally betokened the two attributes of birth andwealth; namely, the habit of command and the disdain of shillings. Avague remembrance of the well-known story how a man and his dog hadarrived at the Granby Hotel, at Harrowgate, and been sent away roomlessto the other and less patrician establishment, because, while he had adog, he had not a servant; when, five minutes after such dismissal, camecarriages and lackeys and an imperious valet, asking for his grace theDuke of A--------, who had walked on before with his dog, and who, oh, everlasting thought of remorse! had been sent away to bring the otherestablishment into fashion, --a vague reminiscence of that story, I say, flashed upon the landlady's mind, and she exclaimed, "I only thought, sir, you might prefer the stables; of course, it is as you please. Thisway, sir. He is a fine animal, indeed, and seems mild. "

"You may bring up the bundle, porter, " quoth the Pere Noble. "Take myarm, my dear; these steps are very steep. "

The landlady threw open the door of a handsome sitting-room, --her best:she pulled down the blinds to shut out the glare of the sun; thenretreating to the threshold awaited further orders. 

"Rest yourself, my dear, " said the Actor, placing Sophy on a couch withthat tender respect for sex and childhood which so specially belongs tothe high-bred. "The room will do, ma'am. I will let you know laterwhether we shall require beds. As to dinner, I am not particular, --a cutlet, a chicken, what you please, at seven o'clock. Stay, I beg yourpardon for detaining you, but where does the Mayor live?"

"His private residence is a mile out of the town, but his counting-houseis just above the Town Hall, --to the right, sir. "

"Name?"

"Mr. Hartopp!"

"Hartopp! Ah! to be sure! Hartopp. His political opinions, I think, are" (ventures at a guess) "enlightened?"

LANDLADY. --"Very much so, sir. Mr. Hartopp is highly respected. "

WAIFE. --"The chief municipal officer of a town so thriving--fine shopsand much plate glass--must march with the times. I think I have heardthat Mr. Hartopp promotes the spread of intelligence and the propagationof knowledge. "

LANDLADY (rather puzzled). --"I dare say, sir. The Mayor takes greatinterest in the Gatesboro' Athemeum and Literary Institute. "

WAIFE. --"Exactly what I should have presumed from his character andstation. I will detain you no longer, ma'am" (ducal bow). The landladydescended the stairs. Was her guest a candidate for the representationof the town at the next election? March with the times!--spread ofintelligence! All candidates she ever knew had that way of expressingthemselves, --"March" and "Spread. " Not an address had parliamentaryaspirant put forth to the freemen and electors of Gatesboro' but what"March" had been introduced by the candidate, and "Spread" been suggestedby the committee. Still she thought that her guest, upon the whole, looked and bowed more like a member of the Upper House, --perhaps one ofthe amiable though occasionally prosy peers who devote the teeth ofwisdom to the cracking of those very hard nuts, "How to educate themasses, " "What to do with our criminals, " and such like problems, uponwhich already have been broken so many jawbones tough as that with whichSamson slew the Philistines. 

"Oh, Grandfather!" sighed Sophy, "what are you about? We shall beruined, you, too, who are so careful not to get into debt. And what havewe left to pay the people here?"

"Sir Isaac! and THIS!" returned the Comedian, touching his forehead. "Donot alarm yourself: stay here and repose; and don't let Sir Isaac out ofthe room on any account!"

He took off his hat, brushed the nap carefully with his sleeve, replacedit on his head, --not jauntily aside, not like a jeune premier, but withequilateral brims, and in composed fashion, like a /pere noble/; then, making a sign to Sir Isaac to rest quiet, be passed to the door; there hehalted, and turning towards Sophy, and, meeting her wistful eyes, hisown eye moistened. "Ah!" he murmured, "Heaven grant I may succeed now, for if I do, then you shall indeed be a little lady!"

He was gone. 

CHAPTER X. 

 Showing with what success Gentleman Waife assumes the pleasing part of friend to the enlightenment of the age and the progress of the people. 

On the landing-place, Waife encountered the Irish porter, who, havingleft the bundle in the drawing-room, was waiting patiently to be paid forhis trouble. 

The Comedian surveyed the good-humoured shrewd face, on every line ofwhich was writ the golden maxim, "Take things asy. " "I beg your pardon, my friend; I had almost forgotten you. Have you been long in this town?"

"Four years, and long life to your honour!"

"Do you know Mr. Hartopp, the Mayor?"

"Is it his worship the Mayor? Sure and it is the Mayor as has made a mano' Mike Callaghan. "

The Comedian evinced urbane curiosity to learn the history of thatprocess, and drew forth a grateful tale. Four summers ago Mike hadresigned the "first gem of the sea" in order to assist in making hay fora Saxon taskmaster. 

Mr. Hartopp, who farmed largely, had employed him in that ruraloccupation. Seized by a malignant fever, Mr. Hartopp had helped himthrough it, and naturally conceived a liking for the man he helped. Thus, as Mike became convalescent, instead of passing the poor man backto his own country, which at that time gave little employment to thesurplus of its agrarian population beyond an occasional shot at aparson, --an employment, though animated, not lucrative, he exercisedMike's returning strength upon a few light jobs in his warehouse; andfinally, Mike marrying imprudently the daughter of a Gatesboro'operative, Mr. Hartopp set him up in life as a professional messengerand porter, patronized by the Corporation. The narrative made it evidentthat Mr. Hartopp was a kind and worthy man, and the Comedian's heartwarmed towards him. 

"An honour to our species, this Mr. Hartopp!" said Waife, striking hisstaff upon the floor; "I covet his acquaintance. Would he see you if youcalled at his counting-house?"

Mike replied in the affirmative with eager pride. "Mr. Hartopp would seehim at once. Sure, did not the Mayor know that time was money? Mr. Hartopp was not a man to keep the poor waiting. "

"Go down and stay outside the hall door; you shall take a note for me tothe Mayor. "

Waife then passed into the bar, and begged the favour of a sheet of note-paper. The landlady seated him at her own desk, and thus wrote theComedian:

 "Mr. Chapman presents his compliments to the Mayor of Gatesboro', and requests the Honour of a very short interview. Mr. Chapman's deep interest in the permanent success of those literary institutes which are so distinguished a feature of this enlightened age, and Mr. Mayor's well-known zeal in the promotion of those invaluable societies, must be Mr. Chapman's excuse for the liberty he ventures to take in this request. Mr. C. May add that of late he has earnestly directed his attention to the best means of extracting new uses from those noble but undeveloped institutions. 

 "Saracens Head, &c. "

This epistle, duly sealed and addressed, Waife delivered to the care ofMike Callaghan; and simultaneously he astounded that functionary with noless a gratuity than half a crown. Cutting short the fervent blessingswhich this generous donation naturally called forth, the Comedian said, with his happiest combination of suavity and loftiness, "And should theMayor ask you what sort of person I am, --for I have not the honour to beknown to him, and there are so many adventurers about, that he mightreasonably expect me to be one, perhaps you can say that I don't looklike a person he need be afraid to admit. You know a gentleman by sight!Bring back an answer as soon as may be; perhaps I sha'n't stay long inthe town. You will find me in the High Street, looking at the shops. "

The porter took to his legs, impatient to vent his overflowing heart uponthe praises of this munificent stranger. A gentleman, indeed! Mikeshould think so! If Mike's good word with the Mayor was worth money, Gentleman Waife had put his half-crown out upon famous interest. 

The Comedian strolled along the High Street, and stopped before astationer's shop, at the window of which was displayed a bill, entitled, GATESBORO' ATHENIEUM AND LITERARY INSTITUTE. 

 LECTURE ON CONCHOLOGY. 

 BY PROFESSOR LONG. Author of "Researches into the Natural History of Limpets. "

Waife entered the shop, and lifted his hat, --"Permit me, sir, to look atthat hand-bill. "

"Certainly, sir; but the lecture is over; you can see by the date: itcame off last week. We allow the bills of previous proceedings at ourAthenaeum to be exposed at the window till the new bills are prepared, --keeps the whole thing alive, sir. "

"Conchology, " said the Comedian, "is a subject which requires deepresearch, and on which a learned man may say much without fear ofcontradiction. But how far is Gatesboro' from the British Ocean?"

"I don't know exactly, sir, --a long way. "

"Then, as shells are not familiar to the youthful remembrances of yourfellow-townsmen, possibly the lecturer may have found an audience ratherselect than numerous. "

"It was a very attentive audience, sir, and highly respectable: MissGrieve's young ladies' (the genteelest seminary in the town) attended. "

WAIFE. --"Highly creditable to the young ladies. But, pardon me, is yourAthenaeum a Mechanics' institute?"

SHOPMAN. --"It was so called at first. But, somehow or other, the mereoperatives fell off, and it was thought advisable to change the word'Mechanics' into the word 'Literary. ' Gatesboro' is not a manufacturingtown, and the mechanics here do not realize the expectations of thattaste for abstract science on which the originators of these societiesfounded their--"

WAIFE (insinuatingly interrupting). --"Their calculations of intellectualprogress and their tables of pecuniary return. Few of these societies, I am told, are really self-supporting: I suppose Professor Long is!--andif he resides in Gatesboro', and writes on limpets, he is probably a manof independent fortune. "

SHOPMAN. --"Why, sir, the professor was engaged from London, --five guineasand his travelling expenses. The funds of the society could ill affordsuch outlay; but we have a most worthy mayor, who, assisted by hisforeman, Mr. Williams, our treasurer, is, I may say, the life and soulof the institute. "

"A literary man himself, your mayor?"

The shopman smiled. "Not much in that way, sir; but anything toenlighten the working classes. This is Professor Long's great work uponlimpets, two vols. Post octavo. The Mayor has just presented it to thelibrary of the institute. I was cutting the leaves when you came in. "

"Very prudent in you, sir. If limpets were but able to read printedcharacter in the English tongue, this work would have more interest forthem than the ablest investigations upon the political and social historyof man. But, " added the Comedian, shaking his head mournfully, "thehuman species is not testaceous; and what the history of man might be toa limpet, the history of limpets is to a man. " So saying, Mr. Waifebought a sheet of cardboard and some gilt foil, relifted his hat, andwalked out. 

The shopman scratched his head thoughtfully; he glanced from his windowat the form of the receding stranger, and mechanically resumed the taskof cutting those leaves, which, had the volumes reached the shelves ofthe library uncut, would have so remained to the crack of doom. 

Mike Callaghan now came in sight, striding fast; "Mr. Mayor sends hislove--bother-o'-me--his respex; and will be happy to see your honour. "

In three minutes more the Comedian was seated in a little parlour thatadjoined Mr. Hartopp's counting-house, --Mr. Hartopp seated also, vis-a-vis. The Mayor had one of those countenances upon which good-naturethrows a sunshine softer than Claude ever shed upon canvas. JosiahHartopp had risen in life by little other art than that of quietkindliness. As a boy at school, he had been ever ready to do a good turnto his school-fellows; and his school-fellows at last formed themselvesinto a kind of police, for the purpose of protecting Jos. Hartopp's penceand person from the fists and fingers of each other. He was evidently soanxious to please his master, not from fear of the rod, but the desire tospare that worthy man the pain of inflicting it, that he had more troubletaken with his education than was bestowed on the brightest intellectthat school ever reared; and where other boys were roughly flogged, Jos. Hartopp was soothingly patted on the head, and told not to be cast down, but try again. The same even-handed justice returned the sugared chaliceto his lips in his apprenticeship to an austere leather-seller, who, notbearing the thought to lose sight of so mild a face, raised him intopartnership, and ultimately made him his son-in-law and residuarylegatee. Then Mr. Hartopp yielded to the advice of friends who desiredhis exaltation, and from a leather-seller became a tanner. Hidesthemselves softened their asperity to that gentle dealer, and melted intogolden fleeces. He became rich enough to hire a farm for health andrecreation. He knew little of husbandry, but he won the heart of abailiff who might have reared a turnip from a deal table. Gradually thefarm became his fee-simple, and the farmhouse expanded into a villa. Wealth and honours flowed in from a brimmed horn. The surliest man inthe town would have been ashamed of saying a rude thing to Jos. Hartopp. If he spoke in public, though he hummed and hawed lamentably, no one wasso respectfully listened to. As for the parliamentary representation ofthe town, he could have returned himself for one seat and Mike Callaghanfor the other, had he been so disposed. But he was too full of the milkof humanity to admit into his veins a drop from the gall of party. Hesuffered others to legislate for his native land, and (except on oneoccasion when he had been persuaded to assist in canvassing, not indeedthe electors of Gatesboro', but those of a distant town in which hepossessed some influence, on behalf of a certain eminent orator) Jos. Hartopp was only visible in politics whenever Parliament was to bepetitioned in favour of some humane measure, or against a tax that wouldhave harassed the poor. 

If anything went wrong with him in his business, the whole town combinedto set it right for him. Was a child born to him, Gatesboro' rejoiced asa mother. Did measles or scarlatina afflict his neighbourhood, the firstanxiety of Gatesboro' was for Mr. Hartopp's nursery. No one would havesaid Mrs. Hartopp's nursery; and when in such a department the man's namesupersedes the woman's, can more be said in proof of the tenderness heexcites? In short, Jos. Hartopp was a notable instance of a truth notcommonly recognized; namely, that affection is power, and that, if you domake it thoroughly and unequivocally clear that you love your neighbours, though it may not be quite so well as you love yourself, --still, cordially and disinterestedly, you will find your neighbours much betterfellows than Mrs. Grundy gives them credit for, --but always provided thatyour talents be not such as to excite their envy, nor your opinions suchas to offend their prejudices. 

MR. HARTOPP. --"You take an interest, you say, in literary institutes, andhave studied the subject?"

THE COMEDIAN. --"Of late, those institutes have occupied my thoughts asrepresenting the readiest means of collecting liberal ideas into aprofitable focus. "

MR. HARTOPP. --"Certainly it is a great thing to bring classes together infriendly union. "

THE COMEDIAN. --"For laudable objects. "

MR. HARTOPP. --"To cultivate their understandings. "

THE COMEDIAN. --"To warm their hearts. "

MR. HARTOPP. --"To give them useful knowledge. "

THE COMEDIAN. --"And pleasurable sensations. "

MR. HARTOPP. --"In a word, to instruct them. "

THE COMEDIAN. --"And to amuse. "

"Eh!" said the Mayor, --"amuse!"

Now, every one about the person of this amiable man was on the constantguard to save him from the injurious effects of his own benevolence; andaccordingly his foreman, hearing that he was closeted with a stranger, took alarm, and entered on pretence of asking instructions about an orderfor hides, in reality, to glower upon the intruder, and keep his master'shands out of imprudent pockets. 

Mr. Hartopp, who, though not brilliant, did not want for sense, andwas a keener observer than was generally supposed, divined the kindlyintentions of his assistant. "A gentleman interested in the Gatesboro'Athenaeum. My foreman, sir, --Mr. Williams, the treasurer of ourinstitute. Take a chair, Williams. "

"You said to amuse, Mr. Chapman, but--"

"You did not find Professor Long on conchology amusing. "

"Why, " said the Mayor, smiling blandly, "I myself am not a man ofscience, and therefore his lecture, though profound, was a little dryto me. "

"Must it not have been still more dry to your workmen, Mr. Mayor?"

"They did not attend, " said Williams. "Up-hill task we have to securethe Gatesboro' mechanics, when anything really solid is to be addressedto their understandings. "

"Poor things, they are so tired at night, " said the Mayor, compassionately; "but they wish to improve themselves, and they takebooks from the library. "

"Novels, " quoth the stern Williams: "it will be long before they take outthat valuable 'History of Limpets. "

"If a lecture were as amusing as a novel, would not they attend it?"asked the Comedian. 

"I suppose they would, " returned Mr. Williams. "But our object is toinstruct; and instruction, sir--"

"Could be made amusing. If, for instance, the lecturer could produce alive shell-fish, and, by showing what kindness can do towards developingintellect and affection in beings without soul, --make man himself morekind to his fellow-man?"

Mr. Williams laughed grimly. "Well, sir!"

"This is what I should propose to do. "

"With a shell-fish!" cried the Mayor. 

"No, sir; with a creature of nobler attributes, --A DOG!"

The listeners stared at each other like dumb animals as Waife continued, -"By winning interest for the individuality of a gifted quadruped, Ishould gradually create interest in the natural history of its species. I should lead the audience on to listen to comparisons with other membersof the great family which once associated with Adam. I should lay thefoundation for an instructive course of natural history, and fromvertebrated mammifers who knows but we might gradually arrive at thenervous system of the molluscous division, and produce a sensation by theproduction of a limpet?"

"Theoretical, " said Mr. Williams. 

"Practical, sir; since I take it for granted that the Athenaeum, atpresent, is rather a tax upon the richer subscribers, including Mr. Mayor. "

"Nothing to speak of, " said the mild Hartopp. Williams looked towardshis master with unspeakable love, and groaned. "Nothing indeed--oh!"

"These societies should be wholly self-supporting, " said the Comedian, "and inflict no pecuniary loss upon Mr. Mayor. "

"Certainly, " said Williams, "that is the right principle. Mr. Mayorshould be protected. "

"And if I show you how to make these societies self-supporting--"

"We should be very much obliged to you. "

"I propose, then, to give an exhibition at your rooms. " Mr. Williamsnudged the Mayor, and coughed, the Comedian not appearing to remark coughnor nudge. 

"Of course gratuitously. I am not a professional lecturer, gentlemen. "

Mr. Williams looked charmed to hear it. 

"And when I have made my first effort successful, as I feel sure it willbe, I will leave it to you, gentlemen, to continue my undertaking. But Icannot stay long here. If the day after to-morrow--"

"That is our ordinary soiree night, " said the Mayor. "But you said adog, sir, --dogs not admitted, -eh, Williams?"

MR. WILLIAMS. --"A mere by-law, which the subcommittee can suspend ifnecessary. But would not the introduction of a live animal be lessdignified than--"

"A dead failure, " put in the Comedian, gravely. The Mayor would havesmiled, but he was afraid of doing so lest he might hurt the feelings ofMr. Williams, who did not seem to take the joke. 

"We are a purely intellectual body, " said the latter gentleman, "and adog--"

"A learned dog, I presume, " observed the Mayor. 

MR. WILLIAMS (nodding). --"Might form a dangerous precedent for theintroduction of other quadrupeds. We might thus descend even to thelevel of a learned pig. We are not a menagerie, Mr. --Mr. --"

"Chapman, " said the Mayor, urbanely. 

"Enough, " said the Comedian, rising with his grand air; "if I consideredmyself at liberty, gentlemen, to say who and what I am, you would be surethat I am not trifling with what I consider a very grave and importantsubject. As to suggesting anything derogatory to the dignity of science, and the eminent repute of the Gatesboro' Athenaeum, it would be idle tovindicate myself. These gray hairs are--"

He did not conclude that sentence, save by a slight wave of the hand. The two burgesses bowed reverentially, and the Comedian went on, --

"But when you speak of precedent, Mr. Williams, allow me to refer you toprecedents in point. Aristotle wrote to Alexander the Great for animalsto exhibit to the Literary Institute of Athens. At the colleges in Egyptlectures were delivered on a dog called Anubis, as inferior, I boldlyassert, to that dog which I have referred to, as an Egyptian College toa British Institute. The ancient Etrurians, as is shown by the eruditeSchweighduser in that passage--you understand Greek, I presume, Mr. Williams?"

Mr. Williams could not say he did. 

THE COMEDIAN. --"Then I will not quote that passage in Schweighauser uponthe Molossian dogs in general, and the dog of Alcibiades in particular. But it proves beyond a doubt, that, in every ancient literary institute, learned dogs were highly estimated; and there was even a philosophicalAcademy called the Cynic, --that is, Doggish, or Dog-school, of whichDiogenes was the most eminent professor. He, you know, went about with alantern looking for an honest man, and could not find one! Why? Becausethe Society of Dogs had raised his standard of human honesty to animpracticable height. But I weary you; otherwise I could lecture on inthis way for the hour together, if you think the Gatesboro' operativesprefer erudition to amusement. "

"A great scholar, " whispered Mr. Williams. --Aloud: "and I've nothing tosay against your precedents, sir. I think you have made out that part ofthe case. But, after all, a learned dog is not so very uncommon as to bein itself the striking attraction which you appear to suppose. "

"It is not the mere learning of my dog of which I boast, " replied theComedian. "Dogs may be learned, and men too; but it is the way thatlearning is imparted, whether by dog or man, for the edification of themasses, in order, as Pope expresses himself, 'to raise the genius and tomend the heart' that alone adorns the possessor, exalts the species, interests the public, and commands the respect of such judges as I seebefore me. " The grand bow. 

"Ah!" said Mr. Williams, hesitatingly, "sentiments that do honour toyour head and heart; and if we could, in the first instance, just see thedog privately. "

"'Nothing easier!" said the Comedian. "Will you do me the honour tomeet him at tea this evening?"

"Rather will you not come and take tea at my house?" said the Mayor, with a shy glance towards Mr. Williams. 

THE COMEDIAN. --"You are very kind; but my time is so occupied that I havelong since made it a rule to decline all private invitations out of myown home. At my years, Mr. Mayor, one may be excused for taking leave ofsociety and its forms; but you are comparatively young men. I presume onthe authority of these gray hairs, and I shall expect you this evening, --say at nine o'clock. " The Actor waved his hand graciously andwithdrew. 

"A scholar AND a gentleman, " said Williams, emphatically. And the Mayor, thus authorized to allow vent to his kindly heart, added, "A humourist, and a pleasant one. Perhaps he is right, and our poor operatives wouldthank us more for a little innocent amusement than for those lectures, which they may be excused for thinking rather dull, since even you fellasleep when Professor Long got into the multilocular shell of the veryfirst class of cephalous mollusca; and it is my belief that harmlesslaughter has a good moral effect upon the working class, --only don'tspread it about that I said so, for we know excellent persons of aserious turn of mind whose opinions that sentiment might shock. "

CHAPTER XI. 

 HISTORICAL PROBLEM: "Is Gentleman Waife a swindler or a man of genius?" ANSWER: "Certainly a swindler, if he don't succeed. " Julius Caesar owed two millions when he risked the experiment of being general in Gaul. If Julius Caesar had not lived to cross the Rubicon and pay off his debts, what would his creditors have called Julius Caesar?

I need not say that Mr. Hartopp and his foreman came duly to tea, but theComedian exhibited Sir Isaac's talents very sparingly, --just enough toexcite admiration without sating curiosity. Sophy, whose pretty face andwell-bred air were not unappreciated, was dismissed early to bed by asign from her grandfather, and the Comedian then exerted his powers toentertain his visitors, so that even Sir Isaac was soon forgotten. Hardtask, by writing, to convey a fair idea of this singular vagrant'spleasant vein. It was not so much what he said as the way of saying it, which gave to his desultory talk the charm of humour. He had certainlyseen an immense deal of life somehow or other; and without appearing atthe time to profit much by observation, without perhaps being himselfconscious that he did profit, there was something in the very/enfantillage/ of his loosest prattle, by which, with a glance of theone lustrous eye and a twist of the mobile lip, he could convey theimpression of an original genius playing with this round world of ours--tossing it up, catching it again--easily as a child plays with its party-coloured ball. His mere book-knowledge was not much to boast of, thoughearly in life he must have received a fair education. He had asmattering of the ancient classics, sufficient, perhaps, to startlethe unlearned. If he had not read them, he had read about them; and atvarious odds and ends of his life he had picked up acquaintance with thepopular standard modern writers. But literature with him was thesmallest stripe in the party-coloured ball. Still it was astonishing howfar and wide the Comedian could spread the sands of lore that the windshad drifted round the door of his playful, busy intellect. Where, forinstance, could he ever have studied the nature and prospects ofMechanics' Institutes? and yet how well he seemed to understand them. Here, perhaps, his experience in one kind of audience helped him to thekey to all miscellaneous assemblages. In fine, the man was an actor; andif he had thought fit to act the part of Professor Long himself, he wouldhave done it to the life. 

The two burghers had not spent so pleasant an evening for many years. Asthe clock struck twelve, the Mayor, whose gig had been in waiting a wholehour to take him to his villa, rose reluctantly to depart. 

"And, " said Williams, "the bills must be out to-morrow. What shall weadvertise?"

"The simpler the better, " said Waife; "only pray head the performancewith the assurance that it is under the special patronage of his worshipthe Mayor. "

The Mayor felt his breast swell as if he had received some overwhelmingpersonal obligation. 

"Suppose it run thus, " continued the Comedian, --"Illustrations fromDomestic Life and Natural History, with LIVE examples: PART FIRST--THEDOG!"

"It will take, " said the Mayor: "dogs are such popular animals!"

"Yes, " said Williams; "and though for that very reason some might thinkthat by the 'live example of a dog' we compromised the dignity of theInstitute, still the importance of Natural History--"

"And, " added the Comedian, "the sanctifying influences of domesticlife--"

"May, " concluded Mr. Williams, "carry off whatever may seem to the higherorder of minds a too familiar attraction in the--dog!"

"I do not fear the result, " said Waife, "provided the audience besufficiently numerous; for that (which is an indispensable condition to afair experiment) I issue hand-bills, only where distributed by theMayor. "

"Don't be too sanguine. I distributed bills on behalf of Professor Long, and the audience was not numerous. How ever, I will do my best. Isthere nothing more in which I can be of use to you, Mr. Chapman?"

"Yes, later. " Williams took alarm, and approached the Mayor's breast-pocket protectingly. The Comedian withdrew him aside and whispered, "Iintend to give the Mayor a little outline of the exhibition, and bringhim into it, in order that his fellow-townsmen may signify their regardfor him by a cheer; it will please his good heart, and be touching, you'll see--mum!" Williams shook the Comedian by the hand, relieved, affected, and confiding. 

The visitors departed; and the Comedian lighted his hand-candlestick, whistled to Sir Isaac, and went to bed without one compunctious thoughtupon the growth of his bill and the deficit in his pockets. And yet itwas true, as Sophy implied, that the Comedian had an honest horror ofincurring debt. He generally thought twice before he risked owing eventhe most trifling bill; and when the bill came in, if it left himpenniless, it was paid. And, now, what reckless extravagance! The bestapartments! dinner, tea, in the first hotel of the town! half-a-crown toa porter! That lavish mode of life renewed with the dawning sun! not acare for the morrow; and I dare not conjecture how few the shillings inthat purse. What aggravation, too, of guilt! Bills incurred withoutmeans under a borrowed name! I don't pretend to be a lawyer; but itlooks to me very much like swindling. Yet the wretch sleeps. But are wesure that we are not shallow moralists? Do we carry into account theright of genius to draw bills upon the Future? Does not the most prudentgeneral sometimes burn his ships? Does not the most upright merchantsometimes take credit on the chance of his ventures? May not thatpeaceful slumberer be morally sure that he has that argosy afloat in hisown head, which amply justifies his use of the "Saracen's"? If his planshould fail? He will tell you that is impossible! But if it shouldfail, you say. Listen; there runs a story-I don't vouch for its truth:I tell it as it was told to me--there runs a storv that in the lateRussian war a certain naval veteran, renowned for professional daring andscientific invention, was examined before some great officials as to thechances of taking Cronstadt. "If you send me, " said the admiral, "withso many ships of the line, and so many gunboats, Cronstadt of course willbe taken. " "But, " said a prudent lord, "suppose it should not be taken?""That is impossible: it must be taken!" "Yes, " persisted my lord, "youthink so, no doubt; but still, if it should not be taken, --what then?""What then?--why, there's an end of the British fleet!" The great mentook alarm, and that admiral was not sent. But they misconstrued themeaning of his answer. He meant not to imply any considerable danger tothe British fleet. He meant to prove that one hypothesis was impossibleby the suggestion of a counter-impossibility more self-evident. "It isimpossible but what I shall take Cronstadt!" "But if you don't take it!""It is impossible but what I shall take it; for if I don't take it, there's an end of the British fleet; and as it is impossible that thereshould be an end of the British fleet, it is impossible that I should nottake Cronstadt!"--Q. E. D. 

CHAPTER XII. 

 In which everything depends on Sir Isaac's success in discovering the law of attraction. 

On the appointed evening, at eight o'clock, the great room of theGatesboro' Athenaeum was unusually well filled. Not only had the Mayorexerted himself to the utmost for that object, but the hand-bill itselfpromised a rare relief from the prosiness of abstract enlightenment andelevated knowledge. Moreover, the stranger himself had begun to excitespeculation and curiosity. He was an amateur, not a cut-and-dryprofessor. The Mayor and Mr. Williams had both spread the report thatthere was more in him than appeared on the surface; prodigiously learned, but extremely agreeable, fine manners, too!--Who could he be? WasChapman his real name? etc. 

The Comedian had obtained permission to arrange the room beforehand. He had the raised portion of it for his stage, and he had been fortunateenough to find a green curtain to be drawn across it. From behind thisscreen he now emerged and bowed. The bow redoubled the firstconventional applause. He then began a very short address, --extremelywell delivered, as you may suppose, but rather in the conversational thanthe oratorical style. He said it was his object to exhibit theintelligence of that Universal Friend of Man, the Dog, in some mannerappropriate, not only to its sagacious instincts, but to its affectionatenature, and to convey thereby the moral that talents, however great, learning, however deep, were of no avail, unless rendered serviceable toMan. (Applause. ) He must be pardoned then, if, in order to effect thisobject, he was compelled to borrow some harmless effects from the stage. In a word, his dog could represent to them the plot of a little drama. And he, though he could not say that he was altogether unaccustomed topublic speaking (here a smile, modest, but august as that of some famousparliamentary orator who makes his first appearance at a vestry), stillwholly new to its practice in the special part he had undertaken, wouldrely on their indulgence to efforts aspiring to no other merit than thatof aiding the Hero of the Piece in a familiar illustration of thosequalities in which dogs might give a lesson to humanity. Again he bowed, and retired behind the curtain. A pause of three minutes! the curtaindrew up. Could that be the same Mr. Chapman whom the spectators beheldbefore them? Could three minutes suffice to change the sleek, respectable, prosperous-looking gentleman who had just addressed theminto that image of threadbare poverty and hunger-pinched dejection?Little aid from theatrical costume: the clothes seemed the same, only tohave grown wondrous aged and rusty. The face, the figure, the man, --these had undergone a transmutation beyond the art of the mere stagewardrobe, be it ever so amply stored, to effect. But for the patch overthe eye, you could not have recognized Mr. Chapman. There was, indeed, about him, still, an air of dignity; but it was the dignity of woe, --a dignity, too, not of an affable civilian, but of some veteran soldier. You could not mistake. Though not in uniform, the melancholy man musthave been a warrior! The way the coat was buttoned across the chest, theblack stock tightened round the throat, the shoulders thrown back in thedisciplined habit of a life, though the head bent forward in thedespondency of an eventful crisis, --all spoke the decayed but notignoble hero of a hundred fields. 

There was something foreign, too, about the veteran's air. Mr. Chapmanhad looked so thoroughly English: that tragical and meagre personagelooked so unequivocally French. 

Not a word had the Comedian yet said; and yet all this had the firstsight of him conveyed to the audience. There was an amazed murmur, thenbreathless stillness; the story rapidly unfolded itself, partly by words, much more by look and ac tion. There sat a soldier who had fought underNapoleon at Marengo and Austerlitz, gone through the snows of Muscovy, escaped the fires of Waterloo, --the soldier of the Empire! Wondrousideal of a wondrous time! and nowhere winning more respect and awe thanin that land of the old English foe, in which with slight knowledge ofthe Beautiful in Art, there is so reverent a sympathy for all that isgrand in Man! There sat the soldier, penniless and friendless, there, scarcely seen, reclined his grandchild, weak and slowly dying for thewant of food; and all that the soldier possesses wherewith to buy breadfor the day, is his cross of the Legion of Honour. It was given to himby the hand of the Emperor: must he pawn or sell it? Out on the pomp ofdecoration which we have substituted for the voice of passionate natureon our fallen stage! Scenes so faithful to the shaft of a column, --dresses by which an antiquary can define a date to a year! Is delusionthere? Is it thus we are snatched from Thebes to Athens? No; place areally fine actor on a deal board, and for Thebes and Athens you may hangup a blanket! Why, that very cross which the old soldier holds--awayfrom his sight--in that tremulous hand, is but patched up from the foiland cardboard bought at the stationer's shop. You might see it wasnothing more, if you tried to see. Did a soul present think of suchminute investigation? Not one. In the actor's hand that trumpery becameat once the glorious thing by which Napoleon had planted the sentiment ofknightly heroism in the men whom Danton would have launched upon earthruthless and bestial, as galley-slaves that had burst their chain. 

The badge, wrought from foil and cardboard, took life and soul: it begotan interest, inspired a pathos, as much as if it had been made--oh! notof gold and gems, but of flesh and blood. And the simple broken wordsthat the veteran addressed to it! The scenes, the fields, the hopes, theglories it conjured up! And now to be wrenched away, --sold to supplyMan's humblest, meanest wants, --sold--the last symbol of such a past!It was indeed "/propter vitam vivendi perdere causas/. " He would havestarved rather, --but the child? And then the child rose up and came intoplay. She would not suffer such a sacrifice, --she was not hungry, --shewas not weak; and when her voice failed her, she looked up into that ironface and smiled, --nothing but a smile. Outcame the pocket-handkerchiefs!The soldier seizes the cross, and turns away. It shall be sold! As heopens the door, a dog enters gravely, --licks his hand, approaches thetable, raises itself on its hind legs, surveys the table dolefully, shakes its head, whines, comes to its master, pulls him by the skirt, looks into his face inquisitively. 

What does all this mean? It soon comes out, and very naturally. The dogbelonged to an old fellow-soldier, who had gone to the Isle of France toclaim his share in the inheritance of a brother who had settled and diedthere, and who, meanwhile, had confided it to the care of our veteran, who was then in comparatively easy circumstances, since ruined by thefailure and fraud of a banker to whom he had intrusted his all; and hissmall pension, including the yearly sum to which his cross entitled him, had been forestalled and mortgaged to pay the petty debts which, relyingon his dividend from the banker, he had innocently incurred. The dog'sowner had been gone for months; his return might be daily expected. Meanwhile the dog was at the hearth, but the wolf at the door. Now, thissagacious animal had been taught to perform the duties of messenger andmajor-domo. At stated intervals he applied to his master for sous, andbrought back the supplies which the sous purchased. He now, as usual, came to the table for the accustomed coin--the last sou was gone, --thedog's occupation was at an end. But could not the dog be sold?Impossible: it was the property of another, --a sacred deposit; one wouldbe as bad as the fraudulent banker if one could apply to one's ownnecessities the property one holds in trust. These little biographicalparticulars came out in that sort of bitter and pathetic humour which astudy of Shakspeare, or the experience of actual life, had taught theComedian to be a natural relief to an intense sorrow. The dog meanwhileaided the narrative by his by-play. Still intent upon the sous, hethrust his nose into his master's pockets; he appealed touchingly to thechild, and finally put back his head and vented his emotion in alugubrious and elegiacal howl. Suddenly there is heard without the soundof a showman's tin trumpet! Whether the actor had got some obligingperson to perform on that instrument, or whether, as more likely, it wasbut a trick of ventriloquism, we leave to conjecture. At that note, anidea seemed to seize the dog. He ran first to his master, who was on thethreshold about to depart; pulled him back into the centre of the room:next he ran to the child, dragging her towards the same spot, though withgreat tenderness, and then, uttering a joyous bark, he raised himself onhis hind legs and, with incomparable solemnity, performed a minuet step!The child catches the idea from the dog. Was he not more worth seeingthan the puppet-show in the streets? might not people give money to seehim, and the old soldier still keep his cross? To-day there is a publicfete in the gardens yonder: that showman must be going thither; why notgo too? What! he the old soldier, --he stoop to show off a dog! he! he!The dog looked at him deprecatingly and stretched himself on the floor--lifeless. 

Yes, that is the alternative--shall his child die too, and he be tooproud to save her? Ah! and if the cross can be saved also! But pshaw!what did the dog know that people would care to see? Oh, much, much. When the child was alone and sad, it would come and play with her. Seethose old dominos! She ranged them on the floor, and the dog leaped upand came to prove his skill. Artfully, then, the Comedian had plannedthat the dog should make some sad mistakes, alternated by some marvelloussurprises. No, he would not do: yes, he would do. The audience took itseriously, and became intensely interested in the dog's success; so sorryfor his blunders, so triumphant in his lucky hits. And then the childcalmed the hasty irritable old man so sweetly, and corrected the dog sogently, and talked to the animal; told it how much they relied on it, andproduced her infant alphabet, and spelt out "Save us. " The dog looked atthe letters meditatively, and henceforth it was evident that he took morepains. Better and better; he will do, he will do! The child shall notstarve, the cross shall not be sold. Down drops the curtain. End of Act I. 

Act II. Opens with a dialogue spoken off the stage. Invisible dramatispersona, that subsist, with airy tongues, upon the mimetic art of theComedian. You understand that there is a vehement dispute going on. Thedog must not be admitted into a part of the gardens where a more refinedand exclusive section of the company have hired seats, in order tocontemplate, without sharing, the rude dances or jostling promenade ofthe promiscuous merry-makers. Much hubbub, much humour; some persons forthe dog, some against him; privilege and decorum here, equality andfraternity there. A Bonapartist colonel sees the cross on the soldier'sbreast, and, /mille tonnerres/! he settles the point. He pays for threereserved seats, --one for the soldier, one for the child, and a third forthe dog. The veteran enters, --the child, not strong enough to havepushed through the crowd, raised on his shoulder, Rolla-like; the dog ledby a string. He enters erect and warrior-like; his spirit has beenroused by contest; his struggles have been crowned by victory. But (andhere the art of the drama and the actor culminated towards the highestpoint)--but he now at once includes in the list of his dramatis personathe whole of his Gatesboro' audience. They are that select company intowhich he has thus forced his way. As he sees them seated before him, socalm, orderly, and dignified, /mauvaise honte/ steals over the breastmore accustomed to front the cannon than the battery of ladies' eyes. He places the child in a chair abashed and humbled; he drops into a seatbeside her shrinkingly; and the dog, with more self-possession and senseof his own consequence, brushes with his paw some imaginary dust from athird chair, as in the superciliousness of the well dressed, and thenseats himself, and looks round with serene audacity. 

The chairs were skilfully placed on one side of the stage, as close aspossible to the front row of the audience. The soldier ventures afurtive glance along the lines, and then speaks to his grandchild inwhispered, bated breath: "Now they are there, what are they come for?To beg? He can never have the boldness to exhibit an animal for sous, --impossible; no, no, let them slink back again and sell the cross. " Andthe child whispers courage; bids him look again along the rows; thosefaces seem very kind. He again lifts his eyes, glances round, and withan extemporaneous tact that completed the illusion to which the audiencewere already gently lending themselves, made sundry complimentarycomments on the different faces actually before him, selected mostfelicitously. The audience, taken by surprise, as some fair female, orkindly burgess, familiar to their associations, was thus pointed out totheir applause, became heartily genial in their cheers and laughter. And the Comedian's face, unmoved by such demonstrations, --so shy andsad, insinuated its pathos underneath cheer and laugh. You now learnedthrough the child that a dance, on which the company had been supposed tobe gazing, was concluded, and that they would not be displeased by aninterval of some other diversion. Now was the tune! The dog, as if toconvey a sense of the prevalent ennui, yawned audibly, patted the childon the shoulder, and looked up in her face. "A game of dominos, "whispered the little girl. The dog gleefully grinned assent. Timidlyshe stole forth the old dominos, and ranged them on the ground; on whichshe slipped from her chair, the dog slipped from his; they began to play. The experiment was launched; the soldier saw that the curiosity of thecompany was excited, that the show would commence, the sons follow; andas if he at least would not openly shame his service and his Emperor, heturned aside, slid his hand to his breast, tore away his cross, and hidit. Scarce a murmured word accompanied the action, the acting said all;and a noble thrill ran through the audience. Oh, sublime art of themime!

The Mayor sat very near where the child and dog were at play. TheComedian had (as he before implied he would do) discreetly prepared thatgentleman for direct and personal appeal. The little girl turned herblue eyes innocently towards Mr. Hartopp, and said, "The dog beats me, sir; will you try what you can do?"

A roar, and universal clapping of hands, amidst which the worthymagistrate stepped on the stage. At the command of its young mistressthe dog made the magistrate a polite bow, and straight to the game wentmagistrate and dog. From that time the interest became, as it were, personal to all present. "Will you come, sir, " said the child to a younggentleman, who was straining his neck to see how the dominos were played, "and observe that it is all fair? You, too, sir?" to Mr. Williams. TheComedian stood beside the dog, whose movements he directed withundetected skill, while appearing only to fix his eyes on the ground inconscious abasement. Those on the rows from behind now pressed forward;those in advance either came on the stage, or stood up intentlycontemplating. The Mayor was defeated, the crowd became too thick, andthe caresses bestowed on the dog seemed to fatigue him. He rose andretreated to a corner haughtily. "Manners, sir, " said the soldier; "itis not for the like of us to be proud; excuse him, ladies and gentlemen. "He only wishes to please all, " said the child, deprecatingly. "Say howmany would you have round us at a time, so that the rest may not beprevented seeing you. " She spread the multiplication figures before thedog; the dog put his paw on 10. "Astonishing!" said the Mayor. 

"Will you choose them yourself, sir?"

The dog nodded, walked leisurely round, keeping one eye towards the oneeye of his master and selected ten persons, amongst whom were the Mayor, Mr. Williams, and three pretty young ladies who had been induced toascend the stage. The others were chosen no less judiciously. 

The dog was then artfully led on from one accomplishment to another, much within the ordinary range which bounds the instruction of learnedanimals. He was asked to say how many ladies were on the stage: he speltthree. What were their names? "The Graces. " Then he was asked who wasthe first magistrate in the town. The dog made a bow to the Mayor. "What had made that gentleman first magistrate?" The dog looked to thealphabet and spelt "Worth. " "Were there any persons present morepowerful than the Mayor?" The dog bowed to the three young ladies. "What made them more powerful?" The dog spelt "Beauty. " When ended theapplause these answers received, the dog went through the musket exercisewith the soldier's staff; and as soon as he had performed that, he cameto the business part of the exhibition, seized the hat which his masterhad dropped on the ground, and carried it round to each person on thestage. They looked at one another. "He is a poor soldier's dog, " saidthe child, hiding her face. "No, no; a soldier cannot beg, " cried theComedian. The Mayor dropped a coin in the hat; others did the same oraffected to do it. The dog took the hat to his master, who waved himaside. There was a pause. The dog laid the hat softly at the soldier'sfeet, and looked up at the child beseechingly. "What, " asked she, raising her head proudly--"what secures WORTH and defends BEAUTY?" Thedog took up the staff and shouldered it. "And to what can the soldierlook for aid when he starves and will not beg?" The dog seemed puzzled, --the suspense was awful. "Good heavens, " thought the Comedian, "if thebrute should break down after all!--and when I took such care that thewords should lie undisturbed-right before his nose!" With a deep sighthe veteran started from his despondent attitude, and crept along thefloor as if for escape--so broken-down, so crestfallen. Every eye was onthat heartbroken face and receding figure; and the eye of thatheartbroken face was on the dog, and the foot of that receding figureseemed to tremble, recoil, start, as it passed by the alphabeticalletters which still lay on the ground as last arranged. "Ah! to whatshould he look for aid?" repeated the grandchild, clasping her littlehands. The dog had now caught the cue, and put his paw first upon"WORTH, " and then upon "BEAUTY. "

"Worth!" cried the ladies--"Beauty!" exclaimed the Mayor. "Wonderful, wonderful!"

"Take up the hat, " said the child, and turning to the Mayor--"Ah! tellhim, sir, that what Worth and Beauty give to Valour in distress is notalms but tribute. "

The words were little better than a hack claptrap; but the sweet voiceglided through the assembly, and found its way into every heart. 

"Is it so?" asked the old soldier, as his hand hoveringly passed abovethe coins. "Upon my honour it is, sir!" said the Mayor, with seriousemphasis. The audience thought it the best speech he had ever made inhis life, and cheered him till the roof rang again. "Oh! bread, bread, for you, darling!" cried the veteran, bowing his head over the child, andtaking out his cross and kissing it with passion; "and the badge ofhonour still for me!"

While the audience was in the full depth of its emotion, and generoustears in many an eye, Waife seized his moment, dropped the actor, andstepped forth to the front as the man--simple, quiet, earnest man--artlessman!

"This is no mimic scene, ladies and gentlemen. It is a tale in real lifethat stands out before you. I am here to appeal to those hearts that arenot vainly open to human sorrows. I plead for what I have represented. True, that the man who needs your aid is not one of that soldiery whichdevastated Europe. But he has fought in battles as severe, and been leftby fortune to as stern a desolation. True, he is not a Frenchman; he isone of a land you will not love less than France, --it is your own. He, too, has a child whom he would save from famine. He, too, has nothingleft to sell or to pawn for bread, --except--oh, not this gilded badge, see, this is only foil and cardboard, --except, I say, the thing itself, of which you respect even so poor a symbol, --nothing left to sell or topawn but Honour! For these I have pleaded this night as a showman; forthese, less haughty than the Frenchman, I stretch my hands towards youwithout shame; for these I am a beggar. "

He was silent. The dog quietly took up the hat and approached the Mayoragain. The Mayor extracted the half-crown he had previously deposited, and dropped into the hat two golden sovereigns. Who does not guess therest? All crowded forward, --youth and age, man and woman. And mostardent of all were those whose life stands most close to vicissitude, most exposed to beggary, most sorely tried in the alternative betweenbread and honour. Not an operative there but spared his mite. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

 Omne ignotum pro magnifico. --Rumour, knowing nothing of his antecedents, exalts Gentleman Waife into Don Magnifico. 

The Comedian and his two coadjutors were followed to the Saracen's Headinn by a large crowd, but at respectful distance. Though I know fewthings less pleasing than to have been decoyed and entrapped into anunexpected demand upon one's purse, --when one only counted, too, uponan agreeable evening, --and hold, therefore, in just abhorrence thecirculating plate which sometimes follows a public oration, homily, orother eloquent appeal to British liberality; yet, I will venture to say, there was not a creature whom the Comedian had surprised into impulsivebeneficence who regretted his action, grudged its cost, or thought he hadpaid too dear for his entertainment. All had gone through a series ofsuch pleasurable emotions that all had, as it were, wished a vent fortheir gratitude; and when the vent was found, it became an additionalpleasure. But, strange to say, no one could satisfactorily explain tohimself these two questions, --for what, and to whom had he given hismoney? It was not a general conjecture that the exhibitor wanted themoney for his own uses. No; despite the evidence in favour of that idea, a person so respectable, so dignified, addressing them, too, with thatnoble assurance to which a man who begs for himself is not morallyentitled, --a person thus characterized must be some high-heartedphilanthropist who condescended to display his powers at an Institutepurely intellectual, perhaps on behalf of an eminent but decayed author, whose name, from the respect due to letters, was delicately concealed. Mr. Williams, considered the hardest head and most practical man in thetown, originated and maintained that hypothesis. Probably the strangerwas an author himself, a great and affluent author. Had not great andaffluent authors--men who are the boast of our time and land--acted, yea, on a common stage, and acted inimitably too, on behalf of some letteredbrother or literary object? Therefore in these guileless minds, with allthe pecuniary advantages of extreme penury and forlorn position, theComedian obtained the respect due to prosperous circumstances and highrenown. But there was one universal wish expressed by all who had beenpresent, as they took their way homeward; and that wish was to renew thepleasure they had experienced, even if they paid the same price for it. Could not the long-closed theatre be re-opened, and the great man beinduced by philanthropic motives, and an assured sum raised by voluntarysubscriptions, to gratify the whole town, as he had gratified itsselected intellect? Mr. Williams, in a state of charitable thaw, nowsoftest of the soft, like most hard men when once softened, suggestedthis idea to the Mayor. The Mayor said evasively that he would think ofit, and that he intended to pay his respects to Mr. Chapman before hereturned home, that very night: it was proper. Mr. Williams and manyothers wished to accompany his worship. But the kind magistratesuggested that Mr. Chapman would be greatly fatigued: that the presenceof many might seem more an intrusion than a compliment; that he, theMayor, had better go alone, and at a somewhat later hour, when Mr. Chapman, though not retired to bed, might have had time for rest andrefreshment. This delicate consideration had its weight; and the streetswere thin when the Mayor's gig stopped, on its way villa-wards, at theSaracen's Head. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

 It is the interval between our first repinings and our final resignation, in which, both with individuals and communities, is to be found all that makes a history worth telling. Ere yet we yearn for what is out of our reach, we are still in the cradle. When wearied out with our yearnings, desire again falls asleep; we are on the deathbed. 

Sophy (leaning on her grandfather's arm as they ascend the stair of theSaracen's Head). --"But I am so tired, Grandy: I'd rather go to bed atonce, please!"

GENTLEMAN WAIFE. --"Surely you could take something to eat first--something nice, --Miss Chapman?"--(Whispering close), "We can live inclover now, --a phrase which means" (aloud to the landlady, who crossedthe landing-place above) "grilled chicken and mushrooms for supper, ma'am! Why don't you smile, Sopby? Oh, darling, you are ill!"

"No, no, Grandy, dear; only tired: let me go to bed. I shall be betterto-morrow; I shall indeed!"

Waife looked fondly into her face, but his spirits were too muchexhilarated to allow him to notice the unusual flush upon her cheek, except with admiration of the increased beauty which the heightenedcolour gave to her soft features. 

"Well, " said he, "you are a pretty child!--a very pretty child, and youact wonderfully. You would make a fortune on the stage; but--"

SOPHY (eagerly). --"But--no, no, never!--not the stage!"

WAIFE. --"I don't wish you to go on the stage, as you know. A privateexhibition--like the one to-night, for instance--has" (thrusting hishand into his pocket) "much to recommend it. "

SOPHY (with a sigh). --"Thank Heaven! that is over now; and you'll not bein want of money for a long, long time! Dear Sir Isaac!"

She began caressing Sir Isaac, who received her attentions with solemnpleasure. They were now in Sophy's room; and Waife, after again pressingthe child in vain to take some refreshment, bestowed on her his kiss andblessing, and whistled "/Malbrook s'en va-t-en guerre/" to Sir Isaac, who, considering that melody an invitation to supper, licked his lips, and stalked forth, rejoicing, but decorous. 

Left alone, the child breathed long and hard, pressing her hands to herbosom, and sank wearily on the foot of the bed. There were no shuttersto the window, and the moonlight came in gently, stealing across thatpart of the wall and floor which the ray of the candle left in shade. The girl raised her eyes slowly towards the window, --towards the glimpseof the blue sky, and the slanting lustre of the moon. There is a certainepoch in our childhood, when what is called the romance of sentimentfirst makes itself vaguely felt. And ever with the dawn of thatsentiment the moon and the stars take a strange and haunting fascination. Few persons in middle life-even though they be genuine poets--feel thepeculiar spell in the severe stillness and mournful splendour of starryskies which impresses most of us, even though no poets at all, in thatmystic age when Childhood nearly touches upon Youth, and turns an unquietheart to those marvellous riddles within us and without, which we ceaseto conjecture when experience has taught us that they have no solutionupon this side the grave. Lured by the light, the child rose softly, approached the window, and, resting her upturned face upon both hands, gazed long into the heavens, communing evidently with herself, for herlips moved and murmured indistinctly. Slowly she retired from thecasement, and again seated herself at the foot of the bed, disconsolate. And then her thoughts ran somewhat thus, though she might not have shapedthem exactly in the same words: "No, I cannot understand it. Why was Icontented and happy before I knew him? Why did I see no harm, no shamein this way of life--not even on that stage with those people--until hesaid, 'It was what he wished I had never stooped to'? And Grandfathersays our paths are so different they cannot cross each other again. There is a path of life, then, which I can never enter; there is a pathon which I must always, always walk, always, always, always that path, --no escape! Never to come into that other one where there is no disguise, no hiding, no false names, --never, never!" she started impatiently, andwith a wild look, --"It is killing me!"

Then, terrified by her own impetuosity, she threw herself on the bed, weeping low. Her heart had now gone back to her grandfather; it wassmiting her for ingratitude to him. Could there be shame or wrong inwhat he asked, --what he did? And was she to murmur if she aided him toexist? What was the opinion of a stranger boy compared to the approvingsheltering love of her sole guardian and tried fostering friend? Andcould people choose their own callings and modes of life? If one roadwent this way, another that, and they on the one road were borne fartherand farther away from those on the other--as that idea came, consolationstopped, and in her noiseless weeping there was a bitterness as ofdespair. But the tears ended by relieving the grief that caused them. Wearied out of conjecture and complaint, her mind relapsed into the oldnative, childish submission. With a fervour in which there was self-reproach she repeated her meek, nightly prayer, that God would bless herdear grandfather, and suffer her to be his comfort and support. Thenmechanically she undressed, extinguished the candle, and crept into bed. The moonlight became bolder and bolder; it advanced tip the floors, alongthe walls; now it floods her very pillow, and seems to her eyes to take aholy loving kindness, holier and more loving as the lids droop beneathit. A vague remembrance of some tale of "guardian spirits, " with whichWaife had once charmed her wonder, stirred through her lulling thoughts, linking itself with the presence of that encircling moonlight. There!see the eyelids are closed, no tear upon their fringe. See the dimplessteal out as the sweet lips are parted. She sleeps, she dreams already!Where and what is the rude world of waking now? Are there not guardianspirits? Deride the question if thou wilt, stern man, the reasoning andself-reliant; but thou, O fair mother, who hast marked the strangehappiness on the face of a child that has wept itself to sleep, whatsayest thou to the soft tradition, which surely had its origin in theheart of the earliest mother?

CHAPTER XV. 

 There is no man so friendless but what he can find a friend sincere enough to tell him disagreeable truths. 

Meanwhile the Comedian had made himself and Sir Isaac extremelycomfortable. No unabstemious man by habit was Gentleman Waife. He coulddine on a crust, and season it with mirth; and as for exciting drinks, there was a childlike innocence in his humour never known to a brain thathas been washed in alcohol. But on this special occasion, Waife's heartwas made so bounteous by the novel sense of prosperity that it compelledhim to treat himself. He did honour to the grilled chicken to which hehad vainly tempted Sophy. He ordered half a pint of port to be mulledinto negus. He helped himself with a bow, as if himself were a guest, and nodded each time he took off his glass, as much as to say, "Yourhealth, Mr. Waife!" He even offered a glass of the exhilarating draughtto Sir Isaac, who, exceedingly offended, retreated under the sofa, whencehe peered forth through his deciduous ringlets, with brows knit in graverebuke. Nor was it without deliberate caution--a whisker first, and thena paw--that he emerged from his retreat, when a plate heaped with theremains of the feast was placed upon the hearth-rug. 

The supper over, and the attendant gone, the negus still left, Waifelighted his pipe, and, gazing on Sir Isaac, thus addressed that caninephilosopher: "Illustrious member of the Quadrupedal Society of Friends toMan, and, as possessing those abilities for practical life which but fewfriends to man ever display in his service, promoted to high rank--Commissary-General of the Victualling Department, and Chancellor of theExchequer--I have the honour to inform you that a vote of thanks in yourfavour has been proposed in this house, and carried unanimously. " SirIsaac, looking shy, gave another lick to the plate, and wagged his tail. "It is true that thou wert once (shall I say it?) in fault at 'Beauty andWorth, '--thy memory deserted thee; thy peroration was on the verge of abreakdown; but 'Nemo mortalium omnibus horis sapit, I as the Latingrammar philosophically expresseth it. Mortals the wisest, not only ontwo legs but even upon four, occasionally stumble. The greatest general, statesman, sage, is not he who commits no blunder, but he who bestrepairs a blunder and converts it to success. This was thy merit anddistinction! It hath never been mine! I recognize thy superior genius. I place in thee unqualified confidence; and consigning thee to the armsof Morpheus, since I see that panegyric acts on thy nervous system as asalubrious soporific, I now move that this House do resolve itself into aCommittee of Ways and Means for the Consideration of the Budget!"

Therewith, while Sir Isaac fell into a profound sleep the Comediandeliberately emptied his pockets on the table; and arranging gold andsilver before him, thrice carefully counted the total, and then dividedit into sundry small heaps. 

"That's for the bill, " quoth he, --"Civil List!--a large item. That'sfor Sophy, the darling! She shall have a teacher, and learn Music, --Education Grant; Current Expenses for the next fortnight; MiscellaneousEstimates; tobacco, --we'll call that Secret-service Money. Ah, scamp, vagrant, is not Heaven kind to thee at last? A few more such nights, andwho knows but thine old age may have other roof than the workhouse? AndSophy?--Ah, what of her? Merciful Providence, spare my life till she hasoutgrown its uses!" A tear came to his eye; he brushed it away quickly, and, recounting his money, hummed a joyous tune. 

The door opened; Waife looked up in surprise, sweeping his hand over thecoins, and restoring them to his pocket. The Mayor entered. 

As Mr. Hartopp walked slowly up the room, his eye fixed Waife's; and thateye was so searching, though so mild, that the Comedian felt himselfchange colour. His gay spirits fell, --falling lower and lower, thenearer the Mayor's step came to him; and when Hartopp, without speaking, took his hand, --not in compliment, not in congratulation, but pressed itas if in deep compassion, still looking him full in the face, with thosepitying, penetrating eyes, the actor experienced a sort of shock as if hewere read through, despite all his histrionic disguises, read through tohis heart's core; and, as silent as his visitor, sank back in his chair, --abashed, disconcerted. 

MR. HARTOPP. --"Poor man!"

THE COMEDIAN (rousing himself with an effort, but still confused). --"Down, Sir Isaac, down! This visit, Mr. Mayor, is an honour which maywell take a dog by surprise! Forgive him!"

MR. HARTOPP (patting Sir Isaac, who was inquisitively sniffing hisgarments, and drawing a chair close to the actor, who thereon edged hisown chair a little away, --in vain; for, on that movement, Mr. Hartoppadvanced in proportion). --"Your dog is a very admirable and cleveranimal; but in the exhibition of a learned dog there is something whichtends to sadden one. By what privations has he been forced out of hisnatural ways? By what fastings and severe usage have his instincts beendistorted into tricks? Hunger is a stern teacher, Mr. Chapman; and tothose whom it teaches, we cannot always give praise unmixed with pity. "

THE COMEDIAN (ill at ease under this allegorical tone, and surprised at aquicker intelligence in Mr. Hartopp than he had given that person creditfor). --"You speak like an oracle, Mr. Mayor; but that dog, at least, hasbeen mildly educated and kindly used. Inborn genius, sir, will have itsvent. Hum! a most intelligent audience honoured us to-night; and ourbest thanks are due to you. "

MR. HARTOPP. --"Mr. Chapman, let us be frank with each other. I am not aclever man; perhaps a dull one. If I had set up for a clever man, Ishould not be where I am now. Hush! no compliments. But my life hasbrought me into frequent contact with those who suffer; and the dullestof us gain a certain sharpness in the matters to which our observation ishabitually drawn. You took me in at first, it is true. I thought youwere a philanthropical humourist, who might have crotchets, as manybenevolent men, with time on their hands and money in their pockets, areapt to form. But when it came to the begging hat (I ask your pardon;don't let me offend you), when it came to the begging hat, I recognizedthe man who wants philanthropy from others, and whose crotchets are to beregarded in a professional point of view. Sir, I have come here alone, because I alone perhaps see the case as it really is. Will you confidein me? you may do it safely. To be plain, who and what are you?"

THE COMEDIAN (evasively). --"What do you take me for, Mr. Mayor? What canI be other than an itinerant showman, who has had resort to a harmlessstratagem in order to obtain an audience, and create a surprise thatmight cover the naked audacity of the 'begging hat'!"

MR. HARTOPP (gravely). --"When a man of your ability and education isreduced to such stratagems, he must have committed some great faults. Pray Heaven it be no worse than faults!"

THE COMEDIAN (bitterly). --"That is always the way with the prosperous. Is a man unfortunate? They say, 'Why don't he help himself?' Does hetry to help himself? They say, 'With so much ability, why does not hehelp himself better?' Ability and education! Snares and springes, Mr. Mayor! Ability and education! the two worst mantraps that a poor fellowcan put his foot into! Aha! Did not you say if you had set up to beclever, you would not be where you now are:' A wise saying; I admire youfor it. Well, well, I and my dog have amused your townsfolk; they haveamply repaid us. We are public servants; according as we act in public--hiss us or applaud. Are we to submit to an inquisition into our privatecharacter? Are you to ask how many mutton bones has that dog stolen?how many cats has he worried? or how many shirts has the showman in hiswallet? how many debts has he left behind him? what is his rent-rollon earth, and his account with Heaven? Go and put those questions toministers, philosophers, generals, poets. When they have acknowledgedyour right to put them, come to me and the other dog. "

MR. HARTOPP (rising and drawing on his gloves). --"I beg your pardon! Ihave done, sir. And yet I conceived an interest in you. It is because Ihave no talents myself that I admire those who have. I felt a mournfulanxiety, too, for your poor little girl, --so young, so engaging. And isit necessary that you should bring up that child in a course of lifecertainly equivocal, and to females dangerous?"

The Comedian lifted his eyes suddenly, and stared hard at the face of hisvisitor, and in that face there was so much of benevolent humanity, somuch sweetness contending with authoritative rebuke, that the vagabond'shardihood gave way! He struck his breast, and groaned aloud. 

MR. HARTOPP (pressing on the advantage he had gained). --"And have you noalarm for her health? Do you not see how delicate she is? Do you notsee that her very talent comes from her susceptibility to emotions whichmust wear her away?"

WAIFE. -"No, no! stop, stop, stop! you terrify me, you break my heart. Man, man! it is all for her that I toil and show and beg, --if you call itbegging. Do you think I care what becomes of this battered hulk? Not astraw. What am I to do? What! what! You tell me to confide in you;wherefore? How can you help me? Would you give me employment? What amI fit for? Nothing! You could find work and bread for an Irishlabourer, nor ask who or what he was; but to a man who strays towardsyou, seemingly from a sphere in which, if Poverty enters, she drops acourtesy, and is called 'genteel, ' you cry, 'Hold, produce your passport;where are your credentials, references?' I have none. I have slippedout of the world I once moved in. I can no more appeal to those I knewin it than if I had transmigrated from one of yon stars, and said, 'Seethere what I was once!' Oh, but you do not think she looks ill!--do you?do you? Wretch that I am! And I thought to save her!"

The old man trembled from head to foot, and his cheek was as pale asashes. 

Again the good magistrate took his hand, but this time the clasp wasencouraging. "Cheer up: where there is a will there is a way; youjustify the opinion I formed in your favour despite all circumstancesto the contrary. When I asked you to confide in me, it was not fromcuriosity, but because I would serve you if I can. Reflect on what Ihave said. True, you can know but little of me. Learn what is said ofme by my neighbours before you trust me further. For the rest, to-morrowyou will have many proposals to renew your performance. Excuse me if Ido not actively encourage it. I will not, at least, interfere to yourdetriment; but--"

"But, " exclaimed Waife, not much heeding this address, "but you think shelooks ill? you think this is injuring her? you think I am murdering mygrandchild, --my angel of life, my all?"

"Not so; I spoke too bluntly. Yet still--"

"Yes, yes, yet still--"

"Still, if you love her so dearly, would you blunt her conscience andlove of truth? Were you not an impostor tonight? Would you ask her toreverence and imitate and pray for an impostor?"

"I never saw it in that light!" faltered Waife, struck to the soul;"never, never, so help me Heaven!"

"I felt sure you did not, " said the Mayor; "you saw but the sport of thething; you took to it as a schoolboy. I have known many such men, withhigh animal spirits like yours. Such men err thoughtlessly; but did theyever sin consciously, they could not keep those high spirits! Goodnight, Mr. Chapman, I shall hear from you again. "

The door closed on the form of the visitor; Waife's head sank on hisbreast, and all the deep lines upon brow and cheek stood forth, recordsof mighty griefs revived, --a countenance so altered, now its innocentarch play was gone, that you would not have known it. At length he rosevery quietly, took up the candle, and stole into Sophy's room. Shadingthe light with careful hand, he looked on her face as she slept. Thesmile was still upon the parted lip: the child was still in the fairylandof dreams. But the cheek was thinner than it had been weeks ago, and thelittle hand that rested on the coverlet seemed wasted. Waife took thathand noiselessly into his own! it was hot and dry. He dropped it with alook of unutterable fear and anguish, and, shaking his head piteously;stole back again. Seating himself by the table at which he had beencaught counting his gains, he folded his arms, and rooted his gaze on thefloor; and there, motionless, and as if in stupefied suspense of thoughtitself, he sat till the dawn crept over the sky, --till the sun shone intothe windows. The dog, crouched at his feet, sometimes started up andwhined as to attract his notice: he did not heed it. The clock strucksix; the house began to stir. The chambermaid came into the room. Waiferose and took his hat, brushing its nap mechanically with his sleeve. "Who did you say was the best here?" he asked with a vacant smile, touching the chambermaid's arm. 

"Sir! the best--what?"

"The best doctor, ma'am; none of your parish apothecaries, --the bestphysician, --Dr. Gill, --did you say Gill? Thank you; his address, HighStreet. Close by, ma'am. " With his grand bow, --such is habit!--Gentleman Waife smiled graciously, and left the room. Sir Isaacstretched himself and followed. 

CHAPTER XVI. 

 In every civilized society there is found a race of men who retain the instincts of the aboriginal cannibal, and live upon their fellow-men as a natural food. These interesting but formidable bipeds, having caught their victim, invariably select one part of his body on which to fasten their relentless grinders. The part thus selected is peculiarly susceptible, Providence having made it alive to the least nibble; it is situated just above the hip-joint, it is protected by a tegument of exquisite fibre, vulgarly called "THE BREECHES POCKET. " The thoroughbred Anthropophagite usually begins with his own relations and friends; and so long as he confines his voracity to the domestic circle, the law interferes little, if at all, with his venerable propensities. But when he has exhausted all that allows itself to be edible in the bosom of private life, the man-eater falls loose on society, and takes to prowling, --then "Sauve qui peut!" the laws rouse themselves, put on their spectacles, call for their wigs and gowns, and the Anthropophagite turned prowler is not always sure of his dinner. It is when he has arrived at this stage of development that the man- eater becomes of importance, enters into the domain of history, and occupies the thoughts of Moralists. 

On the same morning in which Waife thus went forth from the Saracen'sHead in quest of the doctor, but at a later hour, a man, who, to judge bythe elaborate smartness of his attire, and the jaunty assurance of hissaunter, must have wandered from the gay purlieus of Regent Street, threaded his way along the silent and desolate thoroughfares thatintersect the remotest districts of Bloomsbury. He stopped at the turninto a small street still more sequestered than those which led to it, and looked up to the angle on the wall whereon the name of the streetshould have been inscribed. But the wall had been lately whitewashed, and the whitewash had obliterated the expected epigraph. The manmuttered an impatient execration; and, turning round as if to seek apassenger of whom to make inquiry, beheld on the opposite side of the wayanother man apparently engaged in the same research. Involuntarily eachcrossed over the road towards the other. 

"Pray, sir, " quoth the second wayfarer in that desert, "can you tell meif this is a street that is called a Place, --Podden Place, Upper?"

"Sir, " returned the sprucer wayfarer, "it is the question I would haveasked of you. "

"Strange!"

"Very strange indeed that more than one person can, in this busy age, employ himself in discovering a Podden Place! Not a soul to inquire of, --not a shop that I see, not an orange-stall!"

"Ha!" cried the other, in a hoarse sepulchral voice, "Ha! there is a pot-boy! Boy! boy! boy! I say. Hold, there! hold! Is this Podden Place, --Upper?"

"Yes, it be, " answered the pot-boy, with a sleepy air, caught in thatsleepy atmosphere; and chiming his pewter against an area rail with adull clang, he chanted forth "Pots oho!" with a note as dirge-like asthat which in the City of the Plague chanted "Out with the dead!"

Meanwhile the two wayfarers exchanged bows and parted; the sprucerwayfarer whether from the indulgence of a reflective mood, or from anhabitual indifference to things and persons not concerning him, ceased tonotice his fellow-solitary, and rather busied himself in sundry littlecoquetries appertaining to his own person. He passed his hand throughhis hair, re-arranged the cock of his hat, looked complacently at hisboots, which still retained the gloss of the morning's varnish, drew downhis wristbands, and, in a word, gave sign of a man who desires to make aneffect, and feels that he ought to do it. So occupied was he in thisself-commune that when he stopped at length at one of the small doors inthe small street and lifted his hand to the knocker, he started to seethat Wayfarer the Second was by his side. The two men now examined eachother briefly but deliberately. Wayfarer the First was still young, --certainly handsome, but with an indescribable look about the eye and lip, from which the other recoiled with an instinctive awe, --a hard look, acynical look, --a sidelong, quiet, defying, remorseless look. His clotheswere so new of gloss that they seemed put on for the first time, wereshaped to the prevailing fashion, and of a taste for colours less subduedthan is usual with Englishmen, yet still such as a person of good miencould wear without incurring the charge of vulgarity, though liable tothat of self-conceit. If you doubted that the man were a gentleman, youwould have been puzzled to guess what else he could be. Were it not forthe look we have mentioned, and which was perhaps not habitual, hisappearance might have been called prepossessing. In his figure there wasthe grace, in his step the elasticity which come from just proportionsand muscular strength. In his hand he carried a supple switch-stick, slight and innocuous to appearance, but weighted at the handle after thefashion of a life-preserver. The tone of his voice was not displeasingto the ear, though there might be something artificial in the swell ofit, --the sort of tone men assume when they desire to seem more frank andoff-hand than belongs to their nature, --a sort of rollicking tone whichis to the voice what swagger is to, the gait. Still that look! itproduced on you the effect which might be created by some strange animal, not without beauty, but deadly to man. Wayfarer the Second was big andburly, middle-aged, large-whiskered, his complexion dirty. He wore awig, --a wig evident, unmistakable, --a wig curled and rusty, --over the wiga dingy white hat. His black stock fitted tight round his throat, andacross his breast he had thrown the folds of a Scotch plaid. 

WAYFARER THE FIRST. --"YOU call here, too, --on Mrs. Crane?"

WAYFARER THE SECOND. --"Mrs. Crane? you too? Strange!"

WAYFARER THE FIRST (with constrained civility). --"Sir, I call onbusiness, --private business. "

WAYFARER THE SECOND (with candid surliness). --"So do I. "

WAYFARER THE FIRST. --"Oh!"

WAYFARER THE SECOND. --"Ha! the locks unbar!"

The door opened, and an old meagre woman-servant presented herself. 

WAYFARER THE FIRST (gliding before the big man with a serpent'sundulating celerity of movement). --"Mrs. Crane lives here?"--"Yes!""She's at home I suppose?"--"Yes!"--"Take up my card; say I come alone, not with this gentleman. "

Wayfarer the Second seems to have been rather put out by the manner ofhis rival. He recedes a step. 

"You know the lady of this mansion well, sir?" "Extremely well. "

"Ha! then I yield you the precedence; I yield it, sir, but conditionally. You will not be long?"

"Not a moment longer than I can help; the land will be clear for you inan hour or less. "

"Or less, so please you, let it be or less. Servant, sir. "

"Sir, yours: come, my Hebe, track the dancers; that is, go up the stairs, and let me renew the dreams of youth in the eyes of Bella!"

The old woman meanwhile had been turning over the card in her witheredpalm, looking from the card to the visitor's face, and then to the cardagain, and mumbling to herself. At length she spoke:

"You, Mr. Losely! you!--Jasper Losely! how you be changed! what ha' yedone to yourself? where's your comeliness? where's the look that stoleladies' hearts? you, Jasper Losely! you are his goblin!"

"Hold your peace, old hussey!" said the visitor, evidently annoyed atremarks so disparaging. "I am Jasper Losely, more bronzed of cheek, moreiron of hand. " He raised his switch with a threatening gesture, thatmight be in play, for the lips wore smiles, or might be in earnest, forthe brows were bent; and pushing into the passage, and shutting the door, said, "Is your mistress up stairs? show me to her room, or--"

The old crone gave him one angry glance, which sank frightened beneaththe cruel gleam of his eyes, and hastening up the stairs with a quickerstride than her age seemed to warrant, cried out, "Mistress, mistress!here is Mr. Losely! Jasper Losely himself!" By the time the visitor hadreached the landing-place of the first floor, a female form had emergedfrom a room above, a female face peered over the banisters. Loselylooked up and started as he saw it. A haggard face, --the face of oneover whose life there has passed a blight. When last seen by him it hadpossessed beauty, though of a masculine rather than womanly character. Now of that beauty not a trace! the cheeks shrunk and hollow left thenose sharp, long, beaked as a bird of prey. The hair, once glossy in itsebon hue, now grizzled, harsh, neglected, hung in tortured, tangledmeshes, --a study for an artist who would paint a fury. But the eyes werebright, --brighter than ever; bright now with a glare that lighted up thewhole face bending over the man. In those burning eyes was there love?was there hate? was there welcome? was there menace? Impossible todistinguish; but at least one might perceive that there was joy. 

"So, " said the voice from above, "so we do meet at last, Jasper Losely!you are come!"

Drawing a loose kind of dressing-robe more closely round her, themistress of the house now descended the stairs, rapidly, flittingly, witha step noiseless as a spectre's, and, grasping Losely firmly by the hand, led him into a chill, dank, sunless drawing-room, gazing into his facefixedly all the while. 

He winced and writhed. "There, there, let us sit down, my dear Mrs. Crane. "

"And once I was called Bella. "

"Ages ago! Basta! All things have their end. Do take those eyes ofyours off my face; they were always so bright! and--really--now they areperfect burning-glasses! How close it is! Peuh! I am dead tired. MayI ask for a glass of water; a drop of wine in it--or--brandy will do aswell. "

"Ho! you have come to brandy and morning drams, eh, Jasper?" said Mrs. Crane, with a strange, dreary accent. "I, too, once tried if fire couldburn up thought, but it did not succeed with me; that is years ago; and-there--see the bottles are full still!"

While thus speaking, she had unlocked a chiffonniere of the shape usuallyfound in "genteel lodgings, " and taken out a leathern spirit-casecontaining four bottles, with a couple of wine-glasses. This case sheplaced on the table before Mr. , Losely, and contemplated him at leisurewhile he helped himself to the raw spirits. 

As she thus stood, an acute student of Lavater might have recognized, inher harsh and wasted countenance, signs of an original nature superior tothat of her visitor; on her knitted brow, a sense higher in quality thanon his smooth low forehead; on her straight stern lip, less cause fordistrust than in the false good-humour which curved his handsome mouthinto that smile of the fickle, which, responding to mirth but not toaffection, is often lighted and never warmed. It is true that in thatset pressure of her lip there might be cruelty, and, still more, thesecretiveness which can harbour deceit; and yet, by the nervous workingsof that lip, when relieved from such pressure, you would judge the womanto be rather by natural temperament passionate and impulsive thansystematically cruel or deliberately-false, --false or cruel only as somepredominating passion became the soul's absolute tyrant, and adopted thetyrant's vices. Above all, in those very lines destructive to beautythat had been ploughed, not by time, over her sallow cheeks, there waswritten the susceptibility to grief, to shame, to the sense of fall, which was not visible in the unreflective, reckless aspect of the sleekhuman animal before her. 

In the room, too, there were some evidences of a cultivated taste. Onthe walls, book-shelves, containing volumes of a decorous and severeliterature, such as careful parents allow to studious daughters, --thestately masterpieces of Fenelon and Racine; selections approved byboarding-schools from Tasso, Dante, Metastasio; amongst English authors, Addison, Johnson, Blair (his lectures as well as sermons); elementaryworks on such sciences as admit female neophytes into their porticos, if not into their penetralia, --botany, chemistry, astronomy. Prim assoldiers on parade stood the books, --not a gap in their ranks, --evidentlynever now displaced for recreation; well bound, yet faded, dusty; relicsof a bygone life. Some of them might perhaps have been prizes at school, or birthday gifts from proud relations. There, too, on the table, nearthe spirit-case, lay open a once handsome workbox, --no silks now on theskeleton reels; discoloured, but not by use, in its nest of tarnishedsilk slept the golden thimble. There, too, in the corner, near a music-stand piled high with musical compositions of various schools andgraduated complexity from "lessons for beginners" to the most arduousgamut of a German oratorio, slunk pathetically a poor lute-harp, thestrings long since broken. There, too, by the window, hung a wire bird-cage, the bird long since dead. In a word, round the woman gazing onJasper Losely, as he complacently drank his brandy, grouped the forlorntokens of an early state, --the lost golden age of happy girlish studies, of harmless girlish tastes. 

"Basta, eno', " said Mr. Losely, pushing aside the glass which he hadtwice filled and twice drained, "to business. Let me see the child:I feel up to it now. "

A darker shade fell over Arabella Crane's face, as she said, " The child!she is not here! I have disposed of her long ago. "

"Eh!--disposed of her! what do you mean?"

"Do you ask as if you feared I had put her out of the world? No! Well, then, --you come to England to see the child? You miss--you love, thechild of that--of that--" She paused, checked herself, and added in analtered voice, "of that honest, high-minded gentlewoman whose memory mustbe so dear to me, --you love that child; very natural, Jasper. "

"Love her! a child I have scarcely seen since she was born! do talkcommon-sense. No. But have I not told you that she ought to be money'sworth to me; ay, and she shall be yet, despite that proud man'sdisdainful insolence. "

"That proud man! what, you have ventured to address him--visit him--sinceyour return to England?"

"Of course. That's what brought me over. I imagined the man wouldrejoice at what I told him, open his pursestrings, lavish blessings andbank-notes. And the brute would not even believe me; all because--"

"Because you had sold the right to be believed before. I told you, whenI took the child, that you would never succeed there, that--I would neverencourage you in the attempt. But you had sold the future as you soldyour past, --too cheaply, it seems, Jasper. "

"Too cheaply, indeed. Who could ever have supposed that I should havebeen fobbed off with such a pittance?"

"Who, indeed, Jasper! You were made to spend fortunes, and call thempittances when spent, Jasper! You should have been a prince, Jasper;such princely tastes! Trinkets and dress, horses and dice, and plenty ofladies to look and die! Such princely spirit too! bounding all returnfor loyal sacrifice to the honour you vouchsafed in accepting it!"

Uttering this embittered irony, which nevertheless seemed rather toplease than to offend her guest, she kept moving about the room, and(whether from some drawer in the furniture, or from her own person, Losely's careless eye did not observe) she suddenly drew forth aminiature, and, placing it before him, exclaimed, "Ah, but you arealtered from those days; see what you then were!"

Losely's gaze, thus abruptly invited, fixed itself on the effigies of ayouth eminently handsome, and of that kind of beauty which, without beingeffeminate, approaches to the fineness and brilliancy of the femalecountenance, --a beauty which renders its possessor inconvenientlyconspicuous, and too often, by winning that ready admiration which itcosts no effort to obtain, withdraws the desire of applause fromsuccesses to be achieved by labour, and hardens egotism by the excuses itlends to self-esteem. It is true that this handsome face had not theelevation bestowed by thoughtful expression but thoughtful expression isnot the attribute a painter seeks to give to the abstract comeliness ofearly youth; and it is seldom to be acquired without that constitutionalwear and tear which is injurious to mere physical beauty. And over thewhole countenance was diffused a sunny light, the freshness of buxomhealth, of luxuriant vigour; so that even that arrogant vanity which anacute observer might have detected as the prevailing mentalcharacteristic seemed but a glad exultation in the gifts of benignantNature. Not there the look which, in the matured man gazing on thebright ghost of his former self, might have daunted the timid and warnedthe wise. "And I was like this! True! I remember well when it wastaken, and no one called it flattering, " said Mr. Losely, with patheticself-condolence. "But I can't be very much changed, " he added, with ahalf laugh. "At my age one may have a manlier look, yet--"

"Yet still be handsome, Jasper, " said Mrs. Crane. "You are so. But lookat me; what am I?"

"Oh, a very fine woman, my dear Crane, --always were. But you neglectyourself: you should not do that; keep it up to the last. Well, but toreturn to the child. You have disposed of her without my consent, without letting me know?"

"Letting you know! How many years is it since you even gave me youraddress! Never fear: she is in good hands. "

"Whose? At all events I must see her. "

"See her! What for?"

"What for! Hang it, it is natural that, now I am in England, I should atleast wish to know what she is like. And I think it very strange thatyou should send her away, and then make all these difficulties. What'syour object? I don't understand it. "

"My object? What could be my object but to serve you? At your request Itook, fed, reared a child, whom you could not expect me to love, at myown cost. Did I ever ask you for a shilling? Did I ever suffer you togive me one? Never! At last, hearing no more from you, and what littleI heard of you making me think that, if anything happened to me (and Iwas very ill at the time), you could only find her a burden, --at last Isay, the old man came to me, --you had given him my address, --and heoffered to take her, and I consented. She is with him. "

"The old man! She is with him! And where is he?"

"I don't know. "

"Humph; how does he live? Can he have got any money?"

"I don't know. "

"Did any old friends take him up?"

"Would he go to old friends?"

Mr. Losely tossed off two fresh glasses of brandy, one after the other, and, rising, walked to and fro the room, his hands buried in his pockets, and in no comfortable vein of reflection. At length he paused and said, "Well, upon the whole, I don't see what I could do with the girl just atpresent, though, of course, I ought to know where she is, and with whom. Tell me, Mrs. Crane, what is she like, --pretty or plain?"

"I suppose the chit would be called pretty, --by some persons at least. "

"Very pretty? handsome?" asked Losely, abruptly. "Handsome or not, whatdoes it signify? what good comes of beauty? You had beauty enough; whathave you done with it?"

At that question, Losely drew himself up with a sudden loftiness of lookand gesture, which, though prompted but by offended vanity, improved theexpression of the countenance, and restored to it much of its earliercharacter. Mrs. Crane gazed on him, startled into admiration, and it wasin an altered voice, half reproachful, half bitter, that she continued, "And now that you are satisfied about her, have you no questions to askabout me?--what I do? how I live?" "My dear Mrs. Crane, I know that youare comfortably off, and were never of a mercenary temper. I trust youare happy, and so forth: I wish I were; things don't prosper with me. Ifyou could conveniently lend me a five-pound note--"

"You would borrow of me, Jasper? Ah! you come to me in your troubles. You shall have the money, --five pounds, ten pounds, what you please, butyou will call again for it: you need me now; you will not utterly desertme now?"

"Best of creatures!--never!" He seized her hand and kissed it. Shewithdrew it quickly from his clasp, and, glancing over him from head tofoot, said, "But are you really in want?--you are well-dressed, Jasper;that you always were. "

"Not always; three days ago very much the reverse: but I have had atrifling aid, and--"

"Aid in England? from whom? where? Not from him whom you say you had thecourage to seek?"

"From whom else? Have I no claim? A miserable alms flung to me. Cursehim! I tell you that man's look and language so galled me, --so galled, "echoed Losely, shifting his hold from the top of his switch to thecentre, and bringing the murderous weight of the lead down on the palm ofhis other hand, "that, if his eye had quitted mine for a moment, I thinkI must have brained him, and been--"

"Hanged!" said Mrs. Crane. 

"Of course, hanged, " returned Losely, resuming the reckless voice andmanner in which there was that peculiar levity which comes from hardnessof heart, as from the steel's hardness comes the blade's play. "But if aman did not sometimes forget consequences, there would be an end of thegallows. I am glad that his eye never left mine. " And the leaden headof the switch fell with a dull dumb sound on the floor. 

Mrs. Crane made no immediate rejoinder, but fixed on her lawless visitora gaze in which there was no womanly fear (though Losely's aspect andgesture might have sent a thrill through the nerves of many a hardy man), but which was not without womanly compassion, her countenance graduallysoftening more and more, as if under the influence of recollectionsmournful but not hostile. At length she said in a low voice, "PoorJasper! Is all the vain ambition that made you so false shrunk into aferocity that finds you so powerless? Would your existence, after all, have been harder, poorer, meaner, if your faith had been kept to me?"

Evidently disliking that turn in the conversation, but checking a replywhich might have been rude had no visions of five pounds, ten pounds, loomed in the distance, Mr. Losely said, "Pshaw! Bella, pshaw! I was afool, I dare say, and a sad dog, a very sad dog; but I had always thegreatest regard for you, and always shall! Hillo, what's that? A knockat the door! Oh, by the by, a queer-looking man, in a white hat, calledat the same time I did, to see you on private business, gave way to me, said he should come again; may I ask who he is?"

"I cannot guess; no one ever calls here on business except the tax-gatherer. "

The old woman-servant now entered. "A gentleman, ma'am; says his name isRugge. "

"Rugge, --Rugge; let me think. "

"I am here, Mrs. Crane, " said the manager, striding in. "You don't, perhaps, call me to mind by name; but--oho! not gone, sir! Do I intrudeprematurely?"

"No, I have done; good-day, my dear Mrs. Crane. "

"Stay, Jasper. I remember you now, Mr. Rugge; take a chair. "

She whispered a few words into Losely's ear, then turned to the manager, and said aloud, "I saw you at Mr. Waife's lodging, at the time he hadthat bad accident. "

"And I had the honour to accompany you home, ma'am, and--but shall Ispeak out before this gentleman?"

"Certainly; you see he is listening to you with attention. Thisgentleman and I have no secrets from each other. What has become of thatperson? This gentleman wishes to know. "

LOSELY. --"Yes, sir, I wish to know-particularly. "

RUGGE. --"So do I; that is partly what I came about. You are aware, Ithink, ma'am, that I engaged him and Juliet Araminta, that is, Sophy. "

LOSELY. --"Sophy? engaged them, sir, --how?"

RUGGE. --"Theatrical line, sir, --Rugge's Exhibition; he was a great actoronce, that fellow Waife. "

LOSELY. --"Oh, actor! well, sir, go on. "

RUGGE (who in the course of his address turns from the lady to thegentleman, from the gentleman to the lady, with appropriate gesture andappealing look). --"But he became a wreck, a block of a man; lost an eyeand his voice too. How ever, to serve him, I took his grandchild and himtoo. He left me--shamefully, and ran off with his grandchild, sir. Now, ma'am, to be plain with you, that little girl I looked upon as myproperty, --a very valuable property. She is worth a great deal to me, and I have been done out of her. If you can help me to get her back, articled and engaged say for three years, I am willing and happy, ma'am, to pay something handsome, --uncommon handsome. "

MRS. CRANE (loftily). --"Speak to that gentleman; he may treat with you. "

LOSELY. --"What do you call uncommon handsome, Mr. --Mr. Tugge?"

RUGGE. --"Rugge! Sir; we sha'n't disagree, I hope, provided you have thepower to get Waife to bind the girl to me. "

LOSELY. --"I may have the power to transfer the young lady to your care--young lady is a more respectful phrase than girl--and possibly todispense with Mr. Waife's consent to such arrangement. But excuse me ifI say that I must know a little more of yourself, before I could promiseto exert such a power on your behalf. "

RUGGE. --"Sir, I shall be proud to improve our acquaintance. As to Waife, the old vagabond, he has injured and affronted me, sir. I don't bearmalice, but I have a spirit: Britons have a spirit, sir. And you willremember, ma'am, that when I accompanied you home, I observed that Mr. Waife was a mysterious man, and had apparently known better days, andthat when a man is mysterious, and falls into the sear and yellow leaf, ma'am, without that which should accompany old age, sir, one has a rightto suspect that some time or other, he has done something or other, ma'am, which makes him fear lest the very stones prate of his whereabout, sir. And you did not deny, ma'am, that the mystery was suspicious; butyou said, with uncommon good sense, that it was nothing to me what Mr. Waife had once been, so long as he was of use to me at that particularseason. Since then, sir, he has ceased to be of use, --ceased, too, inthe unhandsomest manner. And if you would, ma'am, from a sense ofjustice, just unravel the mystery, put me in possession of the secret, it might make that base man of use to me again, give me a handle overhim, sir, so that I might awe him into restoring my property, as, morallyspeaking, Juliet Araminta most undoubtedly is. That's why I call, --leaving my company, to which I am a father, orphans for the present. ButI have missed that little girl, --that young lady, sir. I called her aphenomenon, ma'am; missed her much: it is natural, sir, I appeal to you. No man can be done out of a valuable property and not feel it, if he hasa heart in his bosom. And if I had her back safe, I should indulgeambition. I have always had ambition. The theatre at York, sir, --thatis my ambition; I had it from a child, sir; dreamed of it three tunes, ma'am. If I had back my property in that phenomenon, I would go at thething, slap-bang, take the York, and bring out the phenomenon with ACLAW!"

LOSELY (musingly). --"You say the young lady is a phenomenon, and for thisphenomenon you are willing to pay something handsome, --a vagueexpression. Put it into L. S. D. "

RUGGE. --"Sir, if she can be bound to me legally for three years, I wouldgive L100. I did offer to Waife L50, --to you, sir, L100. "

Losely's eyes flashed, and his hands opened restlessly. "But, confoundit, where is she? Have you no clew?"

RUGGE. --"No, but we can easily find one; it was not worth my while tohunt them up before I was quite sure that, if I regained my property inthat phenomenon, the law would protect it. "

MRS. CRANE (moving to the door). --"Well, Jasper Losely, you will sell theyoung lady, I doubt not; and when you have sold her, let me know. " Shecame back and whispered, "You will not perhaps now want money from me, but I shall see you again; for, if you would find the child, you willneed my aid. "

"Certainly, my dear friend, I will call again; honour bright. "

Mrs. Crane here bowed to the gentlemen, and swept out of the room. 

Thus left alone, Losely and Rugge looked at each other with a shy and yetcunning gaze, --Rugge's hands in his trouser's pockets, his head thrownback; Losely's hands in voluntarily expanded, his head bewitchingly bentforward, and a little on one side. 

"Sir, " said Rugge, at length, "what do you say to a chop and a pint ofwine? Perhaps we could talk more at our ease elsewhere. I am only intown for a day; left my company thirty miles off, --orphans, as I saidbefore. "

"Mr. Rugge, " said Losely, "I have no desire to stay in London, or indeedin England; and the sooner we can settle this matter the better. Grantthat we find the young lady, you provide for her board and lodging; teachher your honourable profession; behave, of course, kindly to her. "

"Like a father. "

"And give to me the sum of L100?"

"That is, if you can legally make her over to me. But, sir, may Iinquire by what authority you would act in this matter?"

"On that head it will be easy to satisfy you; meanwhile I accept yourproposal of an early dinner. Let us adjourn; is it to your house?"

"I have no exact private house in London; but I know a public one, --commodious. "

"Be it so. After you, sir. "

As they descended the stairs, the old woman-servant stood at the streetdoor. Rugge went out first; the woman detained Losely. "Do you find heraltered?"

"Whom? Mrs. Crane?--why, years will tell. But you seem to have knownme; I don't remember you. "

"Not Bridget Greggs?"

"Is it possible? I left you a middle-aged, rosy-faced woman. True, Irecognize you now. There's a crown for you. I wish I had more tospare!"

Bridget pushed back the silver. 

"No; I dare not! Take money from you, Jasper Losely! Mistress would notforgive me!"

Losely, not unreluctantly, restored the crown to his pocket; and, with asnort rather than sigh of relief, stepped into open daylight. As hecrossed the street to join Rugge, who was waiting for him on the shadyside, he mechanically turned to look back at the house, and, at the openwindow of an upper story, he beheld again those shining eyes which hadglared down on him from the stairs. He tried to smile, and waved hishand feebly. The eyes seemed to return the smile; and as he walked downthe street, arm-in-arm with the ruffian manager, slowly recovering hisspringy step, and in the gloss of the new garments that set forth hisstill symmetrical proportions, the eyes followed him watchfully, steadfastly, till his form had vanished, and the dull street was oncemore a solitude. 

Then Arabella Crane turned from the window. Putting her hand to herheart, "How it beats!" she muttered; "if in love or in hate, in scornor in pity, beats once more with a human emotion. He will come again;whether for money or for woman's wit, what care I?--he will come. I willhold, I will cling to him, no more to part; for better for worse, as itshould have been once at the altar. And the child?" she paused; was itin compunction? "The child!" she continued fiercely, and as if lashingherself into rage, "the child of that treacherous, hateful mother, --yes!I will help him to sell her back as a stage-show, --help him in all thatdoes not lift her to a state from which she may look down with disdain onme. Revenge on her, on that cruel house: revenge is sweet. Oh! that itwere revenge alone that bids me cling to him who deserves revenge themost. " She closed her burning eyes, and sat down droopingly, rockingherself to and fro like one in pain. 

CHAPTER XVII. 

 In life it is difficult to say who do you the most mischief--enemies with the worst intentions, or friends with the best. 

The conference between Mr. Rugge and Mr. Losely terminated in anappointment to meet, the next day, at the village in which this storyopened. Meanwhile Mr. Rugge would return to his "orphans, " and arrangeperformances in which for some days they might dispense with a father'spart. Losely, on his side, undertook to devote the intervening hours toconsultation with a solicitor to whom Mr. Rugge recommended him as to theprompt obtaining of legal powers to enforce the authority he assertedhimself to possess. He would also persuade Mrs. Crane to accompany himto the village and aid in the requisite investigations; entertaining atacit but instinctive belief in the superiority of her acuteness. "Set afemale to catch a female, " quoth Mr. Rugge. 

On the day and in the place thus fixed the three hunters opened theirchase. They threw off at the Cobbler's stall. They soon caught the samescent which had been followed by the lawyer's clerk. They arrived atMrs. Saunders's; there the two men would have been at fault like theirpredecessor. But the female was more astute. To drop the metaphor Mrs. Saunders could not stand the sharp cross-examination of one of her ownsex. "That woman deceives us, " said Mrs. Crane on leaving the house. "They have not gone to London. What could they do there? Any man with afew stage juggling tricks can get on in country villages but would belost in cities. Perhaps, as it seems he has got a dog, --we have foundout that from Mrs. Saunders, --he will make use of it for an itinerantpuppet-show. "

"Punch!" said Mr. Rugge; "not a doubt of it. "

"In that case, " observed Mrs. Crane, "they are probably not far off. Letus print handbills, offering a reward for their clew, and luring the oldman himself by an assurance that the inquiry is made in order that he maylearn of something to his advantage. "

In the course of the evening the handbills were printed. The next daythey were posted up on the walls, not only of that village, but on thoseof the small towns and hamlets for some miles round. The handbills raninvitingly thus, "If William Waife, who left--on the 20th ult. , willapply at the Red Lion Inn at -------, for X. X. , he will learn ofsomething greatly to his advantage. A reward of L5 will be given to anyone who will furnish information where the said William Waife and thelittle girl who accompanies him may be found. The said William Waife isabout sixty years of age, of middle stature, strongly built, has lost oneeye, and is lame of one leg. The little girl, called Sophy, is twelveyears old, but looks younger; has blue eyes and light brown hair. Theyhad with them a white French poodle dog. This bill is printed by thefriends of the missing party. " The next day passed; no information: buton the day following, a young gentleman of good mien, dressed in black, rode into the town, stopped at the Red Lion Inn, and asked to see X. X. The two men were out on their researches; Mrs. Crane stayed at home toanswer inquiries. 

The gentleman was requested to dismount, and walk in. Mrs. Cranereceived him in the inn parlour, which swarmed with flies. She stood inthe centre, --vigilant, grim spider of the place. 

"I c-ca-call, " said the gentleman, stammering fearfully, in con-consequence of a b-b-bill--I--ch-chanced to see in my ri-ri-ri-rideyesterday--on a wa-wa-wall. You-you, I--sup-sup--"

"Am X. X. , " put in Mrs. Crane, growing impatient, "one of the friends ofMr. Waife, by whom the handbill has been circulated; it will indeed be agreat relief to us to know where they are, --the little girl moreespecially. "

Mrs. Crane was respectably dressed, --in silk iron-gray; she had crispedher flaky tresses into stiff hard ringlets, that fell like long screwsfrom under a black velvet band. Mrs. Crane never wore a cap, nor couldyou fancy her in a cap; but the velvet band looked as rigid as if gummedto a hoop of steel. Her manner and tone of voice were those of aneducated person, not unused to some society above the vulgar; and yet thevisitor, in whom the reader recognizes the piscatorial Oxonian, with whomWaife had interchanged philosophy on the marge of the running brooklet, drew back as she advanced and spoke; and, bent on an errand of kindness, he was seized with a vague misgiving. 

MRS. CRANE (blandly). --"I fear they must be badly off. I hope they arenot wanting the necessaries of life. But pray be seated, sir. " Shelooked at him again, and with more respect in her address than she hadbefore thrown into it, added, with a half courtesy, as she seated herselfby his side, "A clergyman of the Established Church, I presume, sir?"

OXONIAN (stammer, as on a former occasion, respectfully omitted). --"Withthis defect, ma'am!--But to the point. Some days ago I happened to fallin with an elderly person, such as is described, with a very prettyfemale child and a French dog. The man--gentleman, perhaps I may callhim, judging from his conversation--interested me much; so did the littlegirl. And if I could be the means of directing real friends anxious toserve them--"

Mrs. CRANE. --"You would indeed be a benefactor. And where are they now, sir?"

OXONIAN. --"That I cannot positively tell you. But before I say more, will you kindly satisfy my curiosity? He is perhaps an eccentricperson, --this Mr. Waife?--a little--" The Oxonian stopped, and touchedhis forehead. Mrs. Crane made no prompt reply: she was musing. Unwarilythe scholar continued: "Because, in that case, I should not like tointerfere. "

MRS. CRANE. --"Quite right, sir. His own friends would not interfere withhis roving ways, his little whims on any account. Poor man, why shouldthey? He has no property for them to covet. But it is a long story. Ihad the care of that dear little girl from her infancy, sweet child!"

OXONIAN. --"So she seems. "

MRS. CRANE. --"And now she has a most comfortable home provided for her;and a young girl, with good friends, ought not to be tramping about thecountry, whatever an old man may do. You must allow that, sir?"

OXONIAN. --"Well, --yes, I allow that; it occurred to me. But what is theman?--the gentleman?"

MRS. CRANE. --"Very 'eccentric, ' as you say, and inconsiderate, perhaps, as to the little girl. We will not call it insane, sir. But--are youmarried?"

OXONIAN (blushing). --"No, ma'am. "

MRS. CRANE. --"But you have a sister, perhaps?"

OXONIAN. --"Yes; I have one sister. "

MRS. CRANE. --"Would you like your sister to be running about the countryin that way, --carried off from her home, kindred, and friends?"

OXONIAN. --"Ah! I understand. The poor little girl is fond of the oldman, --a relation, grandfather perhaps? and he has taken her from herhome; and though not actually insane, he is still--"

MRS. CRANE. --"An unsafe guide for a female child, delicately reared. I reared her; of good prospects, too. O sir, let us save the child!Look--" She drew from a sidepocket in her stiff iron-gray apron a foldedpaper; she placed it in the Oxonian's hand; he glanced over and returnedit. 

"I see, ma'am. I cannot hesitate after this. It is a good many milesoff where I met the persons whom I have no doubt that you seek; and twoor three days ago my father received a letter from a very worthy, excellent man, with whom he is often brought into communication uponbenevolent objects, --a Mr. Hartopp, the Mayor of Gatesboro', in which, among other matters, the Mayor mentioned briefly that the LiteraryInstitute of that town had been much delighted by the performance of avery remarkable man with one eye, about whom there seemed some mystery, with a little girl and a learned dog; and I can't help thinking that theman, the girl, and the dog, must be those whom I saw and you seek. "

MRS. CRANE. --"At Gatesboro'? is that far?"

OXONIAN. --"Some way; but you can get a cross train from this village. Ihope that the old man will not be separated from the little girl; theyseemed very fond of each other. "

MRS. CRANE. --"No doubt of it; very fond: it would be cruel to separatethem. A comfortable home for both. I don't know, sir, if I dare offerto a gentleman of your evident rank the reward, --but for the poor of yourparish. "

OXONIAN. --"Oh, ma'am, our poor want for nothing: my father is rich. Butif you would oblige me by a line after you have found these interestingpersons; I am going to a distant part of the country to-morrow, --toMontfort Court, in -------shire. "

MRS. CRANE. --"To Lord Montfort, the head of the noble family of Vipont?"

OXONIAN. --"Yes; do you know any of the family, ma'am? If you could referme to one of them, I should feel more satisfied as to--"

MRS. CRANE (hastily). --"Indeed, sir, every one must know that greatfamily by name and repute. I know no more. So you are going to LordMontfort's! The Marchioness, they say, is very beautiful. "

OXONIAN. --"And good as beautiful. I have the honour to be connected bothwith her and Lord Montfort; they are cousins, and my grandfather was aVipont. I should have told you my name, --Morley; George Vipont Morley. "

Mrs. Crane made a profound courtesy, and, with an unmistakable smile ofsatisfaction, said, as if half in soliloquy, "So it is to one of thatnoble family--to a Vipont--that the dear child will owe her restorationto my embrace! Bless you, sir!"

"I hope I have done right, " said George Vipont Morley, as he mounted hishorse. "I must have done right, surely!" he said again, when he was onthe high road. "I fear I have not done right, " he said a third time, asthe face of Mrs. Crane began to haunt him; and when at sunset he reachedhis home, tired out, horse and man, with an unusually long ride, and thegreen water-bank on which he had overheard poor Waife's simple grace andjoyous babble came in sight, "After all, " he said dolefully, "it was nobusiness of mine. "

"I meant well; but--" His little sister ran to the gate to greet him. "Yes, I did quite right. How should I like my sister to be roving thecountry, and acting at Literary Institutes 'with a poodle dog? Quiteright; kiss me, Jane!"

CHAPTER XVIII. 

 Let a king and a beggar converse freely together, and it is the beggar's fault if he does not say something which makes the king lift his hat to him. 

The scene shifts back to Gatesboro', the forenoon of the day succeedingthe memorable exhibition at the Institute of that learned town. Mr. Hartopp was in the little parlour behind his country-house, his hours ofbusiness much broken into by those intruders who deem no timeunseasonable for the indulgence of curiosity, the interchange of thought, or the interests of general humanity and of national enlightenment. Theexcitement produced on the previous evening by Mr. Chapman, Sophy, andSir Isaac was greatly on the increase. Persons who had seen themnaturally called on the Mayor to talk over the exhibition. Persons whohad not seen them, still more naturally dropped in just to learn what wasreally Mr. Mayor's private opinion. The little parlour was thronged by aregular levee There was the proprietor of a dismal building, stillcalled "The Theatre, " which was seldom let except at election time, whenit was hired by the popular candidate for the delivery of those haranguesupon liberty and conscience, tyranny and oppression, which furnish thestaple of declamation equally to the dramatist and the orator. There wasalso the landlord of the Royal Hotel, who had lately built to his house"The City Concert-Room, "--a superb apartment, but a losing speculation. There, too, were three highly respectable persons, of a serious turn ofmind, who came to suggest doubts whether an entertainment of so frivolousa nature was not injurious to the morality of Gatesboro'. Besides thesenotables, there were loungers and gossips, with no particular objectexcept that of ascertaining who Mr. Chapman was by birth and parentage, and suggesting the expediency of a deputation, ostensibly for the purposeof asking him to repeat his performance, but charged with privateinstructions to cross-examine him as to his pedigree. The gentle Mayorkept his eyes fixed on a mighty ledger-book, pen in hand. The attitudewas a rebuke on intruders, and in ordinary times would have been soconsidered. But mildness, however majestic, is not always effective inperiods of civic commotion. The room was animated by hubbub. You caughtbroken sentences here and there crossing each other, like the sounds thathad been frozen in the air, and set free by a thaw, according to theveracious narrative of Baron Munchausen. 

PLAYHOUSE PROPRIETOR. --"The theatre is the--"

SERIOUS GENTLEMAN. --"Plausible snare by which a population, at presentgrave and well-disposed, is decoyed into becoming--"

EXCITED ADMIRER. --"A French poodle, sir, that plays at dominos like a--"

CREDULOUS CONJECTURER. --"Benevolent philanthropist, condescending to actfor the benefit of some distressed brother who is--"

PROPRIETOR of CITY CONCERT-ROOM. --"One hundred and twenty feet long byforty, Mr. Mayor! Talk of that damp theatre, sir, you might as well talkof the--"

Suddenly the door flew open, and pushing aside a clerk who designed toannounce him, in burst Mr. Chapman himself. 

He had evidently expected to find the Mayor alone, for at the sight ofthat throng he checked himself, and stood mute at the threshold. Thelevee for a moment was no less surprised, and no less mute. But the goodfolks soon recovered themselves. To many it was a pleasure to accost andcongratulate the man who the night before had occasioned to them emotionsso agreeable. Cordial smiles broke out; friendly hands were thrustforth. Brief but hearty compliments, mingled with entreaties to renewthe performance to a larger audience, were showered round. The Comedianstood hat in hand, mechanically passing his sleeve over its nap, muttering half inaudibly, "You see before you a man, " and turning hissingle eye from one face to the other, as if strug gling to guess whatwas meant, or where he was. The Mayor rose and came forward, --"My dearfriends, " said he, mildly, "Mr. Chapman calls by appointment. Perhaps hemay have something to say to me confidentially. "

The three serious gentlemen, who had hitherto remained aloof, eying Mr. Chapman much as three inquisitors might have eyed a Jew, shook threesolemn heads, and set the example of retreat. The last to linger werethe rival proprietors of the theatre and the city concert-room. Eachwhispered the stranger, --one the left ear, one the right. Each thrustinto his hand a printed paper. As the door closed on them the Comedianlet fall the papers: his arm drooped to his side; his whole frame seemedto collapse. Hartopp took him by the hand, and led him gently to his ownarmchair beside the table. The Comedian dropped on the chair, stillwithout speaking. 

MR. HARTOPP. --"What is the matter? What has happened?"

WAIFE. --"She is very ill, --in a bad way; the doctor says so, --Dr. Gill. "

MR. HARTOPP (feelingly). --"Your little girl in a bad way! Oh, no;doctors always exaggerate in order to get more credit for the cure. Notthat I would disparage Dr. Gill, fellow-townsman, first-rate man. Still't is the way with doctors to talk cheerfully if one is in danger, and tolook solemn if there is nothing to fear. "

WAIFE. --"DO you think so: you have children of your own, sir?--of herage, too?--Eh! eh!"

MR. HARTOPP. --"Yes; I know all about children, --better, I think, thanMrs. H. Does. What is the complaint?"

WAIFE. --"The doctor says it is low fever. "

MR. HARTOPP. --"Caused by nervous excitement, perhaps. "

WAIFE (looking up). --"Yes: that's what he says, --nervous excitement. "

MR. HARTOPP. --"Clever sensitive children, subjected precociously toemulation and emotion, are always liable to such maladies. My thirdgirl, Anna Maria, fell, into a low fever, caused by nervous excitementin trying for school prizes. "

WATFE. --"Did she die of it, sir?"

MR. HARTOPP (shuddering). --"Die! no! I removed her from school, set herto take care of the poultry, forbade all French exercises, made her takeEnglish exercises instead, and ride on a donkey. She's quite anotherthing now, cheeks as red as an apple, and as firm as a cricket-ball. "

WAIFE. --"I will keep poultry; I will buy a donkey. Oh, sir! you don'tthink she will go to heaven yet, and leave me here?"

MR. HARTOPP. --"Not if you give her rest and quiet. But no excitement, noexhibitions. "

WAIFE (emptying his pockets on the table). --"Will you kindly count thatmoney, sir? Don't you think that would be enough to find her some prettylodgings hereabouts till she gets quite strong again? With greenfields, --she's fond of green fields and a farm-yard with poultry, --thoughwe were lodging a few days ago with a good woman who kept hens, and Sophydid not seem to take to them much. A canary bird is more of a companion, and--"

HARTOPP (interrupting). --"Ay--ay--and you! what would you do?"

WAIFE. --"Why, I and the dog would go away for a little while about thecountry. "

HARTOPP. --"Exhibiting?"

WAIFE. --"That money will not last forever, and what can we do, I and thedog, in order to get more for her?"

HARTOPP (pressing his hand warmly). --"You are a good man, sir. I am sureof it; you cannot have done things which you should be afraid to tell me. Make me your confidant, and I may then find some employment fit for you, and you need not separate yourself from your little girl. "

WAIFE. --"Separate from her! I should only leave her for a few days at atime till she gets well. This money would keep her, --how long? Twomonths? three? how long? the doctor would not charge much. "

HARTOPP. --"YOU will not confide in me then? At your age, --have you nofriends, --no one to speak a good word for you?"

WAIFE (jerking up his head with a haughty air). --"So--so! Who talks toyou about me, sir? I am speaking of my innocent child. Does she want agood word spoken for her? Heaven has written it in her face. "

Hartopp persisted no more; the excellent man was sincerely grieved at hisvisitor's obstinate avoidance of the true question at issue; for theMayor could have found employment for a man of Waife's evident educationand talent. But such employment would entail responsibilites and trust. How recommend to it a man of whose life and circumstances nothing couldbe known, --a man without a character? And Waife interested him deeply. We have all felt that there are some persons towards whom we areattracted by a peculiar sympathy not to be explained, --a something in themanner, the cut of the face, the tone of the voice. If there are fiftyapplicants for a benefit in our gift, one of the fifty wins his way toour preference at first sight, though with no better right to it than hisfellows. We can no more say why we like the man than we can say why wefall in love with a woman in whom no one else would discover a charm. "There is, " says a Latin love-poet, "no why or wherefore in liking. "Hartopp, therefore, had taken, from the first moment, to Waife, --thestaid, respectable, thriving man, all muffled up from head to foot in thewhitest lawn of reputation, --to the wandering, shifty, tricksomescatterling, who had not seemingly secured, through the course of alife bordering upon age, a single certificate for good conduct. On hishearthstone, beside his ledger-book, stood the Mayor, looking with arespectful admiration that puzzled himself upon the forlorn creature, whocould give no reason why he should not be rather in the Gatesboro' parishstocks than in its chief magistrate's easy-chair. Yet, were the Mayor'ssympathetic liking and respectful admiration wholly unaccountable? Runsthere not between one warm human heart and another the electric chain ofa secret understanding? In that maimed outcast, so stubbornly hard tohimself, so tremulously sensitive for his sick child, was there not themajesty to which they who have learned that Nature has her nobles, reverently bow the head! A man true to man's grave religion can no moredespise a life wrecked in all else, while a hallowing affection standsout sublime through the rents and chinks of fortune, than he can profanewith rude mockery a temple in ruins, --if still left there the altar. 

CHAPTER XIX. 

 Very well so far as it goes. 

MR. HARTOPP. --"I cannot presume to question you further, Mr. Chapman. But to one of your knowledge of the world, I need not say that yoursilence deprives me of the power to assist yourself. We'll talk no moreof that. "

WAIFE. --"Thank you, gratefully, Mr. Mayor. "

MR. HARTOPP. --"But for the little girl, make your mind easy, --at leastfor the present. I will place her at my farm cottage. My bailiff'swife, a kind woman, will take care of her, while you pursue your callingelsewhere. As for this money, you will want it yourself; your poorlittle child shall cost you nothing. So that's settled. Let me come upand see her. I am a bit of a doctor myself. Every man blest with alarge family, in whose house there is always some interesting case ofsmall-pox, measles, whooping-cough, scarlatina, etc. , has a good privatepractice of his own. I'm not brilliant in book-learning, Mr. Chapman. But as to children's complaints in a practical way, " added Hartopp, witha glow of pride, "Mrs. H. Says she'd rather trust the little ones to methan to Dr. Gill. I'll see your child, and set her up I'll be bound. But now I think of it, " continued Hartopp, softening more and more, "ifexhibit you must, why not stay at Gatesboro' for a time? More may bemade in this town than elsewhere. "

"No, no; I could not have the heart to act here again without her. Ifeel at present as if I can never again act at all!"

"Something else will turn up. Providence is so kind to me, Mr. Mayor. "

Waife turned to the door. "You will come soon?" he said anxiously. 

The Mayor, who had been locking up his ledgers and papers, replied, "Iwill but stay to give some orders; in a quarter of an hour I shall be atyour hotel. "

CHAPTER XX. 

 Sophy hides heart and shows temper. 

The child was lying on a sofa drawn near the window in her own room, andon her lap was the doll Lionel had given to her. Carried with her in herwanderings, she had never played with it; never altered a ribbon in itsyellow tresses; but at least once a day she had taken it forth and lookedat it in secret. And all that morning, left much to herself, it had beenher companion. She was smoothing down its frock, which she fancied hadgot ruffled, --smoothing it down with a sort of fearful tenderness, thedoll all the while staring her full in the face with its blue bead eyes. Waife, seated near her, was trying to talk gayly; to invent fairy talesblithe with sport and fancy: but his invention flagged, and the fairiesprosed awfully. He had placed the dominos before Sir Isaac, but Sophyhad scarcely looked at them, from the languid heavy eyes on which thedoll so stupidly fixed its own. Sir Isaac himself seemed spiritless; hewas aware that something was wrong. Now and then he got up restlessly, sniffed the dominos, and placed a paw gently, very gently, on Sophy'sknee. Not being encouraged, he lay down again uneasily, often shiftinghis position as if the floor was grown too hard for him. Thus the Mayorfound the three. He approached Sophy with the step of a man accustomedto sick-rooms and ailing children, --step light as if shod with felt, --puthis hand on her shoulder, kissed her forehead, and then took the doll. Sophy started, and took it back from him quickly, but without a word;then she hid it behind her pillow. The Mayor smiled. "My dear child, doyou think I should hurt your doll?"

Sophy coloured and said murmuringly, "No, sir, not hurt it, but--" shestopped short. 

"I have been talking to your grandpapa about you, my dear, and we bothwish to give you a little holiday. Dolls are well enough for the winter, but green fields and daisy chains for the summer. "

Sophy glanced from the Mayor to her grandfather, and back again to theMayor, shook her curls from her eyes, and looked seriously inquisitive. 

The Mayor, observing her quietly, stole her hand into his own, feelingthe pulse as if merely caressing the slender wrist. Then he began todescribe his bailiff's cottage, with woodbine round the porch, the farm-yard, the bee-hives, the pretty duck-pond with an osier island, and thegreat China gander who had a pompous strut, which made him the droll estcreature possible. And Sophy should go there in a day or two, and beas happy as one of the bees, but not so busy. Sophy listened veryearnestly, very gravely, and then sliding her hand from the Mayor, caught hold of her grandfather's arm firmly, and said, "And you, Grandy, --will you like it? won't it be dull for you, Grandy dear?"

"Why, my darling, " said Waife, "I and Sir Isaac will go and take a strollabout the country for a few weeks, and--"

SOPHY (passionately). --"I thought so; I thought he meant that. I triednot to believe it; go away, --you? and who's to take care of you? who'llunderstand you? I want care! I! I! No, no, it is you, --you who wantcare. I shall be well to-morrow, --quite well, don't fear. He shall notbe sent away from me; he shall not, sir. Oh, Grandfather, Grandfather, how could you?" She flung herself on his breast, clinging there, --clinging as if infancy and age were but parts of the same whole. 

"But, " said the Mayor, "it is not as if you were going to school, mydear; you are going for a holiday. And your grandfather must leave you, --must travel about; 'tis his calling. If you fell ill and were withhim, think how much you would be in his way. Do you know, " he added, smiling, "I shall begin to fear that you are selfish. "

"Selfish!" exclaimed Waife, angrily. 

"Selfish!" echoed Sophy, with a melancholy scorn that came from asentiment so deep that mortal eye could scarce fathom it. "Oh, no, sir!can you say it is for his good, not for what he supposes mine that youwant us to part? The pretty cottage, and all for me; and what for him?--tramp, tramp along the hot dusty roads. Do you see that he is lame?Oh, Sir, I know him; you don't. Selfish! he would have no merry waysthat make you laugh without me; would you, Grandy dear? Go away, you area naughty man, --go, or I shall hate you as much as that dreadful Mr. Rugge. "

"Rugge, --who is he?" said the Mayor, curiously, catching at any clew. 

"Hush, my darling!--hush!" said Waife, fondling her on his breast. "Hush! What is to be done, sir?"

Hartopp made a sly sign to him to say no more before Sophy, and thenreplied, addressing himself to her, "What is to be done? Nothing shallbe done, my dear child, that you dislike. I don't wish to part you two. Don't hate me; lie down again; that's a dear. There, I have smoothedyour pillow for you. Oh, here's your pretty doll again. " Sophy snatchedat the doll petulantly, and made what the French call a moue at the goodman as she suffered her grandfather to replace her on the sofa. 

"She has a strong temper of her own, " muttered the Mayor; "so has AnnaMaria a strong temper!"

Now, if I were anyway master of my own pen, and could write as I pleased, without being hurried along helter-skelter by the tyrannical exactions ofthat "young Rapid" in buskins and chiton called "THE HISTORIC MUSE, " Iwould break off this chapter, open my window, rest my eyes on the greenlawn without, and indulge in a rhapsodical digression upon thatbeautifier of the moral life which is called "Good Temper. " Ha! theHistoric Muse is dozing. By her leave!--Softly. 

CHAPTER XXI. 

Being an essay on temper in general, and a hazardous experiment on thereader's in particular. 

There, the window is open! how instinctively the eye rests upon thegreen! How the calm colour lures and soothes it! But is there to thegreen only a single hue? See how infinite the variety of its tints!What sombre gravity in yon cedar, yon motionless pine-tree! What livelybut unvarying laugh in yon glossy laurels! Do those tints charm us likethe play in the young leaves of the lilac, --lighter here, darker there, as the breeze (and so slight the breeze!) stirs them into checker, --intoripple? Oh, sweet green, to the world what sweet temper is to man'slife! Who would reduce into one dye all thy lovely varieties? whoexclude the dark steadfast verdure that lives on through the winter day;or the mutinous caprice of the gentler, younger tint that came freshthrough the tears of April, and will shadow with sportive tremor theblooms of luxuriant June?

Happy the man on whose marriage-hearth temper smiles kind from the eyesof woman! "No deity present, " saith the heathen proverb, "where absentPrudence;" no joy long a guest where Peace is not a dweller, --peace, solike Faith that they may be taken for each other, and poets have cladthem with the same veil. But in childhood, in early youth, expect notthe changeless green of the cedar. Wouldst thou distinguish fine temperfrom spiritless dulness, from cold simulation, --ask less what the temperthan what the disposition. 

Is the nature sweet and trustful; is it free from the morbid self-lovewhich calls itself "sensitive feeling" and frets at imaginary offences;is the tendency to be grateful for kindness, yet take kindness meekly, and accept as a benefit what the vain call a due? From dispositions thusblessed, sweet temper will come forth to gladden thee, spontaneous andfree. Quick with some, with some slow, word and look emerge out of theheart. Be thy first question, "Is the heart itself generous and tender?"If it be so, self-control comes with deepening affection. Call not thata good heart which, hastening to sting if a fibre be ruffled, cries, "Iam no hypocrite. " Accept that excuse, and revenge becomes virtue. Butwhere the heart, if it give the offence, pines till it win back thepardon; if offended itself, bounds forth to forgive, ever longing tosoothe, ever grieved if it wound; then be sure that its nobleness willneed but few trials of pain in each outbreak to refine and chastise itsexpression. Fear not then; be but noble thyself, thou art safe!

Yet what in childhood is often called, rebukingly, "temper" is but thecordial and puissant vitality which contains all the elements that maketemper the sweetest at last. Who amongst us, how wise soever, canconstrue a child's heart? who conjecture all the springs that secretlyvibrate within, to a touch on the surface of feeling? Each child, butespecially the girl-child, would task the whole lore of a sage deep asShakspeare to distinguish those subtle emotions which we grown folks haveoutlived. 

"She has a strong temper, " said the Mayor, when Soppy snatched the dollfrom his hand a second time, and pouted at him, spoiled child, looking sodivinely cross, so petulantly pretty! And how on earth could the Mayorknow what associations with that stupid doll made her think it profanedby the touch of a stranger? Was it to her eyes as to his, --mere waxworkand frippery; or a symbol of holy remembrances, of gleams into a fairerworld, of "devotion to something afar from the sphere of her sorrow?"Was not the evidence of "strong temper" the very sign of affectionatedepth of heart? Poor little Sophy! Hide it again, --safe out of sight, close, inscrutable, unguessed, as childhood's first treasures ofsentiment ever are!

CHAPTER XXII. 

 The object of civilization being always to settle people one way or the other, the Mayor of Gatesboro' entertains a statesmanlike ambition to settle Gentleman Waife; no doubt a wise conception, and in accordance with the genius of the Nation. Every session of Parliament England is employed in settling folks, whether at home or at the Antipodes, who ignorantly object to be settled in her way; in short, "I'll settle them, " has become a vulgar idiom, tantamount to a threat of uttermost extermination or smash; therefore the Mayor of Gatesboro' harbouring that benignant idea with reference to "Gentleman Waife, " all kindly readers will exclaim, "Dii meliora! What will he do with it?"

The doll once more safe behind the pillow, Sophy's face graduallysoftened; she bent forward, touched the Mayor's hand timidly, and lookedat him with pleading, penitent eyes, still wet with tears, --eyes thatsaid, though the lips were silent, "I'll not hate you. I was ungratefuland peevish; may I beg pardon?"

"I forgive you with all my heart, " cried the Mayor, interpreting the lookaright. "And now try and compose yourself and sleep while I talk withyour grandpapa below. "

"I don't see how it is possible that I can leave her, " said Waife, whenthe two men had adjourned to the sitting-room. "I am sure, " quoth theMayor, seriously, "that it is the best thing for her: her pulse has muchnervous excitability; she wants a complete rest; she ought not to moveabout with you on any account. But come: though I must not know, itseems, who and what you are, Mr. Chapman, I don't think you will run offwith my cow; and if you like to stay at the bailiff's cottage for a weekor two with your grandchild, you shall be left in peace, and asked noquestions. I will own to you a weakness of mine: I value myself on beingseldom or never taken in. I don't think I could forgive the man who didtake me in. But taken in I certainly shall be, if, despite all yourmystery, you are not as honest a fellow as ever stood upon shoe-leather!So come to the cottage. "

Waife was very much affected by this confiding kindness; but he shook hishead despondently, and that same abject, almost cringing humility of mienand manner which had pained at times Lionel and Vance crept over thewhole man, so that he seemed to cower and shrink as a Pariah before aBrahmin. "No, sir; thank you most humbly. No, sir; that must not be. I must work for my daily bread; if what a poor vagabond like me may docan be called work. I have made it a rule for years not to force myselfto the hearth and home of any kind man, who, not knowing my past, has aright to suspect me. Where I lodge, I pay as a lodger; or whateverfavour shown me spares my purse, I try to return in some useful humbleway. Why, sir, how could I make free and easy with another man's boardand roof-tree for days or weeks together, when I would not even come toyour hearthstone for a cup of tea?" The Mayor remembered, and wasstartled. Waife hurried on. "But for my poor child I have no suchscruples, --no shame, no false pride. I take what you offer hergratefully, --gratefully. Ah, sir, she is not in her right place with me;but there's no use kicking against the pricks. Where was I? Oh! well, I tell you what we will do, sir. I will take her to the cottage in a dayor two, --as soon as she is well enough to go, --and spend the day withher, and deceive her, sir! yes, deceive, cheat her, sir! I am a cheat, a player, and she'll think I'm going to stay with her; and at night, whenshe's asleep, I'll creep off, I and the other dog. But I'll leave aletter for her: it will soothe her, and she'll be patient and wait. Iwill come back again to see her in a week, and once every week, tillshe's well again. "

"And what will you do?"

"I don't know; but, " said the actor, forcing a laugh, "I 'm not a manlikely to starve. Oh, never fear, sir. "

So the Mayor went away, and strolled across the fields to his bailiff'scottage, to prepare for the guest it would receive. "It is all very wellthat the poor man should be away for some days, " thought Mr. Hartopp. "Before he comes again, I shall have hit on some plan to serve him; and Ican learn more about him from the child in his absence, and see what heis really fit for. There's a schoolmaster wanted in Morley's village. Old Morley wrote to me to recommend him one. Good salary, --pretty house. But it would be wrong to set over young children--recommend to arespectable proprietor and his parson--a man whom I know nothing about. Impossible! that will not do. If there was any place of light servicewhich did not require trust or responsibility, --but there is no suchplace in Great Britain. Suppose I were to set him up in some easy way ofbusiness, --a little shop, eh? I don't know. What would Williams say?If, indeed, I were taken in! if the man I am thus credulously trustingturned out a rogue, "--the Mayor paused and actually shivered at thatthought, --"why then, I should be fallen indeed. My wife would not let mehave half-a-crown in my pockets; and I could, not walk a hundred yardsbut Williams would be at my heels to protect me from being stolen bygypsies. Taken in by him! No, impossible! But if it turn out as Isuspect, --that, contrary to vulgar prudence, I am divining a really greatand good man in difficulties, aha, what a triumph I shall then gain overthem all! How Williams will revere me!" The good man laughed aloud atthat thought, and walked on with a prouder step. 

CHAPTER, XXIII. 

 A pretty trifle in its way, no doubt, is the love between youth and youth, --gay varieties of the bauble spread the counter of the great toy-shop; but thou, courteous dame Nature, raise thine arm to yon shelf, somewhat out of every-day reach, and bring me down that obsolete, neglected, unconsidered thing, the love between age and childhood. 

The next day Sophy was better; the day after, improvement was morevisible; and on the third day Waife paid his bill, and conducted her tothe rural abode to which, credulous at last of his promises to share itwith her for a time, he enticed her fated steps. It was little more thana mile beyond the suburbs of the town; and, though the walk tired her, she concealed fatigue, and would not suffer him to carry her. Thecottage now smiled out before them, --thatched gable roof, with fancybarge board; half Swiss, half what is called Elizabethan; all the fencesand sheds round it, as only your rich traders, condescending to turnfarmers, construct and maintain, --sheds and fences, trim and neat, as ifmodels in waxwork. The breezy air came fresh from the new haystacks;from the woodbine round the porch; from the breath of the lazy kine, asthey stood knee-deep in the pool, that, belted with weeds and broad-leaved water-lilies, lay calm and gleaming amidst level pastures. 

Involuntarily they arrested their steps, to gaze on the cheerfullandscape and inhale the balmy air. Meanwhile the Mayor came out fromthe cottage porch, his wife leaning on his arm, and two of his youngerchildren bounding on before, with joyous faces, giving chase to a gaudybutterfly which they had started from the woodbine. 

Mrs. Hartopp had conceived a lively curiosity to see and judge forherself of the objects of her liege lord's benevolent interest. Sheshared, of course, the anxiety which formed the standing excitement ofall those who lived but for one godlike purpose, that of preservingJosiah Hartopp from being taken in. But whenever the Mayor speciallywished to secure his wife's countenance to any pet project of his own, and convince her either that he was not taken in, or that to bediscreetly taken in is in this world a very popular and sure mode ofgetting up, he never failed to attain his end. That man was thecunningest creature! As full of wiles and stratagems in order to get hisown way--in benevolent objects--as men who set up to be clever are forselfish ones. Mrs. Hartopp was certainly a good woman, but a made goodwoman. Married to another man, I suspect that she would have been ashrew. Petruchio would never have tamed her, I'll swear. But she, poorlady, had been gradually, but completely, subdued, subjugated, absolutelycowed beneath the weight of her spouse's despotic mildness; for inHartopp there was a weight of soft quietude, of placid oppression, whollyirresistible. It would have buried a Titaness under a Pelion of moralfeather-beds. Mass upon mass of downy influence descended upon you, seemingly yielding as it fell, enveloping, overbearing, stifling you; notpresenting a single hard point of contact; giving in as you pushedagainst it; supplying itself seductively round you, softer and softer, heavier and heavier, --till, I assure you, ma'am, no matter how high yournatural wifely spirit, you would have had it smothered out of you, yourlast rebellious murmur dying languidly away under the descending fleeces. 

"So kind in you to come with me, Mary, " said Hartopp. "I could not havebeen happy without your approval: look at the child; something about herlike Mary Anne, and Mary Anne is the picture of you!"

Waife advanced, uncovering; the two children, having lost trace of thebutterfly, had run up towards Sophy. But her shy look made themselvesshy, --shyness is so contagious, and they stood a little aloof, gazing ather. Sir Isaac stalked direct to the Mayor, sniffed at him, and waggedhis tail. 

Mrs. Hartopp now bent over Sophy, and acknowledging that the face wassingularly pretty, glanced graciously towards the husband, and said, "Isee the likeness!" then to Sophy, "I fear you are tired, my dear: youmust not overfatigue yourself; and you must take milk fresh from the cowevery morning. " And now the bailiff's wife came briskly out, a tidy, fresh-coloured, kind-faced woman, fond of children; the more so becauseshe had none of her own. 

So they entered the farm-yard, Mrs. Hartopp being the chief talker; andshe, having pointed out to Sophy the cows and the turkeys, the hen-coops, and the great China gander, led her by the one hand--while Sophy's otherhand clung firmly to Waife's'--across the little garden, with its patentbee-hives, into the house, took off her bonnet, and kissed her. "Verylike Mary Anne!--Mary Anne, dear. " One of the two children owning thatname approached, --snub-nosed, black-eyed, with cheeks like peonies. "This little girl, my Mary Anne, was as pale as you, --over-study; andnow, my dear child, you must try and steal a little of her colour. Don'tyou think my Mary Anne is like her papa, Mr. Chapman?"

"Like me!" exclaimed the Mayor, whispering Waife, "image of her mother!the same intellectual look!"

Said the artful actor, "Indeed, ma'am, the young lady has her father'smouth and eyebrows, but that acute, sensible expression is yours, --quiteyours. Sir Isaac, make a bow to the young lady, and then, sir, gothrough the sword exercise!"

The dog, put upon his tricks, delighted the children; and the poor actor, though his heart lay in his breast like lead, did his best to repaybenevolence by mirth. Finally, much pleased, Mrs. Hartopp took herhusband's arm to depart. The children, on being separated from SirIsaac, began to cry. The Mayor interrupted his wife, --who, if left toherself, would have scolded them into worse crying, --told Mary Anne thathe relied on her strong intellect to console her brother Tom; observed toTom that it was not like his manly nature to set an example of weeping tohis sister; and contrived thus to flatter their tears away in a trice, and sent them forward in a race to the turnstile. 

Waife and Sophy were alone in the cottage parlour, Mrs. Gooch, thebailiff's wife, walking part of the way back with the good couple, inorder to show the Mayor a heifer who had lost appetite and taken tomoping. "Let us steal out into the back garden, my darling, " said Waife. "I see an arbour there, where I will compose myself with a pipe, --aliberty I should not like to take indoors. " They stepped across thethreshold, and gained the arbour, which stood at the extreme end of thesmall kitchen-garden, and commanded a pleasant view of pastures andcornfields, backed by the blue outline of distant hills. Afar werefaintly heard the laugh of the Mayor's happy children, now and then atinkling sheep-bell, or the tap of the woodpecker, unrepressed by thehush of the. Midmost summer, which stills the more tuneful choristersamidst their coverts. Waife lighted his pipe, and smoked silently;Sophy, resting her head on his bosom, silent also. She was exquisitelysensitive to nature: the quiet beauty of all round her was soothing aspirit lately troubled, and health came stealing gently back throughframe and through heart. At length she said softly, "We could be sohappy here, Grandfather! It cannot last, can it?"

"It is no use in this life, my dear, " returned Waife, philosophizing, "nouse at all disturbing present happiness by asking, 'Can it last?' To-dayis man's, to-morrow his Maker's. But tell me frankly, do you reallydislike so much the idea of exhibiting? I don't mean as we did in Mr. Rugge's show. I know you hate that; but in a genteel private way, as theother night. You sigh! Out with it. "

"I like what you like, Grandy. "

"That's not true. I like to smoke; you don't. Come, you do dislikeacting? Why? you do it so well, --wonderfully. Generally speaking, people like what they do well. "

"It is not the acting itself, Grandy dear, that I don't like. When I amin some part, I am carried away; I am not myself. I am some one else!"

"And the applause?"

"I don't feel it. I dare say I should miss it if it did not come; but itdoes not seem to me as if I were applauded. If I felt that, I shouldstop short, and get frightened. It is as if that somebody else into whomI was changed was making friends with the audience; and all my feeling isfor that somebody, --just as, Grandy dear, when it is over, and we two arealone together, all my feeling is for you, --at least (hanging her head)it used to be; but lately, somehow, I am ashamed to think how I have beenfeeling for myself more than for you. Is it--is it that I am growingselfish? as Mr. Mayor said. Oh, no! Now we are here, --not in thosenoisy towns, --not in the inns and on the highways; now here, here, I dofeel again for you, --all for you!"

"You are my little angel, you are, " said Waife, tremulously. "Selfish!you! a good joke that! Now you see, I am not what is calledDemonstrative, --a long word, Sophy, which means, that I don't show to youalways how fond I am of you; and, indeed, " he added ingenuously, "I amnot al ways aware of it myself. I like acting, --I like the applause, andthe lights, and the excitement, and the illusion, --the make-belief of thewhole thing: it takes me out of memory and thought; it is a world thathas neither past, present, nor future, an interlude in time, -an escapefrom space. I suppose it is the same with poets when they are makingverses. Yes, I like all this; and, when I think of it, I forget you toomuch. And I never observed, Heaven forgive me! that you were pale anddrooping till it was pointed out to me. Well, take away your arms. Letus consult! As soon as you get quite, quite well, how shall we live?what shall we do? You are as wise as a little woman, and such a careful, prudent housekeeper; and I'm such a harumscarum old fellow, without asound idea in my head. What shall we do if we give up actingaltogether?"

"Give up acting altogether, when you like it so! No, no. I will like ittoo, Grandy. But--but--" she stopped short, afraid to imply blame or togive pain. 

"But what? let us make clean breasts, one to the other; tell truth, andshame the Father of Lies. "

"Tell truth, " said Sophy, lifting up to him her pure eyes with suchheavenly, loving kindness that, if the words did imply reproof, the eyesstole it away. "Could we but manage to tell truth off the stage, Ishould not dislike acting! Oh, Grandfather, when that kind gentleman andhis lady and those merry children come up and speak to us, don't you feelready to creep into the earth?--I do. Are we telling truth? are weliving truth? one name to-day, another name to morrow? I should notmind acting on a stage or in a room, for the time, but always acting, always, --we ourselves 'make beliefs!' Grandfather, must that be? Theydon't do it; I mean by they, all who are good and looked up to andrespected, as--as--oh, Grandy! Grandy! what am I saying? I have painedyou. "

Waife indeed was striving hard to keep down emotion; but his lips wereset firmly and the blood had left them, and his hands were trembling. 

"We must, hide ourselves, " he said in a very low voice; "we must takefalse names; I--because--because of reasons I can't tell even to you; andyou, because I failed to get you a proper home, where you ought to be;and there is one who, if he pleases, and he may please it any day, couldtake you away from me, if he found you out; and so--and so--" He pausedabruptly, looked at her fearful wondering soft face, and, rising, drewhimself up with one of those rare outbreaks of dignity which elevated thewhole character of his person. "But as for me, " said he, "if I have lostall name; if, while I live, I must be this wandering, skulking outcast, --look above, Sophy, --look up above: there all secrets will be known, allhearts read; and there my best hope to find a place in which I may waityour coming is in what has lost me all birthright here. Not to exaltmyself do I say this, --no; but that you may have comfort, darling, ifever hereafter you are pained by what men say to you of me. "

As he spoke, the expression of his face, at first solemn and lofty, relaxed into melancholy submission. Then passing his arm into hers, andleaning on it as if sunk once more into the broken cripple needing herfrail support, he drew her forth from the arbour, and paced the littlegarden slowly, painfully. At length he seemed to recover himself, andsaid in his ordinary cheerful tone, "But to the point in question, suppose we have done with acting and roaming, and keep to one name andsettle somewhere like plain folks, again I ask, How shall we live?"

"I have been thinking of that, " answered Sophy. "You remember that thosegood Miss Burtons taught me all kinds of needlework, and I know peoplecan make money by needlework. And then, Grandy dear, what can't you do?Do you forget Mrs. Saunders's books that you bound, and her cups andsaucers that you mended? So we would both work, and have a littlecottage and a garden, that we could take care of, and sell the herbs andvegetables. Oh, I have thought over it all, the last fortnight, ahundred hundred times, only I did not dare to speak first. "

Waife listened very attentively. "I can make very good baskets, " saidhe, rubbing his chin, "famous baskets (if one could hire a bit of osierground), and, as you say, there might be other fancy articles I couldturn out prettily enough, and you could work samplers, and urn-rugs, anddoileys, and pincushions, and so forth; and what with a rood or two ofgarden ground, and poultry (the Mayor says poultry is healthy forchildren), upon my word, if we could find a safe place, and people wouldnot trouble us with their gossip, and we could save a little money foryou when I am--"

"Bees too, --honey?" interrupted Sophy, growing more and more interestedand excited. 

"Yes, bees, --certainly. A cottage of that kind in a village would not beabove L6 a year, and L20 spent on materials for fancy-works would set usup. Ah but furniture, beds and tables, --monstrous dear!"

"Oh, no! very little would do at first. "

"Let us count the money we have left, " said Waife, throwing himself downon a piece of sward that encircled a shady mulberry-tree. Old man andchild counted the money, bit by bit, gayly yet anxiously, --babbling, interrupting each other, --scheme upon scheme: they forgot past andpresent as much as in acting plays; they were absorbed in the future, --innocent simple future, --innocent as the future planned by two infantsfresh from "Robinson Crusoe" or fairy tales. 

"I remember, I remember, just the place for us, " cried Waife, suddenly. "It is many, many, many years since I was there; I was courting my Lizzyat the time, --alas! alas. But no sad thoughts now!--just the place, neara large town, but in a pretty village quite retired from it. 'T wasthere I learned to make baskets. I had broken my leg; fall from a horse;nothing to do. I lodged with an old basketmaker; he had a capital trade. Rivulet at the back of his house; reeds, osiers, plentiful. I see themnow, as I saw them from my little casement while my leg was setting. AndLizzy used to write to me such dear letters; my baskets were all for her. We had baskets enough to have furnished a house with bask'ts; could havedined in baskets, sat in baskets, slept in baskets. With a few lessons Icould soon recover the knack of the work. I should like to see the placeagain; it would be shaking hands with my youth once more. None who couldpossibly recognize me could be now living. Saw no one but the surgeon, the basketmaker, and his wife; all so old they must be long sincegathered to their fathers. Perhaps no one carries on the basket tradenow. I may revive it and have it all to myself; perhaps the cottageitself may be easily hired. " Thus, ever disposed to be sanguine, thevagabond chattered on, Sophy listening fondly, and smiling up in hisface. "And a fine large park close by: the owners, great lords, desertedit then; perhaps it is deserted still. You might wander over it as if itwere your own, Sophy. Such wonderful trees, --such green solitudes; andpretty shy hares running across the vistas, --stately deer too! We willmake friends with the lodge-keepers, and we will call the park yours, Sophy; and I shall be a genius who weaves magical baskets, and you shallbe the enchanted princess concealed from all evil eyes, knitting doileysof pearl under leaves of emerald, and catching no sound from the world ofperishable life, except as the boughs whisper and the birds sing. "

"Dear me, here you are; we thought you were lost, " said the bailiff'swife; "tea is waiting for you, and there's husband, sir, coming up fromhis work; he'll be proud and glad to know you, sir, and you too, my dear;we have no children of our own. "

It is past eleven. Sophy, worn out, but with emotions far morepleasurable than she has long known, is fast asleep. Waife kneels by herside, looking at her. He touches her hand, so cool and soft; all fevergone: he rises on tiptoe; he bends over her forehead, --a kiss there, anda tear; he steals away, down, down the stairs. At the porch is thebailiff holding Sir Isaac. 

"We'll take all care of her, " said Mr. Gooch. "You'll not know her againwhen you come back. "

Waife pressed the hand of his grandchild's host, but did not speak. 

"You are sure you will find your way, --no, that's the wrong turn, --straight onto the town. They'll be sitting up for you at the Saracen'sHead, I suppose, of course, sir? It seems not hospitable like, yourgoing away at the dead of night thus. But I understand you don't likecrying, sir, we men don't; and your sweet little girl I dare say wouldsob ready to break her heart if she knew. Fine moonlight night, sir, --straight on. And I say, don't fret about her: wife loves childrendearly, --so do I. Good-night. "

On went Waife, --lamely, slowly, --Sir Isaac's white coat gleaming in themoon, ghostlike. On he went, his bundle strapped across his shoulder, leaning on his staff, along by the folded sheep and the sleeping cattle. But when he got into the high road, Gatesboro' full before him, with allits roofs and spires, he turned his back on the town, and tramped oncemore along the desert thoroughfare, --more slowly and more, more lamelyand more, till several milestones were passed; and then he crept throughthe gap of a hedgerow to the sheltering eaves of a haystack; and underthat roof-tree he and Sir Isaac lay down to rest. 

CHAPTER XXIV. 

 Laugh at forebodings of evil, but tremble after day-dreams of happiness. 

Waife left behind him at the cottage two letters, --one entrusted to thebailiff, with a sealed bag, for Mr. Hartopp; one for Sophy, placed on achair beside her bed. 

The first letter was as follows:--

"I trust, dear and honoured sir, that I shall come back safely; and whenI do, I may have found perhaps a home for her, and some way of life suchas you would not blame. But, in case of accident, I have left with Mr. Gooch, sealed up, the money we made at Gatesboro', after paying the innbill, doctor, etc. , and retaining the mere trifle I need in case I andSir Isaac fail to support ourselves. You will kindly take care of it. I should not feel safe with more money about me, an old man. 

"I might be robbed; besides, I am careless. I never can keep money; itslips out of my hands like an eel. Heaven bless you, sir; your kindnessseems like a miracle vouchsafed to me for that child's dear sake. Noevil can chance to her with you; and if I should fall ill and die, eventhen you, who would have aided the tricksome vagrant, will not grudge thesaving hand to the harmless child. "

The letter to Sophy ran thus:--

"Darling, forgive me; I have stolen away from you, but only for a fewdays, and only in order to see if we cannot gain the magic home where Iam to be the Genius, and you the Princess. I go forth with such a lightheart, Sophy dear, I shall be walking thirty miles a day, and not feel anache in the lame leg: you could not keep up with me; you know you couldnot. So think over the cottage and the basket-work, and practise atsamplers and pincushions, when it is too hot to play; and be stout andstrong against I come back. That, I trust, will be this day week, ---'tis but seven days; and then we will only act fairy dramas to noddingtrees, with linnets for the orchestra; and even Sir Isaac shall not bedemeaned by mercenary tricks, but shall employ his arithmetical talentsin casting up the weekly bills, and he shall never stand on his hind legsexcept on sunny days, when he shall carry a parasol to shade an enchantedprincess. Laugh; darling, --let me fancy I see you laughing; but don'tfret, --don't fancy I desert you. Do try and get well, --quite, quitewell; I ask it of you on my knees. "

The letter and the bag were taken over at sunrise to Mr. Hartopp's villa. Mr. Hartopp was an early man. Sophy overslept herself: her room was tothe west; the morning beams did not reach its windows; and the cottagewithout children woke up to labour noiseless and still. So when at lastshe shook off sleep, and tossing her hair from her blue eyes, lookedround and became conscious of the strange place, she still fancied thehour early. But she got up, drew the curtain from the window, saw thesun high in the heavens, and, ashamed of her laziness, turned, and lo!the letter on the chair! Her heart at once misgave her; the truthflashed upon a reason prematurely quick in the intuition which belongs tothe union of sensitive affection and active thought. She drew a longbreath, and turned deadly pale. It was some minutes before she couldtake up the letter, before she could break the seal. When she did, sheread on noiselessly, her tears dropping over the page, without effort orsob. She had no egotistical sorrow, no grief in being left alone withstrangers: it was the pathos of the old man's lonely wanderings, of hisbereavement, of his counterfeit glee, and genuine self-sacrifice; this itwas that suffused her whole heart with unutterable yearnings oftenderness, gratitude, pity, veneration. But when she had wept silentlyfor some time, she kissed the letter with devout passion, and turned tothat Heaven to which the outcast had taught her first to pray. 

Afterwards she stood still, musing a little while, and the sorrowfulshade gradually left her face. Yes; she would obey him: she would notfret; she would try and get well and strong. He would feel, at thedistance, that she was true to his wishes; that she was fitting herselfto be again his companion: seven days would soon pass. Hope, that cannever long quit the heart of childhood, brightened over her meditations, as the morning sun over a landscape that just before had lain sad amidsttwilight and under rains. 

When she came downstairs, Mrs. Gooch was pleased and surprised to observethe placid smile upon her face, and the quiet activity with which, afterthe morning meal, she moved about by the good woman's side assisting herin her dairywork and other housewife tasks, talking little, comprehendingquickly, --composed, cheerful. 

"I am so glad to see you don't pine after your good grandpapa, as wefeared you would. "

"He told me not to pine, " answered Sophy, simply, but with a quiveringlip. 

When the noon deepened, and it became too warm for exercise, Sophytimidly asked if Mrs. Gooch had any worsted and knitting-needles, andbeing accommodated with those implements and materials, she withdrew tothe arbour, and seated herself to work, --solitary and tranquil. 

What made, perhaps, the chief strength in this poor child's nature wasits intense trustfulness, --a part, perhaps, of its instinctiveappreciation of truth. She trusted in Waife, in the future, inProvidence, in her own childish, not helpless, self. 

Already, as her slight fingers sorted the worsteds and her graceful tasteshaded their hues into blended harmony, her mind was weaving, not lessharmoniously, the hues in the woof of dreams, --the cottage home, theharmless tasks, Waife with his pipe in the armchair under some porch, covered like that one yonder, --why not?--with fragrant woodbine, and lifeif humble, honest, truthful, not shrinking from the day, so that ifLionel met her again she should not blush, nor he be shocked. And iftheir ways were so different as her grandfather said, still they mightcross, as they had crossed before, and--the work slid from her hand--the sweet lips parted, smiling: a picture came before her eyes, --hergrandfather, Lionel, herself; all three, friends, and happy; a stream, fair as the Thames had seemed; green trees all bathed in summer; the boatgliding by; in that boat they three, borne softly on, --away, away, --whatmatters whither?--by her side the old man; facing her, the boy's brightkind eyes. She started. She heard noises, --a swing ing gate, footsteps. She started, --she rose, --voices; one strange to her, --a man's voice, --then the Mayor's. A third voice, --shrill, stern; a terrible voice, -heardin infancy, associated with images of cruelty, misery, woe. It could notbe! impossible! Near, nearer, came the footsteps. Seized with theimpulse of flight, she sprang to the mouth of the arbour. Fronting herglared two dark, baleful eyes. She stood, --arrested, spellbound, as abird fixed rigid by the gaze of a serpent. 

"Yes, Mr. Mayor; all right! it is our little girl, --our dear Sophy. Thisway, Mr. Losely. Such a pleasant surprise for you, Sophy, my love!"said Mrs. Crane.